Chains of Destiny (Episode #2: The Pax Humana Saga) Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Front Matter

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  CHAINS OF DESTINY

  EPISODE 2

  Of

  THE PAX HUMANA SAGA

  For Jenny, L., and C.

  To be notified of future episodes in The Pax Humana Saga, sign up for my mailing list

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  Other books in the Pax Humana Saga:

  1: The Terran Gambit

  2: Chains of Destiny

  3: Into the Void

  CHAPTER ONE

  “ANYA, WHAT THE HELL ARE you doing!”

  Lieutenant Anya Grace smirked at the comm speaker, even though she knew the voice shouting through it couldn’t see her. “Keep your pants on, Captain. Stand by.”

  She wove her fighter through the cloud of shrapnel, debris, and Imperial bogeys as she aimed her bow straight at the heart of the NPQR Sphinx. After only three days of respite in orbit around the red dwarf star Laland 21185, the Imperial Centurion-class capital ship shifted into orbit just two klicks off the USS Phoenix’s stern and immediately opened fire. It was as if they knew exactly where they were: their exact orbital speed, inclination, orientation … everything.

  “Lieutenant, I hope you’re planning something unbelievably spectacular, because from this end you look like you’re about to kill yourself and Nivens. You may have only been the Wing Commander for three days, but you’re not exactly replaceable,” Jake’s voice replied, with the slight whine that told Anya he was supremely annoyed at her. Exactly how she liked it.

  “Just watch, sir. You’ll be so happy that you’ll give me another ride on the Mercer Express when I get back.” She smiled at her own play on words. Heh—express. He probably didn’t even pick up on her insult.

  “I’ll do worse than that, Lieutenant,” he said.

  You promise? she thought. “Yeah, I bet you’ll give me a nice dressing-down, as usual. Look, stop thinking about my glorious flat boobs and get ready to train your fire on my handiwork.”

  Looking back she saw she’d picked up a tail—two enemy fighters were in hot pursuit, matching her moves and pelting her with gunfire. She wove, using conventional thrusters to swerve around one of railgun turrets of the Sphinx at such a tight angle it threw her down into the seat at over five g’s, but the maneuver brought one of the fighters directly into their sights.

  “Fire, Nivens!” she yelled, but the streaks of red light shot out from the bow moments too late. She spun to look at him. “What the hell?!”

  His face was a pasty white. “Hey, you’ve got to warn me before you pull a five g turn—you can’t expect me to get a good lock after a stunt like that.” His lips were pursed as in a valiant effort to keep his lunch down.

  “Fine. Here we go again.” She pulled at the controls and flipped them 180 degrees around an ion beam cannon protruding off the surface of the Sphinx’s gray hull. “There. Go!”

  He squeezed the trigger and one of the tailing fighters exploded in a cloud of debris.

  “Quadri, get this other one off my tail, would ya?” Anya shouted into her headset.

  “Sure thing, Spitfire.” The other space jocks on the Phoenix had given her a new callsign, and, while she put on a front of annoyed disapproval of the name, she kind of liked it. Quadri’s fighter peeled off his previous target and blasted through the one tailing Anya, and she swung the bird around to aim back at the Sphinx. Dozens of streams of high-velocity railgun bursts leapt out of the Imperial ship at the Phoenix, and the Phoenix answered with bursts of its own, laying down a defensive screen against the worst of it and firing bright blue shimmering beams of ion cannon fire at the Imperial capital ship. Dozens of fighters swarmed around the two ships, though Anya knew they were dreadfully outnumbered. Again.

  She couldn’t shake the image of the piles of dead bodies in the makeshift morgue by sickbay where six of her fellow pilots had found a new home. A memorial had been planned for that day, but the surprise arrival of the Sphinx had tamped down those plans.

  “Ok, Nivens. Here we go. Hold on to your ass.”

  He frowned dryly. “Consider it clenched.”

