Warlords are exactly that Lord's of War.
They command it, master it and it serves their will.
They use every weapon at their disposal, Intelligence, Propaganda and Martial
to achieve their goals.
HMS Excalibur - Geo-Synchronous orbit over Karin City - Gorean Occupied Karin
OCCUPATION: Day One
Over the ruin and destruction beneath her, the silvery-white blade that hung suspended. An avenging angel, poised to strike a mortal blow into the heart of the Gorean invasion fleet that surrounded her.
"Altitude!" Darien called out, his hand gripping the back of the command chair as the Excalibur began its frantic climb back towards orbit and away from the ring of green steel trying to envelope the mighty star ship.
The Gorean warships, elongated coffins with flayed wings and crescent boosters curled about on their axes, hammering out bursts of fiery plasma trying to cut off the Imperial command carrier's escape. Their hulls were decorated with an angular sigil in a brilliant royal blue. The mark of their master, according to Commander Durnham whose experience with the Gorean stretched back three hundred years.
"Sal-zÿr," the Commander was unaffected by the pull of gravity from the crash climb, standing upright on a slanting deck as crew members clung onto any thing that could stop them from sliding away from their consoles, "beyond that I have no idea." The Commander marched along the weapons tier looking frustratedly at his weapon scopes. "Gorean fliers... Destroyers. Sir we're so badly outnumbered here."
"I think I got that memo," Darien responded, looking up at the holographic tactical display flooded with enemy vessels. "Keep climbing and go to flank speed the moment we attain orbit... how long until escape velocity?"
The Excalibur began to vibrate as she climbed, the engines of the two support carriers attached to the underside of her flanks powering her upwards, gaining speed as they tried to gain enough speed to escape Karin's gravitational pull. Darien knew that if they weren't fast enough, the Goreans would be able to cut them off, forcing them to break off their ascent, and corner them, trapped in an atmosphere.
"We have no jump drives," Commander Durnham reminded him. "Even if we do reach orbit we won't be able to escape the system."
Darien gritted his teeth and nodded. "Right, but after the evacuation of Karin forces our main flight decks are choked with dropships. Not conducive to launching the reinforcement fighters."
Many of the Excalibur's remaining Paladins and Black Knights had been cut down in the initial assault by the Gorean fliers. A horde of fireflies, green and burnished red powered armours with crescent wings that had swarmed down upon the last of the Imperial fighters, wiping out the survivors. That left the reinforcement squadrons, Vanguard and Reaper, which were currently unable to launch from the hangar decks of the Invincible and Ark-Royal. Both support carriers, due to their lateral orientation to the Excalibur's centre of gravity, had been in-operational inside the Karin atmosphere. Once they hit zero-gravity the carriers would be reactivated, their flight decks functional. The two marine fighter squadrons would be able to protect the Excalibur from the Gorean harrying forces long enough for Darien to work out how to thwart the invasion.
It was a gamble; the Imperial Warlord could recognize that, his eyes creasing as around him anything that wasn't secured began to bounce back down the bridge. Behind him there was a rattling and clattering as the instruments on the CIC situations table scattered across the deck, coffee mugs flying free.
"Secure that," Darien commanded, pointing absently towards the broken FTL Comm. unit, melted in Lauren's betrayal on the eve of the battle mere hours ago.
Darien smashed that thought deep within him. A lot had occurred in a single day. Everything that could change had changed, and Darien quickly adjusted his thinking to adapt to the new environment.
"The Gorean will attempt to contain us with fighters," Durnham supplied, looking up. "Our gun crews won't be able to keep up with the swarm. However, Goreans typically attack from a port to starboard counter-clockwise strafing pattern."
"You're our expert on Gorean tactics," Darien observed, pulling himself up and around to fall into his command chair, scanning the data that the Excalibur's computer fed to him.
He felt her anger, sensed the familiarity she had when it came to fighting the Gorean. The memory of her struggle under VonGrippen's hand fighting to liberate the Apilon Rift from the Gorean in the height of the Imperial era was strong. Darien had read a number of VonGrippen's logs, but face to face with the terrifying enemy was a place he had never wished to be.
"Gun crews, concentrate rolling flak fire," Commander Durnham ordered. "Track the lead Gorean fliers and maintain sustained fire while they pass through it."
"Thanks for the rough ride!" Masconi said from behind him, she was using the edge of the CIC plotting board to haul herself up and along the deck to join Darien on the quarter deck, "Mayfair's getting the men stowed below, though my flight decks a mess. I have Katz trying to sort out where to put all the dropships, and the ITE's will be stowed away in a few minutes." She looked at the tactical scopes and whistled. "Shit damn that's a lot of ships!"
Darien nodded at her, glancing a moment at the dark-haired youth in civilian attire that was struggling to match the Wing Commander's confident climb through the listing command centre. He gave her a tight smile. "Nice of you to join us, CAG, I heard that you could use a lift, and since we were passing through..."
"Kind of you." Masconi smiled. "Speaking of rides, we recovered the Propylons."
It was the first piece of good news Darien had received all day, he offered her a genuine grin. "There is a reason I love having you around. Though right now I need you prepping Vanguard and Reaper Squadrons for launch. We'll break orbit in," he checked his watch, "ten minutes."
