BSE Chapter 3-34

“Ungrateful little shits!” Harlow cursed as he stared at the view of the smoke-filled skies of Haven as his ship orbited the burning world.

He had been forced to pull back from his campaign of expansion to deal with a damn uprising and when he arrived, he had been attacked.

The attackers had quickly fallen to his fleet, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that his power was being tested. Harlow did not have the ground forces necessary to retake the surface, and he didn’t want to spend years trying to do so. That left him one very expedient option. He expended the vast majority of the nuclear weapons in his arsenal and laid waste to his own homeworld. He was not afraid to destroy everything to get his way.

The survivors quickly capitulated after his orbital bombardment of the planet, but he no longer had any concern for them. They would either survive on their own or die from the fallout or following starvation. If they didn’t want to suffer, they shouldn’t have risen up against him.

The only thing that truly upset him was the fact that some of the traitors had managed to get aboard his parent's enrichment station and destroy it.

He had only learned of this fact after his bombardment, meaning he no longer had a surplus of nuclear weapons capable of subduing a planetary populace. At least not until his own engineers completed the enrichment center at his hidden fleet yards.

Harlow wasn’t stupid, the moment he killed his parents and captured their station, he had sent the plans to his own hidden facility. The same facility where his engineers had built Harlow’s Might.

It would take time to build the machines needed to enrich the nuclear material, but that wasn’t an immediate concern. There was a more pressing matter that had been brought to his attention by a message he had recently received from Dalton. He had ignored it at first as he was focused on the cleanup at Haven, but a follow-up message from another source had made him curious as to what the man might have sent.

“Well,” Dalton’s recording started, “You truly managed to screw me over this time. Harlow, if you’re seeing this, and I hope you are, I pray you die in the most painful way possible. If you are seeing this recording, it also means I’m dead, probably from that mission you sent me on. Since I’m a spiteful piece of shit, I’ve compiled all the information on the target and included it with this little message just in case I didn’t return. I hope you both get what you deserve.”

The message ended and Harlow chuckled. Only Dalton would think to screw someone over even after his death, the man truly was one of the worst people Harlow ever had the privilege of meeting. He looked at the scans but they didn’t show him much about the system and the planet other than a few ships and Katalynn Char’s fleet being chased off. Dalton had cut out certain sections, likely to hide something. That was annoying but Harlow could do little to punish a dead man.

The trip to that system would take over four months and force him to go through Char space. He wasn’t afraid of Katalynn Char or her people. He saw the number of ships she had, Harlow had over four times that many in his main fleet, not including his dreadnought.

With the STO on the back foot, this was the perfect time to knock that woman down a peg or two on his way to claim the prize that had been denied to him for far too long. That felt wrong though.

Harlow wanted to order his fleet back to the front so he didn’t lose the momentum he had built up, but the thought of doing that made his mind itch. That itch quieted slightly when he focused his mind on heading toward the Char territory. He knew to trust his instincts and made his decision.

As soon as he ordered his fleet to set course for Char territory, the itch faded from his mind.

***

Katalynn stepped aboard the newest frigate to come out of the Asgardian Shipworks for a tour. It was the first frigate to be completed from the new generation of ships her people had spent the last decade designing and building. This new ship joined the Valkyrie in a very exclusive club as one of the only two ships to have been built entirely from Asgardian efforts.

It was a monumental achievement and her people had thrown a festival in honor of the accomplishment.

She only wished this turning point for her people could have been reached years ago. Most of that time had been spent creating the infrastructure and manufacturing needed to build ships of this quality since their old production yards were woefully outdated. Then there were extensive efforts to reverse-engineer systems from captured ships.

While her ship and the frigate were both built by Asgardian hands, the frigate was the first ship to boast all Asgardian components. Even Valkyrie still used parts purchased from the STO. Once the conflict with Xin ended, she would have those same components added to her ship.

Some of the items may not be on par with STO tech, but she would rather fight in a slightly subpar ship that relied completely on Asgardian effort than a ship made from components purchased from the vile STO.

Katalynn understood the need to use STO tech in the past, so she wouldn't simply throw that away, but if she didn’t need to rely on it, all the better.

She ran her hand along the bare metal wall as the engineer in charge of the project prattled on. This ship would be going to one of the Jarl’s fleets so she didn’t need to know the ins and outs of its construction, but she understood the man was just excited about explaining every feature so she let him continue.

This was not a fancy ship, this was a warship. There were no luxuries, every available space not needed for crew and survival had been converted into storage for the cannons. Because there were no luxuries, the ship was smaller than most frigates, but that didn’t mean it was any less dangerous. It still had four weapon turrets like a normal frigate and with the Gauss cannons, significantly outgunned any pirate frigate.

Her people still struggled with optics quality, so the ship did not sport any lasers. Not that she would want it to considering the issues she had with the one on Valkyrie, but it would have been nice to match the newer STO ships in firepower. Still, the Gauss Cannons were a monumental step up from the autocannons most of her people still relied on.

She knew a few of the Jarls had upgraded their flagships to railguns, but she preferred the Gauss cannons for their ability to operate for much longer stretches without maintenance. It was probably one of the only things she agreed with the STO on.

