Hand of the Empire (Rise of the Empire Book 8) Read online

  “The mission was somewhat successful. We managed to infiltrate the Erasi territory beyond their designated trade systems, and obtain some intel about what had been going on inside their territory and in their galactic arm,” Ryaana said. She had been a part of an extended six-year-long mission into Erasi territory, the purpose of which had been to find out anything about what had been going on inside it for the last four hundred years. A bit after the war with the Erasi had ended, they had slowly started limiting the information that escaped out of their territory, until finally they had managed to keep everything out. They denied entry to their territory, except at designated systems where trade with other star-states occurred, though it was highly monitored and carried with it strict information restrictions.

  The Empire had their stealth ships inside monitoring their systems, but prior to the establishment of the Erasi isolation, they had been detected, and the Erasi had threatened hostilities if any Empire or Shara Daim ship were to be found inside their territory. And while the Empire had the Enduring, neither the Emperor nor the Kar Daim wanted to restart the war; they had been too busy trying to keep the former Erasi territory from ripping itself apart after the Erasi had left.

  Ryaana’s mission had been to infiltrate Erasi territory and gather intel. She had a team comprised of seven members, all of whom were from races that were a part of the Erasi—those that had stayed in the territory that the Erasi abandoned, or those were descended from those who had stayed. They had all been a part of the Empire, as it allowed for individuals to become members.

  The Empire had stopped accepting other races as full members and turning them into Clans; instead, additions into the Empire were made strictly on an individual basis. Although there were rare cases where entire races joined, they were not admitted as full members, but more as vassals to an already existing Clan.

  “What have you learned?” he asked.

  “A lot actually, and not nearly enough,” Ryaana replied. Her team had performed the role of an Erasi trader from one of their more backward systems on their border, one that had their permission to trade with other star-states. It had taken the Empire a long time to obtain an adequate ship and codes so that they could pass an inspection, and even more to get the identifications for her crew. She, on the other hand, couldn’t have passed any inspection; the Erasi did not allow any non-Erasi race inside, which meant that she had spent most of her time on the ship in the hidden room designed to keep her presence a secret.

  It might’ve been safer to send a crew that comprised only out of races that were considered Erasi—a point she herself had made—but there was no way of knowing what they would find. And a Sentinel on site was required to make decisions. Not to mention that while many races had some ability with the Sha, none were as powerful as the Shara Daim, Nel, or humans. Ryaana was there for the crew’s safety, and they also needed her if they were to perform a mind probe on an Erasi.

  “The atmosphere among their people is grim, and almost no one was willing to share any information. They have all been ordered not to—even among themselves, they were not supposed to discuss anything. And the impression we got was that any breach was punished severely. We spent the first three years and learned nearly nothing, so we focused on building a reputation among the traders. Eventually we were allowed to move deeper and deeper into the Erasi territory.”

  Ryaana raised an eyebrow. “That is when things got more interesting. We managed to gain entry to one of their outer core systems, a large shipbuilding and material-processing system. We were able to get passive scans of a lot of their yards, all of which were filled.” Ryaana keyed the holo-projector on her wrist-unit with her implant and a series of images appeared above her forearm. “About two-thirds of the yards we observed were occupied by new constructions, but the rest were filled with damaged ships going through repairs or possibly full retrofits.”

  Her father looked at the images closely. “New class?” he asked as he reached the image with a much larger ship. The Erasi had always kept the shape of their ships the same, even when designing new models: all were saucer shaped, except for their Devastator class, which was more of an elongated saucer.

  Ryaana nodded. “These are the same shape as their Devastator class, but almost four times the size.”

  “That would put them at what? About thirty-three kilometers?” he asked.

  “That is what we extrapolated from the images.”

  “Damn, that’s more than half the size of a Sovereign,” he said. The Sovereign-class warships were the greatest warships the Empire had produced. Based in part on the technology of World-ship Enduring and human weapon technology, they were the core of Empire fleets. But they were extremely costly to build— the Empire only had sixteen of them, and Shara Daim only twelve.

  “Do we know how many they have?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He nodded. “You have confirmation?”

  “Yes. The Erasi are planning something—there is a clear indication of military buildup,” Ryaana said. “We learned that they had been in a long-standing conflict on their rimward border with a race they call the Krashin. And it seems that the force they used to attack the Shara Daim during the war was pulled from that border. Krashin had attacked not long after the ending of our war with the Erasi.”

  “So they have been at war for over four hundred years…”

  “Yes; and we did manage to get some records of that war, they are in my report,” Ryaana said. “We know that the Erasi lost a lot of systems in the initial invasion by the Krashin, but have since then retaken a great majority of them, although not all, and it seems that the war front has mostly stalled now and the fighting has become sparse. The full-blown war had tapered off some sixty years ago. Most people we encountered willing to discuss it seemed to think that the Erasi were preparing for another big push against the Krashin. But there have been some smaller internal conflicts, system rebellions and such—but those are usually squashed easily. And we managed to confirm our suspicions. The Erasi have skim drives comparable to our fourth-generation drives. As we moved away from the border and into their core, we encountered ships equipped with more powerful drives.”

