The Orphan Alliance

by A. G. Claymore

  Harry fought a growing sense of dread as the segments of his helmet snapped out of their housings and locked together.

  Humans, who routinely evacuated the atmosphere of enemy ships during boarding operations, always fought in full EVA suits. The life support sub-routines on all Human vessels contained a command line that would activate every helmet within range in the event of a hull breach.

  “Damage control?” Prouse roared, just seconds before Harry would have.

  “Heavy round made it through our shields, sir.” The young lieutenant was leaning over a team of frenzied ratings who were working to sort the various automated damage reports. “Straight through a hangar door on the bow, ventral port side, and out the back end.” He looked to a monitor to his right. “Shrapnel has caused some secondary damage…” One of his team was pointing at a section of his monitor and the lieutenant nodded. “At least twenty-three dead on the hangar deck and five Ospreys smashed, but we’re still fully operational.”

  Because there was such a huge empty space running through the center of Human carriers, the Salamis had been spared the horrors of a heavy round tumbling through the fabric of the ship, turning bulkheads into secondary projectiles.

  Still, it was damn lucky that the round had gone straight through. The Riel had taken a deep hit from a smaller round and her engineers were desperately trying to get her pitch drive back online. Failing that, she could still jump back to Oaxes on her main drive. The Revere had taken a larger round and there was very little left of what had been a frigate only moments before.

  “It was a main battery round from tango hotel-fife, sir,” tactical added.

  “So we have to write off that boarding crew,” Prouse rumbled. It was tango hotel-five that had shot the nozzles off of a boarding sledge. “Give her a ten-bug spread.”

  “Ten-bug spread on tango hotel-fife, aye, sir.”

  Ten more streaks of exhaust marked the departure of the deadly weapons, just as a brilliant flash appeared to starboard.

  “That was the Roland.” The tactical officer’s choice of tense was grimly appropriate. The frigate was nothing more than a tumbling mass of parts.

  “Two enemy corvettes and one cruiser left,” Flemming mused as he examined the trace. He suddenly tensed. “Good God!”

  Harry followed the British officer’s horrified gaze and took a deep involuntary breath. “Belay that ten-bug shot!” he screamed, not caring that he was bypassing the fleet captain. “That cruiser is ours now!”

  “Issuing the recall…” a fire control rating yelled.

  “Turn those warheads on the last two corvettes,” Prouse ordered calmly, perhaps a gentle rebuke to his screaming commodore, though he would doubtless be the first to admit the situation had developed too quickly for the niceties of protocol.

  The main batteries of the Nelson hammered one of the corvettes, knocking her back on her heels while the lighter rounds tore through the overloaded shields, burrowing deep inside the lightly-constructed escort. A cloud of debris streamed out the stern of the ship as the depleted uranium drove straight through.

  The Mosquito warheads had been recalled and re-tasked, but two had reached the shields of the captured cruiser and burrowed through. Fortunately, the shield hadn’t fully closed behind them and they responded to command, turning inside the shields to pass back out. They followed the rest of the swarm, but the hive mind of the swarm assessed that the first three warheads penetrating the shields of the final corvette would be more than enough for such a small vessel. The remainder of the swarm turned and fled the pending blast.

  The Dactari shield closed behind the third warhead and one and a half megatons of force flattened the flimsy ship against its own shields for the briefest of moments before the shield generators were crushed. The blast was unleashed, reaching out to consume four warheads at the back of the fleeing swarm. With their trigger mechanisms vaporized, the fissile material refused to ignite, preserving the remaining sub-munitions.

  And the battle was done.

  Harry realized he had been holding his breath. He began taking a series of quiet, shallow breaths, hoping it would go unnoticed.

  “Launch shuttles to search for survivors,” Prouse ordered as he walked around the trace table. “Fire control, redeploy the remaining warheads as a minefield. I want a screen to cover anything that drops out near that singularity.” The only vessels passing through this area were from the Republic, which automatically made them the enemy.

