Long Live the King

Kindred Lancer was the first to answer my call. A Phalanx round cleaved apart the cruiser nearest to Circe. A second and third shot in rapid succession brought down a frigate and destroyer.

Friede’s actions stirred the Sunless Fleet awake. Streaks of missile fire and ion radiation crossed the vacuum between us and the Caerleon military. Sapphire shields glistened and surged beneath the bombardment.

“Bitch!” I heard Arthur scream. “Kill them all!”

I snapped on Bridge Mode and squelched the whining prince. Waves of murky neural transmissions flooded my senses.

“Vladimir, give me everything the engine has to offer,” I commanded. “Emiko, plot the course for the nearest ship. Stephen, heat up the railgun.”

“Do you really believe all that shit you said?” Friede growled through a private channel.

“I know you’ve fallen for Ulysses,” I replied. “Is that not enough reason for you to put your life on the line for him?”

“Hah!” Friede sniggered. “Looks like you’re a pirate after all. Fine.”

“Edge of Knight,” I ordered. “You’re running interference for Lancer. I’m also transmitting rescue vectors to the rest of the fleet. Pick two of your fastest cruisers. We need you to shroud Circe with flash bombs to cover their tracks.”

“This is not a winnable battle, Nightwing,” Alexis warned. “We’re vastly outnumbered, not to mention outgunned.”

“It’s won so long as we rescue Ulysses,” I said. “So long as he lives, the Sunless Fleet can one day go home.”

Alexis paused.

“...Then it’s my life for a king,” Alexis said. “So be it.”

“Elaine,” Emiko whispered. “When Caerleon returns fire...”

“I know,” I murmured. “It’s not going to be pretty, but they don’t need to know.”

“Extracting Ulysses is going to be impossible,” Vladimir said. “There are just too many imperial ships.”

“We can withstand it if we control the landscape of the battlefield,” I hovered my finger over the data planet beneath us. “We’ll arrange ourselves near the planet. Transmit the firing lines to the others.”

The Sunless Fleet surged forward to reach the shadow of the data planet as the Caerleon fleet fired its return salvo. Imperial weapons were faster, deadlier. I watched Sunless ships shredded apart like paper, their reinforced hulls cut through by concentrated beam emitters.

Incorrigible was the deadliest of the lot. Its fields of plasma turrets struck dozens of ships with superheated, compressed gas, leaving nothing but ruined, smoking derelicts in its wake.

“I’m going to fire on that fucking titan,” Friede said.

“That’s a negative Kindred,” I answered. “It’ll track your position and blow you out of cover. Open up on the closest targets. Nightwing is going to run a distraction.”

“We're prepped for intercept,” Emiko said.

“...Leave me…” Ulysses’s voice croaked through the communicator.

“No can do,” I said. “Lay your head down and wait for rescue. Emiko, gun it.”

Nightwing jumped into the action and slipped into subspace. The thought of escaping had once crossed my mind, but our first subspace jump wiped that possibility clean. Light Federation fighters swarmed the interior of the subspace tunnel. Their rapid fire lasers would bounce off Nightwing’s shields, but the real danger was they were transmitting our location to everyone outside in normal space.

“Vladimir, shields to maximum,” I said. “Emiko?”

“We have the gun,” she affirmed.

Nightwing dropped back into normal space, its nose aimed straight at the underside of a cruiser. The maneuver was sloppy and sluggish. We arrived several miles off course. But at this range, it was still difficult to miss. Emiko primed the railgun and fired. The tungsten bullet shattered the belly and ripped through to the other side.

In the back of my mind, a word spoke to me. Danger.

“Bank hard to port!” I roared.

Nightwing barreled to the side. Plasma glazed over the shields. Alarms screamed on the bridge as the energy readings on my terminal skyrocketed.

“It’s Incorrigible!” Vladimir cried. “Shields can’t take even another near miss like that.”

“Nightwing, this is Kindred Lancer,” Friede said. “The titan is the closest target.”

“Do. Not. Fire. Pick anything else. Edge of Knight, are we ready?”

“Initiating flashbang,” Alexis responded. “Put on your sunglasses everyone.”

At the start of the battle, Edge of Knight had thrown thousands of small, innocuous orbs towards Circe’s ruined body, most of them too small to be worth tracking. Now, they blinked on. After a rapid startup sequence, they burst open, releasing a spark of brilliant magnesium, enough to completely cover all of Circe in white light.

“Now!” I yelled.

