The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (2 page)

Dactari Logistics Station, Oaxian Orbit

T
he
restraint field deactivated and Harry collapsed, sobbing, to the floor. He was
covered in a sheen of cold sweat and his stomach was a constricted knot. Guards
grabbed his shivering form and heaved him up into a chair, yanking out
intravenous lines and breathing tubes, and other lines that Harry didn’t want
to even think about. A technician removed a cortical web from his shaved head,
placing it gently in a tray that retracted into the white wall.

Captain Harrison Young, United States Navy, had never found
the time for family. The life of a captain is a lonely one and he had never
settled down, never married, never had children.

Now he had lived through that process dozens of times, and
he was profoundly grateful to be lonely.

The Dactari knowledge implanting machine was capable of
extracting knowledge as well as inserting it, and he had lived through the
extracted lives of at least thirty Oaxian resistance fighters as they sought to
preserve their independence from the old empire that had preceded the Dactari
Republic.

Again and again, he had felt the despair as his belief in a
just cause was eroded by the Human, or in this case, the Oaxian cost of
resisting the Empire. He watched as a succession of spouses and children were
enslaved or simply killed by callous Dactari warriors, the military race of the
six hundred forty-ninth Emperor, Hemchala. He felt the emotions of every death
and his soul ached for every lost loved one.

His final life had been Orontes, second in command of the
resistance. Orontes had been a master of edged weapons in the arena. His
reputation, skill at training warriors and his personality had led to swift
advancement through the ranks of the ill-fated patriots. Orontes had been
forced to watch as his own family were executed in the very arena where he had
made a name for himself. His youngest had only been three and he had watched
her, desperately experiencing the last moments of her young life, wishing he
could look away.

Wishing he would not have to see, but unwilling to ignore
the last few seconds of her brilliant spark of sentience.

Harry had become aware, as he shared Orontes’ grief, that
his own life was being probed. While his defenses were occupied with the lives
of those who had died thousands of years ago, his experiences were being teased
out of every corner of his mind. He also sensed the presence of a voice, a
human, who urged him to simply let go; let them have what they wanted. It would
all be much easier if he didn’t fight it, if he made an attempt to see their
side of things. Now, slumped in the chair, the man’s name surfaced…

Benedict.

The
Midway
, Weirfall
Orbit

D
wight
followed a pair of armed Marines as they moved down a corridor from the massive
central hangar deck where he and Shelby had been put through a second decontamination
shower. The harsh chemicals used for the second shower must have been stronger
than the standard CDC fare – the
Dr. Young
on the front of his EVA suit
was melted and running down the front plates.
Thank God I was still in my
suit.

A young 2
^nd
lieutenant was escorting them and
they communicated via a small headset that protruded from one of his ears.

The corridor was very much like those on the
Pandora
,
only larger. Stanchions made of carbon fibre provided the structural
support.  Nearly a quarter of the
Midway
was made of the light
carbon components, allowing for better acceleration. Steel plate and gratings
covered the walking surfaces, allowing easy access to the fluid lines that ran
beneath the floors. Cable trays, mounted overhead to carry conduits, snaked
around corners to deliver power and data to the deepest reaches of the massive
vessel. Unlike passenger craft, warships left their internal guts exposed,
allowing for more efficient damage control.

Everywhere Dwight looked he saw variations on the standard
uniform. The blue on blue camouflage worn by the Navy was the common thread,
but many tunics were missing the sleeves and some personnel wore only stained
white t-shirts. Several were even walking the corridors in ragged shorts. “I
thought the military was stricter when it came to dress codes.” He turned his
head toward their young guide, not even noticing the smooth movement of the
articulated neck rings of his suit.

“We’ve been out here three years now.” the 2
^nd
lieutenant waved a hand to hold some crewmen back as they passed an
intersection. The sound of alien music a harsh, driving beat, grew and faded as
they passed. “BDU’s typically last a couple years of constant use, so you’re
lucky we’re even wearing pants.” They came up to the next intersection and the
way forward was barred by an armed guard. They took a right turn, a rat
scurried down a hole in the deck grating as they approached.

