Prologue
Cardinal Order Dreadnaught Menace
New Roma orbit
Empire System, Human Universe
Captain Aren Perry had spent his whole career dreaming of this moment. He was leading a direct assault on the Empire home world. So why wasn’t he more excited about it?
“Captain, Fleet Command reports the aliens are in position,” the CommOp calmly informed the bridge crew.
How did that work, Perry wondered. Did someone talk to the aliens? What was that job like? Not that he had time to think about that. Not now. Not with his bridge packed with his first watch team and the mission greenlit. “Very well. How close are we?”
“We’ll be at Zulu Alpha in two mikes,” replied the NavOp over his shoulder, barely more than a whisper. The bridge of the Menace was small by Red standards, which made it small by almost all standards. The Cardinal Order prided herself on the small, fast ships in her fleet. It had been her greatest strength and her greatest weakness in the fight against the behemoths of the Empire for the past fifty years.
“Very well.” He turned to his DroneOp. “DO, give me a full alert spread. We don’t care if they see us coming anymore. We’re going full active on sensors.”
“Aye, sir,” he snapped.
Time to unzip their fly and let it all hang out.
“Active sensor sweep in progress.”
“Call it out.”
“So far, no blockade.”
“Time and distance?”
“I’m clearing the battle ring now. I don’t … I don’t see anything. They don’t have their battle platforms on this side at all.”
Perry allowed himself a smile. He really shouldn’t, but he was feeling his excitement return. Damn the fact that they had these aliens with them. We’re about to dive below the outer defensive battle rings of New Roma! No one had done that in a thousand years.
“Incoming drone cloud!” snapped the NavOp. “They dropped out of an FTL bubble about a thousand ADUs off starboard.”
Perry felt his smile slip a bit, but this wasn’t unexpected. These would be from the base on Tuleron, the largest of the New Roma moons. They were no doubt scrambling all the fighters they had. But once they realized the size of the attacking force, they would have to divide their resources thin. An FTL-bubble of assorted drone rail guns and nuke kamikazes was easy enough for them to handle.
“Tactical, are we prepped on Point Range Interceptors?”
“In the tubes and ready.”
“Launch all fighter squads. Hold alert fighters on the deck. They can clean up anything the PRIs miss and then continue to their primary assignments.”
“Aye, sir,” snapped the TO.
“And our friends,” Perry said. “Are they ready?”
There was a pregnant pause. Too long.
“We haven’t heard a report from Fleet Command yet,” the CommOp replied at last.
Now Perry’s smile slipped completely. In its place, a scowl broke out. “When was the last report?”
The CO shifted uncomfortably. “The last call I made, sir, when they were in position. We’ve heard nothing since regarding intentions.” He glanced back. “Should we have?”
Damn right we should have. Perry shook off the CO, and he spun back to his station. “Either they come through or they don’t. We’re punching through either way.”
“Platforms!” snapped the TO. “I’ve got two of them now. They were hiding in the belt of the upper moon. They’re swinging around now. I have incoming battery fire. They’ve both released full barrage packages.”
Perry cursed under his breath. The drone cloud they could manage on their own, but not the combined battery power of two platform defense stations. A couple of his bridge staff stiffened, picking up on his mutterings.
“TO, belay the PRI spread on the drone bubble. Redirect to the incoming barrage. We can take out the drone bubble with kinetic charges—”
“Sir,” snapped the CommOp, “Fleet Command reports the aliens are engaging.”
Perry narrowed his eyes. “In what way? Are they following the Alpha plan? Because that didn’t include the platform stations. We’re looking at more firepower than a hundred ships.”
His CO shook his head. “I don’t have details, sir. Just a message that the aliens are engaging.”
Well, that’s just great, thought Perry. This was why they needed some lines of communication directly with these alien bastards. You couldn’t go into a fight expecting everything to go to plan. How can we coordinate the new situation now? he wondered.
“Sir, the drone cloud is gone.”
Perry spun to look at his TO. “Did you redirect the PRIs?”
“Yes, sir. We didn’t hit them. They were just there and then—and then they weren’t.”
Perry turned back, brow furrowed. “Well, that’s good news.” He wondered if their FTL bubble had picked them back up again. Could they do that? He didn’t put anything past the Empire.
