Federation at War (Blue Star Marines Book 1)

by James David Victor

  Boyd held the med-pack over the wound. Fine tendrils spread out from the base of the pack and latched onto him. The tendrils slipped under the skin and burrowed into his flesh before pulling tight, positioned over his aching ribs. He winced and bent sideways, twisting away from the pain as the pack positioned itself and then he let out a sigh of relief as painkillers were administered and the pack began to aid in the tissue and bone reconstruction.

  Grabbing his shirt off the flight console, he saw the young woman at the weapons console looking him up and down.

  Boyd watched her admire his toned muscles and heavy bruising. He waited until her eyes came up to meet his own. He smiled and gave her a wink. She looked down at her console as if she hadn’t just been caught sizing him up.

  Boyd knew he was fit and strong. He didn’t mind this new flight deck officer knowing it. He pulled his shirt on and sat back down in the pilot’s chair.

  “Message from the Plague Crimson,” Poledri said. “We will jump to maximum drive and maintain for the next leg. Flight time is short, and our rendezvous is in the neighborhood.” Poledri walked around the back of the newcomer and patted her on the shoulder. “Everyone, this is Enke Thresh. She’s our new weapons officer and systems engineer. Enke, this is my flight deck crew. If any of them piss you off, feel free to smack them in the head, particularly that one, Boyd. He’s a troublemaker if ever I saw one.”

  Boyd focused on the flight console. The rendezvous was strange. Faction ships usually operated alone in the outer system. Rendezvousing with other Faction ships did sometimes happen to transfer supplies or, as with the case of Thresh, replacing crew, but meeting up with a Faction ship in a mass rendezvous was extremely rare. In fact, Boyd, in his time aboard the Fist, had not once piloted the ship to a multi-ship rendezvous.

  Maybe the rumors were right. Maybe Boyd was closing in on Kitzov.

  This was his job: to find the Faction Leader so the Union could arrest, detain, and hopefully execute the terrorist. Kitzov had risen through the ranks of the Faction to become their top leader. He had once been the low-level leader of a Faction settlement when Boyd’s brother had led a squad of Marines into the settlement. Boyd held Kitzov personally responsible for the death of his brother, murdered by terrorists while doing his duty as an honest and true Union Marine. Boyd would take great pleasure in delivering the news of the leader’s location to the Union. His only regret was that he would not be able to execute the head of the Faction himself. But given his service and involvement in the mission, he probably would get a ringside seat at the hanging when they finally did bring him to justice.

  “Detecting Faction ships dead ahead,” Noland said.

  Boyd prepared to bring the Fist down to maneuvering speed.

  “Hold formation with the Plague Crimson and prepare to drop to maneuvering speed,” Poledri said.

  The image on the holo-stage focused on the gathered ships dead ahead.

  Five ships were there.

  Boyd matched the speed of the Crimson on their starboard side and dropped to maneuvering speed right on time. The two ships came toward the small flotilla of Faction ships from the outer edge of the system.

  The five ships were arranged in a line abreast, all lying with the forward sections pointed toward the distant Scorpio star. The Odium Fist and the Crimson moved in on the rear section of the formation and slid in behind the central ship.

  “All stop,” Poledri said, climbing out of his command chair. “I will transfer to the lead ship on the shuttle. Boyd, you are my pilot. Noland, I’m leaving you in command of the Fist. Thresh, I know you are new, but you are reserve commander. If Noland looks like he is about to do anything stupid, you can shoot him in his ugly head.”

  Poledri marched off the command deck. Boyd set the pilot console to stand by. He transferred controls to the command chair as Noland climbed up to assume command of the Fist.

  “Take it easy on the drive,” Boyd said to Noland. “And watch that third chamber on the main reactor, she tends to kick a bit when you drop down and maneuver to port. And the forward thrusters are blowing a bit cold. Also, remember, she doesn’t like traversing on beam and—”

  “Stop running down my ship,” Poledri shouted along the corridor as he walked away, “and get a move on.”

