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

  His words sat in the woman’s mind like a nesting spider and wriggled uncomfortably.

  Are they talking about me? What do they mean by re-activated?

  A memory flared in the woman’s mind. It was a violent memory of heat and pain. It faded almost as quickly as it came. Another figure came into view from the side, a slender woman with long, dark hair. She was dressed all in black and had her hands placed on her hips. She scowled down at the immobile woman.

  ‘It’d better be worth it Papaver.’ said the slender woman in an accent that had a hint of a Japanese undertone. ‘Stealing her body from the naval morgue was a real pain in the arse! The base was on high alert after the R.D. attack.’

  Body? I’m not dead! Help me!

  The man leaned closer. ‘Don’t worry my girl,’ said the French man, ‘with all the confusion during the uprising at Belatu-Cadros, nobody will miss one body. If we can transplant the brain into the machine successfully, then it will definitely be worth the risk.’

  ‘You really think this will work?’ said the Japanese woman uncertainly. ‘The Sentinel is powerful alright, but the A.I. is as dumb as shit. What good is a dead brain going to be?’

  The Frenchman snorted. ‘It’s no longer a dead brain and it will provide the spark of ingenuity that was missing from the earlier prototypes, just what you said was lacking. This was your idea after all Miss Saito. She has you to thank for her second chance at life.’

  ‘Hey, don’t pin this one on me,’ snapped the woman called Saito. ‘This is your sick little project Papaver! I’m just the hired help.’

  The Frenchman laughed. ‘…and it’s no longer called the Sentinel. Your comments after the last battle testing gave me a better idea. The machine is now to be referred to as the Morgenstern!’

  ‘Morgenstern?’ said the slender woman with a scowl. ‘Sounds like a German rock band!’

  ‘It seemed apt,’ said the man with a smile.

  The man picked up something from a metal tray to one side and held it up. It was some sort of medical instrument with a long, curved, sharp blade that glinted in the light as the man studied it. He leaned forwards and his hands disappeared out of view. There was a wet sound like a knife cutting through lettuce and then a loud crack.

  ‘By the way,’ he said as he worked, ‘did you have any trouble at the insurgent’s command headquarters?’

  The Japanese woman leaned in, studying what the man was doing with gruesome fascination. ‘No, not really. I ran into that couple of United Worlds troopers you warned me about but I took care of them.’

  The man looked sharply across to her. ‘You didn’t kill them I hope. You were explicitly ordered not to.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ snapped the woman. ‘I did just what you said. They’ll both live. I gave one of them a scar to remember me by though, Joe something or other. He won’t forget his mission to Belatu-Cadros for a long time.’

  The name Belatu-Cadros sparked a memory in the woman’s mind of dust and thin air mixed with shouting and explosions.

  I was there! I was a trooper. I was fighting the insurgents and then a bomb went off. What happened to me?

  The Frenchman seemed satisfied with Saito’s answer and went back to his work. ‘This body is perfect, the head is entirely intact despite the shrapnel wounds to the torso,’ he said. After a moment, he stood up and handed the blood covered instrument to the young nurse who placed it back onto the metal tray.

  ‘There, that’s the spinal column severed. Now we can crack open the skull and remove the brain.’

  The Japanese woman leaned in even closer, intently studying something. ‘I’m sure she just blinked,’ she said. ‘Are you sure that she can’t feel anything?’

  Yes, I can! Help me for fuck’s sake!

  ‘Certain,’ Papaver affirmed. ‘The brain and the body died once already and now the spinal column is disconnected. There’s no way that the mind could have survived. It’s like a blank hard-drive that has just been formatted, waiting for us to fill it with new data. There’s absolutely nothing of Lieutenant Hawkins left I’m afraid. She’ll never know of her part in this ground-breaking procedure.’

  Hawkins? That’s me! The woman’s mind screamed. I’m in here. I’m not dead. Please help me!

  The man picked up another device. It had a rotary saw blade that spun and made a piercing whine as the man activated the trigger. He leaned forwards and looked straight into Lieutenant Hawkins’ cold, dead eyes.

