The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (14 page)

Taking Tauhento

Low Orbit, Tauhento

H
arry
fought to hold onto his lunch as the bridge of the
Pandora
shuddered
back into regular space. He looked over at Shelby, noting with a hint of envy
that she didn’t even seem to notice the transition.

“That is one big son of a bitch,” Shelby offered her
professional opinion. Directly in front of them was a Dactari troop ship.
Slightly larger than the carriers of the Human fleet, Dactari troop ships were
designed to hold almost fifty thousand soldiers and they could carry twice that
number for a short duration flight.

At present, with only the city of Caurtez in turmoil, two
response legions of twenty-four thousand troops each might well have been
enough to reassert the long tradition of Republic rule. If those legions failed
to make it to the ground, the situation might spiral out of control.

If the thirty-eight thousand Human Marines of two
expeditionary forces landed in Caurtez, along with the fifty thousand warriors
crammed aboard Lothbrok’s nineteen ships, an uprising might become the
beginnings of liberation. Once news reached the surface that the Alliance had
achieved orbital superiority, the other cities would soon throw in their
support.

A hundred thousand troops didn’t seem like much when weighed
against the challenges of seizing an entire world, but this was a
lightly-occupied planet, yearning to regain its independence.

The real challenge would be in holding it against
counter-attack.

Harry resisted the urge to restrain Shelby’s enthusiasm. He
was little more than a passenger at the moment. Soon enough, they would part
ways with Lothbrok’s force to head for Oaxes, and he would assume his role as
commodore of his own small squadron. Even the commodore, he knew, shouldn’t
interfere with a captain on her bridge.

Until then, all ships in the Tauhentan theater of operations
were under Lothbrok’s command. Harry had already handed the
Völund
over
to Carol and, not wanting to be in the way of her first command, he had moved
temporarily to the
Pandora.
He’d heard of the new ship and, when he
learned it would be part of his own force, he had decided to come aboard and
see first-hand what she could do.

This would be a straight-up fight. They had to resist the
temptation to wash out the enemy force on drop-out. Such a surgical attack
would have raised eyebrows on Dactar. It might even start them wondering if
their ships were being tracked by the enemy. It was one of the oldest problems
in warfare – how to use inside knowledge without giving the game away.

Entire Human cities had been sacrificed to just such a
quandary.

They were at the back ring of a Midgaard ‘swine’ formation.
The cone-shaped formation gave each ship a field of fire as opposed to the
block formation favored by the enemy when their ranks were filled with green
crews. A block formation allowed for a greater depth of defense and tended to
keep a less experienced crew from trying to escape a fight, but it meant that
the majority of their ships were unable to fire at the outset of battle.

The block of forty-three Dactari ships had at its back the
massive troop ship which was beginning to land soldiers in the troubled city of
Caurtez. The sooner that ship was destroyed, the better. Every soldier landed
was one more soldier to shoot at the Alliance forces and their new Tauhentan
allies.

And the destruction of the troop ship would be a serious
blow to the morale of the enemy force.

“All thirty-four ships accounted for,” the tactical officer
announced. “Fleet is opening fire.”

“Very well,” Shelby acknowledged. “Mr. Hendricks, get us
behind that big bastard, if you please.”

“Behind the big bastard, aye, ma’am,” the rating at the helm
replied with a grin. “Engaging full pitch.”

Harry staggered slightly as the small Hussar class vessel
began accelerating toward their target on a parabolic course that would keep it
out of friendly fire. In any other ship, the grav plating would automatically
adjust to the acceleration and neutralize the sensation of movement. In the
case of the
Pandora,
advances in propulsion had outstripped the
abilities of the dampening systems.

“She’s a sweet ride, isn’t she, sir?” Shelby kept her eyes
on her displays but she was clearly talking to Harry.

“Without a doubt, Captain,” Harry struggled into an empty
chair and buckled in. “And she was built after the plague hit?”

