Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3

by Devon C. Ford

  She couldn’t stand to sit still any longer, and rose as quietly as she could to walk to the other side of the room they were in. An expanded submenu on her HUD showed the outside temperature as being a little above freezing, with traces of a brutal wind snaking through the thick jungle. She closed that submenu with a blink of her eyes and glanced diagonally downwards to minimize it before she brought up the analysis of the local wildlife. It didn’t make for good reading, especially not to someone who was already struggling to find sleep.

  “Can’t sleep either?” A familiar voice asked, startling her into jumping slightly. She looked at the comm icon and saw no open channel, meaning that Specter had quite literally transmitted his thoughts into her head. For some reason she couldn’t comprehend, that voice still had the same robotic twang to it, like it was synthesized, even though he wasn’t speaking.

  “Jesus, Ja–” she gasped and stopped herself, “Jesus, Specter, don’t do that.” He chuckled softly, the sound undulating over her eardrums and soothing her. She smiled and relaxed despite the fright she had just received.

  “I knew you’d fallen asleep, by the way,” he told her softly.

  “What? What are you tal–”

  “Back in the desert, when we were first posted to Dassiova’s command. He hasn’t changed much, has he?” Specter asked.

  “Hasn’t changed… he’s older, but then aren’t we all. Hey,” she stopped, shaking her head to get back to the first thing he said. “What do you mean you knew I’d fallen asleep? That was years ago before you were… you.” He chuckled again.

  “I couldn’t sleep. I told Jamie I was too cold and begged him to show me how to trick the suit into letting him turn up the heating, but he was being an asshole and trying to make me buy the information from him. I tried to talk to you, but you were out on your feet, so I took over your watch and called the attack when I saw it. I tried to wake you first but… anyway, I don’t know why but I just wanted you to know that.” Brandt stared at him, totally lost for words.

  “Jake?” She asked hesitantly. Specter sighed.

  “I’m still in here but being around you two makes me come out more. Specter is more like… more like my callsign now, you know? He’s like my front, just like James over there gets all pissy when people don’t call him Zero. It’s like a personality front. Anyway, this cabron keeps hitting me with dopamine shots or something every time he thinks I’m slipping back. Him or one of his other Hyper buddies. I’ve tried to override the command, but… I’m hardwired not to be able to mess with it. I hate it. It makes me go all… fuzzy. Reckon you could disable it for me?”

  Brandt was still speechless at his words, like she had agreed to partake in a séance that she thought was a scam and found herself talking to her dead friend through another person’s body. “I…” she stammered, “I might not be able to, but Paterson definitely could. I’ll wake him up an–”

  “No,” Jake interrupted, “tomorrow. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that, eh?”

  “Sure,” Brandt agreed in a daze, “tomorrow.”

  Chapter Sixteen – Proxima Centauri, deep orbit

  “Save me the excuses, Captain,” Dassiova said from behind the hand the used to rub his furrowed brow, “just tell me the earliest time for completion.”

  “Sir,” Massey interrupted from the doorway of his cabin, “You need to see this.” Dassiova nodded at his flight officer and turned back to the screen.

  “Get it done, Captain,” he told the officer commanding the Venture, meaning that he wanted the space station operational, “unless you feel like repelling a few hundred Va’alen ships with love songs and messages of peace.” He cut the transmission before his sarcastic comment could generate any response, then he stood and followed Massey onto the bridge.

  “What am I looking at?” he asked, squinting his eyes at the large display screen showing the system as a whole.

  “You’re looking at the best estimation of the Va’alen fleet arriving in this sector,” she told him, “and the route they will have to take to avoid an anticipated asteroid path. That will lead them through this part,” she pointed at a bit on the display he couldn’t see before she dropped her hand again, “of empty space. Captain Novak is confident that the shrouded mines you requested will be manufactured in nineteen days.”

