Albion Lost (The Exiled Fleet Book 1)

by Richard Fox

  “Stole my kill,” Ivor mumbled.

  Wyman angled his fighter up and pushed his ion engines so hard his new canopy rattled on the hinges. The Joaquim was miles away, moving extremely fast for what looked like any other shuttle that plied Albion’s skies during peacetime.

  “Rosy, Dandy, handle the rest. I’m going for the bogie on the shuttle’s tail,” Wyman said. He let off a half-aimed shot that hit the water just ahead of the enemy fighter. His attempt to get the enemy’s attention failed as it let off a blast that missed the Joaquim by a few feet.

  “Anytime!” came from the shuttle.

  “Shuttle, on my mark, I want you to pull up and cut your air speed,” Wyman said.

  “Do what?”

  The enemy’s edges glowed brighter.

  “Mark!”

  To Wyman’s surprise, the shuttle did as instructed. The pursuing fighter tried to match the maneuver and sent its shot wide. Wyman unleashed a torrent of wild shots that swarmed around the enemy. One connected, breaking through an edge and knocking the fighter around like a spinning top. It plunged into the sea.

  The shuttle rolled over and flew back out over the open water.

  An energy beam slashed across Wyman’s nose cone and sent up a geyser of boiling water. He slammed his fighter to the side as steaming rain spattered against his canopy.

  “One got away from us!” Ivor shouted.

  Wyman leveled off and twisted from side to side, searching for the last enemy fighter.

  His Typhoon kicked up as the enemy roared just beneath him, disrupting the airflow over his wings and sending him into a tail spin. He grabbed his thruster control and waited until he saw the darkening sky in front of him, then sent a burst of power through the engines, shooting him straight into the air. He throttled back once his wings regained lift and dove back toward the ocean.

  Ivor was on the last enemy ship’s tail, but she didn’t fire—any miss would put the Joaquim in jeopardy.

  A thin beam from the enemy hit the shuttle’s right wing and almost knocked it into a barrel roll. A flare from Dandy’s engines cast deep yellow light across the waves.

  “Dandy, what’re you—”

  Dandy screamed and rammed the enemy ship. Both fighters vanished in a fireball, showering the area in metal fragments that splashed into the ocean.

  “No chute; he didn’t eject,” Ivor said, stunned.

  “Freak Show, was it?” came from the Joaquim. “Thanks for clearing the air. We need an escort to orbit. Can you break atmosphere?”

  Wyman circled around the burning wreckage of Dandy’s and the enemy’s fighters, looking for any sign of life that was surely impossible.

  “Freak Show?”

  “On it, yeah…yeah.” Wyman looked at his battery levels. “I can make orbit. Rosy?”

  “Can do.” She flew to the Joaquim’s wing and matched the shuttle’s speed. “Ready when you are.”

  A flight path appeared on his HUD, leading to the starry sky above. He let his ship’s computer handle the maneuver and settled against his cockpit’s padding as the acceleration pressed him back. His mind went to the dying Excelsior, the loss of so many fighters, the burning cities.

  Opening his eyes, he focused on his instruments, concentrating on the altimeter and the drain on his battery life—anything but the horrors he’d witnessed. His body lightened as gravity slipped away.

  “Joaquim,” Wyman said as the acceleration tapered off and normal breathing was possible, “we’ll get you to a naval vessel. There should be another task force coming in from Sandov.”

  “This is Thorvald with the Genevan Guard,” a new voice said from the shuttle. “We’re taking the Crown Prince to…Siam. No invading ships have translated through that nexus point yet.”

  “Crown Prince? Does that mean the King is…what about Sandov or even Cardiff?” Ivor asked.

  “Both are under attack,” Thorvald said. “The enemy, whoever it is, wasted no time before striking through our major nexus points. Siam is our best option. Come to a close formation. We’re going to do a wide-field jump to bring your fighters with us.”

  Wyman swallowed hard.

  “Hold on…there’s no way a ship that small can expand a slip field to—”

  “This isn’t your standard shuttle, in case you haven’t noticed,” said the first voice from the Joaquim. “I made some extensive modifications to her over the years. The slip generator is the latest tech out of the Reich military development. They don’t know we have it and would be most grumpy to learn as much.”