  “We always knew that would happen eventually. It took them barely half a decade to invent their own type of skim drives. And if they have been at war against an opponent of equal or greater power for the past four hundred years, it means that they must’ve advanced significantly,” he said.

  Ryaana nodded, agreeing. The lead Empire experts all agreed that advancement was directly influenced by the amount of obstacles or conflict in a civilization’s path. Races that lived through conflict advanced faster than those that had no such obstacles or threats. Humanity had been one of the races that had advanced incredibly fast due to its turbulent past and struggle, while for some races like the People, for example, it took a much longer time to achieve as much.

  “We have some data about their military technology. Not as much as I wanted, but enough that we can get a sense about where the Erasi stand now,” Ryaana said.

  “Good. I’ll review your report as soon as I get a chance,” he said. “For now you should report to Hayashi for a more in-depth debriefing. I’ll let him know that you are coming.”

  Ryaana sighed, holding back her annoyance she nodded. “Understood, Lord Sentinel.”

  She stood and turned around to leave when her father called after her. “And make sure that you are free tonight. I’ll let your mother know that you will be coming home with me.”

  Ryaana winced—she’d almost forgotten that she had promised to go home with her father. “Of course.”

  Chapter Two

  Olympus Mons

  Adrian watched as his daughter walked out of his office. Her return had removed a great worry, although he wouldn’t ever tell her that. It had taken almost everything for him to retrain himself and not rush out to meet her the moment she arrived in Sol. He had of course known the moment her ship entered the Empi
re’s territory, but he would’ve never had embarrassed her by acting like an overbearing father. She was a strong woman in her own right—a Sentinel. She wasn’t young by any stretch of imagination, either, and she had achieved much in her life. She had ruled planets, delegated with star-nations, fought in battles.

  Yet to him, she was still the little girl that loved sitting on his shoulders. There were times when Adrian missed those few fleeting years when she was a child, when she had depended on him for everything. They had passed too fast for him to truly enjoy them.

  He shook his head, dismissing the thoughts. There was no point in dwelling on the past, and his daughter had returned safely. Adrian leaned back in his chair for a moment, and then turned his thoughts to Gotu and his prototype ship. He had known everything about the project long before Gotu had gathered the courage to bring it to him—he was in fact the one that had made sure that the project got on Gotu’s desk in the first place. And he did see the value in the technology, and had plans to utilize it. He just needed a bit more time. Iris had let him know of an opportunity to test the ship, so he had opened a window on his holo-table and input a code that only he knew. A new window had appeared in front of him with the crest of the Hand of the Empire, signaling that a secure link had been established. Adrian had waited for a few minutes, until finally the crest disappeared and a person wearing the armor of the Hand had greeted him.

  “Lord Sentinel,” the leader of the Hand of the Empire said through his armor, his voice modulated. With the new relay network covering the entirety of the Empire’s and Shara Daim territory, calls across their territory could be made in real time.

  “Thank you for taking my call,” Adrian had said. The knowledge of this link was a secret known only to Adrian and Hayashi—the second in command of the Sentinels. No one should be able to get in contact with the leader of the Hand of the Empire; by design, no one even knew who he or she was. But the nature of the Sentinels and the Hand of the Empire, had made it necessary for their organizations to work closely together. The link was a way for their leadership to communicate directly instead of going through the lower-ranked people, which they still did for the most part. And then there was the fact that the Hand of the Empire was a check on the Emperor’s power, the same way that the Sentinels were.

  And Adrian had put together the pieces of who the leader of the Hand was a long time ago. Elias Bakas, once the best friend of Tomas Klein, the Emperor, and now presumed long dead. He had never told anyone that he knew, of course, not even to Elias himself, although Adrian suspected that Elias was aware. “I need the help of the Hand.”

  The figure nodded. “What can we do for the left hand of the Empire?” he asked.

  Adrian smiled at the term—even through the modular voice he could hear the humor in the man’s voice. The Hand of the Empire had been designed as a chain that bound all of the Empire together. They were the ones that made sure that the codes of the Empire were honored across the Clans. While Clans could have different laws, they could not have laws that were in conflict with the codes of the Empire. The Hand was the ultimate authority in the Empire: they were law keepers and enforcers, mediators between the clans, and executioners. The Hand’s influence was strictly confined only to the matters concerning the citizens of the Empire inside its borders. Because of that, the people of the Empire had started calling the organization “the right hand of the Empire.”

  On the other side, the Sentinels were the ones that were in charge of everything outside of the Empire’s borders: first contacts, negotiating with foreign star nations, exploration, spying, and assessment of threats. And over the years the people had similarly started calling the Sentinels “the left hand of the Empire.”

  “We need help with a prototype stealth ship. In particular, we need its systems tested. And I was made aware of one of your operations that would suit it perfectly.”

  “Which one?”

  “You have received an emergency message from one of our colonies near the occupation zone—Santis.”

  “A moment,” Elias said, turning his head, likely to look at something off screen. “Ah… May I ask how you knew about this? The teams working in that sector have yet to review it.”

