The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (31 page)

“Just
because
we
are enlightened enough to refrain from such weapons, doesn’t
mean
they
are.” Xec cast a wary glance at the Alliance officers.

“Those
weapons were captured on their way to Earth, three years ago,” Harry called
across the table. “They were carrying Dactari crews, but we…” Towers waved him
to silence.

“We have
used them,” Gelna added in a matter-of-fact voice. “We found the world where
distortion drive was first invented. It was destroyed by mass drivers, possibly
the same ones that the Humans now possess. Fourteen months after that planet
died, Waeem Kib announced the ‘discovery’ of distortion technology here on
Dactar. Twenty-three days later, he died in a
mugging
.”

“Before
anyone could ask him too many detailed questions about his work,” Kale drawled.
He looked over at Reis. “You should’ve made Gelna into a military policeman –
he’s good at it.”

“Enough!” Xec
thundered. “Flota Mas, you
will
return to the surface with us as
ordered.”

After
decades of loyal service, Reis was about to defy orders. He took a calming
breath.
There is only this moment.
He stared at Xec until the Triumvir
felt the need to fill the uncomfortable silence with more bluster. As he opened
his mouth, Reis cut him off. “Even now, with the enemy at our doorstep, your
main concern is your
own
political future.”

Xec
realized his mouth was still hanging open and he snapped it shut.

“You want to
take me away from my fleet in the midst of a crisis. You want to stand me in
the center of the chamber and claim that I was complicit in a military campaign
to conceal defeats at Earth from the government and people of Dactar. Defeats
that occurred while
I
was conducting counter-insurgency operations in
the Ufanges sector.”

The other
two Triumvirs moved to flank Xec.

Before
either of them could lend their own arguments to the confrontation, Reis
completed his transition to renegade. “The three of you are criminally
incompetent and I no longer recognize your authority. I will not take up arms
against the Republic, but I will defend myself if need be. I intend to employ
my fleet in a manner that will best serve our people.”

He nodded
to Gelna, and both delegations disappeared.

Dactari Orbit

R
eis shuddered. It was jarring to see the conference room one instant,
and your own bridge the next. He was standing in the middle of his command
holo. The
tertiary sub-flota who had served as a judge for Heig’s trial
and execution was at the tactical station.
“Rus,” he drew the young officer’s attention. “You are now the second.”

Rus nodded
grimly. He had been filling the role since Heig’s death, so it came as no
surprise to hear it confirmed.

“Fleet
wide,” Reis ordered. “All vessels, this is Flota Reis. Our Triumvirs have
betrayed the Republic. We must remove ourselves from orbit. I will not let them
use our ships and troops against our own citizens. I also refuse to turn this
fleet against our elected officials, as it would set a dangerous precedent. We
must withdraw and hope that the citizens have the courage to set the government
to rights.”

“Sir, I’m
reading pre-distortion energy spikes in the Alliance ships,” a junior officer
called out.

Reis turned
to look at the enemy icons in his display. Blue halos were appearing around the
ships, spreading out from the center as the slow radio signals reached out to
the widely spread forces.

He was
telling the truth,
Reis
thought.
They expect a full-blown civil war to break out.

“They’re
jumping,” the officer announced. “The mass drivers were in the first wave!”

“What are
our own forces doing?”

A series of
vector displays appeared on the green icons, showing the
friendly
dispositions.

“They’re
closing on us, sir,” Rus said quietly.

Reis took a
step toward his new second. “If I order a withdrawal,” he whispered, “will our
ships follow?”

Rus nodded.
“Sir, we knew this was a possibility when we backed Heig.” He pressed his tail
against his own chest in a conciliatory gesture at this reminder of the mutiny.
“We were pretty certain we’d end up tangling with our own people. You’ve
achieved our aims; the least we can do is reward your earlier clemency with
continued loyalty.” He frowned suddenly. “Not sure about the ships we took from
Gaemhaeg, though.”

“Most of
them are between us and the rest of our forces. If it comes to a fight, they
may well decide to run with us – the incoming ordinance will hit them first.”
Reis waved toward the communications officer. “Signal the fleet to spin up
their distortion drives. I want us ready to go on a heartbeat.”

“Aye, sir,”
the officer replied. “What destination?”

Yaetho’kae
is a logical choice. It isn’t Republic territory anymore and the enemy have yet
to take over.
He
took a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm, despite the approaching
ships.

The Alliance would like that,
 he thought.
Going
to Yaetho’kae would leave me in their debt, if not their direct control, and it
would definitely brand us as traitors, once word got out that we had fled to
Alliance territory.
He looked up.

