The burden of command, p.43
The Burden of Command, page 43
part #14 of Empire Rising Series
“I didn’t understand at the time either Admiral,” Cavendish said as he raised his head to meet James’ eyes. “I thought McDowell had some kind of plan. Yet now it seems he didn’t. I don’t know why we attacked when we should have retreated.”
James shared a glance with Emilie. It was a mystery. A concerning mystery. “We’ll have to try and get to the bottom of it later,” he said as he turned back to Cavendish. For now, slot your ships that are still battle ready into formation with our fleet. Did you get much of a look at what the main Flex-aor fleet is up to?”
Cavendish shook his head. “I’m sorry Admiral. We were too busy defending ourselves to divert any ships or drones to Hiva’non.”
“No matter, you got your ships out, that’s what counts. We will remedy that oversight now. Fall into formation Commodore, and we may yet be able to avenge some of your losses.”
“With pleasure Admiral,” Cavendish said, a little more life returning to his voice.
With a nod, James ended the COM channel. Then, he turned fully to Emilie. “What’s your take?”
Emilie shook her head. “If they had just stayed in orbit, I’d think McDowell lost his nerve. Yet breaking orbit and charging the Flex-aor? That was madness. If we were talking about a war between different Human factions, I’d almost suggest McDowell was bribed. But he was killed. And what would the Flex-aor have to offer him anyway?”
James found himself shaking his head as well. It made no sense. “Perhaps we will get an answer as we continue,” was all he could think of to say. “Let’s fire another shell of recon drones. We need to keep our wits about us.” Emilie nodded and turned to her staff officers. James left overseeing the fleet in her hands. Instead, he focused on assessing just what the main Flex-aor fleet was up to. For two hours, as the six hundred and fifty ships of Emilie’s fleet crept deeper into the system, James watched every sensor feed and read every analyst’s report. The more he saw, the more confused he became. The Flex-aor were making no effort to hide what they were up to. Tens of thousands of shuttles were landing and taking off from Hiva’non’s surface. There were far too many to just have come from the Flex-aor warships. Clearly, the inhabitants of Hiva’non had secretly been building shuttles of their own. James wasn’t sure how they had gotten past Rear Admiral McDowell’s watchful gaze. Yet given how McDowell had reacted to the appearance of the Flex-aor fleet, it maybe wasn’t as surprising as it should have been. Something had been wrong with him.
“They must be landing hundreds of thousands of troops,” one sensor officer commented. “Half those warships must have been filled with soldiers.”
James tended to agree. That, or they were filled with the ground-based space weapons he feared. Yet there were no clear signs coming from Hiva’non’s surface as to exactly what the Flex-aor were up to. All the stealth drones that were sent towards the planet were destroyed before they could get good readings.
“We’ve got movement from their warships!” A tactical officer eventually announced. James had been expecting it. The Flex-aor fleet couldn’t allow his ships to just stroll right up to Hiva’non and attack their shuttles. “One thousand ships turning onto an intercept course.”
Emilie glanced at James. He shook his head ever so slightly. They weren’t going to begin decelerating just yet. He knew he couldn’t fight the Flex-aor fleet. It would be as suicidal as McDowell’s charge. Yet he didn’t want to retreat so easily. He needed to gather as much data on the Flex-aor fleet and their purposes as possible, for if their next target was Connecticut or Cral’van, he desperately needed something that might tip the balance. As things stood, James was all too aware that either of the major colonies could be attacked with ease. The only thing he could think of that might give the hundreds of millions of Humans and Crians who lived on each world a chance was the Flex-aor’s logistics. Moving a fleet of eight thousand warships from Hiva’non to Connecticut was no small undertaking. Especially if they haven’t had access to their homeworlds, James thought. Even as his hope rose slightly, it faded again as he continued to think through the situation. Clearly, the Flex-aor had access to shipyards Humanity had never discovered. They had also been able to bring a fleet of eight thousand warships from wherever they were to Hiva’non. That told him they already had a sophisticated supply chain set up.
