Inheritance (Rise of the Empire Book 5) (8 page)

Chapter Ten

Gaxasas city – 17 hours later

Sahib shot a Sowir in the head. As it dropped, he could feel a fog lift of his mind and he could see the tool-soldiers around them freeze and get mauled down by the bullets, plasma, and energy weapons. He moved quickly, exiting from building he was in and jumping on the Guxcacul walker-transport, grabbing hold of the railings not designed for human hands. Immediately behind him followed his six squadmates and Riss. He held firm as it started walking up the pillar to the next level of the city that the Sowir now used as their base.

He had stopped counting how many Sowir and their tool-soldiers he had killed after the first hour of combat. It seemed as if there was no end to them. He and his squad had been a part of the Guxcacul offensive. Every able Guxcacul soldier was a part of it, thousands of soldiers attacking the Sowir bases from beneath, just as the Empire pushed from above.

The walker reached the next level, and some of the Guxcacul soldiers started moving from the back of the transport to the buildings. Sahib, the rest of his squad, and Riss waited for the Guxcacul troops to disembark, as they would be of limited use fighting in the strangely built Guxcacul buildings—at least, the humans would. Then, after they were alone on the walker, it started moving further up the pillar to a carved-out platform. He and his squad disembarked there, and two more walkers arrived soon after from the other pillars or bridges that connected the various parts of the city.

Sahib, Riss, and his squad followed the Sowir troops into the main city building, and what the Sowir now used as the base headquarters. Upon entering, the Guxcacul soldiers opened fire with energy weapons similar to those of the Sowir mounted on their middle arm set, while they used their top scorpion claw-like arms to batter away any Sowir that tried to get into melee range. The Sowir wore full body armor suits, similar to the Empire’s battle suits. Riss wore his Warpath battle gear, which allowed him better movement, as it covered only his critical areas.

The energy beams from the Sowir slowed and then stopped as the Guxcacul cleared the entrance. Sahib and his people followed deeper inside the building. They took the twisting bridge-like staircases that led to the top level, where they encountered another enemy force. Sahib raised his NP-04 plasma rifle and fired at the tool-soldiers racing towards him. The bolt went right through the first, and scorched the second enemy. Then another tool jumped out of the small defensive wall, this one dressed in a heavier armor. Sahib fired at it, but its armor soaked up the hits, although Sahib could see damage. As it almost reached Sahib, Bella stepped in front of him carrying a shield, one that had been designed to fight against the tool-soldier in melee combat.

She used the full strength of her powered suit to bat the attacker to the wall. Then she stabbed at him with her monomolecular blade. The mono-blade pushed through and impaled the creature, but it wasn’t enough to outright kill it. So Sahib approached and fired three more shots point blank and killed it. As more of the enemy troops left the wall, Riss moved in front and let loose with his own, more powerful plasma rifles, mowing them down.

The Guxcacul soldiers charged the wall, crossing over and killing the defending enemy. Sahib and his squad followed, but as they entered deeper into the building, they were forced to split. Sahib, his squad, and Riss took one of the side tunnels, while the other Guxcacul soldiers took the other four.

Riss led the way with Sahib and his team following. Sahib noticed his sensors ping on movement ahead, and he and his people spread out in the cramped passage. The enemy came at them from around the bend, firing their energy weapons from their backs. But his force quickly cut them down.

They continued moving forward, clearing rooms and nearing the most probable location for the Sowir control room. All tunnels eventually led to that central room, but when Sahib and his people arrived, none of the other had reached it yet. Instead, they were met with another fifty tool-soldiers and five Sowir. Immediately after noticing them, the Sowir directed their tools to attack.

Loca stepped forward and pointed her heavy weapon, the CFG-02. The centrifugal-based weapon fired and sent thousands of bullets into the room, smashing computer screens and furniture and ripping through the enemy. The Sowir hid behind their tools, but even with that, two of them fell to the onslaught.

Behind Loca, Riss charged inside, firing his plasma rifles and smashing into the group of the enemy tool-soldiers. The arthropod grabbed them with his upper claws and then fired his plasma rifles point blank. His movements were quick, precise, and deadly, and Sahib was reminded that Riss was a Sentinel from Clan Warpath, and that even though he had a completely different body shape, he had trained with Adrian, who’d helped him develop fighting styles.

