The Belt Loop (Book Three) - End of an Empire Read online

  Not one to be easily intimidated, Har fought back with subtle guerrilla warfare. Short-sheeting Taft’s bed, stuffing the toes of his boots with wads of compacted tissue, hollowing out his bar of soap and filling the interior with syrup, changing his name tag to read TAET by inscribing the extra line with a metal stylus, and so forth. He had not been caught thus far and Har had made sure he was never detected in his weekly raids on Taft’s room.

  He was sitting at his little student desk looking out the window, planning his next counter-strike against Taft when his roommate Cory Chase came in. Har and Cory had gotten off to a rocky start a few months ago but lately Cory was starting to come around to Har’s way of thinking. As impossible as it may seem, they were becoming friends. While Cory, who was a few months older than Har, didn’t exactly go along with every plot and scheme hatched by Har he vowed to remain silent as the war of wills escalated. Cory was roughly the same size as Har and kept his wiry blonde hair military neat and was always the quintessential picture of proper cadet decorum.

  “Whatcha doin’, bird brain?” Cory asked, as he closed the door behind him.

  “Just contemplating the future. Counting down the days until I get out of this asylum,” Har rejoined.

  “Quit your bitching, Har, you sound like an old woman.”

  Har looked at Cory and shot him an obscene gesture with his middle finger. “Here’s what you can do with your old woman. Make sure she’s had all of her shots.”

  Cory mumbled something as he flopped down on his cot. The boys had a free weekend coming up and he didn’t want to start it with a childish argument with Har. “Hey, I’m not trying to get you all riled up. You can do that well enough on your own,” he said aloud.

  “Yeah, I guess I can. I’m just a little on edge, waiting for that dickhead Taft to come storming in here looking for a reason to keep me on base this weekend,” Har grunted.

  “You’ve got too much time on your hands, Har. Taft and a bunch of his buddies have already left the compound. I heard they were going over to the War College this weekend for some kind of senior conference or something.”

  Har stood and clapped his hands over his head. “Spacin’ cool! A free weekend. Boy, the things I’m going to do to his room. Break out your digital, Cory, this is going to be a weekend to remember.”

  “Give it a rest, moron. He’s locked his room. I tried the door handle when I passed his room on the way here. He’s gone and that’s that.”

  Har walked over to Cory’s cot and just smiled down at him. “Locks can’t keep me out. If I wanted to, I could get in at any time. Done it before.”

  Cory raised up on one elbow. “You’re going to get caught one of these times. Then it’s off to the copper mines for your ass. Leave me your mom’s address so I can tell her what happened to you. She has a right to know.”

  Har laughed. “Your lack of respect for my genius is going to be your undoing, Cory. You may be willing to sit by while that jerk makes our lives miserable, but I’m not.”

  “Correction, Har. He makes your life miserable. I get along with Taft okay.”

  Har put his hands on his hips. “Yeah, I know, I’ve seen you kissing his ass on several occasions. Disgusting.”

  “I follow the rules, moron.”

  Har emitted a wicked snicker. “And I make my own rules.”

  * * *

  “Where in the ‘rules’ does it say I’m not allowed out of my room?” Commander Davi Yorn said.

  “It’s still too early for you to be up and about, commander,” Milli Gertz said. She was in Yorn’s room on the second floor of the Weyring Navy Base Hospital. She had made it a point of administering to Yorn since she had reached into his back and removed a dangerous piece of metal rebar that had lodged next to his heart. That was almost three months ago and finally Yorn was out of danger and was on the mend. His movements were still stiff and he coughed a lot as his collapsed and reinflated left lung managed to purge itself of residual fluid.

  “Milli, while I appreciate your concerns for my welfare, I have to get back in shape and start motivating myself to get through all of this physical therapy you docs want to inflict upon me. I just want to walk down to the PT wing on my own and not have that therapist up here in my room torturing me.”

  “Torture? She has the touch, commander, and you’ll get more out of it if you’ll just relax and go along with the program.”

