Hello, everyone. Today is a day to rejoice, a day to pick up arms and celebrate the Ascension of our Royal Navy on Patreon.
Since our last ceremony celebrating our members, more have joined.
In the month of January, our ranks have expanded, welcoming in EM, Mike, and David Josefsen, who have taken their place beside us, each now a Petty Officer of our fleet with the goal of spreading the greatness of Humankind throughout the Cosmos.
In the 5 days this month has elapsed, Philipp Gawol, Kaledark, and wolfsbanenetworks have taken their place beside us, each now a Petty Officer of our fleet with the goal of spreading the greatness of Humankind throughout the Cosmos.
As your Fleet Admiral, I, Crimson_Reapr, welcome you, honor your commitment, and thank you for your service. May our power reach beyond the edges of charted space, and may ruin fall upon all who stand against humanity's strength.
Now, there has been a special person who also took up his rightful place in this Navy. One who worked their way up from the bottom of the barrel, to the top. This great individual goes by the name of Jonathan Roberts, who joined on the month of January as an Enlisted Seaman.
Well, today this man has proven his prowess and has earned the rank of Admiral. Stand proud, stand tall, hold your chin up high, for you, sir, are the first Admiral this Naval force has ever produced!
May your fleet glide through the cosmos and show every maggot just how great Humanity is! Spread our name, spread our glory, and rise, Admiral Jonathan Roberts! For it is an honor to have you amongst our ranks, and in your Honor, a new chapter shall be published publicly, and chapter 34 shall be expedited and written in your honor.
As your Fleet Admiral, I, Crimson_Reapr, welcome you, honor your commitment to our cause, and thank you for your service. May our power reach beyond the edges of charted space, and may ruin fall upon all who stand against humanity's strength.
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POV Shift: Kaelen Strathmore
The shift in command was immediate, cold, and utterly terrifying in its finality. The moment Kaelen ended the transmission with Fleet Admiral Valerius, the monumental weight of his actions came crashing down on him. He had secured the sanctuary, the blind spot in the IUC's vast sensor network, but in doing so, he had burned the last bridge connecting him to his former life.
He could no longer view himself as Admiral Kaelen Strathmore, Captain of the Indifference and Commander of the 117th Imperial Fleet, the steel spine of the Imperial Union of Celestine. He had forsaken that title, becoming simply Kaelen, a rogue father consumed by a desperate hunt, a man who had traded his magnificent fleet and power for a shot at revenge. Most of all, he had made the decision to leave his dreadnaught, the Indifference, behind and board one of the sleek corvettes that would be heading into action. The Retribution.
Although Commander Rhen had argued, tears brimming in her eyes, begging him to remain on the Indifference, Kaelen refused and instead handed her the command over the rest of the fleet while he was away. "Admiral, you are the strategic mind! You must stay here, on the capital ship. Your value is in command, not in the cockpit of a glorified patrol vessel!"
Kaelen had silenced her with a single, exhausted look. "My value, Commander, is in the debt I owe. Just take a moment to process what it is I'm doing. My very actions and orders were treasonous a long time ago, and now I am asking those crews to openly commit treason. I'm not ordering them right now, I'm requesting they destroy an IUC asset and disappear into the black. I will not ask them to commit an act that I, myself, am unwilling to perform."
Furthermore," he had added, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper, "this entire hunt for Jarl Dierdik has been a shitshow and a complete and utter failure on my part. Under my command, six ships, hundreds of lives, and two years of everyone's lives were wasted avenging a ghost who might be alive."
Kaeleln paused momentarily, letting out a shaky sigh. "I need to know, Commander. I need to see Jarl Dierdik's face when I drag him out of his hiding hole. I want him to tell me why he did what he did. I already know the reason, but as a father, I need to hear it from the very mouth of the perpetrator. He must face justice and pay for what he's done, and if Mark is alive, I need to know that I finished the first job before I go on a manhunt searching for the second."
