The Army Of Light (Kestrel Saga)

by Fender, Stephen

  The Army

  Of Light

  A novel by

  Stephen A. Fender

  Kestrel Series: Book I

  JRP ©

  Jolly Rogers Productions

  The Army of Light

  Copyright © 2013 Stephen Fender

  www.StephenFender.com

  First Edition: 2013

  Published through Jolly Rogers Productions (JRP) ©, a subsidiary division of StephenFender.com

  Seattle, WA

  All rights reserved.

  Ordering information:

  orders@stephenfender.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN of Print Edition: 1482311437

  ISBN13 of Print Edition: 9781482311433

  Cover art layout and rendering by Stephen Fender ©.

  All characters, settings, and events depicted on this novel are the sole intellectual property of Stephen Fender. Characters in this novel are not intended, nor should they be inferred by anyone, to represent actual living beings—either now or in the 24th century. However, if you’d like to infer, then go right ahead. I can’t stop you.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  About the Author

  Dedication

  I’d like to thank to my family and friends who have been there through this whole process. I’m grateful for all of you, and each of you has a special place in my heart.

  I’d also like to extend a very special thanks to my wife. You have been my biggest supporter, and my #1 fan. There’s no way I could have done this without you. I love you.

  “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

  - Mark Twain

  Prologue

  Early in the twenty-fourth century, the Unified Collaboration of Systems, a peaceful collection of over two-hundred member worlds, was flourishing in the arts and sciences. Near faster than light travel—known as jumping—was enjoyed by nearly every one of the two hundred and thirty species in the UCS. Trade and commerce were at an all-time galactic high, as the sharing of ideas, cultures, and wealth was enjoyed by every system that had been admitted to the Unified Collaboration. Poverty, disease, and hunger had become words without example, barely spoken within an area of hundreds of square light years.

  Then the invaders arrived.

  It had started with an attack on a research station in the frontier, the furthest portion of the Outer Sphere of Unified space. Then, one by one, subsequent systems began to fall victim to the interlopers. At first, multilateral government agencies in the UCS scurried to find as much information as they could about the threat they now faced. All that was initially known was that the invaders were fierce combatants, and they held no mercy for their conquered foes.

  In a bold move, the various heads of the Unified council agreed to organize a massive effort to halt the invaders advance into their territory. A full scale Unified Sector Command fleet of warships was sent out to the edge of explored space in an attempt to warn the alien menace away. Like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, the two factions ignited a conflict that was sure to go down in history as the greatest struggle for survival the galaxy had ever known… if anyone survived to tell the tale.

  The Galactic War had begun.

  The war raged on for over half a decade. Dozens of Unified planets succumbed to the invaders, known only by name as the Kafaran. The old allegiances of the UCS waxed and waned as some worlds—those once dedicated to peace and prosperity—joined forces with the Kafaran’s in their quest for victory. Enormous fleets were built on both sides, and each struggled for supremacy in the stars high above distant worlds in the far reaches of Beta Sector—one of the three wedge shaped sections of the First Quadrant. Whole civilizations crumbled, tens of thousands of military personnel perished on both sides, and billions of innocent people lost their homes… or their lives.

  In the end, the herculean Unified Sector Command fleet had managed to push the Kafaran’s back into an otherwise unexplored region beyond the edge of the galaxy. Then, without any warning, the fighting ended as abruptly as it had begun. The area of space that was recognized as belonging to the Kafaran’s was quickly deemed off limits to all Unified members. Outposts—some manned and some automated—were installed along the borders of the region in an attempt to monitor the Kafaran’s movements. It seemed to the Unified government that victory was theirs.

  However, the toll on the Unified Collaboration had been exacting. Of the five original founding members of the Unified government, only three of the Core Worlds now remained. Soon after the war, many outlying member worlds formed a deep mistrust of the large governing body of the Unified council. The overall economics of the region were in ruins, and many worlds expressed a self-guided interest to guard their own people and materials instead of trusting the UCS bureaucracy to handle those affairs. One by one, the fringe worlds began to splinter off, fracturing back into their pre-member status. Others formed new allegiances of their own, coalescing into small pockets of semi-government factions. Some planetary systems had even given up interstellar travel all together. In the end, a large portion of the Outer Sphere of planets abdicated their positions on the council, with the far reaches of the frontier long forgotten as the struggling Unified Collaboration of System’s foothold in the Milky Way reverted back to a size it hadn’t known in centuries.

  The Sector Command fleet had likewise dwindled in size, strength, and overall authority. Space that was once freely traveled was now riddled with merchants, dubious civilians, and pirates of every conceivable shape and size. Planets that were once patrolled and maintained by the Sector Command warships were now considered too dangerous to approach, as the safety of the USC crews could not be assured. Many of the men and women that had fought in the Galactic War left the service in search of fortunes to be had on worlds no longer governed by the Collaboration. Some found them… others lost everything.

