Imperial Night (Ashes of Empire, #3) Read online

  “Yes. Since Stearn is unaware of his abilities, it’s best if we let Gwenneth make the call in a controlled environment such as the abbey.”

  “You fear he might not be controllable?”

  Katarin allowed herself a faint grimace.

  “Possibly. We know little about male talents and almost nothing about wild ones. Besides, we should make sure his body’s energies are focused on healing.”

  “I would still like answers about how he found that beacon, Sister. It’s been bothering me ever since you first sensed it.”

  “As would I. Let me ask any questions. Just in case. He may not be aware of his abilities, but they nonetheless manifest through heightened instincts, what laypeople call the sixth sense.”

  Kuusisten dipped his head in acknowledgment.

  “I bow to your greater judgment.”

  With that, he led the way into the sickbay’s recovery room. Its sole occupant raised his head from the reader and stared at them.

  “Stearn Roget, I’m Lieutenant Commander Alwin Kuusisten, Republic of Lyonesse Navy and Dawn Hunter’s captain. I didn’t have a chance to greet you before you collapsed upon arrival. Welcome aboard. I understand you’re healing rapidly.”

  “Thank you, Captain, and apparently, I am.”

  “Stearn would be dead by now if not for our arrival,” Sister Milene said as she entered with a tray from the galley in her hands. A younger version of Cory, with a similar trim to her short, black hair, she nodded politely at her superior and the captain. “A few more days, and he’d have fallen into a natural coma before dying as his internal organs shut down.”

  Roget’s eyes went from Milene to Kuusisten.

  “Then I truly owe you my life.”

  “Saving lives is part of our job, Mister Roget, and we’re good at it.” He smiled at Milene. “We won’t be long, Sister. I know better than standing between a man and his first meal in a week.”

  A loud rumble came from Roget’s stomach, and he gave his visitors a wry grin.

  “What I was eating on Yotai wasn’t much either.”

  “Could I just ask about one thing before we let you sample the cuisine?” Katarin asked.

  “Anything, Sister.”

  “Where and how did you acquire this beacon?” She produced the disk in question with the panache of a professional prestidigitator. “It is normally only issued to members of my Order, mainly the sisters, in case of emergency. We rescued every living Brethren in this and the neighboring sectors, and they brought their beacons with them.”

  Roget’s eyes met Katarin’s without a hint of guile.

  “I found it among the ruins of the Kingstown Spaceport on Montego Colony. We were looking for salvage, and it attracted my attention.”

  “Why wear it around your neck?”

  He shrugged. “Why not?”

  “Because it isn’t exactly a lightweight piece of jewelry.”

  “No idea, but whatever instinct drove me proved to be right.”

  “Fair enough. We can discuss matters after your meal.”

  “How long until we arrive on Lyonesse?” He asked as Milene put the tray on the bed’s swing-out table.

  “Three wormhole transits and a little over three and a half star system crossings considering where Lyonesse is on her orbital path at the moment. Call it five more days, provided the bogies currently in this star system don’t cause trouble.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  Katarin touched Kuusisten’s arm and nodded at the door.

  “Let’s leave Stearn to eat in peace.”

  Once out in the passageway, Katarin made the beacon vanish in one of her garment’s many pockets and sighed.

  “I’m afraid he’s lying.”

  Kuusisten cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He’s not particularly good at controlling his feelings, though he keeps a remarkably good poker face. But there’s something else. We engrave beacons with a mark identifying the abbey that fabricated them. The abbey on Montego Colony didn’t make this one. It came from the Valamo Abbey on New Karelia. The same sector, but almost a hundred light-years apart. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around how a Valamo beacon ended up in the ruins of a Montego spaceport. Sisters, and those few friars with enough talent, activated them only if they thought or knew a Dawn ship would cross their star system back during the empire’s collapse, when the rescue efforts were underway. Granted, we’ll likely never find out what happened in the Aeolus Sector or anywhere else in that part of human space. However, we can take it as a given that beacons don’t make a dozen wormhole transits on their own. Not if they hang around the neck of someone running for sanctuary, which in that part of the old empire would be Lindisfarne. Our fleet of Dawn ships never made it that far.”

