"Just like old times, eh, Mr. Priest?" Arthur leaned out of his chair to look at Yosef. "Escaping from the Mycians in the Caldos system."
"I sincerely hope you don't expect me to function as our gunner this time around!" snorted the old man. "I recall my contribution in that role was minimal."
"This time we're fully crewed. When they catch up with us, I'm going to do the gunnery work myself. Do you know how to operate shipboard sensors and comms?"
"Marginally. They're not so different from other types of standard electronics."
"Standard electronics from Tyr, you mean?"
"What do you mean by that, Mr. Agent?"
"You're obviously more than a few decades out of school, and this isn't a Tyrian starship. I mean by that that your knowhow may be limited in ways you aren't expecting."
"Do you want me to take over from you, or not?"
Arthur paused. "Well, I guess gunnery is the more important task, when it comes to it. Very well – I accept your credentials."
Yosef shook his head. "Shouldn't you be paying attention to the sensors now, when it is the important task at hand?"
"I should, indeed," said the Agent and turned back to the terminal, and reacted with visible surprise. "Captain, jump exit outside the hundred diameter limit!"
"Who is it?"
"Initial size reading indicates between fifteen hundred and twenty-five hundred dtons! Their transponder came online – it identifies as the 'Pagaton' of the Pagaton March Fleet! We're effectively on an intercept course for it!"
They could both hear the Captain cursing through the bulkheads and door.
ooo
"Scan complete," the sensors officer reported. The Pagaton was equipped with the very best in sensor technology – that money could buy, anyway. Unfortunately, among the priceless, irreplaceable artifacts, there weren't any that improved upon the admittedly already impressive array of sensors that the Imperium could field. "We're on the edge of Mycian space, sir, and there appears to be a pursuit in progress. The Mycian fleet is chasing down a mining ship identifying itself as the free trader 'Luxantus'. The escapee is headed right for us with their present course – but reflection data is coming back severely degraded; I suspect they have stealth coating. Could be a smuggler or dissident against the authorities. Shall we intervene, sir?"
"No," replied the Lord Admiral. "We don't have a dog in this fight yet, so to speak. Have any of the other ships arrived yet?"
"No, sir. Provided none of them jumped inaccurately, they should arrived within the hour."
"I know," he replied, without a trace of doubt or uncertainty. "The jump coordinator has not yet let us down. While we wait for them to arrive – comms, get me a connection with the planet surface. I wish to speak with our allies."
"Yes, sir!"
The lightspeed delay was tolerable – only a few seconds. He didn't have to wait long until his subordinate negotiated a direct connection to the Mycian Empire's capital.
"Greetings and welcome to Mycia, Lord Admiral!" said Chancellor Baminakkur. "We have been expecting you for some weeks now."
"And greetings to you too, Chancellor. I had been held up beyond my ability to affect things at Connaught. A dreadful place, with insufficient facilities to provide adequate refuelling and supplies to my fleet when we are in a rush. How go matters on the surface? All well?"
"Quite well, Lord Admiral," the Chancellor smiled. "The Emperor is fully willing to form an alliance with you, on the terms you proposed. We are ready to proceed when you are. The Commonwealth and the Dominion will fall swiftly against our combined might! All of Caldos will be united under the banners of the Mycian Empire!"
"Just so. In the meantime, I notice you appear to have some minor issues with shipping? If I am not mistaken, your fleet is currently chasing down some tiny craft coming in our direction?"
The Chancellor blinked in surprise. "I wasn't notified of this."
"Then perhaps we should include the commander of your space forces in our little conference?"
"Yes, that seems prudent, Lord Admiral. Issuing call now."
Twenty seconds later, the viewscreen split between the golden-robed Chancellor and the black-and-red uniformed High Admiral of the Mycian Space Force.
"Can I help you, Chancellor? And, oh, you're the Lord Admiral, aren't you?"
"I am indeed," the eponymous one smiled smugly. "I see my reputation precedes me."
"I have been briefed on our plans for planetary unification," explained the woman. "Frankly, I expected more warning before we got right to the smash-and-grab. Going through the proper channels would have been very polite."