For another half an hour, James held his nerve as one thousand ships closed with his fleet. When no new information was gathered on just what the Flex-aor were up to in that time, he relented. “All right, turn us around. Set a course back out of the system. And prepare several scout squadrons to be dispatched to the other Flex-aor worlds. We need to bring a warning to their garrisons and find out what is happening there.” Though he had tried to keep his tone level, the deflation he felt crept into it. They were abandoning the Hiva’non system. And James feared, by the time his scout squadrons visited the other Flex-aor worlds, they would have already come under attack as well. All of the Flex-aor worlds would be liberated. And with eight thousand or more warships, they will have months to start to rebuild their orbital defense stations and construction yards. It will take us that long at least to gather a force large enough to dislodge them, James told himself as his head shook. He would need to gather at least six thousand Imperial warships to be able to face the Flex-aor threat. And if I take them from the front lines, what will the Karacknids do? He feared he knew the answer to that as well.
“The Flex-aor fleet pursuing us is decelerating,” the same tactical officer announced.
James’ eyebrows rose in surprise. His fleet was showing it didn’t want to fight. The Flex-aor fleet need do nothing more than follow him at a safe distance to ensure his ships left. Why were they stopping? They were allowing him to continue to watch their activities if he wished. Turning to Emilie, he opened his mouth to voice his confusion. No words made it out. Instead, James’ skin began to crawl. He felt like an invisible slimy rope was sloppily sliding across his torso. The feeling made his eyes bulge. Around him, he saw other bridge officers react in a similar fashion. In the blink of an eye, the slow, sliding feeling suddenly intensified. The rope seemed to grasp onto James’s body and move its way up past his chest over his neck, and wrapped around his head. An intense pain assaulted his mind. James shut his eyes and his hands snapped up to his ears as a piercing sound threatened to explode his eardrums.
Just as the pain reached the point he thought his head would explode, it ceased. James’ eyes flicked open. Yet all he could see was darkness. Then an image from a horror movie flooded into his mind. Except, this was a movie James had seen before. It was one he had lived through. Though he had no idea how, he found himself staring into the many eyes of High Queen Ala’ron. She was floating in a large pool of thick goo, her many tentacles swishing back and forth. James recoiled as he recognized the slimy ropes that had curled around his body for what they were. For several seconds, panic threatened to overwhelm him. He knew the Flex-aor queens were telepathic. That was how they controlled their warrior and worker drones. Once before, Ala’ron had tried to connect to his mind, yet then, she had needed to physically touch him with her tentacles. Now she was millions of miles away on Hiva’non. Wait, James struggled to think. Now that he thought about it, when he had stopped her from touching him, she had still tried to access his mind from a few meters away. She had failed then. His horror increased. She hadn’t this time.
“Admiral Somerville,” Ala’ron’s repulsive but familiar voice said into James’ mind. “Or shall I call you Emperor now? I confess, I didn’t think I’d get the pleasure of speaking to you again so soon. You have made this day a truly joyous one.” She paused and James felt her mind probing at his. Her large maw opened. “How delightful. I see you believed me defeated.” Ala’ron let out a high-pitch screeching sound James sensed was a Flex-aor’s laugh. “Then you’re even more foolish than I thought.” Her tone suddenly changed; James felt a great weight pressing down upon his mind. “Your species has met its end Human. You will keep me as a slave no longer. I’ll have my revenge. Not one of your planets will be protected from my touch. I will wipe your species from off the face of the galaxy. You will rue the day you thought you could imprison me on my own planet!”
The assault on James’ mind intensified. Though he put up a fight, he couldn’t resist Ala’ron’s strength. Suddenly, he found images being forced into his thoughts. One by one, he saw all of the Imperial and Varanni Alliance worlds he had visited be overwhelmed by Flex-aor fleets and turned into smoldering nuclear wastes. As his horror at the images grew, he felt Ala’ron’s sadistic delight rise as well. Mixed in with the images of destroyed worlds were other images Ala’ron made him see, images of Karacknid fleets pouring over Humanity’s northern border. If he had been in any doubt before, he now knew that the Flex-aor had been in contact with the Karacknids. He didn’t sense any awareness of a formal alliance coming from Ala’ron, but then, they didn’t need one. All both species had to do was act in their best interests, and Humanity would be destroyed between them.
