Star Peregrine

by Jake Elwood

  STAR PEREGRINE

  The Green Zone War – Book 2

  By Jake Elwood

  Copyright 2018 by Jake Elwood.

  This is a work of fiction. A novel. Totally made up. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, space battles or interstellar wars is entirely coincidental.

  Table of 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 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Author Notes

  Chapter 1

  Stars, cold and lovely, pressed in on every side.

  Tom Thrush, acting captain of the frigate Kestrel, tore his eyes reluctantly from the view and looked down at the hull plates beneath his boots. A hole the size of his fist yawned in the steel just beyond his toes. The torn edges of the metal bent inward, showing this was an entry hole. This might be the place where Spacer von Halsey had died, though he couldn’t be sure.

  "I've got this one, Sir," said a quiet voice over the radio in his helmet. Tom nodded and stepped aside, popping his boot magnets loose and reattaching them with slow deliberation. A spacer knelt, the magnet set in his knee holding him in place, and stretched a flexible patch over the hole.

  My poor ship. Focussing on the damage to the Kestrel helped Tom distract himself from the real horror, which was the body count from the recent battle and the danger his crew still faced.

  His gaze drifted upward, toward the stars so serene and pure. He wanted to lose himself in that vastness, where suffering and conflict and even interstellar war were trivial and fleeting.

  Duty, however, called.

  He was on the side of the Kestrel's hull, "sideways" from the point of view of the crew inside. He stood on the forward section, about where the mess hall would be. Instead of smooth deck plates, though, a battered wasteland surrounded him. The Kestrel looked like a toy that had tumbled down several flights of stairs. Laser burns marred the metal on every side. Lines of dents and divots showed where streams of bullets had struck the ship. One hull plate was deformed, as if it had been struck by a giant hammer, the middle pushed in, the edges curling outward. Tom shook his head, wondering what kind of weapon could cause that kind of damage.

  At least they didn't nuke us. He shuddered at the thought. The Dawn Alliance had used a nuclear missile against the Kestrel in the opening minutes of the war, dooming half her crew and almost all her officers to a lingering death from radiation poisoning. Either the DA's nuclear arsenal was limited or they'd decided to belatedly honor the interstellar accords, because they'd only used conventional weapons when the Kestrel went toe to toe with a light cruiser.

  He walked aft, reminding himself that his helmet mic was live. He couldn't curse to himself. He couldn't voice the gnawing fear that grew as he took in the scope of the damage. He couldn't scream, or it would be broadcast to the entire repair crew.

  From the aft edge of the forward section the hull fell away like a cliff. Beyond that point the ship looked like a real mess, but most of the damage was to the ship's cargo pods, not to the ship itself. He'd already given the order to abandon the pods, so the damage mattered even less.

  As he watched, an intact pod drifted away from the ship. Forty meters long, it was as long as the spine of the ship, the narrow bridge between the bulbous forward and aft sections. The pod turned lazily as it drifted, and he saw it wasn't quite intact. A long black line marked a split in the skin of the pod, and a powder of some sort floated out, leaving a trail behind the pod. Flour, Tom supposed, originally meant for Sunshine Base.

  As the pod moved away from the ship it exposed the pods on either side and the spine of the ship beneath. Six pods in total encircled the spine. From where Tom stood he could see two pods that were still attached, more or less. One had taken a direct missile strike, and was pretty much demolished. It had saved the ship from a lot of damage. Not much remained of the pod, just a long section of curved metal and the jagged remains of a circular disk at each end. Whatever cargo had been in the pod was long gone.

  The second pod showed several holes. It had taken only minor damage, because the next missile had hit the spine directly. Long sections of hull plate were gone completely, exposing the girders beneath. Tom could see directly into the upper-level corridor that ran along the spine.

  Was anyone there when the missile hit? What if a body got sucked out into space? Has anyone done a roll call? We might be missing a crew member and not even know it.

  He grimaced at the thought, then crouched, grabbing a handle next to his feet with one hand and shutting off the magnets in his boots with the other. The forward and aft sections of the ship were four decks high and proportionately wide. The spine was only two decks. Rather than walk down the aft face of the forward section, Tom launched himself through the void, soaring along the hypotenuse of a triangle formed by hull plates.

  For several wonderful seconds every thought of command and responsibility vanished from his mind. He was fully absorbed by the moment, by the giddy terror of racing through the void, completely separated from the ship. He sailed head-first toward the spine, hands stretched in front of him, and landed palms-first, trying to absorb the energy of impact without bouncing away.

  It mostly worked. His helmet banged into the hull harder than he liked, and his chest hit a moment later, triggering an involuntary grunt. He rebounded, but slowly, drifting away from the ship with the speed of a falling snowflake. There wasn't a handle in reach, so he turned on his boots and shoved the soles of his feet at the hull plates.

  With a click he could hear through his suit, his boots connected.

  "Is somebody injured?" The worried voice on the helmet radio made Tom cringe. It sounded like Sawyer, the Engineering officer. "I heard somebody moan. Is anyone hurt?"

