The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3)

by A. G. Claymore

He couldn’t resist a chuckle. “True enough, but it’s still in that danger zone where I wonder if you might think I was looking lower, not that I wouldn’t...” After a pause, he smiled and shook his head. “I’m gonna stop digging myself any deeper and just abandon that sentence. I don’t suppose you’d throw me a rope?”

  She smiled. “Will an introduction do?” She held out her hand. “Captain Emily Colt.”

  “Dr. Dwight Young.” He shook her hand. My hands must feel like ice, he thought as he let go.

  “Yes, I remember who you are,” she gave him an odd look. “You were surprised that nobody from my group had turned. I’ll never forget the look on your face.” She leaned back against the water-slicked carbon, looking at him. “I take it you’re done with the inoculations?”

  “Yeah, we finished up a couple of days ago and wrapped up a… study, yesterday. I came down here to, umm…” He looked back out at the sunset. “Clear my head, I suppose.”

  “The last few weeks were hard on all of us.” She turned to look out at the city below. “I think it might have been hardest on you, given the role you had to play.”

  If you only knew half the story, Dwight thought. What would she do if she knew his role in creating the plague?

  She nodded to herself. “You could do with a drink, Doctor.”

  He certainly didn’t disagree. “You know a good place?”

  “Best place in the Kinzell,” she breezed as she pushed away from the low wall. “I was heading there when I spotted your blues. We Humans stand out because we all dress the same. Any relation to Harry Young, the new warlord of Tauhento?”

  Dwight shook his head. “As far as I know, I have no living relatives. Never even knew my own parents.”

  She led him up several steep flights of stairs and through a twisting network of tunnels with the occasional, spectacular view from brief stretches of open air. Every foot of wall space was occupied by store fronts or brightly-colored, animated glass signs. She walked across a long grey bridge with a low wall on only one side, oblivious to the fatal drop from the unprotected side.

  A series of ledges ran out from the un-walled side, half of them containing dead bodies. A flock of avians were pecking at the corpses. Must be their idea of a mortuary?

  She looked back, grinning at how closely Dwight kept to the wall. “Half the bridges up here only have walls because they add structural strength. They don’t waste materials on two walls for a low-traffic residential pedway.” She ducked into another enclosed walkway, surrounded by large graphene modules.

  Dwight almost passed her in the dark, but he heard the warbling tone of a door proximity chip reader and turned to squint at the sudden wash of light from the opening. He followed her in and stood, blinking, as his eyes adjusted. Where did she disappear to?

  Emily popped up from behind a graphene kitchen island with a bottle in her hand. “This is pretty close to whiskey.” She slid past him. “Grab a couple of glasses from the cabinet behind you.”

  Dwight turned and pulled out two tumblers that were nearly invisible. Whatever these are made of, the scientist in him thought, the index of refraction is almost the same as air. He turned to follow her and stopped as the guy in him asked another question. Did I just stumble into what the non-nerds call a hook-up?

  With a shrug, he followed her out onto a rain-glazed, grey platform, ten feet by fifteen. Another module above sheltered the first ten feet of its length, a line of dripping water marking where the cover ended. Dwight tried to suppress a shiver. The view was magnificent. The last rays of sunset were casting haloes around the communities that clung to other support columns and he could see the original structures of the old city, far below.

  There were no railings at all.

  “The deck is actually the roof of the unit below.” Emily was lighting an eclectic collection of lanterns by waving her hand near each one.

  “What is this place?” Dwight had the sudden need to take his mind off his surroundings. He had come to the Kinzell in the hopes of finding new things to distract himself, but this was overload.

  “I live here.” She touched two knee-high cubes on the concrete deck and they unfolded themselves into dark mesh lounge chairs. “I’m a supply chain officer, specializing in procurement.” She dropped down into one of the chairs with a sigh.

  Dwight sat sideways in the other chair and held out the tumblers while she filled them. “So you look for things the fleet can use, here in the Kinzell?” He handed one of the glasses to her and eased back in his seat. Can’t fall over the edge as long as I’m in this chair.

