Finest Hour (The Exiled Fleet Book 3)

by Richard Fox

  A hunter raised a rifle at Thorvald, but Tiberian beat the barrel to one side.

  Thorvald opened his mouth and spat out a mass of blood. His tongue had a decent slice across the front side, and he felt a loose tooth wedge between his cheek and jaw.

  The Daegon shuttle roared away.

  Thorvald crawled over on his hands and knees to his broken visor and slapped it against his armor. It folded around the damaged piece.

  A Reichsmarine, bleeding from bullet strikes to the shoulder and thighs, came over and helped Thorvald up.

  “You dying, Genevan?” the Reichsmarine asked.

  “Hod ye.” Blood dribbled over his lips as he attempted to speak.

  “Your man’s over there.” The Reichsmarine pointed behind him.

  Two Reichsmarines, one with a white band with a red cross on one arm, knelt next to Bertram.

  “On three,” the medic said. “One…” The medic yanked the broken sword point out of Bertram’s chest and tossed it to one side.

  “Ah! You kraut-slurping, cow-paddy-eating, goose-stepping arseholes,” Bertram wheezed. “And liars!” he added as the medic patched up his chest.

  “You’re lucky you’re so fat,” the medic said. “You’d have a sucking chest wound if it weren’t for your padding.”

  Thorvald, one hand pressed into the wound beneath his chin, looked over the medic’s shoulder.

  “You hear that, Thorvald?” Bertram asked. “We’re both armor-plated.”

  Thorvald huffed through his nose and shook his head.

  “Where’s Salis and—” Bertram looked at the two Reichsmarines. “—and the other refugees? What did those Daegon bastards hit me with? I feel kind of good. Great, really. Someone give me a gun, I want to keep fighting.” He tried to sit up, but the medic forced him back down.

  “An adrenaline cocktail of some kind,” the medic said. “You’ll crash soon, and when that happens, you don’t want to be in a firefight.”

  “Salis?” Bertram asked as the medic ran a cauterizer laser across the puncture wound.

  Thorvald picked up Bertram’s jacket, removed by the medics, and plucked out a single Genevan armor plate.

  “What’s that? It…it must belong to Salis. She slipped it in there when I blacked out. Why?”

  Thorvald squeezed the plate between his fingers and a pulse of light emitted from the contact point. A line with an arrowhead shone off the plate, and Thorvald followed the point toward the river.

  “Oh.” Bertram got up, ignoring the cold and his wide belly exposed to the elements. “Oh, she put a tracker on me. But if the Daegon found it, then—”

  Thorvald shook his head and tapped the slate against the side of his helmet.

  “Genevan only…smart,” Bertram said. “Is there a transmitter in there for you to send her the all-clear?”

  Thorvald nodded.

  “All’s well, then. She in the water? I could fancy a swim, get that Daegon stench off me.” Bertram reached down to untie a boot, then froze. He swayed and tipped over.

  “Mister…Thorv…I think it wore…wore off,” Bertram said. The steward lay there, fingers still in the laces. The Reich medic pulled a small square off his belt and unfurled a foil blanket with a flick of his hand. He tucked it around Bertram then touched the bottom of his helmet.

  “Let me look at you,” the medic said. Thorvald took his hand away and tilted his chin up. Blood ran down his throat and over his chest.

  “Sorry we couldn’t take out the rest of the Daegon,” the medic said as he sprayed the wound with an antiseptic mist. “The hunters put up more of a fight than we imagined. Lost some good Marines in the process.”

  Thorvald lifted a hand and put it on the medic’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, you did pretty damn well yourself.” The medic drew out a thin metal line from a spool. “This’ll hurt and you’ll look damn ugly until you get to surgery, but it’s the best I can do.”

  “Hurr,” Thorvald swallowed a glob of blood and looked down at the tracker. A single dot moved a fraction of an inch across the surface. He looked out over the icy river.

  “Hurr-ee.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Tolan looked over a railing to an open section of machinery aboard the Joaquim. Dieter had stripped down to his pants, and sweat covered his muscular back as he reached deep into the inner workings.

  “Are you done yet?” Tolan asked.

