Albion Lost (The Exiled Fleet Book 1) Read online

  “I want to go down there with five men and Kamala. You set up the mortars and provide overwatch,” Gage said. “All the interference in the atmosphere will degrade the autonomous targeters, but an IR designation will still work. We just have to paint the targets. Aim assist on the rifles should still work.”

  “We’re looking at about five hundred yards from here to the target area,” Eisen said, pulling the butt of his rifle out further. He slapped the bottom barrel and bipod arms swung out. “We can probably hit what’s down there, just get rid of the cammo.”

  “Judicious aim is appreciated,” Gage said. “There are civilians down there. Don’t take any risks with their lives.”

  “Aye aye,” Eisen said and motioned for four other sailors to take up firing positions along the ridge.

  “Bertram, drop your pack,” Gage said.

  The steward sighed and slipped it off his back. “Thank you, sir. I’ll stay up here, make you some lovely tea and then—”

  “You’re coming with me. Move.” Gage slapped him on the shoulder, then followed Kamala down the hillside.

  Bertram followed after a hard poke from a sailor behind him.

  “See if the man gets his tea after I come face-to-face with a Wyvern pirate. You know they have to kill their own mothers before they can join a raider crew?” the steward mumbled. “Plus, this has to be a drop bear thicket if I’ve ever seen one.”

  “Bertram,” Gage said over his shoulder.

  The doughy sailor continued on in near silence, grumbling nonstop.

  Kamala led the Albion men off a main trail, over a running stream, and to a narrow path next to a large bush covered with white orchids and thorny branches stretched over the flowers.

  Gage stopped and looked up at the canopy. The last time he’d tangled with pirates on solid ground had been years back, and he’d learned a lesson that day on Volera II that nearly cost him his life.

  “Hold on…” Gage’s words stopped Kamala in his tracks. Gage took his optics off his belt and did a quick scan ahead of them. A loose field of crisscrossing laser lines came up on the screen.

  “Laser wire,” Gage said. “They’ve been here for a few days. Makes sense that they’ve got alarms set. No cameras, at least.”

  “What happens if we trip them?” asked a sailor behind Bertram.

  “Maybe they come out and look, maybe mines.” Gage tapped his fingertips against his thigh as he thought.

  “Jigarra plant,” said Kamala, walking over and motioning to the nearly solid mass of brambles and thorn bushes. “Always wild hogs in here.”

  “We’re here for pirates, not pigs,” Gage said.

  “Stupid to set up camp next to a jigarra bush,” Kamala said. “Hogs forage during the day, hide at night.” He took a small cylinder from his pocket and tapped out a toothpick. He snapped the tip and flicked it into the bush, then tossed out two more.

  “Firesticks,” the scout said. “Won’t burn too long, but they’ll smoke out the pigs.”

  “How do you even know they’re in there?” Gage asked.

  Kamala motioned up with a jerk of his head.

  “Don’t look, but there are two drop bears up there. Must have followed the hogs’ scent here…waiting for one to break away from the group,” Kamala said.

  “How many?” Bertram backed up and bumped into a sailor behind him.

  “Don’t worry.” The Siam took a spray bottle from his belt and spritzed Bertram twice. “Repellant. My wife makes it.”

  Gage’s nose wrinkled at the pungent odor of ammonia and cut grass.

  “Ugh, smells like cat piss,” Bertram said.

  “It is. You can smell like that or worry about drop bears.”

  “More please.” Bertram held up his arms and got another spray.

  Gage breathed through his nose as Kamala hit him with the repellant around his neck.

  “How do I get this smell out of the good Mr. Gage’s cloth—”

  The bush rustled as gray smoke rose from where the firesticks had landed. They heard the pigs grunting as they meandered away from the smoke and toward the laser fence. Kamala grabbed his rifle by the barrel and rapped the butt against the thorns.

  Pigs bolted out of the bush and through the pirates’ perimeter…without the sound of an alarm.

  “Quick,” Kamala said, running after the dozen hairy animals as they bounded over the jungle floor.

  “Stay low.” Gage went after the scout, grasping what the Siam was doing. The laser fence would read a multitude of breaches. Their passage was just more noise for whoever saw the alarm go off.

