Tiger- Crusade Read online

  Tiger

  Crusade

  By

  David P Smith

  This book is dedicated to my gorgeous wife, my family and my friends for their continuing support (and patience)

  It’s also dedicated to every ‘Unnamed Crewman in red shirt’ who died to further a plot: I know you were a real person!

  Contents

  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 1

  ‘What . . . I mean where . . . how . . . ‘ Izzy’s mind raced. She had a hundred and one questions all bustling to get out of a single mouth in one go.

  In essence, all the questions revolved around a seeming impossibility.

  It had taken USS Tiger nearly three months to travel from her erstwhile home-port, Hole, to the Arcturus Test Ranges where the crew needed to prove that the ship was fit to rejoin the Fleet.

  During that period, Izzy had been left behind on the alien planet Todot Hahn, where she was stuck in an increasingly difficult situation with two neighbouring alien species (the Sha T’Al and the Tana Empire) becoming more and more antagonistic.

  She’d spoken of this to Commander Dave Hollins after she’d congratulated him and the crew on passing the revalidation tests at the Arcturus Ranges. The Tiger’s First Officer had taken her call from his quarters aboard USS Tiger just minutes ago whilst at Arcturus, over one hundred light years away.

  Yet bizarrely, USS Tiger had just arrived in orbit over Todot Hahn, together with eight Federation assault transport vessels and a huge Tana battleship. Or at least she seemed to have. They could receive Tiger’s transponder codes clearly, but the shipping control system didn’t register a heavy cruiser in orbit where the transmission seemed to emanate from.

  Gathering herself, she tried again. ‘Hollins, what the hell is going on???’

  On the view-screen in Todot Hahn’s shipping control office, Commander Hollins smiled, but looked deadly tired. ‘Izzy, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I will explain it all, but I figure I’ll probably need a few weeks to do it. And I gather that time is a luxury we don’t have . . . ‘

  --------------------

  Dave cut the link and slumped back into the Captain’s chair.

  It had been epic.

  After a series of spectacular misadventures, USS Tiger had been little more than a wreck and the Commander in Chief for the area had wanted to send her to the scrap-yard. Dave had pleaded for the ship’s survival and rashly struck a bargain that he and the crew would get the ship repaired in-situ without calling on any resources from the fleet.

  After three months of frantic repair effort, they’d taken USS Tiger to the test ranges at Arcturus to prove she was a ship worth saving. That had been nearly nine months previously by their reckoning, and that was when they’d left Commander Isobelle Grosvenor behind at Todot Hahn to act as the Federations’ ambassador. Having successfully completed the tests at Arcturus, the crew were in the process of preparing for the long trip home to Hole when Izzy had called him from Todot Hahn.

  Dave had taken the call and immediately sensed Izzy’s concern. They’d got Tiger ready and set out in haste, desperate to get back to Todot Hahn to prevent the situation there from deteriorating further. Sadly, in their haste they’d relied on the ship’s experimental computer to perform the calculations for the repaired warp-drive system.

  The computer had got it wrong in spectacular fashion, and Tiger’s warp engines had torn a hole in the fabric of space, throwing the ship two hundred light-years through the resulting worm-hole.

  They’d landed in the centre of a gigantic dust cloud which was home to a bizarre life-form that drained raw energy from the ship and anything else it touched. In desperation, they were then forced to use warp-coils they’d previously salvaged from a Tana battleship to replace a half dozen of their own that had been destroyed.

  It wasn’t until they reached the edge of the dust cloud some time later that they’d found out there was a fundamental incompatibility between the Federation and Tana-built warp-coils. As a result, their bodged warp-drive was warping space in a previously unknown fashion that allowed them to travel at enormous relative velocities, but also moved them backwards rather than forwards through time.

  In trying to correct this, they’d only made matters much, much worse. They’d vented plasma into the warp-field to try and counteract the component of the field that forced them backwards in time, but instead had forced the ship sideways through another dimension and into a parallel universe.

