Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Reprisal Read online

  She had been busy in her time here, of course.

  Like any good subversive type, she had amassed several caches of weapons, money, and equipment scattered all over the greater Harkor area.

  She was also now running four Callidorian agents on the planet. While the Primans were very cautious and not prone to security leaks, they were forcing the Callidorians to work for them as well to cover the more noncritical aspects of their occupation. She had subverted them by various means- bribery took care of one, posing as a Talaran spy who wanted information on the Primans worked on another.

  The third she ran as a double blackmail, and was actually at the data entry job where she worked. They had low level access to supply routes that the Primans were running through the planet. Halley had arranged a situation in which she and her supervisor were supposedly being blackmailed by another party who would reveal some security indiscretions on their part that had resulted in some of their data being stolen. Halley had, of course, stolen the data in the first place. But her boss thought Halley and she were both under this person’s thumb, and any thoughts by her boss on spoiling the arrangement were shared with Halley. So far Halley had managed to convince her boss that the information the blackmailer was demanding was unimportant and easier to deal with than getting fired and charged with a crime by their company.

  The fourth was a man who had pursued her at this very bar a while back. She had deflected him carefully, not wanting the attention. Later, though, she had done some research on him and discovered that he was a middle manager at a defense contractor that the Primans were using to repair ships at an orbiting drydock. He was also married. So she had found him, gone on a date, let him grope her a bit, then presented him with the video evidence of his transgressions. That had gotten her computer access to the company’s database, and by extension, once she was in the network, data on Priman fleet movements and battle damage assessments.

  Through all of these contacts, she had pieced together a lot about the Priman’s activities. Only after the communications blackout, however, did she really begin to unearth information she had to risk getting out. She had also come across bits and pieces of data that seemed to suggest some sort of weapon being developed in secret that would have disastrous consequences for the entire galaxy, if what the Primans said about their history was right. That was her mission now- find out what this mystery weapon was.

  Loren stood stone still in the dark hallway, SSK raised ahead of him in a relaxed stance. The blaster was set to deliver laser bolts, since he was aboard the ship and didn’t want to risk the solid projectile armor-piercers unless he had no choice. The ship was quiet, and illumination was down to emergency lighting only. He advanced to the next bulkhead quietly, taking partial cover behind the framing that reinforced the corridor intersection.

  Then he saw them- three Primans rounding the corner just as cautiously as he had. He stayed under cover, not making any sudden movements that they would detect. He was sweating just a bit, and through all the stress and confusion, he realized he was in the zone. He was ready and couldn’t wait to fire. He heard everything more clearly, saw where he would shoot his targets. Finally, two of them turned their backs to him to cover their rear as they crept down his hallway. He waited until the last second, when every fiber in him screamed to jump out and open fire. So he did.

  He stepped halfway out from behind the frame, brought his SSK up, and, knowing he had to put down the first one as quickly as possible, fired one shot to the head of the lead Priman before the other soldier could do more than issue a surprised “Ugh.” With a split second head start on the other two, he aimed for center mass and triggered off double taps center mass on both of them. He started a brisk walk towards them, covering them with his weapon. He saw that one of the second two was still moving, and on the guess that they might have been wearing body armor geared towards the defense of energy weapons, made a decision. As he stepped up to them he put one round into each of their heads, removing them from the picture. He crouched down to check for a pulse with one hand while covering the corridor with the handgun, but they were dead.

  “You frighten me, sir.” Came a voice from behind him. “Range is safe, secure weapon, Captain.”

  Loren stood up, engaged the safety, and holstered his SSK. The adrenaline was already leaving him, and he secretly wished he could run the exercise one more time.

  The lights in the corridor came back to full to reveal the adaptive real life simulator portion of the Avenger’s firing range. Through lightweight panels that stored in the deck and ceiling and some basic holoprojection, the range could mimic a number of real world environments. The targets were lifelike, limited AI machines made of a gel-like substance designed to mimic living flesh, and were as close to free-roaming artificial intelligence as most civilizations would allow. He had just been running a ‘repel boarders’ simulation.

  Commander Web Exeter stepped around from behind the blastproof glass and onto the range to join his commanding officer.

  “Well, how did I do?” Asked Loren.

  “You’re a one man war machine, sir. Halley will probably invite you to join up with us when she recruits me.” Web smirked, and Loren knew he was serious about getting together with Halley again. He hoped he wasn’t as serious about the leaving aviation part, though.

  “You had good advance, you picked a good cover, and you were patient. All that practice on the range is showing off; your reaction times are a lot faster than when you qualified last time around. I realize that plugging them in the head was good tactics, but you seemed to enjoy it a little much.” Web meant that last part only half-jokingly. Since the fall of Toral, Loren’s homeworld and the place where his wife was when the planet was captured, Loren had changed, and everyone could tell. He wasn’t sleeping as much, and while most joked that it was simply so he could spend more time thinking about killing Primans, Web saw the signs that Loren was in danger of wanting to take it too far.