And so, the logistics of the light-vessel operation were executed with a somber precision that bordered on religious ritual. The crews of the Swift Justice, the Vengeance, and the Retribution were all called to assemble in Hangar Bay Three of the fleet's Fighter Carrier. They were not given a choice, but even if they were, they would have blindly followed Kaelen headfirst into a black hole.
Kaelen had walked into the briefing room, not in his dress uniform that displayed his rank and all the medals and accolades he had accumulated over the many years of his service. Instead, he was dressed in frayed, flight-issue blacks and laid out the plan in stark, unforgiving detail. He revealed nothing of Mark's possible survival, only reinstating the betrayal of Jarl Dierdik, the corporate rot, and the political necessity of creating a false-flag operation to secure the IUC's future.
"Ladies and gentlemen. If you are standing here before me, and are still willing to follow me, then I must inform you that the very moment we depart from the fleet, we are no longer IUC Navy vessels," Kaelen had stated, his voice ringing with absolute authority and a hint of sadness. "We will become ghosts to our own, deniable assets to the empire. If we are captured, we will be disavowed immediately. If we are to lose a battle, there will be no rescue. There will be no trial. Your only judgment will be in the hands of your captors."
He stopped and made eye contact with the 3 captains of the ships. "I want to clarify that orders have been given for your families to be well cared for in the event of your capture or... death. I have never doubted your loyalty, and your willingness to follow me into death's embrace itself will never be forgotten. Now that I've said what I need to say, I will give you all a single chance to leave and stay behind. No actions will be taken against you, and I will hold no ill will toward any of you."
Not a single man or woman took a step forward to leave. The grief over the lost vessels and the unspoken rage against the Council's inaction was too potent. Kaelen looked at them, a final flicker of the Admiral's warmth in his eyes, before it was extinguished by the cold light of the commander. "If you none of you wish to stay behind, then let us prepare."
The next twenty-four hours were a blur of intense, focused labor as drones were sent out to the three Corvettes. Although blocky in shape, they had been designed as fast vessels made for interdiction and quick strikes. All three of them were stripped bare of their official identity.
A dull whine could be felt inside the ships for hours as they stripped of their pristine white and blue paint scheme. Layers of polymer, ceramic coating, and official IUC insignias were systematically scoured away, leaving behind the dull, dark grey of the ships' raw titanium-alloy hulls, a stealth coating designed to absorb scanner pings and visible light.
Kaelen personally supervised the removal of all three ships' serial plates. Once they had been cut free, he grabbed all three of them and handed them to Commander Rhen in a concrete act of career suicide. "Hang on to these for me, will you?"
Rhen nodded somberly, knowing that the leader she had followed, the man she had served, the Admiral she had looked up to, was too far gone. There was no turning back now.
Hours later, Kaelen was aboard the bridge of the Retribution.
"Commander Rhen will maintain the Indifference's course and relay all pertinent IUC communications to us through a triple-encrypted, quantum-entangled burst comm," he briefed his handpicked tactical officer, Lieutenant Valis, a gaunt, brilliant woman whose sister had been aboard Mark's outdated Heavy Frigate, the Perseverance, two years ago. "Our communications are one-way, highly directional, and entirely dependent on the dead zone my brother, Fleet Admiral Valerius, is creating for us."
Valis nodded, her eyes tracking the final diagnostics check on the Retribution's jump drive. "Understood, Admiral. We will only be transmitting our location while ignoring any communication requests. We are essentially deaf to everything but the broadcast from the Indifference."
"Precisely," Kaelen confirmed, strapping into the captain's seat, a much tighter and visceral fit than the plush command chair of the Indifference. "This vessel is fast, Valis. But a ship cannot be good at everything. Her only defense is not being seen... We are going to make a short, experimental jump. The travel distance will be immense, requiring a forced-charge cycle on the drive, but it should get us into the Seraphim Nebula in one go, bypassing the usual travel lanes and the risk of detection by House Dierdik's long-range surveillance and patrols."
At 0400 hours, two days after the confrontation with Verrin, the three black Corvettes drifted into the surrounding void. The moment they cleared the immediate sensor shadow of the capital ship, Kaelen gave the order that severed their ties to the law.
