Finest Hour (The Exiled Fleet Book 3)

by Richard Fox

  “That why first army have trouble,” Keoni scratched his face. “That why shaping open.”

  “How long have you served the masters? Why?” Seaver asked.

  “Masters came to my home…they don’t give choice,” Keoni said. “Serve here,” he raised a hand high, “or serve here” he lowered his hand. “I can fight,” his hand wavered between the two levels.

  “Why do they have blue or green skin?” Powell asked.

  “So you know who the true masters are,” Keoni said with a smirk.

  “Where did they come from?” Inez asked.

  “Far,” Keoni brushed his hand away. “Beyond ke kai sky river. You call the Veil, yeah?”

  “Slip travel’s impossible through the Veil,” Seaver said.

  “Can I have more?” Inez asked.

  Keoni tucked the bottle next to his body.

  “Beyond ke kai,” Keoni said. “They the old kings, come back to be the same kings. Not kings we remember, but kings. Juliae…she from the low village, no strength in her family. She pledge to Lord Eubulus. Be part of big name. Remember that. Help her name and she help you. My themata all from Papa’apoho…I’m last. Rest all dead, or go to the suits.”

  “Suits?” Powell asked.

  “You go shaping, not suits,” Keoni chuckled. “Only those not worth the bullet go to the suits. But you go now. I see you again.”

  The door opened behind them, and a Daegon male soldier in full armor was there. He motioned them out of the office and put cuffs on their wrists, all connected to a line he held.

  “Wait, where are we—” Seaver’s question caught in his throat as the torque tightened. The Daegon led them away with a jerk on their restraints.

  ****

  Seaver pulled at the straps holding him down on a gurney. A bright light overhead washed out most of the room he was in. All he could hear were muffled screams through the walls.

  A Daegon in medical scrubs, his sky blue skin shone around a mask over his eyes, nose and mouth, held up a syringe filled with silver liquid.

  “Stop,” Seaver said. “Just stop. What are you going do to—”

  The Daegon slapped a gloved hand over his mouth and held head down and jabbed the needle into his carotid artery. Seaver’s vision blurred and the feeling of his body faded away. The Daegon turned away.

  “Faaaa,” Seaver’s lips felt like rubber as more babbled out of his mouth.

  The Daegon lifted up a rack of glass vials and attached IV tubes to them. The first went into his leg and fire coursed through his veins.

  Seaver tried to scream, but he was paralyzed.

  More needles entered his body, each more agonizing than the last.

  CHAPTER 15

  Tiberian gripped the deck of his bridge with the talons built into his battle armor. The needle pains up and down his spine from the armor prompting him into combat helped sharpen his mind as his ship came out of slip space.

  A dome rotated up and around his command seat and a holo field formed around him. His Minotaur hung just in front of him as the rest of the Daegon armada snapped into existence in a field of icons and data feeds.

  He reached out and New Madras appeared, the pale blue of the Indus ships and defenses already visible to him. He grasped at the Amritsar fort then plucked at the defenders’ formations one by one.

  “Looking for a decent target?” Gustavus asked from over his shoulder.

  “There is only one target that matters to me,” Tiberian said. “The buoys have all been destroyed…where are the Albion ships?”

  “A hard-bore slip journey,” said Gustavus, scratching at the fresh scar tissue on his face. “If Gage chose that as an escape…they could be on their way to anywhere in feral space.”

  Tiberian snarled, then barked commands to his bridge crew on the other side of the dome. Torpedoes erupted from the Indus star fort and converged on the leading ships of the Daegon force.

  “You’re worried about the wrong thing, Uncle,” Gustavus said. “You know my father’s been hailing you for the last ten seconds?” The younger man motioned to a pulsating icon.

  “When I need your help, I’ll ask for it.” Tiberian stabbed a finger at the icon. “What!”

  Eubulus appeared in the holo, his form so perfectly rendered Tiberian could almost smell him.

  “I almost doubted your Albion strays had made it here,” Eubulus said. “The Indus fight the way they’ve been taught—ready for an incursion from the outer system, not a knife to the gut.”

