The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (20 page)

Presh, Oaxes

T
he loadmaster checked Harry’s tether and ground line one final time
before giving him a curt nod that managed to convey both the fact that the
harness was ready, and that he firmly
dissaproved
of
such foolishness. He walked out of the airlock and sealed the door behind him.

A circular
hatch above Harry snapped open with a dull ring of heavy metal striking against
a heavy frame, and the platform began to raise him up. As his head cleared the
hatch, he could see the full effect on a large display screen that hovered over
the stadium. It was an impressive sight and, just as the platform leveled with
the open hatch, the
Pandora
released another burst of static discharge,
scattering scorched sand in a spectacular display.

His first
thought had been to bring his old ship, the
Völund
, but it was too large
to fit through the oculus at the top of the stadium. The
Pandora
was a
better choice anyway – her maneuverability was undoubtedly superior and she had
a far more predatory look.

The crowd
was wildly ecstatic. Harry’s fight in this arena and his short speech had tied
him to the legends of Orontes, their favorite tragic hero. They had broadcast the
recordings to every world they could reach in the hopes of stirring up trouble,
especially on the fringe worlds where resistance to Republic rule was
strongest.

Those
broadcasts were mostly self-serving. The Oaxians figured that it might keep the
Dactari too busy to interfere with their uprising, at least until their hero
returned. If indeed, he planned to return. Nobody on Oaxes seemed to know where
he had even come from.

Now he was
back, having just destroyed a force of Dactari who were bent on making them pay
for their disloyalty. The orbital lanes had just been cleared and now they were
catching the Dactari ground troops entirely by surprise.

Finally, at
the moment of their greatest need, their questions would be answered.

He stood there,
letting the noise die down and, hopefully, giving the stadium technicians
enough time to re-focus their sound gear from the platform down on the sand, to
him. On the big display above them, one corner showed a frightened Dactari
officer who, until very recently, had been preparing to preside over the ritual
executions of the twenty bound Oaxians who knelt with their families in the
sand before the platform.

The Dactari
had landed small tactical teams in advance of their main force, seizing the
ring-leaders before the Oaxians could react. They had ordered the stadium
filled and set up an impromptu ‘drum head trial’.

Now they
were setting up to carry out the horrific sentence.

Harry
fought the burning rage as he remembered a similar series of executions,
centuries ago. He knew it was unlikely that they would have been so brutal this
time. They were playing on the memories of atrocities past. No doubt clemency
would be offered at the last moment – a clever little bit of theater, reminding
the locals not to play too heavily on the mercy of their betters.

Either way,
Harry had arrived in the nick of time. If they were on the verge of showing
mercy, it was far better to stop them while they were still on a harsh note.

“Oaxians,”
he roared. As he expected, his voice was being picked up and amplified. A swell
of cheering rose and fell in the wake of his voice. “You were free once.”
Another swell as he took a deep breath and locked his diaphragm. “And you are
again!” It was slightly different at the end from the ancient words, and it was
a change that Oaxians had waited to hear for countless centuries.

“Sir!”
Shelby’s voice could only penetrate the ocean of sound because the earpiece was
deep inside Harry’s ear. “We have reports from the Midgaard scouts. Trouble is
headed our way.”

The roar
was ear-splitting and he doubted he could overcome it, even with the arena’s
sound amplifiers. He gave a quick wave and tapped an icon to lower himself back
into the ship. He walked the twenty feet aft to reach the bridge.

“Scouts
have heard from smugglers,” she began without preamble. “A large force is
concentrating at Xo’Kam, local dinner reservations suddenly open up tomorrow
afternoon.”

“Which
means they’ll be gone by then,” Harry concluded. “They like to eat for free,
but it makes for poor operational security.” He nodded to the large monitor
against the aft wall of the bridge. “Xo’Kam means we’re the likely target.” He
turned the executive officer’s chair to face the monitor. “Let’s bring up the
system chart and plot the intercept line, assuming we leave here in five
hours.”

Shelby came
to stand by his chair as the chart activated and adjusted to show Xo’Kam in one
corner and Oaxes in the other. A red line appeared between the two corners,
indicating where the two fleets would run into each other. A second line,
perpendicular to the first, appeared in green with a time annotation.

“Looks like
the fleet would be thirty six hours late to the party,” Shelby muttered. “We
just got here and we’re already left in the lurch.”

Lurch!
Harry suddenly remembered his
experience with Caradi pirates while taking the
Völund
to deliver helium
isotope to the
Cerans
. He had been sleeping when the
ship suddenly lurched out of distortion. He bounded out of his chair and
approached the chart. “Where’s the deepest gravity well between here and that
line?” He turned to Shelby. “Find something big that we can shove them up
against before we start punching.”

“There’s
still the small matter of getting them to drop out where we want them,” Shelby
reminded her commodore politely, if a little sarcastically.

“That’s the
easy part,” Harry called over his shoulder as he left the bridge.

  A
fresh round of cheers broke out as he descended the forward boarding ramp and
stepped onto the sand. He trotted over to the temporary platform where a small
party of Dactari still stood in a terrified huddle. Rather than mount the
platform, he approached the bound prisoners, moving to the far end. The Dactari
would  have left the most senior prisoner till last.

The
prisoner was dressed in a formal tunic, and his family were in more casual but
finely-made clothing. They looked up at him with uncertain hope as he squatted
beside them.

“Who are
you?” Harry knew these people favored a blunt approach and he was glad to
oblige – he didn’t exactly have a lot of time on his hands. He was relieved to
hear his voice being amplified. It would be best if everything was a matter of
public record.

“I am
Haldita, the Satrap of Oaxes,” he nodded his head at the huddled enemy on the
platform. “I stand convicted of open rebellion.” He had the sense to declare it
proudly.

