The hyperdrive test was completed as planned, with the Kaar-Suuliem waiting for the Mothership. It had taken a few stray gun bursts, but was basically unharmed. The guard force were largely without any damage, though one Acolyte had lost an outrigger wing. They returned in triumph.
"The Imperials are going to realise that we've got two things to look out for," Maala said to Kheran. "We cannot give adequate protection to the Mothership AND Kharak."
"Well, we'll send Kharak right to the bottom of their priority list," Kheran replied. "A fast strike against one of their big bases in this region should solve that problem."
"Many of those bases have civilian populations," Maala reminded him. "I'd prefer a military-only target."
"We don't have to blow it up. If we take out the guard force and the defence systems, we can board the facility and take control of it. We storm the command deck, take control of the facility and hand it over to the rebels. We'd need the help of the Mothership's ground assault forces, so I'll talk it over with Fleet Command, but it's at least worth looking at."
"I'll dig up everything Intelligence has on those worldships. It isn't a lot, but it'll be enough to do a feasibility study."
Kheran got through to the Mothership's Fleet Intelligence officer. "It sounds crazy," he said. "Drawing the Taiidan's attention away from Kharak makes sound tactical sense, but strorming a major enemy installation would entail hundreds of casualties."
"We'd only deploy our specialist boarding troops initially, and the bulk of our forces would only board once the major resistance was being broken up," Kheran countered. "It sounds risky, I know, but your opposite number over here is running some projections about how it would go. Can I ask you to reserve judgement until they're complete?"
"That's fair enough," he replied. "I'd like to have my people go over your data for ourselves, as well."
"By all means. I'll arrange it as soon as possible. Kuun-Lan out."
The intelligence officer sat back thoughtfully. //This is a guy from a mining kiith talking? Boy, things have changed. Or are going to change, I suppose.// He decided to put it to Fleet Command.
"It might just work. If anybody bring this off, Kheran can." It didn't appear to have registered with her that Maala deserved most of the credit, the Intelligence officer mused, even though nobody had ascribed the success of the defence of Kharak to Maala more loudly than Kheran himself. "If he says it's worth a try then it's worth a try, even if he didn't think of it himself."
"They're still evaluating the likelihood of success, but I'll tell them to assume that if they say 'go', we'll join the attack." The Intelligence officer sighed to himself, making absolutely certain he'd turned off his intercom. "I knew it. She's got a crush on him."
"I can still hear you, you know," Fleet Command remarked half in annoyance, half in amusement. "Having a load of computer relays grafted to my body doesn't stop me taking an interest, you know."
"Obviously. Not exactly an obvious choice, but if that's your thing..." Kheran was a gangling, vaguely bookish-looking man with untidy reddish brown hair, and one was left with the impression that he should have been living with his mother and writing computer viruses instead of flying combat missions.
"Oh, shut up."
The intelligence officer put his head in his hands. //My job just got a lot harder. Time travelling gung-ho lunatics and an infatuated Fleet Command were definitely not what I signed on for!//
At the same time, the commander of the fleet sent to Kharak was making her report to Vytis, Proconsul to the Throne of Worlds, one of the few men whom the Emperor trusted. He was an honourable and humane man, who had done his best to contain the worst excesses of the regime, and was becoming more and more alarmed at his master's pogroms.
"Thank you, commander. I can see no way in which blame can be apportioned to your command performance. Your withdrawl was the only way to save the fleet from more casualties. I will ensure that his majesty's wrath is directed away from you and towards the enemy fleet." He paused. "Take the survivors of your battle group to the nearest outpost in order to effect repairs, and have all battle telemetry sent to the Strategic Planning Department and my personal databank."
"Yes, Proconsul. Thank you." The call ended.
//Marvellous,// Vytis thought to himself. //What now? His majesty will be greatly displeased, and want to execute half the command crews, alienating even more of the fleet. I cannot contain the planners of the coup for much longer, and this could well be the last straw!//
Vytis knew of the coup planned against the Emperor. He had been approached by them, but had refused to plot against his master. For Vytis was a man of great loyalty to the throne, despite what the Emperor had become. He had persuaded the cabal of senior military and economic figures to hold off for the moment. The Emperor was thinking of abdicating soon, and Vytis was to be his successor.
The Emperor was reclining on a lengthy couch, reading today's newspaper. There weren't as many pictures of him as he would have liked, but it had been a slow day for news. He glanced up. "Ah, Vytis. What news of the assault on that world... Arak?"
