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  TRAITOR'S DUTY

  Battlecruiser Alamo: Book 12

  Richard Tongue

  Battlecruiser Alamo #12: Traitor's Duty

  Copyright © 2015 by Richard Tongue, All Rights Reserved

  First Kindle Edition: May 2015

  Cover By Keith Draws

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

  Join the Battlecruiser Alamo Mailing List: http://eepurl.com/A9MdX

  With Thanks To: Ellen Clarke, Rene Douville and Peter Long

  If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

  Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

  If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

  If all men count with you, but none too much;

  If you can fill the unforgiving minute

  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

  Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

  And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

  Rudyard Kipling

  Chapter 1

   Ensign Gabriel Cooper, commanding the forward detachment of the Espatier strike force operating on Hades Station, raised his hand to signal the enlarged platoon behind him to hold their positions and wait. He glanced down at the watch on his wrist, the countdown timer still showing ninety seconds before the strike would begin. Two levels up, Lieutenant Esposito was in position with two smaller platoons, waiting to pounce from above and providing the distraction his force would need to break through the Cabal defenses, secure the command center, and finally bring this prolonged siege to an end.

   He glanced back at the leading troopers, rookies no more after four weeks of non-stop fighting. All of them had the marks of battle, their uniforms worn from constant wear, fresh scars on their faces and arms from shrapnel bursts nearby. Under normal circumstances, several of them would be back in a medical facility healing up, but neither side had infinite reinforcements to throw into the fray. Just one more push, and they would finally control Operations. Life Support and Communications had fallen during the frantic initial assault, and now they had to finish the job. Thirty seconds to go.

   His weapon was ready, a fresh ammunition clip snapped into place, and he looked over the men behind him, all of whom were conducting similar checks. They’d learned, the hard way, but at least the Confederation now had another company of seasoned combat troops to count on. That they’d begun this mission with two rookie companies and ended with just one – most of the other lost on the destroyed Trident – still tug at him. Too many people weren’t coming back from this nightmare.

   Not that he could waste time thinking about that now. Ten seconds to go, and he wished for the thousandth time that he had reliable communications links with the other detachment. For all he knew, they were still threading their way through the maze of corridors and passages on the upper levels, but by the same token, they might already have begun their assault.

   “Come on, troopers! Take ‘em!” he yelled, pushing off from the wall behind him and diving towards the end of the corridor. There was no way that their approach could have been missed by the force they had been besieging – that would have been far too much to hope for – but at least the timing of their joint assault might throw them off a little. Behind him, the four squads surged down the corridor like champagne from a bottle, spilling out to fan down the three side corridors in pre-arranged patterns, Corporals leading the charge while Lance-Corporals herded down the stragglers.

   He, of course, was at the head of the column, where he was most comfortable. After only a few seconds, the defenders started to react, and shots cracked around him, a cry indicating that one of his troopers had been hit. That was a cue for his grenadiers to start work, and clouds of smoke billowed out ahead of them, Cooper getting a couple of shots off before the fog grew too thick to see through.

   Instinct took over, and he pulled himself up a shaft that his spatial memory told him was there, hoping that his squad would follow him, and moved away from the cloud back into the clear, the whirring of fans testament to the attempts of the enemy’s engineers to support their front-line troops. The lights began to flicker, and with a smile, Cooper saw the efforts of their hackers in action at last.

   Sergeant Forrest and his team could handle things down below; that was just battering through the lower-level guards with the fewest casualties possible. They could simply keep on pounding at the outer defenses until the last man died, but Cooper was hoping that a more daring approach might save lives on both sides; if his guess was right, this shaft would lead them all the way to the heart of their defenses. The squad behind him had been hand-picked for this mission, mostly old Alamo hands from the long cruise through Cabal space, all people he’d fought beside many times. All people he knew he could count on.

   He popped unceremoniously from the top of the shaft, and without thinking, fired at the baffled-looking guard waiting at the top, the corpse drifting away down the corridor before it had even properly registered. Without pausing, he pushed off after it, his squad following, ignoring the usual tactical doctrine and practice of securing side corridors in favor of diving right for his objective, the big double-doors that were slowly sliding shut as he watched.

   Throwing a small sphere ahead of him, he slowed his advance by pushing back off the wall, closing his eyes for a split second on the count of five. The blinding flash stunned the troops behind it; more to the point, it left the doors as twisted wreckage, the mechanism still trying to jam them into place but failing dismally.

   The enemy guards recovered quickly, moving to use the still-hot metal as a barricade, setting up suppressing fire, but he knew that hesitation would mean the capture of his squad; he pushed on, firing a few rounds to try and keep the enemy pinned down, his men behind him following suit. He heard a scream from up ahead, one of his people getting in a good shot, but as the splatters of blood drifted across their path, he turned back to see one of his own men drifting way, frantically trying to secure a bandage around a gaping wound in his leg.