  It wasn't a moan. I just … breathed out kind of loudly. Tom stood there, silent, wondering if anyone had noticed his rough landing. He certainly wasn't going to admit to anything if he could avoid it.

  "Everybody, check your teammates," Sawyer said. "Make sure they're okay."

  A few voices spoke up, spacers checking on people who weren't in view, others announcing they were fine.

  "Captain?" said Sawyer. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine too," Tom said. "I think somebody coughed."

  "I guess so," Sawyer said. "Keep alert, people. We've all had a rough day. Let's not make it worse with a stupid accident."

  Tom double-checked that the magnets on both boots were working, then started along the spine. To his left, the skin of the shattered cargo pod stretched up, ending in a ragged line just out of reach of his fingertips. Above and to his right he could see the vast curving brackets of the cradle for the cargo pod that was now drifting away from the ship.

  The worst of the damage was midway along the spine. Tom walked along, seeing only minor scrapes and dents, until he was almost halfway to the aft section. That was where he encountered the first work crew, half a dozen figures in vac suits swarming around the exposed steel struts that formed the bones of the ship. There was no clear path past them, so he turned off his boots, kicked off from the spine, and drifted up until he could grab a safety line five or six meters above the hull plates.

  He pulled himself along
hand over hand, looking down on the battered spine of the ship. He could see into crew cabins, and he breathed a quiet prayer of thanks that the crew had been at Battle Stations when the missiles struck.

  There was no direct view into the brig, but he knew that shrapnel had torn through that part of the spine. There was further caused to be grateful. When he took command of the Kestrel, sixteen prisoners, captured pirates from the Free Planets, had filled the brig. Desperate for crew, Tom had released fifteen of the prisoners and put them to work. Only the last prisoner, the captain, a fanatic named Fagan, had been in the brig when the shrapnel came tearing through. He was in the surgery now, his survival still in doubt.

  Quieting an ugly corner of his mind that said Fagan deserved what he got, Tom kept pulling himself aft. An artificial gravity field ran along the spine, and he felt the occasional tug when one of his feet swung too close to the ship. It kept him cautious, kept him from giving the safety line a good hard tug and flying along parallel to the spine.

  The far end of the safety line was clipped to a handle on the forward face of the aft section of the ship. Tom planted his boots and stood, the spine rising in front of him like a tower from this perspective. A dozen meters away a spacer worked with a mop, spreading foam along the hull plates. That, Tom knew, was to remove any lingering fuel residue before the crew put patches in place.

  A wide tear marred the hull plates near the spacer's feet. The damage was almost inconsequential, the hull breached into a compartment that wasn't even pressurized. It was, however, quite possibly the most significant damage the ship had taken.

  That small rip had allowed the Kestrel's main fuel supply to vent into space. The ship had auxiliary fuel storage, enough to get her to a safe port during peacetime, but the majority of her fuel was gone.

  And this was not peacetime. The Kestrel was deep behind enemy lines. With the fuel she had left, friendly ports were far, far out of reach.

  First things first. That was the mantra Tom had been repeating ever since the battle to distract himself from a rising desperation. The ship was stranded, but he wouldn't worry about it until the wounded were in the surgery. Until every major hull breach had been dealt with. Until emergency repairs were in progress.

  He circled around the spacer with the mop and made his way to the circular opening of the tiny airlock. He started the lock cycling and touched the radio controls on the sleeve of his suit. "Ms. Sawyer. This is Captain Thrush. I'm heading inside." Lieutenant Sawyer, who was overseeing outside repairs, was keeping careful track of who was outside the ship.

  "Acknowledged, Sir."

  The hatch to the lock slid open, releasing a puff of vapor, and Tom lowered himself inside. He deactivated his suit radio and heaved a sigh.

  He was fresh out of distractions. He had to figure out how to get his ship home.

  Chapter 2

  Alice Rose sat alone at a table in the back of the Kestrel's mess hall, staring at a battered air pump. The Kestrel's crew had intended to throw the pump away, ignoring the fact that they didn't have a replacement. It seemed to be the Navy way of doing things. Don't conserve, don't repair, just discard and replace. It felt incredibly wasteful to Alice, and a bit frightening. We were trying to fight these people. They're so rich, they can throw away damaged components without even trying to make repairs.

  What chance did we ever have?

  They're our allies now, she reminded herself as she turned the pump over in her hands. The Dawn Alliance is a nightmare. You need to celebrate the fact you've got an ally who's this rich and powerful.

  In theory, anyway. The United Worlds had taken a bloody nose in the opening days of the war. She was trapped now on the Kestrel, a ship in worse shape than the Free Bird, the tiny raider she'd served on until it was captured by the Kestrel.

  "Ho, Alice."

  She glanced up, grateful to hear a friendly voice. The Dawn Alliance people weren't hostile, exactly, but they made it pretty clear they saw her as a necessary evil. They certainly didn't trust her.

  They certainly weren't her friends.

  "Ho, Sean." Sean Collins had served with her for a year and a half on the Free Bird. Sixteen people on a small ship couldn't help but become close. "I see you came through the battle okay."

  He nodded. "I've been doing the rounds. We all came through in one piece, except Fagan."

