The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (24 page)

For the
moment, he would put aside his plans to disrupt the Alliance economy and seek a
different victory for his crews.

“We can’t
fire on them from here,” his second declared. “Not without striking some of our
own in the process.”

“No,” Reis
conceded. “But if we can spread out, we’ll be able to angle our fire in at the
enemy.” He turned to his second. “Signal all ships, we will…”

“Minefield!”
a junior officer announced. “A hemispherical configuration penning us in
against the carbon planet.” A series of red dots appeared around the fleet
commander as the holo display updated.

Reis resisted
the urge to curse. It would be bad for the crew to see their leader unsettled
by the conditions of the battle space, and he had been fortunate to have a
well-trained force. No doubt sensor officers on his other ships were also
conducting full sweeps of the area, rather than simply concentrating on the
enemy.  “Have the flanks fire on the center of the field,” he ordered.
Ships from his flanks, firing at an angle would be able to clear the front of
the field without the risk of stray rounds reaching the friendly ships ahead of
them.

One by one,
the dots began to disappear as the mines were struck by high-velocity rounds.
They were loitering on minimal power so as to evade detection. On contact with
a shield, they would no doubt activate those damned shield arrays and find a
way through.

“That
should be enough of an opening,” he said to his second. “Order them to cease
firing. Take us through and signal the rest to follow.” He was itching to get
at the enemy. Having just left a fight where he was little more than a puppet
on strings, he was eager to return the favor.

They would
make these impudent invaders dance to a Dactari tune for a change.

“The mines
are starting to activate,” the sensor officer warned. “They must have some kind
of passive proximity sensors. The nearest mines are heading for us.”

“Point
defense systems are engaging,” the weapons officer reported. “They should pose
no problem.”

Most of the
ships in this flotilla carried the new shield emitters. They allowed tiny
openings for outgoing ordinance while minimizing exposure from incoming rounds.
Reis had been told by reliable sources that it was an invention from Yilo’haye,
but it seemed far too similar to the shields of the enemy warheads for his
liking.

The new
shields had made their appearance shortly after the second armada had left to
reinforce the troops on Earth. That was another part of the official story that
left sand on his tongue. If so many Human warships had escaped the fall of
their planet, why were they here, attacking Republic worlds when they should be
fighting to free their own people?

“The
Dactari ships are jumping.” The sensor officer shook his head in surprise.

“Worse than
gods-damned clones!” the second growled. “Any fool could see we were coming to
help them and now they’ve simply tucked in their tails and run for home!”

“Open
fire,” Reis commanded. “We might yet do some damage before they can jump.”

The growl
of rapid-fire rail guns blended with the deep, soul-rending roar of the main
batteries as the flagship unleashed her destructive power.

And Reis
finally cursed.

“Tactical,”
he shouted. “Give me a replay of the last centi-day on this quadrant.” He
pointed to the back corner of the holo display.

The second
followed him into the replay, looking at the moving vessels as they fired back
and forth. “What is it, sir?”

“You hear
that?” Reis cocked an ear as the main battery fired again.

“Our main?’

The flota
nodded. “Do you see any main batteries in use during our comrade’s pursuit of
the
Earthers
?”

The second’s
eyes grew suddenly wide. “Those were captured ships!” He looked back over his
shoulder at the bridge crew, his tail unnaturally still as he tried to master
his own reactions. He turned back. “They have played us for fools twice in one
day,” he said in a quiet voice, tinged with anger. “We continually fail to
credit the enemy with anything more than dumb luck, and it may yet be our
undoing. We must get the moss out of our eyes.”

Reis
nodded. He understood that his second wasn’t accusing him of stupidity but,
rather, he was accusing the governing council of misleading the people.

He knew
because it was a common thread from the commissar. Citizens on Dactar were
still being told that everything was all right, that Humans were fools. They
had no idea that enemy forces were loose in the Republic, or that the fight for
Earth was not going so well.

His brow
furrowed.
Is there even a fight for Earth, or is that a lie as well?
He
shook his head. Best not to get into that, and especially not with his second.
As a political commissar, the second was, unfortunately, a true believer.

