War Against the White Knights (19 page)

A pang of loss stabbed at Indiya. She’d never heard that expression – it must have been from old Earth centuries ago. Loobie would have known, but Indiya’s best friend wasn’t here anymore. The expression’s meaning was clear enough, and pertinent. The screening force was meant to keep the Hardits at bay, but they must surely be up to something, she just couldn’t see what was yet.

“Prepare your probe, Captain Cythien,” she said, “but I concur – hold fire until we know more.”

The memory of Loobie reminded her of another childhood friend. Indiya activated an instantaneous communication link across scores of light-years to the Legion’s strategic hub at Khallini, and an undersea prison in which one of the sharpest minds in the Legion was incarcerated.

“This is a surprise, Admiral,” said Finfth. His brain was boosted to capabilities far beyond human, and yet the weaknesses in his character were all too human.

“We are in trouble, Finfth, caught in a Hardit trap. I’m sending you a status report. My question is–”

“Why have the Hardits not attacked?”

Still cutting straight to the point? You haven’t changed
. “Well? Any ideas?”

“I believe the answer is obvious… to someone with my unfortunate experience of life.”

“No grandstanding, Finfth. Everything is at stake here.”

“Then shut up, and pay attention, Admiral. The word you’re looking for is
betrayal
.”

“Betrayal? We’ve had a serious security breach. We’re caught in a trap, because the Hardits and New Empire forces coordinated the movements. They knew where and when we would be.”

“The betrayal runs deeper than that.”

“The Hardits!” Indiya had been talking with Finfth in her mind but her excitement was such that she screamed out loud, the sound muffled by buffer gel. “The Hardits’ alliance with the New Empire is a sham, it has been all along, leading up to this moment. Thank you, Finfth.”

“Happy to be of service,” he replied. “Do come and visit one day, I still keep–”

Indiya cut the link to Finfth’s prison under the seas of Khallini, and open a channel to Captain Cythien. “Avoid contact with the Hardits,” she ordered. “I think they have appeared merely to draw out the New Empire fleet. It’s a double cross.”

“It would be a characteristic Hardit behavior, Admiral,” agreed Cythien.

“Too frakking right, Captain. Keep your X-Boat reserve hidden, but take a rotation of squadrons off the highest alert to keep them rested. If I know the Hardits, they won’t move until they’re ready to gloat, and how long that might be, I do
not
know.”

Back at the Athena end of the engagement, the Imperial forces were proving to be too smart to be drawn in to the Legion’s trap. They were turning about, firing missiles at the outer rim of the Legion formation, firing everything else they had at the swarms of AI drones pursuing them, as the superior weight of Legion drone numbers began to tell.

The Imperial warships were taking casualties now, but a hidden gauntlet still awaited them. The Imperials were breaking out of their encirclement by diving into Euphrates’ gravity well, unaware that five squadrons of stealthed X-Boats were racing to intercept, and the inertialess drives of the X-Boats meant they could accelerate far beyond the dreams of White Knight ship designers.

“Admiral, I’m picking up a transmission from the Hardits,” said
Holy Retribution
’s Sensor Officer, a young Littorane called Yoh-Daen.

“Wrap it in maximum firewall protection. Audio only. And then put it through, Lieutenant Yoh-Daen. The Hardits are ready to gloat, sooner than I thought.”

As she waited for the transmission to be made safe, she observed a flight of X-Boats – Mark Six Phantoms – de-stealth beneath an Imperial destroyer and concentrate all their fire on a single point of the enemy warship’s hull. The destroyer’s point defense systems would be going wild, trying to swat away the attack from these upstart little warboats. But the same technology that allowed X-Boats to dump their momentum into D-Space also allowed them to shift away the kinetic energy of the destroyer’s point defenses, at least for the handful of seconds they needed to bore a hole through their target’s hull armor.

The X-Boat flight peeled away as the destroyer ruptured, the little boats stealthing back into invisibility where their momentum dump system could cool to safe levels before it was brought back to full capacity.

Damage control teams on the stricken destroyer managed to avoid the risk of depressurization ripping the craft apart. Indiya had to admire the skill and bravery that must have entailed. She knew that they would have been her comrades-in-arms if they had not been caught, by chance, on opposing sides in this chodding Civil War.