  The program. Yorn was having none of it. He could make more progress if they would just let him do this on his own. After all, he thought, who else had the true picture of his recovery? Him or some Nurse Ratchett? But he still couldn’t get Lieutenant Commander Gertz to see things his way. They had both served together on the Corpus Christi and he liked her as a person, valued her as a fellow officer. Her personal attention in his recovery efforts was raising his eyebrows a little. She always had a warm smile for him and a gentle hand for his brow. Yorn considered her mother hen approach was nearing the familiarity “no-fly” zone. There was a war raging in the skies above Bayliss and his first concern was getting rehabilitated so he could join the fray. He had been informed that the Christi was on the mend as well and on the day he walked out of the hospital he would be promoted to the rank of Captain and the restored Corpus Christi would be his first command. Incentives to get the healing process moving a little quicker. How Milli Gertz factored into this equation he had not figured out yet.

  “Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll be heading down to PT on my own today. If you don’t like it, better call in the orderly and a couple of burly corpsmen. I’ve got to get moving, Milli. I’ve got to be ready to walk out of here in thirty days. That’s my self-imposed limit.”

  She smiled and reached for his hand. “Aye, aye, sir. If you insist.”

  “I insist.”

  “Then at least let me help you. I can walk with you, should you feel weak or something.”

  He walked around the bed and coughed up a ball of phlegm. He spit the mess into a wad of tissues and stuffed them back into his robe pocket. “Okay. Lead the way,” Yorn said.

  Milli Gertz hooked her arm in his and they headed for the door.

  Chapter 3

  Bale Phatie wanted to know more about the new weapon. He was touring the weapons facilities on Rauud Mithie and, as was his custom, he inspected every department, interrogated every department head, and made a general nuisance of himself. After all, that was what a Piru Torgud — Supreme Military Commander — did.

  He braced Admiral Regiid, his new facilities department head, and demanded information about the new super weapon. He reminded the admiral not to bore him with useless engineering details. He was a warrior and a commander of men and not some pencil-necked bookworm who had time to bury his head in a bunch of technical manuals. Bale Phatie was feared by his men and he knew it. His mere presence in the room was enough to cause even the most battle-hardened military men to buckle in the knees and get jelly-legged when he spoke.

  “So, tell me again, admiral, why do you feel this new weapon is the answer to my prayers?”

  Ceendi Regiid stood about 200 centimeters and was lean and fit but he still had to look up at Phatie. The Piru Torgud was hovering over him like a dense cloud of toxic smoke on a breezeless day. Phatie shifted his weight slightly and the resulting noise from the array of chains and decorations he wore on his sash reminded Regiid of glass breaking. “Your eminence, this design is one for the ages, one the Deliverer himself would be honor-bound to support. It has all of the essentials you requested, it is a ‘Planet Killer’ without equal.”

  Phatie curled his bottom lip and put both of his fists on his narrow hips. His flowing green robe made swishing noises as he pushed his elbows to the side. He was excited about what he was hearing but he questioned the man invoking the name of the Deliverer. In Malguurian lore, the Deliverer — commonplace name for the central star of the home world of Canuure — was the Holiest of Holies. The star was called Voorsuune, a word that had been corrupted by the
humans into “Varson” during the previous war. For the Malguur the star represented their one true God, the bringer of life, the Deliverer from all evil, the One Who Casts No Shadow. While not really a religious man, Phatie liked it when someone used the name of the Diety, affirming their absolute faith and belief in the things they espoused. If they were wrong, it made killing them much easier.

