Alliance (Jack Forge, Lost Marine Book 5)

  Alliance

  Jack Forge, Lost Marine, Book 5

  James David Victor

  Fairfield Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Thank You

  1

  Lights across the tac boat’s flight deck blinked at Jack. The constant flickering had become hypnotic. He thought he might have even slipped into sleep a number of times. With the full set of surveillance drones deployed at maximum range, he was able to survey a huge swathe of space, but there had been no contact. The surrounding space was empty. Maybe he had found the passage the fleet was looking for?

  The sensor drones gave Jack a view of a sphere of empty space several astro-units in diameter. On one side lay the Skalidion Empire, a vast territory dominated by the swarms of deadly fighters. On the other side sat the powerful Devex Empire. The Skalidions were steadily pushing their way into Devex territory, and the two empires were locked in a desperate border conflict with battles flaring up along their vast shared boundary.

  The Skalidions were pushing into Devex territory, and the Devex were pushing back where they could. The distance between the territories was shrinking, a narrow and undulating plain of unclaimed space, and the map of the region looked like a rippling sheet of spacetime, pushed and pulled from both sides. It was a vast contested boundary, in flux but moving inexorably in favor of the Skalidions. The fleet would have to pick its way between the two empires if it was to escape.

  Jack pushed forward, advancing along his proscribed line, mapping more of the surrounding space, while the drones actively sought even the slightest hint of Skalidion or Devex activity.

  So far, all was clear, but he knew that with every sector of space he scouted, there was the danger of encountering a Skalidion or Devex ship. He was alone and vulnerable. The thought made him shudder, and the sudden wave of adrenalin woke him. He no longer felt sleepy.

  The fleet had sent dozens of tac boats out in all directions to find a path out of danger. It was hiding out in a nebula of dense dust and gas that contained several new stars, each with their attendant protoplanetary disks, and the dust and gas and swirling discs of protoplanets gave excellent cover for the huge fleet. The constant collisions in the protoplanetary disks, the swirling gas, and the chaotic mix of radiation made sensor detection almost impossible. It also meant that the fleet had no idea who or what was beyond the edge of the nebula.

  Sending the scout ships had been a risk. If they had been detected leaving the nebula, their hiding place would have been revealed, but the fleet couldn’t hide in the nebula indefinitely. Sooner or later, they had to move on.

  So far, they had remained undetected, and Jack knew the importance of keeping their cover. The fleet’s only hope for survival was to escape this hostile region of space and find a star system to settle and rebuild, or at least make repairs to the battered fleet.

  They were short on supplies, and the ships needed servicing—many needed their reactors stripped and scrubbed, and some ships had been in constant operation for over a year. Jack’s old ship, the Scorpio, had been on the front line of conflict for far too long and was in desperate need of a total shutdown and refit.

  The tac boat Jack was currently sitting in had been in operation for so long that the maintenance counter, the chart that recorded when the boat was due for a service, had reset at least once. The counter was practically at the start of its run, indicating that the boat had just rolled through another maintenance cycle.

  How long, Jack wondered, could the fleet continue to stagger along before system failures became catastrophic?

  The flight deck suddenly flashed, and he jumped. The light seemed to come at the same time as the thoughts of looming disaster. The drone network had detected a planetary system dead ahead. Jack slowed the boat.

  The data piled up and gave Jack a full image of a binary star system with a small red dwarf and a smaller brown dwarf. The pair rotated around a common point in a lazy dance across a small region of space. A few planets orbited the larger red dwarf. Small rocky planets close to the red dwarf were scorched, burned by the heat given off by the dim star and fried by the radiation emanating from the brown dwarf.

  If there was any life in this system, it would be unlike anything Jack had ever encountered. This was a dead and decaying system. Even though it was small and tortured, Jack knew to give it a wide berth. The chance of stumbling across a Skalidion or Devex outpost was too great. He marked the system’s location and altered his heading to avoid it.

  The way ahead was clear. A black void with the distant star field. There would be other systems in his path eventually, but maybe he could clear the danger zone between the two warring empires before he encountered another.

  Jack left the small system away to his port side and scouted forward, into empty space. He felt his eyes droop. He’d been active for days, working straight through several watch rotations. Now that he was alone in the dark, he felt even more tired. At least on board the Scorpio, there was noise, activity, and varied work. It all helped keep him alert. But here, alone, it was almost impossible to keep himself from drifting to sleep.

  He entertained the thought of returning to the small dwarf star system on the pretense of exploring it as a route marker and ensuring it was clear, the temptation to set down on one of the small rocky planets and rest was so tempting. He could power down the tac boat and bring the drones in close to give him a warning system should any ships come nearby. He could lie back, close his eyes, let his thoughts drift away, and fall into a welcome, soothing sleep.