"Nothing like timing." Masconi undid the TER-SEC uniform she had worn after Mars, accepting a TAC-link headset that she slipped on. "Lieutenant Alessandro Mandola." She motioned towards the dark haired youth. "He's a trained Electronic Warfare Officer."
Darien nodded at the EWO. "Lower tier, we have inbound fighters. See if you can do something to foul their combat radars."
"Sì mio signore!" The youth bobbed his head and fought his way down to the lowest tier of the bridge all the way forward.
Darien glanced at Masconi. "He does speak English, right?"
"Oh yes," Masconi reassured, looking back at him, "but he's a little lazy with it. He's provincial Tempus, they like to be eccentric."
"Right," Darien murmured, returning his attention to the Gorean fleet.
They had split their attack force, the bulk remaining over the city of Karin, while the remainder pursued the escaping Imperial vessel. The fliers, inbound at close to Mach 2, were closing to the outer range of the Excalibur's flak barrier. A wall of auto-cannon and auto-maser fire that was thrown up around the Excalibur to protect it from incoming threats such as fighters and missiles. Exploding shells detonated shards of shrapnel into their flight paths, and a few of the lead fliers flew directly into the lethal path. Pieces of metal sucked into their jet engines, tearing the delicate turbines apart and sending the errant powered armour plunging back towards the frozen surface of the planet far below.
"Standby with short range missiles and Close in Weapon Systems," Commander Durnham removed his glasses, nervously cleaning them as he observed the Gorean fliers closely. They held a 360 degree of motion, hovering on vector thrust engines as they bobbed and weaved their way through the flak fire. Occasionally one would score a lucky shot with their plasma cannons, the super heated particles incinerating the flak shell before it would swat them from the sky. It was seconds before they would penetrate the flak barrier and run afoul of the Gatling weapons that comprised the Excalibur's CIWS, dating from the UN civil war, but keenly effective. The CIWS auto-tracked any object that breached the outer layers of defences and managed to evade the Aegis missile system that was ready to hurl forth a payload of death.
"Altitude," Darien urged, resting his hands lovingly on the arms of the command chair, feeling the valiant effort from his ship as she strove to breach Karin's atmosphere and enter her own element where she could really soar.
But try as she might, they were still minutes away from zero-gravity, minutes they didn't have. Darien swore lightly as a Gorean destroyer angled its way across their bow, turning into the very edge of the Excalibur's primary weapon systems. Darien raised in his chair his hands holding him upright as he felt the rush of nervous energy rise inside him. If that one ship could force them to break off their ascent...
"Arm the Zero-point Bore and stand ready to fire," he commanded. At that close range, inside of an atmosphere, firing the mammoth weapon would cause untold damage to the Karin eco-system, burning off vital gasses. But that wasn't Darien's concern at that moment, right then everything hinged on his being able to get his ship aloft. If he couldn't accomplish that goal then it wouldn't matter if Karin had a pristine, untouched environment, all that would matter were the Gorean guns levelled at human heads as they were marched line by line towards food processor ships, ready to feed the next stage of the Gorean invasion of the Rift.
Masconi turned her head a fraction, looking at Darien a long moment, nodding as if she agreed with his decision. She continued to bark orders into her TAC-link, sending pilots rushing through the length of the ship ready at the hatches of the twin support carriers. The moment the artificial gravity was restored on the two vessels they would make a mad sprint to their planes and begin roaring off of the cats to join the fight.
"The Zero-Point Bore is in-operational," Commander Durnham responded apologetically. "With the inclusion of the Propylon chamber tapping energy directly from the primary generators... sir unless we have them re-installed power simply isn't going to reach the main cannon."
"Right," Darien murmured, reviewing his options, "hard way it is. Deck guns target the crescent booster array of that destroyer. Salvo fire, fire for effect on my mark."
Commander Durnham relayed the orders to the gunnery crews.
They Excalibur's rail cannons swung loose of their mountings, the turrets rotating as they tracked onto target, the quad mass drivers preparing to hurl ceramic slugs that were typically reserved for orbital bombardment of heavily defended planetary installations. They weren't designed for actual ship to ship combat. In space the weapons were simply too slow to be effective; but in the current situation the weapons would be devastating.
"Fire!" Darien commanded, echoed by the Commander.
They all felt the roar; it rattled the entire ship, the recoil of the guns causing the ship to buck violently on its climb. The starboard volley of slugs roared away from the ship at relativistic speed crashing into the heavily armoured hull of the Gorean Destroyer and crushing the aft section, while the port side guns tore their way through the main section of the crippled warship, blowing a hole clean through its centre.
"Direct hit," Commander Durnham reported over the roar of cheers from the Excalibur's bridge crew, the Gorean destroyer beginning to fall as it tried to remain aloft on just its thrusters. Sections of the warship began to break apart as she began to disintegrate; pitching downwards as she writhed in her death throws.
The ships evacuation systems engaged, a hail of brightly coloured escape pods began to blast away from its length as its main hangar hatches parted, a squadron of red fliers roared up an away, bright burnished red armour denoting they were something special compared to the standard green variants that were battling their way towards the Excalibur's hull.
"Special Forces," Darien muttered, "lucky us, Commander?"