  “Why would he lie?”

  “Search me. Stearn’s mind does not feel tainted, let alone malevolent, although it’s so chaotic I can’t sense anything useful. I spent enough time in the Windy Isles, working with the worst of the exiles who came with us in Tanith, to have met true evil. Roget is undisciplined, but he feels, for lack of a better word, clean.”

  “Are you afraid he might have taken it from a living member of the Order?”

  “Everything is possible, I suppose.” Katarin gave Kuusisten a helpless look. “But until we’re home and Abbess Gwenneth rules on Stearn Roget’s future, there isn’t much more I can do, lest I somehow make him aware of his abilities.”

  — 8 —

  ––––––––

  The soft chime of an incoming call broke through Lieutenant General Barca’s concentration. Since the tone indicated it was her aide, she finished reading the current paragraph while absently stabbing at the screen embedded in her desk.

  “What is it, Rian?”

  “Message from the operations center, sir,” Lieutenant Colonel Rian Krupak replied in his clipped accent. “Outer Picket reports five bogies entering Wormhole Arietis Six. Sensor data from the traffic control buoys show they’re not configured as merchant ships. Dawn Hunter arrived in the Arietis system at the same time, inbound from her mission, and is holding by Wormhole One at Outer Picket’s orders. I’ve forwarded the buoy imagery to your workstation. Admiral Sirak is monitoring the situation.”

  “Thank you.”

  Barca sat back in her chair and swiveled it to face a large window overlooking the Haven River, which lazily wound its way past the republic’s government precinct at the heart of the capital.

  The first Chief of the Defense Staff worked out of the old garrison commander’s office, an aerie with a spectacular view carved into Lannion Base’s cliffside. But when the newly formed republic stood up a proper Defense Department, its first elected president, Elenia Yakin, insisted Rear Admiral Morane and his staff move into purpose-built headquarters near Government House on the Haven River’s banks. Then Major Barca, along with most officers, breathed a sigh of relief when the service chiefs and their retinues moved out of the Defense Force’s main ground installation.

  As she stared at the river, Barca called up, from memory, the names of the warships currently assigned to Outer Picket. Since the day Admiral Morane implemented the concept of forward defense, Outer Picket and the string of traffic control buoys and subspace relays were the most critical components of Lyonesse’s naval strategy. But unless the senate finally voted enough funds for an orbital shipyard capable of manufacturing frigates or even cruiser-sized vessels, the pickets would gradually lose their punch as the former imperial warships were decommissioned because of age.

  The Coromandel class cruiser Savage, Outer Picket’s lead ship for this rotation, was over fifty years old, and its companion, the Kalinka class frigate Ivan Rebroff, wasn’t much younger. Still, the first domestically produced faster-than-light man-o-war, a corvette, was rapidly taking shape along the shores of the Middle Sea, sout
h of Lannion.

  She would be commissioned as the Republic of Lyonesse Ship Standfast early in the new year. Then the Navy would no longer be composed of warships older than their crews, captured reivers of dubious quality, and the equally ancient Void Ships. Another, to be commissioned as Prevail, was under construction in an adjoining slip while the components for two more were being assembled nearby.

  Barca turned back toward her desk after a fruitless search for the shipyard’s outline on the hazy horizon and called up the imagery from the traffic control buoys. Those were not merchant ships. They looked almost exactly like the reivers who had tried their luck in the Lyonesse Branch five years earlier.

  Besides, the last honest trader visited Lyonesse nearly fifteen years ago and judging by the Void Ship reports over the last decade, there no longer was any commercial traffic worth mentioning in the Coalsack Sector. Not that Lyonesse was a significant trading hub even well before Dendera lost her mind and then her empire.

