Core-ward Periphery of the Onyx Cluster
Present Day
Crevix sat at the center of a system with the same name, having harnessed ensnared twenty worlds with its gravity that now lazily drifted around it in a complex dance of orbit and rotation. Most of those worlds sustained life, even those that sat at the edge, the most recent inductees the Crevix circle. As a system, Crevix was unique in that its largest world was its farthest out, baffling scientists who happened by until they stopped to investigate, finding out the twentieth body from the sun was actually a massive ball of gas wrapped around a trapped stellar body of ice and rock. The blend of white and purple mists served as an attraction of beauty, made all the more resplendent when no worlds blocked the sun’s rays, creating a wondrous display of colors and shapes. Tourists had come and gone for a hundred years…
…until darkness overtook the beauty. The hand of the Crusade had fallen over Crevix: where once colonies thrived as they farmed or mined or built to their hearts content, sending riches and glory to their far-flung masters, there existed only depots and garrisons and sources of manpower for the foul usurpers – they mined too, only it was not jewels or ore or fuel they harvested; it was people. Slaves.
As he looked out of the transparisteel viewport, tint valiantly but vainly shielding him from the Crevix’s light, Grand Admiral-Baron Telan Desaria saw no beauty from the cloud-covered planet of Iah’dra. Instead of delighting in a scene of untouched glory of the gods own making, his face twisted into a mask of disgust. Beauty was now sullied by a dozen low-orbital platforms crossed with tubes and pipes and humongous storage tanks that sucked gas from the swirling mass below. Mining was far from anathema to the Kuati; he closed his eyes and imagined just how the mining was being done and
that angered him so. Imperial citizens being forced at blaster-point to toil until their deaths then replaced by another malnourished captive who would until he could work no more: the cycle would continue until the supply of slaves was exhausted.
“ Sir, we’re in attack position now.”
Desaria broke his gaze, having finished muttering a silent prayer. Spinning on a jackbooted heel, he moved to the center of the bridge and mounted his command chair. Iah’dra expanded before and above the bridge, filling nearly all of the forward viewports; crewmen worked at their stations and terminals, keeping as quiet as a litany of beeps and twirps would allow.
“ Very good, Captain. Group One, execute.”
On either side of the Cuirassier-class Heavy Cruiser
Malefactor, swift frigates and angular gunships ignited drive engines and peeled off from formation. They dove low under the line of six cruisers then oriented themselves towards the demi-planet and rocketed off. As the distance between the mining platforms and the incoming Imperial ships lessened, the group dissembled further into three-ship squads, each one zeroing in on, closing with, and stopping near one of the gas platforms. Not a shot was fired.
“ Scopes?” queried the Admiral, black gloved hands steepled in front of his be-medalled torso.
“ We have incoming, sir. Tracking a dozen ships, all Crusader types. Only one capital ship, a Pike cruiser.”
Barely had the report completed when the center of the viewport became overlayed with a green grid which magnified the platforms and made all visible and clear. Then the view shift to the right to the rim of Iah’dra where both Crevi’x rays and a formation of hostile ships crested the horizon. They came on quickly, losing all cohesion; only one small corvette remained at the side of the slower, but heavily armed cruiser.
“ Captain Vorran, as you please.”
Following a pre-set batch of orders, the thin-framed Balmorran turned to the helmsman and issued commands the Grand Admiral turned out. He listened onto to key phrases in the fabric of words around him from tactical officers, sensor technicians, and Intelligence coordinators. He needn’t have listened to the Fleet Operations officer, for the rumble of deckplating under his boots told him the cruiser was moving at near flank speed to intercept; he had enough faith in duly commissioned officers of the Imperial Navy to trust without confirmation that the five Curiassier’s behind were matching speed and maintaining formation.
The digital timer below the viewport ticked down until the numbers blinked red then flashed to green: maximum, then optimum range for the ship’s heavy weapons had been achieved. The Grand Admiral paused a second more as the line of warships came parallel to the platforms and struggling friendly frigates and gunships. Crusader ships mingled among them, firing wildly and seemingly careless as to whether they struck the unshielded platforms staffed by their comrades and captives. On came the cruiser which loosed a shot from an oversized turbolaser mounted on its blunt prow, missing the fast frigate that was its target and immolating the immobile platform that dared be in its path. Gas tanks belched flame as fired chased pipes and tubes until the entire mass was barely recognizable. None knew how many enemies had died in the errant shot; all knew the answer to how many loyal Imperials perished – too many.
“ Captain, open fire.”
The cruisers, arrayed broadside to the enemy and thus showing the most teeth, opened up with all manner of cannon. Heavy turbolaser turrets spat neon energy at a pace as slow as it was lethal; lesser cannon in single casemates and triple turrets loosed their charges in kind. Waves of green looked eerily at home chasing towards a planet of swirling purples and greys, almost as if the plasmized botls yearned to be among friends, similar gases to those that had been harnessed, refined, processed, packaged, loaded, and loosed to give birth to themselves. None remained after the furious cannonade, not even the enemy cruiser, having been set on by a flurry of torpedoes from vengeful frigates, freed from the fight.
“ Captain, all ships: Phase Two.”
