The Orphan Alliance

by A. G. Claymore

  Leeds Castle, Kent, England

  “This is really disgusting,” Tommy complained. He was standing in the middle of a paved pathway that led from the castle bridge to the golf course. A pale stone gatehouse loomed over the bridge, picking up a greenish hue from the scummy water that sat stagnant beneath the ancient arches. The gatehouse proper looked like a later addition. It was devoid of the crenellations that provided archers with both cover and firing opportunity, but its parapet was still high enough to provide decent cover for the soldier who watched them with wary curiosity.

  Tommy was being projected in the middle of an animated corpse, giving Keeva’s sensors a focal point, whatever that meant. Nonetheless, she had insisted that having his consciousness present allowed for a better analysis, and so Tommy was standing in the middle of what used to be a golf pro.

  “Could be worse,” Kale said in a philosophical tone.

  “I’m really not seeing how it could be worse,” Tommy replied.

  “Well, for one thing, it could be me standing in the middle of that disgusting mess.”

  “I can’t tell you what a help that is,” Tommy said earnestly. “Really… I just can’t tell you that. Keeva, how much longer do you need me to stand here?”

  I was done a while ago, I just didn’t want to interrupt your conversation.

  Tommy stepped out of the back of the corpse so it wouldn’t see him and try to attack him. He grimaced at Kale who was doubled over laughing. “Have your fun, chum. Next time she wants to analyze something, you can be her bloody pushpin.” He pointed toward the gatehouse parapet where the sentry stood. “Might as well drop in and say hello – see how they’re getting on.”

  They got as far as the center of the bridge.

  “That’s far enough,” the guard called, hefting an assault weapon. “What were you doing over there?”

  “Taking samples,” Tommy called back. “We’re trying to figure out what caused the outbreak.”

  “Nobody gets that close to a stumbler without catching it,” he shouted. “Piss off or I’ll put you out of your misery right now.”

  “Not very friendly, is he?” Tommy remarked to Kale.

  “Understandable, I wouldn’t want us coming in there either, if I was in his shoes.”

  “Fair enough,” Tommy conceded. “Keeva, can you please put us on top of the gatehouse, next to that guard? We’d like him to realize that we aren’t infectious.” He closed his eyes. It was very disconcerting to have his point of view change while his eyes were still open.

  You are moved.

  He opened his eyes. The guard was leaning over the parapet, no doubt wondering where the two men had disappeared to. “We’re not really here,” he began politely. “What you see is just ...”

  “Gahhh!” The man spun about, bringing his weapon up and backing along the parapet to get away from them. “What the bloody hell are you two playing at?”

  “Bugger,” Tommy hadn’t expected to frighten the man quite so much. He waved his hand through the stone of the parapet. “See? We’re just projections.” He frowned down at his hand. “Why is it I can wave my hands through walls but I don’t fall through the floor?”

  “She’s not an idiot,” Kale muttered. “She can figure out what our intentions are easy enough.”

  Thank you, Kale.

  “Settle down, buddy.” Kale waved a hand to catch the man’s attention. “We’re humans. We both come from Earth but we’re crew on an advanced ship that can project our image and voices over great distances. He nodded at the Maltese cross on the man’s belt. “Rifles?”

  “Umm, yeah.” His weapon was still aimed.

  “My old unit has an alliance.” Kale was establishing common ground, trying to mitigate their unorthodox entry to the castle. “I was with the Patricias before I joined JTF-2.”

  “I was on Operation Indrik with some of your lads,” the man relaxed his weapon a fraction as he peered more closely at Kale. “Didn’t see you there.”

  “Didn’t see you there either,” Kale replied carelessly. “You sent a company, the Spetsnaz sent another and we made three. That’s about three hundred guys, and I wasn’t with the main body for most of the op. I was out in the hills with my spotter.”

  The man nodded grudgingly. “Sniper, yeah? The old Parker Hale?”

  “No, we had the Timberwolf back then,” Kale said with a grin. “But you knew that, didn’t you? Trying to catch me for a bullshitter?”

