Battlecruiser Alamo_Cries in the Dark Read online

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Dreams in the Dust

  CRIES IN THE DARK

  Battlecruiser Alamo: Book 28

  Richard Tongue

  Battlecruiser Alamo #28: Cries in the Dark

  Copyright © 2017 by Richard Tongue, All Rights Reserved

  First Kindle Edition: December 2017

  Cover By Keith Draws

  With thanks to Ellen Clarke and Rene Douville

  All characters and events portrayed within this ebook are fictitious; any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Join the Triplanetary Universe Mailing List: http://eepurl.com/A9MdX

  Prologue

   The Battlecruiser Alamo slowly drifted through the asteroids, following a carefully calculated trajectory designed to keep it constantly in sensor shadow, eluding the Hegemony warships that roamed the system, looking for any sign of their prey. They’d been hunting them for weeks, likely knew at least their rough location, but Alamo was more than a match for any one of them, and their commander knew it. So the dance continued, as it had for countless days, while her crew struggled to put the pieces back together, to repair the damage sustained during their escape from the Dyson Sphere, more than a month ago.

   Sitting on the bridge once again, Lieutenant-Captain Margaret Orlova, her face still showing the scars of battle, looked from console to console, her crew manning their posts with their usual consummate skill. It had been a frustrating time, nursing her ship into the cluster of rocks, forced to wait and watch while enemy ships flew all around them, knowing that at any moment, one mistake, one misjudgment would expose them to attack, a battle they were not ready to deal with.

   In all honesty, they still weren’t.

   The engineering teams had worked around the clock in a desperate bid to prepare the ship for combat, to put the pieces back together again, but there was only so much that they could do without the services of a spacedock, especially while having to hide their activities. There were three other systems in range, but the further they traveled from the Dyson Sphere, the harder it was going to be to work their way back again, and she wasn’t about to leave her stranded comrades behind.

   Moreover, the Sphere remained their best chance of finding a way home. Somewhere out here was a wormhole that would take them back to Triplanetary space, and without that shortcut home, Alamo and her crew were doomed to wander through Andromeda, perhaps finding some safe haven to establish a settlement, a single outpost of humanity in the vast, endless void beyond.

   “The first gap opens in ninety seconds, Captain,” her Tactical Officer, Lieutenant Scott, reported. “With another one a hundred and eighty seconds later. The first one is the best, ma’am. We’ll be able to get to the egress point without worrying about intercept from any of the enemy capital ships.”

   “They’ve got fighters, Lieutenant,” Senior Lieutenant Francis, Alamo’s harried Executive Officer, replied. “We’re outnumbered at least ten to one in that arena, and they’ll get at least one firing pass before we can leave the system.” Looking up at the status board, he continued, “I must once more formally object to this course of action at this time, Captain. Given another ten days, we might...”

   Shaking her head, Orlova said, “We’ve waited long enough, Lieutenant, and every hour we linger here increases the chance that we are subjected to a surprise attack. They’re strengthening their forces in this system, not weakening them.”

   “Then I also suggest that we go somewhere other than the Dyson Sphere on the first jump. They’ll know that’s where we’re heading, and they’ll follow with everything they’ve got. We’ll still be fighting a battle. The only difference is that we’ll be fighting it in open space, without any ability for tactical maneuvering.” He looked up at the monitor, and added, “It’s got to be worth a try, Captain.”

   Orlova looked at the tactical hologram again, watching the starships slide through the sky all around them. Francis was right, and in other circumstances, she’d probably be giving the same advice, but they couldn’t delay any longer, and even if they tried to throw off their pursuers, they’d still know their ultimate destination. They had to reach the Sphere as soon as possible, no matter what.

   She turned to the officer at the helm, and ordered, “Sub-Lieutenant Quesada, take us out on the course as instructed, maximum acceleration. Lieutenant Scott, bring the crew to battle stations and place all sensors on full-active mode. It’s time to leave.”

   “Aye, aye, ma’am,” the young man replied, his hands gratefully dancing over the controls, thankful to at last be breaking out of the same cautious holding pattern they’d been maintaining for the last few weeks. “Engines to full power, egress point in nine minutes, ten seconds.”

   “Tactical to all hands,” Scott said. “Battle stations, battle stations. All hands to your battle stations. This is no drill. I repeat, this is no drill. Brace for multiple impacts, damage control positions assemble according to Schedule Three. That is all.” She looked up at the control panel, and said, “All stations are responding, Captain.”

   “Very good, Lieutenant,” Orlova replied, watching the screen.

   “Threat warning!” Ballard, the sensor technician, reported. “Two enemy ships have altered course, trying for an intercept. There’s no way they can reach us in time, but both vessels are fighter carriers, ma’am, and if they launch within the next sixty seconds, they’ll make a strike before we leave the system.”

   “What about the rest of the enemy ships?” Orlova asked.

   “Holding course, ma’am.”

