Frontiers Saga 12: Rise of the Alliance

by Ryk Brown

  “This should be interesting,” Master Sergeant Jahal stated as he followed the lieutenant commander past Telles and headed up the ramp as well.

  “Indeed.”

  Ten minutes later, the shuttle was descending through the clouds over the Atlantic, making its way down to its destination from orbit.

  “Why the Azores?” Jessica asked.

  “Location, climate, size, defensibility,” the lieutenant answered. “Most of the chaos is in the Americas, southern Europe, and Africa. Once we get more combat jumpers, we should be able to respond to those areas with ease from that location.”

  Jessica looked out the porthole as the shuttle broke through the clouds, revealing the small island below. “Why Porto Santo Island?”

  “Big enough to support our operations without crowding out the locals, yet not too big to defend. It also has several smaller barren islands around it on which we can place automated long-range defenses.”

  “Against what?” Jessica wondered. “Orbital bombardment? Seriously?”

  “It is not attack by the Jung that we are concerned about.”

  “Our own people?”

  “The Ghatazhak will be enforcing martial law across your world. There will be many who will oppose the idea, and many of them will be armed.”

  “The whole thing seems like a bad idea, doesn’t it?”

  “Perhaps,” the lieutenant agreed, “but a necessary one.”

  “Lieutenant,” the copilot’s voice called over Lieutenant Telles’s helmet comms. “We’re two minutes from touchdown. We’ll be putting down in the city center, just as you asked.”

  “Understood,” the lieutenant answered. “Once we disembark, lift off and hold position at a safe distance until we secure the area.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Trying to attract a crowd?” Jessica wondered.

  “A bit direct, I grant you,” Telles admitted, “but the leaders of the community and local law enforcement will be less likely to engage out of fear than those on the outskirts of the city.”

  “What outskirts,” Jessica wondered as she gazed out the window at the tiny coastal city below. “I’ve seen college campuses bigger than that.”

  “One minute.”

  The city center was quiet, with only a few people on the streets when the shuttle came swooping in from offshore. Its engines screaming, it came to hover directly over the intersection of the small city’s two main streets, right in front of the local city services complex. Those few people that were in the area immediately took shelter, ducking into the few local businesses that were still open, as well as the city services building itself.

  Two policemen, each carrying a shotgun and sidearm, came running out of the main building as the shuttle touched down and dropped its rear loading ramp. Eight Ghatazhak soldiers, four on each side, came running down the ramp. They spread out to either side, taking up positions surrounding the shuttle as Lieutenant Telles, Master Sergeant Jahal, and Lieutenant Commander Nash came down the ramp after them. The two policemen ducked back inside, after quickly lowering their shotguns to more non-threatening positions.

  The shuttle’s engines roared again as it lifted off and climbed out to safety. Lieutenant Telles led the way toward the city services building, with Jessica and the master sergeant in tow. A slight gesture by the lieutenant, and two of the Ghatazhak closest to the building ran up the steps and slipped inside the front doors.

  The lieutenant heard no gunfire from the building as he approached, only the shouts of his own men inside. “Clear inside,” the call came over the lieutenant’s helmet comms.

  Lieutenant Telles stepped confidently into the building as two more Ghatazhak came in from behind. He looked about at the faces of the locals inside. The two policemen, a clerk, and three older men. Two of the older men were wearing uniforms, although they were not the same. “We require the use of your island,” he stated with authority.

  “Jesus,” Jessica mumbled as she entered from behind the lieutenant. “Is that how you ask nicely?”

  Lieutenant Telles looked at Jessica. “The Ghatazhak do not ‘ask nicely’.”

  “Apparently,” she said as she continued past him. “Who is in charge here?” she asked the three older gentlemen.

  “He is,” one of the policemen said, pointing to the only senior gentleman that wasn’t wearing a uniform.

  “Relax,” Jessica whispered to the officer as she passed, noticing the frightened look in his eyes. “They’re not going to hurt you.”

  “As long as you don’t touch your weapons,” Master Sergeant Jahal added for both officers’ benefit.

  Jessica removed her helmet, smiling as she walked up to the three senior men standing in the middle of the office. “You guys must be the ones in charge,” she said, looking them over.

  One of the locals in the room said something to Jessica in an unfamiliar language.

  “He does not speak Angla,” Lieutenant Telles stated.

  “No kidding,” Jessica answered. “It’s not Spanish, I know that.”

  “I believe the primary language here is Portuguese,” the lieutenant stated.

  “Someone around here has got to speak English,” Jessica said.

  “I speak English,” the man in civilian clothing said, his voice broken and unsure.

  “Great,” Jessica exclaimed. She looked at Telles. “See, this guy speaks English.” She turned back to the gentlemen. “Are you the mayor?”

  “Yes, I am. I am Eduardo Borges. I am the Mayor of Porto Santo.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mayor Borges,” Jessica said in as sincere a fashion as possible. “I’m Lieutenant Commander Nash, chief of security for the UES Aurora. Have you heard of the Aurora?”

  “Yes, yes,” the mayor assured her. “Who among us has not?”