"Kharak, sire," Vytis replied. "And the news is decidedly bad. That fleet that came through a nearby slipgate -you recall the report from our automatic monitoring system?- turned out to possess weapons the like of which we have never imagined. The battle group was forced to retreat."
"Vytis, my mind is not all it was, so remind me," the Emperor said in a tone of deadly calm. "Did you not assign every ship within lightyears to counter this new force?"
"I did sire, but now it looks as if we would have need virtually every ship in the Fleet to do any real damage. If you will permit me, sire, I will show a recording taken by the flagship of cruier squadron 35C; one of our best. This ship was positioned approximately midway between the centre of the formation and the trailing edge of the right flank. The commander has always avoided a formation that suggests an obvious leader, to avoid drawing concentrated fire on his flag. You can see the enemy fleet here," he pointed to a cluster of indistinct outlines on the poor-quality visual image. "The fleet is closing at best speed, leaving only a couple of magnetic field defence ships to guard the carriers."
"I can't see any movement from the other fleet," the Emperor said thoughtfully. "What are they waiting for?"
"This," Vytis replied. Three glowing points of light accelerated away from the distant craft, becoming larger and clearer. The Emperor nodded thoughtfully. "Ah, I see. Fusion spheres; R&D has been working on such a thing. Intended to disrupt the formation, no doubt, but I fail to see why this should so disadvantage the fleet that..." The fireballs exploded, and the image dissolved into static as the recording system at least was wrecked. "Oh, Gods."
"Eighteen ships destroyed outright, a couple of dozen badly damaged, and the formation in tatters," Vytis said grimly. "And that was before the fleet attacked. It was nearly a disaster. If they hadn't pulled out quickly things would have been much worse."
"How much did we learn of their capabilities?" the Emperor asked; he hadn't got where he was by being slow to draw profitable lessons from setbacks.
"We're still going through the data collected in the field, but the anecdotal descriptions from the fleet commander are decidedly worrisome. Energy-based weapons that can inflict three times the damage of equivalent mass driver fire. Unmanned combat drones too small and manoeverable for even a scout fighter to target. Some kind of frigate with ion canon turrets, when we can barely fit a single particle accelerator into a frigate chassis. A carrier-type ship the size of a Turanic outpost with twice the armament of a heavy cruiser." He looked helplessly at his master. "Sire, if even half of this is true then we are extremely fortunate that our casualties were only twenty percent."
"Did they suffer any casualties in return?" the Emperor said hopefully.
"No losses besides a few fighters, but they think they damaged some ships pretty badly."
The Emperor sank back, shaking his head. "What am I to do, Vytis?" he said in bewilderment.
"Seek peace, sire. What else can we do? They will take their world back no matter what. Perhaps they will be satisfied with that."
"And if they are not?" the Emperor said, and Vytis heard a new note in his voice.
Fear.
There was no resistance to the Kuun-Lan and her fleet. Every capital ship surrounding the huge vessel immediately entered hyperspace as the group arrived on the scene, and the fighters made desperate but ineffectual runs against Somtaaw ships who simply ignored their fire. The outpost hastily recalled them and broadcast a message of surrender. This caught Kheran by surprise.
"His nibs on the throne won't like that. We didn't do THAT much damage to the fleet that went after Kharak, did we?"
"We're the first people to defeat a Taiidan battle group in decades," Maala replied. "They're like most bullies. They run like hell any time they come up against a real opponent."
"That's a bit harsh. They might be evil bastards but they've got balls of Stage 3 armour plating."
"True," Maala admitted. "We must scare them even more than the Emperor."
"Now THAT'S saying something."
Three seconds later, every civilian ship sped away, and escape pods began jettisoning. "Martyrs, they must have set the self destruct!" The whole outpost exploded a few seconds later. It wasn't the huge cataclysmic blast that you see in the movies, but a series of carefully placed explosive charges -some three hundred in a ship that size- that turned the whole structure into floating wreckage.
"Attention escape pods and transports, this is the Hiigaran warship Kuun-Lan. Do you require assistance, over?"
"That's a negative, Kuun-Lan," a surprisingly calm voice replied. "A Rebel battle group is en route, and they'll retrieve us in an hour or so once it rendezvous with our guard fleet."
"That explains a few things," Maala remarked. "The Taiidan are almost suicidally brave in combat."
"Means we'll have to find something else to blow up, though."
"Hardly," Kheran replied. "They aren't going to know it wasn't us, are they?"
