"Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless? There are many claims as to when the galaxy's history began: that is to say, when misty myths of ancient empires and extinct races dissolve and are replaced by a coherent path that leads us to the galactic present. Some claim the foundation of the Republic marks the birth of history, but I and many others posit it truly began nearly twenty-five millennia ago with the rise of the first human empire and the ascension of the man we now call Xim the Despot." S.V. Skynx, Dawn Times: A Short History of the Early Tion Cluster, 3 BBY
Year 12 of Xer's reign
Year 505 LE [Liberation Era]
The siege of Corlax was in its twelfth day when the assaulting forces reached the capital. Livien sappers had seeded the city outskirts with mines and roadblocks before scattering, and the fire-gutted suburbs became a maze of sniper fire, surprise explosions, and armored vehicles entombed in rubble. The attacking force did not relent, and after the initial encirclement squadrons of Cronese battlebirds soared low through the sky, daring streams of anti-air fire as they released streaking febrilium missiles that toppled gleaming towers and dyed air the color of blood.
It was in this ravaged landscape, beneath a carmine sky, that Marco IV Jaminere, Lesser Prince of Sorasca, met Xim son of Xer.
Jaminere had been waiting for this moment for a long time. From the back corridors of his family's palace he had watched the fast, vicious campaigns of Xer VIII, Pirate King of Argai. What had begun as daring raids for booty had expanded into a power-grab that seized the neighboring Kingdom of Cron and placed the infamous raider on its throne. Recalcitrant worlds had been subdued one by one with brutality that surprised even those who, like Jaminere's family, dismissed the Argai pirates as savages.
For three years, they had watched from their supposedly-safe world as system after system fell beneath the sway of Xer. What had begun with awe at the pirate king's audacity became fear as they learned of the burning of the Timber Palace of Pasmin and the massacres on Nuswatta. Once all Cron was under his heel, Xer came to the Three Allied Kingdoms of Sorasca, Barseg, and Cadinth. To its monarchs he'd made a simple proposal: Join me or die.
They had chosen to join.
King Coros IX Jaminere was a practical man. He knew there was no point in standing up to Xer's brutality and sought to turn the inevitable submission to his advantage. The Three Allied Kingdoms had enemies of their own, and Sorasca and Corlax had a long history of violence paid with violence, generation on generation, going back to their departure of the Tyrants at the dawn of the Liberation Era. Thus, when Xer set his hungry eyes on Corlax, Sorasca was happy to lend its forces to the conquest.
Because he was a Lesser Prince (the second-eldest but third and last in line of succession) his father had no qualms about sending Marco IV Jaminere to the front line. Like all young men on his world, princely or otherwise, Jaminere had been trained to make war on their ancestral foe. He had combat experience against pirates and believed himself to be ready for anything the enemy could throw at him, even though he had just barely passed the age of nineteen standard years.
He came to doubt his conviction as his armored unit struggled to carve its way through the outskirts of the capital. He barely survived his vehicle's collision with a land mine, and his chief advisor, a longtime friend of his father, was cut down by a sniper's bullet that passed through skull and brains and missed Jaminere's blood-spattered cheek by millimeters. By the time they reached the newly-siezed redoubt, more than half of Jaminere's soldiers were dead in the ash-flecked mud of the ruined city.
Harrowing as it was, Jaminere entered the impromptu fortress (it had been a factory two weeks ago) with a feeling of excitement. He had been told that the leader of the Cronese forces was commanding the final assault from this very building, and he was eager to meet the man.
Not Xer VIII. Jaminere had already met the Pirate King, however briefly, during his visit to the court on Sorasca. Xer had been everything his legend supposed: a huge man with a messy beard and booming voice, complete with a crimson silk shirt left rakishly half-open to display gold medallions from a dozen conquered worlds spread over a broad, hairy chest. Now Jaminere had a chance to meet Xer's only son, Xim, who had been at the fore of his father's campaigns and gained renown for victory after victory, often purchased at a high cost in blood. He was, improbably, the same age as the Lesser Prince: not even twenty.
