Frontiers Saga 12: Rise of the Alliance

  The Frontiers Saga Episode #12: Rise of the Alliance

  Copyright © 2014 by Ryk Brown All rights reserved.

  First Kindle Edition

  Cover and Formatting by Streetlight Graphics

  All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  Despite all that had happened, Maxwell Dumar had never put much faith in the idea that Nathan Scott was the Na-Tan described in the Legend of Origins. It was, after all, only a legend. For all they knew it was a bedtime story that had somehow morphed into a pseudo-religion, made stronger still by the maniacal reign of Caius Ta’Akar.

  Commander Dumar chuckled to himself as he made his way down the corridors of the Karuzara asteroid’s command center. Na-Tan. The idea made him smile. Still, Jalea had played the Followers of Origin masterfully, and had gotten the young captain to play the role out of expediency, if not out of utter desperation. That woman had been trouble. He knew it the moment he had met her, and he was glad that Lieutenant Commander Nash had known it as well… and had dealt with her once her usefulness had ended.

  Still, one could not help but wonder how it was that so many things seemed to have fallen into place for Captain Scott, and usually at just the right moment. Today was a perfect example. The precise moment in time that was rapidly approaching, and this particular advantageous alignment would not come again for another eighty-seven years—if Casimir’s calculations were correct. Without this particular stroke of luck, the prince’s plan would not have been possible. One had to wonder.

  Commander Dumar passed the guards at the door to the control room, feigning a return salute. The room was the largest single room in the entire command section, having been expanded to accommodate the many technicians by the removal of several walls. Rows of workstations, each with multiple view screens for each technician to monitor, filled the room. Behind the technicians walked section supervisors and technical experts. In the back of the room were the physicists and engineers.

  “Commander,” the senior controller greeted as Dumar approached. He glanced up at the digital time display on the wall. “It’s getting close.”

  Dumar also noted the time. “Five minutes until the window opens.” He looked about the room once more, scanning for signs of concern from any of the technicians. “Are we going to make it?”

  “If you mean, are we going to be ready, then the answer is yes,” the senior controller answered. “If you’re asking if it will work, I’d have to answer, ‘we’re about to find out.’”

  Dumar smiled wryly.

  “How can you speak of this so casually?” one of the physicists in the back of the room asked. “Do you realize what this will mean? Do you realize how much things will change?” the man continued.

  “Yes, I do,” Dumar answered, “assuming it works.” He turned back to the senior controller. “Of course, if it doesn’t, none of us will be the wiser.”

  The senior controller raised an eyebrow and nodded.

  “Did you get to see your family, Mister Bryant?” Dumar asked, suddenly remembering how much his senior controller had been looking forward to the upcoming visit.

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  “They are well, I trust?”

  “Quite well.”

  “How did your wife react when you told her what you were about to do?”

  “She was fine.”

  Dumar looked at Mister Bryant. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”

  “Of course not,” he answered, smiling. “You married a Corinairan woman, did you not?”

  “I did at that.”

  “Then you know as well as I that had I told her the truth, she would have knocked me out, bound me tight, and dragged me back to Corinair… by what little hair I have left on my head.”

  Dumar had to fight back a laugh. “You are correct, Mister Bryant. I suspect she would have done just that.” Dumar looked at the time display as the last minute disappeared, leaving only seconds left to tick away. “Final check,” he ordered.

  Throughout the control room, section supervisors tallied their technicians one by one, then called in their results to the primary controllers lined up at their consoles directly in front of Mister Bryant.

  “Navigation is good,” the first primary controller reported.

  “Power generation is good,” the next controller added.

  “Power distribution is good.”

  “Life support is good.”

  Mister Bryant listened patiently, marking off each section on his data pad as the twelve primary controllers reported their readiness. He looked at the time display. Thirty seconds and counting. “All systems are online and ready. All outer doors are secure, and all sections are on alert.” Another look at the time. “Fifteen seconds and counting.”

  Dumar looked at the physicists to his right. They looked nervous. The engineers to his left, not as much. “Remove the safeties, Mister Bryant.”

  Mister Bryant stepped up to the small podium located directly in the middle of the twelve primary controllers. He placed his hand on a scanner plate. A moment later, the clear panel over the arming switch slid open. He rotated the knob to the ‘armed’ position. “The system is armed. The array is live.” He glanced at the time again. “Five seconds to the window.”

  Dumar watched the last few seconds change, waiting until the display showed nothing but a row of zeros. “Jump.”

  The Karuzara asteroid was dark, lit only by the distant light from the Darvano star. All of its usual external lighting, its approach and departure trenches, its comm arrays, and its various entrances and exits for personnel working on the surface of the massive asteroid had all been shut down. At the moment, it looked much like it had decades ago… before the Corinairan miners, before the Karuzari, and before the Alliance. It was just another dark, dead rock making its way leisurely around its parent star, just as it had for billions of years.

