Wasp Hand

by Jonathan Moeller

  SILENT ORDER: WASP HAND

  Jonathan Moeller

  Table of Contents

  Description

  Chapter 1: Something New

  Chapter 2: The Lord Admiral

  Chapter 3: The Path To Victory

  Chapter 4: Vesper Station

  Chapter 5: Reconnaissance

  Chapter 6: The Royal Navy

  Chapter 7: Navigator

  Chapter 8: The Beacon

  Chapter 9: Devour

  Chapter 10: Teamwork

  Other books by the author

  About the Author

  Description

  The galaxy is at war, and an ancient enemy has returned from the darkness of interstellar space.

  When Jack March is attacked by an unknown alien vessel, he soon realizes that the alien warship is just the vanguard of a far more powerful invading force.

  All that stands between the alien fleet and the Kingdom of Calaskar is the daring plan of a mercurial Lord Admiral.

  And unless March can carry out that plan, all of human civilization might be devoured by the alien force...

  Silent Order: Wasp Hand

  Copyright 2017 by Jonathan Moeller.

  Published by Azure Flame Media, LLC.

  Cover image copyright © Algol | Dreamstime.com - Spaceship With Blue Engine Glow Photo & © Ig0rzh | Dreamstime.com.

  Ebook edition published December 2017.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Chapter 1: Something New

  Jack March blinked awake, and confusion gripped him.

  He was on the Tiger, and the ship was in hyperspace. The familiar hum filled his ears, and he would have recognized the sounds of his ship anywhere. But he wasn’t in his bunk on the Tiger. The mattress of a standard starship bunk was beneath him, the blanket tangled around his legs, but this wasn’t his cabin. He was in one of the Tiger’s guest cabins, that was it. For that matter, he was naked, and he never slept naked. The practical reason was that if an emergency struck the ship, having to dress would waste valuable seconds.

  The deeper reason was that he didn’t like to wake up and see his scars.

  March turned his head. The bunk had been pulled away from the wall of the cabin to form a double bed, and…

  His memory snapped back into focus.

  Adelaide Taren lay on her side next to him, her black hair pooled around her head, her eyes closed. She had kissed him in the galley, and he had tried to push her away. Then she had pointed out that the real reason he never let anyone too close to him was that the Machinists had torn him apart, and that they had done the same thing to her.

  She had been the first one to understand.

  A few moments after that, they were in her guest cabin and out of their clothes. March had awakened a few hours after to find Adelaide curled up against him in the dark, and his desire stirred once more.

  She had proven most responsive.

  Now he found his eyes wandering over her body. The blanket had pulled away from her, and his eyes traced the line of her toned leg, the swell of her hip, the curves of her chest and the delicate curve of her neck…

  The gray eyes were open when he looked at her face, and she smiled.

  “Jack,” she whispered.

  He put his arms around her. March expected her to flinch as his arm of metal touched the skin of her back, but she didn’t. He pulled her against him and kissed her, and her arms coiled around him.

  ###

  When they had finished, March lay on his back, trying to get his breath back.

  It was later. Truth be told, he was somewhat pleased by how much later it was. He exercised a great deal to remain ready for his missions, but that turned out to have other benefits. Certainly, Adelaide seemed quite satisfied.

  But he looked at her as she smiled at him, and wondered if he had made a mistake.

  She had been his mission. His task was to get her safely to Calaskar. Then he had discovered that she had unearthed several artifacts of the Great Elder Ones. Things had gotten complicated, and he had almost been stabbed to death. But they had won in the end, and were on route to the Antioch system and then to Calaskar, the artifacts safe in the Tiger’s strong room, and Adelaide Taren safe on the Tiger.

  Or safe in March’s bed.

  Had this been a mistake?

  March didn’t know.

  But as she smiled at him, if this had been a mistake, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.

  “I had forgotten,” said Adelaide in a quiet voice.

  “Forgotten what?” said March.

  “How nice it is to wake up next to someone,” said Adelaide. “After.”

  “Yes,” said March.

  He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he kissed her.

  “I thought this part of my life was over,” said Adelaide.

  “Did you?” said March. “That’s surprising.”

  “Why is that?” said Adelaide.

  “You’re an attractive woman,” said March, and she smiled, “and you’re honest enough with yourself to realize that. You must have had...attention.”

  “I did,” Adelaide admitted. “But none of them understood. I wasn’t lying when I said I had only been with one man since my husband died. He...” She thought for a moment. “He wanted me to move on. To let go. To stop working for the Silent Order. I almost did, I admit. But...no. I couldn’t.” She shook her head, her sweaty hair sticking to her neck and shoulders. “Maybe I could move on. Maybe I could forgive it. But I can’t forget it. I can’t let it happen to other people the way it happened to me.”

  “Yes,” said March. He understood. The Final Consciousness had torn him apart and rebuilt him into an Iron Hand, one of its elite commandos and assassins. The Final Consciousness had killed Adelaide’s husband and her unborn child, leaving her trapped in the wrecked car with their corpses until the emergency crews dug her out.