She nodded. “The theoretical work and prototype engines had
already been sorted out beforehand, so it was merely a matter of rounding up
enough people to vaccinate and train.” She looked forward. “Mr. Burke, get
someone to look at that ventral powder monkey – you’ve got an orange light. Dammit,
I shouldn’t have to be telling you.”

She turned back to her monitors. “With all those pods on
Petite Tortue Island, we can make a carbon spinner, steelworker or theoretical
physicist in a matter of hours. We had the prototype yard back up and running in
a few months.”

“Taking some fire,” the sensor rating advised.

“Very well. Helm, swing her around nose-on to the enemy and
stabilize forward shields. “Mr. Burke, we’ll open with every battery, as well
as a full salvo of Mosquitoes.”

The ship swung quickly around, continuing along at its
original velocity and trajectory, but sideways.

“It’s the improved lensing,” she said, in answer to Harry’s
look of wonder. “Once the brainiacs realized that pitch drives were exhibiting
waveform properties, it was just a matter of tinkering. When they found a way
to fine-tune the output, they were able to put two drives in tandem and
reinforce the effects.”

“We have multiple drives throughout the
Pandora
and
they can create an augmented motive force in just about any direction.”

They were coming around the back of the enemy formation now
and the ship slowed. It wouldn’t be wise to get directly behind the troop ship
due to the heavy amount of Alliance fire being directed at it.

“Hit ‘em!” Shelby looked out the windows for only the second
time since dropping out of distortion. The buzz of the Vulcans and the deep
booming of the heavier guns sounded even louder than on the
Völund
, no
doubt due to the fact that the
Pandora
was a third smaller.

The rounds took a few seconds to reach the enemy shields. A
haze of orange began to spread across the aft shields of the troop ship,
peppered here and there with larger impact signatures from the main weapons.

“There’s a seam, Mr. Burke,” Shelby said calmly as she drew
a rough box on her monitor. A long orange line had appeared amidst the chaos,
indicating a point where two shields met.  “Concentrate fire on that line,
just to starboard of the midships point.” A troop shuttle was held up, just
inside the midships line of the mother ship shield and Shelby wanted a weak
point for the Mosquitoes to target – a weak point that wouldn’t have a blocking
shuttle behind it.

“Taking heavy fire,” the shield coordinator reported.
“Almost at design maximum, ma’am.”

“Very well. Shipwide. All hands brace for lateral maneuver.”
Shelby sounded mildly annoyed as she stabbed at the tactical display. “Helm,
bring us around to second firing point. Two and a half pitch. Fire control,
start sending bugs their way.”

The acceleration from this maneuver was far stronger than
Harry’s first experience. The
Pandora
jumped to the side with incredible
agility, like a swordsman dodging a lunge, and the enemy weapon fire was left
behind.
We need to build more of these,
Harry thought. Here they were,
in the fleet’s smallest ship, facing the entire rear side of the enemy
formation, and they had yet to take any damage. He felt the shudder as four
mosquitoes were ejected from their launchers.

The small ship was the perfect mix of speed, aggression and
firepower. Unlike the older, heavier vessels of the fleet, the
Pandora
was like a rapier in Shelby’s hands.

Weiran engineers had already taken her lines. Once Oaxes was
firmly in the Alliance fold, their engineers would be given a chance to study
her engines and systems.

There were two brilliant flashes as they slowed to a quick
halt below the enemy formation. The helmsman had kept the glazed ceiling of the
bridge toward the enemy as they rotated around to a new firing position.

Two of the Mosquito sub-munitions had made it past the enemy
defensive fire. Of the four Mosquitoes fired, two had been destroyed before
deploying their sub-munitions. From the remaining two weapons, only two of the
fourteen warheads had reached the enemy’s shield where their own shield arrays
could cycle through frequencies until they found the right configuration.

The sub-munition that found the frequency passed it on to
the second and, when both were sealed inside the enemy shield, they
group-detonated, trapping two hundred kilotons of explosive power inside the
shields.

