by Isaac Hooke
Assuming Earth didn’t do anything to mess up the alliance.
When he reached realtime communications range, he had Xander loop in Jason, Risilan, Eric, Hephaestus, Tanis, and Jacobs. Their avatars appeared on the bridge.
“It’s getting crowded in here,” Medeia commented.
With a thought, Jain expanded the bridge, giving everyone more room.
“Well, you’ve brought some new friends,” Hephaestus commented.
“Just a few,” Jain agreed. “Tanis, Jacobs, Hephaestus, meet Queen Risilan, Central of the Tyrnari. Risilan, this is Admiral Tanis, and his second in command, Jacobs, commanders of the Paladins of Earth. And this here is Hephaestus, leader of the Mimic faction.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Risilan said.
“The pleasure is mine.” Hephaestus’ eyes twinkled mischievously as he bent over and kissed her hand. The queen seemed unimpressed. She glanced at Jason to gauge his reaction, but he affected an air of unconcern.
“How did it go in Halvert?” Jain asked when Hephaestus released her.
Tanis was the one who answered. “When the Vaernastians jammed the outgoing rift so quickly, we realized they had to be on the surface of the Halvert colony, and eventually found the jamming ships hidden in a mountain range not far from the main city.”
“Good job,” Jain said.
“I have a question,” Jason said.
All eyes turned to him.
“I’m curious, how is the bioweapon clean up going on Earth?” Jason asked, seeming a little uncomfortable suddenly. “Now that we’ve shut down the rifts from the Link staging planets…”
“It’s going well,” Tanis said. “There are only a few pockets of resistance left in the major cities. We should have them cleared out within the week.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Jason said. “It feels good to have played a part in stopping that.”
“Yes, thank you again,” Tanis said. “Humanity is in your debt.”
“What about those bioweapons the Link deployed outside the major cities?” Eric asked.
“Those will take longer to clean up of course,” Tanis said. “It will probably take us a few years before we get them all. Why, you looking to volunteer?”
“Nope,” Eric said, and left it at that.
“So, you got my earlier message I presume?” Jain asked the admiral. “Otherwise you would have been sending out frantic missives when you saw the two alien fleets arriving.”
“I received it,” Tanis confirmed.
“So are you ready to take the fight to the enemy?” Jain said, unable to hold back an eager smile.
Tanis hesitated. “About that…”
“Oh, no,” Eric said. “Here we go. After all that trouble, he’s going to tell us that the humans and Mind Refurbs of Earth have changed their minds.”
Tanis raised his palms defensively. “I appreciate what you’ve done, bringing in reinforcements from our allies and all. And by all rights, the president, Central Command, his defense secretary, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they should all agree that now is the time to authorize a strike against a Link homeworld. But…”
“Here it comes,” Eric said.
“The president is getting cold feet,” Tanis said.
“But we’ve brought them a war fleet!” Jain could have thrown up his arms. First Risilan didn’t want to fight, and now Earth.
Nothing’s ever easy, he reminded himself.
“Talk to him, not me,” Tanis said. “Here, I’ll see if I can get him on the line.”
A moment later President Wilcox appeared. Jain’s time sense instantly accelerated—the president had transmitted a rate increase. No doubt Wilcox had been in the middle of a meeting of some kind, and had momentarily interrupted it to join them.
Jain introduced Risilan, and Wilcox shook her hand: at least he had the decency not to kiss it.
The president released her, and then ran his gaze from face to face. “Well, judging from the hostility in your faces, I presume Tanis has told you my position?”
“You can’t back down now,” Jain said. “Not when we’re so close to turning the tide against the Link.”
The president smiled sadly. “I appreciate everything you’ve done. Gathering up these two races, and forming an alliance in the name of Earth. But, here’s the thing: you did all of this without consulting me. If you had, I would have told you that we weren’t ready to fight the Link, even with allies. That any ships you did bring, I’d use to protect Earth from the next attack.”
