Warlord's Invasion (Starfight Book 1) (2 page)

“J-Just a little drunk, Brim. Nothing to worry about.”

“Listen uh, I didn’t mean to hurt you or anything.”

“I know. I knew what you were doing.”

“You knew?” Brigum stopped scanning his readouts.

“Yes.”

A voice on loudspeaker commanded, “This is the CAG. All fighters launch immediately! Suspend all prep and launch!”

Suddenly, the ceiling lights switched from red to green.

Brigum secured the straps around his helmet and jammed off the autolock on the fighter’s maneuvering thrusters. Once that was done, the cockpit doors slammed shut automatically, securing both pilots inside their artificial gravity environment. The two of them were now isolated from the rest of the universe by sheer dimensional physics. His helmet HUDs came online at the same moment, and now he could see everything outside his fighter as if he had eyes on every side.

The massive hangar bay doors opened and the gravity shield disappeared in an instant. Atmosphere jettisoned out into the void of space, and hundreds of starfighters streamed out as well.

“Here goes,” Darcy said. “Yahoo.”

Suddenly, everything around the fighter fell away and he could see the blackness of space surrounding him and intersecting the expanding distance between him and the orbital space station behind him. The round metallic object, enormous by all standards, suddenly dwindled as it became a small dot. The massive blue-green sphere that was Meerlat, on the other hand, remained the same size no matter how far he went. It would be hours before that object dwindled. He adjusted his communication channels and suddenly, he could hear voices all around him.

“What are we fighting?” several asked.

“Let’s get those pirates!” others shouted.

Within seconds, his main cockpit display switched to a command channel. He saw the CAG’s round face which, in a very bleak military tone, let Brigum find out the hard way.

Ga Empire Emblem, Skull of the Great Ka

Supreme Battlecruiser Usha'Tera…loosely translated: Conqueror's Might.

Bridge of Light…

Hal-Dorat Al-rim came from a desert world twenty thousand light years away. How he came to this
Blurza
-footed forsaken area of space was beyond him. But now he had a duty to uphold. He had been given orders by the Great Commander himself to lay waste to all the military defenses of this system and conquer its only inhabitable planet. And that, he would do with precision. He would show no mercy to these beings from a distant origin, just like they would show no mercy to him if their positions had been reversed.

With effortless precision typical of a veteran commander of a hundred battles, he ordered his forces to accelerate
even more
inward towards the second planet where its defenders had made an apt but completely futile formation. He had seen these things a dozen times before...had witnessed the destruction of all life within a system...and had personally administered the fatal blow that sent a veteran star fleet from far-fetched hope into complete despair. So, this was nothing new. “Spear commanders De-bra and Ka-nal, deploy neutron missiles. Target the defenses only. The Great Commander wants the planet to be hospitable when he arrives. We will show him we are capable subjects.”

“Yes, subjugator,” came the replies.

“Lance commanders, take strike formation two. There are to be no survivors from these
Pra
who can tell their worlds what has happened here.” For a moment, he felt disdain for the little beings in tiny starships who projected their forward armor towards him. But then, that disdain changed to cool respect. They were dying for their world, just like he would do for his. All the other races
had
all died for their worlds. Just like he would die for his.

If their positions had been reversed, he would be the one panting in furious thought, trying every possible means to prevent his end. If their positions were reversed, he would just be as feeble as a lunatic
Harsha
when cornered by
Fel
. He thought coolly, as he sat within his control tank. Then once he killed each of these beings, he would pray for their final journey to the Outer Realm. They were, after all, just as innocent in thought and perhaps just as innocent in experience as his newborns twenty thousand light years away. They had never seen true terror, at least, not the type he’d witnessed in his twelve megacycles of life. And once they were killed, they never would.

Orbital Station Meerlat-01

Command Room…

“Ah, Admiral? They’re changing formation!” the ensign called out. “And they’re firing—something!”

“What?” Vier’s tone was now exasperated. Her mood, on the other hand, had hit the floor. Five minutes ago, she’d just been informed that her stepsister hadn’t made it to an evacuation shuttle and would remain on the planet. What would happen when the aliens took over the planet, she would never know. What the hell did the aliens want with the planet? It was only a minor colony with a bare industrial base. There were thousands of these planets all across the frontier sphere of the United Federation. If they wanted a planet like this, they could have easily picked any number of frontier worlds, but they had chosen hers.

“Ah,” the sensor lieutenant said. “I really don’t know what they are, Admiral. They look like long range kinetic kill slugs but they adjust course and accelerate. But there’s no known physical mechanism that is applying force to them. My sensors say absolutely squash about their inner workings. It’s like they’re made of things from a different universe.”

“God damn it,” Vier whispered, then she spoke louder, “Well, what do you know about them?”

“They can accelerate like a normal missile or torpedo, except at a faster rate. That’s all I know, Admiral.”

“Let the targeting computer assign their designations as missiles, then,” Vier suggested. “And I want to hear everything you know as soon as you find out more about them.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Vier turned towards her second in command. “Well, captain? Options?”

