Forged in Darkness

by James David Victor

  Jack looked over the edge of the gantry to where Reyes had fallen. She had landed on the top of the main drive assembly. It was a long but survivable fall. She looked in some discomfort.

  “Jack,” Visser said. “Get Reyes, and get this ship moving.”

  Jack walked forward toward Visser and the quivering Finch. He aimed his rifle. “That has got to die.”

  Visser stepped over Finch and stood between them. “We need him, Jack. We know that the Chits have infiltrated the fleet, but we’ve never captured an agent before. If you kill him, we’ll be back to square one.” Visser stepped forward and shouted, “Do you hear me, Marine? This was my mission. I’ve almost completed my mission, Jack. You’ve almost completed yours. Just get Reyes and get this ship moving or we’ll all be lost.

  Jack looked down to Reyes on the top of the reactor. And down on the base deck, silhouetted by the light streaming in from the corridor outside, Jack saw a Chitin soldier enter the engine room.

  Jack moved. He jumped over the handrail and down to Reyes. His pulse rifle fired a hail of shots as he fell, every one slamming into the top of the Chit’s smooth head. The creature crumpled under the sudden and unexpected attack. Jack kneeled next to Reyes. He slung his pulse rifle, unclipped his sidearm, and activated the electron blade. He cut the bonds around her wrists and handed her the pistol.

  Another Chit was entering and Jack let him have a sustained burst, the rounds ripping through the shell-like carapace on the vile creature’s head. It fell away, tentacles flailing.

  “Can you restart the ship?” Jack asked.

  Reyes nodded. Her face was covered in tears, her mouth strapped tightly. She was trying to pick away the tape covering her mouth and wrapped around her head. She gave up in frustration and pointed toward the rear end of the ship and the end of the drive assembly.

  Jack hauled her to her feet and fired at the doorway as another Chit came in. It didn’t last long and was soon lying on the deck next to the other dead Chits.

  The captain’s voice came over the ship-wide address. “Incoming Chitin Leviathan. All hands, keep fighting, and good luck.”

  “Get that engine started, Jack,” Visser shouted from the gantry above.

  Jack took Reyes in his arms and jumped down to the base deck. He landed hard but saved Reyes from the impact. She ran to the area she needed to get to, while Jack walked slowly backward, keeping his eyes and the muzzle of his rifle trained on the entrance to the engine room. Another Chit stuck its shiny head in and was struck by a burst of rounds from Jack’s rifle.

  Jack turned and watched Reyes kneel in front of a small panel. She struggled to open it and then cut it with the electron blade on the pulse pistol.

  Jack caught sight of another Chit entering. He fired. The Chit moved forward and into cover. Another Chit came in after. Again, Jack fired a number of rounds into the target, but that one also took the punishment and moved out of sight. Then another came, and another. Jack let loose and poured as much fire into the doorway as he could, and yet another came through.

  “How’s that engine coming along, Sarah?” he asked. He turned and saw Reyes sitting on the floor looking up at him. She nodded.

  “Engines to full.” The captain’s voice came over the ship-wide address. “Stand by for full engine burn.”

  Then Commander Griff came on, “Intruders on all decks. Scorpio Battalion, defend all vital systems.”

  Jack opened a communicator channel to the command deck. “This is Forge,” he said. “Send support to the engine room.” Jack fired as a Chit showed its snarling circle of white teeth. “I can’t hold them off alone.”

  Reyes nudged Jack and indicated he follow her. Jack fell back, firing as he went. He could see more Chits entering the engine room. He followed Reyes and they backed into a deep but narrow recess, the composite walls rough on either side.

  It was a defendable position, but they were trapped. Jack fired as a Chit came around the corner. Reyes loosed off a number of rounds from her pulse pistol.

  Jack looked at Reyes. All he’d wanted was to spend time with her. “I’ve always wanted to be with you, Sarah,” Jack said. A Chitin appeared and fell to their fire. “Ever since I met you, I’ve wanted to be with you.”

  Another Chit stepped around the corner and fell to their fire.

  Jack looked at Reyes, her mouth taped up, dirt and tears on her cheeks. Jack thought he could kiss her, if only her mouth wasn’t covered.

  A Chit appeared around the corner of the narrow recess. Jack fired and the Chit fell back, then another burst of fire leapt up from alongside the Chit and sent it sprawling sideways.

  “Friendlies,” a voice said. A hand waved around the corner. “That you in there, sir?” Torent’s head popped around the corner. “Engine room secure,” he shouted. “Sixth Squad, go and support the Marines around the command deck.”

  Jack leaned heavily against the wall. “Sam, good to see you. Let’s go secure the command deck.”

  “It’s alright, Jack,” Torent said. “They’ve got them beat. I can leave you two alone there if you like?”

  Jack looked at Reyes. Reyes mumbled something from behind the mass of tape.

  “There’s still work to do, Sam.” Jack walked out of the recess. “Let’s sweep the area.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Reyes managed to pull some of the tape away so she could speak. “Get me to maintenance, Jack. There’ll be a load of patch-up work to do. The sooner I get started the better.”

