Republic Ascendant — Chapter Seven
Book two in the Empirefall Chronicles follows the story of the fall of the Rew Confederacy and the rise of the Rogers Republic.
While one captain boards the wreck, another learns the void isn’t the coldest thing waiting for him.
[PROLOGUE • CH 1 • CH 2 • CH 3 • CH 4 • CH 5 • CH 6]
CHAPTER Seven | “Echoes and Silence”
The Resolute Republic drifted like a gutted space whale. Chunks of her skin floated lifeless around her carcass, exposing her bones and organs.
The lights were dim or off, heat bled away into the darkness of space, and her power core pulsed like uneven breaths.
Frost was feathered along the blast seams, guiding the Marines as they approached in two pods from the Republic’s Flame.
“Anchor,” Captain Xendu Hess said, voice flat across the team net. This was his least favorite part of being a Marine. When warships spoke, bodies broke, and the harsh realities of space did not break kindly.
Three shaped charges hissed silently, producing smoke but no noise. The final burst of pressure from the charges opened a doorway the old-hauler had never meant to have.
“Pulse test,” Gunnery Sergeant Shiira murmured. “No return on light signs. If there is atmo, it’s patchy – watch for fire and flash-ice.”
“Copy,” Xendu said. “Heads on a swivel fur-babies.” Xendu placed his suited hand against the new doorway, watching as his Marines floated into the enemy hull.
The gravity well was clearly dead.
“Team One, forward to the conning spire. Two, down the port corridor, I want data trunks and the CIC. Three, hit the magazines. Watch for traps, and disarm the warheads. Nobody dies on a dead stick.” Xendu’s boots bit the deck with a small, satisfying click. The mag soles found enough ferrous metal to stick.
The corridor beyond was the color of old teeth, stained with the carbon of fire and violence. Particulate, electronics, and smoke curled in sluggish clouds as it tried to decide where up was. The mixture of scorching and flash-frozen frost spoke of rapid decompression.
“I didn’t think we hit her that hard,” Shiira murmured.
“Be glad we did, or this would be their Marines on the Flame,” Xendu said. “Keep moving.”
They passed two bodies in crew blues, floating and bloated. Ice crystals had hardened their fur and built up around their eyes and mouth. Xendu logged and tagged the bodies with a gloved hand and a silent curse. The Resolute had been their sister – same ugly grace, same patched strength – and seeing kin turned into frozen meat and wreckage scratched at something that ate below even his tattoos.
“Door,” Shiira warned.
The conning spire hatch was fused open, like a jaw locked by rigor. Xendu crouched and ran a knuckle along the lip, he felt the crystal flake beneath his glove. “Scuttle charge.”
“Without further examination we won’t know if anyone made it off, before –” Private Dava said, letting the words fill the space. At only nineteen, she’d grown into a grizzled Marine in just two days.
Xendu grunted, motioning at the open doorway. “Stack up, you’re first in, Dava.”
The bridge was hollow. Its face torn off, and a gnarled fissure marked where the Flame’s rail cannons had ripped through the hull. The heat of electrical fires that had no oxygen to fuel them warmed against the stark cold of space.
Xendu touched a frost covered keyboard, but the console that held it would not wake. “Does anyone have a working interface?” He asked, looking from member to member of his team.
“That’s a neg, Cap’n.”
Shiira handled her head-light low. “Captain.”
On the back of the command chair – what was left of it – someone had jammed a brass coin into the frame seam, the way superstitious crews did with Saint-bits and luck tokens. This one had been polished until it held its own light. In the center, a seven-pointed wheel glinted – razor thin spokes, and outer ring etched with figures worn away with time. The orange hues faded away to white.
The metal wasn’t brass, he realized; it wore the cooler sheen of something costlier. Argent, his brain supplied, unhelpfully. Gilded Argent.
“What’s that?” Dava asked.