"Politeness is not required," shot back Baminakkur. "Imma, who is it that your ships are chasing down?"
"Oh, you heard about that? Just some putative smuggler. One of my customs officers thinks they've... well, disabled one of our patrol craft, suborned it and somehow used the Captain's own voice to cheat us into thinking we still had control over it."
"What does the supposedly suborned boat say in response to queries now?" the Lord Admiral skipped the several intervening steps, putting himself in the shoes of the tentative crew-killing, ship-suborning smugglers.
"Um, I don't know, I delegated the task to the officer who spotted the potential issue. I'm not sure I agree with his assessment," the High Admiral replied.
"Then perhaps we should add just that officer to the conference. I must say, this is turning out a very exciting entry to a system. Comms, the main viewscreen is getting crowded, use the left and right too."
Fifteen seconds later, Lieutenant Griddle joined the conversation.
"Ma'am? Chancellor! Um, I'm afraid I don't know who-"
"This is the Lord Admiral Peter the First, our soon-to-be ally," quickly explained the Chancellor. "The High Admiral has delegated a task to you. What's the status since then?"
"Sir. I've sent all available craft to pursue the fugitives in a standard entrapment pattern. We expect to be in extreme weapons' range within half an hour from now. They cannot escape the system unless they wish to do it from inside the gravity well, and they might not have fuel to do so anyway, given that they just arrived. I'm certain that we can intercept and handle the rogue ship."
"What about the inspection vessel?" the Lord Admiral asked before the High Admiral could.
"I've been trying to raise it since. No reply, no deviation from its standard patrol pattern. I believe it is on autopilot, sir. I've dispatched a shuttle from the spaceport to intercept it and recover it."
"With medical personnel, marines, and explosive technicians?"
"Yes, sir," the Lieutenant said reflexively. "That's standard procedure in this case."
"Very well. This matter seems well-handled for now. I must congratulate you on good choice of subordinates, Madam Admiral," Peter I inclined his head slightly towards the woman.
She suppressed a snort. "Do we need to take up more of the Lieutenant's valuable time? I'm sure it is better employed running this operation, than talking with us."
"That might be. Thank you for your input, Lieutenant."
"Doing my job, sir!" said Griddle. Comms removed him from the conference.
"Now then, I believe we can resume our discussion. It may be even augmented with the presence of the High Admiral here."
"Glad to be here," mumbled the navy commander, relieved how things went from a possible dressing down to a congratulation.
"Chancellor, can you give me a digest of the events since the last monthly dispatch?"
"With pleasure!"
ooo
In Kaarin's long service in the Scouts, he had sometimes had the questionably valuable opportunity of being in a situation that resembled placing oneself between the anvil and the onrushing smith's hammer. This was one of them – the Mycian navy at his back, and now the Pagaton in front of him. Not stopping to curse luck, fate and what the world was built on, he changed course, perpendicular to the system ecliptic plane. Their course was, of course, not immediately different. They still had momentum built up from their last change in heading, and now they lost even more of their advantage against the incoming Mycians.
He turned on the intercom, on broadcast. "We are well and truly fucked," Kaarin stated plainly. "I am now accepting suggestions on how to get out of this pickle. Any suggestion that gets us somewhere that isn't 'all over the place as distributed atoms' or 'imprisoned by our enemies' is welcome."
"Do not give in to the deadly sin of despair, Captain," replied Yosef calmly. "So long as there is life, there is Hope."
"Platitudes unwelcome!" snapped Kaarin.
"How about something less of a suggestion, but more of a status report," said Arthur. "We actually have good news! The Pagaton is not moving in to assist the system defense boats – it's just sitting there, at the jump limit, minding its own business. I think it has to do with the fact that we've never actually identified as anything other than the 'Luxantus', meaning the Lord Admiral might be thinking it's an internal issue that he's not going to waste any firepower helping the locals out with."
"Okay, that is good news!"
"The bad news is that it did scan us with active sensors and our course diversion means that we'll be in the system longer than we otherwise would have been. This will be a harder fight than we expected."