  “Fick deinen hund.” Dieter looked up and thrust a finger at Tolan. “You’re lucky I’m here. The next time you activated this stealth drive, you would have exploded into atoms. What have you done to this beautiful thing? Such elegance in design and you…” he paused to pick up a bit of slate-gray ribbon, “you used tape to fix it!”

  “Are you done yet?” Tolan took a sip from a bottle.

  “Come down here and I will fix it with your-your-your ass! I want more money,” Dieter said. “More for a tax against your insult to Reich technology.”

  “If I say yes, will that make you work faster?” Tolan sighed and then ducked as a nut whizzed past his head. “Fine! Fifty troys.”

  “Seibzig!”

  Tolan tapped on his fingertips, gave Dieter a thumbs-up, and then he left, the Reichsman cursing up a storm behind him.

  Tolan made his way back to the bridge, noting that much of the grime on the floors and walls had vanished. Geet was on his hands and knees just outside the door to the bridge, scrubbing off an old bloodstain that Tolan wasn’t exactly sure who had provided.

  “Not bad.” Tolan reached behind Geet’s ear and flashed a small black disk with a bit of sleight of hand. “Got the bomb off you. You’re safe now.”

  Geet slapped the back of his head and neck in a near panic, then his eyes narrowed. “Hey…wait a minute.”

  Tolan shut the door to the bridge behind him, then unwrapped the chocolate that had substituted for the “bomb” and ate it. The bridge smelled faintly of lemon and the pile of trash below the console was gone.

  “I should’ve hired him years ago. This is great,” Tolan said.

  He tapped a console to check the ship’s docking-fee balance and received an error message. He looked up and out the bridge’s windows. The nose of his ship faced the force field between the dock and void, but he could see the cockpits of other ships to either side of him. The crews on every bridge were gesturing wildly at each other, more agitated than anyone had any right to be at the same time.

  “Loussan,” Tolan said into the conn, “think we’ve got a problem. Need you up here.”

  Tolan wired entirely too much money to the customs station, but the boot—the hydraulic grips on his ship—didn’t budge.

  A mechanical arm swung off the boot and locked next to his cockpit. A blank screen flipped over, then flashed with static.

  NOVIS REGIRAY emerged from the noise on the screen, then hardened into plain text.

  “Loussan!” Tolan yelled over his shoulder and the pirate captain barreled onto the bridge.

  “That doesn’t look good,” he said, elbowing Tolan to one side and working the controls. “The central system is off-line. The safety protocols should release the boot but they’re—”

  “Get Dieter and use the plasma torches to cut us free,” Tolan said. “Time to skip town.”

  “Fine by me.” Loussan turned to go, but stopped when a flash of light cast his shadow across the bulkhead. He stopped and heard Tolan sit hard in the command seat.

  “Well…shit,” Tolan said.

  Beyond the force field, a Daegon fleet hung in the void, hundreds of their smaller ships forming a loose cloud around three giant battleships.

  One merchant vessel—the boot clamps still on the ship but the heat of freshly cut metal glowing from the shorn edges—slipped out of the docks. Tolan shook his head as it accelerated slowly and a white bolt of energy from a Daegon ship destroyed the merchant vessel without warning.

  NOVIS REGIRAY flashed several times on the screen outside the bridge, then vanished.

  �
�My God, I’ve never seen such a fleet,” Loussan said.

  “I have.” Tolan formed a steeple with his fingers beneath his chin. “Didn’t end well for the planet where I saw it.”

  “What is going—” Dieter rushed onto the bridge and froze in the doorway. Geet tried to jump up and peek over his shoulder.

  “YOU WILL BE RULED. HOLD POSITION OR BE DESTROYED” scrolled by on the screen.

  In the void, drop pods fell from the ships and streaked toward Concord.

  “What do we do?” Dieter asked.

  “Are the stealth drives fixed?” Tolan asked.

  “So many ships…” Dieter put a hand over his mouth.

  Tolan threw a half-empty plastic water bottle at Dieter and hit the bulkhead. “The stealth drives! Sooner I have answers, the sooner we can make an informed decision and survive!”

  “Hours,” Dieter stammered. “I need hours.”