"The Kyal-shok," Durnham reported in a voice that could only sound wearied, "reposition all guns, shoot them down!"
"Why do I get the impression that this just got harder?" Masconi asked looking back towards Darien, "I mean, really, haven't we had enough today?"
Darien shook his head, "not by half, and you know you jinx it every time you ask that... We're going to need all our pilots in the air. You'd best round up Katz and get down to the Ark-Royal."
Masconi nodded. "Any chance we could get a little divine intervention?"
Darien shook his head as he watched a trio of green fliers penetrating the flak barrier and swoop down on a low strafing run on the hull, one of them careening off of the hull to crash into one of the Aegis launchers in a spectacular fireball. Beyond them through the observation windows of the Excalibur he could clearly see the red fliers begin their dangerous attack run bow on for the Excalibur. They worried him, watching how adeptly they commenced their attack in perfect formation. Their armours were of a different configuration, stronger engines, extra firepower mounted ingeniously along their dorsal side. Designed for rapid attacks, they were birds-of-prey hungry for a kill.
"ETA till orbit?" Darien called out again, his eye flicking again to the boards and the Gorean destroyers sweeping to encircle them. It was going to be tight, maybe if he could hit flank speed as soon as they were clear they'd be able to break away, but there was precious little time left. Any mistake and they would have little recourse left open to them.
"Five minutes thirty seconds," Commander Durnham replied. "Sir, we don't have time to gain orbit, not with the fliers breaching our defence screens..." An alarm began to sound on the environmental systems console, a young midshipman looking panicked at his boards.
"Sir," he interrupted at a near panic, "one of them is trying to blow open an exterior cargo hatch."
The last thing any of them needed was a Gorean flier tearing a hole and clawing its way inside the ship. The potential for disaster for a powered armour loose aboard the Excalibur as it tried to reach orbit was monumental.
"Mayfair," Darien called into the TAC-link, "we have an uninvited guest..."
"On it!" Mayfair bellowed back, the roar of noise in the background indicated that he was still on the hangar deck sorting through the mass of humanity that had been plucked off of the surface of Karin.
"I need something airborne," Darien muttered, hauling himself forward to lean over the conn. "Are there any Karin assets that can lend a hand, anything intra-system?"
"No mio signore," Alessandro called back looking up from below, "I have reports from civilian shipping currently holding at the outer system jump markers, a pair of Osterberg Hunter-Killers en-route to Karin for repairs are currently on picket duty. There is a squadron of fighters guarding the orbital dry-docks..."
"Which the Gorean will destroy the moment they are finished with Karin," Darien commented. "What do they have?"
"A few fighters," Commander Durnham replied. "Most were destroyed when the Amsus hit the station during phase one. They also have a couple of Imperial gunships and scouts."
"Order them to break from the station and escort us," Darien ordered, knowing that it would leave the station defenceless, but it was doomed anyway. The most the vessels would do was buy a few more minutes before the Gorean tore them apart, at least helping the Excalibur their lives would be worth something.
"Sì, sì mio signore," Alessandro nodded as he issued orders over the comm. channels, cutting the warriors away from the lost cause that they had been futilely guarding against attack.
The remaining elements of the custodian fighter squadron broke away from the station as they escorted four larger vessels, the twin gunships corvettes with their deadly anti-fighter weaponry and a pair of scouts. They bore down upon the Gorean fliers that were turning to meet the new threat, unprepared for the onslaught that was about to befall them.
The sky lit with fire, the gunships becoming brilliantly expanding spheres of maser fire, wave after wave of maser flak that tore through the flier's rear flanks.
Behind them flew the pair of scouts, heavier than the standard couriers that normally plied the space lanes, they were designed for independent operations on their own and offered their own retaliation for the fall of their homeworld. While the four surviving fighters shrieked into the mix, missiles flying as they fought to keep the fliers unbalanced from the assault.
"Cover them," Commander Durnham ordered. "Aegis systems, clear a path for them to reach our flak coverage."
The missile systems swung to life, the lever arms sliding into their mounting as the systems swept short range interception missiles that were promptly hurled away from the ship. Screaming on solid state boosters the guided missiles arced out from the launcher each tracking a target that was weaving their way in towards the ship.
The Reds broke from their charge, sweeping this way and that as their primary weapons began to fire, hammering out bolts of plasma at the aegis missiles, trying to protect their brethren, buzzing like disturbed wasps as yet more greens succeeded in making it to the hull of the warship.
"They've breached the hull!" the environmental midshipman called out above the wail of alarms.
"Signore, marines are responding," Alessandro called back as he rushed down the length of scopes, scanners, comm. systems and boards till he was beside the internal comm. Array. "They report they have engaged and contained the enemy."
"That won't last long without a heavy weapons squad," Commander Durnham reported, "it'll be like trying to stop a walking tank with pop guns..."
Darien chewed his lip, the ship rocking from another kamikaze flier taking out one of the remaining Aegis turrets; his hull was beginning to teem with the Gorean. Making a snap decision he looked at Commander Durnham. "Get down to the marine command post, and advise them on how to deal with the intruders. Lieutenant Mandola, get damage control crews to seal those sections. We can't risk decompression."
Just a few more minutes, he thought grimly, as the gunships entered the flak perimeter and began to add their firepower to the Excalibur's, concentrating on the flanks while the fighters swept in to pick off rogue fliers tearing at the hull.