  Jack jerked in his seat. He had drifted off for a moment. A fraction of sleep, a morsel to feed a hungry man. He rubbed his face and grabbed a hydration pack. He squirted the water into his mouth, letting his aim go wild so the water splashed on his face. He rubbed the water away, trying to rub the fatigue away. He felt alert, for a moment, but soon the weariness began to creep back. He checked the time since his last stim shot. It had been almost an entire watch.

  His tactical suit would not let him take another for a little while yet. Jack climbed out of this seat and walked to the back of the boat, hoping a little exercise would bring him back from the edge of sleep.

  The tac boat was a small multipurpose craft. Jack had used similar vessels to transport squads of Marines to the front line of battle. There were seats for a full squad of twelve Marines. With twelve tac boats assigned to each company of a destroyer, an entire Marine battalion could be moved at speed to the front lines. The boats were tough, offensive craft in their own right and were designed to deflect heavy ground fire and drop Marines close to the action. They also had a formidable arsenal and could be used to support a destroyer’s operation. They were swift enough to hold formation with some of the fleet’s smaller warships—frigates and corvettes—and they were also able to act as a Blade squadron’s sensor and fire support platform.

  But now, the tac boat was a scout vessel. Jack was alone, with only the drones to accompany him. He was a sensor platform
, scanning and mapping space. Searching for a way out, a path to safety.

  Jack pressed his forehead against the rear bulkhead. Behind the bulkhead was the reactor, and beyond that, the main drive assembly. The bulkhead was cool. Jack let the composite soothe his tiredness and bring some relief from fatigue.

  A warning beep from the flight console had Jack on full alert. He hurried forward, picking his way between the cramped rows of seats and up the few steps to the flight deck. He dropped into his seat and responded to the alert.

  Another star system, away to his starboard side this time. Jack called up the local map on the small flight console holostage. The dwarf binary was only a few astro units back and now there was another system. A white dwarf that was just on the lower range of a main sequence star. A standard planetary disk orbited the star with two small terrestrial inner planets and three massive gas giants. The inner planets were both in the habitable zone. The largest gas giant had one huge moon, almost as big as the smaller of the two inner planets.

  The readings came in from the drone network that organics were detected on the gas giant’s moon. Jack looked at the data. There was life there, but it was little more than a planet-wide moss, a simple form of vegetation. There was no indication of any animal life, or any plant life other than the moss.

  Jack zoomed in on the moss planet. It would never be home, but it could be a pit stop. There was liquid water and the moss could potentially be converted into nutritious rations. Jack marked the location of the planet as possible supply stop and then reset his heading to maneuver along the fine line between the dwarf binary and the white dwarf with its outer mossy moon.

  If the fleet was to come this way, it would be a narrow channel, and a dangerous one. The star systems would attract the attention of the Skalidion and the Devex sooner or later as a possible resupply stop, with potential for a planet-side defensive position where they could hold their lines and hold off their enemy.

  If the fleet was to come this way, it would be like threading a needle. It would be possible to avoid detection, as there was no activity just yet. Maybe this was the way to get clear.

  A new signal sounded, accompanied by an alert. Now Jack was fully awake. He turned the boat about and recalled the drones.

  A lone Skalidion ship was in orbit around the moss moon.

  Jack zoomed in on the Skalidion ship on the flight console holostage and watched it, taking furtive glances at the holoimage as he moved away, slowly at first, waiting for the surveillance drones to return. With the last of the drones safely housed on the outer hull, nestled in their pods, Jack eased the drive up to full power. The gentle increase in power might go undetected, if he was lucky.

  Then the tac boat lurched, fractionally. A warning light flashed on the flight console—the reactor distribution had drifted off symmetry by a picometer and resulted in a slight drive flare. The onboard systems had already recalibrated and corrected the issue. The alert was a simple advisory notice.

  But the flare had done more than jostle Jack in his seat. It had lit up the tac boat’s location.

  Jack looked at the Skalidion drone in orbit, but it was no longer in orbit. It was accelerating—bearing down on Jack with speed.

  “Oh, great,” Jack groaned. He kicked the drive up to full power and began to prepare his weapon systems as the Skalidion fighter moved in for the kill.

  2

  Jack readied a set of decoy slugs and input a new heading. His hands danced over the flight console, flying on instinct and memory. He released the decoy slugs and waited for them to activate.

  The holoimage on the flight console showed him the location of the decoy. It held position a few thousand kilometers off the boat’s rear. The Skalidion fighter was just out of range. Now that Jack had brought in the sensor drones, he was reliant on the tac boat’s on-board sensor array. It was a powerful system in its own right and gave him a good view of over an astro unit in every direction. The Skalidion was just out of that range, but Jack had no doubt the fighter was closing in.

