Relics of Eternity (Duchy of Terra Book 7) Read online

  “Move us in, get me better details, and let me know the moment they react to our presence,” Morgan said calmly. Defiance vibrated as her own engines came to full power, gently accelerating at a pace that played fair with no one’s scientists.

  The A!Tol Imperium’s scientists—which now included humanity’s entire scientific community—were still baffled by hyperspace and its interactions with realspace. They could see its effects, calculate them and predict them—but they would admit, when pushed, that the hyperspace interface itself was probably the single least understood phenomenon in physics.

  “We have twenty seconds before they see us,” Nguyen reported. “If they had tachyon scanners, they would have already reacted.”

  “Nystrom, do we have a first-contact package ready to go?” Morgan asked.

  Passang Nystrom was her communications officer, a half-Tibetan, half-Swedish woman with a ready smile and brilliantly green eyes.

  “We do,” she confirmed. “I also have standard channels ready. Any idea what we’re looking at?”

  “Yes,” Nguyen replied instantly. “Bogey Bravo is still close enough to Hotel to be hard to define, but Bogey Alpha? Alpha’s one of ours, an Imperial-built medium freighter. Half-c drives, million tons cargo.

  “She’s not flying ident codes, but we can’t enforce that reg out here,” she concluded. “Definitely one of ours.”

  “That does change things, doesn’t it?” Morgan said. “Is Bravo ours or an unknown?”

  “Still breaking her down, but I don’t think she’s an unknown,” Nguyen told her. “Seventy percent likelihood Imperial, ninety-six percent likely they’re at least a known signature.”

  This side of the Imperium didn’t have a massive cold-war enemy like the Kanzi. There were a dozen smaller single-species territories belonging to people who’d been hyper-capable before the A!Tol had arrived along this flank of the Imperium.

  The Imperium, for all of its active expansionism, tended to focus on uninhabited systems and species they felt needed their protection. Morgan had her doubts about the true necessity of Imperial annexation, even for Earth, but she was forced to admit they at least tried to do good by the subject races.

  And, well, there were twenty-six human legislators on A!Tol between the three Houses of the Imperial Legislature.

  “They see us; they are evading,” Nguyen reported. “Alpha is making a run around Hotel and Bravo is diving back to try and hide behind Hotel-Eight.”

  “Do we have an ID on Bravo?”

  “Nothing solid,” she admitted.

  “Is she armed?” Morgan demanded.

  “Unsure,” Nguyen admitted. “Size and energy signatures suggest another mid-sized freighter. She’s probably not unarmed but most likely doesn’t have military-grade weapons.”

  “And Alpha is the same,” Morgan concluded aloud. There was an easy solution to the situation available to her, but it put her people at risk.

  “Get me Battalion Commander Vichy,” she told Nystrom. “Then stand by for an omnidirectional transmission.”

  “Unidentified vessels, you are operating in an unsecured region under the authority of the A!Tol Imperium,” Morgan told the ships’ crews. “I hate to lean on the cliché of only the guilty run, but your actions are extremely questionable and my authority over Imperial vessels in this system is complete.

  “You will activate your beacons and stand down your engines. Depending on the conversation to follow, I may require my Marines to inspect your ships. I wouldn’t expect that, but I’ll admit that the chance increases the farther you run.”

  The message was going out on both hyperfold communications and regular radio. Hyperfold communicators weren’t unheard-of on civilian ships, but they were still uncommon.

  Morgan eyed the screen that was assessing whether they’d received her message, then shrugged.

  “El-Amin, ready a course for Target Alpha, sprint speed if you please,” she ordered. “Hold on executing but continue updating. Vichy?”

  “We’re ready.” Battalion Commander Pierre Vichy was probably Morgan’s least favorite of her officers, but the Frenchman’s voice was calm.

  Alpha was closer and had definitely got her message. Bravo might still have missed it.

  “We’ll drop you off at closest approach,” Morgan told Vichy. “I don’t think we can slow down.”