  Jack nodded. He sent Torent ahead and then walked behind with Reyes. Jack looked up to the gantry above. Visser was still standing there. Jack shouted up, “Do you need any assistance with your prisoner, Agent Visser?”

  Visser shook her head. Even from this distance, Jack could see her stern expression. Then she raised her hand and saluted Jack. “I’ve got this covered, Commander. Go and secure the ship.”

  Jack returned the salute. Walking out of the engine room, stepping over the fallen Chitin soldiers, Jack wondered how close they had come to disaster. Too close. The Chitins had nearly silenced them all.

  20

  Jack hadn’t seen Eros for over a year. He stood on the Marine hangar deck and looked down at the bright blue planet below. He reached out and took Reyes’s hand.

  “Beautiful,” he said. “After all the darkness, after all the pain, what I wouldn’t give for a day of planet leave.”

  Reyes moved a little closer. Jack felt the warmth of her body.

  The sound of footsteps caught Jack’s attention. He turned and watched the group marching onto the hangar deck.

  Agent Visser was walking next to Finch, who was shackled to two Marines wearing meat suits.

  “We have to stay up here but he gets to go down to the surface,” Reyes said.

  “I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes,” Jack said, turning back to the view below. He heard Finch shouting as he was marched toward a waiting tac boat.

  “We will meet again, Forge.”

  Jack ignored the comment. Reyes turned to look. She whispered to Jack, “You should have killed him when you had the chance.”

  “Someone told me once, don’t pick a fight with Fleet Intelligence.” Jack turned in time to see Finch get marched up the ramp of the tac boat. “But maybe it is better that we learn as much from him as we can. The information we gain could take years off the war.”

  “As long as they don’t find out about us.” Reyes pressed herself closer to Jack.

  “Us?” Jack said. “There’s an ‘us’?”

  “You know what I mean,” Reyes said.

  “We’ll be okay,” Jack replied, and he really wished he believed it.

  Jack knew the war would be long and he might not survive much longer, but he was determined to survive anything that Finch could throw at him. It was a belief forged in the darkness of space.

  THANK YOU

  Thank you so much for reading Forged in Darkness, the fourth book in the Jack Forge, Fleet Marine series. Jack is
rising through the ranks, but is still leading the charge first hand, too. Things are going to continue to get dicey for him, though, especially with Finch in the custody of Fleet Intelligence. I hope to have the next story ready for you in April.

  If you enjoyed the story, it would be awesome if you left a review for me. That really helps me reach more readers because Amazon features books with lots of good reviews.

  At the end of the book, I have a preview of Discovery which is the first book in the Niakrim War series which is published under my primary pen name (and real name) David J. VanBergen Jr. It’s right after the information about our newsletter. After you read the preview, you can download the book on Amazon.

  Get Discovery here: amazon.com/dp/B071NJBNH4

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  Preview: Discovery

  Space is so boring!

  This was certainly not what Violet had expected space travel to be like. She had dreamed of this since the first time she looked up at the stars in the sky, but none of those dreams had included endless days of nothingness. The only excitement she had experienced during the first days of the journey was when an occasional piece of space debris penetrated the warp field forcing the pilot to take evasive action. Even those potentially deadly encounters were brushed aside, as if they were no more bothersome than a fly buzzing around the room, by the Krim Sprinter's legendary pilot, Cyrus Jones, who was as much machine as man.

  The captain had assured her that the Krim Sprinter was the fastest ship in the fleet, which made it the fastest ship in the known universe, when he reluctantly brought her on board the week before. The problem with space travel was the incomprehensible distances between planets. Even at three hundred times the speed of light, the travel time to Proxima was listed as seven days. The captain had assured her that they would be there in five. When she asked what they would do on the Proxima outpost for two days while they waited for the rest of the crew to arrive, Captain Mitch Cooper had just smiled and walked away.

  After four days of watching countless specks of light stream past in a blur, Violet wished her childhood dream had involved something less monotonous...like being an accountant. She was wondering if it was possible to actually die of boredom when the ship violently lurched, throwing her from her chair. She froze in the air momentarily as the warp drive was forcibly shut down, dropping the ship back into real time, before being slammed into the navigation console. Everything went black.

  When she came to, the ship’s bridge was in total chaos. Warning sirens were going off. Red lights were flashing. Captain Cooper was rushing from station to station, assessing damage and muttering to himself. She had a pretty good idea of what he was saying.

  "What the hell just happened, Cyrus?"

  "We were hit by a photon torpedo, Captain," he answered calmly as he stared at the seemingly empty space in front of the ship.

  "That's impossible!"

  "Yet here we are."

  Captain Cooper looked ready to explode. Instead, he took a calming breath as he ran both hands through his grey hair. "Did you drop us out of warp before we tore the ship apart?"

  "Of course," Cyrus replied without taking his eyes off the still empty space in front of the ship. "Belzaire's not gonna be happy, though. There's no telling how much of the warp system we tore up shutting it down that quickly."