  Tiberian held his arms to the side, then brought his palms together. The entire battle space around New Madras appeared in the holo, with Eubulus standing next to him as he examined the same data.

  “We’re within their lines,” Tiberian said. Icons for Daegon ships on the planet-side edge of their formation went amber with damage as more and more torpedoes struck home. “Let us defeat them in detail and bring this world under our control so I may continue my—”

  “Tunnel vision will be the end of you,” Eubulus said. “I almost doubted you as to the Albion ships being here…yet they are.” He reached to one side and the holo shifted to the outer moons, where Gage and his ships had sprinted ahead of the much larger Castle Itter on their return trip to New Madras.

  “Such an easy target,” Tiberian said. “Helm! Bring us about and—”

  “No,” Eubulus said bluntly, “no, you remain here under my command.”

  “My writ—”

  “Can. Wait.” Eubulus looked up from the battle, his heavy jowls working as he stared his brother down. “You would break formation now and show your belly to the Indus? No. We break the defenders first, that is my writ. I’ll allow you to play in the aftermath once it suits me.”

  “Eubulus, it would be so easy if I just—”

  Gustavus put a hand to his hilt.

  “Then let us break them,” Tiberian said. “Perhaps the Albians will give in to despair and simply surrender. I’ll have my fun with their crews, but Gage is mine.”

  “One thing,” Eubulus said, “that larger vessel with them…the Castle Itter. It is not to be touched. Baroness’ orders.”

  “She mandates mercy now?”

  “She does as she likes, and we obey. I want the Minotaur to engage and destroy this formation.” Eubulus gestured at a group of six Indus cruisers, all on a straight-line course for the Daegon’s troop transports. “Simple. Clear. Do it, then return for more orders. Don’t make me regret tolerating you.”

  Eubulus vanished.

  “Too easy,” Tiberian said. “Helm, set the following course.” He stretched a line away from the Daegon formation and curved it over the Indus cruisers’ projected path. His ship turned within the holo and he felt the slightest pressure through the soles of his boots through the deck.

  “Why not charge them head-on?” Gustavus asked. “Less time. Same result.”

  “Eubulus chides me for myopia, while his child fails at the same lesson,” Tiberian said. He zoomed out slightly, and projected courses from all the nearby Indus ships appeared. “What do you see?”

  Gustavus walked around the holo, hands clasped behind his back, eyes sharp. “The Indus…are moving about like roaches in a sudden light. I see no direction. No strategy. A better commander would have tightened around us, hammered us into the anvil that is their star fort.”

  “You do see,” Tiberian said. “We already landed themata soldiers on the planet. More than anything, they’re afraid of what’s in our troop transports now. And a fearful enemy makes mistakes. Guns,” he said to one side, “ready the turrets. Finish them in one volley. Any crew that misses will feel the whip.”

  “By your will!” came back.

  “By now the Indus commander knows I’m coming for him,” Tiberian said. “What will he do…”

  Bombers launched from the Indus ships, along with a fighter escort. The smaller craft did not vector toward the Minotaur, but leapt forward on afterburners toward the Daegon troop ships.

  “Well?”
Tiberian asked.

  “They are desperate,” Gustavus said, “fixated on the threat within the transports and not this ship. They think either the bombers will take out the transports…or they’ll run our gauntlet and manage it themselves. I would have set the bombers on our ship in the hope of slowing us down.”

  “I prefer they have hope,” Tiberian said. “It is more satisfying to crush it and see their will to fight crumble. These Indus have their back to the wall…and they’re going to fight to the end for it. Same result, just more work for us. Shall we kill them now or let them suffer a bit?”

  “Their systems are still largely intact.” Gustavus’s head tilted from side to side. “Let’s see if we can make them panic.”

  “Good instincts,” Tiberian said. He focused the holo on the Indus fighters and bombers, nearly sixty craft carrying enough ordnance to gut the Daegon landing force.

  “We’re within firing range,” came from the bridge crew.

  Tiberian held up a hand.

