Fleetfoot’s bow pierced the boson field with a boom and rumble. A second later, Darl called up a combination of photon and electron beams that contacted the enemy protective field with a flash of light that warmed the bridge making Drexler’s skin tingle. For an incongruous moment, he thought about the status of his cancer vaccine, reasoning that there were more than a few harmful rays in that burst of light.
When he could see again, he saw that the ship was pulling away and large chunks of enemy hull pinwheeled out into space in their wake. More flashes of light surrounded the ship as the rest of the wing fired.
“Protector!” Drexler called. “What’s our status!”
“Enemy is heavily damaged. Pull back to asteroid field and regroup.”
“You heard the General!” Drexler called to all ships. He did not mind sounding grateful.
18
“Where did they come from?” Gholss bellowed. The ship rocked with impact as the enemy weapons breached their hull. Damage teams scrambled, and operations crews rushed to return fire.
The Alpha stood calm, still and serene throughout the attack. He gave several minor orders and asked for status reports only twice. It was Gholss who was beside himself with frustration and anger.
Even when asteroids began to shatter against the hull, Sslolg remained placid and watchful. Gholss found himself casting aggressive glances at his Alpha in spite of himself. So incensed he was at another surprise attack, he forgot the danger his aggression might bring.
The enemy ships pulled away, and the Alpha Lead ship found itself mired in asteroids with a compromised boson field, a marginal protective field, and a breached hull.
It was only then that the Alpha gave definitive orders. “Leave the particle fields at their current levels and direct repair teams to the affected areas. Second Alpha Gholss, I await your casualty reports.”
Gholss stood trembling and struggling to keep his breath even. “Yes, Alpha Sslolg,” Gholss replied.
The Alpha calmly toured the bridge, checking stations and chatting with his underlings. Gholss quickly assembled his casualty reports and approached.
“Step over to my display column and present your report,” Sslolg ordered.
Gholss complied, placing his data unit on the column base. Holographic figures sprang up and rotated.
“Twenty-five casualties. No fatalities. Medical expect the wounded to be back on duty by next cycle.”
“And the ship?” Sslolg asked
“One reactor operating at thirty-percent due to particle conduit damage and uncertain containment vessel condition. Engineers are evaluating this now. We lost an entire outer protective bulkhead on the starboard side, along with the particle emitters there. We also lost fifty more emitters and several more on our upper superstructure.”
“And our overall function?”
“We function at ninety percent, Alpha.”
“In that case, have engineering reduce all reactors by twenty percent and reduce all particle fields by another fifteen percent.”
Gholss stood as if not understanding the words. The Alpha tilted his head back and did something Gholss had never seen the great leader to before. He laughed.
“Second Alpha! Do you not see the lesson our enemy teaches us? We too can use deception. If we appear weaker than we truly are, it is they who will become emboldened. Otherwise, we would use our superior strength to flick our tongues at a few flies. Instead, we will make the flies come to our open mouths.”
The thought to appear weak would never have occurred to Gholss. The very idea was anathema to most Reptilians. But it made sense, and a moment passed for Gholss in which he felt ashamed the idea did not occur to him. He relayed the Alpha’s orders and took the unusual step to explain them to the crew, who seemed to share some version of Gholss’ reaction.
“Three times they presented us a hard lesson. We will not take a fourth lesson to learn. When the enemy becomes emboldened, we will bring our reactors to full power and render their bodies back to the stars with weapons fire.”
Gholss opened his mouth to respond, but the Alpha met his eyes, not with aggression or challenge, but with a simple invitation to stand beside him and see the data before them. The alpha brought to view all sensor data collected from the various stations. The gravity distortions made nonsense of most of it, but the two officers worked silently and side-by-side to make sense of it now that they had the time.
***
“We see a lot of energy discharge between the asteroid belt and the Oort cloud,” Sahar said. She rubbed her chin with thumb and forefinger in a way that made Margaret think of her as an old man somehow, even though she could not have been more than thirty. Margaret guessed her closer to twenty-five, but did not want to be rude by asking. The official from Medina Orbital Command was young but extremely sharp. She knew space as well as Margaret. Sending her to work with the Task Force was a vote of high confidence by the government of Medina 3.
“Yes,” Margaret replied. “It’s hard to tell what’s going on because of the wide field of gravity distortions the combined ships laid down out there.”
“A brilliant strategy,” Sahar said with a smile. “We will have to record this somewhere for future reference.”
“Oh, I think there are some people out there who have books for this sort of thing ready to take new information,” Margaret said. “Certain elements were expecting war for centuries.” She fixed her eyes on her husband, former Colonel and current Senator with the BJP government. Abhay cast a sharp look her way and pursed his lips. Margaret was past caring. She was tired of secrets.
“I have heard these rumors,” Sahar said with a grave expression that furrowed her brow and knitted her eyebrows.