  This universe was nearly identical to their own, but had diverged significantly over a period of a few hundred years, resulting in the human race creating an Empire hell-bent on galactic conquest. They’d encountered bizarre versions of themselves, driven by completely different motives and had been forced to flee for their lives.

  It was in the act of fleeing that they came across more and more victims of this Terran Empire and been driven by their own conscience into helping them.

  This had resulted in them inadvertently destroying an Imperial Fleet in order to save a large body of Sha T’Al refugees that they’d eventually had to bring with them when they finally escaped back to their own universe.

  By pure coincidence, the desperate actions they’d taken and the need to use their time-warping warp-drive meant that they’d arrived back at Todot Hahn at almost exactly the instant that Dave had taken the call from Izzy, several months in their own past.

  Having escaped the scrap-yard, energy-vampires, giant dust-clouds and ‘evil-twin’ versions of themselves, all they had to do now was avert an interstellar war . . .

  Chapter 2

  Admiral Henry O’Connor strode down the corridor of the Starbase, barely noticing the salutes of his subordinates as they scattered before him.

  He was a worried man. He was barely keeping a lid on the insurrection in Sector 193, and the temptation to leave his diplomatic role behind and wield the awesome power of the Third Fleet was always at the back of his mind.

  At present they were limited to a peace-keeping role. The T’Harji were in the process of joining the Federation, but rebels within their union were determined to prevent that happening.

  They’d armed what vessels they could get and were attacking Federation vessels in an effort to provoke a response that might sway the opinion of the T’Harji populace.

  O’Connor could only protect Federation interests by convoying vessels and guarding systems close to the T’Harji home-worlds, but the rebels were attacking relentlessly, spreading his considerable forces thinner and thinner.

  And now, to make matters worse, he’d been told that communications had just been lost with the Federation’s representatives in the newly incorporated Independent Sha T’Al homeworlds. He’d immediately despatched an engineering vessel to reinstate the network, but she was slow and would take weeks to get to Sector 244. Even then, her engineers would still have to make the necessary repairs.

  Commander Isobelle Grosvenor had already briefed him on how difficult the situation was there, but he wasn’t in a position to do anything about it: the Tana and Sha T’Al would have to sort themselves out.

  He slumped into his seat in the Command Centre and began reading the myriad reports and briefings on a hundred different issues in Sector 193. As he skimmed through them, he realised tha
t whether he liked it or not, the situation beyond Sector 244 was still at the forefront of his mind. If things went seriously south there, he might end up fighting containment actions on two fronts.

  He knew that USS Tiger was the fleet’s only asset assigned to the area, but he also knew that she was still in transit to Sector 244 having left Arcturus recently. He hated not knowing what was going on, and scanned the list of available vessels to see if he could spare one ship to contact Grosvenor on Todot Hahn and keep him informed.

  There were over a hundred vessels in the Third Fleet, but as he flicked through the list he was mentally ticking every one of them off. They couldn’t be spared from this task, or that, or needed repairs after a run in with the rebels.

  He was nearly at the bottom of the list when one name caught his eye:

  USS Higgs: Frigate, ‘Chandley’ Class. Captain: Commander Devon Chamberlain. Status: Inactive, working up.

  Higgs wasn’t officially part of the fleet yet having only just completed building. She was still on pre-commissioning trials and still needed a couple of months of testing and tuning as well as training for her newly assembled crew before she could join the fleet as a fully effective unit.

  O’Connor drummed his fingers on his desk. She wasn’t the finished article, and frigates were single mission ships with fewer capabilities than a heavy cruiser.

  Ironically, she was actually the nearest ship by a huge distance. Her shakedown cruise had taken her to a quiet area adjacent to Sector 244, which meant she was only a few days away from Todot Hahn. It was always risky to put an untried ship in harm’s way, but he’d met Devon Chamberlain, and knew she was going to be one of the best ship commanders in the fleet. She could do this.