  Prouse extended a hand. “My congratulations, sir! It was a damn good plan!”

  Harry took the proffered hand. “The best plan is little more than a lame excuse unless you have good people to pull it off. Your crews do you credit, Captain.”

  Prouse nodded. “I couldn’t ask for better.”

  “What’s our bill?” Harry asked, a little more brutally than he had intended.

  “We’ve lost the Revere and the Roland,” Prouse sighed. “The Riel is on her way back to Oaxes. She might have her pitch drives operational by the time she gets there.”

  “And we took four cruisers and six frigates from the enemy,” Harry added. “That leaves us with almost fifty percent more ships than we left Oaxes with.”

  “More than a fifty percent increase in combat power,” Flemming put in, “when you look at the high proportion of heavy cruisers captured.”

  “They’re hardly combat effective with only fifty men apiece,” Prouse corrected. “They’re moving away from the singularity at full pitch and it’ll be a good seven minutes before we get them out of here. Once we all get home, we can fill out the crews and run some training scenarios.”

  Harry had no doubt that Prouse would hammer the new Marine crews until they could match any ship in the Alliance fleet. He let his mind wander back to Oaxes. He had no reason to believe that Haldita would be any less corrupt than the other fringe satraps. It was a corruption so old, so entrenched over the centuries, that it was looked upon as normal practice.

  Haldita was almost certainly skimming from the planetary revenue. He would have been passing a major portion of that to the regional ganzabar, a finance official who would oversee the revenues of up to ten satraps, skimming some of the unofficial funds for himself before handing the rest over to the consuls, who used their share to fund re-election.

  Now that the Republic’s ganzabar was out of the picture, he wondered how much Haldita would try to skim. He was almost certain to make some attempt to increase his personal wealth in the chaos of the coming months. Whatever arrangement emerged from the shakeup, it was likely going to signal the shape of things to come.

  “Shuttles coming back,” an operations officer reported. “Thirteen survivors from the two ships. Only the ones who tumbled out of breached compartments survived.” The rest had been thrown about inside the vessels as they came apart. Only a lucky few had managed to find themselves in the midst of a parting seam, missed by jagged shards of metal and carbon as their ship disappeared around them.

  “Very well,” Prouse replied. “We’ll leave the Potomac here as a picket and fall back to…"

  “Distortion alert!” sensor called out. “Enemy ships. Arriving inside the mine field.”

  Harry turned to the trace. “More than forty ships,” he muttered.

  “And look at them,” Flemming added. “They’re instantly moving into formation – into an all-around defense.”

  “Like watching a damned cat land on its feet,” Prouse said. “These boys know what they’re doing, even after a surprise dropout.”

  “How long till our prizes can jump?” Harry asked.

  Prouse chewed on his lower lip. “Still three minutes, give or take, until they escape the effects of the singularity.”

  “And we’re less than a half minute ahead of them,” Flemming warned. “Assuming we’re going to have the good sense to run for it.”

  Harry caught Prouse’s eye and saw agreement there. “Yes, Commander, we are going to take our winnings and go home.” He g
rinned suddenly. “Gentlemen, it might be worth mentioning that we are currently being pursued by a force of ten Republic-built warships.”

  Prouse looked at him for a heartbeat and then nodded his approval with a chuckle. “Signal the fleet, including the prizes,” he ordered. “We’ll be firing at the prizes, but nothing bigger than the Vulcans are to make contact with their shields. Try to miss as much as possible.” He was about to change the scale of the upper trace but stopped and turned to the communications officer. “Make sure the prizes don’t reply to that signal. Use best encryption, and tell the prizes to wait until jumping before they disable the logistics transmitters.”

  “We’re about to take some fire from one of our captured cruisers,” tactical advised. “It’s coming from their forward point defenses.” The point defense system employed rapid-fire rail guns of a small caliber. It was doubtful they would ever penetrate combat shielding.

