Empire Ebook Full (21 page)

“I’ve already given you my advice.”

“Blast them? Without further warning? Just put on a big smile and start the civil
war I’ve been dreading and dodging for years?”

Sandra nodded. “Look at it this way, it’s inevitable. If it must happen, you might
as well strike first. If you let Crow destroy that support fleet, he will have struck
the first blow and crippled us.”

I thought about it, my mind swirling. It was too much for my brain right now, and
I realized she was a few jumps ahead of me. Here I was, about to lead a rebel force,
an independent force declaring itself free of Earth’s rule. I wondered if all colonist
rebels in history had felt as conflicted as I did now. I was still an Earthman, still
loyal to my world and my species. But I couldn’t stand by and watch them abuse my
fellow marines. I felt torn by a dozen loyalties in a dozen directions.

“Why can’t we all just stand together and fight the damned machines?” I asked aloud.

“If we did that, we wouldn’t be human,” she said.

I wondered if she was right.

-17-

I ordered the entire fleet to accelerate to flank speed. This caused an immediate
problem as my single cruiser was faster than any of my stubby little gunships. We
were soon outrunning them. I figured I would solve that problem later. I wanted to
get in this game. If the other fleets all met up and fought a battle six hours before
I could get there, then all my soul-searching and heartfelt transmissions were meaningless.
I had to have assets on the table to be a player.

Shortly after I ordered my ships to accelerate, I composed a warning for the Commodore
Decker and his Imperial cruisers.

“Decker, this is Kyle Riggs,” I said, dropping formal titles. If he didn’t respect
my rank, then I wasn’t about to give him credit for his, either. “I’ve decided to
maintain the peace in this system. As far as I can tell, yours is the only force that’s
stirring things up. I see a peaceful civilian fleet traveling in an open system, while
your ships have fired upon both my ships and those of our allies, the Worms. Now,
you’re threatening unarmed refugee ships.

“As the highest ranking official of Star Force in this region, I’m ordering you to
stand down. Prepare to be boarded and inspected. Arrests may occur, as per Star Force
protocol. I assure you, you and your crews will be provided due process, despite your
inexplicably hostile acts. Possibly, this is all some grand misunderstanding. The
facts will emerge at your trial. Riggs out.”

The rest of the crew stared at me as I made this speech. Some grinned hugely, while
others gaped by the end. Only Marvin seemed unperturbed. “Message transmitted, channel
closed,” he said.

I leaned back in my chair and allowed myself a slight smile of amusement. At the very
least, my message would cause Decker to stand up out of his command chair and rage
at me. I wished I had a live vid feed to witness his reaction. Just thinking about
it warmed my heart.

The message flew out into nothingness. The reply took less than twenty minutes to
come back, as all the ships in the system were getting closer together every hour.

“Colonel Riggs,” Decker said. “I’m afraid you do not comprehend the situation. But
that is immaterial. What matters are the details of your threats and accusations.
You’ve admitted to being in league with the Worms, who have attacked and destroyed
Imperial ships without cause. Further, you have threatened to arrest an Imperial officer
in the process of executing legitimate orders. I have specific orders regarding you
directly from the desk of our magnificent leader, Riggs. According to the Emperor,
I’m to avoid engaging you if at all possible. But you’re making that difficult.”

Decker paused for a moment, and I thought he was done. “Marvin,” I asked, “is that
the end of the—?”

“You’ve brought me to a decision point, Kyle,” Decker continued suddenly. “I have
no choice. The Imperial Navy is going into action, and whatever happens, I want you
to know that it was you who caused it all. Let the deaths of these rebels be on your
head.”

I was furious when I heard this. In the end it was
I
who stood up and paced, leaving my command chair behind. I asked my crew to get the
channel open again, but Decker would not answer.

“What do you think he intends to do?” Miklos asked.

“Isn’t it obvious? He’s going to destroy Sarin and her refugees. He’s taking this
opening to do what Crow really wants, to exterminate anyone loyal to me that he can.”

“Do you really think he’d do that?” Sandra asked. Her eyes were big and dark. “I know
Crow is a power-hungry bastard, but—”

“It’s not just Crow we’re talking about, its Decker. He has ideas of his own, he always
did. Crow has always been a schemer, but he’s got some sense of honor. I don’t know
Decker that well, but what I do know doesn’t make me want to trust him.”

“What’re we going to do?” she asked. “We can’t let them destroy unarmed Star Force
ships!”

“She’s right, sir,” Miklos said with maddening calm. “If we are beginning a new conflict,
we need every supporter we can get.”

I bared my teeth in frustration. Things were moving out of my control. I looked at
the big holotank, hoping for answers. After a few minutes spent gauging distances,
I figured I might just have a trick left in my empty sleeve.

“Marvin,” I shouted, “get me into contact with the Worms. Tell them to attack the
Earth cruisers. We can’t catch the cruisers in time, but they can.”

“There will be a lot of lives lost, sir,” Miklos said, “on both sides.”

“I know. But that’s going to happen no matter what we do now. And it’s just the beginning.”

I talked to the Worms, and although they weren’t too excited about getting involved,
they finally decided to honor their pledge toward me for mutual defense. I felt a
bit sick as I arranged the turning of biotic against biotic, but I felt I had no choice.
It was disheartening.

Within half an hour, the shooting started. The cruisers got the first shots off, as
they had the longest-ranged weapons. Their heavy beam emplacements stabbed out into
the infinite night we know as space. They didn’t fire on the Worms, however. Instead,
they began burning the tin cans my supporters were flying in. There were about three
hundred transports out there. They were big, slow-moving targets. The cylindrical
craft tried to evade the incoming fire with poor results. They applied their braking
jets in a panic, and pumped out some defensive chaff and gels.

