Sothcide heard the screams on the radio before he finished the full circuit of the planet. Even with his screen completely washed out by the hypersonic pressure wave riding his bow, the signal bounce from the moon revealed the fate of Vehl’s battlegroup with crystal clarity. The battleships who had disguised themselves as derelict drifters were the heaviest hitters of the Gavisari fleet. Sothcide had seen Raksava, the Gavisar Home Defense Fleet’s admiral. Or at least his flagship, the Bulwark, in a state of disrepair. It still towed the induction tether, a banner to all those still stranded in Juna’s orbit. The same gunners aboard the Bulwark poised to intercept Sothcide’s wing of fighters had delivered firing solutions that crippled the Starscream and destroyed several of her escorts. A second wave of Gavisar frigates and destroyers had followed and finished Wing Admiral Vehl before Sothcide could even rejoin the battle. There was barely a battle left to join. The loss of a heavy carrier, two light cruisers, four destroyers, and two artillery cruisers with accompanying light frigates and fighter wings had crippled the forward line and would leave open the shortest route to Pedres.
Now the admiral was leading the detachment around the moon to use its gravity to double back and catch the second battlegroup, even as the remainder of the fleet closed in from the starward side of Juna. Vehl pressed the attack, and was now in a poor position to retreat. Momentum and gravity both pushed against her escape. Gavisar fighters dotted the battlegroup, climbing and using the gravity of Juna for maneuvering.
"Wing Commander, this is Sothcide of the Starscream, we’re coming to cover your retreat."
Arda’s harsh voice clicked over his fighter’s radio as he accelerated to engage the wing of enemy fighters. His gunner offered solutions on a few of them, and wing assignments filtered down through his squadron. "Vehl’s gone. The Starscream is a total loss. We’ve only got a few minutes before the Bulwark catches up."
There was a flash on his side monitor as one of the Gavisar fighters took out the external propulsion couplings on a heavy frigate. Sothcide swiveled his interceptor and put on a burst of acceleration, lining his gunner up for a barrage of laser fire as the larger craft emerged across the bow of the frigate. The lasers sheared off a section of wing, but the ablative coating on the belly of the fuselage absorbed most of the weapon’s energy. Tough ships, they could take a lot of punishment. Even with Sothcide’s pilots among them, the Homeworld Defense Fleet’s fighters were focused on the engines and propulsion components of Arda’s ships, to the exclusion of the enemy fighters or even the exposed anti-fighter defenses that hammered away at the HDF’s ships.
Tough as they were, the Gavisar fleet was losing fighters at an alarming rate. But if they held Arda’s battlegroup long enough for Raksava to swing back around, then the tradeoff of a few fighters for a battlegroup’s worth of frigates and light cruisers would be incredible for the invasion fleet. Not to mention the Vitacuus, and two of the Maeyar’s experienced wing commanders in the span of a few minutes.
Arda’s battlegroup boasted an impressive sixteen warships, with half again as many frigates. If she died here at Juna with the majority of her strength, Pedres would not hold. Her survival was paramount. But he could not see a way for her to escape Juna.
A light on his communications panel got his attention, the channel he assigned to the Privateer frequency winked at him, and having received the codec from Victoria, the familiar voice of Human Aesop filled his cockpit as he switched the channel to active. He listened as he climbed out of Juna’s gravity for another attack run on a fighter harassing the Vitacuus.
"Attention all Maeyar forces, communication may be compromised, reply on encrypted frequency only, Gavisari Fleet is hiding among civilian derelicts," it said.
Regrettably late, unfortunately. Warnings blared in his cockpit as an indirect Gavisar laser scored a sizzling white cut across his portside ablative plating. A missile took the heavy fighter before he could finish the job on Sothcide. His eye scanned the frequency modulator, the message was coming from closer to the planet, one of the tethered ships passing below. The signal quickly faded as the orbit carried the humans away from the battle and the ships falling into the thick atmosphere of Juna.
What followed in its absence was a fleet-wide broadcast from Wing Commander Arda.
"All craft, dive dive, make best speed for Juna low orbit, Break line-of-sight in the storms and maintain close proximity. Repeat, all craft dive."
