Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum
Read Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum Online
Authors: Owen R. O'Neill,Jordan Leah Hunter
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Military, #Space Fleet, #Space Marine, #Space Opera
A Target-Rich Environment
“Sir?” Kris’s voice came over her fighter's burst link, making Huron grin. She was always polite at the start of a mission. Pretty soon it’d be just “Huron” and when things really started to heat up, she tended to slip into less complimentary forms of address.
“Whatcha got, Ensign?”
“Is this your idea of a
fair fight
?”
“What?” His tone was cheerfully innocent.
“I count about forty of the bastards down there.”
“More like fifty-odd, I think.”
“Oh great. You
did
notice it’s just us out here, right?”
“No one else to get in our way then.”
Kris muttered something he couldn’t make out over the link.
“C’mon, Kris. I thought you were hungry.”
“Starving. Just wanna make sure you weren’t completely AWOL here.”
“Alright then.” He set his T-Synth to designate a flight that was trailing the main formation. “See those three guys at the back? Crappy formation discipline. Let’s show ‘em the error of their ways. Then we can go raid the buffet.”
“Roger that!” He could hear the delighted grin in her voice.
“First kill leads? Guns only.”
“You’re on!”
Loralynn Kennakris #3
Jordan Leah Hunter
&
Owen R. O’Neill
THE LORALYNN KENNAKRIS SERIES:
The Alecto Initiative
(
Loralynn Kennakris #1
)
The Morning Which Breaks
(
Loralynn Kennakris #2
)
UPCOMING
Absalom’s Hundred (
A new Loralynn Kennakris adventure
)
Apollyon's Gambit (
Loralynn Kennakris #4
)
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please follow us on Amazon
.
For full-color, high-resolution maps pertaining to this series, see:
www.loralynnkennakris.com/extras/
(A link to maps pertaining specifically to this book may be found in the Authors’ Notes.)
Also by
Jordan Leah Hunter
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold 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’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
Copyright © 2015 Owen R. O’Neill and Jordan Leah Hunter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by Pleiades Web Press.
Photography by the Authors.
Published by Pleiades Web Press
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IN DEDICATION
To all brave women and men who ever left hearth & home, family & friends, to take the weight, pay the freight, and answer the call. Especially those who did not return.
To absent friends
.
We shall never forget
.
Owen R. O’Neill & Jordan Leah Hunter, February 2015
As we travel this uncertain road on which we have embarked, our horizons expand and things get more interesting. Frequently we encounter forks where we must choose between the well-trodden path and the road less taken, and just as frequently we encounter rocks and pitfalls, roadblocks and critters rustling in the underbrush.
Without the help of many people, we could never negotiate this path we have chosen, and we offer heartfelt gratitude to all of you who guided us and helped to light our path. Some of these luminous beings deserve special mention for their unstinting efforts on our behalf: Alex, Cynthia, Coyora, Johanna and Ramona, Nick, Mark, Scott, Stephen, and Yoly.
That, alas, does not mean we have always listened when we ought, and that we have not, at times, strayed where we shouldn’t and found ourselves hip-deep in a morass as a result. So whatever merit this work has must, in large part, be credited to them. The mud that remains on the floor is our fault.
Janin Station; Tau Verde, Vulpecula Region
Chapter One: The Echoes of Battle
LSS Trafalgar, deployed; Mirandan space, Cygnus Sector
LSS Trafalgar en route to Epona, Cygnus Sector
LSS Trafalgar, on-orbit; Epona
LSS Trafalgar, on-orbit; Epona
Port Lux, Saarland District; Tenebris, Cygnus Region
Port Lux, Saarland District; Tenebris
Phase Plane Indigo; November-Ocean Quadrant, Cygnus Region
IHS Marshall Nedelin, docked; Janin Station, Tau Verde,
Vulpecula Region
LSS Aquitaine, docked; Rigel Kent, Terran Space
IHS Marshall Nedelin, docked; Janin Station
Chapter Four: By The Fates Assembled
Northern California Territory; Western Federal District,
Terra, Sol
LSS Trafalgar, docked; Outbound Station, Gamma Hydras
LSS Bellerophon, docked; Outbound Station
Crystal City, Outer N-Ring; Gamma Hydras
Chapter Five: The Gathering Storm
LSS Ardennes, docked; Outbound Station
LSS Trafalgar, deployed; Gamma Hydras
Outbound Station; Gamma Hydras
LSS Trafalgar, docked; Outbound Station
IHS Marshall Nedelin, docked; Janin Station
LSS Ardennes, Point Moira; near Wogan’s Reef
LSS Effingham, on blockade; Callindra 69, Hydra Region
LSS Ardennes, Point Moira
LSS Athena Nike, Outbound Station
LSS Trafalgar, Outbound Station
Recon Flight Rogue Viper, on patrol; Phase Plane Victor
LSS Trafalgar, Outbound Station
Deep space, Hydra Border Zone
LSS Ardennes, deployed center; Wogan’s Reef
LSS Trafalgar, forward deployed; Gamma Hydras
LSS Ardennes, deployed center; Wogan’s Reef
LSS Fury, on-station, far left flank; Wogan’s Reef
LSS Bellerophon, deployed center; Wogan’s Reef
Chapter Four: The Hour of Reckoning
LSS Trafalgar, forward deployed; Gamma Hydras
LSS Bellerophon, deployed center; Wogan’s Reef
Recon Flight Viper Echo; Phase Plane Indigo, Gamma Hydras
LSS Ardennes, engaged center; Wogan’s Reef
Chapter Five: “The Only Thing Sadder. . .”
