Chaos Quarter (19 page)

Large spheres slammed into the metal superstructure of the primitive settlement. Explosions rippled inside as the force of the blows exploded anything combustible. The fire ripped through the metal caverns, dying when it escaped into the void. Sphere after sphere tore into the station, shattering it. Debris hurtled every direction into space, pieces tumbling end-over-end into the void.

The War-beast shifted, hurling a half-dozen spheres in steady progression, striking where the metal met the rock. More fire rippled deep within the settlement, spewing crushed stone and twisted steel into space. Tentacles arose from the skin of the War-beast to slap away debris that came too close.

“Enough,” Blair said. “If any of them survived, they will have learned the consequences of crossing us.”

The assault ceased. A moment passed, the War-beast hanging in space. Then it simply turned and burned away at top speed. Blair took a deep breath and smiled.

“Time to resume the hunt.”

It is often said that other nations misunderstand the Commonwealth. The reverence toward freedom, the creativity that seems to grow exponentially while at the same time creating a vast quantity of absolute drek, the rampant distrust toward the very people we elect to serve us…it’s hard for many nations to make sense of. But if the Commonwealth is the most misunderstood nation in Explored Space, the Empire of Europa is undoubtedly the most hated.

This is not mere saber-rattling. I fought in the war, I know how easy it is to throw away reason and hate the bastards for what they did to the people of the Anatolian Reach. No, on a larger, anthropological scale, we have to see that it is not only we who hate them. Everybody hates them.

The obsession with “nobility,” the forced subsistence existence of nearly 90 percent of their population, the complete lack of rights and justice, the belief that God sanctions it all…this endears them to few of their neighbors. It irritates more moral states who see an evil regime nearing or at super-power status. It irritates immoral states who wonder why their own brand of repression cannot reproduce the results the Empire has achieved.

While no nation can ever truly be said to have ‘friends,’ few of the empire’s ‘allies’ even try to maintain the façade. They mouth their displeasure and dislike of the empire one minute, then the next turn around and buy Europan weapons because they can’t get guns anywhere else. And through this all, Emperor Cheseworth sits atop his throne, reveling in the power he has over these people.

Domination is a source of pride in their culture. Domination of the emperor over a noble, of a noble over his warriors, of the warriors over the hated serfs. Domination of the empire over weaker nations. It is no surprise then that they save their hatred for things they cannot dominate and control: human nature and all its chaos, states beyond their influence, ideas deviant from their own, and at the top of it all, always at the top, the Free Terran Commonwealth.

-Lecture given to students at New Michigan Institute of Technology by Professor Alejandro Ross, NMIT Recorded Lecture Series—Volume XXVIII, 2498

Don’t ever fight fair. Cheat. Win!

-From Commodore Gutierrez’s Commencement Address to the Fleet Academy Cadets, Annapolis, June 2499

He had to admit that, when it came to non-combat flying, Chakrika was proving marvellously run-of-the-mill. He’d seen people pick it up faster and much,
much
slower. For somebody with as little familiarity as she had, to do moderately well was nothing short of miraculous. A few more weeks and she’d probably be ready to start practicing landings in an atmosphere.

Right now she sat at the controls, humming some happy lullaby from her childhood in a language he’d never heard of. She’d moved Quintus’s crate/crib to the bridge, placing it between her and Lucius. Though she sat at the pilot’s station, she wasn’t actually working the engines at the moment. As usual they were cruising toward a jump point. Instead of flying she was learning, planet by planet, about the Commonwealth.

Where the radar sphere usually floated was the image of a living world, Berenice, the most populated world of the Conae System. Its largest continent was shaped like an unsymmetrical butterfly and dominated by a vast desert. Its oceanic fringes were ringed with a thin band of open palm forest, followed by a thinner ring of scrubby grassland. He’d heard the name of this world before, but hadn’t actually known much about it until she’d pulled it up. She watched, with rapt attention, as images of the world flashed by.

