The Black

Jakruth Murgorz pondered his console, rereading the message for the third time. This could only end one way… unless he got very very lucky. Unfortunately, Inquisitorius Maximar was not one to allow descent. He ran one clawed hand over his console, typing out his confirmation. He sat back in His cramped but private cabin.

Jakruth was not his name… He had lost that almost a century ago along with his freedom. He shared that with every being in his modest command. He commanded a pirate fleet named Void’s Revenge…. That accursed name preceded Jakruth’s time in servitude and would outlast his death. He currently commanded 10 light barges. The barges had no specific design pattern. Instead, they resembled several semi-rusted-out industrial facilities bolted together with engines and weapons welded on.

There were also 3 ‘stolen’ Thermian frontier Brigs, including the disgraced Convergent Dawn and her crew. Only now, she was renamed Black Kar after her descended late captain. The Kar was now commanded by the disgraced Thermian’s first officer, but she was a mixed crew now. Her original crew had been spread between the other two brigs with her own crew augmented by Lycan and Kawmari. The ‘Void’s Revenge’ fleet were free to act as pirates, free to raid and pillage the outer systems, until the Maximar called. They were the Inquisitorum’s insurance policy, her shrouded dagger. When summoned, they were to sail, fight, and die without question.

He stepped onto the bridge of his capital ship, the light barge ‘Cloaked Shank’ “Give me the fleet” he ordered. A K’Claram male scuttled up to him with an archaic microphone on a wire.

“Void’s Revenge! Now hear this…. Maximar calls! Our destination is Delmar space.. Our mission is one of mayhem. We will hit them hard! Make them beg for Unity aid.. our ‘benifactor’ *his voice dropped with hate* wishes an excuse to enter their space. It matters not why. Prepare yourselves!!! It will be several months in subspace. We jump in 2 hours time… Void take those that don’t make it.. Die well! Jakruth out.” He released the ancient microphone letting it swing away from him.

“Navigation, begin slaving the fleet to our computer. Plot is a course for Signus… we have a date to keep.”

Jakruth did not wait for a response. Every crew member on every ship, himself included; was a spared condemned criminal in the eyes of the Inquisition. Considered already dead, but still too useful for servitorship. His will would be carried out.

He returned to his cabin.

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“I think my mind is leaking out of my ears” Ivar groaned as he dropped the reading material homework on 1circle vs 2circle merges in atmosphere vs in the void.

“Oh, common Ivar, this stuff works, you saw it. Hell, you did it to me this morning in the sim!” One of the other fighter pilots, Srillorin maybe, shouted back.

“I know, so much of it goes against instinct. It’s hard to stay disciplined.” Ivar grumbled. “How can a species turn combat into a science?”

“One whose occupation, for the last 6 thousand years of recorded history, has been war” a sing song female voice rang out into the room as Lyrian stepped into the room from the hanger. ‘Well, not perfectly accurate; but it’s a dam good line’ she thought as she walked to the podium as the wings pilots scrambled to find seating.

“Alright, let us start the BFM lecture with atmospheric combat,” Lyrian began her lesson…

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Mac walked into the lair of the professors Gem, or rather, their laboratory of research and development. Mac was met by one of the interns and led to the back of the back of the building. The out of it. The two of them stepped out to be met by Doctor Quinn holding out two copies of Mac over-ear hearing protection. Mac accepted it and donned them obediently. He surveyed the area and saw a smattering of small arms and one really big weapon about the length of one of Concords GAU’s. Doctor Bart was hovering over the big weapon before waving everyone away. He stepped away and pressed a button on the lanyard. The large gun bucked on its 4-legged low mount and the tell-tale report of a large caliber Gauss discharge rang out into the jungle. A new hole appeared in an old, rusted air car at the far end of the clearing and a 40-meter-tall berm produced a cloud of dust as it captured the projectile. Those details registered in the back of Mac’s mind as the recoil of the weapon opened an ejection port and a colossal brass-colored spent cartridge case was spat out. The foliage under it sizzled as it landed, almost glowing with heat.

