Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

Until they were in a fight, in his experience, it was better to keep the crew involved with their commanding officer. Asking them for information ensured that they were in the moment as well and not being lulled off to some dreamland of distractions.

Once the blasters started lasing, then he’d lean on the projection systems, but not until then.

“Beth”—he leaned to port, where Jessup was standing—“strike coordinates?”

“Entered, checked, and confirmed,” she answered professionally, “just as you ordered, captain. We can end this before anyone even knows we’re there.”

“Don’t get too confident, Bethany,” he chided lightly. “They still have a full regiment of Cadre down there. We have to end the fight before they know what happened, or we’ll be cut to ribbons.”

She nodded, knowing that it was the simple truth. The Imperial Cadre were a fighting force unmatched in the empire, lavished with the highest levels of training and equipment and culled from bloodlines that could fully interact with projection systems and those damned Armati.

“Are you certain you can contain them afterward?” she asked softly, a hint of concern in her voice.

Corian nodded. “The Cadre can’t act … won’t act without direct orders from the emperor. It’s not only in the charter; it’s the oath they swore. If the general orders them into action against that oath, he’ll have a civil war on his hands.”

She nodded uncertainly but didn’t question him.

“No, love,” he went on, drawing a smile from her, “we’re on a high-risk operation, but have faith in my plan. There is a true victory condition here, not the illusionary ones we’ve been fighting for over the past few years.”

“I have faith, captain.”

“Good,” he said, glancing aside at a bit of data floating near the corner of his eye. “We’re approaching the launch window. Speed?”

“Almost twenty times sound, captain,” the man standing the helm called out automatically. “Launch velocity will be reached on schedule.”

“Stand by, weapons!”

“Launchers standing by.”

“Locks loose! Fire as she bears!” Corian ordered.

The Caleb Bar sailed on for a moment, seemingly without response to the order, and then a shudder ran through the ship as they reached the first launch point.

“First rack away, captain. Trajectory looks good—impact in three minutes.”

Corian leaned back in his chair and closed his one good eye. “And so history marches on. The emperor is dead …”

Jessup placed a hand on his shoulder, whispering, “Long live the emperor.”

Launched at twenty times the speed of sound from over two hundred miles above the surface, the weapons were simple kinetic projectiles. Initially they fell unchallenged through the thin atmosphere that high up, eventually plunging into the thicker gasses below. Guidance fins came into play as the weapons locked onto their targets from a hundred miles above and three hundred out.

Moving twenty-eight times the speed of sound by the time they stopped accelerating, having reached equilibrium with the air and gravity, the projectiles crossed the distance from the ship in the blink of an eye and were inside the capital’s air-defense system before the warning alarm sounded. Air-defense systems were still moving to track when the first projectile slammed into the palace with the force of a small atomic weapon.

The missiles were made of the same material as the palace, a metal formula beyond the ken of Imperial science. No one knew where the alloy had come from, but it was one of the hardest materials they’d ever discovered.

It was that alloy that made the palace, Redoubt, and few other such fortresses nearly impenetrable.

It was also that alloy that turned conventional bombardment weapons into fortress busters.

The impacts rocked the capital, shaking things to the foundations as shock waves rolled out, but where the missiles struck, the penetrator tips blasted right through walls and continued on to tear into the interior of their targets.

The Imperial hangars took three hits, alloyed penetrators punching holes through the roof and then proceeding to ricochet around the interior. Men and machines were torn to shreds with equal ease in a split second of nightmarish chaos. When it was over, less than a minute had passed, but for those who’d been miraculously passed over by the angel of death, a lifetime had passed, and they felt aged a thousand years.

Across the capital and the palace, similar strikes continued unabated over the next three minutes, and then everything went silent.

“All weapons away, captain.”

“Stand down bombardment,” Corian ordered. “Send the signal to the others, then rig us for atmospheric braking and take us down.”

“Aye, captain. Rigged for air brakes, reversing tractor drive. We’re losing altitude.”

The Caleb Bar began to shudder slightly as it dipped down into ever thickening atmosphere, the air brakes helping the slow but powerful tractor drive begin to claw inexorably at the fabric of the universe as it slowed the ship’s forward rush. Ahead of them, the capital could now be seen, smoke from the kinetic strikes billowing over the city with the first flashes of weapons fire.

Edvard Scourwind scowled deeply as he pushed off the wall and rushed down the long corridor that led to the strategic command bunker of the palace. He reached a bend in the hall and came to a skidding stop as he saw what lay beyond the turn.

The command bunker had taken a strike. Smoke was pouring through the wrecked blast doors, and without progressing farther he could tell that there was little point in trying to utilize the space.

There was only one weapon that could have made that strike, and if it weren’t for the urgency of the situation, he’d have been forced to laugh outright at it being used against him. The fortress busters should have secured the empire for all time against the Senate and its mix of traitorous and ambitious nobles.

Damn you, Corian. You were the best of us.

He turned, running now as he dodged through the confused men and women pouring into the corridors. With the command center eliminated, strategic command would fall to the Cadre general. However, reports had already singled out that area as having been struck as well. That meant that the defense of the capital and the palace would be fractured, likely confused, and almost certainly not as efficient as it should be.

He needed to get to a system he could use to coordinate the response. Even if they beat back the attack, the cost could cripple the empire for cycles to come.

Outside, across the capital, the shock of the attack had just begun to set in as the rumble of the explosions was surpassed by a deep vibration that shook everyone to the core. Citizens, militia, and emergency workers all paused what they were doing and looked around for the source.

No one could quite tell who spotted it first, but a scream went up and people started pointing to the skies, and in seconds nearly everyone was watching as a massive ship slowed to a crawl over the city and came to a stop a few hundred feet above the skyline. The vessel was black, without the peculiar shimmer of plated metal.

No, it was the same color as the palace, a black that sucked in the light and didn’t let any of it go.

No flag could be seen, but movement was clear on its decks as the capital held its breath as one, waiting to see what the unknown ship would do.

Assault lines were flung from the Caleb Bar a moment later, and city dwellers had their answer as soldiers began to drop along the ribbon cables to the ground, even while the ship opened fire to cover their descent.