Alpha Lance

by Isaac Stone

  “It’s our hard luck, Corwin,” she answered. “They can’t get us a new one in time for the run to Yon, so we’ll have to make due on what we have. Besides, the newer FAS ships have different configurations and we’d need to train a new crew.”

  "About that,” I continued. “We’re down five men who had FAS experience. I can’t operate mine efficiently with three men. Who’s the replacement on my crew?”

  “I’m sending Medoro over,” she let me know. “He’s finished his training and we need to get a full crew staffed.”

  I was a bit surprised. Medoro was one of the few recruits we had on the mothership. He’d signed up from some hellhole planet with barely a government so he could leave the place. He was in his twenties and should make a good loader. I’d worked with him when he first signed up and he showed progress. We usually take on five potential recruits for every one that makes the pledge. The UDF doesn't publicize the Orders much, but there are enough stories of war, romance, and glory that there's always a long list of people who want to make the jump. Once these guys figure out that our primary mission typically results in you getting killed before you reach retirement age, they decide having a different woman every night isn’t worth the bargain, and they never even make it to the pledge, much less pack status. It was the same for female recruits too, the mortality rate was always intimidating to those who hadn't grown up around it. I’d liked Medoro; he was one of the few recruits who wanted to know more about the technology behind the ship than how it was to nail every woman on the crew. It takes a special sort of person to become part of the pack, you're either born into it or when you join us it's more like coming home than leaving.

  For my part, I’d grown up in another Starwing Order pack. I understood from an early age that I’d have to leave some day and toss my lot in with another pack, maybe even another Order. It was part of the standard education I received. We were rotated through the different motherships until you settled on the one where you best fit. Very few of us who come of age in Starwing Order opt out and leave, it is the same with the other Orders. Once you go, you can never be brought back, so it’s a hard decision to make if you are doing it voluntarily. When it comes to the bloodlines, well, callous as it might seem, kids get traded all the time, just to keep the Orders gene pool from decaying. I've heard the Orders referred to as being fascist regimes, just as much as we've been called glorified space raiders, and worse.

  It always bothered me by the stares we received every time the ship put into a UDF location for repairs or supplies, like they hated us but also wanted to be us. Most of what we took in was from other Order stations or colonies, but sometimes a UDF outpost was the only one we could use. As per the charter, no Order ship was allowed past a certain distance in UDF territory, unless by special dispensation by the Central Council. Even the Yon system was far out on the edge of the settled worlds.

  It ran through my mind as the Hard Rain went through the course corrections to take it to the Yon system. I didn’t know a lot about the place, other than it was founded by some odd religious group from Old Earth. They went to the outermost part of the known universe to avoid contact with their neighbors. They lived isolated, with little contact with the rest of the federation. I didn’t know much about their beliefs, something to do with a whole plethora of deities and several planets full of temples for them.

  And then the Roka appeared.

  The Roka I did know about. Not so much a belief system, as a whole, extensive set of laws as sat down by their great lawgiver. They’d been a pain in the ass to the UDF since they appeared hundreds of years ago. They felt it was their destiny to bring down the UDF as part of some divine plan. At first, they were a regional nuisance, but they spread across the federation and to every poor planet in it. There were plenty of places that hated the arrogance of the richer systems with all the pull. The Roka played on it and soon became a voice for the downtrodden and everyone with a gripe about the Central Council. We seldom encountered the Roka as they were most active deeper in the federation. One hundred percent a UDF internal problem while we handled pirates, raiders, and invaders in the free-fire zones.

  Until now.

  The Roka had infiltrated at least three governments on the Yon worlds and were at work on a third, according to the report I read. I didn’t look forward to the mission until I found out we would be going at them in space. Now I was interested. With Medoro filling out our crew, we had a good chance of taking them apart right away. It all depended on what the Roka had in the way of starfighters. I couldn't tell from the reports what kind of armed forces existed on the surface of the Yon worlds before the Roka showed up. They might only have a token force, but even a token force could be equipped and upgraded with the latest weapons.

  I was looking forward to this fight. Time to earn back some of the respect we’d lost against the Sidarian hostiles.

  I also found out that the Roka was involved in the Black Mirror drug trade at morning mess, that was new. I didn’t know a lot about that drug at the time, but I heard nothing good about it. If the Roka was involved with the distribution of it, they were making a lot of dirty money off the addiction of others. I made a mental note to look into this drug the first chance I had.

  I spent the rest of the work shift with the FAS crew and in the hanger. Tran had the repair kit with him when I entered the hanger. He was busy going over the damage that remained from the previous engagement. I watched as Tran had an entire panel open on one side of the FAS. He looked inside for any further signs of destruction.

  “How’s she holding up?” I asked him as I approached. He didn’t respond to my question, but I knew he heard me.

  A few minutes passed. “I think she’ll hold up for the immediate future,” he informed me. “They fixed all the problems when we put in for system repairs after we took the hit from the starfighters. Don’t know what they have on the Yon system and that’s what worries me. We could walk right into a nest of rattlers.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  “If they’ve improved the basic UDF starfighter model, or they've seized Navy elements and have their hands on a FAS, we could be in for a real fight.”

