The Alliance Trilogy

by Michael Wallace

  It was too much fire for the dragoons to take. Several took cracking blows, and one of Apollo’s torpedoes slammed into one dragoon’s upper deck. It rolled away, venting gasses, even as Hroom bomblets hit its hull and popped like blisters.

  Three other Alliance ships had been lurking during this initial attack: Blackbeard, her brawler, and the war junk. They slid through the Alliance fleet and between the parting sea of enemy dragoons until they were face-to-face with Star Fortress Alpha. The carrier loomed on the viewscreen, a gray monster of the deep, her guns glowing like eyes as they spit fire.

  She was too much to handle alone, even for the battle cruiser. But even as Tolvern ordered the main battery into action, the Singaporeans concentrated their armor-softening beam at a spot forward of the enemy’s engines. Warthog dropped low and rolled to get off her torpedoes. Blackbeard fired torpedoes of her own to chase in the kinetic fire.

  A devastating rain of kinetic shot, missiles, and torpedoes slammed into the carrier. It rocked backward, stunned, and though it was throwing off countermeasures—chaff, bursts, pulses, and various noisy radiation emitters—there was too much incoming fire to shake it all off.

  Alpha no longer directed its outgoing fire effectively at Blackbeard, but probed for the Singaporeans. That energy beam softening its shield was coming from an unknown source, and it sowed chaos in the enemy defenses. Warthog went in beneath the carrier, unopposed, and hammered the enemy’s underside with close-range cannon fire.

  Tolvern sensed the enemy commander flinching, panicking. Losing mastery of fire control, of defenses, until the ship’s systems no longer fought in concert. Had Tolvern been able to follow up with the rest of her fleet, she could have finished off the lead carrier in the first engagement.

  But by now the dragoons had recovered from the initial confusion and regrouped to attack. Sleek and gray and barracuda-like with their knife-like protrusions up front, they turned the tables on Peerless and Triumph. A furious missile attack struck a hard blow against one of the screening navy destroyers, and the other twisted and dove in an attempt to escape its tormentors.

  Four dragoons pulled up from the rear of the enemy fleet to join the battle. Three others broke for the softer target of the Hroom sloops, and most alarmingly, several others got over the top of Tolvern’s fleet to hook around toward Catapult. Tolvern couldn’t lose her missile frigate or she was doomed. She ordered the frigate to withdraw toward Fort Mathilde while McGowan and the others tried to hold the line.

  “Bravo and Charlie are entering the fray,” Smythe warned.

  The two carriers came in above and below their struggling counterpart. Missiles underway. Big guns firing. Lomelí and Ping worked furiously at the defense grid. They brought down the first wave of attack, but Jane began to give ominous warnings as shot came through. Three dragoons charged from the rear, ready to join the fight.

  Tolvern ground her teeth in frustration. She had Alpha on the ropes: Mark-IVs were striking it nearly unopposed, and another ninety seconds and she’d be ready for another broadside. She hadn’t even launched her striker wing yet, and if they got close and found a weak spot in the armor, they could shove a dagger through its ribs and finish it off.

  But Warthog was about to come under attack by three dragoons, which would push her out of the fight. And Blackbeard could not stand up to the other two carriers. They’d maul her. Not to mention that the enemy was eagerly seeking the war junk. If Blackbeard fell back, savaged on all sides, the Singaporeans would be caught in a trap, unable to escape.

  “Time to withdraw,” she said.

  Gasps of relief, orders going out. As she gauged their reactions, she realized they’d expected her to sacrifice herself. As it was, they’d almost stayed too long. The window was closing rapidly.

  “Nyb Pim, thread us through those dragoons. Get in next to Triumph. Capp, call Zenger and tell him to lay down suppressing fire to shield our retreat.”

  Easy enough to say, but Zenger was in plenty of trouble himself, beset by four dragoons, who had him surrounded and cut off. But if Tolvern came in from behind, she’d muscle two of the enemy ships out of the way, and together, the battle cruiser and its smaller counterpart could handle the others.