  Barca’s fingers danced on the desktop for a few seconds. Ossian Vara, who commanded Savage and Outer Picket, was under standing orders to capture any intruders who entered Corbenic. The star was formerly cataloged as ISC668231-2 until Morane baptized the two sterile systems between Arietis and Lyonesse because he got tired of remembering their numbers. The other now bore the name Broceliande.

  But those reivers didn’t look like they were in good shape, even to her Marine Corps-trained eye. With Lyonesse’s shipbuilding resources focused on the corvettes, there was no point in seizing more dubious hulls that might need scarce materials and parts. Besides, crews for additional ships would be limited until the next few classes went through naval basic and trades training in preparation for the Navy’s upcoming expansion.

  Perhaps she should rescind those standing orders. Let Vara destroy them if they offered battle or, if they turned tail, let them run. Reivers wanted easy pickings. Allowing this lot to run and spread the word that the Lyonesse Branch of the former imperial wormhole network was well defended might keep future intruder-wannabes from even trying. It wasn’t as if the various competing worlds who still possessed the means for faster-than-light travel would suddenly coalesce and form a fleet capable of attacking an obscure planet few remembered even before the empire’s destruction.

  Barca reached for the intercom, then decided she might as well stretch her legs and walk down one floor to where Rear Admiral Nate Sirak, the Chief of the Naval Staff, had his office. Sirak’s aide rose the moment Barca entered the CNS’ domain and came to attention. She gave him a friendly wave and crossed the antechamber, ears picking up not only Sirak’s voice but that of Major General Devin Hamm, Chief of the Ground Forces Staff, and the first Lyonesse-born officer to reach flag rank.

  Both two-stars fell silent the moment she cleared her throat and let out a gentle ‘Good afternoon.’

  “Sir.” Sirak stood while Hamm, who’d been sitting on the edge of his naval counterpart’s desk, jumped up and straightened.

  “Am I right in thinking your discussion centers on the bogies coming through from Arietis?”

  “You are,” Sirak replied. “This is the most excitement we’ve had since the last batch came looking for an easy target.”

  “What would you say if I rescinded part of the Morane Doctrine and let Ossian Vara give them the chance to reconsider and run?”

  Sirak, a lean, black-haired, and dark-complexioned man in his early sixties, considered Barca’s question for a few heartbeats.

  “We don’t need more crappy little ships, and until the corvette program wraps up, we won’t have the wherewithal to upgrade them so that they’re slightly less crappy little ships. Never mind that the Navy is tight on personnel as well. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. That leaves either expending ammunition or letting them run, and though I’m sure Ossian’s gunners would be delighted with a little live-fire training, waste not, want not.”

  “Those were my conclusions, as well. It’s time we move away from the idea of a mysterious Lyonesse Branch, the starship graveyard from which no intruder returns. Let’s shake things up and leave would be intruders thinking our wormhole cul-de-sac is too risky short of using a full naval battle group. At some point, star systems desperate for advanced tech will think of bypassing a heavily defended part of the wormhole network and try to cross interstellar space in FTL, as we did before our ancestors mapped stable wormholes. Provided they can enlarge their antimatter containment units, of course, which I believe isn’t that difficult.”

  The CNS shook his head.

  “It isn’t. Magnetic containment fields are simple in comparison with the rest of an FTL starship’s systems. I’ll send Ossian orders to scare the bogies and let them run. That is if they don’t pick a fight with him.”

  “Go ahead. Consider the capture or destroy part of the Morane Doctrine shelved. While I have both of you, did our intelligence network pick up anything new on this Lindisfarne Brethren matter?”

  “Yes. I intended to mention it at the next command conference,” General Hamm replied. “They erected a Void Orb at the heart of the abbey, one that is apparently of motherhouse size rather than normal abbey size. One of my reservists saw its dedication by Sister Gwenneth, who didn’t appear overly enthusiastic. Going through the motions were the words he used. Has President Morane spoken with the abbess yet?”

  “Not that I know, but he figured it could wait until the next time Gwenneth visited him and Chancellor Reyes, so we don’t appear concerned by a matter internal to the Order of the Void. Considering all they’ve done for Lyonesse and the Knowledge Vault over the years, it might appear uncharitable.”