Riss was unstoppable as he used his greater mass to pin and kill the enemy, whether by his claws, stabbing through them with his feet, or by liquefying their insides with his plasma rifles. Sahib provided help and covering fire from the entrance of the room, just as his squadmates moved inside and started clearing the remainder of the enemy. The three Sowir survivors, seeing that they would lose, decided to charge Riss in a futile attack. They were armed with energy weapons similar to what they had given their tools, but it didn’t matter. Upon seeing them, Riss turned and blew one apart with his plasma rifle. The second he hit with his clawed hand and sent flying into the wall on the other side of the room, while he grabbed the third one and squeezed with his other claw, slowly decapitating him.

Sahib motioned for his squad to sweep the room, and then opened a channel to the Guxcacul forces, telling them that they had secured the control room.

***

Squad Leader Zhu “Pyro” Zhang Wei ducked behind a rock as the Sowir threw something at him. He heard it impact the wall not far from him, and then he was shaken by a small explosion. He peeked out of his cover and fired his CF-13 light assault rifle, sending centrifugally propelled bullets right into the Sowir, puncturing him with dozens of holes.

“Take care, they have some kind of grenades. Less powerful than ours, though,” Zhu warned over the comms.

“It won’t help them much,” Anton said over their squad comms.

“You should really work on that arrogance of yours,” Dson chimed in. “If they bring to bear enough troops, there won’t be anything that we can do. They will overwhelm us.”

“I doubt that they will be able to d that. We are hitting them all across the planet; if they pull forces from one side to help another, we get through,” Toferami added.

“Let’s focus on taking this base, then we can weigh in on the probable Sowir decisions,” Zhu said. Then he proceeded to move to the next rock in the vast tunnel leading downwards towards a former Guxcacul city, which was now a Sowir base.

There were many different types of tunnels, from small tunnels barely large enough for a human to move through them, to vast tunnels large enough for several tanks moving beside one another to pass. Zhu glanced backwards and saw exactly that, four tanks moving towards the massive gate below that led into the city proper. They knew that those tanks would be of limited use inside the city, as they weren’t really built anything like human or Nel cities. But the Sowir had the gate closed, and they would need the firepower to open it.

Zhu raised his rifle again and killed the remaining enemies in the vicinity of the gate. He then stepped back and let the tanks park themselves across from it, preparing to fire.

Zhu watched as they started bombarding the gate, blowing away chunks of it with each hit. The Guxcacul gates were tough, and the Sowir had repaired and improved them a bit after they’d taken the city. But in the end, they wouldn’t hold against the tanks’ assault.

As the tunnel walls shook, Zhu glanced at the ceiling, and yet again admired the ingenuity and skill of the Guxcacul engineers. The tunnel might have looked rough, but it was anything but. It was reinforced from all sides, so that even the detonations of Empire’s tanks against the gate didn’t compromise its integrity.

Then he felt the ground shake as the gate blew inward and dropped on the floor of the city. Tanks moved inside and immediately came under fire from Sowir turrets placed on the city’s dome ceiling. The tanks shrugged off the attacks and returned fire, blowing the turrets and the buildings on the dome ceiling apart, raining dust and rocks down on the rest of the city.

Then they moved along the entrance platform and took positions near the bridges leading to buildings suspended in the middle of the air. Then the Empire’s walkers entered, built based on Guxcacul specifications, exactly for easier movement around their cities. Zhu and his squad got onto one and held on tight as it started walking on one of the city’s pillar bridges, on its way to the next level.

***

Field Commander Dayo Okoro looked at the holo in his battle center, following the many battles around the planet. He was getting real-time updates from every battle via FTL comms. His forces had been pushing the Sowir on all fronts, just as the Guxcacal pushed from below. The Sowir had been unprepared to fight on many fronts at the same time, and were losing ground because of it. Already the kill count for his forces had reached 5 digits, and soon would pass into six. Although the confirmed kill count for the true Sowir was lower than what he’d expected, only around four hundred. But even with their success, there were areas where they were having difficulties.

The Sowir just had too many of their tool-soldiers available to throw at his forces, slowing down their advance and giving the Sowir a chance to set up traps. And those traps and ambushes were where most of his casualties came from. The Sowir had a very small arsenal, and very few things they possessed could actually harm his people, aside from accumulated fire and their melee weapons.

The problem was—as they had anticipated—numbers. And the Sowir could use their troops as sacrificial pawns in order to get bigger rewards. Dayo knew that this campaign would be a long one. For now, their main focus was in taking out as many Sowir as possible, as that lowered the effectiveness of their troops. If they managed to take them all out, they would have a much easier job later. Their tools couldn’t function for long without guidance, and they would turn feral and start attacking each other and everything around them.