“We’re working out a deal with some suppliers down on
Weirfall,” their guide continued, “but it’s tricky, considering we have very
little credit, now that Earth is… well, out of the picture.” They came to
another checkpoint and he looked over at the two suited visitors as they
continued toward the port side of the massive vessel. “Is it as bad as we’ve
been hearing?”

“Probably worse,” Dwight answered. He saw the wince on the
young man’s face and one of the Marines cast him a backward glance as they took
a left at an unguarded intersection.
Way to go, dumbass. They probably have
family back home and no way to find out if they’re ok. “
So, what are you
guarding over there?” He waved to his left. “That where you keep the nukes or
something?”

“Hmm?” The lieutenant frowned for a second, then laughed.
“Oh, lordy no!” The marines were chuckling now. “You don’t want to keep
strategic weapons in there.” He waved a hand to his left. “Delta twenties are a
bad neighborhood.”

“’Scuse me?” Dwight blurted. “Are you serious?”

“Oh yeah,” the officer asserted. “Any ship this big is going
to have areas you don’t go into alone. Even the big super carriers back home
were like that and they were a quarter the size of the
Midway.
Hell, I
was mugged on the
Grant
twice before I finally pulled my head out of my
ass. Remember that, Tim?”

“It’s a miracle you got off that ship alive, sir.” The
Marine on the right answered cheerfully.

“But this is a military vessel,” Dwight objected. “Can’t you
just send in the Marines and clear em out?”

“Ho boy! You sound like I did, my first cruise on the
Grant
,”
the young man laughed. “God she was a beautiful ship, wasn’t she Tim?”

“Best in the fleet, sir!” Tim replied. “Even if she
was
named for an Army officer…”

“Grant was also the eighteenth president,” the 2
^nd

lieutenant volunteered helpfully.
“Maybe that had something to do with it?”

“I never voted for him, sir…”

They came to one of the aft risers and their guide put his
palm on the control screen. A blue glow hazed around his hand as the scanner
identified him. He turned a serious face to Dwight. “Doc, you gotta understand
– we sweep up thousands of kids off the streets to man ships like this. A few
addicts always slip through the filter and we end up with a ready-made market
for illicit pharmaceuticals.” He punched in a series of commands to start
closing off access to the zero gravity shaft.

“Where there’s a market, there’s always someone who’ll make
a profit from it,” he continued. “We conduct sweeps now and then, but the labs
always spring back up. They’re inventive as hell.” He shook his head in rueful
admiration. “You leave a janitorial locker unattended for ten minutes and
somebody’ll raid it and start cooking up some crank.” He nodded at Tim who
pushed off into the shaft, bounding against the padded far side as he worked
his way up toward the bridge deck.

“It’s just a fact of life.” he shrugged, as he looked over
at a green indicator that had appeared on the control panel. “Looks like we’re
clear all the way to the bridge.” He turned to his two guests. “Alright, folks
– time to meet the
old man.
”

Dactari Logistics Station, Oaxian Orbit

H
arry
stumbled into the control room, thanks to a perfectly timed shove from one of
his guards. He’d noticed a senior officer standing in the center of the round
room, surrounded by a circular collection of workstations. There were at least
twenty operators working at the terminals, their chatter interrupted as they
turned to see the prisoner.

Harry figured he was here for a lecture and so he ignored
the officer, looking toward a large, floor-to-ceiling window that looked down
on Oaxes. He strolled over, gazing down at a world that felt strangely like
home, now that he’d experienced several lives on it.

It felt as though he’d had enough of life.

The Dactari officer behind him grunted in exasperation. He
was being ignored in front of his staff. “Well, Captain Harrison Young of the
United States Navy, your reluctance to talk’s been a waste of time, hasn’t it?”
He had a disconcertingly perfect Texas accent. There must have been a few
hundred humans run through the knowledge capsules over the last three years and
their accents lived on in their enemies.

Harry turned from the window. He wasn’t bound. Perhaps they
knew how numb he felt, or perhaps the personnel in the room were considered
sufficient, should he attempt anything violent. He felt dead inside, too used
up to even seek revenge for the deaths of loved ones that he’d never met. He
looked around the room as though he were the only one in it.