  Boyd had more to say. The Odium Fist was a good ship, but only a few knew how to handle her well. He looked at the new girl, Thresh. She was grinning at him. He ignored her grin and left, moving as quickly as his aching ribs would allow.

  The shuttle bay of the Odium Fist was barely large enough to contain the small shuttle. It was originally a mining company bus designed for taking mine workers from one asteroid to another, so it was not really built for long-distance, deep-space flight. It was a horrible hunk of space junk, but it had been reconstructed by Poledri himself, who had boosted the reactor core to increase the hull stability field, so the old bus could just about survive entry through a planetary atmosphere, although Boyd didn’t want to be the one to test it.

  The captain would hear no complaints about the old shuttle. Battered as it was, it was just about good enough to move through space from one ship to another.

  Boyd squeezed alongside the transport ship, his back pressed against the bulkhead at the side of the shuttle bay. The entrance to the bus was a side panel door that was already open.

  Boyd stepped into the bus’s central area. Previously a forty-seat transport, it had been gutted to make room for the expanded core Poledri had installed. It was a rough job, but it worked. Boyd walked to the front of the bus and the single pilot seat on the port side. The co-pilot seat was set back from the flight console at the starboard side. Poledri dropped into it.

  Boyd activated the shuttle and powered the forward panel. The composite became transparent and showed the front of the bay only a few centimeters in front of the flat-nosed bus. It really was a tight fit.

  Poledri opened a channel to the flight deck.

  “Noland, seal the shuttle bay and open the door.”

  Noland’s response crackled over the shuttle’s speaker system. The door began to slide up, revealing the tight cluster of Faction ships.

  Boyd could identify the ships by drive sections alone. One was the classic Faction-built, heavy-duty gunship, the sort favored by pirates. Small, fast, and heavily armored with one massive hail cannon mounted on top. This gunship had been augmented with spitz guns on the port and starboard sides.

  Two were old freighters, retrofitted to be Faction battleships. One was absolutely bristling with spitz guns, the rapid-fire heavy plasma guns merely scaled up versions of Union Marine pulse rifles. They were powerful and reliable, delivering a withering rate of fire.

  The second freighter had also been customized heavily and was covered with surveillance nodes and sensor booms. Both battleships had old school laser assemblies mounted on the upper hull. Boyd calculated that the laser assembly power systems alone must have taken up half of the available space inside the ships.

  These battleships were clearly designed to support other Faction ships and bring huge firepower to any fight, but they were not designed or capable of acting alone. They were essentially mobile high-energy laser firing platforms.

  The other ship was the same configuration as the Odium Fist and was superbly adapted for solo missions. It was one of the newest of the Faction ships—a newly constructed raider. The raiders were based on the design of the old Union corvette, which were no longer in service. The Faction had taken the design, made a few changes, and created the raider. They were the very cutting edge of Faction warship capability.

  But the ship that stood out and made Boyd excited was the central ship, clearly a stolen Union frigate painted with Faction markings. Boyd knew that only a few Union ships had fallen in the fight against the Faction.

  This one had been taken as a prize.

  There was only one Faction member who had enough influence to take command of such an imposing vessel.

  Boyd could almo
st smell the presence of Kitzov.

  “Move us in toward that frigate.” Poledri was leaning forward, his face almost pressed up against the transparent forward section looking out at the huge Faction ship. “She’s the Silence. The first of her kind. It is ships like that that are going to win us this war against the Union.”

  A message from the Silence appeared on Boyd’s flight console—directions for the shuttle to enter the Silence’s shuttle bay on the lower port side.

  “Docking instructions from the Silence, Captain.” Boyd could hardly contain his excitement. He thought about whether he should just collapse the bus’s reactor core field and destroy the Silence from the inside, killing Kitzov at the same time. But as a Blue Star Marine, he knew that was not the way. As much as he wanted revenge for his brother, his training told him to keep personal feelings out of his mission.

