Imperium Knight Chaos Rising (The Hunter Imperium Book 6) Read online

  The view outside was showing a much distorted view of space. The normal cosmic vista was missing, replaced with an orange tinged yellow overlay. I’d never seen anything like it. Except, I had. My eyes shot back to Sim.

  “Status.”

  “We are so borked,” said Pangbornd.

  I flicked a glance his way, and his face was now wearing an expression of horror.

  “The ship is dead,” said Sim, the same way you’d say water was wet.

  “What do you mean, dead?”

  “All power is gone. No engines, no generators, no reserve batteries.” She looked at me steadily. “No shields.”

  My eyes shot back to the view outside. The ship was now appearing to be adrift in space, moving with the momentum we’d had when we jumped, but also slowly spinning. But the movement was hard to see. It was all yellowish outside.

  “Where are we?”

  “Not where we’re supposed to have jumped to.”

  “I get that, yeah. Did we overshoot the jump point?”

  “Apparently.”

  I looked at the mage. He was staring straight ahead, and ignoring us. I followed his gaze back to the view.

  What looked like a very close up view of the whitest part of a sun started moving across the view. The three of us watched it silently, until it vanished as the spin of the ship turned us away from it.

  I sighed.

  Overshooting was when you ended up a long way from where you wanted to be, but could still see where that was. This wasn’t overshooting.

  This wasn’t Haven, so the jump drive had at least jumped. The problem was, this also wasn’t the next system. The sun out there was an orange tinged yellow, with a yellow tinged white core. None of the systems along the corridor of our space had a sun this colour set. Most of them were not yellow at all. I looked at Sim again.

  “Good news and bad news,” she said. “The good news is, the drive did work. We definitely jumped, and apparently further than anyone figured was possible.”

  “Duh!”

  I’d been around the twins too long.

  “The bad news is I’ve no idea where we are now. And we still have no power. And no shields. And we’re falling into a sun.”

  “Life support?”

  The mage was still ignoring us.

  “None. But the ship is still aired up, so just the two of you won’t be an issue in the time we have left.”

  “How long is that?”

  “We’re well into the corona now, which is why we can’t see normal space. The ship should survive until we enter the chromosphere properly, and might even make it into the photosphere. However, everything inside will likely burn or melt well before that. The hull is tough. Everything else, not so much.”

  “How long do we have?”

  It might have been my imagination now it’d been stated, but my face was feeling hot.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  I gave her a yes I do look, but decided I didn’t want to anyway.

  “What happened?”

  “You want me to speculate?”

  “Yes.”

  “The drive was only supposed to use enough power to jump into the next system. There was a dedicated power generator and crystal for the purpose. Since we appear to be totally without power, it seems likely that part of the magic didn’t work, and it used all the power we had.”

  “We could be anywhere?”

  “Oh we’re definitely somewhere. Just way too close to a sun. If we’d been testing hyperspace, I’d say the gravity field of the sun dragged us out. But as I understood the way mages move things, gravity fields shouldn’t have had anything to do with anything.”

  I thought for a moment. And looked again at the mage.

  “Pangbornd?”

  He ignored me.

  “OI. Shithead.”

  His head jerked around.

  “No need to be insulting.”

  “You think? We’re about to die because you fucked up the magic. I think I’m entitled to insult you.”

  “I did not fuck up the magic, as you so indelicately put it.”

  “No? How do you see it?”

  “No-one is more surprised than I am to find it worked.”

  I lost control of my jaw. It fought me for a few moments, and I closed it again with a definite teeth click.

  “You’re surprised it worked? What the fuck?”

  “It shouldn’t have worked. As far as my colleagues and myself were concerned, we were testing something which couldn’t work because there was no way a ship this size had enough power to jump as requested.”

  “You what?”

  “I expected us to go nowhere.”

  “George,” said Sim. “Don’t.”

  Both my hands were gripping the armrests so tight, my knuckles were white, and I’d been a second away from getting up and pounding his face in. I shot a glance at Sim, and she shook her head at me. I looked back at the so-called mage.

  “Let me get this straight. We asked for mages to come up with a device to jump our ships without needing an actual mage to do it, and you took on the task as your own. Now you’re telling me you never thought it would work?”

  “No-one did.”

  “What about the kid who said it could be done?”

  “Who?”

  I glared at him.

  “Oh him. We didn’t take him seriously.”

  “Was he even included in the group working on this?”

  “A kid? Working with masters? Are you mad?”

  “You’re damned right I’m mad. You just killed us all. What the fuck did you do to make us jump like we did?”

  “You want a guess?”

  “Please.”

  “At a guess, I left the power usage open ended instead of limiting it. But I thought even if this happened, we wouldn’t be going anywhere, and they could tow us back to the shipyard.”

  Even Sim was looking at him with total amazement on her face.

  “There is one good thing,” he went on.

  “What?”

  “You left the rest of the crew behind, and the shipyard guy didn’t want to come. So it’s just the two of us who die.”

