The Liberty Fleet Trilogy (War of Alien Aggression, box set two)

by A. D. Bloom

  Ram swung the cage door closed to give them some modicum of privacy. "What is it?"

  "Expensive," the company man said. "It will be up to you to determine if it was worth it."

  Cyning wasn't talking about the booze. "Looks worth it to me," he said.

  "Yes, well." Cyning grabbed the bottle by the neck and handed it to Ram. "We'll see how you like the taste."

  "Don't keep me in suspense, Cyning. I know you're here to gloat over something."

  The company man smiled. "Yes, quite. As you predicted, the Board of Directors has sided with you in victory. Defending the Hive Regent against attack was now their idea all along. A scapegoat has been found and fired. You'll be relieved, no doubt, to know that the Secretary General's Office is ordering the UN Naval Tribunal that was convened to hang Chun Ye Men to disband. They might still kill him later, but not yet. They'll even let him keep the ship."

  "You didn't come here to tell me good news, Mr. Cyning. Why haven't we been able to schedule a breaching ship to take us home for repair?"

  "You're not going home, Commodore Devlin. Not for now. There won't be any repair for Hardway in the Staas Company Yards. Just as there will be no repairs for that ridiculous monstrosity of an escort carrier you and the Shediri have concocted."

  "Half my bays are burned out. I've got a third of my guns. My air group is depleted."

  "Yes," the company man said. "Your ship is battered. And it will remain that way and remain at Shedir where you can't cause any more deviations from the agreed upon course of events. You see, as long as you and Task Force Liberty win, the Board will be forced to keep backing you. They don't like having you in control. Denying you repair is the most sensible approach to making sure you and your heroics can't steer the company and the UN during the next critical phase of Earth's expansion."

  "What do you mean? What are they planning?"

  "After the other two Galleon class battleships are completed for the UN and the rest of the new carriers are ready - very soon, they tell me - we will go to the Ekkai homeworld and we will destroy the rest of the Ekkai fleet. After that, the punishment we deliver to their population should serve as an intimidating example of our retribution."

  "An example to whom?"

  "Other species, of course. You know the Imperium derives the bulk of its strength from colonial forces. If a species refuses to fight for them, then that species knows it will have to pay a heavy price. But we're going to the Ekkai homeworld to show all of them the price they'll pay for attacking us is the highest price they can possibly pay - all of them. We'll do to them what we did to the Squidies."

  "No. Humanity can't do this again."

  "Say what you like, Devlin. You won't be there. You'll be here at Shedir with a barely effective task force while a new fleet drives hard for the Ekkai homeworld to cleanse it of the Shediri's old enemies. The Hive Regent says she likes this idea. And you should know there's a lovely planet in the Ekkai's system with .35 gees and a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. It's a bit chilly off the equator and I've heard there's some natives, but it has water and all the things we like. The only sticky wicket holding back colonization is the Ekkai."

  "Not again," he said. "Don't do this."

  Before the company man left, Cyning turned at the door of the cage and said, "A company spybird spotted your wife and son on the surface with the Hive Regent's entourage. The Board can't presently murder you because you're a hero, Devlin, but if those two clones you've been harboring are meddling in affairs of state and working against our interests, they're very much fair game for our assassins. Do make sure they know it."

  SCS Hardway, sub-tower

  The visit came in the middle of Ram's first sleep in two days. Because it was his wife, Margo, the Marines outside allowed her into Ram's quarters. He woke from a dreamless sleep to the gnawing sound of her counter-surveillance devices on the bulkheads. After she dropped ice into a crystal tumbler and poured, Margo watched him in the mirror as she drank just like Matilda Witt had. "The Hive Regent is aware of your situation. She values your continued presence and defense of Shedir-4."

  He sat up. "I'm glad to hear that because it doesn't look like I can go anywhere."

  "Where you should go is on salvage operations to collect the wreckage from the battle and see what's left you might use. Then, return to the sixth planet - the gas giant. Go to the fourth moon," she said.

  "That's where the rebel Shediri orbital station is - Hive Hrt'ee."