  “Here and elsewhere,” she waved her drink to indicate their surroundings. “I just love living up here. The locals consider this to be a slum district, but it’s the coolest place I’ve ever seen. Just look at the view! To a girl from small town Connecticut, this is like living in a science fiction movie.”

  “Connecticut?” Dwight looked over at her. “Any relation to Samuel Colt?”

  “Who knows,” her tone indicated that she had been asked that question many times. Being in the military and having the same name as the inventor of the first viable revolver was a recipe for constant pestering. “If you ask my dad, you’d think we should’ve inherited the company.” She suddenly fell silent. After a moment, she pulled her knees up, wrapping herself in her own arms.

  There were a few seconds of silence while his mind sifted through the conversation and came up with a probable reason for her sudden change. Never thought I’d feel lucky to be an orphan. She probably works very hard to forget what might be happening back home. Dwight thought. Why’d you have to ask her about family? “What town are you from?” Shut up! You’re just making it worse!

  “Cromwell.” She sniffed.

  You might be able to give her some hope. “I was with a vaccination team that went into Hartford,” he offered. “We had a couple hundred ‘O-negs’ that were going to spread out and pass the vaccine by blood to the surrounding areas. How far is Cromwell from Hartford?”

  “Maybe ten miles,” she said, meeting his gaze.

  I’ll bet this is the first time she’s heard any news from back home since the outbreak. “Someone’s bound to have gone to your hometown then.” He wished he could give her certainty, but it was impossible. “There’s hope, at least.” Though it’s thin hope that probably just picks off an old scab.

  “Part of me would gladly toss the hope as long as I could just know.” Her eyes closed again as she curled up in her chair. She pulled in a deep shuddering breath. “Does that make me a bad person?”

  “No,” Dwight said softly, at a complete loss. “No,” he repeated dumbly, sitting up. This had gone bad so quickly and he felt a desperate need to comfort her, but his experience with social settings, and women in particular, was decidedly thin. He reached out a hand, daring to rest it on her shoulder, but pulled it back in alarm when she twisted in her seat.

  Emily got out of her chair and quietly but firmly pushed him back into his own seat before crawling into his lap and curling up against his chest, her drink still in her hand.

  Dwight placed his drink on the deck before taking hers and setting it down as well. Small tremors told him that she was quietly crying into his chest.

  He remembered nights as a little boy in the group home, desperately trying to hide his tears from the others. Without a thought, he folded his arms around her, giving her what he had so often longed for.

  And they both hid their tears from each other.

  Making an Entrance

  Presh, Oaxes

  The loadmaster checked Harry’s tether and ground line one final time before giving him a curt nod that managed to convey both the fact that the harness was ready, and that he firmly dissaproved of such foolishness. He walked out of the airlock and sealed the door behind him.

  A circular hatch above Harry snapped open with a dull ring of heavy metal striking against a heavy frame, and the platform began to raise him up. As his head cleared the hatch, he could see t
he full effect on a large display screen that hovered over the stadium. It was an impressive sight and, just as the platform leveled with the open hatch, the Pandora released another burst of static discharge, scattering scorched sand in a spectacular display.

  His first thought had been to bring his old ship, the Völund, but it was too large to fit through the oculus at the top of the stadium. The Pandora was a better choice anyway – her maneuverability was undoubtedly superior and she had a far more predatory look.

  The crowd was wildly ecstatic. Harry’s fight in this arena and his short speech had tied him to the legends of Orontes, their favorite tragic hero. They had broadcast the recordings to every world they could reach in the hopes of stirring up trouble, especially on the fringe worlds where resistance to Republic rule was strongest.

  Those broadcasts were mostly self-serving. The Oaxians figured that it might keep the Dactari too busy to interfere with their uprising, at least until their hero returned. If indeed, he planned to return. Nobody on Oaxes seemed to know where he had even come from.

