Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3

by Devon C. Ford

  Blue bursts appeared on the shields of the fleet carrier, as unpaired Va’alen turned kamikaze and nosedived their ships in suicide runs to bring down the shields of the behemoth.

  “Report,” barked the admiral as another twin concussion shook his ship.

  “Port side shields down to fifty-nine percent,” cried the tactical officer as he regained his feet.

  “Helm, spin us around,” Dassiova ordered, “show these bastards our good side.”

  “Aye aye,” Lieutenant Moon chimed back from the pilot’s chair as his fingers danced over the console like a maestro performing a masterpiece. The ship responded quickly, as quickly as a vessel that big could, and she rotated on a horizontal axis to effectively flip them upside down to where they had begun. It was the fastest means of showing their starboard side, and gravity was only relevant in atmosphere.

  “Enemy numbers?” he shouted over the sound of another flurry of impacts.

  “Forty percent at my guess,” the tactical officer replied, “they just keep coming!”

  “Then we just keep goddamned killing them,” the admiral snarled back. He tapped the console beside him, opening up the channel to the two frigates he had ready to go.

  “Dassiova to Hammer and Vengeance,” he shouted over the percussive sound of battle, “Now!”

  The subspace comm link blinked to life. Both Hayes and Halstead, cringing at having to watch a battle on long-range sensors, waited as patiently as they could for the order.

  “Now!” came the admiral’s voice over the speakers.

  “Activate jump,” Hayes cried in a tone of voice that was just missing a whoop of cruel joy. Both frigates blinked out of existence in the far-off sector of space where they had been sent to hide, and when they reappeared in real space, their sensors lit up with a Christmas tree effect.

  “All guns, weapons free,” he yelled, trusting his people to do their job like the stone-cold professional experts he knew them to be. The ship shuddered as munitions thumped out of launch tubes to streak death towards the remnants of the Va’alen armada, and the remaining forty percent of attackers halved inside of half a minute. The two frigates poured fire into the enemy, killing them without mercy and taking very little damage, because the enemy’s guns had been focused on the gargantuan carrier, as Dassiova had known they would be.

  “Dassiova to Torres, you are good to go get your people.”

  “Thank you, Admiral,” Torres replied simply, as the Ichi blinked off the sensor grid.

  “Remaining flight of enemy have broken off!” Dassiova announced on the fleet-wide comm channel, “Good wor…”

  “Admiral!” the tactical officer called out with panic evident in his voice. Dassiova broke off from his seemingly premature announcement of victory and looked at the sensor display readings. He saw it before he was told.

  “Second wave incoming!”

  He saw the data, calculated simple numbers in his head, and saw a second attack heading for them.

  “ETA twelve minutes,” he was told.

  “Time to re-arm the frigates?” he asked, knowing the answer.

  “Err, twenty-six minutes, Sir… and that’s if they were already docked to the Cortez.”

  He had done his best, and still he felt as though he had failed everyone. “Prepare to fall back to the station,” he said gravely, “every last human fights to their last round.”

  ~

  “Three readings, all very long range, Captain,” the ensign informed Torres.

  “Good. Helm? Lay in the co-ordinates from the comm burst and get us there, full burn.”

  “Sir?” Rogers’ replacement asked, “shouldn’t we Shroud and travel at half speed?”

  “You want the chair, Lieutenant?” Torres asked harshly with a single finger pointed down at the captain’s occupied command seat. The pilot shook his head and swallowed, turning to lay in the course and hit the throttle.

  To hell with stealth, Torres told himself, outrun anything that comes near us. Go fast and go hard; get our people out and get back home.

  “Course laid in, Captain,” his new pilot said, “engaging maximum engine speed.”

  They were approaching orbit within fifteen minutes, having not wanted to jump in too close to the gravity wells of the planets and the large star.

  “Get me a full scan of the surface,” Torres ordered as he forced himself not to stand and pace the bridge, “I don’t want to find out about any more orbital-strike capable rail guns after they’ve opened fire. Comm, we got anything?”

  “Negative, Sir. I’m detecting some chatter on open source in what looks like Va’alen. Nothing from our people.”

  “Get a fix on their transponders,” Torres demanded.

  “No can do, Cap,” the young ensign said as he instantly regretted his casual words and carried on quickly. “Ion storms in the atmosphere are making it pretty difficult to get anything through. I’ll stay on it.”

  “Good. Comm, I want you to put out intermittent wideband hails on all of our frequencies. Get some hooks in the water and see if we can’t catch us a bite.” The fishing reference was lost on most of his crew, as angling had been banned years before as an unnecessary blood sport on Earth. It took a further half hour before their patience paid off.

  “Captain, we have a resonating reading from the surface. It looks… it looks like a singularity collapse crater. But the Tanto wasn’t equipped with any si… oh.”

  “We don’t know anything until we know, Ensign,” Torres said stoically. His heart sank as he was faced with the irrefutable sensor data that must have been the crash site of their shuttle and the subsequent loss of singularity drive containment. “If nobody survived the crash, who sent us a ‘come get me’ message?”