  He had a point. A minor one. I stared at him for a good minute, and the sun looked closer as it went past again. It was definitely heating up.

  I was expecting Sim to say ‘three’, but I remembered she had a primary back on the AI homeworld. I looked at her.

  “Do you have any contact with your primary self?”

  “None.”

  “So we’re nowhere near any of our comnavsat network?”

  “Apparently not. And without being able to see stars, I can’t say where we are. Not even roughly.”

  My brain was getting past the ‘what happened’ stage, and was now in full gear on ‘how do we survive it’.

  “Do we have any power anywhere?”

  “Your combat suit still has power, I do, the combat droids on board do. But nothing else.”

  “What about Gorilla?”

  Her eyes lit up.

  “Yes, Gorilla has power. As does the Lightning.”

  Gorilla was my mark two Excalibur fighter. The Lightning was a fast courier. Neither of them had anything like Scimitar had in the way of power. All the same. I looked back to the black face which was staring ahead once again.

  “Oi!”

  He turned to look at me, looking annoyed.

  “What?”

  “Are you ready to die?”

  “No. But it appears we don’t have any alternative.”

  “You’re a mage. Right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then jump us the hell away from here.”

  He laughed hysterically. It was very disturbing.

  “You have no idea what you’re asking.”

  “Yes I do. It doesn’t have to be a long jump, just get us away from the sun, and into an orbit where we have time to get the ship powered up again.”

  I was making assu
mptions here. The main one was the power systems were suffering the equivalent of an EMP burst, and merely needed to be plugged back in to a power source to restart. We had two of them, but we’d need time to join one of them up with Scimitar’s power system, which we currently didn’t have.

  “I can’t possibly jump a ship this size on my own.”

  “Try. You can drain the Lightning of power if you need to. Just leave Gorilla alone.”

  “We’re already too close to the sun for Gorilla,” chipped in Sim.

  “I know. But if we can get further away, we can use Gorilla to try and restart us. If that fails, Gorilla can tow us somewhere safer. The Lightning can’t.”

  The courier lacked a grav sled, which was standard on Excaliburs.

  “Point,” she admitted.

  We both looked at the mage.

  “I can’t do it,” he said, shaking his head.

  “If we run for Gorilla, could you move her?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “What the fuck were you leading the team for, if you can’t move something yourself?”

  “I was the only master willing to take it on.”

  I felt an incredible need to face palm, but this was just not the time. We were rapidly running out of it. My brain went sideways.

  “Are you wearing a suit?” I asked him.

  I was. In fact, I was testing Dreamwalker’s idea of instead of armbands for extra suits, each one was used for underwear instead. I was even wearing one as a cap. Sim was also doing this, trying out female variations.

  “No, of course not. I can protect myself.”

  I undid my restraints and was on my feet before he had any idea I was coming for him. Two large strides, and I had the business end of my sidearm pressed to his forehead.

  “Jump the fucking ship, right the fuck now, or I’m going to blow your fucking brains out.”

  He looked into my eyes and saw death.

  His eyes closed, and the light outside went out.

  Four

  I sat there in the center seat, while the discussion raged around me.

  One by one, white dots representing our titan ships appeared on the screen still showing the entrance points to our space. Each jump point already had battlestations in position, and in two cases, local defense forces. The Naranja had almost finished updating their existing fleet, and with two Scimitar battlecarriers of their own, and a titan, they should be pretty secure now. But I could see them wanting their pilots back from Orion’s Belt where they’d been training.

  The Democratic Union had also modernized most of its ships now as well, and probably would also be wanting its pilots back. But it only had one carrier at its jump point. The other was in orbit of a Keerah world with a half dozen cruisers, and Jane’s Unassailable, now a super-battleship. They were there in case anything got past either jump point in that system, and would remain there until the Keerah could get a fleet there, or Jon moved one of theirs from somewhere else in their space. Technically it was their system, and we shouldn’t have been there, but saving them had brought tigers to the negotiating table, finally.

  Fearless was still in orbit of Napenga, a few systems away, and had been here long enough I was bored shitless, in spite of our rift trip to Haven the other day.

  “What do you think Grace?”

  I startled, having more or less tuned them out while I’d been watching Jon work his magic moving ships across the galaxy. We had six titan ships, two of which were carriers, and only one of which had fighter pilots on board. The other four were pure battle oriented. I’d been nodding to myself as I realized Jon had put the only one with only a captain in command in the only place with a reliable admiral already there, which was the entrance to the Democratic Union. Jen might be old, but she was a solid admiral Jon trusted. The rest were commanded by a two star, a three star, and two four stars, and would automatically command all ships where they were. The last was the carrier without pilots, commanded by a one star general, now right square in our own front yard. I didn’t envy Jack that one at all. Not that I’d ever had much contact with him except at social occasions, and him barking orders to dropship pilots, which I’d been before Fearless.

  “What?” I exclaimed, coming back to the here and now.

