Into the Black

(Main Promenade, Uldan Trade Station, Sedara)

War Priestess of the Perfected Sriss Rerto stepped through the halls of the captured human space station. Losses amongst the Perfected and their Enlightened minions, those Ihm who had not yet become Perfected, were small. Easily within projections.

The humans had attempted to fight, of course, but their weapons were designed to be used against drunken spacers, not warriors in the newest armor blessed by the Goddess, wielding weapons touched by the chaotic energies of the Goddess’s realm. This was not a military installation, after all, but a civilian one, and the fighters were not soldiers, but security officer. Their ‘peacekeeping’ weapons that they carried were designed to disable. They were more concerned with limiting collateral damage to both civilians and the station than they were in ending an assaulting force.

The Warriors of the Enlightened rolled over them like surf upon the sand. Their furor was so great that, even though almost twenty percent of the station’s forces surrendered, there were four times as many body parts as there were total defenders littering the hallways. Entire stretches of the corridors from the docking ring had been painted red with the blood of the defenders, and it had been done so thoroughly that you were almost more likely to find an intact corpse than you were a clean spot on the wall.

All the surrendered, civilian or security alike, and all the slaves from the small slave market were being processed. The computers had not been damaged in the assault, thankfully, so the records were easy to come by. Her Attendants had already started the Selcection.

Two out of every ten were marked to be the private stock of the Imperatrix herself, to feed her newfound hunger for the souls of the unworthy. The most perfect samples of the rest were pulled out, for use in the ritual. The rest? They would be given over to the slave pens back in the Imperium.

The teams landing on the surface were going to conduct similar Selections. Their numbers would be different, of course, with some humans being allowed to flee into the wilds, so that a wild population could be bred and fostered as sport, along with the domesticated human animals. In fact, most of the human population would be allowed to roam free, away from the slave pens. But those humans would quickly find that the ritual would make all but the hardiest survivors long for the safety of the pens.

Three hundred humans, slave and free, out of a population of seven and a half thousand that survived the assault on the station, were waiting for her in the main promenade, guarded by her Attendants and the Warriors of the Legion. Each was stripped naked, chained, and forced to their knees, as was only proper. The chattel must know their place, lest they get ideas above their stations, after all.

She moved into the center of the promenade, where her Attendants had finally finished the preparations. The eight-pointed sign was painted on the ground in blood, with the symbol of Baxanke painted between each point. In the center of the circle was a table brought out from one of the nearby restaurants.

Rerto nodded once. All was prepared, as it should be. Now, the time had come to conduct the ritual. When it was done, the ranks of the Perfected would swell, and the doors to this world would be thrown open to the demons of Baxanke.

“Bring forth the first sacrifice.”

(Main Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Uldat System)

“Successful Anchor jump to Uldat System, Master. All ships in formation.”

I nodded my head at Slave-Captain Virstina’s announcement. I had expected no less. The crews might not have made many anchor jumps, but they’d all trained on it. In fact, the only concern I’d had about the whole thing was whether the Imperial Navy was going to accidentally shoot us or not as we emerged. Sure, Lucio should have sent a priority message, but this was a stressful situation, and stress has a tendency of making people stupid.

“Excellent. My complements to the fleet. This is the first time we’ve tried jumping three groups from three different locations to the same area. I’m pleased to see everyone has been practicing their precision jumps.”

An alert sounded from the sensor station. Captain Virstina looked over. “Report!”

“Captain, one squadron of fighters on loose intercept course. Identified as Imperial Navy Lancer-type space superiority fighters. IFF lists them as Imperial Navy.”

“Captain, we’re being hailed by the fighters. Audio only.”

Captain Virstina looked to me, and I took a step forward. “Put them through, Lieutenant.”

“Attention unknown vessels. This is Cobra Leader. You are entering restricted airspace. Identify yourselves immediately.”

I smiled. The squadron of fighters was facing down a fleet, but the pilot speaking sounded cool as a cucumber. Fighter pilots really were all the same. Tabbing open my comms, I said, “Cobra Leader, this is the BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Admiral Mollen commanding. We are here on contract from the Imperial Crown.”

“Understood, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi. We just got the alert message expecting you twenty minutes before your Anchor drives were detected in system. Handing you over to Bandar Control, so you can integrate with defenses. Cobra Leader out.”

“Incoming hail from Bandar Base Control. Audio and video.”

“On screen.”

The screen blanked, and then revealed a young woman who looked like she would have been of Pacific Islander heritage, if we were in the real world. She clearly was wearing Captain’s insignia on her navy uniform, however, so this had to be the base commander. She offered a nod, and said, “Admiral Mollen, I’m Captain Kaipo Aulani, Commander of Bandar Base. Welcome to Uldat. If you don’t mind me saying, your ships are quite a welcome sight. Though it appears we’re already losing sight of them.”

“I’m sure we are, Captain, and I would be surprised if you weren’t. We will remain in stealth until the Ihm show up, or reinforcements arrive. We will be transmitting IFF on tachyon wavelength 3.14159. Might I suggest we switch to secure tight-beam transmissions, so we can integrate our efforts with your base defenses? If we’re going to have guests, it would be rude not to prepare a party for them.”

“Understood, Admiral. Switching to standard stealth comm protocol five.” She nodded to someone off-screen, and the screen flickered for less than a second, before re-establishing itself. The Navy had standard stealth protocols, but not all were created equal. Protocol five was the one they used for dealing with mercenaries, because no one wanted them to know the kinds of protocols the Navy used when they weren’t on the same side, for obvious reasons.