  Now he was back, having just destroyed a force of Dactari who were bent on making them pay for their disloyalty. The orbital lanes had just been cleared and now they were catching the Dactari ground troops entirely by surprise.

  Finally, at the moment of their greatest need, their questions would be answered.

  He stood there, letting the noise die down and, hopefully, giving the stadium technicians enough time to re-focus their sound gear from the platform down on the sand, to him. On the big display above them, one corner showed a frightened Dactari officer who, until very recently, had been preparing to preside over the ritual executions of the twenty bound Oaxians who knelt with their families in the sand before the platform.

  The Dactari had landed small tactical teams in advance of their main force, seizing the ring-leaders before the Oaxians could react. They had ordered the stadium filled and set up an impromptu ‘drum head trial’.

  Now they were setting up to carry out the horrific sentence.

  Harry fought the burning rage as he remembered a similar series of executions, centuries ago. He knew it was unlikely that they would have been so brutal this time. They were playing on the memories of atrocities past. No doubt clemency would be offered at the last moment – a clever little bit of theater, reminding the locals not to play too heavily on the mercy of their betters.

  Either way, Harry had arrived in the nick of time. If they were on the verge of showing mercy, it was far better to stop them while they were still on a harsh note.

  “Oaxians,” he roared. As he expected, his voice was being picked up and amplified. A swell of cheering rose and fell in the wake of his voice. “You were free once.” Another swell as he took a deep breath and locked his diaphragm. “And you are again!” It was slightly different at the end from the ancient words, and it was a change that Oaxians had waited to hear for countless centuries.

  “Sir!” Shelby’s voice could only penetrate the ocean of sound because the earpiece was deep inside Harry’s ear. “We have reports from the Midgaard scouts. Trouble is headed our way.”

  The roar was ear-splitting and he doubted he could overcome it, even with the arena’s sound amplifiers. He gave a quick wave and tapped an icon to lower himself back into the ship. He walked the twenty feet aft to reach the bridge.

  “Scouts have heard from smugglers,” she began without preamble. “A large force is concentrating at Xo’Kam, local dinner reservations suddenly open up tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Which means they’ll be gone by then,” Harry concluded. “They like to eat for free, but it makes for poor operational security.” He nodded to the large monitor against the aft wall of the bridge. “Xo’Kam means we’re the likely target.” He turned the executive officer’s chair to face the monitor. “Let’s bring up the system chart and plot the intercept line, assuming we leave here in five hours.”

  Shelby came to stand by his chair as the chart activated and adjusted to show Xo’Kam in one corner and Oaxes in the other. A red line appeared between the two corners, indicating where the two fleets would run into each other. A second line, perpendicular to the first, appeared in green with a time annotation.

  “Looks like the fleet would be thirty six hours late to the party,” Shelby muttered. “We just got here and we’re already left in the lurch.”

  Lurch! Harry suddenly remembered his experience with Caradi pirates while taking the Völund to deliver helium isotope to the Cerans. He had been sleeping when the ship suddenly lurched out of distortion. He bounded out of his chair and approached the chart. “Where’s the deepest gravity well between here and that line?” He turned to Shelby. “Find something big that we can shove them up against before we start punching.”

  “There’s still the small matter of getting them to drop out where we want them,” Shelby reminded her commodore politely, if a little sarcastically.

  “That’s the easy part,” Harry called over his shoulder as he left the bridge.

  A fresh round of cheers broke out as he descended the forward boarding ramp and stepped onto the sand. He trotted over to the temporary platform where a small party of Dactari still stood in a terrified huddle. Rather than mount the platform, he approached the bound prisoners, moving to the far end. The Dactari would have left the most senior prisoner till last.

  The prisoner was dressed in a formal tunic, and his family were in more casual but finely-made clothing. They looked up at him with uncertain hope as he squatted beside them.

  “Who are you?” Harry knew these people favored a blunt approach and he was glad to oblige – he didn’t exactly have a lot of time on his hands. He was relieved to hear his voice being amplified. It would be best if everything was a matter of public record.