LSS Trafalgar, forward deployed; Gamma Hydras
LHC Flechette; Wogan’s Reef
LSS Ardennes, at grav anchor; Wogan’s Reef
IHS Vardar en route to Tau Verde
LSS Ardennes, at grav anchor; Wogan’s Reef
LSS Trafalgar, docked; Outbound Station
LSS Trafalgar, on orbit; Epona, Cygnus Sector
Mather’s Landing; Epona
Mather’s Landing; Epona
LSS Trafalgar, on orbit; Epona
Recon Flight Viper Tango, in transit; Asylum, Cygnus Sector
36 hours later . . . on board IHS Ilya Turabian, orbiting
Asylum Station
IHS Ilya Turabian
IHS Ilya Turabian
IHS Ilya Turabian
IHS Ilya Turabian
Verdun Military Hospital; Weyland Station, Vesta, Eltanin Sector
Free Excerpt:
Absalom’s Hundred
A new Loralynn Kennakris adventure, coming soon
Chapter Two: In Dante’s Footsteps
For Thy Sake—
For the sake of thee
I stood my ground
For the sake of thee
I bore the sound
Of bullets as they whistled past
And each one sang:
All flesh is grass
.
Ere long came one that laid me low
And falling as I felt the blow
For thy sake, watched my red blood flow
And lying still—that’s all I know.
I had not lived ten thousand days
I might have died a hundred ways
But for thee I chose this price to pay—
Go
And bring to me that sacred fire
Set thy torch to my funeral pyre
And even as I burn for thee—
Know
Thou hast not seen the last of me.
From ‘The Half-Ballade of Anandale’
— of unknown authorship (originated in the CEF Marine Corps)
Janin Station;
Tau Verde, Vulpecula Region
It was make-and-mend day for the Halith Imperial Navy’s Kerberos Fleet, riding peacefully at grav anchor within the vast embrace of Janin Station. Officially, it was a day of rest when the usual chores like ship drills, weapons exercises, sensor sweeps, and watchstanding were suspended, but in reality it was the busiest and least welcome of the eight days of the naval week that ruled the lives of Halith mariners—especially when the fleet was lying up at a comfortable port like Janin.
Watchstanding and sensor sweeps were little more than formalities for a fleet at Janin: not only was it the second-largest free structure ever built by man—only the astounding bulk of Kazanian Station, orbiting the prime world of Halith Evandor itself, surpassed it—but it was also the most heavily fortified place in existence. The station itself was unarmed (its real estate being too precious to waste on weapons), but the star system in which it resided was, in fact, one vast fortress. Hundreds of picket vessels ceaselessly patrolled the outer approaches to the system, while a combination of light-speed and gravitic sensors that could detect incoming starships over a full day out provided warning. The inner system was protected by a multilayered network of hunter-killer satellites, and finally the station itself and its supporting moon base were guarded by a ring of monitors.
These enormous ships, looking like nothing so much as the giant testudines who still roamed the sanctuaries of Earth, were so large that no hypercapable classes had been produced since the Formation Wars and so expensive that Halith had only ever built sixteen of them. Five of these were deployed to Janin Station. Within their high-domed hulls were thousands of missiles and the best EW and C4ISR suites Halith could produce, but it was the five massive turrets that contained their main armament: triplets of long 24-inch railguns that fired two-ton projectiles at near-relativistic speeds, more than twice the mass and many times the energy of the rounds fired by the 16-inch railguns that dreadnoughts and the largest battleships carried.
So, at ease behind all these defenses, the mariners of the Kerberos fleet could be forgiven if they wanted to slack off a little, above all when the enticements of Qeshan Moon Base were a mere hour away and, for those who could get leave and afford it, the much greater charms of Tau Verde only an evening’s shuttle ride below. With such temptations ever-present, it was entirely expected that they had come to detest make-and-mend day as never before—the day they had to muster by divisions for inspection, with all the cleaning and scouring, primping and polishing that entailed.