Katalynn was nearly through with the tour when one of her handmaidens hurried up to her. The shorter woman had to stand on her tiptoes even when she bent down so she could whisper something into her ear.

As the woman spoke, Katalynn could feel her anger rising. “You’re sure it’s him?”

The woman nodded tentatively.

“That bastard has overstepped for the last time.” She snapped her fingers and her Sub-Commander hurried over. “Gather the fleet.”

“Lagertha?” the man saluted, but there was a question in his tone.

She didn’t bother answering it as he would find out soon enough. “Engineer, is this ship fully stocked with ammunition and missiles?”

“Of course, Lagertha.”

“Good. I’m putting you in temporary command. Gather enough people to operate the ship and form up in my fleet.”

The man looked positively giddy at the prospect. “At once, Lagertha.” He saluted and hurried off, yelling instructions into a radio.

Katalynn made her way to the airlock and her shuttle. If Jarl Isbjorn thought he could jump into Yggdrasil’s Eye with his entire fleet to try and force her to marry him, he was going to learn a hard lesson.

By the time she arrived at her ship, the Jarl’s fleet had finished coming out of warp and were starting to form up. A harsh demand kept repeating over the radio for her to submit and join their houses for the strength of the people. She snorted at that and demanded the crewman to cut the connection to Isbjorn’s broadcast.

As soon as she took her seat, she brought up the system overview. She frowned when she saw that Isbjorn had brought more ships than she had. “That fool must have pulled his entire fleet off the front line for this stunt.”

The man liked to talk about strengthening the Asgardian people, but every action he took weakened it. There was almost certainly going to be a fight between her people and his, further weakening their reserves and splitting sentiments about who should rule.

Isbjorn had almost certainly taken this path because he was too much of a coward to face her in single combat.

“The fleet’s ready, Lagertha,” her Sub-Commander stated.

“Get us into position opposite the Jarl’s fleet, but outside of combat range. I’ll try one last time to talk him down from this course of action, but I doubt he will see reason after coming all the way here with his fleet.”

The fleets approached and turned, carrying on a slow clockwise rotation nearly a light second apart.

Steeling herself, she nodded to the comm officer to connect her to the Jarl’s flagship.

The cocky face of Jarl Isbjorn greeted her. The man was tall, but still a few inches shorter than her. He had a rail-thin build as opposed to her more muscular and stocky form. There was nothing to like about his face either. The man sported a widow’s beak, slicked back and braided, with charms, but he had no beard and his eyes were two cruel flinty blue pools.

“Have you finally come to your senses, woman?”

Katalynn narrowed her eyes at the comment. She hadn’t interacted with the man much since taking over for her father, but she didn’t recall him being so condescending in the past. Was he simply trying to goad her into reacting?

“My senses are fine, but I have to ask if you’ve lost yours, Jarl. You were tasked with protecting the border for the next two months, yet you and your entire fleet are here.”

“Don’t play dumb, girl. You know exactly why I’m here. You’re weak. I gave you the opportunity to correct that mistake by joining our lines and you spit in my eye by facing off against me. Unlike you, I will not let an insult like that slide. So I ask you one final time, either agree to join our lines or we will settle who should lead once and for all.”

So he was trying to goad her. The man was a fool if he thought she would be thrown off by petty insults aimed at her gender. She had faced far harsher during her training when she was growing up.

“So be it, coward,” she spat on the floor, earning snickers from her crew and a venomous look from Isbjorn before the connection cut out.

“The Jarl’s fleet has turned toward us, Lagertha,” her Sub-Commander reported.

“May Odin favor us this day. To battle!”

“All ships, target the Jarl’s flagship.” With any luck, killing that bastard would end the fight and someone with more brains would take over the Jarl’s territory. If not, it was going to be a long drawn out, and bloody affair.

As they closed, she watched the enemy fleet change formation, the Jarl’s cruiser pulled back and two destroyers formed up to block any direct attacks to the larger vessel.

She clicked her tongue. The man truly was a coward if he hid in the back. She also suspected all of his ships would be targeting Valkyrie.

As soon as the distance closed enough, she ordered the main laser to be fired. Odin must truly be looking out for her today because the weapon worked and it scored a hit, raking an angry red line down one of the blocking destroyers as it tried to shift out of the path of the deadly energy weapon.

Soon after the beam fired, the space between their fleets was filled with missiles and projectiles.

ECM and point defense went to work, quickly obliterating the incoming missiles, but the kinetic weapons were another story. The Valkyrie adjusted course slightly, but it was still hit by a few stray rounds that the thick front armor managed to absorb.

One of her gunboats wasn’t as lucky. The ship was shredded as nearly a dozen rounds tore through the space it was occupying.

She cursed the loss but looked at the tactical screen. The destroyer Valkyrie had hit with the laser was out of the fight and breaking apart as it skewed below the theater of battle.

The next volley of fire went out between the two fleets. Once again, the missiles were ineffective at crossing the distance, but kinetics reined supreme as each fleet hammered the ships on either side.

No ships died during the second exchange, showing just how durable even some of the older Asgardian ships were. Before a third volley could be launched, both fleets pulled off as a systemwide alert reached their ships.

AN UNKNOWN FLEET HAS JUST JUMPED INTO YGGDRASIL’S EYE!