Wreaths of Empire Read online

  WREATHS OF EMPIRE

  ANDREW M. SEDDON

  Splashdown Books, New Zealand

  All rights reserved

  http://www.splashdownbooks.com

  © Andrew M. Seddon 2015

  Cover Design: Grace Bridges

  Artwork: Algol on Dreamstime

  To Olivia, who puts up with my urge to write

  and who inspires me in many ways!

  And to my parents, who encouraged me to read from an early age

  and who indulged my youthful passion for science fiction.

  Many thanks to Werner Lind for commentary and critique,

  and to Grace Bridges for insightful editing and awesome cover design.

  PROLOGUE

  The Battle of Felton 114

  July 31, 2542

  From just beyond her boot-tips, sheer rock plunged a full two kilometers to the crawling slate-grey sea below. Jagged pinnacles stabbed upwards like giant teeth, as though she was about to plunge into the maw of some giant prehistoric predator. She’d have preferred a steady breeze, but today the wind was gusty, forcing her to tip back on her heels against its unpredictable buffets and wait patiently for precisely the right draft. It was going to be a wild ride, but having come this distance there was no way she was going to quit.

  Mere specks from this height, she spotted a flock of yellow-necked windriders circling in brilliant sunshine as they hunted for prey, their shadows etched onto the cliffs opposite. Near the horizon, something massive broke the surface of the ocean before submerging again in a towering explosion of spray.

  There. The pressure on her spine was the perfect intensity. Her stomach lurched as she spread her arms and fell forward, allowing the capricious wind to fill her skywings and carry her over the precipice into a yawning chasm of shafts and spires of rock. There was no time for nerves—and no room for error—as she soared through the labyrinth, banking and turning, rising and falling, dependent on her skill and the mercy of the wind—a wind with a piercing keen that sliced into her as she swooped towards the white-capped sea and the tiny island that marked her landing place…a wind that howled like the legendary banshee…like—

  BLAAAAAAAR!

  The proximity alarm!

  The reverie of her last shore leave before deployment shattered, Jade Lafrey jolted to attention and cast a startled glance towards Star Frigate Retribution’s command seat.

  “Lieutenant Lafrey! Take scan!” Captain Harriet Mears-Hadley leaned forward, her sharp-angled face reminding Jade of a Greatmount ridgeflyer arcing towards a kill. The middle-aged captain jabbed a finger towards the vacant scan station, then fired orders around the bridge, somehow making herself heard over the harsh blare of the proximity alarm.

  Jade sprang out of the auxiliary internal operations position she’d been occupying, shouldered an engineering ensign out of her way, and dashed across the deck to the opposite side of the bridge.

  She had no idea where the regular scan officer was. There wasn’t time to ask. She flung herself in the seat before the scan console, brought the screens to life, and ordered a full-system sweep. She could almost sense Mears-Hadley’s impatience. Mears-Hadley didn’t rate highly on a patience scale.

  “Captain,” Lt. Kuula said from tactical, “I’m detecting transition waves.”

  “Source?”

  “Outsystem.”

  Jade swallowed hard. Only two races in the known galaxy possessed the technology for Roessler-spatial travel. The Terran Fourth Fleet wasn’t expecting reinforcements. That meant only one thing.

  A pattern coalesced on the energy-flow screen.

  “Confirm,” Jade said. “Gara’nesh energy signature.”

  “Red alert!” Mears-Hadley barked.

  “Incoming transmission,” the comm officer called. “Priority one. Scoutship Bennington.”

  “On screen. And shut that blasted noise off.”

  The klaxon died.

  The main holoscreen illuminated with the fragmented image of a Naval ensign. Speakers crackled to static-laden life, the audiovisual hyperspace frequencies deteriorating under the assault of the high-energy Roessler-space transition waves that blazed across the spectrum.

  “Bennington…all ships…Gara’nesh breakthrough…vector…”

  The transmission ceased. The screen went black.

  Mears-Hadley’s cool, level tone broke a moment of dead silence. “Battle stations. Drive to power. Shields up. Weapons systems on line.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Jade added her voice to a chorus of responses.

