Pirates of Alcyone: War of Alien Aggression 8.5

by A. D. Bloom

  Pirates of Alcyone

  by A.D. Bloom

  ©2016

  Books in the War of Alien Aggression Series

  1. Hardway

  2. Kamikaze

  3. Lancer

  3.5. Dreadnought 2165

  4. Taipan

  4.5. Combat Salvage 2165

  5. Cozen's War

  6. Force Liberty

  7. Battle of Shedir

  8. Devlin's War

  8.5. Pirates of Alcyone

  9. The Otherworld Rebellion

  The author would like to express his appreciation to the USS Nautilus (SSN-571), USS Massachusetts (BB-59), Evan C., /r/WarshipPorn, /r/ImaginaryWarships, World of Warships. Ninjas.

  Table of Contents

  01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, Epilogue

  2180: War between Earth-allied worlds and the puppets of the Ortani Imperium has continued without pause for sixteen years. Commodore Ram Devlin is currently a fugitive after escaping the penal colony of Otherworld's northern continent.

  Chapter 1

  Devlin's Privateers

  Canopus System

  The battle at Canopus between UNS capital ships and the sprawling Xihute battle carriers lasted for weeks. When a chatter-clacking message in Shediri arrived to tell Ram Devlin one of the bugs' chitin-hulled raiders had spotted a lightly guarded Xihute convoy, Devlin's Privateers left their hidden redoubt and set out on the hunt.

  Today, the 217-meter Shediri-built light cruiser Ketok, the 190-meter Human-Shediri hybrid Ariadne, and 165-meter junk tender, Split Aces, sortied with a new addition to the pack. Absalom, like Split Aces, had been built off the ad hoc shipyard docks of ICV Doxy over their last few years of exile. Her bow and reactor section came from a tug. Her command tower was salvage from a lost UNS frigate and it was the only part with any real armor. Hank Devlin took the command chair with a lifetime and a half of experience, but he knew his new ship needed more shakedown time.

  The second officer, Millet, frowned over the OPS console to the left of the command chair. "I've got warnings on three power converters running to the Shediri drive coils on the bow."

  Hank Devlin thumbed a comms line to the engineering section that capped the aft end of the ship's tensegrity spine. "Chief, is my ship going to lose quiet-drive propulsion?"

  The reply was a few seconds in coming, "We'll be fine as long as nobody distracts me. Tell Millet to ignore the warning lights. I'll shout if there's a real problem."

  Devlin's Privateers breached space using Shediri n-space charges and rode the interstellar transit to Baker 635, a small, but noisy star, given to sudden flares. They awaited the Xihute convoy hiding low over the scorched, first planet. When the time came, they closed range on a dozen alien haulers and a pair of light cruiser escorts while keeping noisy Baker 635 at their backs. The Shediri-designed stealth shunts made them well-nigh invisible, but it was good to know the star's bursting rays were flooding the enemy's arrays to help keep them hidden. The privateers couldn't remain stealthed much longer.

  "Thirteen minutes left on the batteries," said Millet. "After that we won't have enough to run the energy shunts."

  "We'll finish up with the Xihute long before that."

  His father planned to reveal the squadron and open fire when their ships were still more than 5000 Ks out from the convoy giving some of the Xihute reason to think they might escape. The Xihute convoys were like herds on the plains. The many haulers that comprised the convoy would gladly sacrifice just one for the herd to escape.

  Hank thought if he'd been in command, he would have waited longer. He'd suggested it, of course. Sometimes it was as if Ram Devlin had forgotten that Hank carried the memories of his father's own mentor, Rear Admiral Harry Cozen. Nowhere in any plan Harry Cozen conceived would they give an enemy a chance to escape.

  On the day Cozen died, the ugly memories of two wars flooded Hank's nine-year-old mind. Only then did Hank learn he'd been a purpose-made clone and one man's bid for immortality. It would be a strange thing, he agreed, to walk around with another man's memories, but the memories had always been his. He was Harry Cozen. Hank was identical to the man in every way except for the fact that perverse fate and necessity had forced him to accept his former Executive Officer as a surrogate father.