  He was going to take Kitzov alive and watch him dance at the end of a rope outside fleet headquarters on Terra.

  Boyd maneuvered the bus into the shuttle bay of the Silence. The bay was huge and so familiar. He had spent so much of his time as a Marine aboard the Resolute, Major Featherstone’s ship, and the Silence was exactly the same design.

  One thing that was different on this ship was the lines of Faction fighters. They waited for the shuttle bay doors to close and then stepped in from behind the observation area.

  “You wait here, Boyd,” Poledri said as he climbed up and out of the co-pilot seat. He walked back along the bus and opened the hatch. It slid aside slowly with a squeak. “Be ready to get us back to the Fist. Turn the bus around make sure you are ready to take flight. We might be leaving in a hurry if any Union ships should spot our little meeting.”

  Boyd watched as Poledri stepped out of the bus onto the hangar deck. The Faction fighters were more organized aboard this ship than they had been on the Plague Crimson. Their uniforms were standardized.

  Faction fighters on almost all Faction ships wore only heavy-duty work clothing, suitable for them to do their job as a fighter, but those here were wearing standard military kit. And they almost behaved like a disciplined force standing almost to attention as Poledri stepped off the bus, then they were marching, almost in disciplined formation, as they walked behind Captain Poledri to escort him out of the shuttle bay.

  With Poledri gone, Boyd busied himself with the simple task of preparing the shuttle to leave. With that done, he attempted to hack into the internal surveillance systems of the Silence and find out who was on board.

  It had to be Kitzov.

  Poledri marched along the corridors of the Silence, following one pair of Faction fighters with another pair in step behind him. They knew where they were going.

  He didn’t know this ship at all, so he simply followed those in front. He looked at the corridor walls with a mixture of awe and pride in the Faction and all they had become. This was a fine ship.

  A cross-corridor caught Poledri’s eye as he marched past. He glanced left and looked along the hallway stretching off to the port side of the ship and a weapons room housing a spitz gun at the far end. A small gun crew was hanging around lazily in the open room. Quickly glancing to his right along the cross-corridor, Poledri looked to the other gun room on the opposite side. One fighter was in view, sitting in the firing chair with his feet up, reading a holo-file projected in front of him.

  The corridor stretched the length of the ship in the center from drive section to the forward command area. The corridor split and branched at the end, both side corridors leading to the command center. Poledri followed his guards toward that center, but then they turned to their right and led Poledri into a conference room.

  Boyd hacked into the ship systems. He used the hack device hidden in the cuff of his jacket and grafted the signal onto the shuttle’s communication system. The Union frigate had been reconfigured and all ship systems now conformed to Faction operating systems, but there was still the base honeycomb of cells that meant it was easy enough for Boyd to hack into it.

  He accessed the internal surveillance network and raced through the ship, from one surveillance node to the next, until he found what he was looking for in a conference room on the forward starboard side.

  And there, in his uniform, was the unmistakable figure of Kitzov.

  Boyd could barely contain himself. It was all he could do to stop himself from drawing his pulse pistol and racing through the ship and shooting down the terrorist leader right then and there. But he was not an assassin. He was a spy. Information was key, and he had to be alive to deliver it to the major back aboard the Resolute.

  In the conference room, Boyd could see Captain Poledri greeting Faction Leader Kitzov warmly with a shake of the hand, several other captains bowing and scraping to the Faction Leader.

  Then a message from the Odium Fist came over the shuttle communicator.

  “Are you listening, Boyd?” Noland said. “We’ve detected a ship moving in from the outer system. It’s as if it came from nowhere. We can’t identify the ship yet, but it is heading straight for us.”

  Boyd saw the meeting in the conference room break up as a crewman ran in and whispered the news into Kitzov’s ear.

  Poledri strained to listen to what the crewman was whispering, but then he saw the message appear on his personal holo-stage.

  An unknown ship moving in at speed.