The scouts weren't faring as well. One fell back to the planet in a terminal dive, chased by squadrons of fliers, revenge on their minds. The other, battered beyond repair, tried to pull up. It slammed into the Excalibur amidships with a potent explosion tearing a great gouge along the outer armour plating, the vessel spiralling end over end as it smashed into the Excalibur's port rail cannon turret blowing the superstructure sky high.
Excalibur lurched in pain.
* * *
"Can I go now?" Edward pressed, kicking his feet back and forth over the edge of the metal table in the corner of the mess hall.
"No," the field medic snapped for the hundredth time, trying to examine the non-existent wound on the engineer-turned-god's leg. He'd never seen anything like it, and given the amount of wounded marines, soldiers and commandos that lined much of the deck's corridors, he was spending too much time trying to find a justifiable reason.
Sickbay had taken a direct hit during the rescue from Ordessus, and while every effort had been made to repair its facilities, they were still woefully inadequate to the daunting task of treating so many injured and wounded. The medical staff had commandeered the mess hall, converting it into a temporary field hospital to treat the grotesque plasma burns, or savage bite marks many of the injured had earned fighting to hold back the numerically superior Gorean.
Edward brightened when he caught sight of Kyr pushing through the crowds, clambering up onto a table, slipping on a stethoscope and barking out orders to his staff, taking over the management of the triage. Kyr had gained a lot of experience over the two-year war, Excalibur always in the thick of some critical situation or another. His 'butcher's shop' was never without fresh meat, something that sickened even the battle-hardened doctor.
He began to circle, pulling to a stop when he caught sight of Edward taking up space that was drastically needed for someone who was actually injured. "Out!" he ordered, jerking a thumb towards the door.
Edward bounced down, flashing his patented grin at the marine medic and tilting Darien's red cap further back on his head before he bounded away through the crowds, fighting through the mass of people crammed into the ship. Fresh off the EVAC dropships, confused and flustered, many injured.
A few recognized the boy cutting through their midst, offering prayers and calling for help from the divine presence that had been made flesh.
Edward's smile faded as he realized the true extent of the devastation around him. He glanced back, over his shoulder, to where Kyr was stripping off his tweed coat and pulling on a surgical gown, getting ready to remove a large piece of shrapnel that had impaled an unlucky commando.
His people. His Empire.
He felt hands on his arm, pulling, pleading, and he looked down at the faces, some kneeling, many unable to stand. Feeling himself stumble as he bit his lip, "I... I..." he gulped, feeling their pulls, their pleas. There were so many, each needing his help. And he could help them... but how did he choose who to help? All the jokes about his god-hood hadn't prepared him for the realization that the power to choose life of death for another had been placed in his hands.
"Emperor!" a woman begged, holding a child that she had clutched tightly to her chest. The little girl had torn skin and her breathing was ragged. "Please, my lord. Please!"
Edward felt the room spin as he lifted his hands, touching them to the little girl, willing her flesh to mend, filling her lungs with life-giving oxygen... He stepped away; his hands reaching out to another young marine whose hands were burnt and mangled. He ran his hands over them, turning again to the next...
Kyr paused at the edge of his makeshift surgery table, a florescent light pulled from its mountings and hanging down over the table by bare wires to offer the proper light, his hands on the scalpel as he watched Edward moving amongst the injured marked with red tags... those too badly injured or too far gone for normal medicine to save. His eyes watering at the realization of what Edward was doing. He wiped the moisture away with the back of his hand, leaning in to his own work. Knowing there were still lives that were dependant on the only fully trained Doctor on ship to save them, even though an angel of mercy wandered in their midst.
* * *
"Nine dropships, God alone knows how many fighters are out there." Katz jogged back, breathing heavily as he caught his breath as he saw Masconi step down the ladder that connected the hangar deck to the mechbay and was the primary path from the bridge. He adjusted the hoodie he wore. "We don't have room in the hangar to stow them all, and with no Lieutenant Ryerson... I mean without the Air Boss, the deck crews have no direction..."
Masconi shook her head, as she crossed the open hangar deck, the roar of the starship's engines drowning out almost every noise, motioning Katz to join her as they stepped into the pilot's ready room, closing off the noise for a moment, "I need to get down to the Ark-Royal, I'll take over flight ops there. But I need someone to deal with these dropships. You had some experience with dropship operations when you were transferred to Sentinel..."
"Yeah, a whole twelve hours," the young pilot snorted, as the doors to the ready room opened and a deck chief began to show survivors inside, trying to get them out of the way of his plane crews.
Masconi motioned for Katz to come back out into the chaotic din of the hangar deck where teams were cutting through bulkheads to make berths for the excess dropships that had no where else to go.
Katz shook his head, "I'm not qualified..."
"You're all I've got," Masconi remarked, reaching into a locker and dragging out the distinctive yellow jersey. "You're the Air Boss for the Ex. Get that flight deck cleared Boss."
Katz heaved a sigh of despair. "Yes, CAG," he answered, as he pulled the jersey on over his tee-shirt, tossing the ball cap into the locker and slamming it closed. He ran towards the observation post, barking orders to the deck apes, getting them to hurry up and get him a clear flight deck so they could resume some kind of flight ops.