   “Get into cover!” Cooper yelled as the medic tried to move in, paying the price for his courage with a bullet of his own smashing into his chest, the armor under his uniform absorbing the impact but still sending the unlucky trooper flying into the middle of the corridor, perfect target practice for any of the Cabal soldiers up ahead.

   Shaking his head, he swung himself out to cover him, emptying the remains of his clip into the shadowy targets at the ruined door, hoping that he could provide enough of a distraction to give the medic time to protect himself, knowing that the odds were that a bullet would be racing towards him.

   By a miracle, it never arrived, and he found himself flashing past the barricade, crashing the butt of his rifle down on the nearest Cabal soldier while another slammed to the wall in a fountain of blood, one of the men following him getting in a lucky shot. Beyond the door was a short corridor leading into a large room, a few uncertain people in neat uniforms fumbling with pistols while a tall, aristocratic-looking woman with white hair looked at him with contempt, as though she had found something unpleasant under her shoe.

   “Are you the commander here?” Cooper asked, his gun pointed at her.

   “I am,” she replied in a suitably haughty tone. “You might temporarily have the advantage, but my reinforcements will be with us momentarily.”

   “All they’ll find will be your bodies,” he said. “End this now, dammit. For the sake of everyone fighting on the other levels.” Glancing back at his approaching squad, he continued, “This is the last major bastion.”

   “We can still hold you up for weeks,” she said, sh
aking her head.

   “Granted, but at a greater cost to you than to us. If you surrender, I guarantee your immediate repatriation to the inhabited planet in this system. No penal colony, no interrogation, just a shuttle ride home.”

   “Can you authorize that?” she asked with a frown.

   “No, but my fleet commander already has. You have the word of Captain Marshall.”

   “Ah, I have heard that name many times,” she said.

   “You’re stalling,” Cooper said, looking over at the communications station. “You there, can you broadcast across the whole asteroid?”

   The technician looked at his commander, then back at Cooper, and said, “Yes, sir.”

   “Set it up. Now.” Turning back to the woman, he said, “Give the order, or I’ll have to wipe out everyone in the room. One way or another, this facility is now the property of the Triplanetary Confederation.”

   She looked up at a clock in the corner, then curtly nodded, reaching for a microphone.

   “No tricks,” Cooper warned.

   “I don’t think we’ve got any left,” she replied. “Once our fleet gets here, you will be driven back. Don’t get too attached to this facility.”

   “I assure you, ma’am,” he replied with a smile, “that nothing would give me greater pleasure than to leave this place behind. I’ve been here twice, and once was too often.” Her face dropped in shock, perhaps recognition, and he continued, “Now make that call.”

   Placing the microphone carefully by her mouth, her eyes locked on Cooper’s rifle, she said, “This is Commandant Fitzpatrick. All personnel are to stand down from offensive operations, and make their way to the shuttle locks. We’re abandoning the station. Do not engage in any hostile acts against Triplanetary personnel.”

   “May I have the console?” Cooper asked, moving over to the communications station while Lomax, one of his more fearsome troopers, kept Fitzpatrick covered. “This is Ensign Cooper to Lieutenant-Major Brownworth. We’ve taken station control, and…”

   “We heard,” the jubilant voice of his superior replied. “We all heard. Damn good work, Cooper. I’ll see that the Cabal forces get escorted safely to the shuttles; Dragon will escort them to orbit.”

   “Thanks, ma’am, I’ll pass that along.”

   “I heard,” Fitzpatrick said. With a last look around, she said, “I hereby surrender myself to the Triplanetary Confederation, and request political asylum.”

   “You’ve got you be out of your mind,” Lomax yelled. “After what you did to us?”

   “Lomax!” Cooper snapped, then said, “Commandant, that offer included you, and I would strongly suggest that you accompany your men. There will be some negotiations now, and…”

   “There will be no negotiations,” she replied, shaking her head. “Do not be naive. I will face a firing squad for what I have done here today. The Admiralty’s bid to stiffen our resolve and prevent commanders such as myself from taking individual action.” Glancing at her crew as they started to file out of the room, she said, “They’ll be fine, though. Always a need for good troopers. I expect that they will be sent right back into the fight.”

   “Fight?”

   “We still have forces in this system, and now that operations here are concluded, I anticipate that their commanding officer will consider he has no choice but to launch a counter-attack.”

   “They’ve been sitting around near the planet for the last three weeks…” Cooper said.

   “Repairing the damage your surprise attack inflicted on us.”

   “Interesting,” he said. “You’ll be subject to interrogation.”

   “I am aware of that,” she replied. “I suspect it will be a considerably better fate than I can expect if I return home.”

   Nodding, Cooper said, “Lomax, escort her to a shuttle, have her transferred back to the fleet. You stay with her all the way, don’t let her out of your sight for a moment, and if she tries anything stupid, act appropriately.”

   With an air of what he hoped was assumed menace, Lomax replied, “Aye, sir.”