Even as Harry examined the damage to the troop ship, four
more launches separated into twenty eight warheads. They jinked erratically as
they swarmed toward the enemy vessel. Enemy fire was splitting almost evenly
between the
Pandora
and the deadly weapons she was launching against the
massive ship.

Shelby updated one of her screens. “Shipwide. All hands,
brace for lateral maneuver. Helm, bring us to the next point.”

The incredible acceleration dragged everyone to the left. A
blur flew past the windows – a near miss fired from a friendly ship. “Mr.
Burke, it looks like her aft point defenses were destroyed by that last salvo.
Time to lay eggs.”

“Laying eggs, aye ma’am.”

The next warheads to breach the already failing shields
would scan for openings. The wide-open hole in the wreckage of the hangar door
would serve as an excellent entry point. As the
Pandora
swung to
starboard and backward to a new position, fourteen warheads penetrated the
shield, some flying straight through a new opening in the shield seam.

 As the
Pandora
began to slow, almost one and a
half megatons of force were released deep inside the troop ship. The new
program refinement to the weapon controls had allowed them to reach almost to
the exact center of mass before detonating. There was no hope for the enemy
this time and, since her shields were already failing, her debris was blasted
out into the surrounding warships, taking a final revenge on the vessels that
had failed to protect her.

Lothbrok took quick advantage of the chaos, pushing his
troop-laden warships deep into the disordered enemy formation. Harry looked
down at a tactical display and saw that eight Dactari ships had been designated
for boarding. The remainder of the enemy fleet was either too damaged for
salvage or simply useless for anything but cannon fodder.

They were being eliminated by the second echelon of the
cone-shaped swine formation, even as the first echelon rammed up against their
prizes. Harry was pleased at how well the fight was going, but he was also
unsettled at the difference in the two halves of the Alliance.

The Human half would slowly shrink as they took combat
losses while the Midgaard relied on battle to
increase
their forces. As
Harry watched the screen, Midgaard were pouring out of their heavily-manned
ships to engage the Dactari crews.

Each Midgaard vessel carried several ‘prize masters’ as well
as their boarding parties. Every prize master dreamed of taking an enemy vessel
by boarding. Not only would he gain renown, but he would also become the
captain of that vessel, turning its weapons against the enemy as soon as the
original crew was dead.

Harry couldn’t help but wonder what would happen as the
balance of force began to shift. Though Lothbrok had lost one of his harrier
class vessels in the attack, chances were good that he would add seven or eight
Dactari frigates to his force.

He didn’t begrudge his friend the extra ships, but he just
couldn’t get his mind off the dilemma. Human ships didn’t carry prize crews.

At almost the same time as the final cannon fodder ship was
destroyed, the last of the eight boarded ships ceased firing at the Alliance.
Harry let out a sigh of relief. Only one of his ships had taken any appreciable
damage, and both carriers were still fully intact, having waited out the fight
at the rear of the formation.

“Signal from the
Quiberon
for Captain Young,” the
radio operator announced, looking back at. A call from the current flagship
made it likely that Commodore Lothbrok was on the other end.

Harry pointed at a transparent monitor to his right and
turned his seat to face it. Sure enough, Lothbrok’s face appeared.

“That’s quite an impressive little ship you’ve got there.
What do you call them – cricket class?” Lothbrok grinned, and then turned to
the side for a second, speaking to someone off screen. “We have contact with
the insurgents on the ground.” He turned back to Harry. “We’re going to start
landing operations.” He raised an eyebrow. “We’ll try not to wreck the place,
this time.”

“Yeah,” Harry answered with a dry tone. “Try to remember
you’re liberating them, not pillaging.”

“Time you were aboard the
Salamis
, my friend,”
Lothbrok admonished. “I release you from my service,” he added with a touch of
light-hearted pomposity. It had been agreed that Harry should actually keep his
promise to serve as one of Lothbrok’s men until after taking Tauhento. It would
silence any Midgaard who might want to call his performance at the Althing an
empty gesture, and it was unwise to have two commanders in one force.

Now that the time had come for Harry to take his squadron to
Oaxes, he would hoist his own colors as commodore.