  “The copy of the message passed through the Sol relay on its way to the Hand’s headquarters,” Adrian said. After the war with the Erasi, when a large portion of their territory had fallen under the control of the Empire and the Shara Daim, the Sentinels and the Hand had been forced to work together. The territory was technically under the jurisdiction of the Hand, but they hadn’t had the manpower nor the means to control the situation.

  So the Sentinels had stepped in to help. The occupation zone had quickly become a massive area of lawlessness and piracy. The Erasi withdrawal had caused the collapse of most of the systems, and it had taken almost two hundred years for things to settle. But there were still problems, and the one that stood out the most was piracy.

  “I assume that you believe that it is a legitimate lead, then?”

  “Iris seems to think so. I was hoping that you would agree to send your investigators aboard my ship. If you find something, the ship should prove a great asset,” Adrian said.

  “Are you sure about this? If this lead turns out to be something of significance, it will be our first real achievement in a long time. Are you really willing to let an untested ship take the front?”

  Adrian waved with his hand in a Nel sign of confidence. “This ship is fully capable of dealing with the pirates even if its advanced systems don’t work as we hope. The pirates have never shown anything within even five generations of this ship.”

  “Very well. I have no objections. I’ll brief and send my inquisitors to Sol.”

  “Thank you.”

  Elias nodded and closed the link, and Adrian did the same on his end. He then sent a more detailed instructions to Gotu concerning the Hand. With that finished, he turned to the more in-depth report his daughter had forwarded him concerning her mission into Erasi territory. He skimmed over it, seeing just how much content there was. She had, after all, been writing it for ten years—everything her team had learned during that period was in there. It would take him months, maybe more, to go through it all, but thankfully he could speed that up a bit.

  On the left side of his table stood a small, rod-like device with a palm-sized orb as its head. Adrian put his hand over it and used his implant to start the transfer of the data directly into his mind. The transfer of electronic information to thoughts—or, more precisely, memories—was a technology they had developed by studying a similar technology from the People. He wouldn’t immediately just know what was in the report, but all of that data would be stored inside his brain, and he could call up on it inside his mind and digest it faster than reading it directly. After the transfer was done, he leaned back in his chair and focused, moving inside of his mind and into his construct.

  It had changed significantly over the years, but the main chamber which connected to all the others was the same. A large, dome-shaped cave, with a small platform in the center. He appeared in the center, on the platform as he always did, and then he walked over to the wall of the cave. As he approached, the perfect wall fell away, and he stepped into another room.

  It was a smaller room, five by five meters, and it was empty save for a holo-table in the middle. Adrian sat at the table and brought out the report from his mind. Inside the construct, time flew slightly faster, but still not fast enough for him to make any real headway with the report. So he focused, and brought his construct into his mindspace.

  The mindspace was his unique ability. It allowed him many things, but there was one that was most important: he could increase his mind’s processing power to the point where minutes in the real world passed as days in his mindspace. And he had learned how to push his construct, which was an ability derived from his telepathy, into his mindspace, which was a natural evolution of the human brain.

  Once he had done so, he started r
eading.

  Chapter Three

  Sanctuary

  Jacob walked into the office, followed closely by his partner Nkiruka. They walked to the middle of the room and stopped, waiting for their superior sitting at the table at the end of the room to acknowledge them. Elias Bakas, the leader of the Hand, swiped his hand above his table and dismissed the several windows hovering there.

  “Inquisitors, come sit,” he said.

  Jacob and Nkiruka obliged. Inside the headquarters of the Hand, no one wore their armor; it was one of few places where they were free to do so. The agents of the Hand always wore armor otherwise, as to the public they weren’t individuals, but rather a symbol.

  After the two of them took their seats, Elias opened a map of the Empire. “I have a mission for you,” he said. “Two days ago we received a message from a new colony world, Santis, Clan Kazalir, saying that they had detected what might be a pirate presence on the planet. The message was queued for a patrol to be sent once one was available.” He paused. “However, a day ago we received a follow up. Two of the colonists moved to investigate. One was killed, but the other survived. We now have confirmation that there are pirates operating out from this world.”

  “Pardon, sir,” Nkiruka said, “but this doesn’t really seem like something that requires inquisitors.”

  “Ordinarily you would be right,” Elias said, “but there has been a suspicious amount of reports coming from this sector—ghost signals, mostly. Although there has never been an attack in this area, we did send patrols to investigate. None ever found anything. But now our people believe that this area might be home base for the pirates.”

  “The pirates have never struck out at the territory that belonged to the Clans,” Nkiruka said skeptically. “They have been very careful not to attack outside of the occupation zone. It makes no sense that their base is in Clan territory.”

  Jacob nodded, agreeing. The Erasi departure from the territory they previously held had birthed the piracy which ran rampant throughout that sector. But it had also birthed the more radical, terrorist element, calling themselves a “liberation force.” While the pirates operated exclusively in the occupation zone, attacking both the Empire, Shara Daim and the former Erasi targets, the liberation force exclusively attacked Empire and Shara Daim targets, moving even into their territory.