   As the two of them left the rapidly-emptying room, Sergeant Forrest drifted in, a pair of technicians in his wake to take over the control stations. He looked around the room, shaking his head.

   “I can’t believe it. More than a year since we first hit this place, and we finally get to run up our flag.”

   “Are we actually doing that?”

   “Ceremony in half-an-hour in their large mess. We’re just tidying up the loose ends now.”

   “Best guess that there will be booby traps scattered around.”

   Gesturing at the technicians, the sergeant replied, “That’s for our spooks to deal with. Our job’s over, at least for the present.”

   “Final count?”

   “From this operation? Two dead, nine wounded. Bit better than before, I think they’re getting the hang of this.”

   “This whole lousy operation stinks, Sergeant. This dump wasn’t worth that many lives.”

   “I don’t think this place was worth a paper cut, but I’m not the one making the decisions upstairs. Think they’ll let us hang onto this place?”

   “I damn well hope so. The asking price was high enough. Never mind negotiations, though. The big question is whether or not we can hang onto it.”

   “I don’t see why not,” Forrest replied. “Now we’ve got the home-field advantage and all the interior lines of communication.”

   “We don’t have the manpower,” Cooper said, frowning. “That’s going to make it tougher.”

   “Relax, Ensign,” the Sergeant said with a smile. “You don’t need to take all the cares of the world on your shoulders. This is Brownworth’s problem now. Incidentally, she’ll be up here any minute.”

   “So?”

   “Don’t you want to smarten yourself up, or something?”

   Fixing Forrest with a stare, Cooper replied, “That’s the least of our problems right now.”

   “Sir,” one of the technicians said, “I’ve managed to establish contact with the fleet. Internal communications are coming on line.”

   “Good news,” Cooper said. “That was fast work.”

   “Get the encryption systems working before you use them,” Forrest said. “Last thing we need is to have all of our chit-chat sent right to the enemy in the clear.”

   “We already have a message coming in, sir,” the technician continued, looking at Cooper. “Your presence is urgently requested on the flagship.”

   “On Dragon?” Cooper asked. “What for?”

   “I don’t know, sir, but it comes directly from Captain Marshall.”

   “What about the other officers on the base?” Forrest asked.

   “The only message I have is for Ensign Cooper, Sergeant, and it didn’t give any more details than that.”

   “Not for Major Brownworth or Lieutenant Esposito?”

   “No, sir. Just for you,” the technician repeated.

   “Someone’s playing games again,” Cooper said.

   “Captain Marshall isn’t like that, Gabe, and you know it.”

   Shrugging, he replied, “I guess I’d better smarten up a little after all.” He looked down at his uniform, smiled, and said, “I don’t think I’ve changed for a week.”

   “I wondered what the smell was,” Forrest said with a smirk. “Have fun with the brass.”

   “You have a strange idea of fun, Sergeant,” Cooper said as he moved over to the corridor. He paused for a moment, looking around at the signs of battle on the walls, droplets of blood still floating in the air, burn marks all around, scattered empty ammo cases drifting in his path. All this waste, and just for a tumbling rock in the middle of nowhere. Shaking his head, he pushed off towards the shaft, heading for the lock. Joking aside, he didn’t want to keep the Captain waiting.

  Chapter 2

  �
��Marshall lay on his bed, looking up at the monitor on the far wall where an old movie was playing, occasionally glancing at the clock. He was trying to kill time, and he was trying to avoid thinking, neither of which came easily to him. The datapad resting by his side held a report that he would have given anything not to read, but the fresh rank insignia on his uniform jacket, hanging on the wall, was silent testimony that he was the man on the spot.

   There was a brief knock on the door, and Caine stepped in, shaking her head as she looked at the screen.

   “What the hell is that?”

   “Some old Ugandan action flick I found in the archives. Amazing what random walk can throw up from time to time.”

   She reached over to a panel, tapped a control, and quickly the sound faded to nothing. “Meeting in five minutes.”

   “Don’t remind me.”

   “You’re the one who called it.”

   He flashed her a glare and said, “Do you think for a single moment that I wanted to?”

   “No, but now you’ve started down this path, you’re going to have to walk it.”

   “What the hell does that mean?”

   “Exactly what I said. I’m with you all the way, but I don’t think that’s going to make it any easier. If it’s any consolation, I think most of the crew will be behind you on this one.”

   “That doesn’t make me feel any better. This shouldn’t even be a question for discussion.”

   “Then cancel the meeting, delete the records, and let things go as they will.”

   “I can’t do that.”

   “Then you’d better pull yourself together and get to work.”

   He looked up at her, then said, “One of these days it’ll be you in the hot seat.”

   “I’ve been there before, Danny. I didn’t like it.”

   “Sometimes it isn’t given to us to make the choice.” He pulled himself to his feet and reached for his jacket. “This isn’t exactly the part of the job I crave. Damn it, I’d rather be back out in Cabal space. At least then I knew who the damn enemy was.”