Sothcide relayed the orders to his own squadron, "All craft, disengage and dive. Break break break, make for the cloud tops, make altitude sixty thousand meters and maintain spacing. Repeat, Wing Six is diving."
One by one the engines flared to life on the Maeyar ships still able to move under their own power. The First Flight, Kel Vehru, and the missile boat Longbow were left to drift. There was nothing that could save them from the brunt of Gavisar’s next strike. Noses spun toward Juna and the warships began to push forward directly into the planet’s welcoming gravity. The pressure and heat of the atmosphere began to mount, stressing the limits of the sleek Maeyar vessels. Several Gavisar fighters with more bravery than brains attempted to follow, but without the Maeyar dampeners they were quickly torn apart. Even equipped with the systems, Sothcide’s skull rattled inside his helmet, eye blurred as the cockpit warmed from the intense pressure of the mounting atmosphere.
"Battlegroup Vitacuus, brace for broadside," Arda ordered over the fleet-wide channel.
On the side and rear viewscreens Sothcide could see the massive spearheads of Arda’s battlegroup thrusting through the cover of the rolling anvil tops of the thunderclouds below, massive pressure waves building around the ships and fighting against their intrusion into atmosphere. The light cruiser, Maeyis Canal, began shedding components, and finally erupted into a burning ball of plasma before the Gavisar fired a shot.
The battlegroup was far beyond the range of the fighter detachment, but the Gavisar cruisers and destroyers suffered no such handicap, and as the ships passed above, invisible through the plumes of burning gasses in his rear monitor, their fire began to lance down from thousands of kilometers away. Dulled and refracted by the atmosphere of Juna, the scattered laser fire’s deadliness had been blunted, but two more frigates vented plasma and erupted, and the main engines on a destroyer near the Vitacuus winked out. The destroyer began to twist and spin, flinging hull fragments far and wide. The propulsion and guidance failure pointed to an emergency scram of the main reactor, depended upon also by that class of ship’s artificial gravity generator and inertial dampeners. Sothcide harbored no doubt that the G-forces of the spin had already crushed out the life of all hands aboard against the bulkheads. Sothcide looked away, and the opposite side of his cockpit was lit by the flash of the destroyer’s conflagration.
Ahead and below, Juna’s lightning reached up to embrace them, blinding flashes seeking a way inside. Sothcide pushed his interceptor to the breaking point. Now encased in atmosphere, his ship howled as though caught in the worst the northern storms could throw at him, screaming and tearing at the stubby wings of the barely-aerodynamic interceptor. At two hundred thousand meters the proximity alarm began the blare in his ear, and he pulled up on the controls. Still plummeting at hypersonic speeds, even Maeyar inertial dampeners couldn’t keep the blood in his head and the dark hexagonal cells at the corners of his eye became visible as he neared unconsciousness. How many of his wing mates would succumb and miss the maneuver?
All excess power from his meager reactor was being pumped into the overheated anti-gravity system to slow their fall, and Sothcide prayed there were no mountains scraping the edge of the sky below. The thick gray and red blanket carved by jetstreams was becoming more and more detailed in his monitors.
Then the clouds swallowed him.
"Avery, get me a fucking read on that thing," ordered Victoria.
Hanging in space like a tear in some gaudy pinstripe suit was what could only be described as a look at the blue-black bloomers of the universe. The foundation of horizon space research rested on the theory that the universal truths of gravity and light speed were different on the other side. Therefore, the two could not coexist, but could be breached for a time in areas of extreme space-time distortions caused by large amounts of mass, like a star, and by using large amounts of energy and an exotic matter catalyst, like the Condor’s micro thorium reactor. But the amount of mass and the amount of energy were largely mathematical limitations, as evidenced by the Malagath’s incredible dominion driven by the range of their horizon drives and particle cannons.
The problem of coexistence had evidently been solved by someone else, because even without gravitic sensor technology Victoria knew the anomaly was the cause of their early exit from horizon space just as it was the reason for the utter lack of Gavisar’s many oceans. These blue-black tendrils of horizon space licking from the wound in the planet’s orbital path chased an entire civilization from their home planet and into the territory of the Maeyar.
Or left them to die in their tunnels with no water or air.
