The Alliance Trilogy

by Michael Wallace

  Tolvern sensed blood in the water. She shoved every star wolf, sloop, corvette, and cruiser to holding Lima and Juliett in place, then ordered all three battle cruisers to strike November, and strike it hard. Cannon fire raged from three sides. Torpedoes landed hard blows. Blackbeard launched a nuke. It got through, hit a damaged section of armor, and burst through the hull.

  Twenty more minutes and the fourth carrier of six was dead. The final two attempted to break free. Tolvern ordered her fleet to give chase. It was the first time many of her ships had flown together, and she struggled to organize so many at once, even with Vargus and Fox assisting.

  “Bring Gazelle and Sprint into line. And I don’t like those trailing destroyers. Capp, warn Olafsen that if his star wolves don’t stop breaking ranks, I’m going to send them to the back to finish off wounded dragoons.”

  “We got a read on the newcomers,” Smythe said. With the battle at a pause, the fleet had been working on scanning the Moscow jump. His voice was high and excited. “It’s Dreadnought, all right.”

  Tolvern’s heart leaped. “Drake?”

  “No, the general is still in command, sir. But more ships are pouring through that jump, and I expect . . . aye, there’s Vigilant. Drake will be on that ship, right?”

  “He’d better be,” she said.

  If there had been any doubt left in the battle, Dreadnought’s arrival settled it. The battleship was worth two battle cruisers by herself. Throw in the rest of the newcomers—four light cruisers, three corvettes, six star wolves, and nearly two dozen lighter warships—and all they had to do was cut off these last two star fortresses and the battle wouldn’t just be won, it would be a total rout.

  Tolvern’s thoughts turned to Heaven’s Gate. Only one thing could turn the tide now, the arrival of those six . . . no, not even that. Let the rest of the star fortresses arrive from Heaven’s Gate and the Alliance would only save themselves a battle on the other side. They could win the fight here and now.

  By the time they jumped through to Heaven’s Gate, there would be little opposition in the system, and they could bombard the enemy colonies and yards at leisure and then . . . well, Tolvern wasn’t exactly sure how this war would end. How did you negotiate a surrender from an enemy who had tried to reduce your people permanently to the Stone Age?

  Juliett and Lima had been pushing in the general direction of Rasputin, as if they wanted to revisit the site of their earlier defeat and make a last stand at the gas giant. The wreckage of Oscar and Foxtrot awaited, a harbinger of their ultimate fate. What’s more, that movement took them closer to Drake’s fresh forces, rather than farther away. Did the ghouls not understand?

  Tolvern had let herself get caught up with flights of fancy about how they were nearly at mop-up time when Juliett and Lima turned about and laid down a barrage of missiles. They sent dragoons, and if she hadn’t been so cautious in arranging her lines, the savagery of the attack might have blown a hole through her defenses.

  But she had all three battle cruisers positioned out front, along with several star wolves and three Punisher-class cruisers. It was enough firepower to hold the line while the rest of her ships came into play. She’d faced so many desperate struggles against these star fortresses that it was almost a shock to see the preponderance of firepower lined up on her side for once.

  It was Three Rooster that first spotted activity at the Heaven’s Gate jump. Held at the rear of the fleet while the other Singaporean ships focused their efforts on softening enemy armor, the war junk had been scanning Lenin for hidden forces, for surprise entries into the battle, and anything else that might throw a random element into the equation and disrupt a near-certain victory.

  A carrier and dragoons. Twenty minutes later, a second carrier. They didn’t pull away from jump, but remained close. Must be the whole rest of the fleet, then. If the fools had jumped in a couple of days ago the whole battle would have turned out differently, but it was too late now. The Alliance forces would be ready by the time they arrived.

  The Dreadnought-led fleet was still several hours away from Tolvern’s position, but close enough for video sent at light speed, and she composed a message. She let satisfaction show on her face, and injected a light tone.

  “I wouldn’t bother swinging through if I were you, Admiral. Hardly worth it at this point. But you might take your ships out to investigate the Heaven’s Gate jump. Could be some more ghouls need a whipping and, well, I’d hate to deprive you of the pleasure. I’ll come see if you need a hand once I’ve finished mopping up around here.”