The Sunless Fleet opened fire from its new position above the data planet. Edge of Knight emptied its armory into space. Fusion missiles, anti-frigate mines, rapid fire tracking lasers. From afar, Kindred Lancer skewered another pair of destroyers. The Caerleon fleet was awash with ricocheting projectiles.

Nightwing played her part. She weaved through packs of ships and disrupted the Caerleon formation. It wasn’t perfect. The density of the neural cloud slowed our movements and precision. We missed easy targets and our shields had to take the brunt of a misfired rocket. But Caerleon ships turned in our direction, and that’s all we needed.

Two speedy carriers detached themselves from the main body of the Sunless Fleet. They were lucky. Incorrigible and the rest of the Caerleon contingency unleashed another volley, another league of ships burnt to cinders. Under the cover of the magnesium flare, the two carriers approached Circe’s inert body and magnetized her between the two of them.

“Circe retrieved,” Alexis reported. “I hope you have an exit strategy.”

I transmitted coordinates at the opposite end of the system.

“The Caerleon pincer here is quite weak, and it’s in the opposite direction of the titan,” I said. “You’re going to make a break for the rendezvous point here. Maintain a rear guard to cover for Circe and watch for subspace flanks.”

“You’re not coming?” Alexis noted.

“Nightwing will stay behind and pull their attention.”

“The fuck you are,” Friede cursed. “You trying to be put down like a dog too, imperial?”

“I’m not doing it out of charity,” I said. “I’m buying my freedom. Ulysses’s life for mine. This is the last time I’ll be a part of the Sunless Fleet.”

A surge of shock rushed from the crew through to me. It was the first time they had heard my intentions.

“Fine,” Friede crossed her arms. “Then I’m staying.”

I wanted to say no. I almost said it too, but Friede was Friede, and we both knew what she was trying to say. There was no point exchanging any words on the matter.

“Long live the king, then,” Alexis muttered. “Always wanted to see Nana live.”

The Sunless Fleet broke formation as the two ships Circe dashed by. Another barrage of imperial fire washed over the frontline. The fleet’s most resilient ships buckled and died, venting both atmosphere and bodies into the vacuum. The remainder fled behind Circe.

“Subspace radiation,” Vladimir reported. “They’re going to flank them on the retreat.”

“Let’s catch up,” I said. “Stephen, munitions check.”

“We’re low on tungsten rounds,” he said. “All other systems are good.”

“Emiko, let’s intercept them in subspace.”

My navigation officer paused.

“Can you do it or not?” I asked.

“Do I have a choice?” She looked at me and knew my answer. “Then let’s find out if I can. Vlad, feed me their radiation signatures.”

Nightwing dove back into subspace. As we entered, so did another Caerleon battlegroup. Three destroyers with charged up ion cannons, ready to fire at the next exit.

“Point blank,” I told Emiko.

“More and more unreasonable demands,” Emiko muttered. “Just like the old captain.”

We shot forward and settled behind the nearest destroyer. The heat from its aft thrusters threatened to burn Nightwing’s nose. Emiko fired. The railgun barreled into the ship’s rear. The destroyer tilted, crashed into the walls of the subspace tunnel, and spun out of sight.

Nightwing swerved and fired again at the next closest destroyer. The ferrous round escaped the barrel of the railgun and made an impossible ninety degree rotation and jettisoned out of view.

“Again!” I shouted.

The second shot shaved the top deck of the destroyer off. While not fatal, whoever was operating the destroyer’s exit vector out of subspace was not prepared for the sudden decrease in the ship’s mass. As it attempted to escape, the destroyer skipped along the tunnel that led into normal space and crashed into its neighbor. Nightwing decelerated into normal space.

The survivors had made it about halfway to the rendezvous point, where the Caerleon resistance cleared and a clean escape route was possible. The trail of their escape was littered with broken ships.

“Another radiation spike!” Vladimir called. “They just keep coming.”

“Emiko–”

“I can’t,” she gasped. “I’m sorry.”

Her mind screamed to me, so loudly that my ears felt a splitting shriek. Maneuvering under these conditions was breaking her. Emiko wouldn’t hold out for much longer if we kept fighting this way.

A pair of Caerleon ships appeared. Plasma torched and carved the Sunless ships that stayed to fight. Edge of Knight was among them. The ship was struck and shuddered under the stress of a heavy barrage, but the juggernaut shrugged off what would otherwise be a death blow to a lesser vessel and fired back with everything it had left. When the smoke had cleared, one of the Caerleon ships had been reduced to a smoldering crater. Edge of Knight was lit across every deck.

Alexis’s portrait, his face bloodied and bruised, blinked onto the bridge.