  One of the troop ships nearest the oncoming Indus force rotated around and made straight for the bombers. Hull panels exploded off and a swarm of missiles twisted into the void and streaked toward the attackers.

  Tiberian smiled as the bombers vanished off the holo like candles snuffed out by a gust of wind.

  “Q-ships,” Gustavus said. “I didn’t know we were using them.”

  The Indus cruisers held their course…then their courses wavered as their prows angled away from the troop ships.

  Tiberian chopped his hand down.

  Energy cannons fired up and down the Minotaur, pounding the dorsal shields and weakening their energy fields with each strike. The reverberations across the shields grew stronger until the barriers failed and the first cruiser was hit in the bridge superstructure. Two of the Indus ships managed to return fire, and both were crushed by the Daegon’s answer. The rest of the ships succumbed within minutes.

  “They will be ruled,” Gustavus said with a smile.

  “That they will.” Tiberian turned his attention on the Albion fleet, still many hours away. He put a hand on the hilt of his sword and looked at Gustavus, whose attention was on the unfolding battle.

  “Why are they so determined to return to a fight they can’t win?” Tiberian asked.

  “What was that?” Gustavus glanced up.

  “The Albion ferals…” He stalked toward the edge of the holo dome and pointed at a crewman. “Get me contact with our infiltrators already on the surface.”

  “By your will,” the Daegon woman with deep-purple skin lowered her head in submission.

  “Something catch your attention?” Gustavus asked. “My father will need our firepower for the assault on the star fort.”

  “Set the course yourself.” Tiberian sat in the command seat and brought up a menu with a wave of his hand. He tapped on an icon within Theni City and waited as a connection went through.

  “I may have a scent.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “Bank left! Left!” Wyman shouted into his mic as a Daegon fighter closed on Ivor’s Typhoon. He rolled his plane to one side as Ivor cut across ahead of him and opened fire with a quick burst of his cannons. A bolt clipped the Daegon’s tail and it went into an uncontrolled dive, corkscrewing into a city block and exploding on impact.

  “Ah…damnit,” Wyman said, looking down at the growing flames.

  “Thanks for the save,” Ivor said and looped around to join his wing. “Civilians are all supposed to be in bunkers by now. Blame the Daegon for the mess. Let’s not add ourselves to it, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Wyman scanned around the virtual glass of his cockpit, looking for more enemy fighters.

  “Cobras, this is Marksman,” the squadron commander said over the radio. A waypoint appeared on Wyman’s HUD, pointing well east of the city. “Indus request we run interdiction on a track of landing pods. Given that the locals are holding their own, and we’re just plinking stragglers from the main fight in the upper atmosphere, we’re going to oblige them.”

  “Then who’s going to run top cover for the embassy?” Wyman asked. The Albion government building sheltering Prince Aidan was marked by a golden square on his HUD.

  “Did I stutter, Freak Show?” Marksman asked. “Indus have things under control. Killing their ground troops during descent is a hell of a lot easier than trying to root them out of the streets.”

  “Daegon have been playing rope-a-dope with the Indus Navy since they came out of slip space,” Ivor said on a frequency shared with Wyman only. “If we peel off now and they push the screen the Indus fighters have—”

  “He didn’t stutter,” Wyman said and banked toward the waypoint. “Form up and link targeting computers with the rest of the squadron. Two missiles from every Typhoon should do the trick.”

  Red diamonds appeared on his HUD, Daegon pods arcing down from orbit to landing zones outside the city.

  “Fish in a bar—that’s funny,” Ivor said. “No fighter escort at all.”

  “The Daegon in there have a death wish?” Wyman asked. “Planetfall with no—”

  A yellow light flared overhead and he banked hard out of reflex. An Indus Chakram fighter plunged between his and Ivor’s planes, ablaze and disintegrating all the way down.

  “Holy—no chute! No chute,” Ivor said.

  Wyman looked straight up to the gray abyss of a flat cloud layer. Flashes of light from explosions and brief contrails from missiles lit up the cloud like a thunderhead.

  “Doesn’t look like everything’s ‘in hand’ to me,” Wyman said. He looked back to the tracks of the incoming landing pods, then back to the fight above.