“The Chaco system, third planet,” he ordered. “And give me a
separate channel.  Hail the incoming forces.”

With the destination set and his ships spun up, Reis was
suddenly eager to give the final order and get it over with, but he had one
final task.

“Flota Mas,” the voice boomed from the bridge acoustics,
“this is Armada
Oray
Tsingava
.
You are ordered to stand down your forces and submit to military authority.”

“Armada,” Reis replied. “The Triumvirs are traitors. Please
promise me that you will not let them use you against our own citizens.” Though
Reis no longer recognized the authority of the Triumvirs, it would be
counterproductive to argue the validity of
Tsingava’s
promotion. “If our people demand a recall election, you must ensure that it
happens.”

“You
will
stand down or we will be forced to…”

Reis made a cutting motion and the comms officer killed the
channel.  The fleet’s icons were all surrounded in blue.

“Sir,” Rus stepped around to face him. “You’ve done what you
can. Perhaps we should go before anyone starts shooting.”

A shake of the head. “We need as many of the Gaemhaeg ships
as we can get. If they’re unsure about leaving with us, a hail of hostile
ordinance should help them make up their minds. We wait until the first shots
are fired by
Tsingava
,
then
we can…”

“They’re firing!” a sensor officer called out.

Reis looked to see the inbound traces on the holo. “Execute
the jump,” he ordered, sounding calmer than he felt.

He had planned on conducting an asymmetrical campaign
against the enemy, stirring unrest in Alliance territory. The Alliance had
warned him against the Triumvirs, but they had done it out of self-interest. He
owed them nothing.

He had been counting on logistical support from home world,
but that was hardly a precondition of his plan. He would have to work harder, but
perhaps it was for the best. If his activities were uncovered by the enemy, it
wouldn’t trace back to the Republic.

After all, he was a renegade now.

Ten Minutes from Dactari Orbit

F
lemming
sighed and turned away from the holo projection, pulling the carafe from
Towers’ jury rigged coffee maker. “No civil war, but at least the enemy forces
are now divided,” he said as he poured.

“Divided but with a common purpose,” Harry approached with
his own mug, embossed with a MoonSilver logo. Presh, his new capital, was the
site of the very first outlet, and the revenues all flowed through Oaxes before
remitting tax to the Republic – now the Alliance.

The Republic would doubtless put a stop to revenues coming
from their own worlds. Many large corporations would fracture as a result of
the treaty.

“You think he’ll keep fighting us?” Towers asked from his
seat on the couch, raising an eyebrow before pointedly adjusting his gaze.

Harry sighed, sliding the empty carafe back in and fishing
out a fresh packet of grounds. “I hinted that Yaetho’kae would fall through the
cracks for a few weeks at least. If he needed a place to refit and reorg, he
could have gone there without any official interference from either side.”

Caul shrugged. “He doesn’t want to feel beholden to us;
we’re still enemies, after all.”

“Exactly,” Harry emphasized as he dumped coffee into the
hopper and opened the valve on a small copper line. “An enemy who specializes
in asymmetrical warfare, though he’s used to being on the bigger end of the
stick.”

Flemming grimaced as he swallowed some of the black brew.
The dairy industry seemed to be an Earth oddity. There was no real equivalent
out here. “We were ceded some of the core planets – worlds the Dactari consider
to be politically reliable. They won’t exactly welcome us with open arms.”

“That’s got to be his plan,” Harry insisted over his
shoulder. He shut off the valve and flipped the rocker switch to get the
heating element running.  “He’ll sneak in, provide training and weapons
and then move on to the next world.”

Flemming nodded. “He’ll stick to low-level insurgency – the
kind of thing that won’t even show up on the
Firm Resolve’s
 radar,
or whatever the hell she uses.”

“Well, that’s just lovely,” Towers muttered. He leaned back
against the cushions, staring up at the pipes and conduits that snaked along
every square inch of space on a military vessel. A large rat trundled along a
water main, safely out of reach. “What assets can we use against him? I don’t
like our odds if our soldiers have to start kicking in doors.”

“Every single world has a strong organized criminal
element.” Flemming sat down with his mug. He took another sip. “We could reach
out to them, give them a free hand if they can maintain the status quo for us.”
He shuddered at the strong taste. “Terrorist activity is rarely good for cash
flow, and it erodes their power base.”

“We tried using the Krypteia against the Dactari regulars,”
Towers mused. “Now that it didn’t pan out, we’re about to use criminal
syndicates against the Krypteia. What will we end up using against the
syndicates, when that blows up in our faces?”