  The line of Xihute ships processed unaware. The 12 alien haulers steamed on in a line with their two escorts in the lead. The rays of Baker 635 struck their twisted hulls and towers broadside. In his mind's eye he saw railgun salvos and bursts of Shediri ion fire hitting the Xihute hulls at the same angle and penetrating with ease.

  "Mr. Millet, we're getting close. Give the order for lids please."

  Millet leaned into the squack button. "All hands, all decks, latch and seal helmets."

  Hank lifted his own from the side of the chair and once it was on and secure, his Shediri XO spoke to him over local comms, through the internal speakers. Kik Sin Kesik waved three of his four, chitin-covered arms over the station to the right of the chair, and the monotone speech of the bug's translator didn't match his excitement. "Conditional: If Xihute had proxy scout, then we are not detected. Now, too late for them." The bug shifted back from one set of legs to the other and swayed his upper body. Through his helmet visor the light seemed to glint extra bright off the eager bug's ten eyes.

  "I couldn't agree more, Mr. Kik. It's too late for the Xihute now. Mr. Millet, tell our gun captains they're going to get some action."

  "The Commodore's plan has us up in a high guard position over Ketok, Ariadne, and Aces. We're not supposed to engage unless necessary."

  Hank nodded. "That is correct, but no orders were given prohibiting us from providing fire support. We'll be within effective range for our SS-223 railgun blocks. Our crews need experience."

  "Interrogative," Kik Sin said with his jaws clacking over the translator, "Are 30 hours gunnery practice in last 18 days not recognized as practice?"

  "It's easy to perform when nobody is shooting at you. I want my new gun crews accustomed to the chaos. I want them confident. I want them blooded. So give the order, Mr. Kik."

  The bug's jagged chitin jaws clacked and hissed, and the translator hung around his neck said, "Aye, Captain Hank."

  Split Aces and her two junks were the first to show themselves and open fire. The tender shifted power from her shunting panels to her main engines and guns and emerged from an inky blackness in the space of a second. Her two railgun blocks on the bow opened up on the last of the Xihute haulers first. The six barrels cut into each of the blocks flashed as the magnetic vectoring rings inside accelerated the osmium tungsten sabot. They superheated in the unimaginable gees and compressed into a high-density plasma surrounding a core that verged on a fifth state of matter.

  The twelve sabot fired from Split Aces' guns impacted across the aft end of the alien hauler, flashing brightly as the underside launchers on her 50-meter junks loosed their torps. The Otherworld-made, Shediri copies of Staas Company's Mk5 warspite torpedo targeted the pair of Xihute light cruisers escorting the convoy. Their plasma flares spiraled off towards the Xihute warships, already flying evasive to avoid defensive fire.

  The escorts barely had time to respond before Ariadne and the Ketok powered down the energy shunts that protruded from their hull and loosed salvos from their ion cannon and small-bore railgun batteries. Two tri-barreled bow guns and a single stern ion cannon on each of the chitin-hulled vessels hurled clusters of charged particles bound so tightly that their density actually rivaled the sabot from the railguns.

  Hank watched as the tactical display in front of his XO updated to include the new damage in the projected, out o
f scale, representations of the Xihute ships. The hot-edged rings and dark spots on the projection evidenced no less than seven large holes in the rear engine assembly of the Xihute hauler. Where the salvos from the ion cannon landed, the skin of the hauler blew away into the vacuum like it had been made of sand. Her engines began to fail, jetting a cloud of plasma. The glowing, irregular tail crackled with lightning behind the alien freighter as its engines died.

  "This is Ariadne. Concentrate your fire on the escorts. Let's drive the others away now."

  Once the torpedoes came in range of defensive fire, the towers of the two Xihute cruisers sparked up and down firing thin-bore particle streams. The fast-tracking batteries stabbed and sliced at the incoming torps like impossibly thin rapiers. They cut across one Mk5 and then another and the tiny reactors blossomed with brief and brilliant flashes. The Xihute gunners cut down three more torps within only a few hundred meters of their ships. The warhead casings converted to plasma in the det and slammed their alien hulls like storm waves.

