The Flames of War Spread
Even as the clash on distant, desolate Zhogalgan winds down, the spark it has ignited now threatens to set entire star systems aflame.
Now Corvanite Lieutenant Ulric Bannon leads his special tasks phalanx on a deep reconnaissance on an alien world to discover Zolarian plans… while elsewhere, on an airless moon, Zolarian First Sergeant Cul Draven faces savage war against a Corvanite client-state that has launched an offensive in the wake of the Zhogalgan confrontation.
Corvan and Zolah. Two great powers hurtling toward war…
… but the real enemy may be the mysterious alien operatives manipulating the conflict from the shadows.
***
Prologue
Space seemed to twist, and with a burst of bright blue Cherenkov radiation, a blunt cylinder appeared in the Gamma Corvi 822 system.
Cone-shaped drive nozzles at the aft end flared white, pushing the starship toward the distant world that the humans called Zhogalgan at just over one otuchan gravity.
The light of that burst of Cherenkov radiation would reach the planet and the human starships that now dominated its orbitals within sixteen of the humans’ minutes. The starship would reach it much later than that, though at its current acceleration, it would be traveling at a velocity almost too high to engage.
The ship wasn’t there to fight. It was there to observe. What happened after that would depend on what the otuchans aboard saw.
***
There was no way to conceal the drive plume. A massive trail of plasma and radiation, despite the fact that it was pointed away from the planet, it was a flare in the dark. Even so, it was a relatively small spark in the vastness of space. If the Corvanite and newly arrived allied Mytunese starships in orbit over Zhogalgan hadn’t been alert to any opening of the wormhole, they probably would have been hard-pressed to detect the oncoming starship for some time.
Aboard command starships, Corvanite and Mytunese officers conferred. There was no identification being transmitted by the oncoming starship, so all they could monitor were its radiation and neutrino signatures. They were somewhat consistent with observed otuchan diaspora starships, but as no two of those vessels were ever exactly the same, it was hard to say what was happening.
Days passed. The unknown starship continued its acceleration, passing the turnover point where it would have to cut thrust, flip over, and commence deceleration, if it intended to enter Zhogalgan orbit. It continued to gain velocity, while still arrowing toward a near pass by Zhogalgan.
For most of the last Zhogalganite year, the orbitals had been relatively uncontested, depressingly regular incidents with the starships of the Eurasian Concordium and their allies notwithstanding. Most of the starships in orbit were engaged in direct support of the newly formed Zhogalganite Army and the Corvanite ground forces aiding and training them.
On the command deck of the Adamant, Captain Silas Mahan watched the holo tank, the images of his other task group commanders floating in a halo around the plot. Dozens of icons indicated starships as well as units on the planet’s surface, trajectories traced by gossamer lines of light around the sphere of the planet and its moons.
“Thoughts, gentlemen?” He had his own ideas, but he wanted to hear what his subordinates thought. While matters on and around Zhogalgan had stabilized somewhat since the Zolarians had pulled out in shame, the continued presence and belligerence of the Eurasian forces kept the entire situation delicate.
“While I would say that a single ship can’t present too much of a threat, especially on its current trajectory, its kinetic energy is only increasing, and it is still far enough out for a vector change that could make it a considerable threat.” Captain Rankin was one of the older starship captains, commanding the blunt-nosed second-generation cruiser Avenger.
“Still no response to comms hails?” Captain Coré asked from the Demolisher.
“None.” Of all the Corvanite commanders in the system, Captain Daell was the one most likely to have tried talking first, though his hail would still have had the iron fist of the Thunderbird’s weapons behind it. “Though, if they are someone new, they might not be operating on the same frequencies.”
Coré frowned. “What makes you think that they’re new? All signs point to the ship being diaspora otuchan.”
