Chapter 9

The vast fleet of hulks was coming back to life. Preserved by the vacuum and cold of space, there was little maintenance to do, just the waking of one member of the harvesting pack to pilot and run system checks. Their forever voracious hunger was held in check for now, though was driving their every move as they went over the database acquired from the Gunnet.

‘So much prey!‘ what passed for the leader of their group mind exulted.

‘Some are powerful. These must be taken first to prevent us being overwhelmed,‘ came back the consensus with a warning.

‘Agreed!‘

‘We suggest this Vreekoosian Empire as a test of our mettle.‘ The suggestion came from the one who could be considered the second-in-command.

‘The distance is great,‘ the leader commented.

‘They are the strongest of the prey known to the lesser prey.‘ The rebuttal came from the group mind.

‘We are of one mind?‘ the leader asked.

‘We are!‘

‘Then let us loose the Reelc to harvest amongst the prey again!‘

My posting to the Hammerhead had been only temporary, and I took on several more temporary roles during the initial first year of my enlistment. Finally though, I was attached to the 467^th Regiment who specialised in drop landings rather than hitting the ground in landing craft. They had a motto of First in. Last out. Which sounded real cool to me until a call from my Dad informed me they weren’t the first to use it. He remembered that a group on his home-world also used it, though couldn’t remember who they were.

Still, I settled in well, started making new friends as I manned the base medical centre with two other Healers and dealt with the odd accident from their training as well as the occasional viroid picked up during their leisure time.

Yes, technically we were understaffed, but this was typical of Ground Force, who couldn’t attract enough Healers to cover everything they wanted to.

Elsewhere, I found out that Dayyev had just held his first large exhibition, and had been permitted to show the sketches and drawings he’d made of the Royal family, mostly of Amanda and Vicki growing up. He wasn’t allowed to show the private collection, showing the real Amantil with the dark hair though, just the ones made of her with the blonde disguise.

The exhibition was a major success and he’d made a fortune in Royals from the copies of the actual drawings, as well as sales of the genuine articles made of ordinary people doing ordinary things in all levels of Vreekoos. He’d also been offered several lucrative commissions for family style portraits of the upper, upper level Nobility and High Bureaucrats, so basically had a license to print money, as one of my Dad’s weird sayings goes.

Amanda had taken on the role of the public face of the Royal family, leaving her Mum the time to actually get on and run the Empire again. Her relationship with Dayyev had been deliberately leaked to the newsies, who had cautiously sniffed around but found no sign of any impropriety going on and portrayed them as a sort of fairy tale romance, much to the pair’s amusement, but apparently made a lot of young women ‘swoon’ in a sort of hero worship as they read, watched and listened to anything and everything available about the pair.

Vicki and Plenna were still a couple, if hidden from the public eye, though Vicki did pass on that Plenna was now aiming for an officership in the elite Engineering section of Fleet, with Vicki going to try for the Command section. It would mean a period of separation for them, but eventually things would be ‘arranged’ for them to be on the same ship, should they so desire.

The rest of the gang were doing fine if still in education. Though elsewhere I learned that Aunt Hiqua’s youngest daughter Minno had just transferred to become Captain on a Fleet Battlecruiser and was doing well and likely to make it to Captain of a Dreadnought.

In the depths of space all was ready and the fleet of hulks could no longer be described as such, as the various maintenance programs had brought them back to life, in a manner of speaking. Though streamlining and the like was not necessary for space travel, especially with grav-technology. The ships of the Reelc all looked rakishly deadly with pointed noses and almost cathedral-like buttressing in the way of fins and outcrops.

‘Target is set, begin jump sequence!‘ the strident mental voice of the leader commanded.

There was no reply, nor was one expected, but, one after the other, the ships began a series of jumps to the Empire and the new killing fields.

The Imperial world of Reton was a pleasant place to live. The Imperial subjects were generally happy. There was a good deal of trade in the mostly compacted nanotronic devices that made up the various control systems in various ‘machines’ on a host of Imperial planets. There was also a small but growing agricultural sector providing ‘real’ food for those planets with a rich upper level class who did not wish to eat tailored protein, no matter the fact you couldn’t tell the difference between it and the real thing. It had a Ground Force base, as most planets had, but the nearest Fleet base was one star system over. It was, however, like most Imperial planets these days, covered by a battlestar defence grid and a couple of Destroyers for customs inspections and was felt safe enough to hold on until the nearest Fleet got there.

Unfortunately, FleetInt had not anticipated the Reelc. Though that was no real fault of theirs. All they could go on were known enemy capabilities, not something out of a nightmare.

The senior Monitor in the Reton Orbital Station Traffic Control command centre, Bazzi felt his jaw drop as a massive fleet jumped into his system with no warning at all, not even the Tcherzon wave emissions given off by a Raffagee Battlesphere. Nor were there any replies to the staff’s attempts to contact them. The fleet just hung there, looking dangerous, but unresponsive.

“5^th Fleet has been notified and they are scrambling to get here,” a junior Monitor called Hirrick informed him.

