by Scott Warren
Parvus Press
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Published by Parvus Press
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Copyright © 2016 by Scott Warren
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3:1 harbors are a sucker's bet, go for 2:1 brick instead.
Print ISBN:978-0-9976613-1-6
Digital ISBN: 978-0-9976613-0-9
Prologue
Atomic fire blossomed, whiting out the rear-facing sensors of the Dreadstar. First Prince Tavram scowled as his final Malagath warship disappeared from the battle reader, spent to allow him the opportunity to escape. A regrettable sacrifice, if necessary. Avoidable? Perhaps. Foreseeable? Absolutely not; this convoy was a secret even from the admiralty. Conclusion? Betrayal. The ambush had been swift and perfect. Likewise, the retribution would be equally so, in due time. For now, survival in the next few moments became the paramount task.
The Dirregaunt mastery of ambush was unparalleled within the known galaxy. Their vessels lurked, invisible to the naked eye at this distance, and cooled down to avoid sensor detection. From as far as a hundred thousand kilometers away they fired pre—charged banks of laser batteries, slicing metal and composite before closing to finish the work. The Malagath Prince knew the ships, knew the face of their commander, and knew the battle would not end with his retreat. Dirregaunt considered themselves the greatest of predators, and they would pursue him across the stars.
His helmsman said something, a buzz in his ears as a series of smaller explosions on the screen represented the remaining fighters being cut down by high-wavelength lasers. He lifted a blue, three-fingered hand to the helmsman and the remaining screens blurred as the Dreadstar’s emergency engine fired, jumping the envoy frigate with her few survivors. His convoy died to provide him time to plot the calculations and activate the engine, generating a mass field outside the ship substantial enough to initiate a space-tear. It was the last jump the Dreadstar would ever make. Almost all her engineers were dead and her engines lay damaged beyond repair. His fate and the fate of his crew now rested with whomever chanced upon his distress signal. He prayed to the first stars it would not be Best Wishes.
On the bridge of the Springdawn, commander Best Wishes tapped his claws together with a mixture of consternation and elation. Technically, he had failed his mission objective. The Dreadstar fled, despite several large holes in her hull. The emergency engine was a new addition for which he had not been briefed and it allowed for a space fold to carry the Dreadstar away from battle. Rather than an easy pursuit, Best Wishes would be forced to extrapolate his trajectory based on space-time distortions his sensors read from the emergency engine. But once he followed, he would find the Dreadstar hanging limp. The severity of the hull compromises would cause compression shear should the First Prince attempt to accelerate past light speed, leaving the Dreadstar stranded wherever they emerged. A failed objective, but an opportunity to continue the hunt.
Best Wishes did not consider himself bloodthirsty. Rather, he carried a grudging respect for the Malagath and relished the opportunity to test himself further. Respect for their military prowess, if not their ideals. The Malagath culture was brutal and cruel and self-serving, antithetical to Dirregaunt philosophies. Few had more blood on their hands than the Malagath royal family, and the First Prince was the architect of several notable Dirregaunt defeats.
He considered for a moment. His ships had not gone unscathed by the exchange. For whatever else they were, the Malagath were excellent fighters. They managed to destroy two of his frigates and cripple one of his battleships, extrapolating their positions even under fire and lancing them with particle cannons before the Dirregaunt ships began to move.
“Master hailman,” he said, “I do not believe we require an entire battle group to pursue a single crippled frigate. Signal the Surf and the High Rain to return to the staging station.”
He turned to his first officer, Modest Bearing, who had been with his command for almost as long as he’d had a command. “I should like the science team working immediately. Determine where the First Prince has gone, then plot a route,” he ordered. His will carried out, he turned his four eyes back to the viewport where the exhaust residue of the Dreadstar’s emergency engine expanded in an icy cloud at the edge of their magnification.
“You cannot run from me, First Prince.”
Chapter 1: Vick’s Vultures
The Condor pushed away from the derelict hulk. There was little of value left aboard the Morning Spear, but the Vultures stole it anyway. It was what they called a cold wreck. No signs of life, no hot reactor, and not one of the Big Three. Malagath, Dirregaunt, Kossovoldt; those were the name of the game. Lately, Captain Victoria Marin of the Union Earth Privateers had run as cold as that salvaged wreck tilting out of her ship’s forward monitors. Six weeks without good salvage would put her command in the red right fast. Trouble was, word across the Orion Spur said there had been no recent battles between the Big Three or their proxies anywhere within range of her little puddle jumper.
Odd that, since she was in a rough part of the galaxy. Hell, all of humanity was. Earth sat practically dead center in the Orion Spur, a no-man’s land providing a bridge of stars directly between the frontiers of the Malagath and Dirregaunt pushing in from the Perseus Arm and the Kossovoldt from the Sagittarius Arm towards the Galactic Core. Right where she would expect them to be fighting. She wouldn’t encounter Kossovoldt in this area, a species so prominent that the local galaxy had based a common language off their influence, but the Malagath Empire and Dirregaunt Praetory? You could hardly pull them away from each other’s throats in this neck of the woods. They hated each other so much that they rarely left anything big enough to salvage anyway. Half their ships had been in service since before humans put a probe in space, but even the scrap was more valuable than her beloved Condor. Yet … no battles. Something was going on.