  “All ships set to cruising speed and ready missile salvo,” Marksman ordered.

  “Break break,” Wyman said. “Permission to close and go to guns.”

  His fighter settled into a double-line formation just as they passed over the outer edge of Theni City.

  “Not the time to be a glory hound, Freak,” Marksman said.

  “I think the pods are decoys. No escort. The landing zone’s too far from their other LZs to support their invasion. Let me pop one and see if it’s even carrying troops. If I’m right, we save missiles for whatever’s next. I’m wrong and I just look stupid,” Wyman said.

  “Damn it…punch it, Freak. Be prepared to get the hell out of there if you’re wrong because we’ll unload to keep them from hitting the ground in anything but a flaming mess.”

  “Accelerating.” Wyman pushed his throttle forward and he slammed back against his seat. Color bled from his vision as the force of roaring engines pooled blood in the back of his head. His cheeks pulled to the side in a horrific smile beneath his air mask and he struggled to keep a hold on the throttle.

  Target icons grew larger in his HUD and he made out the pods with his naked eye as dawn crept over the horizon. He eased the throttle back and his face flushed as blood flooded back to where it was supposed to be.

  Radar alerts pinged on his canopy as the targeting computers from the Albion fighters kept trying to target his Typhoon. His IFF broke the radar locks, but he didn’t want to risk being downrange from the rest of the Cobras if and when they launched. He’d had enough close calls today. Dying from a friendly fire wasn’t going to do any good.

  “Switching to guns.” Wyman flipped the guard off his trigger and dove in behind the nearest Daegon pod. He fired twice, both shots missing, but lighting up the pod as they passed.

  “No reaction…” He fired again and hit the pod dead center. It wobbled and fell out of formation. The pod flashed, then exploded with enough force that it slapped Wyman’s fighter up.

  “That’s not right,” Wyman said. “What the hell was in that? A bomb?”

  “Freak!” Ivor shouted. “Pull up. Pull up!”

  The Daegon pods had veered toward the Cobras with sudden bursts from thrusters, a maneuver that would have killed any soldier inside from the g-forces of the turn.

  New radar-locks alerts popped up
across his HUD, none of it from the Albion fighters.

  Wyman uttered a long string of obscenities and pulled his fighter’s nose straight up, slamming the throttle. As he shot upwards, he pulled the emergency override on his electronic defense suite and his fighter’s entire supply of chaff and IR flares spat from their housings.

  On his canopy’s holo display, his fighter appeared, trailed by dozens of Daegon missiles, all closing on him.

  The clap of exploding ordnance sounded beneath him, bursts of light casting shadows down the length of his Typhoon. Wyman wasn’t sure what would happen first—either he’d black out from lack of blood to his brain or the missiles would catch up to him.

  The whoosh-snap of missiles faded away and he flew into the cloud layer. His hearing died away and his breathing became more and more labored. His head lolled to one side and he felt a bit of peace as he started drifting away.

  “Freak!” Ivor shouted.

  He snapped back and killed his engines. The Typhoon continued on momentum and broke through the clouds. The sky was a mix of stars and the encroaching dawn as his plane came to a stop, then flipped back and dove nose-first to the surface.

  “Freak Show, status report,” Marksman said.

  “Happy to report I’m not dead,” Wyman said. “Zeroed out my chaff and flares to—”

  “Whatever you did worked,” Marksman said. “Those pods were a trap and you went in face-first. Dumping all your EW in one go must have done something to the Daegon trackers as they all locked on to you and your flares. Well done. I’m going to pretend you meant to do that.”

  “Yeah, totally intentional.” Wyman came out of the clouds and reformed on Ivor’s wing.

  She looked at him through their canopies and shook her head very slowly.

  “Bhagadara!” came over the radio. “Bhadara! Badukam vala bhajo!”

  “That’s coming in over the clear,” Wyman said. “Is it…Daegon?”

  “I heard ‘run’ in there,” said another pilot, call sign Vulgar. “In Indus. What? I’ve been watching a lot of their movies and picked up a couple words.”