Masconi nodded in satisfaction as she clambered aboard one of the yellow plane tractors that were trundling at a rapid clip down the broadened connection corridors, installed during the Excalibur's last refit, that linked the Excalibur's hangars to the Ark-Royal and the Invincible.
It wasn't a comfortable ride, but it sure beat running. She glanced over the clipboard, shaking her head. They had a pair of F-175 fighters snarled on the main flight deck. That left her with a single squadron of planes made up from Vanguard and Reaper Squadrons. Most of the pilots had never had any kind of shipboard flight training; those that had the experience had been swiftly dispatched during the fighting and had been shot down.
She grimaced, the older F-150 fighters weren't as effective as the 175's when it came to keeping the Gorean numbers at bay.
It was up to her, as the CAG, to come up with a solution. The warlord needed a BARCAP, and their lives probably depended on the Excalibur's fighter screen, especially once the ammunition on the Excalibur's flak barrier, already low after the sustained fighting, began to run out.
"And this is another fine mess," Masconi announced to no one in particular as she jumped down off of the tractor, waiting for the airlock that separated the Ark-Royal's artificial gravity zone from the rest of the ships.
She had been secured during the atmospheric flight, at a right angle to the Excalibur's gravity plane. It was impossible to operate aboard her inside the gravity well of a planet. As soon as the Excalibur cleared orbit, the Ark-Royal would engage its own artificial gravity system and allow the anxious crews to rush to their stations, adding the full arsenal of the ship to the Excalibur's firepower.
The seconds seemed endless until, finally, the red light above the airlock changed to green. Masconi was amongst the first through, running towards the flight deck lockers and throwing on her flight suit as her reserve pilots followed her lead. They listened to her as she tried to give them advice on the basics of launching from a carrier. She'd worry about landing later, right then all she could do was take things one step at a time.
* * *
Kyr was hurled almost three meters across the mess hall. Screens and partitions in the commandeered mess hall collapsing as the ship bucked. The ships mess was woefully inadequate to deal with the full realities of war. First it was already overflowing with Marine and Army casualties brought up during the retreat from Karin city, and now he was trying to find room for the crew of the Excalibur who had been injured in the latest round of fighting.
The triage was in ruins, everything that hadn't been secured had been thrown to the deck by the violent explosion, which included patients and medics. It was a mass of pain, flesh, blood and instruments, out of which Kyr had to make some kind of sense or risk loosing many other patients.
He pulled himself bodily to his feet, his once white lab coat a nightmarish red-brown with stains, his face dark as he surveyed the destruction about him. The mess hall hadn't been hit, fortunately, and none of the surviving equipment had been destroyed. He rushed to the surgical bay, grappling with a medical diagnostic board that had fallen across his path. He hauled it upright and struggled over bodies, clambering indelicately to recover surgical tools.
"Nurse!" he yelped, staring at the savage claw marks that had torn the poor soldier's stomach open, shaking his head as he coldly calculated that there was no chance for the boy's survival.
He wasn't expecting Edward's face to poke out from under a piece of tarp that had once formed a wall separating the OR from the main ward. But he was grateful none the less as Edward climbed upright, catching his arm and offered some support.
"You're hurt," Edward said softly, sounding worried.
"I'm low down the triage list," Kyr replied, glancing at Edward as he became conscious that the sounds of battle had abated and an eerie silence had fallen across the room. There weren't even the cries of the wounded and dying begging for someone to help them. Realization dawned on him as his eyes went wide. "You've stopped time!"
Edward nodded his head. "You needed time, I gave you some." He looked about him at the chaotic room as he walked, staring at the pained faces, and the scenes of anguish frozen around them. Shaking his head, he looked tired. "I can help them."
"If you can help them, then do so!" Kyr clutched at Edward's arm, staring hopefully. "I... I can't help them all, I just can't."
"If I continue to help them," Edward murmured, more as if he was having a debate with himself, "it changes things. It confirms who and what I am to them."
"So what?" Kyr barked out, amazed that anyone with the capacity to help, when faced with such horror, could think about doing nothing.
"If I help more, I confirm that I am their messiah, here to deliver them." Edward turned, his eyes red as he rubbed them with the back of a grubby hand. "I'll prove that I am their God Emperor and everything that was done, will be undone."
"What are you talking about?" Kyr asked in open confusion. "Help them!"
"I... I don't think I can." Edward said as his head sank forward, tears beginning to slide down his face, and Kyr felt him tremble beneath his hands. "I can't be him."
"Who?" Kyr pressed, turning Edward roughly to face him. "Who?"
"Markus Aquinas," Edward said, swallowing down his emotions as he found the words to speak. "I can turn the Gorean on their heads, wipe them out to the last damn one of them. I could wade through them till I am knee deep in blood." Each time he spoke his voice gained menace and a dark shadow seemed to grow about him.
His blue eyes blazed. "And why stop there? The more I do, the more powerful I become. Why not expand? I could be powerful enough to bring down the Amsus. Without Rikard they are unprotected. I can snuff them out. All of them." He gestured to a Kardiac petty officer who had broken his arm. "I can be exactly what they pray for. An angel of retribution, with my sword of fire to cast out all who don't belong in my paradise!"