But every second, the two groups came closer. The transports were bulky and either
unarmed, or armed with weapons of insufficient range to strike back. Over the next
hour or so, before anyone else could do anything, the cruisers took potshots at them,
and they became increasingly accurate and harder-hitting as the range closed from
extreme to long.

“The first hit. One transport just blew up, sir,” Miklos said quietly.

I gnashed my teeth. I wondered immediately if it had been Sarin’s ship. It was unlikely,
of course, but it had to be somebody out there who’d just died in a flare of white,
burning gases.

“How far out are the Worms now?” I asked.

“They’re overtaking the cruisers rapidly. About thirty minutes from now, by our estimates,
they’ll be in range to do some damage. We’ll be joining the battle sometime after
that, depending on the speed and course of the Earth fleet.”

I nodded unhappily and went back to watching the Imperial ships fire on our helpless
transports.

“Why didn’t Jasmine bring armed escorts?” Sandra asked.

I shrugged. “If I had to guess, I’d say that Crow made this a condition of their leaving
Earth. They could go if they wanted, but they couldn’t take any warships. Of course,
he sent Decker and his thugs after them. Once they left the Sol system and entered
Alpha Centauri space they could be easily dealt with out of sight.”

Six more ships blew up.

“You have to do something, Kyle,” Sandra said. “Threaten them with annihilation.”

I was both surprised and pleased by her reaction. She’d been insanely jealous of Jasmine
in the past—due to lapses in judgment on my part—and it was good to see her so worried
for the other woman’s safety. Of course, it wasn’t just Jasmine she was worried about.
There were a lot of people dying out there.

There wasn’t anything I could do. I could fire a barrage of missiles, but they wouldn’t
reach before my beams, as we were accelerating. No, the missiles were best left until
we were in closer range, or to chase down a limping, retreating foe.

So I watched, and I winced with the rest of them when ships flashed white. Such magnificent
explosions... The transports had to be fully pressurized to create such an expanding
cloud of burning plasma, like bright, tiny nebulas in space.

After the forty ninth transport popped, the Worms reached effective range. Whatever
anyone had ever said about the Worms, I could respect their eagerness for a fight.
They laid into the rearmost cruiser with every blaze of particles they could produce.
I watched as the beams criss-crossed a region of space seemingly at random. In fact,
the pattern of beams was unfocussed due to the distance, and there were gaps where
the cruisers could dodge and attempt to escape.

All the beams came together, bracketing the wounded cruiser, which had fallen behind
the rest. The cruiser captain detected the incoming flares of radiation and slid to
downward, from the point of view of the local Alpha Centauri’s plane of the ecliptic.
We all watched, wondering if the Imperials would escape their fate. The Worms simply
didn’t have enough range.

But then, the guile of the Worm commander became evident. The pattern with the obvious
gap had been a trap. A new surge of beams, held in reserve until this moment, fired
in unison after the evading ship. They took the radiation directly in the aft section.
There was a flash of heat, then a ripple of explosions as internal systems were burned.
After a few long seconds, the cruiser broke apart.

No one on my bridge was cheering. We watched grim-faced as the Worms destroyed what
had once been a Star Force ship.

“If only the Macros could see us now, squabbling and killing one another over who
will be leader of the pack,” I said bitterly. “They would laugh, if they possessed
a sense of humor.”

“The cruisers are slowing and coming about, sir. They’re firing at the Worms this
time.”

I winced again. The Worms had managed to take out one of the cruisers, but there were
five left. The bad part was the Worms weren’t quite in effective range yet. Their
particle beam weapons were fantastically powerful, but short-ranged. The two fleets
were still pretty far apart, at a distance that was optimal for lasers, but not for
radiation weapons.

“Decker is turning on the Worms now,” Sandra said. “He’s really working them over.”

I saw explosions amongst the small Worm ships. The pilots worked their heavy fighters
with consummate skill. I was impressed as they slewed and spun. Still, each of the
Imperial cruisers had six heavy guns, making a total of thirty long-range weapons
firing in coordination. I cringed at every flaring hit.

“Put up a count,” I ordered.

The number went up in green, right below the blue number representing the number of
our own ships. As I watched, the number of Worm ships diminished at a steady rate.
Each salvo from the cruisers took out at least one of them, sometimes two or three.
Spaced about ten seconds apart, the barrages of laser fire were devastating at this
range.

“Incoming message from Decker,” Marvin said.

I blinked and gritted my teeth. “Put him through.”

Honestly, I expected Decker to bargain. I expected him to tell me to stop this devastating
waste, allowing him to slip away toward Earth while everyone stopped shooting at each
other. I was willing to let him do it, too. I was willing to let him evade justice,
and get away with the numerous murders he’d committed—just to end this slaughter.
Unfortunately, Decker’s message was quite different.

“Ha!” His shout rang from the walls of my ship. “Your alien dogs got one good ship,
but that won’t happen again. They’re too busy dying now. I gave you your chance, Riggs.
I shouldn’t have, but I thought you might listen to reason. You’ve started a war,
but I plan to finish it, rebel.”

The message ended. I looked at Marvin in surprise.

“That’s all he said?” I asked.

“The channel has been closed, and refuses to be reopened.”

I shook my head. Decker was mad. “Tell the Worms to disable Decker’s engines, if they
can be that precise. Tell them if they do that much, they can break off and they’ve
satisfied honor. Call them Worm-brothers, or whatever makes them happy.”

“Message sent.”

The Worms did as I asked. They were closer now, and they could hit with more accuracy.
They fired at the exhaust ports of the enemy ships, which made easy targets as they
were trying to escape. Then the Worms broke off, spreading out in every direction.
The Worm fighters stopped firing and spread into a flying streams that reminded me
of a disturbed flock of bats flooding out of a cave at night.