"As long as it's a fight we have an option of winning. Sorry for snapping at you, old man."
"It's understandable under the circumstances, Captain, you are duly forgiven."
"Alright. We follow a slightly amended plan – flying away and trying not to die, mark two."
ooo
"...and that's pretty much it," concluded the Chancellor. "I also have a collection of detailed reports from my underlings, if you wish to review it in-depth later, Lord Admiral."
"Simply send it over. It will not take as long as you think for me to process it."
"If you say so."
When the upload came through to the ship's computer, the Lord Admiral accessed it remotely. To outside observers, he sat quietly in his chair for about thirty seconds, doing absolutely nothing. His crew were well-acquainted with his eccentricities, but for the Chancellor and the High Admiral this was new.
"Lord Admiral?"
"Chancellor. I believe there is a minor problem with your executive summary," said the warlord. "You have largely skipped over details concerning the vessel that the Tyrians used to convey their delegation. Understandably, this was a minor fact, but relevant."
"I don't quite understand the relevance of it, still," admitted the Mycian.
"Your data includes detailed readings of the Imperial vessel, when it was coming in, when it was impounded, and when it was escaping your system." Without going through the formality of using his officers, the Lord Admiral added still images of the starship to the conference's video stream. "Compare this to the reconstructed imaging we have taken after we've arrived in the system – reconstructed because the ship appears to have high-absorbance stealth shielding retrofitted. This appears to be a standard Type S Scout ship, used commonly in the Imperium as a general purpose small starship. However, notice the upper-starboard section." He indicated the place on the displayed picture. "This is a plate of crystaliron armour, reconstituted after taking battle damage. I won't bore you with the process it is accomplished by, but sufficed to say that while it produces adequate results in terms of restored aerodynamicity and is more economical than simply replacing the whole plate section, the repaired regions still visually show signs of the damage that was inflicted to them originally. In this case, notice the exact lines of the probable high-energy laser hit." Computer-generated traces appeared. "Now compare that to the images taken from your data dump."
"Those are nearly identical!" the High Admiral noticed.
"Excellent deduction," said the warlord emotionlessly. "In conclusion, this is the same ship, the 'Imminent Misjump'. I would also wager that its occupants are quite likely to be the same people who escaped you these few weeks ago."
"This is most serious," said the Chancellor worriedly. "I don't suppose you would be willing to lend a hand towards preventing these spies from exiting our space a second time?"
"I might, in fact. Given the lack of absolute haste, and the fact that the rest of my fleet is yet to arrive, let's go over the mutual assistance treaty one more time..."
ooo
"Is it still not moving?" Kaarin asked.
"Dead in space – relative to the planet, at least. I think they have to be expending considerable gees to keep their position, actually, but from our standpoint, they're static," replied Arthur.
"I don't like it."
"That's very negative of you, Captain. I must say that it's not doing much to help morale aboard the ship," said the priest.
"That's because I'm sick of the worst run of bad luck I've had in over ten years. I'll accept when something isn't as horribly bad as it seems at first, like this – but I don't have to like it, and I suspect it's all just some kind of elaborate ruse against us."
"There's no ruse required. Do the odds not rest firmly with them?" Yosef asked.
"Now who's being negative? Yes, we're quite likely to become crippled in space, will probably die."
Kaarin paused, and the others didn't say anything for a while.
"Listen," he began again, "all of you, as far as I know, are volunteers, myself included. Actually, did you volunteer, Engi?"
"I was given the opportunity to refuse the assignment without a black mark on my record, sir," said Sai Marte from engineering.
"Right. So everyone here is a volunteer. We knew what we were getting into, and we're in a bad situation. You got lucky once, last time around, but they're not likely to fuck up the pursuit again. Not all of us might make it out of this, we might end up as monoatomic dust drifting aimlessly in deep space. But you know what? To hell with that! We're not helpless, we're aboard an armed starship, with the best crew I could hope for. If the Mycians should want to end our lives here, I say we give them a taste of their own medicine! Members of the Imperium and people of Tyr alike, we will show them the true meaning of mettle! And should the Pagaton intervene? Let them come! This ship has served well over a century in the Scouts, and survived every encounter it had. Can they say the same of their own ships? Can they say that they couldn't have better crews? No! When we get into firing range, I say we give them hell. Are you with me?!"