Xendu didn’t answer. He thumbed a photo from his suit camera, then slid a thin pry under the edge. The “coin” came free with a faint magnetic tick. The reverse was clean, without an icon or motto, just the tiniest ridge where a fingernail might have worried against it.
“Some kind of coin,” Shiira replied for her boss, watching him carefully as Xendu played at the scratch with his multitool.
The face twisted – no more than a quarter-turn – and lifted from its backing like the cap of a locket. Inside, a wafer as small and precise as the cradle that held it. It was black with mirrored edges, cold and silent.
“A passive data shard,” Xendu grumbled. He wore one in a pendant with his family’s names, a final letter, and a last admission to his wife. “Shiira, bag and tag this. Get it in a faraday sleeve.”
“Aye, sir.”
“And Shiira,” Xendu added. “No uplink, no scan.”
Nodding, she took the coin and wafer from him. She held her breath, despite being separated from the coin by a space suit – it just felt like the thing to do.
“We’ve got our hint,” Xendu said, surveying the broken bridge. “Hopefully Jendon got more from CIC.” He touched the burned out chair with two fingers – a habit from a faith he’d never had – and turned away. “Sweep the rest of the tower, tag the dead.”
“Rog,” Shiira said softly.
Xendu felt his words catch rough in his throat, “Names if we can get them. Then we’ll get out. This wreck has more ghosts than answers.”
Arg Homamanous stood in the mouth of the lens.
The broadcast nexus was colder than the assembly hall. Cold and stoic, like a war room. No banners here, no stained glass, only a pillar of cameras nested like rifles on a turret and a grid of white lights that made every pore treacherous. Technicians ghosted across the dark in soft shoes, speaking in hand-signals between the red tally lamps. The floor had been scoured to mirror-black; Arg could see the outline of his own shoulders where the light fell across his collar and made his rank flash like a thin-edged blade.
“Thirty seconds, Central Administrator,” said the floor director, a thin Eukary with a coloring pencil behind one ear and fear under the skin. “We’ll swing the civic channels first, then the military stream. You have… eight total.”
Eight minutes, to keep a galaxy. Arg flexed his fingers once behind his back; he tugged the cuff seam with his thumb and pinky, a private ritual. He felt the reverb of the past month scoring the inside of his skull; K-79 lost without a shot, Rogers’ broadcast constitution climbing the nets like a vine, and now the report that Gendara’s relay had gone dark and then gone to glass, its last transmissions clipped and strangled on the line.
“Ten,” the director said. The red lamps seemed to take a final breath, and the room inhaled with them.
Arg stepped into the mark.
“Citizens of the Confederacy,” he said, and his voice did what he asked: calm water over a deep trench. “Captains. Workers. Families. I speak to you not as a symbol, not as a statue on the commons – but as a man sworn to keep the lanes open and your children safe on the worlds you’ve earned.”
A pause. Let the proles lean closer.
“Some of our systems have declared for the so-called Rogers Republic. They have done this in the language of liberty, and they will tell you that liberty is simple. That it is a door you open and never have to hold for anyone else. But liberty without duty is only abandonment with a prettier word.”
He didn’t blink. The proles hated blinking.
“In the last six days, five worlds and twelve stations signed petitions to ‘opt out’ of our mutual-defense pacts. Even Gendara Station voted, but their votes were cast in blood while their beacon died. Kotha’s outer yards declared neutrality with Confederate contracts still wet on the register. I tell you, these are not the acts of patriots! They are the tools of those who would pluck the ropes from the bridge and call the fall your fault.”
He let the next breath grow teeth.
“Make no mistake. We are at war. Not by our choosing, but because a clique of opportunists decided the galaxy could be sliced like sweetbread and handed out to whichever hand shouted loudest.”
The light grid warmed; sweat tracked a line under his collar. He refused it the dignity of a handkerchief.