  Pale blue dots all over the asteroid began to glow, becoming white as they quickly rose in their intensity. The hundreds of intense white dots suddenly flashed, sending a wave of blue-white light across the surface of the asteroid like a wave of shimmering water. A second later, the entire asteroid was engulfed in a brilliant blue-white flash of light that rivaled the Darvano star itself. The flash faded even more quickly than it had manifested, leaving only the blackness of space where the Karuzara asteroid had been only a moment earlier.

  “Jump complete,” Mister Bryant announced. He looked around out of the corners of his eyes as if he were afraid to move his head. Finally, he turned to Commander Dumar, who was smiling more broadly than ever before. “We’re still alive.”

  “Indeed we are,” Du
mar agreed, “and where are we?”

  Both of Mister Bryant’s eyebrows raised as he remembered his next task. “Position!” he called out.

  “Raising the arrays!” the navigation controller answered.

  “Emitters show zero energy,” the array controller reported.

  “Energy banks at zero charge,” the next controller announced.

  “Reactors are normal.”

  “All stations are reporting no damage.”

  “All systems appear to be nominal.”

  “Sir!” one of the section supervisors called out. “We’ve changed shape and mass!”

  “What?”

  An image appeared on one of the big view screens on the forward wall of the control room. It was a computer-generated graphic of the Karuzara asteroid based on readings from her many sensors.

  “We wondered if that might happen,” one of the physicists said.

  “We told you that would happen,” an engineer insisted.

  “That what would happen?” Commander Dumar answered.

  “The jump fields sort of nipped off the tops of some of the surface peaks, instead of forming over their complete surface,” the physicist explained.

  “That’s why we made all our comm and sensor arrays retractable, isn’t it.” Mister Bryant said.

  “We expected this,” Dumar added.

  “We just didn’t know how much mass we would lose,” the engineer admitted. “If we’d had more time, we could have calibrated each emitter to prevent this from happening…”

  “It was my call,” Dumar interrupted. “Do not worry. All we did was smooth a few rough edges, correct?” He looked at Mister Bryant. “That is all we lost, correct?”

  “Uh, yes, sir. That’s all.”

  “Position is verified,” the primary navigation controller announced. “We are exactly ten light years from our previous position, thirty-seven light years from Palamor.”

  “Our trajectory?” Dumar asked.

  “Perfect,” the controller added, beaming from ear to ear.

  The control room erupted in cheers.

  Mister Bryant reached out to Commander Dumar. “Congratulations, sir. You’ve just jumped an asteroid.”

  Dumar smiled as he shook Mister Bryant’s hand. Fate continues to smile on Captain Scott, he thought as he shook his head in disbelief.

  * * *

  Josh and Loki ran down the central corridor, dodging the constant stream of damage control teams and medical rescue technicians flowing in all directions.

  Loki slowed a moment as he stepped aside to make room for a stretcher as another of the Celestia’s injured crewmen was wheeled from the main hangar deck forward toward medical. The man had severe burns on one whole side of his body, and looked to be in great pain.

  “Come on, Loki!” Josh yelled back from the hatch to the main hangar bay.

  Loki continued forward at a quicker pace once again. “Did you see that guy?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. He’s hurt bad. They all are. They’ll pump them full of nanites and they’ll be back on their feet in a few months,” Josh said as he stepped through the hatch. “Hell, most of them are Corinairan. The nanites won’t hurt them at all.”

  Loki shook his head as he followed Josh into the hangar bay. He had known Josh for years now, and still his friend’s general lack of compassion for other human beings never ceased to amaze him. He followed Josh as they weaved through the usual well-orchestrated chaos that was the main hangar bay only minutes after a battle.

  Josh broke through the chaos, stopping in his tracks, his mouth agape as the eighth four zero two rolled forward and turned to line up next to the previous seven. “Holy crap!” he exclaimed, turning back toward Loki, whose expression was similar. “I didn’t believe him when he told me…”

  “Neither did I,” Loki admitted with nearly equal excitement.

  “How many are there?”

  “I heard at least a dozen,” Loki answered.

  “Twenty jumped in,” Marcus announced as he approached. “Four of them got smoked attacking that damned battle platform.”

  “Where’s the rest of them?” Josh asked eagerly.

  “Helping the Celestia finish off them bombers,” Marcus answered.

  “Look at them,” Loki exclaimed. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Ours was better,” Josh boasted.

  “Ours was only one,” Loki explained, gesturing toward the entire group of eight.

  “Maybe, but we did a lot of damage with that one ship,” Josh reminded his friend.

  “That’s my point, Josh. Imagine what the captain can do with sixteen of them.”