"I'm with you, sir!" dutifully answered Petty Officer Sai Marte.
"I don't have any other choice, do I?" Arthur expressed his support.
"God is with us, Captain. Who can be against us?" Yosef said solemnly. "In these possibly final moments, I would like to express my sincere appreciation of associating with all of you. In fact, I would like to extend each of you an offer of induction into the Church. The ceremony is brief in its most basic form."
Kaarin was about to react with his usual cynicism, but then laughed instead. "You know, priest? I'd take an offer from the Evil One himself, in our current situation, if he promised to help us somehow. I'll take you up on that one, so long as we don't endanger ourselves while we go through with it."
"Anyone else?"
"Sir, I'll do it too if the Captain thinks it will help," said Sai Marte.
"I'll pass," said Arthur.
"Very well. I'll get the water," he said and went off to gather the ritual materials.
ooo
"Sir, jump exits detected. The 'Fury of Mora' and the 'Savage' have entered the Caldos system. Scatter within tolerable limits," said the sensors officer.
"Excellent. What of the others?"
"They haven't... more jump exits detected! The 'Prediction', the 'Inevitable Vengeance' and the 'Isolation' have entered Caldos. The 'Fury of Mora' is launching its boats."
"Right on time. Signal my fleet, standard sphere formation. ETA to formation?"
"Ten minutes, sir."
The Lord Admiral smiled, getting comfortable on his throne. This was going to be a nice way to show off the power of his force. He would have otherwise preferred to capture the tiny scoutship intact and possibly integrate it into his fleet, but in the present circumstances, it was a better opportunity to show off the guns. If the Mycians didn't know to de-facto accept being a vassal state, not just the de-jure alliance, they would certainly after this show of force, on their own behalf. While this might have been adequately done via the overapplication of force on groundside, squashing the Mycians' petty little rival states, the warlord knew not to wave atrocities in the face of the Imperium, even if these worlds were not part of it. There would come a time to take the fight to the Third Imperium itself, but that could hopefully be delayed until there was a chance at victory. Some day – some day hopefully soon.
ooo
The ceremonies were extremely basic, just as Yosef had said. He said some words, poured a little water on his and Sai's heads, and pronounced them members of the Universal Assembly, and thereby first in line to a heavenly afterlife. Luckily, according to the priest, full understanding of the faith was not required. The process took not more than five minutes, in all.
"Captain!" Arthur announced from his post. "We're reading multiple jump exits! They're all using the same transponder allegiance code as the Pagaton!"
"Is it too late or too early to file a complaint form about our blessings?" sighed Kaarin, sitting back at the helm, and resealing his vacc suit. "Nevermind. The situation is not worse that it was before. What's a few more warships, if that flagship could wipe us by itself? What are they doing, Arthur?"
"Forming up. Some kind of protective arrangement around the 'Pagaton'. Also, I think you'll be pleased to note that we're in range of long-range beam weapons. One of the Mycian boats has already begun taking pot-shots at us, but their gunner is no more skilled than Yosef, it appears."
"I'd say 'evasive maneuvers' if I weren't the one to make them in the first place," said Kaarin, flipping a random-walk switch on his control board. "This'll slow us down. Arthur, get to the turret controls. Yosef, take over the sensors. Notify me of anything interesting you see that you think I might want to know about, just like your predecessor did. Sai, prepare for emergency repairs."
The crew said their aye-ayes and yes-sirs and jogged off to their duty stations. Kaarin, after everyone got to their posts, closed the internal doors and began depressurization – slow, so as not to interfere with everyone's jobs – in order to forestall fires on board. Since everyone was wearing vacc suits ever since they arrived in the system, there was no actual need for air, unless the fight went for over six hours, which would take a considerable miracle. They would likely either be dead, or free to leave in under one hour, much less six.
"Captain," Yosef said. "The sensors are showing something strange. What do the blue blinking rectangles mean?"
