Galactic Empire Wars: The Alliance (The Galactic Empire Wars Book 4) Read online

  The Galactic Empire Wars: The Alliance

  (The Galactic Empire Wars Series, Book 4)

  By

  Raymond L. Weil

  Books in The Galactic Empire Wars Series

  The Galactic Empire Wars: Destruction (Book 1)

  The Galactic Empire Wars: Emergence (Book 2)

  The Galactic Empire Wars: Rebellion (Book 3)

  The Galactic Empire Wars: The Alliance (Book 4)

  Website: http://raymondlweil.com/

  Copyright © June 2015 by Raymond L. Weil

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design by Humblenations.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Galactic Empire Wars: The Alliance

  A Galactic Empire Wars Novel

  Chapter One

  “Get down!” yelled Lieutenant Ryan Nelson as a nearby explosion showered him with dirt and rocks.

  The lieutenant dove head first into a nearby smoking crater, landing hard and rolling in his Type Four battlesuit. The eight-foot tall black and gray suit cushioned his fall and as soon as he regained control, he scrambled to his knees, peering cautiously over the lip of the crater. With a grimace, he saw the scattered remains of a battlesuit and glanced at his HUD to see if it signified one of his platoon members. With a sigh of relief, he saw his Marines were all still alive, but a few icons were blinking amber, indicating suit damage. They’d been ambushed by the arachnids and were under heavy and unrelenting fire.

  “Status!” he barked over the platoon frequency, as more explosions shook the ground near him. Over his comm, he could hear a muttered cursing and instantly recognized the voice.

  “Damn Kleese have us pinned down,” complained Corporal Parker from where he was lying on the ground in a prone position firing his RG rifle at a distant target. He was in an exposed position with no significant cover around him

  “Switch to suit explosive rounds,” Ryan ordered as more explosions went off around his embattled position. “The Kleese have to be on the ridge in front of us. I want every tree on that damn ridge blown apart!”

  Ryan concentrated and the visor in his helmet instantly expanded the view of the ridge. He scanned across it, carefully seeking targets of opportunity. Every so often he would see a puff of dark smoke as an explosive round was launched toward the pinned down company of Marines.

  “Firing explosive rounds!” yelled Corporal Adams as she sent half a dozen of the powerful explosive shells arching toward the ridge. Four other Marines close to her were also launching shells.

  As Ryan watched, a series of massive explosions marched across the ridge, sending rocks and dirt flying high up in the air. Trees were blown apart and large smoking craters were left behind. Shortly, the top of the ridge was covered with small fires and billowing black smoke.

  “Lieutenant Ryan?” Major Stevens spoke over the command frequency.

  “Yes, sir?” Ryan responded as he searched the devastated ridge for any more puffs of smoke. Sure enough, he saw another group appear and moments later, more explosions assailed his beleaguered position.

  “Damn!” yelled Corporal Parker. “We didn’t get them.”

  “We pummeled that ridge!” uttered Corporal Adams angrily, as she rolled over onto her back staring up into the sky. “How can they still be there?”

  “We can’t stay pinned down too much longer,” Stevens said over the comm channel. “We’re taking too many casualties.” Even a Type Four battlesuit could be damaged or destroyed by the powerful explosives the Kleese were lobbing at them.

  On his HUD, which was displaying information on all four of the platoons involved in this part of the operation, he could see six glaring red icons and half a dozen amber. He was standing in a deep crater surrounded by several other Marines in Type Four suits. They were in a wide valley with some tall trees, a few large boulders, and no other cover.

  “The Kleese on that ridge are dug in too deep. They must have a bunker there somewhere.” Stevens knew in order to have survived the explosives bombardment, the Kleese had to be under the ridge. The weapons they were using were probably automatics they’d placed on the ridge earlier.

  “What are your orders, sir?” asked Ryan. He knew there was only one way to ensure the Kleese on the ridge were eliminated. He wondered if Major Stevens was about to give the order to use the Type Four battlesuits’ most powerful weapon.

  “Use a suit nuke and level that ridge!”

  Ryan turned pale at actually hearing the order. The suit nukes were the most powerful weapon he had at his disposal. He’d never given the order to use one in combat before or even seen one used. Taking a deep breath, he activated a personal communications channel between himself and Corporal Lauren Adams.

  “Corporal Adams, we need to clear that ridge of Kleese.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lauren replied. She had gotten up and was standing behind a large tree firing RG explosives rounds at the base of the ridge. “We’ll have to go up that damn hill to do it and we’re going to be highly exposed. We’ll lose some people.”

  “No!” answered Ryan sharply. “I’m using my neural implant to activate the nuke firing tube on the back of your suit. I want you to place one of your warheads directly on the top of that ridge.”

  “A nuke?” stammered Lauren, turning to look in the direction she knew the lieutenant was. This was an order she hadn’t been expecting. Each Type Four battlesuit had two of the small nukes in a special tube on the back. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Ryan answered, as an explosion threw more dirt and rubble into the crater he was crouched in. “The Kleese are obviously inside a bunker buried beneath that ridge. It’s going to take a nuke to clear them out. There’s no other way.”

