Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3

by Devon C. Ford

  “He’s alive and stable,” Specter said, “but he won’t be for long.”

  “We need to get him back to the fleet,” Brandt said, “but he’s our only pilot.”

  “I can fly,” Specter said, ignoring the shocked silence of his friend and commander, who had been oblivious to that fact about him, “but we need a ship.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – Deep Orbit of Proxima Centauri

  Dassiova was left speechless as he looked at the display beside his command chair. Everyone in the fleet, be they ratings working in the galleys or specialist engineers maintaining shield resonance harmonics, was doing their duty to the best of their ability. He was certain of that fact, but he was less certain that he was performing his own duties to the required standard.

  “Admiral, Venture reports less than fifty percent shields remaining,” cried the comm officer over the sound of a sparking, muted explosion in a nearby console as the power relay overloaded.

  The second wave of enemy ships was just as large, if not larger than the first, and the empty ordnance launch tubes of his fleet could not be cycled fast enough to turn the tide as they had in their first engagement.

  “Second gun barge destroyed by enemy fire,” the tactical officer reported in a flat tone which hung heavy with accusation.

  He had given it his all, and it hadn’t been enough. He racked his brain for anything else he could do; any insane, out of the box plan he could come up with as the Indomitable shuddered with each impact of the Va’alen armada’s weapons and suicide runs. He reached for the console and the fleet-wide comm channel he had programmed ready, as he prepared himself to give the order to abandon the system and everything they had fought, had bled for, to achieve. His finger hovered over the icon, fear of failure and a stinging pride making him hesitate, when the tactical officer shouted another warning.

  “Multiple ship readings,” he cried in a voice that had found another octave higher than his previous one.

  I’m aware of that, Dassiova thought bitterly to himself, hell I could reach out a window and probably slap an enemy ship, there are so goddamned many of them.

  “More jump signatures,” the tactical officer said again.

  Jump signatures? Plural? Dassiova’s mind questioned. The only fleet asset we have not here is the Ichi.

  “On screen,” he ordered, the battle raging outside temporarily forgotten until another impact shook him in his chair. The viewscreen blinked to life, the display cutting out a couple of times, before the image stabilized and formed a curious mirror of what he imagined their fleet to look like when not engaged in a knife fight in the void of space.

  “That’s…” he said uncertainly, his words trailing off.

  “Sir, incoming hail.”

  “Put it through,” he said, pausing until he got the nod from his comm officer. “Unidentified vessels, this is Admiral Dassiova of the UNS Indomitable. We are under attack by a fleet of hostile aliens and request immediate assistance.”

  Silence.

  “Unidentified vessels,” Dassiova began again angrily before being cut off.

  “Admiral Dassiova,” came the crooning and unmistakably human response, “what would you offer for our assistance?” Dassiova frowned, nodding at the comm officer, who activated the video link. The image of multiple ships was replaced by an Arabic-looking man in his fifties, wearing a black uniform and sitting in a command chair almost identical to the admiral’s own.

  “Identify yourself,” Dassiova demanded.

  “I,” the man said with a smug arrogance as he placed a flat hand on the chest of his uniform, “am the General Chakour of the Middle Eastern Alliance. My fleet is willing to engage the enemy if you give your word that we will enter into negotiations in good faith. Alternatively, I could order my fleet to withdraw and return to finish off the Va’alen when they have destroyed you.”

  So many questions boiled up inside Dassiova that he could barely contain them to arrive out of his mouth in any semblance of order. He wanted to know who the hell the Middle Eastern Alliance was, what they were doing with a fleet that looked almost identical to his, why the man called himself a general when that rank had been abandoned worldwide generations before, but most of all, he wanted to know what he would be agreeing to if he accepted the help. A series of heavy impacts rocked him in his chair as he wasted precious seconds thinking, before a scream from an injured bridge officer forced him to respond.

  “Very well, General,” he said, trying to ignore the sinking feeling that he was about to whip back the covers and jump into bed with the devil himself, “you have my word that we will have discussions in good faith when we are all safe. Dassiova out.” He turned to his comm officer who had already severed the link. His face was an unreadable mask of fear and rage as he ordered someone to get the injured female officer to the medical bay as he saw her clutching her face tightly, with blood seeping between her fingers. He sat down, tapped the fleet-wide comm icon, and growled his brief orders to all ships and the space station.

  “Ninth Fleet, this is the Admiral,” he began, feeling instantly defensive of his crown as another bull had entered the field, “an additional human fleet has entered this sector. We have a truce with them until the Va’alen are defeated… hold your nerves, people, and we will see this thing through to the end.”

  He felt a surge of pride as the weight of the enemy attack lessened. The new ships joined the fight, attacking from all flanks with their energy weapon cannons and doubling the rate of enemy destruction in moments. He realized that the pride he felt hadn’t originated with him, but came from the small alien smiling at him in silence from the observer’s chair to his right. Asha was radiating the feeling that Dassiova had just saved them all.

  “Don’t get too excited just yet,” he said quietly to the Kuldar ambassador, “I get the feeling that we’re in for a rough ride before things get straightened out.”