"Swift Justice, Vengeance, confirm transponders offline. Activate full hull-dampening fields," Kaelen ordered, his voice echoing in the small cockpit.
"Swift Justice, transponders off, dampening active. We are ghosts, Admiral," came the crisp reply from Captain Thel, a former hotshot fighter ace.
"Vengeance confirmed. Transponders dark. Our drives are synced and our engines on standby," replied Captain Zev, a steady veteran of deep-space salvage operations.
"Good. Prepare for experimental deep-space jump. Coordinates locked. Charge cycle in T-minus sixty seconds," Kaelen said.
The experimental jump was brutal. It was only achievable by changing the frequencies of their jump drives, something that pushed them far beyond their safe operational parameters. The drive core screamed, and the light in the cockpit dimmed to an angry red. Kaelen felt the sheer force of the core energy threatening to tear the vessel apart and gripped the controls, tasting metal and adrenaline. This was the risk. This was the price of speed and secrecy. If the jump drive failed during this experimental jump, they would be atomized and scattered across a hundred light-years of empty space.
Then, with a terrifying, instantaneous lurch that threw Kaelen hard against his restraints, they broke through.
The view outside the main port was no longer the empty black of standard deep space as they had arrived at the outer rim of the Seraphim Nebula. This was a place where cosmic dust and gas clouds painted the void in swirling, violent hues of magenta, gold, and poisonous green. The nebula was beautiful, but its beauty was a cloak for chaos. The dense ion clouds that played havoc with navigation, and massive fields of silicate asteroids.
Kaelen shook his head, trying to regain his bearings and shaking off the disorientation. "Report. How's everyone holding up?"
"The jump was successful. The Drive's core stability is currently at forty-two percent, and charging slowly. All of our navigational systems are intermittent due to atmospheric interference," Valis reported, her voice steady despite the emergency readouts flashing across her console. "We are within the Seraphim Nebula, Admiral. Coordinates confirm our position 300 parsecs from the IUC border."
"Perfect," Kaelen muttered, a cold satisfaction creeping into his tone. "Swift Justice, Vengeance, immediately engage passive camouflage and start moving into the belt. We'll be moving blind for now. That means no active scans... Valis, plot us a course through the thickest asteroid field toward the core of the nebula. I want the largest celestial bodies between us and the nearest known star system. We will use the asteroids to camouflage our signatures."
The next few hours were an exercise in tense, claustrophobic navigation. The Retribution and her two sister ships moved not through open space, but through a colossal, slow-moving graveyard of rock and ice. The silence was absolute, broken only by the hum of the internal life support and the occasional, unsettling thud of a micro-meteorite hitting the armor plates.
Kaelen piloted the ship himself, weaving the Retribution with efficiency through passages so tight that a Destroyer would be shredded instantly. He felt the ship's hull scrape against magnetic fields generated by massive, tumbling asteroids, the proximity masking their movements from any distant surveillance.
They were in the Unclaimed Territories, and in this lawless space, the rules of civilized engagement were null. Jarl Dierdik was hiding here, thinking the bureaucracy would protect him. However, Kaelen was here to prove that bureaucracy was meaningless against the will of one man.
They came across their first enemies eighteen hours into the deep-space penetration. It wasn't a Dierdik convoy, but two small, armed cutters that were most likely private security hired by House Dierdik to patrol the outer perimeter of their so-called "exile space." They wore no official markings on the cutters, only the stylized, opulent gold and green sigil of House Dierdik. They were, in essence, pirates with corporate branding.
"Two patrol craft, designation 'Sentinel-Alpha' and 'Sentinel-Beta'," the navigation officer whispered, relaying the passive scan data. "They are moving on a predictable loop, probably looking for smugglers. Their power signatures are low-grade. A single light Frigate could easily deal with them both."
Kaelen studied the tactical display, his finger tracing the movement of the cutters. They were sloppy, overconfident in the deep black of the nebula, most likely taking this patrol as leisure since there weren't many crazy enough to take this route. He saw his opening as they were about to pass a massive, jagged asteroid, giving him a perfect blind spot.