  “Do you think we should go look for George?” asked Aleesha.

  “You mean without orders, in a fleatrap full of troops?”

  “Maybe without the troops,” suggested Alana. “Just us.”

  “You mean the alpha team?”

  “George is still one of us, yes.”

  My neck was getting sore looking from one side of the bridge to the other, and back again.

  “I don’t disagree in principle.”

  “What’s that mean?” asked BA.

  “I think we should try to find him. He’s George. No matter where he is, he’ll find the worst trouble he can find, and run straight into it.”

  “Got that right,” chuckled Agatha.

  “He’s Alpha Team,” yelled Amanda. “Of course he will. If there’s a shit end wherever he is, he’ll go in like we always do.”

  “But we’re not going to do him any good going after him in Fearless, even if we could find him.”

  “Oh, I think I know how to find him,” said Jane, who’d been the only other one not contributing to the discussion up until now.

  “How?” asked BA.

  Everyone looked at Jane.

  “I’m not saying. For now, you all have jobs to do, and as Grace just said, Fearless is not the ship to go looking for trouble in.”

  “Where do we get a ship?” demanded Aleesha.

  Jane tapped her nose with a finger and grinned.

  “Ok, don’t tell us.” Amanda was deadly serious, which for her, was saying something. “But you better come up with a plan before we do. Come on,” she said while rising. “Let’s get the rest of the troops off the surface, and be ready for whatever Jon has lined up for us next.”

  The bridge emptied. I sat there waiting, still looking at the nav map, which was showing more tree fleets in each system than we’d ever seen before anywhere. Granted, the Keerah had warned us they were coming, but this was something way beyond what anyone had guessed they’d bring at us.

  Another screen popped up in front of Jane. It had the base hull of a Scimitar on it, and she was viewing it from all angles as it flipped around under her control. As I watched, another one appeared beside it, and I could see this one was Claymore, my boyfriend’s ship. The recent battle damage had been repaired, but Chris had made some radical changes to the front end.

  Jane was making a point of not looking at me.

  Smart.

  “You have the bridge, Jane.”

  “I thought I might,” she laughed.

  I jumped up, and stalked into my ready room, taking a seat behind my desk. There was already a screen up there, showing me what was going on in our main shipyard back in Haven.

  Ideas began to form. When Jon finally called an hour later, I was ready for him.

  “Grace, when you finish loading, have Jane let me know, and I’ll rift you back to Haven. I think your troops can have a few days off while we see what this new plant offensive has to offer.”

  “Amanda says it’ll be about another half hour.”

  “Good. Yours will be the last move of our people for a while, and then I have to start moving Ralnor fleets to take up the slack we’ve left hanging in their space. I bet the Keerah will want some fleets moved as well, but they haven’t signed the non-aggression pact yet, so until they do, the Ralnor benefit.”

  “Will they be much longer do you think?”

  “No. Jane’s going to accidently leave some nav maps up so their military envoy can see Ralnor fleets appearing on our navmap from no-where. That should get them motivated.”

  He was grinning. I smiled sweetly at him, and the grin faltered.

  “No.”

  “Jon.”

  “No.”

  I gave him a
pouting duck face look. He cringed. I didn’t blame him actually. It wasn’t one of my better looks.

  “No.”

  “How do you know what I’m going to ask?”

  “It’s written all over your face.”

  “What is?”

  “You all want to go after George.”

  “Are we that obvious?”

  “Duh!”

  Of course we were.

  “So why not?”

  “Fearless would never survive even a moderate Trixone force if you encountered one.”

  “Who said anything about Fearless?”

  He paused long enough for his lower jaw to close again.

  “Spill it,” he commanded.

  Having your ex-boyfriend being the Imperator and your boss, was a pain in the posterior at times. On the other hand though…

  “You let Dreamwalker redesign the front of his ship.”

  “So?”

  “Give me the almost completed Scimitar hull, and let me design my own dreadnaught version.”

  He sighed. I waited. Someone said something in his background I didn’t hear properly, but he ignored it, sitting there in his own command chair, thinking. I had one more card I could play, but was hoping I wouldn’t have to.

  “Alright. I’ll make you a deal. If you can find a competent pilot to command Fearless, I’ll let you go convince Bob to let you guide him in designing a new ship. If he builds it for you, we’ll talk about what you can do with it. But until someone can find out where George is, no-one is going looking anywhere for him. Agreed?”

  “You won’t regret this.”

  “I better not.”

  The channel ended, and I sat there grinning to myself. I should have known I wasn’t by myself.

  “You didn’t play the protecting the ex-girlfriend card,” said Jane, standing in the doorway.

  “I was hoping not to.”

  “Good choice. It would have pissed him off, big time.”

  “Yeah.”

  I hadn't known it for sure, but I still thought I could have made it work if need be. After all, he’d saved me from a building falling down after being bombed, and he’d kept saving me until I’d stopped running and started flying. He couldn’t keep saving me forever.