  All ships in the squadron save Hank's now opened fire on the Xihute cruisers with all batteries, encouraging them to run with their undamaged freighters and cut their losses to one ship. In just a few moments, it seemed to be working. The Xihute cruisers and the rest of the haulers accelerated as if they meant to abandon the single, disabled hauler.

  Hank thumbed comms to his gun captains. "This is Hank Devlin on the bridge. We've got one hauler; I want two. You've got time and a clear shot for the 223s before the enemy gets out of range. Captain Foet on the Doxy says a large crate of Earth's finest just arrived for me. It goes to the crew that knocks out the engines on a second Xihute freighter before they get away."

  He thought they'd take longer aiming, but his gun captains fired in quick succession and in slightly less time than they'd taken in practice. The calls that came up to tell the XO they were reloading had a determination in the voices that the bug couldn't discern, but Hank could hear it. Those gun crews were going to bag that second hauler. He was sure of it.

  To their eternal shame, the aft batteries missed, but it would always be a matter of dispute which of the batteries on Absalom's bow scored the hit that disabled the second Xihute freighter. Their two, well-aimed salvos landed at nearly identical angles across the plasma vents of the aliens' engines in spreads so tight that the massive holes they blasted in the assembly merged into one. At the right angle the wound looked like an '8' set diagonally across the aft plane of the engines. It vented unfocused plasma in thin, billowing clouds as the ship fell out of line and lost propulsion.

  None of them had thought they'd get a chance to contribute to the battle so directly. There was so much cheering over local comms that he barely heard the calls from Ariadne. "Absalom, what the hell do you think you're doing?" It was Dana Sellis. "You are to cease fire immediately. Don't mess with the plan."

  Hank could tell by the way Kik Sin canted his head what he said was a question. "Interrogative: reason for Dana Sellis anger?"

  "She's worried the escorting Xihute warships won't leave if they think they'll lose more than one hauler. But they will; they don't have a choice."

  On the tactical display in front of his XO the last three Shediri-made torpedoes evaded the Xihute guns and closed to within a few Ks of their target. Particle streams from the Xihute ships waved and stabbed with futility right up until the moment the torps spiraled in down the lines of fire and detonated against the alien hulls.

  The det flashes that lit the windows to starboard were mostly just a light show. The vape craters would be deep, but probably not fatal, he thought. "Penetration," said Kik. The oval hull breach he saw jetting chlorine and green flame told him that. The Xihute slugs were burning on that deck, but only on that deck most likely. The torpedo det on the second Xihute hull delivered a similar wound to it at midships, but neither of the escorts slowed. Neither of them turned either. They both accelerated and kept pace with their freighters, loosing ineffective beams from their main batteries at the Privateers.

  Ariadne and Ketok winked in and out of view as they pulsed power to their stealth shunts. The Xihute didn't have much chance of scoring a hit on them, but they continued to fire long after it was clear they were on the run.

  "Why the hell don't they cease fire," Millet said. "We barely have to dodge their salvos at this range. What do they think they're doing?"

  "They're communicating. They're letting us know they can protect the rest of the convoy if we come any closer and try to bag ourselves a third hauler. XO, report to the launch bay. Take a boarding party with plasma cutters in our longboat. Land on the hull and cut your way into those holds. It's Christmas, Mr. Kik." The bug stepped away from the tactical station just as the audible alarms began and the air over the console began to blink with the quickly refining shapes of newly approaching ships.

  "Wait a moment, Mr. Kik..."

  "Nine ships inbound. 484,000 Ks out."

  "Why didn't we see them?"

  "Baker 635 is at their backs and they just lit engines," said the bug's translator. "Accelerating. ETA 17 minutes at current speed."

  "They've already seen us," said Hank. "Mr. Millet, go ahead and ping with active beams and show me all you can."