Margaret restrained herself from telling Sahar, and everyone else in the room, what she knew. That the BJP, along with the wealthiest and strongest Trade Union Worlds, planned for centuries for a war they believed inevitable. They hid secret military capabilities in the designs of the earliest Union freighters to be unlocked in case of conflict. Then they lost the keys. It would be laughable were it not so tragic. That such plans might be a self-fulfilling prophecy did not seem to occur to the great minds of the early Trade Union. That the plans may be lost to the ages did not seem to occur to those who dreamed up the scheme.
It was the continued peace and success of the trade union itself that harmed the war contingency plan most of all. Six centuries of peace and prosperity for dozens of sentient species living together in space and enriching their homeworlds was the death blow to security plans. And all the while, one species had an entirely opposite intent.
Now, billions of previously peaceful species scrambled to accept and deal with something not seen for generations. Violence on trade union worlds was nearly unheard of. The back planets and fringe colonies were another story. Unincorporated planets did not operate under the rules and laws of the Trade Union. They did, however, survive by commerce with the Union. Margaret was very familiar with some of those worlds. Running cargo to the fringe worlds was often profitable, but also dangerous.
Some worlds where the species were more accustomed to violence allowed their citizens to serve in armies that kept the violence from creeping into Trade Union territory. That was where Dr. Abiola cut his teeth as a Pan-African Federation Marine. The Federated Americas City Ships also maintained small military forces that operated on the fringe.
The nomadic existence of the City Ships dictated by necessity that they have some plan for defense. In their travels, they might find themselves facing a new and hostile species, or coming face to face with a less-than-friendly world. That and the natures of their societies tending toward internal strife did produce people capable of fighting. Some even excelled at it. The problem was getting to those people and putting them into play against a well-trained, well conceived and heavily armed force that operated with near impunity in the Trades for nearly four months.
The Armada hoped to break some of the momentum built up
by the Reptilian attack. Their success was becoming a problem for the Lizards. Their light attack ships disguised as Trade Union Freighters worked almost too well. They got ahead of their own plan, which appeared to have been sprung early. Margaret believed her brother had something to do with that as well.
“Encrypted reports are coming back from the Armada now,” Sahar said. “It will take a while to decrypt and summarize them. The data is dense and the encryption particularly strong as not to give the Reptiles any chance of intercepting our sensitive information.”
“But this is what we know so far,” Margaret said. “It looks like they set a trap for the cruiser and once again, the Lizards stumbled right in. This is the third time they’ve done something like this.”
“They are not likely to keep doing this,” Sahar remarked. “While they operate mostly by aggression, they are not stupid. When they realize that their tactics cost them dearly, they will shift. It’s just a matter of time.
“It appears that shift is coming,” Margaret replied. “The Cruiser pulled back and slowed its approach then when it hit the asteroid field, it took a defensive position, rather than lash out.”
Sahar’s face brightened, and she pulled a display scroll from the corner of the conference table and brought it closer to Margaret. The first reports were decrypted and rolling in. Sahar called them up, and both women read eagerly.
Two waves of Armada fighters did a fair amount of damage to the Cruiser. Reports of hull breaches thrilled Margaret. She was not expecting that. The most she hoped for was that the Armada would slow the Cruiser down until stronger ships arrived from the BJP.
But a troubling development was the mass of ships that once gathered twenty light years from the Medina system. Space stations on the outskirts of the solar system sent back long range sensor images clearly indicating movement. The massing fleet entered blinkpoint and would join the cruiser within the next several hours. Medina Orbital was working on a series of reports that would explain that to the Armada leaders.
“Why has Orbital not sent word of this?” Margaret asked.
“Because the information is incomplete. Orbital will send a complete report when the data is verified accurate.”
Margaret took a deep breath to contain her annoyance. As a consultant with the new Trade Union Taskforce, her position was delicate. The collective governments accepted her value as a space travel expert. The fact that she was the sister of the Resistance Armada Leader and the wife of a powerful BJP Senator also helped her position. But for all of this, delicate politics were involved, and she often had to tamp down her initial reactions. The Medina Government did things with slow and plodding deliberation. “I can respect that,” Margaret replied. “I believe that, in this situation, an initial report might be helpful.”
“Orbital Control takes the position that incomplete information is very dangerous,” Sahar said. Something in her presentation of that position told Margaret that she did not share that position.
“There is also something to be said for timeliness here. The Armada is making plans on-the-fly. I’m sure they will put to good use every scrap of information they can get.”
Sahar considered the point for a moment, then said, “There is another scheduled transmission coming up in the next thirty minutes. Maybe you could include a message to your brother.”
Margaret smiled at her new friend and colleague. “I think that is an excellent idea,” she said.
***
Regular transmission intervals helped Drexler manage incoming information, but it also meant that Medina Orbital sat on the information. The Armada was blind. The distortions they created also made long-range sensor scans unreliable. They were dependent on external intelligence to know what was coming.
“Mumlo, come take a look at this,” Drexler said. He still kept his display scroll fastened to the viewport bulkhead. He grew fond of the configuration and wondered why he hadn’t done it this way years ago. The wall made a fine work surface, and the backdrop was stunning, even though space was rather deadly at the moment.
“What am I seeing?” Mumlo asked, taking a first glance at the screen.
