Alpha Fleet (Rebel Fleet Series Book 3)

by B. V. Larson

  “You don’t trust us, sir?” Lt. Rousseau asked.

  “It’s not that,” I said. “I need a crew that trusts me implicitly.”

  She didn’t argue. When Dalton showed up, she stood down, relieved of duty. She walked off the bridge without a look back.

  Mia, I noticed, tracked every step of her retreat like a cat watching a snuffling mouse slink down a hole.

  “Permission to stand the bridge, Captain?” Commander Hagen asked.

  I nodded to him absently. My eyes were riveted to the local display. The number of bombs floating around our ship—it was like being in a sea of ball bearings.

  “Mia,” I said, “as soon as you get lined up, lay down a pattern of fire toward the approaching phase-ships.”

  “We can’t see them, sir.”

  “I know that. Do your best to hit them anyway. Use your instincts. They’re out there, rushing into range. If we can hit them before they can shoot back…”

  “Target area selected,” she said. “Pattern programmed. Locked and ready to fire.”

  “Fire at will.”

  Mia didn’t hesitate. She rarely did. The ship began to shiver as the big mains unloaded into what appeared to be empty space.

  It had begun. We were fighting, and this battle was already hopeless.

  Even as strikes were being tallied against open expanses of space ahead of us, I ignored all that action.

  Staring at the river of floating metal surrounding us, I could not help but wonder what they would do. Any single one of them could get it into its tiny artificial brain to light itself up and finish us. There was nothing we could do, however, other than look like we were on their side.

  =39=

  For a time, the battle was rather sterile. We were hammering away at empty space, hoping for a lucky strike. Around us, spreading thinner by the minute, was a vast armada of smart-bombs that were apparently seeking targets just as we were.

  “Captain?” Dr. Abrams said, being the very last to make his way up to the bridge in answer to my summons. “What is it now? Do you want me to man a gun or something?”

  “It might make you marginally more useful,” I admitted. “But no. I want you to answer a few questions for me before we die out here in a vain flash of glory.”

  He looked at the tactical situation and blanched. “It looks like you’ve got too much on your hands to bother—”

  “No,” I said firmly. “You’re staying up here with me. Now, did you or did you not interact with the Nomads recently?”

  Abrams hesitated. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “I, on the other hand, am sure that you do.”

  His features took on a stubborn cast. He crossed his arms and lifted his sharp nose into the air.

  “I see what this is,” he said. “The blame-game. When things go badly, the need for a scapegoat often becomes critical.”

  “We’re far past that now. Doctor, we’re not likely to survive another hour. In that light, let me ask you a simple question. Did you, or did you not, have contact with the alien known to us as Godwin?”

  Abrams fidgeted. “This is some sort of witch-hunt, isn’t it?”

  “I’m trying to ascertain the truth, Doctor. You came up with an astounding number of discoveries in a relatively short amount of time. One of them, for example, was the drive we used to open that rift at our stern.”

  Abrams’ eyes slid toward our stern, and his expression shifted to one of alarm.

  “We’re not heading back to the Solar System? Have you gone mad yet again, Blake?”

  “Yeah, probably,” I admitted. “Now, answer my question.”

  “All right,” he said. “If it will stop you from killing us all in this Quixotic manner. I was visited by Godwin several times. During those meetings certain… items of value were exchanged.”

  “Such as… the plans to build an FTL drive?”

  “I might have been provided with a little guidance,” he said primly. “A helpful hand when certain technical restraints arose. You have to understand, I took such design suggestions in an advisory sense only. I was on the verge of breaking through on every one of them.”

  “Right…” I said in a heavy tone. “So, Godwin fed you the design for our engine. What else?”

  He sputtered for a moment. “There might have been some help with the ship’s control package…”

  “Let me guess. He gave you a software toolkit to build our AI. Did it ever occur to you that Godwin’s navigational package caused us to scatter the first time? That you should never have taken its recommended settings?”