  **

  Commander Yulia Zheng, Ivan Rebroff’s commanding officer, raised a skeptical eyebrow — or at least her hologram did — when Captain Ossian Vara told her they were to scare away the incoming bogies instead of capturing them.

  “Did HQ finally decide the Navy has enough worn-out hulls? If so, I can’t say I’m unhappy. It’s a given we run the largest naval force in this and the neighboring sectors. Otherwise, one of the Void Ships would have reported something, or the Outer Picket would face more than just an occasional wolf pack. Why shouldn’t scavengers, reivers, and other assorted scum find out they can’t mess with us? Making ships vanish is good for mystery, not so good for deterrence.”

  Vara made a face at his younger colleague.

  “You’re not wrong, but part of me remains a tad cautious about advertising a Navy is protecting the Lyonesse Branch. It’ll make the wrong sort of sentient beings wonder how valuable our home system is.”

  “Perhaps. In any case, the top brass decided. What are your intentions?”

  “Pretty much the same procedure as always. Go silent shortly before the reivers are due to cross the wormhole’s event horizon, give them a few minutes so they can shake off any disorientation, then light them up with our targeting sensors. Once we have their attention, I’ll let them know they can either leave or die instead of demanding they surrender or die.”

  Zheng, a hard-faced woman in her forties with intense dark eyes and short, jet black hair, let out a soft snort.

  “Leave or die just doesn’t sound right.”

  “True. But if we’ll no longer operate our version of a black hole that makes ships vanish without a trace, so we keep Lyonesse just as mysterious as her legendary Earth namesake, a softer tone is necessary. It’ll be at least another six hours before they exit the wormhole, so I’ll call the picket to battle stations at four bells in the dog watch. We’ll go silent once both ships are ready.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Vara, out.”

  Ossian Vara was a heavy set, dark-haired man in his early fifties, with deep-set brown eyes that missed little. Although he was one of the Republic of Lyonesse Navy’s most senior officers, he’d been a mere lieutenant in Savage when Task Force 160A’s flag officer, Commodore Reginus Bryne
r, defected to Lyonesse with his five ships more than two decades earlier.

  When news came of Yotai’s scouring by Empress Dendera’s Retribution Fleet, even the most skeptical among the task force’s crews had nothing but praise for Bryner’s decision. But part of Vara still longed for the days when imperial starships patrolled the wormhole network and kept order throughout a fractious empire.

  Since trading the imperial crown for a gold, double-headed Vanger’s Condor and anchor emblem, he’d spent almost half his time in space standing guard at this wormhole terminus as part of the Outer Picket. A necessary job, but a boring one, unless hapless reivers peeked down the cul-de-sac. And they were becoming scarce as fallout from the human empire’s collapse affected more and more star-faring worlds in this part of the galaxy.

  He couldn’t even remember the last time an honest trader asked for admittance, but he’d still been a lieutenant, or perhaps a freshly promoted lieutenant commander. It was long before he became the second most senior starship captain in the fleet after Tupo Hak, who commanded Vanquish, the Navy’s flagship and most powerful unit.

  Back then, the crews came from elsewhere. Now, most of them were born on Lyonesse and had no memories of the mighty Imperial Fleet. The fast attack cruiser Vanquish was the largest warship they’d ever seen, even if she wasn’t particularly powerful compared to the long-vanished heavy cruisers and battleships that gave the empire its mighty fighting power. Few of them ever left the three star systems Lyonesse claimed as her own, other than those who volunteered for Void Ship expeditions, and they were carefully selected.

  Vara let out a soft sigh. He had no regrets about his choices, but now and then, he felt nostalgia for a bygone era and a distant birth planet even though both seemed more like fading dreams. He tapped the screen embedded in his day cabin’s desk.

  “Captain to first officer.”

  “Sir,” Commander Senga’s voice replied a few seconds later.

  “We will call battle stations at four bells in the dog watch.”