Orphan's Alliance (Jason Wander) (23 page)

A swabbie’s voice quavered. “Hell, how many are there?”

“Eighty-three,” Mimi replied, her voice as flat and soft as billiard-table felt. I looked down at the threat counter in the display’s lower right corner, at the winking red “83” and smiled.

Mimi said, “Put Tactical on speaker.”

“It is on, ma’am.”

The Scorpions’ ship-to-ship chatter should have been crackling like cellophane on the Tactical frequency. There was only static.

Mimi frowned. “Try the alternate push.”

“Nothing, ma’am.”

The Scorpions’ green dots didn’t seem to be maneuvering in large groups, but breaking into duos of leader and wingman.

Mimi swore. “They don’t have radio contact, either.” She turned to Howard. “Is this why the recon drones didn’t pick up any chatter? The Slugs have learned to jam radio?”

Howard said, “Looks like it.”

Mimi swore again.

We never knew what the maggots would learn next, except it would usually be something we didn’t expect, and something that gave us fits.

She turned to Ord, who held an olive-drab canvas bag that looked a century old, and pointed at the bag. “You think that thing will work?”

Ord made a tight smile. “One way to find out, ma’am.” The Slugs’ epiphany about radio jamming was an unpleasant surprise, but not Ë€€ wientirely unanticipated.

Mimi turned to her executive officer. “We still have intercom?”

The XO fingered his earpiece. “Yes, ma’am.”

She stepped toward the hatch that led off the bridge and forward, and said over her shoulder, “Mr. Burke, you have the ship. The Flag is displacing to the observation blister.”

Mimi’s legs are short, but I could barely keep up.

FIFTY-NINE

SPACESHIPS DON’T NEED WINDOWS, passengers do. But that’s not why every cruiser has a hemispherical, fifty-foot diameter crystal dome on its nose. The observation blister on every cruiser carried forward from the first ships, not so long ago, because the designers wanted to provide the crew a means to navigate by the stars if the navigation system tanked.

But today, the
Emerald River
’s blister was bent to another purpose. Mimi was going to command her fleet like Nelson led his Fleet to victory at Trafalgar, watching the action from his quarterdeck, and sending silent, visual signals.

Mimi plugged in her headset to the forward rail, as Ord emptied his canvas bag, and plugged in the thick cord that ran from the bottom of the pistol-grip handle of a brass cylinder like a squat coffee can. Mimi looked to our right, where the
Yorktown
floated in the distance. She held lenses to her eyes, and sighted on the
Yorktown
’s observation blister. Even without lenses, I saw a light flicker our way. Mimi nodded. “Good. Flash an acknowledgment, Sergeant Major?”

Ord’s surplus-purchased Aldis Lamps were a century old. Their principal advantage over signaling in Morse code with a flashlight was that an Aldis had a telescopic sight that allowed its beam to be directed where the receiving party could read the dots and dashes. After our landing debacle on Tressel, Ord had acquired on Earth, then distributed among the fleet’s cruisers, lead Scorpions, and transports Aldis Lamps like the one he signaled with.

He had also made few friends by forcing pilots, weapons officers, and communications swabbies to learn ancient Morse code.

It was hardly state-of-the-art radio, but it worked. Besides, the Slugs saw in the infrared spectrum, so they probably didn’t even know we had beaten their jamming.

Mimi also plugged in a mini display, which gave her an electronic view similar to what she had on the bridge. But the battle between our Scorpions and the much larger Firewitches was easy to see, unaided. The Scorpions darted around and through the Firewitches, which kept together in boxy formations so one ship’s mag rifles could cover another’s tail. But where a Firewitch could twist fast enough to hit a Starfire, none could lay a glove on a right-angling Scorpion. As a Scorpion would pass above, below, or to left or right of a Firewitch, a flash would flicker as the Scorpion dropped a missile out of its stinger tail pod, the missile homed, lit, and punched into the Firewitch. In ΀ a Fmoments, the missile’s thermobaric would ignite, and the Firewitch would explode in a silent, purple puff. Mimi gave commands to the Scorpion wings, and Ord relayed them in Morse to the Wing leaders. But I couldn’t imagine that a Scorpion pilot, optics or not, would have time to find and decipher those tiny flashes. It hardly mattered. As I watched, more Firewitches joined the fray. Still the hundreds of tiny white Scorpions twisted and danced around the ponderous, blue-black squids. I glanced down at the threat counter on Mimi’s mini display. It read sixty Firewitches, down a net twenty-three, and kept dropping, even as more Slug ships entered the battle.