Lightyears away, Vytis stood by helplessly as the Emperor sat down and burst into tears.
"The Imperials are going to realise that we've got two things to look out for," Maala said to Kheran. "We cannot give adequate protection to the Mothership AND Kharak."
"Well, we'll send Kharak right to the bottom of their priority list," Kheran replied. "A fast strike against one of their big bases in this region should solve that problem."
"Many of those bases have civilian populations," Maala reminded him. "I'd prefer a military-only target."
"We don't have to blow it up. If we take out the guard force and the defence systems, we can board the facility and take control of it. We storm the command deck, take control of the facility and hand it over to the rebels. We'd need the help of the Mothership's ground assault forces, so I'll talk it over with Fleet Command, but it's at least worth looking at."
"I'll dig up everything Intelligence has on those worldships. It isn't a lot, but it'll be enough to do a feasibility study."
Kheran got through to the Mothership's Fleet Intelligence officer. "It sounds crazy," he said. "Drawing the Taiidan's attention away from Kharak makes sound tactical sense, but strorming a major enemy installation would entail hundreds of casualties."
"We'd only deploy our specialist boarding troops initially, and the bulk of our forces would only board once the major resistance was being broken up," Kheran countered. "It sounds risky, I know, but your opposite number over here is running some projections about how it would go. Can I ask you to reserve judgement until they're complete?"
"That's fair enough," he replied. "I'd like to have my people go over your data for ourselves, as well."
"By all means. I'll arrange it as soon as possible. Kuun-Lan out."
The intelligence officer sat back thoughtfully. //This is a guy from a mining kiith talking? Boy, things have changed. Or are going to change, I suppose.// He decided to put it to Fleet Command.
"It might just work. If anybody bring this off, Kheran can." It didn't appear to have registered with her that Maala deserved most of the credit, the Intelligence officer mused, even though nobody had ascribed the success of the defence of Kharak to Maala more loudly than Kheran himself. "If he says it's worth a try then it's worth a try, even if he didn't think of it himself."
"They're still evaluating the likelihood of success, but I'll tell them to assume that if they say 'go', we'll join the attack." The Intelligence officer sighed to himself, making absolutely certain he'd turned off his intercom. "I knew it. She's got a crush on him."
"I can still hear you, you know," Fleet Command remarked half in annoyance, half in amusement. "Having a load of computer relays grafted to my body doesn't stop me taking an interest, you know."
"Obviously. Not exactly an obvious choice, but if that's your thing..." Kheran was a gangling, vaguely bookish-looking man with untidy reddish brown hair, and one was left with the impression that he should have been living with his mother and writing computer viruses instead of flying combat missions.
"Oh, shut up."
The intelligence officer put his head in his hands. //My job just got a lot harder. Time travelling gung-ho lunatics and an infatuated Fleet Command were definitely not what I signed on for!//
At the same time, the commander of the fleet sent to Kharak was making her report to Vytis, Proconsul to the Throne of Worlds, one of the few men whom the Emperor trusted. He was an honourable and humane man, who had done his best to contain the worst excesses of the regime, and was becoming more and more alarmed at his master's pogroms.
"Thank you, commander. I can see no way in which blame can be apportioned to your command performance. Your withdrawl was the only way to save the fleet from more casualties. I will ensure that his majesty's wrath is directed away from you and towards the enemy fleet." He paused. "Take the survivors of your battle group to the nearest outpost in order to effect repairs, and have all battle telemetry sent to the Strategic Planning Department and my personal databank."
"Yes, Proconsul. Thank you." The call ended.
//Marvellous,// Vytis thought to himself. //What now? His majesty will be greatly displeased, and want to execute half the command crews, alienating even more of the fleet. I cannot contain the planners of the coup for much longer, and this could well be the last straw!//
Vytis knew of the coup planned against the Emperor. He had been approached by them, but had refused to plot against his master. For Vytis was a man of great loyalty to the throne, despite what the Emperor had become. He had persuaded the cabal of senior military and economic figures to hold off for the moment. The Emperor was thinking of abdicating soon, and Vytis was to be his successor.
The Emperor was reclining on a lengthy couch, reading today's newspaper. There weren't as many pictures of him as he would have liked, but it had been a slow day for news. He glanced up. "Ah, Vytis. What news of the assault on that world... Arak?"