The destroyer’s respite was only temporary. Its engines were badly damaged, and its targeting and point defense severely compromised. As ships throughout the Imperial fleet began taking hits from the deadly X-Boats, a flight of Swordfish fighter-bombers appeared on the damaged aft section of the destroyer and launched a barrage of deadly torpedoes before fading away into the void.

The destroyer exploded. No one could have survived that.

“Patching the Hardit communication through, Admiral,” said the sensor officer, flicking her long Littorane tail in excitement. “There’s a lag of about 70 seconds, but I thought you’d want to hear this exchange from the beginning.”

“Why do you not attack?” The voice was produced by a standard translator system, and the originating words could have been spoken by any race. Indiya guessed this was a Jotun.

“We did de-cloaked,” came the reply. Even if Indiya hadn’t been able to tell from the context, the sloppy sounding translation, with erroneous grammar, was characteristically Hardit. Indiya suspected the Hardits mistranslated on purpose. “We surprise the so-called Legion rabble at the prearranged time and place. Do we not?”

“And we have moved to engage the Legion rabble, so that you may crush them from the rear. Time is running out. Make your advance now.”

“No,” said the Hardit.

“Why? Why squander this chance, Commander Tawfiq?”

“My thoughts exactly. Why squander this chance to betray you, dear Admiral Gleaming-Diligence? Please consider the inaction of my Hardit fleet to be analogous to a barbed spearhead, heated until it glows red hot before I personally shove it up your rectum and begin to rotate the spear shaft. Did you really imagine the Hardit New Order was your ally?”

While the Hardit paused, Indiya noticed how the quality of its translation improved when it wished. The Hardit continued: “We are destined by fate to win our fight for freedom, Admiral Gleaming-Diligence – and I hope you are hearing this too, human Admiral Indiya. In the future ordained for this galaxy, there shall be one people, one race, one scent. Human, Jotun, White Knight, Littorane, Khallene– the fate of all your races is extinction at the hands of the New Order.”

“Admiral,” said Lieutenant Yoh-Daen, “the Hardits rebroadcast that exchange to us, into human language. They ceased transmission for about twenty seconds, and are now trying to establish a new link.”

“Put in place the same security protocols as before, Lieutenant, and then connect them to me, also rebroadcasting to all Legion flag officers. And include Ambassador Sandure in the comms loop.”

Xin Lee reported in. “We have Arun. He’s safe.”

Relief flooded through Indiya.
Finally, some good news
.

“He’s alive, stable, but unconscious. We’re headed for
Vengeance of Saesh
, seeing as our usual berth appears a little busy facing down the Hardits. Arun was mumbling something about Tawfiq. If she was the one who tortured Arun, then I’ll have to wait for my revenge – a shuttlecraft got away and went stealth on us before we could vape it.”

“Tawfiq is alive and attempting to contact me now,” said Indiya. “Or, at least, a Hardit claiming to be Tawfiq. What are the chances of Arun contributing to command decisions in this current situation?”

“Zero.”

A chill cut through Indiya. “Understood. Good luck, Lieutenant-General. I know you will take good care of him. Indiya out.”

Indiya required only a small fragment of the mind to talk with Xin. Most of her attention was on the engagement with the Imperial forces. The X-Boat squadrons had devastated the enemy fleet, but their effectiveness was degrading due to the need to cool down their overheating energy dumps. Nonetheless, their contribution had been devastating.

She opened a connection to the tactical commander of the main portion of her forces. “Admiral Kreippil, kindly pursue the enemy before you. Surrendering ships will be boarded and taken, their crews unharmed, but only if they show no resistance. To everyone else, display no mercy as you crush them.”

“With pleasure, Divine One.”

She had just made Admiral Kreippil’s day. More. For decades now as he slept his off-duty periods away in his water-filled cabin, he must have dreamt of this moment. She sighed. Now, she suspected, it was her turn to make the Hardit commander’s day.

“I hope you enjoyed the recording of my conversation with Admiral Gleaming-Diligence,” said the Hardit. “I would have continued the exchange for longer, but your little fighter craft seem to have destroyed the Admiral’s ship. I wonder, was it Hardit technology you copied in that stealth design? Never forget that the originating innovation was ours. Do not expect Hardit sensors to be so blind to your tricks, copied, as they are, from obsolete Hardit technology.”

