Superdreadnought 5

by C H Gideon

  “It’s for the team,” Geroux retorted.

  “Is that why I’m stuck using my suit scanners while you’ve rigged up half the city’s security cams and sent out a horde of mini-drones?” Jiya asked.

  “See how helpful I am?” The young tech laughed.

  “Keep it down, people,” Asya told the crew. “I can’t hear myself think with all your chatter, let alone concentrate enough to find that bastard.”

  “Someone’s cranky,” Ka’nak chided.

  “I think I see him,” Maddox interrupted.

  “Where?” the rest of the crew asked simultaneously.

  Maddox chuckled across the comm, saying nothing.

  Jiya really didn’t care who got him. She just wanted to be sure that he was caught and put down.

  Every other true cultist with the exception of Jora’nal had been killed, and that bastard was in jail on Lariest, where he’d rot in a cell forever alongside her father.

  It was kind of a fitting ending for both of them, and she hoped the two were locked up close enough to piss each other off regularly.

  That thought gave her great satisfaction.

  A flurry of movement against the flow of pedestrian traffic caught her attention, and Jiya cast a furtive glance that way.

  And there he was.

  Her heart raced, and she almost hit her comm and pointed him out, but as much as it wasn’t about the competition, she needed to see the job through.

  This guy had made a fool out of all of them.

  Jiya relaxed and sucked in a cool, deep breath to calm her nerves, then she leaned against the wall, turning her face away so he couldn’t recognize her.

  He glanced at the crowd, then ducked into a narrow alley off the main street the parade traversed.

  Jiya eased behind the crowds, their good-natured pushing and shoving nearly pressing her against the shops that lined the street. She dodged both vendors and sightseers as she wound her way toward the alley he’d gone down.

  She didn’t want to trigger her cloaking device, since the rest of the crew would know she had and would come running. That would be a sure sign she’d spotted him.

  Jiya reached the corner of the alley and eased to the edge, stepping off the curb and daring a peek around.

  She nearly lost her head for it.

  A burst of gunfire tore apart the bricks just inches above where her head had been. He’d apparently misjudged her height, thanks to the curb.

  The crowd reacted to the shot, all hell breaking loose.

  Children started crying, and people started screaming and wailing, and the thunder of footsteps of those who were part of the parade and those watching it joined into a singular cacophony.

  “Where did that come from?” Reynolds asked over the comm.

  Jiya resisted answering, but the question had come from her superior. It was instinct to reply.

  “Small alley by Wallaths grocery,” she answered, knowing the rest of the crew would be breathing down her neck in seconds.

  She dropped low and sprinted down the alley.

  Of course, Ast had already bolted out the other side.

  “He’s loose on the street parallel to the parade course,” she reported. “And I better get a damn raise for being a team player.”

  She skidded around the corner just as Commander Ast made the next one. Jiya recognized the vague outline of his attire before he disappeared.

  Without hesitation, she continued the chase.

  She wasn’t alone.

  Asya thundered up on her heels and the two wordlessly followed, Asya drafting off Jiya’s lead.

  Ast hit a straight patch and was forced to press hard to find cover while he ran. He darted left to right, bobbing and weaving to avoid being hit in the back. Asya gave it her best shot, though.

  Blaster fire illuminated the alley and scored the walls around the runner, but he was fast and unpredictable, and Asya hit everything but him.

  “You’re going to bring the police down on us,” Jiya warned.

  Asya did her best to shrug while running. “Like him shooting into a crowd hasn’t already set that in motion?”

  She had a point.

  “North on Clatterdun,” Jiya reported as Ast skittered and darted right down a side street.

  “On him,” Maddox called.

  “Damn it, Jiya,” Asya bitched at her friend. “If he gets to him before me because you’re calling the chase, I swear…”

  She let the threat hang, but Jiya had a pretty good idea what Asya was willing to do.

  Honor was a big thing to her, much as it was with Bethany Anne.

  Asya might not have the same sense of absolute Justice in the face of any and all circumstances, but she sure as hell did everything she could to avenge a slight against her or her friends.

  “East on Malfar,” Geroux reported, growling at herself when she realized she had given up Ast’s location freely. “Damn it! Now you’ve got me doing it, Jiya.”

  Jiya and Asya shifted course to intercept, letting Maddox burn his energy in the sprint to catch up.

  “He’s coming back toward you, Jiya,” Ka’nak called.

  Ast popped out of a side alley not more than twenty seconds later. He skidded to a halt in the middle of a four-way cross-section as he saw Asya and Jiya, believing he had given them the slip.

  Since that was clearly not the case, he raised his gun, but both Asya and Jiya fired first.

  Ast ducked and spun back around, just barely missing colliding with Ka’nak, who barreled out of the easternmost alley.

  Maddox appeared and blocked the way he’d just come, so Ast spun again—and ran face-first into the barrel of Geroux’s extended pistol.

  He winced and stumbled back, regaining his footing and raising his gun to shoot his way out.

  The problem was that he was surrounded on all four sides.