There was
always a danger in making an officer responsible for the crew’s adherence to
Republic ideals. He might actually believe the message he preached to the men.
Such a man, responsible for the minds of the crew, could be a threat to a
corrupt government.

The flota
put a hand on his second’s shoulder. “We’ll continue the pursuit but, if they
don’t stay to fight, then we’ll find a quiet place where we can properly
regroup.”

The second
gave him a look of respect. “Not back to Gaemhaeg, then?”

“No,” he
smiled grimly. “That, at least, is one victory we can deny our enemy. We’ll
keep the force together and look for opportunities.”

The Kinzell Lychensee

“I
’ve been here,” Dwight muttered as
they walked up a half flight of graphene steps. His breath was misting in the
cold fog. “When I was looking for someone to do my tattoo.”

“He did
your
CL13
?” Emily asked.

“No, I went with another place,” he replied with a look of mild
alarm, “but he’ll probably remember…”

“Ah! Mr. Young!” The shop owner turned a monitor and stood
up as they walked in. “You’ve reconsidered about the animated nude?” He
gestured invitingly at the screen.

Dwight
cleared his throat. “Umm…”

“Well,”
Emily leaned in to get a close look at the monitor displaying the design in
question. “She sure is
impressive
.” She arched an eyebrow at Dwight.
“You really are a patron of the arts, aren’t you?”

“It’s not
because she’s nude,” he spluttered. “Well, ok, sure – she looks nice, but the
real reason I was looking at it is because she’s animated. How cool is that?”
He spread his hands, looking to the Yo’Thage brothers for support, but they
were grinning at his predicament.

“Let’s see
the animation,” Qut suggested.

Dwight
suddenly realized the animated feature probably wasn’t going to help much, but
it was too late now.

Theil
touched the screen and the image began to move.

“I have to
admit, that is pretty neat,” Emily allowed. “You don’t see that kind of thing
back home; we just have… Oh!” She stepped back from the screen. “Is she…”

“Yes,”
Theil replied proudly.

Emily
turned her head to gaze at the image sideways, a mischievous grin on her face.
“Where were you going to put something like this, Dwight? She would probably
work her way around your entire arm.”

“I’ve done
one where she dances around a customer’s upper arm,” Theil said. “I can show
you…”

“Can we
please just start cutting holes in my head?” Dwight blurted.

“Chicken,”
she teased.

“You need
surgery?” Theil waved to a chair at the back of the shop. “What do you need?”

Qut held up
a sealed package. “We need you to install a Hothmoen bus on a Midgaard Q-CPU.”

The
artist/surgeon wagged an appreciative finger at the brothers. “I had a feeling
the two of you were bringing some exotic work to my shop, but a Hothmoen CPU
implant?” He rubbed his hands together. “I’ll be the envy of every shop on the
planet!”

“Uhhh,
you’ve done this sort of thing before, right?” Dwight eyed the chair with
growing apprehension.

“Of course
not,” Theil replied cheerfully. “Darfoeh is the only world in the Republic
allowed to handle CPU implants and, even there, it’s restricted to one isolated
facility in a floating city.”

“Now wait a
minute.” Dwight’s hands came up on their own, clearly agreeing with his
reluctance. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable with being an experimental
patient.”

“Experimental?”
Theil frowned at Qut. “Where is the CPU installed?”

A roll of
the eyes. “In his sinuses.”

“Hah!” He
gave Dwight a gentle shove into the chair. “Don’t worry; I’m just hooking up to
existing ports and attaching the new assembly so it won’t bounce around and
make you want to sneeze. Ten minutes – tops.” He activated the restraint field.
“And I can absolutely guarantee that no harm will come to
me!”

It was more
like six minutes.

When the
restraint field lifted, Dwight surged out of the chair like a cheetah being
released by a game warden. He felt a wave of dizziness and stumbled into
Theil’s desk.

“All right,
let’s get you back to the lab.” Emily grabbed an arm and ushered him out into
the foggy pedway before Theil thought to ask what the bus had been connected
to.

They were
halfway there when everything got fuzzy again. He pushed his way through the
crowd to sit on a low wall that enclosed a street-side café.

Emily sat
next to him, putting a hand on his back. “What are you feeling?”