“Sir, I—”
Perry waited for his CommOp to finish his thought. “Yes?” he said impatiently.
“Alpha fighter group reports no incoming fire from the platform stations.”
First the drone cloud, now the platform barrages? That was impossible, thought Perry. They’d just seen them on the sensors. Missiles could go off course. Kinetic slugs could explode. Lasers could miss. But none of those things just disappeared.
“Are they sure they didn’t just miss them?” It was a ludicrous question. But in the heat of the moment, Perry was at a loss to explain the message from his fighter squads.
“Negative, sir,” the CO said. “Shall I tell them to continue on to primary targets?”
Perry nodded. “Do so.” Today wasn’t a day for questioning miracles. “Tell me when those platform stations release another barrage. I doubt they’ll make the same mistake twice.”
“Sir, the Empire battle platforms.”
Perry waited a half-beat. “What about them?”
“They’re gone.”
“Back behind the moon?” Perry asked, wondering what that would accomplish for them.
“No sir. I just had them on scanners one moment, and the next they were gone.”
Perry frowned. “Gone?”
The TO threw up his hands, uncharacteristically flummoxed. “They just disappeared.”
“Four trillion tons of space station doesn’t just disappear,” Perry huffed.
“Yes sir, I understand—”
“They didn’t disappear,” snapped the DO, looking intently at his console. “I have drone eyes on. I have a huge debris field. At least twice the size of the platforms, and breaking up fast. There’s an energy signature I’ve never seen before.” He turned away from his console to meet Perry’s eyes. “It’s emanating from the aliens, sir.”
“Four trillion tons of space station,” Perry muttered again under his breath. “Impossible.”
“Sir,” said the CommOp unsteadily. “Fleet Command reports alien engagement is complete and we should report to primary position.”
Perry slowly turned to the DroneOp. “Are we clear?” He tried to keep the shock out of his voice.
The officer nodded. “No Echos anywhere in the neighborhood.” He paused. His voice had a hint of a smile in it. “Unless you count debris.”
Perry shook his head. He noticed a couple members of the bridge crew were smiling. A few more joined in. Perry tried to keep the smile off his own face, but doubted he succeeded. Maybe he was being too hard on these new alien partners.
Maybe this was the beginning of an attack the Cardinal Order would be celebrating for generations.
“Very well. Take us to primary and begin siege operations on the planet.”
Chapter 1
Papa Squadron
Outside the Great Corridor
NewVerse Space
“It’s a joke,” said Ensign Walsh over the sound of his thrusters. “They’re going to put a knife in our back the second they can.”
“I’m more worried they’re gonna eat us,” said Ensign Butterby. “Have you actually seen one of them up close? We were part of that docking team that was trying to get that link between that Da’hune ship and the fleet command cruiser. Saw one of them right at the port window. I mean, it was right there!”
“And?” asked one of his partners, flying in tight formation as they approached the first corridor markers. In his HUD, Walsh could see a cluster of nearly two dozen points of light, indicating the transponders of all the fighters in the group. They had just completed a near-FTL jump and the energy bubble was still dissipating. Data about near space was coming in slowly.
“And it looked at me like I was its damn lunch!”
“If you didn’t look like such a dainty piece of meat, Butterball, that wouldn’t happen.”
“Maybe they just wanted to probe you, pretty boy?”
“Up yours, Jabber.”
“I think that was the idea for you.”
A shrill alert cut through the chatter on the team frequency.
“Fun time is over, shitheads, we’re here,” said Lieutenant Dockers, in a voice that said he’d not been enjoying fun time at all.
Walsh strained forward to see if he could find what they were looking for. The jump should have put them close, but it was still futile with his naked eye. He called up the link to the fighter’s AI. The ancient Devastator took a full second to respond to his request. He wasn’t sure if it was the age of the craft, or the ill repair it was in. I guess it doesn’t really matter, he thought.
Then an image appeared in a window in his mind. It was still blurry, but the Great Corridor between the NewVerse and home had never looked so sweet to Walsh. Technically, it had never looked like anything but a vid image to Walsh. He had been asleep when his assigned invasion cruiser, the ESS McKinney, had passed through. That was eight months ago. He wasn’t supposed to see it again for four years.