  Kamala came to a stop in a streambed with wet soil walls almost up to Gage’s waist. He knelt beneath a snarl of roots spreading from a tall tree next to the embankment and drew a machete with a dark matte blade off his back. The Albion men took cover along the low wall.

  Bertram’s breathing was fast and shallow. Stress, not exertion. Gage put a reassuring hand on the steward’s shoulder.

  “Deep breath. We have the advantage—don’t forget it,” Gage whispered.

  “Never seen a pirate in the flesh, sir. Never had to come up on another man that wanted to kill me. Sure, there was that time when Ol’ Josh thought me and his girl were—” A twig snap silenced him.

  Gage put his finger to his trigger and activated his rifle optics with a press of a button. Ballistic glasses slid down from his helmet and a small screen with the video feed from his weapon came up in front of his eyes. He slowly lifted the rifle up and panned it from side to side.

  A man with an open shirt, leather pants, and thick boots tromped through the jungle toward them, a shotgun in one hand and a radio in the other. A giant fleur-de-lis tattooed on his chest and on one temple spoke of his allegiance: Wyverns.

  “Kamala,” said Gage as he lowered his weapon and looked to the side. The Siam was gone.

  “Sir, take the shot?” a sailor whispered.

  Gage looked at his suppressor-less rifle muzzle, then shook his head. There could be more pirates lurking around. Giving up the element of surprise for a single enemy was a poor tactical decision. They were through the perimeter. Once the guard reported on yet another pig incursion and went back, Gage and his men could sneak up on the main camp.

  There was a splash downstream. A juvenile pig with white matted fur and black spots raised its snout in the air, then ran away.

  The static and occasional squelch from his radio grew louder as the guard walked toward the stream. Gage pressed himself into the mud, placing his confidence in Albion, engineering to keep him hidden as his uniform aligned its colors to blend in.

  The guard, a man in his late thirties with the build of an ogre and the hygiene to match, stopped next to the tree and rested a forearm against it, holding his shotgun barrel down and dangerously close to Gage.

  Gage stayed perfectly still as his heart beat so loudly he was surprised the pirate couldn’t hear it.

  The Wyvern raised his radio to his face.

  “Rein. Encrore rein.” He moved the radio away and shouted, “Ey! Casse-toi vous cochons!”

  Just then, Bertram sneezed.

  The pirate’s head snapped to the side. He frowned and cradled the shotgun in both hands. Gage pressed his finger to the trigger, ready to kill the Wyvern the instant he realized he wasn’t alone.

  He slapped his shotgun barrel against his palm, then spat over the edge of the mud ledge. The drop splattered atop Gage’s boot.

  The tip of Kamala’s machete flicked up behind the pirate’s shoulder. The blade slashed behind the man’s neck and he gave off a startled huff. His eyes danced up and down and his mouth went slack. Blood poured down his neck and across his chest. Kamala reached around and plucked the shotgun out of his hands, then gave the pirate a nudge.

  The man toppled over and fell across the stream. His head bounced against a rock and went rolling into the stream, bobbing like a cork as the water swept it away.

  “Only one,” Kamala said. “Poor security.”
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  “Up,” said Gage as he grabbed a shell-shocked Bertram and twisted him away from the corpse. “They’ll come looking for him soon. Form a firing line and we advance on the camp. Don’t shoot unless we’re fired on or I give the order. Move.”

  Kamala wiped the bloody blade against the dead pirate’s leg, then sheathed the machete.

  Gage and the Siam guide hurried a few steps ahead of the sailors, who remained uniformly silent as they made their way through the jungle. Space combat was brutal, the work of energy cannons against hulls and shields accompanied by explosions that killed men and women instantly or promised suffocation in the freezing void when space suits were badly damaged.

  Seeing your enemy bleed wasn’t part of the equation.

  On Volera II, Gage had come face-to-face with a Harlequin mortir, one of their cyborgs designed solely for murder. He’d seen the killing precision of a dedicated assassin firsthand. There were still nights he woke up in a cold sweat, remembering the glint of a blade as it drove at his neck. A shiver went down his spine. At least that mortir was dead. Probably dead.

