Reason For Vengeance (Dark Vengeance Book 1)

by Adrian D. Roberts

  “Once on board the station, Ruben Novajkovui killed several of the brave Rangers on guard who tried to question him, before heading to the anti-matter reactor. Once there he forced Technician Simone Honduras at gun point, after killing many of her co-workers, to over-ride the reactors controls. This is what caused so much devastation to the space station. Legion Intelligence has not yet released the details, but they have confirmed there is a strong link to Thomas Doherty, who Zeus PD bravely attempted to apprehend on the morning of-” Valerie slammed her hand down on the ships controls, stopping the report.

  Screwing her eyes tight as the wave of grief and despair ripped through her again. The tears never really stopped and had been a slow constant trickle down her face. Now they flowed forth in full force. Great sobs racked her body. Valerie screamed and wailed, as she saw as clear as day, the broken and bloody bodies of her children and husband.

  Drawing her feet up she hugged her knees and buried her head into her legs. Forcing the universe away from her as she grieved for her family.

  ***

  It was some time later that she was able to bring herself to raise her head and face life again. Taking a deep breath she pushed that never ending well of emotion back behind its thin wall. As her thoughts became coherent, she saw over half an hour had passed in a blur. The navigation display showed the Histria was up to almost one percent of the speed of light and traveling at two thousand, eight hundred kilometres per second.

  Forcing herself to concentrate, she focused on the news report. The Government obviously decided to keep her name out of the story. If the wrong person started asking questions about Valerie Carter and Eleanor Doherty, then there was a real danger of many things coming out into the open. Valerie could well understand, why they would not want such things as Prometheus and the missions Shadow Company carried out, seeing the light of day.

  Satisfied her face would not be on every networks channel, Valerie started the power cycle increasing the reactors output and brought the main engines out of standby. Normally she would have done this before leaving hyperspace. It was a clear indication of how distracted she was. Everything felt like it was too much effort, nothing felt natural anymore.

  It took a little over half an hour for the Spectre to bring itself to full readiness. By then, the Histria Azure was travelling at four thousand, five hundred kilometres per second and was still accelerating. Valerie disengaged the Spectres landing gear and a burst of the directional thrusters pushed it away from the freighter. No longer connected to the Histria, the Spectre was not accelerating. The massive freighter continued on without noticing its passenger depart.

  Waiting a further half an hour, Valerie orientated her ship for its own journey to Blaze A, a path that would take it around the Histria. It was a longer trip that decreased the chance of being detected and only added a few extra minutes to the journey. In theory the Spectre would be entirely invisible to the Histria. Some risks, no matter however small, were not worth taking when all it would cost is a little extra time.

  The twin drives lit up and the Spectre moved off smoothly. Valerie began to check the tactical data that was streaming into the ships passive sensors. With full access to the most up to date Legion signal decoders, the computer was noting the location of every Legion asset in the system, along with all the civilian traffic moving around.

  A Legion task force was on the outskirts of the system, well outside the hyper-limit. Two battleships with a light cruiser and destroyer screen. Too far out to be of any concern to her, Valerie dismissed it. What did catch her eye was a base in one of the asteroid belts, right on the edge of the hyper-limit and away from any planets. It was not mentioned when Shadow Company were last in the system. That wasn’t really surprising. There was no relevance to their mission.

  Only the location showed on the tactical screen. She queried it with the computers and the signal gave no additional information. The data banks also came up blank. Looking at the information for the system itself it showed no mining in that area. All the mining was taking place on belts closer in to the system. That in itself was not unusual, it cost time and money to move raw materials from the belts to the planet. Why mine further out when closer resources were to hand.

  It was a mystery and like the task force, not one of any relevance so Valerie ignored it. She had two hours until she arrived at Blaze A and she headed back to ready her gear.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Whatever luck she had, was still with her and it was night time over the Ginormican Mountains. Valerie piloted the Spectre smoothly down out of the night sky, heading for an area she remembered. Shadow Company scouted it as a possible base. Too far from where the Butler clan operated, the Company chose not to use it in the end. The area was made up of deep valleys, only accessible by air, with large caves at their bottoms. With little of value in the way of resources, there was no reason for humans to go there.

  The ships powerful active sensors built a detailed topographical map for Valerie to study. Being highly directional, they left little sign of her passing, unless she was unlucky enough to fly over a human settlement. If she did, hopefully they would think it was the Blaze Police sending in an armoured aircar to sweep through the mountains. Since Shadow Company visited, the Clans stayed quiet and the Blaze Police made a point of letting them know they were still watching.

  It took almost three hours and Valerie could see the sun beginning to rise, when she finally found a suitable location to hide the Spectre. Small by the standards of Hyperspace capable ships and many inter-system ones, it still measured over one hundred metres in length. Almost all of its internal volume was taken up by complicated systems and the smallest anti-matter reactor the Legion could build.

  That same reactor also made it highly illegal and no planetary government, including the Pantheon, would want it landing on their world. An anti-matter reactor could be devastating, as Valerie proved on Furioso. The Pantheon passed a law long ago, against anyone building a ship capable of atmospheric flight and used anti-matter as a power source. Such a ship was not even allowed to enter a Pantheon system.

