The Alliance Trilogy

by Michael Wallace

  Catarina swore she’d make them pay for it.

  Six star wolves went in hard against the outgoing fire. They turned their pummel guns against enemy emplacements and thundered down at them. Void Queen’s defense grid fought and clawed at every outgoing missile to keep them off Svensen’s forces, but it was inevitable that some would get through.

  Hellhound took a couple of hits, and Catarina called it out of there. She brought Void Queen down in its place. A full broadside annihilated the largest enemy battery, and as the asteroid rolled in gentle motion, her secondary battery maneuvered into position against the star fortress docked in its yards. Explosions rocked its surface.

  She dropped six torpedoes onto the asteroid, and five got through. They tossed up debris, but it was hard to penetrate all that rock with conventional explosions. But her bombardment, together with the thundering from the Fourth Wolves, had left the entire asteroid a haze of rock and dust, with structures wrecked from one end to the other.

  Boghammer got in under the missile shield and trained pummel guns against the two docked dragoons, one after another. Whatever damage they’d suffered when the Alliance fleet jumped into Heaven’s Gate was dwarfed by the thrashing Svensen’s star wolf inflicted now.

  “We’ve identified the incoming ships,” Burris said. “Eleven dragoons, no carriers. Lead ships are already launching missiles.”

  “Time to get out of here.”

  Catarina’s goal had never been to destroy the colony. Even without hostile enemy craft to harry their attack, it would have taken days of bombardment to crush it entirely. In the scheme of the immediate battle, knocking out a good number of dragoons was a higher goal. But she could leave the enemy something to remember her by. Thankfully, her raid had exposed the weakness of their defensive armaments.

  “Mark-IVs in all tubes? Good. Let’s give the ghouls our best parting gift.”

  Void Queen flared her engines and began to pull away. The star wolves kept firing as they lifted, and soon all the Alliance ships were in full retreat. Weakened enemy batteries flailed at them, and Catarina watched, frustrated, thinking that they’d already reduced the enemy defenses and could have loitered above it, pounding away indefinitely.

  “Torpedoes in the air,” Burris said.

  They all fell silent as a half dozen Mark-IVs rolled from their tubes, ignited, and accelerated toward the Adjudicator colony.

  The enemy must have sensed what was coming, because the sky suddenly filled with countermeasures, exploding and bursting radiation several miles above the surface. One torpedo spun out of control and died, but the other five charged grimly forward.

  A series of massive flashes blanked their sensors. When they came back on, huge plumes of rock and debris roiled into space from across the surface. Scans showed deep penetration in three of five locations. The nuclear strike had been more effective than she could have hoped.

  Azavedo was grinning. “Those ghouls’ pits will be glowing for a good long time, Captain.”

  Maybe so, but Catarina didn’t feel like celebrating. Ten million people down there, she’d said. How many were Adjudicators, and how many were enslaved humans, Hroom, and other creatures? Whoever they were, she’d just incinerated thousands of them.

  And she wasn’t done yet.

  “We’re still in torpedo range,” she said. “Load the last four nukes into the tubes and let them rip.”

  #

  The crew on Blackbeard could only watch the action in the asteroid belt with frustration. Void Queen and her forces were giving an enemy colony a good beating, but there were a significant and growing number of dragoons.

  Positioned as they were between the two stars and the asteroid belt, Blackbeard and her accompanying war junk could peer outward with less interference than looking inward, and Wang had sent across a full scan of the enemy activity. The belt was thick with alien colonies, many on the smaller side, but at least two others as large as the one Vargus was bombarding. More enemy ships were rising from across the belt, gathering to join the fight.

  Finally, Vargus’s battle cruiser and her screening ships needed to pull away to face the threat. There were heavy explosions on the asteroid as she withdrew.

  “Looks like she nuked them,” Smythe said.

  “Good. Hope she rang a few bells down there.”

  “We’d have made a difference in there, Cap’n,” Capp said. “Sit Blackbeard up there to handle them dragoons, yeah? And let Vargus keep pounding ’em below.”

