Ruins of Empire: Blood on the Stars III Read online

  “Recharge primaries,” Barron snapped out, unnecessarily, he knew. His people knew their business, as well as any spacers he had ever seen. They’d been good when he’d taken command of Dauntless, and he hadn’t hesitated to use his family name to secure a few special additions like Atara and Fritzie. But now he truly realized what his people had become. He wondered if they even needed him anymore. They all knew their jobs, and they executed them with almost frightening proficiency.

  “Blue and Scarlet Eagle squadrons have disengaged, sir. They report fuel status critical.”

  “Have them get clear of enemy weapons range and then cut their engines. We’ll pick them up after we take out this battleship.” The idea that Dauntless might fail to destroy its adversary never entered his mind. The Union ship was as good as crippled without thrust capacity. Barron didn’t even have to close to its weapons perimeter…he could pick it apart with his longer-ranged primaries. It almost seemed too easy. Indeed, compared to Dauntless’s other struggles over the past year and a half, it was too easy. His people had been honed in battle with opponents like Katrine Rigellus and her razor-sharp Alliance crew…and behind enemy lines, trapped and outnumbered, running a gauntlet to destroy the Union’s main supply base. A one on one fight with a crippled enemy battleship seemed almost like an exercise.

  Except you still lost people. Less than usual, but men and women who followed you are dead in this fight.

  He felt a wave of guilt at his confidence, and at the relief he felt that casualties were relatively light. No matter how great a victory he won, he’d long ago sworn to himself that he would never forget that the blood of his crew was the currency with which he paid for his triumphs. Even when, very occasionally, one came cheap.

  He knew the Blues and the Scarlet Eagles had suffered more losses in their attack on the Union vessel. Battleships relied on their own interceptors to defend them against fighter attack, but they also mounted dozens of small laser turrets. Any attack, even one against a vessel stripped of its defensive fighter screen, would suffer some degree of losses to this deadly fire. Barron deliberately looked away. He didn’t want to see, not now. There was nothing he could do about it, not one man or woman he could save by focusing on the losses while the battle still went on. There would be time for that later, when he was alone. When he owed nothing to his crew’s morale and he could sit in the solitude of his office or his quarters…and feel pain for those lost. And the guilt for sending them to their deaths.

  “Both Blue and Scarlet Eagle leaders confirm your orders, Captain. They have transmitted their positions and vectors.”

  “Very well, Commander.” He still wasn’t used to the “Scarlet Eagles” designation. Timmons’s unit had been called the “Red Eagles,” but Dauntless already had a Red squadron, and confusion in battle could get men and women killed. Barron didn’t like insisting that Timmons make a change—after all, he knew how superstitious fighter pilots could be about such things—but he did it anyway. In the end, the star pilot hadn’t put up much of a fight, just one perfunctory objection. Barron suspected Timmons considered ‘scarlet’ a synonym for red, and therefore a sop to whatever subconscious concerns he had about tempting the gods of flight by making changes.

  “Primaries charged and ready, Captain.”

  “Batteries are to fire at will until the enemy is destroyed.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Barron leaned back in his chair, some of the exhilaration he’d felt earlier slipping away. He wished he could escape from Dauntless’s bridge, flee to the sanctuary of his office where he could face the conflicting emotions. Part of him, at least, felt less like a soldier, fighting for a cause…and more like an executioner. A murderer.

  He knew that was unfair. He would have accepted the surrender of the Union vessel, and he knew any prisoners he took would be treated humanely in Confederation custody. But Union ships rarely yielded. His mind drifted back to the struggle at Santis, the great battle with Captain Rigellus and Invictus. Alliance ships never surrendered either, though that was about honor and the codes mandated by their culture. Barron hadn’t fully understood the fanaticism of the Alliance spacers when he’d fought that fateful battle out on the Rim, but he’d read all he could since then on the history of the Palatians, and on the militaristic empire they had built in just over half a century.

  The ancestors of the Alliance had been subjugated, their world conquered, their people enslaved. They had endured generations of misery, and when they finally threw off the shackles, they built a culture centered in strength. Never again…those words became their mantra, and the core of their national philosophy. Barron didn’t approve, at least not of the extremes to which their stark society had taken its mandate, but he understood.

  The Union, however, was something utterly alien and contemptuous to him. A self-proclaimed egalitarian republic, in reality it was an oligarchy ruled by a rapacious class of politicians, one in which all but the most highly placed lived grim lives of hard work and deprivation. The prohibition against surrender was enforced in a practical and brutal way, by holding the families of spacers responsible for their actions. Any Union personnel yielding would do so knowing their parents, spouses, children, and siblings would pay for the crime with their lives…and few doubted the rapacious efficiency of the Sector Nine intelligence agency in such matters.

  Barron detested the Union. He considered it a blot on humanity, a threat to every other nation. Yet the men and women his people killed were little more than slaves. They had no choice, unless you could consider watching everyone you cared about murdered for your own failures a choice. Every Union ship his people destroyed was one small step toward winning this war…and losing it was unthinkable. But each victory also meant more unfortunate human beings slaughtered, people who had been consigned to an unending nightmare, simply because of the misfortune of being born on the wrong worlds.

