An impressive array of outgoing fire launched from Albion warships, followed immediately by an answering salvo from the enemy fleet. Good lord, the alien carriers could put a lot of ordnance into the air. Combined with fire support from the dragoons, it exceeded Tolvern’s by a solid margin.
“Defense grid, don’t let me down.”
Lomelí, Smythe, and Ping were already working long-range countermeasures, and having some success. But it was clear that some of those missiles would break through. The shields were going to get a workout.
“Looks like you’re finally going to get your wish, Lieutenant,” Tolvern told Capp.
Capp blinked. “Hey, it weren’t my wish, Cap’n.” She touched her ear and snapped something at the gunnery. If it was Barker, the old salt would be giving her grief at the same time.
Pummel gun fire arrived. Three dragoons were facing the incoming wolves, and had launched bits of chaff, but the Scandians punched through it like it was made of tissue paper. Too late, the dragoons realized this was no ghost fleet, but real Scandian warships. They fired cannon, even as kinetic fire struck them along the bow.
One dragoon took a heavy beating midsection and blew its torus ring. More fire ripped through the suddenly weakened armor, and it fell back, bleeding. The other two dragoons would have suffered the same if Olafsen’s wolves had been trying to kill them.
Instead, all ten Scandian warships smashed through the weak defensive position and came at Foxtrot. The massive carrier dwarfed the individual star wolves, each of which was roughly the size of a dragoon or a destroyer, but it was out of position, firing toward the battle cruisers, and its entire port-side flank lay exposed to the incoming attack.
What the Scandians lacked in battle was long-range striking ability. During fights against rogue raiding crews, most of it pre-Alliance, Tolvern, Vargus, and others had learned that if you held them at arm’s length, you could punish them with torpedoes and missiles. But let those ships within close range of your hull, and the power of their guns could open you up like a tin can.
Foxtrot, for all its armor and size, had to roll hard to keep from losing a huge swath of shielding and weapon systems. As it rolled, its ability to fire against the battle cruisers diminished, and Blackbeard and Void Queen pressed in eagerly. Brawlers in front, like shields. Wang’s forces lurked somewhere above. Destroyers shifted to hold off dragoons that charged to stop them.
Those working countermeasures across the Royal Navy forces had done yeoman’s work in bringing down incoming missiles, but some of them began to break through. One large explosion cracked against Warthog, and Vargus’s brawler took hits as well.
“Warning,” Jane said. “Level-one detonation expected.”
It struck, lights flickered, and a damage report appeared on Tolvern’s console, flashing yellow on the number four.
“There you go, Capp,” Tolvern said. “We’re back in the action.”
“About bloody time,” Capp said. A strange, almost manic light gleamed in her eyes.
Foxtrot had its guns on the star wolves. One Scandian ship after another found itself raked by missiles, pulse fire, and kinetic shot and was forced to withdraw. The last to pull away was Boghammer, and it had two dragoons on its tail, in addition to outgoing fire. That was Svensen’s ship, and Olafsen’s command post.
“Get out of there, you fools,” Tolvern said.
Hellhound, Thunder, and Boneless swung into position to relieve their fellow wolf. Thunder took a blow that severely damaged its rear shields, and as it pulled into position behind the others, a dragoon sent two missiles and a burst of pulse fire into its engines. The injured star wolf lost plasma, then rolled as a secondary explosion burst out the hull on the opposite side. Other star wolves tried to come to its aid in the teeth of Foxtrot’s fury. The carrier seemed bent on revenge.
“Escape pods in the air,” Smythe said.
It hadn’t looked so serious yet as to abandon ship—in fact, the breach was already sealed and the engine coming back online—but Scandians wouldn’t bail unless the situation were grave. And seconds later, something detonated in the ship’s stores, and it exploded.
Wang’s war junks made their move. Concentrated energy beams lit up Bravo. It had continued its bombardment, now manageable thanks to Foxtrot’s diversion into a side battle, but the force of it was strong enough to keep the two battle cruisers at bay, unless Tolvern wanted to make a full charge into the jaws of the enemy. Which she did not, her desire for revenge on Bravo notwithstanding.
