Chapter VIII: New Servants
Inner Worlds
Fourteenth Janissary of Hóssea, Pendellence-class Light Cruiser
Isadora Äewyzsla
She did her best to control her breathing as she stood in the command section of the bridge, her and her bridge officers surrounding the holo-map of the system. Currently, the map was empty and would remain so until they exited Darkspace and reentered realspace. She tugged at the tight collar of her Imperial uniform. She wore the flag captain’s uniform: which was a navy blue coat with a blue-grey tunic underneath and blue-grey trousers and black boots. The coat’s collar had a silver rim that was a display of her rank. Below the silver on the right side sat the pins that showed her rank. She didn’t mind the design but hated the tight collar. Her previous uniform had been far more comfortable.
“I’m not sure it befits a commander to continuously tug at her collar,” the Political Bureau’s guard-dog remarked. His accent told her that he had grown up in the Imperium’s core worlds, the Imperial Core.
“Perhaps the Navy should design better uniforms, Mr. Stark,” Isadora suggested.
He chuckled and spoke with a smug look on his face. “You’ll get used to it, and frankly you should be honored for the opportunity.”
She knew that he referred to the honor of serving and not being conquered. Hóssea hadn’t seen her cities annihilated by super-soldiers that slaughtered everything in their path.
“The Imperium should appreciate everything we bring from our holdings in the Inner Worlds, so it’s all mutual from where I stand”
“That’s a common misunderstanding for new worlds, actually,” he claimed.
“Excuse me?” She asked dryly.
“Claiming importance. It will make little difference whether we brought you in through diplomacy or simply exterminated you.” He shrugged. “Maybe that’s unfair.” He wore the common Political Bureau black tailcoat frock with silver buttons, long boots, and black gloves.
She avoided snorting. “Maybe? If we’re so pointless why did you spend almost twenty years negotiating our peaceful entrance into the fold? Or why you’re swarming our naval officer’s academy with young Imperial officers?” Perhaps why Hóssean Janissaries like her were thrust into command roles in the Imperial Starfleet. She’d been a lieutenant commander until Hóssea was brought into the fold, then she’d been promoted immediately and placed in command of a ship. The Fourteenth Janissary of Hóssea was one of the thousand-strong Hóssean Janissary Starfleet. A tiny amount in the overall Imperial Navy apparently. It was far larger then she could have imagined, with hundreds-of-thousands of ships from the mightiest Citadel War Barges to the smallest corvette.
Political Officer Stark didn’t respond to that.
“We are exiting Darkspace,” the Adjutant alerted.
“Okay, look alive Janissaries.” Her eyes focused on the holo-map. Three worlds appeared as well as the system’s sun. It zoomed in on the only inhabited world. In orbit laid a dozen stations attached to the surface with massive tethers. A fleet of ships sat in orbit as well. “Identify them,” she ordered.
“Sensors identify them as Zraechalorians,” the Adjutant said.
“How many?”
“Six-hundred.”
A young ensign handed one of her lieutenants’ a datapad which he quickly read through. “Hmm, yes. Twenty-five of them is Artillery Cruisers.”
She arched her eyebrows worriedly. “Twenty-five. That’s frightening.”
Mr. Stark merely scoffed at that. “Aren’t Janissaries supposed to be courageous?”
“Courageous and caution are not the same things.”
“That’s what you tell new recruits in basic training. There is no difference.” His expression was one of amusement.
Isadora chose to ignore him and gave a look to her officers to do the same. She knew their tempers would flare at such an insult. “Have Navigation the following message to the main fleet. My Lord and Lady Archons, the Third Scout Squadron have located a six-hundred strong enemy presence. Add the coordinates of this system.”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of her lieutenants’ affirmed. He quickly dispatched an ensign to send the orders to the communications officer.
“Are the Zraechalorians doing anything?”
“Negative,” the Adjutant replied.
“They know we’re here,” Lieutenant Blazek remarked. “Maybe they’re just waiting to see what we’re going to do.”
“I don’t know. That’s a lot of caution around a squadron.” She only commanded ten ships and her three Pendellence-class Light Cruisers were the strongest of them. The rests were destroyers and frigates of standard Imperial models.
Eventually, the Zraechalorian fleet assumed a defensive formation and Isadora waited anxiously for the main fleet to arrive. Finally, five-hundred ships exited Darkspace a few hundred-thousand kilometers from her scout squadron.
“Sir, a communique from Admiral Ludwig Herschen,” the Adjutant informed her. “He orders you to join with the Carrier Flotilla.”