  Bravo, whom Tolvern couldn’t stop thinking of as her primary enemy, spotted her trying to disengage. It moved swiftly to cut off Blackbeard’s retreat, and got its dragoons into the fight against Warthog. That forced Blackbeard to attack the dragoons in order to save her brawler, and that in turn slowed her down more. Charlie also loomed.

  “Warning,” Jane said. “Class-three det—”

  The ship rocked. Lights flickered. Tolvern nearly fell as gravity dropped to nothing, then came back on again.

  “Jane is offline,” Smythe announced from the tech console. He had the good sense to be strapped in. “Targeting computers down.”

  “Defense grid, too,” Lomelí said. Her voice was tight, afraid.

  Capp let loose with some of her favorite curse words, and Ping was speaking a rapid-fire Chinese that sounded equally salty.

  “We’re back!” Smythe said.

  Nyb Pim’s long fingers had been flying over his console throughout this, continuing to navigate a way out of this mess. Nav had stayed up, thank God, and with it his nav chip’s interface. He sent across a complicated sequence of accelerations and violent maneuvers that would test the inertialess systems.

  Except that Bravo nearly had her boxed in. No longer under fire, Alpha was turning the tables, firing with abandon. Just when Tolvern felt the noose tightening around her throat, HMS Apollo streaked back into the fight.

  The corvette had outrun her pursuers, hooked around, and come in against Alpha while the trailing dragoons struggled to catch up. The ones that had been harassing Warthog were slow to respond, and Apollo kept herself free of Bravo and Charlie by using Alpha as a shield.

  She hammered at the injured star fortress with cannon and torpedoes. The corvette was a lighter ship than Blackbeard, and Alpha was no longer panicking. But neither could it ignore the attack. That brought Tolvern some relief. More so, the threat of losing a carrier was enough to get the attention of the other two star fortresses attacking the Albion battle cruiser.

  Blackbeard and her escort ships slipped free of the trap. Tolvern ordered Apollo to get out of there, and the corvette flared her engines. Enemy shot chased her away, and she did a nifty little shimmy to slip between two dragoons that tried to cut her off.

  “Aye, mate, that’s one hell of a maneuver,” Capp said.

  Tolvern was equally impressed. “If we survive this, Dwiggins and his crew deserve a medal for that action alone.”

  “McGowan’s on the line,” Capp said. “Wants to know if we’re gonna regroup at the fort. Says he can hold the Z-axis if we’ll protect the Y from dragoons.”

  “No. Tell him to take position off Triumph’s port. We’re going to make a charge.”

  HMS Babylon was about to be overwhelmed. The destroyer had been harried by multiple dragoons ever since taking that initial pounding. Once Blackbeard got clear, the missile frigate threw everything into Babylon’s defense. The colonel’s sloops were fighting their way to her side, too.

  Five dragoons surrounded the destroyer and kept her hemmed in. The Albion warship was fighting back with everything she had, but had already lost her aft shields, and the engine was bleeding from its containment field. A punishing cannon attack knocked out the destroyer’s battery. Two more volleys, and Babylon lay helpless while the pummeling continued.

  Blackbeard rumbled into the battle. Tolvern ordered a broadside. It bashed a dragoon, which turned about with something of a yelp of outgoing fire. A pathetic attempt to shake off the battle cruiser.

  “Roll,” Tolvern said grimly. “Give it the secondary.”

  Another roar of the cannons. Shot penetrated the enemy ship. A secondary explosion burst out the other side. Pressurized gas burst from the bow. And the dragoon was dead and drifting.

  This bro
ught little celebration. Babylon could barely limp back toward the rendezvous point. Reports scrolling across the screen indicated that a third of the crew was dead or wounded, and a good number more were cut off in bulkheads to keep their atmosphere from venting. All weapon systems down; she couldn’t so much as fire her deck gun.

  Nearly every Alliance ship had suffered damage in the exchange, with the exception of the war junk, the corvette, and the missile frigate. The most serious fell on a pair of the colonel’s sloops, which had been raked by fire in one of several short encounters with enemy dragoons. One of the sloops had completely lost the armor above its ammo stores. One more shot to that section and it would penetrate the magazine and detonate the ship.