“You will hear of a battle on Gendara’s moon,” he said, giving them the truth the way a surgeon cuts away necrotic tissue. “You will hear that a Confederate relay was silenced. That men and women in the slate-gray of the state died at their stations. You will hear it from those who say this proves the Confederacy is weak. It proves the opposite. When our enemies must strike from the shadows to steal what they cannot build, it proves they are afraid.”
He leaned an inch toward the visual pickup, causing his presence to rise while allowing his voice to soften.
“Those of you who have lost a cousin on an ore barge, a brother on patrol, a mother along a survey lane; you have paid your tithe. I know what I ask when I say: hold. Keep faith. This is our house. We mend it together, or we freeze apart.”
A beat. The military stream would be coming online.
“To the officers and crews of the Rew Defense Structure: Article Nine remains in force. You are authorized to engage any Republic-marked vessel operating in Confederacy lanes. Protect civilian hulls first. Do not be drawn from your lanes by provocation. We fight where the food flows, where the fuel flows, where the medicine flows. We fight to keep promises.”
He straightened. The lights made the air ring in his ears.
“And to those who left,” Arg said, letting the line sharpen, letting the man inside the uniform speak, “you will find that the Republic’s flame looks warm from far away. Up close, you will learn what burns.”
He let an ugly smile show his teeth.
“Cut,” said the director, breath already leaving him as the red lamps died.
The room quickly uncoiled. The world returned to its noises: a dropped headset, a whispered curse, a hatch sighing open on hydraulic pistons. Arg did not move until the floor manager’s shoes appeared in his peripheral vision.
“Excellent cadence, sir,” the man said, as if one could grade a dam against a flood. “We’re patched into the civic boards in the Perseus arm within ninety seconds. Your next slot—”
“My next slot is the council,” Arg said. He let the words be a small mercy: no edge, only the relief of ending a thing clean. “Send me the tallies when they stabilize. And get me the transcript. No edits.”
“Yes, Central Administrator.”
He left the broadcast nexus with the taste of bile in his mouth and the knowledge that taste was only an echo of what was to come.
Hold, he had told them. Keep faith. However, he had not told them that faith and food rode the same convoys.
The council chamber had windows, but not the kind that opened. A ring of armored glass showed Rew Prime through hazed distortion baked in the afternoon light; it made the planet look like a painted disc in a museum case. Around the long table, the Confederacy’s senior staff had arranged themselves in the seats they always took, as if the chairs carried names. They looked up when Arg entered, and then they looked down, as if to apologize before even beginning to be scolded.
“Let’s dispense with pleasantry,” Arg said, clipped and without preamble. “We have two problems today. The first is political: more systems announcing for Rogers. The second is material: the cost of disruption.”
He nodded at the logistics minister, Comptroller Vej, a soft-spoken Eukary with a belt that had gone out two notches in a month.
“Numbers,” Arg said.
Vej cleared his throat and tapped a pad. The table surface lit with lanes like blood vessels. “We’ve had twenty-seven convoy disruptions in nine days. Not all are attributable to the Republic, but the pattern matches interference. Four fuel tenders rerouted after last-minute beacon ‘updates’, which were counterfeit of course. Two medical couriers never checked in; one has now been found scuttled near the Peerson shoals.”
“Scuttled,” repeated Admiral Sel Har, Arg’s old rival, precise as ever. “Not seized.”
“Correct. Cargo bays vented to vacuum. Drives removed. Beacons burnt.”
“Pirates,” said the Interior minister, Utiey the Older, a brown-skinned sub-species from a world far outside the Confederacy, toned too hopeful. “We can call them pirates.”
“Costs.” Arg didn’t look at him. “We call them costs.”
Vej swallowed. “Projected shortfalls within two weeks: twenty-one percent fuel availability in the Vaskan string; forty-three percent in high-grade coolant replacement; critical for rail spines and spinal cannons; thirty-two percent for med-synth; burn treatments, surgical gels. If we cannot stabilize the coolant chain,” he touched another panel and the table dimmed to a grim blue, “we begin hard-capping cruiser drills in thirteen days. Weapons training will degrade. In a month, we lose readiness.”