The invasion hadn’t really gone to plan, but Walsh didn’t care about the plan. He cared that they were going home sooner than expected.
Assuming the Reds weren’t already bombing the shit out of home. Walsh figured his home was fine. He didn’t get time on the ansible connection these days. Since they were at war with the Reds now, any part of the joint force that had been shared was a hot mess, and that included the supply lines and communications arrays that the coalition had hastily built and then even more hastily ripped apart.
But Walsh figured his home was fine. His wife was on the Macron City base on the moon of Eros. It wasn’t worth fighting over, which was one good thing about being from nowhere.
His drifting mind refocused on the image in his mind’s eye. He repressed the urge to gasp. He’d heard about the new station that the joint forces had built at the corridor, but up close it was a mammoth creation.
Humanity Station.
The entire ring of the static corridor edge was a patchwork of bulky modules and compartments, some that appeared to be miles long, comprising the contributions of all the major powers. Even at this distance, Walsh could make out the bright yellow handshake corridors designed to bridge the gaps in each of the major powers’ design specifications. He’d seen enough joint operations to know that it wasn’t always easy to dock Alliance and Asiatic Ring ships, or Union and Brotherhood. Or Cardinal Order and Empire, if it came to that.
Angling out of all the major modules that formed the ring in space, Walsh could make out hundreds of smaller modules surrounding them, arrayed in haphazard patterns around some modules, in regimented rows around others, all attached to their base modules by an elaborate array of passes and rigged supports of all shapes and sizes.
Even the Reds and the Empire, who were now at war, had modules here that were part of the corridor. And like a science expedition in Antarctica on Old Earth, the warring powers were letting their scientists play nice, or at least appear to, and work side-by-side without open hostilities — although they weren’t technically allowed to share assets in any way.
The entire station was a maze that Walsh imagined could take days to explore. Lucky for him, they didn’t have to explore it.
They just had to warn it.
A green plane of light sliced through the image in his mind, emanating from a point about halfway up the structure. It swung past his Devastator, disappearing into space to his right, where the rest of the fighter group was clustered, then took another pass with the plane set at a 90 degree angle.
“Hold,” said Dockers, the flight leader. “We’re getting the once-over.”
That was a bit of a surprise. After the clusterfuck in NewVerse space, nobody was sure if Humanity Station would even be here, let alone what condition it was in. If the intel they had was right, the Reds were now in bed with another alien species, and had gone with them to attack New Roma proper. They would’ve had to pass through here. Walsh found himself wondering if Humanity Station had just sat by passively while the Reds had passed through.
His mic clicked. “Guess you’re getting that probe, Butterball,” Jabber said.
Walsh laughed.
“Kill the comedy,” snapped Dockers, before Butterby could offer a retort.
Walsh couldn’t see any damage to the station at all. Nothing that made it appear that a fight had taken place here. Nothing active about it at all.
The fighters were taking an unusual vector on their approach, not arriving by the direct ship channel, so whatever the front of the station looked like, they wouldn’t have a good view until they were turning into the corridor proper. As a small squadron of fighters, they weren’t authorized to use the main ship channels to approach directly. They might be desperately running home with their tail between their legs, but protocol was protocol.
“Anyone see any activity in there?” Walsh asked over all-comm. They might not have a good view of the front door, but the station was huge, and they could make out plenty of the infrastructure from their approach.
“Looks as dead as your social life,” Jabber said. “I don’t even see any drones in the complex.”
“Me neither,” said Butterby, as if his not seeing them was worth commenting on. “That’s spooky as shit.”
The returning fleet had gotten nothing but static from the station as it approached. Since the fleet was now comprised of approximately ten thousand more Da’hune warships than when it had last passed by these parts, they’d been understandably eager to explain to Humanity Station what they were seeing.
But it seemed there was no one at Humanity Station interested in hearing.
“Somebody’s operating this ident beam,” Dockers said. “So look alive.”
On cue, the green energy plane disappeared, and static exploded over the all-comm Empire channel they were monitoring.
“Welcome home!” said an overly-friendly voice. “I make you as Empire Echo Papa 211.”
“Confirmed,” replied Dockers, in a voice that Walsh thought sounded less than relieved. “Can I get an ident call, please?”
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