Empire Ebook Full (35 page)

It didn’t really matter which planets they were. They were timeless and remote. Gazing
at them for a few long seconds, I felt a curious level of perspective. We were nothing
compared to those spinning worlds that teemed with life. No matter what we did out
here, bits of dust fighting to the death in the skies, they would go on orbiting their
star serenely.

While I was stargazing, I wondered too about Kerr’s attempt to take out my leadership.
I reminded myself this wasn’t the first attempt, the news reporter with the bomb had
been intent on the same goal. I had to count the missile barrage as the second assassination
attempt of this new conflict. I went further, deciding the tactic was part of Imperial
strategy now—Crow’s strategy. Kerr hadn’t just come up with it on his own, it wasn’t
his style. He’d been ordered to make this move if I resisted. I could hear Crow in
my head with his rough, Aussie accent: “If he fights too hard, kill him.”

Captain Sarin ended my reverie by contacting my helmet with a short range com-link.
We all knew enough not to chatter with powerful signals. Enemy missiles tended to
locate that kind of transmission and home in on it.

“Look up,” she said.

I followed her instructions and saw a fading reddish glow. I knew what it was: one
of the nukes had gone off when I wasn’t looking. The reddish glow was replaced almost
immediately by a flash of brilliance, then several more. In the middle of these incandescent
flares of energy was the spoon-shape of my abandoned cruiser.
Nostradamus
broke apart as I watched.

“Set your shades to full-auto,” I said, just in case someone had screwed up. Even
temporary blindness could be deadly now. “Link arms and look away from the ship. If
they hit her with a heavy fusion bomb, it could reach us even out here.”

My team needed no further urging. I felt arms link up with mine on each side, and
we all turned our heads away from the cascading impacts. I took that moment to marvel
at the firepower Kerr had unleashed in order to kill little old me. He was either
crazy, or fearful. I had to question his judgment. Was my leadership really worth
that much to our side’s chances of victory?

As I pondered the question and more flashes illuminated space behind me, I had another
thought: perhaps I’d been overly egotistic. Perhaps Kerr wanted to wipe out
all
my senior officers, not just me.

That made more sense to me. I considered Miklos, Sarin and many of my other key officers
to be excellent tacticians. They were all veterans of a dozen battles. The Earthers
didn’t have anyone like that on their side, I knew. Maybe that’s why Kerr feared us
enough to make such a concerted effort to wipe us out.

I was pondering this when one of the shockwaves finally touched us. I figured out
afterward that it was probably a missile that hadn’t made it all the way to its target.
Maybe
Nostradamus
had been completely destroyed, and the missile had detected this and decided in its
tiny electric brain to just end it all and detonate. Whatever the case, the explosion
hit us from behind and caused us all to go into a tumbling spin.

I felt like a fly that had just been swatted—hard. I didn’t lose consciousness, but
Jasmine and Miklos did. Sandra took the impact well. She even managed to catch Jasmine
before I could. We’d both been through Marvin’s Microbial baths, and our flesh was
as tough as nails.

There was blood on everyone’s face when I peered into the visors. Jasmine’s visor
was starred, and Miklos’ jaw was hanging at an unnatural angle.

“We need to get them to another ship, Kyle,” Sandra said. “I don’t know what their
condition is. I think Miklos’ suit has lost power.”

I worked to connect an auxiliary cable to his suit, and had Sandra do the same for
Captain Sarin. Together again, we began limping away on two skateboards rather than
four.

We finally dared to call for help when we’d reached a safe distance of about a thousand
miles from
Nostradamus’
wreckage. We were quickly acknowledged and a destroyer moved to pick us up.

The big nanite arm from the destroyer’s hold plucked us from space and reeled us in.
The crew was stunned to have all their highest level commanders drag themselves aboard.
There were only three of them, a junior officer and two non-coms. Their eyes were
wide, dark and grimly determined.

“Are you all right, sir?” the skipper asked, peering into my faceplate.

“Yeah,” I said, “It’s just a bleeder. Not even worth removing my helmet. Let the nanites
take care of it.”

The young skipper nodded uncertainly.

“These two are out,” I said. “Do what you can for them in your medical bay. You do
have a medical bay, don’t you, Lieutenant?”

“Yes sir,” he said, showing me the way.

The destroyer was one of the newer stripped-down models I’d taken with me from Andros
Island long ago. The sick bay was small, with only three tables. I made sure Miklos
and Sarin were stretched out comfortably on two of them, then returned to the bridge.

“It’s time to get back into this battle. What have you got for tactical display?”

The young Lieutenant nodded helpfully to the forward wall, which crawled with bumps
of metal. The nanites were having to work overtime, trying to display every ship in
the vicinity.

“You’re kidding, right? This vessel was never upgraded with a full command console?”

The Lieutenant stammered excuses until I waved for him to shut up.

“All right,” I said, “we’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”

I began quoting a script to the nanites on the surface of the bridge, giving them
detailed instructions on how to display warnings and faster updates. By selecting
more critical elements and updating them faster, while letting less important data
slide by, the primitive system was able to operate more like a tactical ops display.

The display showed that the enemy had pressed through the breach, filing into the
Eden system despite horrible losses. All but seven of the big battleships had been
destroyed. About ten of the smaller, sleeker missile ships still eluded our guns.
What concerned me most was the next wave. This consisted of several hundred one-man
fighters. These ships were fast and maneuverable. In a way, they were a worst case
enemy for our gunships to face. Armed with heavy cannons that had a slow rate of fire,
we couldn’t hope to hit these missile-sized targets as they twirled and dodged into
the system. A cloud of them had broken away from the main formation and were advancing
to attack my main line.

