New Contract (Perimeter Defense Book #3)

by Michael Atamanov

  "IF YOU TRY TO FLEE, I WILL FOLLOW YOU AND DESTROY BOTH YOU AND EVERYTHING ELSE ALIVE. YOU ARE DOOMED!"

  "That's enough of that, now get lost! I didn't come all the way here to run away. My goal is to destroy your fleet, and I have enough ships with me to make that happen. You know it’s true. I can sense your fear. You still haven't forgotten the damage I did to your fleet in the Aysar Cluster. The same will happen here."

  "YOU CAUSED ME PAIN THEN. THAT IS WHY YOU MUST DIE!!!"

  I could only laugh and shake my head, chasing off the ringing in my ears. Katerina ton Mesfelle was standing next to me. There was fear on her face.

  "Georg, what happened?! Your nose is bleeding!"

  I ran my hand over my face, and my palm came back wet and red.

  "Nothing dangerous. The Queen was just trying to scare me," I laughed, demonstrating to my cousin that everything was fine. "You'd better find me some cotton balls to stop the bleeding."

  Just then, the screens in the room finally turned on, and I rushed to familiarize myself with the situation. The Alien fleet was three thousand miles from us and was composed of a huge disk-shaped ship, encrusted with clusters of smaller ships. I suspect that the Queen's shields had protected some of the frigates and destroyers from the explosions, otherwise it was hard to explain how several hundred small-class ships had survived the attack of my twenty cloaked bombers. Then, before my very eyes, Behemoths from all sides started creeping in and docking on the five huge Mammoths. Either they were there for repair, or energy charging, or perhaps they just wanted to protect themselves from further attacks behind the carriers' shields. Just one group was moving, around eighty Meteors, and it was coming quickly in my fleet's direction.

  "Attention, fleet! The enemy is approaching. Their frigates are marked on the map. Advance toward the fourth planet. Tactics officer, number the targets. Electronic fighters, divvy up the frigates. As soon as they get near, blind them. Do not wait for my command. Warhawks and Pyros, stand by. Do not move away from our ships. Break off into pairs. When the enemy approaches, I want two webs and warp disruptors on every Meteor. Admiral Mike ton Akad, destroyers are your responsibility. Get them in groups of five, shooting on your command at targets under double web. After you shoot one down, switch right to the next target. Thrushes, do the same. Fire all together at targets under double stasis web. Surgeons, get back a bit. I need you behind all the other ships as insurance. Curses, stand by. Release drones only after the battle begins. We don’t need to spook the enemy!"

  "Tuki-tuka-de-sa, bomb attack complete. Nineteen bombers came out next to the seventh planet." the voice of the Chameleon female from Surprise-1 could be heard on the fleet channel. "We lost Surprise-19. They didn't make it into the warp and ended up stranded within striking range."

  "Great work, de-sa. Load up the ten megatonners. First division, to the flagship at sixty. Second, approach the station at two hundred and wait for my command. For now, the small ships and cruisers that survived are hiding in fear under the Queen's shield. If they risk crawling out, we'll have to keep spanking them until they learn their lesson."

  Someone started tittering on the common channel. After that, one of the captains let fly a greasy little joke about giving the Queen herself a spanking, causing raucous laughter on the fleet channel. In general, I am of the opinion that the fleet channel should not be used for extraneous information, but I made no move to interrupt the merry-making now. My crew came to the Hnelle system ready to die, perfectly understanding the balance of forces. Now, I felt that my subjects were just blowing off steam to lessen their stress and fear. They looked to be finally coming to life. Some even started smiling.

  "Attention! This is the first assistant from Pyro-45. I've just sustained an attack from the Queen! Strange thoughts came into my head, like everything was lost, and we should give up right away! I quickly realized that they weren't my thoughts, and had been planted there by these bushes, I mean… Aliens. In response, I imagined a weed-whacker giving a bush a haircut, and the attack on my brain immediately ended..."

