Decisively Engaged (Warp Marine Corps Book 1)

by Carella, C. J.

  Decisively Engaged

  Warp Marine Corps, Book One

  By C.J. Carella

  Published by Fey Dreams Productions, LLC

  Copyright @ 2015 Fey Dreams Productions, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced, displayed, modified or distributed without the express prior written permission of the copyright holder. For permission, contact cjcarella@cjcarella.com

  Cover by: SelfPubBookCovers.com/Fantasyart

  This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to the beta readers whose critiques improved this book: Wesley Harris, Duane Oldsen, Scott Palter, Kevin Rose, Joshua D. Shaw, and George Tur. If any mistakes remain, they are on me; if there are few or none, it is thanks to them.

  Books by C.J. Carella

  Warp Marine Corps

  Decisively Engaged

  No Cost Too High (Forthcoming)

  New Olympus Saga:

  Armageddon Girl

  Doomsday Duet

  Apocalypse Dance

  The Ragnarok Alternative

  The Many-Worlds Odyssey (Forthcoming)

  New Olympus Tales:

  The Armageddon Girl Companion

  Face-Off: Revenge (Forthcoming)

  Beyonder Wars:

  Bad Vibes (Short Story)

  Shadowfall: Las Vegas

  Dante’s Demons

  “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

  - George Orwell

  “There is a special Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.”

  - Otto Von Bismarck

  “In this corner of the universe, we are the Klingons.”

  - War Amongst the Stars: A Brief History of Post-Contact America, by Admiral Hubert De Grasso (ret.),

  Prologue: First Contact

  The Hrauwah cruiser Wisdom of War emerged from warp space somewhere between the single star in the system and its nearest planet, spewing atmosphere from several breaches in its hull.

  “Go into full stealth mode,” King-Captain Grace-Under-Pressure said as soon as she recovered from warp transit, her demeanor befitting her Chosen Name. Her vessel was damaged, and their warp jump had taken them to an uncharted world on the tail-end of the galaxy, but panicking would achieve nothing but the loss of dignity before one’s inevitable demise.

  “As you wish,” her Lord Engineer said. Their wireless neural interfaces made words superfluous, but verbal commands were traditional, and tradition was one of the building blocks of the Hrauwah Naval Service.

  All non-essential systems on the cruiser – everything but basic life support and its force fields – shut down, reducing its energy signature to the point that its pursuers would have to come within a light-minute to detect the vessels’ presence. Doing so was risky, but at the moment the Wisdom of War was unable to fight or flee; hiding was the only viable option left.

  For two long hours, the Wisdom drifted in space as its damage control teams worked desperately to restore its damaged systems. King-Captain Grace used that time to curl up in her command chair and take a nap, her tail wrapped tightly around one of its gripping bars, following instincts carried down from her species’ arboreal ancestors. One slept when one could in times of war. She woke up when her neural implant hissed in her ear, alerting her that she was needed.

  “Warp emergence detected,” Lady of Tactics Courage-and-Discretion announced coldly. “Approximately five light-minutes away.”

  Passive sensors were low-ranged, but it was all they dared use at the moment. Even running silently and with force fields diffusing the ship’s heat signature into something barely above the ambient temperature of outer space, the Wisdom was dangerously close to the enemy’s emergence point. Captain Grace waited patiently while Lady Courage analyzed the data.

  “Target identified as a Risshah Three-Claw-class battlecruiser. Same energy signatures as the vessel that engaged us at Star System Ninety-six.”

  A chorus of growls greeted the news; everyone in the bridge bristled in anger and apprehension. The Risshah were hated throughout the galaxy, and their unprovoked attack on the Wisdom only confirmed what everyone knew: the Snakes were murderous, treacherous savages.

  “Silence in the bridge,” King-Captain Grace said. “We knew we were up against the bloody Snakes, didn’t we? All we can do now is try to be ready for them. Unlike the last time,” she added soberly.

  A Three-Claw battlecruiser had a good ten percent more firepower and fifteen percent stronger shields than her vessel. The Snake warship had ambushed the Wisdom by hiding behind an asteroid and using a decoy beacon to lure the Hruawah cruiser into range. Only sheer providence had saved it from total destruction. Sheer providence and the skill of its crew, who had managed to launch its own salvo of missiles and beams before fleeing into warp-space. The ensuing stern chase had been long, with only a faint hope they might be able to evade their enemy. The Wisdom had sped through warp space until reaching a suitable emergence point. All Grace could hope for was that the enemy wouldn’t find them until her crew could restore the Wisdom’s damaged systems and offer battle on slightly better terms.

  Minutes passed, grew into hours. The King-Captain used the time to examine the data on the system they’d found themselves in after performing that most dangerous maneuver: an unplanned warp-jump, following a random gradient in space-time leading to the nearest major gravity well. The chances that such a jump would leave them stranded in the strange sub-universe between warp points were somewhere in the twenty percent range. Only the fact that certain death at the hands of the Snakes had been the only alternative made the maneuver advisable.

