The Armageddon Inheritance

“Thank you,” Colin said. It was scarcely a detailed report, but he hadn’t asked for that, and he turned to Hector MacMahan.

“Ground Forces?”

“The ground forces are better organized than we could reasonably expect,” the hawk-faced Marine replied, “if not yet quite as well as I’d like.

“We have four separate nationalities in our major formations, and we’ll need a few more months to really shake down properly. For the moment, we’ve adopted Imperial organization and ranks but confined them to our original unit structures. Our USFC and SAS people are our recon/special forces component; the Second Marines have been designated as our assault component; the German First Armored will operate our ground combat vehicles; and the Sendai Division and the Nineteenth Guards Parachute Division are our main ground force.

“There’s been a bit of rivalry over who got the choicest assignment, but it hasn’t gotten physical … not very often, anyway.” He shrugged. “These are all elite formations, and until we can integrate them fully, a continued sense of identity is inevitable, but they’ve settled in and mastered their new weapons quite well. I’m confident we can handle anything we have to handle.”

“Thank you,” Colin said again. He turned to General Georgi Treshnikov, late of the Russian Air Force and now commander of the three hundred Imperial fighters Dahak had retained for self- defense. “Parasite Command?”

“As Hector, we are ready,” Treshnikov said. “We have even more nationalities, but less difficulty in integration, for we did not embark complete national formations to crew our fighters.”

“Thank you. Intelligence, Commander Ninhursag?”

“We’ve done all we can with the non-data Dahak has been able to give us, Captain. You’ve all seen our reports.” The stocky, pleasantly plain Imperial who had been Nergal’s spy within Anu’s camp shrugged. “Until we have some hard facts to plug into our analyses, we’re only marking time.”

“I understand. Biosciences?”

“Bioscience is weary but ready, Captain,” Fleet Captain (B) Cohanna replied. Fifty thousand years in stasis hadn’t blunted her confidence … or her sense of humor. “We finished the last enhancement procedures last month, and we’re a little short on biotechnic hardware at the moment—” that won a fresh mutter of laughter “—but other than that, we’re in excellent shape.”

“Thank you. Maintenance?”

“We’re looking good, Captain.” Fleet Captain (M) Geran was another of Nergal’s “children,” but, aside from his eyes, he looked more like a Terran, with dark auburn hair, unusually light skin for an Imperial, and a mobile mouth that smiled easily. “Dahak’s repair systems did a bang-up job, and he slapped anything he wasn’t using into stasis. I’d like more practice on damage control, but—” He raised his right hand, palm upward, and Colin nodded.

“Understood. Hopefully you’ll have lots of time to go on practicing. We’ll try to keep it that way. Tactical?”

“We’re in good shape, sir,” Tamman said. “Battle Comp’s doing well with simulators and training problems. Our Terra-born aren’t as comfortable with their neural feeds as I’d like yet, but that’s only a matter of practice.”

“Logistics?”

“Buttoned up, sir,” Fleet Commander (L) Caitrin O’Rourke said confidently. “We’ve got facilities for three times the people we’ve actually got aboard, and all park and hydroponic areas have been fully reactivated, so provisions and life support are no sweat. Magazines are at better than ninety-eight percent—closer to ninety-nine —and we’re in excellent shape for spares.”

“Engineering?”

“Engineering looks good, sir,” Chernikov replied. “Our Imperials and Terra-born have shaken down extremely well together. I am confident.”

“Good. Very good.” Colin leaned back and smiled at his officers, glad none of them had tried to gloss over any small concerns they still had. Not that he’d expected them to.

“In that case, I think we can conclude, unless there are any questions?” As he’d expected, there were none. In a very real sense, this meeting had been almost ceremonial, a chance for them to show their confidence to one another.

“Very well.” He rose and nodded to them all. “We shall adjourn.” He started for the door, and a mellow voice spoke again.

“Attention on deck,” it repeated, and Colin swallowed a resigned sigh as his solemn-faced officers stood once more.

“Carry on, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and stepped out the hatch.

“Supralight shutdown in two minutes,” Dahak remarked calmly.

Colin took great pains to project a matching calm, but his own relaxation was all too artificial, and he saw the same strain, hidden with greater or lesser success, in all of his bridge officers. Dahak was at battle stations, and a matching team under Jiltanith manned Command Two on the far side of the core hull. The holographic images of Command Two’s counterparts sat beside each of his officers, which made his bridge seem a bit more crowded but meant everyone knew exactly what was happening … and that he got to sit beside Jiltanith’s image on duty.

A score of officers were physically present at their consoles on the starlit command deck. In an emergency, Colin could have run the ship without any of them, something which would have been impossible with the semi-aware Comp Cent of yore. But even though Dahak was now capable of assessing intent and exercising discretion, there were limits to the details Colin’s human brain could handle. Each of his highly-trained officers took his or her own portion of the burden off of him, and he was devoutly thankful for their presence.

“Sublight in one minute,” Dahak intoned, and Colin felt the beginnings of shutdown flowing through his interface with Chernikov’s engineering computers. The measured sequence of commands moved like clockwork, and a tiny, almost imperceptible vibration shook Dahak’s gargantuan bulk.

“Sublight … now,” Dahak reported, and the stars moving across the visual display were abruptly still.

A G3 star floated directly “ahead” of Colin in the projection. It was the brightest single object in view, and it abruptly began to grow as Sarah Meir, his astrogator, engaged the sublight drive.

“Core tap shutdown,” Dahak announced.

“Enhance image on the star system, Dahak,” Colin requested, and the star swelled while a three- dimensional schematic of the Sheskar System’s planetary orbits flicked to life about it. Only the outermost planet was visible even to Dahak at their present range, but tiny circles on each orbit trace indicated the position each planet should hold.

“Any artificial radiation?”

“Negative, Captain,” Dahak replied, and Colin bit his lip. Sheskar was—or had been—the Imperium’s forward bastion on the traditional Achuultani approach vector. Perimeter Security should have detected and challenged them almost instantly.

“Captain,” Dahak broke the silence which had fallen, “I have detected discrepancies in the system.”

The visual display altered as he spoke. Oddly clumped necklaces of far smaller dots replaced the circles representing Sheskar’s central trio of planets, spreading ominously about the central star, and Colin swallowed.

Dahak had gone sublight at the closest possible safe distance from Sheskar, but that was still eleven light-hours out. Even at his maximum sublight velocity, it would have taken almost twenty-four hours to reach the primary, yet it had become depressingly clear that there was no reason to travel that deep into the system, and Colin had stopped five light-hours out to save time when they left.

At the moment, he, Jiltanith, Hector MacMahan, and Ninhursag sat in Conference One, watching a scaled-down holo of the star system while they tried to decide where to leave to.