  “Nineteen days gives us about thirty minutes to deploy them before that damned armada knocks down our front door. Tell him to speed it up or else lower my expectations for me. Either way, tell him to pull his Russian thumb out of his ass and not to waste time on excuses.”

  “Sir,” Massey said reprovingly, “he also wanted it noted that the manufacturing time has been delayed because he has had to redirect key personnel to the repair of, er, essential fleet assets.” Dassiova growled to himself, turning the noise into a throat-clearing cough. The ‘essential fleet assets’ referred to was the battered and damaged Ichi, which Dassiova had ordered repaired as a priority so that the fleet could get their recon ship back in play. He bit down another loud cursing of Torres, knowing that the impetuous call he had made wasn’t necessarily the wrong one, but had just turned out to have been a catastrophe. He paused, staring at the display screen and thinking, which lent him the appearance of being about to explode in rage at any moment.

  “We’re confident they’ll be forced to come that way?” he asked, looking at the three-dimensional map of space before him.

  “Yes, Admiral,” Massey said.

  “Good,” Dassiova answered, giving nothing else away and changing the subject. “Anything from the Hammer or the Vengeance?”

  “Negative, Admiral,” one of the comm officers answered, “no update scheduled and no emergency subspace bursts.” He pulled a face, weighing up the risks and the odds that the two frigates were running on low power, with the metaphorical covers pulled over their eyes as a superior Va’alen force searched for them. He decided that neither of those captains were the ‘hold their breath and hide’ type, which was precisely why they commanded the big space tanks the frigates had been turned into.

  “Send a message on subspace to both ships,” he ordered, “my compliments to both captains; they are to search for ten days, then jump back to prepare for a fleet defense operation. If there is no sign of the Tanto by then, we will have to declare them officially MIA. I know it’s harsh, but the lives of everyone up here and everyone who’ll follow are more important than the few we have out in the cold.”

  The comm officer acknowledged him, just as the door to the main bridge hissed open and in strode an alien on a mission.

  Asha walked to Dassiova and stood tall, towering over him with a third of the body mass. A wave of deep concern spread over the bridge, despite the Kuldar’s evident attempts to keep it in check.

  “Ahhd-mee-rahl,” Asha said with a bow, still stumbling over many human words and unable to grasp the concept that a person in charge was not royalty, “I implore you that we may speak for a time that is short.”

  “You mean you want to talk to me for a minute?” he asked, carrying on before the confused alien could respond. His grasp of English was improving massively each day, but his translations were often literal as he learned the language from the translation software on the comm device given to him. “Sure, come on.” Dassiova walked past the concerned alien and entered his cabin, pausing at the door for Asha to follow.” Massey made to accompany them, but the admiral shook his head to tell her to stay put on the bridge.

  Dassiova sat on the uncomfortable couch built into the outer room in his private quarters, holding out a hand to invite the gangly alien to join him. Asha bowed again, sitting delicately and wringing his hands. Another wave of worry escaped and threatened to take the admiral’s breath away, meaning that whatever was on Asha’s mind must be bad.

  “I can feel the concern, Asha,” he said gently, “tell me what’s eating you?”

  “What is… consuming my body?” he asked with incredulity and more than a little concern for his own safety
as he tapped at the comm device offering the translation.

  “I mean,” Dassiova said as he tried to stifle a laugh that would have escaped had he not experienced the confusion and fear through his telepathic alien advisor, “what’s the matter? What is eating you up inside and causing you to worry? It’s a human thing; a colloquialism.”

  “Oh,” Asha said, embarrassed, “I, ah… I have seen the reporting of Captain Torres, and I think I know what the anomaly was which they witnessed.” Dassiova racked his brain.

  “Oh, the, er, the thing the two Va’alen fighters were towing?”

  “Exactly this,” Asha said, producing a datapad from inside his flight suit. Dassiova managed to stop his face from wrinkling up, seeing as how he didn’t like the thought of wiping alien sweat off a screen he was touching, and was grateful that the telepathy only worked one way. That they knew of, anyway. He leaned over and took the pad, seeing a screen grab of a recording from the Ichi depicting the unpowered vessel. It was zoomed in to show ‘glyphs on the outer hull.

