Blood on the Stars Collection 1 Page 3

  Commander-Princeps Katrine Rigellus sat quietly and watched the procession go by, rank after rank of stormtroopers clad in their crisp black uniforms, marching perfectly in unison, each step a model of precision.

  Just like they were taught to do. Born to do.

  The troopers were mostly Probs, natives of Palatia and probationary-citizens of the Alliance. The Probationary-Aspirants who served thirty years—and survived—would retire as full Citizens, their children guaranteed enrollment in their old units, perpetuating a system so successful it had allowed a single planet to field an enormous and extremely effective military, one that had known nearly sixty years of uninterrupted victory. One that had subjugated thirty systems and more than fifteen billion people in just over half a century.

  The processions were spectacular, the best ever staged, many were saying, and those in the multitude whispered with joy and pride. The celebration had been going on for hours, since dawn, the parade route lined with cheering Citizens and, behind them, the throngs of Probs, even louder and more excited, making sure to broadcast their enthusiasm and patriotism to any who might sponsor their citizenship one day. The life of a Probationary-Aspirant was an ongoing audition for promotion to the upper ranks of society.

  The masses of Plebs were gathered the farthest back, screaming as loudly and with as much fervor as their betters in the forward positions, though Katrine suspected there was more fear than sincerity in their cheers. The Plebs were the workers, the men and women who toiled in the mines and factories and shipyards. For the most part, they were not native Palatians, but rather populations drawn from the conquered worlds, relocated—often forcibly—to do the work that freed the Probs for service in the army and navy.

  The Plebs weren’t slaves, not quite, but they weren’t free either, and most of them were barred from military service and assigned on the basis of aptitude tests to lives working in one industry or another. An intelligent and capable Pleb might be educated and rise to become an engineer or a computer programmer, positions that would allow a moderately comfortable standard of living…and some hope of moving into the Prob class. Those with less aptitude were relegated to the fields, the mines, and the massive factories that produced an unending flow of munitions. Plebs whose ability or effort were below par tended to find themselves treated as expendable resources, with accordingly short life expectancies.

  A few Plebs had burst out of their lesser stature, gained access to the military and worked their way to positions of power and influence—and even full Citizenship—but not many. Those who achieved success often did so at the sides of notable Patricians and Citizens, enjoying the benefits bestowed by their powerful masters after long periods of faithful service. Most others worked twelve hours a day, and except for those at the very top, lived joyless lives devoted to maintaining the vaunted Alliance military machine and enjoying few of the spoils of victory.

  The system had not always been that way. Building ships and arms had been regarded as a sacred duty in the earliest days of the Alliance, as important even as the service of the soldiers and spacers on the front lines. There were images in the Archives of cheering groups of Prob workers standing outside arms factories or inside the orbital shipyards, watching as the warships they’d built fired up their engines and moved off on maiden voyages. But conquests and access to subject populations had gradually changed that perception, and military service had become virtually the only path to full citizenship for a Prob. A taint of cowardice now clung to any who chose a different route.

  “Long live the Alliance!”

  The shout rose from across the way, no doubt the over-enthusiastic efforts of a particularly ambitious Prob. But it was a challenge to the others standing nearby, and they joined in, repeating the cry, shouting it again and again until thousands were chanting.

  Kat sighed. She hated parades. Indeed, she despised most public spectacles. She acknowledged the utility of such events, and she recognized the current one as the largest and most magnificent she’d ever witnessed, but even as she watched she hardly saw the precision marching or the endlessly rehearsed bands. It was all false, empty symbolism and a pale image of the heroism and effort it purported to represent.

  Instead, faces floated before her, men, women, comrades…friends. The dead of the last campaign, hundreds from her own vessel, spacers who had served her loyally, carrying out her every command with the last of their strength. And thousands more. Indeed, many more than Vindictus’s dead had fallen taking Heliopolis. The crews of the battleships destroyed by the enemy pulsar, the dead on twenty other damaged vessels, the stormtroopers who pacified the surface after a bitter fight. The price of the glory on display here had been paid by thousands of loyal Palatians, men and women who would never see home again. What did a marching band have to do with such devotion, such sacrifice? The dead were feted as heroes, but what did that do for them?

  She was watching from an unfamiliar place, the central grandstand, the province of officers of exalted rank, men and women who commanded armies and fleets, and those who sat on the Council itself. She glanced across the broad avenue, acutely aware of her own discomfort, looking toward the platform holding the other ship commanders and their first officers. Theirs was an honored place as well, if slightly less stratospheric than her present perch. It was also where she belonged, save for one fact. She was one of the heroes of this war—indeed, the hero of the final campaign—and that very morning she had received a decoration from the hand of the Imperatrix herself, with all Palatia watching the transmission.

  Katrine was a celebrity now, a symbol of the might and the warlike ethos of the Alliance, her success in battle being spun into the legends that would encourage the next generation. Even the parade below was working its magic in that regard. The grand procession included rows of trucks, displaying the broken wreckage of enemy ships…vessels the Alliance fleet had destroyed in battle. And next in line, carried with solemn respect, a series of great trailers hauling more debris, twisted metal…much of what remained of Vindictus.

