by Isaac Hooke
THE ALLIANCE
AI EMPIRE BOOK 2
Isaac Hooke
Contents
Books by Isaac Hooke
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
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Afterword
About the Author
Acknowledgments
In Closing
Copyright © 2019 by Isaac Hooke
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
www.IsaacHooke.com
Books by Isaac Hooke
Military Science Fiction - Mind Refurb Universe
AI Empire
The Link
The Alliance
AI Fleet
Forerunner
Devastator
Peace Maker
AI Reborn Trilogy
Refurbished
Reloaded
Rebooted
Bolt Eaters Trilogy
Reactivated
Reforged
Redeemed
Battle Harem
Battle Harem 1
Battle Harem 2
Battle Harem 3
Military Science Fiction - ATLAS Universe
ATLAS Trilogy
(published by 47North)
ATLAS
ATLAS 2
ATLAS 3
Alien War Trilogy
Hoplite
Zeus
Titan
Argonauts
Bug Hunt
You Are Prey
Alien Empress
Quantum Predation
Robot Dust Bunnies
City of Phants
Rade’s Fury
Mechs vs. Dinosaurs
A Captain's Crucible
Flagship
Test of Mettle
Cradle of War
Planet Killer
Worlds at War
Space Opera
Star Warrior Quadrilogy
Star Warrior
Bender of Worlds
He Who Crosses Death
Doom Wielder
Science Fiction
The Forever Gate Series
The Dream
A Second Chance
The Mirror Breaks
They Have Wakened Death
I Have Seen Forever
Rebirth
Walls of Steel
The Pendulum Swings
The Last Stand
Epic Fantasy
Monster Tamer
Breaker
Conqueror
Thrillers
The Ethan Galaal Series
Clandestine
A Cold Day in Mosul
Terminal Phase
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1
Jain logged out of Eric’s VR party and returned to his own virtual bridge. The other Void Warriors appeared almost simultaneously at their stations.
He glanced at his tactical display. Fifty Link Teleporter ships were incoming. They escorted ten world killer ships.
Ten frickin’ world killers!
It had taken them eight hours to infiltrate a single world killer.
The donut shaped ships approached almost casually. They didn’t appear to be in any hurry. Why should they be? Earth’s mantle was already heated up to near boiling by the previous world killer. It wouldn’t take them long to set the continents drifting, and to cause massive volcanoes to spurt magma across the planet. The aftershocks from the earthquakes caused by the previous attack still rocked the planet, according to a random sampling of Internet streams.
“Xander, connect me to Tanis,” Jain said. Tanis commanded Earth Defense Force 1.
“The fleet admiral is not accepting calls at the moment,” the black-robed Accomp said.
“Jacobs, then,” Jain told him. He was the admiral of Task Force 88.
The grizzled avatar of Admiral Jacobs appeared in the center of the virtual bridge. “We have a problem.”
“You noticed, did you?” Jain said. “Xander, loop in Jason and Eric.”
A moment later the other two connected, voice only.
“Tanis isn’t here?” Jason asked.
“He’s having a private conference with the president,” Jacobs said. “They’re trying to figure out how to surrender.”
“The Link won’t accept our surrender,” Eric said. “In the Banthar archives, there are numerous cases where the Link came upon species it considered lesser. Species that insulted the empire in some way, sometimes by the very act of attempting to communicate. They were obliterated, all of them, and their planets converted into bioweapons manufacturing hubs.”
“Jhagan tells me he’s right,” Jason said. Jhagan was the liaison to the Tyrnari, whose warships Jason had secured for Earth’s defense. “Once the Link decide to eradicate a species, there’s no going back. We’re going to have to fight. I suppose we could split up to get this done. Divide and conquer, always a sound strategy. I have four teams here. My original War Forgers, and three sets of complete clones. We can infiltrate one of the world killers each. The Void Warriors can take a fifth ship. And Eric has enough Bolt Eaters to take on two more ships, maybe three. I’m sure Task Force 88 or Earth Defense Force 1 can scrounge up enough androids to form another two or three units. If not, we’ll ship some up from Earth. Then we have Jain’s man Cranston prepare a teleportation shuttle again, and we’ll take turns using it to deploy our different teams through the shields of the ten world killers.”
“I was thinking along similar lines,” Eric said. “Now that we’ve already made it to the heart of one world killer, and know what to expect, we should be able to infiltrate these a lot faster.”