  “You’re right,” Josh admitted with a chuckle. “I hadn’t even thought of that.” Josh turned back toward Loki. “Let’s go check them out.” Josh took off on a brisk stride toward the line of black interceptors, slowing to appear more nonchalant as he neared the first one. Its cockpit was open and empty. Its crew, being the first to board, had already disembarked. The same was true with the next two ships in line. Each of them had obvious scarring from their recent encounter with the Jung battle platform. They also had some rather odd-looking configurations on some of their weapons ports and control surfaces.

  “What the hell is this?” Marcus wondered, having followed them over. “This ain’t the right gauge for a hinge. It’ll never hold up down in the atmosphere.”

  “We weren’t planning on taking them down to the surface,” one of the pilots explained, “at least not if we could avoid it.”

  “That ain’t no excuse for sloppy…”

  “We had to get the first twenty up rather quickly, I’m afraid,” the pilot defended. “I suspect more than a few shortcuts were taken to get them out the door.”

  “The first twenty?” Loki wondered. “There are more coming?”

  “I believe so,” the pilot answered. “I’m not quite sure when, or how many. At least another twenty, I’d guess.” The pilot stepped closer, extending his hand. “Thain, Busby Thain. Friends call me ‘Busy’.”

  “Josh Hayes,” Josh said, shaking the pilot’s hand as he continued staring at the row of interceptors.

  “Loki Sheehan,” Loki answered. “This is Marcus Taggart.”

  “Nice to meet you, Senior Chief,” the pilot answered.

  “Likewise, Lieutenant,” Marcus answered as he also shook the lieutenant’s hand. “You from Corinair?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Corinari?”

  “Six years now,” the lieutenant answered. “Least ways, I was. Not sure what we are now, to be honest.”

  “I’m just glad you all showed up.”

  “Sorry to come so late,” the lieutenant said. “We were under the impression that trouble wasn’t expected for at least another month.”

  “Yeah, things changed,” Marcus said. “Happens a lot around here.”

  Busy turned toward Josh, who was crawling up the boarding ladder to the nearest ship. “You like spacecraft?”

  “We used to fly a Falcon just like these,” Loki told him.

  “Still say ours was better,” Josh insisted as he came back down the ladder.

  “Falcon?” The lieutenant suddenly realized who he was speaking with. “Josh and Loki. You’re the guys they told us about.”

  “What?” Josh said, his interest suddenly peaked.

  “You heard of them?” Marcus asked, more surprised than anyone. “Oh, crap.”

  “No, you guys are famous back home. At least to other flight crews. Hell, they even had us studying some of your maneuvers. The waterfall? That was amazing! Did you really do that?”

  “We really did that,” Loki answered, wishing the memory of the event could stay buried deep within his subconscious.

  “Unbelievable. Most pilots would have ejected.”

  “Can’t eject when you’re carrying a jump drive in Jung territory,” Josh said with obvious swagger.

  “I guess not,” the lieutenant admitted. “Still, it would be a hard ins
tinct for a Corinari pilot to overcome, especially after they drilled it into your head during training.”

  “Yeah, well, ain’t nothing ever been drilled into that boy’s head,” Marcus told the lieutenant.

  “Senior Chief!” a deckhand called out from the distance.

  “Chaos calls,” Marcus said as he turned to leave.

  “So, we’re famous back in the PC?” Josh asked, feeling more cocky and arrogant than usual.

  “I don’t know about the entire Pentaurus cluster, but everyone on Corinair who flies has heard about you two. I’ve got to say, it’s an honor to meet you both. I’d love to hear about some of your flights some time.”

  Loki closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “Sure!” Josh said. “What would you like to hear about?”

  “Oh, man,” Loki mumbled, shaking his head.

  * * *

  “Congratulations, Captain,” Lieutenant Telles said from the entrance to the captain’s ready room. “Your victory, although surprising, was well earned through the use of sound tactics.”

  “We were victorious because twenty Falcons arrived just in time to save our butts,” Nathan said.

  The lieutenant moved deeper into the ready room as he spoke. “Only because of your actions in the Darvano system, and your subsequent defeat of the Ta’Akar Empire. Without those victories, this one most certainly would not have been possible.”

  “Perhaps,” Nathan admitted, not completely believing the lieutenant.

  “A great leader always makes his decisions based on the greater goal, not the individual battle. You were prepared to let your world die in order to continue fighting for people you might never meet, but who need you to stand and protect them nonetheless.”

  Nathan looked at the lieutenant. “Are you sure I wasn’t just afraid that we would lose, that we would all die and the Earth would die with us?”

  “There is nothing wrong with fear, Captain,” Lieutenant Telles explained as he took a seat across from Nathan. “Fear increases adrenaline levels, sharpens our wit, energizes our muscles, quickens our heart and respiratory rates. Fear prepares us; keeps us alive, if we control it. That is what you did this day. Not only when you were willing to walk away from the battle, but when you destroyed that battle platform with perhaps thousands of Jung still on board.”