Darkness Beyond (Light of Terra: a Duchy of Terra series Book 1) Read online

  Even Asimov, the central military posting in the Imperium’s new human colonies, didn’t have a starcom. What they all had, however, were hyperfold communicators. The technology had been given to the Imperium in exchange for favors done for one of the galaxy’s elder races, the Mesharom.

  Hyperfold coms had a range of roughly ten light-years, with a transmission lag of about an hour per light-year and a drastic fall-off in bandwidth at a distance. Most of the Imperium had been seeded with hyperfold relays now, but this message was direct from the Imperial picket at Powell.

  “It is,” Xun Huang confirmed. “But…it was an automatic transmission.”

  That sent a chill down Harold’s spine. There was only one automated and encrypted message that an Imperial Navy ship would send via hyperfold communicator.

  “It’s a Code Omega,” Harold stated aloud. “Which ship?”

  “Corona Glare,” his coms officer reported. “There’s not a lot of data attached, but what is attached suggests that both Patience and Kindred Spirit had already been destroyed. There is no secondary telemetry.”

  “But if we didn’t get Code Omegas from them…” Harold’s operations officer, Captain Nahid Ling Yu, trailed off softly. The Chinese-Iranian officer looked sick, yanking on her shoulder-length black braid as the conclusion sank in.

  “They had to have been destroyed before they could send even an automated transmission,” Ling Yu continued after her pause. “How much data did we get?”

  “Automated Code Omega sends us a short-range sensor snapshot,” Xun Huang told them. He threw it up in the hologram. There wasn’t a lot of detail or information—there was only so much the limited-bandwidth emergency transmission could include.

  It was enough to make the battleship looming over Corona Glare very clear.

  “Impossible to tell if there’s more ships in the system,” Ling Yu said, her voice very level and slow. “But if they ambushed a destroyer with a battleship…”

  “Then we have to assume that they had more than one,” Harold finished. With a grim shake of his head, he reached the only decision he could have made and kept his stars—or his soul.

  “Get me Rear Admiral Sun,” he ordered. “I’m going to hold his squadron and one of the destroyer squadrons here with instructions for Captain Vong and Bellerophon once they arrive. The rest of us are going to Powell.”

  And he was going to have to explain to his wife that their limited interlude had just come to a sharp end and send her on her way to her expedition.

  Damn it.

  Chapter Four

  The super-battleship Indira Gandhi led the way into the Powell System, her exotic-matter emitters sufficient to open a portal out of hyperspace well over thirty kilometers wide. President Washington brought up the rear of the formation, her emitters holding the portal open as the rest of Harold’s task force passed through.

  Hyperfold coms didn’t work across the hyperspace barrier—another disadvantage that kept the starcoms in use—but regular radio did. By the time Washington carried Vice Admiral Harold Rolfson into the star system, he knew what was waiting for him in terms of enemies: nothing.

  That also summed up the amount of orbital industry and civilian shipping visible in the system, both of which should have been present.

  “We’re running a cross-collation from all task force sensors,” Ling Yu reported. “But…initial scans show no power sources in the system. At all.”

  Two gas giants, both of which should have had cloudscoop stations. One major and two minor asteroid belts, all three of which should have had small to medium mining operations. Five rocky uninhabited worldlets that should have been dark.

  And then Powell itself. A colony world with a population of over a hundred and twenty thousand sentients, over ninety-eight percent human, with three major power installations and almost as many minor power sources as people.

  “Nothing on the colony?” Harold asked, making sure he understood.

  “Nothing,” Ling Yu confirmed. “We’ll resolve more data as we close, but even at this range, our sensors should be able to pick up even mid-sized generator facilities.”

  Even Harold couldn’t force cheer in the face of that news. There were no ships, friendly or hostile, in the system, and all of the power sources that should have been present were gone. There was an easy answer for all of that and he did not like it.

  “We’re already moving in, I presume?” he said, as lightly as he could.

  “All ships have reported in and we’re moving towards Powell at point four light.” She shook her head. “Sir, it…”

  “I know what it looks like.” Harold stepped away from her to study the plot in the hologram tank. “Split the destroyers off,” he ordered. “Send them on a sweep of the outer system. Some of the asteroid miners or cloudscoops may have gone dark and avoided notice. Even in the worst case, some may have made it to escape pods.”

  Ling Yu nodded and began to give orders as her Admiral continued to stare at icons that should have been lit up.

  One hundred and twenty thousand sentient beings. People in his area of responsibility, that he’d been supposed to protect.

  What the hell had happened there?

  By the time they reached orbit, Harold had part of an answer and he didn’t like it.

  “We’re running debris-pattern analysis, but it looks like every spaceside installation was destroyed by interface-drive missiles,” Ling Yu told him. “Anything that might have had a sensor package sufficient to give us any data was blown to pieces.

  “Then they went hunting through the asteroid belts and the gas giants.” She shivered. “Captain MacArthur reports they are finding escape pods from the mining facilities and cloudscoops. Some were destroyed, others managed to hide.”