Despite the horror of what he was seeing, and the great pressure on his mind, a new thought occurred to James. He desperately reached out for it. Years ago, when Johnston had been attacked by one of Ala’ron’s daughters, she had tried to read Johnston’s mind when she had entangled him in her tentacles. James had heard the story many times from Johnston. He had always claimed he had been able to read her thoughts as well. Gathering his strength, James suddenly stopped trying to resist Ala’ron’s mental assault. Instead, he forced his own thoughts back through the mental link she had made.
Ala’ron roared and hissed at him. In the blink of an eye, all of her strength turned to snapping the connection between them. James resisted it as best he could. He lasted less than a couple of seconds. Then, the link severed. But not before he managed to get a glimpse of several images from Ala’ron’s mind. What he saw shook him to his core. The Flex-aor did have other fleets. Even as he sat on Matilda’s deck, they were assaulting the other Flex-aor worlds who housed other Queens. Yet that wasn’t what sent shivers of panic down James’ spine. The Flex-aor hadn’t come to retake their worlds. The thousands of shuttles he had watched weren’t landing troops or weapons. They were taking off Flex-aor workers and drones! Already, Ala’ron was on board one of the battleships orbiting Hiva’non. The Flex-aor weren’t trying to recapture their worlds, they had come for their people! The clearest image James had got had been of massive mobile construction ships. Ships large enough to house millions of Flex-aor and build thousands of ships. They are completely changing their ways, James thought even as his body began to shiver. A deep coldness was beginning to assault him. His whole body felt weakened and his mind drained. Nevertheless, his thoughts were clear. The Flex-aor were evacuating their worlds. They planned to become a nomadic species. One that could move from system to system with ease and strike at any Human world they wished. And they have more ships, James told himself. What Matilda’s sensors were looking at now were just the ships the escaped Flex-aor had enough warriors to man. They had thousands more out in unexplored space just waiting for warrior and worker drones to be brought back to man them. James shook his head. It wasn’t just Connecticut, Utah or Cral’van that were at risk, every border colony throughout Varanni Alliance and Imperial space was at risk. And the ships that would be needed to defend them all would strip the northern border forts of all their strength.
“James,” a very concerned voice said loudly. “Uncle!” As he slowly became aware of the voice repeating his name, James also realized his body was being shaken back and forth. Suddenly remembering where he was on Matilda’s bridge, his eyes fluttered open. “Oh, thank goodness!” Emilie said. She was hunched over in front of him, one hand on his shoulder, and the other on his forehead. “You are freezing! What happened?”
James opened his mouth to speak, but only a croak came out. His throat was bone dry. Turning slightly, he reached for a glass of water he kept under his command chair. Only when he saw his hand move in front of him did he notice it was shaking. Trying to stop it made him realize his whole body was shivering. Gritting his teeth together, he wrestled to regain control of himself. When Emilie saw what he was reaching for, she beat him to it and moved the glass to his lips. James drank deeply and then allowed a final sip to roll around his mouth. As his shivers started to subside, he let out a deep breath. “I’m… I’m alright,” he managed to say to Emilie. When he tried to give her a reassuring smile, his lips barely widened.
“What is going on? Are you unwell?” Emilie demanded.
James shook his head as best he could. “No, it’s not that,” he said slowly. “It was Ala’ron, she reached out to me.”
Emilie swung round and looked at the holo display of the Flex-aor fleet. Then she turned just as quickly back to James. “Their High Queen?” She asked, then her eyes narrowed. “Telepathically!” James nodded. “But how?”
James shrugged. “I thought it impossible. But it was her.”
Emilie’s hands clenched into fists. “That’s what I felt? Her mind trying to touch mine?”
“I believe so,” James replied. “Like a slimy tentacle reaching right into you?” Emilie nodded. James couldn’t help but chuckle slightly at the look of disgust on her face. “Just be thankful she wasn’t looking for you. It was me she was after.”