  “You have the new IFF loaded?” Tolan asked Loussan.

  “Yes…Coventry registry just like you asked.” Loussan swallowed hard.

  “Decent, at least we won’t stick out like a sore thumb if the Daegon are looking for the Joaquim,” Tolan said. “Dieter, get back to work.”

  “Just ‘get back to work’? That’s your plan?” the Reichsman asked.

  “That the Daegon didn’t blow this fleabag to pieces the second they arrived was a miracle.” Tolan waved at the fleet, which was taking fire from the ground. Several of the smaller ships had taken damage and were spiraling down the gravity well.

  Salvos flashed from the attacking fleet and Tolan looked away.

  “They want this station for some reason,” the spy said. “They just might want all the ships aboard it too. We’re not ready to make a break for it, so it’s best we do get ready while we have the time…and see if another path presents itself.”

  “This is that famed Albion bravery?” Loussan asked. “I expected better from you jackboots.”

  “I’m an intelligence professional,” Tolan said, rolling his shoulders forward. “That makes me a coward and an opportunist doing everything I can to avoid being caught. You pirates should appreciate that. Now, let’s…let’s do our best to act like just another tramp ship caught in a war zone. You get all that, Geet?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said from behind Dieter.

  “Exactly. That’s the exact attitude we all need to have when the Daegon come looking for us. So let’s everyone get back to work.” He took a small red gummy candy from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. “Chop, chop, boys.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Salis moved slowly through the river, each step testing her footing as she fought the current like it was a gale wind. The timer still gave her and Aidan several more minutes of air supply, more if she cut back her oxygen mix.

  She went to all fours as she reached the bank, then lifted her head up and out of the water just enough to peek over the surface.

  +Grynau welcomes me.+ Her AI put a glow on a nearby building for her.

  Then it is safe, Salis emerged from the river, her plates flexing like scales to expel water. The back of her helmet puffed as the air tanks refilled. She marched up frost solid soil to the remains of a school.

  Reichsmarines came out of the building and she stopped, reaching for a weapon on her back hat was long gone.

  Thorvald and Bertram—the same foil blanket wrapped around his shoulders—came out onto a playground. Salis’ heart skipped a beat to see the two, and she felt an involuntary smile cross her face.

  She went to one knee and the cocoon opened up and she helped Aidan to the ground.

  “Mr. Berty!” Aidan rushed into the steward’s arms. “Where did you go?”

  “For a bit of a swim, young master,” Bertram said. “All’s well…soon as my teeth stop vibrating and this double vision goes away, that is.”

  “Who’re the scary men?” Aidan hugged Bertram and slunk between his arms. Salis made the conscious effort not to take the slight personally.

  “They’re from the Reich,” Bertram said. “And they’re here to help, they keep saying. I don’t want to believe it, but they’ve not sold me into slavery yet.”

  Thorvald smacked Bertram on the shoulder.

  “Yes. I said ‘yet.’”

  Thorvald knelt next to Aidan and pointed to a bloody patch on the boy’s pants.

  “Minor abrasion.” Salis removed her helmet and slapped the side, knocking frost away. “Treated and disinfected. What happened to you?”

  “Tiberian,” Thorvald sent the sub-vocalization from his armor to hers. He touched his swelling jaw and winced. “I followed the beacon you put on the steward, but the Daegon got to him first. Fight ensued.”

  “You kill him?”

  “We’re not assassins, Salis, we’re guardians. That being said…I didn’t kill him this time. The commodore has the fight in orbit under control, and he’s got the Daegon on the run. Extraction’s on the way down. We’re due back on the Orion soon as possible.”

  “Fine by me.” She put her helmet back on. “I’ve had enough of this planet.”

  Thorvald touched the bloody stain on Aidan’s leg, and a small line of lights lit up on his arm and her HUD flickered.

  “What did you do?” She touched the side of her helmet. “My AI just took a data influx from yours.”

  “Files.” Thorvald canted his head slightly. “DNA contact opened a number of sequestered data sources…my AI kept them hidden as need-to-know because of how I inherited this suit back on Albion…so much data.”