  The officer's last words were drowned out by a wild chortling. I couldn't hold back a smile either, and took the microphone:

  "This is Fleet Commander Crown Prince Georg royl Inoky ton Mesfelle. I confirm Pyro-45's statement; it is possible they will try to attack our minds. The Queen also tried to attack me already. I'll tell you this: it isn't fun, but it's nothing you can't handle. The Queen doesn't have the power for a prolonged attack, so just wait a bit, and she'll stop. Or, feel free to use the weed-whacker method suggested by Pyro-45. For now, get yourselves together. I don't want any unnecessary talking on the combat channel. The first group of Alien Meteors is getting close. Frigates, advance! Curses, release drones!"

  God damn is that a beautiful sight! On the tactical map, a thick cloud of green markers emerged from my cruisers and swallowed up the herd of enemy frigates.

  "Warhawk-11, here. I need help. I've got two of them on me! Ow. Thanks, guys!"

  "Pyro-6, here. Target hit!!! My first time downing an Alien!"

  "Flycatcher-2, you're shooting at the wrong target! That one was for Pyro-11 and us!"

  "Thanks, Surgeons, I’m all charged up. This is Thrush-23. Friends, I owe you one."

  "I can’t believe it’s already over. It hasn't even been thirty seconds..."

  The red markers in the attack group really had disappeared from the map. I took a closer look at the screen, trying to determine how many of our ships had been shot down. I had requested debris not be displayed on the tactical map, so it was no simple task to figure out how the battle had ended. Not able to find the answer myself, I gave the assignment to my subject:

  "Admiral, I need a loss report."

  After a few seconds of silence, Admiral Mike ton Akad's answer rang out:

  "Crown Prince, it would seem there were no losses on our side. Eighty-three Meteors were destroyed, but they practically weren't shooting back. Our electronic warfare ships did a good job. They turned most of the enemy frigates off right away. And after that, our drones and antisupport ate them up. A clean victory! I've never seen this in real life, only in old reports on the Sector Eight Fleet! Great job, guys!"

  The elated roar of hundreds of throats sounded out in my headphones. At the same time, messages on personal relationship improvements started pouring in from subjects. On the backdrop of the great number of flashing lines, I was able to follow the most important changes, though it was hard:

  Global fame increase. Current value: +32

  Global standing increase. Current value: -48

  Standing change. Empire Military faction opinion of you has improved.

  Present Empire Military faction opinion of you: +21 (trusting)

  Standing change. Katerina ton Mesfelle's opinion of you has improved.

  Presumed personal opinion of you: +100 (completely trusting)

  Global standing increase. Current value: -47

  Standing change. Mike ton Akad's opinion of you has improved.

  Presumed personal opinion of you: +34 (respect)

  I was sitting at the console with a stupid ear-to-ear smile, straining to hold back tears of joy. How sorely I had been lacking all this over the three long months I was gone! How I had missed times like these! And it didn't matter now if what was around me was a game or not. It was these exact moments that made life worth living. For some reason, I was reminded of the fact that Florianna should have been at my side. The stream of adulation now coming in was necessary for my Truth Seeker's abilities to grow. Ugh. I wonder how Flora is doing right now...

  I breathed a heavy sigh. The prearranged signal to the Parn system had been successfully sent two days earlier, but the agreed-upon response had not followed, not a day later, nor even two. That made me very worried. Some very bad thoughts were coming to mind. For example, that Miya had managed to track down the runaways and strike down the competition for her and her daughter. Or that the captain of Star Mutt had changed his mind and
was refusing to release my people from his scout ship. Or maybe, my former companions had seen the constant barrage of mud being slung at Crown Prince Georg royl Inoky on the news, and simply decided not to return...

  But as for the fleet I had hidden from Georgiy in Swarm space, it was not nearly as bad as I was worrying. The forty-five million credits I'd sent were very welcome, and smoothed over the financing problem, at least temporarily. I had already received an answer from Clay ton Avelle, in which the captain of my flagship thanked me for the money and added, "Your financial support came just in the nick of time. The crews are inspired and prepared to hold out for another few months."

  "My Prince, the Aliens have really dug in under the large ship shields." The voice of Admiral Mike ton Akad brought me back to reality. "They've been there for seven minutes already without budging. Maybe we should give them a nudge with the bombers again?"

