The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (16 page)

Alliance Consulate, Lychensee, Weirfall

D
wight
stepped out the front door of the four-storey stone consulate building and
looked up at the new city. A network of massive angled graphene supports held
the modern city suspended above the structures of the old city. The supports,
rising at a forty-five degree angle, intersected each other several times as
they climbed toward the gleaming high-rises of modern Lychensee. An exuberant
mix of homes and shops encrusted each support column like barnacles, haloed by
the rising sun.

He had lain awake in his room all night, concentrating on
the unfamiliar sounds of the alien city so he wouldn’t have to think about the
events of the past few weeks. Now that the
Angel of Death
had done his
duty, his usefulness was at an end, but there was no one to administer
his
transition. Nobody to give him the peace he craved.

The moment his room screen told him the commissary was
serving breakfast, he went downstairs, ate, and headed for the front gate.

He needed as much distraction as he could find, and the
tangled clusters of dark grey boxes that covered the gigantic columns looked
promising enough. He stopped by the front gate of the walled compound. The
consulate looked like an Aztec interpretation of a four-storey, twentieth
century structure. The entire surface was covered with rows of weathered,
iconographic relief sculptures glazed by the morning mist. Even the wall
bordering the compound was decorated, but the symbols seemed more generic, to
the point that you could spot the same patterns over and over.

The heavy concrete walls inside the gate were a more recent
addition, placed by the Alliance to prevent bomb-laden surface vehicles from
forcing their way into the compound. Surface-to-air missile batteries in the
compound and on the roof handled the aerial threat.

Dwight threaded his way through the winding, concrete enclosed
path to reach the front gate. The squad behind the sandbags was different from
the one on duty when he had arrived the previous evening.

“Morning, Doc,” a young lance corporal greeted him with a
non-committal sort of nod, his breath fogging the cool morning air.

It was always a guessing game for Dwight. Some recognized
him from the vaccination teams and treated him with cool detachment or even
hostility, but some were outrageously grateful for their extended lifespans.
Then again, some had no idea who he was. His uniform proclaimed him as having
arrived on the
Pandora
, because it was still in good condition. He was
further identified as a doctor by the insignia on his collar. ‘Doc’ could mean
the young man had glanced at his collar, but it could also mean he held a
grudge over a dead buddy.

It was an uncomfortable feeling, knowing that some people
hated him on sight. He always wondered if the person talking to him wanted him
dead. The sooner he got away from his fellow man for a while, the better. He
pointed up to the haphazard structures that encrusted the city supports.
“Anything worth seeing up there?”

“There’s always something to see on one of the column
districts,” the young man answered. “Each one is like a little city in its own
right.” He nodded down the street. “There’s a cab stand just around the
corner,” he said. “Grab an aerial unit and have him take you to the Kinzell.”

“What’s the Kinzell
?”

“It’s a section of that column over there.”  He pointed
slightly to the right. “See that column that angles up toward us, just behind
the two that cross each other?” He turned to Dwight. “It’s filled with small
businesses of every conceivable description: electronics, experimental surgery,
tattoos…” He pulled his sleeve back to reveal a bright pattern of intricate
whorls and characters in Dheema.

“That’s amazing!” Dwight blurted. “How do they make it
glow?”

“Bioluminescence,” the young soldier replied. “Caught seven
kinds of hell from the brass when I showed up with this,” he admitted ruefully.
“In retrospect, a glowing tattoo isn’t a good idea for combat personnel.”

“Still, I’d like to see how they do it,” Dwight mused. It
would certainly make for a good distraction.

“Good place to go drinking too,” the young Marine added. You
can get a room on the cheap, if you don’t feel like finding your way back here,
and the bars up there stay open ten-ten.” Time had been set to the decimal
system back in the Imperial days. Weeks were ten days long and days were ten
hours. “The party never stops.”

“I suppose that explains Tipsy McStagger over there.” Dwight
nodded down the street. “First thing in the morning and he’s already half in
the bag.”

The lance corporal spun around, a look of alarm on his face.
“Oh, shit!” He looked up to the raised concrete platform by the side of the
gate. “McElroy! Get your head out of your ass and put crosshairs on the drunk
at two o’clock!”

Dwight decided the best course of action was to follow the
lance corporal into the raised platform, but he couldn’t see what all the fuss
was about. Another Marine was inside, aiming a heavy-duty rifle down the street
toward the local.

“Definitely looks like a tango to me,” the Marine advised.

“Alright,” the lance corporal replied. “Hit him with a gel
round.” Designed for crowd control, the .50 caliber gel round was
typically
non-lethal on humanoid targets.

There was a sharp bang as the rifle bucked back into the
Marine’s shoulder.

