Into the Black

(Flag Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Dimiya System)

“Have Warlock Squadron focus their next attack run on the enemy cruisers. Those bastards keep trying to flank us to get around and attack the carriers. Give them something else to think about.”

“At once, Admiral!”

I took a deep breath as I looked at the plot. Things were not looking good. There were too many enemy ships. His ships could finish off the Ihm forces, though it would leave them even bloodier than they were now.

And then there was the disturbance near Ydan. It wasn’t a Hellspace rift, but the sensors were detecting Hellspace energies from the disturbance. But there was nothing I could do about it. All my ships were out of position and otherwise engaged.

Even so, I could feel the energy building from the disturbance. No, not just me. Everyone with a bit of psychic talent could feel it. Even the Ihm and the Gorb looked like they were feeling it, as I could see their ships begin to move and realign, turning to face this new anomaly.

The power grew, and grew, getting more pronounced to the point where some ships stopped firing entirely. A moment of peace fell upon the system, like the last gasp before you took the plunge. No, more like seeing the water pull back just before the tsunami hit.

And then, the psychic equivalent of a new sun being born exploded onto the fabric of reality. I staggered, physically shook by the psychic shockwave unleashed from the arrival. Dimly, I could hear Raven describing what I already knew from my sorcerous senses. The blast was an explosion of tachyons charged with the energies of Hellspace. Something that should have been impossible, given everything we knew about how tachyons and Hellspace worked. And yet, that didn’t change the fact that it had happened.

FEAR NOT!

The psychic call spread out across the system. Felt more than heard, I got the sense that it hit everyone in the system at the same time, despite the distances. And in that instant, I knew that things had changed.

FEAR NOT, DEFENDERS OF DIMIYA! THE TERRAN EMPIRE STANDS WITH YOU!

That voice, was one I knew, and yet it wasn’t. But I knew the being behind it well enough. As the Hellspace Tachyons boiled away, everyone with access to a system plot saw the ships revealed.

The Imperial Second Fleet was here! They had transitioned in, that much was obvious, but the Transition Drives only worked at the system’s edge, at the heliopause, and these ships were well inside that limit! It had to be the Hellspace coloring to the tachyons I had sensed. The Empress did something to make it happen.

I took a breath, and yelle, “ALL SHIPS, KEEP FIRING! BLOW A HOLE THROUGH THE IHM FORMATIONS!”

And, like that, the spell was broken. As crewmembers snapped back to reality and redoubled the assault on the enemy, the invaders shuddered, and all forces turned away from their goals. The Ihm, the Gorb, the X’thari, and even the newcomers I hadn’t learned the name of out on the outer planets. All of them turned, and made their way towards Ydan, and the glowing beacon of psychic might that stood upon the Empire’s flagship. Forces that had been on the edge of defeat roared in renewed resolve, and went on the attack.

The battle was not yet won, but the tide was turning.

(Flag Bridge, CNS Wrath of Gadran, Dimiya System)

Admiral Rizzazi gaped openly at what his sensors were showing him. The Imperial Second Fleet? Here? Now? It wasn’t possible! The capabilities of the transition drive were known! Their maximum range was roughly twenty-five light-years, and you couldn’t use one inside a system’s heliopause, or the gravity and other forces would rip you apart!

But that defiant call to arms left no doubt. His sensors were reading things correctly. The Imperial Navy’s Second Fleet was in Dimiya space. It was the first time that any Imperial Navy vessel larger than a corvette had been to Dimiya since the beginning of the first war between the two star nations. Even in the darkest days of the last war, the Imperials never pushed so far as to actually enter Dimiyan space.

“Sir! Ground command reports that enemy infantry are retreating from the outer planets. Some kind of teleportation!”

“Admiral, Newcomers and X’thari ships are making course to Ydan! They are still firing at each other, but the Imperial ships seem to have attracted most of their attention.”

Rizzazi took a breath, and shook off his shock. He would freak out about what this would mean for the future of the Confederacy later. Right now, he had a battle to win.

“Well, if the Newcomers and the X’thari are showing us their backs, then shoot them in the ass! The more we kill, the less the Empire gets to claim they came in and saved our asses!”

(Bridge, BSN Breath of Hades, Dimiya System)

Slave-Captain Ahshala Ulaven’s eyes went wide as she staggered under the weight of the psychic message. When the Gorb ships began turning to head back towards Ydan, shock turned to a feral snarl. “Don’t let them get away! Keep up the pressure as much as you can!”

“What about the Last Stand, Captain?”

“Keep the protocols online. We’re not out of this yet, and we still haven’t found a way to take down the rest of the ships. They’re distracted, but they could still turn around and make mincemeat out of us if they wanted to, and then no one would be between them and the planet.”

(Flag Bridge, BSN Hrunting, Dimiya System)

Commodore Dakha coughed up blood as she looked at the plot. The Empress was here, huh? Maybe they would live through this, after all! Or, at least, what was left of her battle group would.

“Message the group. Operational command transferring to Captain Zox on the Nægling temporarily. Hrunting is at 13% combat effectiveness. We will withdraw to guard over Black Star Station, and the civilians there, in case anything breaks through.”

She coughed again, fresh pain blossoming from the jagged spike in her gut. “Set course for the Station. Best possible speed.” Of course, ‘best possible speed’ wasn’t much to talk about when the ship was reduced to under a quarter of its maneuvering thrusters, and seven of the eight engines driving the ship had been slagged, but it was the thought that counted, right?