  He made the call.

  --------------------

  Devon closed the link to Admiral O’Connor and sat back in her chair.

  She’d accepted the mission: what officer worth their salt wouldn’t?

  She looked around the Bridge of the Higgs. It looked like a war-zone already. Panels hung from their consoles, exposing multi-coloured looms of cabling. Several of the screens weren’t working either, and some items of equipment were still missing.

  Higgs was a fine ship, but she was brand-new, and there were many, many teething faults to be ironed out before she’d reach operational effectiveness. She had only a skeleton crew, mostly engineers, plus a contingent of civilians from the ship-yard, making adjustments and corrections as they went.

  She had virtually no operational staff at all, and the staff that had been assigned to Higgs were scattered across a dozen sectors. She couldn’t afford to wait for them.

  She turned to her Executive Officer, Lieutenant-Commander Chad Braxton. ‘Chad, pull up a list of all unassigned personnel in transit through this sector: we’re going to have to press-gang a few bodies.’

  The young officer looked concerned. ‘If we’re going to start poaching personnel, we’re going to need some serious rank behind us.’

  ‘Yeah, but I figure Admiral O’Connor will be happy to help us on that one.’

  --------------------

  Dave transported down to Todot Hahn so Izzy could brief him properly on the most recent happenings.

  He wasn’t surprised to see Izzy waiting in the Transporter Room for him, but he was surprised when after a moment’s hesitation she bounded onto the platform and threw her arms around him. Dave wasn’t sure why Izzy was so pleased to see him, but then he guessed she was relieved to have Tiger back on station.

  She was warm and soft and smelt wonderful, and after a slight hesitation of his own, Dave joined in and hugged her back. It wasn’t until he wrapped his arms around her that he realised just how much he’d missed her these last few months. She nuzzled into him and he held her tight, enjoying a moment of contact that was more than just physical.

  He wasn’t sure how long they stayed in the embrace, but it wasn’t long enough. He was vaguely aware of Chief Carstairs, the transporter operator, checking his watch none to discreetly, while his assistant groaned and muttered ‘For god’s sake, get a room!’

  Regaining her composure, Izzy disengaged. She was still blushing vividly and her eyes were twinkling as she backed away, smoothing her already immaculate uniform back into place. She noisily cleared her throat, still wearing a huge smile and very formally saluted, saying ‘Welcome to Todot Hahn Commander Hollins, it’s good to have Tiger back on station.’

  Dave wasn’t sure if he blushed to as he stood to attention, saluted back and replied ‘Thank you Commander, it’s good to be back. Now, what have we missed?’

  Izzy’s shoulders slumped. ‘God. Where do I start?’

  Dave could see her anxieties rising to the surface. A key part of Izzy’s remit in staying on Todot Hahn was to help the population of Sha T’Al there and at the nearby systems of Cho-dal-far and Jal Doran. The Sha T’Al had been sold ordinary aspirin by an unscrupulous human trader as it had an extraordinary narcotic effect on Sha T’Al bio-chemistry. It wasn’t until a large proportion of the population was hooked on this drug that other, horrific side-effects had begun to reveal themselves.

  The aspirin ate away at the higher reasoning centres of the Sha T’Al brain, eventually reducing them to violent flesh-eating near-zombies. The un-afflicted Sha T’Al became the victims of the afflicted and much of the population had been infected, attacked or just evacuated. Entire colonies had been decimated.

  USS Tiger had arrived to investigate the apparent demise of the Sha T’Al colonies near the Federation border and found scenes of appalling carnage. They had made every effort to assist and ironically found that the symptoms of the affliction were eased by the consumption of ethyl alcohol.

  Izzy had been assigned a small team of scientists and chemists to stay with her at Todot Hahn in an effort to help reverse the effects of the affliction.

  Dave decided to help Izzy, prompting her to take small steps in a long journey of explanation. ‘Let’s start with the easy stuff. How’re the local population doing?’

