Rise of Shadows (6 page)

“That’s not good. The last time Shadow took this route we nearly lost him,” said Thazure.

“The lack of traffic along their route has reduced the mundane presence considerably since his last adventure. They should not meet any real force until they have made some noise,” said the red-hooded magus.

“True, and I suspect they will make a lot of that,” said Thazure. “I was able to discern that they are calling this Operation Show of Force.”

“That is not good,” said the red-hooded magus. “That is sure to bring out the others.”

“Yes,” said Thazure.

“That is most unfortunate,” said the red-hooded magus.

“It would certainly delay our plans,” said Thazure.

“Yes, very much so,” said the red-hooded magus. “Where are they now?”

“Our last report is that they are hiding in Korshalemia someplace waiting, just as we are,” said Thazure.

“Or rather just as we were,” said the red-hooded magus.

“Yes, as we were,” said Thazure.

“Then let’s head to the pool and see if we can see them planning their response,” said the red-hooded magus. “We may have to deal with them first.”

“Certainly,” said Thazure.

As they walked through corridors of stone that looked natural instead of hewn from the rock the red-hooded magus said, “Regardless of their plans, we need to keep moving forward with ours. They are growing too powerful, and if we wait much longer it might be too late for our plan to succeed.”

“Shadow, we are at the jump point,” said Flame.

“Thank you, Flame. This is it, crew. When we clear the jump, rig us for low power mode. Flame, get us in the sensor shadow of that star as quickly as you can without giving us away. I want to make sure we have the option to fight or run, depending on what we find. Any questions?” I paused to give them a chance to speak, but a nervous silence filled the bridge. “Flame, jump.”

As we entered jump space, I felt something shift. I could not place what, or how, but something was different when we came out. I could not ponder long on that because, as we exited, the ship’s tactical alarms were going off and four light cruisers were moving fast towards the jump exit point.

“Looks like they saw us coming, but they are heading to the normal exit, not to us. Flame, bring us around; I want to come up behind them.” They made a tactical error guessing our route. By staying in low power mode and banking around the star we should be completely invisible to them.

“Yes, Shadow,” she said as I felt the ship go into a gentle bank.

“These four should be easy for us, if we are careful. Phoenix, when I give the order to engage, the first thing I need you to do is get our shields up. Spectra, I want you to shut down their communications. We do not want them getting any help.” I paused here and analyzed the tactical map a bit. It looked like one ship was clearly the leader so I marked it alpha target, then said, “Flame, it is time to engage. Bring the engines up to 30% power and come in on alpha target at 250 mark -27 degrees. Dusty, fire the staves as soon as we are in range.”

As the Dust Dragon leapt out of the shadows, I sensed our shields go up and watched as Spectra efficiently jammed not only their communications but also all of their sensors.

“Dusty, thirteen seconds till range on alpha,” called out Flame.

“Roger, Flame. Positive lock on alpha, beta, and gamma targets,” he replied.

As we reached firing range, I felt the massive staves build up in power, and then as one they released the pent-up energy, which streaked through space in front of us like a massive purple river forced through a small hose. “Flame, come about on to beta, approach at 180 mark 15 degrees. Dusty, take it out at the first opportunity,” I said as alpha target was hit by the blast. Two staves would have been overkill on such a small ship, and Dusty had fired all six. The light cruiser was completely consumed by the blast, not even leaving a debris field. “This time limit it to two staves per target,” I said. That would allow us a faster rate of fire.

“Positive lock on delta target. If Flame adjusts our course by 20 mark 0 degrees I can hit both beta and delta in one pass,” stated Dusty.

“Well spotted, Dusty. Flame, adjust your course,” I said, and soon both delta and beta were eliminated.

“Spectra, stop your jamming. I want them to get a message out. Flame, come about on gamma, 0 mark 0 degrees,” I said. That would bring us head-on with them. “Spectra, please open a channel. Broadcast on all frequencies the following message, ‘This is Shadow of Alpha Academy. Your days of terrorizing this sector are over. You will not survive this fight.’ End transmission. Dusty, hold your fire a bit. I want them to get a message back home about us. Flame, orbit them at 15 kilometers.”