  Jack activated the rearmost counter decoy slug. The slug flared like a drive assembly, throwing out a signal impossible to differentiate from the tac boat’s own drive assembly. With the slug flaring, Jack made a slight course correction and headed off a few degrees to starboard. The slug continued in a straight line for a few seconds before altering course a few degrees to port.

  Jack watched anxiously. He was sweating but cold. The Skalidion fighter came into range of the tac boat’s sensors. It was following the slug.

  Jack cut his drive and coasted while the slug flared again, changed heading by a few more degrees, and accelerated away. The slug could not match the tac boat for speed, but it made a good show of pretending to be the tac boat, running for safety.

  Jack altered his heading with a burst from his port-side thruster jet and pushed himself on course toward the nearby dwarf binary.

  The image on the flight deck’s holostage showed a sphere around the boat with all data from the sensors feeding into the real-time image. The decoy slug was veering off toward the edge of sensor range at the port side of the sensor view. The Skalidion was toward the rear edge of the sphere but moving closer by the second. Jack clenched his fist tightly, pressing it against his lip, and watched the tiny point of light that represented the Skalidion fighter.

  He breathed in relief as he saw that the fighter was clearly in pursuit of the decoy slug. Jack was slipping away. He set a heading and gave the thrusters another light burst, pushing the stub nose of the tac boat toward the dwarf binary.

  The holoimage flashed as the decoy slug was destroyed. The Skalidion fighter poured green fire into its target. Jack watched as the Skalidion fighter held position, the fighter slipping toward the edge of the sensor sphere as the boat moved. He could hear his pulse as he watched the small holoimage.

  The Skalidion held position. It seemed transfixed by the explosion of the decoy. Jack saw the brown dwarf of the dwarf binary come into sensor range.

  Jack had escaped.

  Then his drive flared again. It was the slightest of energy-balancing discharges as the onboard systems corrected another minor asymmetry in the reactor.

  Jack felt his heart beat hard. The Skalidion fighter turned in a flash and jumped to high speed, heading directly for him.

  He kicked the drive up to full power and sped forward. He readied another decoy slug. It might work again, but Jack had another plan this time. He just hoped the Skalidion were as clever as he thought they were or his next trick would never work.

  But before he attempted evasion, Jack would put up a defense. However, he had not been equipped with any combat drones. This was a scouting mission, after all.

  The forward laser assembly drew power directly from the reactor and was always an option. Jack had the forward laser loop powering up, but he was not planning on attacking the Skalidion head on, as the range of the Skalidion’s green fire was too great. It was slow but devastating ordnance that almost crept forward, but when the Skalidion came on in numbers, the sheer amount of green fire was impossible to avoid.

  Jack did have the single top-mounted hail cannon and a range of ordnance at his disposal. He loaded a high-density kinetic hail round into the cannon. The cannon rotated swiftly, and a slight screech echoed through the tac boat, suggesting the swivel assembly had not been serviced for some time. But the cannon lined up on its target and reported ready to fire.

  Jack watched the Skalidion on the holoimage. It was closing in to a few thousand kilometers. He reframed the image for close-range operation. The Skalidion fighter grew larger on the holoimage as the sensors displayed more information over a smaller scale.

  The Skalidion fighters were sleek craft with three distinct parts: a sharpened nose section that housed the green fire generator, the central section—which was the largest and contained the Skalidion itself, and then the bulbous rear section that tilted upward from the line of the two forward sections. The drive system was possibly house
d there, but the method of propulsion was as yet unknown to Fleet engineers.

  Jack waited for the fighter to close into its weapon range. With a few seconds to spare, Jack fired the high-density round. It raced toward the pursuing Skalidion, closing the distance in seconds. Then the round detonated, throwing a wall of kinetic hail outward.

  The detonation filled the sensors for a moment, obscuring the Skalidion. When the flash died away, Jack saw the Skalidion holding position as the wall of kinetic hail blocked its path.

  Then it activated its forward green fire weapon and burned a channel through the expanding wall of kinetic hail before jumping back to high speed and racing through the channel it had created.

  Using the time he’d bought for himself, Jack closed in on the brown dwarf, beyond which was the red dwarf. Between the two was the region of tortured spacetime with several planets giving cover. He would evade the Skalidion there, or defeat it, or he would lose and be consumed by the Skalidion or one of the stars.

  Jack fired another round and threw up another wall of deadly hail. The Skalidion knew better than to charge through the hail curtain, as it would shred the fighter, but the green fire quickly burned a path and the Skalidion came on.

  Readying the next decoy slug, he aimed his boat at the brown dwarf and let himself fall into the gravity well. He released the decoy slug, then cut his power and ran dark.

  The Skalidion had already been tricked by this once. Jack was hoping it would not fall for it again. He would have to time it perfectly.

  The Skalidion came through the final hail curtain and closed in on the last-known location of its prey.