"Kharak, sire," Vytis replied. "And the news is decidedly bad. That fleet that came through a nearby slipgate -you recall the report from our automatic monitoring system?- turned out to possess weapons the like of which we have never imagined. The battle group was forced to retreat."
"Vytis, my mind is not all it was, so remind me," the Emperor said in a tone of deadly calm. "Did you not assign every ship within lightyears to counter this new force?"
"I did sire, but now it looks as if we would have need virtually every ship in the Fleet to do any real damage. If you will permit me, sire, I will show a recording taken by the flagship of cruier squadron 35C; one of our best. This ship was positioned approximately midway between the centre of the formation and the trailing edge of the right flank. The commander has always avoided a formation that suggests an obvious leader, to avoid drawing concentrated fire on his flag. You can see the enemy fleet here," he pointed to a cluster of indistinct outlines on the poor-quality visual image. "The fleet is closing at best speed, leaving only a couple of magnetic field defence ships to guard the carriers."
"I can't see any movement from the other fleet," the Emperor said thoughtfully. "What are they waiting for?"
"This," Vytis replied. Three glowing points of light accelerated away from the distant craft, becoming larger and clearer. The Emperor nodded thoughtfully. "Ah, I see. Fusion spheres; R&D has been working on such a thing. Intended to disrupt the formation, no doubt, but I fail to see why this should so disadvantage the fleet that..." The fireballs exploded, and the image dissolved into static as the recording system at least was wrecked. "Oh, Gods."
"Eighteen ships destroyed outright, a couple of dozen badly damaged, and the formation in tatters," Vytis said grimly. "And that was before the fleet attacked. It was nearly a disaster. If they hadn't pulled out quickly things would have been much worse."
"How much did we learn of their capabilities?" the Emperor asked; he hadn't got where he was by being slow to draw profitable lessons from setbacks.
"We're still going through the data collected in the field, but the anecdotal descriptions from the fleet commander are decidedly worrisome. Energy-based weapons that can inflict three times the damage of equivalent mass driver fire. Unmanned combat drones too small and manoeverable for even a scout fighter to target. Some kind of frigate with ion canon turrets, when we can barely fit a single particle accelerator into a frigate chassis. A carrier-type ship the size of a Turanic outpost with twice the armament of a heavy cruiser." He looked helplessly at his master. "Sire, if even half of this is true then we are extremely fortunate that our casualties were only twenty percent."
"Did they suffer any casualties in return?" the Emperor said hopefully.
"No losses besides a few fighters, but they think they damaged some ships pretty badly."
The Emperor sank back, shaking his head. "What am I to do, Vytis?" he said in bewilderment.
"Seek peace, sire. What else can we do? They will take their world back no matter what. Perhaps they will be satisfied with that."
"And if they are not?" the Emperor said, and Vytis heard a new note in his voice.
Fear.
There was no resistance to the Kuun-Lan and her fleet. Every capital ship surrounding the huge vessel immediately entered hyperspace as the group arrived on the scene, and the fighters made desperate but ineffectual runs against Somtaaw ships who simply ignored their fire. The outpost hastily recalled them and broadcast a message of surrender. This caught Kheran by surprise.
"His nibs on the throne won't like that. We didn't do THAT much damage to the fleet that went after Kharak, did we?"
"We're the first people to defeat a Taiidan battle group in decades," Maala replied. "They're like most bullies. They run like hell any time they come up against a real opponent."
"That's a bit harsh. They might be evil bastards but they've got balls of Stage 3 armour plating."
"True," Maala admitted. "We must scare them even more than the Emperor."
"Now THAT'S saying something."
Three seconds later, every civilian ship sped away, and escape pods began jettisoning. "Martyrs, they must have set the self destruct!" The whole outpost exploded a few seconds later. It wasn't the huge cataclysmic blast that you see in the movies, but a series of carefully placed explosive charges -some three hundred in a ship that size- that turned the whole structure into floating wreckage.
"Attention escape pods and transports, this is the Hiigaran warship Kuun-Lan. Do you require assistance, over?"
"That's a negative, Kuun-Lan," a surprisingly calm voice replied. "A Rebel battle group is en route, and they'll retrieve us in an hour or so once it rendezvous with our guard fleet."
"That explains a few things," Maala remarked. "The Taiidan are almost suicidally brave in combat."
"Means we'll have to find something else to blow up, though."
"Hardly," Kheran replied. "They aren't going to know it wasn't us, are they?"
Lightyears away, Vytis stood by helplessly as the Emperor sat down and burst into tears.