Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6

by Chaney, J. N.

  “What is it, Ninety-Six?” Ezo asked.

  “I now recall that some of the Bawee were taking an unusually long time in the cargo hold during refueling.”

  “You now recall?” Ezo said with his arms out. “How are you just now recalling this?”

  “Given the cultural context and mission parameters of our stop on Worru, I was—”

  “It’s a rhetorical question, Ninety-Six!”

  “Quite sorry, sir.”

  “Ru-Do,” Sootriman said, summoning the foremost guard, “sweep my new ship for tracking devices, and dispose of them. I want it clean before anyone comes poking around.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” the guard replied with a crisp bow.

  “Hold on,” Ezo protested, “it’s not your new ship.”

  “Negotiations are over.” Sootriman ascended the stairs without bothering to turn around.

  “Over? But Ezo—”

  “Oh, and Ru-Do, if you see any of these three snooping around, kill them on sight.”

  “With pleasure, Your Majesty,” the guard said.

  “Or… negotiations are over,” Ezo conceded.

  “Glad you agree,” Sootriman said as she sat back down. “You may borrow the ship currently in port at docking bay twenty-one. I believe she’s fueled and ready for departure. Plus, the way I see it, the Indomitable is ready to go. It would take at least one week to get a modulator on Geronimo. Given the Stiletto that’s about to make port, I’d say you have less than one hour. So once again, Ezo, my idea is your best idea.”

  Ezo let out a sigh. “We’ll take the deal. Plus, the Indomitable sounds like a good name for a strong ship.”

  Awen got the distinct impression that this was how most negotiations went between Ezo and his wife. If Sootriman hadn’t been so bent on thwarting their progress, killing them, or becoming the proud owner of some of the most important information ever to reach the known universe, Awen could see herself liking the woman. But for everyone’s sake, Awen hoped this was the only time they’d ever meet.

  “Have fun exploring the galaxy, Ezo,” Sootriman said. “The mystics know you were never talented at exploring anything else.”

  28

  Magnus slid down the steep metal chute, slowing as the incline leveled out. His feet had contacted the first of a series of chute-wide filters meant to separate debris from fluids when he noticed that the large access panel to his left was propped open. He switched his HUD to infrared imaging and saw the team making their way along the gantry.

  “Nolan,” Magnus said over comms, “SITREP.”

  “Ten souls, myself included. Everyone but Rawlson is accounted for, sir,” Chief Warrant Officer Nolan replied. “Making our way to subsection bravo.”

  “Roger that. I’m on your six o’clock.”

  “Copy.”

  Magnus looked up just as bits of ash and shrapnel landed on his armor from above. He sidestepped into the hatch and started to run. Letting his sling catch his MAR30, Magnus drew his Z from his chest holster and held it in low-ready position. He toggled the weapon to single-round mode and thumbed off the safety, scanning for targets. He caught up with the slower-moving group, checking his retreat every five paces, expecting their position to be compromised any second.

  So far, so good. Magnus didn’t like how slowly they were moving. He toggled his HUD back to visual and was struck by how dark the passage was. Other than a few small red emergency lights, the maintenance shaft was black. He went back to IR.

  “Any way you can light our progress, Nolan?” Magnus asked over comms.

  “Negative,” the warrant officer replied. The methodical blare of the ship-wide klaxon sounded in the background over the mic. “It’s pretty slow going.”

  “Copy that,” Magnus replied, sweeping his Z from end to end.

  “Map says we only have another seventy meters.”

  Just then, Magnus noticed a new heat signature climbing into the tunnel two positions ahead. “Contact.” He pointed his Z, bypassing the two team members in front of him and zeroing in on the enemy combatant.

  The hostile jerked in surprise, probably at having so many options to target, and raised his weapon. Magnus squeezed off two bolts that flashed white in his HUD and caught the trooper in the shoulder and bicep. A weapon clattered to the gantry, and Magnus sent a third bolt into the base of the enemy’s neck, severing the spine.