  ‘Right, let’s get cracking!’ he said with a smile…

  CHAPTER 13 “SHAME”

  Acrid smoke hung like a cloudy veil around the ceiling as the squad of troopers ran along the darkened metal tunnel. They stopped at a junction, sweating and breathless. The sound of distant rifle-fire echoed off the grey metal walls, reverberating and sharp like bolts dropped into a metal bucket. There was the distant boom of artillery and then the floor and walls shook furiously for a moment. When the deck had steadied, Lieutenant Commander Pugh looked towards the rest of his squad with unease.

  ‘Ok, McGagh, Stofan, I want two stun grenades round that corner, followed by the rest of the squad in a two by two formation. Ready. Go!’

  There was a marked lack of movement. Some of the troopers scowled, some had shifty, uneasy expressions on their faces or were staring fixatedly at their boots. One immense man standing at the front, had defiance written on his face as clearly as chalk on a blackboard.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? Get to it, that’s an order,’ Pugh shouted, his voice faltering slightly.

  Not here, he thought. Not now! There was too much at stake. Most of the squad stared at the floor, ashamed but resolute, unable to voice what they were thinking. Only McGagh, the large Irish man with the bad disposition, met Pugh’s gaze directly.

  ‘That’s not going to work,’ McGagh stated coldly, his staring eyes glinting resolutely in the darkness.

  ‘What?’ snapped Pugh, the colour beginning to drain from his already haggard face.

  ‘If we use that tactic, we’re all dead. We should head around to the next junction and double back, take ‘em from behind.’ McGagh glared at Pugh, his eyes unblinking. ‘Unlike some of us, I’ve done this sort of thing before…’

  Pugh’s jaw dropped and he did goldfish impressions for a moment. It was true. Out of anyone in the squad, McGagh had the most experience in battle. His reputation preceded him like a bad smell. But Pugh was his commanding officer nonetheless. He had to take control of the situation.

  ‘This is not up for discussion Leading Spaceman McGagh, that’s an order!’

  Pugh’s voice was lower now, more desperate. He started to sweat. There was the low rumble of another distant explosion, grenades exploding inside the metal structure. The deck shook and a light that was hanging from a chain on the overhead began to sway slightly. The smell of burning flesh wafted down the corridor, an unmistakable aroma to anyone who had been in battle; roast pork mixed with burning hair. The air between Pugh and McGagh practically sizzled with nervous energy. Then McGagh’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘We don’t take orders from filthy mutineers!’ McGagh stated flatly.

  His voice was not taunting, it was cold and calculated, a simple statement of fact. The sentence hung in the air like the thick smoke, heavy and bitter. The words stung Pugh as surely as if they had been a physical attack. McGagh turned his back on Pugh. This was even more insulting than the words. One by one, the whole squad turned their backs on Lieutenant Commander Pugh and began to walk off down the corridor in the opposite direction, following McGagh.

  ‘McGagh!’ Pugh shouted after him, sweat dripping down from underneath his helmet, his hands holding his rifle so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.

  At a nod from McGagh, the squad broke into a jog. He was one of the few among them who had seen any real combat, seen death. His comrades knew that he was a veteran of Belatu-Cadros, the first and bloodiest battle in the war against the insurgent terrorists. They were more ready to trust him than
a man who had betrayed them all in mutiny just a few days earlier. The departing McGagh cast a venomous glance backwards as if to say “I’ve won”. After a moment of deep introspection, Pugh reluctantly began to follow them. What else could he do? The enemy were close. They still had a job to do. His feet felt like lead as he made his way along the corridor a few yards behind his squad.

  Ahead of Pugh, the squad rounded a blind corner when suddenly at least twenty heavily armoured pirates appeared from behind several make-shift barricades and opened fire. The troopers didn’t stand a chance. Each trooper that was hit by the crossfire squirmed in pain as a massive jolt of electricity ran from their metal soled mag-boots straight up through their legs. Blue light arced over their bodies as they convulsed, teeth clenching and eyes staring in pain. In a second it was all over and the whole squad lay immobile on the greasy deck, twitching slightly and groaning in agony. Pugh rounded the corner a moment later to find his whole squad disabled. He stared at the pirates and his shoulders slumped in defeat. He dropped his rifle which clattered to the floor and dejectedly raised his hands. One of the pirates smiled at him and then his face fizzed slightly with a static burst, rippling like a reflection in a pond.