The other problem was the Sowir food supply. According to their intel, Sowir had about three years’ worth of supplies for both themselves and their troops. Which was why Dayo had chosen to focus on attacking as many of their underground bases as possible.

His campaign rested on their ability to lower the effectiveness of the Sowir troops, which meant direct attacks on the Sowir and their supplies. His people had orders to ignore the Sowir attempts to pull them into prolonged fights with hordes of their troops, and instead focus on those troops that were clearly guided by a Sowir. This early in the campaign, killing one Sowir was worth tens of thousands of their troops.

With a flick of his hand, Dayo focused the holo on the deep underground, where the Guxcacul counterattack was taking place. They had taken the last three years while the Empire prepared and told the Guxcacul how to build FTL comms, and had them integrated into the Empire’s systems. So Dayo had real-time updates from their side as well.

The Guxcacul counterattack was very well coordinated, and while their equipment wasn’t as advanced as that of the Empire, they were a match for the Sowir. They were advancing a bit slower than what Dayo would have liked, but they were gaining ground. He saw that they had almost captured one of the Sowir bases deep underground. There was a great amount of risk for them, because they didn’t have anywhere near the number of troops as either the Sowir or the Empire, and they could be overrun far easier if the Sowir decided to amass troops and send a large force against them. But it was neither Dayo’s nor the Empire’s place to tell them that they couldn’t fight for their world.

Dayo would need to make sure to minimized the risk by taking out as many of the Sowir troops as he was able. As he started reading reports from the various fronts, he was interrupted by a comm from the fleet.

“What can I do for you, Fleet Commander?” Dayo asked.

“Our cargo ships have arrived. As soon as they place the defense platforms in orbit, I will take the fleet out of system. If there is anything else that you need, now is the time to ask for it,” Fleet Commander Bethany Jones responded.

“Of course, Fleet Commander. I doubt that we will need anything, but I will check with my people,” Dayo said.

“Very well, Field Commander. You have a couple of hours before we leave,” she said, and then ended the call with a salute.

Dayo signaled to one of his aides and sent him off to the quartermaster building on the other side of the base. With that taken care of, he returned his attention to the holo and the many battles raging across the planet.

Chapter Eleven

January; Year 36 of the Empire; Thanatos – Fleet Headquarters; Nineteen days later

Laura sat in a chair that had become uncomfortable three hours ago and listened to the presentations from the Fleet’s best scientists and engineers. They were presenting her with the new technologies that could be used for their ships in the future, based on the technology they had received from the sphere. There was surprisingly little technology on weapons and military.

As it was told to her, the People hadn’t really had a military, or a need to develop weapons. They were the oldest race in the galaxy, and their technology had been so far ahead of anyone else that any attack against them had been laughable. They
had
had weapons, but all of those had been energy-based weapons, far ahead of anything that the Empire could even attempt to make. It required resources and elements that they hadn’t even discovered yet. But there were other things, nonmilitary in nature, that Laura and Seo-yun hoped they could adapt and turn into weapons.

She gave out a mental sigh of relief when they reached the last item on the list.

“Energy shields,” said Ritsarni, one of Fleet’s leading scientists, but also one of the youngest.

Laura looked at him without speaking, willing him to continue.

“Ahem, well…we found blueprints for the energy shield, which we are confident we can adapt for our needs and install onto our ships,” Ritsarni said.

“We already have shimmering field technology,” Laura added tiredly. A lot of the technology they had presented to her today, the fleet already had something similar. But she knew that she shouldn’t have been surprised about that. They couldn’t really make a big jump in technology, even if they had the knowledge, because they lacked the means to build what they found in the sphere. It would take them at least ten years to reach a level where they could start utilizing some of the more advanced technologies from the sphere. At least, advanced compared to the Empire’s technology. What the People had had at the peak of their civilization was so far ahead of them that it might as well have been magic. They had the data, but they lacked knowledge and understanding. But that would come with time.

“Yes. But the shimmering field technology doesn’t really stop the energy weapons, it dissipates them around their impact point, basically robbing the energy beam of its power. A powerful enough weapon would still transfer some of the energy through the field,” Ritsarni said.

“And an energy shield does what, exactly?” Laura asked, and immediately regretted her choice of words as she saw the look on Ritsarni’s face.

