by Dean Henegar
Slater slowly changed his viewpoint, forced to go one compartment at a time as he moved through the ship. Midway through deck two, he came across a battle. Reapers stood motionless on the deck as a handful of defensive drones fired away at the troll kill team, their autonomous function keeping them active whereas his more advanced and core-based MOBS were inert. The trolls’ plasma weapons flared, and the last of his defenders was blasted apart. The trolls wasted no time and charged down the passageway toward the lower deck.
Pausing only for a moment when they saw the devastation that the cyborg had wrought, they continued through the ship. For now, they seemed to ignore the treatment pods and the unconscious soldiers inside. Slater had no doubt his friends would get added to the menu if he couldn’t find a way to stop the kill team. That was the problem, though, wasn’t it? He couldn’t do anything. The kill team had been specifically equipped to take him; it was the perfect force to destroy his derelict core.
Rushing through his systems, trying to find anything connected to his core, he realized that everything was blocked off from him except for his vision interface.
Wait . . . There was something else tickling at the back of his mind. That was it; Mr. Hidey’s connection to Private Long had protected the little guy from the blast’s disruptive energy. He sent out commands to the small rat, which was sitting camouflaged next to Long’s treatment pod. The rat moved through the small spaces inside his compartment walls, the ones his repair drones used to move about the ship, and eventually made his way up to deck two and the supplemental reactor Slater had installed there to help power his ship.
Using the rat, Slater removed the failsafe on the reactor itself and set it to overload. The process would only take a few minutes, and he needed to be quick if he wanted to survive and save his last two humans. Running Mr. Hidey back into the med bay, the rat, guided by Slater, opened the treatment pod that housed Private Long, then joined the soldier inside before closing the pod once more.
Warning klaxons rang throughout the ship, announcing the impending blast. With the ship in imminent danger of destruction, the automated last-chance failsafe Slater had built into the Franklin went into effect. A pocket opened in the deck below his core, dropping him into a protective shell several feet thick. The system checked for any other designated key personnel, finding the two wounded soldiers in the med bay. The treatment pods retracted into the floor, joining Slater inside the core-enhanced shell he had built. A compartment under his armored shell opened to space as the reactor went critical.
“Nice try, little core. There is no way you can overload your core after the blast the elf unleashed on you,” the troll leader said as he and the others ignored the sound of a reactor overload warning.
“You’re right. I can’t overload my core just now, but I can overload the supplemental reactor on board. I win, troll. You and your council are finished,” Slater taunted, his audio restoring at the last minute.
I guess this ends exactly where it started: with me destroying my ship, Slater thought as the reactor went critical. The force of the blast expanded outward even as part of it was channeled through the ship and into the section where Slater and the treatment pods were housed. The heat began to melt the protective shell even as he was pushed out by the blast. As he had calculated, the blast disintegrated the ship, but the armored pod containing them held up long enough for it to be hurled safely away.
* * *
Unleashing another furious roar, she crushed the last of the nearby tormentors, these metal-skinned beasts that had killed her mate. Her call of anger and loss was silent in the vacuum of space, but she didn’t care. Heavily wounded, she was about to charge off to continue her search for the energy that called to her, the energy she hungered for. Blinding light in the distance consumed the energy she sought, leaving nothing alive that she could sense. She felt a hint of the energy, but it faded slowly out of the system. In her wounded state, she would have to content herself on the tasty bits to be found inside the metal things that had stung her so badly. There was much meat to be found in these types of foes, even if it took a lot of work to get to it. She and her young, hidden away safely on a nearby world, could feed well on the bounty for many weeks.
— 30 —
Three Months Later, SAC Defensive Fortress S121
“Sir, I’m getting an emergence signature from the jump point. Multiple ships are transitioning. I have three contacts on the board,” the sensor tech said to the officer of the watch. Commander Sanchez felt his blood run cold as he watched the sensor returns and waited for more contacts to appear. His small slice of the war had been quiet for the last few weeks, the gnomes and others pausing hostilities. Still, it was only a matter of time before they began to push once more into human space. He breathed a sigh of relief when it turned out there were only three small ships and not the lead units of another gnomish push.
“Receiving a hail from one of the contacts, sir,” comms said.
“On screen. Let’s see who—or what—just came to visit,” Sanchez ordered. A human in a United States Navy uniform appeared on screen. This captain was a long way from home; the U.S. held the line against the kobolds and other races at the opposite end of human-controlled space.
“This is Captain Hal Falkoff of the USS Kidd. I have with me Captain Guzman of the SAC corvette Tiburon and Captain Peirce of the HMS Nestor. We need an immediate vector toward SAC command. We have a story you aren’t going to believe and, perhaps, the means to win this war . . .”