  Actually, five, since Reynolds appeared on one of the rooftops, whistling down at Commander Ast as he aimed a rifle at him.

  “Today is not your day, Ast,” Asya told him. “Or do you prefer ‘Voice of Phraim-’Eh?’”

  “I find that last one a bit gaudy,” Geroux admitted as she inched closer, leaving Ast no room to run around her without guaranteeing he got shot.

  “You know your god’s dead, right?” Ka’nak asked him, then mimicked a grenade going off. “Boom! God bits everywhere.”

  Commander Ast snarled, spinning in a desperate circle.

  “Come on now, Voice, you have to have something to say,” Jiya told him. “I mean, it’s right there in the name and everything.”

  “Just take me in,” Ast argued. “I’ll go peacefully.” He moved like he was going to set his weapon down.

  “Oh, no, no, no. That will not do,” Asya taunted. “We’re past the point of you surrendering and earning yourself a comfy prison cell. No, we’re taking care of this here and now.”

  “You’re not murderers,” he told them. “You won’t kill me in cold blood.”

  Ka’nak chuckled. “You might have us mistaken for someone else.”

  Jiya appreciated the Melowi’s bluster, but Ast was right; they weren’t murderers. They weren’t looking to gun down a person in cold blood, regardless of the crimes he’d committed.

  But that certainly didn’t stop them from pushing to make sure the killer in Ast came out so it could be punished properly.

  The crew inched closer, guns up and at the ready. Reynolds covered them from above.

  “A bunch of people died because of you, Ast,” Asya explained. “You don’t just get to walk away from that. There’s blood on your hands. Innocent blood, and lots of it.”

  “I was simply a servant of my god,” he pleaded.

  Asya laughed in his face. “Pathetic. He wasn’t even a god. You were schlepping drinks and running errands for a pretender. A crackpot.”

  “He wasn’t worthy of calling himself sentient, let alone a god,” Maddox pressed.

  The gun in Ast’s hand trembled as he spun in
slow circles, facing the crew and their judgment.

  “The sound of his jaw snapping is something I’ll remember forever,” Ka’nak said.

  Ast twisted to glare at the Melowi, but Asya’s words caught him cold.

  “He died crying,” she said. “Did you know that? Your god wept and pleaded for his life before his head exploded.”

  “No!” Ast shrieked and turned, bringing his gun up and pulling the trigger.

  His shot went wide.

  Asya put a smoking hole between his eyes and killed him right there.

  The rest of the crew fired right after, each claiming their right to Justice for what he’d done.

  Commander Ast, the Voice of Phraim-’Eh, stood in the middle of a dingy alley, a corpse already, but his body too stubborn to realize it.

  He held his ground with rigid defiance, then crumpled to the ground in a heap, nothing more than a bad memory like his would-be god, Phraim-’Eh.

  The crew lingered for a while, not moving, simply staring at the end of their mission lying dead on the ground.

  “Okay, people, let’s wrap this shit up,” Reynolds called from the rooftop. “He got his, now it’s time to move on.”

  The crew nodded and put their guns away, glancing around the group. Small smiles crept to their lips.

  Yeah, they’d killed someone, but he’d fucking deserved it.

  “Six to beam up, Scotty,” Reynolds called to the Reynolds. “And a corpse. Don’t forget the corpse. We can’t just leave that in the gutter like some Old West movie.”

  Takal came back over the comm, “Who is this Scotty you keep bringing up? Did we hire someone new?”

  Epilogue Two

  The mission was over.

  At least this part of it, Reynolds thought.

  He and the crew had come through it all and had taken out the evil descendants of the Kurtherians who had invaded the Chain Galaxy, and who had hoped to expand beyond even that.

  And they’d killed a god.

  Well, not really a god. More like a delusional nutbag who’d managed to get his hands on corrupt nanocytes somewhere and juiced himself into an early grave.

  He’d convinced a lot of people, though, and had brought a lot of bad shit down on good worlds.

  Reynolds was proud to have taken part in helping those worlds recover. Him and his crew.

  They’d been a big part of it, regardless of how shaky their start had been. He couldn’t have done it without them.

  It was also nice to have the last leader of the cult dead and accounted for.

  Now that he was fully recovered—Takal having rebuilt his body and the crew having repaired the ship, making them both whole—it was time to make a decision.

  Reynolds sat the core crew down in the meeting room and used the audio-video system to project his message to the entire ship.

  He felt it only fair to tell them what he intended and give them a choice.

  He sat at the head of the table and looked out across the closest of his crew. Reynolds dreaded this moment, but like every other circle of life, it begins and it ends, and it isn’t entirely up to us when it happens.

  “Given that my mission here is over, the Kurtherians I sought vanquished, I figure this would be as good a time as any to clear the air and see what the future holds and what roles you play in it.

  “I’ve enjoyed spending time with each and every one of you, and our experiences will forever be locked in up here…” he tapped the side of his head, “but I feel I have to be honest with you.

