• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

She spun about. The stormtroopers set the heavy frame down, switching off its antigrav platform before marching behind Daala and Pellaeon.

Daala did not turn to watch, but she heard the guards hustle out of the fortress and gather up their fallen leader and the message cube. They rushed back inside, and the thud of armored doors echoed in the narrow canyon.

After the hour was up, Colonel Cronus decided to join Daala’s forces. Wholeheartedly.

An armored fast transport from the fortress hangars took Daala and Pellaeon, along with a contingent of their suspicious stormtrooper guards, away from the planet. Colonel Cronus himself piloted the armored transport, transmitting recognition signals into deep space. Leaving Daala’s battleships behind, Cronus took them straight up out of the system, perpendicular to the ecliptic and toward the sparse cometary cloud.

Colonel Cronus was a small man but packed with power. His shoulders were broad, his chest rippled, and his swollen biceps showed that he took great care to maintain himself at peak physical form, even in the reduced gravity of the small, bleak planet. His curly black hair was seeded with silvery strands that gave him a distinguished appearance. His complexion was deeply tanned and seamed with lines that made him look weathered; his large brown eyes constantly flicked back and forth, drinking in details. He spoke sparingly, answering questions put to him with just the right amount of information.

“I need to make a brief hyperspace hop,” Cronus said, “to get us far enough to the edge of the system—unless you’d rather we spent weeks at full burn of our sublight engines?”

Daala stiffened. Pellaeon frowned suspiciously, and the stormtrooper guards snapped to attention; but she decided that Cronus had little to gain here by sudden treachery —and that trusting him with a responsibility such as this could only plant the seeds of deeper loyalty. “Very well, Colonel,” she said. “I’m anxious to see what Delvardus has managed to create with all the credits he’s been spending.”

Pellaeon looked at her as if in warning, his heavy mustache drooping; but she shook her head imperceptibly. The vice admiral sat back and forced himself to relax. Cronus accepted her orders without question and began programming the navicomputer.

Daala felt her nerves taut like high-tension wires running through her body. She kept her expression impassive, but adrenaline coursed through her as she strapped herself into her chair. Everything had gone remarkably well. The conquest had been devastating and bloody, but she had taken out selected targets—the appropriate victims—and the Empire’s harvest grew stronger and richer with each weed she plucked. She felt elated when she thought of the momentum of her triumph.

Pellaeon raised his eyebrow in question, but she didn’t respond. The risk had paid off for her. She would always remain on guard, but for the moment the danger was over. Now she had to work on consolidating her power.

Cronus swiveled in his pilot seat, looking at Daala with deep brown eyes that held an unexpected warmth; she wondered if he actually appreciated her takeover. She had seen him look upon the body of Superior General Delvardus with barely concealed scorn.

“Entering hyperspace, Admiral Daala,” he said. “Please don’t be alarmed.” Around the ship, space vanished in a multicolored swirl.

Daala leaned forward to speak to the colonel. “We’ve researched the amount of funding Delvardus tunneled into his operations, and I am not impressed with what I saw at his fortress.” She narrowed her emerald eyes and continued, “I hope he hasn’t been squandering the Empire’s resources.”

Cronus smiled and shook his head. “I assure you, Admiral, he has not. I think even you will be impressed.”

Daala closed her eyes for a moment to tally her fleet in her mind, adding together the Star Destroyers she had already collected from the various warlords, all of the battleships and firepower she had to command. She vowed to put her fleet to its best