Frozen Soul, and other works: Chapter 79

Captain Vaughn (or Empress Merida, depending on what hat she was wearing at the moment), smiled as she walked into the Combat Information Center of the Fleet Base. When they’d begun to turn the tide against the Usurper’s forces, and were able to pivot from simply staying alive and free to planning the assaults that would retake their Empire, she had never assumed that they would be able to take the Fleet Base intact. An attack in numbers through the gate had never worked before, not since people learned to defend the things. And the logistics of having her already sketchy supply train extend all the way to Alpha Centauri without the fleet base to back her up were… disheartening, to say the least.

But in her wildest dreams, she had not believed that they would not only have been able to capture the Fleet Base completely intact, but also get three fourths of the defending ships to surrender without fighting, and only having to destroy seven percent of Second Fleet before the rest surrendered. This was a victory that would be spoken about for generations, in no small part because of the necessity of keeping some parts of the operation classified to keep the same techniques from being used against them in the future.

She didn’t know what ‘proprietary technology’ Commodore Mollen had that allowed him to infiltrate the Fleet Base, but given the fact that he’d gone alone, instead of sending a full team, she figured he’d probably uncovered some Lost Tech somewhere in his travels. He HAD apparently spent some time on kisArra, in Confederation space, and that place was rumored to have been home to an ancient colony long before humans expanded into that area of space. She liked to think that he dug something up in the sands, and was clever enough to figure out a way to use it to his benefit. It fit the ‘dashing rogue’ mystique he liked to paint for himself, after all.

“You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you?” Merida snapped her head to the side to look at Lucio, raising an eyebrow as she did so, questioningly. He simply smiled, and said, “The Commodore. You’re thinking about him again right?”

“Wh-what do you mean by that? Have you been using psy on me?”

“Oh please. Remember the psy blocker you got, to keep out mental influence? No, I don’t need psy for this. You were licking your lips, like you were picturing a very tasty dish.”

Merida blushed hard at that. “I would never!”

“And you just confirmed it with that cute blush, mon Capitan. Oh, I’m only teasing you, of course. That is certainly a delightfully sinful dish that I wouldn’t mind eating, myself. But don’t think you’d be able to make him a consort or anything. He’s far too nomadic a Nomad for that to work out. The best you’d be able to do is to be a willing woman, eager to please him whenever he blows into port. Unless you gave up everything and ran off to join his crew, like your sister did.”

Merida sighed. “And those are all the reasons I cannot do it. Abandoning the Empire? Going off living as a mercenary? I couldn’t do that. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to steal Sheila’s chance at happiness away from her. And I’m not sure I could handle simply being another member of that man’s harem.”

“Captain, we have multiple unscheduled transitions!”

The playful banter died instantly, and the mantle of military leader fell across Merida’s shoulders. “On screen! How many ships? Do we have IFF codes?”

“Captain, I’m reading over one hundred new ships in the system! IFF puts them as elements of Fourth, Eighth, and Tenth Fleets!”

“Incoming transmission!”

“On screen.”

The display screen blanked from the tactical view of the system, to show an older Japanese man in the uniform of a Fleet Admiral. “This is Admiral Yamamoto of Eighth Fleet. I am the one currently in command of the task force you see before you. I apologize for the delay in our arrival, but it took some time to coordinate and arrange a new commander for Fourth Fleet. But we are here now, and we have come to pledge ourselves to the true Empress, Merida Vaughn.”

A tear tried to force its way from her eye unbidden, and Merida quickly blinked it away. “All ships stand down. Welcome Admiral Yamamoto. It is good to see you again, Sensei. If you would come to the Fleet Base, I believe we have a lot to discuss.”

“Of course, my Empress. We’ll be on station in four hours.”

Merida smiled as the officers came in. Surrounding her here were officers from the Fleet she’d led away from Sol, the battered remnants of those who remained loyal to the Empire instead of the Usurper, and those who had now joined her, either through surrender (at Edena, or here at Alpha Centauri), or through the realization that they were simply on the wrong side.

She looked closely at the commanders that had come in from the new fleets. Admiral Yamamoto she knew, of course. He had taught several courses at the Academy when she was there, and she was gratified that he, unlike some of the other instructors, had not been cowed by her family name, or attempted to use her influence to get her father’s ear. That meant that when he praised her for her work, or criticized her for her failures, he was legitimate and fair in both. He made her the naval officer she was today, and it was because of his teachings, and others, that she refused to let that bastard Travis win.

The new commander of Fourth Fleet was apparently a recently promoted Admiral that had been freed from a slave world just before the Bagthera operation. Another of Commodore Mollen’s feats, apparently. Somehow he’d found where political prisoners who refused to accept the ‘new order’ that Travis was pushing were being kept. Admiral Han looked hungry to be in the fight. From the few reports she’d had on where Han had been found, Merida empathized completely.