  His eyes never left the main display, even as he wrestled with such thoughts. His people were doing their jobs magnificently, Dauntless’s gunners carving up the Union battleship like some kind of roast on a holiday table. It was clean looking, at least on Barron’s readouts. Words, numbers, diagrams. He knew the reality was quite different, that on the dying Union ship, men and women were suffering unimaginable fear and torment.

  It will be over soon, at least, he thought, listening as Dauntless’s primaries fired yet again. Almost as if in answer, the bridge erupted into cheers as the small ovoid vanished from the tank. The enemy ship’s reactor containment had failed, releasing the equivalent of a miniature sun inside the vessel. The destruction was complete—there was nothing left of Dauntless’s adversary now, save for a cloud of plasma and a blast of hard radiation.

  It was another victory, but the thrill was gone for Barron, even the sense of achievement. No matter how many battles his people fought, how many of their enemy they defeated, each struggle just seemed to lead to the next. It seemed war, once begun, had no end. Only more killing, more death.

  “My congratulations to the gunners, Commander,” he said, trying not to sound as robotic as he felt. “Another outstanding performance.”

  “Yes, sir.” He could hear a hint of something in Travis’s tone. Either his first officer was feeling the same conflicting emotions, or she was picking up on his.

  Or both…

  “Bring us around, Commander. Let’s go fetch the rest of our fighters.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “And send out the recovery shuttles. We’ve got some pilots out there to pick up before they run out of life support.”

  * * *

  “You called for me, Captain?” Atara Travis stood at the open doorway, staring tentatively inside. She wouldn’t come in without an express invitation, Barron knew. Not though he’d called for her, nor even because she was his best, most trusted friend. Dauntless’s first officer tread an odd and highly specific line with him between discipline and friendship. He’d never been able to quite figure it out, wh
y in some situations she could sit back, call him Tyler, and even once in a while, on those rare occasions when either of them drank, tie one on with her old friend with nary a salute in sight, yet in others she displayed a surprising degree of formality. She was always proper with him in front of the crew, of course, but it was her behavior in private that varied so widely.

  “Yes, Atara, come in. Sit down.” He waved toward the small counter separating the tiny kitchen in the captain’s quarters from the main room. “I just had tea sent up. Pour yourself some if you’d like.”

  “Thank you, sir.” She walked across the room, grabbing the small teapot and filling a cup. She turned around, facing Barron again. Then she walked over, sitting in one of the chairs flanking the sofa where Dauntless’s captain, in a surprising display of relaxation, was actually semi-sprawled out. Not lying exactly, but not quite sitting either.

  “It’s just us here, Atara. You can check the ‘captains’ and ‘sirs’ at the door.” He smiled, just in case his tone wasn’t enough to assure her he wasn’t scolding her, just inviting her to relax.

  “Commander Fritz reports that all systems are operational…” Travis paused. “But, she also advises…and this is exactly how she put it…that she’s got everything taped and glued together and about half the equipment on this ship could fail at any time if somebody so much as looks at it the wrong way.” Travis’s tone was lighter than it had been, but Barron could hear the worry there too. Dauntless had come back from the grueling battles behind the Union lines battered and barely patched together, functional only by the grace of God…and the unmatched skill of her engineering team. She’d desperately needed a full repair and refit in spacedock then, but she hadn’t gotten one. Instead, she’d spent an additional six months on the front, there because the Confederation needed enough ships to deter any immediate moves by the Union…and because, for all she’d been through, there had been a backlog of ships even more in need of repairs.

  “Well, it looks like her tape and whatever else she used managed to hold up long enough. I just got the orders by direct comm. We’re coming off the line. We’re to proceed to the fleet base on Dannith immediately for extended repairs…” His smile broadened. “…and shore leave for all personnel.” Barron needed a break, he knew that much. He needed time for his head to clear, and a few months with no life and death decisions was just the prescription. And he was certain Atara and the rest of the crew were just much as in need of a rest.

  “That’s good news, Tyler. The crew will be thrilled. Why don’t you make an announcement?”

  “I will. It will be good to get her back into top shape again, won’t it? We’ve earned our pay, but the last full refit we had was before we went to Archellia. Since then, every break we’ve had has been cut short, the repairs underway slapped together half-finished.”

  “We really need it. If we didn’t have Commander Fritz, I doubt we’d have a functioning system aboard.”

  Barron nodded. No one had to tell him what a precious asset Anya Fritz was to his crew…even if she was a terror who drove her staff almost to the point of insanity. Barron had heard half a dozen of the nicknames the engineering crews had for their commander, and he didn’t presume to think they’d all made their way to the captain’s ears.

  His eyes darted back to Travis. There had been something in her tone. Concern? “What is it, Atara?”

  “Sir?”

  “Something’s bothering you. So, spill it.”

  “It’s nothing, Tyler. Really.” She paused. “I was just wondering…”

  “Wondering what?”

  “Well, why would they send a routine order to report for service and shore leave directly to the captain, rather than to me?” She looked up at him. “Was it on the regular line?”

  Barron hesitated, tension suddenly weighing on him. “No, it was on the Priority One channel.”