  So where in the Seventeen Heavens and Hells had they arrived? Grace-Under-Pressure accessed the data her exhausted Lord Astrogator had hastily assembled. A Class Seven star with eight major planetary bodies. Including one inhabited world, the star’s third closest planet. One blue world, rich in water, inhabited by a technologically-proficient species; it radiated enough energy in the electromagnetic spectrum to stand out like a bonfire in the night. Her blood ran cold. The Snakes chasing her ship would assume that they had followed the Wisdom to a hostile system. And the Snakes dealt with potential hostiles in only one way.

  “Lord Engineer,” she said, her icy tone of voice hiding her terror and despair. “What is our status?”

  “We are back to seventy percent in all essential systems. Two missile tubes remain non-operational, but the rest are ready. Lasers, plasma and graviton cannon are all online, although I fear some of them are good only for one or two volleys before…”

  The King-Captain cut him off. “Thank you, Lord Engineer.” She switched to the general channel. “Battle stations. We will engage the enemy shortly.”

  “Your Majesty, the Risshah have performed a warp jump!” It took a few minutes to detect the Snake’s emergence. “Target reacquired! They are…”

  “In orbit around the third planet from the sun,” Grace finished for her Lady of Tactics. “And are preparing to depopulate it.”

  Lady Courage nodded, wide-eyd and panting from stress.

  The news was over four minutes old. The enemy vessel would take five to ten minutes to start its attack run after emerging from warp-space, depending on how efficient its crew was, how well it would recover from the warp-transit process, and how much damage the Wisdom had inflicted on it before fleeing. The only chance the helpless primitives on that planet had to survive would re
quire Grace-Under-Pressure to risk her ship and all aboard her.

  Her Royal Court, the officer-noblemen charged with managing each aspect of her vessel, received her orders in silence. There were doubtful glances cast back and forth, but no one questioned her, and she allowed herself a moment to savor her pride in them as they rushed to do battle with a superior enemy under highly adverse circumstances.

  “Prepare for warp jump,” she said as her implants delivered the coordinates to her crew. “We will emerge at long range, launch an automated missile volley, and conduct a direct approach after warp recovery.” Her terse orders were put into effect, years of training paying off. All the details were worked out in under a minute.

  “Warp engines ready. Coordinates set.”

  “Engage.”

  Transition.

  The Wisdom of War ceased to exist in normal space. Grace’s perceptions shifted, surrounded her with hallucinations and manifested memories, fears, emotions, some of them her own, others belonging to her crew, and yet others having no relation to any reality she knew. She forced herself to ignore the distorted sense of time that made the transition process seem to last several minutes, all the while surrounded by howling, crying ghosts. Her dead parents were there – father, bearer and mother, all three of them cursing her for dishonoring her family and the Supreme Arbiter. Shame and fear became physical sensations, sending shivers down her spine.

  Closing her eyes didn’t help; warp perceptions had nothing to do with physical senses. The meditation techniques that all Starfarers practiced did help, a little. Only one percent of her species could enter warp-space while awake and aware. Another five percent could do so only while unconscious or in suspended animation. The remaining ninety-four percent could not endure warp transit; exposure resulted in death or incurable insanity. Even among the warp-rated, multiple jumps had a tiny but gradually-increasing chance of inflicting serious side effects. Every transition could be one’s last.

  Emergence.

  They were back in the universe where they’d been born, the place where light had a fixed speed and space-time’s curvature could be deduced and manipulated according to knowable laws, a universe that made sense. Recovering from transition took some time, however, as her mind struggled to set aside the fading but still vivid alien stimuli and grasp reality yet again.

  During that time, only the automated systems on the Wisdom were able to act. They dumbly followed their programming and fired eighty-three missiles.

  Grace’s ship had emerged one light-second away from the Snakes. Her missiles would cover that distance in two minutes – plenty of time for the enemy battlecruiser’s sensors to burn through their stealth systems and its point weaponry to destroy them all. The volley was a distraction, meant to buy time while her crew recovered from the warp jump and rushed into optimal firing range, under half a light second, close enough for missiles and beam weapons to overcome their target’s force fields and point defenses.

  They were too late, however. The Snakes had already launched on the unsuspecting planet below.

  The Risshahh’s genocide tactics were simple. A swarm of hundreds of missiles zeroed in on concentrations of electric light, radio waves, and graviton emissions. Down below, on the planet’s night side, circles of red light started to blossom, each marking the funeral pyres of millions of sophonts. Grace recovered in time to watch half a world die. After the first swarm of missiles was exhausted, more volleys would follow, destroying every city, then every town, and finally every village, hamlet, and air, land or sea vehicle they could find, murdering everyone except for a handful of survivors in the most remote areas of the world, where they would be hunted down at leisure.

  “The Snakes are turning to face us!”

  “Maintain course.”

  “They are engaging our missile salvo, but… Their point defense systems are degraded. Attrition rates are too low. They won’t stop them all!”

  All eighty-three missiles should have been detected and destroyed in a minute or less. The enemy battlecruiser had indeed been damaged by the Wisdom’s parting shots, however, and the Snakes hadn’t had enough time to effect repairs. Their sensors were having trouble locking onto the incoming missiles; their effectiveness increased as the ship-destroyers got closer, but not enough.