(Eclipse Club, Shvehona City, Dimiya)

“Those family-fornicating, excrement-eating, piles of ambulatory garbage!”

Elnaril Triswyn looked over to his lieutenant, Stephano at that outburst. That lieutenant was a refined, even-headed sort. You rarely, if ever saw him get angry or upset, which was why he was one of the primary enforcers for his organization, the one he sent in when the message needed to be cool and calculating, not brute thuggery that might get out of hand. That outburst was the closest he had ever heard Stephano come to cursing.

“What is wrong?”

“Thelorious is losing its deity-forsaken mind. It was bad enough, with the few rifts that opened, dropping demons on the city. Sure, the Guard were holding the line, there, along with our people in the city, but now? The Empress just showing up, with a battle fleet? All the powerful types are trying to say this is some kind of invasion, and the start of a war.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Triswyn groaned. “Fine, who are the main ones spreading such stupidity?”

“The Verdant Dawn, the group that rose up after the Shining Path got broken up? The one where all the anti-Empire zealots went? Yeah, they’re the ones leading the charge, and have been ever since it was announced that the Empress would be paying a diplomatic visit. Only reason there aren’t more casualties from the demons is that the Guard was already out to prevent riots from forming. And they’re pushing back against the Guard.”

Triswyn growled. “Fucking idiots. They couldn’t wait until the danger was actually past? No, forget this. Who do we have in proximity to the leaders?”

“At your advice, we arranged for some of our guys to be in the security detail of every leader of the Verdant Dawn, to make sure that they didn’t go and piss off the Black Stars.”

“Good. Activate all of them. Take out every last one of the Verdant Dawn we can. Plant information leading to the Urakia Syndicate. They’ve been getting uppity lately, anyways, ever since they became the pawns of Confederate Intelligence.”

“Right away, Leader.”

(Ehdara City, Ydan, Dimiya System)

The psychic shockwave sent a ripple across the battlefield. The only ones who weren’t affected were the Black Star Marines, who had dropped into combat with the psychic shielding on their armor cranked up so high that they could taste blueberries in the back of their mouth. They felt it, and heard the message, of course. (Shielding that made you blind to what was happening upon the psychic battlefield was worse than useless, after all.) But it didn’t affect them like it did everyone else.

Where everyone else, whether they be civilians or Gorb or Demons (no matter the type) or even the beleaguered Guard, stopped, in shock at the psychic pulse, and the announcement that followed, the Black Star Marines kept fighting. Kept killing. More than their voices, it was the sound of their guns and the roar of their chainswords that caused people to break the spell, and continue their desperate fight. The desperate retreat stalled, and the troops gathered to begin the offensive. To try and force the enemy back.

“HOLD THE LINE! NOT ONE STEP BACK!”

The roar of the General of the Black Star Marines, in full armor, leading from the front, was something to behold. Like something out of the stories of old. And it inspired the men and women around him, to see him hacking and slashing and shooting his way through the seemingly endless tide of enemies.

Black Star fighters and ships flew back and forth across the battlefield, providing much-needed air support, taking the pressure off the troops already under siege. Fourteen Crow-Class Assault ships, five full squadrons of fighters, and one of bombers all made their attack runs, focusing on wherever the fighting was hardest. Their guns carved up enemy positions and halted advances, in more than one case saving a group of Guardsmen that were on the brink of being overrun and slaughtered.

Now, new ships began descending. They were Imperial Marine drop transports, and they were descending, as the Black Stars had, on pillars of flame as they plowed through the atmosphere, intent on getting to ground as quickly as possible while still being fit to fight when they arrived. From their bays troops and vehicles deployed, and they began taking the fight to the demons. As they did so, the demons found that their attacks would miss more often than not, while the Imperial Marines hit more than they missed, and hit harder than they should have been able to. All the whipe, they lifted up their voices with a simple battle cry, “THE EMPRESS PROTECTS!”

(Flag Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Dimiya System)

“Hrunting is withdrawing.”

“That’s fine. She’s done all she can, at the moment. Rally the fleet. Form up on the Ama-no-Murakumo, and press forward! Focus fire on the flagships as we find them! Kill the leaders and we can disperse this group into sections that will be without guidance! Get us making way towards Ydan!”

“Admiral! Incoming transmission from the Imperial flagship, INS Triumphant. The Empress wishes for you to join her upon the planet’s surface with your guards, so that, together, we can seal the rift. The message says that the Empress will smooth the way for you.”

I nodded slowly. The battle would not be won until the battle was finished, and the only way of sealing Hellspace rifts that I’d found so far involved Starbolts in Hellspace. Saying that going with that plan would have unforeseen and terrible consequences was like discovering the profound truth that water was wet. If the Empress had another plan, I was all for it.

Raven frowned. “Can we get to the surface from here? Even in the Starlight Raven, that will not be an easy flight, with all the insanity going on. Even if we slip past both fleets, we still would have to deal with any ground-to-air weapons that the invaders have.”

I took a breath. “We don’t have a better choice. Make the Starlight Raven ready to depart. If the Empress says that she will protect us on the way, then I have ever confidence that she’ll stand by her word.”

“As you wish, Admiral.”