Empire Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  What Readers Are Saying

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Other Books

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  In Her Name: Confederation

  Other Books

  A Small Favor

  About The Author

  EMPIRE

  In Her Name: Redemption, Book 1

  Michael R. Hicks

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ISBN: 978-9780984492749

  EMPIRE (IN HER NAME: REDEMPTION, BOOK 1)

  Copyright © 2009 by Imperial Guard Publishing, LLC

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Published by Imperial Guard Publishing, LLC

  AuthorMichaelHicks.com

  WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT BOOKS

  BY MICHAEL R. HICKS

  "This book is EXACTLY what I expect of a good sci-fi book. Between the depth of the characters and the extent of the backstory, I quickly lost myself in this wonderful novel. The only downer for me was turning the last page, and there not being any more pages!"

  "Michael Hicks has shown great mastery of his subject. This is the Harry Potter of SciFi."

  "What many people forget is that at the heart of the In Her Name Omnibus there is a love story that makes Romeo and Juliet look tame. Readers will find themselves experiencing both the joys as well as the despair of the main characters, and I for one, sometimes had to wipe away the tears before I could continue reading, though this is by no means a sad story."

  "I took a chance on the first volume of this series and couldn't stop reading until I had finished it all. Although military science fiction is not usually my first choice, an engrossing plot line, a fully developed alien culture and thoughtful characters held my attention and left me wanting more."

  "The "In Her Name" series is great. When an author can tell a story of humanity's interactions with an alien race, and make you feel like you know alien people and their culture, I feel like a wonderful job of "universe building" has been done. Also great military story-telling. Great job, Michael!"

  "Thank you Michael R. Hicks for deciding to write. I now own everything you've published to Kindle and am anxiously waiting for the final book of the In Her Name series!! HURRY UP!"

  "I do not have much to say other than this series was amazing."

  "This is the most I have enjoyed a series since C.J. Cherryh's compact space series, and goes miles beyond anything I have read in the last decade. If you want a good read, and a fantastic universe to bury yourself in... this one is high on the mark."

  "I found myself reading until 2-3 AM. Lots of action and good character development. Highly recommend this series."

  "This series is well worth the money. I buy books all the time, and some are the same cookie-cutter formula as the next; I didn't get that feeling from this collection of books. This may be the first author I can rank next to Heinlein and Asimov on my bookshelf in a very long time."

  "The last time I was so hung-up on a book it was Pillars of the Earth. I read fast because I couldn't wait to find out what happened next and then slowed down because I didn't want it to end. I just couldn't slow down on these books."

  "Michael Hicks apparently channels the blood of Heinlein and Asimov in his veins. I read all three of these books in 3 days. As a SF fan from the 1950's and 1960's, I grew up with the "greats" of SF and the "trekies". However, in recent years SF has failed to ignite that sense of wonder and I had stopped reading anything new. This series, In Her Name, is absolutely amazing."

  "Be warned that once you start reading this book, it would be very hard to put it down. Requirements: 1. alarm clock - to remind you that you have to go to work today. 2. Another alarm clock to remind you of meal times. 3. A very understanding wife."

  For Jan.

  Your love saved me.

  FOREWORD

  When I first started writing the In Her Name series, Empire was the lead book of the overall story. Like George Lucas with the original Star Wars movie, however, Empire is really the beginning of the end of the overarching story of the war between humanity and the Kreelan Empire. Don’t ask me why I started the story where I did. We’ll just have to blame my demented muse.

  A decade and a half after I finished Empire and its companion novels, Confederation and Final Battle, I again put virtual pen to paper and wrote First Contact, which is the true beginning of the story, and then its companion novels Legend Of The Sword and Dead Soul.

  Why am I bothering you with such trivia, when all you want to do is dive into this book?

  There are two reasons. First, the trilogies have different flavors, if you will. While Empire and its companions are generally considered science fiction, they’ve also held great appeal for fantasy and romance readers. The trilogy led by First Contact, on the other hand, leans more toward military science fiction. It certainly has elements of fantasy and a dash of romance, but it’s more of a sweeping wartime saga. So, while I hope you enjoy all the books, it may turn out that you’ll prefer one trilogy over the other. And that’s okay, because both First Contact and Empire are free as ebooks. So if you don’t find yourself enjoying one all that much, give the other a try!

  The second reason is that for those who want to read the books in chronological order, First Contact is the one to start with. I’ve gotten a lot of questions from readers about that, so I thought I’d clarify it here. And at the end of each book is a sample of the subsequent novel, so you don’t have to worry about which you should read next.

  Last but not least, if you read any of the In Her Name novels and become intrigued by the history of the Kreelans and their culture, there is another trilogy that begins with From Chaos Born, telling the tale of how the First Empress rose to power. If you find yourself enjoying Empire, you’ll definitely like From Chaos Born.