Kyr drew his hand away, shivering at the sudden chill that swept through him. "You aren't the Immortal Emperor, you are Matthew Elias..."
"I am Edward, the last Prince, heir to the Empire," Edward took a step forward, standing regally. "I am more powerful than you know, and as my power grows, so too do my responsibilities of choices. I hold the power of life and death, I decider..."
"You're not evil," Kyr reminded him. "There has to be a way, something you can do or the Gorean will..."
"The Gorean." Edward sighed, settling back against the edge of the surgical bed, his dark hair falling forward as he picked at the edge of Darien's leather jacket playing with the zipper, going from a terrifying visage of power incarnate to a small boy, lost and uncertain.
"You have to act," Kyr pressed, his eyes searching the strange being before him. It resembled his friend, but was so much more, wrestling with things that no human should ever have to wrestle with. The responsibility of true power was an immense weight, and the temptation to use it risked bringing him closer and closer to the edge of true corruption.
"I can heal them," Edward said calmly, pulling himself together, "but just enough to save their lives. The rest is up to you."
Kyr smiled a tight smile, seeing the conflict raging within Edward. "What about the Gorean?"
"I will face them," Edward said, "but in the shadows. Any direct confrontation would bring only ruin. Humanity believed in a god once, and that nearly destroyed everything, I cannot be responsible for that."
"You sound like the Prince," Kyr mused, reaching out again to rub Edward's shoulder. "Is there any of Matty left in there?"
Edward looked up, sadness in his eyes. "This is me, it's all me, that's the problem. I have urges to do... so many horrible things. Every mistake I make doesn't just affect me, it affects everything everywhere. It's not just today; it's every day hereafter as well. The last Immortal Emperor, in forty years of his rule, caused three hundred years of suffering. His Templar destroyed entire civilizations; caused untold carnage; gave rise to Lex Talionis..."
"If you are a god, then be a god," Kyr said quietly. "Earth got by for over two thousand years with God moving in the background, out of sight."
One moment he was awash in the destruction of his temporary sick bay, and the next it was restored to the way it had been before the attack, the deck shuddering beneath his feet as the boy with the savage rents in his stomach twitched beneath his hands.
Glancing down, he found a knot of emotion forming in him as he saw the wounds were not as serious as they had been before. Edward had kept his word; he'd chosen to be a merciful god and spared the boys life.
Kyr looked up, trying to find Edward, but he was gone. Back to his shadows, and that meant that Kyr had a job to do.
* * *
A wall of green ships, flying power armour, transports and dropships arrayed like a massive wall of steel, ringing her, staying at a precarious five-mile distance. The very edge of the Excalibur's Close in Weapon Systems firing range.
Darien sat perplexed in his command chair. The smouldering bridge was in a state of disarray after the Gorean assault that had followed swiftly on the heels of Rikard's thwarted invasion of Karin. They'd lost the two gunships as the Gorean reds had broken off their assault on the ships hull, a cloud of fighters running the gauntlet of the Flak barrier again as they had withdrawn.
His tactical read-outs and repeater displays all registered the readiness of the Gorean Armada, poised on the brink of descending and destroying the lone Imperial Command Carrier that stood, defiantly, between them and domination of the Apilon Rift.
"Why aren't they attacking?" Darien asked, pulling himself up from the command chair. The rumpled, carbon-stained fabric of his pure white Warlord's tunic, pulled a little as he unbuckled it and set his hands on his hips. His eyes scanned across the displays around him. "Commander?"
Durnham was pulling a triple duty, with nearly all of the Excalibur's command-level officers down on the flight deck after the retreat from the city, there were only the three officers on the bridge, aside from the inexperienced Midshipmen that had replaced the bridge watch slain in Lauren's betrayal before the first attack.
The Commander looked pristine, as only a hologram could, amidst the damaged systems around him, supervising repairs to the bridge systems in the brief respite they found themselves enjoying.
"I don't know, Warlord," he replied truthfully, staring up from the shattered console and shaking his head. "The Gorean hold a tactical and strategic advantage, all our fighters are either on the Ark-Royal or destroyed, and while we have the Propylons, they are currently being re-installed, and without Lieutenant Elias... I don't think they will be operational any time soon."
Darien folded his arms. "Matty's in sickbay, he'll be fine." There was a twinge of emotion to his voice, indicating he was saying it as much for his own benefit as for the Commander's.
"Signore." Alessandro had been a blessing, co-ordinating communications throughout the battle. He handed Darien a marine TAC-link headset, "Colonel Mayfair down on the main flight deck."
Darien touched a hand to the earpiece as he turned away from the Commander. "Did you rescue everyone?"
"Sir," Mayfair called breathlessly through the radio, "we're packed tighter than a mariachi's trousers down here. Katz is trying to sort out the flight deck but we're over crowded by EVAC dropships, and most of those we pulled off of Karin with us have never been on a starship, so we're pretty fouled, sir. He's asking if we can launch some of the EVAC ships and try to sort this mess out, clear some room on the flight deck"
Darien stared at the wall of snot-green steel surrounding Excalibur, bristling with plasma cannons all pointed at his ship. He did not relish the idea of doing anything that might provoke a Gorean BBQ party. He looked about him at the tired faces, strained, waiting for the inevitable end. He knew that Mayfair was right. Excalibur was a sitting duck where she sat in low orbit, the time ticking down as they continued to climb. Air crews were down on the Ark-Royal ready to launch, and he'd feel safer with a BARCAP and some manoeuvring room. But that meant abandoning the city of Karin to its fate.
