The Mandate of Heaven (39 page)

“Templeton, Baracoa, hit the lights,” Alex called out.

Immediately a hail of gunfire erupted from the floor, but this time targeting the massive chandelier hanging from the ceiling, far above them.  With a massive
boom
it came crashing to the ground, exploding into a million pieces and instantly the large auditorium descended into utter darkness.

“Great!” Jessica swore.  “Now we can’t see a thing, but they certainly can.  They’ve all got light amplification goggles, you idiot.”

“Not for long,” Alex muttered darkly.  “Close your eyes.”

“What?”

Knowing that she couldn’t see him, Alex still rolled his eyes.  For a minute he was tempted to hand her over to Stanton.  As she would simply argue him to death.  But instead he drew her closer, shielding her eyes with his cloak, before raising his fusion pistol high above him and taking aim.

The total darkness was no impediment to him, and the intense, focused blast, from his fusion pistol hit its intended target dead centre—the bag of pearls.  The concentrated energy blast instantaneously disintegrated the surrounding canvas bag, before colliding with hundreds of pearls.  The most perfect energy converters in the galaxy.  They in turn absorbed the energy, soaking it up like a sponge, before re-emitting it as light.

It was like a supernova in the enclosed space and even with eyes closed, the light was blinding.  Worse still it didn’t immediately diminish, but individual pearls continued to emit the blinding light.  No longer confined by the bag, they started to drift apart by the process of diffusion.  For the troops who had switched back to their light amplification goggles, the light was blinding—permanently so.  Their goggles were able to handle one or two intense light sources, but couldn’t handle the hundreds of individual ones.

Their screams of pain reverberated around the auditorium for a very long time to come.

*****

“He called me a coward, to my face, did you know that?”

“Uh, no my Lord.  I didn’t,” the Captain replied with a startled expression.

“Two minutes until the assault shuttles arrive.  Fighters in close escort formation,” the Tactical Officer called out faintly.  He was even further along the bridge than the Communications Officer.

“Last person to even question my honour, I had him nailed to a bulkhead—by his tongue,” Granville said in shocked disbelief.

“I’m sure nobody has repeated it since, my Lord,” the Captain said diplomatically.

“Asked me what sort of role model I wanted to be for my grandson.  What sort of question is that? He’s a Lord, by the way.  Did you know that?”

“I did, my Lord.”

“I can sincerely relate to Stanton.  He might be an evil, nasty, lying, two-faced son-of-a-High-Lord, but at least the man has good instincts.”

“My Lord?”

“Regarding Alex, that is,” Granville clarified.  “And his intense desire to shoot him.  A desire I hasten to add, that I share, as I’ve often wished I’d done the same, when I had the opportunity.”

“I see,” the Captain murmured.

“No, you don’t,” Granville corrected him.  “But I’ve often thought them two sides of the same coin.  One light, the other dark.  Seems ironic doesn’t it that Alex Grey, whose men would blindly follow him into Hell, has lost everything.  While Stanton, whose closest friend would gladly stab him in the back, just to be rid of him, is High-Lord over several star-systems.”

“One minute remaining, my Lord,” the Tactical Officer cried out.

“Alex tried to explain it to me once,” Granville carried on, unperturbed.  “The Mandate of Heaven he called it.  The divine right, granted by the Gods, for one man to rule over all others, based on their ability to govern, fairly and well.”

“Seems like the Gods picked the wrong man, this time around,” the Captain replied.  Who considered that any man who told Granville, to his face, that he was a coward, had a lot to recommend about him.  The fact the man was still alive, obviously also indicated that the Gods looked, more than a little favourably, on him.

“Indeed.  How many of our Close-In Weapons Systems have been restored to operational capability?”