Frigates aligned themselves with the platforms then turned away from the gas planet. Tendrils of gravity wrapped around the platforms as reactors spun up to maximum output – tractor beams were locked on. The large industrial structures had small thrusters which kept them tethered in orbit, but they could not fight military tractor beams. The frigates pulled and pulled; one at a time, the platforms were stolen from Iah’dra’s grip. They were pulled away into deep space where the large cruisers took up positions between them and the system’s depth from whence danger could come.
And danger did come.
“ Sensors, Captain: four large warships in bound, preliminary scans show as Crusader battelships. Contacts One through Three are known, Contact 4 is of a design not previously encountered.”
“ Acknowledge Sensors.” Captain Vorran trotted from the aft control corridor, skidding to a stop next to the Grand Admiral. On a Star Destroyer, he would merely have had to look up; Cuirassier Cruisers had a single-level bridge. “ Sir, shall we launch fighters?”
The Grand Admiral was exactly as he had been for the whole of the engagement, unmoving from his rigid pose. Only his eyes darted back and forth in their deep-set sockets, raping every item they could view of every detail the moving on to another target. His steepled fingers had not even tapped one another, even as the ship had rocked with a few lucky shots from the enemy cruiser. In the past year, as the war with the Crusade intensified, he changed. Six months ago, when the enemy laid siege to Onyx, making off will more than a half-million citizens and badly mauling his flagship, the normally energetic aristocrat had slid quickly into introversion. He had earned the nickname ‘Iron Admiral;’ now, witnessing first hand his stolid, stoic demeanor, Captain Vorran knew why.
“ Bring us about; all cruisers to reform battle line. Fire by batteries as the enemy ships come within range. Primary targets to be reactors and weapons. Do not launch fighters.”
The good Captain swallowed hard, summoning every bit of courage a ten-year veteran could muster. He leaned closer to the flag officer and spoke as quietly as he could be understood on a bridge in action. “ Those ships outclass us, sir, even if we disengage the platforms and bring the escorts to bear.”
Desaria did not even flinch. “ Thank you, Captain. Commence firing when we’re in formation.”
The Crusader battleships closed, slowing appreciably to give their gunners a better chance at accuracy. A vertiable wave of energy washed off the four Crusader ships, pounding the Imperials without mercy or relent. The stubborn ship’s shields held, but only barely; the Curiassiers were being violently knocked about.
Reports streamed in from all over the
Malefactor of injured crewmen, overloaded conduits, and bursting hull seams. While the shields held, the stress the projectors placed on reactor and hull were more than designed for. Men screamed while medics and droids ran as quickly as they were able; while their efforts were superhuman, their success was measured in a horrible ratio of lives saved to lives lost.
Captain Vorran felt his heart sank as he listened to the communications officer report of the heavy cruiser
Tannen, a report from her auxiliary bridge. Every senior officer, along with every crewmen near the command deck, was dead.
“ Subspace distortions, Grid 21A-635-53F!”
Vorran considered for a moment what death might be like. He opened to his eyes to take one last look at the bridge before the shields went down, but instead he found himself staring at three familiar wedge-shapes on the central status display. A trio of Star Destroyers had knifed into the system and were returning in kind the acts of the Crusader battleships. Heavy weapons thundered in the vacuum and continued to do so after one enemy ship broke away to escape into hyperspace. The others were pounded until they could fire no more. Normally, the Destroyers might have stopped firing, giving quarter to the survivors of such a withering fusilade.
Not to slavers, however. The Crusader ships were pounded until sensor technicians gleefully reported all oxygen supplies on the enemy ships were depleted or burning up.
Vorran sighed relief as the Grand Admiral stood. The Iron Admiral closed the distance and stopped for a second, letting his cold, green eyes stare down the slight Captain. “ You are not always privy to operational details, Captain. Have faith.”
* * *
The quarters given to the Grand Admiral were the best on the battleship
Vehement; old regulations from the days of the First Emperor mandated every destroyer built to have an admiral’s cabin, whether it was to be a flagship or not. Commander Grimalt had never been in them before, and it was not what he expected. Instead of bright, opulent fixtures, he could see little in the low lighting, aside from the Iron Admiral himself silhouetted at the viewport against the backdrop of hyperspace. The executive officer came to a smart attention, clicking his heels as he tried to squeeze a centimeter onto his height. “ We have evacuated all civilians from the platforms, sir. We have accounted for twenty thousand. Unfortunately, we discovered about half as many bodies.”
“ And the Crusader prisoners?”
“ We’ve removed all weapons from the platforms and sealed them into several warehouse blocks on each platform. We are due to arrive at Onyx in two hours where we will offload them.”
“ Are they provisioned?”
Commander Grimalt considered the question. The platforms had some rudimentary foodstuffs, but the prisoners would not be able to get to them from the chambers they were locked in. “ Not really, sir.”
The Iron Admiral never stopped staring out the viewport. “ Break the tractor, Commander. Let them drift in hyperspace for the remained of their lives. They’ll starve, eventually. Needless to say, they will have plenty of time ponder the price of enslaving Imperial Citizens.”
Out of habit, Grimalt came back to attention, clicked his heels, and hurried out of the cabin back into the corridor. When the doors closed behind him, he considered the gruesome possibility of starving to death. A wretched way to go! For a moment he wondered if the punishment was fitting. Then he stumbled on the truth – he didn’t care. They were slavers, and they deserved whatever they got. Grimalt headed off towards the bridge.
[size=1]Requiem en Terra Pax[/size]
