From Furies Forged (Free Fleet Book 5) (38 page)

              “That said, we all need rest, we’ve pushed hard for weeks to build up some real strength with the Henry-classed Destroyers. We should all be proud about the laser-cannon factory we got into commission, our personal achievements and professional achievements of turning these Kalu excuses for ships into something that will make them piss themselves in fear.” Laughs and chuckles ran through the crowd.

              “Alright, now git! If I see you so much as staring at your tools lovingly, I’ll start following my Uncles practice of boot throwing!” He said, his manipulators moving in tired amusement. The engineers laughed and joked, moving in groups as they left the command area of the shipyard.

              “How about a beer?” Felix asked, looking as tired as Silly felt.

              “That, that would be marvelous,” Silly said, his entire body felt like it had been put through a metal press from the sheer volume of work over the last few weeks. They’d finished the Henry Destroyers, given them two cannons and a slew of weapons which they put on themselves. Then they moved to the next hull and the next.

              It was tiring and mind-numbing work doing the same thing day-in and day-out. Yet it had shown results.

              “I thought so too,” Felix said, the two of them walking towards the impromptu mess which was the meeting point for the majority of the engineers, the Commando’s commander had opened a tab up for them. She’d seen how hard they’d pushed themselves and she knew how the people on the front lines were going to see the Destroyers for the godsend they were.

              Felix and Silly got into their own flavors of beer and sunk into their seats. Two aliens from wildly different cultures thrown together by the Syndicate, the Free Fleet, and their love of building things. It’s odd where you find your best friends.

Chapter Parnmal, again

              “I swear we spend more time fighting in this system than we spend passing through it,” I sighed as I looked over the screens. We had exited a wormhole into Parnmal a few hours ago.

              The Kalu had done the same a day and a bit ago. Well Falhu’s splinter group, Orshpa’s group was still about five hours behind us. Resupplying had taken its time.

              Though unlike the Kalu we had up to minute by minute information from Parnmal. Which allowed us, combined with the AI computing power of our fleet, to jump a hell of a lot closer to Parnmal, meaning we were just seven hours away from coming into range with Falhu’s splinter forces. Instead of twenty-six hours.

              “There might be something to that. I think we’ve only passed through the system four times and fought in it three times?” Rick said, looking thoughtful before shrugging. “I’d have to look through the logs for how many times we’ve passed through,” he said.

              I knew he didn’t have to look up the number of times we’d fought in the system. We’d both had our share of grief not only for losing those we knew, but those that had followed us and our orders in those battles.

              I looked over my side, seeing Krom’s ungloved hand playing with my boy, keeping him from crying his almighty head off. The kiddo seemed to have a good taste in people and had turned Krom into the perfect babysitter. Deadly, six and a half foot tall, preferred powered armor to a battle suit and a big ole softie on the inside.

             
My criteria on an ideal babysitter baby sitter might be a bit different compared to others,
I thought getting a small chuckle from myself as I looked back to the main screen. Every time I saw Parnmal I was struck by the onward march of progress and our ability to overcome our limitations when we make something pretty fucking awesome. Like having a trading hub, usually with the population of New Jersey. Even with everything going on, the sight of Parnmal wasn’t just reassuring because of the firepower, shields, and armor it sported. No it gave me hope for the people that flooded its marketplaces and called it home.

             
People can be pretty damned awesome when they work together. Wow I am a sappy bastard sometimes;
I guess being a new parent had something to do with the tidbits of wisdom that seemed to be fleeing my brain like people running from a burning building.

             
Might be the wake-ups I’ve been having for the last couple of days,
I wondered, a man couldn’t win.

              I got comfortable in my chair a report coming in from Min Hae. I opened it, sitting up in my chair as the report completed.

              “Damn, I didn’t think they could do it,” I muttered to myself.

              “Do what?” Rick asked, hearing my voice.

              “The Destroyer yard finished off those Henry-classed Destroyers. They engaged the supply fleet, which is now drifting components, and five hundred of the six hundred and thirteen ships are coming to reinforce our people across Union space,” I said, sending the report to Qurv.

              “Hey Qurv, I think that a few people might be interested in this little video,” I said.

              “I think so,” he said, scanning it over before throwing it on the main screen, we watched the sped-up battle play out.

              “I am so happy those bastards never understood shields,” Krat said.

              “Amen,” Marleen agreed.

              Death and Destruction was the currency of the Free Fleet and here we had done ourselves proud. The Henry classed Destroyers weren’t the pretty purpose built machines of war that the rest of the Fleet had been transformed into. They made me think of the days when we had been spending as much time keeping the damned ship from trying to commit suicide as we spent trying to fix the extra damage we’d piled onto them. We’d come a long way, we had used the useless and broken with effectiveness that made me damned proud of my people.

              I saw the makeshift ships for the weapons they were, sure they weren’t perfect, but they were a chance.

              “Rick remind me where those ships are going?’ I asked, I knew but others hearing might bolster their efforts and reassure them.

              “A hundred will be joining us, the rest of the five hundred will be split between Cheerleader and Boot’s fleet to assist in the tracking down of Falhu’s forces,” he said, his voice loud enough to carry across the bridge.

              “So they should be meeting up in Drvntrni in, five days?” I looked to him.

              “About that,” he nodded in agreement, referencing his star map briefly.