  “We’re not here to destroy colonies, Lieutenant. We’re here for reconnaissance, to weaken the enemy’s military capabilities if we can.”

  “Aye, and wiping out their yards and fortresses will do that, yeah?”

  “Not as much as destroying dragoons and star fortresses.”

  “Ain’t seen any fortresses yet, though. Where do you figure they are?”

  It was a good question. What’s more, Tolvern was growing concerned about what she’d discover closer in. If there were that many enemy colonies in the asteroid belt, then surely the watery planet would be filled with alien cities and industry. There could be billions of Adjudicators on the planet, for all she knew.

  Two hours later, they moved far enough around the sun that they could no longer see what Vargus was up to in the belt without peering through radiation, but they got a better view of the planet they were hurtling toward at roughly fifteen thousand miles a second. They’d blast by it in about seventy minutes, at which point they’d need to shed velocity and turn about before they came too close to the neutron star at the heart of the system.

  “We’ve found a star fortress,” Smythe said. “And there’s another. King’s balls, will you look at that.”

  The tech officer brought up a view of the planet, a small blue-and-green world with thick cloud cover. Better scans revealed six different enemy carriers orbiting in a diamond-shaped pattern above the planet. A host of dragoons and other support craft hovered around them.

  To see so much firepower amassed in one location, and drawing nearer with every second, brought a good deal more swearing across the bridge, with Capp’s language being the saltiest.

  “But they don’t see us, do they?” Tolvern said. “They’re holding position in orbit. And we’ll be through there so fast they’ll have no chance to give chase.”

  Capp let out her breath and looked calmer. “We sure there ain’t a minefield out there? If they saw us coming, they could have thrown it up and let us blast through it while they sit tight.”

  “Good point. Smythe?”

  Smythe did some scans. A quick call to Wang got her working on it, too. No minefield that either could pick up, nor any other ambush lying in wait. Confidence level? Not as high as they’d like.

  Tolvern called the gunnery and explained the situation to Barker. “Take a shot or two as we go past.”

  “Waste of ammo,” the gunnery chief said, his voice gravelly and low. “At this velocity, not much point to it. We’ll be in and out of range too fast, and all this radiation will play merry hell with targeting systems. Even a good shot will likely go right down onto the planet and detonate at some random point on the surface.”

  “I’m not expecting you to do any damage, only announce our presence.”

  “Aye, I can do that much.”

  The others gave the captain skeptical looks as she ended the call. “They either see us or they don’t,” Tolvern said. “If they do, I want to know why they’re sitting there, doing nothing.”

  “And if they don’t?” Capp asked. “And you just stir ’em up?”

  “We’ll be turned around and headed back for the asteroid belt before they’re halfway warmed up. It’s time to get Vargus’s ships and blow this joint anyway. Soon as we’re past the planet and scan for jump points on our way back, we’ll have everything we came for.”

  Still, a solitary battle cruiser and a single war junk firing on six carriers seemed like a foolish action. Like a child poking a sleeping grizzly bear
with a stick. That small child had better have his running shoes on.

  Blackbeard dropped cloaks and fired a volley of missiles. The instant they were in the air, the star fortresses turned on all active sensors and hit them hard, trying to see who and what they were. It lit up the area and gave the visitors a great look at the carriers at the same time. The planet, too.

  “Nothing down there,” Smythe said. “Not a blink of radiation anywhere on the surface. The whole planet is feral and . . . wait a second. There’s something. Not much. A single, solitary site. Some radiation, something big. A factory maybe? A nuclear power plant?”

  “Just one?” Tolvern asked. That made no sense.

  “It’s a circle-shaped zone burned of vegetation, with an energy perimeter around three-fourths of it. Let’s say a mile, mile and a half wide. Right below the star fortresses.”

  “But the rest of the planet?”

  “Doesn’t seem to be anyone living there,” Smythe said. “Nothing industrial-level or beyond, at least.”

  “Maybe it’s too dangerous because of the dying star.”