  The Machinists had torn her apart, just as they had torn March apart.

  “You were the first man I met who understood that,” said Adelaide. She smiled and kissed him. “And you yanked me out of the way of a speeding lift car. If that doesn’t win a girl’s heart, then nothing does.”

  “Your heart, then?” said March.

  Her smile faded. “It...Jack. If this is too fast for you, if you’ve changed your mind, that’s fine. I understand. We don’t have to do anything...”

  “No,” said March. “Some things shouldn’t be done casually or lightly. This is one of them.”

  “You’re right,” said Adelaide. “Then...you don’t regret it? You don’t think this was a mistake?”

  “No,” said March.

  Her smile returned. “And not just because you enjoyed yourself thoroughly?”

  He smiled back. He couldn’t help it. “And not just because I enjoyed myself thoroughly.” March sighed. “I’m not very good at this.”

  Adelaide raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s false modesty, Jack. If the first time I finished didn’t convince you, then I think the second and the third times should have.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” said March. “The first morning, and we’re already talking about death and regret.”

  She shrugged. “Why not? Some of the most honest conversations of my life have been after.” She hesitated. “Not...that I’ve had many chances for a long time. You’re only th
e third man I’ve been with, Jack. The first was my husband. The second, well...he was a mistake. It was three years after the bombing. I felt like a scarred and used up old crone...”

  “You’re not,” said March.

  Adelaide grinned for a moment. “Thank you, but that’s what I felt at the time. He made me feel young and pretty and desirable again...but he was a cad. The kind of man who actually does have a girl in every port, and I broke it off with him. That was twelve years ago. There was no one else until I met you.”

  “Eight years,” said March. “That’s how long it’s been since I’ve had this kind of conversation.” He didn’t like to talk about his past, but she had, so it seemed only fair. “When I was an Iron Hand...you know how the Final Consciousness rewards them.” She nodded. “After I was freed from the Final Consciousness, I went wild for a while. The idea that I could seduce a woman, that she would sleep with me because she wanted to rather than because she was ordered to...it was intoxicating.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said Adelaide.

  “But I tired of it,” said March. “I hated for them to see my scars. The experience left me feeling cold and...hollow, I suppose. The last time was eight years ago. And now there’s you.”

  “And now there’s me,” said Adelaide.

  She stretched and then pressed herself against him, her head resting on his chest. March lay against the bed, feeling the warmth of her skin against him.

  “Yes,” he said at last.

  He considered the situation coldly, logically, as an Alpha Operative of the Silent Order should do. The practical course of action would be to leave her on Calaskar, depart, and never see her again. Once he reached Calaskar, Censor would have another mission for him, and another, and then another. An Alpha Operative shouldn’t have personal entanglements. The sensible thing to do would be to simply disappear from her life.

  March didn’t like that thought. He didn’t like it at all.

  Did he want to work as an Alpha Operative of the Silent Order forever? A month ago, March would have said he would do the work of the Order to the end of his life, which would likely be swift and violent. Alpha Operatives, by and large, did not tend to last long. March had been one for ten years, which while not a record for the Order was nonetheless unusually high.

  Did he want to fight the Final Consciousness for the rest of his life?

  Like Adelaide, he couldn’t turn away from the fight. But neither did Adelaide spend her days flying from system to system in search of the enemy. There were other ways to fight the Final Consciousness, ways that would be compatible with having a woman in his life for the long term. Not everyone in the Silent Order was an Alpha Operative.

  March was surprised that he was already thinking that way. Maybe he shouldn’t have been. Adelaide Taren was so different from him, but in many ways, she was not.

  March thought…

  He thought he had some things to consider.

  “What are you thinking?” murmured Adelaide. “I can hear you thinking, you know.”

  “I think there is something I should tell you,” said March.

  “Oh?” said Adelaide. She levered back up on her elbow, her expression guarded. As if she expected a blow.

  “I don’t want to do this casually,” said March. “I don’t think you do, either.”

  “No,” said Adelaide. “Jack, you’re the first man I’ve been with in twelve years. This isn’t something I do lightly.”

  “I don’t know what I’m trying to say,” said March. “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, or even in five minutes. But I do know...I want you with me. However I can manage it.”

  “Oh, Jack,” she said, resting against him again. “That’s one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard.”

  “Is it? I was just being honest.”

  He felt her smile. “That’s what makes it sweet.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do,” said Adelaide. She hesitated. “Do you want to have some breakfast? I mean, I did make dinner before we got distracted. I would just have to heat it up. But if you’re ready again...”

  March laughed a little. “No. I know I’m in good shape, but three times in twelve hours might be my limit.”

  Adelaide grinned. “Then I did wear you out. It’s just as well. I’m ravenous. Want to have breakfast with me?”

  “Yes,” said March. “I do.”

