Warlord's Invasion (Starfight Book 1) (14 page)

El-Sur purred as her eyes darted in amazement at the divine objects, no normal Ka should ever see.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Eleven Days Later…

January 24
th
3987 AD

Rigel Seven (Planet), Rigel (Star)

Alcubierre City, Panasia Continent 348
th
Street…

T
he annual Zex celebrations on Rigel Seven had long ago ceased when the Cats invaded the system. What had once been a busy metropolis was now eerily silent as the citizens hid within their homes, not that any of them was safe if the aliens wanted to destroy them. With only one hundred thousand marines to protect them against a landing force in the tens of millions, the citizens of Rigel Seven knew their independence was doomed.

Dusty Attemborough knew very little about the gigantic multi-mile alien ships up there. He only knew that what was left of the star system’s defenders had either fled or been annihilated in meticulous fashion. Being from a military family, he had some knowledge about the chaos happening in the space above. As he sped his hoverbike through a street a kilometer above the ground, he saw a giant broadcast from one of the major holonetworks playing out in front of a skyscraper.

The aliens were landing, the giant image of the anchorwoman said. Forty-eight multi-kilometer troop transports have deployed in the planet’s exosphere, spread evenly throughout the world. Tens of thousands of smaller transports were now descending across the planet, aiming for the population centers. What was harder to imagine still was that each of these transports carried thousands of armored warriors.

“All citizens, please vacate public areas and return to the safeties of your homes. Remain indoors. Do not attack or threaten the invaders,” the anchorwoman announced.

Dusty took his gaze off the enormous holobroadcast. Feeling the wind press against his face, he continued zooming through the street a kilometer high.

I’m not going to make it.

His apartment was seventy kilometers away, but the aliens were landing...now. Even though the street was depopulated, his bike could only go at one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. He turned his gaze at the night sky and saw the sudden flashes of nuclear detonations, which meant the overmatched ground defenders were still able to put up a fight. But for how long? The aliens were coming. Even the stars were occasionally blotted out by black objects, which could only mean one thing.

He had to go in doors—now. If he stayed in the streets when they arrived, who knew what would happen to him?

Skyscraper after skyscraper zoomed past him on all sides as his hoverbike rushed through the lifeless street. Business offices in every direction, much like his own work place. But they were all closed. Why? Why did he leave his company building in the belief that it was safer at home than in a multi-kilometer skyscraper?

Then, he saw an open establishment located inside a skyscraper that led off the street. Slowing his bike down, he saw the flashing holo emissions above the place.

Nellie’s Red Light Club. All Visitors Welcome. Free Drinks to B-Card Holders...

He parked his bike right near the entrance without even bothering to hook it to the autolock. He climbed off and ran through the neoplastic doors into the roomy establishment. The first thing that greeted him was the scent.

He felt suddenly happy, almost giddy, and everything looked so clear and illuminating. He saw the naked holographic belly dancers in the distance, their long bodies wavering back and forth, alluring him. Aroused, he saw the robot receptionist scan his body for his E-Card, and he barely noticed it saying, “Twenty credits removed, enjoy your stay.” Everything everywhere felt so bright, the flashing tables, the colorful chairs.

“Hello, what can I get you?”

Dusty blinked at the sound of the woman’s voice. The woman was young like him, in her mid-thirties, with shoulder cropped purple hair that looked like bliss.

“Nothing,” Dusty involuntarily smiled, “I just want a place to stay.”

The woman smiled back, and for a second, Dusty couldn’t help but gaze at curve of her breasts beneath the blue skinsuit. Wow, she was beautiful. But this was hardly the time...

“Relax, I’m an android,” she said. “Follow me.”

The woman led him towards a table where there was a holoset. When he sat, the chair evolved around him, sucking him in. It was more comfortable than the average lounge chairs at his office.

“Everything here is automated, so as long as your E-Card works, you’ll be able to adjust anything to your control. Have a good time at Nellie’s.” The woman left.

“What’s your name?” yelled Dusty.

“I don’t have one!”

Dusty turned on the holoemitter to the same channel he saw outside. The same anchorwoman was on. Now, he could see the giant alien landers. They descended down the sky with no resistance. Minutes later, the anchorwoman reported that one had landed outside the city.

“What’s going on?” someone beside him asked.

Dusty looked up to see a new face.

An older man, soggy, drunk in elation pheromones just like him. He must have just came in.
“They’re coming into the city,” Dusty replied.

“I doubt they’d touch a place like this,” the man said.

Suddenly, a loud transparency shattering boom erupted close by. Then, another.

For half an hour, the booms continued uninterrupted.

Then, sudden thumping footsteps could be heard outside the door. They were loud, like metal clanking against ferrocrete.

“What’s going on?” the man asked.

“They’re here!” Dusty said.

Then, just as the door was about to be blasted open, it stopped. The footsteps hurriedly retreated, eventually disappearing into the distance.

At the same time, the newswoman’s face suddenly turned elated. “The alien troops are returning back to their transports! Several alien landers are lifting off!”

“Why?” the man asked.

Dusty shrugged. The sudden news, combined with the drugs in his system, made him want to cry.

Hours later, when the alien landers returned to their kilometer-wide transports, Dusty finally found out.

The sector fleet had arrived.

Betelgeuse Combined Fleet

Dreadnought Beginner's Luck

Bridge…

That’s a lot of ships in one place, Vier Kleingelt thought while staring at the holomap.

The holomap read 4892 signatures, all federation. Sixteen hundred of them were cruisers of various types, another eight hundred were dreadnoughts, the best the humans could offer. Her own ship, the
Beginner’s Luck
, hovered in the middle of the armada. Out of sixteen million spacemen, Vier felt a little giddy that she was the second highest ranking officer in the entire fleet. With little regard to her own safety, she wished in her heart she was at the front.