“Kindred Lancer. Nightwing,” he coughed. “Ulysses’s safety’s up to you now. This last dog’s mine.”

“Edge of Knight, you are out of munitions,” I said. “Continue to the rendezvous and prepare a randomized escape vector. We’ll find another way–”

“Negative, Nightwing. Edge of Knight is still armed. I’ll clear a path for the king.”

The impulse drives of Alexis’s warship flared one last time. Edge of Knight barreled towards the second Caerleon battleship on an intercept course with the last piece of equipment it had left.

“See you in another time, Nightwing,” Alexis saluted. “Edge of Knight, out.”

Edge of Knight hurled itself into the battleship. The two crunched together and ruptured. Something inside, I wasn’t sure if it was Edge of Knight or the Caerleon battleship, detonated and enveloped both ships in flame.

By now, the rest of the Sunless Fleet had made their way to the edge of the system. Some ships were already preparing to jump, but two cruisers holding Circe remained still. Carrying dead weight with you into subspace was, after all, a complex maneuver. They needed more time than normal to calculate a suitable destination solution.

Anybody with brains knew this, and Caerleon was not ready to give up its prize just yet. A subspace tunnel emerged that was large enough to fit several Caerleon battle groups. Only one ship emerged, and it was the only ship that mattered. Incorrigible looked indomitable among the battered and defeated.

“They’re not gonna make it,” Stephen whispered.

“I’m drawing its fire!” Friede screamed.

Three precise ferrous rounds smashed into the titan. The behemoth lurched backwards, but the rounds did little more than to dent a planetary crust’s worth of armor plating. I watched helplessly as Incorrigible pinpointed Kindred Lancer’s location in a heartbeat. Its plasma cannons trained on the stationary Phalanx and fired.

Phalanx shields were built to be tough. They had to be. They were stationary targets. But no amount of shielding could have withstood such firepower. Kindred Lancer’s main gun melted, its decks set were ablaze, and its innards ruptured from within.

A ragged cough came through the comms. Lancer had no power left to even give me one last look at Friede.

“This is Kindred Lancer. My position has been compromised. It’s been an honor serving with you imperial dogs.”

Another burst from the Incorrigible butterflied Kindred Lancer in half.

The corpses of the Sunless Fleet flickered like dying stars. Had I still been an imperial, I might have rejoiced at the occasion, but I knew I was no imperial, not any longer. There was no joy or even sadness in the slaughter, only the uncomfortable calculus of narrowing survival odds.

“He’s hailing us,” Emiko said. “The prince.”

“To gloat, I’m sure,” I groaned. “Let’s see if we can buy more time.”

I thumbed the console to accept Arthur’s hail.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” the prince sighed when he reappeared. “Look at the mess you’ve made, Elaine.”

“Not a big enough mess, in my opinion,” I said.

“That’s enough!” Arthur banged his fists. “Why can’t you just admit defeat already? I defeated you when I exiled you. I’ve defeated you again here. This battlefield belongs to me, to Caerleon.”

“You’re wrong, Arthur,” I laughed. “The battle belongs to your titan, who we never stood a chance against. But you have never beaten me. All this time, and I still can’t believe you don’t know the reason that you are here.”

“The reason?”

“You are here,” I said, “precisely because you have yet to defeat me. You have yet to witness me beg, to grovel in your presence. You can kill me and end this dance for good, but then you would have to live with this loss, and your silly notions of honor prevent that.”

“What kind of nonsense is this?” Arthur scoffed.

“You tried me for crimes I did not commit, fabricated untruths and had me cast out,” I said. “Your knights know, and they still follow you out of blind loyalty. But you cannot live with this dishonor, not until you’ve properly proven me to be the villainess that I’ve been made out to be.”

“And if I offered to put the past behind us? Grant clemency? Give you the forgiveness that you so desire?”

“At this point, I would rather die,” I spat, “than to take any deal offered by you or any of your cowardly knights and retinue. I’ve decided Arthur, here and now. I’ve decided that for as long as I shall live, and for as long as the imperium rests in your hands, I shall tear your empire brick by brick until nothing of your stain remains.”

“Wonderfully said!”

A subspace tunnel emerged besides the Incorrigible and hid the carriers carrying Ulysses from view. It was the largest tear in normal space that I had ever seen, multitudes wider than Caerleon’s titan. A flock of vessels drifted out of the tunnel, followed by a series of Phalanx installations, followed finally by the shadow of a giant, its entire southern sphere suffused with the dazzling gleam of the largest Lemmings-Hyder engine known to man.

“Why hello there, Arthur,” the Witch of Hadrian smiled with contempt.