  That was a long-running deficiency in sloop design, and still present in the older models. It was a good thing the Adjudicators didn’t seem to know it, or they’d have been able to score an easy kill. One dragoon, one good shot, and the sloop would blow.

  Tolvern ordered the sloop to escort Babylon back to the fort. The destroyer would land in the yards. Get her injured crew to the medics and do whatever emergency patching they could manage. Unlikely they’d get her back into the fight before it was over.

  The enemy was in better shape, having more ships and firepower to work with, and only suffering the loss of a single dragoon, but Blackbeard’s savage attack on Alpha made them hesitate. Bravo and Charlie stayed close to the wounded star fortress, and the enemy recalled most of its dragoons. Delta kept some distance from the others, facing off against the Fourth Wolves, though it was clear the enemy saw Svensen’s squadron as more of a nuisance than anything.

  Tolvern called Boghammer and got a direct line to Ulfgar Svensen. The Scandian was rumbling like an angry lion.

  “Blast it, Tolvern,” Svensen said. “I’m suited up and running command from the launch bay. Am I going to sit out the whole battle, or are you going to get me into the fight?”

  “The path is clear. Go in there and take that carrier.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Other men were given to speeches before entering battle. Blustering about Viking ancestors, calling for help from the old gods. Svensen had indulged once or twice, but there wasn’t much point to it. If a man couldn’t get his blood up when bursting into an enemy ship under heavy fire and fighting an opposing crew desperate to dump you back into the void, then you weren’t much of a raider in the first place.

  And so, when he gave orders to Jörvak in the command room to take them in for the final charge, he went straight for the traditional war cry, spread over the com for the entire Fourth Wolves to hear.

  Blood, spoil, plunder, death.

  Valhalla!

  Others started in, their voices rising in full-throated cry. Again and again they said it, until the men had worked themselves into a frenzy. He let them repeat the chant twenty, thirty times, then cut the channel to end it.

  The faceplate reading showed five minutes to impact. Five minutes of being stuffed in the hold, strapped down, harnesses in place. Suffering enemy weapons, a remorseless battering that might very well destroy one or more of the star wolves. Maybe all of them. Only the gods knew what was going to happen out there.

  And he couldn’t follow any of it. Had no idea what was happening up top. Had purposefully cut himself off from that information since it wouldn’t do him any good.

  Svensen reopened the channel, but this time forced the others onto passive. Only he could speak, and they would all listen.

  “Listen up, men. You are the Fourth Wolves. You’re not some rabble, raiding and slaving. You’re not going in for loot. Nobody will range off on his own to seek personal glory. Every man will obey orders, and we will fight together as one. When that happens, when we take this star fortress, then we get our glory and honor.”

  He ended the transmission.

  “Glory and honor?” Kelly asked. “Didn’t you tell me up top you weren’t much one for speeches?”

  She was right next to him in her harness, but static clouded her voice. Svensen tried not to think it was because the enemy was hitting them with burst charges as they came in.

  “I wasn’t planning on it. Guess a little bit came out. What about your marines? Want to give them a speech in English?”

  “Unnecessary. They’re professionals.”

  He chuckled in appreciation of her snide tone.

  A marine platoon was with them now, below and to his right in the hold. Their mech suits were white, not gray like Kelly’s, but they had Albion lions painted on the chest plate like she did. No crazy bug helmets or demon horns like his mech raiders. More standardized in their gear, too. Free hands—no fixed guns—with a standardized rifle carrying a grenade attachment.

  Boghammer shuddered hard. He gripped his harness and closed his eyes to ride it out. Fought off the temptation to call Jörvak and demand a damage report. Checked his faceplate.

  Four minutes left. Had it only been a minute since he’d checked last? Gods save him.

  He thought about the alien face he’d seen on Castillo, when the locals showed him the Adjudicator armor. It was mummified with time, shriveled, but it was enough of a glimpse that he could easily summon an image of his enemy.

  Ghouls, with ash-gray skin. Big eye sockets. No lips, only protruding teeth, almost tusk-like as they curved out of the mouth. This was a species with a carnivorous past. Svensen imagined them eating their food whole. No forks and knives for these sorts.