“Set a course and inform the rest of the squadron to follow,” she ordered. Here we go, she thought. She had expected the Archons or at least one of them, but perhaps they were busy elsewhere. The Zraechalorians controlled hundreds of worlds after all. The main fleet must have divided already to fight on different fronts.
The Carrier Flotilla was the only carrier force in the large navy, possessing ten carriers, seven of them Alexander-class and the other three of different designs. She assumed they were from worlds brought into the fold whose ships had been advanced and efficient enough to bring into the Navy instead of scrapping them for metal to construct proper Imperial ships. She thought it was such a waste and believed that carriers had a lot of potential in a void battle. She looked at the holographic map as fleets slowly moved closer to each other. At a distance of one-hundred eighty-million kilometers, the Adjutant alerted that sensors detected the Artillery Cruisers' main cannon powering up. She glanced at the confident Mr. Stark and back to the holo-map. Seemingly they were simply advancing toward the foe straight on. It gave her a sick feeling in her stomach.
“Enemy firing,” the Adjutant warned.
She closed her eyes and muttered, “Oh god.”
The main gun of the Artillery Cruisers was a massive plasma cannon. It made the Imperium’s plasma batteries look puny and the large blue bolts crossed the void at an incredible velocity.
“Empress,” Mr. Stark gasped.
She then opened her eyes. “Casualties?”
“Sixteen Frigates and seven Cruisers have been destroyed. Two Battlecruisers have been crippled,” the AI reported.
“How in the hell could aliens build something that powerful?” Mr. Stark exclaimed.
Isadora clasped her hands behind her back and straightened her back. “We’re fighting masters of war, Mr. Stark. Don’t worry too much. It takes a while for them to recharge.”
“We’re still an hour away!”
“Indeed we are.”
As she had expected the fleet’s capital ships received orders to open fire with super MAC guns and large MAC guns. Her light cruiser had only a few large MAC guns that they opened up with at the enemy fleet. It would take almost two-minutes for the Super-MAC slugs to reach the enemy – which gave them a lot of time to calculate their trajectory and maneuver necessary ships out of the way. The Large-MAC slugs were shot at an incredible velocity and at over three-minutes they were unlikely to hit on their own. A whole fleet firing would make it more difficult to maneuver away from every slug. The Imperial ships with plasma cannons fired a hail of superheated plasma bolts that far sooner impacted enemy hulls. The generally cylindrical warships of their foe fired their own hail of MAC rounds through the slowly shrinking distance. Isadora was concerned, however. They continued straight ahead.
“Lieutenant Blazek, I want you to send a message to the commander of our flotilla. Suggest that we break off and ascend to assault the enemy from above.”
Blazek had the message written down, then handed it to an ensign that would send it to the communications officer that would hand the order to one of his communication stations to transmit. Before any reply arrived, as the minutes trickled by, the cylindrical Artillery Cruisers fired once more. A terrible loss of life as twenty-five vessels was either utterly destroyed by the plasma or crippled. Not even Lycinium plating could protect a ship against such a powerful bolt. It ate right through, and it meant that one-tenth of the fleet was gone. She counted eight damn minutes before a young ensign at a console by the command section called over a young officer, a Midshipmen. The Midshipmen wore a sleeveless navy-blue coat with blue-grey tunic and trousers. The Midshipman turned to Lieutenant Blazek.
“Sir, a response from flotilla-command.”
Blazek came over and took a look. Then he turned to Isadora.
“Flag Captain, Commodore Prontheus says that he pressed upon Admiral Herschen to flank the enemy. Unfortunately, he was refused. Fiercely so, according to him.”
She glanced at the nervous Political Officer. He nervously tapped his right-hand fingers against the back of his left hand. “Very well then. Thank you, Lieutenant Blazek.” The admiral must have another tactic than just throw themselves at them.
“Ma’am.”
“Eight enemy vessels are withdrawing, heavily damaged by our firepower,” another lieutenant remarked as he looked up from the dataflow from the sensors. Like the rest of the ship’s crew, he was a Janissary from Hóssea. Mr. Stark was the exception.
“Have you been in battle before, sir?” Lieutenant Blazek asked him.
“I-I, that is no. I-I have not.” He tried to remain composed. “I’m not a, a Battle-Commissar. J-just a simply Political Officer in service of the-the almighty God-Empress Mara.” It seemed he said it more to himself then Blazek.
Isadora read the distance had been reduced to considerably. A few ships on both sides were destroyed or damaged and forced to withdraw every once in a while, but it was a slow and generally equal distribution. The Fourteenth Janissary of Hóssea maneuvered when two super-MAC rounds were fired toward them. Then the Artillery Cruisers fired again and damaged or outright destroyed twenty-five battlecruisers. Herschen’s ship was not among them, but she knew it easily could have been. She sighed deeply. Only a handful of battlecruisers remained functional.
