Operation Georgia
Copyright© 2026 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 2
Faegol System, The Colandran Empire
As her outbound ships crossed the Faegol System’s nominal hyperjump limit, Adana allowed herself one last look at the wreckage they were leaving behind. Faegol was a G3 star with 10 planets, two of them inhabited. She had placed mines in the space around both of them. Scattered across the system was the cold, dead wreckage from eight Imperial cruisers and three squadrons of Imperial destroyers. Faegol Station itself was a shattered cloud of debris dropping into the upper atmosphere of Faegol-3.
Unlike Imperial Navy commanders in a similar situation, she had done everything she could to avoid civilian casualties. She had been careful to chop all of the larger pieces of the station into smaller pieces. Nothing big enough to obliterate a population center remained intact. There were only small, fused bits of metal and synthetics remaining. They should make a spectacular meteor shower, enduring for most of a month. She doubted the Imperials on Faegol-3 would appreciate that display.
There had been two other stations, both of them fuel-processing facilities, each in orbit around one of the system’s smaller gas giants. Nothing she did there would harm civilians on the inhabited worlds. She had seized the fuel stores. Everything else at those stations had been reduced to glowing plasma.
“The last fighters have landed, ma’am.” Captain Abakumova spoke softly, as if reluctant to disturb her commander’s reverie. “Eckern and Mohacs report they are ready to jump.”
Admiral Korina nodded. “What about the merchants we captured?”
“Our prize crews are already on their way to the rendezvous.”
“We might as well join them, Captain.” Admiral Korina sighed and tore her gaze away from the Bridge main scan. “Proceed as planned. I’ll be in my quarters.”
She ignored the stacks of paperwork that never ceased multiplying on her desk. Stretched out on her bunk, she lay staring at the bulkhead.
Their bloody-handed Emperor certainly ought to be feeling the pain by now, she thought. I’ve wrecked 14 systems, but I’ve left them more than enough communication gear. Their Eldests will all be screaming their heads off to every passing ship, demanding that their Emperor help them. Will he hear them? And will he care?
Her attack on Faegol had been just like the others. Every Imperial Navy warship in the system had fought her squadrons though neither wisely nor well. She was facing officers and crews who were not the pick of the Imperial Navy, and it showed. She had carefully picked the defenders apart, using her speed and maneuverability to beat them in detail.
I have to get everybody together soon to analyze this battle, just like we did the others. And document the analysis. I can already hear them groaning. I can’t imagine why those girls haven’t spaced me yet.
Each new Imperial commander taught her something. Details changed from one system to the next. Some had more or bigger defenders. A few had better commanders. It did them no good; she had defeated them all, one after the other.
The Imperial warships at Faegol could have fled. Perhaps they should have. That was not for her to decide. It was enough for her to know that they could have avoided battle and abandoned their system to her. They did not. She almost wished they had. Instead, they had stayed and fought, stubbornly, bitterly, dying to the last ship. She could not fault them for attempting to protect their own people. She would not despise them for attempting to protect their Empire. That was their choice and duty. They must stand and fight, just as she must destroy them, just as she had destroyed their peers in every other Imperial system her squadrons had attacked during the last six months.
She felt weary to the bone. It was the kind of fatigue she knew would not go away even if she slept for a month. “You’re 52 years old,” she reminded herself. “You’re not the lively young thing anymore.” She felt her stomach knot in protest as Weizman entered the jump. “It’s this damned war,” she thought. “If an Idenux or an Imperial doesn’t kill me first, the decisions and their bloody consequences will grind the life out of me soon enough.”
Adana thought of her sib Vikki, dying in her arms on a crowded street in First Landing. Blood, Vikki’s impossibly red blood, had streamed onto the pavement. Adana had looked up at her sib’s killer, looked into the flat, empty eyes of the assassin. She remembered other people running at the woman. She remembered seeing the assassin flinch as the first stun charge hit her, slowed her down, and caused her hand to twitch as she fired at Adana. She remembered the pain in her side, knowing it would not be enough to let her follow where Vikki went.
The killer had sagged and then fought stubbornly to stay erect, trying to complete her mission. An expression of mad certainty had flared in her eyes. Adana remembered watching as the killer raised her pistol again with both trembling hands, put the muzzle in her mouth, and then the back of her head had exploded outwards in a flash of red. The corpse had danced in macabre slow motion as more stun charges hit it. Then it had tumbled to the ground, leaving Adana alone in that timeless moment as her sib’s life faded beneath her numbed fingers.
Hard to think it’s been almost a year. Hard to think of what’s happened since then. Fourteen systems smashed. Forty-three Imperial bases reduced to wreckage, and more than 90 ships destroyed. Thousands of lives snuffed out, some of them ours, most of them theirs. I killed them, just as coldly and ruthlessly as they killed Vikki, but at least I gave them a chance to run. I made certain they knew I was coming. I didn’t just pop out of a crowd with a gun in my hands and start shooting. The Imperials saw my ships come in from hyper. They saw the broadcasts of all of our previous attacks. They knew what would happen to them. I gave them a choice. That was far more than they gave Vikki.
People in the system the Imperials called Faegol had known for a long time that she might visit them. They had certainly received every possible warning from other systems, and then, finally, directly from her. Days before her ships crossed the hyperjump limit, she had sent in a swarm of drones. Each of them broadcast scenes from her previous attacks on other Imperial systems. Each of them broadcast, in great detail, what was left of the systems she had visited. Each of them had told of the results of their continued loyalty to their bloody-handed Emperor.