"Swift Justice, you take Sentinel-Alpha. Vengeance, you take Sentinel-Beta. Make sure you attack simultaneously," He ordered. "Do not even give them a single warning, and do not leave any survivors. Pepper them full of holes with your railguns and then fire a handful of missiles for cleanup. We want them atomized before they can send a distress signal, and we want to preserve our stealth as long as possible. Your time to kill is fifteen seconds. Go."
The ensuing skirmish was violent and short. The Retribution held position behind the asteroid, with Kaelen watching the tactical feed. Captain Thel of the Swift Justice executed the maneuver perfectly, emerging from the asteroid's shadow, firing two rapid bursts of railgun slugs. The first cutter, Sentinel-Alpha, didn't even have time to register the threat before its reactor core was penetrated and vaporized in a silent, blinding flash of light.
The second cutter fared slightly better, managing to send a garbled, partial transmission before Captain Zev's Vengeance shredded its engines with a focused railgun volley. The Vengeance then closed the distance and dispatched the crippled vessel with a final, devastating railgun shot.
"Mission was successful. No return fire detected and not a single loss on our end," Valis reported, her face pale but resolved.
"We'll take the risk of a clean-up, but we're taking everything we can," Kaelen said to Valis. "Zev, Thel, retrieve the transponder data and any datalogs you can salvage. I want to know where they were reporting to, who they were reporting to, and what their patrol routes covered. We are now deeper in the game. From this point forward, every Dierdik vessel we come across is to be attacked on sight. If they get a transmission off, then we go from the hunters to the hunted."
They spent four more hours moving deeper into the Nebula, the silence of their movement broken only by the sporadic, high-tension reports of the data retrieval. The patrol logs confirmed Kaelen's suspicions of Jarl's presence in the Seraphim Nebula. Gared Dierdik had hired an entire private security fleet to move here and protect him. The retrieved logs pointed to a heavily guarded route leading to a hidden refinery, the perfect place for a high-value exile to wait out the storm.
After a while more of searching, Kaelen came across what he was looking for.
"Admiral, the navigation officer has found five large vessel signatures, 60,000 kilometers dead ahead. They're running low-power, just like us, trying to blend with the background radiation. Four of them are heavy frigates, and the fifth… the fifth is a luxury vessel. Although it's custom-built with a high-power engine, it's lightly armed. I believe it's him. It has to be him," Valis reported, her voice tight with adrenaline.
Kaelen leaned forward, the exhaustion temporarily forgotten. He saw the tactical display: five glowing icons, moving slowly but purposefully through a relatively clear patch of the nebula. The four Frigates were positioned in a standard diamond defense formation, protecting the high-value asset at the center.
"Valis, confirm the luxury vessel's signature against the Swift Passage's jump signature we got from the agent's report," Kaelen ordered.
A moment later, Valis confirmed, her breath catching in her throat. "It's a perfect match, Admiral. That luxury ship is the Swift Passage, and unless it's a diversion, Jarl Dierdik is most likely inside that ship."
Kaelen felt a cold, hard knot of satisfaction tighten in his gut. "All ships, maintain absolute distance. We are not engaging until I give the order. We are going to shadow them for the time being. I want to know their every maneuver, every shift in power, every crew change. We are going to be their shadow for three days, or until they make a mistake."
The three-day trail was an exercise of agonizing patience. Kaelen ran the Retribution on minimal power, maintaining a distance of 70,000 kilometers, which was far enough to remain beyond the Frigates' active scanner range in this clusterfuck of a system, but close enough to observe the subtle shifts in their formation. They used the vast, tumbling silicate asteroids as their blinders, constantly adjusting their position, always keeping a large, electrically charged mass of rock between them and the Dierdik convoy.
The Swift Justice and the Vengeance operated on the flanks, acting as the eyes and ears, risking slight increases in power for short-burst passive scans, relaying the data back to Kaelen.
