Beyond Death (Perimeter Defense Book #2) (23 page)

"Will do, Georg, but I need you to give me the chance to broadcast them!" Katerina clearly lit up, walked closer to the big screen and began to give orders to technicians. I couldn't even understand half of what she was saying. "Eighth filter... Autofocus on the gleam. Second camera here and correction. No, no, what delay?! Yes, microphone here with dubbing and pressure. Where has makeup gone off to?"

All the teams had finally been assigned, and the officers got to work. I stood from my seat and also watched the attack on the big screen with my cousin. I turned to the android and asked:

"Bionica, be a mensch and take all this stuff away from my station. I can barely see the monitors at this point. It's like I'm blind. And after that, I'll read all your wishes. And thank you for the gift! Excellent wine!"

"I'm glad you liked it!" The android walked up to my seat, picked up a couple flowery leaves and suddenly froze in indecision. I had left the gold medallion sitting on the table under some papers, hoping she’d see it.

Meeting my gaze, the synthetic girl took the piece of jewelry and put it back on her own wrist. She turned the paper the chain was under, read what I'd written on it and gave a happy laugh.

"Astra trusts you. You shouldn't take advantage of that," it read.

"Ten seconds!" Nicole Savoia was in charge of the countdown. "Three. Two. One. Attack!"

The stealth bombers appeared for just a moment. You just barely even see them on the backdrop of all the Alien ships. The aftermath of their attack, on the other hand, was a bit harder to miss. Inside the fast-moving ball, a great many fiery sparks began shooting out, swallowing up a large proportion of the armada's forces. It combined into one huge ball of plasma, and the thirty explosions scattered the Alien ships. After that, the Aysar Cluster station also gave way to a pretty burst of flame. The ten megaton bomb was enough to break the space fortification into pieces. And then... an unplanned explosion followed, much more powerful than the earlier ones. A bright white wave reached
Ghost-6
within a second, after which the recording ended.

"
Ghost-6
is no more," Admiral Kiro Sabuto said, upset, looking at the extinguished marker indicating a former allied ship on the screen.

"Distance to epicenter: twelve hundred miles," Nicole said in the silence that had descended.

I took the microphone and said, trying to keep my cool:

"All ships warp to the Lobj system!" The Aliens are not concerned with us anymore. We simply couldn't choose a better moment to get away from the armada."

* * *

In the dining room, I was eating breakfast with Admiral Kiro Sabuto and the staff officers, who were discussing recent events at a lively din. The bombing of the Alien fleet and the death of
Ghost-6
. On the one hand, the energy shields installed on cloaked frigates were just a formality, just ticking a box. But on the other hand... even being twelve hundred miles from the epicenter couldn't save our scout! Engineers were arguing with Admiral Kiro Sabuto over the true force of the blast, having the radar signature area, frigate shield capacity and size, but they came up with some huge numbers beyond possibility, measured in hundreds of gigatons or even teratons in TNT-equivalent. Our thermonuclear reserves looked like nothing more than firecrackers compared with whatever was behind that blast.

Did we destroy the enemy armada? I would like to believe that we did, of course. But those engineers' calculations, based on the assumed relationship between the size and shield power of Alien ships, have shown the exact opposite. The
Queen
definitely survived. There could be no doubt of that. The
Mammoths
, which is what the officers had started calling the small Alien carriers, didn’t get wiped out either. But when it came to
Behemoths
' ability to survive that plasma inferno, there were doubts, though there was also a serious lack of data. We had never once shot through an Alien battleship's shield, so we had no idea how strong it was. The good news was, the calculations gave the Alien
Sledgehammers
,
Chainsaws
(the previously unnamed cruisers discussed earlier) and other small ships, absolutely no chance of having made it out of the fiery whirlwind.

Bionica affirmed that she had counted seven thousand, three hundred starships in the Alien armada, and according to our calculations, no more than three hundred of the largest ships could have survived, not including the approximately five hundred frigates and destroyers that were on their way to the Aysar system at the time of the explosion in search of our fleet. We still didn't know how many of our stealth bombers had survived the attack, but in any case it looked like an acceptable trade-off.

And the last question, which was causing the officers to argue at an even more fevered pitch was what exactly that blast was. An antimatter explosion from one or several
Behemoths
? It was definitely the answer that first came to mind, but certainly not the only possibility. The main engineer of
Joan the Fatty
told us his alternate theory: the warp beacon itself had exploded, causing energy from another dimension to slip through a hole in the fabric of space. No one could say one way or another when it came to that theory. There were no other times in human history when an operating warp beacon was observed to have been destroyed. As such, no one had any idea what such a risky move could lead to.

"Tuki-tuka-de-sa, I ask you to come to Florianna's room. Your assistance is required in the interrogation of the traitors," Popori de Cacha hunted me down just as I was coming out of the dining area.

I was quite surprised, as I had earlier told the Chameleon that I did not intend to personally carry out such an unpleasant procedure. Nevertheless, the head of my guard was stubborn and affirmed that the situation with the arrested was not simple, and would need my personal intervention. I sighed heavily, banished the thoughts of Astra waiting for me, and followed after the head of my bodyguard.

The three arrested were sitting in handcuffs squatting on the floor. Surrounded by the four silent insects, Florianna was in her already familiar flying armchair. It was hard to tell whether the paralyzed girl was working hard or sleeping behind her closed eyes.

"How could I sleep here...?"
The voice ringing out in my head confirmed the first of the two theories.
"Prince, we are now dealing with the second assistant from
Bride of Chaos
, this is the simpler case. I'll tune in to the conversation in a bit."