  Lauren closed her eyes and nodded to herself. If the troop assault ship Argyle was still in orbit, they could’ve called down a railgun strike to take out the hill. However, the Argyle and the rest of the fleet had withdrawn due to heavy Kleese pressure. She knew somewhere up in space a battle was taking place, which could very well determine their survival. If the Kleese won, then none of the Marines down on the planet would be going home.

  Accessing her neural implant, she prepared the center tube on the back of her suit to fire. Using the targeting scanner in her suit helmet, she fed in the coordinates of the area on the ridge she wanted the small nuke to obliterate. She took her time to ensure there were no mistakes.

  “We’re firing a nuke!” Ryan broadcast to everyone over his suit comm.

  “There will be a concussion from the blast, which will
strike us,” added Major Stevens. “Our suits are designed to withstand it. Everyone go to ground and dim the visors of your helmets.”

  “Do a ten count, Corporal Adams,” Ryan ordered, as he hunkered down in his crater. “Then fire the nuke.”

  “Wow!” spoke Alexander excitedly after hearing Lauren was going to fire a nuke. “I wish I’d been chosen to fire one of those babies. I’ve been itching to launch one ever since I found out our suits are equipped with them.” He was speaking to Lauren over the private channel the two maintained. They were close friends and Alexander wouldn’t mind being more than that, but he knew Lauren wasn’t interested, at least not yet.

  “Just get down,” replied Lauren, glancing over toward Alexander, who was in a kneeling position. “You don’t want to glow in the dark, do you?”

  Adjusting her comm, Lauren began counting down from ten. When she reached zero, she concentrated and the neural implant in her brain transmitted the signal to the tube controlling the nuke. She felt a slight bump, as the suit sent the small warhead flying upward and toward its designated target. “Nuke away,” Lauren called out as she threw herself to the ground. She wanted to have kids someday and had no plans on being exposed to a burst of hard radiation.

  Several moments later, there was a brilliant flash as the small fusion device detonated just above the ridge. Rock, soil, trees, and brush were instantly incinerated as temperatures in the millions of degrees pummeled the ground. The rock and soil seemed to just boil away. The blast wave from the explosion traveled outward, knocking down trees and stirring up a cloud of dust.

  Ryan felt the ground shake and, for a brief moment, the sky seemed to light up. Then the blast wave hit and he was hammered with more debris. The trees swayed from the blast and several came crashing to the ground. A few more minutes passed and everything seemed to quiet down. Looking up, he saw a small mushroom cloud rising from where the small ridge had once been. He knew the cloud was caused by superheated air rising upward from the blast.

  “Kleese are dead!” declared Corporal Parker as he stood up and brushed off his battlesuit. “I think we cooked their arachnid asses.”

  “Radiation seems to be minimal,” reported Sergeant Casey Hunter. She was now standing with several other Marines staring at the small mushroom cloud billowing upward where the ridge once was. “We should be able to resume our advance shortly.”

  “We were told there would be no radiation,” Major Stevens spoke over the general comm frequency. “Remember, these nukes were designed by the Kiveans for maximum destruction with minimal radiation.” He had all the confidence in the world in the highly intelligent alien race, which had taken up residence in one of the asteroids in the solar system.

  “The Kiveans are brilliant,” added Private Mary Hatterson. Mary was a clone just like Casey and being such was very familiar with the Kiveans.

  “We’ll give it twenty minutes and then we’ll advance,” Major Stevens announced over the general comm channel. “Everyone keep an eye out for any movement on what’s left of the ridge.” He didn’t see how anything, not even the Kleese, could have withstood the nuke.

  “Any word from the fleet?” asked Lieutenant Brice Felton on the command channel. The tone of his voice indicated great concern over their current situation.

  Felton was on Ryan’s left flank and Lieutenant Autumn Guthrie was on his right. Major Stevens and the reserve platoon were in the rear in a support position.

  “No,” replied Stevens. His command suit was capable of reaching the Argyle anywhere in the system while the coms in the lieutenants’ command suits were limited to low orbit only. “Not since the Zaltule battlecruisers forced our fleet to withdraw. I don’t believe the Kleese ships knew we’d already landed. When the Argyle was withdrawing, Commander Anton indicated that the entire Kleese fleet was in pursuit.”

  “So, what are we going to do?” asked Autumn worriedly. She’d lost two of her Marines in the brief fight with the Kleese, who had been embedded on the ridge.

  “We make sure that ridge is clear and then proceed to our main objective,” replied Stevens.

  They were on the nonaligned world of Diadem, which up until now had refused to join the Alliance. The Zaltule had invaded Diadem two months back, forcing its defending fleet to withdraw rather than face destruction. The admiral of the fleet had fled to Alliance space and requested assistance in removing the Zaltule from their star system. If the Alliance was successful, the admiral guaranteed Diadem would join the Alliance.