“What did she want?” Emilie asked.
“To gloat,” James answered. “To show me what she intends to do to our worlds in revenge for what we did to hers.”
Emilie’s face fell. “That’s what has you so shook up?”
James nodded. “That, and the other things I saw. When she was reading my thoughts, I managed to get a glimpse of some of hers. They have more ships. Perhaps as many as twenty thousand. But that’s not all, they are not landing troops or weapons on Hiva’non’s surface, they are taking their people off. Whatever Flex-aor forces escaped when we occupied their systems before, they’ve been building massive ships; new homes for the Flex-aor Queens. They plan to head to them now and disappear, only to strike at our worlds when we least expect it. Ala’ron knows about the Karacknids, she knows we have to defend our northern border. She is just going to keep striking at us where we are weakest until she or the Karacknids destroy us.”
Emilie’s face had turned white to match James’. Slowly, she turned to the holo display. As James followed her gaze, he could see the Flex-aor fleet was already pulling away from Hiva’non. Evidently, they had picked up all the warriors and workers they needed. “They will jump out and try to disappear,” James said. It was more than a guess, he was certain. He could still feel Ala’ron’s intentions within his own mind.
“What do we do?” Emilie asked. When James turned back to her, he saw a look of defeat and fear that he felt himself. “We cannot protect every one of our planets.”
James tried to summon what mental strength he had left. What he had seen from Ala’ron had shaken him badly. But the future she envisaged wasn’t certain yet. Not by a long shot. With a great deal of effort, he straightened his facial features. Slowly, he smiled at Emilie, trying to convince her of the same confidence he was attempting to convince himself of. “What do we do now?” He echoed. “Now I have the biggest task of your life for you,” as he spoke, James allowed his voice to rise so everyone on Matilda’s bridge could hear. He raised a hand and pointed at the retreating Flex-aor fleet. “That force intends to destroy everything we have built these last two decades. I need to get back to Earth. The situation is far more precarious than even I feared. But reinforcements are already on their way here. I need you to track that fleet if you can. Keep in contact with them and hunt them down.” Holding Emilie’s eyes, James stared at his niece unblinkingly. He knew the weight of the order he was giving. Keeping Emilie out in the Flex-aor homeworlds meant she wasn’t going to see her son any time soon. It also meant there was a very high chance she would never be returning to Earth. A large part of James thought he should be the one to stay. Yet he felt an overwhelming burden to get back to Earth. The strategic situation had completely changed. He and he alone had an insight into Ala’ron’s thinking. He needed to be somewhere where he could direct all of Humanity’s forces. As he stared at Emilie, he knew she was reading all those thoughts and more in his face.
Ever so slowly, she nodded to him. Her eyes told him she understood exactly what he was asking. “We will not let you down,” she promised. “We will hunt them and destroy every last one of their ships. No other Human colonies will be bombarded from space.” Murmurs and whispers from around James told him Matilda’s bridge officers were in complete agreement. James nodded to his niece. Neither of them had any choice. They had to do what they had to do. “I will begin to make the arrangements for you uncle,” Emilie said more quietly than before. “You’ll want to get on your way as soon as possible.”
“Yes, as should your ships. You need to pull back, possibly to the old fort at X-36. That will be the best place to gather the ships coming from Varanni Alliance space.”
“Agreed,” Emilie replied, “though not before we dispatch scout ships to try and follow them. I will write up those orders for my best Captains now. With our damaged ships from the garrison fleet, it will take us time to fall back to X-36. You should leave before us.”
Though James hated doing it, he nodded in acquiescence to Emilie’s recommendation. “Just make sure you are careful, especially if you come up against Ala’ron or one of her daughters. I think we can now guess what happened to Rear Admiral McDowell. Ala’ron has had years to work on him, maybe she gained some sort of control over that time, or maybe she was able to just overwhelm him when her fleet first arrived. We can’t know for sure. You need to be careful.”
“I understand,” Emilie said as she brought a hand up to her jaw. “We will have to instill some new safety precautions. Adapt the chain of command. But we will figure something out. Don’t you worry about it.”