"We'll start with this one," Popori de Cacha also pointed to the strong man with the second captain's assistant's patches on an Orange House uniform.

Undigo ton Mesfelle, major of the Orange House of the Empire, second captain's assistant on the battleship
Bride of Chaos
in the Perimeter Sector Eight Fleet

Age: 48

Race: Human

Gender: Male

Class: Military/Aristocrat

Achievements: None

Fame: +2

Standing: 0

Presumed personal relationship: Unknown

Empire Military faction opinion of you: (information unavailable at present)

We were the same age and even related, though perhaps not very closely. I sat on the edge of Florianna's magical seat and turned to the arrestee:

"Undigo, you have already sworn an oath to me as fleet commander and passed a Truth Seeker check in the Himora system. How can this be?"

"It's just how it turned out, Crown Prince Georg," the major made no attempt to argue or find an excuse for his actions, instead just telling me the story. "My family is quite close to the main branch of the Mesfelle line and is in close contact with Duke Paolo royl Anjer ton Mesfelle and his close family. My sister even lives on the Orange House Capital in Duke Paolo's summer palace. My wife on Nessi is Peres royl Paolo ton Mesfelle's wife's closest friend... to be more accurate, she's even closer friends with Peres ton Mesfelle," Undigo corrected himself quickly. "It was after I took the oath that Duke Paolo found a way to hook me in. To keep someone very close to me out of harm, I agreed to deliver a small sealed package to Swarm coordinator Triasss Zess. I suspected that there was something in the package that the Duke was planning to use to harm your Highness, but I still do not know what exactly it was."

"So this is the traitor that delivered the message from the head of the Orange House to Triasss Zess, after which Triasss Zess sent our fleet into a trap," Popori de Cacha was clearly not inclined to forgive the betrayal, however, he submitted to the Crown Prince's right to judge this aristocrat and relative.

I stayed in thought for one minute. I'm not sure how they broke the major, nor what exactly he gave the Alpha Iseyek, but Undigo ton Mesfelle's indirect accusation at Duke Paolo could turn out useful. I needed this person around as a witness.

"I'll leave you among the living, but only if you back up your words with a sworn statement."

Undigo nodded and I ordered him removed and placed under arrest in one of the cabins on
Joan the Fatty
until we returned to the Empire. There were two more: a middle-aged, and frankly not very beautiful woman with Orange House Fleet space captain patches and a young chubby corporal half her age. Both characters were NPC's with no additional information available. Popori de Cacha explained the details:

"This woman says that she hears voices that whisper to her that humanity is doomed. But these voices supposedly are directly promising to let her live, and even make her practically immortal if she helps them destroy the Sector Eight Fleet. She was able to convince her first assistant, who was also her lover that they had been chosen to become the Adam and Eve of a new human race, but first they would need to help the Aliens kill the people that were already around. They were planning to begin with the ships of the Sector Eight Fleet. They really were placing radio beacons at the spots in the Aysar system and were preparing to leave some more to make extra sure."

"But that is true!" the woman screamed out. "The voices do speak to me! The old humanity is doomed. It will fall under the Alien onslaught. And only I will retain the right to remain alive and give a new hope to humanity! And as the voices say, I do, to make sure our species will not go extinct! You can call my actions treason, betrayal, whatever you want. But, in the end, it will be I who saves humanity!!!"

I frowned squeamishly at the arrestee's screams, and because of the rapture and awe that her young assistant was looking on her with. How could I make sure the rest of my subjects wouldn't begin heeding this dangerous lunatic's words?

"So what is the problem with sentencing her, then?" I couldn't understand why my subjects treated these two traitors with such regard.

"The problem is that she really does hear voices, or at least believes so honestly that she does that there is no difference," the Truth Seeker explained to me. "I see two options: either she is mentally ill, and so should be treated, and not punished. Or the voices are real and then the fact that Aliens can control people’s minds would be a serious problem."

I opted not to draw anyone's attention to the second possibility. There were no reliable facts, so it was hard to predict all fleet members', both peoples' and unpeoples', reaction to the news that Aliens have the ability to influence the mind. That was why I asked in a blatantly negligent tone:

"So, the Truth Seeker says that the captain simply lost her mind from fear? Yes, when our fleet landed in the trap, it is possible that the weak of spirit may have grown desperate, and that even could have led some to become less clear on the line between fantasy and reality. So, my decision is that the woman is to be placed in the infirmary under Nicosid Brandt's observation, and to let the military court deal with her assistant. The boy never heard any voices. He decided to betray his own kind consciously and intentionally."

The man jumped up to his feet and tried to burst out of the room, but he couldn't open the locked door with his hands bound behind his back.

"No! So that was all a lie about restarting the species?! You're such a bitch! I hate yo..." one of Popori de Cacha's assistant didn't allow the traitor to finish his sentence, sticking the paralyzer to his neck in a tried-and-true motion and grabbing his body as it fell to the ground.

"And now, the most important thing, Crown Prince," not paying attention to the motionless body on the floor, Popori de Cacha walked up to the wall and turned on the screen. "That is footage from the observation cameras in the hangar of
Joan the Fatty
. You can see the shuttles full of captains arriving one after another, as Admiral Kiro Sabuto requested. Note that the second to last to dock is the shuttle from
Umoyge-7
. In this clip, you can watch the captains all exiting their ships."

A small scuffle was shown on the screen. My bodyguards suddenly seized three of the people from the list, and the Chameleons that showed up helped, while also keeping the other captains and officers from interfering in the conflict.