  “Bays and birds are designed for it, sir,” the Marine replied. “Bravo might end up a bit roughed around the edges, but we’ll bring her in.”

  “She’s almost certainly armed, Battalion Commander,” she warned him.

  “So are my shuttles.”

  She concealed a sigh.

  “Understood. El-Amin? Execute. Vichy? Stand by to drop.”

  The course change wasn’t much, just enough to make sure they intercepted Alpha’s current course. The velocity change was more dramatic, as Defiance went from sixty percent of lightspeed to seventy.

  She couldn’t sustain the pace for more than twenty minutes at a time, but the freighter couldn’t evade her at that speed either.

  “Closest approach to Bravo in thirty-six seconds,” Rogers informed them. As First Sword, Rogers was in secondary command, watching and silently listening in case something went wrong.

  “Shuttle bays confirmed ready,” she continued. “Vichy can launch on my mark.”

  “Handle it, First Sword,” Morgan ordered. “I’ll focus on Alpha if you manage the Bravo takedown.”

  “Understood.”

  They were in range of the vast majority of Defiance’s weapons, but even the faster-than-light hyperfold cannons would be inaccurate at best at this range. Morgan could destroy both Alpha and Bravo with a word, but she needed more to go on to do that.

  “Nystrom. Any response?”

  “Negative,” her com officer confirmed. “Both of them have almost certainly received the message, but they’re rabbiting instead of talking.”

  “Shuttles away,” Rogers’s voice murmured in Morgan’s ear. “Holding one platoon aboard for Target Alpha.”

  New icons spilled across Morgan’s holotank as nine assault shuttles took off after Target Bravo. They couldn’t match their mothership’s full sprint capacity, but sixty-five percent of lightspeed was more than enough for this.

  “Let’s give them one more chance,” Morgan said aloud. “Nguyen, best guess at range for a clean disabling shot?”

  Morgan had done Nguyen’s job and knew what the answer should be…but Nguyen’s comfort with the precision levels of her weaponry wasn’t Morgan’s, and better the job done at all than done the way Morgan would have.

  “Two light-seconds at most, sir. Five hundred thousand klicks would be better.”

  “I don’t believe a difference of a few seconds is going to bankrupt us, Lesser Commander,” Morgan replied. “Stand by to disable Target Alpha’s engines at five hundred thousand kilometers.”

  They were gaining at twenty percent of lightspeed, but they were still twenty light-seconds behind their target and over a light-minute from Bravo.

  Morgan could run through half of the possible scenarios at a glance. There was no way Bravo was evading her shuttles or Alpha was evading her.

  She tapped a command on the screens around her chair, activating the transmission Nystrom had prepared.

  “Unidentified ships, this is Captain Morgan Casimir of the A!Tol Imperial Navy warship Defiance,” she said, any pretense at friendliness gone. “Neither of you can escape me. Neither of you had anything to fear until you tried.

  “You have twenty seconds from receipt of this message to cut velocity and prepare to be boarded, or I will fire to disable your vessels and you will be boarded regardless.”

  The message flashed into space and Morgan leaned back in her chair.

  “Standing by to fire on your time stamp, sir,” Nguyen told her. “Lines up neatly with the five hundred thousand klick mark.” She paused. “Do you think they’ll stand down?”

  “If they were going to, t
hey already would have,” Morgan replied. “No, Commander Nguyen, the only question that remains is whether they’re armed and stupid.”

  “No, they’re both,” Nguyen sighed in response. “I have missile launches on the screen. I make it six standard interface-drive missiles. Point-seven c.”

  “Inform Commander Vichy he’ll have incoming fire shortly,” Morgan replied. “Disable those missiles, Commander Nguyen. Then disable that ship.”

  It wasn’t even a fight. Defiance had an entire arsenal of deployable parasite, antimissile drones, plus onboard antimissile plasma cannons and a dozen other antimissile systems. If Morgan hadn’t been making a point, she would have simply taken the missiles against the cruiser’s shields.

