The Long March (The Exiled Fleet Book 2)

by Richard Fox

  “His answer told me a great deal,” Tiberian said. “Your fleet arrived at Anchor guided by a pirate?”

  “Yes, sire, Loussan of the Harlequins.”

  “But we destroyed their ship,” Gustavus said.

  “Some, it seems, survived.” Tiberian traced a circle on his armrest with a diamond-tipped nail on his gauntlet.

  Barlow’s spine felt like it was growing warmer, growing into a red-hot poker. He gasped and fell to his knees.

  “Hiding something?” Tiberian asked.

  “A buoy!” Barlow spat. “There should be a grav buoy hidden somewhere. Loussan is the only one that can access it.” The pain subsided and he collapsed to the cold deck.

  “Order the ships to destroy the Ring,” Gustavus said. “Trap them here and finish them.”

  “Gage will die before he lets us take the boy king, isn’t that right, dog?” Tiberian jerked Barlow’s chain and dragged him across the deck.

  “That’s correct, sire.” Barlow stood up again. Tiberian turned off the translation device within the torque and Barlow winced in pain.

  Tiberian turned a palm up and a straight line appeared. “All picket ships,” he said, the line warbling with the inflections of his voice, “engage all Albion ships but do not destroy the Orion. Target her shields. Vessel Alpha one through three…bombard the inner ring. Split fire and converge at the six o’clock position.”

  “What about the rest of our ships? We’re not far. We can destroy them in a few minutes,” Gustavus said.

  “We’re not here to kill them all.”

  “I don’t see how it matters if the boy lives or dies.” Gustavus tapped his sword against his thigh in frustration.

  “An insurrection rages on Albion.” Tiberian leaned forward as the Albion fleet on the holo wall spread out and angled toward the bottom half of the ring. “The world is a jewel of natural beauty. The people, well educated and industrious. Baroness Asaria wants the world made compliant, not ground to dust. It takes a brute to destroy, young one. It takes a ruler to bend lesser to their will. We return with the boy, Albion’s last hope will be lost. The planet will succumb to our rule and their compliance will be known through the rest of slave space.

  “Albion will teach them that surrender is a better alternative than fighting to the bitter end. Then our crusade will accelerate as more worlds are taken whole, fewer ships lost, more thralls to the army. That is why the Baroness needs the boy. That is why we will not force Gage’s hand into anything but surrender. Besides, we have another asset in play. Let’s see if Ja’war is ready to deliver.”

  Chapter 21

  Battle stations sounded around Ja’war as he ducked under a pipe. The explosive charge attached to his belt bumped against his thigh as he weaved through the cooling system servicing the main reactor.

  The Orion’s engines and power plant were far better engineered than any other wild-space ship he’d ever been on. The redundancies built into the system were a challenge to understand, but once Ja’war realized the battleship was meant to withstand attack from without, not within, his task became easier.

  He found a metal box nearly hidden between two wide pipes pulsing with heat. The fluid regulators controlled the flow of plasma around the fusion reactor. The loss of more than one sent the entire system into shutdown, and Ja’war had already rigged the other on this deck. He knelt and removed an explosive charge mixed from battery packs and grenade detonators he’d pilfered from an open arms room. He twisted the end cap once clockwise and a timer popped up on the tube. He twisted again and a red light pulsed.

  “Foster!” someone called out. Ja’war heard footsteps pounding against the deck as the speaker ran toward him.

  “Foster! They’re calling us! Breach on deck four!”

  “Be right there,” Ja’war said, using the woman’s voice. He slipped the charge behind the regulator and it mag-locked to the casing.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Brown—that was his name—asked from the walkway at the end of the pipes.

  “This regulator’s reading a short and if I don’t fix it, the whole thing will slag. You know how many man-hours that’ll take to replace between these lava tubes?” Ja’war gave Brown an angry look.

  “It might do that,” Brown said and glanced at a screen on the back of his gauntlet. “And you haven’t even cracked the case open to fix it.” He tapped his forearm screen. “It’s in the system. Meanwhile, we have actual problems to deal with. Let’s go!”