He waved off his own question as rhetorical. “We’ll have to
give it a try.” He stood, signalling the end of the meeting. “I swear to God,
if this ends up with us using dogs because the
cats
didn’t work out, I’m
gonna shoot someone.”

He headed through the door that joined his quarters to the
bridge. “Captain Hunter,” he called out as he crossed to the central command
holo. “Hold until we confirm our guests are back aboard their own ships and
then put us back on course for Weirfall.”

He turned to find Flemming had followed him. “Commander, go
through the personnel files and start putting the liaison teams together.” He
stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Syndicate liaison staff will have to
accompany every single garrison we send out.”

Flemming nodded and left for his office.

Towers noticed Hunter looking over, no doubt wondering about
the admiral’s sudden laugh.

Towers grinned. “The help you get these days, Captain – I
tell you, it’s criminal…”  

U
nnoticed
in his communications chair, Dwight was reaching out through the starboard bow
of the vessel, searching for a path. He knew his target was in that general
direction and there was no shortage of signals coming from it. He just had to
reach out far enough to find them.

It was gratifying, after his role in tearing Humanity apart,
to find a way to start connecting them again.

He was definitely developing a knack for path finding. He
saw it as ‘pushing’ his consciousness in the right direction. He was pushing it
far more quickly each time as his confidence grew. He was vaguely aware of
background radiation and noise as he passed through various systems.

And then he found what he was looking for. It was only
noise, but it seemed to come from the right direction.

The
Yo’Thage
brothers had given him a quick lesson in targeting. They were no experts
themselves, but they were physicists, so they did their best to help him
understand the science involved. Signal degradation had been one of the first
lessons.

“We call it
the Double Quartering Law,” Qut had said. “As you double the distance from the
source of a transmission, the signal strength is reduced to one quarter.” He’d
waved his hands out in a fanning motion. “The signal spreads as it propagates.”

Dwight had
originally expected to find planets by zeroing in on their media signals, and
he was doing exactly that, but the signals were never anything more than noise
until he got to within a light year of the source.

As he
closed in on his target, the noise began to fall off. That was when he knew he
was in the right place. On most worlds, there would be a steady increase in the
signals. He would have been hearing thousands of broadcasts. Here there was
only a nav beacon and a lonely, automated voice.

“Warning, this planet is under quarantine due to a highly
infectious disease. Extreme force will be directed against any ship attempting
to land on or launch from the surface. All orbital facilities are likewise off
limits. Any attempt at boarding will result in your destruction.”

He pushed down toward the beacon, picking up
light radio chatter as he closed in
on his ultimate target.
How did Shelby talk to them?

“Petite
Tortue Tower,” he spoke silently, his speech muscles moving, but producing no
audible sound on the bridge, “this is Dr. Dwight Young. Do you read me, over?”

“Dr. Young,
Petite Tortue Tower. Good to have you back,  Doc, but this channel is for
air control only, over.”

“Petite
Tortue Tower, I’m not back,” Dwight replied. “This signal is originating from
the fleet. We’re ten minutes out from Dactar.”

A new voice answered him from Earth. “Dr. Young, Petite
Tortue Tower. Say again, over.”

“Petite
Tortue Tower, Dr. Young,” Dwight added his name this time, trying to match
their procedures. “I’m using micro wormholes to create a transmission path.
We’re still in Republic space at the moment.”

“Dr. Young, Petite Tortue Tower,” the voice replied, “no
offense, but why are we talking to you instead of the admiral, over?”

“Petite
Tortue Tower, Dr. Young.” Dwight was getting tired of the voice procedure and
it was starting to show in his voice. “I was just testing the implant to see
how far I could reach. The admiral will likely want to talk to Earth, once he
hears about this conversation, but I’d like to have a quick word with anybody
from the vaccination teams before we get into that.”

There was a
long silence.
“Dr. Young, Petite Tortue Tower,” the man finally
answered. “Switch to one-one-eight and stand by, over.”

  Dwight could feel the new channel, like a small child
tugging at his sleeve. He was reasonably sure he was listening to it, but it
was hard to know for certain when you were accessing specific frequencies by
‘feel’.

“Doc?”

Dwight knew that voice. Before the plague, the man on the
other end of the connection had been a detective sergeant in the Chicago
Police. He was the one who had rescued Dwight and the other researchers from
Tartarus Station. “Ben? Is that you?”

“Yeah, what the hell is going on? We were just about to lift
off for Chicago when the tower started telling us some pretty weird shit. Are
you really in the Republic right now?”

“Yep. Look, Ben, I’ll explain it all later but I was
wondering if you could do me a favor. I’m trying to locate some folks in Cromwell,
Connecticut…”