Frozen Soul, and other works: Chapter 67

The Katcheka system was an agricultural resource node. Two planets in the ‘goldilocks zone’, K3 and K4, were basically perfect for agriculture, but were very short on metals or other such materials near enough to the surface for industrial use. The large oceans, however, made cement a preferred building material. That’s where pretty much everyone in the system lived, working massive farms that helped feed the Empire.

There were two rocky planets closely orbiting the star, but they were uninhabitable, and were useless in terms of heavy industry. One was comprised mostly of molten lead, while the other was basically an irradiated diamond. Even if one could ‘harvest’ parts of the diamond, it would be decades before you could put them in the same room as anyone you didn’t want to have a slow and painful death. I wasn’t sure how, but somehow it seemed there was a radioactive core to K2, supporting theories that it was actually the remains of some kind of Lost Tech.

The rest of the system comprised of a couple gas giants, which allowed for ships to get fuel easily enough. There was a surprising lack of debris in the system. No asteroid belts, no rings on the gas giants, no lurkers in trojan or LaGrange points. Hell, there were barely any moons in the system. Either this system had been mined out before it was ever discovered, or it had the least ‘mess’ of any system I’d ever seen. Leading theory said that K2 was actually an artificial planet, made in part with the remains of all the leftover debris from the system’s formation.

In other words, it was useless except as a breadbasket system.

Of course, breadbasket systems were almost as important when a war was on as major industrial nodes. Not only for the military, who generally enjoyed eating, but for the civilian side. You start having major shortages and forcing civilians to make do with emergency rations and you quickly find yourself with a morale problem of epic proportions. Sure, soldiers don’t like e-rats, but they can put up with them. That’s part of the gig, and they know it. Try telling a civilian that they can’t have their coffee because supplies have been interdicted and see how quickly they start revolting.

Coincidentally, K4 was the Empire’s largest supplier of coffee, period. Something about the soil gave the local coffee a taste that pretty much everyone liked. If something happened to the coffee supply, well, Bad Things™ would start happening in the Empire in short order. Impressive, since K4 only had maybe a hundred thousand people on the entire planet, mostly scattered out to all the farms, though there were four main cities which were used as distribution nodes, leading up to the space station in orbit.

Coffee, naturally, was one of those necessary goods that had a low profit margin usually, when compared to industrial goods, and the system was fairly safe from pirates because of that. There were simply better targets elsewhere, in richer systems where valuable items were made or precious metals were mined. A lone station orbited K4, the only one in the system, and it typically played host to the single Navy corvette (the INS Tomthumb) that was usually present mostly as a Revenue agent.

Now, however, Katcheka was just behind the front lines, making a tempting target for raiders. So the system had been hurriedly reinforced with the frigate Chikada and the light carrier Palladia, carrying three squadrons of fighters. The Emperor’s lack of screening vessels was showing itself again, but the fighters would make this a challenge for prospective raiders. They were running the crews with one squadron out on patrol at all times. Probably had the second on standby and the last getting rack time. Taking out the ships before they could use the station’s FTL coms to call for help from the front would be rough, especially with Imperial warships being transition capable. They could have company within minutes of an alarm being raised if they did in-system hyperspace runs to get to the heliopause, transitioned, and then went to hyperspace to close for the fight.

On board the INS Agamemnon, one of Her Majesty Empress Merida’s heavy cruisers, Captain Ivanova leaned over the tactical readouts, which were valiantly displaying the readings from the stealth probes she had launched. The readouts were impervious to her scowl as she stood there, trying to figure a way that she and Captain Reynolds on the Peaceful Valley could successfully raid this system without losing their ships. Oh, the forces in system weren’t an issue. The problem the reinforcements that were under half an hour away.

If they took out the station first, then the chance of an FTL comm making it out of the system in time to warn the Usurpers was small. But getting close enough for the two heavy cruisers to issue the broadsides needed to destroy the station without being seen was going to be all but impossible. Heavy cruisers might have some stealth ability, but they were by no means slippery enough to work miracles like that. At best, their ECM could fool sensors into thinking they were a pair of freighters, right up until the light bouncing from their hulls caught up to whoever was looking their way. Successfully destroying the Usurper forces in the system would be difficult enough without the secondary objective of seizing or destroying the freighters in orbit.

So the surprise was, indeed, total and complete when all of a sudden, long range sensors indicated that both the station and the carrier had suffered from simultaneous kinetic strikes. The station was gutted, starting from the ‘top’ of the station where the sensors and FTL comms were located, and leading up to what must have been a hellacious explosion on the first truly hardened deck several levels below it, essentially decapitating the station. The carrier, on the other hand, was simply GONE. Ivanova rolled back the readings, and cursed as she saw the carrier get ripped apart by secondary explosions. At least the station had enough of it still intact that there would be survivors. Those aboard the carrier were not so lucky.

“REPORT! Where the hell did those kinetics come from?”

“Captain, unknown at this time! Computer analysis of the impacts suggests similar weapons to what intelligence says were used at Earth to destroy Fleet Base 1 and cripple the Usurper’s flagship.”

“Do we have a bearing?”

“Working… yes, Captain, we have approximate bearings for the shots, but there is nothing out there! We have nothing on sensors, and visual scanning shows nothing in the area. We did detect a several spikes in the background EM field momentarily on that bearing before the impacts. Results inconclusive.”

Ivanova shook her head. Those were the enemy over there, but they were still Navy. They may have been acting out of misguided loyalty to the Usurper, but they didn’t deserve a death like that, without even being able to put up a fight. But she had a mission, and that mission just got one helluvalot easier. “Contact the Peaceful Valley, bring us in on an attack run, they have no FTL comms now, so help will be delayed.”