  “YES!” he boomed suddenly. “Of course it occurred to me! The first time we jumped, I examined the AI settings and rejected them. They made no sense. I came up with my own equations and used them instead. I didn’t trust Godwin implicitly. Quite the opposite.”

  I looked at him, thinking back to our first foray into interstellar space. “But we scattered that first time. Your numbers were no good. So, the second time you created a rift, you trusted the AI?”

  “What choice did I have? We were about to be blown to bits by those damnable mines.”

  “Right… it was all a setup. We were led out here like dupes. The Nomads must have had a ship fly here and deposit thousands of these drones. Then, they needed a delivery vehicle. They got us to do their dirty work for them. We transported their weapons to an Imperial star system—this one—so they didn’t have to.”

  Abrams peered at me, thinking hard. “It seems plausible,” he admitted. “But in the name of all that is Holy… why?”

  “I can answer that one, Doc,” Hagen said, stepping closer to us. “You nailed it two minutes ago. They wanted a scapegoat. A patsy to deliver their bombs. Or maybe, they just wanted us out of the way. In either case, we’re involved in a diplomatic disaster out here, and I don’t know if we can do a damned thing about it.”

  “Abrams,” I said. “You’re a liar. A court might someday decide if you’re a traitor as well, if we’re lucky. But for right now, you’re all I have. Use the facts we have. Use the knowledge that the ship’s computer has been compromised in your next set of equations. Try to map us out a safe route home.”

  He nodded and hurried off the bridge.

  “Are you hitting anything, Mia?” I asked.

  “Negative,” Chang answered for her. “She’s pounding empty vacuum and filling it with radioactive particles.”

  “I’m firing blind!” she complained. “It helps if you can see your prey.”

  I noticed that as she said this, she was looking at me. I wasn’t sure if that was significant or not.

  “All right,” I said. “Helm, ease off the throttle. Slowly begin to brake.”

  Dalton looked at me and smirked. “Trying to lose all these little steel doggies, eh?”

  “Something like that.”

  At first, my gambit appeared to work. The spheres that were orbiting around us pulled ahead. They no longer formed a swirling cloud, but rather a vanguard.

  But then, things took an unexpected turn.

  “Captain! They’re on our stern!”

  For just a second, I thought Samson was talking about the spheres. But I realized as he hit the emergency dump of decoys and shielding, it had to be something else.

  “Evasive action. Random course, Dalton.”

  He had us all standing on our heads a moment later, sending our ship into a slowly corkscrewing plunge. It was all relative, of course, but it felt like we were moving downward.

  There were three smaller vessels on our stern. Phase-ships. They’d come out of hiding and fired immediately.

  The enemy’s first salvo went wide. We’d pumped out obscuring crystals, aerogels and decoys, but their software made rapid adjustments. Negating our defensives the second time around, they nailed our flank shields several times.

  The ship shuddered and there was a horrid electrical ripping sound, as if we’d been struck by lightning.

  “We’ve lost our por
t side shield,” Samson informed me.

  “Mia, get some fire on those phase-ships!”

  “I’ll have to cut through the gravity drones to do it.”

  I looked and saw she was right. Dozens of our companions had broken off, and they were now plunging to intercept the enemy ships.

  “Hold your fire!” I ordered her. “Let’s see what the drones do first. Dalton, accelerate away from the point of impact—if they’re going to go off, we don’t want to be here.

  The phase-ship captains had the same idea, it appeared. They broke off and moved away—but the spheres pursued them. The chase lasted about a minute, and then the spheres caught up and went off in unison.

  “Did they phase out?” I demanded.

  “I don’t think so,” Chang said. “I think they couldn’t get charged up fast enough to escape. There’s debris… Sir, I think they’ve all been destroyed.”

  I slammed my hands together in triumph. “Then Nomads are on our side so far.”