This particular day the crews looked upon with special trepidation because it happened to fall right after the celebration of
Nefastio
, the year-end holiday on which official work was banned and a great deal of license was tolerated, and as a result, most of them were badly hungover. But what really mattered was the state of their officers, many of whom might be in even worse shape than they were.
By an unexplained coincidence, the pocket dreadnought
Ilya Turabian
—the
Grand Admiral’s Yacht
, as she was satirically known—had come in five days ago and been given pride of place at the anchorage, forcing Kerberos Fleet’s flagship to an outlying berth (a slight the mariners of the fleet did not take calmly, and it was well that the crew of the pocket dreadnought were not allowed shore leave). The purpose of her visit had been kept confidential, but an important banquet was held on the day before
Nefastio
itself, attended by all the captains of the fleet, their senior officers and staffs, and two days of almost unrelenting debauchery would sorely test those who did not have iron constitutions or a rare degree of self-control.
So as the bosuns roused out their frowsty and crapulous crews at 0600 to begin the long process of making themselves and their ships presentable again (for one thing, the heads were a horror few could face), there was much murmured commentary and many a discreet weather eye trained on officers’ country to see when they would start to appear and what their aspect would be. The later it was, they figured, the better their chances.
The port was already crowded with small craft at this early hour, almost all of them bumboats that were conveying the mariners’ pleasurable company of the night before back to Qeshan’s many brothels. The bosuns had bundled these beauties out early, in most cases even before the crews were awake, because centuries of experience showed that mariners were most easily detached from their harlots while both parties were unconscious. Thus, by 0400, a good two hours before reveille, the bosuns’ mates, assisted by the sergeant-at-arms, were herding long lines of blinking, yawning, muttering whores, indifferently dressed if dressed at all, into the waiting boats where orderlies scanned their venereals, rechecked their licenses, updated their health records and endorsed their pay chits as they embarked.
The officer’s companions presented a much different case. Not only did they include wives and sweethearts, but none came from the low port houses, many were professionals of distinction, and the more exalted they were, the longer they stayed aboard. And the mariners knew that nothing was guaranteed to put a hungover officer in a good frame of mind better than a couple of extra hours’ sack time with one of these delightful artisans.
But it was the fleet’s commanding officer who set the tone on these occasions, and Admiral Jakob Adenauer was well known as an abstemious man devoted to his wife. He was no kind of tyrant, but the same could not be said for all of his subordinates. The possibility that he would appear and, worse yet, deliver some sort of address at his normal hour of 0800 thus preyed on many a fretful mind.
That such an address was due was confidently predicted by most. The banquet of two nights ago was proof of that. Fleet commanders did not hold such events for their entertainment value, and doing so immediately before such an important holiday meant something big was at the event horizon, perhaps something unprecedented. It could only mean a new deployment, and while the crews readied themselves for a light breakfast (
sutlëchĵ
, made of golden rice boiled in malt beer and liberally spiked with detoxicants), this topic occupied them almost as much as the likely state of their officers, for it conceivably offered as much potential for concern as excitement.
Concern because an astute professional eye that could have encompassed the entire scene that AM would have noticed that although the Kerberos Fleet embodied an enormous accumulation of naval firepower, which presented a stirring sight in port, it was not a fleet in prime condition—far from it.
Painfully evident everywhere were the scars of last month’s battle at Miranda. Most obviously, neither of the big carriers of Carrier Division II (CARDIV II), which represented half their long-range strike power, were ready to sortie.
Count Ivanov
was still in airdock undergoing repairs, and
Prince Valens
had recently received a new fighter group to replace the one decimated in the encounter and was still training it.
Although the light carriers
Danton
and
Mazarin
had been added, they each had less than half the fighter complement of a fleet carrier and they were inexperienced; the level of coordination required by fighter ops took much time and effort to attain, and as yet, no one knew how well these two little sisters would be able to cooperate with
King Constantine
and
Prince Gregor
, the heart of CARDIV I.
Joining
Count Ivanov
in airdock were the fleet’s two fastest battleships,
Condorcet
and
Desailles
, which comprised BATDIV I.
Condorcet
was having her damaged drive nodes replaced and would not be ready for a month.
Desailles
was in worse shape, and her wounds would keep her in port even longer. In compensation, IHS
Orlan
had been attached, and although
Orlan
was the newest of the powerful
Marengo
-class battleships and came from the elite Prince Vorland Fleet, she had yet to see action, which made her a much less welcome addition than IHS
Jena
, the battle-hardened veteran from the VanNeimen Fleet for which Adenauer had lobbied tirelessly, eventually prevailing only through the intercession of his friend, Admiral Joaquin Caneris, the Prince Vorland Fleet’s commander.
