The Space Navy Series
Books One & Two
(Including the Kindle novellas)
“Josiah Trenchard and the Might of Fortitude”
“Josiah Trenchard and the Morgenstern”
By
JONATHON FLETCHER
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:
Commander Josiah Trenchard is a no-nonsense, foul mouthed, alcohol-fuelled action hero.
He’s been fighting hard in the war that’s been raging between the United Worlds and the insurgents ever since the Belatu-Cadros uprising on Mars, four years ago.
When Trenchard is unexpectedly re-assigned to an untested prototype hunter-killer vessel called the “Might of Fortitude”, he is thrown into a series of deadly adventures that will test his mettle to breaking point.
While hunting bloodthirsty pirates who have unleashed a reign of terror throughout the asteroid belt, Trenchard struggles to cope with a woefully inexperienced crew of misfits and reprobates and must put his life on the line to save his ship, his crew, and the honour of the Space Navy.
After insurgent terrorists kill thousands of innocent people on Earth, he and his crew are then sent on a mission, deep within the Kuiper belt, to protect a facility which is vital to the war effort.
The heavily armed pirates who prowl the asteroid belt are also racing to be the first to occupy the space station and steal a dark military secret hidden within. During the ensuing battle, a terrible “something” wakens from its cryogenic slumber and carves an indiscriminate wake of death and destruction throughout the space station.
Can Trenchard save the day? Just who is the mysterious leader of the pirates and what are the dark motives of the Papaver Corporation?
Will he ever get a quiet glass of rum and a smoke? Step aboard the “Might of Fortitude” to find out…
This is a compilation of the Kindle books, parts ONE and TWO in the SPACE NAVY series (“Josiah Trenchard and the Might of Fortitude” & “Josiah Trenchard and the Morgenstern”).
Length: 70,000 words (estimated).
PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT CONTENT!
This book is intended for adults. It contains scenes of a violent nature and repetitive use of swearing and adult themes that may be unsettling to some readers. Please do not read it if you are of a sensitive nature.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, screen captured, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2017 Jonathon Fletcher
Cover art and design © 2017 Jonathon Fletcher
All rights reserved.
(1st Edition 13th March 2017)
For Wib; my nesting partner…
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank all those who supported me over the years, especially Mum and Dad, Jane and Alex, my friends Pete Pugh, Mark Collins, Paul Bird, Zyggy (who doesn’t play guitar) and Dave Thomas (the nicest man in the world). Special thanks to my wife who is my biggest critic and helps me to see my books with a new perspective. I simply could not do this without her, she is my best friend and the love of my life. Finally, I would like to thank those special people on Twitter and Facebook who have helped me to promote my #SpaceNavy books world-wide and also the lovely fans of my work for your excellent reviews and support.
Honour, strength and unity!
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE “Mars”
CHAPTER 1 “A Man of War”
CHAPTER 2 “Memories”
CHAPTER 3 “A Bird in the Hand”
CHAPTER 4 “Lessons”
CHAPTER 5 “The Might of Fortitude”
CHAPTER 6 “Wild Times”
CHAPTER 7 “The Onibaba”
CHAPTER 8 “Smiler”
CHAPTER 9 “Space Walk”
CHAPTER 10 “Alpha Mike Foxtrot”
CHAPTER 11 “Debriefing”
CHAPTER 12 “How to Make a Monster”
CHAPTER 13 “Shame”
CHAPTER 14 “Bad News Travels Fast”
CHAPTER 15 “Genevieve Noir”
CHAPTER 16 “Nerves”
CHAPTER 17 “Cold Iron”
CHAPTER 18 “Quoth the Raven”
CHAPTER 19 “It’s Alive”
CHAPTER 20 “Trapped”
CHAPTER 21 “Revenge”
CHAPTER 22 “The Warmonger”
CHAPTER 23 “A Drink and a Think”
EPILOGUE “Genesis of the Morgenstern”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GLOSSARY
PROLOGUE “MARS”
Bullets whined through the air like angry mosquitoes and the ground heaved as a massive explosion tore the road into shreds. The sound of the explosion was deafening to the two soldiers who were running for cover. Even their rasping lungs shook and rattled with the deep resonant boom. The air that they desperately tried to suck in smelled of sulphur and builder’s dust. The foreboding purple sky gave everything a sickly, pinkish hue. The ruined landscape of Mars’ largest city, Belatu-Cadros, was as close as they had ever come to the depths of hell itself.