  Magnus made out Dutch’s slender figure as she backed away from the dead trooper and raised her ML10 to cover the new entry point. A second combatant started to climb through, but Dutch ended the attempt with two point-blank shots to the trooper’s helmet. The body was pulled back, and a small ball rolled onto the decking.

  “Stun grenade!” Magnus yelled. By this point, however, he had run even with the new entry hatch and batted the grenade back through the hole with his hand. He managed two more steps, hoping his body would block as much of the blowback as possible. But he knew that plenty of the grenade’s disruption blast would get past him, affecting those ahead.

  The grenade detonated in the hall with a high-pitched whine followed by an air-sucking whump. He watched ahead as the line of people stumbled to their knees, some falling on their hands. He couldn’t make out the girl’s status, but he hoped the adult bodies had shielded her from the worst of it.

  “Come on, Gilder!” Magnus shouted through his speaker. “On your feet, Private! Move, move, move!” The line started forward again, and as soon as they’d managed another five meters, Magnus returned the enemy’s gesture with a frag grenade of his own.

  “Cover your ears,” Magnus yelled up the line. He pulled the frag from his hip, pressed the three-second timer with his thumb, and tossed the ordnance through the hatch. “Fire in the hole!” He turned to catch up as the grenade barked in his helmet.

  The pace slowed. Within a few seconds, however, the line was underway again, and Magnus covered their retreat. Nothing more emerged from the hatch.

  The access tunnel ended in a T, and Magnus watched the group turn left—a good sign, as it meant that his schematic was still current—and followed them toward the main access hatch at the end of the corridor. Preparing to exit into a larger corridor ahead, he holstered his Z and brought his MAR30 back up, walking backward to cover their six.

  “We’re at the end of the tunnel,” Nolan called over comms.

  “Egress,” Magnus ordered, “but stay alert. Stay smooth.”

  “Copy.” Nolan said. Magnus heard the warrant officer muscling the corkscrewed lock mechanism. “Opening.” A small squeak accompanied Nolan’s words.

  There was a moment’s silence as Magnus held his breath. If there was anyone on the other side of that hatch, they were most likely—

  “Clear,” Nolan said.

  Magnus let out the breath. “You should see a bank of emergency pods along the left wall. Confirm.”

  “Affirmative. Everything looks good, Lieutenant.”

  He gave another sigh of relief, though he knew they still had a long way to go. Victory is made up of one small gain after another. Even hell can be conquered if you do it a step at a time. Without that mantra, it was easy to get distracted, and distracted Marines were dead Marines. “Load them up, Warrant Officer.”

  “Copy that.”

  Magnus was just about to check how much farther he had to go when he noticed enemy troopers come around a bend back in the tunnel. “Contact,” he said and raised his MAR30. His AI presented three targeting reticles, and Magnus waited for them to overlap. The moment they did, he fired another staccato burst. The blaster bolts lit up tunnel walls with a strobe effect. All three combatants fell into one another, their armor clattering together.

  Magnus turned and kicked Gilder the last meter through the hatch, then he grabbed the overhead bar and swung himself through, landing outside in a crouch. Dutch closed the hatch behind him and spun the lock shut.

  Magnus toggled back to visual and looked down the wide subsection corridor. Red emergency lights flashed
in time with the klaxon while banks of standard yellowing work lights illuminated painted lines on the floor indicating foot and equipment paths. A seemingly endless supply of crates, carts, and forklifts was perfectly ordered along one wall. Along the other were the entry hatches for the ship’s emergency-escape vehicles.

  Nolan had secured Valerie and Piper and was seeing to the senator, who was visibly upset. He helped the man enter the tube feetfirst and guided him down. “Watch your head, sir,” Nolan said as the senator turned in the vertical pod and rested his back against the padded backboard. The senator buckled the harness around his chest then followed Nolan’s instructions to cross his arms.

  The senator’s remaining three crew members were secure inside pods while Haney, Gilder, and Dutch got squared away. Nolan sealed the senator’s canopy and pressed the button marked “Ready/Away,” which closed the glass blast doors. Then he asked Stone for a thumbs-up. When the senator gave him the sign, Nolan jogged with Magnus to the next two available pods.