* * *
Ten Years Later, System Epsilon Prime (the Council’s Command World), USS Slater, Flagship of the Combined Fleet
“Transition complete, Admiral Falkoff. All ships in the fleet are accounted for. Your orders, sir?”
“Hail Admiral Guzman,” Falkoff ordered, not wasting any time once his friend and fellow admiral appeared on the screen. “Admiral Guzman, do you see that council fleet moving to block us?” Falkoff asked. The council had cobbled together the last battered remnants of the ships still loyal to them. Behind the wall of outclassed ships, the remaining five derelict cores awaited, the ships standing as the crumbling council’s last line of defense.
“Aye, aye, we can see them, sir,” Guzman replied.
“Well, I don’t want to see them anymore. Take Task Force Final Vengeance and clear them from my space, Admiral Guzman. Advise all ships to hoist the red flag. There will be no quarter given this day,” Falkoff ordered. Guzman gave a predatory grin before signing off. Falkoff watched Guzman’s task force race toward the waiting council fleet. Over three hundred ships waited for the humans, varying in size from a pair of battleship-sized orcish vessels to a flotilla of kobold corvettes. Swarms of gnomish raiders flocked in front of the fleet before turning to engage the approaching humans.
Task Force Final Vengeance contained twenty battleships, all of which were the latest design. An additional seventy lighter ships served in support of the heavies. The enemy had them beat by sheer numbers, but not in firepower. An opening swarm of missiles left the human task force, launched from ranges far greater than the enemy had experienced in any of their previous encounters against the human fleets. Over the last decade, humanity had made technological gains that should have taken them centuries to develop—technological gains that the council had been unable to replicate as the tide of war turned against them.
The two hundred missiles of the initial volley suddenly became two thousand as they split into submunitions and decoys, overwhelming the enemy’s point-defense systems. Only a tithe of the incoming missiles was intercepted by the council’s fire, and most of those they did manage to destroy were decoys. The wave of missiles began to reach its targets, concentrating on the larger ships first. Shields failed and hulls exploded by the score. By the time the first volley was done, over sixty enemy warships were blotted from space. Unfortunately for the council fleet, the first wave was followed by five more. Long before entering main gun range, the last hostile ship had been swept
away. The final missile volleys began targeting larger chunks of the destroyed vessels, anything that might still hold a survivor. Humanity was done playing around, and if the council wanted a war of extinction, humanity was more than happy to bring it to their doorstep.
“Well done, Admiral. Now pull their teeth,” Falkoff ordered Guzman. The task force moved forward even as the rest of the fleet got underway. The five ancient council derelicts were subjected to hours of pummeling from outside their own guns’ range. Eventually, their hulls resembled a cratered moonscape, stripped of all external weaponry and means of propulsion.
“Sir, the path is clear. All enemy defensive weapons are down,” Guzman advised.
“Well done, old friend. It’s up to Admiral Peirce to finish this. Admiral Peirce, land your landing force,” Falkoff ordered.
With a small escort fleet in support, five titanic human ships of a new design closed in on the derelict cores. Each ship contained a specialized force of marines and drones specifically trained to overcome the threats found on a derelict. After docking with the derelicts, the first waves of drones left the ships to clear out the defenders. Heavily armored and shielded, the Grim Reaper drones made short work of most derelict MOBS. To finish the job and locate the cores, marines in heavy power armor began to board. As the marines left their landing ship, they slammed their armored fists against a digital plaque mounted above the hatch. Every time the plaque was hit, a different name was displayed; each was the name of a victim in the war against the council. As the last marine boarded, the name flashed in red.
Commodore Slater.
“You did it, Slater. You gave us what we needed to win. Today, you and the others are avenged,” Admiral Falkoff whispered to himself as the council’s last derelict core was destroyed.
— Epilogue —
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed; his chronometer was one of many functions that had been damaged by the blast. Was it one minute or millennia? Did it even matter at this point? His brain was foggy. Bits and pieces were missing, drifting off like much of the protective shell over his core had done. There had once been something he was keen to protect, but he had done something to preserve it. When had he done that? A name hovered at the edge of his mind, evading every attempt he made to grasp onto it as the constant hunger gnawed at his remaining sanity.
Once, he had felt a small breath of relief as something smacked against his core, contacting just long enough for the few remaining nanobots to strip some material off it, increasing their numbers by a tiny fraction. After that one contact, things were silent again as he continued the endless task of trying to remember his own name. His thoughts were disturbed when he felt something change. He was no longer moving in the same direction; something had stopped him. Sound began to rise around him as a hatch closed and atmosphere touched his form.
“Don’t let it contact the hull. Keep the repulsor field active or we might have trouble,” a voice stated. He could understand the voices but didn’t recognize who was speaking. Why couldn’t he see them?
“I know. I’m not an idiot, despite the fact that I married your sister. If this is what I think it is, it’s dangerous, but it could also be the answer to all our financial problems,” another voice said.