The two troopers ducked behind the crumbling corner of a demolished building and instinctively covered their heads with their arms until the hail of dust and debris had subsided. When the explosion had spent itself, the younger of the two looked to his comrade and grinned, pushing up the protective visor of his black helmet to reveal clean eyes on a dirt streaked face.
‘What’s pissed these guys off so much anyway?’ he called above the constant sound of gunfire, clearing his throat loudly and spitting thick, black mucus to the ground.
The older of the two soldiers squared his broad shoulders, grinned back at his comrade and snapped his visor up too. ‘For god’s sake Trench, don’t you ever watch the news?’
A stray bullet pinged off the masonry above their heads and the two soldiers ducked. In the distance, someone was screaming. The sound ceased abruptly after a short burst of gunfire.
‘Politics bores the hell out of me Bird,’ a grinning Josiah Trenchard replied. ‘I don’t care why these fuckers are pissed at the government this time; I’m just here for a little payback and to make sure that they stop shooting at poor munters like me!’
A United Worlds attack gun-ship roared overhead. Its deafening jet engines rattled the buildings as it passed slowly overhead, causing a thick orange dust to rain down. The gun-ship hovered for a moment in the purple sky. The gunners, who were hanging out of the side hatch, strafed a nearby building with their mini-guns, decimating the structure and silencing the sporadic gunfire that was coming from the insurgents hidden within. As relative silence fell, the gun-ship sped off over the massive chimneys of the distant atmosphere processing plant and then dwindled slowly into a tiny dot against the vast extinct volcano of Olympus Mons.
‘Whatever the reason they originally started all this,’ began Bird, ‘we must still find out w
here they’re getting their weapons from, and that means interrogating the insurgent leaders.’
There was another erratic burst of rifle fire from a nearby building.
‘Come on Trench,’ shouted Bird above the din, waving his arm in the direction that he intended them to go. ‘Let’s move it. This low gravity is making me sick to my stomach. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can get back to base for a shower and some scran!’
‘Sounds good to me,’ replied Trenchard eagerly.
The two soldiers snapped down their visors once more and dashed across a dangerous stretch of open ground, their black uniforms covered with dirt and thick orange dust. They reached the door to a large, officious looking building and booted it open before carefully entering; rifles raised and torch beams dancing through the hazy air.
Bird lowered his rifle and let it hang from the strap while Trenchard covered the room. It was a large entrance lobby, deserted and covered with the same orange dust. Bird studied the display on his portable G.P.S. unit and once satisfied, he raised his wrist towards his mouth and pressed the communicator switch on his bracelet cuff-link radio.
‘Lieutenant Bird to mobile command H.Q. Come in, over,’ he called.
There was a burst of static before the reply came through.
‘Mobile command H.Q. here. What is your status, over?’
Lieutenant Bird spoke calmly and clearly into the radio. ‘We have suffered heavy losses to our squad. Only Sub-Lieutenant Trenchard and I have reached the target building. Requesting backup. What are your instructions, over?’
There was a pause while H.Q. passed the information up the chain of command. After what seemed like an eternity, the very short reply came through, ‘Backup currently unavailable at this time. Proceed as planned, over.’
Another gun-ship roared overhead, the vibrations from its engines dislodging a heavy rain of dust. Lieutenant Bird gave Trenchard a worried look. ‘Instructions confirmed. WilCo. Lieutenant Bird out!’
Trenchard pulled a sour face. ‘They still want us to go in without any backup?’ he said incredulously. ‘After all those we’ve lost?’