“Less than ten percent, my Lord,” the Captain replied apologetically.  “If you recall I did bring it up during our last staff meeting, but you replied that it was a waste of your—”

“Yes, yes, I do recall,” Granville replied testily.  “Then retract the docking bay and lower all blast shields.  Bring on-line the guns and target the assault shuttles.  When they’re in range, open fire.  Ignore the fighters.  They pose no risk to us, they don’t even have anything that could scratch us.”

“Understood.  My Lord, should we broadcast an advance warning?”

Granville sat unmoving, staring sightlessly ahead, picturing in his mind’s eye the High-Lords laughing while they sat at his table, eating his food and toasting each other with his wine to their good fortune.

“No.  I think not.”

*****

When commissioned in the early twenty-fourth century,
Elysium Fields
had approaching fifteen thousand Close-In Weapon Systems.  These short range, point-defence weapon systems, were designed for targeting and destroying incoming missiles and enemy fighters which had penetrated the ship’s outer defences.  Considering its main armaments, such an event was considered highly unlikely, however, for the first of the Nova-Class Dreadnaughts to be built, the original designers took no chances.  Therefore, each CIWS was armed with a one hundred and fifty millimetre cannon, capable of firing twenty-five hundred rounds per minute.  Each iridium tipped, armour-piercing round, was capable of penetrating armour up to twenty millimetres thick, at a distance of over twenty kilometres.

If a hostile target did ever breach the outer defences, there was no chance of it making it past the ship’s inner defences.

With only ten percent of these weapons operational, and an even smaller percentage actually facing the approaching ships, they locked on to them with a multi-millimetre radar, which was at least two centuries out of date.  The electronic warfare systems on the approaching ships remained silent, no longer checking a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that had long since become redundant and now was replaced by quantum entanglement scanners.  However, the ancient radar was still more than up to the task of calculating range, distance and bearing and passed this data onto a fire control computer which by modern standards was an antique.  Yet, it was still with lethal accuracy that one-by-one gun barrels that hadn’t moved for more than a century came to life, pivoting around on their mountings, to point in the direction of the on-coming shuttles, now on final approach, ten kilometres distant from the Dreadnought.

With no advance notice of the impending threat, and overly confident in their own numbers, superior technology and firepower, the transports didn’t stand a chance.

The first few hundred rounds went aft of the shuttles, but the computer almost instantly adjusted aim, punching holes, six inches in diameter, clear through the first one.  It disintegrated into a ball of molten fire and metal.  With the mechanical killing efficiency of a machine, the fire-control computer switched targets, moving on to the next closest shuttle.

Now alerted to the threat by the destruction, moments before, of the first shuttle, the pilot of the second immediately tried evasive manoeuvres, applying full thrust to the engines, banking hard away from the massive warship.  This brought them a momentarily reprieve, of at least a few seconds, before it too was torn to shreds, just like the first.

The fighters, which up until this time had remained in close escort formation around the shuttles, immediately scattered to avoid the incoming fire.  Swooping and diving in all directions they helplessly tried to divert the incoming fire away from the less manoeuvrable and far more vulnerable shuttles, all in vain.  The timeworn dreadnaught steadfastly continued to ignore them, instead focusing all its fire on the approaching shuttles.

In less than thirty seconds the squadron of assault shuttles had been reduced to nothing but torn and jagged fragments of metal, floating aimlessly in space.  Cold, dark and very much alone.  One-by-one the guns on the
Elysium Fields
fell silent again, as if in respect for the massive loss of life that they had just inflicted, with their merciless actions.  The ancient warship meanwhile continued to float on, serenely, in space.  A forbidding, apparently long abandoned, space-fortress, it seemed impossible to think that only moments before it had casually obliterated the approaching transports.  The only sign now of its prior actions, were the dozens of fighters, angrily buzzing around it like a swarm of wasps, until even these were eventually recalled, having failed at their task to escort the shuttles to the dreadnought, safely.

While in the depths of space, everything seemed calm and serene, quite the opposite was currently taking place on the bridge of the Battlecruiser
Valkyrie
, where confusion and panic reigned.