  She aimed right at a particular section of the ship, a section she was nearly sure contained the crews responsible for loading the nuclear warheads. Three, two, one, she counted to herself: at the last second she used the gravitic controls to reorient ninety degrees and fly parallel to the hull, which now streamed past her viewport just inches away. With the press of a button she initiated a short-range gravitic shift …

  … and reappeared just meters away, on the same trajectory. She looked behind her, and smiled. In her wake, a cloud of debris streamed out from the Sphinx, and she knew her tactic had worked.

  “It’s all yours, Mercer. Do you think you can hit that small a target?”

  After a moment of silence on the other end, Jacob Mercer’s voice asked her, in awe, “Did you just blow a hole in the nuclear torpedo section? That thing has armor over two meters thick!”

  “They’re a funny thing, these gravitic fields. Even funnier when you’re moving this fast relative to another nearby surface.”

  “Anya, forget everything I ever said about you. You’re a genius!” he burst out, followed by, “Po, fire!”

  One of the railgun turrets on the Phoenix swiveled and began firing a stream of slugs, which slammed into the two holes Anya left behind. Explosions leapt out from the now widening scars, and Anya saw Nivens fist pump the air out of the corner of her eye. He grinned at her.

  “I wonder if they saw that coming,” he said.

  “Ensign, they never see me coming,” she said without even a grin as she pulled on the controls to point at another incoming fighter. “Though I suppose it’s us now, not just me. You still good with being my gunner, or do I make you piss your flight suit?”

  “No ma’am.” He squeezed off a round, piercing another fighter with a barrage of high-caliber fire and sending it crashing into the Sphinx’s hull.

  “Good. You need a callsign, you know. I’m thinking Babyface.”

  “Please no,” he said, firing off another few rounds at a stray fighter, which flew wide.

  She veered away from an incoming fighter. “Or how about Pencilholder? At least until you can pull it out of those clenched cheeks of yours. Come on, lighten up,” she smacked his shoulder.

  “Quadri’s voice sounded over their headsets. “Hey Spitfire, I got a tail. Help me out here.”

  “On it, dickhead.”

  “What the hell? That’s not my callsign!”

  “Yeah, I know. Peel off to your right in two seconds.... Now!” Quadri’s fighter turned wide to the right, followed by the Imperial fighter, which swung into the red streams shooting out from Nivens’s forward gun.

  “Thanks, Nivens,” said Quadri from the headsets.

  Anya pointed out the window, “Lieutenant Short, watch those bogeys on your flank.” She gunned the engine to accelerate towards the beleaguered fighter.

  Two short bursts from Nivens blasted them to oblivion. “Thanks, Spitfire. We owe you one.”

  “Another one,” she replied.

  Jake Mercer’s voice pierced through the background chatter of pilots and gunners and the flurry of battle. “P-two, P-four, and P-eight, concentrate your fire on the star
board rail-turrets. We’re going to knock the sucker out with a quantum field disrupter torpedo. Everyone else, cover them.”

  “You heard him, Nivens, lets go hunt ourselves a rail-turret,” she said, swinging the bow around to point back at the Sphinx, still sparkling with railgun fire.

  Nivens turned to her. “Sir, if we just opened up a hole in their nuclear section, can’t we just do it again near a more sensitive system? Like, right next to some power conduits or something?”

  She bit her lip before gunning the engine and swerving past some friendly fighters. “Brilliant, Pencilholder.” The hull of the Sphinx loomed up closer, and Anya dodged some incoming fire from an ion beam turret. She pointed to an area on the hull. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Niven’s glanced down, checked his console, and nodded. “Yeah, that’ll do.”

  “Right.” The fighter plunged down towards the hull, and accelerated. “Preparing gravitic shift.…” Anya gripped the controls tight in her white-clenched fists. The hull zoomed past just a meter away, the details washed away in a blur. “Now!” She thumbed the gravitic shift button….

  And the universe spun wildly.

  “Dammit!” Anya’s head pulled hard to the side as the fighter spun uncontrollably and the angular momentum threw her against the seat restraints.