  ‘Enough!’ shouted a loud voice from seemingly everywhere in the corridor. ‘Open it up!’

  ‘SIMULATION CANCELLED,’ said the flat voice of the Guardian computer. ‘OPENING TRAINING AREA.’

  The holographic image of the pirates blinked off. With a rumble and grinding of gears, the wall slid slowly apart allowing searing white light to pierce the darkness and fill the smoking corridor. Pugh squinted into the light to see a figure standing, hands on his hips and tapping his foot impatiently. When the doors had fully opened and Pugh’s eyes had adjusted to the light, he could finally see the form of his commanding officer scowling straight at him from the adjacent classroom.

  The rest of the squad were picking themselves up off the floor and dusting their uniforms down, still wincing in agony. The electric shocks had been painful, but not damaging. They would all have bruises where the stun charges had contacted the skin, but they would fade in time. What was more damaged was their pride. Pugh was marginally pleased to see that McGagh had cracked his chin on something as he fell to the floor and a large purple welt was beginning to spread across his disgruntled face. Captain Josiah Trenchard scowled at the squad.

  ‘What a pathetic bunch of useless arseholes!’ he shouted angrily. ‘I should have you all disciplined for disobeying a direct order from your ranking officer.’

  ‘But Sir!’ McGagh protested.

  Trenchard’s eyes fixed on McGagh like a steel vice. ‘Two watches on painting duty McGagh,’ Trenchard snapped, eyeballing McGagh and daring him to say another word. ‘We’ll see if twelve hours in an E.V.A. suit with a brush in your hand and sweat running down your arse crack will wipe that smug grin off your face. Anyone else for nines?’

  McGagh fumed but remained silent, as did the rest of the squad. Pugh may not warrant their respect but they were at least intelligent enough not to annoy the Captain any further. Many hung their heads and avoided meeting Trenchard’s steely glare straight on.

  ‘Well, I see that you’re all cowards as well as trouble makers. You’re a disgrace, the lot of you! Dismissed,’ Trenchard bawled in disgust. ‘I want you back here by oh six hundred tomorrow for extra training.’

  The squad began to file unhappily out of the training area.

  ‘Not you Pugh!’ snapped Trenchard as Pugh made a move to leave.

  The two men waited in uncomfortable silence as the rest of the squad disappeared. When they were quite alone, Trenchard rounded angrily on Pugh.

  ‘You have to get a bloody handle on this Pugh!’ he snapped.

  ‘Yes Sir,’ replied Pugh, unable to meet Trenchard’s eyes directly.

  ‘This has gone on long enough,’ continued Trenchard. ‘So, you fucked up when you followed Captain Bird on his fool’s mutiny, but he’s dead now and it’s time to move on. I understand that you’ve been having a hard time from the crew and frankly, you deserve every bit of it!’

  Pugh shuffled uncomfortably as he thought about the living hell that the crew had made his life in the three days since they had returned from the asteroid belt.

  ‘But the time has come to fight back,’ continued Trenchard. ‘If you’re ever going to command the troops effectively, you must first command their respect! If you can’t even do that, then I can’t trust you in combat.’ He paused and caught his breath before snapping, ‘We can’t afford to lose another good officer. Sort it out!’

  With that, Trenchard turned on his heel and swept out of the classroom leaving Pugh alone, miserable, and praying for a miracle.

  Just outside the classroom, Trenchard ran into Lieutenant Chertok who was waiting patiently for him with a placid smile upon his face.

  ‘I changed the simulation mid-way through as you requested Captain,’ Chertok said calmly. Then he raised an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘Altering the location of the enemy during battle was a little unfair wasn’t it Sir?’