  The image concatenated from the LiDAR and active radar returns hovered over Kik Sin's console. Even with the grainy image, Hank could tell right away that eight of the nine ships were Staas Company 300-meter victory haulers from the last days of the 2164 war. The image couldn't show him the patch-weld armor, but the scattergun and small-bore railgun batteries that had been added later were easy to pick out. "Those look like gunboats made from mothballed Staas Company haulers," said Millet. "Guess who..."

  The ninth ship was just over 550 meters. The resolution of the image improved over the next seconds, but none of them needed it to recognize the menacing lines and armored turrets of SCS Appaloosa, now under a black flag and rechristened as Voracious.

  Gunboat cruisers like her had been produced late in the 2164 war to bolster the lines at Sirius. They were cost-driven ships. The ones that survived were sent to rest hull to hull in orbital pens near Deimos and await the induction furnace. This one had been sprung and retrofitted by the Deimos Syndicate. Voracious had been the 'Scourge of Alcyone' since it came to hide in the very same set of Lagrange asteroids Devlin's Privateers had been forced to call home.

  "Fancy meeting you here, Randall" said Hank. "Awfully lucky for you, isn't it?"

  Hank's Shediri XO stated it plainly. "We can't defend our kill."

  "I have to agree," said Millet. "We can't stand up to that much firepower and armor...not in an open-space fight like this."

  Kik Sin Kesik clacked his jaws inside his helmet. "We should have brought Shediri raiders with us for cover. They fear raiders."

  "If we'd brought them and Fancy Randall knew about it, he'd attack the Doxy and there wouldn't be a home left to go back to."

  "This is Ram Devlin," his father's voice said in his ear. "All ships rig for quiet running."

  "Voracious is transmitting at us," said Millet.

  "Quarantine it."

  "It's just a feed...a standard format comms projection."

  "Make it audio only. He grates on me."

  "Too late. Sorry, Skipper."

  The full-scale, see-through figure was projected at the front of Absalom's small bridge. Fancy Randall wasn't even wearing an exosuit. The cut of the wool suit was just unfamiliar enough to let Hank know it was in fashion somewhere far away, on Mars probably since he was sponsored by the Deimos mob. The odalisques behind his command chair ran their hands over his chest as he smiled broadly and let a booming voice out from under the thick, black mustache he'd cultivated to offset his lack of hair. "Gentlemen, I thank you for your fine work. You truly deserve your reputations from the 2164 war. We'll take care of the operation from here."

  Ram Devlin's voice didn't hide the anger well. "There's enough for everyone today, Randall. Accept one of the haulers as our gift. You ca
n even pick which one."

  "I could have one or I could have two. I'll take the cargoes of both those ships if you don't mind. I'd ask your men to do the cutting and heavy lifting for us, but you're too clever to stick around here much longer. You'll certainly be gone before we arrive to collect our prize because you're smart, Commodore Devlin. It is plainly obvious to you that my flotilla is superior. Take your privateers and go home. And if you get any silly notions about launching longboats and attempting to clear out those holds of whatever is in there before we arrive, then I hope you'll remember we're sure to be seeing you back in the Alcyone system. We're neighbors after all."

  Alcyone System

  Terminus of the Canopus-Alcyone Transit

  Devlin's Privateers opened a transit back to the Alcyone system. Despite their use of Shediri charges to breach space, the terminus of the transit flashed brightly enough that UNS destroyers passing through the outer system saw it. A pair of them shadowed the privateers as their batteries ran low and they became semi-visible. It looked as if the two destroyers might attempt pursuit as the privateers entered the dense field of broken moons and planetoid fragments trailing in the Lagrange point of the system's eighth planet. "Interrogative:" said Kik. "Why do UNS ships never let us be? We fight the same enemy."

  Hank's father asked the same question nearly every time he drank the local whiskey. It had been 14 years since Ram Devlin's fall from grace with Staas Company and the Secretary General's Office. Still, his father thought he could reason with them. He still thought if he hurt the Xihute or the Imperium badly enough that Staas Company and the UN's Navy would give him letters of marque and stop hunting them all like pirates...like they hunted Fancy Randall.

  "Why do they think we're all pirates?" his father would no doubt ask him later. Today, the answer seemed clear and so did the solution.