  “What’s the status?” The first officer, Commander Bray, arrived and dropped into the seat next to Mears-Hadley.

  “Update, Lafrey,” the captain said, fixing a grim stare on Jade.

  Jade studied the rapidly changing displays and scrolling readouts on the monitor screens, wishing she could interpret them as quickly as the regular scan officer.

  “Bennington’s gone, ma’am…”

  She imagined the scoutship—posted too close to the main fleet for its warning to make any difference—blasted to charred cinders, the ruins spinning outsystem, the crew dead for no reason except the cold cruelty of war. And her mind’s eye saw the Gara’nesh warships bearing down like an avenging fury on the unprepared Terran Fourth Fleet, brushing aside the few unfortunate support vessels that lay in their path as if they didn’t exist. Admiral Lopez had been so confident that the Gara’nesh had no Roessler-spatial route to this system that the Fourth Fleet wasn’t even on alert status, let alone in battle formation.

  “Never mind Bennington!” Mears-Hadley snapped. “What about the intruders?”

  Jade stared at the readouts. “About a dozen ships, ma’am. Heavy frigates.”

  Mears-Hadley swiveled around to face the holoscreen. “Damnation!”

  “Directive from Admiral Lopez,” shouted the comm officer. “General retreat. Disengage!”

  Mears-Hadley swore loudly and broadly. “Incompetent idiot!” She turned to helm. “Get us underway, Klein. Flank speed. Tactical: All weapons armed, targeting programs active.”

  “Hostiles closing rapidly,” Jade called. “Range in two minutes.”

  “Intercept vector, helm,” Mears-Hadley said. Then she muttered to the first officer, in words barely loud enough for Jade to make out, “Let Lopez run. I’m not about to.”

  One minute.

  Jade gripped the edge of her console. The seconds ticked by. She watched the red indicator lights of the Gara’nesh fleet closing on blue ones. One of those blue dots represented Retribution, stationed on the fringe of the fleet, farthest from the attackers.

  Her knuckles ached. It couldn’t really be happening. Surely this was only a bad dream…a scan malfunction…a simulation…a training exercise…Those couldn’t be real ships bearing down, real combat looming ahead, real death very possible—even likely.

  She wasn’t on a combat track! For her, this was a temporary posting in-between shore assignments. And for many members of Retribution’s crew, newly graduated and commissioned, a shakedown cruise in supposedly safe space.

  “The fleet’s a sitting target,” Mears-Hadley grated. “Isn’t anybody but us maneuvering for battle?”

  Jade took the question to be rhetorical.

  Zero.

  “They’re on us!” she exclaimed.

  “Visual,” the captain ordered.

  The starfield mutated into a haphazard field of ships. The unprepared Terran Fourth Fleet’s incomplete formation wavered and disintegrated as the Gara’nesh warfleet smashed into it.

  A sleet of solid projectiles, accelerated to near light speed by coil guns, slammed through the Terran ships. Many projectiles were incinerated by automated defense lasers before inflicting damage. Many more
penetrated the defenses.

  Retribution’s own batteries laid down a covering fire as the frigate accelerated.

  Jade watched in horrified fascination as Reprisal, Admiral Lopez’s flagship, was cut to shreds before it could get out of range. In moments, enemy fire reduced the massive star frigate to a drifting, lifeless hulk, without a single shot being fired in return.

  “Reprisal’s dead,” Jade said dully. No consolation in the fact that Admiral Lopez wouldn’t live to face a court-martial.

  Dimly, as if through a haze, she heard Mears-Hadley issuing orders to Lt. Klein on helm.

  Retribution made her way past the disorganized mass of fleeing and disoriented ships.

  Dauntless went next. Projectiles riddled her to a holed mass of scrap. The Gara’nesh weapons encountered little resistance. Energy discharges flickered and danced like St. Elmo’s fire over the helpless ship’s hull. Jade had encountered the electrical phenomenon once, when a replica sailing ship on which she had been travelling encountered a severe thunderstorm, and blue plasma glowed at the tips of the masts.

  But that was as nothing compared to the violent fluxes that tormented Dauntless. Then her magnetic shields, deflecting particle-beams, collapsed, and Dauntless exploded in an eye-searing eruption.