*****

“Report!” Admiral Sloane bellowed to be overheard across the shouts and cries echoing across the bridge.  Everything had been running on schedule, like clockwork, just the way that he liked it, when suddenly everything started to fall apart, literally.

“We’ve lost the entire assault team,” his Flight-Operations Officer reported, grim faced.  “According to the Commander, Air Group, they’re all gone.  He’s just issued a recall notice to the remaining fighters, as they don’t have any armaments to assault the enemy capital-ship.”

“Enemy capital-ship?  What are you talking about?  It’s a floating hulk in space and was decommissioned over two centuries ago.”

“It appears not Admiral, as the CAG is reporting that enemy fire emanated from that floating hulk in space, as you call it.”

“Very well then, we’ll have to do this the old fashioned way.  Distance to target?”

“One hundred and fifty kilometres, Admiral.”

“Tactical?”

“Outside effective range of our main guns Admiral, we could use the torpedoes, but—”

“But what?”

“We don’t have a clear firing solution, Admiral.  I’ve checked.  It’s absolute chaos out there.  We’re currently tracking over two hundred unique contacts, ranging from small runabouts, all the way up to massive, interstellar, freighters.  I’ve never seen so many ships in once place, outside of the Lagrange point on Capella.  Business must be absolutely booming here.”

“By the High-Lords, we’ve got a shooting match going on out there, don’t they care?”

“Seems not, Admiral,” the Tactical Officer shook his head in disbelief.  “I guess that the lure of profit outweighs the risk.”

“We’ll see about that,” Sloane muttered.  “Once I’ve finished with this station, they’ll have to use a quantum entanglement scanner just to look for the remnants of what’s left of it.  Communications,” he called out.  “Broadcast the following to all ships in the system on the emergency guard frequency—to all ships in the vicinity of
Elysium Fields
, by order of High-Lord Stanton you are to immediately vacate this space.  Extended combat operations are about to commence, any ships in the area will be flagged as hostile, targeted and destroyed.  Leave.  Now.”

“Civilian ships are vacating the area, Admiral.  We now have a clear firing solution for the anti-capital ship torpedoes.”

“That’s all it takes to deal with these privateering scum, a show of force.  Target the enemy ship, arm torpedoes and open all outer launch tubes.”

“All of them Admiral?  Each warhead is armed with a fifty kiloton warhead.  I thought you wanted to disable the enemy ship, not annihilate it?”

“I’m constantly reminded by all of the formidable armour of the Nova-Class Dreadnought, let me demonstrate to you all its ineffectiveness, in the face of such overwhelming firepower.”

“What of the High-Lord, Admiral?  The last message that we received indicated that he was still on board?”

“He’s meant to be a God, isn’t he?” Sloane shrugged.  “I’m sure that he will survive.”  The thought of eliminating this bothersome ship and his loathsome superior, in a single volley, cheered him immensely.  While the day had started off miserably, it had the sudden prospect of ending extremely well.

“Match bearings and shoot!” he roared.

*****

Jessica opened her eyes, staring upwards, into the long arm of a spiral galaxy.

Or at least that was how it first appeared, a hundred different stars moving in tandem, in a circular motion.  It was only as her eyes slowly adjusted, having been momentarily blinded by the earlier flare of light, that she could pick out individual ‘stars’, but they were nothing of the sort.

“The pearls,” she breathed in sudden understanding, as they continued to re-emit the light from Alex’s fusion pistol.  “So that’s why you insisted on being paid in Al-Keishi pearls.”

“I told you they were the best natural energy converts in the galaxy,” Alex reminded her from somewhere above.

“But how?” she shook her head in confusion.  “How can they just be floating up there?”

“For the same reason that it feels like you’ve just lost several pounds, we’ve been slowly reducing the artificial gravity in this section, ever since you first arrived.  It’s just been so gradual that you haven’t noticed.  The effect on the pearls is simply more pronounced, as they possess less mass than you or I.”