  Wyman settled on the shuttle’s wing and looked over the top at Ivor, who threw her hands up in confusion.

  “This is crazy,” Wyman said. “Our fighters can’t survive in slip space for more than—”

  “You stay here and you’ll die,” Tolan said. “I’ve done this before and it almost worked that time. Mag-lock your fighters to the hull once we’re in slip space.”

  “We’re not even near the—”

  “You’re starting to bore me, kid. I need to concentrate for a second so I don’t smear your molecules over the next many light-years….Close enough. Activating in three…”

  Wyman tucked his fighter closer to the shuttle as a milky-white bubble formed around them.

  “Two…”

  He’d done a slip transfer only once before in his life, tucked deep inside a void ship, and his stomach twisted into knots at the memory.

  “One!”

  A kaleidoscope of light swarmed over the bubble.

  ****

  Wyman felt his fighter settle against the shuttle’s upper hull and flicked on the mag locks in his landing gear. The electromagnets were designed as a last resort to save a fighter if its mothership was too damaged to recover void craft by locking on to the outside of its parent ship. While Wyman had practiced the maneuver many times, he’d never done it on such a small ship.

  Or while moving.

  Or while in slip space.

  His balled his trembling hands into fists and refused to look at anything but his knees. The madness of slip space swirled around him, a riot of smeared light that danced like water reflecting off a pool over the protective bubble of true space around the three ships.

  According to the navy’s psychologists, his aversion to seeing raw slip space was quite normal and not a problem. Operating outside a ship’s hull while underway in the gravity funnels between stars was extremely dangerous and not part of his job description. They assured him that he had nothing to ever worry about.

  Wyman couldn’t help but notice that none of those shrinks were there with him while he sat in his cockpit, almost too terrified to move.

  “I’m locked in,” Ivor said.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Wyman hummed.

  “Well I’ll be damned…that worked,” Tolan said. “OK, now I need the two of you to get to the air lock on the back of the ship. Salis will let you in.”

  “You know what? I’m OK right here,” Wyman said.

  “It’ll take us three days to reach Siam. How long will your life support last?” Tolan asked.

  “Twelve hours,” Ivor said. “It’s not that bad, Freak. Kind of pretty actually.”

  “Nope! Just…bring me new air tanks. I won’t get hungry. Three days of sitting right here…with my eyes closed.”

  “Wait a minute, are you afraid?” Tolan asked. “A fighter pilot scared of a little EVA? That’s like a wet navy sailor that doesn’t know how to swim.”

  “I’ve got him,” Ivor said. “Get the air lock ready for us.”

  Wyman sat still, concentrating on each breath of recycled air that came through his suit. A knock on his canopy made him flinch.

  “Freak, look at me,” Ivor said.

  Wyman shook his head.

  “I know about the accident on the Derringer, know what you went through. But you’re not there anymore; you’re right here with me. I need you to unlock your canopy and get inside the nice, warm shuttle that’s full of breathable air and…prob
ably alcohol. Couldn’t you go for drink after this shit of a day?”

  Wyman turned his head to Ivor and opened one eye. She stood next to his cockpit, one hand gripping the emergency release that would have blown his canopy off his fighter. Madness swirled behind her and his stomach heaved.

  He turned his head away and used one hand to unlock the canopy. She grabbed him by the hand and squeezed it.

  “The docs said I wouldn’t remember anything,” Wyman said, his chin tucked against his chest. “But I do...I do.”

  He felt his restraints loosen and then he felt her grab him beneath his shoulder. She pulled at his bulk but failed to move him.

  “I swear to God I don’t know how you get your giant gorilla ass in the cockpit,” Ivor said.

  “Hey kids,” Tolan said through their helmets, “got a slight fluctuation in the slip drive. The bubble’s going to shrink to standard size in the next few minutes if I don’t figure out the issue. Long story short, get your asses in here before I reverse the polarity on the hull and jettison your fighters to save the Joaquim. Better get moving. Mr. and Mrs. Unfriendly will crush my skull if I put the Crown Prince at risk.”