  Yet they wouldn’t consider themselves bloodthirsty predators. Not like Apex and their hive-like mentality, exterminating all around. No, the Adjudicators considered themselves civilized, judging the wicked and unholy for their sins. They were the law, and other, lesser beings deserved whatever befell them.

  But the reality was different. They preyed on weaker civilizations. Maimed them, crippled them. Hauled millions into slavery and left the shell-shocked survivors to cower on ruined worlds, their civilizations obliterated and their jump points collapsed to prevent them from regaining the stars.

  Something shifted, gravity adjusting as the ship decelerated rapidly. If that antigrav failed, all the netting and harnesses in the universe wouldn’t matter. His brain would slam into his cranium with enough force to turn it to jelly.

  He glanced over to see Kelly’s head turned toward him. Her faceplate was a mirrored surface; he couldn’t actually see her. But he imagined her tense expression, her lips drawn together.

  Jörvak spoke through the com. “Blackfish attachments deployed. Ninety seconds.”

  During the last war, the Scandians had built a number of smaller raiding craft known as blackfish. They would fly in under cover of star wolves and land devastating raiding parties on Apex harvester ships. But the blackfish were underpowered and without enough firepower to go in alone, which had limited their effectiveness.

  After the war, the admiralty retired the blackfish to patrol duty, while Albion engineers retrofitted star wolves with similar boarding attachments. The big Scandian warships were now capable of slamming into enemy ships, surviving the collision, and rapidly disgorging mech raiders.

  Jörvak again. “Ten seconds. Brace for impact.”

  The ship shuddered again. More incoming fire. But not enough to bring them down.

  Boghammer struck the enemy ship. Twin booms followed—shaped charges blasting holes in the enemy shields. Harnesses popped and clips clanged open. The bulkhead doors swung open. A blast of air, rushing out, then rushing in. Two atmospheres equalizing.

  And then Svensen joined the charge as mech units burst into the enemy ship.

  #

  “Fire all torpedoes,” Tolvern ordered. “Explosive shot in the main.”

  Blackbeard, Peerless, and Triumph—the larger battle cruiser and her two smaller companions—formed a united front against the three star fortresses bearing down on them. HMS Catapult lingered to the rear, with the war junk somewhere above and Warthog shielding her mother ship with another bristling array of guns.

/>   The rest of the Alliance fleet, barring those two ships sent back to huddle wounded beneath Fort Mathilde’s guns, dodged in and out of attacking dragoons, trying to support the Fourth Wolves, now charging Star Fortress Delta.

  Boghammer was already in. She’d rammed the big carrier and was sticking out of the enemy ship’s side like a remora attached to a shark. Raiders and marines entered, and immediately came under fire.

  Svensen’s ships absorbed blows coming in, but his charge had caught the enemy by surprise. As Tolvern hoped, they seemed to have dismissed the star wolves as a nuisance fleet, sniping from the sidelines, perhaps being held in reserve, but no threat against the four carriers.

  Delta finally recognized its mistake and fired all guns, missiles, and bombs against the rest of the wolves. Icefall struck and took hold, several hundred feet up the carrier’s hull from Boghammer. Boneless and Hellhound came in under heavy fire and smashed home. More raiders and marines disgorged.

  And then disaster.

  War Cry, completely overhauled since the war, new crew trained by Albion, with all the best Scandian men and equipment, dove in from above. A dragoon pursued, desperately trying to shoot down the star wolf before it made contact.

  A small missile struck War Cry’s underbelly and nudged her into a stream of outgoing kinetic fire. The fire hit a damaged section of War Cry’s armor and peeled it open like a buzz saw ripping through a tin can. The star wolf disintegrated before Tolvern’s eyes, leaving nothing but a string of debris bouncing harmlessly into the carrier and drifting away in a cloud of haze.

  A hundred and eighty crew, raiders, and marines, dead in an instant. Not so much as a final distress signal.

  Anvil died next. Dragoons cut off its attack and kept it from hitting the carrier. The ship’s commander made a frantic plea for suppressing fire to guard his retreat so he could make another pass. But as he raced below Delta, the star fortress let loose with its guns. One punishing blow hit Anvil’s engine and disabled its acceleration. The star wolf drifted helplessly into space, pursued by three dragoons.