"It’s like there’s nothing there, Vick. Electromagnetic, radio, all quiet. Electro-optical is getting the same artifacting interference consistent with horizon space travel, but unless someone looks out the front airlock I have no idea what it actually looks like. Radiological is off the charts with horizon radiation and spectral is showing gas and water crystals being sucked into that thing at thousands of cubic tons per second."
"Carillo, warm up the rails."
Someone whispered something to the Malagath duchess and she disappeared from Victoria’s screens. Instants later the imperial vessel triggered an active sensor pulse that briefly washed out the monitors as the energy passed over and through the composite hull of the Condor. Warnings flashed across not only her command repeaters, but her retinal implants and the main viewscreen.
"Conn sensors, active return on the Malagath sounding, two contacts bearing one two eight and one three seven, both down six on the negative azimuth near the anomaly. Silhouette suggests—Captain, it’s the Kossovoldt!"
Huian spoke up from her pilot’s station. "Ma’am, the duchess is moving to engage," she said. She was pointing to the viewscreen where the imperial ship’s engines had flared to life, pushing toward the distant specks which her fire control team had already labeled as the primary and secondary.
"Follow her in, Huian."
Huian hesitated at the controls.
"We can’t escape them, Huian. Our only chance is supporting Duchess Tora. Fuck if I want to take up arms against the Kossovoldt," said Victoria. Though there was little enough the Condor could do. Of the Big Three, the least was known about the Kossovoldt, even how their language became seeded across so many worlds. All Victoria knew was what she could see, that the two ships dwarfed the largest heavy cruisers of the lesser empires, that their profiles were jagged, wicked things, and that they were shunting forward a few hundred miles at a time as the Malagath bathed them with active targeting sensors.
Warnings beeped on Victoria’s screen as the Duchess began discharging particle projectors and laser banks at the two ships. Only the Malagath and the Dirregaunt could stand in the same arena as the Kossovoldt, but she’d never been near one of the titanic battles that had left the remains of fleets scattered across so many systems. Nor did she want to be.
"Huian, drop us down at twenty degrees and line up the rails. We don’t want to get caught in whatever the Kosso throw back at the duchess. Split the bearing on her active sensors so Carillo can get a better ranging solution."
Something on the Malagath starboard side exploded in a shower of sparks and venting atmo. Though no weapons alerts had triggered, another spike in that horizon transference radiation washed over the Condor.
"Avery!" she shouted.
"I know, Vick! Whatever they’re hitting the Imperial with, it’s something we can’t track!"
In the distance, Malagath weaponry struck home on one of the Kossovoldt ships, and it began to shunt away, as if the universe was a pond and the ship was a rock skipping across it. The other pressed forward and struck again at the Malagath, scoring close enough that the flash briefly whited out the forward sensors. Thermal on the Malagath vessel began to escalate without explanation, radiation levels on the hull rising in lock-step with the surface temperature. At their range it would take the railgun rounds over a minute to reach the Kossovoldt’s position, their missiles even longer. With the Kossovoldt hulks jumping around like spastic space monkeys, her tactical team would never be able to lock down a solution that would penetrate their point defense, let alone land. Hell, even if it landed, it was a coin toss whether the Kossovoldt would even notice.
The sheer arms race between the Big Three had become a matter of attrition and armor as titans tossed enough directed energy at each other to level cities. Victoria had never been present for a true battle between such forces, and witnessing removed any ambition to help the Malagath. Even her nuclear-tipped missiles weren’t a match for any of the six particle lancers the Duchess was bringing to bear.
"Huian, turn us around."
There was no hesitation this time. The engines groaned as Huian Wong pulled into a high-g turn more appropriate to a fighter than a Privateer sloop. With a gesture Victoria kept the main screen focused on the battle behind the Condor, confused as the range indications continued to drop.
"Huian, increase thrust."
"I am, ma’am, antigravity dampeners are at maximum load, any more acceleration and we’ll be feeling the flight forces."
The ranging solution to Duchess Tora’s imperial star runner began to decrease by dozens of meters per second, then hundreds. Huian hadn’t been wrong about the dampeners being pushed to their limits. Her command consoles were vibrating under her hands even as the deck rumbled beneath her feet. They hadn’t been accelerating hard enough to be fighting this much to reverse it. Unless . . . .