  It almost made Valerie smile as she considered the implications should someone ever discover that the Spectre had not only been built but had actually been stolen. It was a fleeting moment quickly smothered by her pain.

  With a competence earned with over a hundred years of experience, she manoeuvred the ship into a cave. It was tight and she had to fly the ship purely on its anti-grav, making adjustments in the centimetres to clear the rugged walls. Here the wrap around holo screen was the perfect tool giving her the clearest picture possible of where the Spectre was in relation to the cave.

  Carefully, bit by bit she brought the ship in and down onto the uneven floor. The landing gear compensated for it as best it could and the ship was left with only a ten degree slant. Valerie began the shut down cycle and headed back to the crew quarters for her equipment and bag.

  She’d already changed into her black combat boots, dark, form fitting trousers and matching top. Over that went her fitted light body armour, protecting her body, shoulders and upper arms, with pistol holders on each thigh complete with Mag pistols. None of it was Legion issue and were her personal equipment, completely indistinguishable from those worn by people on a hundred planets. Finally, she pulled on the last gift her family would ever give her. The coat felt like a piece of them, it made her feel an almost warmth to wear it, until the wave of grief and loss crashed over her.

  Gritting her teeth she rode that wave until it subsided, took a deep breath and grabbed her pack. It would take her over a week to walk to the nearest bastion of civilisation. Hopefully she could then get a ride and lose herself amongst the masses that made up Inferno, the capital city of Blaze A. The pack was filled with food, water, clothes, money, weapons, along with climbing and survival equipment, from a grav-belt to ropes and sleeping bag to small stove. Altogether it weighed almost fifty kilos and she knew that even she was going to be feeling i
ts weight as she made her way out of the mountain range.

  Activating the door, she stepped down the exit ramp and breathed in the cold, thin air. Modern technology could only do so much and in comparison the air in the Spectre tasted stale and lifeless. After more than eighteen days, it was a relief to feel rock under her feet, the pull of real gravity and a breeze coming in through the cave’s mouth. The cave was made of an almost black rock, formed as a vent for volcanic activity far in the planet’s past. A white moss type substance gave an interesting contrast to the black rock. Only the fact that it was empty of any sign of animal life was of concern to Valerie.

  Dumping her bag on the floor, she went back into the ship and up to the cockpit to check on the shutdown. The computer brought the reactor into its minimum cycle mode, where it would tick over and supply just enough power for its containment fields, along with a trickle to the ships electron cells. All the other systems shut down one by one, until only the lights were left. Satisfied the ship would not give itself away with any energy leakage and be useable if needed, she walked out, sealing the door behind her.

  Picking up her rucksack, she slung it on one shoulder and walked out of the cave mouth to take a proper look at the valley. Looking around, she could see she was in the widest part, narrowing at each end to canyons. All of the walls were almost vertical with little slant and in many parts, the walls leaned into the valley. Activating her wristcomp, she displayed a holographic image of the valley taken from the Spectre’s sensors on the way in. Focusing in on the end canyons in turn, she could see they both ended in dead ends, without any easy way out. Perfect for hiding in it may be, getting out of it was not so easy.

  Fortunately, Valerie’s grav-belt could lift her out of the valley easily. Such technology was very power hungry and its battery pack had a limited endurance. There were hundreds of kilometres of mountain range to cover and the belt would be her most important tool. She needed to ration its use as much as possible. The belt went around her waist, with straps looping around her thighs and this particular model was designed for the military, so it fitted around her pistols.

  Orientating herself by her holomap, she headed towards the north wall, following her progress on the wristcomp to make sure she exited the valley at the right point. While searching for the Spectre’s hiding place, the scans created details maps of an area forty thousand square kilometres in size. The computer was then able to calculate a route through the first eighty-six kilometres of her journey. It still left her over fifty kilometres in a straight line, she would have to navigate by experience, training, instinct and luck.

  Activating the harness and setting it for a low powered ascent, she rose up gently, keeping close to the cliff, using her legs to prevent her from hitting it. She felt light headed as she rose up the cliff face and swore to herself. The air here was very thin and she forgot to put on her re-breather. A clever device, designed for use in the many harsh environments Commando’s found themselves. It could scrub the air of almost any toxin or gas. Where the air was too thin or thick for humans to operate efficiently, it regulated the rate oxygen was drawn in. Up here at the top of this world, it would draw air in quicker and allow Valerie to breath normally without any loss of breath.

  The re-breather was still in her pack and fortunately she hadn’t begun any strenuous activity. She could not get to it until she reached the top and took care to breathe long deep breaths, while concentrating on keeping her body as relaxed as possible. Even for her enhanced genetics, it was a struggle and by the time she reached the top she felt giddy, a clear indication of the lack of oxygen. She took her time, carefully pulled herself over the ledge and deactivated the belt. Shrugging off the pack, she opened the pouch on the back and pulled out the re-breather, at least she put it in an accessible pocket. It slipped onto her face easily, covering her nose, mouth and chin.