“Deep space, twenty light years bearing two-ninety from Medina Star’s northern pole.” Drexler described space using the star system’s relative coordinates to give Mumlo better context.
“They came from the Central Trades,” Mumlo said, catching on.
“Yes. Those are captured ships. Used to be ours,” Drexler said.
“They are using stolen ships for their fleet,” Mumlo said. Drexler changed the view to show hull configuration reports.
“They added weapons,” Mumlo said. “In just a few months, they turned those ships into fighters.”
“Not top-tier fighters, but good enough to turn us into dust,” Drexler said. “It’s like the beginning of World War I on Ancient Earth. They started out with horses and swords, and ended up with trucks, tanks, and machine guns.”
“I do not know the history of your world,” Mumlo said.
Drexler thought for a moment, searching for the terms to explain. “It was long and bloody. War is an excellent teacher. We are all learning new ways to fight, just like the human nations of Ancient Earth once did.”
“This new group of ships changes everything,” Mumlo replied. “I count nearly three-hundred vessels in that group.”
“So, we have two choices. Either we hit the Cruiser now with everything we have, or we run,” Drexler said.
“You left out the third choice,” Mumlo said.
“You mean stay, fight them all and die? That is no choice at all,” Drexler said.
“We need to put this to the vote,” Mumlo replied.
Drexler ground his teeth and groaned. Mumlo was right. It did not look good for the Armada. He could not make that choice on his own, not if he wanted unity, and to be able to sleep again, assuming he survived.
“Captain,” the protocol officer called. “The patrol group has arrived from Medina System.”
They did not know what else to call the group of ships the Armada encountered on first entering the system. They were a strange collection of mining craft and odd freighters from around the Trades.
“Hey, Reggie,” Drexler said. “Your long-lost cousin is here.”
He referred to the Jubilee, who Drexler discovered came from the same shipyards as Reggie.
“So I see,” Reggie said. Their captain is asking for direct contact between his ship and me.”
Drexler thought for a moment. “Let’s hold off on that. I want to know more.”
“Understood,” Reggie replied.
“Hail for you from the Jubilee, Captain,” comm station reported.
The request was for a private channel, so Drexler took the call in his ear implants and subvocalized as he left the bridge for his personal quarters.
“This is Captain Fleetfoot,” Drexler said.
“This is Captain Aahloh,” a reedy voice replied in unfiltered Tradespeak.
“May I ask, Captain if you are Tonaw?” Drexler asked.
“You may, and I am, “ Aahloh replied.
“I recognize the sound of your voice,” Drexler said. “What can I do for you, Captain?” Drexler had not met many Tonaw. Their world was small and had but one sentient species that was not space-faring before the Silicoid Wars.
“I request medical attention for my crew and assistance with my ship. Since your ship is the same model as mine, your expertise would be most valuable.”
Drexler agreed instantly. There was no other response but to offer aid when a fellow Astronaut asked, especially one who experienced what Aahloh had. “My crew and I will do what we can, Aahloh. You have my word on that,” Drexler said.
“I am most grateful. My crew will also be grateful, such as it is.”
“Yes, Captain,” Drexler replied. “I saw your report. The Armada is looking for a replacement crew for your ship. I understand you want to be part of the Armada. We will get your crew situation sort
ed out and make that happen.”
“Indeed,” Aahloh replied. “Expect our arrival within the hour.”
Drexler made a detour and headed for the medical bay to talk with Dr. Abiola. It was only professional to give the Doctor notice. The medical bay doors opened on a busy scene, to Drexler’s surprise. Some of the crew were banged up by the sudden maneuvers and shocks as they took the ship through paces it was never designed to take. Drexler saw people with burns, and arms in slings. Some had bound lacerations with bandages showing several different shades of blood.
Drexler stood in the doorway not knowing what to do or say. Seeing the results of his handiwork was a shock.
“Hello, Captain,” said a simian junior crew member on noticing Drexler.
“Hello, Naka,” Drexler replied, recognizing the young simian. He walked over for a closer look. “What’s going on with you?” Drexler asked.
“I was in engineering for the last attack repairing a sub-conduit. The deck got away from me, and I broke my arm sliding down the conduit tube,” Naka replied, giving a hoot to indicate she found the situation amusing.
Drexler was not amused. “Looks like you banged your head, also.”
“Yes. That too,” Naka replied. She touched her head as if to remind herself it was also hurt.
“Well,” Drexler said, “you’re in good hands here. Dr. Abiola will fix you up.”
Drexler threaded his way through medical staff and wounded crew to find Samuel tending a human crew member with severe burns to her back. Drexler winced. Samuel looked up and said, “Captain.”
“Samuel,” Drexler replied in a hushed voice.
To his surprise, the crew member tried to sit up. She moved to push herself from the metal slab of the operating table. “Captain!” she exclaimed, “We hit them hard! We did it!”
“Damn it, Rachel,” Dr. Abiola said. “I told you to stay still. If you don’t want to have a painful mass of scar tissue for a back, you need to do what I say!”
Rogue Messiah: Fleetfoot Interstellar Series, Book 2 Page 19