              I looked around the bridge, people weren’t on edge and were talking in more conversational than tense tones.

              I glanced to my fleet, we were formed up like the pyramids that had smashed the Kalu supply freighters, though our leading craft was War Station and Super-Carriers with Dreadnoughts flowing behind him.

              I leaned to my left side, resting my chin on my fist, my right hands fingers tapping on my other armrest like a wave, leaving the bridge behind and studying my enemy. I had done this for hours as a gamer and spent many sleepless nights studying my enemies over the years. My strength wasn’t in being a stubborn ass, it was exploiting every and any weakness I saw.

              “Ben, could you get me a plot showing Orshpa’s predicted entry point and a straight line from that to the Falhu splinter group?” I asked, my eyes moving across the main screens information in thought.

              “Yes sir,” Ben said, a change in the plan forming in my head.

                                                                      ***

              Wallace Jones looked out of Parnmal’s view screens, he was one of the hundred and fifty ambassadors from Earth that were on the massive station. They were supposed to be making agreements to benefit Earth. Yet after the mess that had occurred between the Free Fleet and Earth, they had been promptly told to fuck off by nearly every other star-system and most of the traders disregarded any interest in trading with them.

              He was part of the American embassy, which had meant fuck off was one of the more polite terms the residents of Parnmal used.

              The Free Fleet had pulled a smart move saying that they were a subsidiary of the Free Merchant Fleet. It had connected them to the sphere of traders and merchants irrevocably. The fact that they still had patrols helping to watch merchants crossing space at a fee was similar to the merchant fleet in Earth’s world wars.

              The Free Merchant Fleet was the backbone of the Union; the Free Fleet was the shield.

              There had been moments where Wallace wished the Earth forces had succeeded if only to salve his own pride and get the respect due to his office. Begging and scarping at the doors of the lowest merchants on Parnmal was undignified and humiliating.

              Those thoughts were far from his mind as the Kalu fleet raced towards Parnmal like dogs on their prey’s tail. Their drives and bomb-pumped acceleration hurling their two hundred and fifty-three thousand strong armada at Parnmal.

              That was more than half of Earth’s population after the Syndicates’ bombardments. Though not all of those on Earth were capable of combat, only about twelve percent of the population of Earth were actually trained for combat. Not one of the Kalu were anything but warriors all baying for the blood of any that fell in their view. To them everyone was a combatant, whether they were a kid or a mother or father.

              He had never served in the military and he had generally looked down on the people that did so. Honor and all of that were just useless words to him, used by people to gloss over the bloodied psychopaths that were part of any military.

              Sure it was better to have them ready to be thrown out in the defense of the country, it was better than having them clutter up the jails and hurting the
real
people that kept countries moving forward.

              He had seen the Commandos in their powered armor as a tool to instill fear in the population. Hell he still did and he didn’t know how they, or anyone could destroy the oncoming Kalu.

              There was no way that the Free Fleet with their fleet less than five hundred in strength, now closer to four hundred after the losses they’d sustained, would be able to kill the hundreds of thousands that they had reported.

             
We should have taken control from Salchar as soon as possible,
he thought, looking to the Free Fleet pyramid that was following the Kalu in towards Parnmal. An alert appeared on the screen in front of him.

              He zoomed in on it, a new wormhole had formed, out of it even more Kalu emerged, sandwiching the Free Fleet between them.

             
Why the fuck did I have to get stranded on this station?
He asked some unknowing power as the first Kalu fleet unknowingly entered Parnmal’s firing range.

              The station invited them in like a Venus flytrap, waiting for them to get just deep enough to making pulling away a hard proposition.

                                                                      ***

              Orshpa had heard the copies of information from Ashota, they talked about how Parnmal was a station even bigger than Rosho.

              He’d been right, a shipyard filled with Free Fleet warships was connected to the station which was a mash of asteroids melded together. Weapon batteries were tiny on the station which made one think that there weren’t many of them. They would be mistaken. There was more firepower on that station than in the entire fleet between him and Falhu’s splinter group.

              He was looking at scans that were a half hour late.

              He growled and shook his head roaming around on his command deck.

              If Falhu’s fleet went up against that station they would win, a Kalu leader could never think any differently. Yet the cost of ships and Kalu would mean that they couldn’t continue their attack on the core systems of the Union and the Free Fleet.

              “Send orders to Falhu’s splinter fleet. I want them to send half of their number against the station, the rest are to regroup with us as we move onto attack the feeder worlds of the Free Fleet,” Orshpa said. He was writing off half of the other fleet, but it was the only way to get the rest to come with him.

              If he didn’t get into the feeder worlds, then the Free fleet would win. The Kalu’s strength was in ground combat, that was clear to him now. He needed to bring them to fight on the planets, the first world he came to he would demonstrate the might of the Kalu’s fighting ability.

              Then he would strike out to attack Earth, the home of the Free Fleet’s leader. He would lose face with his home planet since he was unable to defend his own people.

              He bared his teeth, a growl tickling his throat in pleasure.

              “We will go on and bloody the worlds of the Free Fleet. We will go into ground combat and we will make them howl our names as we write ours in the stories! Come with me brothers, let our honor guard crush this station of metal and weakness. We shall ravage their worlds and cull those that might avenge them!” He said, stirring his Kalu up into a blood-frenzy, two crashed together in battle on his command deck.