The Orphan Alliance

by A. G. Claymore

  “Imagine what separatists could do, if they had easy access to something like that,” Qut said softly as he stared at Dwight. “It’s one of the reasons why they say you never retire from the Obsidian Order, the Obsidian Order retires you.”

  “Bet they don’t put that in the recruiting ads,” Dwight said with a dry tone. “Anyway, I have a Quantum chip in my head, so if you hook up a transmitter to your discriminator, we can try it out.”

  “Hmm, no…” Qut ran a hand through his hair. “An RF connection would be too slow by several orders of magnitude.” He looked at Dwight for an uncomfortably long time. “We would need to use a Hothmoen bus.”

  “Ooohhh!” Rosh looked at his brother. “Then he might be able to communicate mentally, assuming he could find a path to his target.”

  A nod. “Maybe.”

  “Wait a minute.” Dwight grabbed Qut by the shoulder and turned the Tauhentan back to face him. “What exactly is involved in this ‘Hothmoen bus’? I get the feeling it’s not public transit for subatomic particles, and it sounds like you want to attach it to my CPU.”

  “Well yeah.” Qut looked a little surprised at the outburst. “It’s no big shake. We just pop down to Theil’s tattoo shop and he’ll hook it up. Should take no more than a few minutes. He’s seen the specs on the Midgaard…”

  “Tattoo shop?” Dwight darted a glance at Emily. “Somewhere down there, a guy who’s currently drawing flames on some guy’s ass is going to crack my skull open?”

  “Crack your skull open?” Qut grimaced.

  “Dwight, the CPU isn’t inside your brain.” Emily set her mug down on a workbench and put a hand on his arm. “It’s in your sinuses. All Theil has to do is go in through your nose and link up with the existing gear.”

  “But a tattoo guy?”

  She shrugged. “They’re the surgeons here. You know, my great-great-grandfather was a blacksmith, and everyone in Cromwell came to him when they had a tooth that needed pulling.”

  “I’d still rather a proper dentist, thank you.”

  “Ughh…” She rolled her eyes. “Theil’s still a better surgeon than any doctor you’d find back home.”

  Dwight was about to reply that you couldn’t find many doctors on Earth anymore, but caught himself just in time. Having no family of his own, he tended to forget that others did. He didn’t want to keep reminding her of her own worries.

  “Alright,” he said quietly.

  A Task Force’s Best Friend

  The Salamis, Near Chula 565

  “Well, that was certainly unexpected,” Harry muttered as he stared at the trace table. Are they trying to lull us into a false sense of security? “Commander, do you have any theories?”

  Flemming, shaking his head in surprise, was caught off guard by the question. “Ah, well, I expect the enemy saw close to forty ships attack Tauhento and only seventeen at Oaxes.” He dragged his fingers across the growing stubble on his chin. “Perhaps they sent their A-game to Tauhento and knocked together a force of raw recruits to put us down?”

  “I don’t give a shit what their reason is,” Prouse rumbled as he approached the table, “s’long as they keep acting like a pack of damp-eyed nancy-boys.” He nodded to Harry. “We’re on the move, sir.”

  The enemy had been travelling to Oaxes in column formation. That alone indicated that they weren’t elite forces. They had also been sloppy about their station keeping, which indicated that they had probably gone straight from training pods to warships.

  The frigate captured after the previous battle, the one with the damaged engineering section, had been put back into service after a mad scramble by almost every engineering team in the task force.

  She had limped out here to perform one last task, the creation of an artificial singularity.

  As they passed near the ship, the Dactari force was knocked out of distortion, but in the reverse of the usual drop order. If they had maintained proper intervals, it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad, as the drop wash would have passed through the gaps, but the enemy commander had let them get too close to each other

  The plasma wash had destroyed nearly half of the enemy forces, but they still outnumbered the Alliance fleet by roughly three to two.