The computer narrated, telling tales of the world and its people:
Berenice. Population 670,000,000. Originally settled 2247. Terraforming completed 2342. Five continents, four comparable to Earth’s Australia in size. Main continent similar in size to South America. Originally settled by immigrants from Italy, Spain, and Chile. Smaller groups from other Earth nations and neighboring worlds contributed lesser numbers. Known for heavy industry in hot, dry climate of its main continent’s interior. Tropical and citrus fruits grown widely and exported. Mainly desert and semi-tropical eco-systems constructed from numerous extant and restant species. Small tropical rain-forest and temperate bands. No continents near the poles, both of which have circular ice-caps nine hundred miles in diameter
... On and on the Computer spoke. Chaki probably knew more about Berenice than he did.

She’d taken to the ship’s databanks like an addict. That night he’d shown her Earth, she’d stayed up late, breaking only to feed Quintus, consuming information. He had suspicions about the type of life she had lived and would bet education hadn’t played a large role. She was surely making up for it now.

“Time until recharge?” Rex asked, sitting in the communications station on the bridge’s upper tier.

“
Twelve minutes
.”

One more jump and they’d be at Byzantium. One more jump and they’d have a chance to correct the sick joke fate had played on Second. He hoped.

A beeping arose from the scan station. He glanced over, past Second in her usual spot. A light flashed on the console.

“
A ship has jumped into this system
,” the computer stated.

Damn it, why did you have to hope!

“Get me an image,” Rex spoke, anger rising in his stomach. If the Hegemony bioship found them now, it would be a simple trace to Byzantium.

The scopes and scanners went to work, building an image. Berenice disappeared as the computer projected the newcomer. It was not the bioship. But it was something just as bad.

“That is a Europan frigate,” Lucius spoke from the gunner’s seat.

“
Spathion-
class
,” the computer declared.

“Chaki, take Quintus back to your cabin; arm yourself. Second, get to your cabin. Computer, put up all information available on
Spathion
-class frigates,” Rex ordered.

Chakrika grasped the crate with both hands and rushed the now-crying Quintus out of the bridge. Second walked out at her normal measured pace. Rex leapt to the pilot’s seat, sliding in as soon as Chakrika had gotten to her feet. The small central screen of his console sprung to life, detailed images and information scrolling down. Lucius looked on, shocked.

“You know that much about our sh-
Europan
ships?!” he asked.

“Amazing what spy probes can find out,” Rex replied.

The
Spathion
-class was the most numerous ship in the Europan fleet. It was the smallest capital ship they operated, yet it still stretched 580 feet in length and 490 feet in width. That made it nearly three times bigger than his glorified freighter. The damn thing looked like a misshapen metal pancake, with a huge bite taken out of the front.

That “bite” was jammed full of weapons. A pair of medium pulse cannons and five lighter pulse cannons faced forward. Light pulse cannons on each flank were mounted for broadsides. Another medium pulse cannon and three lighter guns faced aft. The medium guns were deadly. A single shot from one of them would blast through twenty-five centimeters of armor, give or take. He only had twenty centimeters protecting his ship. Even what they considered a “light” pulse cannon had him outmatched. His single pulse cannon was a scaled-down model designed for use on fighters. The frigate’s “light” guns had at least twice as much power.

Making it worse was a dual missile launcher mounted on top of the hull. The
Spathion
ships carried at least twenty missiles, sixteen missiles more than the number of defensive missiles
Long Haul
had to intercept them. Granted they were Europan design and had an unacceptably high failure rate, but they were still more than enough to blast him out of the void. Defensive pulse cannons, each as powerful as his main gun, sat on turrets throughout the hull. They were point-defense weapons, so even if he got
Long Haul
close, it would still be pounded mercilessly.

“They’re ahead of us,” Lucius advised. “Moving to intercept. We cannot turn and run.”

“I know,” Rex spoke. Europan warships were built for speed. Unable to stand toe-to-toe with a comparable Terran ship, the Empire had built faster and faster vessels, focusing their doctrine on hit-and-run attacks. If he ran the frigate would pass him, slow, spin, and close to attack.

“Range of the Europan ship?” Rex asked.

“
Two point two million miles, closing at .19C
,” the computer spoke.