Lieutenant Bird nodded grimly. ‘Looks like, yeah,’ he replied.
‘But what about our fucking squad?’ raged Trenchard. ‘Do they think we’re bloody expendable? We lost some damn good troopers today!’
Bird scowled. ‘Command must think that finding the insurgent leaders is top priority, whatever the losses. No other squad has made it this far behind enemy lines.’ Then Bird paused and fixed Trenchard with a sombre stare. ‘Don’t you want to find out who’s behind all of this?’
Trenchard nodded grimly. ‘I swear,’ he said angrily as he activated the laser target pointer on the top of his rifle, ‘that if I get out of this alive, I’m going to stick my boot so far up the Captain’s arse that he will be able to taste the dog shit that I just trod in!’
Lieutenant Bird grinned and switched his own laser pointer on, the pencil thin beam of red light showing up clearly in the dusty atmosphere. ‘Lead on mate,’ he ordered.
Bird and Trenchard worked their way slowly and ever deeper into the concrete structure. The room that they were looking for would be right at the heart, in the most protected underground bunker. They rounded a corner and found an inert body lying on the cold concrete floor. The body was covered with blood. The young woman, barely a teenager, was dressed in the desert camouflage uniform of the local Rubente Dextera militia. Her hand still grasped her pistol and her eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.
‘Another one!’ exclaimed Trenchard.
Lieutenant Bird knelt by the body to check for a pulse. The woman was still warm, but quite dead.
‘Just like the others,’ said Bird softly. ‘Throat slit and left to bleed to death. It’s a very clean cut too.’
‘Special forces?’ asked Trenchard with a furrowed brow.
Bird thought for a moment. The wound was very long and precise. ‘No,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘This is more like an execution.’ Then he prised the pistol from the dead girl’s grip and examined it thoughtfully. ‘This pistol is navy issue,’ he said with a scowl. ‘It’s an older model than ours, but it’s definitely military, made by Pap-Corp. Someone’s definitely supplying the insurgents with illegal arms.’
‘If the insurgents are using those weapons on us, then who the hell is getting all Ninja on them?’ Trenchard hissed.
‘I don’t know,’ Bird said quietly, dropping the pistol and staring thoughtfully into the distant gloom ahead. ‘But we need them alive to question.’
Trenchard gestured to the bloody boot prints that led off down the corridor in front of them. ‘Whoever it was has fucking small feet!’ he observed.
‘…and they’re not far ahead of us,’ said Bird, a dark, foreboding expression falling across his face.
The two soldiers dropped into a walking crouch and carefully made their way along the corridor, aiming their rifles into the gloaming darkness ahead of them.
They found three more bodies along the route before finally arriving at the entrance to a control bunker. They carefully edged around the door, which was hanging off its hinges, blasted into pieces by an explosive charge. The room was full of computers, communications equipment and tactical display banks. The scene inside was utter carnage. Bodies lay everywhere, the command staff of the Martian insurgents. Every single one of them was slashed and drained of blood, which pooled onto the floor, resembling used engine oil in the dim, red emergency light of the bunker. In the very centre of the room a slim figure, dressed head-to-toe in black, was finishing off the last of the unfortunate command staff with what looked like a short sword. The figure expertly slashed the terrified man from shoulder to gut, spilling his blood and internal organs onto the cold concrete floor. The man crumpled and lay twitching on the floor next to the disfigured bodies of his fallen comrades.
Trenchard and Bird inched gently into the room, the tiny red dots from their rifles aimed steadily at the lithe black figure’s head and chest. The figure looked down and studied the red dots on its chest for a moment, then it cocked its head to one side inquisitively before looking straight up into Bird’s eyes as if daring him to fire.