Tenth Fleet’s commander was another Admiral who was a colleague of Yamamoto’s. Admiral Jeffery Sinclair had been in the Navy for over fifty years, and though he still looked like a man in his thirties, he was practically an instillation on his ship. Seeing him off the Babylon was a rarity. His defense of the Line during the last Ihm war was still taught in the Academy.

There were several other captains and commanding officers in the new group, but the only other newcomer she needed to know at the moment was General Melissa Greer. Apparently, she’d been another ‘guest’ at the slave ranch where Admiral Han had been recovered, along with several members of her staff. After being freed, they had quickly returned to their old unit, and to read the official report, ‘discussed their displeasure with the new commanding officer at length, at which time the CO reported to the morgue for further deployment’.

Stepping to the head of the conference table, she waited for everyone to quiet down. The fact that a mere Captain of a superdreadnought was in overall command of an operation where multiple admirals were present was… unusual, but given her other role as Empress, no one questioned it. Especially since she had let the Admirals control the battles in the field, while she fought her ship.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, on behalf of my father, the late Emperor, and all the true servants of the Empire who have fallen due to the trickery and treason of Travis and certain members of the nobility whose ambition outweighed their loyalty to their liege, I thank you all for coming. The ships gathered here represent the largest striking force ever assembled in human history. Never before has so large a force been gathered for striking a single target.”

“Of course, given the nature of that target, I would be lying if I said we could have twice as many ships as we currently do, and be assured of victory. This is the single largest striking force in human history, and we are going to be assaulting the single largest defensive block in human space. We are going to be striking Sol itself, the heart of the Empire. For three thousand years, from the first Russian forays into space until now, Sol has stood unconquered, unchallenged, untested. And so it is only fitting that humans be the ones to test her.”

“Let us be clear. This will be no simple raid, no sneaking in and battering a few ships before fleeing. This is not a pirate raid or a stealth attack on shipping lines. We are going to fly into the teeth of the strongest defensive position in human space, possibly in the galaxy. Not all of us will make it through the coming storm. But if we do not do this, if we simply cut and run, then we betray the oaths we took to stand and defend the Empire against all those who would attack her, against all enemies, foreign or domestic. We betray our fathers and brothers, our mothers and sisters, and all those brave humans who have fought and bled and died for us to be here, now, as one of the most powerful nations amongst the stars.”

“And if we should fail, we doom them all to tyranny and enslavement. No, not the tyranny of a mortal ruler who will someday pass away. No, not the enslavement of collars or chips used so freely, too freely, by those with power in our Empire against those without. What I am speaking of is something far, far worse. If we should fail in reclaiming Terra and Sol from the Usurper, then the human race is doomed to be under the uncaring, unfeeling booth of a mad AI, our very souls corrupted and twisted in service to It, claiming It as a god!”

She paused, and then said, “Yes, the rumors you’ve no doubt heard throughout the fleet are true. There is a new ‘cult’ that has sprung up, starting in Sol, around my brother, the Usurper. This cult claims that the ‘Lord Deus’ has come to show ‘Holy Terra’ her destiny amongst the stars, as the conqueror of all things. And they promise immortality to those who follow them and are devout in their belief. Oh, not the immortality in heaven that religions have preached for time immemorial. They say that Lord Deus can grant them immortality in this world, something that had before been available only to the Nomads.”

“What they do not say is the price, the terrible price that comes with this false immortality. I have spoken with several Nomads, and, through them, know the truth of their version of immortality. They live in another world, where their true forms lie. But through technology, they are able to project their consciousness into this world, taking on forms like those we are familiar with. When one of them dies, the connection between their world and ours is severed, and it takes time to reestablish it. But because they never died a true death, they lay no claim to true immortality.”

“But this Cult of Deus is different. Their immortality is a lie that claims to be true. The sentient AI Deus, who had long been trapped beneath the molten rock and acidic winds of Venus, has, it seems, found a way to copy and upload a human consciousness from one body to another. So long as the record of a dead cultist remains, even if they are not within range of one of the cloning facilities at the time of their death, they can still be brought back if this record is brought to the AI. They die a true death, and then a mere copy takes over in a new body, a puppet in a meat suit.”

“And they would be a puppet. For the AI corrupts its servants, brainwashing them until there is nothing left but loyalty to a glorified program with delusions of grandeur. It is for this reason that we have so stringently purged the Fleet of any cultists we’ve found, cutting them out like a cancer before they and their influence could spread. But if we are to capture Sol, we must go into the heart of their territory, and we must acknowledge that every last cultist must be destroyed. But destroying them is a mercy to the people they were before, granting them vengeance against the machine slaves that murdered their old selves.”

“With that in mind, we have a campaign to prepare. Let’s get to it.”

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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