  After some discussion, the Alliance had formed a fleet and sent it to free the planet. If they could drive the Kleese from Diadem there were several other nonaligned worlds close by that might be inclined to join. Everything had gone well at first with the few Kleese ships in orbit leaving immediately upon detecting the large inbound Alliance fleet. However, a few hours later, the Kleese had responded with a surprisingly large warfleet, dropping into the system and forcing the Alliance to temporarily withdraw until additional reinforcements could be summoned. The Kleese fleet had not gone into orbit as expected but had set out in pursuit of the Alliance ships.

  “What if the Kleese return before our fleet does?” asked Brice with concern in his voice. He knew the Zaltule could bombard them from orbit. The Type Four battlesuits would give them very little protection from such an attack.

  “That’s why we need to take our primary objective,” answered Stevens grimly. “If we hold the planet’s primary spaceport I doubt the Kleese will want to see it destroyed. Perhaps we can buy time until the fleet returns.”

  The comm channel became silent as the three lieutenants thought over Stevens’ words. They knew they had no other real option. On the far side of the spaceport, there were another four hundred Marines in Type Three battlesuits. The two groups of Marines were supposed to meet up at the space complex.

  -

  Admiral Adamson studied the tactical screen carefully as the Zaltule warships began dropping out of Fold Space. He was opposed by nearly twelve hundred of the deadly three-kilometer wide ships in the form of a massive disk. Their hulls were covered in weapons emplacements with pulse fusion batteries and energy turrets everywhere. Hundreds of small hatches hid sublight antimatter missiles ready to be launched at a moment’s notice. Unlike the larger Kleese exploration cruisers, these ships were designed for war and there were no large training facilities or holding areas for conscripts. The entire ship was filled with power systems and narrow corridors, which would make it nearly impossible for a conscript in a battlesuit to traverse. These ships were designed for fleet battles and planetary bombardment.

  “We must have pissed that Zaltule Overlord off,” commented Colonel Wade Nelson as he gazed at the numerous red threat icons appearing on the screen. He’d hoped the Zaltule fleet wouldn’t follow them. “We can’t fight a fleet that large.”

  Over the past six months, they had worked hard adding new worlds to the Alliance. Hyram Blake, Earth’s main negotiator, had been traveling from world to world seeking to strengthen the growing Alliance. So far, the Alliance had twenty-seven worlds committed to resisting the Kleese. All of the worlds were high-tech planets with technology or parts of technologies that not even the Kleese possessed.

  The Kiveans, Talts, and Deltons were working with human engineers back in the solar system to combine much of this technology into a new breed of warship, one that would be extremely deadly to the Kleese. They just needed time to finish the design and get the new class of warships into production. After the fierce battle in the solar system, the Kleese had been relatively quiet for a number of months. Now they’d returned with a vengeance.

  “I have over seven hundred ships to fight these Zaltule,” Adamson said in a grim voice, looking over at Wade. “Two hundred of them are assault ships and won’t be very useful against these Zaltule battlecruisers unless we can knock their shields down.”

  Wade remained silent. He knew they couldn’t afford to lose this Alliance fleet. There were three other smalle
r fleets operating in the Alliance patrolling the borders of their self-proclaimed territory to ensure Kleese aggression was held to a minimum. This was their main battle fleet and had to be preserved at all costs.

  “I have the Diadem Admiral on the comm,” reported Lieutenant Emma Travers. “He says in the face of such a massive Kleese fleet he does not expect us to sacrifice our ships in a hopeless battle.”

  “Nevertheless, we will engage the Kleese,” Admiral Adamson replied in a grave voice. “They must know attacking a nonaligned world will have serious consequences.”

  “You’re going to bloody their nose,” Wade said in sudden understanding.

  “If a Kleese has a nose,” Adamson replied with a nod. “We’ll advance and engage them long enough to inflict sufficient damage on their fleet to give them pause. Perhaps enough to withdraw back to where they’ve been hiding for the last six months.”

  Wade nodded. He agreed with Adamson’s strategy. The Kleese must learn there would be resistance to all of their attacks in or near Alliance space. Wade just hoped they didn’t lose too many ships teaching the Kleese this lesson. He was also anxious to return to Diadem and rescue the Marines they’d left behind.

  “All ships, prepare to engage,” ordered Admiral Adamson over the fleet’s general communication frequency. “Keep your Fold Space Drives charged and ready to activate at my command.” Ships in Fold Space couldn’t be hit by enemy fire due to the speeds they traveled. Turning toward the helm, he continued. “Lieutenant Martin, plot an intercept course with the Kleese fleet and transmit it to all of our ships.”

  “Stand by to fire weapons,” ordered Commander Sandra Shepherd, as she stepped over behind Tactical. “Target a Zaltule warship with our particle beam cannons and then follow up with our sublight antimatter missiles. Let’s see if we can punch a missile through one of the holes generated by the particle beams.”