  "Yes. Proceed there if you seek repairs. The Regent has negotiated a new understanding with Hrt'ee. Did you know they're sisters? Hrt'ee has agreed to give you whatever help she can." Margo turned square to face him then. As his eyes began to wander, he suddenly wished he'd married a less attractive woman.

  She walked to the edge of his bed and began to remove her exosuit.

  "You're staying? Here? With me?"

  "Of course I'm staying. I know Captain Sellis won't like it, but we have to keep up appearances. I'm still playing the part of your wife and we're still newlyweds. You don't want to make it look like I came all the way from the surface just to have a secret meeting now, do you?" As she crawled into his bed, he smelled the bugs' scent on her suit-liner. It was like almonds and sour laundry and he couldn't get it out of his nose.

  "Cyning knows who you and the boy are. Both of you." She only nodded grimly at that. "Why does he let you live if he knows?"

  It seemed to amuse her that he had to ask. "Cyning hasn't tried to kill Hank and I for the same reason one lets a man rot in a gulag instead of shooting him - one might need him. Cyning is dangerous. And you're not likely to need him." She actually winked then.

  "Why are you helping me? Or is this Kesik's idea?"

  "We can't go snuffing out other species willy-nilly, now can we? On our advice, the Regent will back you in secret and give you the support Staas Company refuses you."

  "What's in it for her?"

  "We're going to repair your ships as best we can and send you to the Ekkai's home system," Margo said. "You will arrive before the new Staas and UN fleets are completed and before the assault on the Ekkai homeworld begins. The only condition is that after you defeat the Ekkai, you will accept their surrender in the name of Hive Regent Kesik."

  He paused to make it seem he was thinking about it, but his decision had already been made.

  2166 - Devlin's War

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Epilogue

  1

  SCS Doxy

  Shedir System

  Human shouts mixed with bug whistles and clacks in Doxy's port-side hold. The Marines and Redsuits mimed killing roaches with spray cans and called out 'Hsssss...hssssss...kills bugs dead!'. The old insecticide jingle bounced off the Shediri's chitin shells.

  In response, the bugs beat their limbs against their thoraxes in unison and whined and clacked. What the Shediri chanted together translated to the bugs' name for a mostly hairless, pig-like mammal they farmed for protein. "They think they're scary when they chant that," Lucy Elan said.

  "They are scary when they chant that," said Garlan. "They mean to say we look like a meal."

  The Marines and redsuits in Doxy's hold surged at the bugs as they tried to drown the Shediri out, and the whole line of arthropods twitched forward a meter and locked arms, towering and swaying over the shouting Humans while their chitin jaws clacked.

  "Carnaby!" Garlan barked. "We're going to lose control of this madhouse if you don't take the reins right the hell now. Go! Go! You're on!"

  Carnaby strode out into the electrically charged and rapidly diminishing no-man's-land between the Humans and the Shediri, and in the space of a few springing steps, Garlan's XO puffed out his chest and lifted his arms high in the air and seemed to virtually double his s
ize to attract the crowd's attention. Carnaby knew how to handle a stage. "Welcome Humans, welcome Bugs!" he boomed as Shediri translators consulted the conceptual language matrix and echoed his words in mechanized chorus. "This is the match-up you've all been waiting for! Human champion vs. Bug champion!"

  The Human crowd drowned him out with their cheers, and a second later, the Shediri got their translation and cheered too, beating their thoraxes with four or six arms depending on the bug. The Shediri didn't get gambling for money, but everyone here understood the concepts of 'pride' and 'face' and 'bragging rights'.

  "In one corner..." Carnaby searched the human crowd until it parted and Lucy Elan's boxing champion stepped forward, already dancing on the balls of his feet. "In one corner AAFA Heavyweight and two-time Privateer boxing champion...Company Marine Sergeant Bolo Kang! Kang!" Bolo jabbed twice with his left just to display some speed and all Garlan saw was blur. When the fighter's hands were still again, Garlan could see the dark callouses on the top two knuckles of each of his fists. Those knuckles had been hammering flesh and bone for years. The callouses underneath them were bone spurs.

  "I've got my money on your Marine," said Doc Ibora.