The Slugs were losing so fast that, if this were a boxing bout, they would throw in the towel. Suddenly, my gut got cold. We had never seriously thought about what might happen if things went too well for our side, because they so rarely did. Slug warriors would drop dead if cornered, unless they could take you with them. We nearly captured an intact Slug Projectile during the Blitz, but it blew itself up, and nearly took Howard and me with it.

I leaned toward Howard. “What do the Slugs do when they know they’ve lost?”

“Die.”

“Exactly. Would they blow Mousetrap up, and themselves with it?”

“To deny it to us? Probably.”

“How do we stop them?”

“I can think of one option.”

“So can I. But it’s bad.”

TEN MINUTES LATER,Mimi moved her Flag, again, this time amidships, to the launch bays, with me, Howard, and Planck in her wake. Her executive officer had taken over directing traffic from the observation blister, as new cruisers popped out into the radio-silent Mousetrap, then poured their Scorpions into a massive dogfight no remote commander could meaningfully direct, anyway. The first of
Emerald River
’s Scorpions was returning to rearm, and Mimi wanted to be on the flight deck, where she could be sure they re-sortied fast, and where she could extract immediate information from pilots while they were back aboard.

We came through the bay hatch into choreographed chaos. The Scorpion, shimmering white, with its ceramic canopy already open, was backing down the hissing launch rails, away from the resealed inner doors.

The hemispheric bay, vast and crowded at the same time, looked like the globe of a gumball machine shaken by a giant. The Bay Boss and Pushers hung above every-thing in a hovering oversight gantry, pointing and signaling with yellow-gloved hands, wearing yellow vests and helmets. The clamshell doors of the Scorpion’s stinger pod, like the doors that had enfolded me when the Slugs first hit Mousetrap, yawned, while swabbies in red armorer’s vests hoisted missiles into the Scorpion pod. The green-vested launch rail crew reset the Scorpion to return to the fight, and purple-vested Grapes, the refueling crew disenfranchised by the Cavorite-powered Scorpion, bounced amÖ€ ailong the others lending hands where needed.

By the number on the tail stinger, this was the Scorpion that had been assigned the most determinative action of this early phase of the battle, and had performed its mission unarmed and vulnerable. It had been assigned to deliver Jeeb to Mousetrap’s surface. Its pilot stood, helmet visor up, eyes wide, sweating while he gulped a Coke plasti and watched the armorers reload his ship so it could rejoin the battle as a fighter spacecraft.

Mimi asked Jude, “How’d it go?”

He panted between gulps. Sweat streamed down his face. “Firewitch can’t maneuver fast enough to track its rifles on us. S’like stealing, skipper.”

I asked him, “Did you deliver the package?”

Jude nodded, but he wouldn’t look at me. I still didn’t know whether he blamed me for his mother’s death, or whether he was afraid that if we acknowledged one another we would finally acknowledge her loss.

He stared at the armoring crew, as he replied to nobody in particular, “Jeeb was crawling around the surface when I backed out.”

Mimi asked, “How’s the ordnance performing?”

Jude nodded. “One shot, one kill. As long as the Slugs run out of targets before we run out of missiles, we’ll control the envelope around Mousetrap.”

That was always the problem with the Slugs.

The Bay Boss waved Jude back to his cockpit, and the canopy closed over my godson. The Scorpion slid forward on its launch rails until the inner doors closed behind it, then the hull shuddered as he rejoined the battle.

Howard furrowed his brow, and said to Planck, who, for all his inexperience, was in command of his first space firefight, “Sir, we assumed we’d have greater difficulty in these initial phases. I think it’s likely, if things continue, that the Pseudocephalopod will destroy Mousetrap while it still has enough control of the moon to do so.”

Planck said, “How do we prevent that?”

“Abandon plans to land forces on Mousetrap. The Pseudocephalopod can’t keep up with our Scorpions. If we saturation bomb Mousetrap with penetrating thermobarics, we would scour every living thing out of the interior. Right now, It can’t stop us from doing that.”

I said, “But we still don’t know whether the humans inside Mousetrap are alive.”

Planck said, “These Slugs are ruthless. You’ve said it yourselves. They’ve been in control of Mousetrap for years, now. The garrison were engineers, not combat troops. Jason, be realistic. There’s no one left inside to save.”

