The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (26 page)

Capitalizing

The
Midway,
Weirfall
Orbit

“T
hank you, Captain,” Towers’ tone managed to convey both gratitude and
dismissal, and the officer gave him a quick nod before leaving the conference
room. He would return to Admiral Gao, having delivered his report.

The admiral
turned to Caul. “Well?”

The
Midgaard leader gazed thoughtfully at the holographic system map that hovered
above the table. It was a recent addition, scavenged from a crippled enemy
ship. “It’s certainly different from how my people fight a war,” he allowed. “I
can see the value in what Gao has done – forcing a defeat on the enemy while
leaving enough of them alive to spread the news.” He looked at Towers. “I would
have just killed them all. There’s always the danger in teaching the enemy a
lesson – they might learn something other than humility.”

“It did
look that way,” Towers’ eyes wandered to the holo display, where a grey icon
showed a former enemy concentration. “They were sitting on a major choke point
for more than fifteen hours.” He grimaced. “They had some clever mischief in
mind. I was on the verge of sending a force to wipe them out, but then they
simply jumped for home.”

“A mutiny,
perhaps,” Caul theorized.

“Perhaps,”
Towers conceded, “but I don’t think so. They were a well-trained force,
carrying the boar’s head of the Krypteia on almost all of their ships.”

“Either
way,” Caul offered, “they’ve headed for home with news of defeat, so it would
seem that Hu Gao has made the right choice.”

“But what
do we do about it?” Towers expanded the scale of the view with a drag of his
hands, scrolling over to Dactar. He zoomed back in. “We have to make another
move. We’ve sat on our asses for too long. Now that we have momentum, we need
to keep up the pressure, keep the enemy on their heels.”

“We don’t
have the strength to take many more worlds,” Caul said. “It’s a scramble just
holding three planets.”

“So we go
for the one target that makes the risk worthwhile.” Towers zoomed Dactar to
fill the space above the conference table. “Hit them here where they feel most
secure. Give them a couple of days to absorb whatever that Krypteia force has
in mind and then wipe their forces out of the skies in full view of their
people.”

“You would
leave their population untouched?”

“Maybe,”
Towers stared at the projection, watching the constellation of protective
warships as they randomly shifted their positions. “If we destroy the planet,
the remaining forces will have nothing to lose. The reprisals would make
anything we’ve seen so far look like child’s play in comparison. We need to
scare them, not kill them.”

“If you
kill ‘em,” Caul approximated a hillbilly accent, “they won’t learn
nuthin
’.”

Towers
stared at the Midgaard. “That’s just wrong. Whoever set up the language program
has a really strange sense of humor.” He waved a hand. “Anyway, let’s get Dr.
Young in here. We need to gather our forces and strike while our own territory
is relatively clear.”

The
Salamis
, Oaxian
Orbit

H
arry looked up from a report as Eiboekna entered his quarters. Major
Liam Kennedy, acting as her security escort (a member of a royal family rated
more than an NCO for a guard, after all), stopped just outside the doors. “You
wanted to get us together with the Dactari leadership.” He waved her to the
other couch. “Looks like you’ll get your wish. We’re ordered to join an attack
on Dactar.”

“And will
you commit the same crimes that you accuse them of?” she asked as she took her
seat. “You saw horrible atrocities through those memories.” She looked down at
the table. “It’s a legacy my family isn’t very proud of. Would you have that
stain on your hands as well?”

“We didn’t
start this war.”

“That won’t
excuse you. There are billions of civilians on that world. There are millions
of children who love their parents.”

“And
billions of potential recruits,” Harry reminded her. “That world is the beating
heart of all that has plagued my people for more than ten years. The mass
drivers, sent to eliminate my entire species, came from Dactari orbit, carrying
Dactari crews.”

“Perhaps
you’re willing to contemplate their destruction because they’re a different
species,” she suggested. “If you met some of them, got to know them…”

“I do know
one of them.” Harry leaned back against the couch. “A captured medical officer
named Gelna Tai. He shipped with us on the
Völund
as a consultant and
back-up translator.” A sigh. “Jumped ship at Khola, but I did like the little
guy. He has a good sense of humor.”

“It doesn’t
bother you that you might wipe out his family?”

An
uncomfortable frown. “I hate them for what they’ve done, and I don’t hate them
because of Gelna. You might say I’m of two minds.”