"Those are jump exits!"
"Press F-V and use the arrow keys to cycle between contacts," Arthur instructed over internal radio.
"Oh, I get it now! Wait, these names seem familiar..."
ooo
Commodore Hayes returned to his flagship, the ISS 'Black Swan', after his 'negotiations' with the troublesome Tyrians. He was very thankful that he didn't have to interact with the damned Imperial Intelligence agent more than was absolutely necessary. Eye-eye agents were Trouble with a capital-T, in his books. Now that their ship had jumped, just an hour ago, he relaxed. Those people might have the right idea that this warlord would be trouble, eventually, but Hayes had his mandate, and was willing to live and let live. Let the entire main burn down, for all he cared – they'd just make arrangements with the successor government, be in Peter I 'the Conqueror' or anyone else. The Imperium did not meddle into the affairs of foreign states unless there was some benefit to the Emperor to be had. Here, involvement was likely unnecessary and would very definitely endanger the mission of keeping watch over the Research Base – and the quarrelsome Dostoevskyan government. Without his force here, the separatists may just come out on top, and the loyalists would be in a severely disadvantageous position, without the support of Imperial warships in orbit.
He sipped a cup of high-quality, imported stim and reviewed his messages, in the comforts of his splendid quarters aboard the 'Swan'. Maintenance report, fuel requisition, disciplinary action for a marine, another disciplinary action, shore leave request, multimedia message from Intelligence... Hayes blinked, stopping. What did Intelligence want now? He put it on the holoprojector.
The unwelcome face of that agent smiled at him.
"Good evening, Commodore? How is your day? My day is fine, although by the time I had the prerequisites to send this missive, we were already en-route to our destination," said the recording. "I recall that you were opposed to committing forces to the defense of the Sindalian main. This is somewhat problematic, since it is counter to the purposes of Imperial Intelligence and the interests of the Imperium as a whole. I would like you to reconsider-"
"I'd like you to try to convince me!" muttered Hayes, grip tightening on his cup.
"-but I realize that you are a man of your word. If you said that you won't do something, then you will not, obviously. Imagine my surprise, then, when I went through your mailbox and personal files, to see a completely different sort of person. Without a doubt, someone is pretending to be you, an Imperial officer. Indeed, what would a happily married man, with several children and a loving wife, see in torrid affairs with the Duchess of Csim and your own quartermaster simultaneously, presumably without either of them knowing about the other?"
The Commodore's heart stopped, the cup falling from his hand, and crashing to the metal floor. He didn't even notice.
"This must have been some sort of mistake," continued the hologram. "I fully intend to get to the bottom of this, expose the scoundrel who has broken into your ship's account to besmirch your spotless character, and fully exonerate you before the public opinion."
The recorded Arthur paused. Hayes' eye twitched slightly.
"Now, then, to business," the agent resumed, more somber this time. "Commodore, you will temporarily abandon your station at Dostoevsky, and come to the defense of the Sindalian main. You will continue to provide aid until such a time that the menace of the 'Lord Admiral' is vanquished. How you do it is largely up to you, but should you fail to visibly help out in this matter, certain findings will be forwarded to the three women named. I trust that you value the necessity of secrecy as much as any Imperial agent, and will not disappoint me. This message will self-delete in five seconds."
The recording shut down.
Commodore Hayes deliberated for a full minute before pressing the call adjutant button. The young man was on the scene momentarily.
"Jim, I have orders to the fleet. Ready for departure for Caldos within six hours. Jump in formation. Notify the XO and my Captains, they'll take it from there," he told him, looking at the sad remains of a stimulant cup. "And clean up this mess, while you're at it."
ooo
"That's the Imperial ships from Dostoevsky! 'Karma' and 'Revolution' have entered the system, and here comes 'Cyclops'!" Yosef announced. "More ships are arriving in!"
"Hell yes!" Kaarin clapped his hands forcefully.
"Now do you believe the power of the Lord, Captain?"
"Hell yes!"
"Not the most appropriate affirmation, but I'll take it."
Arthur grinned silently in the turret.