  The message was barely underway when Smythe warned that something big had come through from Heaven’s Gate. A third carrier, then. Not unexpected. Most likely, all six would be through soon enough.

  No, bigger than that, Smythe said with a frown. Something . . . well, he didn’t know what, but much bigger than a star fortress.

  Tolvern felt a nervous tickle. “I shouldn’t have sent that message. Blast it all, I got cocky. Keep hitting it with sensors—let’s know what kind of ship we’re dealing with.”

  A super carrier of some kind, she thought. It would be to the regular carriers what Dreadnought was to the battle cruisers. The allies should still win that fight with as much firepower as they’d brought to the system, but things might get dicey, depending on the capabilities of the new ship. How much bigger? she wondered.

  More worrying still, Juliett and Lima had led her fleet away from an easy escape through the jump points into Moscow, and the newcomers could move in either direction and cut them off. The general and the admiral could still turn around and wing it out of here with Dreadnought and the rest, but there was no way the battle cruiser-led fleet could make that sort of move. Not without fighting their way clear.

  Her best bet was to take down these last two star fortresses before the enemy got its reinforcements. Let the rest of the situation resolve itself.

  Tolvern had kept her fleet at arm’s length from Juliett and Lima, content to take them down slowly and preserve her own forces, but there was now greater urgency to the situation. She organized a torpedo boat run, had her war junks concentrate energy beams on Juliett, and checked to see if Citadel had her plasma ejector recharged. Fox said his systems were good to go.

  “Getting a good scan of the newcomers now,” Smythe said, still concentrating on the Heaven’s Gate jump. “Any moment and . . .”

  The tech officer jolted to his feet and pushed away from the tech console. He staggered backward two steps and put his hands behind his head while he stared at his screen.

  “What’s the matter over there?” Capp demanded. “You look like you’ve seen a . . . well, what is it, mate?”

  Smythe tapped his console. The main screen shifted away from battle, from the movement of warships, the flash of explosions, and the missiles racing back and forth between the Alliance and Adjudicator fleets.

  Instead, it showed the position around the jump point, coming into greater resolution with every passing second. Two star fortresses maneuvered to open a space between them for the newcomer. It dwarfed them, a long, squid-like form that stretched for miles if you counted the . . . what were those? Appendages? Suddenly, Tolvern knew what she was staring at.

  It was a star leviathan.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Drake had just angled his task force toward the jump point when the fleet com exploded with chatter. He was roughly nineteen million miles distant from Tolvern’s forces, and the information was nearly two minutes old by the time it reached him.

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing at first. A star leviathan? Here?

  Drysdale scanned the jump point with Vigilant’s own instruments to verify the claim. Even as the data came in, unambiguous, Drake found himself doubting. It was something else, a trick of some kind. Like how the enemy supposedly collapsed jump points, or the Scandian ability to project ghost images of their ships across the system.

  Lieutenant Pearson voiced a similar doubt. “A s
tar leviathan? What are the odds?”

  “Why shouldn’t one be here?” Hashemi asked. He was working the tech console with Drysdale.

  “Everyone is convinced,” Drysdale said. “It’s not just us. The Singaporeans, too.”

  Pearson shook her head. “Yeah, but . . . they’re so rare. And it came through the jump. It wasn’t here before. And now, right when we’re about to win the battle? It’s too much of a coincidence to believe.”

  The monsters of the deep were part organic, part mechanical. And ancient—naval forces had come across bits of tentacle that seemed to have drifted in the void for millions of years. Brockett thought they’d been created as recyclers who kept the space lanes clean. Then, when their creator species went extinct, they’d evolved into something else. Independent organisms.

  When a leviathan entered a system, there was nothing to do but hunker down and wait it out. Fortunately, they stayed out of gravity wells as a general rule, but they might devour an entire mining colony in space. Equipment, reactors, fissionables—anything hot drew them. Finally, when sated, they would bury themselves in an asteroid or fire their ventral engines to retreat beyond the limits of the system, there to go dormant, molt, and spawn.