  Further complicating the situation was the fact that Harry’s forces were still ten minutes away from effective engagement range. The radius of drop-out probability had to be avoided or he could have lost the entire task force before ever firing a shot.

  Now it meant ten minutes of hell as they approached an enemy with linear acceleration weaponry. They could reach out farther and hit harder than the Humans and, experienced or not, they were certain to make the most of their advantage. With the singularity still present, they couldn’t run. That left only one option.

  Four bright flashes appeared in the middle of the enemy formation – four artificial stars that died in a matter of seconds.

  “That’s all of them,” the tactical officer announced. “The rest of the warheads are on their flanks.”

  There had been over three hundred Mosquito sub-munitions scattered around the estimated arrival point. A hundred were directly in the path of their expected arrival, while the rest were arrayed in a huge cylinder, with the open ends facing either the Alliance at one end, or the gravity well of Chula 565 at the other. Many of the warheads in their path would have been destroyed by drop wash and many more by gunnery. Still, four had managed to kill four enemy ships.

  The rest had them boxed in with only one way out.

  The guns of the entire task force began firing once it was clear that they wouldn’t be hitting the remaining sub-munitions. It would take a long time for the rounds to reach the enemy, but there were always the smallest of chances that an incoming round might also be intercepted.

  “Going to nine-tenths pitch,” the helmsman called out. Though it was a seven-minute run to the enemy at full pitch, a series of random velocity changes would help to throw off enemy fire. Even their high-speed projectiles took a few minutes to reach out this far and, unless they were firing straight down the throats of the Alliance ships, even the smallest change in velocity would play havoc with targeting.

  Harry hated this part of battle – the long moments when you couldn’t do anything but wait. They would have to run the gauntlet for another six minutes before effectively returning fire.

  An icon changed color on the trace table. At least some of us don’t have to sit idle, he thought as he watched the targeting layer update. The fire control teams were selecting vessels around the perimeter of the enemy fleet as priority targets. They were the ships that had nobody behind them. If they were destroyed, their demise wouldn’t unmask the batteries of a new ship that would then be free to fire on the Alliance.

  Frigates and cruisers near the heart of the formation were also being targeted for boarding. Once they were out of the fight, they would help to screen the Alliance vessels. The Dactari might be reluctant to fire back at ships that held their comrades, even if those ships were firing at them.

  A deep, ripping buzz rumbled through the bridge as the main battery opened fire on eligible targets. The Salamis carried the only rail guns in Harry’s task force and four hundred kilograms of projectile were now outbound at more than eight times the velocity of conventional rounds.

  “Back to full pitch.”

  Some flashes began to appear where opposing rounds were impacting. All of the flashes were closer to the Alliance due to the higher velocities of the Dactari projectiles.

  “Center of incoming mass appears to be targeted on the Salamis,” the sensor coordinator advised. “We’re about to take a damn good pounding.”

  Harry continued to present an air of calm composure. The boarding parties were ready to go, the targets were allocated, and all he could do at this point was set an example.

  “Any second now,” the sensor officer said, a little more loudly.

  As if on cue, the view began to color as the high-velocity rounds began to impact
the shields. Dappled rings of red and orange danced across in front of the Salamis as the enemy projectiles probed for weaknesses in the massive carrier’s shields. Some found their way inside the small openings that blinked in and out of existence to allow for outbound firing.

  “Two Vulcans and a one-oh-five are down on the starboard bow,” fire control announced.

  “Cease fire and stabilize the forward shields,” Prouse ordered. “The rest of the task force can do the firing while we soak up the enemy rounds.”

  “The Riel took a hit,” sensor announced. “She’s falling back.”

  The raindrop pattern of impacts was interrupted by a large red ring and the deck shuddered under Harry’s feet.

  “They got a big one through,” the damage control officer called out. “Graze down the port side. No inner hull damage. Took out fifteen shield emitters, eight Vulcans and six one-oh-fives.”

  “We got lucky,” Flemming muttered.