  “I really don’t know where I’m going from here,” he admitted. “I’m thinking I’ll travel to High Tortuga to resolve a personal issue, but that’s not a guarantee.”

  He purposely didn’t mention Bethany Anne or the Federation so as to avoid feeling as though he were manipulating or coercing decisions from people.

  “There’s no real direction set for me right now, since I’ll always be chasing Kurtherians wherever they appear. It doesn’t feel right to drag all of you along without some certainty somewhere along the way.”

  Reynolds paused and looked at the crew in f

  ront of him. They sat without saying a word, which was what he had expected. Thanks to being the ship, he could hear the muttered conversations of the entire crew, no matter where they were, although he blocked them out for the time being.

  He didn’t want to get a false sense of things by eavesdropping and pushing for something they really didn’t want. Reynolds wanted a truly independent decision on behalf of the crew.

  “Anyway, I’ll come out and say it. I’m leaving on an adventure to who knows where, for who knows how long, with who knows what outcome. So…who wants in?”

  He waited quietly as the crew made up their minds.

  The answer wasn’t long in coming.

  “We’ve decided we’re going with you, Reynolds,” Jiya told him. “Someone’s got to be there to clean up all your shit.”

  You Have Been Judged

  If you liked this book, you might also enjoy You Have Been Judged, by Craig Martelle and Michael Anderle.

  Available Now at Amazon

  Author Notes - Craig Martelle

  January 29, 2019

  Thank you for reading this book, and you’re still reading! Oorah, hard-chargers. I really hope you liked this story.

  The readers have spoken! So many people were disappointed to hear that Superdreadnought would wrap up with number 5, but it won’t. We will continue the series with a big shake-up for Book 6 (not the core of the crew, but where they are and where they’re going). Thank you for being polite and vocal in your need for more Superdreadnought. You are the reason I do what I do. We have the stories left to tell, so we’ll tell them. For you.

  I spent the last week in sunny Wisconsin. I’m being sarcastic. I left beautiful temperatures that had finally made it above freezing (we went 114 days straight without a high above freezing this year – that’s far from a record in Fairbanks, Alaska), but it wasn’t in Wisconsin. I watched temps climb where I live close to the Arctic Circle while they plunged in Wisconsin. It took almost the full week before temps were above freezing. And when they did climb past 32F all the way to 34, it started raining, like a total downpour rain.

  Then temps returned to the low 20s. Sweet. At least when the sun hit the next day, it melted most of the ice and dried up the roads. Wisconsin.

  I was there for a gaming convention, more fantasy gaming and that kind of stuff, a bunch of older folks who were introduced to Dungeons and Dragons in the 1970s now have a convention every year around Gary Gygax’s birthday to celebrate a life well-played.

  That was a long week. I was tired constantly from so much peopling, but it was good and I like the people who attend that show. I had a lot of great conversations with people who are important to me. I also got to spend a great deal of time with my brother, not something I take for granted nowadays. He lost his wife of forty years back in October. I’ve talked with him more on the phone and spent more time with him in the past six months than I had in the previous ten years.

  I spent a lot of last year’s latter half getting books ready to storm 2019:) I have a few series that are doing exceptionally well and a couple, not so much. Sometimes, I have no idea why one series will resonate more with readers than another, but no matter what, I do my best to make sure they are well written. That is in my control. I like the latest reviews on Judge, Jury, & Executioner 5 – Slave Trade, a book that made its appearance a week ago.

  Five Stars! An exceptionally well written, fast paced, action filled book. The characters are well developed and the story held my attention and demanded that I finish it in one sitting. Looking forward to the next book in this series.

  Five Stars! I recommend this series it has colorful characters and is very entertaining. I also like the way characters from the rest of the universe make occasional appearances.

  Those kind words keep the fires stoked within and make me keep striving for better and better. I hop
e you like what you read in Superdreadnought 5. It is a nice piece of work that I think you’ll enjoy.

  We’ve worked through the details of Superdreadnought 6’s outline to come up with a great transition story. No more plot reveals at this point. I am a ways into Bad Company 5 – Destroyer and will dabble on that each day to try and finish the story by the end of March. That will give me a nice leg up for April.

  Back to the word mines to find those golden nuggets for you.

  Peace, fellow humans.

  Please join my Newsletter (www.craigmartelle.com – please, please, please sign up!), or you can follow me on Facebook since you’ll get the same opportunity to pick up the books for only 99 cents on that first Saturday after they are published.

  If you liked this story, you might like some of my other books. You can join my mailing list by dropping by my website www.craigmartelle.com, or if you have any comments, shoot me a note at craig@craigmartelle.com. I am always happy to hear from people who’ve read my work. I try to answer every email I receive.

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  That’s it—break’s over, back to writing the next book.

  Books by Craig Martelle

  Craig Martelle’s other books (listed by series)

  For a complete list of books from Craig, please see www.craigmartelle.com

  Terry Henry Walton Chronicles (co-written with Michael Anderle) – a post-apocalyptic paranormal adventure