A silence settled that was not quite shame and not quite fear, but had tones of both.
“What utter foolishness,” Sel Har scoffed, “You are telling me to choose between drills and patrol?”
“I am telling you to choose between now and later,” Vej said, flinching at his own courage.
Arg let the tension hang just long enough to bruise egos. “Intelligence,” he said finally.
The chief of the net, Director Osa, with small, sharp, shoulders like an arrowhead, folded her hands. She was an Owlette, a recently uplifted species. “Two matters, Chancellor. The first is the Rogers Constitution spillover. ‘Open Source Constitution,’ they call it. It’s gone to twenty-nine systems. It’s not just a manifesto; it’s a kit. Templates for local charters, sample ballots coded to run on old civic nets, language for ‘exit clauses’ quoted from our own compacts. When one colony publishes a vote, three more consider it. A day later, five. It’s a cascade.”
“Stop them,” said the Interior minister, interrupting again, softer this time, as if the word were a curse more than a command.
“I can’t stop an idea that fits into a gossip packet,” Osa said, not cruel, only tired. “We scrub; it reappears as a funerary notice. We block; it rides a weather report. We flag the servers; another colony mirrors them on a school network. Their network is personal.”
“And the second matter?” Arg asked.
Osa glanced once at Vej, then at the floor. “The relay losses. Gendara’s core is gone, as you know. We have recovered twenty minutes of pre-failure chatter on a backscatter from a meteorology platform. It shows—” She paused, selecting the smallest words that could hold the largest truth. “—a Republic signature in-system before the strike we expected. A different hull than the one we tracked. There may be… multiple teams operating without obvious coordination.”
Sel Har’s eyebrow rose. “The Republic runs more than one rope through a needle? I would have given them less credit.”
“It may not be credit,” Osa said. “It may be chaos. But from our vantage, the cost is the same.”
“Can we penetrate Rogers’ command?” Arg asked.
“We have assets in their periphery,” Osa said. “But the center holds tighter than we modeled. Rogers herself is careful; her lieutenants speak in layered channels. And—” She hesitated.
“And?” Arg said.
“We believe,” Osa said, “that some of our own sympathetic channels have gone quiet because our officers’ families live in the same towns as the people they are supposed to spy upon. They will not burn their neighbors to save us.”
The Interior minister made a small helpless sound. Sel Har did not.
Arg turned his head to the window. The planet outside looked like a medallion. He could see, within himself, a path fork: the speech he had given, all iron and certainty; and the room he was in, all numbers and joints and hairline cracks.
“Recommendations,” he said.
Vej glanced down. “We can convoy fuel under destroyer screen to the Vaskan string, but only if we pull those destroyers from Peerson, which exposes the shoals. If we accept three weeks of training suspension, we can keep cruisers burning at patrol strength. The coolant chain must be restored; failing that, we will begin cannibalizing damaged spines to keep ready hulls nominal.”
“Approved,” Arg said, without letting the moment become an argument the room could hide in. “Do it. And publish the training suspension as doctrine, call it ‘operational reset.’ We will not show the Republic our knees.”
“To Intelligence,” Osa said, “I can re-task our dead-letter route to carry counter-constitution packets: veteran testimonies, survivor stories. Remind them of the costs. If Rogers’ kit is a door, our packet will be the storm raging on the other side.”
“Do it,” Arg said.
Sel Har folded his hands. “We should strike a symbol. Like the raiding ship, the Republic’s Flame, Or, take a colony on the edge, a depot with a famous name, something to remind fence-sitters that the Confederacy’s hand can still close.”
Arg looked at her. “And when the fuel you would have used for that strike fails to reach the cruisers because we pulled their screen to make the gesture?”
He did not look away. “Victory is logistics, Arg.” Sel Har retorted, drawing the air out of the room by using his old rival’s first name. “But morale is logistics too.”