  Ja’war grumbled and squeezed past the pipes. His mind went through reasons to send Brown down here to repair the fault just before he blew it to hell.

  ****

  Light flashed across the bridge as the shields took another hit.

  “Firebrand, Remorseless.” Gage touched a Daegon ship moving toward the right of the inner ring. “This is your priority target. Stretch your legs and engage.”

  Loussan, who looked incredibly uncomfortable in an Albion vac-suit and helmet, leaned down to examine one of his screens.

  “I need line of sight to the buoy hidden inside the Ring,” the pirate said. “We’re still too far away.”

  The Daegon ship that broke formation opened fire, bolts of energy streaking through space and crashing against the inside of the Ring. Boulders ejected from the impact and went hurtling through space.

  “Guns, all forward firepower on the ship,” Gage ordered.

  In the holo tank, the two frigates raced ahead of the Orion. The spine lance on the Firebrand fired, and Gage shook his head. The shot streaked past the enemy ship assaulting the Ring, missing. The ship paused for a moment, then restarted the barrage, walking shots closer and closer to the hidden buoy.

  “Conn, all ahead full. Take power from the shields if you have to, but we need to cross through the Ring,” Gage said.

  “Aye aye,” Jellico said.

  The Remorseless raced ahead of her sister ship and unleashed her own spine lance. The blast ripped down the side of the Daegon ship. The diamond points on the port side were shorn away and the ship bled air from a dozen cuts. The enemy vessel listed to the side, on a slow impact course with the Ring.

  Torpedoes from the battle cruisers Concordia and Ajax sailed over the Orion and activated. Laser warheads pounded a Daegon ship, which exploded in a flash of light. When the effects cleared away, the Daegon formation had broken apart.

  Three ships headed toward the inner ring and opened fire. Gage looked at the distance his ship still had to cover to access the buoy and realized the Daegon would reach weapons’ range well before he could get line of sight on the inner ring.

  “Remorseless, Firebrand, engage those ships. We can’t let them hit the buoy.” Gage tapped the location within the ring and sent it to the frigate captains.

  “Main gun’s down for another ninety seconds,” said the captain of the Remorseless. “But I think I can manage something.”

  “Thirty seconds,” came from the Firebrand.

  The Remorseless dove toward the inner ring, her ventral maneuver thrusters flaring and kicking her tail up and into her direction of travel. The engines fired and the ship came to a stop just over the buoy.

  The three enemy ships opened fire, their shots converging on the Remorseless.

  The Firebrand’s spine lance sent a searing green spear through one of the Daegon ships, piercing through the prow and exiting out the engines.

  “Almost there,” Loussan said.

  The Remorseless’ shields buckled under the onslaught. A hit broke through the hull over her forward point defense battery and blew out the bottom of the ship. The leading edge of the ship’s prow broke away and went tumbling through the void.

  “Conn, get us between the two enemy ships and the Remorseless,” Gage ordered.

  The Orion shifted beneath Gage’s feet as the battleship angled to one side.

  The flagship’s forward guns opened fire and pummeled one of the two Daegon ships. The shield popped with a flash of blue light and a pair of hit
s cracked the enemy ship in half.

  The final ship lowered its shields and unleashed a torrent of fire at the Remorseless. The bolts left dying trails in their wake, then beat against the Orion as it took the punishment aimed at the badly damaged frigate.

  Plasma bolts splashed against the Orion’s shields. An emitter buckled under the strain and a shot exploded against the hull. The Orion canted to one side as another shot came through the shield gap and annihilated a point defense turret in a brief fireball.

  Gage’s holo tank flickered.

  A salvo from the Renown destroyed the final Daegon ship, leaving nothing but an expanding cloud of gas and small fragments behind.

  “My apologies.” Captain Arlyss of the Renown came up in the holo tank. “Wanted a clean shot.”

  “Your judicious aim is appreciated,” Gage said.

  “Got it!” Loussan smacked a palm against the console. “Jump data going to your navigator now.”