The weaving target began to stagger backward but disappeared
half a second after the impact as a blast originated from his chest. Ground
cars on the consulate side of the street were thrown up against the decorated
wall, falling back to the pavement in crumpled heaps.

“Are you sure you used a gel round on him?’ the lance corporal
tore his eyes away from the carnage to look down at McElroy.

“Come on, Tim…” McElroy rolled his eyes “Even our HE rounds
don’t have that kind of power. The gel must have hit a trigger on his vest
bomb. That was an Obsidian Knight, sure as hell.”

“Obsidian Knight?” Dwight finally poked his head above the
parapet to view the destruction.
For someone who’s tired of life,
he
thought,
I sure got my head down in a hurry.

The lance corporal, Tim, nodded as he brought his G20
assault rifle tight into his shoulder. “Dactari bad asses,” he muttered.
“Operatives in the Krypteia who volunteer for certain-death missions like this
one.” He nodded out at the swath of charred pavement where the mist had already
begun to deposit a new, reflective sheen.

“In order to conceal their identity,” McElroy added, “they
often have their tails removed. It helps them blend with locals but it screws
up their balance. We’ve killed a few honest drunks in the past, so we use the
gel rounds now.”

The lance corporal used the optics of his G20 assault rifle
to scan the surrounding area. He spared a quick glance at Dwight before
activating his earpiece. “Six, this is Six-Two. Looks like he was going to try
breaching the perimeter wall. That means there are more of ‘em out there right now,
watching us. Probably in those buildings across the street.” He tilted his head
slightly, bringing his left hand up to touch the earpiece as he nodded. “Roger,
Six-Two out.”

He turned to Dwight as a powerful low-pitched whine began to
sound from the consulate roof. “We’re shutting down this gate for a while, Doc.
You should go back in and take the east gate if you still want to go
sightseeing.”

Dwight threaded his way back into the compound, looking up
to see an assault carrier lift off from the roof of the consulate on its way
toward the blast area. Rows of feet dangled from the open doors on either side
of the forty foot long craft. He looked down at the pathway winding between the
reddish trees toward the east gate.

The biologist in him mused on how the trees
under
the
new city had adapted to the particular wavelengths of light that bounced down
the canyons of glass above. Though the trees topside were green, just like on
Earth, foliage down here was bathed in a different wavelength of light and tended
to favor carotenoid pigments.

Without any conscious thought, his feet began taking him
toward the east gate.

The
Salamis
, Ten
Minutes from Oaxes

“T
wenty-eight
ships.” Harry gazed at the telemetry being sent over from the
Leetayo
.
It was displayed on a screen in his quarters so that none of the bridge crew
would wonder where he was getting such accurate information. There were
twenty-eight enemy ships in Oaxian Orbit. Harry and his squadron of thirteen
ships were only a ten-minute jump away.

“They’re broadcasting doom and gloom on every local
channel,” Mickey Willsen reported. “Streets will flow with blood, heads will
roll, that kind of stuff.”

“But no mass drivers,” Harry mused. “If they came for
revenge, they wouldn’t leave anything standing.” He nodded to himself. “What
we’re seeing, Major Willsen, is the
iron fist in the velvet glove.
They
start off with the threat of retribution and when the Oaxians come to them on
bended knee, they put the glove back on and make peace from a position of
strength.” He could feel his pulse quickening. “We need to hit them while the
glove is still off.”

“Their trace history shows the formation as being relatively
dynamic,” Mickey’s face was on another monitor, next to the telemetry feed.
“They keep shifting around.”

Harry nodded. “This is a more experienced force than the one
at Tauhento.  They’re trusted to operate outside of a block formation as
long as they maintain a protective envelope for the troopship.” He took a
calming breath. “This is going to be a tougher fight.”

“I’d be happier if we could hit ‘em with a good dose of
distortion wash,” Mickey said. “Of course, that would blow our advantage. If
even one escape pod gets away from us, the game is up.”

Harry was in mid-nod when he realized what an idiot he was
allowing himself to be. He grinned, even though he was angry at himself for
almost letting an opportunity to slip by. “Leave that to me,” he told her,
bringing up a second channel on her screen. A signal NCO’s face peered out at
him, eyes growing wide as he recognized his commodore. “Get me your captain,”
Harry ordered.

Carol Cernan appeared on the screen. “What can I do for you…
Sir?” It wasn’t the first time she’d almost called him Harry by mistake.

“Captain, I’d like you to make the first jump into Oaxian
space.”  Harry pulled the current locations of the enemy fleet and
combined their signals, effectively scrubbing out any ship-specific data. “I’m
sending the coordinates that we want you to get eyes on, keep at least five
thousand kilometers away. The rest of the fleet will arrive a minute or two
after you, but we’ll be jumping in much closer.”