  Trenchard scowled. ‘That bastard McGagh needed to be taught a lesson damn it!’ he growled. ‘He’s a trouble maker and he’s far too cocky already. Pugh’s had it rough recently but he’s no use to me if he can’t command a squad. If Pugh won’t step up, then I’ve got to step down hard on the biggest cockroach in the platoon and that’s McGagh. Otherwise, he could get good troopers killed one day. I’ll not have a repeat of what he did on Mars aboard my boat!’

  Trenchard paused and took a deep breath, trying to calm down. He scratched at the long scar on his neck and wished that he could smoke in the training area.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to Chertok. ‘Let’s get back up to the Might.’

  CHAPTER 14 “BAD NEWS TRAVELS FAST”

  Far out on the edge of the solar system, beyond Pluto and just inside the Oort cloud, sat the moon-sized lump of rock named “Cairn”. The surface of this barren and airless dwarf planet was crammed with shining pressure domes containing the military installations of the United Worlds Space Navy. In a high orbit of the naval base sailed a multitude of mighty leviathans, dark shapes that slid through space like colossal monsters in the deep sea. These mighty star-ships were simply vast tubes of engine. They were designed to suck in matter from space and blast it out from spherical engine cores to propel the craft faster than light between the furthest stars. Huge rugby ball shaped gravity pods rotated slowly like Ferris wheels around these mighty engine cores to provide gravity to the fragile human crews within.

  Holding orbit dotted between these vast monsters were much smaller craft; Hunter search-and-destroy class. These missile-shaped vessels resembled submarines, with fins arranged around the centre of the ship like the fletching of an arrow. They were still referred to by the sailors of the navy as “boats” rather than ships, and their proud lineage could be traced back hundreds of years to the submarines that they so closely resembled.

  One of the smaller craft was slightly different than its sisters. It looked newer and the weapons mounted on the hull of the vessel were more powerful as befitted the latest prototype in the fleet. This Wolverine class vessel, itself larger than a sea-going battle ship, sat in orbit revolving gently around its axis. It bore a long gash along its side, the scar of a recent run in with the pirate ship Onibaba. Painted on the hull, which was receiving a fresh coat from a grumbling, space-suited McGagh, was the proud name of the boat; the Might of Fortitude.

  Captain Josiah Trenchard was sitting in the wardroom aboard the Might of Fortitude waiting for a mat-stat briefing and sipping on bad tasting, ship issue coffee. His recent promotion, after the death of the previous Captain, still hadn’t quite sunk in. He stared with mixed feelings at the static holograph of the preceding Captain that still hung on the bulkhead opposite. Captain Bird had been a good friend to Trenchard, ever since the academy when Trenchard had first joined the navy. Sure, he was misguided and had tried to hand the Might over to the pirates, but
Bird had received his just reward for that; a bullet through the head and his body flushed into space with the rest of the jetsam. It had been Trenchard that had put his life on the line to keep the vessel out of the clutches of Captain Smiler and the pirate leader Harlequin.

  This then was his reward for saving the navy’s prototype hunter-killer; he was now Captain of the Might of Fortitude. He should feel greatly honoured but he had begun to wish that he hadn’t been given the responsibility by Admiral Fife. He was finding out that being a Captain carried its own unique set of problems.

  He stared down at the agenda for the “material state of the boat”, or mat-stat briefing, on the green hologram that floated above the table in front of him. At the top was a long list of officers. He didn’t know any of them well enough and yet somehow, he had to command their respect. Certainly, they all knew that he had saved the boat, but they also knew that his promotion had been a field promotion. He hadn’t completed the Perisher officer’s training course. He hadn’t even earned his dolphins badge like every other sailor on board. Trenchard absent-mindedly rubbed the twin dolphin badge that was pinned above his left breast pocket as he thought about this. He would always be a skimmer to the crew; he could see the mistrust in their eyes. No, mistrust was too strong a word. It was more like they were waiting for him to slip up so they could point and laugh and say “I told you so!” He sighed heavily as his eyes ran down the list and took another sip of the foul-tasting coffee.

  Warrant Officer Van Allen - Tactical

  Petty Officer Hall - Communications

  Chief Petty Officer Kittinger - Scanner Control

  He had met all three. They were good solid officers but he knew very little about them. That was something he must put right soon. It was one of the reasons that he had called this meeting.