“We know you came here to arrange a deal that effectively
constitutes a smuggling contract.” The officer frowned slightly as he watched
his prisoner. “We knew that you’d come here sooner or later. You can’t use all
those new hulls without systems to operate them and there are precious few
worlds that can supply what you need. We reckoned it’d be a back door deal like
this. It contravenes the Law of Imperial Trade and Commerce. It’s a clear
threat to the security of the state.”

Harry said nothing to this. He had a pretty clear idea of
where this was going. They had wrung him dry and now they only had one use for
him. He would die at the hands of the Oaxian courts, making diplomacy with the
Alliance all but impossible.

The officer sighed. “You’ll be turned over to the
authorities in Presh,” he said, indicating the planet outside the window. “They
know how to deal with criminals.” 

There it is
, thought Harry dully.
A quick
show-trial followed by a slow show-death.

A technician entered through a door at the back of the room
and headed for a bank of modules mounted beneath an inactive twenty-foot view
screen. He knelt before a module with a blinking orange panel on it and slid it
out.

“I hope you won’t bother with false hope, Captain,” the
officer said quietly as he turned to look at the tech. “The court already knows
the verdict – it’s simply a matter of standing you in front of the adjudicator
and having her read it out.”

The tech slid the module back into the wall and a large
screen above it came to life. Harry was looking at a stylized display of every
system in the Republic, dotted with target reticules and text boxes. He was
fluent in Dheema. Every officer in the fleet and at least half the enlisted
personnel had been plugged into one of the capsules that had been captured
after the Battle of Mars.

“Those are ships,” he said in perfect Court Dheema, the
dialect of the Dactari ruling class. “Warships, if I’m not mistaken.” He turned
to the bemused officer. “You can see every Republic warship from here, can’t
you?”

“Goods flow as needed, Captain.” The Dactari officer gave
the technician an angry nod toward the exit. “When a vessel needs products from
this system, we know about it immediately and send out the required parts.”

“Wouldn’t it be wise to stockpile parts around the Republic,
so repairs could be conducted even faster?” Harry was trying to steer the
conversation away from the idea that was beginning to sizzle in his brain,
though he doubted he would live to carry it out.

A shake of the head. “The processing cores only survive for
a short time outside of a ship’s systems. They travel to the stricken ship
aboard incubator vessels, but they can only keep them alive for a few months at
most.” A sad smile. “And no, Captain, you will not have a chance to tell your
superiors about the fleet telemetry system. You will be dead before dinner
time.”

The
Dark Defiance
,
Earth Orbit

T
ommy
Kennedy, Kale Thompsen and Gelna Tai gazed out at the Earth. The bridge of the
Dark
Defiance
simply ended at a railing and the only thing separating them from
the void was the energy shield. It was almost like standing in the mouth of a
cave looking out at the night, though in this case they saw the Earth instead
of the moon. It was a beautiful sight, after three years of searching out the
sister ships to the
Dark Defiance.

They had found the massive ship in the depths of a gas
giant. They had been left on Khola, one of the giant’s inhabited moons as
embedded employees of Red Flag Minerals, an American company that was
aggressively searching out commercially viable sources of Helium isotope.

The ship had been built by an ancient race that had found
themselves alone in an empty galaxy. Millennia ago, they had planted the seeds
of life on hundreds of worlds, leaving a guardian vessel to tend each one.

When the unlikely trio brought the
Dark Defiance
out
of her long slumber, her living symbiote had been so shocked at the chaos on
Khola that she’d given serious thought to sterilizing that world and starting
over. Tommy had managed to talk her out of it, but knowing that a similar ship
lurked in the depths of Jupiter and that others like her stood sentinel over a
thousand inhabited worlds, Tommy couldn’t rest easy on Khola.

They had to make sure Earth wouldn’t be sterilized.

“Can’t believe I stowed away in Kale’s disgusting foot
locker to get off the
Völund
, and I end up back here,” Gelna muttered,
flicking his tail to the side in the standard Dactari gesture of disgust. “No
way am I going down there. They’d lock me up for sure.”