  “And the second jump solution?” Gage asked. Loussan double-checked his screens and nodded. “Good. Send that to Clarke.”

  “Sir, more Daegon ships just appeared on the scope,” Price said. “Moving to intercept.”

  “Never easy.” Gage opened a channel to the stricken Remorseless. “Captain Bargia, what’s your status?”

  The frigate commander’s profile picture came up on the console along with error messages from the damaged ship’s communications systems.

  “Engines are online, slip drive active.” Bargia’s words were muffled, his breathing labored. “Everything else is either on fire or off-line. We’re conducting an emergency vent of the whole ship to get the fires under control.”

  “How long is the slip jump to the next waypoint?” Gage asked Loussan.

  “Three hours,” the pirate said.

  “Bargia, complete your vent and enter slip space without delay,” Gage said. “You’ll have to make the whole trip without atmosphere, but your suits will last long enough. I’ll have emergency crews standing by when you arrive.”

  “Aye aye,” Bargia said, “my crew’s tough. We’ll manage just fine.”

  “Get into slip space. The fleet needs you and we are less without you.”

  “I’ll pass that on. Remorseless out.”

  “Conn, how long until we can get out of here?” Gage asked.

  “Two hundred eighty-five seconds until the jump solution is complete, sir.”

  Gage watched as more and more Daegon ships emerged from the nebula. None would enter weapons’ range before his fleet could escape.

  “They had us,” Loussan said. “They could have packed their ships around the nexus point and we would’ve never stood a chance.”

  “Tiberian’s not hunting for a trophy kill,” Gage said. “He’s after something more.”

  Ja’war, Gage thought. The Daegon knows that monster’s still in play. A poison on my ship that will bring us to our knees.

  “Tell me, Loussan,” Gage said, “have you ever dealt with a Faceless before?”

  ****

  Air rushed past Ja’war and through a rent just beyond a half-closed air lock. He could see the Ring as the Orion passed by, so close he could make out craters and a wrecked Daegon ship on the surface.

  “Tell the team on deck six to shut their locks!” Ja’war shouted into his intercom as he and Brown heaved against a circular handle, moving the air lock shut inch by inch.

  His intercom was a cacophony of conflicting commands from different deck bosses, none of whom seemed to have a fair grasp of what was happening to their ship or what it was doing.

  “Are you actually trying?” Brown said as the flow of air lessened to a strong breeze.

  Across the inside of her helmet, an emergency message flashed across the glass.

  PREPARE FOR SLIP JUMP

  Ja’war gripped the wheel tighter and applied a good portion of the augmented strength that came with having an inhuman level of control over his musculature and shut the air lock door with a slam.

  “Hot damn, must’ve been stuck,” Brown said.

  Ja’war ran toward a recessed control panel and pulled the trigger for his bombs off his belt. Dots ran in a circle on the touch screen, then flashed an error message. No connection to the bombs.

  “All the blast doors,” he said. The heavy doors were blocking his signal.

  “What?”

  “We need to report up that this door is sealed.” Ja’war fought back anger. He had to keep his cover and composure for just a bit longer. He couldn’t stop the Orion from leaving, yet, but he could keep the Daegon on their heels.

  He entered an override command he learned from his time as Challons and accessed a hidden file that connected him to the splitter box hidden in the antennae array.

  Chapter 22

  “He’s in!” Clarke shouted as Captain Price stalked toward his station.

  “What part of ‘keep this secret’ didn’t you understand?” the XO asked as she looked over Clarke’s screen.

  “Sorry, ma’am, just excited.” Clarke watched as Ja’war, from his terminal within the ship, typed in commands. “He’s sending it as a burst transmission. Wide spectrum. Guess he doesn’t know where his spy master’s hiding out there.”

  “Let it go through,” Price said. “Just make sure he’s sending the wrong jump solution.”

  “Already got the bum data loaded…he’s adding some free text. I don’t know what it means,” Clarke said. “Should I send it?”

  “All of it.”

  Clarke tapped on his screen and a green TRANSMIT box appeared.