“It does, at least from a distance,” Daell replied. “However, there is an inconsistency to be considered here. Since when do diaspora otuchans care about anyone outside their particular phratry? Their entire philosophy revolves around evolution through struggle. If the Zhogalgan otuchans cannot survive on their own, they don’t deserve to. A potential intervention by other otuchans—the homeworld otuchans hate the diaspora more than any humans or aliens in this part of the galaxy—would be a change so drastic that it would catch every intel analyst for a thousand light years flat-footed.”
Mahan snorted. “Given some of the reports from this very system over the last Zhogalganite year, that would not be out of the ordinary.”
The reports of not only ghost ship sightings, but even an actual engagement by Corvanite ground forces with aliens from one of those fabled ghost ships, had been classified, but each of the starship captains had seen them.
Captain Sobhan of the Reckoning hadn’t said a word yet, but now, as his holo crossed its arms, he spoke. “The unknown ship’s identity is a matter of curiosity, not true import. If there is talking to be done, it will be done by Consul Abraham. If there is fighting to be done, that will be our job.”
“Well said, Captain.” Daell didn’t seem offended by the implied rebuke, since he had been the first to hail the oncoming starship. “So far, its vector is inconsistent with an attempt to enter orbit. It might attempt a high-velocity attack pass, but on its current trajectory, it will pass by just outside the Lagrange points.”
“We have approximately twenty hours before it is within directed energy weapon range.” As Captain Coré spoke, a golden sphere appeared in the plot around Zhogalgan, indicating the range at which any of the starships currently in orbit would be able to engage using lasers or particle beams. The lasers stayed coherent farther than the particle beams, but at the velocities involved, the difference in range would be somewhat negligible.
Mahan looked around at his fellow captains. “Maintain watch and go to Alert Condition One as soon as it comes within DEW range?”
He got nods all around. “Very well, gentlemen. Death comes.”
“Let us go and meet it.”
***
The blunt, cylindrical starship continued its plunge toward Zhogalgan, cutting its drive well after it was traveling at such a velocity that the planet’s gravity was only going to divert it a relatively small amount. The line in the plot bent toward the distant gas giant Sukalyk. Mahan thought he was starting to see what the plan was. A gravity boost around Sukalyk would propel the otuchan craft back toward the wormhole emergence point after conducting a high-velocity pass by Zhogalgan.
This was looking more and more like a reconnaissance mission rather than an attack. He still called the ship to Alert Condition One as soon as the unidentified starship passed the edge of that golden sphere in the plot.
Eyes both organic and mechanical watched as the otuchan ship—there was now no doubt about its origin, as it was within visual range—hurtled toward rendezvous.
***
While active targeting systems lit up the oncoming starship, the otuchans aboard gave no sign they even noticed. Powerful telescopes were trained on the ships in orbit as well as the surface below, doing what they could to penetrate the thin clouds without using active measures that might trigger a response from the myriad weapons systems currently locked onto the ship.
Those optics were far more advanced than anything the humans would expect to be equipped aboard an otuchan diaspora starship. The computers processing their imagery corrected for weather and movement, constructing a detailed set of images that were carefully observed and cataloged by cold, unblinking reptilian eyes.
The Corvanites might have considered identification of the starship’s origin academic, but the otuchans aboard the ship had different priorities. They noted the origin of every human on and above the planet, even as their ship flashed past at well above escape velocity, careful to give the humans no excuse to open fire on it.
The pass took only hours, and then the starship was plunging into the dark again, toward the distant blue glint of Sukalyk. The Corvanite and Mytunese ships in orbit over Zhogalgan continued to watch, ordered to hold fire and maintain their orbits, while the Eurasian and Shangxi cruisers held to their own orbits, if only to avoid granting the Corvanites and Mytunese in orbit any advantage. It was a cold war in the skies above Zhogalgan, but it was still a war.
The otuchan starship rotated to point its drive cones out toward deep space, the sun-hot plasma jetting out once more to adjust the starship’s vector, the projected line of its trajectory quickly curving around Sukalyk and back toward the wormhole.
Captain Mahan would have reason to wish that he’d opened fire on that ship.
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