  “Make a note of which captain that is.” Prouse turned back to Harry. “Shows a fair bit of initiative, that one. He’s helping to create the effect we’re going for here. I’m of a mind to help that along.” He turned back to his bridge staff. “Evacuate all compartments aft of alpha sixty five,”

  Harry raised an eyebrow as his fleet captain turned back with a grin.

  “I’ll simulate a shield glitch and let a few rounds in. If our new arrivals are as proficient as we think, they’ll expect us to be taking some damage.”

  Reis mastered his anger and assessed the situation. They had been forced to flee from Tauhento only to tumble out of distortion halfway to Gaemhaeg. The cause was obvious enough. The enemy had created an artificial singularity to trap a Republic force. Even though they were outnumbered, the Rebublic ships seemed to have gotten the better of the engagement and they were chasing the Humans off.

  For the moment, he would put aside his plans to disrupt the Alliance economy and seek a different victory for his crews.

  “We can’t fire on them from here,” his second declared. “Not without striking some of our own in the process.”

  “No,” Reis conceded. “But if we can spread out, we’ll be able to angle our fire in at the enemy.” He turned to his second. “Signal all ships, we will…”

  “Minefield!” a junior officer announced. “A hemispherical configuration penning us in against the carbon planet.” A series of red dots appeared around the fleet commander as the holo display updated.

  Reis resisted the urge to curse. It would be bad for the crew to see their leader unsettled by the conditions of the battle space, and he had been fortunate to have a well-trained force. No doubt sensor officers on his other ships were also conducting full sweeps of the area, rather than simply concentrating on the enemy. “Have the flanks fire on the center of the field,” he ordered. Ships from his flanks, firing at an angle would be able to clear the front of the field without the risk of stray rounds reaching the friendly ships ahead of them.

  One by one, the dots began to disappear as the mines were struck by high-velocity rounds. They were loitering on minimal power so as to evade detection. On contact with a shield, they would no doubt activate those damned shield arrays and find a way through.

  “That should be enough of an opening,” he said to his second. “Order them to cease firing. Take us through and signal the rest to follow.” He was itching to get at the enemy. Having just left a fight where he was little more than a puppet on strings, he was eager to return the favor.

  They would make these impudent invaders dance to a Dactari tune for a change.

  “The mines are starting to activate,” the sensor officer warned. “They must have some kind of passive proximity sensors. The nearest mines are heading for us.”

  “Point defense systems are engaging,” the weapons officer reported. “They should pose no problem.”

  Most of the ships in this flotilla carried the new shield emitters. They allowed tiny openings for outgoing ordinance while minimizing exposure from incoming rounds. Reis had been told by reliable sources that it was an invention from Yilo’haye, but it seemed far too similar to the shields of the enemy warheads for his liking.

  The new shields had made their appearance shortly after the second armada had left to reinforce the troops on Earth. That was another part of the official story that left sand on his tongue. If so many Human warships had escaped the fall of their planet, why were they here, attacking Republic worlds when they should be fighting to free their own people?

  “The Dactari ships are jumping.” The sensor officer shook his head in surprise.

  “Worse than gods-damned clones!” the second growled. “Any fool could see we were coming to help them and now they’ve simply tucked in their tails and run for home!”

  “Open fire,” Reis commanded. “We might yet do some damage before they can jump.”

  The growl of rapid-fire rail guns blended with the deep, soul-rending roar of the main batteries as the flagship unleashed her destructive power.

  And Reis finally cursed.

  “Tactical,” he shouted. “Give me a replay of the last centi-day on this quadrant.” He pointed to the back corner of the holo display.

  The second followed him into the replay, looking at the moving vessels as they fired back and forth. “What is it, sir?”

  “You hear that?” Reis cocked an ear as the main battery fired again.

  “Our main?’

  The flota nodded. “Do you see any main batteries in use during our comrade’s pursuit of the Earthers?”

