grimace.
“Welcome to the Night Blades.”
The small group looked at each other in surprise. The officer walked away to leave them in the middle of the training arena.
“Night Blades? Is that a good thing?” asked Jack.
Roxana nodded while Xenophon tried to support the dead weight of Glaucon. He looked unconscious, but Roxana seemed unconcerned at his state.
“Well, we will earn more credits, but there is a greater risk. They are the elite unit on this ship, so we’ve struck gold here,” she said with a very surprised look.
CHAPTER TEN
Scout Ship Odysseus, Cilician Gates
Kentarchos Anaxandros watched the distortion with interest. The Cilician Gates were one of the most famous parts of space, and he never tired of watching the strange optical effects in this region. This particular triple star system was one of the richest and most densely populated planetary formations known to mankind. With over thirty planets, it was the perfect supply, engineering and construction site for hundreds of light years. As kentarchos of his vessel, it was his job to keep the Armada notified of local traffic, celestial phenomena and any other issues that might arise prior to their arrival. It wasn’t the first warship he had commanded, but it was his first operation as a mercenary officer. His new rank of kentarchos was an odd one. In his home, in the Arcadian military, he had been a captain with a well-proven track record. Since forced retirement, he had hit hard times. The opportunity to spend time earning substantial rewards with the mercenaries, under Clearchus, was an offer he could not refuse. That still did not help him getting his head around the use of the archaic ranks used by the Laconians.
The Laconians, he thought, nodding his head in agreement with himself. At least with them in charge, we might actually have a chance of coming back alive.
It might be a pan-terran operation, but it was clear who was running the show. His thoughts were interrupted by a loud voice.
“Sir, engineering are experiencing an issue with the secondary propulsion controller. They want to take it off- line for assessment,” said Ka’Veras, the ship’s kybernetes, or executive officer.
“How serious is it?” asked Anaxandros.
The kybernetes moved his hands in front of his display as he made direct contact with the relevant crew. A number of figures appeared, and he moved quickly between them as he disseminated the information. It wasn’t a large vessel, no bigger than a Laconian frigate; the ship was small and lightly armoured. It still packed quite a punch with its array of plasma cannons. These weapons were more than capable of destroying civilian ships five times her size and even giving some military ships something to worry about. She was ninety-two metres long, capable of faster-than-light travel and carried a complement of one hundred and nine crew.
“Sir, not critical, but there is a low probability of an injector failure if we are forced to use all drive units.”
Kentarchos Anaxandros scratched his chin as he considered the options. The ship was equipped with three main propulsion units, all powered from the main core. The Primary engines were the FTL drive, and it was what allowed the vessel to jump great distances in the blink of an eye. The secondary engines were much like those used in conventional rockets and ships to change orbit and make low speed manoeuvres. These engines were critical for movement in battle or docking at stations. The final, emergency system was the gas projection system. Archaic by all standards, it was only ever used as an emergency if the secondary engines failed. The gas system could only be used to alter direction or make fine adjustments, and the ship couldn’t do much else with it.
What if I take the engines off-line and enemy ships jump in? Our only option would be to jump out of here.
“What about the FTL drive, will it be affected?” he asked.
“Either way the FTL drive will be taken off-line.”
He shook his head at the last comment.
“We’re a scout craft, so without speed we are sitting ducks. Our job is to report on any possible enemy movements in this sector and to report back to the Armada. We’ll get the system checked out when we get back.”
“Sir.”
He looked back to the displays and the odd light formations in space. Occasionally, a flicker of light would indicate the movement of one of the massive transports as it moved through the system. Light from the suns would glint from its hull as it passed by. He started to relax, and the muscle in his back easing for just a second before the storm hit. It started with a flash of light followed by the dimming of the ship’s interior lights. Alarms triggered throughout the Odysseus. He looked to his screen and spotted an object entering the system.
“What is it?” he cried.
Dekarchos Ezekiel, his tactical officer, checked his screen.
“It’s Imperial…give me a second…yes, Sir, it’s a Median battleship. Our database confirms its configuration as a Scythian Class heavy battleship. I think it’s the Elamite, Sir.”
He looked back to his own computer display and the projected design and configuration of the ship. It was massive, maybe half a kilometre long, but nothing as vast as the Terran Titans.
“Tissaphernes’ ship? I thought he was supposed to be off fighting the Lydian pirates, six systems away? What is he doing back here?”
The Kybernetes looked at a sequence of flashing symbols on the central computer display.
“By the Gods, something is coming in, something even bigger!” he said excitedly.
Almost as he finished speaking, the first of hundreds of smaller vessels arrived. No two were alike, but most were about the same size as the Odysseus. He unbuckled himself from his seat and moved to the main display in the centre of the deck. The Kybernetes and Dekarchos Ezekiel joined him, each gazing at the images in surprise.
“Kentarchos, I have match on the audio channels,” said Auletes Sarjek.
The ships communications officer spoke with a smooth, almost artificial voice that appeared from the side of the deck. She was the tall automaton, and a freed worker from one of the border worlds who had managed to wrangle a spot on his ship. Anaxandros hadn’t been keen to have her in his crew, but just a cursory glance at her resume showed she had immense skills and knowledge of language and dialects in this region of space. She was the perfect communications officer. A number of the rest of the crew were not happy at her being elevated to the rank of a junior officer without prior military training. This was a private venture, however, and the rules were, well, unique.
I‘m still not sure I understand if Sarjek is male or female, he thought, distracted for a second by the exotic crewmember. She had expressed confusion at having to choose a sex and had asked the Kentarchos of the ship to choose. Based on her looks and soft voice, he had chosen female, but it still felt odd, prescribing something so private. He shook his head, annoyed at himself for taking his thoughts away from the task at hand. He had to think for second while he tried to remember what she had said.
“Yes, the audio channel?”
“Channels,” she corrected. “I have over twenty different languages, the most common one being use is a dialect of the Mulac language. I am also detecting some Terran languages plus Median.”
“Why are they not encoding their traffic?” he asked, partially to her and also to himself.
She looked at him as if to say he should already know the answer. Sensing he wasn’t sure, she raised an eyebrow and spoke, again in that mellow, almost soft voice.
“Perhaps they weren’t expecting anybody to be listening in on them?”
He checked the main screen, but the number of ships entering the system kept increasing. In all his time as both a civilian and a military commander, he had never seen so many ships in one place.
This has to be an invasion force of some kind. Where the hell are they all heading?
“I need information and fast. Where have they come from? What is their full disposition and more