  Instead, she left it to Nguyen. Hyperfold cannons vaporized all six missiles easily a million kilometers from Defiance. More hyperfold cannon shots pecked carefully at the freighter, bracketing it again and again.

  Morgan half-expected them to surrender during the ten seconds Nguyen toyed with them. Instead, they were still grimly trying to run when Defiance crossed the half-million-kilometer line and the hyperfold cannons fired one last time.

  Target Alpha stopped dead in space as Nguyen destroyed her power generators. The shots were perfectly calculated, triggering safety mechanisms that blasted the fusion reactors into space before they could gut the vessel they supported—and without power, the velocity provided by the interface drive vanished.

  “Target Alpha disabled,” Nguyen reported calmly.

  “El-Amin, bring us up next to her. Nguyen, disable any weapon systems that twitch. Rogers—which platoon commander is left aboard?”

  “Speaker Marquez, sir,” Rogers told her over their private channel. “Vichy’s most experienced platoon commander.”

  “Good choice,” Morgan conceded. “Get him moving. Does he need support?”

  “He doesn’t think so,” the First Sword said drily. “I’ve got Speaker Susskind assembling the MPs for a second wave if needed.”

  “Good choice,” Morgan repeated. “Keep us in the loop. I need to check in on the Marines.”

  Chapter Three

  “Oh, les crétins,” Pierre muttered to himself.

  Target Bravo, which they knew almost nothing about, had apparently decided that her sister ship’s example was a good one to follow. Instead of near-suicidal idiocy.

  “Pilots, evasive maneuvers,” he ordered. “Gunners, target those launchers.”

  The assault shuttles couldn’t fight a real warship, but the one advantage his weapons did have was precision. Proton beams had once been the main beam armament of the Imperial Navy, but in the era of the plasma lance and the hyperfold cannon, they were entirely obsolete.

  Except for in the hands and tentacles of the A!Tol Imperial Marines.

  The helmet of the Battalion Commander’s power armor was showing him a three-dimensional model of his assault wing. The computer happily drew in white lines as the shuttle’s spinal proton beams fired.

  None of the launchers on Target Bravo got a second shot off, and none of their missiles even hit.

  Crétins indeed.

  “En avant, vite,” he ordered. His Marines’ translators could handle French easily enough, though he’d switch to English if he was giving complicated orders. He didn’t like the crude language, but it was humanity’s international tongue and had become their interstellar tongue.

  The shuttles responded to his orders promptly, lunging in toward the freighter.

  “Watch sector six,” one of the pilots barked. “I’ve got what looks like a heavy plasma cannon turret.”

  “Then take it out,” Pierre snapped. A moment later, the turret opened up, spitting heavy fire toward his shuttles. It was a ground-support installation that had no business on a starship—but the rounds could give his shields a headache if they hit.

  His enemies weren’t the only crétins around, it seemed!

  “Someone shoot that, s’il vous plaît,” he barked. The turret vanished while he was speaking, two proton beams intersecting on the weapon platform.

  “Watch for other weapon systems; they clearly expected someone to be boarding them,” he ordered as they swept in.

  “Or were planning on boarding someone else,” a pilot muttered. Pierre intentionally didn’t register which one.

  “Conceivable,” he agreed. “That turret would make fine support for boarding a civilian ship. Either way, faites attention. Be careful.”

  Two more plasma turrets emerged as they approached, this pair extending from behind concealed plating to try to take his people by surprise. Pierre Vichy would have been quite upset if any of his people had been so lackadaisical as to get themselves shot, but they lived up to his basic expectations and vaporized the new turrets in prompt order.

  “Contact in ten seconds,” his shuttle’s pilot reported. “Brace.”

  Pierre grinned behind his power-armor helmet, confident that none of his people could see his momentary burst of anticipation. It would never do for the soldiers to think their commander enjoyed this kind of thing.

  “Shuttle six, contact.” One of his other pilots had made it in first, and Pierre’s grin faded. He’d have to talk to his shuttle pilot later.

  “Shuttle one, contact.”

  At least his shuttle was second.

  “Allez! Vite, vite!” he barked.