"Conn sensors. Massive power spike on the Imperial, heat building on the bow like crazy."
"Shit! Davis, cut down the engine, run up those dampeners with as much juice as you can give them," said Victoria. She thumbed the main circuit, "All hands brace, we’re in for a hell of a bumpy ride."
The range was ticking down more than six kilometers per second now, the Condor was hurtling down range almost as fast as the railgun slugs would have, and accelerating backwards while Victoria’s teeth tried to rattle out of her skull. What little light reached the dark side of the planet began to twist and bend as the immense mass at the bow of Duchess Tora’s ship took shape. For a moment the star runner seemed to warp itself as if stretched along the edge of a soap bubble, then it vanished, leaving the Condor hurtling directly toward the anomaly and the two Kossovoldt hulks at a velocity she couldn’t hope to control, let alone reverse. The final ignition of the Duchess’ emergency engine had sent the Condor into an erratic tumble, and it was all Huian could do to keep the ship from being pulled apart at the seams from the sheer force of the singularity the Malagath had forced into existence for a fraction of a second. She’d seen that force rip the front third off a Dirregaunt dreadnaught, and now it was throwing them at the tear in horizon space, if the antigravity generators didn’t burn out first.
But the Kossovoldt didn’t seem content to wait for her to come to them. Off the sunward side of the Condor there was nothing but the night-darkened landscape of Gavisar, until the visual sensors on that side were filled with the mass of a Kossovoldt hulk, a jagged wedge-shaped body with faceted protrusions snaking into a metal and composite superstructure. The entire ship seemed lit from within by a suffuse red glow, looking less like the metal she knew it to be and more like a living thing. Her command repeater lit up with a positive firing solution for the railguns.
"Hold fucking fire!" she almost screamed. No human had ever come this close to a Kossovoldt ship and lived to tell the tale.
Might still be true after today, she thought. A sobering thought for Victoria, and she very much wished she was not sober for this. That last bottle of scotch stashed in the outboards of the wheelhouse wasn’t doing her much good now. The red glow intensified, silhouetting the Kossovoldt hulk against the planet, and then focused into a beam that washed out the Condor’s sensors with a deep crimson. It came from no apparent emitter on the hull of the ship
"Huian, get us level," Victoria heard herself say, but her own voice sounded far-off and muffled as a whine built up within the hull of the ship. Huian Wong seemed to be struggling with her control inputs. She was claiming something, that she’d been locked out of access to the ship’s maneuvering but Victoria had stopped paying attention. Ahead on the main viewscreen, the sensor artifacting caused by the horizon space tear loomed closer and closer. That great blue-black maw opened above Gavisar dominated the night sky now. It must have been five, no, ten thousand kilometers across. Big enough to swallow her itty bitty Condor. Hell, big enough to swallow a whole damn planet.
Or spit one out.
Victoria stepped down from the conn, approaching the main viewscreen as the Kosso hulk drew closer. It was matching the momentum of the Condor perfectly, and it almost seemed as though she could see shapes moving beneath the metal surface, as if the hull was a sheet of thick ice. She walked past the empty XO’s chair and the pilot’s bench, approaching the flickering screen. She was oddly calm, she thought. The Malagath resigned them to death as soon as they engaged that emergency engine that sucked the Condor into the anomaly. Even at full acceleration she couldn’t have overcome the momentum that instants-long singularity demanded of her ship.
Why were they just watching her sail into it? Not worth whatever space-boiling weapon they’d unleashed on the Malagath? And just what had that been anyway? Victoria couldn’t venture. Despite having seeded the language used across the known galaxy across countless fledgling worlds, humanity knew next to nothing about the Kossovoldt. And they weren’t alone in their ignorance. All anyone knew was that they zealously guarded the Sagittarius arm from the Dirregaunt Praetory and the Malagath Empire, warring with them across the core-side of the Orion Spur. They never claimed worlds, never interacted with the lesser empires beyond outright destruction, and never were seen this deep in the Orion Spur. The galactic drain valve was practically a stone’s throw from Earth.
And now they studied Victoria as her Privateer ship tumbled into the waiting teeth of the horizon space tear, following her across the event horizon into the nebulous tangles of horizon space. Victoria watched the red light of the Kossovoldt spotlight intensify, and then every light on the conn blew out at once, leaving her in darkness.
