Cascade Effect (Edge of Imperium Book 2), page 1
WarGate Books
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Text copyright © 2024 by Peter Nealen
Production copyright © 2024 by Galaxy’s Edge, LLC
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Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
EPILOGUE
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 flare 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 tell was 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. The majority 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 and 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, as it was within visual range—hurtled toward rendezvous.
***
While active targeting systems lit the oncoming starship up, 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 col
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.
CHAPTER 1
The heavy lift shuttle shook and shuddered, the drives roaring and rattling First Sergeant Cul Draven’s teeth as he hung on, strapped into his acceleration couch and feeling every single one of the three hundred ninety kilograms he currently weighed under this thrust.
This operation was already going poorly. There shouldn’t have been this sort of turbulence—or maneuvering—on the way down to the surface of an airless moon.
Despite the deformation the Gs were forcing on his eyes, he fought to focus on the display splashed across his faceplate. The rest of the enlisted in the company—even the platoon sergeants—wouldn’t necessarily get this information, but the officers had been forced to concede that the first sergeant needed just as much situational awareness on the way down to Dina Chandra as they did.
Captain Breck was one of the more military competent officers Draven had ever dealt with, yet that came with a degree of arrogance that made even the late Captain Thill’s attitude pale by comparison. He had granted Draven access to the tactical feed, but he had been extremely grudging about it.
That feed was still populating, even as the sixteen heavy lift dropships descended toward the darkened face of Dina Chandra, the gold and blue bow of Dur Udyaanm’s limb looming above the craggy horizon. The dropships were blue bullet-shapes descending on plumes of fire, backed by the sleek shapes of the starships of the Grand Fleet, most of them front line classes with their spherical main hulls connected to lozenge-shaped thrust sections by long, slender booms.
That was the easy part. The angry red dots blossoming on what was supposed to be the clear side of the moon, even as the red, angular shapes of the Mytunese starships retreated toward the far side of the planet, were much more concerning.
Lines flickered from the surface into space, tracing railgun and laser fire, forcing the dropships to jink and maneuver, at a point on their trajectories where that was becoming more and more dangerous. One of them flashed, then began to drift to one side as it fell faster and faster toward the cratered surface of the moon. The drives must have taken a hit. Draven could only watch as the heavy dropship accelerated and hit, turning into a soundless explosion as it struck the surface and shattered, sending a cloud of debris and dust billowing into the vacuum in slow motion.
An entire company of the Grand Army of Zolah had just been wiped out.
“Thirty seconds!” The pilot in the cockpit above sounded like she was close to panic. Watching that crash would have shaken the most hardened combat veteran, and from what he’d seen so far, few of these pilots had seen much action. There had been plenty of brushfire wars along the periphery of the Grand Democracy’s sphere of influence, but few of those had involved a regimental drop under fire.
Draven was tensed in his hardsuit, waiting for the hit that would send Able Company to join Fox in a cascade of fragments and dust on the lunar surface. There was no way to brace for it. If it happened, he doubted he’d even be aware of it, at least not for long.
He almost flinched as the dropship hit, hard enough to make the hydraulic landing struts sag. It took a second to realize that they were down, and they hadn’t taken a catastrophic hit.
“Hard contact!” The pilot wasn’t getting any less excitable down on the ground, and Draven could hear the thrum of the capacitors running the point defense lasers in the dropship’s nose. The LZ was supposed to be at the bottom of a large crater, but the Mytunese must still have had ground forces within line of sight.
Either that, or the gunners were blowing rocks up out there, just to be on the safe side.
“Everyone out! I want a perimeter at least a hundred meters from the ship.” Draven was already getting unstrapped. They hadn’t descended in the crawlers—blowers were grounded in vacuum—since the Mytunese hadn’t been expected to have any forces outside a hundred kilometers of the main base, set into Kamakshi Crater and permanently facing the gold, green, and blue orb of Dur Udyaanm.
Intel screwed it up. Again.
Draven shouldn’t have been surprised, especially when he’d tried to bring it up and been shut down by Captain Breck. The space battle that had left the glowing debris of half a dozen Mytunese wrecks in decaying orbits over the planetoid, and the quick strikes on the surface by starship-mounted weapons and ZX-74 Hunter II starfighters should have driven any ground forces back to the crater.
Apparently, they hadn’t. The Mytunese had taken full advantage of the time they’d had on the moon’s surface, since their initial invasion of the planet had stalled and the Zolarian fleet had arrived.
The ramps lowered all too slowly, the last of the internal atmosphere hissing out into the void. They had descended pressurized, which was another thing they probably wouldn’t have done if they’d expected contact on the way down. Fortunately, as soon as the first hostile fire had been registered from the surface, Draven had ordered the company to pressurize their hardsuits, just in case.
That Captain Breck hadn’t intervened when he’d put that order out over the comms was a good sign, since it meant that the captain had been considering it as well, and Draven had beaten him to it by seconds. That didn’t mean he wasn’t in for a dressing down later, but after the career he’d already had, that was less concerning for him than it would have been several thousand hours earlier.
He was halfway to the ramp before half the men and women in the lower personnel compartment had even freed themselves from their harnesses. Adrenaline coursing through his veins nearly made him launch himself several meters into the sky as he went off the ramp, forgetting about the considerably lower gravity on the surface for a moment.
It was eerie, out there in the stark, sharp-edged silence of the airless moon. He was sure he was taking fire, and that the point defense guns on the heavy dropship were returning it, but there was no indication by sight or sound.
His visor started to populate a moment later, as his suit’s sensors, bolstered by the scanners aboard the heavy lift dropship, began to pick out Mytunese fighting positions. There were some along the rim, though one was obliterated a moment after it was highlighted, a laser turning it and the hardsuited Mytunese soldiers into a spray of superheated dust and fragments.
Several more of the defensive positions, however, were dug into the floor of the crater, below ground level and protected by berms of rock and dust. Right at the moment, where he’d landed and settled to a knee as he fought to keep his balance after leaping much too far out from the dropship, Draven could see one of those positions only about half a klick ahead, though none of the Mytunese were currently exposed.
“On me!” There was no time to organize more than that. He looked to right and left, seeing nearly a dozen hardsuited figures, two of them lugging the components of a combat laser, and he quickly tagged them each, sending a ping to their helmet visors to let them know he was talking to them. Their names floated above their heads in his own visor, but he was too absorbed in the task at hand to notice.
Charging forward with a long lope that he’d learned a long time ago for use in low gravity environments, a sort of lean and push motion that would propel him over wide swathes of ground without popping him too far above the surface, he checked that the contacts in his gauntlet were still working, connecting his suit with the MA-57 rifle’s optics, painting an aiming pip on his faceplate.
Half a klick wasn’t that far when he could cover twenty meters at a stride, effectively gliding over the surface, his rifle up and the buttstock tucked into the pocket built into his pauldron as he went. The movement was actually smoother than it would have been in normal human-comfortable planetary gravity, making aiming easier. So far, he’d covered half the distance without any of the Mytunese exposing themselves, even as the bright flashes of laser strikes blew puffs of molten dust and rock into the sky, fountains of glowing sparks rising far higher than they would have planetside, floating down slowly.