  “And that’s the reason, gentlemen,” Kitzov said with a smile, “that I have to keep on the move. It looks like the Union has detected our little meeting. You have your orders. We are preparing for a major offensive against the Union. We are going to drive them back from the outer system ship by ship. Once we have control of everything outside the belt, they will have to negotiate. But have no doubt, this is going to be a desperate and bloody fight. The Union will not want to surrender power, and unless we can force our claim with the might of arms, the Union will never give us our freedom.”

  Poledri applauded along with the other captains.

  “No communication about this operation is to be sent across general communications, not even coded. The Union has spies throughout our organization. You have my permission now to execute any that you find on your ships. Any communication about the mission operation is to be delivered through face-to-face, in-person contact only.”

  “You have our full support, sir.” Poledri stepped forward and offered his hand. “The Odium Fist is ready for action.”

  Kitzov shook Poledri’s hand and delivered a pat on his shoulder.

  “Good to see you, Poledri. I regularly hear from the Union that your ship is high on their kill list. Must make you proud to be so hated by the Union.” Kitzov smiled and then left the conference room.

  A group of Faction fighters in their new uniforms showed the ship captains out of the room.

  Poledri opened the channel to his shuttle. An image of Boyd appeared before him. He spoke as he walked.

  “Boyd, we are leaving. There’s a ship detected moving in on our rendezvous. Make sure we’re ready to leave.”

  Boyd acknowledged Poledri’s orders and told him that the shuttle ship was ready to go. He closed the channel and then stuffed his hack equipment back inside his jacket just as Poledri stepped into the shuttle. The shuttle door closed behind him.

  “Get us out of here, Boyd,” Poledri ordered.

  Boyd sent the request to leave to the Silence command deck. No acknowledgement came, but the outer door opened.

  Boyd activated the drive and maneuvered the bus out of the Silence. He activated the holo-stage and focused on the Odium Fist. All around, from shuttle bays across the rear lower section of the Silence, came shuttle craft in various shapes and sizes, many very similar to the mining shuttle bus that Boyd was now piloting. They all moved away from the Silence toward their own ships.

  A message came onto the bus communication from the Silence command deck. Poledri opened it and transferred it to the holo-stage.

  The image of Kitzov appeared there. It was a broadcast messa
ge.

  Boyd looked at the image. He had never been this close to his target. He needed to notify Featherstone as soon as possible.

  He had located Kitzov.

  “We have obtained a full sensor analysis of the incoming ship using our new Faction-built sensor array. It’s not a Union ship, but it’s not Faction either. We have nothing like this in our database. This is completely new and totally alien.”

  “Skarak,” Boyd said.

  Poledri ignored Boyd, focused entirely on Kitzov.

  “It’s moving in at speed. It has some similarity to the ship that Captain Poledri’s crew found crashed on an asteroid, and it’s moving fast. Get back to your ships and make ready to defend the Silence.”

  “So now you know who I was meeting,” Poledri said, turning to Boyd. Poledri was beaming, proud to have been so close to the leader.

  “I think we better get back to the Fist.” Boyd put the data-stream of the incoming alien ship on the holo-stage. It would be on top of them in a matter of minutes, barely enough time to get back aboard the Fist. “It is the same as that ship we found, the ship that it killed Mitri’s crew. The ship that tried to kill me.” Boyd looked at the image—the black body of the ship with the long forward structures arcing forward like rapiers, fine swords ready to slice up the small Faction flotilla.

  Boyd raced into the Fist’s hangar deck and stopped hard, the stability field barely compensating for the sudden deceleration. Boyd felt himself pitching forward slightly in his chair, a sick feeling in his stomach and his sinuses as the sudden deceleration threatened to squash him.

  “Outer doors closed,” Poledri said. “Pressurizing hangar deck shuttle bay.”

  “Taking the bus systems offline,” Boyd said.

  Then a message from the Odium Fist flight deck came over Poledri’s holo-stage.