  Outside of the relative safety of the Inner Sphere, nothing could be trusted, and nothing was.

  In the now feral reaches of the galaxy, beyond the comfort of the Inner Sphere, people struggled to rebuild and survive as they stopped looking toward the tentative future and instead focused on the now problematic present.

  Chapter 1

  Everyone seems to overlook the fact that, in order for the mythical Phoenix to rise from the fiery remains of its predecessor, it had to first be on fire, and that’s precisely where Shawn Kestrel found himself. His last five days were supposed to be spent on a simple two-legged trade route from his home port on the planet Minos to the small mining colony on the planet Averna, about three light-years distant. That’d been the easy part. It wasn’t until after the drop-off, when Shawn had stopped into the local bar on Averna to imbibe and count his profits—or lack thereof—that he’d willfully invited misfortune into his life. With Unified credits not flowing through the adjoining systems as freely as they used to, and with the seller of the cargo making quite an attractive offer, Shawn had reluctantly agreed to add a third leg to his journey, picking up a last minute shipment bound for Donatue III, a desolate planet near the e
dge of the Outer Rim of the sector.

  He should have known better. After all, it was one of the first unspoken rules of interstellar trade: never add more than you planned for when you took off. Now, with his ship burning up as it plummeted toward the surface of Minos at an incredible rate of speed, he wasn’t in a position to argue the logic of that doctrine.

  It’s fascinating what can pass before your eyes in those final moments as you plunge to your death. It was interesting that, considering what most people say about seeing the faces of loved ones, various deities, or having regrets about cheating on your sixth grade trigonometry homework, Shawn now considered them all apocryphal. The only thing presently buzzing about the synapses of his grey matter was how to avoid having his treasured flight jacket torn in the imminent crash.

  After all, there were just some things you simply couldn’t replace.

  He grasped the dual handled control stick with one hand, which seemed to strenuously object by shaking violently and demanding his utmost attention. His right hand, however, was occupied controlling the lateral maneuvering jets as he attempted to get his lumbering craft on the right glide slope for planetary reentry—not an easy feat without the raw slowing power of the four reentry thrusters. Red warning lights, the universal color of danger, began popping up like lemmings on his control board. More annoyingly, the proximity alarm had begun to sound, and there were very few noises in the galaxy more ear shattering or cringe inducing.

  The normally beautiful blue and white world outside of the ship was a blur of motion as the shuddering of the Mark-IV interstellar transport threatened to rattle its rivets and screws from their resting places. With the maneuvering jets of little use for gross movements, and knowing that his ships nose needed to be more starboard in the next thirty seconds—less he be burned to a crisp—he reluctantly fired the portside main drive engine, a dangerous move, considering the extreme heat of the outer hull was likely to damage the finely balanced unit. At the moment, however, it seemed a small price to pay to save one’s life. With small, controlled blasts, the planet Minos swung from the starboard side of the wide view port to rest dead-center with his craft.

  Finally, something is going my way.

  A moment later the quaking subsided as the nimble freighter transitioned from the mesospheric to the stratospheric layer. Shawn watched as the temperature of the outer hull also began to decrease rapidly, already dropping below seven hundred and fifty degrees from the peak twelve hundred of a standard reentry. Blessedly, the proximity warning had stopped nearly as soon as it’d started shrieking through the speakers. He was now immersed in the upper cloud layers of the planet, the wisps of white flowing around his craft as if he were flying through sheets of silk. All he had to do now was strike a bargain with the universal law of gravity and he’d be right as rain.

  His ship, which he’d christened Sylvia’s Delight, was doing more of a controlled fall than an actual landing. Not intended for extended atmospheric operations, D was essentially a great metal brick slaloming around the cumulonimbus clouds that stretched from six-thousand to as high as twenty-thousand feet into the sky. The maneuvering thrusters, designed for precision landings while hovering, were none the less doing an admirable job of slowing the craft’s plunge. After descending to just under five-thousand feet, Shawn saw the welcoming mile high spire of Mount Di’Kul—the island chains largest volcano—jutting through a layer of cumulous clouds that had gathered low around the islands. Above the mountain, not far from Shawn’s original entry point into the atmosphere, was the fragmented remains of Charnt, Minos’s long dead moon.

  Reaching for the main engine controls again, he was greeted by the ever pleasant female voice of the ships computer, which informed the captain in its melodious tone that all drive systems were completely down.

  “You have to be kidding me?” he asked in utter disbelief.

  The computer responded in the negative.

  “Initiate main drive startup sequence!”

  “Unable to comply,” the computer immediately replied.

  “That was too fast. I don’t think you even tried.”

  “Of course I tried, Captain,” the computer responded in a moderately perturbed tone. “The safety interlocks prevent this course of action. Please assume crash positions.”