No wait, thought Victoria, It’s just me.
The Bulwark had been built to repel and defend, making safe the skies of Gavisar from any who would claim her. Now it served as vanguard to the Exodus fleet and the Last Children of Gavisar, and would guide the children back to their new home. Originally the design had lacked an interstellar engine, as a symbolic gesture the vessel’s architects had placed a shrine in its place. Now it held a subspace penetrator, and the installation had finished only days before the Gods finally returned to take back what had been gifted so long ago.
Admiral Raksava had fought at first, in an effort to afford the children of Gavisar more time to escape the surface. Some might have called it vain, others simply blasphemous. The Homeworld Defense Fleet had been positioned as soon as the new gravitational displacement sensors aboard the Bulwark had detected the foretold tear forming above the night sky. And for a time it worked, until the Kossovoldt took notice and began to boil the metal from his captains’ hulls. It took only hours to dismantle the majority of the fleet and drain the seas and skies of Gavisar, leaving billions dead or dying.
He had left Gavisar before, of course. But never here, never to Pedres. Pedres had been his people’s temptation to stray. Now he rested upon his knuckles, forelegs wrapped around protruding coils of cabling that ran across the viewscreen. He watched, as below him the storms of Juna swallowed up the Maeyar survivors. The human’s aid had been invaluable in spotting their maneuvering and timing the counter-attack that had crushed Eru Vehl and her spoiled, faithless crew. The lightning that stretched up into the vacuum of space caused interference on his screen, so he turned away from it to find his personal chaplain, Jessad, floating nearby.
"Admiral, the human has initiated contact once more. He wishes to know our next move."
"Have the signal routed here."
"Yes Admiral. Is there anything else?"
Raksava paused. On the screen, gentle flashes represented his fighters destroying the last of the Maeyar flanking fleet above Juna, though leaving the remainder at his back could seriously jeopardize the noncombatant ships orbiting the planet. Those noncombatants and their broods were the future of the Gavisar, if they could pass this final trial.
He considered, briefly.
"Why did the Kossovoldt give us Gavisar only to later reclaim it?"
Jessad was silent for a moment. "A chaplain offers spiritual guidance, admiral, not insight into the mind of the divine. I cannot presume to know the minds of the Kossovoldt."
"Then guide me."
"The Kossovoldt have returned as they promised in ancient times. Their gift to us was not Gavisar, but the written and spoken word, and with it the opportunity to forge our destiny in exchange for stewardship over the planet. So that we would no longer need Gavisar."
"And are we ready to forge our own destiny?" asked Raksava.
"That will depend on your leadership, Admiral," said Jessad, and with that he passed through the iris hatch, leaving Raksava alone with the silent display, until it was replaced with the image of the Human captain, Jones. It was an ugly little thing, long narrow face with hair on one half, and more surrounding a thin-slit mouth. Humans possessed the bifold symmetry favored so often by spacefarers.
"I must commend you, Human Jones. Your timing was exquisite, truly an ambush worthy of those who bested the Dirregaunt. Now the path to Pedres lay open and the scales swing in our favor."
The human called Jones showed Raksava the top of his furry head. "Thank you, Admiral. It is my sincerest hope that this victory signifies the beginning of a friendship between our people."
"This war is not over yet. The greatest challenge lies ahead, and with the Vitacuus behind us Arda will be nipping at our backsides. Pursuing her on the surface without the Bulwark’s gravitic sensors is suicide, and if she is left to threaten the brood ships any siege of Pedres will prove a pyrrhic victory."
The human considered for a moment. "If I may, leave me a detachment of ten ships. Your vessels may not be able to detect and outmaneuver the Maeyar in Juna’s storms but the Howard Phillips can be your eyes and ears. I can get close enough to transmit ranging information and navigation adjustments."
The humans must be desperate for friends indeed if they were willing to brave the thunder of Juna. "You will be nearly blind. It will be like fighting underwater."
Jones just smiled, an expression involving the corners of his mouth exposing tiny white teeth and the reddish tissue that made up the insides of humans. The expression was meant to convey warmth, but it held nothing of the sort.