  The attackers had fired on escape pods from civilian installations. Harold understood his operations officer’s shiver. He could, just barely, see a logic behind firing on civilian installations or firing on military escape pods. Shooting up civilian escape pods, though…that was just vicious.

  “And the planet?” he asked.

  “Kinetic bombardment,” she stated in a toneless voice. “Not interface-drive weapons, not energy weapons. Probably specialized kinetic munitions, but I can’t be certain, as that’s outside our design paradigm.”

  The gravitational-hyperspatial interface momentum engine didn’t play particularly fair with Newtonian or Einsteinian physics, and humanity’s scientists hadn’t fully worked out how it worked before the A!Tol arrived and they got handed somebody else’s textbooks.

  The current standard interface-drive missile of the A!Tol Imperium, though, accelerated to point eight cee in just under two seconds. Planets didn’t survive being hit with that. On the other hand, the interface drive didn’t handle atmosphere very well, and missiles were even worse for it. The safety protocols built into Harold’s missiles to prevent accidentally hitting planets were simply an augmentation of an existing “flaw” of the system.

  “We don’t go in for mass bombardment,” he agreed quietly. “Any sign of life on the surface?”

  “Nothing. The three major settlements are just craters. It looks like every farm or moving vehicle got a smaller kinetic strike. If there was a power source, it got blown up.”

  “Genocide,” Harold concluded. “Someone just wiped out one of our colonies. A hundred thousand souls. The fuckers.”

  His curse echoed in the stunned silence of his flag bridge. The world in the holographic tank looked mortally injured, too. “Nuclear” winter was well on its way to taking hold. Life would probably survive, life tended to do that, but anyone who’d managed to survive this atrocity was going to face an uphill battle to stay alive.

  “Keep the destroyers on the search for survivors from the outer installations,” he finally ordered. “But get the cruisers moving back into hyperspace. We won’t get much useful data from four or five light-days out, but we will get some answers.”

  His gaze remained focuse
d on the dying world beneath him.

  “And if I know my Duchess and my Empress, they are going to want those answers. More, they’re going to want a target.”

  And so did Harold Rolfson. Someone was going to burn for this.

  Chapter Five

  Amanda Camber watched the night sky carefully. Her mental math suggested that a Militia force should be arriving around now, but…with no telescopes, no communications and no power, she had no idea.

  “Do those look like new stars to you, Kyle?” she asked the big guy leaning against the tree next to her.

  Kyle McDermott was at most half her age. She’d confirmed that he had been in the precinct station cells, though she hadn’t asked why as the big man had turned out to be essential to keep everyone alive.

  There were a few hunters in the group, but McDermott was both a hunter and a professional chef. He’d helped the others find animal life and edible plants in the forest where they’d ended up and had known how to turn freshly hunted animals and gathered plants into real food.

  “I’d say they were satellites,” he replied as he looked at the night sky with her. “Except we haven’t had satellites since we ended up out here. So, yeah, new stars. Ships?”

  “I’m hoping,” Amanda admitted. “Go keep an eye on everyone. I’m going to try and call up.”

  “And what happens if they’re not friendly?” he asked.

  “I get blasted from orbit and the rest of you better hope the next ships along do low-altitude surveys,” she told him with forced cheer. “Now get out of the blast radius, Kyle.”

  He snorted and gave her a mock salute. She waited for him to get off the hill and head down toward their crude camp in the valley below, under the shelter of a convenient mountain. The hope was that the mountain would protect them from detection and kinetic strikes.

  None of that would help once she turned on her communicator with enough power to reach orbit.

  Once her helper was out of sight, she pulled the device out. She hated risking it. Her communicator currently held the only copy of the sensor records. She’d checked—no one else among her collection of refugees had a communicator or computer with enough memory space to hold a copy.

  Unfortunately, no one else had a communicator that could reach orbit. With a sigh, she pulled the scroll-like device open and turned it on, ordering it to full power and to try and ping the Militia network.

  And then she closed her eyes and waited for hell to fall from the sky.

  Nothing happened. She kept her eyes closed for a few more seconds, and then checked the screen. She had a contact. A Duchy of Terra Militia code was responding to her ping.

  “Militia ships in orbit, this is Director-at-Large Amanda Camber from the Terran Development Corporation,” she said crisply. “I am approximately sixty kilometers from where Arbor City was, with just over five hundred survivors.

  “We have limited food and water and require immediate aid. Please con—”

  “This is Vice Admiral Harold Rolfson,” a familiar voice cut her off. “We are deploying shuttles to your beacon immediately. Are you in need of medical assistance?”

  She breathed a long sigh of relief.

  “No, Admiral, everyone we pulled out is physically fine,” she told him. “I’d suggest you find every damn counselor you have in your fleet, though, as these people are pretty shaken up.”

  Rolfson snorted.

  “Everyone up here is pretty shaken up, so I can guess,” he agreed. “Ms. Camber…do you know what the hell happened?”

  “I know a bit. I also have full sensor records from the orbital network and a TDC transport.” She paused. “People died to get that data, Admiral. Please tell me it’ll be worth it.”

  “A lot of people died,” he said grimly. “I don’t think anything will ever be worth it, but if we can ID the bastards who did this, they’re going to pay.