  “Good point, Sir,” the ensign replied, still unable to keep the disappointment from his words. “Wait… I’m getting something in a cloud gap… Va’alen base, without a doubt.”

  “How big?” Torres wanted to know.

  “Smaller than a town, easily, no weapons signatures detected.”

  “Shroud up,” Torres barked. “Are we able to reach them with our weapons?”

  “Doubtful, Captain,” Sarvanto said, “we’re geared for ship to ship and not orbital bombardment.”

  “Captain!” The comm officer yelled, “we’re getting an incoming comm. It’s weak…”

  Chapter Twenty-Five – Unnamed Moon Surface

  “And we’re sure he’s in there?” Brandt whispered to Specter over their channel.

  “Without a doubt,” came the barely synthesized reply. “I have his transponder on line-of-sight link.”

  “Enemy?”

  “Count fifteen,” Specter said.

  “Can we take them?” she asked hopefully.

  “Only one way to find out,” he said with a smile that she could hear in his voice. She knew that glee wasn’t flippant. She knew it was borne of the cruel satisfaction of a man created for war being given the opportunity to do what he did best.

  “On your go,” Brandt said over the comm, knowing that speed was the key to recovering their pilot alive. The air far off to her left by Specter’s position boomed with a dull crump and a supercharged projectile was sent through the dry air to cross the open ground. She wasn’t so inexperienced as to watch where the shot came from, but kept her eyes on the alien optical holo-display projected above the barrel of her newly stolen weapon. Ahead of her, one of the two Va’alen she could see above what looked like the main gate went rigid as an atomized cloud of its internal fluids blossomed into the still air. The alien beside it flinched, watched as the dead warrior toppled over the edge to plummet downwards, then turned its gun outwards and began firing indiscriminately. The second alien dropped a heartbeat later as the 12mm bullet streaked through the air at a velocity too fast to detect and punched a hole through it with a perfect center mass kill. That one fell backwards into the walled compound as roars of alarm reverberated around out of sight of the two lone attackers.

&n
bsp; “Easier to kill when they aren’t fired up and charging at you,” Brandt said softly to Specter.

  “You think the bravest warriors would be posted here, at the ass end of the galaxy, guarding a wall with no enemy on the planet?” he asked back, changing her mindset about their foe.

  “Good point,” she agreed, “so we’ve got the weak, lame and lazy to contend with here?” Before he could respond, a roar sounded from behind the gate as other voices, louder and deeper, joined the one who’d started up the battle cry.

  ~

  Aq D’marath, despite his unfortunately small stature for a Va’alen, thought of himself as a brave warrior. His father had retired from active expeditions and was now enjoying a seat on one of the clan high councils, having returned the proud victor of dozens of forays out into the galaxy. He was perpetually disappointed with his first spawn and had covered his lack of natural aggression and ability by circumventing the military channels through political ties. He had purchased, threatened, bargained and traded for his son to advance to Aq ahead of any of his peers, but that was as far as wealth and influence could take him. The reward for his appointment to the biggest expedition known to the alliance to which the Va’alen belonged was for D’marath to be made lord and master of an uninhabited rock, where he was given a detachment no bigger than a palace guard to protect some crystal mineral miners from the local bird population.

  D’marath had complained. He had petitioned his father to exert influence once more on his behalf and insist that the next wave of reinforcements through the portal either brought him home, or else brought him a force large enough to swear fealty to him and make him a leading voice among the Aqs. His father had no mind to do the former and no purse to afford the latter, as sending warriors through unsponsored by the allied clans was a costly venture. His response, a simple data comm containing his answer, was to tell his son to find some enemy and bathe in their blood to make the other Aqs respect him. ‘It is earned by trial,’ his comm had said, ‘it is not bought or given freely. Find your own glory.’

  He stood at the inside of the gates, after he’d been roused from his relaxation by the return of the scarred and blooded Fal K’rath dragging behind him what appeared to be a dead human still in its metal carapace, and found himself summarily ordered to rouse every warrior and defend the base. His first thought was to challenge the Fal, but as he rose to do so, he saw the crossed wounds to his chest and knew that he must have lost his mate to these humans. The fact that he had not berserked, had not followed the sacrosanct Path of Ending, frightened him into complying.

  He roused his guard, led them towards the defenses, and watched in horror as the two warriors posted above the main gate fell to unknown enemy fire. He turned to his warriors, all of them bigger than he, and none of them seemingly enthused by the thought of imminent battle.

  “We are Va’alen,” he cried, seeing as only a few of them stirred. “We. Are. Va’alen!” He bellowed at them. “We fear no enemy, and we seek glorious death in battle!” He leaned back and spread his arms wide as he issued a roar of challenge to the sky. Other warriors took up the call, and the sudden elation that they were following him into battle buoyed his spirits to previously unknown heights.

  He was a warrior. He was a leader. He was invincible, and he would tear the enemy limb from limb.

  Pushing his way to the gate ahead of his warriors, he ordered it open and made sure he was the first brave and true Va’alen to leave the safety of the compound as he envisaged with wondrous glory the stories of his bravery echoing throughout the Va’alen empire for eternity.