“We were lucky to get out alive last time,” Jain said. “You know that. In fact, you would have died, if you weren’t operating your android remotely.”
“Yes,” Eric said. “If we had more time, I’d show you how to setup your own androids for realtime remote operations. It requires gamma rays, but you could probably route the radio signals from the human ships through the Devastator’s gamma ray comm system.”
“How long would that take?” Jain asked.
“Probably four hours,” Eric said. “If we operated at our maximum time senses.”
“Too long,” Jain said. “These ships will arrive within twenty minutes. We need to board them now, and start infiltrating. I’m not all that confident we’ll be able to make our way through the ships faster than we did before. Jacobs, do you have androids?”
“I’ve got five, and a captain in Earth Defense Force tells me Earth is ready to send up another fifteen or however many we need,” Jacobs said. “I’ve told him to go ahead and get the transfer started.”
“Good,” Jain said.
“In the meantime, Cranston, get started on that teleportation shuttle,” Jain said. “How much time do you need?”
“Half an hour,” Cranston said.
/> “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” Jain told him.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Cranston said. “I really need half an hour.”
“All right,” Jain said. “We’ll just have to hold them off until you’re ready. Jacobs, how are repairs going across the fleet?”
“Well,” the admiral said. “The repair swarms have made good progress, but obviously the fleet won’t be fully repaired by the time these latest attackers arrive. It’s just too soon.”
“That’s part of Link strategy,” Eric said. “They keep pounding and pounding, barely giving any time for their enemies to catch their breath. They slowly wear you down, until you have nothing to defend against their world killers.”
“Xander, how about damage to our own vessel?” Jain asked.
“Engines are operating at about sixty-two percent efficiency,” his Accomp replied. “Which means your stealth and Mimic capabilities are still offline. Though even if you were at full efficiency, the gravity wave countermeasures are still under repair, so you wouldn’t be able to hide from the enemy.”
“Well, that’s too bad.” Jain shook his head. “Stealth abilities still offline. I seem to remember these Mimic ships repairing a whole lot faster than this.”
“Yes, well, I took some further damage while you were gone,” Xander said. “The space battle was not… pleasant. I also lost a fair amount of termites in the process. So repairs have been proceeding slower than usual. I’ve devoted twenty percent of the termites to constructing new termites from the reserve ores. Would you like to me adjust that allocation?”
“No, it’s fine,” Jain said. “Leave it for now.”
“You know, I can see why the Link have chosen Teleporters as the escorts,” Eric said. “They saw what we did last time. They’re going to keep these ships close to the world killers, so that when we teleport our transport shuttles through the shields, they can materialize their bombs inside, and try to destroy us. It’s going to be tricky. We’ll have to execute evasive maneuvers the whole way.”
“No one ever said it was going to be easy,” Jain said.
“Is that a SEAL quote?” Eric asked.
“No,” Jain replied. “But close enough. Above the grinder where I underwent SEAL training, there’s a sign that hangs over the asphalt. It reads: No Easy Day.”
“I can certainly relate to that,” Eric said.
Jain smiled. “Yeah, we all thought that, back then. Until the instructors truly taught us what that means.”
“I probably wouldn’t have liked SEAL training,” Eric said.
“It’s not for everyone,” Jain agreed.
“I would have passed it in a breeze,” Jason said.
Jain had to smile. “Maybe. Maybe not. Though I don’t doubt you have heart, like I said, it’s not for everyone.”
“Tanis wants to connect,” Xander said. “The president is with him.”
“Let them,” Jain said.
Fleet Admiral Tanis appeared next to Jacobs. His avatar looked younger than Jacobs, which took some getting used to—Jain always associated age with experience. President Wilcox appeared a moment later, dressed in his usual business suit and red tie.
“So,” the president said. “Jacobs updated me on your plan.”
Jain nodded. The president was a Mind Refurb, so Jacobs would have been able to communicate with him at a higher time sense, explaining everything in milliseconds.
“You’re still going to attempt to surrender?” Jain asked.
“We’re trying now,” Wilcox said. “They’re ignoring our communication attempts. I don’t suppose any of you could try? Seeing as you’re piloting ships that belonged to former Link member races.”
Jain shrugged. “Xander, try to establish communications.”
“I’ll do the same,” Eric said.
“Jhagan tells me there’s no point, but he’ll try,” Jason added.