  “There’s still blackouts for me.” She ran her finger tips up and down through the air, scanning data. “What do you have?”

  Thorvald popped to his feet so suddenly, the Reichsmarines took cover, searching for threats.

  “I have the organ donor database open. Prince Aidan has….he has a close blood relative aboard the fleet,” Thorvald said. “Same father. Different mother.”

  “How is that possible?” Salis asked. “How would someone not know…not know that King Randolph is their father?”

  “Because they were never told,” Thorvald said. “Commodore Gage needs to know about this.”

  “What will he do with the relative? He or she must be older than Aidan…that would mean a different Crown Prince, right?”

  “Salis, you don’t understand. Commodore Gage is the blood relative. He’s Prince Aidan’s half-brother.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Gage watched as a Reich shuttle came through the force field of the Orion’s only functioning landing bay and settled down on three hydraulic gears. Typhoons from Cobra squadron settled down further away.

  The ramp of the Reich shuttle lowered, and Prince Aidan came down, flanked by Thorvald and Salis. Bertram limped behind them.

  Aidan had a sour expression as he walked up to Gage. The boy put his hands on his hips and his bottom lip began to quiver.

  “I-I-I was scared.” Aidan flung his arms around Gage’s legs and Gage hugged the boy.

  “I know, my Prince, and you were right to be scared. It was a horrible situation…and I’m sorry,” Gage said.

  “Did you send the bad ones?” Aidan asked.

  “No, but I was still wrong to send you away. This ship…the entire Fleet, it may be better for you here,” Gage said.

  Aidan thrust a finger at Salis.

  “She lost my Tigey!”

  “It was the best tactical decision at the time,” she said. “The Daegon put a tracker in it.”

  “Well done to you both,” Gage said to the Genevans. “Thorvald…what happened to you? Your face.”

  Thorvald shrugged.

  “The scars might make him prettier, but he needs to have his tongue and jaw reconstructed.” Salis touched the armor on the back of her head, then motioned to Thorvald’s neck. “I can speak for him. And if we may, sire,” she glanced down at Aidan, “we need a word.”

  “Later.” Gage stepped around them and clasped Bertram by the shoulders. “B
ertram…you look awful.”

  “I died,” Bertram frowned, “but I got better. Begging your pardon, sire. But given my actions on the planet, I’d like to ask a small boon of you.”

  “You may ask.” Gage’s brow furrowed and he looked at Salis, who nodded.

  “A shower, sire. A long, hot shower. I need ration chits from you, Emma—who owes me—and Salis. Maybe yours too, by your leave.”

  “See Doctor Seaver first,” Gage said. “Thorvald as well. Salis will get Aidan resituated.”

  Gage waited for them to leave, then went to the bottom of the shuttle ramp.

  “I’m impressed,” Klaven said as he tromped down, stopping short of setting foot on the Orion’s deck. He used the ramp to keep his slightly higher than Gage’s. “I never thought I’d see the inside of an Albion ship. Looks tremendous, even with all the damage.”

  “You’ve permission to come aboard,” Gage said.

  “Best not,” Klaven said. “I’m not here, Commodore, not officially. And I won’t ask for your grace to step foot on your deck. We Reich have our own foibles, and those in line for the throne must never appear to kneel to another sovereign. Even if that sovereign is but a boy.”

  “At least I can thank you in person.” Gage held out a hand, and Klaven grasped him by the forearm. Gage returned the hold and they shook. “The timing of your intervention was…interesting.”

  “Well, I couldn’t very well join in the fight until after the Daegon murdered my ambassador, now, could I?” Klaven asked.

  “You had me change course so you could get a flank shot on their battleships,” Gage said.

  “Fortuitous. I’ll leave an offering at the Shrine of Saint Siegfried on New Prussia once I get home.” Klaven glanced around, a bit nervous.

  “That where you’re off to now?” Gage asked.

  “When the Daegon ran out of the system with their tails between their legs, they used a slip space frequency that we were able to capture. It opened up the ley lines to several nearby systems…the Castle Itter will weigh anchor for Lantau. The League’s meeting there. I’m reasonably certain it hasn’t fallen to the Daegon. Yet.”