  The second’s eyes grew suddenly wide. “Those were captured ships!” He looked back over his shoulder at the bridge crew, his tail unnaturally still as he tried to master his own reactions. He turned back. “They have played us for fools twice in one day,” he said in a quiet voice, tinged with anger. “We continually fail to credit the enemy with anything more than dumb luck, and it may yet be our undoing. We must get the moss out of our eyes.”

  Reis nodded. He understood that his second wasn’t accusing him of stupidity but, rather, he was accusing the governing council of misleading the people.

  He knew because it was a common thread from the commissar. Citizens on Dactar were still being told that everything was all right, that Humans were fools. They had no idea that enemy forces were loose in the Republic, or that the fight for Earth was not going so well.

  His brow furrowed. Is there even a fight for Earth, or is that a lie as well? He shook his head. Best not to get into that, and especially not with his second. As a political commissar, the second was, unfortunately, a true believer.

  There was always a danger in making an officer responsible for the crew’s adherence to Republic ideals. He might actually believe the message he preached to the men. Such a man, responsible for the minds of the crew, could be a threat to a corrupt government.

  The flota put a hand on his second’s shoulder. “We’ll continue the pursuit but, if they don’t stay to fight, then we’ll find a quiet place where we can properly regroup.”

  The second gave him a look of respect. “Not back to Gaemhaeg, then?”

  “No,” he smiled grimly. “That, at least, is one victory we can deny our enemy. We’ll keep the force together and look for opportunities.”

  A New Perspective

  The Kinzell Lychensee

  “I’ve been here,” Dwight muttered as they walked up a half flight of graphene steps. His breath was misting in the cold fog. “When I was looking for someone to do my tattoo.”

  “He did your CL13?” Emily asked.

  “No, I went with another place,” he replied with a look of mild alarm, “but he’ll probably remember…”

  “Ah! Mr. Young!” The shop owner turned a monitor and stood up as they walked in. “You’ve reconsidered about the animated nude?” He gestured invitingly at the screen.

  Dwight cleared his throat. “Umm…”

  “Well,” Emily leaned in to get a close look at the monitor displaying the design in question. “She sure is impress
ive.” She arched an eyebrow at Dwight. “You really are a patron of the arts, aren’t you?”

  “It’s not because she’s nude,” he spluttered. “Well, ok, sure – she looks nice, but the real reason I was looking at it is because she’s animated. How cool is that?” He spread his hands, looking to the Yo’Thage brothers for support, but they were grinning at his predicament.

  “Let’s see the animation,” Qut suggested.

  Dwight suddenly realized the animated feature probably wasn’t going to help much, but it was too late now.

  Theil touched the screen and the image began to move.

  “I have to admit, that is pretty neat,” Emily allowed. “You don’t see that kind of thing back home; we just have… Oh!” She stepped back from the screen. “Is she…”

  “Yes,” Theil replied proudly.

  Emily turned her head to gaze at the image sideways, a mischievous grin on her face. “Where were you going to put something like this, Dwight? She would probably work her way around your entire arm.”

  “I’ve done one where she dances around a customer’s upper arm,” Theil said. “I can show you…”

  “Can we please just start cutting holes in my head?” Dwight blurted.

  “Chicken,” she teased.

  “You need surgery?” Theil waved to a chair at the back of the shop. “What do you need?”

  Qut held up a sealed package. “We need you to install a Hothmoen bus on a Midgaard Q-CPU.”

  The artist/surgeon wagged an appreciative finger at the brothers. “I had a feeling the two of you were bringing some exotic work to my shop, but a Hothmoen CPU implant?” He rubbed his hands together. “I’ll be the envy of every shop on the planet!”

  “Uhhh, you’ve done this sort of thing before, right?” Dwight eyed the chair with growing apprehension.

  “Of course not,” Theil replied cheerfully. “Darfoeh is the only world in the Republic allowed to handle CPU implants and, even there, it’s restricted to one isolated facility in a floating city.”

  “Now wait a minute.” Dwight’s hands came up on their own, clearly agreeing with his reluctance. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable with being an experimental patient.”