The words sat between them like a live battery. They both knew the truth of them. They both knew the cost. They both knew they’d be bitter enemies once again … when… if, the war ended.
Arg rubbed his temple with a knuckle and found that the habit did not dispel the headache so much as move it an inch to the left. “We strike when it buys us food,” he said. “When it buys us coolant. When it buys us a week of drills back. Not before.”
Sel Har opened his mouth to respond again, but a knocking at the door saved the confrontation. The knock was too tentative for a guard, and too urgent for a clerk. Arg gestured; the guard palmed the panel, and a young officer slid in with the raw look of someone who had run in a building where running was not allowed.
“Admiral,” she said, breath catching. “Civic tallies, as requested. We – ah. Sir, two more systems have declared plebiscites. Not fringe worlds. Inner-belt worlds. They’re calling them ‘audits.’ They say they only want to count what people feel.”
Arg’s face hardened into ice, “Keep. The. Faith. I said.” His growl was low and predatory.
“Feelings are not votes,” Utiey the Older spouted unhelpfully.
“They are, before you teach them otherwise,” Osa murmured, her reply soft. Arg’s anger flashed towards them in a glare of fire.
Arg took the slate from the officer. The names on it were not small: Antalla and Jaxson. Names printed on his own childhood maps, constellations of pride. He did not let the room see the slow squeezing of his fingers against the slate’s edge as his knuckles went white.
“Publish our statements regarding the Operational Reset,” he said, voice once again stable water. “Add the convoy orders — make it clear the lanes will be kept. Tell the press that Gendara’s moon will be rebuilt. Make them see cranes, not ash.”
“And the military stream?” Sel Har asked.
“Keep Article Nine. Point the saber-rattling elsewhere. If a captain wants to posture, let him posture in his wardroom. I want the lanes patrolled, not the nets.”
The meeting loosened by degrees. Pads closed. Vej looked as if he’d swallowed a stone as he hurried for the door. Osa had a pinched look set around her eyes that meant sleep would not find her tonight and she would not go looking for it. Sel Har’s mouth tilted in something that might have been disappointment or defiance to be flamed another day.
As they stood, Arg added, “One more matter. Rogers’ Flame.”
Osa paused. “Sir?”
Arg let the name taste in his mouth. “I want their captain’s pattern. Not his sheets, I can get those from Archive. I want to know his choices. Where he turns when cornered. Who he spares when he doesn’t have to. People reveal themselves by mercy and by hunger.”
“We’ll build the model,” Osa said.
“And Admiral Sel Har,” Arg said, as the Senior Admiral turned to leave, “your ships in the Vaskan line.” Arg’s grin became wolfish, “once they have the model, bring me the bow of that wretched ship.”
Sel Har’s chin dipped a fraction as he glanced at Osa. “What of the resource shortage?”
“Find your teeth Sel Har,” Arg waved his hand in dismissal, “but do not lose another transport. Or you and I will not get another one of these little sparring matches.”
Dismissed, and thoroughly whipped, the council left. Trying to fulfill the whims of their ruler. Arg stayed a moment longer with the world behind glass. He let the quiet take him and give him nothing back.
The door sighed again, softer. This time it was his personal aide, Amon, as precise as a metronome. “Lord Chancellor. The transcript from the lens. No editorial changes.”
Arg took it, skimmed it, found where he had sharpened too far and where he had left it too soft, he readied himself to tear into his own writing. But the tried and exhaustive rule of state tugged at him. Pursing his lips, Arg marked neither correction nor redaction, and slid it back. “Send it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Amon hesitated. “There is one more item. Unattributed chatter on the Republic periphery suggests… unease. They’ve begun issuing multiple taskings to the same theater. It looks sloppy.”
Arg’s mouth twitched - too tired to be a smile, too sharp to be nothing. “Or desperate.”
“Or both,” Amon said.