  "There's no point. The bombs are what they're hiding from," I disagreed. "By the way, they’ve taken an interesting tack. They're joining several ships' shields together into one. I'll have to put our scientists and engineers up to the task of thinking up something similar for us to use. It's a good ability to have in battle. But for now, let's try to provoke the Aliens a bit, and see if we can get them to move."

  * * *

  The standoff had been going on for five hours. My soldiers came just short of mooning the Aliens out their portholes in their attempts to draw the enemy ships out from under the shields of the Mammoths and Queen. We tried absolutely everything. Several times we "accidentally" passed near Alien ship debris, inviting the enemy starships to make a jump into our fleet. We also made a fake attack on the Hnelle station. My Pyros cut circles around the Mammoths and strafed the Queen's shields. We tried to get in touch with the Aliens at various radio frequencies for negotiations. Nothing helped.

  Just one time, a few hours earlier, a single Sledgehammer had made a timid outing, but it immediately went back under the shield before my ships could even start reacting. And another eight times, the Queen had made attempts to mentally control certain soldiers of my fleet, but it was always unsuccessful. All members of the Unatari Fleet crew had been warned of the threat, knew the false nature of the enemy’s promises and could only laugh at the pitiful attempts to control them. Also, the "weed-whacker method," as it was being called in the fleet, worked without fail and brought her mental attacks to an immediate halt every time.

  "Georg, the viewers are hungry for action!" Katerina ton Mesfelle grumbled, referring to the prolonged lull that had taken hold after all the action of the initial phase of battle. "I told them three hours ago about the six huge bubbles the Aliens were hiding in. Since then, nothing has changed, though silver-tonged soldiers from your fleet are competing to compose the best joke about the Queen of the shrubs. What should I show in the next report?"

  "Show how afraid they are of us. Or make it look like they're expecting something," the captain of One-Eyed Python was also clearly growing bored and yawning.

  Thinking that I couldn’t see his screen, Corwin ton Mesfelle-Ugar minimized the cruiser stats window and opened a graphical editing program where he was drawing a snow-white rhinoceros in a flower-covered field. It was a pretty good picture, too.

  "They're waiting for us to make a mistake," I posited as I distractedly built a pyramid out of empty energy-drink cans on my console. "They're figuring out that, if they move at all, we’ll just run away, returning us to the status quo, with them hiding under their energy shields. That's why they're in no rush, just watching us get more and more bold, and waiting for the moment we get too eager and slip up."

  The empty-can pyramid collapsed. I collected the scattered containers and threw them into the trash incinerator.

  "Alright, I've had enough. We aren't some mere court jesters to entertain the Queen and her host. If the Alien fleet doesn't make a move in the next hour, our ships will return to Unatari."

  Just then, as if replying to me, the admiral's alarmed scream rang out:

  "Warning! The enemy has started maneuvers en masse!"

  Just as he said, the red dots really did start to move all at once on the tactical map. I turned on the microphone and screamed:

  "All ships, warp out immediately to Pyro-1! Get out! Everyone out! Thrush-12, don't sleep! Flycatcher-4, you get out too!"

  All of my ships warped out smoothly to the first receiver and were now about six hundred miles from the enemy, watching their strange scheme take shape. The Alien starships also regrouped and stretched out into a long line. The Behemoths and Hermits began releasing all their drones. I was first to figure out what the enemy was doing by extrapolating their formation in a straight line from the warp beacon. They were aimed at the Tesse system.

  "They're realigning to greet some guests from Tesse!" That was it! There must have been an invisible Alien observer in Tesse that had detected a jump to Hnelle from there.

  A great many comments came in from captains of my fleet in response:

  "What an idiot!"

  "Jumping into an Alien-controlled system is a pretty perverse way of committing suicide!"

  "Well, what can you say? That dumbass is in for some shit."

  The three comments reproduced above were actually the most appropriate of the bunch. In general, the comments on the mental capacity of the unknown captain were exceptionally vulgar in content. For some reason, I was reminded of Princess Astra at that moment. Such an act would have been in my former favorite's spirit. A ship could easily reach Tesse from the Parn system in three days so, time-wise, it added up...