“Well, you seem to have been busy.” Mac mused, walking over to the weapon at hand.

“Indeed, sadly nowhere near what you are capable of.” Prof Bart stood, walking over to the other three.

Mac removed his ear protection now that the range was cold, “So what am I looking at?”

“This is our first Attacker/bomber born Gauss Cannon.” Professor Quinn began, “We simply cannot make the sort of absurd power numbers that your ship is capable of. Currently, we have converted the capacitance cartridge design for fighter, attacker, and bomber applications. It will require a capital ship to charge the cartridges and provide reloading capabilities. Currently, it takes a full ‘day’ to charge 100 cartridges using a class 4 Delmar Reactor while underway in standard non-combat power loads.”

“Class 4?” Mac asked.

“Class 1 is the fighter class and small shuttle/attacker fusion cores. Class 2 is used on small destroyers and escort gunboats designed to be subspace capable. Class 3 is a cruiser-class fusion core, and Class 4 is our current biggest reactor. We use them on orbital platforms and our largest class capital ships.” Professor Bart chimed in.

“So, charging the weapon itself is out of the question with our current fighters and bombers. The projectile is a 41mm ‘durrasteel’ dart with 4mm Sabot. We can get 1300 m/s in atmosphere and 10,000 meters per second in a vacuum. We have not figured out how to swap on the fly, so the mission-specific cartridge will have to be loaded before launch. Each bomber will be able to use one of these in a hardpoint-mounted Pod with 25 rounds. Sadly, this won't be a fighter-on-fighter weapon, but our initial testing is promising against capital ships. We can currently fire roughly 5 rounds a ‘second’ without risking overheating. 10 if we only want to shoot 7 rounds before letting the weapon cool. Repid firing all twenty-five requires a rebuild of the weapon.” Professor Quinn finished the explanation.

“So, you solved the capacitor problem?” Mac asked, picking up the heavy cartridge off the ground now that it had cooled.

“In a way.” Professor Bart alternated with his brother. “Our graphene capacitors are not as potent as Human versions, but we can get our small arms and ship-grade weapons combat effective. Without the ability to make power though, we may be limited on what velocities we are capable of; or what designs we can use effectively.”

“Sadly, the power problem is resource based, unless we find some asteroids or a planetoid with what you need to make a Plasma-based fusion device and fuel for it… It’s a wise decision to work around what you have. Considering what I have seen from the UGN. If you were to add this as an offensive weapon to a capital ship. Or an array of 3 or 4 of them. You will be in a superior position until your power runs out.” Mac stooped down to look over the weapon squatting on its mounts. “Make sure you don’t skimp on the support structure and recoil management.” He finally stood. “I like it, what else did you want me to look at?”

The next 3 hours Had Mac test firing and discussing various small arms. Their Gauss small arms were a bit chunkier, and they had not bothered trying pistols. Mac had also inspected and test-fired some of the Chemical propellant weapons on the range. Those were showing more promise, even though the Delmar had decided to go with lighter powder charges and smaller calibers due to their weaker physical abilities. Mac had pulled out a couple of blueprints and requested a couple of chemical propellant weapons for himself and Lyrian. He was still unsure if the capacitors in his Gauss ammunition would trigger security and wanted options.

The Tests ended with professors Grem taking some notes and Mac heading off to meet Lryian after her lecture.

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Admiral Gwen sat in her Flag quarters sipping her morning coffee. She was 5 minutes away from her weekly meeting with Clint. They had done two more Jump tests with the fleet as well as with a Drone converted Cargo transport. They had just finished dropping the LEAP techs off after upgrading the cooling systems of the Slip-Drives after the last few rapid jump tests showed the need.

Her computer chimed, and she opened the alert. Her eyes widened slightly as she read the message. Taking a breath, Gwen calmly finished her coffee more out of personal discipline than apathy. She placed the Cup in its place to be washed and walked toward the Bridge of the Tranquility. Clint met her just outside the door, “I guess you got it too?” She asked.

“Yes, Admiral.” His voice was practiced calm, to anyone but those who knew him best. He was practically bouncing on his toes.