  “We get any luckier and we’ll be in trouble,” Prouse muttered back, keeping his voice low enough that the bridge staff wouldn’t hear him. “If they keep taking out shield emitters, we won’t be able to keep body and soul together for very long. These boys can’t run, so they’re going to go down hard.”

  “Coming into the envelope now,” Prouse announced in a louder voice. “Activate the fire control trace and let’s get to work.”

  The firing pattern shifted, now that the task force was coming into effective range. The Dactari, having had several minutes of uninterrupted firing, now had to raise their shields in the face of effective fire. They could drop a small forward section to fire, but at this range, that small opening was a viable target for Alliance gunnery.

  Concentrated fire began to hit ships on the flanks of the Dactari formation while a steady flow of ordinance forced the heart of the enemy formation to be more conservative about their targeting opportunities.

  “Boarding eight is away,” tactical announced. “All eight teams are launched and fire control has integrated their trajectories.”

  The first wave of Mosquitoes began to leave the launchers. Almost twenty percent of each wave were designated as decoys for the eight boarding targets. The old boarding sledges fired their liquid-fueled rockets and hurtled past the front layer of enemy ships, angling for their targets in what passed for the second echelon of the disordered force.

  Six sledges survived their various approach vectors. Five were preceded by their escorting decoy warheads, receiving the frequencies needed for high-speed shield transit. They rammed through the outer hulls, shaking their payloads of soldiers as they slid past heavy bulkheads.

  They slid to a stand-still and, as their dampened inner hulls reached the limits of their travel, explosive seals blew open the sides to allow the boarders out and into the enemy vessel. They struggled against strong winds as the atmosphere of several dozen compartments was vented out through the hole they had just made.

  From this point on, they would be fighting in the vacuum of space, venting each compartment as they moved to secure key compartments. It was something they had been training for since the first war. Their enemy may have received the basics of close quarter-fighting during their training implants, but nothing made up for actual experience.

  The Dactari recruits, already low in numbers, fell quickly.

  The sixth sledge was forced to attempt a low-velocity push through and the pilot had begun the maneuver directly opposite the cruiser’s large hangar bay doors. There simply wasn’t enough time to accelerate to full ramming speed if they managed to get through and so he was planning to rely on getting into the bay before opening his hatches.

  As soon as the serrated nose of the heavy craft penetrated the shield, he rammed the throttles all the way forward and the sledge leapt ahead, narrowly escaping the brunt of the point defense systems, but the tail of the sledge was caught in the rapid fire of the cruiser’s defensive weapons.

  “We’ve lost the main nozzles,” he screamed. “There’s no shutting her down. We’re riding a damned signal flare!”

  “Holy hell!” Prouse exclaimed. “Did a live warhead follow that sledge in?”

  “No sir,” fire control replied. “Not even decoys.”

  “Sir, she lost her nozzles to point defense fire,” sensor advised.

  Prouse shook his head. “Right, we’ll keep an eye on that cruiser, but let’s start hammering the first echelon, now that the boys behind them are occupied.” He looked down at the trace table. “Midgaard are asking for three more targets.” he looked up at Harry, eyebrows raised.

  “Let ‘em try, Captain.”

  Prouse was in the middle of authorizing the last of the three targets when another turned orange. Both men leaned in, frowning.

  “The Pandora?” Prouse looked over at Harry.

  “Shelby still has Fenris and his team aboard,” Harry said quietly. “She’s got a better ship for this kind of work. Better even than the Midgaard.” He nodded.

  Prouse authorized the target and the icon representing the Pandora leapt out to the flank, where a heavy cruiser was turning to bring her main batteries to bear on the Danube. “Look at that,” the fleet captain said in admiration. “She dances around the rest of us. If we had just another five years of peace, we would have made the enemy technology look like museum pieces.”

  The Pandora threw out her own screen of decoys as she closed on the cruiser, who now seemed to forget all about the Danube as she desperately tried to bear on her new assailant.