Arg nodded once. The thought moved through him like a fish through dark water: invisible, present, changing the depth by its passing.
“You once told me,” Amon said, summoning courage he usually did not waste on philosophy, “that the difference between a state and a mob is that a state can count. It knows what it has and what it needs. It can do math.”
“I did say that.”
“Can we still count?”
Arg let his eyes track the curve of Rew Prime and thought of fuel tallies and coolant spines and packets that behaved like stories instead of orders. “We will,” he said at last, and made it a decision instead of a guess. “Or we won’t be anything at all.”
When Amon left, Arg lingered long enough to hear the building settle; the ducts flexing, the glass clicking in its frames as it held back the last of the day’s heat.
How did it come to this?
How am I about to lose it all?
The name, the one he could never admit, even alone.
But it was on his lips before he could swallow it, “Be’tok.”
It had only been three months since Kele Vorr had left Sintar-B’s dockyard station at the command of the Republic’s Flame, and now they were returning – battle scarred.
The station was still a lopsided wreath, but berths and warships now clung to her hull as they underwent construction and outfitting.
Where the Flame had been one of six mongrel ships being built when she left, she was returning to a station with purpose built warships waiting on Captains and crews.
She stood out as not only a ship who had seen action, but one who had come home with injury.
“When we dock, our honoured dead depart first.” Vorr ordered, standing like a statue at the center command console. He wore the modified Confederate dress uniform that the young Republic had co-opted out of availability.
“Aye, Captain.”
The green-brown gritty sealant was still above his right eye, contrasting with his blue skin. The purple-red rupture of skin below had yet to decide what shape it was going to take and Vorr had thought if it did turn into a scar it was well placed to remind those who opposed him he was there when the Republic joined the battle.
“We’ve been ordered into the air-bag, sir.” The junior pilot reported from his plot board that was receiving telemetry from the station. Vorr couldn’t think of him as his junior pilot anymore. With Staff Sergeant Tellish dead, this young pilot would likely be his long term replacement.
Vorr racked his memory for the kids name and he couldn’t see the name stripe on his duty uniform. “Thank you crewmen,” he settled with. Perfunctorily professional.
Captain Xendu stood by his side, wearing his red dress uniform. The sharp lines, and imposing shoulder epaulettes made the Eukary seem positively massive. “Is that odd?” He asked, keeping his voice low.
Vorr bit slightly at his lip, wondering the same, before answering. “Filling an air bag is expensive, but it lets them work on the ship in the atmosphere.” He shook his head, still unsure of the reason. “It likely means we’ll be in dock for at least a fortnight.”
Xendu nodded, “Wasn’t the whole point of the Flame that we could just swap damaged cargo containers with new ones?”
Vorr felt his eyes narrow, and he knew he was projecting his own suspicion across the lattice unintentionally. “Indeed.”
Vorr knew Xendu wanted to keep questioning, but was relieved when the old Marine showed enough situational awareness to stop pressing the matter.
Vorr sent a feeling of unease into the lattice, reaching for Maru. Maru echoed the sour dread, and they both knew; something was wrong.
The air bag took the better part of two hours to inflate, and when the cold white light finally filled the cavity, repair crews swarmed over the ship like ants. Vorr bit his tongue as he reached to scold the harbor master for not waiting for funeral rights – but it didn’t seem wise to make waves right now.
Of the one-hundred and eight he left port with, forty-six lay in caskets with eighteen empty caskets marking those lost to the black. He’d lost almost sixty percent of his crew. They all had been injured, himself included. Vorr kept his hands at his side, despite the itch now forming under his salve.
“Captain Vorr?” a dock adjutant asked. The boy was young, young enough that he flinched when he saw the patch above Vorr’s eye. “Sir – your orders.”
“Hold position son,” Vorr replied, trying to not let the anger bleed into his voice. “Funeral rights first.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” he said, holding the tablet out again. “I’m afraid I was told not to wait.”