"Very well," said Raksava, "You will have your spacecraft. Destroy Arda on the surface or force her out of hiding and destroy her in space."
"It looks like the majority of the fleet is moving out, they’re headed to Pedres. We counted eight warships heading down on a shallow approach to the northern hemisphere, but Raksava’s transmission promised ten so be on the lookout. That was some stunt you pulled with the dive. It will take them a while to follow you."
Aesop listened as the scratchy reply came over the communication array. Sothcide had to climb dangerously clear of the storms to make their broadcasts. He risked detection, but Aesop had access to the Gavisari communication network, and hopefully soon limited sensor operation as well depending on how he routed power.
"Heavy losses in the planetary dive, two ships never checked in."
Sothcide didn’t recognize the voice making the report. Down four ships in total then. That put them at or below force parity with the detachment Jones was leading, but he’d have to find them first. Down there the murky black of electrical storm clouds would offer no visibility and practically blind any advanced sensors outside a few thousand kilometers. Jones wouldn’t be as hampered as the Gavisari, he could navigate the treacherous peaks and canyons with lidar that would keep him above obstructions and able to hunt the Maeyar. He’d been a blue-water navy submarine officer before being accepted into the Union Earth Privateer program. He experienced tracking and outmaneuvering the quietest Chinese ships in the world through hundreds of miles of open ocean. This was his calling, and it appeared that he could no longer remain in a recon role. This is what Red Calhoun had warned Aesop about. Jones was taking up arms directly against the Maeyar in a visible show of support for the invasion fleet, and whatever happened, Aesop couldn’t reveal information that would put another Privateer ship at risk, even one at odds with the goals of the old lady. But he could still follow orders to the best of his ability.
"You’re outgunned, but they’re still reporting their communications from the ionosphere through a compromised network. I can help you stay ahead of them, but without sensors we’re limited to optics."
"Do as you can, but we cannot afford to sit idle. Wing Commander Arda has positioned us to meet their strikes. I must go, human Aesop. The clouds here are thinning, and my risk of detection increases. I will relay your words. Good luck, and I hope your captain returns soon."
Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be the first time the old lady had left marines on station when the situation demanded it. "Copy Sothcide, see you on the next pass," he said. Aesop Cohen cut the transmission, returning the recording equipment to the general Gavisari bands. When he turned away from the dish he found Singh waiting for him, floating halfway through the hatch down to the sensor compartment.
"We have a problem, Sarge."
Singh’s North Indian accent carried a harder edge than usual. Aesop had been about to have her switch the power bus back over to the sensors so he could continue working on them, but that could wait. Without further explanation, the marine swung back through the hatch and Aesop pushed himself after her. In the deck below he found Vega, hard connected to Maggie Chambers’ vacuum suit via a fiber optic line. His black faceplate lifted up as Aesop drifted into the room.
"Her arm showing sepsis symptoms?"
"Her arm’s fine. She lied, and it’s real bad, Cohen. Something punctured her suit when you guys hit the hull, and it self-sealed but whatever it was tore a damn hole through Mags. That’s why she been self-dosing with painkillers, but now she’s almost out. And the bleeding never fully stopped."
"How bad’s the bleeding?"
Vega put his hand on Maggie’s shoulder, as much in admonishment as compassion from the way he squeezed the composite plating. "Her back teeth are floating," he said.
"And of course she didn’t see fit to tell us. Didn’t want to be a bother, eh Chambers? Christ, girl, you could have died."
Maggie shrugged silently inside her suit, which quickly turned into a spasm. Aesop shook his head. "Vega, could you patch her up?"
"Shit Cohen, I don’t know. I don’t even know what’s in her. Maybe if I got a look, and maybe if I had my field-dress kit or a battle surgery kit, but you can’t swing sutures in a vacuum. She needs atmo."
"I know," said Aesop, the palm of his hand pressed against the translucent faceplate of his helmet. "She’s lucky to be alive at all, but damn if I’m losing her just because she was too stubborn to admit she got hurt. I’ll think of something."
Vega squeezed her shoulder again as Maggie Chambers twitched in pain. Whatever she was feeling in that suit must have been hell if she’d been pumping herself full of painkillers. "Better think quick."