  “You hear that, Freak? You start moving or we die—we both die.” Ivor shook his shoulder. “I’m not leaving you out here. Get. Out.”

  Wyman lurched out of the cockpit and fell onto the hull, gipping it with both hands.

  “Progress, that’s progress,” Ivor said as she tried to lift him by the waist with a grunt.

  “I don’t want to look,” Wyman said.

  “You don’t have to look. You just have to move.” He got to his knees and gripped her wrist with both hands. Wyman took a halting step forward, then another.

  Ivor led Wyman to the back of the shuttle. She peered over the edge and into the swirling abyss below. White light spilled out of the open air lock.

  “OK, this part’s going to be tricky,” she said. “You need to climb down and swing into the airlock.”

  “What?” Wyman’s eyes opened in shock, which proved to be a mistake as he squeezed his eyes shut again and moaned in terror.

  “Get him to the edge,” a woman’s voice said.

  “About out of patience with you, Freak.” Ivor swept her shin against Wyman’s ankles, knocked him flat against the hull, and then pressed her hands against his shoulders and pushed him feet first toward the edge.

  “Wait. Wait!” Wyman grabbed her by the forearms hard enough that she winced in pain.

  A bronze armored hand reached over the edge and grabbed Wyman by the ankle.

  He gave off a scream so shrill it could have come from a little girl. The hand yanked Wyman over the edge, who dragged Ivor along with him.

  “Wait! Wait!” Ivor tried to dig her heels into the hull, but Wyman’s grip held true. She flipped over the edge and got a close look at the energy wall that held the ship inside slip space. Touching the wall would send her into real space, and the physics of that transition would spear her every atom across a very long swath of interstellar space. She jerked away from certain death and slammed into a metal floor.

  She stared at a pair of bronze boots, then looked up Salis’s body to her masked face. The outer air-lock door shut and air flooded the chamber.

  Wyman had an iron grip on Ivor’s arms, his face tucked against the floor.

  “Bridge, I’ve got them,” Salis said. Her faceplate shifted away and she snorted.

  “Finally,” Tolan said. “Bring them up when they’re ready.”

  “Freak, we’re safe. Open your eyes and let go of me before you break my friggin’ arms,” Ivor said.

  Wyman looked up, let her go, and sat against the bulkhead. He ripped his helmet off and wiped sweat-soaked hair away from his face.

  “To hell with that,” he said.

  “You don’t say.” Ivor removed her helmet and took a deep breath of chilly air.

  “You’re a Genevan?” Wyman asked Salis. “Who’s here? What about the King?”

  “I am Salis. Crown Prince Aidan is resting with Thorvald. The rest…”

  Wyman saw the dents and scorch marks on her armor and got an idea of what happened.

  Ivor raised a foot and kicked Wyman in the chest.

  “What the hell, Wyman?” she asked. “Dogfights, bad orbitals in and out, and you lock up during something as simple as an EVA walk that we’ve done a hundred times in training?”

  “We never did a slip space EVA. Did you see—” he pointed at the air-lock door “—that shit? There was an explosion when I was a kid…the docs said I was cured and good to join the navy…it all just fell apart when I was out there.”

  “Psycho conditioning can fail after enough physical stress,” Salis said. “This isn’t unusual.”

  “Not that unusual. You feel better, Wyman?” Ivor asked.

  “A little, actually.” Wyman shrugged.

  Ivor sniffed the air and gave her wingman a disappointed look.

  “Don’t you judge me. Remember what happened to you after that night in Coventry City?” Wyman shifted his seat.

  “It’s called blackout drunk for a reason,” Ivor said, standing up.

  “I’ll take you to the showers.” Salis helped Wyman up and led them into the Joaquim.

  ****

  Tiberian walked through a throng of Daegon warriors and into the hidden shuttle bay. The flash of laser fire still winked in the sky as the last of the Albion navy died to the Daegon guns. With the palace under his command, and the battle for the skies nearly over, Albion was all but defeated.

  A warrior knelt before Tiberian and held up a stuffed doll.