  “Pretty place, Kamchatka,” the soldier said with a grin, sidestepping the question. He lowered the weapon. “You lads here from that island? The one where they’re making the cure?”

  “Cure?” Tommy glanced over at Kale, then back to the soldier. “There’s a cure for this?”

  “Yeah, the lieutenant heard something over the shortwave we dragged in here.” He nodded beyond them to a rickety antenna assembly on one of the towers. “Someone’s set up a lab on one of those Caribbean islands and they’re making vaccinations.”

  “Then that’s our next stop,” Tommy said.

  “You don’t want to meet the lieutenant?” The man sounded surprised. He waved to the back of the small island. “He’s just over there, in the ‘New Castle’.”

  “No, we really should get going. We’re on a tight schedule.” Tommy didn’t see the value in telling the man about a forty-kilometer-long ship that lurked somewhere in the solar system. A ship that might just emerge from hiding, decide that humanity wasn’t worth saving, and start the whole planet over again.

  The poor man had enough trouble on his hands.

  The Krypteia

  The Midway, Weirfall Orbit

  Dwight approached the Marines flanking the entrance to the bridge. He grabbed his ID lanyard and pressed his thumb onto the small square on the back of his badge, causing the front to glow a light green.

  The guard on the right gave him a curt nod and he stepped toward the doors, which slid open for him after reading the radio frequency ID chip in his badge. The badge itself would open the doors, but the guards were there to apprehend anyone whose biometrics failed to produce a green positive.

  The bridge was surrounded on all sides by glass. Structural elements interrupted the view at odd angles. The graceful curve of Weirfall hung above them, blue and swathed in clouds. Ships of the fleet lay dispersed throughout the planet’s various orbital lanes. Just like back home, thought Dwight as he passed through the hive of activity that was the combat information center.

  He had worked in orbit before the plague escaped, but his research facilities had been buried deep inside Tartarus Station. He had rarely seen Earth from orbit and found himself so filled with wonder as he approached the command wing that he forgot to be nervous of the admiral as he approached.

  “When I was a child,” Towers broke in on Dwight’s reverie, “I never dreamed of seeing Earth from space. Now I look down at alien worlds as part of my day job. Imagine what life will be like ten years from now…”

  “Does this mean we’re upside down?” Dwight waved at the planet hanging above them.

  “According to what frame of reference?” Towers arched an eyebrow as he walked over to join him at the window. “You have everything you need?”

  “Yes, sir. We’re in pre-production right now.” He kept looking out at the world above them. “Full production will ramp up in about three more days.”

  “How long until we can start to vaccinate multiple ships simultaneously?” Towers was no longer willing to inoculate one ship at a time. Losses on the Midway had been lighter than projected, but three hundred twenty-two men and women had still turned. It had been a nightmare.

  And rumors were spreading through the fleet like wildfire.

  Towers had been there for many of the infected, at first. He had sat with them as they learned of their fate, held some of their hands as they received the shot that would end their lives peacefully. Some had raged at him, called him a murderer and cursed his name for forcing the shots on them. Some had
told him they didn’t hold him responsible, said how they understood that service meant risk, that they didn’t blame him for making everyone take the shot.

  Those were the ones that kept him from sleeping.

  “Two weeks, sir.”

  “And the Weiran tissue samples?”

  “The retrovirus won’t work on them, so they can’t be inoculated, but they’re just as vulnerable to the plague as we are. Midgaard are completely immune.”

  “Quarantine?”

  “Yes, sir, at least four days after the last victim on any ship is identified.”

  Towers stared up at the planet for a long moment. “I appreciate the role you’ve played in this, Doctor. It’s not an easy thing to give someone a shot that may kill them, but it’s got to be a damn sight harder to give one that you know will kill a patient.”

  Angel of Death, the researcher thought. That’s what they call me on this ship. He shuddered. If they only knew the whole story…

  “Inbound contact!” A voice rang out over the bridge monitors. “Four-eighty-two units over one-sixty-seven by thirty-one degrees. Contact is a locally-registered orbital tender. No response to hails.”