"Take us up and into high orbit," he commanded to the helm. "Marty, we're going to need some help up here on the bridge if I'm going to make this work... Any sign of Shale?"
"Negative, sir," Mayfair replied.
"Get everyone secure," Darien ordered, watching as the Excalibur's bow began to tilt towards open space, the ion drives of the two support carriers attached to her rear flanks powering the great warship up towards freedom. The Gorean ships seemed to match the manoeuvre, breaking their formation to follow, never once straying across the invisible five-mile no-fly zone.
"I'll get this mess sorted out down here," Mayfair reassured him. "If I find anyone else with bridge certification, I'll be sure they join you as well."
Darien removed the headset, collapsing back into the command chair and taking stock of the situation, feeling satisfied that things were getting done . He felt Excalibur's unease at the Gorean's hesitancy to engage her, an unease he was beginning to share. If they wouldn't engage, and he couldn't bring any of the Excalibur's offensive weapons to bear, then there was little he would be able to do to stop the invasion.
He rested his head against his hand, and waited.
* * *
"Il mio Signore, riguardo, the Gorean..." Alessandro called out.
Darien turned to look up. As the Excalibur climbed away from the planet, the Gorean forces were pulling away, accelerating to keep their distance and dropping behind the Excalibur, giving the warship a clear passage.
"What the hell?" Darien demanded, staring in surprise, "They're letting us go?"
"Not that we can go anywhere, even if we wanted to," Commander Durnham observed, joining the warlord on the command tier, "but this is extremely peculiar behaviour on their part."
"Aberrant behaviour for a Gorean," Darien remarked, folding his arms. "Pull us out to the L-Five mark and then all stop. Set Condition Three." Darien folded his arms again. "We're all tired, and if they're giving us a chance to conduct repairs, we should take it."
"The Propylons, Warlord?" Commander Durnham inquired.
Darien nodded. "We should withdraw, try to work things out. Captain Kingston has an outpost in an adjacent system, Methuselah's Dûm, and we need to re-establish a line of communication to Karin as well." He looked down at Alessandro. "You're a communications expert, can you re-establish a TAC-link with possible ground assets on Karin?"
Alessandro shrugged, "I will try."
"We have the auxiliary FTL transmitter that Chancellor Rikard was utilizing," Durnham added. "We can at least communicate with Field Marshal Riley, perhaps we can recall..."
Darien shook his head. "Riley committed to the Earth Assault, any recall order would prove disastrous, and even if we could recall those forces, the Gorean would be entrenched on Karin long before they arrived. Unfortunately, we're on our own again."
"And that's changed, ever?" Mayfair called out, the Colonel looking the worse for wear, his fatigues soiled and torn. The Amsus DT-09, with the under-slung Polian Kill'a'ma'jig, was tucked over the crook of his arm.
"Optimism, Colonel," Darien replied. "A commodity we can little afford to be without."
"I have a few others to add to that list," Mayfair added. "We're stuffed to the gills with troops and refugees, and last I checked we were only about a third of the way into our re-supply from Karin before all this," he nodded at the Gorean, "came down. I've made them comfortable for now but frankly, sir, comfortable for now won't be comfortable after they have to sleep packed like sardines in a can. Then when feeding time comes around, it's gonna be a zoo."
The reality of their situation crashed down upon them all, and Darien closed his eyes, allowing his shoulders to sink. They were worse than alone, they were the last bastion of free humanity in the Karin system. And, unless they could re-install the Propylons, they were in a world of trouble.
Research Station - Phobos Moon- Mars- Amsus Occupied Territory
OCCUPATION: DAY ONE
It was a tomb. A tomb of her fears, her darkest memories, of the personal pain that burned within her. The betrayal of trust that had festered to become the woman that she had grown into: an immortal being, evolved from a husk of anger.
She shimmered into existence in the ruin. The effort it took to travel such distances always left her weary, but a smile played upon her face as she caught herself before she fell. It was a talent she alone possessed. Rikard had never mastered the ability to rip apart hyperspace and step through at will. It was her edge and her ace in the hole.
The simple white coat she wore was stylish and modern, her platinum blonde hair pulled up under a broad-brimmed hat best suited for horse racing than for walking the abandoned halls of the derelict station. Around her were the wards of the asylum where, rather than treating, they had specialized in creating lunatics.
She had chosen to come alone. She could sense Rikard's desperation and with him safely disposed of she was free to act in his stead.
That gave her everything he thought she didn't know about. All of his secrets were ripe for the picking, and with the threat of the missing Imperial fleet, she had no choice but to consider the advice of her Amsus Fleet Marshals and seek alternate solutions.
Things had spiralled out of her control. She was an assassin, a precision instrument of death bred for the kill, and she was intelligent enough to understand that she wasn't equipped to deal with renegade Imperial Battleships obliterating entire worlds and a sneaky General evading the net of ships that searched the stars for him.