  “Wha—what happened?” said Nivens through gritted teeth.

  Slowly, the fighter’s spin slowed, and when she could get her bearings Anya saw that they were several klicks away from the Sphinx. She scanned her board, examining some new readings that had appeared in the last minute. “They’re generating some kind of wonky gravitic field. It’s projecting just beyond their hull, probably to prevent us from doing exactly what we were trying to do.”

  The comm crackled on. “Anya, what the hell was that?”

  “Check your gravitic readout, Captain,” she said.

  A momentary silence. “Looks like they were ready for you that time. Just get back over there and suppress their fire—we’ve got to get this torpedo outta here,” said Jake.

  “So, looks like the Empire is learning?” deadpanned Nivens.

  “I’m as shocked as you are. Come on,” Anya glanced out the viewport. “Our boys need us against those turrets.”

  ***

  Admiral Trajan strode onto the bridge like a black storm cloud descending on an unsuspecting town. His face stern and impassive, he motioned to tactical. “Report.”

  “Sir! The Sphinx shifted to Laland 21185 just moments ago. They should be engaging the Rebels now.” Captain Titus glowered at his console. He’d been trying to direct the repairs of the forward section since the rogue Resistance ship had shifted suddenly away not three days ago, but the gravitic field wake left by the Phoenix had torn an even larger hole in its stead. Even if the Caligula were to dock at the Earth shipyards, repairs would take weeks. That was news Admiral Trajan would not be happy to hear, to say the least.

  “Captain, prepare several gravitic pods. I have messages I want transmitted as soon as possible.” The Admiral stared at him with his one gleaming eye. The gaping eye socket seemed like a perfect metaphor for the Admiral’s soul—empty, scarred, and with an eye single to accomplishing his mission from Emperor Maximilian: Defeat the Earth Resistance at all costs.

  Admiral Trajan handed Titus a data pad. “Here. See that no one sees them other than yourself. And even that is inadvisable.” The single eye flashed him a knowing glance accompanied by the barest hint of a sly smile, and Titus immediately understood the reference to the late Chief Engineer. Titus knew all too well that Trajan intended to leave no paper trail, no trace, no proof of his mission. As Trajan explained it to him, if the Senate were to ever find out, it would rock the Empire to its core—the faith of the people in the Emperor’s commitment to abide by his own laws would be shaken irreparably.

  “Very well, sir,” said Captain Titus.

  “And how are the repairs going?” Trajan looked down at the command console, studying the reports streaming by.

  “Hull repair crews say they’ll need at least three days to seal the breaches, at least temporarily. To repair them fully will require several weeks in space-dock.”

  “Gravitics?”

  “Should be operational by the end of tomorrow.”

  Trajan glowered at the console. “I want it before then, Captain. Use whatever means at your disposal to motivate your engineering crew. The next stage of our plan requires it.”

  “Sir? The next stage?”

  “Of course. You thought the destruction of the Resistance was the only goal? It was but the first step. The prelude to The Plan.”

  Titus shifted uncomfortably on his feet. Next step? Just how long would the Admiral be staying on board? “What about Mercer? And the Phoenix? And the Heron?”

  “Yes, yes. We will deal with them. They are but two ships. Pawns, no more, in the grand scheme of things. Our vision lies higher, Captain.”

  Somehow, Captain Titus knew that the “higher vision” would not be forthcoming from the Admiral anytime soon. The man had a habit of playing his cards so closely to his chest that Titus had to wonder if even the Admiral kept his hand straight.

  “Very well, sir. I’ll encourage the new Chief Engineer to work faster. I’ll redirect repair crews to engineering if that is all right with you?”

  “It is, Captain. Gravitics is our number one priority right now. Everything else can wait. Even the hull, if necessary.”