“Activate all missiles. Start hitting it with radar,” Rex said.

“They’ll be on us before we can jump,” Lucius said.

“I know,” Rex spoke. “At that speed they should be overtaking us any second now.”

Sure enough the bulk of the Europan ship appeared ahead of him. Rex jammed his foot on the reversing pedal. The engines blasted against the momentum of the ship, cutting the speed down.
Long Haul
groaned as it shed millions of miles per hour.

“You’re slowing? You plan to fight them?” Lucius spoke.

“Got to,” Rex replied. One of the strangest things about combat in space, for newcomers at least, was that you generally fought at speeds far slower than you travelled. Moving tens of millions of miles per hour in a straight line was easy. Trying to maneuver at that speed with an enemy only a few
thousand
miles away proved problematic. The slightest miscalculation could send you crashing into their ship or into a nearby planet. And it went without saying that no ship could survive a collision at one-tenth the speed of light, much less the one-fifth the frigate was traveling.

The Europan ship, predictably, overshot. As it faded from view it began to slow, ready to make a turn and come back. Had Rex run into any old junker, he probably would have accelerated in another direction and tried the old pilot’s favorite of planned-random-directional-shifts. He’d done it before, stopping, changing heading, then speeding up while a faster ship slowed to correct. When you were good at it, you could keep people out of engagement ranges. That wouldn’t work here, not with a ship that could double his speed.

So he waited.

“I’m thinking your friend on Helvetia must have sent out a jump drone before he barged his ass onto my ship,” Rex wondered.

“Most likely. Is there some strategy to sitting here and waiting that I should be aware of?”

“Possibly. Are your countrymen as long-winded and arrogant as everybody thinks they are?” Rex asked.

“
Former
countrymen and yes. By their standards I am concise,” Lucius spoke.

“Got a plan,” Rex said, a half-smile crossing his face. “Slight chance it’ll work too.”

Lucius rolled his eyes.

The Europan ship was nearing the ten thousand mile range, the maximum range of the Rake missiles on his ship. He had four. If he launched them now and all of them got through, the frigate might not be destroyed, but it would definitely be hurting, possibly crippled. By the standards of modern warfare, the sixty centimeters of steel armor coating the frigate wasn’t much. Even the light Rake anti-ship missiles, normally used on small fighters, could punch through that. They wouldn’t have much punch left
afterward
, but they could do it. But there was no way all four would get through those defenses. One probably would, maybe two. That would be a black eye, not a broken back.

A missile streaked toward them.
Long Haul’
s dorsal turret tracked it, ready to release a spew of thirty millimeter shells.

“
The
incoming missile does not appear to be locked onto us
,” the computer announced.

“Cannot even master missile guidance, right?” Lucius spoke.

“I don’t think that’s it—”

“
The missile has exploded one hundred miles behind our current position
,” the computer spoke.

Rex’s half-smile grew to a whole one.

“Somebody wants to negotiate,” Rex said.

“They want me,” Lucius figured.

“They do,” Rex spoke. “I need you to pretend you’re the captain. Keep whatever noble jerk-off is in charge on that boat talking.”

“Long enough for the jump drive to finish recharging,” Lucius concluded.

“Exactly.”

“They’ll be able to track us, jump in a few hours, and run us down,” Lucius pointed out.

“We’ll take care of that, don’t you worry. I’ve tangled with your—with
Europan
frigates before,” Rex spoke.

The Frigate dominated their viewscreen. The semi-circle cut that denoted its bow faced them, its big guns pointed right at
Long Haul
.

“
We are being hailed
,” the computer spoke.

“Ignore it,” Rex said. “Inform me via my console screen every minute until we are ready to jump.”

Rex moved to the pilot’s station and sat down. Lucius remained in his position, his icy calm as present as ever.

“You should trade me for safe passage. Take Quintus and Chakrika and get out of here,” Lucius spoke.

“Will you stop being so damn selfless. Things aren’t that bad yet,” Rex replied.

“
That hail has been repeated. They are threatening the use of force
,” the computer announced.