  “Got a crow’s nest,” one of the sailors said. “Two o’clock, see two of them up there.”

  “Take cover.” Gage knelt behind a fallen tree and found the observation post. Two pirates sat in an armored pillbox mounted on a tree almost four yards in diameter. The now extinct Francia Expeditionary Legions had prized their modular technology for rapid landfall campaigns. A single lander could bring pallets full of armored walls and transform that cargo into a fully functioning forward operating base within ten minutes. That some of the old tech still found use with the Wyverns shouldn’t have been a surprise, no matter how unpleasant it was to Gage.

  The two pirates in the crow’s nest busied themselves with data slates. The blast windows were up, allowing the morning breeze to circulate through the enclosure. One’s fingers mashed at the screen, probably playing a game. The other had his feet up, half dozing as he looked at his slate. The four repeater blasters mounted on pintles gave Gage pause.

  A beat-up lander lay a few dozen yards away, tucked against the tree line. Tall poles held up the active camo-nets overhead. The ramp was down, and open boxes full of scavenged electronics and gold-inlaid jade statues were piled around the base of the ramp. Each Siam family kept a shrine centered on the statues of a kneeling saint. They were never sold and were something of a collector’s item beyond the planet. Gage made out two more pirates in the plane. One stretched, walked to the edge of the ramp, and relieved himself over the side.

  “That’s a Yennovo G9,” Bertram said. “Needs at least three to fly. Can carry ten people, but they wouldn’t bring that many if they planned on taking stolen goods up to their ship.”

  “There were four, maybe five, during the kidnapping,” Kamala said.

  “Where are the prisoners?” Eisen asked.

  “They’ll be in the G9 and restrained,” Gage said. “They know the area, know where to go. The pirates don’t. They won’t let the girls even see an escape route. How long until that crate could be airborne?” he asked Bertram.

  “Engines aren’t even lit. Cycle time for those engines is almost three minutes.”

  Gage winced. Worst-case scenario, having around one hundred eighty seconds to disable or capture the shuttle from the moment the pirates realized they were compromised and could blast away was a tough challenge.

  “We need to stop it from taking off,” Gage said, “and without putting the girls inside at risk. If they get airborne, we’ll never be able to track them with all the interference in the atmosphere.”

  Gage ran tactical scenarios through his mind. Not knowing the total number of pirates or if one was sitting in the cockpit ready to flip on the engines at a moment’s notice added too much ambiguity to his options.

  “I say we run up and shoot them all in the face,” Kamala said.

  “We do have surprise on our side…yes,” Gage said.

  “Sir, I was a boatswain’s mate before I came to bat for you,” Bertram said. “The power packs in a G9 are where the wings and fuselage meet. Enough bullets in there and that bird’s not going anywhere. Her hull’s as strong as tissue paper against our blasters, but I do suggest we get close, shoot at an upward angle to keep from hurting the innocents inside.”

  “Good suggestion, Bertram,” Gage said. “Master Chief Eisen, ready the designator and paint the crow’s nest. We’ll launch our assault soon as the missile takes it out. Bertram, Clyde, you damage the batteries. Eisen, you and the rest lay down suppressive fire on anyone else that shows up. Kamala and I will get into the shuttle. We’re not here for kills. Get the prisoners and get them to safety, understand?”

  The sailors nodded. Eisen tapped a sailor with a laser designator on his rifle and the man aimed it at the crow’s nest.

  “Assault element, let’s go,” Gage said. He slid over the tree trunk and moved toward the shuttle at a crouch, Kamala beside him.

  “How the hell did I end up on the ‘assault element’?” Bertram whispered to Clyde, the other sailor with him.

  “Maybe because you opened your big mouth about knowing everything about the G9,” Clyde shot back.

  “Be helpful…get thrown into the fire. Got it. Very fair,” Bertram muttered.

  Gage glared fire over his shoulder and his steward sank a little deeper into his low stance.

  They were fifty yards from the shuttle when a pirate with dreadlocks down to his chest walked onto the G9’s ramp and peered into the forest. He held a radio up to his mouth and spoke.