  “Well,” Chang said, “at least they’re programmed not to destroy us just yet.”

  His description was far less positive, but I didn’t argue with him. There was no reasonable way that I could.

  “Dalton, swing back down into that swarm of drones,” I said. “I think we’re safer there.”

  “I’m way ahead of you, Captain.”

  We did a looping barrel-roll and plunged back into the mix of spheres. They grudgingly bumped out of our way.

  “Any sign of the Imperials?” I asked.

  “Negative,” Chang said. “They’re maintaining stealth. Apparently the Nomad drones can’t find them either. They only attacked when they came back into normal space.”

  “Right… if we stay here in this bee-swarm, we should be okay. Where are we headed, Chang?”

  He worked his numbers for a few seconds before looking up. A glittering yellow arc of light lit up the screen, and the holoprojector zoomed out to show more of the star system.

  “The ninth planet…” I said. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Captain, we’ve got another trio of contacts.”

  I swung my view to the region specified. A triangular formation of three ships had emerged a thousand kilometers off our flank. They were pacing us.

  “Can we fire through this cloud of marbles without hitting them?” I asked.

  “I’m not that good,” Mia complained.

  “Then I suggest we fall back and bring our main batteries to bear on them, sir,” Commander Hagen said.

  I looked at him thoughtfully. “No. They’re just hanging out there. They want us to come out to play. They want us to either shoot one of these drones by accident, or to leave their protection to attack. Remember, Captain Lael has plenty of other ships out here, hidden on this battlefield.”

  Hagen stepped up to my station, rubbing at his chin. “This is tricky,” he admitted. “Tactically complex. We’re fighting ghosts, and relying on alien smart-bombs that we can’t talk to with only guesses to guide us on their behavior.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “It gets worse when you’re dealing with twenty different species all running around a battlefield at once. The Rebel Kher are anything but tightly organized.”

  He nodded slowly and didn’t offer any more suggestions. That was a pity, as I could have used a good one about then.

  =40=

  “Okay,” I said, “this can’t last forever. Lael is trying to trick us out of our nest of drones, but she can’t wait until we hit her world. She has to make a decision soon.”

  “We don’t know that, sir,” Samson interjected.

  “Why not? You don’t think she wants to protect fellow Imperials?”

  “I don’t think we know for sure who lives on that world. What if it’s a Rebel Kher planet?”

  That thought did give me pause. Could we be riding herd on a deadly swarm of intelligent bombs? Taking a force of fantastic destructive power straight into the waiting arms of an ally?

  Heaving an uncertain breath, I came to a decision: I needed more information.

  “Contact Lael.”

  “She’s not answering, sir,” Chang reported.

  Leaning back in my seat, I pondered my next move. After a few moments, I came up with an angle. I opened a channel myself and recorded a message.

  “To the new commander of the Imperial task force. We present you with Earth’s sorrowful regrets at the death of Captain Lael. We found her to be a capable adversary, even if she tended to make many tactical errors. Hopefully, you will do better and bring less shame to the Empire for which—”

  That was as far as I got. I rather regretted the quick success of my tactic, because I had a lot more backhanded compliments to hand out—they were lined up and ready to go inside my head.

  “This is Captain Lael!” said an angry voice. She appeared then, a ghostly form superimposed over the depicted star system. “What do you want, Blake?”

  “Captain?” I exclaimed in surprised. “I had no idea—who led that brave assault on our stern if it wasn’t you?”

  “If I’d been leading the assault, your ship would have been destroyed!” she assured me. Calming down with a visible effort, she continued speaking a moment later. “Flora was a capable second,” she said. “She had promise, but that potential will never be realized now.”

  “A pity…” I said in a vague tone. “Tell me, if you’ve lost the will to fight, why are you still following us at all? Perhaps you’d best race ahead to your homeworld and work to mount a superior defense.”

  Lael made an odd noise. It was something between hiss and a gargle of rage.