You’re not trying to carry the day. Preserve forces, retreat, fight again.
But she hadn’t yet earned a limited victory. She’d lost a star wolf, seen damage to a pair of destroyers, and suffered additional blows across her fleet.
Bravo turned about and flailed for the war junks. Outgoing missiles struck dangerously close to where she thought Three Rooster and First Dragon were positioned. But it bought Tolvern some breathing space.
“Send orders to our destroyers,” she told Smythe. “I want them breaking up dragoon formations. We have to keep them out of the fight.”
She called Olafsen personally. Three of the remaining wolves were scooping up away pods with the Thunder survivors, while the other six massed for another attack. Olafsen grumbled when she told him to come back around and support the battle cruisers. He wanted to make another run at Foxtrot and follow up on the damage he’d inflicted.
But Foxtrot was well out of position, and would take another hour and a half, minimum, to get back in the fight, whereas the wolves could charge in and strike Bravo hard from above while Blackbeard and Void Queen hit from below and to starboard. She called Vargus, and fed her data Nyb Pim had worked up for the attack.
Within minutes, the Alliance forces were back in the action. Bravo was still hunting for the war junks, and that gave them an opening. Torpedoes, missiles, and soon the heavy cannon were in play and forcing the star fortress to respond. Nine star wolves joined the fight and delivered blows of their own. In less than twenty minutes, the enemy carrier had taken the kind of punishment that would have knocked apart any Albion ship short of Dreadnought, but the enemy continued absorbing and delivering blows.
The destroyers were doing great work with the dragoons. They knocked three out of the fight, against one of their own, which was forced to retreat behind a nearby brawler when pulse fire ripped a hole in her upper decks.
Unfortunately, Foxtrot now rejoined the fight, and brought along fresh dragoons. Several had materialized from nowhere—the well-hidden reserves that had been lurking these past days in Lenin—and they came in so hard against Olafsen that he was forced to withdraw. Then dragoons, supported by a stream of side fire from Foxtrot’s long-range missiles, made a wedge in Tolvern’s destroyer fleet.
Suddenly, what had seemed a victory in the making had all the signs of pending disaster. Tolvern ordered a hasty retreat. They still had enough separation from Foxtrot that if Bravo pursued immediately, it would find itself under heavy fire from the departing Alliance forces until its fellow Adjudicator ships could organize for battle.
She almost hoped it happened, dreaded the result if it did, and could only sink back in exhaustion when the enemy paused to regroup. Both carriers had suffered damage, and a number of dragoons were in trouble. The result of the battle was a stalemate, which was what she’d hoped for in the first place.
Tolvern made the call. Flee for the outer rim.
#
Tolvern took a call from Vargus a couple of hours later, when she’d showered and was readying for some needed rest after twenty-two hours on the bridge. There was no video, and the other woman sounded equally exhausted.
“Why didn’t they press the fight?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” Tolvern admitted. “It would have been a close thing, but I’d have liked the odds if I were the enemy commander. You must have put the fear of God into them after smashing Kilo like you did.”
“We might have wo
n, we might have lost,” Vargus said simply. “But I don’t think Kilo’s destruction has anything to do with it. They wanted to fight, until suddenly they didn’t. It wasn’t because the balance of power had changed.”
“They’re still following us,” Tolvern pointed out. “It’s not like they ran.”
“But more to keep us hemmed in, prevent us from leaving Lenin.”
“Why do you think that is?”
Vargus hesitated. “I think the ghouls disengaged for the same reason we did, and it wasn’t fear. I think they expect the next encounter to give them better odds.”
“Meaning reinforcements. The six in orbit above the planet?”
“Could be. Or maybe Fox or Drake are bringing unpleasant company. Or maybe another Adjudicator fleet is winging in here after trashing some other alien race. There are a lot of possibilities, and we know the enemy has a whole lot of warships out there somewhere.”
“We have a whole lot of warships, too,” Tolvern said. “And so far we’ve been giving as good—or better—than we take.”