  “Override safety locks and initiate the main drive startup sequence now!”

  “At the current altitude and velocity, such a procedure could be fatal to the structural integrity of the vessel.”

  “Are you concerned about me or yourself?”

  The computer seemed to mull the question over for a second. “Does it matter?”

  What idiot thought it would be a good idea for computers to talk, let alone argue with you? Weren’t they supposed to blindly obey orders, no matter how dangerous or ridiculous it seemed? Some genius, at some point in the last two hundred or so years, thought it was a good idea to put a form of artificial intelligence in these things, making it easier to order a latte while simultaneously taking out some of the danger involved in basic space flight. Unfortunately, it was that same forward thinking idiot’s sense of overprotection that was about to cost Shawn his life.

  “Look, you and I have gotten on pretty well the last few years, and I’ve never tried to ask more of you than I thought you could give. You’ve been good to me, and I’ve tried to be a good steward of what I’ve got. But make no mistake about this: If you don’t release the locks on the main drive engine and begin an auto startup sequence I will, so help me, put a bullet through your CPU and do it myself.” As if to make his point, he withdrew his sidearm from the holster slung around the side of his chest.

  The computer, taking a moment to correlate the available information, responded in the affirmative. “Safety locks disengaged. Auto startup sequence in process.” Its tone was less than pleased. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  The distinctive whine of the engines beginning to power up was music to Shawn’s ears. All things being equal, a startup of this nature was only required when the ship first took off from a landed position. To disengage the safety protocols was to skip about a dozen procedures in the normal startup routine. Vital systems, such as core coolant levels and monostator lubrication pressure, went unchecked as the computer attempted to start the two massive thrusters at the rear of the cargo ship.

  The enormous distant volcano, as well as the water below, came more clearly into focus. Why, at this moment, Shawn’s brain thought it would be a good time to flash his entire life before his otherwise occupied eyes he couldn’t say for certain. Perhaps it was all about perspective. When your ship is two hundred miles above the surface, you don’t get the same feeling of dread as you do when you’re only a hundredth of that from certain death. Based on the speed of Sylvia’s Delight and her current trajectory, if the engines didn’t start up in the next thirty seconds the cargo ship would either crash headlong into Mount Di’Kul or overshoot the island entirely, the one hundred and ten foot long ship shredding itself to pieces against the large coral monoliths that jutted from the shallow waters beyond.

  There was a sharp bump in the control stick, followed quickly by another, and Shawn realized the engines were attempting to light off. Closer and closer the jolts came to one another until they were very nearly overlapping. Suddenly every light, every gauge, every system inside the ship sprang to life. Even a few gauges he swore were not there before lit up brilliantly. The rough ride instantly smoothed out as the main drive engines took over the job of propelling the craft.

  Fifty feet from the surface of the water, the main engines lit with twin blue blasts of brilliance as the stern of Sylvia’s Delight parted the shallow waters behind the craft in a glorious wake that would’ve made any pleasure boater green with envy. The ship then rocketed away from the beach, swinging in a wide arch around the island as Shawn angled the craft for a landing at his personal hangar.

  *

  “Well, Skipper, I’ve got good news and I’ve
got bad news,” Trent offered slowly as he entered Shawn’s office. “Which would you like to hear first?”

  Of all the people in Beta Sector, why did this have to happen to him, and why now? As if the unrelenting heat waves wafting around the islands weren’t enough, Shawn had also missed the last payments on his utility bills. To make matters even worse, his singular source of income was now little more than a barely hovering money pit sitting out in the hangar.

  Shawn looked forlornly to Trent Maddox, his faithful mechanic, friend, sole business partner at the Old Flamingo Transport Agency, occasional drinking buddy, and often smart ass.

  The old wooden desk chair squeaked in protest as Shawn leaned back and put a hand to his mouth, rubbing a days’ worth of stubble on his chin as he pondered how to best answer Trent. An hour before, Shawn had realized that if he’d been able to complete his most recent shipment, he would’ve finally been able to pull himself free of the near bottomless pit of bills and notices stacked haphazardly on the desk before of him. As it was, the cargo from that haul—that fateful third leg that never should have been—was now warm and comfortable in the belly of some pirate cruiser, and his own vessel had more than her share of damage to show for the encounter. So, with the primary inspection of Sylvia’s Delight done, it seemed that Trent’s singular responsibility was to deliver the fatal torpedo to Shawn’s already foundering week. After all, what good news could he possibly have?

  Trent, standing in the center of the office opposite Shawn’s desk, with his tattered and stained red ball cap on backwards, rung his hands nervously as he searched for the right words to offer his employer. His sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, and his arms and hands were coated in some kind of thick, black slime that the mechanic had tracked into the office. Trent’s gray coveralls were smattered in grease stains from nearly head to toe. When he finally took a seat, he left sticky hand prints smudged into the armrests of the chair.