  “Launch ready five and divert the CAP to intercept,” Towers ordered as he crossed to the port side of the bridge wing, leaning low against a strut as he strained to see the offending craft. “He’s getting too damned close.” He opened a channel on his wrist pad. “CAP, this is fleet command, make it clear he’s not welcome.”

  “Roger, command,” a terse voice replied over the monitors. “Firing across his bow.” A muted, throaty buzz sounded through the bridge as the interceptor’s rotary cannon opened up in a warning shot. Weapons made no noise in space, unless you happened to hear them from inside the attacking vessel.

  “Ready five is away, moving to take up combat air patrol,” an officer in the CIC reported.

  “Contact still on approach vector,” the sensor coordinator advised.

  “CAP, fleet command, splash the inbound,” Towers ordered.

  “What if this is all just an innocent mistake?” Dwight asked the admiral, surprising even himself at his outburst. Perhaps he had simply seen too much useless death lately.

  “No such thing as an innocent mistake anymore, Doctor. You start allowing for those and, sure as hell, one of ‘em will get you killed one day. We’ve lost eight ships already to attacks that started out looking like innocent mistakes.”

  “Fleet, CAP. Contact destroyed. Pulling back to ready pos…”

  “Distortion alert!” a loud voice nearly matched its enhanced volume on the monitors. “Same coordinates as the contact.”

  Before Dwight could even ask what a ‘distortion alert’ was, the windows on the bridge went dark, obliterating the view of the planet and ships. Even with the darkening, the flash of an inbound arrival left spots in his vision.

  Ships on long voyages mostly used distortion drives that compressed space in front of them while dilating it behind. The ship essentially sat still while ‘moving’ space past them at incredible velocities. That distortion was detectable, giving a very slight warning of inbound traffic. Any warning was better than none because the compressed space at the leading end tended to pick up any cosmic debris between points A and B. That debris was released in a deadly plume of plasma on drop-out.

  It made a hell of a weapon.

  “That was right on top of the original contact,” the sensor coordinator advised as the windows returned to normal, showing a massive, boxy vessel. “Krorian freighter. Expired registry. Nowhere near the inbound corridors for this system.”

  “CAP, command. Target engines and bridge,” Towers ordered.

  “Roger, command. This is Zulu call sign. Flight leader was too close to the drop wash. We lost him.” Even as she advised command of the loss, the buzz of weapons indicated she was following her latest orders.

  “Launch ready six and divert five to…” Towers was cut off in mid-sentence by a bright flash. The attacking ship was being ripped to pieces by a series of explosions.

  “Command, CAP Zulu. That wasn’t us. She just started tearing apart from the inside, where we weren’t even firing.”

  “CAP, command. Roger that. Come back to the barn for debrief. Five is relieving you on patrol.” Towers turned to the flag captain. “Did you launch ready six?” A nod. “All right, recover them and put em back in the lineup.

  “Ever hear of the Krypteia?” He looked over at Dwight who shrugged or, perhaps, shuddered, still in the grip of the moment.

  “They were a sneaky pack of Spartan warriors in ancient Greece who used to kill the helot slaves in the dark of night.” He turned to look out at the wreckage. “Supposed to terrorize slaves and reduce the frequency of servile revolts.” He nodded out at a large chunk of wreckage as it drifted toward the planet above. “Dactari have a secret, elite force whose name roughly translates into the Krypteia. They specialize in hit-and-run operations, not unlike what you just saw.”

  “This was a Dactari attack?” Dwight couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice. “I thought they were more for the big fleet attacks, not this small scale stuff.”

  “Small scale?” Towers laughed. “Son, that tender was carrying a jump beacon and it was heading right for us when we cut her up. Another three minutes and that freighter would have dropped her wash right through the Midway. This was a strategic attack.