  “Down.” Gage went to his knees and crawled beneath a fern with rainbow-colored fronds that shimmered with the breeze. The dead pirate must have gone overdue. The man with the dreadlocks hollered into the shuttle and two more Wyverns carrying rifles came tromping down the ramp.

  “Bet they’re going to come right for us,” Bertram said. “Yup. I hate being right all the time.”

  “Eisen,” Gage tapped the mic on his throat, “where’s that fire support?”

  “…connection…fixed. Splash, over.”

  Gage cocked up an eyebrow, trying to remember details from his basic officer course’s field artillery familiarization training from almost two decades ago. “Shot” meant the round was in the air, then “splash” would mean…

  A brief whistle filled the air, then the base of the tree holding the pirate crow’s nest exploded into smithereens. Giant scales of bark snapped away as the trunk buckled and slowly tipped back into the jungle…directly for the Albion sailors.

  As Gage lurched to his feet and ran straight for the camp, the question of whether the guided missile had missed the crow’s nest or if the sailor with the laser designator had intentionally targeted the trunk crossed his mind.

  He kept running as a shadow grew over his head. The groan of defeated wood roared in his ears, and he spied a circle of large rocks around a smoldering fire. He leaped into the circle as thin branches thundered down around him, tossing up a blizzard of leaves with the impact. The rocks took the brunt of the impact but still some whipped against his back and legs.

  An empty bird’s nest bounced off Gage’s head. He looked up and saw a crawlspace through the downed branches, propped up by the rocks around the cooking fire.

  Heat bore through the thin armor on his hips and stomach as he lay in a pile of still-burning embers. Gage scrambled forward, knocking up soot and ash that caked his rifle and covered his ballistic glasses as he moved. He crawled clear of the fire pit and branches and tried to wipe the gray sludge of ash and water away, only managing to make the mess worse.

  Gage ripped his helmet off…and found himself looking eye to eye with two pirates standing a few yards away beside the crushed crow’s nest. That he’d just crawled out of the fire and probably looked like some sort of Siam forest spirit might have been what kept the pirates flat-footed for a moment. He swung his weapon up and fired from the hip. The three-round burst kicked up dirt at the pirates’ feet and shocked them into
action.

  The commodore took better aim and fired. His weapon made a deep buzz and an amber light blinked over the shot counter. Energy rifles had little in the way of moving parts, but the focusing crystals could be fouled, rendering the weapon unusable. Gage dropped the ash-choked rifle and drew the pistol on his hip.

  Time seemed to slow as he sidestepped as one of the pirates fired, a blue bolt that snapped past Gage’s face and left a wave of heat over his bare skin. Gage lined up the sights and hit the pirate twice in the chest. He swung the weapon toward the other target and found him already aiming at the Albion officer.

  A red bolt slashed down and hit the pirate on the shoulder. His rifle went flying and he pitched to the ground with an ugly black burn against the base of his neck and one arm badly dislocated. Gage snatched up the fallen rifle and promised to award an extra day’s shore leave to whoever made that shot from the cliff where Chief Eisen and the rest were on overwatch.

  Engines chugged to life and a blast of hot air washed over Gage. The Yennovo, its ramp up and secured, was nearly halfway through the preflight cycle.

  “Damn it!” As Gage ran toward the shuttle, he glanced to one side, hoping to see Kamala, and found nothing but a mountain of branches. No sign of Bertram and Clyde; they were either on the wrong side of the fallen tree…or under it.

  Gage raised the pirate’s rifle to his shoulder and aimed at the base of the wing. This weapon let off a slew of solid projectiles, and the kick nearly knocked him off balance and pulled the muzzle high after a few shots. He ran beneath the wing and fired again. Thin fingers of electricity and sparks broke into the air and one of the engines coughed.

  He ran toward the front. The dreadlocked pirate was the only one in the twin forward pilot seats. He was shouting and bashing his fists against the controls.

  Gage fired a round through the windshield over the man’s head. The pirate looked at Gage and sneered.

  The Albion officer pointed one hand at the still revving engine, then chopped his fingertips across his throat.

  The pirate gave him the finger.