  “Great. This is Lieutenant Telles of the Ghatazhak,” she added, gesturing toward the lieutenant. “You’ve probably heard of the Ghatazhak as well, I imagine.”

  “Yes,” the mayor replied, his expression becoming far less enthusiastic.

  “Don’t worry,” she told the mayor, “they’re not as bad as everyone thinks. They’re actually pretty good guys.” Jessica turned toward Telles again. “Right, Lieutenant?” She made a face at him to go along. “Smile,” she told him under her breath.

  A pained look came across the lieutenant’s face.

  Jessica was slightly taken aback. “Seriously? That’s the best you can do?” She turned back to the mayor again. “You’re just going to have to trust me on that one.”

  “What did he mean when he said he required use of our island?” the mayor asked.

  “Well,” Jessica began, “what he means is that we would like to make a base of operations for the Ghatazhak on your little island here, and we were sort of hoping that you would be, you know, supportive of the idea?”

  “Here? Why here?” the mayor wondered.

  “Location, size, layout, nice sandy beaches, good weather, you know, the usual stuff,” Jessica answered.

  The mayor leaned closer to Jessica, as if he did not want the others to hear his words. “But, they are killers.”

  “Yeah, technically,” Jessica admitted, trying to play it off, “but they’re our killers. They work for us.”

  “But they killed all those people,” the mayor reminded her. “I saw this on the net. It is true, yes?”

  “Well, yes, but they were acting under orders…”

  “Who would give such and order?”

  “That’s not important right now,” Jessica told him, trying to change the subject. “What’s important is that they would like to use your island for their base.”

  The mayor looked at the Ghatazhak again. They were dressed in their standard, flat black combat armor, most of them with their visors down. “Do we have a choice?”

  Jessica’s head bobbed back and forth, not really indicating a clear yes or no. “Yes and no,” she said sheepishly. “Yes, as in you can agree to cooperate, but no, as in,
if you refuse we’ll just round you all up and move you somewhere else, and still take your island.”

  The mayor looked at Jessica. “This hardly seems like a choice.”

  Jessica’s head hung down. “Can we talk alone for a moment?” she asked, leading him away from the others. They moved to the far edge of the room, out of earshot of the rest of the people in the office. “Look, Mayor Borges, I know it seems unfair and all. I get that. But you’ve got to understand that things are pretty bad right now. The Earth is messed up. We’re out there,” she continued, pointing upward, “in space, fighting the Jung, day in and day out. We can’t do that without help. Help from the Earth. We need the Earth’s support. Her infrastructure, her industrial assets, we need all of that stuff, if we are going to continue fighting.”

  “But we are just a small island of farmers and fisherman,” the mayor objected. “We cannot provide such…”

  “These men, and the reinforcements that will soon be joining them, are tasked with the job of bringing order back from the chaos that the world is experiencing in the wake of the Jung attacks. Without order, the Earth’s recovery will take considerably longer. In fact, without order, the Earth may never recover.”

  The mayor looked at Jessica again as he contemplated her words. “So, we are replacing one dictator with another.”

  “I know that it looks that way, sir, and maybe we are, but it’s only temporary, until the governments of our world can get back on their feet and maintain order on their own.”

  “History is full of such promises,” the mayor told her, “and they are almost always broken.”

  Jessica looked at the floor for a moment, searching for a different angle with which to convince Mayor Borges to cooperate. “How long has it been since you have received any goods from the mainland?”

  “Several months, at least,” the mayor admitted. “Since the Jung were first driven away, I think. Maybe a few ships since then.”

  “How are you doing on basic supplies? Things like medicines, equipment, fuels… You know, the stuff you use day in and day out?”

  “Most things have been rationed, including water.”

  “You have a desalination plant, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but we try not to run it any more than necessary, for fear that it will break down, and then we will have nothing. We can barely even water our crops. If it were not for the sea, we would starve.”

  “Well, the Ghatazhak will change all of that,” Jessica promised. “Our people will keep your desalination plant working. We will provide medicines, supplies, equipment… Well, maybe not a lot of medicine. I mean, we’re pretty short ourselves, and let’s face it, those guys almost never get sick. But, they need food. Heck, they eat four times as much as the average person, so they need lots of food.”

  “They will buy our crops?”

  “Well, no. They don’t have any money. None of us do, really. But you can help each other. The Ghatazhak will have the support of the Aurora, the Celestia, and the rest of the Alliance. Your lives will be vastly improved by their presence on your island.”

  “And if the Jung return?” the mayor asked. “We shall be directly targeted.”

  “If the Jung return, they won’t bother with targets,” Jessica admitted. “They’ll probably just wipe out everyone from orbit and start over.”

  The mayor sighed as he looked about the room. “How much of the island will they need?” he finally asked.

  “It was not necessary to negotiate with the locals,” Lieutenant Telles said as they walked down the steps of the city services building to the street below. “We could have simply started our operations, and there would have been little they could have done to stop us.”

  “This way, they won’t even try to stop you,” Jessica argued. “Hell, they’ll even help feed you.”

  “They would have fed us either way.”

  “Well, this way they won’t pee on the crops before you take them. Besides, everyone on this little island probably knows each other. If a Jung spy were to try to infiltrate their ranks, they’d spot him.”