Certainly there were no Social Republicans inside to save. “Aud, the whole reason to insert Jeeb inside Mousetrap was to resolve that uncertainty.”

Mimi said, “The Slugs are jamming everything. As far as we know, Jeeb didn’t even find a way in. I didn’t want to say it to Jude, but Jeeb’s moot.”

Howard shook his hÛ€€indead. “Jeeb’s brainlink transmits outside normal bandwidths. The Pseudocephalopod reacts economically once it reacts. It may jam only frequencies it’s heard us use a lot.”

The brainlink frequency was so exotic that I wore the only receiver that could hear anything Jeeb transmitted, anyway. But I hadn’t heard a thing.

“I won’t lose this campaign by delaying for a maybe.” Planck turned to Mimi. “Admiral, recover and rearm all the Scorpions, in turn. When we’re ready, scour every living thing out of Mousetrap.”

Mimi said, “Yes, sir.”

Harsh reality may have turned Audace Planck into a dictator. But it hadn’t undone him as a commander. I didn’t like what he was ordering. But I couldn’t disagree with it, either.
Emerald River
began to shudder as, one after another, her Scorpions returned to take on penetrators that would enable us to fry every Slug inside Mousetrap.

I recalled Ord by intercom, and met him in the adjacent bay. As we watched, the bay inner doors opened, and a Scorpion slid back in down the launch rails. Armorers scurried toward its stinger pod. Within minutes, the Scorpion would be ready to re-launch. On the revolver’s opposite side a troop transport sat cold on the rails.

I pointed at the empty transport. “If we knew there were friendlies inside Mousetrap, we would have landed troops in Mousetrap. What did we project? Thirty percent casualties?”

“Low side, yes, sir.”

“Now the embarked divisions may take zero casualties. Overall, this result will be better than our best case. So why do I feel like shit?”

“Heroes get to choose the ditch they die in, sir.”

If any humans remained alive inside Mousetrap, they would never have had a choice. Hydraulic whine echoed, as the armorers lifted a thermobaric toward the Scorpion in the bay.

“Jeeb, is that you?” It was a whisper.

I turned to Ord. “What?”

He turned to me, frowning. “Sir?”

My right earpiece fed me whatever I dialed up. Which, lately, was nothing but intraship chatter. Forgotten in my left ear was the old-fashioned bud that was supposed to have brought me Jeeb’s transmissions from Mousetrap.

I pressed the left piece closer.

A voice said, “Jeeb, can I transmit through you?”

I recognized the voice. My heart thumped at the whisper.

I switched my throat mike to Jeeb’s frequency, then whispered back. “Munchkin?”

“Jason?” Her voice cracked. “I thought you were dead.”

“I thought you were dead. What happened?”

“I hung on to a tether. After you floated away, I got back inside. We can hear activity. What’s going on?”

“We?”

“Six thousand of us here, barricaded inside Level Twenty. I don’t know how many more. How did Jeeb find me?”

“He was supposed to get inside. If he recognized somebody . . .”

Munchkin asked, “What happens next?”

Ord was staring at me. I motioned him to follow as I ran toward the Bridge. As I ran I thumbed my mike back to intercom.

SIXTY-ONE

MIMI AND AUDfaced Ord and me as the bosun piped us onto the Bridge. Mimi asked, “How many?”

“Munchkin says six thousand with her. Barricaded on Level Twenty. The Slugs have been content to wait for them to starve.”

Aud Planck frowned. “We can’t risk the mission for them.”

They weren’t Aud’s troops. They weren’t mine, either. They were mostly Marini. That didn’t make them less valuable to me, and I hoped, in spite of Aud’s transformation, to him. Humanity aside, if Earth and Tressel turned their back on the Marini, we could lose the ally that supplied our Cavorite. I said, “We have to try.”

Aud looked at Mimi. She stood with her feet planted, arms crossed.

Aud nodded. “Alright.” He turned to me. “I’ll authorize landings. But if we get any indication that the Slugs are going to destroy Mousetrap, the Scorpions go in.”

Mimi spoke into her mike. Within minutes, we felt the hull shudder as revolvers rotated the Scorpions out of launch position, and replaced them with troop transports.

Ord and I armored up, because I was going in with my troops. We returned to the bays, and watched as troops boarded the transports, then we headed forward again, to the observation blister. I switched back to Jeeb’s frequency. “Munchkin? What’s the situation down there?”

“You guys have stirred the Slugs up.”