  You couldn’t destroy them with force of arms; missiles and torpedoes only attracted them. When a ship drew too near, it fired spore cannons that enveloped and destroyed engines. Tentacles drew in its victims to consume them. Drake had witnessed an entire Apex harvester ship disappear down a leviathan’s maw.

  General Mose Dryz called from Dreadnought. The tall Hroom looked proud with the iron circlet above his brow and a white cloak with emerald threads hanging lightly on his shoulders. Humans and Hroom moved back and forth behind him, while he remained stiff and solemn on the bridge.

  “Admiral James Drake, we have a grave problem.”

  “I’m not convinced it’s real, General. More likely a trick, a gambit to throw us off. Perhaps save Juliett and Lima so they can gather their forces and fall back to Heaven’s Gate.”

  An uncertain hum sounded from deep in Mose Dryz’s throat. “I will admit that I am continually baffled by deceptive maneuvers. That is not a Hroom strength, and never will be. And yet, why are the star fortresses remaining in conjunction with the jump point? There are three now, and they seem to be attempting to hold the beast in place.”

  Drake didn’t like to put the general on hold. Mose Dryz, acknowledging Drake’s leadership at the head of the Admiralty, would wait with endless patience for him to return, and more than once some emergency or other had distracted him and left the general dangling for an extended period of time. But Drake needed more time to sort out the situation, so he put the Hroom commander onto a side channel with Pearson.

  Soon, it became clear that Mose Dryz had made an accurate assessment of the situation. A fourth enemy carrier jumped, then a fifth. Finally, number six. As the star fortresses recovered from the jump, they formed a diamond pattern around the leviathan. Alliance ships were hitting the space from multiple angles with multiple kinds of sensors, and the resolution improved minute by minute.

  The thing was clearly a leviathan, and in its feeding state, too, with tentacles unraveled and trailing for miles. Violet plasma vented from its nozzle. And somehow, the ghouls were commanding it. They’d taken control of its mind—whatever kind of mind it possessed, anyway—and maneuvered it at will much as they’d done with the human slaves and the gray-skinned troglodyte creatures that had launched suicide attacks on marines and mech raiders.

  “The general has an idea, sir,” Pearson said.

  “Put him back on the big screen.” Drake nodded an acknowledgment as his counterpart reappeared. “Your plan, General?”

  “It is apparent that we must flee this system—we cannot defeat a star leviathan.”

  “It would be nice to have an escape route—we’re agreed there. But we’re out of position. As it is now, the leviathan can push toward either of the Moscow jumps and block our escape.”

  “We have arrived with a powerful fleet, James Drake, and many of our ships can travel faster than a leviathan. We send the slower ones—sloops, torpedo boats, destroyers, war junks, and missile frigates—to rendezvous with Jess Tolvern’s fleet. The rest of us come at the creature and engage it in battle.”

  Drake couldn’t help himself. “Engage it in battle? Are you mad, sir?”

  “Perhaps I am.” An amused whistle sounded through his nose slits. “I am a Hroom general commanding the most powerful ship in the Royal Navy. My traditional enemy. If nothing else, the gods have a curious sense of humor, do they not?”

  Drake couldn’t help but smile. “So we feint an attack, draw the monster’s attention, and let the others escape? Then we lead it on a merry chase and jump out once we’ve managed to gain separation? The Adjudicators are controlling the thing—why wouldn’t they simply ignore us and move to cut off Tolvern’s slower forces?”

  “I have been observing, and it seems that the enemy control is imperfect. All six carriers are in precise position, and the creature is sending out tentacles to taste and probe. I believe, James Drake, that if we present it with an enticing target, it will . . . how would you say in English? Slip its leash and come after us.”

  Drake stared back, finally understanding what the general was getting at.

  #

  This wasn’t the first time the Royal Navy had faced a star leviathan, or even that a ship named Vigilant had faced one. It wasn’t even the first time they’d purposefully tried to attract a leviathan’s attention. Drake’s old friend Nigel Rutherford had used a diversion to get past one of the lurking monsters. He’d drawn its attention, then dropped it into a mining colony so he could make good his escape.