‘Don’t move!’ shouted Lieutenant Bird. ‘You are under arrest by order of the United Worlds peacekeeping force under section…’
The figure suddenly leapt, more quickly than it would seem a human was capable of. Bird and Trenchard reacted a moment too slowly and strafed the room, attempting to keep up with the figure that leapt and dodged their every volley. With a sudden rush, the figure swung off a roof girder and lunged at Trenchard, catching him with its sword across his neck and chest. He dropped his rifle and clutched desperately at his throat with his gloved hands, in a vain attempt to stop the warm flow of blood that was pouring from the gash. Then he fell to the floor gasping for air.
Lieutenant Bird angrily attempted to zero in on the black-clad figure and managed to skim a bullet across its thigh. The figure howled with pain and anger. It brought the sword down hard in a wide arc that sliced cleanly through the metal barrel of Bird’s rifle. At the same time, the figure leapt feet first at Bird’s stomach. Bird’s broad frame crumpled like a squashed beer can and he whacked his head violently on the sharp edge of a console. Despite his helmet, he fell to the floor unconscious.
Trenchard couldn’t speak. The blood was filling his convulsing windpipe, bubbling and popping as he choked. He was losing his grasp on his throat as well as on consciousness. The black-clad figure dropped onto its haunches beside Trenchard’s face and calmly wiped the blood off its sword on Trenchard’s uniform before sliding it expertly into a sheath tied to its back.
As Trenchard slid into the numbness of unconsciousness, the figure brought its masked face close to Trenchard’s ear and whispered. The voice was soft, feminine, and had the slight hint of a chocolaty Japanese accent.
‘You’re lucky…’ she said as she pulled Trenchard’s dog tags out from beneath his uniform an
d studied them. ‘…Sub-Lieutenant Josiah Trenchard. My orders weren’t to kill United Worlds troopers. But this was fun. We must do it again. Catch you next time?’
The figure reached over and activated the inbuilt distress beacon that was part of Trenchard’s bracelet cuff-link radio. Then she stood up and raced away down the darkened corridor. The last thought that went through Trenchard’s oxygen starved mind before everything went black was… she’s got a really nice arse.
CHAPTER 1 “A MAN OF WAR”
Four years later…
The heavy metal hatch screeched slowly open and Commander Josiah Trenchard stomped angrily down the creaking ramp. He stopped at the base of the ramp and threw his heavy harness to the scuffed tread plate floor with a resounding clunk. He’d had a hard day. He had a pounding headache and was keen to get out of his sweaty, blood-stained uniform as quickly as was humanly possible. He looked down at his black sleeves which were spattered with blood and bone fragments from troopers in his platoon; people he knew well, good friends. They would be coming back from the crappy little ice-moon below in a plastic body-bag. That was, if they could find all the bits.
He scratched irritably at the long scar on his neck that was just visible as it disappeared underneath his crumpled uniform. It always itched when he was sweaty and stressed. The underwater tunnels that he’d been fighting in had been hot as hell and humid to match. He was desperate for a shower but he had a job to do first. He needed to get this over with.
‘Okay, bring them down,’ he shouted impatiently to the waiting troopers inside the sturdy little craft, an edge of sadness and weariness creeping into his voice.
One by one, twelve dishevelled prisoners, brow beaten and manacled together, were ushered down the ramp by the battle weary United Worlds troopers. Trenchard studied the prisoners closely as he pulled a crumpled packet of cigarettes out from his inside jacket pocket. He lit one and took a long, satisfying drag. Hardly anyone smoked these days but Trenchard had an addictive personality. Whether it was booze, coffee or nicotine, Trenchard usually required each in large quantities. He was getting some dirty scowls from the nearby Techs, but they could all go and screw themselves. They hadn’t just been into battle. He needed this cigarette more than he needed air right now. He let the smoke linger inside his lungs for a long moment as he savoured the head rush, before blowing the smoke out of his mouth to one side. Then he ran his grubby, yellow stained fingers across his greasy shaved scalp and thought back on the day’s events as he took another long, satisfying drag.
The Space Navy Series Books One & Two: Including the Kindle novellas Josiah Trenchard and the Might of Fortitude & Josiah Trenchard and the Morgenstern Page 1
