Outer Olympus

Outer Olympus: Chapter 35

The Aurora Borealis nestled inside the shattered remnants of an orbital cylinder colony that once served as the economic center for a sprawling gas mining operation on the planet of Abydos III. Years ago, millions of people had inhabited this colony and the mining stations it supported, extracting isotopes of helium and hydrogen from the gigantic planet for use in dual cascade reversion reactors much like that one that silently powered the Borealis. Now, as far as the Hegemony was concerned, this sector of space was just the graveyard of a crushed dream. Abydos, being one of the systems of Outer Olympus closest to Olympus proper, had been a focal point of the first stage of Prince Hyperion's assault on the fledgling Euphrates Stellar Union, and the first sacrifice to the Dragon of Babylon's strategy to defend the nascent revolutionary state. The Hegemony's fleet had outnumbered the newly formalized rebellion navy over twenty-to-one, even with the production of new ships from the Solomon Project such as the Orias-Class Corvette, of which the Aurora Borealis was one of the first. There was no way to win in a straight fight, so the rebels hadn't tried. When the Hegemony had retaken Abydos, the retreating Stellar Union Navy had burned the mining stations, leaving the massive imperial fleet with no ability to refuel and resupply.

Kamea Kestrel, the captain of the Aurora Borealis, had been there when it happened. Most of her crew had fought in the battle of Abydos, as part of a hunter-killer battlegroup that had snuck into weak points in the Hegemony formation to pick at vulnerable supply ships or isolated frigates. She had been a talented raid leader; her battlegroup had destroyed three supply ships and five nebula class frigates during the battle, despite only consisting of a handful of corvettes. She remembered the sadness when the mining stations burned, and the shock and horror when the Hegemony retaliated by destroying the central colony, dooming millions to cold vacuum. There was no tactical value to the act; if they had left the colony intact, in the years that followed they would have been able to rebuild the mining stations and have this whole area churning out fuel and wealth for their masters. Instead, they had made a statement: work with the rebellion, and die.

There was some satisfaction, then, for Kamea, in seeing what this graveyard colony had become. Forgotten by Hegemonic eyes, left as a reminder of hideous brutality, this hundred billion tonne corpse had become Obsidian Base; a covert shipyard and strategic command center for what remained of the Euphrates Stellar Union Navy. Kamea was a stickler for formality on that point; many simply called the force she was part of the rebellion, or the revolutionary navy, sometimes even the Lilithist Navy, but Kamea refused to accept the Union's death. They would fight on, bleed the imperialists dry, and bring about their land of prosperity and justice once again.

Even as the brave and loyal workers of Obsidian base changed out the busted armour panels of the Borealis, refilled it's stocks of Thunderbolt ship-to-ship missiles, rewired fault electronics and got her ship back to fighting ability, Kamea sulked in the shadows of her unlit office. On the bridge, her role was to inspire confidence, loyalty, and action in her crew. To make sure they knew what they were doing, why they were doing it, and got it done. So any bit of doubt, any thought things might be hopeless, she had to have in private. Though they were licking their wounds, this had been a disastrous month for the fleet. The attack on the Ministry of the Future research station had been a bold plan, dreamed up by the ESU's intelligence agency the Eyes of Horus, tactically planned by Kamea herself, and executed by a considerable number of the remaining naval forces of the ESU. They had known it would be an unusually large battle, they had known it would be a fierce fight, and they had known people would die. With the objective being as strategically significant as it had been, the cost was deemed worthwhile, and the operation had been executed. And so, following the battleplan Kamea had drawn up, over a thousand of the best and brightest of her generation, the people who had followed her through thick and thin, had died in the inferno, including most of her old friends from the hunter-killer group. And even after all that, the whole battle, everything they had risked, came down to one woman.

Kamea hadn't even really considered that Rune wouldn't be successful. As much as deploying a teenager into frontline combat scenarios put a foul taste in her mouth, Rune had always delivered. The girl was a veritable one woman army, and if there was anyone who could fight her way off that station alone, it was her. But she hadn't. Rune had seized the objective of the operation, held the fate of the galaxy in her hands, and failed. Disappeared. Almost certainly dead or captured, there was no real alternative outcome. And so the entire operation had failed to accomplish it's objective. A thousand brave souls had died for nothing.

They had given it their all in the battle, of course. In terms of raw tonnage, her fleet had fought with exemplary skill. They had taken down three Hegemony ships for every ship they had lost, including the destruction of the Stormcaller, a Penumbra Assault cruiser that had been giving her forces a hard time the last few weeks. But the numbers game was never in a rebellion's favor. They had destroyed what might be generously accounted to two percent of Hegemony space forces in Outer Olympus, and lost one fifth of the Euphrates Stellar Union fleet to do it. It felt like the death knell of everything she had been working for. Intellectually, she knew she had felt this way before. The path to get here had been littered with loss and death and sacrifice and heroism. But here, away from her troops, she let herself wallow.

Until her door opened, and Handler Alaska Ptolemy walked into the room. As Kamea's handler, Alaska was the only person who could just barge in here like this, seating herself down like she owned her place with a polite smile on her face. Alaska's job was to keep Kamea's actions in line with the goals of the ESU, to ensure loyalty and dedication and that the troops knew it. Their relationship had come to a tense start; as Kamea had been a defector from the Hegemony Navy near the beginning of the rebellion, Alaska's initial goal was to figure out if she was a spy and dispose of her if this proved to be the case. Now, she was functionally Kamea's number two on the ship when it came to interacting with the crew, and Kamea couldn't imagine doing the job without her.

"What is it?" Kamea asked, still sulking in her chair. Alaska knew better than to chastise her for having these moods, as long as it wasn't in public.

"Got a transmission from the Dragon's Armada." Alaska said. This didn't improve Kamea's mood much; she didn't have a lot of respect for the pirates. When the Hegemony had retaken Outer Olympus, revolutionary space forces split into two groups; the ISU Navy, which sought to continue the fight against the Hegemony until Outer Olympus was once again free, and the Dragon's Armada, which turned to vigilante piracy and simply sought to stockpile wealth and material while hurting the Hegemony at any turn. Kamea had felt betrayed by their refusal to continue and organized campaign, having idolized the former leader of the ISU Navy who now mostly went by the title of "The Dragon of Babylon."

"Please tell me they don't want anything," Kamea said, "We really aren't in a position to render aid." Alaska shook her head, and immediately Kamea perked up. Alaska's body language indicated she was enjoying holding Kamea in suspense, which might mean this is good news.

"Quite the opposite. Apparently the Dragon's Fang is hanging out on Maintenance Six over Rockwater these days." Kamea searched her memories. She had been in the same room as Castle Constant before, but never spoken; battlegroup leader and boarding team leader didn't often have many interactions. Though she had her misgivings about anyone wearing the mark of the dragon, she also respected the very real work Constant had done in their days together.

"Maintenance Six. That's in Rockwater's L3, right? The only colony that survived the Leonidas Massacre?" Alaska nodded. With that proximity to the research station, a desperate Hope began to bloom in Kamea's chest.

"Correct. He claims some of his underlings rescued a prisoner from a VISOR facility just under two weeks ago. A young prisoner with considerable mystic powers." Kamea nearly jumped from her chair. If Rune was still alive, and better yet, in allied (if ideologically questionable) hands, this all might still be worth it.

"Schedule a tactical meeting. We'll need to tally every asset we still have in the Rockwater system," Kamea began, mind already blazing.

The time for sulking was over. She had a war to win.