End of Empire
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: As usual, I own none of this. Rating: K. Time: Centuries after my stories beginning with The Pilot.
"That's a lot of froonium. Who was your last customer?"
Armendariz stopped for a moment.
"You're Imperials, right?" Kate nodded. "Well, he didn't ask for anything to be confidential, so I can tell you. His name is King Tal the Great. I don't know if anyone else thinks he's great, but he does. He came here with a fleet of ships to attack the Empire. They left not a week ago."
"A fleet?" Rick asked. "How big?"
"He had forty-four warships and twelve troop transports. The warships weren't that big, maybe four hundred to six hundred feet in length. Maybe ten thousand tons or less. Mostly less."
"About the size of Imperial frigates or big corvettes. How were they armed?"
Armendariz shrugged.
"We could see directed energy cannons and missile tubes from our ground-based telescopes, but how good they are, we can't tell."
"Are you sure they headed for the Empire?" Kate asked. "We'd hate to run into anything like that."
"All he could talk about was raiding the Empire. He must be headed there."
"You weren't afraid they'd raid you for the froonium?" Rick asked.
"Not at all. Our ancestors left the old Commonwealth when it collapsed. They came out here looking for a new home, but there was violence and destruction everywhere. When we got here, our FTL engine failed, so here we had to stay. We've been digging tunnels for centuries. They go for thousands of miles in all directions. Our population centers, our farms and factories are all under miles of rock. You could bombard us from space for years without injuring us. Try sending troops into the tunnels and you'll find we're very well prepared to fight there."
"We want to avoid going back to the Empire while there's a war underway, both the civil war and a barbarian invasion. Can you suggest anyplace we might trade further in galaxy?" Kate asked.
"You might try Timisoara. It's about fifty light years from here. It's a very old, heavy metal poor planet. However, they've done some amazing things with glass, plastics, resins, ceramics, some organics and such. They'll pay for heavy metals such as iron, copper, lead, nickel, tin, zinc, or anything else like that. They also trade with a group of planets further in galaxy. We really don't know more than that. We don't have any FTL ships of our own, so everything we know is just hearsay."
"Tell you what." Kate said. "Well sell you the micoxaphlopin for your six hundred and ninety-three pounds of froonium and a half a ton of the metals you mentioned."
"A half a ton?" Armendariz said. He'd been trading for a long time as well. Eventually, they settled for eight hundred pounds of metals, and everyone was happy.
They returned to where Zephyr was waiting deep in interstellar space.
Rick explained to Beau and Short Tail where they were headed for next.
"A metal poor planet?" Said the Vorlag. "I don't care how hard they work; without metals they can't build much worth selling in the Empire."
"Luckily, we're not here to make a profit. We're here to find out how far the barbarian star nations extend away from the Empire." Rick grinned at his friend. "And, in all that time they may have developed some excellent alcoholic drinks."
"That would be worthwhile, then."
They were about to go to FTL when a sensor officer called out.
"Ship dropping out of FTL, sir. About one hundred and ten thousand miles from us."
"What? They couldn't have spotted us out here. No one has sensors that good."
"They're not moving, sir. And they're not using any active sensors. But they are there."
"Wait one." Said Short Tail." They just launched something."
"A missile?" Castle demanded.
"No, it looks like…Yes. It's a message drone. They've had an engineering casualty and are sending for help I bet. That's probably why they aren't using any sensors. They want to keep whatever power they have to keep life support going."
"Any idea where the drone is headed?"
Short Tail discussed that with his team for a minute.
"It looks like it's headed for a planet about fifteen light years away. Their drones aren't very fast, so it'll take maybe six or seven days to get there."
"Can we get a good look at them without giving ourselves away?" Rick asked.
The sensor team worked for several minutes.
"They're smaller than we are by a good bit, sir. Maybe if we sent a stealthed drone to look them over we'd get a better idea of who and what they are."
Castle concurred and they sent off the drone. In less than an hour the drone was back, and they were looking at the intel it had brought back.
"I recognize it." Said Short Tail. "It's a barbarian fleet scout."
"Like us?" Rick asked.
"Not really. More like the fleet scouts the Empire used decades ago and more. Small, very fast, good sensors and minimal armament. They carry a crew of six or seven."
"We can destroy them with our blaster cannons then."
"We might want to take the ship rather than destroy it." Short Tail said, scratching his furry chin.
"Try to hit the bridge?" Castle said. "We could still destabilize the anti-matter containment field and blow the ship up."
"I was thinking of sending a boarding party over to take the ship."
"How would we ever manage that? No one's boarded an enemy ship in…well, a very long time."
"Luckily you have two very large crewmen who just happen to have sets of powered battle armor. We can remove some of the sensors from the drone and ride it to within say a thousand miles of the ship. Then use our maneuvering rockets in the battle armor to get to the ship. Then blow a hole in the hull, they have no armor, and the hulls are thin, at least compared to most warships. Once inside we kill everyone. Easy."
"Sounds easy, but doing it is harder. And I don't want to lose my two most senior officers."