  “So you say. I have heard nothing but promises coming out of these shops, Admiral Regiid. You are the fourth commanding officer here in the last several months since Admiral Uubiid was, shall we say, replaced. I tire easily upon hearing these empty promises from your engineers. They promised me the new ship designs and the new weapons would be the deciding factor in reengaging the humans. So far we have had only limited success in taking the battles to Bayliss. The enormous energy we use to get us there leaves us with half of the returning battle groups running out of hydrogen before they can make it back to Canuure or Rauud Mithie. I have hundreds of ships waiting to join the fight but they are still on standby until we can solve the fuel issues. What this department failed to reckon was the efficiency curves associated with the stolen human fold technology. That is why they always send smaller tankers out with their fleets — ‘oilers’ I think they’re called — so their heavier warships can be refueled in space. Even with our improved ships and improved drive technologies, the humans still have the upper hand. It is time for this negligent thinking to come to a halt, admiral.”

  Regiid fidgeted. He thought about some of the other men that had held his position and the life expectancy was not very promising. He knew how Admiral Uubiid had been “replaced”: Phatie killed him with an arc-welder’s wand shoved up into his neck and then activated. Some of the engineers and officers that witnessed that horror still talk of it in hushed tones. Uubiid’s replacement, Admiral Koraath, had fared none better in the long run, his life cut short by a stroke from Phatie’s sword. “I can arrange a demonstration, your eminence. There are several suitable asteroids I can prepare out near Nuurhe. I can have a ship at your disposal within the hour, sir.”

  “Make it so, admiral. And for your sake, I hope this demonstration is exactly as you purported.”

  Admiral Ceendi Regiid thumped his chest with his right fist. “You will not be disappointed, my eminence.” He turned on his heels and marched away to make ship preparations. He would summon one of the new hybrid destroyers and have the weapon loaded by the time the Piru Torgud’s shuttle made orbit. If everything went according to plan, this day would be recorded in the Malguurian history books with a sidebar from the Supreme Military Commander Bale Phatie himself.

  Now Regiid’s hopes relied on the damned thing working as advertised. If it didn’t, the only thing posted this day would be his obscure obituary on the back page of some obscure tabloid rag circulated on the dead planets in the Malguur Domain.

  * * *

  The disturbing report was not what Admiral Vincent Paine wanted to read. Delays and more delays. The Colonial Navy had been caught with its collective pants down and there was going to be hell to pay until the Second and Third Fleets could pull together and put down this Varson uprising. As sophisticated as the Navy was — its grand ships plying the void like privateers in some bygone era, the officers and men strutting their stuff among seven colonized planets reaching almost 900 light-years from mother Earth, the Admiralty lording over more than a billion souls out in the Belt Loop and the Fringes, a military society steeped in tradition and fearless in battle — it was being dragged down by its own inertia. The inability to move men and machines to the right place at the right time. No matter how intelligent the species had become, he thought, somehow it had never been able to marry smarts with logistics and now the race was paying the price.

  Over the last three months the Colonial Navy had lost 136 ships and over 42,000 able-bodied sailors. More men and materiel lost in three months than in the entire first conflict with the Varson Empire. While the Colonial navy was satisfied with babysitting the Varson planets, the enemy had been busy retrofitting ships, developing new weapons, improving their drive systems and infiltrating the human planets with spies.

  This trend had to end. In a matter of days the remnants of the First Fleet of Elber Prime, mostly aged hulks with antiquated drive mechanisms and outdated weapons, would join the Second and Third. Most of the ships sent out to the Belt Loop had been recalled and were heading for Bayliss with the Third Fleet boats that had been doing patrols around Elber Prime and the Fringes — that nebulous concoction of gas and dust almost 800 light-years beyond Elber toward the Flame Nebula and the rich hydrogen fields beyond — and in total would amount to almost 500 ships when they joined the Second Fleet around Bayliss.

  Paine pushed his reader across his desk and stood. He was in a temporary office setting on the Weyring Navy Base on Bayliss, a place he was going to occupy for the foreseeable future. He longed for his austere yet comfortable digs back on Elber but that was out of the question. A battle group admiral had to be actively engaged where the action was and right now that action was centered around Bayliss.