“Protect Earth? We didn’t agree to this.” Risilan glanced at Jason. “The terms were that we would begin systematically attacking Link homeworlds, starting with the top, most influential members, and working our way down until the entire empire surrendered. If this is not what you intend, I’m pulling out.”
“That’s right,” Eric said. “I’m going to have to pull out the Banthar too, if that’s the case, as much as I’d like to protect Earth. Because you see, my world needs to be defended just as urgently as your planet does.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Wilcox said. “Other than, I’m sorry.”
“I was expecting some resistance,” Jain said. “Though not this much, considering the vibes I got from Tanis.” He glanced at the admiral, who wore a guilty expression, then returned his attention to the president. “Look. We’ve got hard data… we’ve sent probes to all the different Link systems, including those where they’re engaged with the Fresnal. The Link are weak. We have to strike now. We have a good chance of winning this if we do. Here, have a look.”
He transmitted the data the probes had recorded to Jacobs, Tanis and the president. They accepted.
“Pay particular attention to the Fresnal numbers on the Link-Fresnal front,” Jain said. “The Link are weak, but the Fresnal are even weaker. If we don’t intercede, the Fresnal will lose. And when that happens, the Link will be free to turn their malevolent gaze fully upon humanity.
The eyes of Tanis, Jacobs, and Wilcox defocused. They were very likely accelerating their time senses even further to process what he had sent.
Wilcox finally glanced at him. “How recent is this data?”
“A couple of days old,” Jain said.
“Incredible,” the president said. “I would have expected their numbers to be at least twice this.”
“Now do you understand what I mean when I say we stand a chance?” Jain asked.
“They’re probably harboring more ships on staging planets we don’t know about,” Jacobs said. “And they likely have shipyards we haven’t discovered yet, too.”
“It’s possible,” Jain agreed.
“I’ve been continually sending probes to systems bordering the Link territories, and I haven’t found anything,” Eric said.
“If I were part of the Link, I’d make sure my staging planets were as far away from my territory as possible,” Jacobs said. “To mislead prying eyes like yours.”
“If they had more ships ready for war, they would have sent them by now,” Jain insisted. “We’d be fighting them off at this very moment. Have you seen any since we left this system?”
“No,” Wilcox admitted.
“There you go,” Jain said.
“Given this new information,” the president said. “I’ll have to consult with my advisors, and Central Command. I can’t guarantee you that we’re going to go to war. But I have to say, you make a fairly good argument. If we want to strike, now definitely seems like the time.”
With that, Wilcox disconnected.
Jain glanced at Eric after the president had gone. “It was a good thing we collected that data.”
“Yeah,” Eric said. “It helped convince a queen. And now it’ll help sway a president.”
“Or turn him away from us,” Jacobs said. “Because like I told you, the data feels incomplete to me.”
“Maybe it is,” Jain said. “Maybe not. But all I know is, there will never be any better time to attack than this. If we hold off,
and wait until years down the road when we finally feel ‘ready,’ after we’ve rebuilt our fleet and added hundreds more to our numbers, I guarantee you, by the time we reach a Link homeworld, we’ll face thousands.”
“We might already face thousands,” Jacobs said. “But hey, what do I know? I’m just a Mind Refurb.”
25
Eric emerged in the target system.
A few hours ago, the president had finally given the fleet permission to attack. Wilcox had agreed with their assessment: they’d never have a better opportunity to turn the tide in this war than now.
Defense Secretary Anderson had once said he didn’t want to engage in a fight that would last for decades, but the truth was, in a sense humanity had already been fighting for over a hundred years: the Link and their member species had been a threat to Earth since that first invasion a century ago.
That the Link hadn’t yet conquered Earth fully was due to the distraction of the Fresnal; their protracted war had prevented Earth from being the focus of attention all this time. But if the Fresnal lost, which seemed inevitable given the data Eric had gathered from the Link-Fresnal front, then humanity would fall shortly thereafter.
It was ironic: while the Fresnal had saved humanity, they were also partially responsible for the original invasion. The bioweapons quota the Link had enforced upon its member races to feed the demands of the war was what had spurred the Banthar into invading Earth the first time, all those years ago.