“Now, I’ve got tarpits seeded across the system along the ecliptic, but we’ve only got 90% coverage for twenty degrees above and below. We started making more tarpits the moment we heard about how the lizards went around the traps at Sedara, but with limited ships, the deployment is slow going.”

“Any word from the fleet?”

Aulani grimaced. “They’re giving the lizards as good a run as they can, but they aren’t giving up on the chase. Only reason they haven’t been caught yet is because the Admiral recovered enough to take command, and she’s been using every trick in the book to try and shake them.

“Unfortunately, all our intel from Sedara is about twenty-five minutes old, thanks to the Tachyon Jammers. They block communications, and the closest Nomad with access to secure Navy transmitters is with 2nd Fleet, and they’re in transit, two weeks out. Next closest is at Sol, so we’re getting reports straight from home, as it were.

“Thankfully, the Ihm haven’t made any moves like they are leaving the system, yet. They dispatched some ships to try and chase 8th Fleet, but the rest are all waiting near Sedara, for the ritual that they’re supposedly up to. Though some people are being taken, and loaded on transports as slaves.”

“Right. In that case, I’ll have my shuttle pilots help to speed up deployment. We can’t assume that the Ihm don’t have some new method of FTL that isn’t tachyon-based, so let’s get moving as fast as we can. In the meantime, I’ll have my planners get in touch with yours, so we can work on a battle plan.”

“Understood, Admiral. Bandar Base out.”

(Fleet Command Cluster, IAS Purity of Purpose, approaching Sedara VII)

“Winglord, we are approaching the seventh planet. Scout probes indicate that the enemy has gathered on the opposite side of the planet from us, and are now attempting to flee to the outer system.”

Winglord Jusk Zecho nodded once, her tongue tasting the air excitedly. This was her first major command, after the previous Winglord was retired, due to not agreeing with the ideals of Perfection that the Imperatrix had decreed throughout the Imperium. Even better, she had been assigned the important role of finishing off the Imperial Navy forces, so that the Armada could cement their hold on the system, and preserve the secrecy of the Shroud for as long as possible.

“Best time course around the planet. Full speed. I want them caught before they can get a transmission out!”

“As you will, Winglord.”

The use of tarpits in the system had slowed their pursuit, but the enemy fleet was clearly badly damaged. Some of their ships had been left behind as floating wrecks. She’d ordered the wrecks destroyed as the wing passed, just in case. She wasn’t going to stain her record by falling to some Terran trap.

That caution had proved useful when the sensors detected the first mines. Oh, the stealth mines were hidden from her normal sensors at normal ranges, but that was fine. Her sensor officer had found the mines through the tachyon sensor arrays.

Active tachyon sensors, like the pulses many ships used to try and detect stealth ships, were all but useless with the Shroud running, since it made too much noise. But, if one were practiced enough, you could read the ‘chop’, for lack of a better term, and pick out objects, because sensors getting drowned out was not the same as them returning no result. It wasn’t possible for the computers, as far as they knew, but the living sometimes had the talent to see the patterns in the Shroud’s noise, and see where some object interfered with those patterns. Her sensor officer was one such savant, and the reason why her wing was selected to chase down the fleeing ships.

Of course, just knowing where objects were didn’t make them not dangerous. Especially since Driex was only mortal. Even the Enlightened and the Perfected needed sleep, after all. That meant she had to slow her pursuit slightly, to ensure that she didn’t run into an ambush while Driex was sleeping, or run into any mines that slipped past her watchful eye. There had been two mines that had gotten dangerously close to the fleet, but Driex had found and revealed over fifty, just in their path.

A little lost speed was fine. Even at the reduced pace, she was still gaining on the human fleet. Their antics only ensured that it would be a tough fight, but one that everyone in the wing would be all too happy to see end with the humans’ integration as a slave species, or their annihilation.

Zecho didn’t care much about which choice the humans made. They could fight against the end, but he had seen the truth. Their days were numbered, because, no matter how hard they fought, they would fall and fail. That was the natural way of things. All beings would fall to the Imperium and the Perfected!

Suddenly, alarms began going off across the bridge. “What is it?”

“Warlord, the sensors are detecting X’thari drive signatures! Estimated point of emergence… within thirty-thousand kilometers of the fleeing Imperials!”

“Comms, record and transmit all sensor data to the Perfection Made Manifest, and let them know that we are advancing to take on the X’thari ships. Weapons, I want all systems charged and ready to go. Conn, keep us on the best-time route to the enemy fleet. Engineering, get us more speed!”

Zecho waited, as the minutes counted down and sensors began resolving their images. They would be in weapons range of the X’thari ships mere moments after they jumped in. Sure, the 45 ships that the X’thari looked to be bringing would have a chance to raise shields, but her fifty-five ships would meet theirs before they had a chance to properly respond to the situation. It was all too easy. Kill the leader, and the rest of the X’thari won’t know what to do.

“Warlord, enemy forces do not match X’thari designs! Unknown faction, with what appear to be Black Star-inspired ships. No IFF signals, nothing.”

“Warlord, new targets are broadcasting to the entire system.”

“Let us hear it.”

“This is Commodore Keh Dakha of the Black Star Navy, formerly Warleader of the Ihm Armada, to all Ihm vessels. I name you all cowards, no better than the Unspoken Empress! The slime beasts of Yenthak IV are better fighters than you lot, and twice as intelligent!

“Come and face me, if you dare!”