  Izzy sighed. ‘Not as well as I’d hoped. For some reason on Cho-dal-far a part of the infected population seems to have a resistance to the effects of alcohol. The Sha T'Al are really struggling to re-colonise the mainland and there have been a couple of nasty incidents.’

  Izzy shrugged. ‘Esther Milano has been working on it with the best scientists the Sha T’Al have, but they’re not making much progress. It seems there’s no reason why alcohol shouldn’t work, but on a few of them it just doesn’t. They’re trying other forms of ethyl alcohol, but some of these have had quite bizarre and completely unexpected side-effects. Milano is facing an uphill battle trying to learn about Sha T’Al bio-chemistry and genetics as she goes.’

  Dave scratched his head. ‘Well hopefully we’re in a position to help. We’ve got a few more Sha T’Al doctors and scientists in our load of refugees. If I’m honest I know nothing about them, but I’m sure they’ll be able to help.’

  ‘Well it’s good news even if it’s only moral support. If we get lucky one of them will spot something that we’ve missed or come up with something we haven’t thought of yet.’

  With that topic put to bed, Izzy carried on to the next issue.

  ‘Joynes is being Joynes as always. He's been experimenting with exotic plants again, and roped Lieutenant L'Amour and PO Esther Milano in. To be fair, they’re doing it in their spare time, but it’s had a definite knock on effect. Ostensibly, Joynes is looking for compounds that might have the same effects as the alcohol should have, but you know what he’s like. He’s been sampling the compounds extensively and co-opted quite a few of our people and even the Sha T’Al into assisting with his . . . er . . . research.’

  She sighed deeply. ‘The worst of it is that it’s interfering with some of the good things we’ve achieved.’

  ‘They've come up with some genetic variations of hemp that seem to thrive in this environment. Unfortunately, that plant seems to be compatible with the cereal species th
ey took its chlorophyll DNA from and it's pretty much supplanted it in whole crops. The poor Sha T’Al are trying to grow staple food stuffs and have ended up with fields of weed.’

  ‘Of course, Joynes is delighted and has been sharing his . . . success . . . around liberally. It’s not a massive issue, but it’s just another obstacle we could do without. The pace of other work has tailed off and it seems no-one is getting much done around here at the moment.’

  ‘I guess we can deal with that. I’ll find an excuse to get Joynes back on-board Tiger and find a way to occupy his time, then I’ll just have to discipline L’Amour and Milano’ shrugged Dave.

  Izzy sighed again ‘Don’t feel you have to be too hard on them. To be fair they’ve both been working every hour they can to try to get to the bottom of the alcohol resistance problem. It’s just that Joynes can be quite persuasive, especially when Skye hasn’t got . . . er . . . a huge amount of . . . well . . . um . . . men.’

  Izzy seemed to be blushing slightly, and for a second what she’d said made no sense to Dave at all. He eventually realised that he’d stranded Skye, a clinically listed (although happy and well-adjusted) nymphomaniac, on a planet with only a half dozen human males to choose from.

  ‘And before you ask’ continued Izzy, rolling her eyes ‘yes, she has been trying it on with the local lads.’

  ‘The thought never crossed my mind’ Dave lied. He had intimate knowledge of Skye’s condition from a long and exhausting day of trying to get a favour from the E&E Officer. She clearly preferred ‘quantity’ to ‘quality’ and he knew she must have been going crazy inside a few days. He was also aware of Israel Joynes’ reputation in that respect, although he wasn’t entirely convinced a union between them was physically possible. Skye L’Amour was a teeny, tiny woman, but Joynes was an absolute man-mountain.

  He pushed a slightly worrying image from his mind, but it came back again as he realized that he still needed to go and see Skye about a personal matter. In his pocket he still carried a perfectly polished dilithium crystal that Skye had lent to him under duress many months ago in order to get Tiger underway to the Arcturus Test Ranges.