Some called him Xim the Cruel, others Xim the Bold, Xim the Brave, or (for some reason) Xim the Ineluctable. Jaminere could not help his curiosity; he wondered which of the appellations was true. He hoped, with a little romantic fancy, that all of them were.
Thus, after identifying his battered unit to the Cronese guard and gaining entrance to the redoubt, he was escorted to the command center with a pounding heart and dried blood on his face.
Jaminere would already remember his first reaction to the sight of the pirate prince. It was anticlimactic, even trite. He'd thought Xim would be taller.
Indeed, there was little of Xer in him, at least at first glance. Jaminere found him standing with a handful of officers over a pencil-scarred map of the city, bright beneath an overhead light. He wore no scarlet shirts or gold medallions, only a vest of black metal weave over camouflage grays. Despite the armor it was clear he had a thin frame. His face was narrow with high cheekbones, a short blade nose, and hair cut to brown fuzz over a skull that looked just a little oversized. Neither handsome nor ugly, there was nothing to distinguish him save the attention he commanded from the other soldiers.
When Jaminere entered the room, Xim looked up from his map. Their eyes locked for the first time and Jaminere felt a tiny shiver of what he would later call destiny. Xim's eyes, slightly hooded beneath strong brow-ridges, featured irises the color of a sea in twilight: dark, cold, deep. Yet in the center of those eyes, the black pupils themselves, there gleamed a brightness like fire.
Jaminere would first dismiss this as a fluke of the light, but in the years to follow, during other intense moments, Xim's eyes would darkly flash and it would take him back to their first meeting beneath the red sky of Corlax.
On first sight, that flash only halted him for a moment. He said, "I am Prince Marco IV Jaminere. It is an honor to meet you, Xim son of Xer."
With that he slapped his right fist to his left shoulder, the Sorascan sign of respect between equals. Xim made no response at first save a tiny narrowing of the eyes, and Jaminere wondered if the pirate prince didn't want greater deference. Yet a prince of Sorasca, even a lesser one, did not bow before anyone and their kingdoms were, nominally, partners. So Jaminere held his salute and Xim watched him from across the table without expression. Four long, heavy heartbeats passed.
Then Xim told his officers, "Give us a moment. I'll speak to our guest in private."
The officers left the room without a word, leaving the two young men to stare at one another across the table and the marked-up map.
Finally Xim exhaled. "It's good you're here. How many did you bring?"
Jaminere lowered his salute and gave the count of every soldier, armored vehicle, and artillery unit they'd shepherded through the ruined city. The numbers were all lower than he'd hoped, but Xim's face didn't show disappointment. It didn't show much of anything.
Xim took a pencil and added circles to his well-scratched map. "We're going to need your forces here, here, and here. It's the only way we'll be able to complete the encirclement. I'll let you decide how to deploy your units."
Jaminere looked over the map. The blood on his face, dried and crusting, began to itch but he resisted the urge to brush it away. He surveyed the territory taken and the fortifications yet to be stormed. As awful as the first twelve days of this siege had been, it seemed like the worst was yet to come.
"Tell me your thoughts," Xim said.
Because he sensed the other young man wanted honesty, Jaminere ventured, "If this becomes a battle of attrition, we might not be able to win it. Not without more men."
"My father's forces are split between Raxus, Rudrig, Barseg, and here. We have very little to spare."
Jaminere looked back at those eyes. They were dark and hard again. "I can ask my father for reinforcements, but if he decided to provide them—and that is an if—it may take two to three days for them to reach here. The Liviens may send reinforcements of their own by that time."
"Or the forces in the capital may try a breakout. Which would cost them, but they might see it as their best option." Xim exhaled deeply. The overhead light carved shadows out of every crease in his face and he looked much older than nineteen. Indeed, he looked even older than his father, for despite his gray hairs the Pirate King had seemed young with barbaric gaiety.
Not Xim. Xim was a serious young man saddled with a heavy burden. Just like Jaminere.
"Encirclement may not be the best option," he offered. "Perhaps we could join our forces at one or two points and make critical thrusts into the city center. We'll have holes in our line, and some of the enemy might get away, but if we can take the center we'll take the city."