  “I am Haldita, the Satrap of Oaxes,” he nodded his head at the huddled enemy on the platform. “I stand convicted of open rebellion.” He had the sense to declare it proudly.

  Harry nodded. There was a very good chance that Haldita was convicted by the Dactari to make him more popular. A governor pardoned for siding with the rebels might be far more effective in controlling the citizens of this world. It wasn’t something he had the time to unravel at the moment.

  “Convicted by a court that no longer exists,” Harry mused. “I’d say the verdict is now void.” An approving roar greeted his statement, and Harry cut the Satrap’s bonds. Both men stood. “You appear to be in need of a warlord.”

  The crowd leaned forward as one, waiting to hear the formal words of the ancient contract.

  “In accordance with accepted custom and practice,” Harry began in Oaxian, “I offer my service to the people.”

  A low murmur began to build as those who still understood the old language translated for those who didn’t.

  Haldita gave Harry a long look of appraisal. Finally, he extended his hand, palm upwards. “As the Satrap of Oaxes,” he replied in stilted Oaxian, “I accept your services as the warlord of our world.”

  The murmur turned to a roar of approval as Harry waved his own palm, face down, over Haldita’s. Once again, he heard his name being chanted by thousands. He might be an alien, but he didn’t look all that different, he had helped to free them and he spoke Oaxian better than most locals. He raised his hands to calm the crowd.

  “There is a large force of Dactari forming up for an attack,” he shouted. Those who hadn’t stopped cheering certainly did at this news. “We are leaving almost immediately to deal with them, but we will return.”

  He turned to Haldita, handing him his knife and nodding toward the prisoners. “Free your people.”

  Holding Ground

  Bending the Bow

  The Quewu, Near Tauhentan Space

  Reis Mas resisted the urge to deploy his ships into a planar formation, despite the unrestricted firepower that it offered. His sixty vessels were all crewed by the Krypteia and he knew he could trust them to hold their ground. As their flota, he had trained and fought wit
h almost all of them. They had even war gamed an engagement against a hypothetical Midgaard force at this year’s Pursuit to Eo’xo’co commemorative training exercises.

  And that was why he wasn’t planning on one of the standard Krypteian formations. This enemy was incredibly aggressive – unrealistically aggressive, as one intelligence officer had remarked during the training sessions. The Midgaard possessed an incredible confidence and viewed death in battle as a sure way to earn favor in the next life.

  They were, much like the Dactari, a military species.

  This enemy wouldn’t melt away into distorted space like the local insurgents, nor would they toe the line and try to slug it out. They would push into an attacking formation, getting so close that the Dactari targeting opportunities would be severely restricted. Battery masking would be a very serious problem as targets began to disappear behind friendly vessels.

  And they wouldn’t simply be hiding, they would be ‘laying alongside’ as the intelligence staff had described it. The enemy would actually slam their vessels into their targets and pour warriors into the Dactari ships, taking them intact before turning them against Reis’ forces, effectively doubling the attrition factor of the lost ships.

  As the Dactari blasted their way back into regular space, they were already in the formation that he had devised during the training evolutions of the Pursuit. It was a simple adaptation of the cone formation, consisting of multiple, smaller, interlocking cones. A sub-flota from fleet administration had dubbed it the honeycomb and thus the credit had been stolen from Reis, but his men knew who really came up with it.

  With only sixty ships the formation looked more like a loose planar formation, but it was going to work against the Midgaard, Reis was sure of it.

  “Enemy are right where we expected,” the sensor tech highlighted the targeting icons on the holo projection that filled the back half of the bridge. “They’re closing fast,” he added in a tone of mixed surprise and scorn.

  And no wonder he disapproved. Reis stepped around the projection of Tauhento’s larger moon and counted the icons. Only twenty seven ships and they still can’t wait to come to grips with us. These Midgaard are mad – in an admirable sort of way!