  He walked to the window and looked out over the gray skies and the equally gray landscape of the base. Courier boats and shuttles made routine landings not more than 200 meters from his window and the noise was both reassuring and quietly disturbing at the same time. He was reassured by the constant activity, the flow of men and machines arriving and departing at regular intervals; disturbing was the occasional noise of a distressed landing and the accompanying sirens from the rescue vehicles. Off in the distance he saw plumes of oily black smoke and plenty of flashing yellow warning beacons highlighting the underside of the rising columns of smoke, appearing as some insane tornado in reverse.

  He paced around his office for a few minutes and finally returned to his desk. He still had a mountain of orders to cut, a stack of personnel matters to adjudicate, plenty of promotions to authorize. It was times like these that he wished silently he had only one star, that he was out in the Loop or the Fringes hunting down intruding Varson battle cruisers, lighting them up with his weapons array.

  Thank heavens for young men, he thought. They were the future, the salvation of us all.

  He quickly returned his attention to his work and as if on cue, a loud explosion from somewhere north of the airfield shook his office for the third time this day.

  * * *

  “How are they treating you, Colonel Inskaap?” Lieutenant Niki Mols inquired.

  She was in the detention barracks and deep in the bowels of the building, down on sublevel two, at the end of a long empty corridor. She was facing Zuure Inskaap, a Malguurian “guest” of the Colonial Navy. In his past life on Canuure, Inskaap had been high on the list of Bale Phatie’s inner circle, a henchman disguised as an Intelligence Officer in the Marlguurian Defense Forces. A fancy name for a spy. Inskaap spied on Phatie’s enemies on the domestic front and secretly placed spies in the colonies, paid informants assigned the task of keeping track of key players in the Colonial Navy. Activities borne out of the quest for revenge initiated by Bale Phatie in an effort to avenge the loss of his family at the hands of the Colonial Navy’s Second Fleet of Elber Prime. A plot ten years in the making.

  “I am doing okay, lieutenant. I could have not asked for better treatment under the circumstances.”

  His “circumstances” were the result of his decision to turn against his former leader and roll over on his countrymen. Inskaap had coerced and killed his way onto a transport ship out of his home world and, employing stolen documents and bribed officials, he’d managed to make his way to Bayliss and the friendly confines of the detention barracks.

  “You’ll get used to the food over time, colonel. It must seem pretty bland considering your high caloric requirements,” Mols said, in an effort to sound reassuring. Lieutenant Niki Mols was the titular head of the Colonial Navy’s fledgling Intelligence Service, a position that did not exist until a few years ago. She was instrumental in breaking Varson military c
odes during the first Varson War, an accomplishment done while she was only in her teens. The fact that her uncle was a senior officer in the Admiralty helped propel her to a position of some authority at a relatively young age. Being an expert in the language of the Malguur and an expert code-breaker gave her the impetus to start a listening post campaign in the colonies and it was intercepted transmissions out of the Elber system that had led her to Bayliss and now the Malguurian spymaster Inskaap.

  “I find your coffee a welcome diversion from my native voojhie, and it has none of the undesirable side effects from continued indulgence.”

  Mols looked through the bars into the darker recesses of Inskaap’s cell. In the far corner she spotted a portable coffee maker. “Good. It’s the favorite drink around here. There are only a few places in the colonies that can support the growth of the coffee plants and sometimes the supplies are limited. Right now, though, we are blessed with ample supplies. I hope the war doesn’t result in rationing.”

  Inskaap pushed up his gangly frame from the side of his bunk. He was wearing a modified standard-issue Navy utility uniform without any designations of rank attached. For someone so tall and thin he must have had a hard time finding something that fit, she thought. Chief Osca Penny came to mind, one of the tall sailors she’d sailed with on her brief stint aboard the Corpus Christi. “Can you speak of what’s going on upstairs, lieutenant? The war?” Inskaap asked as he approached the bars.

  “No, I’m not at liberty to discuss those things with you. You have no ‘need to know’ and I still have to convince the powers that be you can actually help us in this affair. It’s a hard sell, colonel. There are members of the Admiralty that do not trust you.”