Of course, she had also sent identical drones into systems she had no intention of entering. That was only one of the more obvious deceptions she practiced in this deadly game. It was critical to her plan that as many Imperial warships as possible be committed to protect as many different Imperial worlds as possible. That would spread out an already overextended enemy, greatly reducing the number of ships free to come hunting for her. It would also reduce the number of ships she found in those systems she did attack.
In the wake of her drones, almost half of the Empire feverishly prepared for an attack that would never materialize. Millions, perhaps even billions of stellars, would be invested in defense, not offense. Those defenses would never threaten Families on Home, Setosha, or anywhere else. The Imperial Navy’s system commanders must know that, of course. Even so, they all had to prepare, just as they all had to sit, watching their skies, waiting and worrying while she went elsewhere. Fear and uncertainty were just as useful as weapons as any missile in her ships’ magazines. Lunging ever deeper into Imperial space as she had, fear and uncertainty were her closest allies.
Faegol had begun preparing for her attack long before she arrived. They had reinforced their bases with additional armor, missile launchers, energy weapons, and crews. They had built three new, heavily armed forts with active defenses to defend their shipyard. Their commander had devised a clever new tactic to fight her. His warships had met her not far from the hyperjump limit, but refused to close. Instead, they had traded missiles with her all the way back to the Inner System until they had reached the shipyard and its defenses at Faegol-4. There they had tried to catch her ships between them and their forts.
That fight had been quite impressive, however disappointing the results were for the Imperials. She had recognized that trap long before it tried to close on her. She had had plenty of time to plan her response, time to prepare the fighter strike which eviscerated his surviving destroyers, time to slip her carriers and escorts behind his cruisers and smash him against them with her cruisers at just short of the maximum range of his forts’ weapons. Still, it was clear that the Imperial commander had carefully thought through what would make her task most difficult. She must remember to point out his cleverness to her captains.
Unfortunately for him, the Imperial commander had had no idea what Families fighters could do to his warships without even closing to energy weapon range. Sixty of her pilots had streaked in from multiple directions, released full loads of missiles, and then peeled away. More than 350 nearly undetectable weapons had continued on trajectories aimed at the Imperial warships as her ships had danced closer, launching their own missiles, forcing Imperial defenders to focus on them. He was a clever one. She had to give him that. He had seen the threat and had tried to avoid it, but her weapons and ships had surrounded him, leaving no safe vector away. His ships’ antimissile weapons lashed out frantically, but he was quickly run out of options and time.
Only a few minutes later, well inside his point defense envelope, gravitic drives had suddenly activated on the surviving Families fighter missiles. Barracuda cortexes awoke, searched for motion, found it, and lunged. Ship drives overwhelmed missile drives. Point defense lasers flared. Second-stage rocket engines ignited. Barracudas scented terrified prey. Virtual jaws lined with imagined rows of insubstantial razor-sharp teeth opened briefly and then snapped shut. Warheads detonated. Imperial cruisers and destroyers shuddered at the impacts.
Then Adana’s remaining 30 fighters and all her other ships had launched more missiles. Neither the clever Imperial commander nor any of his warships had survived.
For the forts, Adana had taken a page out of Corey Andersen’s tactical handbook. Two had burned in the hellish nuclear firestorms resulting from hits by dozens of antimatter-tipped missiles salvoed from her cruisers. That had cost her one casualty. Gunnery Senior Esther Hardie had looked at those two annihilation spheres in which hundreds of Imperials had been incinerated and had decided that her war was over. Prompt action by a Marine who saw her enter the airlock had saved her life. The doctors would not give any prognosis on her mind.
The third fort had received special treatment. Admiral Korina had wanted information, but she had seen no reason to risk any of her ships. She had given the Imperials a chance: 30 minutes to surrender and evacuate. Their commander had refused. She had hammered the surface defenses with hundreds of small imploder warheads, rupturing airtight integrity and shaking the place to pieces around him.
When the fort had been nearly shattered, leaking air and water vapor in all directions, her Marines had stormed it under the cover of her cruisers’ energy weapons. The fighting had been brief and its outcome certain. Survivors of the initial bombardment were few. Any of them stupid enough to test what remained of their luck against the Marines had been killed.
Her Marines had then gutted that Imperial fort just like they had Idenux forts in years past. Everything small enough to carry out had been crammed into a lander. Anything too big to carry had been cut loose and towed away. When there was nothing left worth taking, they had placed an antimatter warhead in the middle of the place. Afterwards, her gun crews had vaporized the largest surviving pieces. Their work created a glowing plasma and dust ring around Faegol-4. Nothing big enough to breach a habitat would survive entering the planet’s thin atmosphere. She had warned the locals to expect months of meteor showers. Their sullen response had not been worth recording.
Because of Setosha, the Imperials had no battleships in their system defense squadrons. Adana would have to make the time to thank Corey Andersen for that. It seemed likely that the entire Imperial Reserve Fleet had been activated to replace what had been lost at Setosha. She couldn’t be certain, of course. Her information came from conversations with stunned Imperial governors. Eavesdropping on whispered discussions between captured Imperial officers further substantiated the story. Her most convincing intelligence, however, came from Will ‘o the Wisp and Nightstalker, two of the Families Scouts assigned to her operation. It appeared that most of the old Imperial battleships had gone elsewhere to replace the modern ones that had never returned from Setosha.
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