  With that, my dear reader, let’s get on with reading. I hope you enjoy the tale!

  DISCOVER OTHER BOOKS BY MICHAEL R. HICKS

  In Her Name: The Last War

  First Contact (Book 1)

  Legend Of The Sword (Book 2)

  Dead Soul (Book 3)

  The Last War Trilogy Collection

  In Her Name: Redemption

  Empire (Book 1)

  Confederation (Book 2)

  Final Battle (Book 3)

  Redemption Trilogy Collection

  In Her Name: The First Empress

  From Chaos Born (Book 1)

  Harvest Trilogy (Techno-Thriller)

  Season Of The Harvest (Book 1)

  Bitter Harvest (Book 2)

  Novellas

  The Journal Of Avery Moore

  Visit AuthorMichaelHicks.com for the latest updates!

  CHAPTER ONE

  The blast caught Solon Gard, an exhausted captain of New Constantinople’s beleaguered Territorial Army, completely by surprise. He had not known that the enemy had sited a heavy gun to the north of his decimated unit’s last redoubt, a thick-walled house of a style made popular in recent years. Like most other houses in the planet’s capitol city, this one was now little more than a gutted wreck.

>   But the Kreelan gun’s introductory salvo was also its last: a human heavy weapons team destroyed it with a lucky shot before the Territorial Army soldiers were silenced by a barrage of inhumanly accurate plasma rifle fire.

  The battle had become a vicious stalemate.

  A woman’s voice suddenly cut through the fog in Solon’s head as he fought his way out from under the smoking rubble left by the cannon hit. He found himself looking up at the helmeted face of his wife, Camilla. Her eyes were hidden behind the mirrored faceplate of the battered combat helmet she wore.

  “Solon, are you hurt?”

  “No,” he groaned, shaking his head, “I’m all right.”

  She helped him up, her petite form struggling with her husband’s greater bulk: two armored mannequins embracing in an awkward dance.

  Solon glanced around. “Where’s Armand?”

  “Dead,” she said in a brittle voice. She wiped the dust from her husband’s helmet, wishing she could touch his hair, his face, instead of the cold, scarred metal. She gestured to the pile of debris that Solon had been buried in. The wall had exploded inward a few feet from where he and Armand had been. The muddy light of day, flickering blood-red from the smoke that hung over the city, revealed an armored glove that jutted from under a plastisteel girder. Armand. He had been a friend of their family for many years and was the godfather of their only son. Now… now he was simply gone, like so many others.

  Solon reached down and gently touched the armored hand of his best friend. “Silly fool,” he whispered hoarsely. “You should have gone to the shelter with the others, like I told you. You could never fight, even when we were children.” Armand had never had any military training, but after his wife and daughter were killed in the abattoir their city had become, he had come looking for Solon, to fight and die by his side. And so he had.

  “It’s only the two of us,” Camilla told him wearily, “and Enrique and Snowden.” Behind her was a pile of bodies in a dark corner, looking like a monstrous spider in the long shadows that flickered over them. The survivors had not had the time or strength to array them properly. Their goal had simply been to get them out of the way. Honor to the dead came a distant second to the desperation to stay among the living. “I think Jennings’s squad across the street may be gone, too.”

  “Lord of All,” Solon murmured, still trying to get his bearings and come to grips with the extent of their disaster. With only the four of them left, particularly if Jennings’s squad had been wiped out, the Kreelans had but to breathe hard and the last human defensive line would be broken.

  “It can always get worse,” a different female voice told him drily.

  Solon turned to see Snowden raise her hand unenthusiastically. Platinum hair was plastered to her skull in a greasy matte of sweat and blood, a legacy of the flying glass that had peeled away half her scalp during an earlier attack. She looked at him with eyes too exhausted for sleep, and did not make any move to get up from where she was sitting. Her left leg was broken above the knee, the protruding bone covered by a field dressing and hasty splint that Camilla had put together.

  Enrique peered at them from the corner where he and Camilla had set up their only remaining heavy weapon, a pulse gun that took two to operate. Its snout poked through a convenient hole in the wall. From there, Enrique could see over most of their platoon’s assigned sector of responsibility, or what was left of it. In the dreary orange light that made ghosts of the swirling smoke over the dying city, Enrique watched the dark figures of the enemy come closer, threading their way through the piles of shattered rubble that had once been New Constantinople’s premier shopkeeper’s district. He watched as their sandaled feet trod over the crumpled spires of the Izmir All-Faith Temple, the most beautiful building on the planet until a couple of weeks ago. Since the Kreelans arrived, nearly twenty million people and thirty Navy ships had died, and nothing made by human hands had gone untouched.