  “You know what that thing is?” he asked.

  “I have suspectings,” Asha said awkwardly, “but for me to tell you what I have thinking, I must admit to a thing which you do not know.” Dassiova leaned further forwards and stared hard into the large eyes through the dark goggles, wishing that he would just allow the translator to work instead of mangling the grammar.

  “A lie? You mean you decided not to share important intelligence about the enemy before we came back out here?” A sensation of shame mingled with a little fear swept the room before Asha spoke.

  “The lie is not about the Va’alen,” he admitted, “but about our own species. We Kuldar are not how our whole race was before the Great Journey of my ancestors… we are… we were what the others called,” he hesitated, lifted the comm device and made a series of rattling, clicking noises until the translation showed on his screen and he said the word.

  “Uhn-der-lingss.”

  “Underlings?” Dassiova asked, taken aback. “Why?”

  “You identify our ability to project our mindsets? Our fee-linghs? It is something which only the matured ones of our species can be doing, and many of us that are not able. I, like only a few of my kind, are able to make a limit on our projections.”

  “So…” Dassiova asked.

  “So if we were the underlings of our kind, the higher caste of our peoples were the Overlords. Their minds can project not just feelings but controlling thinking. According to our legends, the few who were born with this powers made the others of our kind do their bidding.”

  “Aaand…” Dassiova prompted, not liking where the conversation was heading.

  “And the markings on the device the Va’alen are towing are not Va’alen at all, but old, very old Kuldar. They have at least one of our higher kind, and I do not know how they could be a prisoner.” Dassiova stared blankly at him for ten long seconds before responding simply with, “Aaaah, shit.”

  ~

  The comm officer on the bridge of the Vengeance jumped in alarm as her console lit up. “Ma’am, incoming hail from the Indomitable. Requesting an all-clear before they continue transmission?” Captain Nicola Halstead frowned at the breach of protocol, quickly finding that annoyance pushed aside by a tight knot of fear in her stomach. She glanced at the tactical officer, seeing no concern that the subspace link had awoken any shrouded enemy fighters nearby, and nodded her assent to the comm officer.

  “On screen,” she instructed, her voice level and in control.

  “The comm is marked for your eyes only, Captain.” Halstead rose without speaking, nodded to the Lieutenant Commander beside her to take the chair, and walked into her quarters, where she activated the viewscreen at her terminal.

  “Admiral,” she said in greeting, seeing Dassiova’s drawn face nod back at her moments before Craig Hayes’ welcome and rugged mug blinked in to fill the right half of her screen. Her breath caught for an instant and she stifled the giggle that threatened to escape her mouth, as Hayes had clearly been sleeping and looked groggy.

  “I’ll be brief,” Dassiova said, “and I apologize for breaking protocol, but this can’t wait.” He sighed heavily, like a parent with twin toddlers trying to keep them from killing each other in public. “It appears that our new allies,” he invested the word with some acidity, “have neglected to reveal certain aspects of their history to us until now. Long story short, there is a sub-species of Kuldar, or maybe the ones we know are the sub-species, I’m not sure,” he shook his head, annoyed with his own wandering logic, “but anyway… the thing that Torres’ ship saw the Va’alen towing is a kind of higher-level Kuldar with… I can’t believe I’m saying these words, but hell… with mind control abilities. Odds are, these new sons of bitches are allied with the Va’alen and kinda hate the ones on our side. Just to make it more interesting. No idea of their combat or tactical capabilities yet, but it changes the game.” He paused, watching for any response to the words he had used and waiting for them to sink in to the minds of the two frigate captains.

  “What do you need, Admiral?” Hayes asked in a half growl, half croak.

