Orion Fleet (Rebel Fleet Series Book 2)

by B. V. Larson

  She was alight with excitement. Her eyes were wider than any human girl’s could hope to be. They darted around the chamber, seeing those around me, but they quickly landed on me and stayed there.

  “Leo!” she called. “Is that really you up there? They told me you were slinking around in a phase-ship, killing Imperials. But I wasn’t sure if the rumor was true, or only propaganda to keep us from losing our minds.”

  “It’s me,” I said, smiling at last.

  Gwen was watching us with a disapproving expression, but I didn’t care. Mia and I weren’t exactly a match made in heaven, but we were compatible physically and emotionally. Mia wasn’t like a human girl—she was more visceral and immediate in her thinking. She got excited about things and jumped on them, which I found refreshing compared to the human women I’d been with recently. They all seemed to overthink every detail of life.

  “Can you come down here to see me?” Mia asked.

  There it was, right to the point as always. The other crewmen around me were smiling and exchanging knowing glances.

  “How about this?” I asked. “I’ll talk to Ursahn. Would you like to serve on my ship? We came here to recruit people anyway.”

  Her ears moved expressively, and she answered with an affirmative growl. I took her at her word, and we soon closed the channel.

  Gwen was standing alarmingly close when the signal cut out. I hadn’t noticed when she’d stepped beside my command chair.

  Despite being on hand, she didn’t look at me. She stared straight ahead.

  “Is there something you’d like to say, XO?” I asked her.

  “Nothing Captain—but I was wondering what capacity Mia would serve aboard this ship?”

  “Well, I hadn’t—”

  “Maybe you require a private assistant in your cabin?”

  I met her eyes then, and we both frowned.

  “No,” I said firmly. “I’m making her a gunner. Rotate her into the shifts.”

  “To be on deck when you are?”

  “Yes.”

  She stared at me, her mouth a very small pinched spot of pink.

  “Are you sure the people of Ral will be willing to part with—”

  “Leave that up to me. They’ll volunteer by the hundreds of thousands if I know these people. Ursahn will have her pick, I’m sure.”

  Getting up from my seat, I gave it to Gwen and left. I used my sym to call Ursahn back and make arrangements.

  Gwen was possibly a bad choice for my XO, I saw that now. She was too close to me. Too personally involved. She treated me like I was her kid-brother half the time. I would have had her step down and give the job back to Miller—but I didn’t fully trust him.

  After a few short conversations, Ursahn informed me my requests would be honored by the Ral.

  “Apparently, they believe you’re some kind of hero,” she sniffed.

  “That’s because I am,” I said. “And I’m not finished yet. Let’s take this fleet back to Admiral Fex. I have a proposal to make that involves him and the entire Rebel Fleet.”

  “You have a proposal…?” she asked, blinking at me. “Possibly, you don’t understand your rank, Blake. You’re wearing a four-pointed emblem. Fex is an Admiral. Demands go only one way—from him down to you.”

  “Listen, Ursahn. You know as well as I do that Fex is a traitor. Help me out, and we’ll save more worlds from destruction.”

  She looked at me with her dark, wet eyes, but she nodded at last. “I’ll see what I can do. There are options when a situation requires circumventing the chain of command.”

  That was good enough for me. I headed to the lower decks and waited impatiently in the pod bay. When a shuttle came up at last, it was piloted by a Ral male. Next to him was an excited female.

  I recognized both of them. The pilot was Ra-tikh, and his passenger was Mia.

  Mia jumped out of her harness and embraced me tightly. It was good to see her again.

  =57=

  Ra-tikh had come along as a formality. Apparently, by the laws of Ral, Mia was still a member of his personal group of females.

  On Ral, there were about ten females for every male. They lived and worked together in prides, much as lions on earth did. Not every female was part of a pride, but most were. Legally, that gave Ra-tikh a stake in where Mia went and what she did.

  When we exited the pod chamber, I was only half-ready for what happened next. I should have expected it, but somehow the happiness of the reunion had thrown me off.