  “Shuttles are less than five minutes out. We’re sweeping for other survivors, but…”

  She winced.

  “Anyone?”

  “Looking like another five hundred from the belt and cloudscoops,” he said gently. “Otherwise…”

  “I got everyone evacuating during the attack,” Amanda whispered. “At least some should have abandoned their vehicles, but they can’t be far from the cities.”

  “That’s…useful to know,” Rolfson told her. “I’ll pass that on to our shuttle pilots. You have my word, Amanda. If anyone survived, we will find them.”

  Amanda went straight from the shuttle bay to the super-battleship’s tactical analysis center. From the harried expression of the Arabic-looking staff Captain who arrived shortly after she did, the Admiral’s staff hadn’t realized she knew the layout of the ship that well until the Marine escorting her had called in.

  “Ms. Camber, I am Captain Nahid Ling Yu,” she introduced herself. “I’m Admiral Rolfson’s operations officer. You said you had scan data?”

  Amanda gestured to the screens around them, where President Washington’s tactical department was already pulling the data from her personal communicator.

  “From the TDC ship Pippin and from every satellite feed that the Arbor City Police had access to,” she confirmed. “Reading all of this is mostly beyond me, I can basically say ‘this is a starship, right?’ and probably be right.”

  Ling Yu chuckled and stepped over to study the displays as the analysts worked away to assemble a complete sequence of events.

  “We’re lucky you got this,” she noted. “The bastards who attacked blew up everything. All we have from the space installations is escape pods, and no one thought to grab sensor records in the rush to survive.”

  “Thank Captain Lowell and precinct chief…” Amanda paused, then swore as she realized she’d never even learned the name of the man who’d got her out of the city. “They got me the links,” she said quietly. “I’m just a messenger. I’m here to bear witness.”

  “I understand,” Ling Yu told her, putting a hand on Amanda’s shoulder. “There are no words for this, Ms. Camber. You need to make sure that you meet with one of the counselors as well. Everyone we’re pulling off of Powell is going to need all of the help we can give them.”

  Amanda nodded, then shook herself. The Militia officer was at least twenty years younger than her. When the woman had been born, Amanda had been digging her way through the ugliest mid-Asian genocide of the last two hundred years to break into an abandoned corporate research facility.

  She’d seen worse. This was, at least, an impersonal slaughter.

  That didn’t really seem to help.

  “I want to see your results of the data analysis,” she finally told the operations officer. “You can check my file if you like; I’m cleared for it.”

  She had just enough clearance to know that there were multiple levels of Dragon clearances above her, and that the Duchy shared those clearances with the Imperium. Her own work with the Duchess, however, meant she was cleared for anything less-classified than that.

  And Amanda Camber needed to know who the sons of bitches who’d bombed a world around her were.

  Morning brought an invitation for her to join the Vice Admiral and his staff for a briefing. Amanda wasn’t military and never had been, but she understood what an “invitation” to join an Admiral entailed.

  Plus, it was what she had requested.

  It was the first time she’d seen Vice Admiral Rolfson in person, and she was surprised to see how closely his image hewed to his reputation. He wasn’t a massive man, but his long hair and massive beard, both still bright red, lent him a larger-than-life feel.

  His face looked like he was used to smiling and laughing…but he was doing neither today. Today, the Vice Admiral in command of the Duchy of Terra Militia’s largest out-system deployment was leaning on the arm of his chair, his chin resting in his hand as he studied the holographic display at the front of the briefing chamber.

  “Now that the good Director has joined us, can you lay it out, C
aptain Ling Yu?” he asked, his voice tired.

  Amanda started to apologize for being late, but he cut her off with a wave of his hand.

  “You’re not late, Ms. Camber. I’m just impatient and angry. Someone is going to pay for this, and I very much want to know who.”

  Ling Yu sighed and tapped a command, bringing a ship into the middle of the holoprojector for everyone to study.

  “We don’t have enough information to get hard IDs on anything,” she admitted. “What we do have, however, is a lot of suggestive data—and a solid visual on the ship that destroyed Patience and Corona Glare. This is what they look like.”

  Camber studied the ship, but she knew that she wasn’t exactly familiar with starship taxonomy. It was roughly shaped like a pair of stacked horseshoes, with four prongs reaching forward from a blocky base. It rang a bell, but…

  “The design paradigm is Kanzi,” Ling Yu concluded aloud. “Stealth fields are not a known development of the Theocracy, but they’re not blind to the massive technological advancements the Imperium has been undertaking.

  “Multiple factors of the ship and the incident do not align with known Kanzi technology or general Kanzi methodology,” she continued. “Most of the factors are easily being explained by this being a new class of battleship. The devastation of the local population, however, is very unlike the Kanzi.”

  “That would depend on their goals,” Rolfson said. “If they have a covert stealth fleet, they may well be attempting to use it to draw the Imperium into an overextended position hunting a ‘mystery enemy’ while they prepare their regular fleets for outright war.

  “While they would prefer to take slaves, the Theocracy Navy is willing to make many sacrifices at their High Priestess’s command. Massacring a population they could sell for money would be a small demand.”