They entered the Bridge together. “Admiral on Deck!” Clint Barked and the room silenced as everyone stood and faced them. Admiral Gwen reached for the left arm of her command chair and activated the fleet-wide Com button.

“This is the Admiral speaking. I won’t beat around the bush. We have received confirmation that our mission is a go. We will be departing in 3 hour’s time. Run final checks and sync the computers. Take your time people. Let’s get this right, everyone. We may hold the fate of the Human species in our hands. As we are a go, I will give you the full mission that has been classified until now. We are one of 7 fleets scheduled to depart toward the far side of the galaxy. Each has a different beacon provided to us by our Ally on the out-skirts of this “Galactic Unity’s” domain. The rest are to depart for their respective destinations, dropping beacons at regular intervals and seeding the space between for exploration by slip-space. We will be doing the same, however, we will not be returning immediately. I have been named Ambassador to the Delmar Confederation. Our mission is to represent Humanity. Our return trip will depend on what we find when we get there. This is your last chance to back out. You have until the last shuttle returning the logistics and preparation crews to their stations to decide. Make no mistake; this is not safe. We do not even know if we will make it. There are hostile forces that we may encounter on arrival, and we do not know what lies between us and our Ally. We are sailing off the edge of the map Gentlemen and women. That is all.” She released the button on her chair. “Let’s go people!” She said finally, snapping everyone out of their frozen positions.

3 hours later. Admiral Gwen’s Expedition fleet winked out of existence trailing whisps of plasma as they jumped for slip space. Over the next 2 months, small fleets of mixed Terran and Martian warships were retrofitted and sent out on separate missions. Delmar had given Sol the beacon coordinates for 6 other beacons on the outer edges of Unity space. Sol had formatted their Beacons to not interface with the Unities network, acting more like receivers. The Sol beacons were designed to receive a signal with the correct code, then directionally broadcast back to the coded message. It would be a slow process, but a secure one in that the UGN would not be able to use the Sol beacons to reach Humanity’s cradle system. With luck, the Unity would not even notice the Sol beacons as they would not be actively transmitting unless requested. For the first time in human history, Sol reached outside her star’s orbit with manned flight.

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The day had arrived. Mac, Lyrian, and Commander Himar stood inside the observation room of the Delmar Confederation Fighter Defense headquarters. Their arrival had had mixed reactions. Himar’s wing had rushed up to them with excited ‘handshakes’ and ‘bro-hugs’ for ‘BigMac and Fizz’. Lyrian had let it slip the tradition of call signs and Ivar had begged Himar to give them some. Himar was still on the fence about it, and Mac had refused stating that it was not his place. Rules you see.

Himar’s wing settled into their sim pods and the ‘home wing’ settled into their own pods. ‘home wing’ was supposed to be the best of the best from all the tribes. To them, Himar’s wing was just some outskirts pilots in need of an attitude adjustment.

“Teams! Take your position! This will be a two-scenario exercise. Three matches per scenario. The first will be starting in low-level atmosphere over the Hilisti straight. The second will be in orbit over Delmar. Both scenarios will be Air superiority. Each team must take and hold the central zone until it is captured. Match ends when one team is eliminated, or the point is captured. As always, there are no safeties engaged in these simulators, you can and may cause blackouts and/or injury. Take care pilots. BEGIN IN 30!” The head instructor announced. And pressed the initiation button to spin up the scenario.

A Grizzled old Delmar in a high officer’s uniform glanced a glare are them, “So, you are responsible for wasting resources on useless concepts. I’ll be heading up an investigation after this, boy.” He grunted. He was the largest Delmar Mac had seen thus far. The man looked every bit the part of a portly, politically commissioned officer.

Mac intentionally gave him a grin full of teeth while holding his gaze, then turned to face the screens as the battle commenced. The home wing immediately scattered, trying to individually encircle the tighter flying Wing flown by Himar’s Pilots. Ivar shouted a break command and His flight of 8 snapped into 4 flights of two. Each flight targeted an individual Home Flight pilot and 8 enemies turned into 4 enemies. The surviving pilots predictably dove for the tail of the pairs of Himar’s flight only to be gunned down as the pairs of wingmen began crossing each other’s flight paths raking any trailers in laser and plasma. The fight was over in under 3 minutes with only one of Ivar’s pilots taking moderate damage.