  But beyond the searching muzzle of Enrique’s gun, the advancing Kreelans passed many of their sisters who had died as the battle here had ebbed and flowed. Their burned and twisted bodies were stacked like cordwood at the approaches to the humans’ crumbling defense perimeter, often enmeshed with the humans who had killed them. Enemies in life, they were bound together in death with bayonets and claws in passionate, if gruesome, embraces.

  Still, they came. They always came.

  Solon caught himself trying to rub his forehead through his battered helmet. Lord, am I tired, he thought. Their company was part of the battalion that had been among the last of the reserves to be activated for the city’s final stand, and the Territorial Army commander had brought them into action three days before. Three days. It had been a lifetime.

  “One-hundred and sixty-two people, dead,” he whispered to himself, thinking of the soldiers he had lost in the last few days. But they had lasted longer than most. Nearly every company of the first defensive ring had been wiped out to the last man and woman in less than twenty-four hours. Solon and his company were part of the fourth and final ring around the last of the defense shelters in this sector of the city. If the Kreelans got through…

  “Hey, boss,” Enrique called quietly. “I hate to interrupt, but they’re getting a bit close over here. You want me to light ‘em up?”

  “I’ll do the honors,” Camilla told Solon, patting him on the helmet. “You need to get yourself back together.”

  “No arguments here,” he answered wearily, propping himself against the remains of the wall. “I’ll keep on eye on this side.”

  Camilla quickly took her place next to the gunner. “I’m glad you didn’t wait much longer to let us know we had company, Enrique,” she chided after carefully peering out at the enemy. “They’re so close I can see their fangs.” She checked the charge on the pulse gun’s power pack. A fresh one would last for about thirty seconds of continuous firing, an appetite that made having both a gunner and a loader to service the hungry weapon a necessity.

  “Yeah,” Enrique smiled, his lips curling around the remains of an unlit cigarette butt he held clenched between his dirt-covered lips. He had tossed his helmet away the first thing, preferring to wear only a black bandanna around his forehead. His grime stained hands tightened on the gun’s controls and his eyes sighted on the line of advancing Kreelans. “Looks like they think we’re all finished, since we haven’t shot back at ‘em for a while.” He snickered, then snugged his shoulder in tight to the shoulder stock of the gun. “Surprise…”

  Solon was hunched down next to a blown-out window, looking for signs of the Kreelans trying to flank them, when he noticed the shattered portrait of a man and woman on the floor next to him. He picked up the crushed holo image of the young man and his bride and wondered who they might have been. Saying a silent prayer for their souls, he carefully set the picture out of his way. Somehow, the image seemed sacred, a tiny reminder of the precariousness of human existence, of good times past, and perhaps, hopes for the future. These two, who undoubtedly lay dead somewhere in this wasteland, would never know that their own lives were more fragile and finite than the plastic that still struggled to protect their images.

  He turned as he heard the coughing roar of Enrique’s pulse gun as it tore into the alien skirmish line. He listened as the gunner moderated his bursts, conserving the weapon’s power while choosing his targets. Solon was glad Enrique had lived this long. He was as good a soldier as could be found in the Territorial Army. They had all been good soldiers, and would make the Kreelans pay dearly for taking the last four lives that Solon had left to offer as an interest payment toward humanity’s survival.

  As he looked through the dust and smoke, the thermal imager in Solon’s visor gave him an enhanced view of the devastation around him, the computer turning the sunset into a scene of a scarlet Hell. He prayed that his seven-year-old son, Reza, remained safe in the nearby bunker. He had lost count of the number of times he had prayed for his boy, but it did not matter. He prayed again, and
would go on praying, because it was the only thing he could do. Reza and the other children of their defense district had been taken to the local shelter, a deep underground bunker that could withstand all but a direct orbital bombardment, or so they hoped. Solon only wished that he had been able to see his little boy again before he died. “I love you, son,” he whispered to the burning night.

  Behind him, Camilla hurriedly stripped off the expended power pack from the pulse gun and clipped on another. She had come to do it so well that Enrique barely missed a beat in his firing.

  Solon saw movement in a nearby building that was occupied by one of the other platoons: a hand waving at him from a darkened doorway. He raised his own hand in a quick salute, not daring to risk his head or arm for a more dashing salutation.

  He made one more careful sweep of the street with his enhanced vision. Although he had spent his life in service to the Confederation as a shipbuilder, not as a hardened Marine or sailor, Solon knew that he needed to be extra careful in everything he did now. His body was past its physical limit, and the need for sleep was dragging all of them toward mistakes that could lead them to their deaths. Vigilance was survival.

  As he finished his visual check, he relaxed slightly. All was as he had seen it before. Nothing moved. Nothing changed but the direction of the smoke’s drift, and the smell of burning wood and flesh that went with it. He felt more than heard the hits the other side of his little fortress was taking from Kreelan light guns, and was relieved to hear Enrique’s pulse gun yammer back at them like an enraged dog.