Enemy Ally by Mike Waller

Author:Mike Waller [Waller, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, aliens, space, space opera, galactic war, distant future, Echo's Way, female main character
ISBN: 9780648275558
Publisher: Rampart Publishing
Published: 2019-06-15T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

THE REGION OF SPACE was far from empty. Five tollean vessels, three more than Ben expected, sat a thousand kilometres ahead. Somewhere beyond lay the gateway through which the Federation forces would attack.

A fraction of a millimetre in diameter, the wormhole was not visible. The gate was a generalized region, hundreds of square kilometres in area, within which the generator could create a link between the microscopic wormhole and a spacecraft.

This gateway was unusual. Located near the Lagrange L5, a trojan point on the orbit of the star's largest gas-giant, its position moved around the yellow star with the planet. As a way into the system, it was unreliable and rarely used. It led to a neutral star and was normally guarded by only two enemy vessels. Fleet chose it for the invasion for that reason.

Ben sat back and tried to summarise the situation. Three destroyers and two cruisers were inadequate to deny entry to the massed forces soon to arrive, but they could cause considerable damage. Losses at this early stage were unacceptable, but unavoidable. The real battle would take place once the main body of the fleet arrived and approached the tollean base.

Ben felt responsible. The Tolleani were expecting something to happen, and had bought in reinforcements. He could only speculate on what raised the alarm, but two possible causes came to mind.

First, the Special Forces team dropped at the moon Persephone had been detected. Once they were identified as human, an alert would have been sent to the naval base. It took only seconds to discount the theory. If discovery had occurred and a warning dispatched, it would take time for ships to relocate. Ben flew straight here, and would have arrived first.

In all likelihood, he gave the game away when escaping the system at the end of his reconnaissance mission, months earlier. The enemy no doubt assumed something was in the wind, and had called in extra forces in case.

The tollean military did not know Fleet would come through this particular gateway, so there would be reinforcements at the others as well. They would remain on station until word came of an attack elsewhere, by which time it would be too late to stop the incursion. Instead, they would head back to the main base to assist with its defence.

The guard vessels ahead would do their best to cause mayhem, undoubtedly ordered to pick off anything that came through the gateway without question. Once overwhelmed, they would try to draw the fleet away until support arrived, and that is where Ben came in. He sat between the aliens and their base; his mission was to prevent any warnings if possible.

His ship floated motionless in space, undetected. With the dispersion field on full, and with the vessel positioned to avoid detection by light occlusion, his presence was unsuspected. The Infiltrator was not an attack craft, but that did not make it either defenceless or powerless. Larger than Ben's previous command—a front line destroyer—it possessed almost as much firepower, especially fitted out for this mission.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.