“Someone silence this slave!” the High Mistress Ma-Win ordered.
“When my people are done with you, Karduan will only be spoken in Hell!” Captain Johnson yelled in defiance.
A second after his bold statement rang through the hall, the edge of a white tritanium pater hit him from behind and along the side of his neck. The incredibly sharp sword’s edge easily and ever so cleanly severed his head from his body. For a second after the blade had passed through his flesh the head stayed sitting on the neck and shoulders of the navy officer. A moment later the head and body tumbled to the ground. The human captain’s head rolled across the floor stopping short of reaching the council’s table.
“This pathetic creature has shown you what is in store for you if we don’t unite as twelve again. They will fight to the last and they have the means to come back from their losses if we don’t act now,” Mar-Du said as she produced a cloth and wiped the red blood from her prized patar’s white blade.
Ma-Win looked to the other seated Houses and examined their faces before she spoke to the Four.
“Please take your seats sisters as we have much to discuss,” said the Mistress of the House of Win.
Mar-Du waved her hand and the Four moved to the ends of the U shaped table and sat down.
“Before we promise to commit our fleets, we call for the office of a Grand High Mistress position to be established as a first among equals to guide us to victory through this war,” Mar-Du declared looking to the Houses of Win and Vo.
Ma-Win knew that their help would come with a price as she found herself cornered. If she said no, the Four could walk away or worse rise up and restart the Karduan Internal War. The High Council had no available fleets to stop them and with such a threat the humans could definitely win the war. No, she needed to play their game until their usefulness was at an end.
“Of course,” Ma-Win said as the debates started around the table about how to create such a position and what would be their powers.
Novels by Shane Van Aulen
“Wolf’s Run –The Chase of War” is the author’s sixth novel and is the long awaited sequel to “The Log of the Gray Wolf.” Once more you are taken along with the crew of the attack cruiser ISS Star Wolf, fighting behind enemy lines while seeking a lost warship and crew who could help end the war.
His fifth novel is called “Knight’s Dawn” and is a medieval styled, sword and magic fantasy that starts the Knight of Stars Saga. Join the Lost Prince of Caspia as his adventure begins.
“The Dead Country: A Long Journey Home,” is his fourth book and is an apocalypse story of death and survival after a terrorist sponsored zombie pandemic strikes America. This is a zombie book that even people who don’t like zombie books will like and that from page one hundred on is non-stop battle for survival.
“The Log of the Gray Wolf,” is the author’s third novel and is a science fiction military adventure about a starship fighting to get home from behind enemy lines.
His second book, “The Blood of Others,” is also a science fiction story but about murder and crime set on the mean streets of a distant alien world after an interstellar war. This book is set in the same universe as the “Log of the Gray Wolf.” “The Blood of Others,” is a unique book that is a mind-blowing blend of a police mystery; sci-fi, high speed action thriller with a touch of horror that doesn’t even have a genre or category to be labeled by.
His first novel, and still his favorite is another medieval fantasy (and part of the Knight of Stars Saga) set after the second alignment of stars with an older Prince Galen called, “The Tale of the Elder Knight.”
The author doesn’t have an editor or formal publisher and apologizes for any errors he may have missed while editing his books.
“Writing is easy - Editing is a real pain in the _ _ _!” SMV
About the Author
Shane Van Aulen is a graduate of Millersville University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History with minors in criminology and military science.
Since the age of fourteen, Mr. Van Aulen has studied various marital arts with Isshin-Ryu Karate/Kobudo as his principal discipline. He was a karate instructor for sixteen years and a women's self-defense instructor for a local college for ten years. In more recent years he has studied Wing Chun Kung Fu.
Mr. Van Aulen had trained in foil/sabre fencing for six years with a former Olympic team member as well as Japanese Iaido for several years.
As a NRA firearms instructor, he has instructor’s ratings in pistol, rifle, shotgun and personal protection in the home as well as being a certified range safety officer.
The author is a veteran and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Infantry, Airborne and Special Operation Forces Civil Affairs schools. He started as an enlisted soldier, is a Distinguished Military Graduate and had last served as a Major in the Army Reserves.
Presently, he works as a history teacher. He lives with his lovely wife, his rambunctious son, his adorable daughter and a pack of hungry dogs.
You can contact the author at his Amazon Author’s page or by e-mailing him at [email protected]
Epilogue - Part Three - “The Pirate”
Pirate Captain Peter Alexander piloted the escape pod away from the station and headed not towards the Confederation fleet but towards the Karduan junkyard floating in space. He had managed to stop the bleeding in his left arm having found the wound to be a through and through. Luckily, it missed his bone and though his arm hurt like hell it was at least not broken.