The flash of hot rage raced out of Vorr, jumped across his lattice like chain lightning, and struck the kid’s psyche as Vorr snapped the tablet from his hands. “How dare you defile our honoured dead!” He screamed.
The lash and recoil hit the kid psionically like a whip, causing him to cower. Vorr’s teeth flashed and a thousand conversations filling the air bag stopped.
“Funeral rights first.” Vorr projected his voice, drawing the harbor master’s attention now. “Then repairs and orders.”
From thirty yards away, the lead Foreman held up his hands acknowledging the demand, and as the grav-lifted coffins rolled past, each man, woman, and ner held their respect for the dead.
As the last casket reached the loading elevator, Vorr turned to the adjutant, but the child had scampered off.
Vorr held the slate, it was already security signed, and was just in standby. The message terminal was locked-out except for the single message.
BY ORDER OF THE CHANCELLOR OFFICE.
NOTICE >> CAPT. KELE VORR __ RELIEVED __ TEMPORARY NON-ACTIVE LIST, PENDING REVIEW AND INVESTIGATION.
RRS REPUBLIC’S FLAME TO REPORT FOR REFIT AND REASSIGNMENT
NOTICE >> INTERIM COMMAND – LT CMDR DARA __ EFFECTIVE UPON RELIEF.
REFIT NOTICE >> I.X.21
CAPT. VORR __ NOTE FROM OFFICE: TRAVEL AUTHORIZED FOR SINTAR-B, PERSONAL LEAVE. HALF PAY FURLOUGH.
Vorr glanced up as he tried to reach through his lattice for Qira. He needed her now. Instead, two armed Military Police, one a fellow Declanian, had his eye. He could feel the Declanian in his lattice, trying to ease Vorr’s tightening muscles.
“You don’t need to do that,” Vorr said as the pair drew closer. The Declanian’s partner, some sub-species or local uplift, cocked his head, trying to understand the comment.
“We cannot let you back on the military net,” The Declanian said, holding out his hand, palm forward and fingers spread in a Declanian greeting, offering a link. “I am Sinna Fix.”
“Kele Vorr,” Kele said as he interlocked fingers with Sinna. “Although I suppose you know that.”
With the bond joined, Kele and Sinna closed their eyes, finally able to communicate without words. Kele began, not because he wanted to, but because Sinna’s tonal lattice was stronger than his; What is happening?
Sinna tightened his hand slightly; You have made powerful enemies. You are being relieved and sent to the surface, I don’t know why.
My family lives on Sintar-B.
Sinna’s surprise caused the connection to waver for a second. I didn’t know there were any Declanian’s living this far out.
Only my family remains. Vorr pushed the memory of his father out of their link. He couldn’t handle the emotion right now. There were more of us once, now there are only three. Four when I return.
Live long brother. Sinna said, giving their traditional farewell and releasing the connection. Turning to his partner, Sinna nodded, “Captain Vorr will not give us issue, he can return to the ship to get his belongings and pass on command.”
“But if he uses the net,” The ash-grey skinned man objected.
“I will not –” Kele and Sinna spoke in their own words, in unison, link energy still lingering, “--he will not.” Sinna’s partner shot a startled glance between the two men.
“I’ve heard about Declanian bonds before,” he shivered visibly, causing the folds in his skin to shake. “Freaks among us,” he grumbled as he turned away as if he’d witnessed something untoward.
Vorr returned to the corridors of the Flame. He already missed this ship. The crew he passed glanced up, then down – all those small, guilty motions people make when ship-lore says don’t meet the captain’s eye. Vorr wasn’t sure it it was because he silenced the workers earlier, or had the news of his leaving already made its way across the crew.
He found Dara on a catwalk above the missing container number five mount. She had the outstretched posture of someone trying to make three crews a single organism. Hair bound back. Hands black with grease and marker.
“Dara,” he said.
She turned, blinked, took in the sealant scar in one tidy glance, and didn’t ask. “Sir.”