  Automatically it began to work and Valerie breathed deeply. It took only a few seconds for her head to clear and for her to feel better. Once she could trust herself, she climbed to her feet and took in her surroundings. The grav-belt brought her out between two peaks with a traversable slope running downwards. It was a beautiful view with the sun rising in front of her over the mountain peaks. Once, she would have stood there to take in the spectacular scenery. Now, all the attention she had left to spare was for the next part of her journey. With her pack tight on her back, she set off towards the rising sun.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The rattle of her back pack was loud in Valerie’s ears as she jogged along the rough ground. The animal trail she was following was strewn with rocks and pebbles, making the footing treacherous. Four days had passed since she left the Spectre and she had covered almost forty kilometres of her journey. In reality, she ran much further with the constantly rising and falling terrain. Twice she needed to backtrack, after finding herself in a blind ravine not showing from the Spectre’s scans. Her grav-belt was now out of power, three long vertical ascents and a descent used all of its energy.

  Long days of jogging and nightmare filled nights were taking their toll on her body. She felt emotionally, mentally and now physically drained. Concentrating only on pushing forward and her footing to make sure she didn’t fall.

  Movement out of the corner of her eye was her only warning. It was swift and large. Valerie reacted as quickly as she could, diving to the left and away from whatever was coming at her. She landed on the stones, feeling them scrape over her and one particularly large boulder narrowly missing her head, as a large brown shape passed her. Continuing the roll, she came to her feet and reached for her pistols automatically. The right was missing, but the left came out of its holster smoothly.

  The creature came to a skidding stop, its massive weight giving it a lot of momentum and still it managed to spin round surprisingly fast. A large powerful maw with teeth as long as her hand and four fangs twice as long, sat on the end of a long powerful neck. Taller at the shoulder than Valerie with eight gangling and muscular legs, each one ending in a paw with three curved claws a match for the fangs in length. All of this was topped off with twin tails, long, and powerful.

  “Shit,” Valerie swore as it prepared to launch itself at her. Stone Dragons were the top of the food chain on Blaze A. Nothing else came close and they were one of the reasons so few humans were to be found this high up the Ginormican Mountains. Solitary creatures that made their homes in the large caves, they were excellent hunters and their tough hide made them very difficult to kill while their colouring allowed them fade into the background. Closer to Earth lizards than mammals they were difficult to pick up on infra-red sensors due to a lack of body heat.

  Valerie didn’t think, she acted. Her empty right hand hit the release button on her pack, dropping it to the floor behind her as her left squeezed the trigger. Bending her knees at the same time, she prepared herself to leap as the Stone Dragon came charging towards her. Almost ambidextrous, her shots landed precisely where she wanted them, penetrating the thick hide and stopping in the creatures bone. Five shots was all she had time for before it was upon her. She was able to leap to the left, keeping her gun clear, only just in time.

  Teeth flashed past her and the beast howled in pain and anger. This little thing stung it and escaped its jaws a second time. The Dragon stopped faster and instead of turning, used one of its tails to smash Valerie in the chest, sending her flying back. The breath was blasted from her lungs, the body armour saving her ribs and she lost her remaining pistol, as she came crashing down onto her back.

  Using the momentum, Valerie went limp and rolled to prevent as much damage as possible. She felt something rise up inside of her, the rage she felt on Furioso swamped her. She could not get her family back, she could not see Daphne laugh, she could not be kissed by Tom, she could not hug Bobbie again and she could not get to those responsible. What she could do is fight this creature, give life to her rage and kill it with her own hands.

  Rolling back to her feet, she drew the knives fr
om her boots. Valerie flicked on the blades so they hummed a light red, and snarled at the Dragon. It turned towards her and came on more slowly, roaring at its tiny opponent and Valerie charged forward. The Dragon’s surprise was obvious, never in its life had anything run towards it and Valerie could see old scars on its back, proof it had tangled with humans before.

  The hesitation was only momentary and its massive jaws snapped at Valerie as she ducked underneath it, slashing her right blade across its maw. The super-heated blade sliced deep into the creatures cheek and carved the top off one of its fangs. The Dragon roared in pain and tried to snap at her. Using the same technique she taught her daughter in the garden of her home, to avoid the opposing teams tackle, Valerie spun out of its way and leaped to its back. She had no intention of riding the beast and rotated gracefully in the air. Her left blade cut deep into the shoulder. Continuing the movement brought her right blade around and that too sunk deep into its flesh.

  The Dragon roared as it had never done in its life. Never had anything hurt it as this thing did and it shrugged her off violently. Fully expecting this Valerie used the movement to propel her much lighter body through the air, twisting and landed catlike on her feet, blades ready at her sides. Luck was with her, she managed to land cleanly and she showed a predator’s smile. The Dragon glared at her, its front right leg slumped down, the tendons destroyed by Valerie’s second strike and blood seeping slowly from all three cauterised wounds.

  The two opponents moved towards one another slowly and began to circle far out of reach of each other. It seemed for the first time in her life, Valerie could think clearly. The rage burned bright and deadly in her mind as she analysed the situation. The Dragon was injured, slow, hurting, wary and most important of all it was afraid of her. Never before had it faced anything like her and it felt fear.