“I know it. Frankly, I like our position now a lot more than when we were facing Apex. That was desperate. This feels merely . . . all right, so it’s pretty bad. And yet . . .”
“I hear you. We might merely be killed, enslaved . . . reduced. But at least the ghouls aren’t eating us.”
Vargus gave a little laugh, then cleared her throat. When she spoke again, her tone was serious. “I’m on board with your strategy, and I’m optimistic, too. But I can’t help but feel the enemy is waiting to spring a nasty surprise.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The dead lay piled in great heaps, so many that they formed a hill to the west of the landing pad that pushed all the way to the perimeter fence. The human technicians brought by the Slave Master had reestablished the perimeter, but it was a half measure, and didn’t keep flying bugs from dropping in from the sky.
The bugs laid their eggs among the dead, which soon squirmed with millions of green maggots as long and slender as Nils Oolmena’s index finger. When the wind shifted toward the excavation, a stench settled at the bottom. Humans gagged, and Cavlee fell ill and died by the hundreds. The insectoids continued their relentless, unthinking work.
As did the Hroom. Now that the Slave Master had put the sugar eaters to death, Nils Oolmena and his people were the most durable. The radiation from the dying star affected them less, as did the humidity, the heat, and the disease spread by the rotting pile of corpses.
But no Hroom planets had yet been reduced, only scattered colonies, so they were few in number, whereas the Adjudicators had an endless supply of the other races, and so they came. And died.
The Slave Master didn’t seem to care for the stench, either, and observed from behind his green, faceless armor. He had no tolerance for laggards; the moment a devotee fell, he ordered them killed. Once, when an insectoid brushed his armor, he slammed a spike through its carapace and watched it die, twitching.
Another time, a human begged Nils Oolmena for more water. Before the Hroom overseer could respond, the Adjudicator came over in big strides, grabbed the woman’s forehead in an armored fist, and crushed her skull. He threw the body at Nils Oolmena’s feet while she was still convulsing and alive. Feeling faint and ill, the Hroom ordered two nearby Cavlee to drag her to the pile of dead. They did so with low, plaintive keens of “Cavlee. Cavlee.”
The work was almost done. The Dweller stirred beneath the machinery and the ant-like creatures crawling across its vast, rubbery skin. The workers exposed a tip of metal that curled in spirals as it came clear of the ground. The Slave Master ordered the equipment brought out of the pit and the work to continue by hand so as not to damage it.
As the object emerged on the back of the Dweller, Nils Oolmena recognized its form as not so different from the devices that emerged from the skulls and exoskeletons of the devotees.
It was an implant, designed to control the creature when it arose.
So it doesn’t serve willingly. It cannot be controlled without force.
He laughed bitterly inside. Another piece of the great fiction the Adjudicators had constructed for themselves. They were worse deceivers than the humans; they’d constructed an entire belief system of purity to justify exterminating their enemies and controlling the life of every planet they touched. Call it purity or preservation, it was still built on a foundation of lies.
Over the next two days, as the work continued at a frantic pace, they uncovered five more of the objects along the back of the Dweller. The monster was waking beneath them, and the ground shuddered until it knocked the devotees from their feet and toppled the rotting mound of bodies above.
“Tomorrow,” the Slave Master announced. “Tomorrow we wake the Holy Dweller and send it to the skies.”
The assembled hordes quivered and moaned and whistled and clacked their chitinous parts. Nils Oolmena stood in the midst of their panting, sweating bodies as they listened with rapt attention. He was silent, thoughtful.
“I’ll send a message to the other Adjudicators so that they are ready,” the Slave Master continued. “Tonight you will sleep and eat the last of your food supplies—every one of you will work tomorrow, and you must have strength.”
More exultation came from the devotees, such a tumult that Nils Oolmena’s head ached with the noise. It didn’t seem to occur to any of them that if they devoured the last of the food, it could only mean that there would be no need for it beyond tomorrow’s labors.
When the devotees finally quieted, trumpeters from the plains were sounding from somewhere to the southwest, as if they’d heard the noise and wished to call a challenge.