“Shadow, they are transmitting now,” said Spectra.

“Good. Dusty, open fire,” I said. Then, in an instant, the fight was over. They never even got a shot off. “Spectra, can you tell what the transmission said?”

“Shadow, I’m not sure, but your message was repeated in it. The rest is encrypted,” she said.

“Excellent. Flame, best speed to our next jump point,” I said. We had a good six hours until we were sufficiently clear of the dwarf star to jump. “Ok, that was very well done, everyone. I am proud of you!”

There was an almost somber aspect to their joy as they started to come to grips with what we had just done.

“We achieved our objective, but in a way I feel bad because we had to kill them,” said Flame.

“Yeah, me too, but we should be celebrating,” said Dusty.

They all seemed to look to me as if expecting some great revelation. “Everyone, do not be surprised that you find no joy in this. We just killed, in all likelihood, twenty to thirty mundanes who stood no chance against us. The day you can take such actions lightly would be a dark day indeed. We go to war because we have to, never because we want to. We are not yet out of danger; the route we are on was reported as having pirate activity all along it, so we need to keep an eye out still. Now, everyone is to rotate through taking a break, but not more than one of us at a time. This is a very dangerous section of space, and I will need everyone on top of their game as we come out of the next jump.”

The next six hours passed uneventfully, as I expected. If the pirates were planning to retaliate, their best placement would be at the exit point of the next jump, and not on this side of the jump where we had plenty of escape paths.

“Flame, I want you to plot the exit to this jump early also. If they are waiting for us, they will be planning to catch us at the exit. This time they could have a better idea of what we are flying, and may be better prepared,” I said.

After watching the Dust Dragon launch, the old man returned to his office. This was a very modern affair, complete with artificial lights and a view port looking over a grassy meadow. He sighed as he sat at his desk and started reviewing some information on his terminal. Then, seemingly without warning, he waved his hand, which opened the door and let in a rather plain-looking human.

The human was distinctly average in all ways, except his steel-grey eyes. There was something about those eyes: it was as if they could see right through you, down into your very soul. They spoke of power and malice; they gave him the look of an arch villain from your worst nightmare. The human bowed before the old man and waited to be acknowledged.

“Speak,” said the old man.

“The Dust Dragon has easily defeated the first ambush,” said the steel-eyed human.

“Obviously. They have proven no match for Shadow in the past,” said the old man.

“True, but the pirates are gathering a large force to intercept them, far too large for even Shadow.”

“They are but mundanes. The Dust Dragon will prevail. We have more important issues than this,” said the old man. “Spectra is aboard the Dust Dragon, as hoped. How close are we to reaching her?”

“Very close. She would be ours already if not for Dusty.”

“Dusty?” asked the old man.

“Yes, he seems to be her anchor. It’s a tragedy to see such a dark soul mixed up with them, really,” he said.

“Interesting. Can we reach this Dusty?” asked the old man.

“He is teetering also, not as much as she is, but enough that we might be able to reach him.”

“Excellent, we can play off them as one, then. Assign someone to make sure Dusty is reached also,” said the old man.

“Yes, sir,” said the steel-eyed human.

“What of the others?” asked the old man.

“No way, they are too ingrained now,” he said.

“No, I do not think so. Not yet,” said the old man as he stood and walked to the view port. With a wave of his hand it changed to show a space dock. The space dock was filled with bustling people from many different races. Some were walking briskly, eager with excitement; others were shuffling along, visibly depressed. Standing among them was a small group of people in rather plain uniforms who were carefully watching the other travelers. They would not have been noticeable at all except that the old man seemed to keep the view port centered on them. Occasionally one of them would break off from the group and approach one of the depressed-looking travelers. They would talk briefly, and then simply vanish.

“Looks like another good harvest,” said the old man.

“Yes, your plan is brilliant. Every year we are growing from the gems they reject,” said the steel-eyed human.