  Lucy said. "I'm surprised you like boxing, Doctor. We make such a mess for you to clean up."

  "Compared to the burns, treating concussions and fractures is a joy. And like I said. I've got money on this one. Garlan's powder monkey gave me 2:1 odds on Kang."

  Garlan said, "Bix bet on the bug?"

  "He said he'll double my money if Lucy's champion wins this."

  Kang waved to his crowd and flipped off the bugs. You couldn't actually see the extended digit through the thick gloves he wore, but the Humans all recognized the gesture and cheered it. Carnaby put his arms up to quiet them all just enough to hear him introduce the bug.

  "Aaaannnd...from Shedir-4, the pink planet with a bug problem, comes a fighter with an alien title that translates to 'grapple and pummel kill-hero'.....C-tis A-mon Ke-siiiiik!"

  Carnaby's anatomy prevented him from saying the name right so the bugs hissed, whined, and clacked it in unison as their champion came out of the crowd. The war painted Stripey twitched forward on its four, skittering legs and it imitated the jabbing that Bolo had done, but only extended its four, boxing-glove-covered hands slowly to show how long the arms were and how its reach was almost twice the Human's.

  "That, there is one fierce-looking bug," said Garlan. 2:1 odds seemed almost fair.

  "The Shediri look tough," Lucy said. The way she said it made him wonder what she knew that he didn't.

  Bolo Kang and C'tis Amon Kesik stood five meters apart, and Carnaby stood between them so that the death stare they held with each other passed over the top of his head. "It took us three weeks to get the rules straight! So don't screw it up! Nothing below the belt! No grappling! No elbows or 'whip joint' strikes. No stinging! No biting of any kind!"

  A clatter and hiss erupted from the Shediri crowd, and Garlan's translator said, "No Human smell."

  Carnaby grinned at the bugs in the crowd and then looked up at their champion. "Sgt. Kang, knock this cheesey-sock-stinkin' earwig out. Aaannnd...fight!"

  Five meters from a Shediri is too close. After the briefest gesture like a cobra drawing back to strike, its upper body whipped at Bolo Kang. Three out of its four gloved fists extended with all the force of the bug's shifting body weight and they would have transferred every painful joule of it to Lucy's champion if he hadn't already moved. Kang stepped back on his rear foot and moved to the side as if he'd seen the strike coming, and Garlan realized Lucy's champ had learned to read a bug's tells. To Bolo Kang, the bug was already a step behind in their dance.

  "Now," Lucy mouthed into the crowd's roar as her fighter propelled himself forward, up off his rear foot. That back knee came up hard and fast to block the thrashing backhands from the Shediri. They weren't enough to stop Kang or his body's upward motion. As the Marine's head passed the top of the bug's, all ten of its compound eyes were watching him.

  Kang punched down square between the top sets of eyes, at the junction of a pair of chitin plates with a centimeter of wiry haired bug-flesh showing between them, pink and visibly soft. The force of the impact traveled down through the head and into the neck and thorax stunning the bug momentarily and making it straighten out like a spear had been rammed down through the top of its head and into its body.

  Four gloves came out to catch it as it hit the deck. The bug spun and coiled and sprung. This time, it left Kang no easy escape. The Marine brought his hands up to guard himself and tried to get out of the way, but the bug stretched itself across him even taking a pair of blows to the chest plates in order to wrap itself around the Marine and bind him with all its legs exactly as the rules prohibited. The redsuits shouted. "Bunk!" Bunk!", but when rules have gone out the window, calling 'cheat' won't bring them back.

  Kang twisted and fought to get one arm free as the bug tried to crush the breath out of him. He wriggled, trying to get into a position to strike at the head again. Garlan saw him giving up position tactically, allowing the bug to crush him tighter if it meant he'd get closer to being in position for one more strike. Kang must have been betting he could hold out without breath, but from the way the whites of his eyes had already gone red with all the bursting vessels, it was crushing that was going to kill that Marine before suffocation. Sgt. Bolo Kang looked like he was reaching for some far off, unseen star, but then his outstretched hand closed into a fist, and he hammered his elbow down into a spot on the side of the bug's neck.