  Ra-tikh lunged at me the moment we had our helmets off and were walking down the central passageway together. He slammed me into a wall, and I elbowed him in return.

  His claws ripped my suit, and his hot breath burned the nape of my neck.

  I can attest right here and now that having a big cat on your back isn’t a pleasant experience. In fact, it ignites a state of pure panic in a primate like myself. I’d always figured that too many of his kind had eaten too many of my kind back in the day.

  Ducking low, I stood up suddenly, trying to throw him off and break his hold. It worked, partly. He rolled off and sprang up again.

  Mia understood what was going on perfectly. She stood back with her arms and legs thrown wide. Her eyes were big and alight, darted over the scene as if she couldn’t get enough of it. She showed her long teeth and panted slightly, but she made no move to interfere.

  I understood the situation after a flash of insight struck me. Mia was part of Ra-tikh’s pride. If I wanted to take her, I would have to beat him down. That was the law and custom of Ral, and I realized I should have clocked him the second he stepped out of the shuttle.

  As it was, I was in a close-quarters fight with a big cat. He was larger and stronger than I was, but he’d never been as sophisticated in combat. His kind preferred to fight like animals, rather than using a trained series of moves utilizing balance and leverage.

  He came at me again, and I sidestepped, trying to trip him. He caught me with a rake cross the belly. Right through my shredded spacesuit, I felt the blood flow.

  About then two of my crewmen rushed up with their disruptors out.

  “Stand down!” I shouted to them. “This is to be a fair fight.”

  Shocked, they did as I’d ordered. They’d been briefed about things like this, but they hadn’t experienced much of this kind of thing in person.

  Ra-tikh nodded to me, acknowledging my honorable move. But he didn’t look like he was going to give up.

  He rushed in again. This time, he was expecting my sidestep, and he twisted into me. We both went down in a heap.

  I knew I was in trouble then, but I had a few moves left. I grabbed his wrist and twisted, pulling his arm up behind his back.

  He chewed a set of holes into my shoulder and sank claws into my ribs while I tried to get him into an arm lock. Blood poured, but I got his arm up behind him.

  “What is the purpose of this?” he panted.

  I was on his back, hauling up on his arm, which seemed close to dislocating in my grasp.

  “If you don’t give up,” I said, “I’ll break your arm.”

  “Ha!” he snorted. “Good enough.”

  He flopped on his face and went limp.

  Confused, I stood up. Mia gave a little shriek and rushed up to me, throwing her arms around me and kissing me.

  She had a body-cam on her chest, and she directed this down toward Ra-tikh’s inert form.

  “The monkey captain has defeated Ra-tikh,” she said seriously. “I am free to change my allegiance.”

  I watched this performance in confusion. After making her little speech, she stopped the body-cam from recording and transmitted the vid.

  “Is it done?” Ra-tikh asked from the deck.

  “Yes,” Mia said, “that was most convincing, Ra-tikh. It almost makes me sad to leave you.”

  By then, I was beginning to catch on. Ra-tikh got calmly to his feet and adjusted his clothing.

  “That was all an act?” I demanded
.

  “I thought you would be pleased,” Ra-tikh said. “I did my best to employ primate tactics. You issued the challenge, and I wanted to accept your offer, but I knew you wouldn’t trade a female of your own for mine.”

  I thought about the idea of giving Gwen or Lael to Ra-tikh. No one would have been happy about that.

  “So,” I said, “you decided to play a trick. You faked this fight to give up Mia?”

  “It was the only way to maintain honor and friendship all the way around,” Ra-tikh said. “Aren’t you pleased?”

  My suit was a bloody mess, but I knew that complaining about unnecessary roughness would only be embarrassing. A little spilled blood was nothing to this predatory species.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’m pleased. I’m glad to have Mia back aboard my ship.”

  “May you have better luck with her than I have,” Ra-tikh said. “She refuses to mate, and she’s slow to work.”

  “Ral bores me,” Mia admitted. “I’m no longer happy on my homeworld.”