  “Any problems?” Magnus asked.

  “The senator’s a good man,” the warrant officer replied. “Cares for his family. But he should definitely stick with politics.”

  “Copy that. And the nav link?”

  “The family’s nav computers are slaved to yours, with mine and their captain’s as redundant backups.”

  “Good work,” Magnus replied. “Get yourself situated.”

  Magnus doubled back to make sure that each member of the team was set. He gave and expected a thumbs-up at every set of glass doors. One by one, each crew member replied until Magnus got to the Stones. The senator looked rattled. Valerie seemed calm, all things considered, and still looked stunning, her face illuminated in the pod’s halo of white light. She smiled at Magnus and lifted a thumb.

  When Magnus got to Piper’s pod, he knelt and removed his helmet—not the best tactical move, but he didn’t want to frighten the girl in what might be her last moments of life. After all, the whole plan was a long shot. The fact that they’d gotten as far as they had amazed him.

  “You okay?” he mouthed.

  Piper nodded, forcing a smile. Her blond wisps of hair barely came up to the bottom of the glass doors.

  “Everything’s going to—”

  A blaster bolt exploded into a thousand sparks as it struck the metal wall over Magnus’s shoulder. He ducked and covered his head with his helmet, swearing at himself. He looked down the corridor to see it filling with combatants. Several more shots struck the wall, peppering his armor with molten metal.

  Magnus’s AI had selected the closest targets, and his MAR30 was aimed. His first three bursts took out three targets, forcing the advancing enemy to cover. The action bought him enough time to do the same as he darted to the opposite side of the corridor and ducked behind a forklift. He looked across at the row of escape pods and saw Piper’s blue eyes peeking over the lip of her hatch. Blaster fire streaked beside him, the walls showering him with bright gouts of orange and yellow sparks. He wanted to look at Valerie’s face, too, but he couldn’t look away from Piper.

  At that moment, seeing her eyes filled with fear, time slowed down. Magnus had a sudden overwhelming urge to protect Piper’s little life at all costs—to live for her as long as possible. The emotion was visceral, flowing from a formerly unknown part of his soul, one he could not entirely explain. It was different from any other instinct he’d ever felt before, enough that Magnus wondered if he was about to die—or maybe he had already been shot, but his body was in shock. All that mattered was that small face, illuminated by explosions of light. She looked to him for protection. For reassurance. For hope. And he wanted to give it all to her, to see her grow into the woman she was destined to be.

  Real time hit Magnus in the chest as he suddenly realized that the next available escape pod was across the corridor and at least twenty meters toward the enemy. Heavy blaster fire had him pinned down. He pointed his MAR30 around the forklift and brought its visual sensor up in his HUD. The other end of the hallway was stacked with troopers.

  Magnus selected wide displacement and heard his weapon’s barrel aperture expand. He squeezed the trigger. The weapon hesitated, building the desired charge in its capacitors, and then released a broad burst of energy down the corridor. Magnus rocked backward. A blue light swept down the subsection and slammed into the enemy. Bodies not behind cover were flung backward. He heard troopers scream even under their helmets, their bodies slamming into and sliding across the deck.

  This was his chance. He stepped into the open. But before he could take a second step, more blaster fire struck the ground and forklift. He reversed momentum and dove for cover again.

  Dammit. There were simply too many troopers. They’d filled the end of the corridor faster than he’d anticipated. He looked back at Piper. Whatever strange dreams he had of protecting her into adulthood were now gone, obliterated like the blaster bolts exploding in sparks around him. The truth was that he wouldn’t live long enough to see her past this moment. But he would save her at least this once. He would make sure she had a chance to go on growing, to become the beautiful, strong woman he somehow knew she’d be.

  “Jettison the pods, Nolan!” Magnus ordered over the comm.

  “But, Lieutenant, we have better odds of survival if—”

  “This is about survival!”