  “They’ve been around for centuries fighting separatists and their fingerprints are all over this, right down to destroying themselves when it’s obvious they can’t get away.” The admiral turned to face the Angel of Death. “They’re wary of fighting us toe-to-toe after we handed them two defeats, especially here on their own turf. If they lose here, they lose for good, so they hold their remaining fleets in reserve and rely on guerrilla tactics.”

  “They’d already weakened their internal security fleets to send the last attack on Earth,” the flag captain added as he rejoined them on the bridge. “So the reserve force isn’t much to look at, I’d bet.”

  “Captain Hunter’s probably right,” Towers agreed.

  “Then why don’t we just head for Dactar and crush them?” Dwight realised, too late, that he was trying to tell these men how to do their job and he winced inwardly, expecting an earful.

  “You have any idea how much ammunition we can run through, fighting for a whole goddammed planet?” Towers raised an eyebrow at him. “We’ve been cut off from Earth and we blew off more than half our ammo taking Weirfall away from the enemy. It’s only been in the last month that we started to get some test quantities from a local manufacturer and most of those have been failures, so now we’re trying to find suppliers who can manufacture barrels as well.”

  Captain Hunter gave Dwight a tolerant look. “It’s not like these folks had ever heard of caseless ammo. Most weapons here use either a liquid propellant or linear acceleration. We had to help them build an industry from the ground up.”

  “It’s one of the few reasons the Weirans haven’t run us off yet,” Towers added. “New jobs, and we’re the only market for the product, but we need to get our hands on a few more planets or we’ll be facing widespread riots.” He pointed up at Weirfall. “We need interplanetary commerce or we’re dead. That’s our first objective. Problem is, we can take a world, but we can’t keep it. We don’t have the force to hold multiple worlds if the enemy concentrates for a counter attack on one of them.”

  “We’d likely hear from our smuggler friends of a Dactari concentration of forces,” Captain Hunter explained. “But by the time a smuggler gets to us with the news, it’ll all be over.”

  “Those little bastards sell us information on the Dactari and then go back to the Dactari and sell them information about us,” Towers added. “And not a damn bit of it is of any use to anyone.” He sighed. “We’re blind.”

  Back in the Fold

  The Völund, in transit to Weirfall

  The sound hit Harry as soon as the seals breached on the Mid
gaard lighter. They were being lowered to the small hangar deck of the Völund. The image of gladiators being lifted into the ancient Roman amphitheater came to mind as his crew cheered themselves hoarse, welcoming him home.

  Harry had heard a half million Oaxians cheering his name, and it had been an incredible experience, but it paled next to this. He was having a hard time mastering his emotions as he stepped off the ramp and his people, his military family, surged around him, all wanting to be the first to welcome him back to his ship.

  “The old man’ll pitch a fit when we get back,” Carol, his first officer, shouted over the din as Harry and Lothbrok were both hoisted up onto shoulders. “But it’s worth it, even as a simple morale exercise!”

  The two returning heroes were carried out of the hangar and thrust into the forward riser shaft. Arms grabbed them four decks up and pulled them out. Once again they were hoisted up by a mix of Harry’s old civilian crew, soldiers and Midgaard crewmen from Lothbrok’s flagship.

  As they rounded the corner and entered the crew lounge, they were met by another cheer, slightly slurred this time as the celebrants here had access to the ship’s liquor stores. An odd quintet of musicians, three Royal Marines and two Midgaard crewmen, struck up a celto-alien fusion tune that bounced merrily along.

  The stars outside the windows blurred and a smooth wave of distortion swept through the room as the main drives activated, bringing the approach corridor at Weirfall rushing toward them. It would be a two day run to the Alliance world.

  As the distortion waves faded, bottles of white ale were thrust into their hands. The Völund had never been a dry ship and, when she had been drafted into US Navy, Major Liam Kennedy, Harry’s security chief, had taken him aside and suggested asking for a complement of Royal Marines.

  The hastily-formed human fleet was largely composed of mixed crews and the presence of the Royal Marines would mean a relaxation of the American tendency to field ‘dry’ or alcohol-free units. This must be the last of the beer from home, Harry thought as he took a deep drink. Just as well, it was starting to turn anyway.