  These people were refreshingly honest and direct. I knew Mia would be a culture shock aboard Hammerhead for many of the humans, but maybe that was a good thing. After all, they could use a firsthand education as to what the Kher were really like.

  “Welcome aboard, Mia,” I said.

  “Which one is your cabin?” she asked.

  “Uh… we’ll get to that. Ra-tikh, would you like to take a meal with me?”

  “No,” he said. “I hate fruit and dried meat. I’ll go back home, hoping Ursahn might choose me to fly one of her fighters—she’s yet to answer.”

  “All right then. It was good to see you again.”

  We clasped hands briefly. Ra-tikh reached out one of his massive hands and closed it around my wrist, he twisted it this way and that, experimentally.

  “Curious,” he said. “I can see that your arm has flaws. It can barely rotate without coming free at the shoulder. You should know, however, that my limb felt almost no pain when you tried this trick on me.”

  “Good to know, thanks,” I said.

  We saw him off, and only then did I head for Medical to clean and seal my lacerations.

  Mia whispered in my ear while the ship’s doctor glued my flesh back together.

  “He was lying,” she said. “You hurt his arm. I saw his face.”

  “Welcome back, Mia,” I said, and we hugged again.

  At the smell and feel of her, I felt a surge of happiness. It had been a long time since I’d touched her.

  Despite all the trouble she’d caused already, I dared to hope she’d be worth it in the end.

  =58=

  Dr. Abrams came to talk to me while I was resting in the infirmary. The ship’s medic wanted a chance to make doubly sure my wounds were disinfected before she released me—and I was considering overriding her authority on that point.

  I was worrying about Mia. She was trouble in physical form, and Gwen had already come down from the bridge to welcome her aboard. They’d left together, talking. It all sounded innocent and cheery enough—but I didn’t entirely trust Gwen’s motives.

  Abrams presented a welcome distraction. He walked in, nodded to me, and presented a smug look I knew too well.

  “Figured out something new, did you Doc?” I asked.

  “What? Did someone contact you already?”

  “Nah, I saw it in your face.”

  “Interesting… I had no idea I was so transparent. But in any case, yes, I’ve discovered something new.”

  My good arm made a spinning motion. “Okay, out with it.”

  “It’s regarding your conversations with the enemy captain.”

  “Lael? What about her?”

  “She let slip several critical pieces of information. For one thing, she suggested that the Imperials had some form of control over the automated Hunters.”

  “Yeah, sure. They can prevent them from attacking any target they want. They already demonstrated that, and you stole their tech.”

  Abrams flipped one skinny finger up like switchblade. “Ah, but that’s not the end of it. Yes, I duplicated their friend-or-foe signal that causes the Hunters to ignore an enemy. I also gave you a jammer to implant in their ship that caused their own system not to work.”

  Grunting, I spun my finger to indicate he should speed this up. Dr. Abrams loved nothing more than to list his own accomplishments, just in case anyone had missed something.

  “That achievement gave me a further idea,” he said. “What if the Imperials are able to attract a Hunter to target a system? What if they can entice the enemy to attack where they want them to?”

  “What evidence do you have of such a capability?”

  “Almost none,” he admitted. “But recall the fact that the Hunter has never attacked one of our battle stations. Perhaps the Imperials worried that we might damage it severely. How did they get the Hunter to go only to safe, relatively undefended planets?”

  “No idea—and I still don’t think we have any evidence that they’re doing what you’re suggesting.”

  That irritating finger of his was up again, like a flag of pale flesh. “Ah, but we might! Remember when you encountered the three cruisers in a nearby system?”

  “Yeah…”

  “It’s my contention that the enemy was ‘marking’ that system for attack.”

  “How can we be sure of that…?”

  He smiled, and I got it. “Ah,” I said. “Okay. You want us to go out there and take a look. If they were flagging that system for destruction next after this one, then when the Hunter jumped—it probably jumped there.”

  “Exactly.”