During these seventy-two hours, Kaelen barely moved from the cockpit. Sleep was an impossibility. He survived on the stale nutrient bars that he hadn't eaten in years and water. The knowledge of Mark's possible survival was a searing pain that intensified his need to capture Jarl. Every second spent trailing this private convoy was a second stolen from the search for his son.
But the debt came first. If he abandoned this now, his entire rebellion and the sacrifice of his men would all be meaningless. He would have nothing left but the guilt of his failed vengeance and his failed duty. Jarl Dierdik had to be delivered to justice, even if Kaelen himself had to become a criminal to do it.
He spent hours studying the Dierdik security ships, logging their routines. The Frigates were well-armed, likely carrying heavy railgun batteries, but they were corporate vessels, and although corporate vessels were amongst the most well-armed ships in human space, military vessels would always outclass them. Their crews were professional, but they lacked the hardened discipline of a fleet veteran.
And that lack of discipline began to rear its head on the third day.
The Dierdik convoy was approaching a vast, complex region of the nebula, a junction of swirling gas clouds and asteroid clusters known colloquially as 'The Widow's Weave.' The navigation was difficult, even for Corvettes, forcing the larger Frigates to slow and adopt a narrower, more constrained formation.
"Admiral, look at the spread," Valis suddenly reported, her voice hushed. "The two aft Frigates are falling dangerously far behind the main luxury vessel. They're widening the defensive diamond too much to account for the gas currents, creating a funnel effect."
Kaelen saw what Valis pointed out. The two leading Frigates were sticking close to the Swift Passage, pulling ahead while the two trailing Frigates were lagging far behind, trying to maintain an unrealistic separation to cover all angles in the gas. This maneuver, which was designed to maximize surveillance coverage, inadvertently created a massive, sixty-thousand-kilometer gap in the defensive line. The convoy was now functionally split with two defenders ahead, two defenders behind, and the Swift Passage dangerously exposed in the middle of the gap.
"They're overconfident, thinking they've cleared the borders and are safe. They're moving into a transport formation, not a combat array," Kaelen observed, his voice regaining the tactical edge of the Admiral. "Thel, Zev, do you see it?"
"We see it, Admiral," Captain Thel replied, a grim excitement in his voice. "A perfect ambush corridor. With the speed they're maintaining, we can cut them in half and isolate the Swift Passage before the trailing two Frigates can close the distance."
"Exactly," Kaelen confirmed, the plan crystallizing in his mind. "We have to hit them now. They're giving us the window, and if we wait, they'll enter the refinery zone, and we'll lose them forever... This is it. It's about time we settle this debt."
Kaelen immediately switched to giving orders. "Retribution and Swift Justice will simultaneously engage the two lead Frigates. Focus fire on their bridge and primary weapons systems. We must destroy them or cripple them immediately to prevent them from shielding the Swift Passage or signaling for help. Vengeance," Kaelen then addressed Captain Zev, "you ignore the Frigates. Your priority is the Swift Passage. You will position yourself to cut off any attempt by the luxury vessel to engage its engines at full power. You are the cork in the bottle. Do not fire, but make sure Jarl Dierdik knows he's trapped. Use your mass drivers to create a debris field in front of its path. We're going to do a hit and run before the trailing two Frigates can catch us."
A moment of silence hung in the comms. Everyone knew the risk of what they were about to do. They were three light Corvettes, designed for speed and interdiction, against four heavy Frigates, built for sustained combat within their own class. The odds were suicidal.
"Acknowledged, Admiral. Charging our reactor. Godspeed, sir," Captain Thel replied.
"Vengeance ready to cork the bottle, Admiral. Let's make some noise," Captain Zev confirmed, a note of grim determination in his voice.
Kaelen took a deep, steadying breath, his gloved hand gripping the firing controls. "Execute attack vectors Beta-Three. Full power to the main thrusters, prime the railguns... and may God help us."
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Starting next week, on Tuesday the 10th, I'll return to uploading 3 chapters a week. 1 additional Chapter will be uploaded on Sundays.
You can read up to 27 Advanced Chapters on my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/cw/Crimson_Reapr
Crimson_Reapr is the name, and writing Sci-fi is the way.