“Well,” Ritsarni started enthusiastically, “the shield matrix works in combination with the applied energy source to—” Laura stopped him by raising her right hand. She then covered her face with her other hand and took a deep breath.

“Could you explain it in layman’s terms, please?” she asked weakly. She had spent the last six hours being bombarded with terms and facts that she barely understood, and she could not take one more.

Ritsarni looked crestfallen, but Laura refused to be swayed, so he righted himself and started speaking.

“The shield basically negates the energy that comes in contact with it. It’s not really that simple; it doesn’t just negate energy, it makes it…It is a bit more complicated than that. It is—” He’d started to steer back into scientific talk, but one look from Laura made him focus. “Right. It negates energy by pushing with equal force from within, basically,” he said, and Laura could see that he wasn’t happy with his explanation.

“Alright,” Laura said. “Convince me that it is better than what we already have.”

“The People didn’t invent these shields as defenses against attacks; they were used for deep mining of suns,” Ritsarni said.

“Mining of the suns?” Laura asked incredulously.

“A certain type of sun, yes. Apparently some suns possess an element that was essential for their more advanced technology, and could only be found inside certain suns. Although later they discovered a means to make it artificially, but that was hundreds of thousands of years after. The energy shield allowed them to build their mining facilities inside the suns. The shield we are capable of building now won’t be able to do that, of course. We don’t have a power source strong enough to do that yet. That is the limit of these shields; the amount of power we can pump into them dictates the level of energy they can stop.”

“So, will they be better than the shimmering field?” Laura pressed.

“In some ways yes, in others no. The shimmering field doesn’t require an equal amount of energy to dissipate the attack. If an attack more powerful than our field hits it, it will still lose some of its power from the field. If an attack more powerful than the energy shield hits, it will disrupt the energy matrix and simply pass through.”

“That to me sounds like our field tech is superior.”

“As I said, in some ways yes, in others no. The greatest advantage I believe this technology holds is that it can be configured to stop kinetic energy,” Ritsarni added.

“It can stop kinetic weapons?” Laura asked, intrigued.

“Yes. It can rob the weapons of their energy, if the matrix is properly configured, making the attack effectively stop moving. The People used them on their world ships to stop dust or anything else that might impact their hulls. The shields are limited by our power-generating capabilities, but as the team on Sanctuary draws closer to building a working prototype of their old power source designs from the sphere, I think that we should take a look at energy shields as a possible addition to our newer ships.”

“Well, that is interesting. We won’t start building the new fleets for a few years, but yes…this can be something that we consider for that.” Laura nodded. “Thank you, Ritsarni. I will think on this, and we will see.”

***

Laura was at her home on Thanatos when a call came in for her. She sat down at her holo table and answered. A video window popped out above the desk and Adrian looked at her.

“Adrian!” she said. “I’m glad that you called. I have been wanting to speak with you.”

Adrian smiled at her words. They had of course been in contact almost daily, as he gave her reports on the offensive. But this wasn’t about Fleet business; it was a personal call.

“I didn’t have anything better to do, honestly. We are still waiting for the Third Fleet to arrive, and I have done as much to prepare as I can,” Adrian said.

The Second and the Vanguard Fleets were in a staging system, waiting on the Third Fleet and some more reinforcements from the Empire, preparing to attack the Sowir home system. The fleet had passed through seven Sowir systems in the last nineteen days before the Sowir had decided to abandon the other three and move all their assets to their home system. But as the fleets had passed through the abandoned systems, they’d found that the Sowir had already destroyed their own assets in them.

Laura glared at him in faux anger. “You want to say that you only called me because you are bored?” Adrian gave her a boyish grin that reminded her of a time when he was much younger, and her face softened. “How have you been?” she asked.

Adrian’s face changed, and she could see that he was tired.

“I’m good,” he said, and Laura gave him a look of disbelief. “Okay, I’m tired.” He grimaced. “The Sowir don’t know when to stop. Any sane race would have surrendered long ago. The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that we made a mistake when we broke our agreement with them. That made us untrustworthy in their eyes; they will not let themselves be fooled again. They would rather die than let what they believe we would do if they surrender happen.” He shook his head and his right hand made the Nel gesture for frustration.