“Everything
just starts to get fuzzy somehow.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “I
don’t actually
see
fuzziness, but it feels like I do.
”

“I think it’s working,” Rosh said as he crouched in front of
him. “Can you turn off the input from the discriminator until we get back to
the lab? It might make walking a lot easier.”

Dwight concentrated, bringing up the control menu. It took a
few false trails before he found the input list. Navigating a computer was
difficult enough, but this one was manufactured by the Midgaard and he still
wasn’t fully familiar with the layout. He found the bus/discriminator
combination and deactivated the signals coming from them.  

He instantly felt better.

The moment they got back to the shop, Qut closed the front
end with a grey, segmented shutter while Rosh helped Dwight into a chair. He
pulled three chairs to face him and turned to clear a space on the workbench.
When he came over to his seat, a small object was sitting on the bench.

“There’s a simple transmitter on the bench,” he nodded over
his shoulder. “All it does is emit a steady clicking sound, three clicks
followed by a few seconds of silence, then three more and so on.”

Dwight still had his regular receiver on. “I can hear it.”

Qut dropped into his chair, leaning his elbows on his knees.
“Deactivate the standard receiver and turn the discriminator back on. You’ll
need to direct the feed from the discriminator into your CPUs signal
processor.”

“So, if I’m picking up the signal from your transmitter,
it’ll get processed as a standard signal?’

“Exactly.”

It took a few minutes to create the link, but he felt he was
getting better at using the retinal menus. He suddenly tensed.

“Whoa! I’m getting a solid bank of sound.” He tilted his
head slightly. “I’m getting literally millions of signals coming in from that
transmitter, all at slightly different time offsets.”

Rosh jumped out of his chair with a delighted screech.
“That’s exactly what you should be seeing!” He danced a clumsy jig around the
chair and gave Qut a friendly thump on the back. “It’s working!”

“Now we need to pick one of those signals and follow the
path back to the transmitter,” Qut advised. “Just pick any one signal.”

Dwight concentrated, but there were just too many signals to
ignore.
Maybe I should be using the CPU to filter out the ones I’m not
trying to trace.
He selected one signal and had the system mask the rest.

With the other paths ignored, he concentrated on the one
signal. He could actually perceive the path, knitted together by countless tiny
tunnels through the foamy ocean of space-time.

He shifted his position on the seat and the path shifted as
well. He was sure of it.
Can I make the path shift consciously?
He
imagined a curve around Qut and the path followed.
I should be able to move
the end as well,
he thought.

The three clicks disappeared, leaving only silence. He
caught snippets of sound as he moved the end. “I’m moving the end of the
pathway,” he explained. “I’m only getting quick little snippets of
transmissions.”

“You can control where the path goes?” Rosh asked, eyes
wide. “That’s amazing!”

“Well, it seems remarkably intuitive so far,” Dwight
muttered absently. “I thought I’d hear a ton of chatter.”

“The aperture at the end is a micro wormhole,” Qut
explained. “You pretty much need to be pointed straight at the target to pick
up the signal.”

“Hey, maybe we can talk to Earth with this?” Dwight tried to
figure out what direction his home world was and lost the path entirely. He
shut down the feed before it had a chance to sneak up on him and start the
fuzziness again.

“Signals from your system wouldn’t have reached us yet,” Qut
frowned. “At least not through normal space. Not sure how you’d find a path to
follow.”

“Let’s try the
Midway
first,” Emily suggested. “You
could try picking up the beacon and initiate a hail using your voice-link.”

Dwight grinned. “It it works, we may be boarding a shuttle
within the hour.”

“S
ir,”
a nervous young communications officer stood at the open hatch to Towers’
quarters at the back of the bridge. “We have a call for you from Dr. Young.”

Towers couldn’t help but smile. Some of the youngsters in
the fleet were just naturally frightened around senior officers. “From the
surface?”

“Well,” a deep breath, “the signal seems to originate here,
on the
Midway
, but the system shows no record of us making a call to
ourselves.” He opened his mouth, then frowned  as he shut it again. He
made another attempt. “Sir, it’s almost as if the signal
has
no origin.
It’s just here, being picked up by our systems.”

“All right, put it through to my neural link.”
What’s so
important that he can’t wait till he’s back aboard?