  The Va’alen armada’s commander watched the progress of his attack with satisfaction. He was under orders to command the second wave and not die in glorious battle with the first attack, and having waited for what felt like an eternity, as he and hundreds of other warriors moved slowly under the safety of their cloaks, they felt that mirroring the cowardly tactics of their human enemy lacked the honor of a direct assault. When their first wave was all but destroyed, the commander gave them their wish and ordered them to attack.

  The humans, damaged and degraded by the deaths of the brave and fearless Va’alen in the first wave, had spent all of their heavy ammunition, as he had hoped, and the mines they had left were gone, allowing them free reign to move and swarm over the lumbering ships as they tore death into them with their cannons.

  The commander was already celebrating his victory, already imagining welcoming his Aq to the space station they would capture and presenting him with high-ranking prisoners to be recycled and consumed in honor of his glorious leader and their victory. He imagined being elevated to become the second in command of the expedition; the Gan-Ch’aal or Second Warrior and relished the thought of standing beside his Aq as the formal challenge for leadership was made. He knew that their Hive Lords never intervened in such matters, preferring to allow the Va’alen to organize their structure and leadership as they felt best. That much was evident in the fact that they must have known what Aq Qa’shal had planned to do, and they must have felt the presence of so many Va’alen leaving the sector to begin their long journey to destroy the humans after they brought a second fleet to the system.

  That daydreaming was interrupted by the sensor display in his ship bursting into life as a warning sound fired off multiple times. Each shriek of electronic warning indicated a jump signature detection, and for a moment he was worried that the humans were escaping and abandoning the space to them.

  A glance at the display told him quite the opposite.

  Eight more ships showed on the readout, and all of them humming with detectable weapon signatures. The numbers of his own ships began
to decrease at an alarming rate only moments later as these new ships joined the fight. Knowing the battle was lost and the mission a failure, the commander faced a choice. He could either retreat, fly the long and torturous journey back to his people, where he would be executed for treason and failure, or else report the failure via the communications relay and die in battle, as any true Va’alen should wish to do.

  He was no politician. He had no family connections of worthy reputation that could stave off any retribution for his willing actions, so instead he sent the report back to Aq Qa’shal and opened a channel to his mate in the ship just off and behind his right wing. He called a Va’alen mantra to her, telling her that their bond was breakable only through death, and that death would spark the Path of Ending and transform them to the next world. She roared back in unison with him as both ramped their engines up to full pitch and set a direct course for the nearest enemy.

  ~

  “What killed it?” Specter asked as they carried Rogers carefully from the room they had found him in. His severed forearm was rested on his chest as he stayed still and silent in his medically-induced state of rest.

  “Not me,” Brandt said, “I never got a shot off before it had… I don’t know, a heart attack or something.”

  I took the life of the Va’alen, because I could not control the rage it felt through the Path of Ending, a voice said inside their heads. It sounded pained, as though barely holding on. I have a proposal for you, humans.

  They stopped, almost dropping Rogers. Brandt hefted her new weapon and scanned a full three-sixty.

  “Who the hell is that?” she called out. Her head snapped around to the shadows behind her as Specter looked the same way. Something had caught their senses, but not their sight or sound or smell. Something tickled their consciousness like low-voltage electricity. Thin arms came into view ahead of a large skull and dark skin. Big eyes without pupils contracted as it stepped into the light to protect its vision. It looked like a Kuldar, only different.

  “You’re Kuldar?” Specter asked, having evidently drawn the same conclusions as his commander.

  No, it said, we are something different. The Kuldar, like the Va’alen, were once our children.

  “Okay,” Brandt said, “I call bullshit. We’re taking you back to fleet where someone else can decide what to do with you.”

  NO!

  The voice was suddenly stronger and reverberated like an echo.

  I cannot leave this place, but I will give you everything you need in return for information.

  “What information?” Brandt asked suspiciously.

  I need to see the mind of a human who knows how you move between the stars without a portal.

  “You want a Fold Drive?” she asked. “Is that it?”

  We, it said as it slid backwards towards the shadows again to reveal that it was actually hovering, simply want to return home without more lives being lost.

  Brandt didn’t believe it, but she saw little choice.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – Deep Orbit of Proxima Centauri

  “Venture, Cortez,” Dassiova said into the comm, “Are you jump-capable?” They were. It was a risky strategy, but it served the purpose of both removing two vulnerable ships from the fight and getting support to Torres and the Ichi, without losing a fighting ship. “Do it. God speed,” he ordered.

  The two ships’ icons blinked out on his sensors as he looked at the arrayed warships facing them.

  “Talk to me, tactical,” he said.

  “Sir, they er, they’re pretty much the same design and layout as we are. Same weapons, same multiple-layer shield emitters, same Fold Drive resonance…”

  “Same shield harmonics?” he asked, thinking ahead.

  “Can’t tell, Admiral, should I rotate our shield harmonics?” Dassiova gave him a long, expectant stare until he did it.

  “Incoming hail, Admiral.” He nodded and stood in front of the viewscreen.