  Travis frowned. “Does that seem like a normal use of the Priority One channel, Ty? Maybe I’m worrying about nothing, but it seems an order like that would have come in with the normal housekeeping traffic.”

  Barron stared down at the floor for a few seconds. What she said made sense. He’d written off the Priority One usage to the war, and to Dauntless’s proximity to the front. But now he was thinking of other transmissions, ones far more sensitive than this last one, sent on the normal channels.

  “Don’t mind me,” Atara said contritely. “I think the last year or more has me a little edgy. I’m seeing enemies everywhere I look.”

  A bit of Barron’s smile came back. “Well, it’s not like there haven’t been enemies and dangers everywhere, so I’d say your senses certainly have reason to be heightened.” He paused. “Still, I don’t know what could be waiting for us at Dannith. It’s pretty far back from the lines, and unlike Archellia, it’s not near any other power. There’s nothing across that border but the Badlands. So, unless the old empire is going to rise from the ashes and dust and attack us, I’d say we’ve got a pretty good shot at a crisis-free refit.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Ty.” Atara was trying to mask her concern, and she would have managed it with anyone who knew her less well than Barron. He knew she was still concerned, and more to the point, he realized he was as well now. “I’ll go plot a course for Dannith, if that’s all right with you,” she continued. She got up, but then she hesitated, waiting for permission to leave. Another mix of casual and formal.

  “That’s a good idea. We’re already cleared to go, so we can head out anytime.”

  Travis walked toward the door, pausing just before she got there. “It’s been a tough year and a half, Ty,” she said softly, without turning around. “I think it’s got me a little paranoid.” Then she walked the rest of the way, the door opening as she reached it and closing behind her as she stepped out into the corridor.

  Barron sat unmoving, staring at the hatch for a long time.

  Yes, you’re paranoid, Atara…but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong…

  Chapter Three

  Excerpt from Auguste’s Meditations on the Cataclysm

  We speak of the Cataclysm frequently, in academia as well as routine conversation. We typically refer to it as a single occurrence, some war or disaster dating to a specific point in time. This is not only incorrect, it is antithetical to a true understanding of mankind’s fall, and of the subsequent limited rebirth that has created our Confederation and the reality of today.

  The Cataclysm was not one event, not even a lengthy one, as it might appear from the many references that so characterize it. Rather, it was a lengthy sequence of separate disasters exacerbated by the poor decisions of those in power, ultimately resulting in the downfall of most technologically advanced civilizations, and in the complete and utter destruction of thousands of formerly-inhabited worlds.

  Even the date we assign to this shattering event owes more to the somewhat arbitrary creation of the calendar used in the Confederation than it does to a quantifiable historical happening. In truth, what we call the Cataclysm extended over many centuries, perhaps the greater part of a millennium, as humanity’s civilization began to decline from its peak. The point from which we measure our years is but the final low of that terrible sequence of destruction and decay—the moment Megara lost contact with the remnants of the vast civil polity we know today only ephemerally as the empire.

  The empire was vast, of that much we are certain, though we know few details about its history. For centuries before the receipt of the last message that marks the start of our calendar, contact had been sporadic, and actual governance from the imperial capital but a historical footnote well beyond living memory.

  The empire spanned a region of space many times the size of that we inhabit today. Our worlds, those of the Confederation and the Union, and all the other nations in this area of the galaxy, were once but a fringe sector of the empire, though they fell away from its control centuries before the final crescendo of destruction. It is the very remoteness of our worlds t
hat allowed them to avoid the great depths of the fall that occurred elsewhere.

  Humanity’s ancient empire, incalculably more advanced than our Confederation, died a slow and painful death, splintering and crumbling into warring parts, and eventually descending in a final centuries-long orgy of destruction. On world after world, the last survivors succumbed to radiation poisoning and uncontrolled disease. The few machines that had not been utterly destroyed gradually ceased to function, leaving nothing but silent graveyards where once stood titanic testaments to mankind’s achievements.

  All that remains of this great empire is that region of the galaxy designated Abandoned Space or the Quarantined Zone, and colloquially known as the Badlands. On world after silent world, the technology and knowledge gained during untold millennia of growth were slowly lost to the ages.

  Outside the Badlands, on the frontier, some planets, worlds like those of our own Confederation, retained enough technology to support a relatively rapid return to space travel and the rediscovery of the transwarp links left behind by the empire. The hundreds of planets known to us, both within the Confederation and in the surrounding nations, are only those accessible through the remaining Schwerin transit lines. Where that ancient system of transwarp portals has failed, worlds once part of a vibrant and prosperous empire are lost to us, trapped by enormous gulfs of space. Occasional radio signals confirm that some few of these planets remain inhabited, but they are removed from our conception of reality, almost as though they occupied an alternate universe.

  We of the Confederation take pride in the wealth and science we have developed, yet here, even on advanced worlds like Megara, the technology we control is but a tithe of that our ancestors possessed. We generally view our growth in optimistic terms, as a rebirth, an upward trajectory from mankind’s near doom. We ask ourselves how long it will be before we have returned to the levels of knowledge possessed by our ancestors, before we exceed the heights they had achieved.