With my cruiser gone, I had only a scattered number of destroyers and frigates with
lasers aboard that could track and take down these fighters. This was a known vulnerability
of my tiny fleet, but I’d compensated when facing the Macros in the past, once by
using the Nano fleet to run interference for us, and another time by building orbital
laser platforms. Neither of these solutions were available to us now.

Once I had the tactical display configured, Sandra established contact with my unit
commanders and we were in business again. Sloan had taken over in my absence.

“Give me the situation as it stands, Sloan,” I ordered.

“Sir, glad to have you back in the game. We’re withdrawing sir, firing as we go. But
we can’t seem to hit those little ships.”

I gritted my teeth. I’d always known Sloan was too cautious to run a full-fledged
space battle. He had a fantastic knack for recognizing a threat, but he too often
dealt with it by withdrawing or repositioning. He wanted every battle to be clean
and textbook. Unfortunately, in my experience that rarely happened out here in this
deadly universe.

“I can see the fighters—they’re gaining on your gunships. What is your plan for dealing
with this problem?”

“The Centaur troops, sir—they’re about to meet the enemy lines now.”

I opened my mouth to shout at him, but then halted. I realized my error immediately.
I’d ordered the ship to display ships up to a given size—but it had interpreted our
space marines as so small it wasn’t displaying them.

“Ship!” I shouted. “Respond!”

“Responding.”

“Display the space-borne infantry.”

“All known self-mobile contacts are being displayed.”

 I marched up to the wall, and peered. It did seem there were colored dots there,
so small they could hardly be seen. “Show large formations of individuals as collective
ovals, please.”

That did the trick. Within a few seconds, I could see about thirty ovals. I suspected
each group represented a company of my troops. They were about to meet up with the
fighters head on.

“They’re going too fast. Sloan, the Centaurs—they’ll fly right past the fighters,
or smash into them. The relative speeds are too high, I’d guess around a thousand
miles an hour or more. No one can land and assault an enemy ship at those speeds!”

“I don’t think that’s their plan, sir,” he said.

I opened my mouth to say more, but suddenly understood what he was getting at. We’d
never had smooth command and control over our Centaur troops. They’d pretty much done
what they’d wanted in every battle, while trying to follow our orders in their own
way.

“What orders did you give them, Sloan?” I asked.

“I told them to destroy the fighters, sir. I don’t think I had any choice. They were
the only asset I had on the field.”

As I watched, the two lines came together. The ovals representing the Centaur companies
spread out at the last minute, covering more area. The fighters were taking them out
with guns, I could tell. The ovals began looking ragged—then the two lines met.

Explosions rippled up and down the line. The fighters melted, as did the Centaur companies.
Thousands of brave troops died in less than a minute.

“Are they blowing themselves up?” Sandra asked me quietly.

I turned around and looked at her, then back to the screen. “They’re following their
orders,” I said. “Sloan?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“That was grim, but well-played. I don’t think I could have come up with a better
solution. Please release more marines from our transports. The enemy will recognize
the threat now. They’ll target the transports, and I don’t want an entire battalion
taken out by one lucky missile. Get them into space.”

“All of them, sir?”

“Hold back a reserve—five thousand troops. Pull them back. Pull everything back, but
push the marines forward.”

He relayed the orders and I stared at the walls and the helmsman’s navigational screen.
There was so much going on out there, and I didn’t have a proper command and control
unit set up. The more I thought about it, the more I figured Kerr’s opening move had
been a good one. He’d almost won right there, by knocking out my command ship. Fortunately,
Sloan had played it pretty well.

Examining what Kerr had managed to wriggle through the ring by this time, I decided
it was indeed time to retreat. He had more battleships now, at least thirty of them.
He was forming up at the ring before pushing forward with his big ships. There were
more of those sleek missile ships too—more than fifty of them. Altogether, his fleet
completely outweighed mine. We’d given them a hard blow, but hadn’t stopped their
advance.

The surviving fighters turned and began retreating to the main fleet. I watched as
a few of my Centaurs ran them down and blew them up.

“Kyle, you have to stop that,” Sandra said, “They’re broken and running. Show mercy.
We might need it later ourselves.”

I nodded. “Right.” I called Sloan and our Centaurs broke off the pursuit. They turned
around and retreated to our own small line of gunships.

There was a lull in the battle, during which Kerr’s fleet kept trickling in through
the ring. How many ships did that bastard have? I realized now that I couldn’t possibly
hold them all back—except for my ace in the hole, my space marines. They were suicidal,
especially the Centaurs. The enemy had prepared carefully, but they hadn’t counted
on twenty thousand crazy mountain goats with nukes on their backs.

“Sir?” Sloan called over the command channel. “I’ve got a channel request from the
enemy fleet. I think Kerr wants to talk.”

I allowed myself a tight smile. “Open the channel and patch it through to my destroyer.
Don’t let him know where it’s going, hide it in the ship-to-ship traffic. Let’s hear
what the good General has to say now.”

 There was a crackling, followed by a loud, unhappy voice. “Riggs? You crazy fuck,
are you still alive?”

“Naturally,” I said, “I didn’t think you cared, General.”

Our two fleets hung in space, at a range of about a hundred thousand miles, eyeing
one another. Like two brawlers that have landed heavy blows on one another and stopped
for a breather, we were both feeling new respect for our opponents.

“Oh, I care, you slippery devil. You’re like a cockroach dipped in axel grease.”

“The feeling is mutual, sir,” I assured him. I keyed off my mike and turned to Sandra:
“Try to figure out which ship he’s on. He has to be in the system now.”

She nodded and went to work on her console.