“Is there any point this conversation?” said Indiya “or are you transfixed by a pathological need to gloat, a displacement activity to compensate for the deep-rooted sense of your inferiority? I hear you were a criminal from the lowest strata of your society, Tawfiq Woomer-Calix. Is that the source of your insecurity? Does that explain your need to sneer?”

“On the contrary, Admiral, the very idea of speaking directly to a member of an inferior slave race, especially one as foul-smelling as yours, is a revolting act that only my selfless dedication to duty can compel me to perform. It is your ignorance and tail-twitching levels of stupidity that make this conversation necessary. Indeed, that requires me to aid you.”

“The Human Legion has no need of your assistance, Hardit.”

“Oh, but it does. You are, as yet, too ignorant to perceive your dilemma. When the truth reveals itself to even your pallid intellect, you will realize that I have the key you need. I shall give it to you freely… if you beg well. Your commander failed in this task. Perhaps you will do better.”

Indiya was about to send a curt reply and then cut the link, but a dramatic change to the events around Athena captured her full attention. Kreippil had been in his element, pursuing the scattered remains of the Imperial forces when the truth of Tawfiq’s words became apparent.

Athena vanished.

The moon was tiny in comparison to the vast and potent gas giant it orbited, but Athena was a mega moon, large enough to have supported the evolution of intelligent life. And it had simply disappeared.

Indiya accessed sensor, tactical, and visual information. She listened in to the more coherent speculations of her officers throughout the fleet. She watched as New Empire stragglers, unable to evade the region of space around the missing moon, also disappeared, but not before turning into vivid balls of plasma. If those ships and their crews had crossed to wherever Athena was now, then they did so as hot, ionized gases. Legion missiles already fired and pursuing Imperial targets suffered the same fate. So too did many of the more aggressive drones, their simple AI controllers unable to adapt to this stark change in the rules of the physical universe.

The oxygenating buffer gel that she was so used to filling her throat suddenly threatened to choke her as she watched Kreippil’s vanguard attempt to veer away from Athena. Luckily, the Littorane Admiral had already been directing his ships into a high orbit around the moon. But this invisible barrier reached far into space beyond Athena’s surface. Indiya was forced to watch, heartbroken as brave Legion ships slammed into this impossible obstacle and were consumed in fire.

There were lifeboats, a meagre leavening of survivors, but all too few. She hadn’t the strength of will to count how many warships had been destroyed. The tactical teams were carrying out their grim responsibilities, feeding her the terrible truth of casualties, an appalling price paid in people and materiel, but her mind slid around the numbers, not yet ready to comprehend them.

Duty forced her to calm herself, because if she were the Hardit commander this would be the moment she would strike. But Tawfiq’s forces still waited there passively. She had the sense of them being an audience, enjoying the spectacle as their two enemies battered each other.

She gave a cautionary order to her subordinate who would be suffering these losses even more acutely than her. “Admiral Kreippil, temporarily reassign your X-Boat forces to
Lance of Freedom
. There is little they can do against that barrier, but if the Hardits move, your squadrons’ contribution may prove vital.”

When Kreippil acknowledged, Indiya turned instead to an understanding of what had just occurred, aided by sensor probes that Kreippil had already sent in.

The barrier was like a spherical void cut out of space-time. A ball with a diameter of a quarter of a million klicks had been excised from the physical universe, and at its center was Athena, the White Knight homeworld. There was cruel irony here because inside this hole was another section of the universe that had cut itself away – the Imperial citadel with the Emperor inside.

Her ship should still be in communication link with the Imperial Palace, the ghostly connection of entangled
chbits
that made instantaneous communication possible bypassed the barrier around the citadel. She fully expected the same was true of this new barrier.

Soon she would have to consult with scientists, and talk with the Emperor himself if Xin’s special op mission hadn’t retrieved Arun alive, but she knew they would only confirm what was already apparent: the New Empire had sealed themselves behind an impenetrable fortification, on an unprecedented scale that even the Emperor had not suspected was possible.