   Nodding, Francis replied, “They might think we’re pulling a feint, trying to draw them away from our intended exit point.” He looked up at the monitor, and added, “Not too late to do that, ma’am. If we hustled...”

   “Then we’d have four enemy ships on our back instead of two,” she replied. “Launch fighters, Lieutenant. I want all of our remaining birds in the air. Orders to intercept any incoming formation and return to Alamo on the double. I will not leave anyone behind in this system.”

   “Aye, Captain,” Francis replied, turning to his station. A few seconds later, Alamo rocked as three fighters, the remnants of its once-proud squadron, raced from the launch tubes, speeding ahead of the ship on its way out of the system. She looked up at the course projection, nodding in approval. They were playing a conservative game, giving themselves plenty of chances to get home in a hurry if they had to. Regardless, she threw Francis a quick glare. He nodded in response, already preparing one of the search and rescue shuttles for emergency launch.

   She looked up at the sensor display, watching as the two ships converged upon them. After a moment, the remainder of the enemy fleet altered course, belatedly chasing after Alamo, doubtless deciding that she wasn’t attempting some sort of ruse but was actually fleeing the sy
stem. A quick flick through the combat database confirmed for her that they had left it too late, that they could never reach them in time, and neither could their fighters.

   “New targets!” Scott said. “Twelve interceptors in the air, Captain, bearing directly with weapons hot. Enemy cruisers are reducing acceleration, staying out of the battlespace.” Throwing controls, she added, “They’ll be on us sixty-one seconds before we can reach the egress point.”

   “Quesada, is there anything more you can do?” Orlova asked.

   “Nothing, Captain. We’re already at maximum sustainable output.” Glancing down at his controls, he added, “Even if I red-lined the systems, they’d still have at least forty seconds on us, and I’d burn out half the power relays doing it.”

   Shaking his head at the engineering station, Spaceman Fitzroy said, “We’ve only just got the damned thing working again, Captain.”

   “All decks are at battle stations,” Scott said. “Missiles in the tubes, prepared for defensive fire, and our point-defense systems are on-line.” Turning to Orlova, she asked, “Should I prepare the laser cannon, ma’am, or are we going for a full-power run out of the system?”

   “Leave maximum power with the engines,” Orlova replied. “We want to be away from here as soon as possible, and one laser shot won’t help us much in the current tactical situation.” Alamo’s engines roared to full power, a low whine rumbling through the hull as the ship surged to maximum acceleration, a dotted line racing across the viewscreen to display their departure from the system. Her eyes were locked on the fighters, three facing twelve, knowing that all of their senior officers were dead or missing. Three near-rookies, with the fate of her ship in their hands.

   “Eight minutes to egress point, Captain,” Quesada said. “I don’t dare any evasive action, ma’am, or the cruisers will catch us. We’ve got to go full-burn.”

   “Then by all means, Sub-Lieutenant, give it everything you’ve got.”

   “Aye, ma’am,” the helmsman said with evident relish. He’d hated the enforced tedium of the stealth course as much as anyone else, and was relieved to be heading out into open space once more, no matter what odds were facing them. “Course for the Sphere is plotted. We should come out right where we left.”

   “You think Salazar and the others are still alive?” Scott asked.

   “You’ve known Pavel as long as I have, Lieutenant,” Orlova replied with a smile. “Do you really need me to answer that question?”

   “I guess not, ma’am,” she replied with a smile. “More fighters launching from the other two cruisers, but they’ll never reach us in time. I’m surprised they’re wasting the fuel.”

   Shaking her head, Orlova said, “They’ll try for our hendecaspace drive on the first pass, Lieutenant, and if they manage to put one shot on target, we aren’t going anywhere.” She looked up at the viewscreen, her fighters releasing their deadly payload, six missiles racing towards the enemy formation before Alamo’s ships turned back, racing home, heedless of the fuel they were recklessly spending to get away. Orlova nodded in approval. Textbook.

   “Enemy formation has launched eight missiles in response,” Francis said, leaning over the sensor display. “Overkill, Captain, but I think they’re playing it safe. We still have sixteen incoming missiles to worry about.” Glancing up at the countdown clock, he continued, “In about five and a half minutes from now.”

   “Hold your course, Quesada,” she said. All eyes were locked on the viewscreen, watching the slow progression of the ships as they slid through the sky. The worst part of space warfare was the waiting. Hours, sometimes days of tedium interspersed with seconds of furious activity and sheer terror. Nothing new to her, but that didn’t make it easier. Especially as she couldn’t, even after a month, quite get used to the idea that this wasn’t her ship. Pavel Salazar had been her commander for months, and the late Captain Marshall before him. She’d commanded this ship during the Xandari War, but that was more than a year ago. Most of the people on this vessel were new, people she didn’t know, who didn’t know her. It made a difference, somehow.

   “Two minutes to intercept,” Scott said, breaking through her reverie. “Enemy formation closing for action. I’d like to get one salvo up early. We might be able to take out a dozen of their missiles that way. With a little luck, point-defense will take care of the rest.”

