Chapter 4

Rebellion Imperial date 7938 E, 23 years ago

Even before that fateful day when the Empire fell, the Rebels were making little waves in some quarters, one of them relatively close to our world. We were taking a little holiday on the extreme edge of our arm of our galaxy. Even the zulons cannot travel to the next galaxy, but the views from the very edge seem like the edge of blackness with just the odd smudge of light here and there in the black above, below and outward from distant, fleeing galaxies, with the bright Milky Way, our galaxy, filling the other quadrant of the sky, a thing of beauty seen in all its glory from the galaxy’s very edge.

Our little expedition was well documented, with views screened with much interest all around Como Prime and all the other planets where clan Merciant were regarded with affection as their lords and partners. We set up regular broadcasts that the majority of the population tuned in to watch and marvel at the beauty and extreme majesty of our universe. I had commanded the trip, the Honourable Ivan Merciant, war hero, and heir to the dukedom, accompanied by my lovely and heavily-pregnant wife Lady Velda and our 2-terran-year-old son Ivan II, my mother the Lady Jeneve, and my sister the Honourable Sholona Merciant, whose beautiful hand was being sought by half the noble bachelors in the Empire, yet she was totally devoted to her PhD in biomechanics research. My father the Duke Jolyon could not be spared from his duties to holiday with us from the start, but it was hoped that he would join us at some point before the expedition ended and we all returned home.

One day our expected world-wide broadcast wasn’t screened for all to see, but mis-communication through the zulons at the very periphery of the galaxy was not uncommon, so only an apology was sufficient to assuage any concerns of the people, who were rightly proud and fond of their principal family. It was only the next day when no further word was heard that a search of the vast sector was launched, especially as the zulons advised that they couldn’t raise my zulon Pynom either.

I was found drifting in the space out on the sprawling end of that arm of the galaxy about two weeks later, safe but alone in a single survival sleep pod. The traumatic termination of my biolink with my zulon Pynom, meant that all our people understood that I was unable to remember anything at all surrounding the incident. Only pure speculation ranked this loss with the rumours of renewed rebel activity around the periphery of the Empire, but without any hard evidence, the official line was that this tragic loss to my family was due simply to a regrettable accident.

I not only lost my wife and son, but Velda was seven months pregnant with our daughter to be, who we were going to name after her grandmother Jeneve II, so I felt my loss was considerably greater than my father’s loss, although he lost his wife, daughter, and his only grandchildren.

My aunt, Gillian came to stay with us for the funeral ceremony that we held for her sister and the other lost members of the family. I had always got on well with Aunt Gill, she was much younger than my mother and there were no airs and graces when it came down to playing with Sholona and me. Now her visit was a much more sombre time with these grave losses to bear.

Gill too, had suffered from the civil war. Her first husband, the Duke Desmond of Albany Prime, a garrison general, had been assassinated, as the war intensified in year 7930 E, when I was 16 and their only daughter Lilian was a precocious child of 5. They had lived with us for a couple of years, with Lilian even adopted by my parents, before the requirements of the Imperial social scene demanded that Gillian be remarried, to secure Lilian’s safety as her presence on the shorthand list of being 5th in line for the throne when the current old and now childless Emperor, after the Crown Prince and his family had been assassinated during the earlier uprising, finally succumbed to old age.

So Lilian then became the adopted daughter of the Archduke of Burbary, a much older man never married before and a career Galactic Navy Rear Admiral. It was while Gillian and Lilian were on Como Prime comforting Jolyon and I over our loss, and running our household in the manner that my mother would have approved, that the the rebellion war flared up in the Altus Quadrant, to which her husband was despatched with the Fleet of the Red, a quarter of the Imperial Navy, to quash.

I was still on the Imperial Galactic Naval Reserve and I was activated and despatched to join the Red Fleet. I hadn’t yet replaced Pynom my zulon, because as merely ducal heir I had no need to do any interstellar flights, but the Navy arranged a war vessel, Viking Class Destroyer with a Navy zulon, Cyclun, as my wormhole-generating partner. She was rough and ready, used to inexperienced lieutenants being bumped up to Lieutenant Commanders beyond their capabilities and making them look good, but soon grudgingly admitted that I wasn’t as bad as most officers in her experience. Our task, with my small crew of eight in a fast triple-hull destroyer, was sector patrol, keeping an eye out for unusual rebel activity and investigating anything out of the ordinary that we came across.

In short order, Naval Intelligence discovered that the Rebels were planning a full scale naval battle, something neither side had attempted for 50 terran-years, so we were all flicking our readers through the old text books honing up on the tactics that hadn’t been taught for so long. The Rear Admiral looked forward to a classic battle with a chance of making a name for himself and the Fleet lined up in columns, noticing that the Rebels were also lining up using the same old tactics. My role in the destroyer was not to line up with the seven- to eleven-hull battleships and cruisers, we wouldn’t last long slogging it out that way. We were to harry the Rebel fleet for any weaknesses or build up of any extra strike force that could threaten our line and report our findings back to the Admiral.

Both battle fleets lined up in a star system called Soiuklus, but instead of each fleet aligning alongside and attempting to board each other and fighting on board hand to hand with sword and dagger, the Rebels suddenly opened up with devastating broadsides of red hot projectiles, destroying many of the capital ships that the Imperial Navy had built up over many years. Then the Rebels launched the crews of their ships to board the damaged Imperial vessels to wipe out the Imperial crew survivors. These were the F2 Hybrids, half-human half-veg, grown with integral space armour, the vegetation half of these mindless drones able to supply oxygen to the humanoid muscles while absorbing the byproduct of carbon dioxide and turning it into oxygen to refuel the human side and use the surplus carbon to repair damaged human and veg cells. They were killing machines that were delivered to the battle in thousands and they took no prisoners, so all the old conventions of battle and treaties governing the care and treatment of prisoners was consigned to the history files.

The Rear Admiral Archduke of Burbary was killed in the Battle of Soiuklus, the flagship HIMS Splendide targeted and utterly destroyed within moments of the battle commencing, causing confusion and all loss of leadership and cohesion in the fleet, so soon the Imperial Navy was in full retreat, each ship for itself.