“We could go as projections,” Kale volunteered. “I can go to
a Montreal police station and stand in front of my wanted poster – see how long
it takes for someone to realize who I am…”

“They probably took those down by now,” Gelna mused. “And I
don’t think the authorities would recognize me at all if I went to Britain.
They’d just assume I’m an escaped Dactari prisoner.”

“Technically, you
are
an escaped prisoner,” Tommy
grinned. “They didn’t exactly free you when you joined the
Völund
. Kale
and I wouldn’t have had to carry your surprisingly heavy arse onto the shuttle
in a footlocker if you were free to leave.”

“Something ain’t right,” Kale was frowning down at the
planet. He pointed. “That’s the Middle East, so that’s Western Europe.” He
waved his hand toward the dark side.

“So?” the Dactari shrugged.

“So,” Tommy answered, “there’s almost no lights visible in
one of the most highly populated and industrialized regions of the planet.”
It
looks like only a handful of cities have power. What does that mean?

I can only find one signal from this world,
Keeva,
the humanoid mind of the ship, spoke to their minds.
It appears to be a
warning
.

They suddenly heard a layer of static as she fed the
transmission to their thoughts. “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.”
A few seconds of silence. “Warning…” The message began to repeat and Keeva cut
it off.

Tommy’s hands gripped the railing, his knuckles white.
“Whatever this is, it’s not good. Keeva, please project me on the surface. I
need to find out what’s happened to my sister on Guernsey.”

Please picture Guernsey’s location for me,
Keeva
replied.
I’ll need to look into your private thoughts to put you in the
right place.

Nodding, Tommy closed his eyes, picturing the island as
though from a satellite. He brought up his memories of the cottage as well as
local landmarks. “Will that be enough?”

Yes, I think I have the right place,
she replied.

Tommy opened his eyes and found himself standing outside a
low, thatched cottage belonging to Erin, his father’s sister. If Deirdre was
anywhere on earth, it would be here. He reached for the door handle and
stopped, shaking his head with a grin. Taking a deep breath, he stepped through
the door, seeing the fibres of the ancient wood as he passed through. He found
himself in the central room. A wonderful crackling sound came from the
fireplace that heated the small home. He wished he could smell the sharp scent
of the wood fire.

“Tommy!” Erin rushed over from the fireplace. “Oh, it’s so
good to see you! I didn’t even hear you come in.”

Tommy raised a hand, trying to warn his aunt but he was too late.
Her hug went right through him and she tumbled onto the couch. She turned and
regarded him with mild alarm.

‘It’s ok, Auntie.” He gave her a sheepish grin. “I’m being
projected from a ship in orbit. That’s why you can’t touch me. I should have
thought to warn you as soon as I came in.”

“Projected?” She furrowed her brow. “I was sort of hoping
you’d come along with a rescue team.”

“There doesn’t seem to be any official organizations left.”
Tommy looked around the central room. “Auntie, where’s Deirdre?”

“She turned in early.” Erin grinned. “She’ll be excited to
see
you
! Deirdre…” She turned her head as she called out to a door near
the fireplace. “Someone to see you love.”

Knowing his sister was safe, Tommy remembered the other
question that had been nagging at him. “Auntie, what happened here?”

“Some kind of plague.” She spread her hands in a helpless
gesture. “Within a couple of days, all travel was shut down but it was already
everywhere. People were dropping like flies all over the world and that’s bad
enough, but then they started getting back up again.”

Tommy turned his head as though trying to hear her better,
not sure what to say. “What?” It was the best he could do. What he had heard
didn’t exactly make sense, so he didn’t feel terribly bad about the feebleness
of his own reply.

“It’s what I’ve heard,” she said defensively. “They say the
dead are kept moving by the disease somehow. They keep spreading the infection
until they fall apart. Thank God it hasn’t shown up here on the island.”

“Tommy!” Deirdre was standing in her doorway in a
nightdress.

Erin held a hand up to Tommy with a grin. She wanted to see
how Deirdre would react to falling through her brother.

Tommy moved to his left a bit as his sister raced over. He
wanted to make sure she would land on the couch rather than on her aunt.

Sure enough, Deirdre found herself sprawled on the couch
next to Erin. She composed herself and looked calmly at her brother. “I think
that deserves an explanation.”