  If the enemy weren’t controlling the thing, he’d be tempted to try the same strategy here. Fire a few salvos, let it chase, then lure it toward Juliett and Lima. The wounded star fortresses would be a good meal, maybe enough to send it into a dormant state.

  “How are we going to fight it, Captain?” Pearson said. “Fire our cannons and hope for the best?”

  He shook his head. “Even a full broadside from Dreadnought would barely tickle the thing. Add Vigilant and the rest, and we might succeed in annoying it. Maybe we could knock through a few tentacles, but even then . . .”

  “But missiles and torpedoes just feed it,” she said. “Even the big stuff.”

  “Exactly right. Which is why we’re going to fire nuclear torpedoes.”

  “That’s our plan, to fire nukes and make it hungry?”

  “Fire and run and hope we only lose a few ships. Hope the ghouls don’t have full control and it chases us. Anyone who doesn’t get caught and eaten escapes to fight another day.”

  Not only Pearson, but the rest of the officers on Vigilant’s bridge were staring at him. The same question he’d asked the general was on their faces now.

  Are you mad, sir?

  Not mad, only desperate. They’d won a victory here, six star fortresses down and dozens of dragoons obliterated. Two more carriers had suffered serious damage, and would have shared the fate of their companions if the arrival of the leviathan hadn’t sent the three battle cruisers and their support vehicles scurrying for safety.

  Led by those battle cruisers, and augmented by a fresh collection of ships from Drake and Mose Dryz’s forces, Tolvern’s fleet by itself was one of the largest ever assembled, yet still not powerful enough to fight a single star leviathan. It fell on Drake to delay the creature with Dreadnought, four light cruisers, five star wolves, and three corvettes.

  The leviathan wasn’t alone, either. As Drake brought his ships on an intercept course, the six star fortresses leading the monster began to fire long-range missiles. Two of the six were in the databases already—Alpha and Golf—but the other four were unknown. The harrowing thought occurred to Drake that there might be numerous other Adjudicator fleets out there, together with star fortresses, dragoons, and possibly even star leviathans.

 
No, he couldn’t believe it. Not the leviathan part. They’d seen no evidence of that before, heard nothing from the rescued survivors of Sevastopol and Novosibirsk. This, whatever it was, was new or at least a final contingency on the part of the Adjudicators. He had to believe as much or give up their hopes as lost.

  Each of the star fortresses shed six riders as Drake and the general approached. Three dozen dragoons broke away, or almost. One dragoon was sluggish maneuvering clear, and the leviathan rolled over and fired from the spore cannons around its mouth. Spores hit the dragoon and engulfed it in a thick, gelatinous substance.

  A tentacle snaked out, stretching for miles, and snared the ship. The dragoon got its engines working and tried to break free, then tried to blast through the tentacle when that didn’t work, but it was too late. The leviathan opened its maw and shoved the ship down like it was a marshmallow. It closed its mouth and the dragoon vanished without so much as a belch of plasma.

  Low cheers sounded across Vigilant’s bridge to see one of the enemy’s own go down. Drake didn’t have any time to gape at the leviathan, not with the surviving dragoons forming ranks and charging.

  “Whatever the ghouls are doing, they don’t have full control of the beast,” he said. “That means the dragoons are as vulnerable as we are. I want them hemmed in, pressed against the leviathan. That should take some heat off Dreadnought.”

  The general continued to charge toward the star leviathan, which was moving to block Tolvern’s path to one of the Moscow jump points. Drake took Vigilant and led the other dozen ships in their reduced flotilla toward the massing dragoons, where he ordered a swift charge.

  The four cruisers were only slightly slower out of the blocks than the corvettes, and the Scandian ships had good acceleration, too, plus enough armor to absorb blows. They smashed the formation of dragoons and scattered them like deer before wolves. Vigilant and Peerless trapped a dragoon between them, cracked its armor from both sides with a pair of devastating broadsides, and left it a bleeding corpse while they looked for another victim.