  The Shediri's grip loosened, and Kang sucked in air. With the strength it gave him, he brought the elbow down on the same spot again and again until on the fourth blow, the bug's grip loosened completely, and C'tis Amon Kesik dropped Bolo Kang to the deck and went stiff. The bug fell on its side, and its eight appendages twitched and spasmed and beat against the steel before it attempted to rise. It swayed and fell again and didn't move.

  The Human crowd cheered and the bugs hissed as Kang beat his chest and howled like a triumphant, red-eyed ape.

  SCS Hardway

  The Shediri swarm passed overhead. The serpentine of war-painted raiders blotted out the stars as Commodore Ram Devlin pushed open the hatch and stepped out onto the top of the command tower. Here the antenna forest around him made his skin tingle through his suit and from here he could see the full breadth of Hrt'ee the Usurper's orbital station. The thin docks that fringed its main body and the towers that twisted off it so unpredictably hung against the rotating bands of the gas giant.

  The glow from the rebel hive's induction furnaces lit UNS Guerrero orange in five places where the mobile construction units melted the Shediri steel and painted it on hot, aligning the crystals in projected fields and then painting on another layer like it was lacquer. Ram had no idea how many coats they'd painted onto Chun Ye Men's mountain of battleship to reform her outer hull and repair the canyon gouges in her bowplate.

  Rabal's squadron of railgun monitors had gotten their share of Shediri steel and unlike Chun, the captains of those ships hadn't turned down the offer of an extra coat of magnetite chitin on top. The five monitors pointed at the gas giant together just a few Ks out past the Doxy as if they planned to bombard its core.

  Ram looked all around him over the midships and bow for Tig Meester and the lights of the approaching knuckledragger mech, but all he saw were a few junks rising from the topside bays to join the combat air patrol. Even limited flight operations were twice as difficult to run with only the primary bays available. Hardway hadn't been so easy to repair as the other ships.

  "On your port side," Tig Meester said over local suit comms. Ram saw them through the space under the directional arrays. He jumped upwards and puffed gently with the slim-jim gas belt until he'd cleared the antennas. "Careful with that gas belt," his Chief said. "Those things are tricky. Just hit the auto-stop and we'll come get you."

  Not more than a second after Ram's hand went to the
control pack on his slim-jim and arrested his motion, the four-meter-tall knuckledragger puffed gas jets and came at him like a great, headless gorilla. One of Meester's saltier redsuits, Ariz, sat in the chest compartment piloting. As he came in hot, Ram just hoped he wasn't going to show off.

  The plumes shot outwards from the knuckledragger's shoulders, driving the mechanized suit below him so that when it came to an abrupt and certain stop, Tig Meester was standing on top of it in his slightly burnt red exosuit not more than five meters away.

  "Don't lean over the knuckledragger's directional jets when you ride up top," he said. "But you know how to ride gorilla-back, right Mr. Devlin?"

  "Saw a cherry catch a burst from the D-jets of a 'dragger at Sagan Station once," Ram said as he puffed himself forward, grabbed the bar next to Meester, and planted his feet on top of the mechanized suit, standing where the 4-meter metal ape's head would have been if it had one. Neither of them said how that cherry had survived the incident only to be burned up by Squidy boarders just a couple hundred meters below them on the side of the command tower.

  As Ariz rotated the mechanized suit on its jets, he checked for traffic only briefly before jetting them out over the port side of the bays. "The repairs look good on the Primary Bays," said Meester. But up ahead, the stub towers for the midships batteries were nearly bare. Only scars remained where those guns had been. The ship's bow plate had been holed more than once. That had been repaired, but the carrier's bow guns were long gone and nothing would ever again launch out the ruined forward bays just behind it.

  Even after all the work they'd done, seeing the forward bays and the bow section of his ship like this still made Ram's gut twist up. MBay1, at the heart of the forward bays, had been filled with burning plasma in the last battle and been turned into a flash-melted cavern. What his Chief and the Shediri had made of that space and built into that burned out section now protruded from either side of the savaged forward bays for almost 150 meters on both sides of the ship like the hollow, fluted, chitin skull of a hammerhead shark.