This repeated itself twice more and Himar’s flight only lost two fighters total in the three engagements. Mac could feel the aging staff officer’s glare, but he pointedly ignored him entirely, only speaking to Lyrian and Himar.

The exercise moved on to the orbital combat portion and ‘home wing’ fared little better. Mac had taught them the Terran Max Delta V spiral approach, and Ivar had modified it to work without ballistics, and for two flights of 4. In the first match, When the home wing tried to imitate the formation-based fighting from earlier Ivar’s wings split into two flights and began concentric spiraling approaches that filled the entire capture point with laser and plasma fire creating a kill box that obliterated the home wing without a single hit of return fire. The second and third matches went little better as Ivar proved he was paying attention. The skilled Delmar flight leader effortlessly called different tactics to each adjustment that the ‘home wing’ made.

The exercise ended. And the Staff officer huffed off claiming he was going to have the entire scenario investigated down to the connections between simulator pods. Mac just chuckled and shook his head as the actual Head of the Training facility stepped over to shake Himar’s hand.

“I would like to see the curriculum you put in place to train your pilots to this level.” he stated to Himar.

“I cannot take credit. This was demonstrated then taught by these two.” He pointed to Mac and Lyri who were politely standing there.

“I can have the reading material and recorded lectures sent to you by the end of day, if you like.” Mac responded.

“I would. Now if you will excuse me. I have an aging Colonel to talk down.” The man chuckled.

Mac, and Lyri cashed in that rain check and Himar’s wing went out for the evening to treat their instructors to a victory celebration.

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Mac and Lyri stood on the tarmac of the Shuttles departing for the freighter fleet. Lyri was saying goodbye to her father, mother, Martin, Tristen, and Brayton. Mac was doing the same. They both hated this. Lyri wanted to be on the Con, and Mac did not like the idea of hoping the Unity ignored the Lucid Traveler because of his absence. He had taken steps, however. Mac had Started Doctor Quenn into figuring out if Concord could be retrofitted with a subspace drive. It wouldn’t be much. But if the call came, he wouldn’t be stuck in some fucking hanger because he couldn’t jump. Traveler had also been upgraded with new capacitors for their weapons and shield banks. She had more teeth and could bear them for longer now. Mac silently prayed that would be enough.

The two of them went home that day, and just cuddled. Lyrian spent the evening curled up in his lap having a good mope. He stroked her hair and main as they watched an evening movie.

“bithidh iad ceart gu leoir (They will be fine)” He whispered to her.

“Tha fios agam, tha e dìreach a’ faireachdainn ceàrr (I know, it just feels wrong).” She whispered back before turning off the screen and taking his hand.

“fuirich ri mo thaobh a-nochd (stay by my side tonight)” She coo’d to him as he stood, scooping her in his arms

“Gu dearbh (of course)” he said before leaning into her to kiss her on her chin, then down to her neck before nipping her hard on the neck and giving her a low humming growl into her soul.

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Jakruth surveyed his fleet. Two of the barges were not going to make the jump, such was life. He cared not that the crews were begging for leniency. Maximar did not allow for divergence from his orders. The rest of his fleet was synced up, and slowly closing formation under slaved navigation to his flagship.

“Systems green Jakruth,” The navigational station called out.

“Execute” Jakruth ordered. All the ready ships began their run to subspace. The two barges that were having difficulties tried to follow. The nearest barge to the formation started to flicker its external lights. Following a small explosion on its larboard side, the main drive on the same side flickered then failed, and the stricken barge began yawing the stricken vessel to port before it detonated. The second barge made its acceleration burn to subspace. It attempted to make the jump and its subspace drive overloaded, ripping the ship apart with a cloud of venting atmosphere before its Fusion Core detonated as well.

Jakruth barely noted the blips disappearing from his HUD. The Void’s Revenge waits for no one.