  “We have their shields,” the tactical officer called over his shoulder.

  “Very well,” Shelby acknowledged. “Helm, lay us against that bay door on the port side.”

  “Laying along the bay door on the port side, aye, ma’am.”

  She opened a channel. “You ready down there?”

  Fenris was surprised he could notice how attractive her voice was at a moment like this. His blood was coursing as the cruiser loomed outside the forward bay door, and yet he still found himself grinning at the sound of her voice.

  “We’re ready,” he replied simply. We can deal with that later, assuming we both survive this.

  They raced toward the enemy ship, startled Dactari crewmen staring out at them from the hangar deck, no doubt assuming they were about to be rammed. They ran in terror, just like they always did. It was something a prize master counted on.

  It gave them an uncontested foothold in the hangar bay.

  The two ships made contact at a slight angle, leaving a four-foot gap on his side of the front rank of ten warriors. He fought his fears, reminding himself that there was no gravity to pull him down into the gap, and led his crew across.

  He was pulled back down as he drifted over the threshold of the bay entrance, landing lightly in enemy territory. He sprinted ahead, making room for the four waves that followed him and began searching for any crew who may have remained in the large hangar. A lone technician stepped out from behind a pallet of cases, a look of dumb relief on his face at not being killed in a ramming maneuver.

  He died with a single burst from Thorstein’s G-20.

  The bay was clear. Fenris turned to see Arnleif wave a two man team toward one of the access doors. She turned to him and nodded. “Everyone’s here. We going straight to engineering this time?”

  Fenris rolled his eyes. “What do you think? I don’t want to become known as the ten-minute captain.” Engineering was the best place for a determined crew to scuttle a ship and he didn’t want to suffer the same defeat twice running.

  They turned for the aft exit.

  “Does that mean you’re worried Captain Shelby might talk?” Arnleif inquired sweetly as they jogged to join the warriors who were already lined up to pour through the door.

  Fenris grinned good naturedly as his crew laughed. “I have a feeling I’m going to be bound by that nickname for life,” he said with mock seriousness. “We’d better seize this bucket in ten minutes so others will assume it’s the reason behind
the name.”

  The door slid open and Thorstein threw a shock grenade down the corridor. As the arcs of electricity diminished, he led his team through the open door and down to the first intersection. He fired one burst down the hall, shook his head and waved the next team forward.

  “Two of the little delvers, but they scampered off,” he shrugged. “They don’t seem to have any fight in them.”

  The delvers, Thorstein’s reference to the clever dwarvish miners of Midgaard legends, were barely in evidence as they pushed toward the engineering section. They entered the engineering section after a few brief encounters, never taking any fire.

  Three enemy in engineering yellow stood by the central control panels and they fell to a hail of bullets. Fenris walked over to look down at the three corpses. Where is everybody? he wondered. It felt as though the ship had little more than an anchor watch aboard. Are they that desperate for crew?

  A voice emanated from the panel in Dheema. “Confirm your orders, Commander.”

  Fenris looked at the panel. A self-destruct command was active and awaiting final approval. The three engineers must have been on the verge of blowing the engines or, at the very least, they were trying to work up the nerve. He reached out and canceled the command procedure.

  “The order has been rescinded,” he replied in Dheema.

  “Who is this?”

  “I am Fenris, a leal warrior from the fief of Beringsburg.” He replied casually. “I’m the new captain of this vessel. I would advise you to take your chances in an escape pod. I’m in the habit of killing stowaways.”

  There was no response.

  Fenris looked to his crew, nodding at Thorstein. “Keep ten here to hold engineering.” He looked to Arnleif. “I’m taking ten to seize the bridge. Take the rest and clear the ship.”

  Harry almost lost his balance as the bridge shuddered again. The grav plating glitched and his right foot suddenly came loose, only to fall back down as the control systems corrected. A two-tone alarm blared throughout the room and every helmet snapped closed in unison.