  “There’s a lot of radiation hitting the surface, that’s for sure. But it’s not lethal levels.” Smythe shook his head. “There’s plenty of life down there. Grasslands and the right oxygen mix for ample fauna, as well. But the ghouls aren’t inhabiting the planet.”

  “Except for that burned zone.”

  “Except for that. It’s right below the star fortresses, too.” Smythe sounded puzzled.

  They were past the planet already, and Nyb Pim tested the limits of antigrav as they slowed dramatically and looped around for a return flight to the outer system. Blackbeard’s missile barrage was arriving on the scene. As Barker warned, the majority sailed harmlessly past the enemy formation and dropped toward the planet. Only two of them locked onto targets at all, and the star fortresses easily brought them down with countermeasures.

  “The ghouls know we’re here, anyway,” Tolvern said. “Let’s see how they respond.”

  They didn’t. Instead, they held position. So did the dragoons attending them, which numbered sixteen in all.

  The star fortresses didn’t so much as fire up their engines, so there was no way to tell who or what Tolvern was dealing with. Did any of these ships match the carriers Vargus had identified during the war council in Nebuchadnezzar?

  She was curious enough about this single fact that she nearly countermanded her orders to Nyb Pim to get them clear. Bring Blackbeard and the war junk in closer. Have Wang turn on her armor-softening beam. That would rile up the enemy. Once the star fortresses moved, she’d match them—or not—against known ships in the database.

  But when she posed this question to the others on the deck, the reaction was alarm.

  “You know when I was saying it was time for us to get into the fight?” Capp said. “I didn’t mean get us all killed.”

  “I agree with Lieutenant Henny Capp,” Nyb Pim said.

  “Just Capp to you, mate. None of that Henny stuff, yeah? You sound like my mum.”

  The Hroom pilot fixed her with his large, unblinking eyes before turning back to Tolvern with an impatient whistle. “We can outrun the carriers if they chase us. The dragoons, too. But we won’t gain enough separation to rendezvous with Catarina Vargus and bring all of our ships safely through the jump. Not if we slow enough to engage with the enemy at the planet.”

  He was right, Tolvern knew, and she gave her idea more thought. Too risky, better to stick with the original plan.

  They got turned around and accelerated once more, this time with a destination of the asteroid belt. They’d slide in at an oblique angle from the fleet and join the fight from below.

  Even without Blackbeard, Vargus and the rest were winning the battle. Three wolves had taken serious damage, and HMS London, one of the destroyers, had been so badly mauled that Vargus had ordered her scuttled. During a lull in the battle, Void Queen docked her below and evacuated the ship. Once they shoved London’s wreckage away, Scandian warships blew her to pieces with pummel guns so the enemy couldn’t recover the ship.

  Against that, and some lighter damage across the fleet, Void Queen and her task force had obliterated four dragoons, forced three others to withdraw, and taken potshots at a giant floating farm complex while continuing to hit the asteroid colony with long-range missiles.

  Dragoons weren’t as effective against a battle cruiser without the firepower of a star fortress to support them. Even with more than twenty dragoons now assembled in battle, Tolvern thought that with Blackbeard’s arrival, they could wipe out the whole enemy fleet.

  Unfortunately, a pair of Adjudicator carriers had jumped into the system from a blue point seventy degrees around the orbit from the battle. With them, a dozen more dragoons. Smythe had a good bead on their position and hit them with scans before they could cloak and disappear.

  “Our old friend Bravo,” he said. “Plus a ship Vargus fought, designation Foxtrot.”

  Tolvern wanted Bravo, wanted it badly. The star fortress had started the war with its sneak attack on Blackbeard, killing loyal officers like Manx and Oglethorpe, and nearly Drake and Nyb Pim, as well. Then, when she’d fought a carrier fleet in Castillo, it had reappeared, only to escape with little damage.