He had also disabled the pod’s emergency transponder that would have helped both Karduan and Confederation forces to find him. The last thing he wanted was to be recovered by either group. The Confederation would throw him back in jail and probably add at least a half dozen more charges to his pending life sentence. The Karduans if they won, would have probably torture him, beat him down and then cut him into tiny ribbons with one of those patar swords that they loved so much.
No, his only chance was to do what any good pirate would do – run! He couldn’t get to a docked ship and he wasn’t about to hide out on the station. The next best thing to do was to grab an escape pod and make a break for it. He was counting on that during the confusion of the battle one more escape pod wouldn’t be noticed or even matter to the two sides as they battled it out.
It sounded like a dumb idea after all he’d be eventually picked up or would run out of air. He also had nowhere to go and that was the kicker as he knew exactly where he was going.
Steering his pod into the space junkyard of broken ships and floating wrecks he maneuvered himself through the maze until he finally found what he was looking for. He should find it, after all he was the one who captured it and had eventually parked it in the middle of the salvage field.
Maneuvering to the airlock he smiled as he looked at the little ship. It was a mail hauler, one of the older ones that use to bend from one system to the next link on the bender cycle. They would pass supplies and mail to another short ranged mail ship before bending back. It was a kind of a pony express system that fell out of use as established lanes of commerce were created and standard cargo ships with longer bend cycles and larger payloads took over their routes.
This one was old but on the frontier if it still worked you used it. The mail hauler normally had a crew of two and its living space was a little bigger than that of a large shuttle. It would normally carry a cargo of no more than two cubic tons.
When Alexander captured it she had a crew of two and a load of personal packages of little value. It had been a bit of a hard sell to the station mistress to pay him for it. Sure she wanted the two humans as slaves but the small unarmed ship wasn’t worth her time. He finally convinced her to pay him for it by pointing out that she’d also get the two tons of packages which may have an intelligence aspect to them. It was all bullshit as his men had already torn through the packages but she didn’t know that.
Bie-Tor reluctantly took the craft and its cargo in
exchange for two turrets that were added to the Chaos.
Now the mail hauler sat abandoned in the salvage field of parts and damaged ships all but forgotten.
Locking onto the airlock he waited until he got a reading from the small craft. Its air was thin but breathable and its systems were running on battery power which was very low. He would have to get its lone fusion drive generator online and operational as his first priority.
Luckily, he wasn’t just a pretty face or a good pilot and navigator. He was also a trained engineer and had grown up around engines whether he like them or not. His father had once been a Confederation Chief Petty Officer of engineering. That is until he was dishonorably discharged for drunkenness on duty and for striking an officer.
When his father was sober or at least functional he worked whatever job he could get often dragging his brat son along with him. Peter learned and helped or got smacked that is until the day came that he had enough. After one good beating he brained his old pappy with a hammer after he had passed out from the booze. The old bastard had it coming for all the years of beatings he had given him. Unfortunately, he hit the old drunk a little too hard. On the same day that he was finally free of him was the same day he started his criminal career.
It took him several hours to restore life support and restart the engines. The ship still had some water but there was no food or any other supplies. Not surprising as it was a short range vessel. He would have to find food and any other items he’d need from the wrecked ships around him.
Over the next two weeks that is exactly what he did. Peter Alexander, the pirate captain who was also known as Alexander the Great hid and scrounged like the rat some people would have gladly called him.
During that time, he accumulated supplies by visiting the damaged ships and salvaged sections floating around him. He had thought he’d have to resort to eating tasteless emergency rations that some of the ships used in their escape pods. Once he searched the ships, he was surprised that he found an abundance of food left behind when the ships were captured. Two freighters’ galleys had almost complete stores of provisions. Peter remembered that the Blues didn’t like the smell of the meat based diets of humans and didn’t want to feed them anything except Karduan foods.
On one of his salvage trips he had even managed to find an old 8mm automatic pistol and a sawed off pump shotgun under a freighter captain’s bed. The captain must have been fearful of a mutiny or at least that’s what Alexander thought having always kept several weapons near his bed at night just in case. They weren’t the best or most modern weapons but they were better than nothing and it made him feel good just to have a pistol on his belt.
He’d found plenty of extra clothes, two space suits that fit and other sundry items that he would need to make life bearable while he was trapped in the tiny mail hauler. Oxygen replacement cartilages for his space suit were abundant as well as first aid kits and emergency space rations.
The next part of his plan would take days if not longer as he waited to find a gap in the system’s defenses so he could make a break for the gravity well and freedom. The mail carrier wasn’t fast but it was small and he was hoping for the right circumstance to escape. He had to get passed the station, the sentry ships and any parked fleet ships as well as the minefield with its maser net. No easy task but he had always had a survivor’s luck.
As he waited he watched and watched. Sometimes he would observe the same old thing for hours. He varied his sleep for days so he could watch at different intervals. At other times he would have to power down while a shuttle passed by to retrieve parts or collect hull plating for the station’s repair teams.