“Sir, is this supposed to make sense to me?”

Harry shook his head with a grin. “Not in the least,” he
replied, “but I’m hoping it’ll make some kind of sense to the enemy. Jump in
ten minutes from my mark.” He reached forward to the time display in the bottom
right corner, touching a green button. “Mark.”

As Carol disappeared, Mickey unmuted her channel. “So the
enemy, who possess FTL comms, will assume that the
Völund
is using
similar technology to act as our scout?”

“That’s right, Major,” Harry was unsurprised at how quickly
she saw through his scheme. This was the woman, after all, who’d hacked into
the Dactari operating systems during the first war. She had used that discovery
to infect most of the enemy ships in Mars orbit employing what looked like a
firmware update from Dactar.

Because of her, enemy ships had been captured intact so
engineers on Earth could then pull them apart and learn their secrets.

Because of her, Humans were in the Republic as invaders, not
as prisoners.

“That still leaves a lot of our own people with unanswered
questions, sir.”

“It does,” Harry admitted. “But when they get no answers,
they’ll speculate. Within days, we’ll be hearing rumors that our engineers
finally cracked the FTL comms problem and they’ll believe the
Völund
was
scouting for us.” He shrugged. “The last thing on anybody’s mind will be the
Leetayo.
”

He reached up and sent the coordinates to Prouse’s address. The
consolidated point was still updating in near real time. He opened another
channel to the bridge. “Captain Prouse, please be so good as to execute a
combat jump to these coordinates. Current intel suggests a force of thirty
enemy vessels. Jump-off time is my current mark plus sixty seconds. The
Völund
will be jumping in a full minute ahead of us.”

It was short notice, but the fleet was already spooled up
and waiting for the order. Eleven minutes was just adequate for a coordinated jump
into a hostile zone.

“Aye sir,” Prouse replied, setting down the diaphragm-sealed
mug that had been at his lips when Harry contacted him. The magnetic base
snapped to the ferric-laced glass of the trace table. “Combat jump on those
coordinates in just under ten minutes.” He raised an eyebrow just slightly.
“We’ve just enough time to pull it off, sir. I’ll get right on it.” The screen
went dark again.

 Harry turned his attention back to Mickey. “Shut down
the feed. We have the data we need. Chances are good for us to hurt them bad on
drop-out. After that it’s a slugging match. See you on the other side.” He
turned off the screens and headed for the bridge.

His job was essentially done. As the commodore, he had taken
what measures he could to protect his command and safeguard the incredibly
valuable resource that was currently plugged into the bridge of the
Leetayo
.
Marine boarding parties were loaded aboard seven sledges left over from the
first war. Mosquitoes had been cannibalized so their shield penetrating arrays
could give the sledges a way through enemy shields. Initial testing had proven
them to be effective.

“Commodore on deck!” The bridge crew, sensibly, went on
about their duties despite the announcement and Harry strode over to the
glass-enclosed wing projecting out at the front where the view was best. Adams
was there as well and Harry tried to keep just far enough from him to avoid
making small talk. He was too keyed up for chit chat.

“Distortion alert!” the sensor coordinator called out. “It’s
the
Völund.
She’s off.”

Many of the operators were looking at each other, Harry
noticed.
Good, they’ll assume she’s the reason for our accurate jump.

The ensuing sixty seconds lasted far longer than Harry would
have expected. He had just sent some of his best friends into enemy territory
alone. Carol was the oldest friend he had, though he certainly wouldn’t have
worded it that way in her hearing. His hand came to rest on his stomach and he
grinned, remembering the last time he had slipped up with the word ‘old’ when
referring to her. It had taken a full minute to regain his breath, but it
seemed as though the current minute was taking much longer.

“Jumping in: ten, niner, eight, seven, six, fife, fo-wer,
three, two, one, jumping.” The propulsion officer suddenly seemed to occupy
several places at once, like those old lenticular pictures that shifted when
you moved them. Harry fought to keep his lunch down. He’d never had problems
with the process until a pack of Caradi pirates knocked the
Völund
back
into regular space with an artificial singularity four years earlier. He’d been
able to perceive the distortion ever since.

The bridge gradually resolved itself back into one piece and
Harry took a series of shallow breaths as quietly as he could.

“Link shows all vessels have jumped off successfully,” the
tactical officer announced. “Spooling up all weapons for combat drop-out.”

Incredibly, the following ten minutes seemed to pass faster
than the minute of waiting.
At least we’re on the move,
Harry thought as
he looked up at the chronometer.
They should be dropping out right about
now.