Eiboekna
stared at Harry. “Where I come from, that condition is cause for concern. Under
stress, the mind can split off a part of your personality in an attempt to
preserve the rest. A dumping ground for the traits you want no part of, but
desperately need in order to survive.”

“You’re
reading a lot into a simple slip of the tongue.” He stood, waiting for her to
follow his lead. “We’re going to fight them because we have no other option.”
She followed him to the corridor entrance. “We need to shake the Dactari people
out of their mindset, show them that they weren’t meant to rule us.”

He stopped
at the door and she turned to face him.

“If there
are any of them left,” he added with a grin, “maybe you can broker a peace
between us.”

She looked
at him for a long moment. Long enough to make him fidget. “Who is Benedict?”
she asked, the sudden non-sequitur taking Harry by surprise.

“I should
ask you that,” he replied with a tilt of his head. “He was with you on the station
when we came into the control room.”

She shook
her head slowly. “When you killed the commander, I thought you were talking to
his body. I assumed
Benedict
was some derogatory term used by your
people in reference to the enemy, but found no records of it in your database.”

“You’ve
been given access to our systems?” Harry sought refuge in the mundane. “What
the hell was Prouse…”

“I did find
a reference in your own nation’s history files,
” she went on, ignoring
his bluster. “A general in your revolution against a country called England
. He abandoned your cause to fight
for the enemy.”

Harry could
feel the heat in his ears. His eardrums throbbed in concert with his pulse. He
walked away from the door, heading for the windows.

“After you
shot the commander, we were alone in that room until that young woman came in
and took a system module.” She followed him. “You kept talking. You started
yelling after you activated the destruct sequence. I thought you were yelling
at me but, now, I’m not so sure.”

“After
I
activated…” Harry turned from the window to look at her, not wanting to
believe her, but knowing she made sense.

“The
Dactari forced their way into your mind,” she reminded him gently. “It’s not
uncommon for a personality to fragment under a deep incursion.” She reached out
to rest a hand against his arm. “
Everyone
breaks, sooner or later. I
think in your case, a small part of you fragmented off and broke, leaving the
rest of you untouched.”

“You think
I
created
Benedict?” He shivered.
If she’s right, am I even fit to
command anymore?
The standards were certainly lower, now that they were cut
off from home. Still, this was asking fleet medical to overlook a hell of a
lot.

“Created him,” she said, “and killed him.”

“What?” Harry looked at her with surprise – and hope.

“He was on the station when it blew,” she smiled. “You made
absolutely certain nothing escaped; you even executed the crew in the landing
bay. Nothing got away before the detonation.”

“Can it really be that simple?”
Somehow, I’ve always
known that Benedict was my own creation. I’ve always seen it – out of the
corner of my mind.

She shrugged. “Does it have to be more complicated? You’ve
thought he was dead since the raid.” She released his arm and headed for the
door. “Leave him that way,” she said over her shoulder as she passed through
the portal.

Gaemhaeg resupply depot

R
eis
let out an explosion of breath as he watched the station come into view. For
two days now, he had sat in his quarters, staring out at the black. The fleet
had reported in at Gaemhaeg as originally planned. His second obviously had the
sense to maintain a semblance of normalcy despite his insane plan. Had the
fleet bypassed the station on their way to Dactar, they would have attracted
unwanted attention.

For two days now, they had been going through the motions of
a resupply stop while waiting for their launch slot to Dactar. When the ship
had pushed back from the docking port, he’d thought they were finally released,
but they were simply moving to a new wing of the station to take on food.

He snatched up his deodorant cube and hurled it at the
windows.
Two days sitting here and no way for me to signal the station crew!
He watched it bounce off the heavy pane and tumble back to his feet. He
looked at the mark on the window, then past it to the windows of the station’s
crew quarters.

With a grim smile, he picked up the cube and marched over to
the windows.

‘Crew has mutinied. Send boarding team to this vessel,’ he
wrote in pasty white, backward glyphs. Tossing the cube aside, he raced over to
his gear locker. He pulled out his EVA suit and boots, tossing them on the
floor so he could reach the shelving behind. He grabbed a powerful illuminator
and raced over to his door, entering a personal lock code that should give him
at least ten minutes of guaranteed privacy.

Racing back to the windows, he turned on the illuminator and
shone it across at the station windows. He was working his way from left to
right, top to bottom, shining the light into each crew apartment until he
caught movement. Swinging the light back, he saw a crew member desperately
pulling her towel down from her wet hair to cover herself.