  29

  Awen sat in the third seat on the Indomitable’s bridge and seriously considered asking Ezo to turn the freighter around. In fact, were it not for the mystery ship that had tracked them to Ki Nar Four and the fact that Sootriman didn’t appear to be the most hospitable patron, Awen would have insisted he do so. All things considered, however, she was forced to make do with the circumstances, even though she was quite sure the ship wouldn’t hold together for more than a few hours in subspace.

  Ezo’s grand assumptions about the name Indomitable were wrong. Whatever Geronimo had been with regard to beauty, aesthetics, cleanliness, and condition, the Indomitable was the opposite. Built as a commercial Longo-class light freighter long before Awen’s parents or even grandparents were born, the ship’s hull seemed like it was cobbled together from pieces of a hundred other failed vessels. The fact that any intelligent manufacturer had intentionally designed such a pockmarked walrus was a sin punishable by a thousand deaths. No one in good conscience should ever have let such a bloated hulk see the light of day.

  The Indomitable’s disklike shape rattled as it left Ki Nar Four’s orbit. TO-96 was careful to stay hidden in the shadow of the planet, opposite the strange ship’s position from the coordinates Sootriman had provided. At least we have that going for us, Awen thought. But by leaving them without weapons and with only the most minimal of shields, Sootriman may have already doomed them all to an early grave anyway.

  “Hull integrity is holding, sir,” TO-96 said.

  “Why, Ninety-Six, you sound surprised.” Ezo increased the throttle.

  “That’s because I am, sir. I very much and truly am surprised. In fact, I think it’s a miracle that—”

  “I got it, wire brain. You don’t have to explain it all to me.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Awen clamped her jaw shut to keep her teeth from rattling. Despite the odds, they were back on a ship and preparing to make for the wormhole. She hated Ezo for it—for everything—but had to admit that it didn’t matter much what ship they were aboard. Geronimo was certainly far more comfortable and safe. And clean. And—there were a thousand other things she liked about it. But at the end of the day, a ship was a ship. To her, the discovery was what mattered the most. That, and being able to get there first, to represent the Luma to a new civilization. She wanted to preserve the Luma’s way of life from whatever Republic invasion would inevitably attempt to swallow it whole. Awen was still a Luma, after all, and would be as long as she was wanted. Suddenly, she wondered about Willowood’s fate. Had So-Elku reprimanded her—or worse—for interrupting a private meeting? No, Willowood had
fought So-Elku in the Unity! Such things—well, they never happened. So, would she be disciplined? Or had she gathered other Lumanarias loyal to the Order and confronted the master?

  “Willowood will know what to do,” Awen said under her breath and suddenly longed to see the old woman again. She wished Willowood was with her, traveling across the galaxy to the wormhole.

  Once the Indomitable was clear of Ki Nar Four’s gravity well, TO-96 confirmed the course calculations and made the jump to subspace. “I still don’t understand why your wife would ever waste a perfectly good modulator on a ship such as this, sir.”

  “That’s because you have a good conscience,” Ezo replied.

  “Pardon me?”

  “You think the best about everyone. And while it’s a naive thing, it’s a good thing in a galaxy that’s falling apart like ours.”

  “So you’re saying I’m socially shallow but morally superior.”

  “Something like that. Can we just see if the blasted thing works?” Ezo asked. “If not, Ezo’s going to give Sootriman a piece of his mind.”

  “If not, we’ll all be obliterated, our atoms spread across the quadrant for a billion years.”

  “Yes, and then Ezo will give her a piece of his mind.” Ezo turned back to Awen. “You may want to hold on to something.”

  “Like your neck?” Awen asked, chin up.

  Ezo rolled his eyes. “Punch it, Ninety-Six.”

  “Very good, sir. Modulating to factor two—in three… two… one…”

  Awen saw the cockpit stretch out in front of her. She felt like she was going to throw up and realized she hadn’t located a vomit bag ahead of time. She’d been too nervous leaving the planet to be sick—a real first for her. Now, however, the sense of vertigo that swirled in her head was overwhelming. The sounds of the cockpit felt as if they were muffled by a pillow. Then she felt like her spirit was trying to separate from her body, as if she’d become careless with the Unity or had attempted a new exercise without proper training.