  “Oh, I wish I could see their faces,” Clarke said. “I’d just love to pop up and say ‘Problem?’”

  “You want to be on the Daegon ship when that happens?” Price asked.

  “Well, no.” The TRANSMIT box pulsed and Clarke touched it. “It’s away.”

  “Commodore,” Price called up to the command dais. Gage leaned around the holo tank to see her. “We’ve got our breathing room.”

  “Conn, engage the slip drives,” Gage ordered.

  ****

  Pins and needles traveled down Barlow’s thigh as he huddled against Tiberian’s throne. The Daegon crew ignored him completely while the ship traveled through slip space. Tiberian had remained on his throne, conversing with the other commander that enjoyed disturbing Barlow with his sword’s edge.

  Concentrate, Barlow told himself. I’m an officer in the Albion Navy, the light against the darkness of wild space and beyond. I can still fight. Can still hurt them.

  He slowly raised his head. Tiberian’s bridge was a circle, with workstations arrayed around the circumference. All the Daegon had the same eerie blue or green skin as Tiberian, but the bridge crew’s armor was simpler. They each carried a helmet locked to their thighs when they walked around, which they snapped into a holder when they took their stations. No unnecessary cross talk, no banter. Just focus.

  Like a bloody Reich ship, Barlow thought. He tried to scratch his face…and waved the stump at the end of his right arm across his head. A bit of foil covered the end of his arm, applied by a Daegon after Tiberian had removed him from the torture chamber.

  They’ll keep me alive so long as I’m useful, he thought. But this bastard gets his hands on Prince Aidan, I doubt they’ll keep me around as a mascot.

  His ears rang and Barlow shrank into a fetal position.

  “Dog,” Gustavus kicked Barlow’s bare feet, “I have questions.”

  “Sire.” Barlow stood up, the chains around his neck and arms feeling heavier than ever.

  “Do your ships have self-destruct protocols?” the Daegon asked.

  “No, sire.” The torque sent a lance of pain through his stomach and Barlow doubled over. “Albion crews fight to the last. They do not take their own lives out of spite.” The pain grew stronger, like a hot ingot was working through his gut. “We can overload the fusion cores. Burn out the engines.”

  Barlow took a ragged breath and lied, “The captains ha
ve no way of destroying their own ships.” Sweat dripped down his face and he continued the lie. “Not unless they crash into something.”

  His ears rang and Gustavus moved away.

  The pain subsided, and Barlow crumpled against the throne. Warmth spread from his heart to the rest of his body, and the constant pain of his injuries faded away.

  He’d managed a half-truth through the torque’s ministrations. While there was no command option from the captain to initiate self-destruct, a determined crew could flood their hull with oxygen and ignite the fusion reactors. The ensuing fireball would leave little of the ship behind. Or they could rig torpedo warheads to explode in their launch tubes.

  Now. Now Barlow had a weapon he could use against the Daegon. A weapon he’d have to guard carefully.

  The ship lurched as it dropped out of slip space and the bridge crew rattled off status reports, starting at the station just to the right of the holo wall and continuing from station to station clockwise.

  Tiberian stood up, one hand on the hilt of the sword hanging from his belt, and walked down the steps circling his throne. In the holo wall, a small planetoid, volcanoes and molten rock active across its surface, hung in the distance. A ring of asteroids circled the moon. Dark spots speckled the orange nebula, and smaller rocks the size of destroyers danced around the planetoid.

  One of the crew gave a terse warning, and an asteroid appeared as a holo projection overhead. It flashed several times and its projected course traced right through Tiberian’s ship. The commander rattled off a series of orders, and the ship banked to one side and slid forward.

  Slowly. Far too slowly.

  Tiberian reached back, and a pack of escort ships appeared in the holo field. He grabbed one and hurled it at the incoming asteroid.

  Barlow found a certain sense of tranquility as the escort ship raced to intercept the asteroid. His life was almost certainly forfeit no matter what happened in the next few minutes. That he could die along with so many Daegon was almost…quaint.