That brought her back to the beginning, a full circle that had started with a desperate escape from the pain and anguish that had been inflicted upon her. Back to Rikard's lab, the cradle of her kind.
She eased her arms around her slender form, her eyes searching the darkness about her, remembering what it had been like when she had been a child. Bright and sterile, Rikard hadn't bothered with the outer station, leaving it in the state that it had been in during the Global Civil War when a running fire fight had erupted in the first few days of the war.
Her memories of those days stood stark in her mind, she'd died there, gunned down by soldiers trying to stop her fury as she had torn her way through them. She could feel the echo of the pain, the fear that had imprinted itself upon the carved stone of the corridors and the metal of the bulkheads. That day had set who she was, what she was, and forever crystallized her hatred.
She had returned later, after her first betrayal by the Immortal Emperor at Rikard's reprieve. He had brought her out of her cell to cast down those that had seen her sealed away for an eternity in darkness, for his own twisted aims. She wandered through those sections of the labs, pausing at the doors to what had been her rooms. The red Templar's cross sprayed across them marked a nightmarish spectre of her past.
Delicate fingers brushed the faded spray paint, feeling the bumps where it had run down the doors, remembering the Templars trained in how to fight her. The Ophanim, Kardiac, leading them to recapture her in the name of their insidious God.
Kardiac. The name tasted vile in her mouth, the sword that had cut her down before she could exact her glorious vengeance upon the Emperor. The man that had out fought her in the very halls where she now walked, imprisoning her for a second time within the crystal prison to wait, watching the agonizing passage of time on the forgotten frontier.
"I hope you are burning in the fires of your conviction," she murmured, stepping away from the door to her past and marking her own path down towards the deep core of the facility. Looking down over the devastation of her last, desperate fight, she remembering the anxiety and fright at discovering a being that she couldn't defeat, a mere boy with the ability to end her dreams before she could fulfil them.
At the time she had thought Kardiac another product of Rikard's labs, another twisted aberration of stolen Peligian technology. Bloodroot's curse poured into a corporeal essence and unleashed to its own madness upon the galaxy at large. But her overriding memories of her fight with Kardiac were of the absence of the power he possessed, yet he was able to counter hers, his innate understanding that had rendered all of her might useless.
She could almost see him crouched upon the floor, one hand steadying himself as he spun a baton through his hands, waiting for her to strike out again, moving ahead of her fury. A look of rage upon his face as he closed upon her. The white-shrouded praetorian and Templars forming a ring upon the gallery upon which she now. Watching the fall of the Queen of Ice, the Widow of Tears as Kardiac had dubbed her on that final day.
Her hand balled on the railing, her lip quivering. Three hundred years dead and her darkest fears still stalked her in her memories, a place from which even she could never flee.
"You cannot frighten me," she swore, looking at the shadows. "I am so far beyond you now."
She swept on, her skirts billowing as she marched purposefully down broad stairs, reaching the doors and wrenching them aside with a mere thought. Pausing as she entered the lab, her eyes widened. Rikard had done much since Kardiac had captured her. The rows of stacked incubation tubes buzzed and hummed stacked upon one another as they climbed the length of the deep core. Imperial markings labelling much of it despite the fact that there were hallmarks of the European Union creators everywhere.
Despite the smell of old sweat that hung in the air, she remembered the facility. Had grown up sitting upon tables in that room being prodded by doctors. But the removal of the ceiling and much of the floor had opened the room up, glowing in greens and blues the faces that stared back at her looked so peaceful. Children, hundreds of them, in various states of development. One had been pulled down, disturbed long after the lab had been sealed, the dust on the canopy being rubbed back to show a half formed construct within.
The lights flared around her as she walked out onto the central platform, vats of critical fluids burbling as their pumping systems reawakened, sensing a presence in their midst. She stared about her as the holographic liaison flickered into existence.
"Milady," it greeted with a bow.
Sephradon smiled remembering how useful the computer's liaison had been during the Templar's attack. "I've missed you," she replied, with a flicker of sentimentality.
"I await your command," the Liaison responded dutifully.
"What is that?" Sephradon inquired motioning to the one open tube as she walked around it surveying the damage that had been done as it had been pried open.
"GN-3-02," the liaison stated flatly.
Sephradon smiled. "Ahhh, Edward," she surmised, running a hand over the womb of the new Immortal Emperor. "Such an inelegant birth." She looked about her. "And these are all GN-3's?"
"Negative, Doctor Rikard has destroyed all but two specimens of GN-3 program," the Liaison replied, the hologram following her gaze up and around him. "These are the GN-2-Beta specimens, earlier experiments in third stage genetic engineering. However since the Immortal Emperor himself took a hand in the design of the GN-3 they were relegated."
Sephradon felt her jaw tighten. "Relegation. Rikard had no further use for my kind after he had the third generation."
Her assessment of the constructed clones caused her a slight shiver. Copies of the first experiments, Rikard striving to recover his losses after the Immortal Emperor had seized his work and taken it upon himself to build his own heir. Rikard's vanity at preserving his work would prove her salvation. It wouldn't take much to assemble a maturation system; Mars had plenty of them, and combined with the right level of education...
Sephradon smiled at her own cleverness as she patted the solution to the war and the insurance that the Amsus dominion would be absolute.