14 Back to Basics by Stuart Grosse

Author:Stuart Grosse
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

(BSN Dykhaniye Smerti, Nuevo Edo Orbit)

Captain Zylna stepped off her shuttle with Lieutenant Daelen, the head of her Marine detachment. The Black Stars apparently used what they called ‘tactical teams’ for their ship-board security and ship-to-ship or ship-to-ground actions, but the Confederate Navy used their Marines, probably because they had a lot of them, and needed to put them to good use somewhere. Taking a moment, she looked around to get her bearings. It was still amazing that a group like the Black Stars had been able to capture a fully-functioning Imperial carrier during the civil war. Of course, it probably had more to do with pride than anything, with a captain not wanting to surrender to his ‘brothers’ and face the shame of admitting they’d chosen the wrong side, or some crap like that.

It was still an impressive sight to see, however, with the Imperial flight deck filled with the fighters of the Black Star ships, especially those new Dragon bombers that had made such an impact on the Fleet chat nets when their existence was disclosed. Poor pilots were bemoaning the thought of being stuck in a bomber, while commanders were quietly freaking out about the destructive capability of the Dragons with those torpedoes of theirs. There were people saying that this may mean a change in fleet tactics overall over the next couple decades, as carriers became more important than dreadnoughts for fleet operations.

Taking a breath, she turned her eyes front, and stepped up to the officer in the black uniform of the Black Star Navy, and offered a salute. “Captain Faylen Zylna of the Luvon Gilrie, and my Marine commander, Lieutenant Kuskyn Daelen, requesting permission to come aboard?”

The officer returned the salute, in a style that was not quite Imperial or Confederate, but was its own style. Her background reading identified it as the same style used by an old blue-water navy on Earth long before the humans ever reached space. This ‘US Navy’ was apparently a major power in the world’s oceans before the wars that eventually lead to the planet’s unification and the birth of the Terran Empire.

“Captain Zylna, I am Slave-Captain Scott Cook, and both you and Lieutenant Daelen are welcome on the Dykhaniye Smerti. If you will follow me, the Master wishes to meet you both, to go over the details of these exercises.”

As they fell in line behind the captain, Daelen asked, “Were you stationed on the Smerti when it was captured during the war?”

Slave-Captain Cook winced at that, and said, “First, that is a… sensitive topic with many of the crew, and those of us who are still on board don’t like talking about the war. We were following the orders of our commanding officers, who we trusted. Unfortunately, it became clear that there were many of the upper echelons who were deeply complicit in crimes against the Empire. I was the second officer aboard the Radiant Dawn at Edena. With our fighters either on mission or destroyed, we were helpless against the enemy fire.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.