Victoria turned to her navigation officer.
“Huian, take us out of here. Growl Red while you’re at it and have him report to the wheelhouse. He better have good news.”
“Aye Skipper,” said Lieutenant Wong. Victoria scowled behind the young Chinese woman’s back as she stood from the captain’s chair. Little blue-water puke up-jumped to space duty for being someone’s daughter. Nothing against the little shit personally, but Victoria hated her rosters being mucked by political pull. Space was dangerous enough without the added variable of political nepotism.
Ducking through the hatch from the conn she made her way down two ladders, swinging past the galley and entering the officer’s mess under the hand carved wooden plaque, labeling the compartment ‘The Wheelhouse’. Once inside she made a beeline for the wet stores, snagging a tumbler from the wall on her way. Christ she needed this. As she was pouring the whiskey she heard the swish of the magnetic seal behind her and smelled a body recently freed from an extended vacuum suit vacation. She turned to Red Calhoun, the commander of her marines, still in his armored vacuum suit.
“Christ, Red, you could have at least dressed do
wn. Drink with me.”
The big Scotsman squeezed around the table grabbing a glass for himself. “Orders were to report to the wardroom, Vick. ‘Sides, I dress down and it gives you an excuse to stare at my ass.”
Victoria scoffed, “Don’t kid yourself. I’ve seen what you’re pushing. I wouldn’t write home about it,” she said.
Not entirely true, the marine had good broad shoulders and strong calloused hands. And combat experience was always a plus when serving a tour in her bunk. Not that she would ever tell any of this to Red.
“Anyway,” she continued, pouring a few fingers into the second glass, “Anything good?”
There was a static sensation in the air and a change in the tone of the reactor as the Condor slid into the superluminal compression of her FTL drives. Outside, the ship began to move back towards the system’s star for a horizon jump. Large space-time distortions were needed to enter a horizon jump. The closer to a star, the easier it became. Getting out was another matter, more of an art than a science. The hairs on Victoria’s arms stood up, as they had every FTL slide since she had first climbed aboard an interstellar ship. It made her feel chilly, though every doctor she’d seen said it was psychosomatic.
Red washed his throat before answering. “A few high-freq conduits, burnt out core and storage matrixes, identification and effects of a few of the floaters and a functioning UV spectrum laser. Third generation, Tallidox made. Reactor was scuttled, but Aesop pulled some incomplete logs and schematics off a drive. Kid’s a wizard with xenotech.”
“In other words, garbage,” she said.
“In other words…” said Red, nodding slowly to himself. Victoria sighed, “You know what happens if we can’t haul in any decent thieving.”
“I know, I know. We get to Taru station without collateral and no one will extend us more credit. Ship gets stranded and we have to wait for the Huxley to pay down our debt and lend us some fuel.”
“And you know I hate owing Jax shit. That cocksucker and his three missing teeth still haven’t let me hear the end of it from last time. Never mind when we hauled his ass out of the fire after he got those Graylings on his wake. Don’t take to being ransomed, Graylings.”
Red chuckled over his glass, “You remember when we pulled him outta what was left of the Dolphin? He was grinning so wide I thought his face’d get stuck like that. What’d he get on that haul?”
“Shit, that was the run he made off with the undamaged core manifold what let the third gen Kosso hulks push past 120c wasn’t it? Old tech to them, almost ancient really, but we’re still figuring it out Earth-side. That’s why they gave him the Huxley. Shit, 120 times the speed of light? We do that, and we’ll be hopping between stars in just a couple days. Without a horizon drive. We’re going to go from 40 worlds to 400 before the xenos can blink. Let’s see ‘em try to push us out of the Orion Spur then.”
“That’s still a long way off, Vick. How about we start with making it back to human space?”
The two sat in silence for a time before it was interrupted by the mechanical chirp of the growler. Vick picked up the analogue receiver. Ancient tech even so far as humans were concerned, sound powered and nigh infallible the privateer fleet still made use of them for internal communications.
“Wheelhouse, Captain speaking.”
“Wheelhouse sensors, Ma’am. We’re getting a deliberate distress signal. Encrypted but it’s a Malagath Codec. The crypto computer broke it down enough for a location. It’s within Horizon range, three rungs up on the azimuth and almost on the way to Taru. Could even be hot, origin is two days old maybe.”
“Shit Avery, that’s Big Three, why’d you wait so long to tell me?”
“Wanted to confirm it first, Vick. I’ll go ahead and kick it over to Huian.”
Victoria slammed down the receiver and opened up the command network console in her retinal implants. She watched excitedly as Huian received the information and made the necessary course adjustments to change their Horizon drive destination. She stood up to activate the main circuit and address the crew but found Red had already done it for her, smiling his wide, toothy smile.