There was a long pause and an awkward silence between them, until the old man finally asked, “Is there something else?”

“Yes. The others are also likely to have seen this launch and will no doubt interfere,” said the steel-eyed human.

“I am hoping they will,” said the old man.

“You are?” he asked.

“Yes, they need to be taught a lesson. This is my realm, and they are not welcome,” said the old man.

That brought a smile to the steel-eyed human’s face, and he said, “Then we will have to make sure they get that message loud and clear,” he said.

“Indeed we will,” said the old man.

Flame turned to me and said, “Shadow, we are ready to jump.”

“Excellent. Everyone, be ready. The pirates have had almost six hours to prepare for our arrival, and we might have a much greater fight on our hands when we come out. Dusty, use your powers to hide us when we exit. Once I have an idea of what we are facing, we will decide whether to fight or flee. Until that time, keep us hidden. Everyone ready? Good. Flame, jump,” I said.

Once we had cleared jump space our tactical alarms went off like crazy. There were a dozen light and medium attack cruisers waiting for us. They were spread out fairly far apart, which would mean we could only engage one at a time with our grand stave cannons, but their longer-range weapons would be free to pound us. “It seems they are very ready for us, or at least they think they are. We can take this fight, but we will have to be careful. Dusty, I want you to think groups of three for your targets. That is, we always want to hit one close range with the staves and have missiles on the way to two more that are further away. Flame, I want you to think jack rabbit. We do not want to stay put long enough to get shot at. Phoenix, I want you to think turtle. Get our shields up as soon as we begin our run, and keep on top of them. Spectra, the medium attack cruisers are your primary targets; make sure they cannot get a lock on us, ever. Also make sure that no communications get out. It would not be good at all for them to be able to call for help. Everyone understand?” I asked.

Once everyone had indicated they understood, I had Flame lie in a course that would slowly and quietly set us up for our first run. I knew we did not have a ton of time because they would be expecting us to make a move soon after we disappeared, thanks to Dusty’s cloaking spells. If we took too long they would be likely to suspect a trap and possibly call for back-up.

As we slid through space I could not help but think back to the numerous training missions we ran and how miserably we did at first. In the early practice runs it was not uncommon for Flame to crash into one of the enemy ships, or Spectra to jam us instead of our enemies. Once Dusty miscalculated the missile trajectories and ended up blowing up the space dock we were defending.

Eventually we got the kinks worked out, and we started flowing well as a team. Orders were acted on sometimes before fully given, and everyone knew their part. We began outsmarting all the simulations on a regular basis, and I knew it was time to launch. It would have been better to launch as part of an experienced flight team where my crew could learn under the safety of others’ experience, but we were too far from the Aleeryon Navy’s reach to get help from them, and Alpha Academy had no one else to call on.

“Shadow, we are in position,” Flame said.

“Excellent, let’s do this,” I said.

Suddenly I felt Dusty release our cloaking field and all the weapon systems of the ship powered up to full charge. Phoenix got our shields up almost instantly, and Flame revved up our engines to attack speed. Pulses of power left the ship as Spectra got our electronic countermeasures in full swing. I carefully watched the tactical display to see how the enemy would react, and by their chaotic initial response I was sure we had taken them completely off guard.

“I have positive lock on alpha group,” called out Dusty.

“Open fire,” I responded.

The power building up in the grand staves was almost intoxicating to me as I watched the Dust Dragon’s cannons roar to life, destroying the first target. At the same time, two sets of long-range antimatter torpedoes launched towards two more targets.

“Move on to beta group. Do not wait for the missiles to hit. Time is on their side, not ours,” I said as I sensed a hesitancy in moving to the next group.

“On it,” called out Dusty as his hands flew over the controls. “Beta group locked. Flame, bring us about to the attack vector.”

Soon the Dust Dragon’s grand staves had claimed another ship and two more sets of antimatter torpedoes were on their way to deal death. Spectra continued to fight hard in the electronic warfare sphere of combat and, up to this point in the fight, was able to keep the enemy from getting a lock on us; eventually, however, one got through.