"That's not victory enough." Xim shook his head. "We can't allow Corlax's leaders to escape. My father offered the Liviens an alliance, just like he did your people. The Liviens' refusal was very… rude. Our victory here has to be thorough."
"But if we take the city—"
"They maimed our ambassadors," Xim said with a snarl. Anger was the first emotion Jaminere saw from him. "They cut off their hands. Then their feet. Then they were sealed in vacuum suits, brought back to Argai, and tossed out of an airlock. They intentionally dropped out people into the gravity well too far away from our orbital pickets to retrieve them. But they made sure the comlinks were on, so our men could tell us everything before they burned up in the atmosphere."
Jaminere was sickened but not surprised. The histories on Sorasca were replete with tales of brutality by the Corlaxians and their Livien allies. Were their own records filled with sins committed by Sorasca? Probably. Violence paid with violence, atrocity with atrocity, was the way of the universe and had been since the fall of the half-mythical alien Tyrants. Or so the histories said.
"The Liviens are a formidable enemy." Xim's voice bristled with anger. "We must win a victory against them here and it must be total. My father will not forgive anything less."
Anger, and something more. Was it fear of his father's wrath? Perhaps. Jaminere wasn't afraid of his father's anger, but Coros IX was a very different man than Xer. The ruler of Sorasca had dignity, poise, and pretension. If Jaminere failed to subdue the Corlaxians here, he knew his father would repay him with more of what he'd received his entire life: cold neglect and unspoken scorn.
"How can we win?" Jaminere's voice cracked.
Xim took a deep breath. "There is a method, but I didn't want to use it. I was hoping your reinforcements would be more substantial."
"We did the best we could."
"I know." Xim looked hard at the map. He took his pencil and marked one large slash at a location near the city center. "We've identified this as their main armory. I'm sure they've distributed most of their stores by now, but enough should remain to make a very satisfying explosion if hit."
Jaminere frowned. "That's deep inside their line, and I'm sure it's armored against missile strikes."
"We'll need more than a missile. That's why I've designed three battlebirds to make the strike."
"But their bombs—"
"The 'birds themselves," Xim corrected. He shifted his head, and for just a second reflected light make his eyes gleam once more. "They'll be laden with bombs already, and once they hit the target the force of full-speed impact, combined with the explosives, should be more than enough to crack open the armory shell. In fact, even one direct hit should be enough to vaporize everything in a kilometer's radius."
Jaminere knew what he was being told but struggled to wrap his mind around that. "The concussive wave from that kind of attack..."
"Will be much wider," Xim nodded.
"And the battlebirds … They will be manned?"
"By our best Duinarbulon Lancers."
"They'd make that sacrifice?"
"They'll have to." Xim looked back at the map and traced a broad circle with his thumb. "All our units in this zone will have to be considered expendable. To ensure the battlebirds reach their targets we'll have to get close enough to the armory to draw as much fire as possible and clear up the skies."
Jaminere understood what he was saying. For years he'd heard of the Pirate King's radical, ruthless tactics; how victory after victory had been achieved over piles of charred bodies.
Why had he expected the battle for Corlax to end any other way?
"For operational security, our units on the ground can't know the battle plan," Xim said. "I had intended the decoy forces to be entirely Cronese… but now that your Sorascans are here, any contribution is welcome."
Jaminere looked at Xim, at those dark-ocean eyes, no light this time. He understood exactly what the other man—the other teenager, just like him—was asking for. And he knew that unless their forces partook together in this brutal, suicidal, battle-ending strike, the alliance between Xer and Sorasca would never hold true.
"Is there really no other way?" he asked.
Xim shook his head. "Every hour we waste gives the enemy a chance to reinforce or break the siege. If we're going to win, it's now or never."
He made it sound simple, but his voice was heavy with decision. So many lives; so many deaths. So many ways this battle could end, and only one of them could mean true victory for Xim and Jaminere.
The Lesser Prince of Sorasca picked up a red pencil and drew three marks within the blast zone. "I can send units to these locations."
The son of Xer nodded. "That will be enough."