If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here right now.
He had to smile at that thought. He would have stayed inside a Cicada war machine, roaming the mountains of the Caucasus for the rest of his days, or until the military decided to retire him. Which meant turning him off.
Ahead, the target was a super-Earth, home to a race known as the Zanefyne. Hephaestus had suggested the world, because the Zanefyne were one of the original founding members, and thus stood relatively high in the Link Empire. Their world was also home to the Link High Command, where orders from the other founding members were gathered and dispatched to the rest of the empire. If they could seize the High Command, in theory, they could sow chaos among the Link members, but in practice, the empire would probably reroute their messaging traffic to a different world.
Either way, it was the perfect world to target, as an attack here was equivalent to a strike at the heart of their empire. It also had the least number of orbital defenses. There were only a few warships in orbit, but it was expected that more would jump in when the fighting started.
Eric kept his eye on the tactical display. Ahead, ships began to reposition above the Link homeworld, moving to protect the planet with the defense platforms.
“We’ve been spotted,” Tanis announced over the comm.
“I figured that,” Eric said.
“Looks like they’ve got jammers,” Jain sent.
Eric tried to create a rift. Didn’t work.
They were trapped in the system.
But that wasn’t unexpected.
The first few hours passed rather uneventfully, with the Banthar, Tyrnari, Mimic, Paladin, and Void Warrior fleets traveling to the rendezvous point. When the Alliance members had all arrived, they headed as one unified mass toward the target world. The Mimic ships all cloaked. Meanwhile, the Banthar and Tyrnari doubled up in an effort to hide their numbers.
“I’m detecting rifts opening on a massive scale,” Dee said.
Eric glanced at his overhead map. Rifts were indeed appearing in random locations throughout the system. Ships began to emerge.
And more ships. There were types out there Eric had never encountered before.
“They keep coming!” Bambi said over the comm from her own starship. “So, you were saying the Link are spread thin, huh? They don’t look too ‘spread thin’ at the moment…”
“We expected them to send reinforcements,” Eric said. Just not this many.
The rifts finally closed.
When the fleets had first entered the system, the Alliance had outnumbered the enemy three to one. But now they were the ones outnumbered. Not by much, true, but still, the battle wasn’t going to be easy.
I hate this, he tried telling himself. Wars. Space combat. Conquering homeworlds…
Who was he kidding?
He lived for this.
The fleet came within weapons range.
“Bolt Eaters, engage,” Eric said. He couldn’t help the grim smile that formed on his face as he opened fire.
To be continued…
I hope you enjoyed The Alliance. Book 3 in the AI Empire series, The Empire, will be available next week (or sooner). Click the link below to be notified when the book comes out, or to discover other novels in the Mind Refurb universe that you might have missed.
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Afterword
Please help spread the word about AI Empire 2 - The Alliance by leaving a one or two sentence review. The number of reviews an ebook receives has a big impact on how well it does, so if you liked this story I'd REALLY appreciate it if you left a quick review. Anything will do, even one or two lines.
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About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Isaac Hooke holds a degree in engineering physics, though his more unusual inventions remain fictive at this time. He is an avid hiker, cyclist, and photographer who sometimes resides in Edmonton, Alberta.
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Acknowledgments
I’d also like to thank my knowledgeable beta readers and advanced reviewers who helped smooth out the rough edges of the prerelease manuscript: Nicole P., Lisa G., Chris S., Jerry P., Amy B., Karen J, Jeremy G., Doug B., Jenny O., Bryan O., Gary F., Clay, Noel, Anton, Spencer, Norman, and Trudi.
Without you all, this novel would have typos, continuity errors, and excessive lapses in realism. Thank you for helping me make this the best novel possible, and thank you for leaving the early reviews that help new readers find my books.
And of course I’d be remiss if I didn't thank my dear mother, father, and brothers, whose wisdom and insights have always guided me when the alliance seemed broken, and I was only two strokes from victory.
— Isaac Hooke
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