Also, an objective observer would have faulted the force structure. There were not enough destroyers for the screening, picket duty and rescue operations these nimble little ships excelled at—they should have had a dozen squadrons, not a mere eight, and a third of those below strength—and there were rather too many light cruisers of that unhappy breed which could neither keep up with fast battleships nor offer much support to the big carriers and dreadnoughts they could accompany. In terms of long-range reconnaissance assets, there were too few, and they were of the wrong type. The fleet’s stealth frigates had suffered heavily; only a paltry number remained, and compensating with additional corvettes was a weak stopgap measure, at best.
Finally, all too many of the ships were simply old. Indeed, the light cruisers
Neva
and
Taranis
were ancient
Amur
-class ships that should never have been employed in a modern fleet.
Elchingen
and
VanScheer
, two of the Fleet’s original battleships, were among the oldest in service, and barely a match for the newest League battlecruisers. Most of the destroyers were old as well, and short-winded compared to their newer sisters, putting an undue strain on the fleet’s logistics.
In short, the Kerberos fleet was wearing out. By rights, it should have passed the baton to one of the other main Halith fleets, the VanNeimen or perhaps the Ilion, and been given a long, well-deserved period of R&R. Even Admiral Adenauer’s flagship, the big dreadnought
Marshall Nedelin
, was in need of a thorough refit.
But an objective observer would not have gotten a very sympathetic hearing for his views from the men and women of the Kerberos fleet, assuming he had the audacity to bring them up. From highest to lowest, they were full of pride in their fleet, which before the war was looked on as the bastard stepchild of the Halith navy: an assemblage of the antiquated and the cast off, good for nothing but patrolling the disorderly backwater of the Hydra region between Halith’s eastern frontier and the Bannerman Confederacy.
Selected for the war’s opening thrust and grudgingly reinforced because they were (most of all) expendable, they’d succeeded brilliantly at Rho Ceti, then grown and continued to succeed, defeating a combined fleet comprised of units from the Nereidian League’s Colonial Expeditionary Forces, the New UK’s Royal Navy, and the Terebellum Empire’s Navy to take the vital Kepler Junction. After that, they subdued Deneb sector, where Alesia put up a gallant but doomed resistance, and the Aventine Grand Duchy concluded that survival was the better part of valor.
Now they were the most powerful fleet in the Halith Imperial Navy. The Prince Vorland Fleet had more cachet and the Haslar Fleet had the blue blood and prestige, but they had the battle honors. They felt they had carried the conflict for the past year—fourteen months by the Terran calendar—and they were jealous of the distinction. They might not have all the best and the brightest, their deployments might not always follow the book, they might look a bit patchy and act a trifle weary, but they had beaten all comers to this point, and they had every confidence they would do it again whenever the need arose.
Indeed, Miranda, which they knew to have been a defeat (whatever government propaganda might say), confirmed their opinions. For all that it rankled and for all they looked forward eagerly to getting some of their own back, they knew they had fought well—the respective losses proved it—but there had been poor management and inefficient leadership. They’d been attached to the Duke Albrecht Fleet as mere auxiliaries there—let those pricks wear the shame. Had the operation been entrusted to them, had they been under their own admiral, how different the outcome would have been. At Kepler, they’d beaten the vaunted CEF Seventh Fleet—the
Pogues
, as they derisively referred to them. It was sheer idiocy they’d been denied the chance to do it again. Now, happily, that chance was certainly at hand.
So on the mess decks, and in the gunrooms and berthing spaces, as 0800 came and went and no officers appeared to savage them, the mood began to lift. As the mariners bent to their tasks, their thoughts turned to what orders the yacht might have brought them, and the theories ran as hot and strong as the coffee.
Would they finally break out through the Kepler Junction and complete the conquest of Cygnus sector? Or, since the Terebellum Empire was rumored to be wavering, would they perhaps get a crack at finishing off the New United Kingdom of Friesia and New Caledonia? They might even be sent to carry out the reconquest of the Karelian Republic, although a tiny handful silently hoped not: the Karelian navy was small, expert and savage, and the planets of the republic were more so. Or maybe the Supreme Staff had resolved to take another shot at securing Novaya Zemlya, where they’d trapped and annihilated a League fleet at the end of the last war.
As each of these ideas was propounded and its merits debated, the hard-bitten veterans of the fleet would cap the discussion by clapping a knowing eye on the first-voyagers and announcing: “Don’t you worry, ya pollywogs. Those
Pogue
bastards will be under our guns again soon enough. And when they are, we’ll stamp every round ‘Remember Miranda.’”