But she couldn’t be—because the vice admiral desired her safety more than anything—nor could her tactical mind consider that to be a wise decision. If an admiral got taken out in the middle of a battle like this, an enormous hole would open up in the chain of command. One of the lesser ranked commodores would have to replace her, but even then that meant there would be negative impacts in morale and efficiency.

For as much as that feeling inside her chest desired to be in the grit and nit of combat, she knew her dreadnought would probably never see it. The giant probability was that even if the battle went against her, her flagship would probably be protected to the point where it could safely retreat out of the warzone.

For generations of star admirals commanding fleets of this size, the idea of fervently boosting the morale of the fleet by heading at the front of battle had been lost to the necessity of keeping the chain of command intact. This would not have been the case in her earlier assignments, where there weren’t enough ships to protect her, where she was just as vulnerable to missile, and hyperbeam strikes as the next battleship. Now though, she was in command of a giant...

“Sixty nine missile boats in the squadron A19 are all accounted for as requested, Admiral,” one of the controllers reported.

“Twenty five carriers in B12 signal affirmative.”

“Marine Assault Wing A through D returns affirmative check.”

Vier nodded in mock approval. While she seemed to be impressed in appearance, she was actually a little fearful of the results. This was the first time a large fleet like this had been gathered together in a decade. Since the Pirate Wars and the Orion Wars had ended, massive federation fleets had no purpose to assemble. The sheer logistics of moving a near five thousand vessels together into one beacon of hope meant a criteria for organization and assembly was even more needed than the skills of a tactician.

What this meant was that even if Vier hoped she had those skills, she would be hesitant to think her lower ranked commodores could follow suit. And there wasn’t that much time for any real-time practice, either...

The only thing these newer raw flag officers knew was what they had experienced years ago in
real battle, and perhaps, if their distant memories were still functional, what they’d learned in the space academy.

However, that wasn’t her biggest worry. No, her biggest worry was something far more dangerous and potentially disconcerting.

Admiral Mu Pei had rejected her pleas to send more scouting fleets to determine the enemy’s true abilities. In the time it took to detain and observe another hundred feline warships, he said, the Cats would have invaded another fourteen heavily populated worlds. The true enemy wasn’t uncertainty, it was time, he said. The more fleeting the action, the quicker the determination of the fate of billions of people.

But what was billions when compared to the trillions of people within the empire? Vier thought, still gazing at the holomap like a familiar child’s toy. Although she wished Mu Pei’s negligence for caution and space was just a fortunate attribute, she
knew
that such negligence could prove fatal. And if that wasn’t bad enough, what made matters worse was that sixteen other flag ranking commodores and rear admirals believed in Mu Pei’s will over truth. For the eighteen billion civilians on Betelgeuse Five, she certainly hoped the truth, at least her suspicion of the truth, was false. What made it damn futile was that hope didn’t impact reality at all.

At times like this, she wished that one person were here, the one she could confide in like no other. But Captain Willock was not that person by a long shot. Willock was Willock, and he wasn’t someone who could hold her heart, or on a subliminal level, her soul if the shit hit the fan. The man in the hospital bed was a realist, but he was also a battle tested veteran who had been with her through every hardship, from frail edge-of-defeat to victory. A person who had shared every triumph to every heartbreak.

...A person who she should have married if he wasn’t afflicted by a blind divine curse that he could only be
physically
attached to members of his own gender. She hated the luck of the draw. His
direction
was her own misfortune.

“Admiral, can I be of an assistance?” Willock asked from in the seat next to her.

“I don’t think so, Captain.”

“Please, I’ve observed my new flag officer long enough to know when she’s troubled. Admiral.”

But you’re not him.
“What can I say?” She smiled. “I’m glad you are capable of that. But even then, there’s very little you can do.”

“Try me, ma’am.”

Vier nodded. “I think a large amount of this fleet could be in jeopardy. Millions of spacers could die.”

“Yet, you’ve done everything you could to prevent that potential mistake, ma’am.”

“I have.”

“Yet, you still feel terrible of this outcome that hasn’t been set in concrete, correct?”

“I do.”

“It’s a similar feeling felt by thousands, perhaps millions of officers before you. But in the end, the chain of command is the only thing that keeps the universe and our world together. Ma’am, if you can’t believe in the wellness of a decision, your only choice is to believe in the necessity of that decision. Decisions are frail things based on an infinite set of bits of information, but the belief that one must follow the decision made by those superior to you is the only lasting sanctuary in military custom.”

Vier blinked. She didn’t know her flag captain thought like that. “Safe haven or not, I don’t believe we can win a war when the enemy knows our strengths and weaknesses and we cannot do the reverse, Captain.”

Willock was silent. He stared at the hologram map with such a constant eye, as if he wasn’t thinking about the little dots but the organism as a whole.

Well…that’s what she thought he was thinking.

He remained silent for a minute. Finally, he said, “Then there is only the inevitability and blind fortune. Ma’am.”

Vier thought the idea was cryptic, until he smiled, that same casual smile that the female ensigns thought of in a furiously attractive way. What he meant, or what she thought he meant, was that even if we have no power over our destiny, destiny itself could shape to our benefit with the slightest of fortunes. The small details within a larger framework could slowly but irrevocably change even the dimmest picture. It was rule of the Compound Effect, that small changes could have large repercussions. To her, it meant that even if the world around her could possibly turn into hell, she could, in as frank a truth as the possibility of the negative outcome coming true, be witness to it eventually turning around with what meager fortunate events fate gave her.