  “We found this here, master,” the warrior said. “A vessel managed to escape orbit with the aid of two fighters.”

  Tiberian took King Randolph’s crown from his belt, activated scanners in his gloves, and waved his fingertips over the crown and doll. DNA from both items showed they belonged to a father and son.

  “Prince Aidan lives,” Tiberian dropped the doll to the ground, “and he has escaped.” He touched a golden box on a chain around his neck. The expectations of his command were simple. So long as the Albion royal family, any part of it, survived, he was a failure.

  “The fleet tracked the ship’s slip signature,” the warrior said. “They didn’t go far, to a backwater world called Siam.”

  “Bring my shuttle,” Tiberian said. “The hunt continues.”

  Chapter 14

  Wyman ducked his head and shoulders into the bridge. The sight of the light swirl around the ship’s slip bubble made his stomach lurch, but the panic he’d felt outside the hull stayed away.

  Tolan sat at the conn, eyes fixed on a holo pathway projected in front of him. His hands tightened and closed on the control stick as he gently adjusted the ship’s course.

  “You called?” Wyman asked.

  “I know you’re a fighter jock, but are you also rated for slip travel?” Tolan asked, keeping his gaze on the projections.

  “I have instrument training and some sim time. Basic assessment stuff before I went down the single-pilot track. You need me to take over?”

  Tolan’s face twisted, as if something deep inside was giving him pain.

  “The grav buoy’s data was flawed. No doubt from the Daegon-created nexus points. We have a slip path to Siam, but we don’t have a good enough read for the autopilot to make the whole trip. Should go easy once we’re past Guernica’s mass shadow. Have to have someone on the stick until then. Need you to—crap.”

  Tolan pulled the stick to the right, then back as the slip pathway changed.

  “If we lose the groove, our effective speed gets cut to barely light speed,” Tolan said. “It’ll take hours to get back to best speed—hours the Daegon can use to overtake us. This day will get worse if we pop out of slip and into their welcoming committee instead of Admiral Sartorius’ fleet.”

  “Yeah, I get that…how’s this ship doing almost three hundred c? The navy’s courier ships can’t get over two fifty without fly
ing apart.”

  “Daimler drive from the Reich factory on Far Carolina. Still in testing after an explosion destroyed the production factory. They don’t know I have it and it’ll stay that way, won’t it?”

  Wyman bit his lower lip in contemplation.

  “Wait…what exactly are you? Some kind of a spy?”

  The projection in front of Tolan straightened out and the man finally glanced over at the fighter pilot.

  “I had a ship with no transponder hidden inside the Odin Wall term sporting stolen Reich tech and a half-dozen other tricks you haven’t noticed yet that would let me smuggle Emperor Xin’s favorite concubine off the Forbidden Continent on Lantau without anyone noticing. No, I’m not a spy.”

  “Well, since this is your ship, I guess that means you’re in charge.”

  “There are times I appreciate military narrow-mindedness. Sure, I’m in charge. Until the Genevans decide I’m about to put the Prince at risk and they crush my head like a grape. This smooth patch should last for a few more minutes. You ready to take the stick?” Tolan shifted uneasily.

  “I can manage. Move.”

  Tolan struggled out of the seat and leaned against the astrogation station as Wyman took his spot. Tolan doubled over in pain, his hands pressed against his stomach.

  “Controls are easy…slip groove looks steady…you OK?”

  Tolan stood up, the fingers of one hand locked into claws.

  “Adrenaline dump wore off. Nothing like hours of pants-shitting terror to upset the humors, right?” The spy rubbed his locked hand until the fingers flexed on their own.

  Wyman’s cheeks flushed in embarrassment.

  “Send Ivor up here when she’s out of the shower, please,” Wyman said. “We’ll work out shifts between the three of us. You got any food on this crate?”

  “The galley is wherever you open a zip-pack. I think I’ve got a couple days’ supply left over from my last stop on Wu-Gwai. You like chicken feet and fish stew?”

  “What?”

  “You get hungry enough and it’ll taste great.” Tolan pressed a knuckle against his temple. “I need to attend to some needs. Keep us on track. Prince Aidan’s depending on you.”