  “Assuming that spy has not already been among them for decades.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Lieutenant Telles looked at her, managing the slightest of smiles as he tapped the comm control on the side of his helmet. “This is Telles, ready for pickup.”

  “Copy that. Be there in three,” the shuttle’s copilot answered.

  “Better sugar than vinegar,” Jessica said.

  Telles looked at her again.

  “By the way,” she continued, “we need to work on your smile.”

  * * *

  “The platform just went to FTL,” Loki announced from the rear of Falcon One’s cockpit.

  “Finally,” Josh exclaimed. “Same course?”

  “Yup. Still halfway between Mu and Eta.”

  “At least now we can go home,” Josh said, straightening up in his seat and switching his main display to flight mode.

  “Hold on.”

  “What? Why?”

  Loki stared at his sensors.

  “What’s going on?” Josh asked as he switched his primary display back to the sensors.

  “The battleship… It’s moving.”

  “I thought it was dead… As in not moving.”

  “Main propulsion was down, as was power generation.”

  “Well, if it’s moving then it must have power again.”

  “It does,” Loki agreed. “In fact, one of its antimatter reactors has just come back online.”

  “If main propulsion is down, then all that’s left is maneuvering. Where can they go with that?” Josh wondered. “Hell, they can’t even break orbit…”

  “They’re not,” Loki interrupted. “They’re slowing down. They’re dropping out of orbit… Toward Kent.”

  “What?”

  “Their reactor’s power output is increasing.”

  “There must be at least a skeleton crew on board.”

  “They’re really starting to slow down now. They’re falling to the surface.”

  “What the hell? That thing can’t land, right?”

  “No, it can’t,” Loki assured him. “I don’t understand…” Loki stopped mid-sentence as the readings on his sensor display suddenly rocketed. “What the hell?”

  “Oh, my God,” Josh declared. “Was that…”

  Loki was speechless for a moment, his eyes fixed on his sensor display. “I think it was.”

  Josh’s eyes were also fixed on his sensor display. “Loki? Where’s Kent?”

  “It’s… It’s gone.”

  “It can’t be gone, Loki. It’s a moon… A damn big moon at that!”

  “All I’m showing is debris, Josh,” Loki insisted. “Lots and lots of debris, as well as a full spectrum discharge from a matter-antimatter event.”

  “They drove their ship into a moon and set off their antimatter reactors?” Josh couldn’t believe what he was saying. “No way.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Who does that?” Josh exclaimed. “How many people were on that moon?”

  “Several million, at least.” Loki still couldn’t believe what had just happened. “Fuck, Josh… They just scuttled their ship, and took out an entire civilization with it.”

  “We have to get back and report this, Loki.”

  “Yeah, right,” Loki agreed, snapping out of his stupor. “Plotting a jump sequence back to Sol.”

  Josh switched his main display back to flight mode, and started powering up the Falcon’s flight systems. “I’m starting to think our enlistment might not have been such a great idea after all, Loki.”

  * * *

  “Our overall propellant storage capacity has been reduced by twenty percent,” Commander Willard reported, “however, based on our usage patterns, I don’t expect it to be of significance.”

  “We can always pump some over from the Celestia when she returns from Tanna,” Nathan told him as he continu
ed to study the reports on his desktop view screen. “She can top off again on her next trip back.”

  “How many runs will she need to make?” the XO wondered.

  “As many as it takes,” Nathan said. “They can make most of their repairs en route, and the Earth needs the relief aid that Tanna is providing.”

  “Maybe we both should be making relief runs?”

  “Until the Ghatazhak are reinforced, have a base operating on the surface, and have a few combat jumpers, one of us needs to stay in orbit as much as possible.”

  “It’s not like we can do anything to keep the peace on the surface from orbit,” Commander Willard said.

  “It’s a psychological thing,” Nathan explained, “at least that’s what President Scott believes.”

  “How’s your father doing?”

  “Tired, stressed, overworked; just like everyone else I suppose.”

  “I don’t see how he can deal with the chaos as well as he seems to.”

  “He takes it one crisis at a time,” Nathan mumbled as he studied the reports again. “Always has.”

  Commander Willard turned slightly in his chair to point at the ship’s schematics currently displayed on the large view screen on the forward bulkhead of the captain’s ready room. “Lieutenant Commander Kamenetskiy thinks he can permanently seal off the middle baffle in the damaged propellant tank, then remove the damaged forward half and use parts of it for hull repairs.”

  “How hard will it be to pull those sections out?”

  “He says it can be done without a shipyard. It’s not a proper repair, but it will give us back that depressurized section again. That will make internal repairs easier in that area.”

  Nathan looked at the schematics for a moment. “What percentage of our total propellant did we use in the Centauri engagement?” he wondered.

  The XO tapped some buttons on his data pad, then turned back to his captain. “Less than twenty percent.”

  “And in the original liberation of Earth?”

  “Thirty-seven percent,” the commander answered after tapping a few more buttons. “However, we were operating at higher speeds during those battles. To be honest, Captain, we’ve not used more than half of our total propellant in a single engagement since we first liberated Tanna.”