by Blaze Ward
“Hold your line, Del,” Piet yelled back. “Mary-Elizabeth has this.”
This was Ajax.
Right out at the edge of range for her big guns, but closing hard on a tangent that would get the pirate vessel on top of them for one pass, like fencers on a carpet, before Storm Gauntlet could flip them the finger and disappear.
Del maintained an amazingly-fluid stream of profanities in at least six languages as he maneuvered the Assault Shuttle closer to home, without appearing to repeat himself once.
Truly, a forgotten art.
Storm Gauntlet lit up like a thunderstorm building over a desert as Ajax fired her cannons in quick order.
At least in space, everything was silent. In ancient times, the roar probably would have been comparable to two mounted knights trying to beat each other to death with sticks. Even Sykora got into the act, pouring the fire of her little twin-barrel landing turret into the beast’s nose, a teacup Chihuahua threatening a bull mastiff.
Storm Gauntlet disappeared in a puff of fiery smoke for a second, before the two ships emerged.
“Did Sokolov really just fire a torpedo?” Del asked in wonder.
He had known the parsimonious captain much longer than Javier had. And had the same opinion of the man’s willingness to spend money.
“Two,” Javier replied, shocked nearly out of his wits by the cost as he studied the other signal that had just appeared on a far corner.
And the sneakiness.
He wasn’t sure how that second one had gotten where it was, but it had come out of the sun like Persian arrows.
Javier was pretty sure Ajax was even more surprised. All incoming fire ceased as the pirate squirmed like a fish on the hook and concentrated on killing two incoming torpedoes before they got killed.
And then darkness. Or rather, light.
Flight deck lights.
Del had gotten them through the lock shield and was drifting in the air like an errant, gray balloon.
“Watch this, kid,” Del yelled.
Javier had no idea what was coming, but knew that it would be ugly, stupid, painful, and amazing.
He clenched his teeth and opened his lips. Whiplash and compression did more damage than impact.
The assault shuttle SLAMMED into the deck hard enough to ring like a bell. Javier lost all the air in his lungs.
“What the hell was that?” Javier yelled when he got his breath back.
“Landing gear has magnets to hold you down,” Del laughed. “You aren’t supposed to engage them three meters in the air. Still works, though.”
And it had. Sounded like Mjolnir, but it had worked.
And then Storm Gauntlet jumped.
Blink.
Gone.
Escaped.
…
Slavkov, I’m coming for you.
Part Seven
The damage report was ugly. Javier was surprised at how visceral it was to listen to the catalog of systems damaged, blown, or scorched in the few seconds that Ajax had gotten a solid lock on them.
Before those folks were suddenly fighting for their own lives against inbound torpedoes on two different flanks. Nobody was sure if either torpedo had gotten home against Ajax.
Didn’t matter. They had done their job.
Storm Gauntlet hadn’t stayed around long enough to ask. Ajax had been dark when they came out of jump, but nobody knew if that was cloak or destruction. Calypso had been too far away to get a good read, because they had been sitting way the hell out there watching. The prize crew had taken Sokolov’s example and run like hell.
Gotten here early, to a dim, yellow dwarf in the middle of nowhere with a number but no name, since they hadn’t jumped from inside a gravity well either, unlike Storm Gauntlet. No recovery and retuning time.
And wonder of wonders, Sokolov hadn’t even batted an eye at Javier’s suggestion that Dr. Mornan and his crew be set free and sent home in Calypso, minus only one shuttle that nobody was willing to go back and look for.
That was a measure of how furious, how chewing-nails-angry, the man had gotten.
So now it was just Storm Gauntlet and her crew alone in the darkness of a barely-cataloged star with no interesting planets.
Andreea Dalca, the Chief Engineer, finished speaking and looked down, folding almost in on herself like the solidly introverted woman she was. Javier’s eyes wandered around the conference room.
Gray walls probably in need of a paint job, if for no other reason than to keep crew members out of mischief. Moss green table top strewn with mugs containing various substances. Most of them even legal in most systems.
Captain Zakhar Sokolov at the head of the table. His Centurions gathered around him: Piet Alferdinck, Navigator; Mary-Elizabeth Suzuki, Gunner; Ragnar Piripi, Purser; Prasert Hayashi, Boatswain; Andreea Dalca, Chief Engineer; Djamila Sykora, Dragoon; Javier Aritza, Science Officer.
Council of War.
“I beg your pardon?” Zakhar turned and said to Javier.