  Her ship had done its duty, given its all in pursuit of victory. She could still remember those deadly moments, her battleship pressing forward despite all the firepower the two massive fortresses poured into her. She hadn’t returned fire, hadn’t so much as targeted either of the great orbital platforms. Vindictus had pressed on toward its primary target. Its only target. The enemy laser cannon.

  Vindictus had somehow made it to point blank range and, even more miraculously, her main guns had still been operational. Kat closed her eyes for a few seconds, remembering the moment she’d given the order to fire, the feeling she’d had as she saw the great pulsar cannon split down the middle, her laser batteries tearing into it. Success. Victory. Though earned at the ultimate cost. Vindictus sat under the guns of the forts after the destruction of the pulsar cannon, its weapons silenced, its engines torn to scrap, and Kat had known her ship was doomed, that her people would all die. Then it happened.

  The ships, the vanguard of the Alliance fleet, the great battleships her impulsive maneuver had saved…they came whipping around the other side of the moon, and as each vessel moved into the clear, it opened fire, targeting the fortresses, blasting them to atoms.

  Kat remembered sitting in her chair, waiting for death. She’d known her position was hopeless, that the cost of saving the fleet had been the loss of her ship and crew. But Vindictus held, somehow it stood firm despite all the enemy forts could throw at it. Her vessel had been blasted almost to bits, its reactors shut down, its weapons gone. But the twisted hull of the great warship still stood, hanging on just long enough, providing emergency life support to the half of her crew who had survived to that point.

  She savored the images…watching the fortresses die. One first, and then, seconds later, the other. They died under the relentless assault of the fleet. They died as the Alliance warriors pressed forward, fighting with all they had, struggling to rescue Vindictus and the great heroes aboard who had sav
ed them all. And Vindictus and those left in her crew had indeed been spared. Kat’s ship had been as good as lost, blasted far beyond repair, but in the end it was saved from final destruction, and half its people survived. Though it would never fight again, Vindictus’s name had entered the Honoreum, the hallowed records of the Alliance military.

  Now she was back on Palatia, paraded around, hailed, shaking hands and being put forth as the ideal Alliance warrior. She detested the addition of role model to the list of her duties, but she knew her place, and her obligation was to serve however she could. Kat questioned things quietly sometimes, but she was a Palatian Patrician, and obedience and devotion were bred into the very cells of her body. It was in her to question herself, but never to rebel against what she was.

  She’d gone through an almost unending series of congratulations and interviews, days of them, and then the excruciating few moments when the Imperatrix placed the gleaming platinum decoration over her head and turned to the crowd calling for acclamation. The shouts had been deafening as she received an honor every young officer in Alliance service craved beyond all others. But Katrine simply endured, as she had been taught to do, though more than anything she wanted to slip away, to escape from the fawning elites and the endless noise and shouts of the crowd.

  That was impossible, of course. It would have been so even if she’d been across the avenue, attending the festivities as an ordinary ship commander, but it was unthinkable for her to leave the exalted company she found around her now, the great and mighty of the Alliance. She had no choice, save to stay and play the role of hero of the state.

  The recent battles had won the Alliance six of the Unaligned Systems, worlds that had now surrendered, taken their place among the other conquered planets that formed the Alliance. They brought their industry with them, and millions of their former citizens, new Plebs to feed the endless war machine. It was the Alliance’s way, to conquer or die. And it was the lot of the subjugated to become part of that apparatus, to spend their lives hard at work in the mines and factories, producing ships and weapons under the watchful eyes of their masters. The Alliance’s flag was emblazoned with its mantra, Vae Victis. Woe to the defeated. And the Patricians and Citizens of the Alliance—and the Probationary-Aspirants who served under them—took it to heart.

  It was a hard way, a life dedicated to duty, to strength…but it had seen the Alliance grow from the seed of a single world, poor and subjugated by offworld conquerors, to a proud interstellar nation of thirty systems in less than sixty years. There were Alliance citizens still alive with living memory of servitude, and as a people they had sworn a collective oath. Never again.

  These are your people, she thought, trying to encourage herself but realizing how uncertain she felt about that realization. She was descended from ancestors who had been heroes of the Rising that had freed Palatia—and of the brutal Cleansing that had followed. Her grandmother had risen from the slavery and servitude of pre-Rising Palatia…and gone on to lead fleets to victory in the early wars of the Alliance’s expansion. Kat was heir to a great tradition, a benefit that had aided her rise…and a burden too, a constant pressure to excel, to achieve ever more and to live up to her family’s reputation.

  A load that became heavier the day my father died…

  “Commander Rigellus, allow me to congratulate you on your victory in the recent campaign. It is officers like you who will lead the Alliance into the future.”