He couldn’t hear, with the vacuum between them, but he was
reasonably certain that profanity played a major role in her angry tirade. He
tried to point to the message on the window, but she must have thought he was
indicating his quarters because her anger level visibly increased.

“Unbelievable,”
he muttered, moving his light on to
the next set of windows. He looked back to see her waving a communicator at him
before putting it to her ear. She was reporting him as an ogler.

“Hells,” he cursed. If she reported him, the station’s
guards would come to the ship, but they would come lightly armed and searching
for a pervert. They would be disposed of by his mutinous crew and the force
would jump for Dactar immediately, authorized or not. He needed them to arrive
armed to the ears and expecting a hard fight.

He ran to his locker and pulled out his cover kit, cursing
himself for not thinking of it sooner. He unfolded the thin thermal blanket and
placed the non reflective black side against the window, behind the message.
The contrast should help her to notice what he had written.

The woman in the station frowned at this new development,
but she leaned forward toward the window.
She’s trying to read the message,
thank the Ancestors!
She suddenly stood straight, staring silently at Reis.
Her head turned slightly and she nodded before speaking into her communicator,
gesturing at Reis’ ship.

He didn’t have long to wait – ten minutes at most. Stations
like Gaemhaeg maintained a fast-action team at all times. After losing several
stations to Alliance attack, the security protocols had been redesigned. The
muted sounds of boarding weapons made it very clear that Reis’ message had been
received.

His men were experienced counter-insurgency operators, but
they were taken unawares, thinking their ruse undiscovered. The few who carried
weapons were quickly cut down and the remainder had the good sense to know a
losing fight when they saw one.

When he opened the door, he found himself facing two of the
compressed-gas weapons of the boarding party. A single, sudden move and the
weapons would spit out a hail of deadly flechettes.

“Hands up!” the one on the left, a secondary sub-
squadra
, barked. “Stand and identify!”

Reis raised his hands. “Flota Reis Mas of the Krypteia.” He
waited while the soldier on the right activated the scanner on his weapon and
read the glyphs on his hand. “My commissar led a mutiny,” he explained.

“A mutiny… in a Krypteia force?” The security officer shared
a look with his trooper. “What in the hells is going on?” He leaned in,
lowering his voice. “Sir, does this have anything to do with the large force
that just went pelting past here for Dactar?”

“What large force?”

A shrug. “No idea, sir. It was big, though, as if every ship
we have was pulled together and sent to home world together. They didn’t drop
out when they got here; they just kept on going. We picked up enough anomalies
to indicate hundreds of ships.”

Reis’ blood ran cold, his tail pressed against his chest.
If
we wanted the ships at home world for some emergency, we wouldn’t mess around
with gathering them at some other location. We’d just tell them to get there at
best possible speed.
He shivered.
The Alliance would arrive at Dactar as
a single force. A coherent fleet heading for home world could only mean one
thing.

“It’s an Alliance attack.” He looked at the junior officer.
“Show me the prisoners.”

Though he had been a prisoner of his own men only minutes
before, he recovered his air of command quickly enough. There was no time for
second-guessing. The security officer accepted Reis’ authority easily and led
him out into the middle of the bridge.

His second was there on his knees, and he looked up
beseechingly at his flota. Reis felt like kicking his teeth in but he had too
much work to do. He turned back to the security officer. “Are there any other
officers in your boarding team?”

A negative shake of the tail.

Reis looked around the bridge, pointing to one of his own
junior officers. “You, Rus! Stand up and come over here.”

The young officer warily walked over to his flota.

“Give me your communicator,” Reis held out a hand, taking
the unit from Rus and inserting it into his right ear. “Fleet wide,” he
ordered. “All vessels, this is Flota Reis Mas. I have removed the commissar
from his post, and now I must decide what to do with the rest of you.” Despite
his own preferences, he could ill afford to lose half his men with a hostile
force heading for Dactar.

And he would rather play down the seriousness of what had
happened. Killing half his force would cause a sensation and forever mark him
as the flota who lost control of elite troops. The disgrace would plague his
children’s children.

“You all know what punishment you have earned.” He let that
hang over their heads for a few moments like the fabled hammer of Milieus. He
could see the furtive glances on the bridge as crewmen wondered who would die.

“Unfortunately, I cannot afford to lose half my force at the
moment. A large enemy fleet has just passed this station on its way to attack
Dactar.” He was pleased to see their relief turn back to horror as they
absorbed the news. They were showing more concern for Dactar than for their own
miserable pelts. That might have influenced his decision, if absolute need
hadn’t already done so.

“Rather than subject the fleet to quinqaugination, I have
decided to convene a drumhead trial for Commissar Heig. He has abused his
position as your counsellor, leading you on a fool’s errand while our people
are in dire peril.”

He turned to the station security officer. “You will serve
as a panel judge. State your name clearly.”

“Secondary Sub-Squadra
Livtay
Vel.” The officer looked as though he wanted to protest at the quick flow of
events but he had already accepted Reis’ authority and, like most regular
troops, he was more than a little afraid of the Krypteia.

Reis nodded. He turned to his own officer. “For the record,
Judge Rus.”

Rus shot a quick glance at his sub-flota, still kneeling on
the floor. “Tertiary Sub-Flota Tomyr Rus.”

“Tribunal president, Flota Reis Mas, presiding.” Reis looked
down. “Sub-Flota
Sablin
Heig, Commissar, you are
charged with treason.” The two judges looked at him in surprise, no doubt
expecting a charge of mutiny. Mutiny would have left too many loose threads in
the record. A mutiny, by its very nature, requires the complicity of a large
portion of the crews. Treason, on the other hand, could easily be a one-man
job.

Reis waited until Heig looked up. “Commissar, what do you
have to say in your defence?”

The sub-flota was on the verge of weeping. He had come so
close to achieving his goal. He had seen himself as the savior of the Republic,
but now he faced the shame of an execution. “Our leaders are lying to us.
Humans are invading
us
, and the Triumvirs still tell us that everything
is fine,” he rasped, channeling his sadness into anger. “Theirs is the treason,
and it must be exposed before the Republic falls.”

This one last time, my friend,
Reis thought sadly,
I
can rely on you to act as expected.
“Sub-Flota Heig has admitted his intent
to turn military force against our elected leaders. He has violated one of our
most sacred laws of founding, the separation of military and government. Worse
still, he has done this in a time of war.”

Reis turned to the two judges. “Judge Vel, how do you find
the defendant?” Reis could see the near-terror in the security officer’s
features, and he reached out to take the sidearm from the security trooper who
stood to
Vel’s
side.  

 
Vel’s
eyes were glued to the
weapon in Reis’ hand. The message was clear. The presiding judge was ready to
carry out the sentence and it would not go well for anyone who stood in his
way. “Guilty.” He drew his own sidearm.

“Judge Rus?”

Rus spotted a discarded weapon on the floor and stepped over
to retrieve it. “Guilty.” He armed the weapon, coming to stand beside his flota.

“Please,” Heig whispered, “not in the back.”

Reis pulled Judge Vel over to stand next to him. Vel was
shaking, but he looked willing enough. “On your feet, Heig,” Reis ordered.
“Face your fate.”

Tears on his cheeks, Heig nodded his gratitude. The exact
manner of his death indicated much about the tribunal’s true feelings. If he
had been kicked down to lie on his face, then his name would be cursed in the
history files. From there, subtle variations of kneeling, standing and facing
his judges indicated the possibility of mitigating circumstances. To die on his
feet facing his judges meant that the tribunal had sympathy for his motives but
were still constrained by law to carry out the sentence.

His words were a matter of record, and the manner of his death
would ensure that his children would not live in shame for his actions. They
might even feel pride in the manner of their father’s death, knowing he’d been
a martyr.

“Judges,” Reis barked. “Place!”

Reis, in the center of the three judges, placed his weapon
against Heig’s chest, just over the heart. Vel and Rus placed theirs over the
secondary cardiac musculatures in the lower abdomen.

“Ready!” Reis called out. “Fire!”

Three pneumatic concussions, almost close enough to be a
single sound, and Heig was flung back onto the deck. He convulsed twice and
then the spark of life faded from his eyes.

“The prisoner is dead,” Reis announced for the record.
“Tribunal is dismissed.”  He put a hand on the security officer’s
shoulder.

“Station command,” he ordered, hearing the slight addition
of background noise almost immediately. “This is Flota Reis Mas of the
Krypteia. I’ve learned of a pending attack on Dactar. I’m commandeering your
defensive squadron and taking them with me to aid in the defense of our home world.
Any attempt to counter my orders will be viewed as treason.”

And, just that quickly, Reis went from a prisoner in his
quarters, to the commander of a force that was twenty percent bigger than the
one he had lost.

Amazing what you could do with a
deoderant
cube.