“Yeah, don’t get your hopes up too much. It could just be a bunch of space junk. I know someone who can tell us what it is and pay us handsomely for it if our hunch is correct,” the first voice replied.
“Sounds good to me. A little risk for a lifetime of reward. We just need to be careful. That place can be bad news.”
He rapidly lost interest in the voices. They were taking him somewhere, a place where he would likely encounter matter for his nanobots to work with, a place with food. His hunger abated for the moment as he remembered his name. Slater. He was Slater, and he was a derelict. He had also been something else before that, in another time before the hunger had finally overtaken him in the never-ending void of space. It didn’t matter. He knew these voices were taking him somewhere he could finally feed.
— Afterword —
Thank you for once again signing on as part of the crew of the Franklin. I want to thank the people that helped this series come into being. The cover art is more impressive work by the artist Piero Mng (Gianpiero Mangialardi). I love the battle depicted between the reaper drones and the gnomes. My editor, Bodie Dykstra, continues to be a valuable partner in making these books the best they can be. My family always supports me, and I am blessed to have them. The audio version is in production at the time of publishing and should be ready soon. Once again, it will be narrated by the talented Jack Voraces.
While we saw a conclusion for humanity in their battle against the council, Slater’s adventures are just getting started. What is going on with Slater? Where is he being taken? What happened to Private Long and Harris? Is Mr. Hidey still alive? Find out in Derelict, Book 3: Sarton Station, which is coming soon.
Much like in the first book, several of the vessels in the story are named after real-world ships. Here is a rundown of some of the specific vessels featured in this tale.
SS Tuxpam. The Tuxpam was completed in 1903 as the SS Prometheus for Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum. Sold to Standard Oil in 1914 and renamed the SS Cushing, she was requisitioned by the U.S. Navy as the USN Chinampa before being returned to her owners in 1919. In 1924, she was sold to new Italian owners and renamed the Americano before being laid up in Tampico, Mexico. The Mexican government seized the ship, and it finally received the name SS Tuxpam in 1941. On June 27, 1942, she was sailing about forty kilometers off the coast of Veracruz when she was attacked by U-129. Two torpedoes were fired, one of which malfunctioned, causing U-129 to have to dive in order to evade it. The tanker was still afloat after another torpedo hit, and U-129 surfaced and engaged the ship with its deck gun. It took fifty-two rounds before the tough old ship finally began to burn and sink.
Tiburon (SS-529). Trench-class submarine that was authorized in 1940 but canceled in 1944.
ARM Huracan (A-301). The Huracan started life as INS Ilia, a missile boat built by the Israeli Navy. Sold to Mexico in 2004 after a complete rehaul, it was renamed the Huracan. The ship is still serving in the Mexican Navy.
USS Cordova (AVG-39). Escort carrier completed in July 1943 by the United States Navy and transferred to the Royal Navy in August 1943 and renamed the HMS Khedive. The ship served as the command ship for the invasion of southern France in 1944 and then was used in the invasion of Singapore in 1945. The ship was returned to the United States after the war before being sold into merchant service in 1947. In 1975, she was sold for scrap.
ARM Durango. Patrol vessel commissioned in 2000 for the Mexican Navy. The ship still serves and is used for coastal defense and drug interdiction.
USS Kidd. A Fletcher-class U.S. destroyer launched in 1943. Named after Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, who died on the bridge of his flagship, the USS Arizona, on December 7, 1941. The ship served with distinction and fought in many of the Pacific battles of the Second World War as well as the Korean War. Entering the reserve fleet in 1964, the Kidd eventually was towed to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and has been fully restored as a museum ship. The ship is open for visitors, and I recommend you visit if you are ever in the area.
HMS Nestor. Launched in 1915, the Nestor took part in the Battle of Jutland in the First World War, where she was sunk while attacking a German battlecruiser squadron commanded by Admiral Franz von Hipper. The location of the wreck is known, and the area of the battle is a protected historical location.
ARM Allende. This ship started life in 1972 as the Knox-class USN destroyer escort Stein. The ship, strangely enough, was one of the few to have ever been attacked by a giant squid. In 1978, the sonar dome on the ship received damage and was covered in cuts to the rubberized coating. Nearly all the cuts contained remnants of the claws located in the giant squid’s suction cups. The claws were the largest recorded at the time. Decommissioned in 1992, the ship was sold to the Mexican N
avy in 1999 and renamed the Allende. The vessel is still in service, though it is not known if she has suffered any subsequent attacks by sea monsters.
If you’ve enjoyed this book, you may also be interested in my LitRPG series Limitless Lands. You can find it here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G7GWFFL/. If you want to connect with other readers and authors in both the LitRPG and Dungeon Core communities, check out the following Facebook groups:
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