  “I thought the Roka only had access to what they bought on the black market, busted ass Sid models and patchcraft gunships.”

  “We don’t know if they’ve infiltrated the military on those worlds. I looked their specifications up. Some of those worlds bought high tech toys. They might not have a lot of them, but it’s enough to keep us busy.” He returned to the panel as the repair kit handed him some requested tools.

  I tended to listen to whatever Tran had to say about our FAS. He knew more about them than anyone. There was no room for an error margin once you left the mothership and engaging the enemy. One slight mistake and everyone was dead. We’d been lucky and only lost one of our crew when we took the hit. The next time we wouldn’t be so lucky.

  “So how was your assignment last night?” I asked him. I hadn’t looked to see who he was paired with on the roster.

  “Not bad,” he told me. “Captain had me with Amarin. Nice girl, but she cries a lot.”

  “Cries?” I asked him. “That’s a bit of a surprise. Is she ok?"

  Amarin was one of the other recruits who stayed. The day she turned eighteen on her home world, Amarin put in for the training class on the next freighter. It took her to our nearest post and she applied for position with the local group. Once they were certain Amarin was the right age, she went through all the medical and mental examinations. These eliminate the worst cases. Six months of prospect duty gets rid of the ninety percent of the others. She done well enough to go into the pool of available candidates and Captain brought her on board as a potential new member of the pack. Everyone liked her, her record was spotless and she was voted in by the pack.

  I should mention we only accepted new members of the family if they’d been approved by everyone. Most of us have the special sense that detects problems in adv
ance.

  So I was a bit surprised to learn she cried in bed.

  “Something you did that upset her?” I asked Tran.

  “Not really an issue,” he replied. “Turns out she does that when she’d happy. I asked around and everyone else tells me the same thing. Some yell, some squeal, she cries. I know I am still kind of learning, but I think that's a good thing right? She's really hoping to be one of the next mothers.”

  Every woman on the ship was expected to produce children. Right now, we had twelve children on board, counting the newborn. The rest were on some of the asteroid colonies or on orbital stations. The only way a kid could be trained was by doing something, so they tended to send them along in small groups on the pack mothership. We rotated supervision with them. The children were supposed to think of every adult on their ship as a parent, but they always had special attachments to their biological families. I know I was close to Britani on account of our Kyle, who was ten as of last month.

  Supposedly, the entire mating schedule on the mothership was to breed for the right gene characteristics. The Orders wanted people who were awesome in combat, but who made good parents when there was down time. The theory was that this made for a cohesive unit.

  I went inside the FAS and sat down in the pilot chair. We were all qualified on every aspect of these ships, but I alone acted in the role as commander. I felt the metal of the dashboard and thought of Ollie. His son John was on board, still in diapers.

  I was once told the way we lived on the Hard Rain came about because of the high casualties in the early days of the Order system. The UDF was under constant attack from all sides and forced itself to field battlefleets all the time. The only way to keep the numbers up was to institute a controlled breeding program. The various groups that made up the Orders would be able to keep the population high enough to field enough motherships. It was the only way the Orders could keep the raiders back. This all happened hundreds of years ago, before the UDF secured its present borders. After the raids and mini-wars with the small kingdoms on the periphery were over, the UDF considered curtailing back the groups that patrolled the zone between civilized space and what lay beyond. However, they decided we were too valuable and cost-effective to shut down. And so, hundreds of years later, we continued to protect the UDF against any form of intrusion.

  All human of course, the invaders. Left over from the first great expansion of humanity that sailed forth in the great unknown during a thousand years of expansion. From a time that stretched so far back into the past that no one knew where it all began.

  We made the jump to the Yon system later that day when the Insubstantia drive was fueled up from the scoop and ready to go. It takes a lot of time to grab the loose hydrogen molecules that float between the stars with the electrostatic bottle we use. We were able to get the compression chambers full by the end of the day.

  It’s not a very dangerous process any if the entire crew knows to strap in before the jump initiates. The best thing to do is find a spare acceleration chair or someplace secure and lock yourself into position. I wasn’t up in the main deck with Captain and the forward crew. I did manage to crawl into our FAS and find the pilot’s chair. Orlando sat behind the inactive gun and grinned when he saw me.

  “Going to be long one, Boss,” he called out to me. This was a lot longer jump than we made on a regular basis.

  We heard the count down from the audio and prepared for the transition. When Captain announced the jump, I already had my hands gripped onto the armrests. I could feel the eerie sensation that flowed through our bodies as the Insubstantia forces pulled our reality across twelve systems to deposit the Hard Rain right outside the Yon star.

  I’ve never liked going through a jump. You have no way of knowing what will be on the other side. At least I’ve never been in the mothership when she dropped out of hyperspace into a battle. I’ve heard some terrifying stories about those happening and have no desire to be part of them.

  Which meant this would be the first time it ever happened to me.

  5

  “Listen up,” I heard Captain’s voice over the audio. “I’d hoped we could do this the easy way, but we’ve dropped into a hot zone. I want Tank and Corwin’s ships made ready to launch. We don’t have much time. The good news is that we’ve got some help from a Silver Horde mothership that is already engaged.”