  “Elias,” the woman on the other end said. She smiled at him, and that smile was one of triumphant evil.

  “Massey…” Dassiova began, about to question her whereabouts and inappropriate use of his first name before the penny dropped. A strangled noise from his tactical officer caught his attention, and he was glad that the young officer knew to keep his mouth shut when the comm was active to the enemy. Dassiova looked down at the console, seeing the source of the noise. The ships were giving off a radiological warning.

  “You goddamne–”

  “No need for all that,” she cut him off with a dismissive wave, “I just wanted to strongly suggest you listen carefully to what General Chakour of the M.E.A. says. Things could get… messy, otherwise.”

  “It was you all along,” Dassiova stated, “those ships. Designed from our schematics you sent from Mars?”

  “Down to the last bolt and weld,” she replied, “only stronger and more heavily armed. You see, you’re really not in a position to make any demands, which is why we are offering the UN a truce. A ceasefire, both here and on Earth, until we can agree on the best way to divide up the spoils of war.”

  Dassiova stared at her for a long time before glancing down and nodding. The link cut, leaving the screen in darkness.

  “Chief, this is the Admiral,” he said into the comm device beside him. “Release Lieutenant-Commander Eze with my deepest apologies and escort her to the bridge.” He walked away towards his quarters. “Anyone needs me, I’ll be on the horn back home. Stay tight people, like that bitch said: this could get messy.”

  ~

  “Ready?” Torres asked the others, doubling up the question with a hand gesture as a throwback from when the technique was practiced out of a plane in deafening atmosphere and without the high-tech comms they now used. They were ready, and as the Ichi was brought to a low geo-stationary orbit, he hit the override control to open the lower section of the shuttle bay ramp. The bay had already been depressurized when they broke the very upper limits of the atmosphere to allow them to jump and not be fried to a crisp. The captain stepped forwards to peer over the edge, seeing thick clouds arcing with purple electrical discharge far below him.

  “We wait for a gap, and we drop,” he said, feigning a confidence he didn’t truly possess, but he’d had grown into command enough to know how to make it sound good.

  “Jumping in three, two, o…”

  “Bridge to Torres!” the captain faltered as he arrested his step towards the abyss.

  “Torres here,” he said, a slight crack in his voice which he coughed to disguise.

  “Sir, two ships just jumped into this sector. We’re being hailed by the Cortez. The Venture is also broadcasting ident codes.”

  The Venture, he thought, she’s got dropships and ground troops.

  “Give me a direct line,” he said, slapping a shaking hand at the control panel to shut the ramp and re-pressurize the empty shuttle bay.

  ~

  The arrival of the dropships filled with troops into the atmosphere of the moon created a comm network as soon as they broke through the thin cloud cover where the storm was weakest. Chatter and hails filled their comms, and one by one, the surviving members of Brandt’s team sounded off. She called a medevac to her location first, then requested the ranking officer meet her to deal with the first contact situation. The alien allowed itself to be taken into custody, and Brandt had to admit that she was happy it was someone else’s problem and not her own. Rogers was placed into a field stasis device, affectionately known as a coffin, which was capable of stabilizing him for the flight back to the Venture where he would undergo emergency surgery. His arm was lost, that much was certain, as she had only ever seen clean cut limbs reattached and not messy wounds where a limb had been torn away. She felt for him, knowing that a pilot of his skill level was uncommon, and she hoped that he could get the medical help he needed to do his job again. She said as much to Specter, who smiled.

  “I know a guy who is good with prosthetics,” he said. Brandt furrowed her b
row.

  “Did you just make a joke?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, “what of it?”

  “Nothing,” she said quickly, “for a second then you just seemed like… well, you again.”

  “I’ve always been me,” he said, “but I get your meaning. I’m back now, I’m sure of it.”

  “You mean you’re Jake again?”

  “You make it sound like I’m Doctor Jekyll or something,” he complained. Brandt’s knowledge of the ancient works was just about sufficient to get that he had made some kind of reference to schizophrenia.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” she explained, “I just…”

  “I get it,” Jake said, “it’s okay.” Brandt hesitated before asking the question on her mind.

  “What are Hyper going to do with you? When we get back, I mean?” Jake shrugged.

  “They can let me go or I can transmit their tech secrets to the whole UN.”

  “You’ll blackmail them?” she asked, her eyebrows going up so high they risked altitude sickness.

  “I’m sure I won’t have to,” he said, “besides, something tells me they’ll have their hands full mining all these crystals and other minerals. Who knows what’s on the main planet, too?”

  They turned as a long file of captured Va’alen came through, all of them much smaller than the others of their species Brandt and Specter had seen. So much smaller that they were the equivalent height of an adult human. They’d been found hiding in the mine shafts that the base protected. Crate upon crate of bright crystal had been harvested from deep inside the rock, and none of them yet knew what it was, only that it must be valuable.

  She was reunited with her team, what was left of it, and apart from Rogers and Paterson, who needed medical treatment, she kept them on the surface to recover the bodies of their team. With the help of a squad from the Venture, they returned to the caves where they had encountered the large scorpion things, and there they found the bones of McMarrow.