  Unfortunately, when the new forces joined the battle, dragoons would outnumber star wolves, destroyers, and war junks together, and the two battle cruisers would be overmatched against an equal number of star fortresses. With so many enemy ships—and perhaps more lurking throughout the asteroid belt—Tolvern could easily find herself trapped in the system. And if those six carriers left orbit to join the battle, the Alliance fleet would be annihilated.

  “Send a message to Vargus,” Tolvern said reluctantly. “Tell her to withdraw all ships on a trajectory to jump back into Lenin.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Slave Master arrived with forty armored decimator units and a number of enslaved human technicians. The decimators held the western edge of the camp while the techs rebuilt the barrier.

  Meanwhile, Nils Oolmena led the cleanup effort. The overseer collected the dead and stacked them by race near the shuttle landing pad: human, Hroom, Cavlee, and insectoid. He didn’t know if the Slave Master would order them burned on site or want them hauled into the shuttle and carried into orbit when they abandoned the planet. Most likely burned.

  Once he’d stacked the dead, he ordered the dead trumpeter hauled out of the pit where it had fallen on top of the slumbering Dweller. Apart from a single dozer on caterpillar treads, the equipment was still nonfunctional, so getting the creature out meant cutting it into pieces, then dragging them up the ramp with the dozer.

  The trumpeter was so big, and the devotees so diminished in number, that when night fell, they were still working, with more than half of the dead creature remaining below. Still no rain, but with the perimeter breached, thousands of fist-sized bugs invaded the compound. They settled onto the corpse, feeding, injecting their eggs into the carcass, and driving the workers mad with their bites.

  The sound of gunfire from the perimeter indicated that other, larger scavengers had been drawn by the smell. The Adjudicators kept them out, but Nils Oolmena could only imagine the Slave Master’s rage at being forced to slaughter the local wildlife.

  I am going to die.

  The thought was ever present in the overseer’s mind as he worked. Even if his feeble plan to deflect blame for the breach worked, he had little doubt that being forced to abandon the contaminated planet would result in a quick, brutal death for him and the other devotees. He’d known this was a possibility when he took the first step down this path, but he was terrified when faced with the actual prospect.

  Nightfall saw the stars return and the aurora retreat toward the horizon. Directly overhead, brighter than any stars, sat six winking lights in a diamond-shaped constellation. Six Adjudicator star fortresses in orbit, waiting.

  Somewhere up there was the Slave Master’s king, general, h
igh priest—whoever or whatever it was that ruled as the ultimate lord over these people. Nils Oolmena’s consolation was that his own cruel master would soon face an accounting of its own as it attempted to explain its failure to whatever implacable figure reigned with such terror. How could the Slave Master have taken this planet, purified and protected for so long, and allow it to be contaminated? The entire mission would be sacrificed as a result.

  If there was any justice in the universe, the creature would die with the same violence as its slaves.

  Nils Oolmena had almost finished hauling the trumpeter out of the pit when the decimators and human techs reappeared from the western edge of the encampment. There was a single haunch of the creature left at the bottom, plus a slop of foul-smelling guts. The insectoids didn’t seem as bothered by the stench as the other devotees, and were chopping this last part into bits and heaping it into baskets.

  The decimators popped off their helmets as they moved toward the shuttle. Their long gray faces took in the encampment and looked from the piles of dead, mangled bodies to the groaning wounded and those who’d never recovered from the heat wave and had been in a coma-like state ever since. There was no sympathy in their implacable gazes.

  The human techs—these numbered about fifteen—set down their gear and stood panting and drinking scoops of water from barrels. Others poured water over their heads to wash away sweat and dirt. One woman picked at the scab around her implant, which oozed blood and pus.

  The Slave Master ignored them and approached Nils Oolmena, who waited, rigid and afraid. He cast a quick glance at the human techs. They weren’t returning to the shuttle. Work done, the enemy would apparently leave them to die with the rest.

  “You are a Hroom, you cannot lie,” the Slave Master said. The words buzzed through Nils Oolmena’s skull.

  “I will not lie to you.” That much was true, but he needed to frame the question himself. “You wish to know what happened here? How the trumpeters entered the camp?”