  Even as the afterimages faded from the screen, Retribution shuddered under the impact of projectiles ploughing into her own armor. Strays, Jade imagined, as the ship hadn’t yet been targeted by a Gara’nesh vessel.

  Alarm lights lit up across the board.

  “We’re holed!” someone shouted from operations, followed by, “All systems still green.”

  Mears-Hadley sat impassively. She could have been on a training exercise, Jade thought, not in a full-scale fleet action.

  “We’re through,” Jade called as scan showed that they’d cleared the shattered remnants of the fleet and gained maneuvering room. A red marker flickered. “Hostile ahead!”

  A heavily armored Gara’nesh ship, bristling with weapons, winked into range.

  “Target!” Kuula yelled.

  “All weapons fire!” Mears-Hadley replied.

  Retribution trembled as her coil guns erupted. Invisible until they impacted the enemy ship, the projectiles punctured armor shields and shattered laser-defense mirrors. Plumes of vapor spewed from wounds in the Gara’nesh hull. Retribution's lasers and particle beams followed up, eating through the unprotected metal. The Gara’nesh ship wilted under the barrage. Seconds later, Retribution flashed past the beaten, dead ship.

  Somebody cheered.

  “Quiet!” Mears-Hadley ordered.

  “Courageous is under heavy fire.” Jade watched the indicator lights on scan. “Gone.”

  “Status of other active ships,” Mears-Hadley requested.

  “Dead or running, ma’am,” Jade reported.

  Mears-Hadley beat her fist on her armrest. “Cowards!”

  The monitor showed Valorous being cut to shreds under the combined firepower of two Gara’nesh warships.

  “Reverse course,” Captain Mears-Hadley ordered. “We’ll make another pass.”

  “But ma’am,” the Nav ensign protested. “We’ve pierced their formation—there’s clear space ahead!”

  “Take us back, mister!” Mears-Hadley grated with a barely-controlled fierceness.

  “Y-yes, ma’am.” The man inputted the commands. Retribution turned in a long, laborious arc, shedding velocity and then regaining it.

  Vengeance detonated in a titanic explosion that lit up the particle sensor displays.

  “Is nobody fighting?” an exasperated Mears-Hadley cried as the lights on scan went out one by one. Jade reported each loss with deepening anxiety—at this rate they’d soon be the only ones left. They couldn’t take on an entire enemy fleet by themselves, not even if they’d had a full crew of battle-hardened, experienced veterans, instead of one with a high proportion of inexperienced neophytes like herself.

  “Target coming into range,” Jade reported as Retribution bore towards the battle. Another Gara’nesh ship loomed out of the darkness.

  “They’re armed,” Lt. Kuula added.

  “Let them have it!” Mears-Hadley commanded.

  Jade barely had time to register that both ships, Terran and Gara’nesh, fired together when Retribution's bridge dissolved in a mass of fire and smoke. The impact flung Jade out of her chair. A surge in the grav-fields left her weightless, then reversed and slammed her to the deck. Her forehead smacked the unyielding metal. Stunned, she lay still, listening to the cries of the wounded, the harsh crackle of burning circuits, smelling the stench of smoldering insulation. But there was no hiss of escaping air, no deadly breeze plucking at her uniform.

  She realized that one of the cries was her own.

  Pain lanced through the back of her neck. She winced as she raised herself to her elbows then wiped the back of her hand across her streaming eyes.

  How the bridge had escaped being opened to space, she didn’t know. If it hadn’t been the most heavily protected portion of the ship, it probably would have been. As it was, the projectile must have hit very close. Thank God for self-sealing systems that closed all but the largest hull-breaches almost as soon as they occurred.

  Her eyes finally focused. Carnage emerged from the blur. A couple of other crew members stirred, but the ones who lay still outnumbered them.

  Including Mears-Hadley.

  Jade dragged herself across the debris-littered deck to the captain. She reached out and touched a skull that trembled and shook. Her questing hand came away from her superior’s head sticky with blood. One look at the vacant eyes told her Mears-Hadley would be issuing no more commands.

