Prince Conqueror by Hughes Fred

Author:Hughes, Fred
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Theogony Books
Published: 2024-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 14: News, and None of it Good

MT Pegasi System

October 1044

Hazard sat behind his desk in the darkened office, trying to absorb everything that was happening. He hadn’t made it out to the hyper limit before Commodores Laine and Doheny had taken their forces to the Teegarden star system. That had been five days ago, and he wondered how so much could change, and badly, in so short a time.

With the rest of the fleet out of the system, Hazard had taken responsibility for commanding the defense of the system. He wasn’t concerned about that, with 49 Swarm cruisers and the thousands of attack craft they carried available, as well as a squadron of the new missile-equipped dreadnoughts on hand. But a commander needed to be close to the action, so he’d traveled to the outer portion of the MT Pegasi system and transferred to the dreadnought Zion to wait for the return of his forces.

Hazard had barely gotten settled into his new accommodations when the first of a string of unsettling reports had arrived. Scott Conners’ had informed him of the breakdown of talks with the representatives of Pegasus’ cities over the formation of a colonial government. The news wasn’t unexpected, or even concerning, by itself. But the issues of the planet’s government escalated when riots broke out in all the planet’s major population centers.

Brigadier Roberts had already deployed a portion of the Marines held in reserve to quell the violence. Fortunately, non-lethal measures had quieted the mobs, but Hazard doubted that would last. He believed—and his intelligence advisor, Snake Atwater, agreed—that the rioting had been neither spontaneous nor random. The dissident city representatives had organized and executed the violence to force the empire’s hand. To force his hand.

Then the message probe had arrived bearing bad news from home. What Hazard had feared most—the reason he’d begun his current quest—had finally happened. Someone had gotten a sample of the Black Dragon Virus out of Marxist space. Thankfully, they hadn’t seen the effects of the virus yet, but Hazard knew it was only a matter of time. Grand Admiral Thomas O’Riley, the commander of the Imperial Fleet and Hazard’s mentor and friend, had immediately implemented the Andromeda Protocols to minimize the effects of any outbreak of the virus.

Appended to the virus message were special instructions from his mother, the empress. She wanted to meet with Hazard and discuss how they would deal with the issue. They’d already selected a time and location. Damn time delays caused by distances, Hazard thought. The empress and crown prince were to meet in the Baldor star system.

Baldor had been the first waypoint stop for Hazard’s Earth Expedition, and the fleet had established a space station and refueling facilities there to support the logistics needed to support his force. It would take his mother two weeks to get to the system, and that was as far as the empress’ advisors felt comfortable traveling. They didn’t like her being gone that long, but it was impossible for Hazard to travel all the way back to the empire.

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