  Katrine turned at the sound of the voice, shaking herself quickly from her thoughts. Her eyes fixed on the speaker, a man, old, his hair completely white. He leaned hard on a cane, and the dress uniform he wore was rumpled and ill-fitting, as if it hadn’t been out of his closet in many years. A flickering of familiarity stirred. He was a fleet commander, retired now of course. It took a few seconds for a name to surface…Commander-Altum Bacchallus. A man who had somehow managed to rise to a position of considerable power and prestige, despite an almost total lack of identifiable accomplishments. He was accompanied by a young woman, quite attractive, and at least forty years his junior.

  A Prob, no doubt—or even a Pleb—seeking a path to citizenship in an old man’s bed…

  Katrine held back a sigh and forced a smile to her face. “Commander-Altum, what a pleasure to see you, sir. Thank you for your kind words. You are most gracious.”

  She nodded slightly, hoping the brief exchange of pleasantries would suffice. But, alas, it was not to be. The aged officer beamed back at her and launched into a retelling of one of his old campaigns, one she was sure was wildly embellished.

  She listened quietly, politely. Her mind, so attuned to tactics, to maneuvers to get herself out of tough spots, failed her utterly. There was nothing to do but listen, and feign interest. She’d dealt with her share of “I remember whens” and “I knew your father back in the days,” but Bacchallus had a reputation for droning on endlessly.

  And Kat knew she was going to get a good idea of how well that reputation was deserved…

  Chapter Four

  CFS Dauntless

  Approaching Archellia, Cassiopolis III

  307 AC

  “Archellia Control, this is the Confederation Fleet Ship Dauntless, requesting permission to approach.” Darrow spoke slowly and clearly into the comm system.

  It took about eight seconds for his signal to reach the planet and the response to arrive. “Acknowledged, Dauntless. Please hold at the outer marker until we have completed our scan.”

  Tyler Barron sat in the command chair of Dauntless’s bridge, listening to the exchange. He wanted to be surprised at the formality of the procedure, but he wasn’t. Archellia was a long way from the disputed border, and such precautions hardly seemed necessary. But war with the Union was imminent, and however far from Archellia the battlelines were likely to be, Confederation forces were on alert everywhere. No officer wanted to end up defending lax security procedures if something went wrong.

  Not even in a backwater like Archellia. Not now.

  The specter of war still hung like a shadow, but Barron’s crew was in good spirits, bound for well-deserved shore leave and a break from the grind of duty. He knew it would be a relatively short break, with danger lurking on the other side, but he’d been in the service long enough to realize just how much spacers lived in the now.

  Tomorrow we may face destiny, we may fight and die and fall to the fires of perdition, but tonight is ours, and we drink and make merry.

  It was an old quote, from pre-Cataclysmic times, but whatever centuries-dead spacer had first spoken it, Barron realized he had known his brethren well. Barron tended to be a bit over-serious himself, the inevitable result of growing up as he had, feeling the crushing expectations from the moment he was old enough to understand. But he knew there was logic in the simple spacer’s view. His crew couldn’t do anything to affect what was coming, and if war indeed erupted, there was little doubt many of them would die in the fighting.

  They might as well savor the time they have…

  He knew he was different from his crew, even from his officers. But he was devoted to them all, and his first thought was always to provide them the best leadership he could manage. He never let himself forget that every command he uttered had consequences, that his mistakes could get his people hurt. Or killed.

  The first few months of his command had been difficult ones, as such things usually were, especially since he’d had to overcome the usual resentments, the impression that the Barron name had more to do with the insignia on his collar than his skills and service. But he and his people had gotten past it all and become a solid team, and Barron would have put Dauntless against any other ship in the fleet, despite the fact that she was neither the newest nor the largest.

  “Dauntless, all scans check out. Please transmit alpha codes for final authorization.”

  Barron leaned forward slightly and flipped open the small panel on the armrest of his chair, revealing the keypad below. His fingers punched out a code,
one only he and his first officer knew. It was another wartime procedure, a failsafe designed to prevent an enemy from using a captured vessel to approach a Confederation world. Its implementation before the outbreak of hostilities, and on a world so far from the prospective battle zone, attested to just how worried the Confederation’s leaders were of an impending attack, and the fifth column tactics the Union would almost certainly employ if hostilities broke out.

  He felt himself snapping back to his rigid posture, staring straight ahead as he waited for the confirmation. No one on the planet had Dauntless’s code—at least, no one living. Only the base’s AI. And security protocols prevented any direct contact between the core data systems and unconfirmed ships, for fear of viruses and cyber attacks. That meant the base crew would have to manually input Dauntless’s code to check its validity.

  “Dauntless, you are cleared to dock at bay three. Welcome to Archellia.” The voice on the speaker was crisp, professional…but there was something else there too, something besides the provincial accent. A touch of excitement perhaps. Archellia was far from the core worlds or the disputed frontier, a quiet frontier capital overseeing a cluster of fringe systems and mining colonies on the far edge of Confederation space. The planet was home to a sizable naval base, but the frontier it guarded was a quiet one, facing mostly independent and militarily weak systems, and its naval complement was one of small patrol vessels and scoutships, designed to counter piracy, not to face invasions. A visit by a frontline warship was quite a rarity.