  “I’ve heard enough of your insults. Your ship will never reach Diva. Of that, I can assure you.”

  She closed the channel, and I laughed out loud. “She named her planet! I wasn’t even going for that much. Where does that leave us, Chang…? Navigation?”

  The navigational team huddled around a few consoles for about ten minutes before they were willing to make the call.

  “It’s Diva—a star system near Pollux.”

  “Yeah, I heard that. It’s Imperial, right?”

  “We’ve got no reliable charts from this far out. The Rebel Kher maps fade away at this distance.”

  That made me blink in concern. “We’re way out? As in more than a thousand lights?”

  “Yes, Captain. It’s more like two thousand lights.”

  I winced visibly. For some reason, being so far from home always made me feel a little faint. I didn’t like being someplace where my home star couldn’t be picked out by the naked eye on a clear night.

  Two thousand lights… At this range, it would be hard to find old Sol with a telescope.

  “How’d we get out here so far, so fast?” I demanded. “Normally, a long jump takes time, and you usually scatter when you do.”

  “Why don’t you think we scattered?” Hagen asked.

  “Space is too big. If you lose your target-lock on a beacon star, you’ll probably hit the open void, not a populated star system.”

  “Yeah… I knew that.”

  “When you apply classroom knowledge to a real live voyage, you find out it’s all different don’t you?”

  “Reality is always a deal-breaker, Captain.”

  My thoughts brought me back to Abrams. I hadn’t checked on him lately. I was interested in a report on his progress, but I didn’t want to leave the bridge in a volatile situation.

  Deciding to ride things out for a time, I spent half an hour in my command chair, monitoring everything. During that time, Lael didn’t attempt to kick us in the ass again, but we hadn’t yet dared to fall out of formation with the swarm.

  “How long until we reach the ninth planet—the one she called Diva?”

  “About fifteen more hours, Captain.”

  “That gives us some time to think. I want my senior staff all coming up with scenarios. Commander Hagen, you have the watch. I’m going below.”

  Hagen looked surprised, but
he didn’t comment. I left him in command and headed down to pester Abrams. I knew from experience I wasn’t going to get anything useful out of him by just calling.

  There was an impressive huddle going on when I got down to the labs. At least fifteen lab coats were humping over figures and simulations. They had a full-fledged holoprojector of their own, and they’d worked out countless scenarios.

  “What’s the verdict, Doc?” I asked aloud.

  A few eyes flicked to me, but no one answered. It took me a second to realize Abrams himself wasn’t in the midst of his team. He was, in fact, nowhere to be found in the planning rooms.

  One woman with a strange haircut and glasses caught my eye with a waving finger. Wordlessly, she pointed me toward the swinging doors in the back.

  Striding that way, I straight-armed the doors, sending them flying. Somehow, I already knew what I was going to find.

  There, sure enough, was Abrams. He was crouching over a shiny object in a glove box.

  The room was dark, but not pitch-black. The primary light source was from inside the box, where his hands and his attention were directed.

  Crossing my arms, I cleared my throat loudly.

  “What is it?” Abrams demanded without looking back. “Is that clown down here again? Am I to have no peace?”

  “No,” I said. “There’s no rest for the wicked, Doc.”

  He slid his hands out of the glove box and straightened. “Ah, Captain Blake. I was wondering when you would return to check on me. I’m sure you’re satisfied, no?”

  “No,” I said. “Why would I be satisfied? I’ve gotten nothing from your team, and it’s been an hour.”

  He spun around with a look of sudden rage. “An hour? Those cretins!”

  He charged past me and began shouting in the labs. Soon, I heard the thudding of feet.

  “You’ll get your report. We came up with a new formulation perhaps forty minutes ago. I approved it and moved on.”

  “Why didn’t I hear about it?”

  He shrugged. “I told them to check the numbers. Perhaps, they are timid. Or perhaps, they have difficulty with so many variables at once.”