   “Proceed, Lieutenant,” Orlova said. “Quesada, do everything necessary to protect the hendecaspace drive. We can live with any other damage, but we’ve got to get out of the system on this pass, or we’ll never leave it.”

   “Understood, Captain,” the helmsman replied, his hands poised over his controls, ready to send commands surging through the system. His youth belied his experience, and his calm demeanor proved it. He knew what he was doing, and more importantly, he knew that he could do it.

   The seconds trickled away as she watched, one after another, the fighters getting ever closer as they prepared for launch. Alamo rocked as Scott fired the first defensive salvo, hurling them towards the fighters in a desperate bid to distract them, knowing that it was the longest of long shots but choosing to take it anyway, an instant before the enemy formation fired. Eighteen dots on the screen, with six more chasing after them. Scott frantically worked her station, preparing another salvo for launch, and Orlova cursed the damage they had not been able to repair, the missile tubes they hadn’t had a chance to clear. That would have made it simple. Now it was going to be tougher.

   Alamo rocked again, six more missiles flying into space, but those would be the last. Eighteen against twelve, heading towards mutual annihilation. A brief flurry of flame raced across the sensor display, and twenty-five of the contacts vanished, leaving only five remaining. Alamo’s point-defense guns began to pound away, hammering all around them in a bid to clear their way out of the system, and one after another, the incoming contracts faded from display.

   All but one, which slipped through the firestorm.

   Quesada nimbly tossed the rear of the ship around, sending the ship into a mad tumble for a second, long enough to take the impact on a non-critical area of the hull. Even so, Orlova winced at the anguished whine of the armor, buckled and broken once more, as the helmsman lurched the ship towards its target.

   “Thirty seconds!” he yelled.

   “You have the call, Sub-Lieutenant,” she replied, as Fitzroy and Francis frantically prepared a damage report.

   “Aye, ma’am,” he said.

   “All our fighters are home, Captain,” Scott reported. “We’re free and clear.”

   Finally, with a blinding flash, Alamo slid into the safety of hendecaspace, beginning her long transit to the Sphere. And with luck, one of the last steps on their journey home.

  Chapter 1

   No matter how long Lieutenant-Captain Pavel Salazar stayed in the Dyson Sphere, the sight of the eternal, endless landscape rolling around him still filled him with awe and wonder. He glanced at Lieutenant Lombardo, the engineer guiding the magnetic train across the surface, traveling far faster than the speed of sound, then back at the landscape again. They moved at a thousand miles an hour, but even after a day and a night, they were only just approaching their distant destination, forced into a circuitous route by the extraordinary twists and turns of the track, as though laid by a madman in the distant past.

   He glanced back at the cabin, his mission team preparing for what was to come. When Alamo had been forced to flee the system to escape destruction at the hands of a Hierarchy assault force, more than a dozen of them had been left behind, unable to reach safety before it was too late. Worse, the mystery they had come here to solve remained. Alamo was stranded in Andromeda, tossed through space by the vagaries of an artificial wormhole, stumbling through uncharted space in a desperate attempt to find their way home.

   And they’d been so damned close.

   The scientists that had led the massacre of the
ir first base camp, rogue operatives of the Hierarchy, had found the answer he was looking for, a chart of the wormhole layout. He’d had barely a minute to glance at it before he’d had to flee, the base destroyed by nuclear fire in order to prevent the cannibalistic race beneath from unleashing a reign of terror on the surrounding environment. There’d been no choice; he couldn’t sacrifice millions, perhaps billions of lives in order to save the hundred-and-forty on Alamo, but that didn’t make him feel any better.

   Except that at least he now knew that the secret was here, somewhere on the sphere, and that the answer to the mystery was waiting for them. That was something. All he had to do was find it, duplicate the work of the scientists. He couldn’t believe that was the only copy of the wormhole map, and somehow knew that the builders of the Dyson Sphere had something to do with it. Nothing else made any sense, not with the wealth of Terran lifeforms they’d found.

   He’d left half his people behind, rebuilding Base Camp with the help of the Neander. Should Alamo return quickly, unexpectedly, at least they’d have a chance to be rescued. Logically, he should have done the same, but he couldn’t bring himself to wait with such a near-infinite expanse to explore. They’d held on for ten days, long enough for Alamo to venture to another system and back again, and when there was no sign of their ship, he’d opted to move out, to continue the journey he’d begun.

   That there might be another reason that Alamo hadn’t returned was a shadow over his soul, one he attempted to dismiss but could not completely banish from his thoughts. The ship had been under heavy attack, and the Hierarchy held local space in an iron grip. There was a better than even chance that the ship might have been destroyed. In which case there would be no rescue, and the Sphere would be their home for the rest of their lives.

   “Five minutes, Pavel,” Lombardo said, glancing across from his controls. “I’m beginning deceleration right now.” Shaking his head, he continued, “I’d give a lot to know how this thing worked. We ought to have been tossed against the bulkhead when I tapped the control.”