“A moment please.”
She came down to the corridor, facing him as he took a minute to organize his thoughts.
She started before he could, “I didn’t ask for this,” she said quickly, throat tight and even. “Sir.”
So the crew knows. He mused, news moves fast on a small crew. Even faster when the crew is reduced by over half.
“I know,” Vorr said. “It’s yours anyway.”
She looked past him at the broken hull, then back through him at a shape of future only she could see. “You’ll fight it,” she said. Not a question.
“I’ll answer for what I’ve done,” Vorr said. Then, because he was this ships plank owner and she would be new Captain, he added, “You’ll take her out of dock clean. You’ll set your own cadence. Don’t copy my bad habits. Keep Qira on your right and Maru in your ear. If Estal tells you an ansible window is dirty, believe him. And never trust a quiet corridor to be empty.”
Something like a smile tried to rise and didn’t. “Aye, sir.”
He felt her on the lattice – a bright, tight knot of determination and fear and the particular ache of getting what you wanted the wrong way. He wrapped it once in steadiness and let go.
“Captain,” she said, and then corrected herself. “Kele.”
“Dara,” he said back. “Make her proud.”
He nodded and left before the moment could grow cold.
The officers’ berths smelled faintly of old tea and salt-fish – but maybe that was just because he was thinking about home. Vorr packed in eight minutes: two uniforms, his service revolver, old boots he should have thrown away three years ago, and the lock of hair Qira had given him. He set the small tin with his father’s medals on top and closed the bag.
He searched his cabin one last time and stood in the doorway, letting the hum of the Flame soak into bone.
He felt her, just outside. Her emotions were raw, unfiltered, crashing like waves. Pulling the lock-bar, the air tight door opened and she didn’t wait for him as she barreled into his arms.
Pressing passionately she kissed his lips, running her fingers down his spine, nipping at his nose between long draws of passion. “I’m not going to let them do this to you.” She said, as tears broke from her eyes.
“Let it stand,” he said, extricating himself from her passion. “We upheld the law, let me see them try and prove we didn’t.” He grinned, wrapping an arm around her waist. “Once they try to bring charges against me, I will know who is trying to ruin me and I can stop it.”
“It’s the Chancellor I heard,” Qira snarled. “If I ever cross with her.”
Vorr smiled, her passion and fire fanned his maddening love for her. “You’ll take on the namesake of your people?”
Qira snarled slightly, almost playfully. “It’s not right.”
“It hardly ever is,” Vorr agreed. “For now, I’ll go back to my family’s fishery, work with my Uncle and look after my Mother.”
“FIsh?” Qira asked, nose wrinkled in a blending of playful disgust. “You’re going to smell awful.”
“Oh yes,” Vorr agreed. “It’s quite pungent. Not many Pantheras visit us planetside.”
Vorr drank another kiss from her lips and then slung his bag on his shoulder. “Take care of the Flame for me.”
“I will see you soon Kele, mark my words.”
Vorr walked towards the exit ramp, fighting the urge to look back.
He’d see her again, he’d make sure of it. It was more than passion now … it was love. Vorr chuckled to himself as he felt Maru enter his lattice. Vorr, of course, meant Qira, but some may have thought he meant the Flame.
“Chief,” Vorr said as Maru fell into step beside him.
“Captain,” Maru replied, giving a wry grin, “She’s a keeper, sir.”
“I would tend to agree with you,” Vorr said, tapping the side of his nose playfully.
“Officially, I mean the ship of course,” Maru said, laughing.
“Take care of her for me,” Vorr said, patting Maru on the shoulder. “Both of my her’s.”
Learn more about Stellar Empire on our official wiki.
Stellar Empire is a new sci-fi IP that we’ve been developing, and Andrew previously Kickstarted a card game in this universe, Stellar Empire: Skirmish!
Thanks for reading the Empirefall Chronicles! Subscribe to receive updates to our story and lore directly in your inbox!