Harry
nodded. There was a very good chance that Haldita was convicted by the Dactari
to make him more popular. A governor pardoned for siding with the rebels might
be far more effective in controlling the citizens of this world. It wasn’t
something he had the time to unravel at the moment.

“Convicted
by a court that no longer exists,” Harry mused. “I’d say the verdict is now
void.” An approving roar greeted his statement, and Harry cut the Satrap’s
bonds. Both men stood. “You appear to be in need of a warlord.”

The crowd
leaned forward as one, waiting to hear the formal words of the ancient
contract.

“In
accordance with accepted custom and practice,” Harry began in Oaxian, “I offer
my service to the people.”

A low
murmur began to build as those who still understood the old language translated
for those who didn’t.

Haldita
gave Harry a long look of appraisal. Finally, he extended his hand, palm
upwards. “As the Satrap of Oaxes,” he replied in stilted Oaxian, “I accept your
services as the warlord of our world.”

The murmur
turned to a roar of approval as Harry waved his own palm, face down, over
Haldita’s. Once again, he heard his name being chanted by thousands. He might be
an alien, but he didn’t look all that different, he had helped to free them and
he spoke Oaxian better than most locals. He raised his hands to calm the crowd.

“There is a
large force of Dactari forming up for an attack,” he shouted. Those who hadn’t
stopped cheering certainly did at this news. “We are leaving almost immediately
to deal with them, but we
will
return.”

He turned
to Haldita, handing him his knife and nodding toward the prisoners. “Free your
people.”

Bending the Bow

The
Quewu
,
Near Tauhentan Space

R
eis Mas resisted the urge to deploy his ships into a planar formation,
despite the unrestricted firepower that it offered. His sixty vessels were all
crewed by the Krypteia and he knew he could trust them to hold their ground. As
their flota, he had trained and fought with almost all of them. They had even
war gamed an engagement against a hypothetical Midgaard force at this year’s
Pursuit
to Eo’xo’co
commemorative training exercises.

And that
was why he wasn’t planning on one of the standard Krypteian formations. This
enemy was incredibly aggressive – unrealistically aggressive, as one
intelligence officer had remarked during the training sessions. The Midgaard
possessed an incredible confidence and viewed death in battle as a sure way to
earn favor in the next life.

They were,
much like the Dactari, a military species.

This enemy
wouldn’t melt away into distorted space like the local insurgents, nor would
they toe the line and try to slug it out. They would push into an attacking
formation, getting so close that the Dactari targeting opportunities would be
severely restricted. Battery masking would be a very serious problem as targets
began to disappear behind friendly vessels.

And they
wouldn’t simply be hiding, they would be ‘laying alongside’ as the intelligence
staff had described it. The enemy would actually slam their vessels into their
targets and pour warriors into the Dactari ships, taking them intact before
turning them against Reis’ forces, effectively doubling the attrition factor of
the lost ships.

As the
Dactari blasted their way back into regular space, they were already in the
formation that he had devised during the training evolutions of the
Pursuit.
It was a simple adaptation of the cone formation, consisting of multiple,
smaller, interlocking cones. A sub-flota from fleet administration had dubbed
it the
honeycomb
and thus the credit had been stolen from Reis, but his
men knew who really came up with it.

With only
sixty ships the formation looked more like a loose planar formation, but it was
going to work against the Midgaard, Reis was sure of it.

“Enemy are
right where we expected,” the sensor tech highlighted the targeting icons on
the holo projection that filled the back half of the bridge. “They’re closing
fast,” he added in a tone of mixed surprise and scorn.

And no
wonder he disapproved. Reis stepped around the projection of Tauhento’s larger
moon and counted the icons.
Only twenty seven ships and they still can’t
wait to come to grips with us. These Midgaard are mad – in an admirable sort of
way!

There was a
shimmer in the midst of the enemy formation, followed immediately by a pair of
bright flashes to either side of Reis’ flagship.

“Two of them
have executed micro-jumps right into our midst.” The sensor tech looked up in
surprise. “They’re approaching cruisers at the rear of their perspective cones,
probable boarding actions pending.”

That hadn’t
been anticipated during the training evolutions, but Reis would have used the
same formation to deal with it. He reached out to the floating icons, tasking
three cruisers from the rear of neighboring cones to fire on each of the two
interlopers.

Though he
trusted in the initiative of his commanders, he didn’t want half of his anchor
ships deciding to deal with two enemy ships. A honeycomb was a very hands-on
type of formation for a commander.

“Both enemy
vessels destroyed,” the sensor tech announced.

“The
Ayani
isn’t responding to hails,” the communications officer warned, updating the
cruiser’s icon in orange. “She may be fighting off a boarding party?”

Reis glared
at the man. The comms officer knew as well as any Krypteian that a ship out of
contact was a ship you couldn’t afford to leave in action. It would mean
another three heavy cruisers standing picket over the ship until they could
confirm her status.

If they
didn’t answer hails, then they weren’t under control, and the communications
officer had no business making the next order harder for Reis.

“Destroy
the
Ayani
and return the picket to attack positions.”

The
communications officer nodded with an angle to his head, a subtle
acknowledgement of his slip, and updated the order list for the picket vessels
that had destroyed the enemy attacking the
Ayani
.

They had
been too late to save her, and now they had to destroy her before she could be
turned against them.

Reis
realized that he didn’t know the captain of the
Ayani
. He saw no point
in asking either – he knew he would lose a few more captains before the day was
done and some of them would certainly be friends. There had been a time when he
knew every captain under his command, but he’d been forced to scrape this force
together from a half dozen worlds. He had to trust in their
judgement
.

He took a
deep breath. “Hold formation and press forward.”

And then,
suddenly, a new variable was added to the equation.