  She smiled, got to her feet, and stretched. Now that was a compelling sight. March looked long enough that she saw him looking, and she gave him a pleased smile. Then he sat up and started collecting his clothes.

  “Um,” she said. “Do you remember where my clothes ended up?”

  “I think we left them in the galley,” said March. “Along with your coat.”

  “Ah,” said Adelaide as she pulled on her underwear. “We did get carried away, I think. As I recall, you literally carried me in here.”

  March felt himself smile. It was a strange feeling, and he wasn’t accustomed to it. “You weren’t complaining.”

  “No, I most certainly wasn’t,” said Adelaide. March stood, and she kissed him once more. “Breakfast?”

  ###

  The next three days were some of the most pleasant of Jack March’s life.

  He did not have a lot of happy memories. There had been a few pleasant moments with his mother in the labor camps of Calixtus. Some, but not many. There was the satisfaction of a mission completed, which while not quite pleasant, was nonetheless a good feeling. There had been the day he had awakened from surgery with his hive implant removed, the thunderous chorus of the Final Consciousness no longer filling his thoughts.

  March had not, however, ever had an experience quite like this before.

  He had been concerned that Adelaide would follow him around the ship all day, but she had her work, just as he had his. She shut herself up in her cabin or in the galley for hours at a time, working on the book about her expedition to Xenostas. Or she exercised in the gym while listening to Calaskaran rural music. March was unfamiliar with that genre, but it seemed to involve a lot of guitars and bass beats, and the singer was either a woman lamenting how her husband had died in the service of the Royal Calaskaran Armed Forces, or a man singing about how he wanted to retire to rural Calaskar with his faithful dog, buy a pickup truck, and start a farm. March did not see the music’s appeal, but Adelaide enjoyed it, and sometimes even sang along (albeit breathlessly) while exercising.

  He saw her at meals when they ate together in the galley, and they talked about the planets that March had visited, or Adelaide’s family and life on Calaskar.

  At night they slept together, though little actual sleep was involved at times.

  March had never done anything quite like this, and he had never met a woman he liked as much as Adelaide Taren.

  The feeling did not blind him. She was not an angel descended into his life. March had spent a lifetime assessing people as targets, and he knew Adelaide was not perfect. She was fastidious about her appearance to the point of vanity. Her immense self-confidence sometimes bled over into arrogance. Not as badly as the late and unlamented Professor Patrick Orson had claimed, but it was there. She tended to explain things to him that he already knew. March supposed another man would have found that annoying, but he was just pleased it took the burden of conversation from him. Speaking was not his strength.

  But that was all right. He wasn’t perfect, either. And Adelaide was smart. When she put her mind to something, she worked with the energy of an entire hive of bees on amphetamines. March found laziness intolerable in himself and others, and he wouldn’t have been able to tolerate it in his…

  His lover? His girlfriend?

  He didn’t know.

  March didn’t know what would happen when they returned to Calaskar with the relics locked in the hold. Maybe she would change her mind. Maybe he would never see her again.

  But he would always remember these three days fondly.

  “Where are
we going today?” said Adelaide on the morning of the fourth day.

  They sat together in the Tiger’s cramped galley, eating breakfast. Adelaide shared his preferences for breakfast – egg or bacon-flavored protein powder, a fruit-flavored nutrient bar, and two or three cups of coffee to wash it all down. March would have preferred vat-grown eggs, but the powdered stuff was cheaper and easier to store on a starship. Given how much physical exertion he and Adelaide had enjoyed over the last three days, it was probably a good idea to eat a lot of protein.

  “Vesper’s World,” said March. “Last system before Antioch.”

  She took a drink of coffee. “Have you ever stopped there?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve passed through it often on my way to the outer colonies and some of the neutral powers. I’ve stopped a few times at Vesper Station, but I’ve never landed on the planet.”

  “It’s a beautiful planet,” said Adelaide. “At least from orbit. But the colony is beautiful, too. I think there’s only...fourteen, fifteen million people living on the planet.” March nodded. “I stopped there a few times on trips for the University and the Order both. Vesper City is a lovely place. You can see the mesas of the Western Desert from there. Nothing like it on Calaskar.”

  “I wish we could stop,” said March, “but we shouldn’t.”

  If they stopped, any Machinist sympathizers or agents on Vesper Station might try to kill her. March also had twenty quantum inducers and an unknown alien artifact of the Great Elder Ones locked in his ship’s strong room. The Final Consciousness might make some efforts to kill him or Adelaide, but only if it happened to be convenient.

  To get the alien relics in the strong room, the Machinists would destroy worlds.

  “I know,” said Adelaide. She took a sip of coffee.

  A resigned feeling settled over March. He would have liked to have stopped on Vesper’s World with Adelaide, to have walked the streets of the city with her, to have seen the mesas and the canyons. But they had to get the relics back to Calaskar and to the Ministry of Defense. Censor would have a new task for March. Perhaps he would have a new task for Adelaide.