  I heaved a deep sigh. Abrams could have just frigging told me right off what he was getting at, but he’d greatly enjoyed leading me through his logical inferences first. I guess that was part of the fun involved when you had a genius around—you had to endure his eccentric behavior.

  Heaving myself off a hard, infirmary bunk, the medic put up a fuss, but I waved her off.

  “If I feel infected,” I told her, “I’ll come back.”

  “You lost a lot of blood. You might pass out.”

  “Then Abrams here will carry me back.”

  Abrams looked alarmed, but he didn’t say anything as we went up to the bridge. I contacted Ursahn with my sym along the way.

  “Captain Ursahn,” I said, mustering all the cheer and bravado I had left. “I have a request to make.”

  “I’ve already told Dr. Abrams the answer is ‘no’—so don’t bother.”

  I glanced over at Abrams, who studiously refused to meet my eye. The situation was now clear: he’d tried to go over my head and failed. With his annoying personality, who knew what kind of damage he’d done to our cause?

  “No?” I asked, deliberately sounding surprised. “You mean you don’t want to go back to confront Fex?”

  “What? No… I mean yes! Going back to the battle station is the plan. We will confront the admiral. Your no-rank scientific servant begged me to divert our course toward some other star system of no consequence.”

  “Such nonsense,” I said. “Feel free to ignore his idle prattling if he ever dares to contact you again.”

  Abrams was glaring at me, but he didn’t quite dare to interrupt.

  “His ideas weren’t entirely without merit,” Ursahn said. “He wanted to check—”

  “To see if the enemy Hunter was there or not, right? Yes, I know. A sheer waste of time! Who cares where the Hunter is? We’ve got a proven defense against these automated ships now. All we have to do is spread the usage of these gravity-pulse systems and the Hunters will avoid all our planets. Then we can safely forget about them.”

  “Well no… we can’t,” Ursahn said thoughtfully. “They’re still very dangerous, and the one we chased off might even know what we’re planning.”

  “Are you telling me Dr. Abrams isn’t a fool?” I demanded.

  She thought that over. “I don’t think he is… his suggestion was out of pl
ace, and beyond his station. But it wasn’t a bad idea.”

  “Well then,” I said, “do whatever you want. It’s up to you, Ursahn. Blake out.”

  Abrams stared at me when I’d finished. “A whole star system is about to be destroyed due to your petty lack of respect? Is that the kind of ship’s officer you’ve become, Blake? I want a transfer. As soon as there’s a second ship in the Earth Navy, I’ll be on it.”

  “If they’ll have you,” I commented. “But just wait around a minute on the bridge.”

  “Whatever for?” he asked.

  “You can train Mia on the weapons console. You did the interface redesign, right?”

  He grumbled while Mia came to sit beside him and listen. He gave her a first-class lecture outlining the basics. The phase-ship had only one major piece of armament, and it was pretty easy to operate. The real trick was deciding when to fire it, as it took some time to cycle through its cool-down phases.

  Before the lesson was finished, Ursahn had called me back. I relayed my sym’s output to a forward screen, and Abrams couldn’t help but listen in.

  “I’ve reconsidered,” Ursahn said. “We’ll go to the last known contact point where we might find the Hunter. If it’s there, we’ll know something about Imperial capabilities. If it’s not, we’ll learn from that too. Prepare to follow Killer into a new rift.”

  “Hammerhead is underway, Captain,” I said. “We’ll follow you while phasing.”

  We fired up our engines moments later and followed Killer into a newly made rift.

  =59=

  Abrams was dumbfounded.

  “How did you manage that bit of magic, Blake?” he asked me. “Ursahn gave me a flat ‘no’ earlier. Now, a few minutes later, she calls you back and practically orders you to follow my original suggestion?”

  “It’s all in how you ask, Doc,” I said. “You can’t act like you want something too badly, or people will try to stop you from getting it.”

  “That’s highly counterintuitive.”

  “It certainly is, but if you do it right, you’ll do a lot better in both love and war.”