"Oh, you're just fond of us, but our job is to gather intelligence, not to keep the commander's friends alive."
"It's not that." Rick said. "It's just that if I lose you two, Miss Alexis would run amok." He said with a smile.
"I'm sure you can manage one teenage girl." Beau said.
"Okay, get ready. I'll have engineering prepare the drone."
Soon enough, the two were suited up and on their way. The drone took them to within a thousand miles of the enemy ship. Their battle armor took them the rest of the way. They landed softly on the hull of the ship.
"Rather a sloppy job of building." Beau said, putting his helmet directly on Short Tail's so they didn't have to use their radios. "This thing would never pass an Imperial Navy inspector."
"All the better for us." Short Tail replied.
They had prepared a large, shaped charge that they placed over what they thought was the engine room. Hopefully, most of the crew would be there trying to fix whatever had gone wrong. The charge would blast a hole in the hull about twelve feet wide. Enough for the two to drop into the ship at the same time.
"Grab onto something solid and hang on tight." Short Tail said. "I'm about to set it off."
Short Tail also grabbed onto a solid looking stanchion and set the charge off. They blew a hole in the hull. Air blasting out of the ship hurled the hull piece away and shot out tools, papers and what looked like three bodies.
"Did you count three?" Short Tail asked, now using his radio.
"Three. Definitely."
They dropped into the ship. They had hit the engine room, and a quick check showed it was empty. The blast had caused an airtight door to shut. Short Tail fired his heavy blaster rifle at the door, punching a hole in it. Air gushed out.
Beau grabbed another shaped charge and placed it around the heavy door. They stood back and blew open the door. On the other side they found a dead human, who had been trying to get int a space suit.
"That's four. There should only be two or three more." Beau said.
"The dead one was just putting on a regular space suit." Said Short Tail. "That suit wouldn't stop anything. Our blasters will cut them into pieces."
They proceeded towards the bridge, preceded by smart grenades. The grenades had small anti-grav motors and a very small computer "brain". They had to cut through two more doors but found no more crew.
"This has got to be the bridge." Beau said, readying his last shaped charge. "Ready?"
Short Tail nodded and Beau set off the charge. The fight was anticlimactic. The two remaining crew members fired blasters at the two Imperials, but without result. The last two crewmen were killed.
"Check and see if they left any booby traps behind." Short Tail said. "I don't want to be here if they set the anti-matter containment field to collapse."
Beau checked the bridge.
"The wording seems to be a variation of Anglic, but I can't tell if they did anything to sabotage the ship."
Castle kept the Zephyr well away from the enemy ship in case it was booby trapped but sent a ship's boat over with an engineering crew to remove their computer and do their own booby trapping. They had no trouble removing the computer's memory core and rigged the anti-matter containment field to collapse at a signal from Zephyr.
They used their sub-light engines to move Zephyr further away and then set off the collapse. There was a small bright flash and then nothing.
"Ship's gone, sir." Said someone. "Nothing but stray atoms now."
"We'll move out of here and see what the computer has to tell us."
In less time than it took to move a half a dozen light years, the computer techs had all the intel the computer had.
"Most of it's the usual stuff, sir." Said Lieutenant Li, their best computer hacker. "Navigation, FTL controls, life support and what not. There are two things of interest to us. This was one of King Tal's ships. They hadn't scouted any Imperial planets, but we know where Tal is headed. The area around Saint Elena."
"Saint Elena?" Castle said, surprised. "There's a big Imperial Navy shipyard there as well as two large private shipyards and more than a dozen smaller ones. They've been building system defense boats until you can damn near walk from one end of their solar system to the other on their hulls. They've been churning out frigates, destroyers and even some cruisers for both the Imperial Space Navy and the Viceregal Navy. The Saint Elenan Space Militia is powerful as well. The last I heard, they had a dozen destroyers, thirty or so frigates and even two heavy cruisers."
"What about nearby planets?" Short Tail asked. "They could skip Saint Elena and go after less defended planets in the vicinity."
Castle thought for a moment.
"The nearest planet is al Andalus, an agricultural world. It's 1.2 light years away. But it's hard to grow Earth food on Saint Elena. Hard, but not impossible. So, they import a lot of food from al Andalus. It's close enough so they can protect their food supply from anything the barbarians might throw at it."
"The next closest is Sumitomo Mining Number Eight. It has no habitable worlds, but plenty of rare metals and minerals. They're only four light years away. Saint Elena needs their products for their industries, so they'll protect Sumitomo, as will the Imperial and Viceregal navies. They both need ships that Saint Elena builds."
"There's another world nearby." Kate said. "They export some kind of analog to coffee. I don't remember what they call it."
"Simbacha." Beau said. "I've been there. The place is called Kloos. The most advanced social organization the non-human locals have come up with is the multi-family clan. Simbacha is harvested in the wild and the locals like to get paid mostly in weapons to fight other locals, but they'll turn on any invader. I wouldn't raid the place and if I did, I'd expect to get a bloody nose."
TBC