“Ma’am! The Chikada and the Tomthumb are breaking orbit. They’re spotted us, and they look all kinds of pissed.”

“I don’t much blame them. Enemy fighters?”

“On attack vector. Expect contact in zero six minutes.”

“Captain! New target uncloaking! Five thousand kilometers astern of the Chikada! They’re opening fire!”

“What ship? Do we have anything else out here? I swear if those intel weenies risked my ship and my operation by not telling us what was going on…!”

“Negative, captain. No messages in cue about allied stealth ships.”

“Captain! Enemy fighters have been engaged by a squadron of stealth fighters! Chikada has taken heavy damage to shields, Tomthumb moving to assist.”

“Get us in there! Launch missiles once we’re within range. Classify the unknown as friendly, for now. If they want to kill Usurpers, they’re more than welcome to it. But you watch them, I want to know the moment they so much as twitch in our direction.”

“Detecting weapons fire from cloaked vessels! Three, maybe four vessels not appearing on our scanners, Captain. Enemy fighter squadron has only three surviving birds. One unknown fighter damaged, but intact, looks like it is returning to base. Wait one. The Tomthumb’s shields are down! Change in weapons fire. Two stealthed ships now using ion cannons on the Tomthumb. Chikada’s shields are down, all unknowns now firing ion cannons. Enemy ships are disabled.”

Ivanova let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Whoever these people are, there was no doubt that they were professionals. But professional what? Mercenaries? Pirates? She was watching the way the unknown fighters moved, and the pilots clearly had military training. How the hell did something like this get financed?

“Captain, detecting assault shuttles breaking from stealth, five ships total, heading towards the enemy ships.”

“We have a transmission in the clear from the unstealthed unknown. Appears to be directed to the enemy ships. Voice only.”

“Pipe it through, I want to hear this.”

“This is Captain Hoffa of the Interstellar Brotherhood of Teamsters ship Ceasar’s Palace. This system is guilty of using non-union workers at all distribution centers and port facilities, and they will be brought into compliance with union regulations by force. Your ships and crews will be seized pursuant to that end. Surrender, and you will live. Resist, and you’ll live with a Stepford Defiance collar. Hurt any of my people when they board to take control of your ships, and I swear to all the gods that ever were, you will beg for the sweet release of death, and it will never come. And yes, I see that message drone you just sent off. Very clever throwing it out the docking port manually. And now it is destroyed. Are you going to stop dicking around, or am I going to have to disable your life support for a couple hours before I come over there and beat some sense into you?”

The bridge crew on the Agamemnon looked as stunned as Ivanova was. Just what in the hell had they stepped in here? Since when did labor unions exist in Imperial space, much less have weapons like this?

“C-captain, unknown ship is sending another transmission, encrypted tightbeam to us and the Peaceful Valley. Includes video.”

“On screen.”

A man in what looked like black tactical armor under a black coat appeared on the screen in front of her. The screen split to show Captain Reynolds as well. He looked like a mercenary captain more than a pirate, at least.

“This is Commodore Mollen of the Black Star Fleet, Captain of the Starlight Raven. Who might I be addressing?”

Captain Reynolds looked at the screen and nodded slightly, knowing that she’d see it. She was in nominal command of this mission as the senior captain, so she’d handle the talks. “I am Captain Susan Ivanova of the Imperial Navy Ship Agamemnon, loyal to the true Empress Merida. Not to put too fine a point on it, Commodore, but what might you be doing out here, and what was this I heard about the ‘Interstellar Brotherhood of Teamsters’?”

The face on the screen laughed. “Hah. I figured you’d be listening in. And so would any Imperial spies down on the planet below. I’m not giving away more information than what I already have on a clear channel. That’s an excellent way to have someone send assassins after you.”

Ivanova revised her appraisal of this Mollen character upwards. He was brash and bold, but didn’t let his ego get in the way of an operation. And, apparently, he liked to spout bullshit from the position of having a gun to the other side’s head. Made the other side wary of disbelieving him, at least. And he clearly had some idea of the way things really worked.

“Very well, what is it you wanted to discuss?”

“Well, I assume you’re in this system to raid the storage and distribution nodes for food and coffee being shipped off K3 and K4, and put the hurt on the Usurper forces and civilians?”

Seeing as there was no other reason for them to be there, Ivanova nodded. “That is our mission.”

“Excellent. Then when you’re through, perhaps you could escort my ships into Loyalist space? I’ve got the Confederation Ambassador and his family and staff aboard one of my ships. I also have someone who would really like to say hello to your Empress, if she can get the chance.”

The captain motioned for someone off-screen, and they joined him in the frame, wearing similar tactical gear, but when she removed her helmet, Ivanova gasped in surprise. It was Princess Sheila! No one had heard anything about her whereabouts other than a rumor that she’d joined a Nomad pirate captain.

Mastering herself, Ivanova nodded, and said, “I believe we can arrange safe passage into Loyalist space, yes.”

“Excellent! I’ll let your people get to work, then, just leave the northern warehouses alone for a bit? No sense in all that coffee going to waste if I have room in the hold to keep my people happy.”

Ivanova sighed as the connection cut out. OK, maybe the pirate part was true.

Previous Chapter Table of Contents Next Chapter

Be sure to read my published works!

Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):

Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT

Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37

Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy LitRPG):

Volume 1 - Tutorial https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VPRNDB

Omnibus 1 - Volumes 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0774T354X

Into the Black (Sci-Fi LitRPG):

Book I - Game Start https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LT5WGL

Omnibus I - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077X2KR7Y