“Governor is making his way to the planetary defence centre. Civilian bunkers are now opening and evacuations are beginning,” another called Juva informed him.

“Unknown fleet is beginning to move towards the planet, Destroyer Anlon is moving to intercept!” a third, the defence co-ordinator called Taron, announced.

“Unknown fleet is launching smaller vessels,” Hirrick informed them.

“Bring defence network online!” Bazzi ordered. “Order all civilian vessels to depart orbit away from the unknowns.”

“Anlon is being joined by the Tursul“ Taron announced. “Requesting weapons free!”

“Granted,” Bazzi replied.

The two Imperial Destroyers closed in on the unknowns and both placed a ‘shot across the bows’ of the leading smaller vessel only to be totally ignored. They then both fired directly at the vessel, only to see their hyperbeams deflected away, something that was thought to be impossible by Imperial scientists. They were both then fired on by the nearest of the unknown fleet, taking rocking blows, though not being disabled.

Both Destroyers then launched deep penetration missiles, hitting the leading unknown and causing it to stagger in space before a second hyperbeam salvo ripped it apart.

Other of the smaller vessels had now moved into range of the two Destroyers and launched what were thought to be missiles of their own. The Destroyers close-in defence (railguns mostly) took out a good few but others impacted but did not explode.

“Anlon and Tursul report being boarded, Bazzi!” Taron informed him. “Enemy are proving hard to kill but have been isolated...” she announced then went pale as the Tursul exploded massively on all their screens.

“What the hell are these things?” Bazzi asked out loud as a feed came in from the Anlon showing several beings, clearly not human but armoured and armed with weird looking weapons, yet, if possible, choosing to close with the Fleet onboard GF contingent and capable of penetrating the armour if they got in a good blow.

“Enemy fleet is in range of the defence grid!” the first junior Monitor stated.

“Open fire!” Bazzi replied, wondering if it would work.

The battlestar grid opened up and it was as Bazzi feared, the enemy vessels, particularly the larger ones, were unaffected by the torrent of fire coming their way and were trying to track down the units doing the firing. What did temporarily stop them though was a salvo from a ‘battlesphere killer’ which literally vaporised a leading medium-sized vessel and brought the attention of the rest onto it before it could get another shot off.

‘They’re going to get through,’ Bazzi thought desperately. ‘All we can do is buy time!’

“Fleet is ready to depart, Admiral!” Narro, the senior Flag Captain of the 5^th fleet, informed Admiral Hratt as the frantic preparations came to a climax.

“Let’s go then! Heavy Fighters to go in advance, the rest of the Fleet to follow,” she ordered. “The Empress commands!”

“And we obey!” came the now automatic reply of the unofficial, but sanctioned, Imperial motto.

“Latest reports from Reton say the battlesphere grid is losing ground. The enemy have a shield technology that defends against a hyperbeam,” Narro informed her. “They also like to board vessels and engage in hand-to-hand.”

“The Anlon and Tursul?”

“Tursul is gone. Anlon is fighting a losing battle against these things. It also seems as if they are feeding on some of the living,” Narro swallowed nervously.

“Feeding?” Hratt questioned.

“Anlon sent this,” he showed her the tri-dee feed showing one of the creatures use some sort of energy claw to slice off a crew member’s leg causing them to fall. It then used another limb with a spike like appendage below the wrist to stab the hapless crew member in the chest and cause them to just shrivel up into a desiccated-looking corpse, whilst the creature itself grabbed one of the cut off limb and took a huge bite out of it.

“All information is to be sent on to FleetInt,” Hratt informed him with a pale face. “Inform the Fleet, no enemy vessel is to be allowed to approach.”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

“Heavies are to go in the front line, missile strikes first, followed up by beam strikes. Lighter units are to pick off stragglers. Inform the Heavy Fighters about their shields.”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

The Heavy Fighters emerged into Reton space to find it full of alien vessels, all inbound towards the planet itself. The good news was that the battlestar grid was still fighting; the bad news being that it was only having a limited effect on the smaller ships. There were a few alien wrecks around though, but no sign of the two naval vessels.

“You got the reports,” Commander Vill, stated over the comm channel, “Your hyperbeams probably won’t work. Use a regular missile strike and your railgun cannons to sweep away the lighter craft then use your main missiles to hit the larger vessels, followed up with a strafing run from the hyperbeam cannon.”

“Yessir!” came a series of replies.

“OK. Let’s give these things something else to worry about until the 5^th gets here!”

“Yessir!”

The enemy were clearly not expecting the small (relatively speaking) Heavy Fighters. Their use of physical weapons followed by a hyperbeam burst took out a good few of the smaller craft attacking the battlestar grid. Two of the dodging craft even took out a medium sized vessel with a devastating run using their primary missiles to rupture the hull and their hyperbeams to tear the inside of the craft apart when its shield failed. Unfortunately though, they only had limited numbers of missiles and railgun rounds and the enemy had numbers and were using them to force the Heavy Fighters further from the planet they had come to defend.