  Stifling the retches that threatened to overwhelm her, Jade clambered to her feet. The bridge spun, and she clung to the back of the command chair for support.

  “Ma’am? Ma’am?”

  Jade didn’t realize at first that she was being addressed. Finally the man, the ensign from Nav, caught her attention. A stream of blood trickled from a gash on his chin and blotted the white front of his uniform.

  “Ensign?” Jade coughed.

  “Orders, ma’am?”

  “Orders?”

  “You’re the senior surviving officer, ma’am.”

  “Th-that’s not possible!” Jade gasped.

  “Look for yourself. I’m getting no response on command commlinks.”

  She forced her eyes to focus through the smoke haze. Captain Mears-Hadley: dead. Commander Bray: dead or unconscious. Lieutenant Kuula on tac—Jade gagged at the sight of the battered body. Lt. Traggert on comm: unmoving. Lt. Klein—sprawled with a shard of metal protruding from his chest.

  Anxiety surged over her and her stomach plummeted with the same sensation as when she’d stepped off the dizzying heights of the Greyling Formation, entrusting herself to the wind and a flightsuit.

  “Orders, ma’am?” the man repeated.

  Jade took a deep breath and swallowed. She was a trained officer, she told herself; she’d better act like one, even if her heart was racing like a herd of panicked Cassel’s wild horses fleeing the jaws of a saberhound. And maybe there was a superior officer alive but unconscious in some other part of the ship. Just the next few minutes…that’s all she had to worry about.

  “Status, mister—Tung, is it?”

  The man leaned to his side to view the tactical board. “Heavy casualties. Stardrive’s out, insystem is minimal. Grav’s holding, but barely. Coil guns gone, lasers inoperational. Hull’s holed on decks 2, 8, 9, and 12, but breaches are contained and compartments sealed.”

  Jade staggered back across the deck to her own station. “Scan’s patchy. Radiation levels are tolerable.”

  Jade looked at the miraculously undamaged main screen. The Gara’nesh ship they had attacked had passed beyond weapons range. The last visuals showed it to be as badly damaged as they were, if not worse. It seemed to be drifting…

  It wasn’t.

  “They’re turning!” sh
e exclaimed, as indicators on the scan monitors flickered. “Particle emissions rising.”

  “Coming to finish us off,” Tung said.

  “Can’t you get us anything?”

  Tung limped to the tactical station, pushed Kuula’s floppy-necked corpse aside, and slid into the seat. “If I reroute, maybe one shot from the lasers, that’s all.”

  “Better than nothing. Do it.”

  “I can’t guarantee targeting. The program’s inactive.”

  “Do it manually.”

  The Gara’nesh ship closed.

  “Hurry up, Tung.”

  “Almost done,” he replied. “There.”

  Jade’s fingers dug into the edge of the scan console. “Coming in range… Fire!”

  The lasers emitted one final, dying burst.

  The Gara’nesh ship wavered, flickered like a mirage, an apparition seen through wavy glass. Jade’s vision protested at the distortion. Stars winked into existence behind the ship. Then it was gone.

  She blinked, rubbed her eyes. “What happened?”

  “I’d guess they went into R-space without a containment field,” Tung said. “Must have had a weird power surge or something.”

  Jade shivered.

  Despite theories, nobody knew what happened to a ship in Roessler-space if it entered without a containment field. In the early days of primitive drive technology and unreliable fields, ships would enter and never return, lost somewhere in limbo, in a fluctuating matrix of energy fields, probabilities, and dimensional interfaces.

  Damaged, too close to a star system for a field to operate, the Gara’nesh hadn’t a chance. Jade didn’t envy them their fate. Some things were worse than death. Being unprotected in Roessler-space was one of them.

  “Where’s the fleet?” Tung asked.

  Jade’s vertigo threatened to return. Her throat was dry as she said, “Fleet? There is no fleet. Warspite has gone. Gallant and Intrepid cleared the system and transitioned. They’re probably half-way home by now. We’re alone. It’s just us and…them.”

  She shook her head and instantly regretted it. Six star frigates destroyed to only two Gara’nesh. If she wasn’t careful, Retribution would make seven. What should she do? What would Captain Mears-Hadley have done?