  Avenger had been involved in almost a dozen major engagements since the start of the war, from the First and Second Battles of the Golan Narrows, to the Battle of Delos, and more that were identified only by impersonal grid coordinates on the galactic map. The ship had gotten more beat up before she had finally earned herself a spot in drydock, and the crew was worn out. Everyone except Loren. He had two dozen Priman kill silhouettes stenciled on his Talon’s fuselage, more than anyone in the squadron, and was hungry for more. He flew more combat missions than a CAG needed to, and was always on the hunt to take out another. Web was concerned it was bordering on obsession, but what do you say to a man whose wife is being held captive by your enemy? He could sympathize by thinking about Halley stranded on Callidor, and knew if Loren told him to cool it he would probably react badly.

  So Web had agreed to spend some one on one time drilling Loren in handgun and close combat against the chance they ever met any on the ground again like they had on Callidor. It kept his mind from wandering, Web hoped. In any case, Web had confided in Cory about his concerns for Loren, and she had promised to talk to him about it after this afternoon’s flight simulator sessions.

  Captain Sirian Elco sat in his quarters at his desk. Once a clean and uncluttered space, his desk, and quarters in general, were slowly descending into complete disarray. So this is entropy, he thought to himself as he surveyed the mess of data cards, readers, documents, clothes, dishes, and even spare parts. Until two months ago when Avenger had left drydock after major repairs, the whole ship had been a mess. He had volunteered to use part of his living quarters as spare parts storage after the primary machine shop was destroyed in a skirmish shortly before the refit. He meant to clean it up, but there was always something else to do.

  One of his tasks was about to start, and that was the daily rantings of Senator Zek Dennix. He had been making transmissions from Delos for months now, reminding the citizens of the Confederation of Systems that he was the surviving voice of government. Elco would have loved to watch the
Torino bombard the Senator’s location with her big guns, but watching his broadcasts was mandated by the admiralty, if for no other reason than to remind them that they technically served the civilian leadership. Since almost all of that leadership were prisoners of the Primans, Senator Dennix claimed the position of leader of Confed. It was amusing, to say the least, and at least the down time gave him the opportunity to eat.

  He sat down with a tray full of freshly cooked food, giving thanks again that the galleys were back in action. After living for two months on prepackaged rations and instant meals, the whole ship’s morale was noticeably higher.

  He activated his primary holoprojector, keyed in the frequency Dennix broadcast on, and began the wait.

  Not long after, the screen flickered, then a clear picture sprang into existence on top of the projection plate on his desk. It was Senator Dennix, dressed well in a suit and tie, with his aide Ples Damar standing behind him. He stood behind a gleaming metal podium in what appeared to be a well furnished office of some sort. It was common knowledge of course that the Senator was in hiding, but he apparently had scrounged well enough to put together a nice broadcast studio. The large Confederation Navy crest, a stylized galactic disc over a shield in gleaming stainless steel and black nickel, was fixed to the wall behind him along with the Confederation flag. The Confed Navy crest is new, Elco thought. Nice touch.

  “Citizens of the Confederation of Systems,” Dennix began, not looking at any notes and not showing the eye movements associated with an on screen script prompter. He was either winging it or had memorized the whole thing. “My broadcast today must be shorter than usual, as our scramblers are not fully operational after our move. We had to relocate yesterday amid rumors that anti-Confederation insurgent forces were planning an attack on us. It saddens me to think that our own citizens would attack us, whether out of fear, a misguided attempt to appease the Primans, or whatever other motivation could drive such behavior. I accept this as the price of being the lone voice of Confed government, of freedom here on Delos.

  “Today you might notice the Confederation Navy crest affixed to the wall behind me. I display this symbol with pride for our armed forces, as they fight on under their last executive order before our Senate was captured and detained by the Primans. They have fought bravely and sacrificed much in the last half year, and we should all be grateful to them.

  “I do, however, pose a question to the people of the Confederation. What are the objectives of our Armed Forces right now? Who is giving them their orders? Our military follows the orders of the general populace through their elected leaders. I point out, sadly, that there are precious few civilian leaders left. In that vein, I ask, is the military in control of running the Confederation? Who determines policy? I call for the establishment of a means to communicate with myself and my advisors, so that proper civilian leadership can be restored to the Confederation. With that leadership, we can determine the course of this conflict.”

  Uh oh, Elco thought. That was going to cause some debate, he knew. He had discussed the same thing with his fellow and superior officers at length. None proclaimed to want to run a military dictatorship, but none could figure out how to make policy, either. Did the Navy have its’ senior liaison officers to the civilian leadership simply make the decisions? Should they hold an election? Nobody knew, and everyone hoped the issue would stay under the radar as long as possible.