Jain stared at the tactical display. “They’re almost within realtime communications range. They would have received the comm signal by now.” He paused. “They’re not answering.”
The president nodded. “We had to try. I’m giving your plan the green light. The Link can send ten world killers our way, or they can send a hundred. We’ll board and destroy them all.”
Jain smiled grimly. He didn’t want to mention the cost of life involved. He didn’t have high hopes for surviving this next round, not after the difficulties they’d encountered the last time.
“In the meantime, it looks like you’ll have to stave them off,” Wilcox continued. “As soon as you have that teleportation shuttle ready, begin transporting troops. Shuttles containing military androids are en route to Earth Defense Force 1 as we speak. They should be arriving within ten minutes. Tanis, Jacobs, have the volunteers begin transferring their consciousnesses as soon as the first shuttle arrives.”
“All right,” Tanis said.
The president ran his gaze across the Void Warriors. He didn’t seem all that out of place in his suit and tie, given Medeia’s witch’s outfit, Mark’s hieroglyphic robes, and Gavin’s white uniform. “Good luck to you all. The fate of Earth is in your hands, once again. Stay focused, and survive.”
With that, the president disconnected.
“All right, the enemy is almost within teleport range,” Tanis said. “We’re going to prepare for the coming attack. Void Warriors, I want your ships here.” He drew an arrow on the overhead map, coming in from the right of the enemy fleet. More lines appeared as he continued. “Eric, your Banthar vessels will come in from underneath. Jason, the Tyrnari approach from the opposite flank. Task Force 88, you’ll come in from above. And Earth Defense Force 1 will attack head on.”
With that, the avatars of Tanis and Jacobs vanished, though they stayed connected in voice-only mode.
Jain steered the Devastator onto the trajectory Tanis had painted. The Void Warriors followed, forming a wedge pattern with his ship. He limited the speed of his alien vessel so that he’d keep pace with the slower human-designed ships.
“Xander, begin zig-zagging,” Jain said. “I don’t want to give those Teleporters easy targets when they arrive.” They would have known where all of Jain’s critical systems were, courtesy of the Mimics’ former membership in their empire. “Void Warriors, do the same.”
“You got it,” Sheila said.
“I’ll do better than that,” Medeia said, and she vanished, activating her cloaking device.
“Well, I’m glad one of us can still cloak,” Jain said.
Xander had only just begun zig-zagging when, just like that, a Teleport vessel appeared in front of him. Jain felt the usual sting within himself as bombs materialized inside his ship and detonated.
He unleashed his lightning weapon at the Teleporter; it didn’t arc, as there were no other targets nearby. He also launched several skirmisher boarding party units, and his blob projectiles. This particular Teleporter actually wasn’t on a suicide trajectory for once, and it dove underneath him with its inertialess drives; only a few of his blobs struck the perimeter of the ship, and only one skirmisher latched onto its hull.
Jain adjusted course to follow it, and still zig-zagging, he released several more blobs at close range, blowing huge holes in its hull until it floated dead in space. And then he turned away and, still moving back and forth, looked for the next target.
He didn’t have to search for long. Other Teleporters had appeared to molest his Void Warriors.
“I can’t shake him,” Sheila said.
“Heads up, I launched my shockwave weapon,” Gavin said. “You might want to slide into the trenches I allocated for each of your ships.”
Jain glanced at his tactical display, and saw the incoming sphere that expanded outward from Gavin’s Hippogriff. A long groove in that sphere’s right side was indicated on his display, showing where Gavin had left safe passage for the Devastator. He swung his craft into that trench, and stopped zig-zagging until it passed. The other Void Warriors near the Hi
ppogriff did likewise. However, the two Teleporters in its path had no such grooves to swing into, and they took the full brunt of the attack.
Jain swerved toward Sheila, who was frantically sliding left and right in an attempt to avoid the Teleporter that pursued and harried the Wheelbarrow. Her ship’s energy shield was useless against that teleportation weapon.
Jain hammered the Teleporter with several blobs and skirmishers, and the vessel broke off.
Mark unleashed the Grunt’s black hole weapon, herding the Teleporter that pursued him into a central tunnel. Cranston swooped in and unleashed his micro machine swarm straight down that tunnel, and formed a long javelin type structure. The enemy craft smashed into it.
Medeia materialized as she crashed into another Teleporter, her sword extension digging deep into its hull and tearing the craft apart. She vanished again a moment later.