  Alice nodded, unsure of her feelings. Fagan had been her captain. He'd been her shipmate, and more or less her friend. But he was a fanatic, so lost in hatred for the United Worlds he was oblivious to the fact that everything had changed. "Have you heard any news about him?"

  "The surgeon says he'll pull through." Collins's lips thinned. "They took off his left arm, though."

  Alice's stomach twisted. "Oh my God."

  Collins nodded grimly. "Thrush has a lot to answer for."

  She looked at him, startled. "It's not his fault."

  Collins's bleak look darkened into a scowl. "Of course it's his fault! Who put Fagan into the brig? Who flew us into battle?"

  "Who shot up the ship?" she retorted. "The Dawn Alliance, that's who. The same people who are probably invading Novograd right now."

  "We don't know that."

  She threw her hands up in frustration. "You know what they're like! Do you really think the Free Planets are still free?"

  He gave her a stubborn look, but she knew him too well to be fooled. He knew she was right.

  The problem was, he was right, too. They didn't know what was happening back on Novograd. Seventh-dimensional travel allowed spaceships to vastly exceed the speed of light, but communication technology hadn't kept up. The fastest way to send a message was still to put it aboard a ship.

  "It's war," she said. "People get hurt in wars. We've got a captain who takes the fight to the enemy. Our enemy. And I'm okay with that."

  Collins looked like he wanted to argue, but he didn't speak.

  "At least the Bird is clear," she said, and he nodded. The Free Bird, crammed from bulkhead to bulkhead with refugees from a threatened United Worlds outpost, was on its way to Garnet, the massive United Worlds base in the heart of the Green Zone. That meant three of her old shipmates were safe.

  As safe as anyone could be during an interstellar war, anyway.

  Her fingers played with the pump, turning the exposed blades, feeling for resistance. Collins looked at her hands. "What're you doing?"

  "It's broken."

  His upper lip developed a hint of a curl. "So why are you fiddling with it?"

  "I'm hoping to fix it."

  The curl in his lip became more pronounced. "Why?"

  "Because it's broken," she said with a bit less patience.

  He shook his head. "What do you think, they'll be so grateful for your help they'll let you join their Navy?"

  She set the pump down, gave him a hard look, and began counting off points on her fingers. "One. These people are our allies. Two. We're stuck in deep space on a damaged ship. The better the ship functions, the longer we're likely to live. Three. If we act like allies, maybe they'll treat us like allies. If we act like spoiled children, maybe they'll decide they had the right idea, treating the Free Planets like colonies, like we're trespassing in our own homes."

  "They don't think we're allies," Collins said, scowling. "They think we're lackeys. The more you do for them, the worse it'll be."

  "You're starting to sound like Fagan," she said. "He was always an asshole. Admit it, you know it's true."

  He did, too, but he wasn't going to concede it now. "Give up, Alice. They don't respect you, and they never will."

  She stared at him, filled with frustrated exasperation. For him it was true. He would be petulant and quarrelsome, and the Navy people would never trust him. They certainly wouldn't respect him. She was losing respect for him herself.

  Even as she wondered if he might be right.

  Behind him, a figure in the dark blue uniform of a Navy officer stepped into the mess hall. It was Tom Thrush, the man w
ho'd boarded the Free Bird as a sublieutenant, then showed up outside the brig as the new acting captain of the Kestrel. He looked ridiculously young, barely older than Alice herself, but he was growing rapidly into his position. The burden of command seemed to weigh quite heavily on him, which was hardly surprising. He wasn't having an easy time of it.

  His gaze fell on her, and he smiled, the solemn commander momentarily replaced by a cheerful young man. "Alice," he said. "I'm calling a meeting of department heads in the boardroom. Do you know where that is?"

  She said, "Department heads?

  "I forgot to tell you. You're a department head now." He gestured upward with his thumb. "The boardroom is one deck up on the far side of the corridor." He left the mess hall.

  Collins made a face. "So maybe you'll get a little bit of respect. It won't last, though."

  "Here." She pushed the pump across the table to him. "Fix this. You were always better at mechanical gadgets than I was." She stood up and hurried after the captain.

  Alice let herself into the boardroom in time to see Tom take a seat at the head of the long table. O'Reilly sat on one side of the table with Harper, the Marine lieutenant, across from him. Alice took a seat beside O'Reilly, as far from the dangerous-looking marine as she could reasonably be.

  Vinduly came in next, his red surgeon's uniform rumpled, looking weary and old. He sat beside Alice, slumping and looking at his folded hands on the table in front of him. Sawyer came in almost on Vinduly's heels and took a seat beside Harper. Sawyer didn't look much better than Vinduly, with dark circles under her eyes, her pale hair flattened across the top of her head.

  Alice was struck once again by how young the captain looked. As she looked from one person to another, though, there was no question who was in command.

  "Our biggest topic for discussion is our destination," Tom said. "I want to cover the basics first, though." He looked at Vinduly. "Doctor. Would you like to begin?"

  Vinduly sighed, his already-slumped shoulders sinking even lower. "Poirier died on the operating table." He spent a moment just staring at his hands. "Fagan pulled through, but I had to take off his arm."