  Trajan stood up straight from the command console and glanced around the bridge, nodding with approval at the cleanup job the repair crews had done. After the Phoenix shifted away, the resulting gravitic wake had sent such a jolt through the ship that several ceiling plates and deck girders had collapsed onto the bridge floor and multiple console panels had erupted in sparks from the electrical surges. Luckily, no one was killed, but the destruction maimed several junior bridge officers.

  “And Captain, a word?” Trajan caught his eye and motioned towards the door that led to the hallway containing the ready room, now converted to the Admiral’s makeshift quarters. Titus’s heart sunk as he followed the man in the black Admiral’s uniform with gold epaulettes dancing on his shoulders as he walked.

  When the door to the ready room opened, Trajan pointed his finger in the air, indicating to the computer to perform some predefined function, and instantly the room was alive with the stark, rustic sound of two slow, mournful fiddles. One played against the other, forming a not quite harmonious counterpoint as it clashed with unholy intervals—not like the usual harmonies used in the music Titus preferred and certainly not the harmonies used in the state religion. He frowned with vague disapproval.

  “New Frontier music, Captain. I’ve actually grown quite fond of it. It’s what happened when you combine people of an eastern aesthetic with western folk instruments on the plains of some treacherous new world.” Trajan sat at the desk and began fingering the console.

  Captain Titus cleared his throat and stood at ease next to the desk, hands folded patiently behind his back. “I should mention, sir, that the final casualty report stands at 140 dead, ninety-two missing—most of those are marines from the two boarding parties sent to the Phoenix—and sixty-five still in serious or critical condition in sickbay.”

  “Thank you, Captain. Most unfortunate,” Trajan said distractedly, not glancing up from the screen and only showing a passing interest. “Now, here is what I wanted to show you.” He pressed one more button and the viewscreen on the wall danced to life with the scenes of the battle from earlier in the day.

  “I’ve been studying the sensor readouts from the events of three days ago, Captain, and if I’m not mistaken they confirm my suspicions as well as the suspicions of Central Intelligence. Watch this,” he said, pointing up to the screen.

  Titus watched a close-up shot of the central portion of the Caligula, its railgun turrets unleashing a torrent of fire at the Phoenix. After a few moments, in the blink of an eye, a fighter appeared out
of nowhere and immediately fired a torpedo out of its bow, which impacted with the hull of the Caligula, generating a secondary explosion that Titus guessed was the gravitic drive cutting out. A moment later the fighter disappeared.

  Titus blinked in surprise. “Is this even possible?”

  “It appears so, Captain. The CERN scientists have been holding out on the Empire, it seems. We shall have to pay them a visit.”

  “But if this is true, the implications for fighter tactics and engagement … the manual just got turned on its head, sir.”

  Trajan glanced at him askance, a shadow of annoyance passing over his brow. “Yes, I’m sure the bureaucrats in the fleet administration building will have a veritable manual writing heyday with this. But I’m more interested in two things. How will the Rebels use this against us, and how can we get our hands on the same technology.”

  “There’s the Roc, sir. She’s still got a full contingent of fighters on board. We can transfer them over here.”

  “Already done, Captain. They will be arriving within the hour. See that the fighter bay has room to receive them. We may have to transfer some of our fighters over to the other ships.”

  “Yes, sir.” Titus turned to leave, but hesitated. “Will that be all, sir?”

  “For now, yes. I have a few other ideas, but I will reveal them to you when they’ve matured a bit more,” Trajan breathed deeply through his nose, his nostrils flaring. “We are on the cusp of greatness, Captain. Something our civilization has not achieved in 600 years. Not since the utopia following the Robot Wars has our race found such peace and prosperity. You know, those blissful few decades in the twenty-first century? But those were destroyed by an unthankful few, and the Emperor and I will do everything in our power to attain order and peace again.”

  Titus strode towards the door, but Trajan’s voice stopped him in his tracks. “Captain, you are of course welcome to read all those communications. Many of them concern the regular maintenance of the ship. Forgive me for taking the liberty of scheduling a refuel at the Praesidium, I had no wish to intrude on your responsibilities.”