One piece of luck occurred on the fifth day after the battle. Many of the fleet’s ships including one of those accursed attack cruiser left as he smiled at this bit of good news. There were still plenty of ships in the system, many of which were under repair as well as several other ships serving as picket ships near the minefield. They had even started to replace mines within the field closing the gap they had been caused when they fought their way through.
Alexander had also found a large quantity of booze in his scavenging trips that had been hidden in crewmen’s footlockers and in officers’ quarters.
Now he could party with the best of them but as he sat and watched he kept his drinking to a minimum except for the hour just before he’d sleep. He hated to admit it but he needed several good stiff drinks to get to sleep – too many bad dreams, too many bad memories.
It was in this hour before he rested that he happened to notice something odd. One of the salvage shuttles had bumped a large piece of hull fragment as it entered the junk field. The hull section headed out towards the minefield and towards the sun. It would still take days if not weeks for it to get there. He watched in bored wonder from his tiny cockpit as the hull section first made its way towards the minefield and gravity well. A voice on the communications channel announced that the piece of debris had escape from the junkyard which the station acknowledged and confirmed this minor navigation hazard.
Peter Alexander laughed at the overly worried Confederation personnel and their reaction to the sight of the tumbling junk. In fact, he thought it was so funny that he named the hull section Bob because as it tumbled it seemed to bob on every other rotation.
Falling asleep after a few drinks, he awoke several hours later. His head hurt from the whiskey but he had slept without any nightly visitors especially of those that he had harmed in the past or of those who still sought vengeance upon him.
Glancing at his space radar’s screen and then out the main window he saw that the hull section was now tumbling into the defensive grid. In fact, it was passing close to an older and visible proximity mine. Waiting for an explosion he was surprised when nothing happened and it passed right by. Bob had made it into the minefield and was continuing on its tumbling course toward the system’s star and the sole gravity well.
Sitting back in his chair he took a sip from his half empty whiskey bottle and thought about what this all meant. Either the hull section was too small to activate the proximity sensors of the mines or the station had turned the mine field off. This was so the space debris wouldn’t activate the mines prematurely and waste them on junk. The question was which had just happened?
Watching for the next few hours he followed the course that Bob took before he fell asleep again waking hours later he saw that the hull section was still tumbling away as it slowly made its way across the minefield. It would take at least another day for it to reach the gravity well and bend point. It would then continue on to the sun’s gravity field and its ultimate destruction. Still, it gave him an idea as he finished off the bottle and curled up in his pilot’s chair and fell back asleep with a smile across his unshaven face.
Over the next two weeks he watched and waited especially for the shuttles carrying salvage crews as they passed by him and headed deeper into the junkyard. Once they were clear from his position he would fire up his fusion drive and move just enough to bump a piece of wreckage out into open space and towards the minefield and sun.
It was a game as well as a test to see at what point they would activate their mines. How big of an object would they let go by? What would they investigate? Would they destroy anything that flew by or just shut down the mines until it passed? Lots of questions were created in his mind by good old Bob’s passing.
The other question was when should he try to make his break? They were probably three duty shifts on the station. One of the shifts would be the graveyard shift. It didn’t matter that the station, like a starship, had around the clock duty shifts and that there was no real night or day. Most people though still liked the idea of a morning, afternoon and night so there was always a night shift. The graveyard shift meant less overall activity and that meant bored crewmen.
Other shifts were much more active with salvage operations and with various ship repairs going on. Bored usually meant lazy and busy could mean concerned maybe eve
n overly concerned. It was a tough decision to make on when to leave. It was all a big gamble but so was his whole life and this was just one more roll of the dice.
After weeks of testing the station’s reactions and the various sizes of breakaway objects he decided to make his move. He would send his small mail carrier on a tumbling course just as Bob and the other even larger pieces of hull fragments had followed. Alexander picked the graveyard shift to make his break at what would have been around three in the morning on the station. He had to hope that they would just ignore him as they had the others.
Nevertheless, to do this right would mean no easy journey. It would still be more than three days of bumbling along with a rollercoaster of a ride. Other shifts could still take an interest in him and he could be stopped and discovered or even destroyed at any time.
The first day was hell! He had strapped himself in the pilot’s seat and found that after a few hours of rotating that he was fighting to keep from being sick. The last thing he wanted to do was throw up in his helmet. You just never get that stink out. He had already powered down and switched off the gravity right after he started his tumbling and had escaped the junkyard. He wanted to appear to be a piece of space junk and having a power reading would make people interested.
He now unfastened his safety strap and floated trying to stay in the middle of the ship as it spun about him. He didn’t try to eat or in this case drink very much from the liquid emergency rations which were designed to be used while in a space suit.
Wolf's Run: The Chase of War (Star Wolf Sqaudron Book 2) Page 56