  As Tran and Medoro scrambled inside the FAS, I tried to remember what I’d heard about the Silver Horde, and wondered what they'd be like to share a mission with. They were based on some ancient tribe that ran wild over most of their home planet at one point in the past, real space barbarians if you believed what you heard around the cantina. Not the sort of people you wanted to get angry, but just the sort you needed to back you up.

  I'd felt the ship tremble as Tank’s FAS left before us. It’s not possible to hear much from inside those ships, but you can feel the rumble as the hanger doors open and the burst from the plasma jets as they head off toward their goal. I’d wanted to be the first one out, but Captain decided on Tank’s crew this time.

  I watched the hanger doors retract from the front and waited for the signal to leave. We weren’t close enough to the local star to have much light flow into the hanger, but I still noted a glowing object in the distance. The Yon star was a good ninety-three million miles away and still provided enough light to illuminate the hangar.

  The moment the doors were fully retracted, Tank roared across, cutting it close enough to our FAS to rattle our teeth. He had to get that one in, but I’d done the same to him in the past. Cheeky bugger.

  “Corwin you're up,” I heard the voice of Captain.

  I told Orlando to get us out there.

  I gripped my holds as the plasma torch lit and pushed our FAS out into the vastness of space. It didn’t take us long to get out there and I watched the screens as we cleared the hanger. The doors began to close the second we were clear.

  I could feel the excitement rush through my body as I made my way up to the conning tower gyro. I nodded at Modero where he stood at the weapons systems. He had the emergency communication duty too in case we really ran into trouble. I didn’t expect that to happen, but we were suited up just to be on the safe side.

  “Stick with Tank’s crew,” I informed Orlando. “I have the coordinates coming in from the mothership. We’ll know the final destination soon enough.”

  By now, all I could see of Tank’s FAS was a bright light in front of us. He’d managed to get far enough ahead of us in the few seconds since his FAS was launched. I grinned and watched him bank into another direction.

  “You still behind me, Corwin?” Tank asked as his face appeared on the screen in front of me.

  “I’m catching up,” I let him know. I turned to look at another bank of screens that showed the faces and medical stats on my crew. “Orlando keep an eye out, we're flying into a fight in progress.”

  “I'll call it when I see it, at mega-speeds this thing could be all over the place,” he told me. “Looks like Silver Horde didn't give us specifics, just a general sector of engagement. Are we good with that?”

  I laughed at him. “I’ll have to be good with it,” I responded. “Silver Horde probably doesn't want to share the glory. We're all supposed to be part of Alpha Lance, but try telling them that."

  I glanced down at the screen below me that showed the result for the scans for hostiles. “I’m not seeing a thing either. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t change.”

  I felt the ship pulse as Orlando ramped up the plasma engines.

  As I expected, Captain held the third FAS ship in reserve. There was no reason to commit it unless the battle came to close to her. She might need it to protect the Hard Rain if things really got out of hand. From what I could tell, there wasn't a whole lot happening.

  “How are you boys holding up?” I heard a familiar voice speak over the audio. It was Latasha who served as the link to our FAS ships when we were engaged. Captain would be busy with
running the pack right now. The women were prepped for action should the big guns on the mothership come into play. I tried hard not to think about Reagan and his crew. Along with the loss of Ollie, it left a big void in my heart that was hard to fill. I know I wasn’t alone in that feeling.

  “We’re alright for the moment,” I heard Tank speak to her over the audio. “See anything or got that special feeling?”

  “Not yet. She’s with the Grand Marshall right now. Appears to be a command chain issue. The Udies won’t relinquish authority to us because we’re in their territory. Silver Horde drew off a few Roka fighters and is in pursuit, so we're alone up here.”

  “UDF bureaucrats,” I heard Tank grumble, “Didn't they get the memo from Central Counsel? Anything else?”

  “You can forget about any help from the other ships. Silver Horde is in pursuit and out of FAS range. The one from the Apollo Order has to bow out of Alpha Lance, some critical issue with their Insubstantia drive. Too bad, because I heard the crew of Tom Finland can put up a fight.”

  “Then it's the two ships for the whole sector once our friends finish their chase,” I replied. “Won’t be the first or last time this happens. What’s the name of the Silver Horde mothership?”

  “Great Khan.”

  “Let us know the moment it comes into range.”

  Two hours later, we had our destination.

  “I’m sending the coordinates,” Latasha let us know. Her voice, sultry as ever woke us up. It’s easy to lose your mind out in the void when you’re not in the middle of battle.

  I looked down and watched the numbers scroll across the screen. In one motion, I sent them to Orlando down below. He nodded at my screen as the adjustments were made.

  “Not too far away, boss,” Orlando acknowledged. “Looks to be an orbital station. Some kind of refueling depot on the outer planet’s peripheral orbit.”

  “Medoro get the lasers hot,” I ordered.

  “Looking good up here,” our new crew member responded. “Everything is ready to be chambered up. Weapon systems are at full capacity. I checked them out before we left.”