Laura shared in his sentiment. At the time, it had been a good decision, and she would not allow herself to dwell on it. But she knew from their prisoners that the Sowir believed that the Empire was on the side of Nelus, as they knew that Nel were part of the Empire. And that, along with the fact that the Empire had broken its non-aggression agreement with them, made them think that humanity would allow the Nel to do the same thing to the Sowir as what they had done to the Nel and the other races of the Consortium. They might not have seen anything wrong with what they were doing, but they understood that the Nel did not share that opinion. They knew the Consortium laws; their crimes were unforgivable.

“Do you think that you can force them to surrender?” Laura asked.

“We can enforce a surrender even without their compliance; we just destroy every asset they have in space and blockade the planet. Even if they don’t want to talk with us, there is little that they can do. But I think that eventually, when they realize what we are doing, they will start responding to our attempts at communication, if only out of curiosity.”

Laura nodded. “Let’s not talk about them anymore. We spend most of our time with them on our minds as it is,” she said. “So…I hear you and Bethany have been talking again.” She feigned disinterest.

Adrian rolled his eyes at her. “It was just one lunch!” he said, then narrowed his eyes at her. “How did you even know? We were here, on Harbinger…” Then he raised his hand and looked at the bracer on it. “Iris? It was you, wasn’t it? I told you to stop doing that. Oh, and now you ignore me, of course you do.”

Laura smiled at his ramblings. “Don’t be mad at her, she worries about you.”

“There isn’t anything for her to worry about.”

“She thinks that you are alone too much,” Laura added gently.

“Alone? I’m constantly surrounded by people!” Adrian argued.

“Yes, but you are their commander. And yes, I know you have friends. But you don’t have anyone with whom you can share your life.”

“Beth and I are just friends,” he said.

“Whatever you say, Adrian. But there was a time when you were in love with her.”

“Once. I don’t have the time now for those things,” Adrian said stubbornly.

“Perhaps you can try and make time,” Laura retorted.

Adrian sighed. “Perhaps.” He paused, and looked conflicted for a moment before his face cleared. “Tell me, how was your day?” he asked, changing the subject. Laura resigned herself to the end of that conversation and went along with his not-so-subtle topic change. She proceeded to describe to him in excruciating detail the flow of her meetings that day.

***

Adrian stood as Bethany entered his quarters. They embraced warmly and she took a seat at the table. Goran, Adrian’s steward, entered from the kitchen and started putting food on the table. Bethany sighed in satisfaction as Goran removed the covers from the plates and the smell of the dishes spread through the room.

“That looks delicious,” Bethany said. “I skipped lunch and have been looking forward to this all day.”

Adrian smiled. “Well, then, there is no need to wait,” he said, and grabbed a big chunk of synth meat. He cut off a chunk and put it in his mouth. There was no difference in taste from real meat, and over the years it had replaced meat harvested from living animals. Now meat was grown in vats on “farms,” but with no actual living animals. But cooked meals weren’t really that commonplace nowadays; they were for special occasions. Most of the Empire ate food prepared in bio-fabricators, and while it could be made to taste like anything you imagined, it was always in the form of gray paste.

Beth released another sound of satisfaction as she took a bite of her own piece.

“This is the best thing I have ever eaten,” she said blissfully.

Adrian nodded in agreement. “It is pretty good. I’ve been trying to get the recipe from Goran for years, but that man is one tough nut to crack,” he said. Then he made a Nel gesture for interest as he asked, “So why did you skip lunch?”

They made small talk as they ate, exchanging funny stories and swapping experiences from their various positions in command over the years and how they dealt with insubordination. Adrian told her about their old team from the Academy, which she had lost touch with, and he promised to get them all together again.

Then Beth paused and looked at him strangely for a moment before shaking her head. “I don’t think that I will ever get used to that,” she commented.

“Used to what?” Adrian asked, confused.

“Those gestures you are making as you speak,” she answered.

Adrian looked at his hand and saw that his fingers were bent and pointed upwards in a Nel sign that meant comfortableness. Startled, he dropped his hand to the table.

“Oh, I didn’t realize I was doing it,” he said.

“No, no. It’s not bad, I’m just not used to seeing that. I don’t really interact with any Nel privately; I have only seen it from a few of my subordinates.”

“I do spend a lot of time around Nel, and count some among my best friends. I guess that it just became a part of me,” Adrian said.

Bethany looked at him sadly. “I knew that you must have changed, but these past few days have just served to show me the extent of it. We lost so much time…” Beth said remorsefully.

“Neither one of us is the same person we were then.”

“No, we are not,” Beth said softly. She picked up a fork and started playing with it in silence for a few moments before speaking. “I heard some rumors…”