“Because of their current speed and acceleration, it’s too late now to turn tail and run,” Shenks replied. “Very few of our ships will make it out alive. Still, it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever be able to defeat that force. Just the size comparison alone is enough to hammer us to pieces. Their total tonnage outweighs us by ninety to one, including this space station. I suggest we make the best out of the situation and take out as many of them as we can.”

“I know.” Vier rested her elbows on her armrests. “It’s like we’re fighting monsters from another kardashev scale. We’ll need an absolute miracle if we’re going to win against that.” She shook her head. This wasn’t the right mentality to confront this
thing
. She had fought bad odds before, but never this bad. What were the chances that these aliens had a weakness she could exploit? If both societies were alien to each other, there was a slight chance, however dim, that these aliens could not overcome human technology. Yet, if they could make hyperspace emergence chasms this big, it was damn unlikely they could be beaten technologically.

But as long as there was a chance, she was willing to fight. It was in her training and her upbringing to fight with all she had. Hell, she would fight even if there weren’t a chance.

“Admiral, need I remind you that it was you who said ‘there is no greater test of a person’s courage than death?’ “

“I was quoting Knopsky,” Vier whispered. “A crazy martyr who happened to fulfill a role in history.”

“We are fulfilling that role now, Admiral. We made first contact.”

“Lucky us,” Vier grumbled. “Lieutenant Seetch, I want two volleys of missiles consisting of about six hundred each sent out on an intercept trajectory right now. They are to impact the enemy fleet the moment they enter range of our disruptors. I want to saturate their defenses with our missiles and disruptors. However, keep the vast majority of our missiles in reserve. The purpose of this is to test their defenses before I send out all our missiles.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the weapons controller replied.

“Browder, I want you to tell the warship squadron to stay in formation and wait for my order before moving. Our station’s disruptors outrange the cannons on those warships after all.”

“And the Tachyon net, ma’am?”

“Keep it shifting. I don’t want them to blast our sensors out of the blue.”

Browder nodded, then turned back to his station.

Vier pressed a button on her chair. “CAG, you hear me?”

“I hear you, Admiral,” Captain Mike Michio’s voice answered. “Fighters are on the way.”

“I want the fighters to enter combat range of the enemy fleet at the same time that missile group B intercepts it.”

“Missile group B is the five thousand missiles you’re keeping in reserve?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. What about those weird looking enemy missiles?”

“We’ll take them out when they come at us. Keep the fighters safe. I want those hypernukes on target.”

“Yes, ma’am. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Tell Lieutenant Akiko I’m sorry I got us into this mess.”

“Yes, ma’am. She’ll hear it after the battle.”

“Goodbye, Mike.”

“Goodbye.” Mike closed the channel.

For a moment, Vier stared in a stony silence at the main viewscreen. Then she let out a sigh and went back to work.

Supreme Battlecruiser Usha'Tera

Bridge of Light…

Hal-Dorat Al-rim sat coldly in his control tank, eyeing the
Pra
who had just fired off several thousand primitive missiles at his fleet.

It was nothing. Those missiles, apparently propelled by gravity drives, would probably do nothing against his shields, much less his armor.

His
missiles, on the other hand, would be entirely different. They
would
harm the
Kavic
out of those Pra.

“Lance commanders, maintain formation. We will destroy the Pra and propel the Great Commander to new heights.”

Battlespace…

In the deadly coldness of space, two thousand multi-dimensional particle torpedoes of the Ga Empire dove relentlessly towards their targets. Armed with the human equivalent of 30 gigatons of TNT on each torpedo, they sped through space quicker than any
human
warship or missile. Their space-skipping drive kept the human tachyon sensor system completely befuddled. Numerous human sensor nets lost track of the torpedoes while others fixated on sensor ghosts. When the torpedoes entered range of the humans’ nadion disruptors, those same human disruptors fired at the torpedoes. The torpedoes began the alien equivalent of erratic maneuvers. Their space-skipping drive made them impossible to hit. The beams from those human disruptors missed entirely, taking out nothing. The alien torpedoes continued on course, heading towards the human warships making up the humans’ inner defense sphere. A large number of those torpedoes also aimed for the space station where Vier Kleingelt commanded the system’s defense.

Orbital Station Meerlat-01

Command Room…

“Our disruptors are having no effect!” the sensor ensign called out in the station’s command center. “Those alien missiles are coming at us as if they’re sensor ghosts or something! Not a single one got taken out so far!”

“Damn!” Vier smacked her armrest. She couldn’t understand it. What type of technology was this? Why hadn't they met this type of alien race so far? Where had the aliens come from? If they were this powerful... “ETA on those alien missiles?”

“Twenty minutes! They’re fast, Admiral!”

“Open up the point defense slots on all our ships. Get the point defense platforms out as well!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

She couldn’t believe that her disruptors were having no effect. Nadion disruptors were the fleet’s highest form of phased nanopulse disruption technology. It had been in use and perfected over the past century. In the Orion Wars, those disruptors won numerous battles. But if they didn’t work here—what did that say about human technology overall? Human weapon technology centered around phased nanopulses, so much that the human battle doctrine was built around it. The last century had seen a lot of new developments in weapons technology, but nothing compared to the innovations in nanopulses.