The Adjudicator turned its helmet to study the devotees. “I see many who are too weak already. A burden to the rest. They will be culled. Overseer, identify them now.”
Something buzzed in Nils Oolmena’s head. Insectoids moved out from among the others and came to stand in front of him, quivering. They clacked their mandibles and snicked their claws open and closed.
Reluctantly, he moved among the devotees. There was a Cavlee on its knees. It was as good as dead anyway, and he gave a sign. The insectoids snipped its throat. Two humans hugged to hold each other upright through shared strength. Nils Oolmena nodded, and the insectoids gutted them. Another human, then a Cavlee that may have already been dead. An insectoid was next—its fellow creatures tore off its limbs without pity or hesitation.
Nils Oolmena moved back toward the Adjudicator. Was it enough? Please let it end.
“More!” the Slave Master said. “Still too many weak. Cull them! That one there, and that one. More like that—there must be dozens.”
The overseer had no choice but to comply. By the time the whole grisly business was done, perhaps ten percent of the workforce had been killed. The survivors hauled away the dead.
The Adjudicator turned toward its own quarters, dug into a hollow in the hill of dirt and rock from the excavation, as far from the others as possible. As it passed, it spoke, perhaps only to itself, but Nils Oolmena heard it clearly.
“By tomorrow night this disgusting filth will be purified.”
It was then that Nils Oolmena made his plan.
#
He carefully peeled back the tarp and crawled out of his hole on his hands and knees. It was darker than it had been. The sky was nearly clear of the auroras, with only a single strand of silvery green above the horizon, as beautiful as the circlet around the Hroom empress’s forehead.
He thought about Lum Gee. The poor, doomed Hroom. Doomed by human sugar, by the Adjudicator implant, and by Nils Oolmena’s hopeless efforts to stop the work. He remembered holding her broken body in his arms after she’d been thrown skyward by an enraged trumpeter. She’d trusted him, trusted that in death, at least, she’d helped him thwart the enemy.
What a fool he’d been. He hadn’t done anything of the kind. The Adjudicators were hypocrites. The work would continue, the contamination of the planet be damn
ed. By this time tomorrow the site would no longer exist, but it would be erased in the most destructive way possible.
He guessed that a bomb would fall from the diamond formation of star fortresses glittering overhead. Their last act, before leaving this planet. Nuke the work site from orbit.
Nils Oolmena spared a final thought for Lum Gee. “I will see you in the Endless Dreamland, friend.” He gave a worshipful hum from deep in his throat.
He remained cautious as he emerged from his hole. There were sounds in camp, and he listened to them carefully, alert to any hint of danger. The wind off the plains. Coughs from holes and trenches. The squirming, buzzing sound of maggots and bugs from the pile of dead. A groan from someone at the waste trenches when he passed. Human, he thought.
These things barely registered after so long in this hell. He was listening for the sound of the Adjudicator or of insectoids on patrol. Would the Slave Master exhibit some final bit of paranoia to protect his prize?
No, there was no point to it. The devotees would never lift a finger, and what could they manage anyway? There was nothing one could do to harm the Dweller. As far as they were concerned it was invulnerable, practically immortal.
He slipped into the shadow of the heavy equipment where it sat idle above the pit. It hadn’t been used since unearthing the first of the Dweller’s implants. Rusted and worn from rain and heat and overwork, it would be destroyed along with everything else. But each tractor or dozer had a box of tools attached to the back. Unsecured, like everything else in the camp.
He popped the lid off one box after the other and picked through the tools with his fingers. He found a hammer, and discarded it in favor of an electric drill. That, in turn, gave way to a plasma torch. It still had a charge.
Nils Oolmena slung the fluxor over his shoulder and hefted the nozzle and hose. He gave a final glance around to make sure that nobody was watching, and picked his way to the edge of the excavation. A few minutes later he was at the bottom, walking across the curved hump of the Dweller’s back. Strange hoses and appendages twisted and curved as they emerged from the ground and plunged back in, some as thick as his leg, others as big around as the Slave Master’s shuttle.
The Alliance Trilogy Page 46