“This is the Captain.” She grinned back.
“At 1900 hours we detected a distress call within horizon range. It’s Big Three, people, maybe even hot. We’ll be activating the horizon drive at 2050 hours. General quarters will be at 0230 hours. You know what this means. Rest up if you’re not on watch, all drills are on hold. Marin out.”
The cheer from the crew was audible through the metal hull of the Condor and Victoria couldn’t help feeling proud. Even if the cheers were as much for the cancelled damage control drills as for the prospect of hot salvage. Her Vultures were the best privateers in deep space as far as she was concerned. And damn if Earth wasn’t getting awful tiny in the rear-view mirror all the way out here.
“Red, you gonna get some sleep before GQ?”
He raised an eyebrow, “You?”
“Now? Shit no. I just hope no one beats us there.”
“And I need to debrief my marines, and then brief them back up again, and find time for a shower in there somewhere.”
In her current mood Victoria wouldn’t mind debriefing one of his marines personally. “Malagath Imperials, what can we expect if there are survivors?” she asked.
“Well if the ship is in good shape we’re looking at a tactical Alcubierre drive, high density particle cannons, gravitic seekers.”
“Shit. If they were in good shape there’d be no distress call.”
“I agree. We manage to board, it gets a little simpler. Toxic atmo is likely, but meaningless to a marine in a vac suit. We’re looking at masers and little to no tactical discipline. They haven’t had an infantry battle in centuries. The ablative plates should do for the marines and I doubt the Malagath have seen a slug rifle since they went to space.”
It was probably true, when humanity first entered the galactic arena they found it packed to the rafters with over a hundred other races; all at uneasy odds with each other, and none of whom still used kinetic weaponry. By and large most had made it about as far as the musket before weaponizing light, heat, accelerated particles, or radiation. Battery and energy production technologies in the galaxy-at-large were an area in which Earth struggled to catch up.
So, now she was headed toward a hulk manned by one of the Big Three. She considered the potential salvage, tapping her fingers on her tumbler. No telling what the Union Earth would do to get their hands on that tech. Or for that matter, what some of the local players might do to keep it out of U.E. hands. Red picked up his helmet and left, leaving her alone with the whiskey. She poured herself another.
Best Wishes examined the data brought to him by the science team. For three days they circled the departure point of the Dreadstar, attempting to extrapolate the trajectory and likely emergence destinations with what little they knew of the Dreadstar’s emergency engine. High math. Nigh impossible, he would have thought, but his science team was unparalleled. He thanked the master astrotician and gave the order to his navigator. The Springdawn lurched into action, accelerating back towards the distant pinprick of the local star at almost 250 times the speed of light. Best Wishes did not have access to the single-use gravitic generator of the Dreadstar’s emergency engine. They would have to use the gravity field of the red dwarf to pounce across the stars towards his prey. But he had the scent. It was only a matter of hours now. The Malagath ship fled further in a single jump than the span of most of the lesser empires, but the Springdawn could match it. They were both far from any allies.
First Prince Tavram huddled in the cold interior of the Dreadstar bridge with the nine remaining crew of his original fifty. Habitation control was a luxury they could not afford while emergency power dwindled. The hull breaches exposed the interior of the vessel to the chill of deep space, and with the reactor offline no waste heat was being produced to replace what was lost. Entropy might kill them before ever Best Wishes determined which
way they had fled.
“My Prince,” a ragged voice called from the sensor display. Tavram turned toward his youngest crewmember, Aurea, a female of only twenty solar cycles. His junior engineer, now his senior engineer. She looked up at him, face illuminated by the display, “A ship has entered the system, it is accelerating towards us.”
“Is it the Springdawn? Send a signal, let us be done with this one way or another.”
“No my prince, it is moving too slowly, I cannot believe it is Dirregaunt. And I am getting very little data, nothing further than confirming that there is something coming. They should be on the optical now but even visually there is nothing.”
“Sending the distress call again, short range,” another voice rasped. His impromptu communicator. Previously his ship’s cook. Everyone’s voice was labored; carbons were building up in the ship’s atmosphere. Tavram pulled up the optics display on his own console, tuning it to the proper bearing. Aurea had been right, there was nothing. At this range … wait, there. A star winked out. Another followed shortly, and then another along the same vector. Soon a profile began to emerge. The ship was matte black, like nothing he recognized. Had they been purposefully flying between stars to prevent a visual cue? A predatory tactic. The folds of skin on Tavram’s slender throat began to grow moist as the ship’s profile hardened. A primal reaction. Fear? No. Caution. Wariness of the unknown.
It was small, perhaps half the size of the Dreadstar. Odd lines. No elegance. An ugly craft. He couldn’t place it with any of the lesser empires he was familiar with.
In a matter of minutes, the alien ship pulled alongside the Dreadstar. While obviously slow to transit, her helmsman handled her beautifully, matching the Dreadstar’s unstable spin with maneuvering engines. Tavram wondered what the newcomers used to perform the maneuver. Some sort of gravitic adjustors? Subspace repulsors?