  “There are those planets under Priman rule that have come to embrace them as benefactors, benevolent beings not to be fought, but welcomed as the architects of their civilizations. I myself am not yet convinced of their claims to have altered the course of most civilizations in our part of galaxy, but I must ask myself, is there a better way than fighting to the death? Perhaps there can be a truce, or alliance. Without someone to ask them, nobody will know. And unless someone with the full authority of our government and military behind them makes this overture, it will be meaningless. So I leave you with these thoughts today. Whether you believe the Primans are the inspiration for your religion, the ones who allowed your species to flourish and reach the stars, or the ones who so swiftly and effectively took control over an ever-growing swath of this part of the galaxy, you should ask yourself: shouldn’t we be trying to talk with them?”

  The camera stayed fixed on his sincere face for a few more seconds, then he nodded farewell and the image de-rezzed and vanished.

  Sectors away from Avenger, on the fringes of what had once been Enkarran space, floated the Union and two other cruisers of her type, the Imminent and Horizon. If the Confeds thought they had it bad, the Enkarrans were putting on a clinic on post-invasion chaos. After the Primans had nullified their treaty with the Enkarran Empire, they had captured the Enkarran military and civilian leadership much as they had done with Confed and the Talarans. They hadn’t stopped there, however. They had also taken shipyards, production centers, even commercial space stations and spacelanes. With each world now isolated from the rest of their empire, individual planets tried to take care of themselves. They bartered and rationed, traded and issued IOUs to any party who would deal with them, which were extremely few after their part in the Priman invasion.

  With their infrastructure in disarray, the remnants of the Enkarran military were left to fend for themselves. Many of their number had attempted attacks on Priman forces, to limited success. Captain Krent had been among that number, but after several costly defeats in head to head fighting, he had taken what forces wanted to join him and launched a guerilla campaign. He had been marginally successful these past few months, but sometimes he wondered what the point of it was. It was hard to convince his crew to keep fighting, risking their lives, and dying, when he couldn’t explain what the point was either. They weren’t being paid, were living on meager rations, and had to avoid Confed and Priman forces alike. There were those that favored abandoning their ships and finding an obscure colony world to lie low on, but he wouldn’t have any of it, and had offered a shuttle and free passage to those that showed interest. Only a few took him up on it, and he had let them go on their way, if for no other reason than to show his crew that they did have a say in their own future. In any case, having that kind of feeling aboard a ship would become a cancer that would rapidly destroy his force from within, and was worth the cost of losing a shuttle or two.

  That had kept up the morale of his little task force, but he knew he’d have to keep producing or once again he’d have to worry about if he’d even have the crew to fight another day.

  The three Enkarran ships were stopped dead, face to face with a large luxury liner that was easily as big as one of those cursed Sabre class carriers of Confed’s. Unlike the drab military carrier, this ship was garish, with multicolored running lights, observation towers, huge bubble-windowed observation floors, several hangar bays that were currently filled to capacity with every manner of high end private transportation, and even a respectable complement of ship-to-ship weaponry. It was a private condo ship, akin to a cruise liner except that the richly appointed units inside were sold to private owners. These owners could come and go as they pleased, using the liner as a home away from home, vacation getaway, etc. Normally these ships would take a scenic track around the home sectors of the occupants, stopping at various ports along the way. After the Priman invasion, however, this ship and those like her had made a habit of keeping just a few light years behind the front lines, always ready to spirit those inside out of harm’s way.

  After a hesitant initial meeting arranged by a fixer from Delos who called himself Garrett, Krent had found that the luxury ships were willing to trade goods with the Enkarrans if it suited them. It didn’t always work out, but most times it was worth the meeting. Not being well versed in the art of the covert ops trade, it had taken officers from all three of his ships a month to find someone who could introduce Krent to one of these ‘Fixers’, as they were called. It had gone well, but he quickly decided he didn’t like the man or his profession. Either wa
y, the arrangement seemed to be working, as it was today.

  The Union was currently picking up several weeks’ worth of foodstuffs, though it had cost them a few of their precious spare turbolaser compression chambers. He still didn’t know if it was the right trade, but it was all that was offered, and they needed the food. Pondering this, Krent left his post on the bridge to head down to Engineering and talk to his people there. The meets were generally conducted by the Executive Officers of both ships, and after a few times it had become enough of a routine that he dare not ask to change it now by getting involved or otherwise disturbing the process.

  Commander Merritt Elder stood outside the hatch of the Warbird’s commanding officer, Captain Corinne Sosus. While Avenger had been in drydock, they’d had plenty of time to be together. Now, back on the line and running combat watches, they were back to the old routine of snatching moments together whenever they could. He’d come back early from a patrol after Avenger and Task Force 96 had received orders to change positions, and after doing a hasty post-flight had made tracks down to Cory’s quarters. Though he had the access code to the door, military decorum dictated he announce himself and request permission, especially in case any of her pilots happened to pass by.

  He tapped the ‘call’ button and waited for a reply.

  “Yes?” came the sweet sound of Cory’s voice through the speaker.

  “It’s Commander Elder,” he replied. He so much wanted to say something about being there to repair her living room table or another suitably suggestive line, but that internal filter of his was finally working on a regular basis. He supposed he just didn’t want to get her in trouble should someone walk by.

  “Come in.”

  He entered his access code and walked past the kitchenette into the small living area.