  His Marines were already moving and Pierre followed the first squad out, a plasma rifle in his own hands.

  “Incoming fire,” the lead trooper reported. “I don’t think I saw armor, but they’ve got at least a few bipod-mounted plasma rifles.”

  “Species?” Pierre demanded. “Do we have an ID?”

  “Saw at least three,” the trooper replied. “Suit identified humans and Pibo. Didn’t get a good enough visual to ID the others.”

  “Understood.” Pierre was reviewing the maps his people were feeding him, and his system was matching them against documents in the assault shuttle’s database. “Computers have identified the model of the ship,” he told his people as the match popped up.

  Merde. His command platoon wasn’t close to anything of value, though he at least had platoons near the bridge and Engineering.

  “All platoon commanders,” he barked, switching to the command channel. “Your suits should have identified the vessel. Move to the closest critical components. We are facing resistance from human and Pibo armed crew in the central deck. Maintain communication and secure the vessel. Advise if your situation becomes fraught, mes amis. En avant!”

  He studied the map near him.

  “We are closest to the cargo bay,” he told the Marines. “That they are defending as strongly here suggests that the cargo is valuable to them. We must progress. Grenades, s’il vous plaît.”

  Pierre had no illusions about what his soldiers thought about him. He was “that prissy French fuck.” So long as his men didn’t say that to his face and followed his orders, he didn’t even care.

  A dispenser in his suit popped a grenade into his hand as the three troopers with grenade launchers stepped forward.

  “Minimum dispersion,” he ordered as he set his own grenade. “We want to remove the barricade, not damage the cargo or where we must walk.

  “Now. Throw.”

  Each of the launchers sent a burst of grenades around the corner, and Pierre and the other Marines followed up with thrown grenades. The suit guided his throw to make sure it ricocheted into his target, though he refused to let the computers take over.

  The systems could and he was told it would be more accurate, but he wasn’t going to trust it.

  Three dozen plasma grenades went off in the space of a few seconds, and Pierre didn’t even need to give an order for his people to charge in their wake. The first squad of his command section was around the corner when he turned it himself, plasma rifles flashing in the hallway.

  Their grenades had destroyed whatever lighting had existed, leaving the fight in an eerie darkness lit only by th
e blue-white flashes of modern plasma weaponry. Pierre had no trouble following what was going on—and it was very clear the fight was already over.

  “Hold fire,” he snapped. “Secure prisoners.”

  They probably weren’t getting any from this lot, he knew. The grenades had probably been overkill—but, on the other hand, all of his Marines were still alive.

  “No life signs,” the squad leader reported. “Area secure.” She paused for a moment before continuing carefully. “Enough of them were still shooting when we charged that we might have overreacted, sir.”

  “That’s for the debrief, Squad Leader,” Pierre snapped. It was entirely possible that only some of the defenders had been shooting, but none of them had been actively trying to surrender, either. There’d be a review later, but that was for later.

  “Move up on the cargo compartment; squad three take the lead,” he ordered. As the power-armored figures swept around him, he cycled his coms to the command channel.

  “Platoon commanders, report,” he snapped. “Bridge?”

  “Bridge has a bit more than I’d expect for a civvie ship,” the Marine in charge of Alpha Company’s Third Platoon reported. “Deployable fortifications, heavy weapons, some power armor.

  “No losses yet and we’re pushing them back. We’ll have the bridge in fifteen minutes, sir, but I can’t promise it’s going to be very intact.”

  “Understood. Engineering?”

  “In our hands,” his Second Company commander, Oghenekaro Hunter, reported. “Not much left after the shuttle shot the power cores to hell. They didn’t defend it, and I have three platoons with me.” He paused. “Bravo-Four has life support as well. Permission to send Bravo-Three to reinforce.”

  “Oui, do it,” Pierre replied. His display showed him his other platoons as they checked in. Alpha Company was spread all over the ship. Alpha-One was with him, and Alpha-Three was assaulting the bridge, but the other three platoons had landed all across the front half of the ship.