  "My dear officers, we'll have to try to rescue this lame duck and distract the Aliens. Attention! Our target is the Alien ship group nearest to the station. There's a Behemoth and two Sledgehammers there that are a bit too far from the others. Once you're ready, jump to one hundred twenty miles from the station. We'll be just eighteen from the enemy. I remind you to travel as fast as possible along a curved trajectory to avoid getting one-shotted by a Behemoth. Frigates, I need webs and disruptors on all three ships. Also, start shooting down drones right away. Electros, you can totally ignore the Behemoth. It won't be able to hit us with its stationary cannons no matter what it does. Your objective is the two Sledgehammers. Thirty electronic fighters on the two targets is more than enough. If I see even one of the Sledgehammers getting a shot off, you'll all be cleaning the decks of my yacht after the battle! Now, Curses, your mission is to needle that Sledgehammer there with your drones. I've marked it here. After you're done, move on to number two. Energy neutralizers should be on the Behemoth the whole time. Forty energy neutralizers is nothing to sneeze at. We'll see if the Alien battleship is ready for such an attack, and how much energy it has left. Flycatchers, shoot the Behemoth's drones down. Surgeons, you're our safety net. So then, off toward the station. Countdown to jump: ten seconds!"

  Despite the gravity compensators, I could feel that I was being pressed down into my chair. The starship accelerated fervently toward the Alien-controlled Hnelle station. Katerina couldn't stay on her feet, falling with a squeal and crawling quickly over to her seat to buckle in.

  "Three, two, one. WARP!!!"

  One-Eyed Python made it out just fine. We were at twelve miles from the Behemoth and six from the Sledgehammers. Our boost thrusters immediately hummed into action, giving the cruiser extra acceleration. Staying still near those battleship cannons was begging to die.

  "Both Sledgehammers have been switched all the way off," reported the young lieutenant in charge of active jamming.

  "Very nice," I smiled.

  The nearest Alien cruiser was hard to see due to the mass of combat drones now swarming it. On the tactical screen, I saw the shields of the Sledgehammer restore back up to maximum a few times, but then they finally went down to nothing and stayed there. Four seconds later, five at most, the Alien ship was no more. One thousand six hundred enhanced drones from the Curses, each of which could do as much damage as a frigate, started darting off t
o their next target.

  "The Behemoth's energy shield is down!" the tactics officer told me with no small amount of surprise in his voice.

  Our forty energy neutralizers sucked all the power out of the Behemoth in twenty seconds. The enemy didn't have enough energy left to keep up their shields up. Now the defenseless giant had to be taken down.

  "Attention! The Meteors are pouncing!" Admiral Mike ton Akad pointed to a group of thirty Alien frigates and a few destroyers that were rushing to help their catastrophe-stricken ships.

  It's not clear what the Aliens were hoping to achieve with the attack. We had already mowed down eighty frigates without a single loss, so we would definitely be able to take down another thirty. If the Queen wanted to chase us off, she'd have sent a much more serious force, but no other Alien ships came in our direction.

  "This is your fleet commander speaking! All ships remain in place. Let's get the second Sledgehammer. If anyone leaves the battlefield now, I'll shoot them myself! Electros and Flycatchers, get ready to intercept the small Alien ships. Keep a close eye on the other enemy ships to make sure none of them start coming for us. And destroy the Sledgehammer wreckage next to our ships. There's no reason to give the enemy the coordinates to our fleet."

  Just then, a flash of light erupted! We’d just lost a ship. One of the battleship's rounds found its mark.

  "Do not reduce speed. Orbit the battleship! Well... step on it harder... We've got the second Sledgehammer! All drones to the Behemoth. Thrushes, get to work on it with the cannons. No, stand down! Call off the drones. Send them out for the Meteors. Warhawks, stand by! Head off to intercept the frigates. I remind you: two webs per enemy. Warhawk-4, where are you going to without order?! Tamara Vuzhek, get back here! I need you alive. Yes, go with everyone else. Electros, it's up to you now. Our priority is to turn off the Hermits. All the rest, head for the frigates."