  Violet had pulled herself to her feet and was using the navigation console to steady herself. "So what just happened?"

  "Somehow, we were hit by a photon torpedo while traveling at warp three," the captain muttered.

  "How is that possible?"

  "It's not."

  The captain raised his hand to head off further questions. "We'll talk later. Can you find your way to engineering?"

  "I think so."

  "Get down there and help Belzaire. There's bound to be damage of some sort."

  She was leaving the bridge when Cyrus quietly said, "There's something out there, Captain."

  "Where?"

  "Right in front of us."

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know," Cyrus answered. "I can't see it."

  "If you can't see anything, how the hell do know something's there?"

  Cyrus just shrugged.

  The captain pointed at Violet. "Get to engineering. Tell Belzaire to get that warp drive back online."

  "I'll do what I can."

  The last thing Violet heard as she headed to engineering with a renewed sense of urgency was Captain Cooper telling Cyrus to put everything they had into the shields. All their lives might depend on it.

  As Violet rushed into the warp room, she was confronted with a scene straight out of her nightmares. Glowing green warp fluid squirted everywhere. Steam leaks sprouted like geysers. Blinking red and yellow beacons were the only discernible source of light. When a huge man with deep red skin and jet black hair rounded the corner screaming curses, she thought, just for a moment, that she had been transported to Hell and was facing the devil himself.

  "What are you doing here?" the large, angry man growled through gritted teeth.

  "I...I...I'm here to help," she managed. "Captain said to help you get the warp system back online."

  "Oh," he said with a sudden smile. "Glad to have you. I'm Belzaire. Come with me. We've got a lot of work to do."

  Belzaire turned and walked straight into the chaos, not even bothering to avoid the steam blasts or leaking warp fluid. Violet followed tentatively, doing her best to avoid both. When she caught up to him, he was in the process of sliding a very heavy looking cabinet to the side, revealing a trapdoor in the floor.

  "What's in there?"

  "Warp fluid," he replied nonchalantly.

  Before Violet could ask why the warp fluid was stored behind a hidden trapdoor, Belzaire pulled the door open to reveal a deep chamber with hundreds of clear cylinders full of glowing green fluid. There was easily ten times the legal limit of warp fluid in there.

  Belzaire answered her unasked question with a mischievous smile and started pulling out cylinders. "We lost almost two hundred liters before I got the system shut down," he said. "I'll fix the leaks while you refill the system."

  "Two hundred liters is more than a ship this size needs for the entire system," Violet sputtered, finally coming to terms with what she was seeing. "Not to mention twice the legal limit of reserves allowed on a ship like this."

  "I've made some modifications," was all he said while he continued to pull out more cylinders of the precious liquid.

  When he had retrieved twenty-five cylinders, Belzaire stood up and looked at Violet, who was staring at him with wide eyes, trying to comprehend what was going on. "Now, look," he said firmly. "If the captain sent you down here to help, something is seriously wrong. We need to get this ship back up and running. You deserve an explanation, but now is not the time."

  Sensing the gravity of the situation, if not the cause, Violet nodded slowly. "What do you need me to do?"

  Belzaire smiled reassuringly and pointed across the warp room to the half-empty tank of warp fluid. "We need to refill the reservoir. Can you do that while I fix the leaks?"

  "I think so."

  "Good. Just put a cylinder on the fill pad and hit the green button."

  Those were the only instructions he gave before turning away and heading to a pipe leaking warp fluid on the far wall. Violet looked a
round the room briefly, wondering what she had gotten herself into, then started transporting the cylinders to the reservoir.

  It took far longer than she had anticipated because she was constantly stepping over debris and around puddles of warp fluid, which she learned the hard way were very slippery. By the time the last cylinder had been sucked into the tank, Belzaire had finished repairing the leaks and was gathering the empty cylinders and putting them back in the hidden compartment. When she attempted to ask about them, Belzaire simply said, "Later," and closed the trap door and slid the cabinet back into place.

  With the compartment of warp fluid again hidden, Belzaire turned to Violet and smiled warmly. "Thank you for your help," he said. "You should head back to the bridge. If something goes wrong, that's the best place to be."

  She wanted so say something, ask questions, or try to figure out what exactly was going on. Instead, Violet simply said, "Okay," and headed out of the warp room, back to the bridge.

  As soon as she turned to leave, Belzaire hurried to the control console and pushed the intercom button for the bridge. "Captain, we've got the system ready to power back up. We should be ready for warp travel in about five minutes, but we won't have full capacity until I can do a more thorough repair."

  "Got it," came the captain’s disembodied reply. "Call me when you're ready."

  Back on the bridge, Violet sat in the chair she had previously been thrown from, looking out into space. She was trying to piece together everything she had seen. Did the captain know there was enough illegal warp fluid hidden on his ship to get everyone on the ship executed? She thought it was likely that he did. And what did Belzaire mean by modifications? Nobody knew how warp travel really worked, it just did. Making modifications to something you didn't understand, and could kill you, was crazy. But then again, much of what she had seen and heard since coming aboard the Krim Sprinter was a bit bizarre.