  Seventy-six missiles were destroyed. Seven reached their target. They detonated against the battlecruiser’s force fields, their graviton and plasma warheads battering the invisible barriers protecting the ship. One got through a breach in the shields and struck the battlecruiser’s armored hull.

  “Hit!” The visual and data display showed the effect; the Snake battlecruiser lurched in space, knocked off course, ejecting burning atmosphere at the point of impact. The damage was enough to turn a hopeless fight into one that the Wisdom could win.

  “Fire as you bear,” the King-Captain ordered, unnecessarily yet again, but the proper forms must be followed. She wanted to throw her head back and howl in triumph, as her ancestors had done in the emerald forests of her planet’s prehistory, but she retained her composure.

  Her first volley smashed through the enemy’s remaining shields. Gravity-beams, plasma bolts and multi-spectrum lasers cut through the hull and its internal force fields, turning vital components and hissing Risshah crewmen into undistinguishable vaporized matter. The enemy struck back, but their return fire was diffuse and badly coordinated; the Wisdom’s force fields held under the onslaught as it continued its attack on the crippled, dying Snake ship. Inevitably, a beam or missile struck the containment field around the battlecruiser’s gluon power plant, releasing massive amounts of energy. The enemy vessel vanished in a flash of light that half the planet below saw as a new sun glowing in the sky, blindingly bright.

  Any joy Grace might have felt over her victory was short-lived. Over two-thirds of the planet’s cities had been consumed, mostly on one hemisphere, although no land mass had been spared. A world’s civilization had been crippled, possibly beyond repair.

  The Hrauwah did not cry. They expressed sorrow by whimpering and howling, and the pain Grace felt watching the destruction wreaked by the Snakes could no longer be contained. She was far from the only one doing so: the crew’s combined keening filled the bridge.

  Her ship-domain – her entire species – owed the people of that planet a blood debt, and they would help in any way they could. The survivors of the unprovoked onslaught would have to make their own choices, however, and learn to survive in the new reality that had come crashing upon them.

  “Welcome to Starfarer society, you poor sophonts,” Grace said.

  Down below, thousands of cities continued to burn.

  Excerpts from First Contact: A Multimedia Archive:

  “This is the President of the United States. We surrender unconditionally. We only request that you extinguish the arson weapons you have deployed against our cities. In the name of decency and compassion, I beseech you to spare the innocent lives of millions of people who never meant you any harm. Whatever our sins may be, we will repent and make amends. We… We beg for your mercy.”

  “This is Trish Valenzuela, reporting from the Empire State Building. The entire city and its suburbs are surrounded by a ring of fire. The flames appear to be growing in height and intensity, and rolling steadily inwards, consuming everything in their path. They…”

  (She winces at an explosion in the sky)

  “That was news chopper, I think. It hit some sort of invisible barrier, near where the fires started. It’s… (long pause). “I’m getting reports of at least a dozen major urban centers similarly affected. Thousands are already dead, and if the fires are not contained, millions will follow, including this reporter. May… May God have mercy on our souls. Back to you at the studio, Morty.”

  Robert Freemantle @RobAtHome67

  The fires are getting closer. Most of the Valley already engulfed. Smoke is getting bad. I think we’re all goners. #LABurning

  101 replies 83 retweets 3 likes<
br />
  “Mom, dad… If you’re still in town, get out into the country as soon as you can. If you can. It’s all happening in cities, they’re targeting the cities. I’m… Listen, I love you both very much. I… I have to go now.”

  - voice mail from First Contact, courtesy of the Benson family.

  “They were able to use their phones until the end. Dad was on a business trip in Chicago. He called us from his hotel, and we talked until his room caught fire. We heard him scream before the line went dead.”

  - Testimonial by Theresa Delacourt.

  Last upload from YouTube star Gina Pebbles: The video shows the skyline outside her apartment in Atlanta. It is wreathed in flames, reaching hundreds of feet in height. Police sirens can be heard in the distance. “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragon is playing in the background, the music mixing with the sounds of disaster outside. Down below, several figures run from the conflagration; some of them are already on fire.

  Gina turns her smartphone camera on herself. She is crying.

  “This is it, people. I’m gonna upload this before it’s too late, ‘kay? Love y’all, and if there’s an America after this is over, don’t forget us, ‘kay? Find the fuckers who did this and make them pay.”

  Janice Quinn @hnybny112

  PPL R BURNING TO DEATH. SOMEONE DO SOMETHING HELP US

  72 replies 329 retweets 0 likes

  “This is Johnathan Britten, KDFW, outside Dallas-Fort Worth. The dome around the metropolitan area is completely filled by rising flames; everybody inside must be dead. The last reports we received from the other side of the dome came from a group calling from a bomb shelter, who claimed temperatures were reaching lethal levels before going off the air. I’m told the structure, the energy field apparently, is containing most of the heat inside it, somehow preventing it from spreading beyond its confines, which is the only reason my crew can film it from under a mile away. It’s still very hot in here. One might say hellishly hot.