“We’re being slaughtered for the Fourteenth sake,” one of her officers grumbled in frustration.
She shared his frustration. “Damn it all.” He couldn’t have another tactic. He’d have done something by now and not just letting the main power of his fleet be annihilated. “Send a message directly to Admiral Herschen.” Mr. Stark looked at her with surprise.
“Tha-that is not how the chain of-”
“Spare me,” she told him with a firm stare. “Press upon the admiral that we should divide into battlegroups and outflank the enemy.” She looked at the dataflow on the holo-map. Twenty-seven enemy ships had been forced to withdraw due to damage received. Withdrawn. Not a single ship had been destroyed yet, and they had suffered almost ninety destroyed or damage. Almost a fifth of the fleet.
After four minutes she was informed, “Admiral Herschen is hailing us, sir.”
That surprised her. “Put him through on the holo-screen here.”
The grey-haired, wrinkled man appeared on the screen. He looked furious.
“Admiral,” she said respectfully.
“Flag Captain Äewyzsla. I don’t know how you do things on Hóssea and I frankly don’t give a fuck. Captain’s have been court-martialed for fewer offenses.”
“Sir?” She was confused and surprised by his anger.
He slammed a fist into the console on his side. “Questioning the orders of your commanding officer in battle can lead to a breakdown in morale and disaster. Don’t you have a Political Officer onboard?”
“We do;” she said through gritted teeth.
“Get the bastard over here.”
Hearing the furious admiral, Mr. Stark slowly strode over. “Sir.”
“Do your damn job or I’ll have you shot for gross incompetence!” Herschen then closed the channel and left Isadora’s command section in silence.
Isadora took very little joy in the first enemy kill. One of their brown-bronze-hulled destroyers were obliterated by a heavily focused plasma barrage. She recognized the Zraechalorians confidence since they still kept their position. She saw that a Shrine-class Imperial Cruiser gained suspicious engine trouble without suffering any damage and began to retreat. Apparently, the admiral didn’t trust it for three cruisers opened fire on her engines and disabled her. Dead in the water the Heavy Cruiser had little chance when a succession of MAC slugs struck her and broke her center, exposing much of her crew to the void before secondary explosions tore her apart and left no survivors. Four corvettes were caught in the detonation’s shockwaves range and three of them were destroyed. The last was only crippled, left afloat in the void. It was a shock for Isadora to watch the destruction. She couldn’t imagine how much damage to morale that did to the remaining fleet.
“Sir, the Void’s Dream has been destroyed,” Blazek alerted. “You’d be the highest-ranking officer in our flotilla.”
She quickly analyzed the map and locked in on the asteroid field east of the enemy’s position.
“Okay, okay.” It could carry huge consequences in the aftermath, but if nothing was done she couldn’t see a victory. “Have the Carrier Flotilla set a course for those asteroids and have navigation set an irregular course and order the others to do the same.”
She received encouraging and excited smiles from her fellow Janissaries. “Yes, sir!” Blazek exclaimed and seemed thrilled to send her order on.
It may be a gamble to assume Herschen wouldn’t fire upon them as well, she knew. Firing upon a whole flotilla would be mad and she couldn’t accept that he was that nuts. Though as the minutes passed she waited to see what would happen, far less confident then she appeared to her brothers and sisters. After a time she sends a message to the commander of the fleet’s 2nd Battlegroup informing him of what she intends to do. It took her flotilla fifteen minutes to reach the asteroids. They then began to assume cover behind them. By that time the Artillery Cruisers had fired twice, obliterating almost fifty ships. Meanwhile, the slow grinding down of forces continued and slowly had been turning in the enemy’s favor due to their numerical superiority. Three-hundred and thirty-eight Imperials remained in comparison to five-hundred thirty-seven Zraechalorians. However, the ratio of ships destroyed and merely damaged was hugely in the enemy’s favor. From behind the asteroids, Isadora instructed her twelve light and heavy cruisers to set courses to peek up from between asteroids to fire a volley.
On-call with the captain’s of the remaining nine carriers, she told them, “Our foe has no carriers, leaving us with the advantage. With close to a thousand starfighters and starbombers, we must take the offensive.”
“Such a feat would be terribly risk, with large potential casualties,” one of the captain’s stated hesitantly.
“Yes.” Admiral Herschen had given them no option. “We must commit if we are to prevail. Captains. Prepare your pilots.”
“Yes, sir,” they all responded in mostly unison.