  “I need you to jump your ships back to us,” Dassiova answered. “There’s an incoming enemy armada with an ETA of a little over two weeks, and I plan to use you two to harry and harass the sons of bitches all the way here before we crush them.

  “And the missing crew, Sir?” Halstead asked, seeing a tightening of concern on the fleet commander’s face.

  “I can give you another twelve hours tops,” he said grimly. “After that, I see no other option.” He left the rest unsaid. He had no other option but to declare them all missing in action, presumed lost. Presumed dead. In terms of personnel numbers it was nothing; a mere shadow of the crew lost by either Hayes or Halstead on their last foray into the system, but in terms of fleet morale and irreplaceable people, the cost was high.

  “Understood, Admiral,” Hayes said. “Anything else, Sir?”

  “No,” Dassiova replied, “see you soon. Out.”

  The left half of their screens went dead as the faces of the two remaining captains enlarged, each to fill the display of the other. They sat across from one another, face to face but separated by half a million miles, in a moment of introspective silence before Halstead spoke.

  “No sense in stealth now?” she asked.

  “Nope,” Hayes replied, “double up or spread out?”

  “Double up,” she answered, “active sensors and weapons hot.” Hayes nodded agreement.

  “We’ll jump to you,” he told her as the Hammer had been scouting away from the planet, “three full orbits with active sensors and check out that forest moon before we go back?”

  “Fine by me,” Halstead told him, nodding before she cut the comm to leave the other captain on his own.

  “Weapons hot?” Hayes asked himself out loud, his voice still croaky after the full ninety minutes of sleep he had been blissfully enjoying. A smirk crept onto his face as his brain caught up with the conversation. He shook off the childish excitement her words had caused him to feel, put on his game face along with a fresh flight suit, splashed water on his face and short hair, and stepped back onto the bridge to give his orders.

  Chapter Seventeen – Va’alen base, Unnamed Moon Surface

  The arrival of the Hive Lord had caused a massive volume of unnecessary work for the handful of bored Va’alen warriors deployed to the surface. They had even been ordered to clean up their barracks in case an inspection was carried out, as if their mythical overseers cared about such things. The sullen feeling running through the small ranks, as the young Aq in charge bossed them around to demonstrate his power and mask his fear, was unmistakable.

  “Who does the small one think he is?” one warrior complained to another. “My mate is larger than he is, and he hasn’t even fully grown his teeth in yet.”

  “He is our Aq,” the other answered blandly.

  “Only because his sire is an old Muq,” th
e other complained in a quiet, hissing growl as though they could be overheard, “I’m sure if my sire was a warrior of renown, then I would be in command and not him.” The other warrior beside him turned and adopted a slightly lowered stance; body language for a challenge.

  “But he was not, was he? He was just like you and just like me. Like my sire was and like our offspring will be. Stop running your mouth over nothing and do as we have been commanded.” The complaining Va’alen said nothing, ignoring the challenge in the words and stance, but he stopped talking nonetheless.

  “Why is it here, anyway?” the braver of the two asked after a moment’s silence. “What does a Hive Lord want with this bastard of a rock?”

  “The minerals?” the other guessed.

  “Why would a Hive Lord want minerals? I think it is here hiding. I think the humans have come in force.”

  His words got the other thinking as the pair walked back to their assigned perimeter defense position where their mates had been keeping watch over the high gate overlooking the plains and the distant mountains. The news of a human spacecraft crashing on the moon had caused great excitement, but that had been short-lived when the team sent to recover their bodies and equipment found only an impact crater the size of a transport ship. After that brief interlude of excitement, they had gone back to the monotony of keeping watch for any concerted effort by the indigenous wildlife to breach their walls, or the attention of the larger types of reptilian predator to come into range so they could kill another and recycle its biological matter to feast the whole base. Such demonstrations went a long way to raising the standing of a Va’alen warrior who had no family ties to call on, and killing more than one of the large beasts would create a reputation. Reputation, at least when it came to being noticed by a more senior and well-connected warrior, was everything.