  ~

  The gate burst open as the roar still filled the air. Brandt, much closer than Specter was in his elevated sniper position, saw the smaller alien at the head of the charge and proceeded to riddle his torso with shots from her new weapon. It faltered, dropped to its knees, and was stampeded by the other aliens running behind it as though it were a thing of no significance; weak cannon fodder to be sent out first.

  Specter’s weapon crunched its unique report over and over as the shots drilled into the tightly packed advance, and any that faltered or tried to break off were stitched with automatic fire from Brandt. Nine of them died within fifty paces of the gate, and only three remained on their feet as the return fire found the rocks near to Brandt’s position. Forced to duck and retreat, she slithered to lower ground and sprinted low along the defilade as she counted to ten, then popped up and drilled a handful of bursts into the flank of the attack. She dropped one just as a bullet from Specter blew the shoulder off another. It turned around on the spot, looking for the missing arm, which lay on the dusty ground. She used the hesitation to hit it hard with ten shots to the chest and watched as it writhed on its feet like a landed fish and then fell backwards. The last one standing turned and fired on her, scoring a glancing blow that temporarily shut down the servos in her right arm and forced her to drop the weapon.

  She dived for cover, tucking herself small and hiding from the incoming fire as it advanced on her. Specter’s rifle had gone quiet and she called for him over the radio, hearing nothing in response until the firing stopped suddenly. She emerged from cover to see the wide blade sheathed in the forearm of his armor protruding from the open mouth of the Va’alen less than ten paces from her position.

  “You good?” he asked her. She stood, shaking her numb right arm as the neurological feedback had caused a kind of psychosomatic pain response. She bent to pick up the Va’alen rifle as Specter did the same; Zero’s rifle on his back and his own pistols on his thighs.

  “I’m good,” she said, “Let’s get our pilot back.”

  ~

  “…immediate medevac… KIA…epeat… equesting S.A.R. to th… ordinates… two casualti…”

  “Clean that up,” Torres ordered with a snap of his fingers at the comm officer who bit back her immediate retort that she wasn’t a miracle worker. With a sigh that managed to stay mostly internal, she tried to modify the frequency harmonics to ‘clean up’ the digital broadcast signal going out over a wideband burst through an alien ion storm about a hundred miles below them. To her amazement, not that she would let on to the captain that her success was a pure fluke, the broadcast came through a little more clearly.

  “…UN vessel in this sector… is the cr… of the UNS Tant… ash landed on moon orbi... anet nearest the larger of the tw… uns… equesting immed… earch and rescue to these coordina… two casualties and three KIA…”

  The bridge of the Ichi was silent for a moment before Torres broke the deadlock. “Can we get a fix on it?”

  “Close enough, Sir,” the tactical officer announced, “only problem is getting through the ion storm in one piece. We’re pretty banged up still an…”

  “Goddammit, Ensign,” Torres erupted unexpectedly, “you’re not paid to state the obvious to me every time I give an order.”

  “Yes, Sir,” the chided young man said as he ducked his head back to his console once more.

  “So, we have a rough fix on the transmission area, yes?” The captain asked in a more patient tone. An affirmative, albeit a relatively sulky one, came from tac. “Good. Comm, get a link up to the fleet and request a frigate with dropship capability. We need a support team on the ground.”

  “Sir, fleet aren’t responding to subspace hails.” Torres blinked.

  “They what now?”

  “The fleet, Sir,” the comm officer repeated, “they aren’t responding to our hails on subspace.” As though the same information repeated in a slightly different way was even more confusing, Torres’ mind couldn’t make the dots connect.

  “Sir, I have an idea,” the ensign at tactical said.

  “All ears, Ensign,” Torres said, eager for any change of subject right at that moment.

  “How about a probe? We fire it at the surface and the comm boosters act like a relay from the surface to us up here.”

  “Could that work?” Torres asked Sarvanto, who looked at the ensign and shrugged hi
s agreement. “Do it,” he ordered.

  “I’ll need to reconfigure the sensor array to gather all Un frequencies and feed them directly back to us, as the ground team won’t necessarily know what we’ve done and wouldn’t think to transmit on a narrow-band fr…”

  “Ensign,” Torres interrupted, “first off, you need to get an internal monologue or you and I will fall out on a permanent basis. Secondly, how long?”

  “Probe is launched,” he said, “reconfiguring now. Should be active by the time it lands.” He looked around to see the captain’s raised eyebrow and added quickly, “oh, about two and a half minutes.”

  It was closer to ninety seconds before the probe rigged to act as the tin can on the other end of their piece of string gave them a clear link.

  “This is a distress call to any UN ship in this sector. This is the crew of the UNS Tanto. We have crash landed on the small moon orbiting the planet closest to the larger of the two suns. Hostile alien and indigenous life on the planet. We have two currently injured, repeat two casualties and three KIA. Requesting immediate medevac. Send S.A.R. to the coordinates of this transmission.”