Then the hangar bays opened a large force of fighters and bombers swept forward toward the enemy. They dodged missiles and railguns and advanced against a single target. One of the Artillery Cruisers. Their purpose was to deliver plenty of missiles and torpedoes to attack its primary weapon and engines. The flotilla behind them would fire careful volleys of MAC rounds and plasma. Thrice Isadora ordered hails from the fleet’s flagship ignored, knowing the consequences she likely piled on herself. She felt hopeful as two enemy destroyers and a damaged cruiser was destroyed in their second volley. They waited with purpose as their pilots thrust themselves over the enemy fleet and descended with railguns spewing lethal rounds toward them. Dozens of starfighters were destroyed by the time they reached the first target and the first squadrons unleashed a volley of torpedoes and missiles and as they piled on the sensor’s revealed that they had broken the armor that protected the engines and disabled both it and the cannon. As her bridge crew cheered the squadrons proceeded to the next target. She worriedly saw the casualties rise. They would successfully disable three Artillery Cruisers before they all withdraw toward the asteroids and their carriers.
The Adjutant counted casualties. “Three-hundred and forty-seven starfighters lost, Flag Captain.”
As her flotilla fired its third volley they obliterated four more ships. The remaining Artillery Cruisers had recharged and fired their own volley, obliterating fifteen ships. The other seven had been fired at the largest asteroids that her flotilla hid behind, though it mattered little due to the size of the asteroid field.
“Sir!” Blazek exclaimed. “Reinforcements twenty-two-million kilometers behind our main force!”
“You mean our reinforcements? Right?” Mr. Stark hoped.
“Aye.”
The answer led Mr. Stark to spend a moment spraying to the empress.
“Identify them,” Isadora ordered. “Who are they?”
The Adjutant answered. “Thirty-two starships. Thirty-one are Citadel War Barges.” Isadora’s eyes widened. That meant Ultra Marines, right? That meant Ultra Marines had come to salvage the horrendous battle.
“Thank the Fourteen,” she breathed. “What’s the last?”
“It is the Zahoriana-class Battleship Empress’s Wrath,” was the answer.
“Show them on the map.”
The massive flagship of the Death Wolves appeared it’s with an escort of Citadel War Barges. The massive battleship was a truly astonishing sight to behold. The massive dagger-shaped ship was truly beautiful of starship construction. Then she found herself once more stunned when the thirty-two ships entered Darkspace and seconds later exited Darkspace right on top of the enemy fleet. The idea of performing a micro-jump on top of the enemy hadn’t even ever occurred to her and yet she watched then as the Empress’s Wrath sat below their fleet and used its enormous focused firepower to turn three Artillery Cruisers to dust almost instantly. The Citadel War Barges had made their jumps into the middle of the fleet and wreaked havoc. Their primary target was the Artillery Cruisers.
“Have the flotilla leave the asteroid field and attack the enemy immediately,” she commanded. “And tell the carriers to rearm their squadrons as soon as humanly possible.”
The Zraechalorians chaos was absolute and ships desperately attempted to engage in a fighting retreat. As she would expect from the Zraechalorians even this chaos didn’t fully break down their discipline, for she saw some of that in the retreat. At that point, she knew that the battle was over and retreated to sink down into her command chair and breathe out. Over four-hundred starships would successfully retreat, but the Artillery Cruisers were not among them. All Imperial ships gathered in orbit over the planet and Boarding Assault Ships and gunships from the Death Wolves vessels boarded a dozen stations.
Immediately after the battle had concluded Isadora left the bridge under Blazek’s command and withdrew to her office to write her account of the battle and all mistakes she considered had been made by Herschen. Then she would transmit it to the Empress’s Wrath.
Later as troops had begun to land on the planet and the stations were all occupied, the Adjutant’s voice suddenly sparked into being in her office. “Flag Captain Äewyzsla, I have been asked to deliver some news for you.”
“What do you got, Adjutant?” She yawned, exhausted after the cycle’s events.
“Vice Admiral Ronald Oldenburg has been announced as the new commander of the fleet.”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Really?” He’d commanded the 2nd Battlegroup prior.
“Indeed, Flag Captain. Archon Neith has promoted him to admiral. Nothing’s been said about Admiral Herschen.”
“Well, what’s important is that the Archon immediately saw his incompetence.” She paused. “Against the Zraechalorians at least.” She knew nothing about his career but he must have been skilled to rise to admiral in the first place. She’d heard hints about nepotism in the Imperial Starfleet. It seemed rare but still happened. The promoted vice-admiral was proof of it. Oldenburg was a well-known name in the imperial halls of power. “He’ll probably get moved to some other distance command. Preferably far from the front.” She leaned back and her expression fell grim. So many thousands were dead because one man was given a post he wasn’t mentally capable of handling. What a tragedy.428Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIXswifAlZx
