The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (4 page)

Leeds Castle, Kent, England

“T
his
is
really
disgusting,” Tommy complained. He was standing in the middle
of a paved pathway that led from the castle bridge to the golf course. A pale
stone gatehouse loomed over the bridge, picking up a greenish hue from the
scummy water that sat stagnant beneath the ancient arches. The gatehouse proper
looked like a later addition. It was devoid of the crenellations that provided
archers with both cover and firing opportunity, but its parapet was still high
enough to provide decent cover for the soldier who watched them with wary
curiosity.

Tommy was being projected in the middle of an animated
corpse, giving Keeva’s sensors a focal point, whatever that meant. Nonetheless,
she had insisted that having his consciousness present allowed for a better
analysis, and so Tommy was standing in the middle of what used to be a golf
pro.

“Could be worse,” Kale said in a philosophical tone.

“I’m
really
not seeing how it could be worse,” Tommy
replied.

“Well, for one thing, it could be
me
standing in the
middle of that disgusting mess.”

“I can’t tell you what a help that is,” Tommy said
earnestly. “Really… I just
can’t
tell you that. Keeva, how much longer
do you need me to stand here?”

I was done a while ago, I just didn’t want to interrupt
your conversation.

Tommy stepped out of the back of the corpse so it wouldn’t
see him and try to attack him. He grimaced at Kale who was doubled over
laughing. “Have your fun, chum. Next time she wants to analyze something, you can
be her bloody pushpin.” He pointed toward the gatehouse parapet where the
sentry stood. “Might as well drop in and say hello – see how they’re getting
on.”

They got as far as the center of the bridge.

“That’s far enough,” the guard called, hefting an assault
weapon. “What were you doing over there?”

“Taking samples,” Tommy called back. “We’re trying to figure
out what caused the outbreak.”

“Nobody gets that close to a stumbler without catching it,”
he shouted. “Piss off or I’ll put you out of your misery right now.”

“Not very friendly, is he?” Tommy remarked to Kale.

“Understandable, I wouldn’t want us coming in there either,
if I was in his shoes.”

“Fair enough,” Tommy conceded. “Keeva, can you please put us
on top of the gatehouse, next to that guard? We’d like him to realize that we
aren’t infectious.” He closed his eyes. It was very disconcerting to have his
point of view change while his eyes were still open.

You are moved.

He opened his eyes. The guard was leaning over the parapet,
no doubt wondering where the two men had disappeared to. “We’re not really
here,” he began politely. “What you see is just ...”

“
Gahhh
!” The man spun about,
bringing his weapon up and backing along the parapet to get away from them.
“What the bloody hell are you two playing at?”

“Bugger,” Tommy hadn’t expected to frighten the man quite so
much. He waved his hand through the stone of the parapet. “See? We’re just
projections.” He frowned down at his hand. “Why is it I can wave my hands through
walls but I don’t fall through the floor?”

“She’s not an idiot,” Kale muttered. “She can figure out
what our intentions are easy enough.”

Thank you, Kale.

“Settle down, buddy.” Kale waved a hand to catch the man’s
attention. “We’re humans. We both come from Earth but we’re crew on an advanced
ship that can project our image and voices over great distances. He nodded at
the Maltese cross on the man’s belt. “Rifles?”

“Umm, yeah.” His weapon was still aimed.

“My old unit has an alliance.” Kale was establishing common
ground, trying to mitigate their unorthodox entry to the castle. “I was with
the Patricias before I joined JTF-2.”

“I was on Operation Indrik with some of your lads,” the man
relaxed his weapon a fraction as he peered more closely at Kale. “Didn’t see
you there.”

“Didn’t see you there either,” Kale replied carelessly. “You
sent a company, the Spetsnaz sent another and we made three. That’s about three
hundred guys, and I wasn’t with the main body for most of the op. I was out in
the hills with my spotter.”

The man nodded grudgingly. “Sniper, yeah? The old Parker
Hale?”

“No, we had the Timberwolf back then,” Kale said with a
grin. “But you knew that, didn’t you? Trying to catch me for a bullshitter?”

“Pretty place, Kamchatka,” the soldier said with a grin,
sidestepping the question. He lowered the weapon. “You lads here from that
island? The one where they’re making the cure?”

“Cure?” Tommy glanced over at Kale, then back to the
soldier. “There’s a cure for this?”

“Yeah, the lieutenant heard something over the shortwave we
dragged in here.” He nodded beyond them to a rickety antenna assembly on one of
the towers. “Someone’s set up a lab on one of those Caribbean islands and
they’re making vaccinations.”

“Then that’s our next stop,” Tommy said.

“You don’t want to meet the lieutenant?” The man sounded
surprised.  He waved to the back of the small island. “He’s just over
there, in the ‘New Castle’.”

“No, we really should get going. We’re on a tight schedule.”
Tommy didn’t see the value in telling the man about a forty-kilometer-long ship
that lurked somewhere in the solar system. A ship that might just emerge from
hiding, decide that humanity wasn’t worth saving, and start the whole planet
over again.

The poor man had enough trouble on his hands.

The
Midway
, Weirfall
Orbit

D
wight
approached the Marines flanking the entrance to the bridge. He grabbed his ID
lanyard and pressed his thumb onto the small square on the back of his badge,
causing the front to glow a light green.

 The guard on the right gave him a curt nod and he
stepped toward the doors, which slid open for him after reading the radio
frequency ID chip in his badge. The badge itself would open the doors, but the
guards were there to apprehend anyone whose biometrics failed to produce a
green positive.

The bridge was surrounded on all sides by glass. Structural
elements interrupted the view at odd angles. The graceful curve of Weirfall
hung above them, blue and swathed in clouds. Ships of the fleet lay dispersed
throughout the planet’s various orbital lanes.
Just like back home,
thought
Dwight as he passed through the hive of activity that was the combat
information center.

He had worked in orbit before the plague escaped, but his
research facilities had been buried deep inside Tartarus Station. He had rarely
seen Earth from orbit and found himself so filled with wonder as he approached
the command wing that he forgot to be nervous of the admiral as he approached.

“When I was a child,” Towers broke in on Dwight’s reverie,
“I never dreamed of seeing Earth from space. Now I look down at alien worlds as
part of my day job. Imagine what life will be like ten years from now…”

“Does this mean we’re upside down?” Dwight waved at the
planet hanging above them.

“According to what frame of reference?” Towers arched an
eyebrow as he walked over to join him at the window.  “You have everything
you need?”

“Yes, sir. We’re in pre-production right now.” He kept
looking out at the world above them. “Full production will ramp up in about
three more days.”

“How long until we can start to vaccinate multiple ships
simultaneously?” Towers was no longer willing to inoculate one ship at a time.
Losses on the
Midway
had been lighter than projected, but three hundred
twenty-two men and women had still turned. It had been a nightmare.

And rumors were spreading through the fleet like wildfire.

Towers had been there for many of the infected, at first. He
had sat with them as they learned of their fate, held some of their hands as
they received the shot that would end their lives peacefully. Some had raged at
him, called him a murderer and cursed his name for forcing the shots on them.
Some had told him they didn’t hold him responsible, said how they understood
that service meant risk, that they didn’t blame him for making everyone take
the shot.

Those were the ones that kept him from sleeping.

“Two weeks, sir.”

“And the Weiran tissue samples?”

“The retrovirus won’t work on them, so they can’t be
inoculated, but they’re just as vulnerable to the plague as we are. Midgaard
are completely immune.”

“Quarantine?”

“Yes, sir, at least four days after the last victim on any
ship is identified.”

Towers stared up at the planet for a long moment. “I
appreciate the role you’ve played in this, Doctor. It’s not an easy thing to
give someone a shot that may kill them, but it’s got to be a damn sight harder
to give one that you
know
will kill a patient.”

Angel of Death,
the researcher thought.
That’s
what they call me on this ship.
He shuddered.
If they only knew the
whole story…

“Inbound contact!” A voice rang out over the bridge
monitors. “Four-eighty-two units over one-sixty-seven by thirty-one degrees.
Contact is a locally-registered orbital tender. No response to hails.”

“Launch ready five and divert the CAP to intercept,” Towers
ordered as he crossed to the port side of the bridge wing, leaning low against
a strut as he strained to see the offending craft. “He’s getting too damned
close.” He opened a channel on his wrist pad. “CAP, this is fleet command, make
it clear he’s not welcome.”

“Roger, command,” a terse voice replied over the monitors.
“Firing across his bow.” A muted, throaty buzz sounded through the bridge as
the interceptor’s rotary cannon opened up in a warning shot. Weapons made no noise
in space, unless you happened to hear them from inside the attacking vessel.

“Ready five is away, moving to take up combat air patrol,”
an officer in the CIC reported.

“Contact still on approach vector,” the sensor coordinator
advised.

“CAP, fleet command, splash the inbound,” Towers ordered.

“What if this is all just an innocent mistake?” Dwight asked
the admiral, surprising even himself at his outburst. Perhaps he had simply
seen too much useless death lately.

“No such thing as an innocent mistake anymore, Doctor. You
start allowing for those and, sure as hell, one of ‘em will get you killed one
day. We’ve lost eight ships already to attacks that started out looking like
innocent mistakes.”

“Fleet, CAP. Contact destroyed. Pulling back to ready
pos
…”

“Distortion alert!” a loud voice nearly matched its enhanced
volume on the monitors. “Same coordinates as the contact.”

Before Dwight could even ask what a ‘distortion alert’ was,
the windows on the bridge went dark, obliterating the view of the planet and
ships. Even with the darkening, the flash of an inbound arrival left spots in
his vision.

Ships on long voyages mostly used distortion drives that
compressed space in front of them while dilating it behind. The ship
essentially sat still while ‘moving’ space past them at incredible velocities.
That distortion was detectable, giving a very slight warning of inbound
traffic. Any warning was better than none because the compressed space at the
leading end tended to pick up any cosmic debris between points A and B. That
debris was released in a deadly plume of plasma on drop-out.

It made a hell of a weapon.

“That was right on top of the original contact,” the sensor
coordinator advised as the windows returned to normal, showing a massive, boxy
vessel. “Krorian freighter. Expired registry. Nowhere near the inbound
corridors for this system.”

“CAP, command. Target engines and bridge,” Towers ordered.

“Roger, command. This is Zulu call sign. Flight leader was
too close to the drop wash. We lost him.” Even as she advised command of the
loss, the buzz of weapons indicated she was following her latest orders.

“Launch ready six and divert five to…” Towers was cut off in
mid-sentence by a bright flash. The attacking ship was being ripped to pieces
by a series of explosions.

“Command, CAP Zulu. That wasn’t us. She just started tearing
apart from the inside, where we weren’t even firing.”

“CAP, command. Roger that. Come back to the barn for
debrief. Five is relieving you on patrol.” Towers turned to the flag captain.
“Did you launch ready six?” A nod. “All right, recover them and put em back in
the lineup.

“Ever hear of the Krypteia?” He looked over at Dwight who
shrugged or, perhaps, shuddered, still in the grip of the moment.

“They were a sneaky pack of Spartan warriors in ancient
Greece who used to kill the helot slaves in the dark of night.” He turned to
look out at the wreckage. “Supposed to terrorize slaves and reduce the
frequency of servile revolts.” He nodded out at a large chunk of wreckage as it
drifted toward the planet above. “Dactari have a secret, elite force whose name
roughly translates into the Krypteia. They specialize in hit-and-run
operations, not unlike what you just saw.”

“This was a Dactari attack?” Dwight couldn’t keep the
surprise from his voice. “I thought they were more for the big fleet attacks,
not this small scale stuff.”

“Small scale?” Towers laughed. “Son, that tender was
carrying a jump beacon and it was heading right for
us
when we cut her
up. Another three minutes and that freighter would have dropped her wash right
through the
Midway.
This was a strategic attack.

“They’ve been around for centuries fighting separatists and
their fingerprints are all over this, right down to destroying themselves when
it’s obvious they can’t get away.” The admiral turned to face the Angel of
Death. “They’re wary of fighting us toe-to-toe after we handed them two
defeats, especially here on their own turf. If they lose here, they lose for
good, so they hold their remaining fleets in reserve and rely on guerrilla
tactics.”

“They’d already weakened their internal security fleets to
send the last attack on Earth,” the flag captain added as he rejoined them on
the bridge. “So the reserve force isn’t much to look at, I’d bet.”

“Captain Hunter’s probably right,” Towers agreed.

“Then why don’t we just head for Dactar and crush them?”
Dwight realised, too late, that he was trying to tell these men how to do their
job and he winced inwardly, expecting an earful.

“You have any idea how much ammunition we can run through,
fighting for a whole
goddammed
planet?” Towers raised
an eyebrow at him. “We’ve been cut off from Earth and we blew off more than
half our ammo taking Weirfall away from the enemy. It’s only been in the last
month that we started to get some test quantities from a local manufacturer and
most of those have been failures, so now we’re trying to find suppliers who can
manufacture barrels as well.”

Captain Hunter gave Dwight a tolerant look. “It’s not like
these folks had ever heard of caseless ammo. Most weapons here use either a
liquid propellant or linear acceleration. We had to help them build an industry
from the ground up.”

“It’s one of the few reasons the Weirans haven’t run us off
yet,” Towers added. “New jobs, and we’re the only market for the product, but
we need to get our hands on a few more planets or we’ll be facing widespread
riots.” He pointed up at Weirfall. “We need interplanetary commerce or we’re
dead. That’s our first objective. Problem is, we can take a world, but we can’t
keep it. We don’t have the force to hold multiple worlds if the enemy
concentrates for a counter attack on one of them.”

“We’d likely hear from our smuggler friends of a Dactari
concentration of forces,” Captain Hunter explained. “But by the time a smuggler
gets to us with the news, it’ll all be over.”

“Those little bastards sell us information on the Dactari
and then go back to the Dactari and sell them information about us,” Towers
added. “And not a damn bit of it is of any use to anyone.” He sighed. “We’re
blind.”