Had he been speaking aloud?
He had.
“I said, it’s time for a Council of War,” Javier finally replied, drawing ugly looks from several others.
Not Sykora, he noted dryly.
“And why is that, Aritza?” Zakhar asked.
“It was a trap,” Javier observed in a heavy voice bordering on planet-crushing anger. “Charge me another quarter drachma, but I was right.”
The others stirred and muttered under their breath, but didn’t say anything.
Zakhar fixed him with that dread captain’s stare.
“I’m sure you’ve always had enemies, Sokolov,” Javier continued. “They’ve either gotten bolder, or more desperate.”
He paused to look at everyone at the table that would meet his eye. Andreea might catch him in the reflection from the tabletop, which would be good enough. She was like that.
“Part of that is my fault, I’ll grant you,” Javier said into the silence. “Navarre did some dangerous and desperate things, and Walvisbaai seems to have made common cause with the asshole who owns the Land Leviathan.”
Zakhar’s eyes bored into his.
“Why do you care, Javier?” he growled. “You’re very close to paying off your debt. You’ll be free to go. I made you that promise. I intend to keep it. This won’t be your problem shortly.”
Javier’s stomach turned sour, but the words needed to be said.
“It won’t ever stop being my problem, Zakhar,” Javier responded. “As long as any of them are alive. Something Del said earlier. Someone might recognize me somewhere, someday. Someone will track you and follow me. I will never escape. Unless I kill all of them.”
“All of them?” Sykora asked.
Javier couldn’t tell if her voice bordered on mocking, or aroused. It was a fine edge with her.
He fixed her with a death glare.
“All of them,” he agreed. “But I’ve been listening to the damage reports, and you have a problem.”
Zakhar didn’t say anything, but Javier could see it in his eyes.
“If we were a warship on active duty, I would expect us to need several months in drydock to repair the damage Ajax did to us,” Javier said.
Zakhar just nodded.
“And we can’t afford that,” Sykora said, for him. “We’re done.”
Sykora. Agreeing with Javier.
Had they fallen through Alice’s mirror, somewhere along the way?
Yes. At Shangdu.
Farouz.
Everyone else in the room disappeared as Javier focused his attention on Zakhar Sokolov, and Djamila Sykora, seated on the man’s right. As was normal.
“We are not necessarily done,” Javier retorted. “But there are not many options. Especially if you want to get those bastards as badly as I do. Hurt them. Destroy them.”
He took a breath. Cast the dice.
“I know a way.”
Sykora nodded.
She was in. Just like that.
Cra
zy and dangerous were her stock in trade.
Zakhar gave him a dose of stinkeye.
Everyone else remained silent, unwilling to fall into the chasm that surrounded the three of them.
“How?” the captain finally asked.
“The derelict is not in any of my records,” Javier said. “Partly because it is almost impossible to get to. Partly because of the legend. Partly because I’m greedy and wanted to salvage that derelict myself one of these days, after I was done with survey contracts. I’m pretty sure nobody but me could get us in there, or back again.”
He took another breath. Deep. Not cleansing, because it was not clean, mountain air around them.
More like the brimstone fumes one would find in hell.
That was okay. He had escaped all that once. Beat it. Become somebody else along the way. Someone who was happy.
It wasn’t anger drawing him back, pushing him to that spot where he would contemplate doing something like this.
No, this was wrath. Pure and simple.
His eyes locked, first with Sykora, then Sokolov.
She understood and nodded, those bright, green eyes inquisitive, but never doubtful. If the science officer thought he could do it, so could she.
That included storming the Gates of Hell.
The captain studied him more closely. A mad line of electricity connected them across the table.
The Bryce Connection.
The rest of Sokolov’s Centurions had been minor officers in minor navies. Only he and Zakhar represented the Concord. The good guys. The protectors of the galaxy after Neu Berne went down in muted flames to end The Great War, taking the Union of Worlds, Balustrade, and almost everyone else down with them.
Only the Concord survived.
Hegemon, largely by default.
Wrathful angels coming to take your souls.
“Derelict?” Zakhar asked in a hesitant voice.
As if his soul recognized the danger before his mind did.
“The final resting place of the Hammerfield,” Javier announced.
Sykora jolted, exactly as if Javier had reached across the table and backhanded her.
“You lie,” she snarled.
Javier could understand her pain, her anger.
Hammerfield had an Arthurian quality in Neu Berne culture. The last flagship of the Neu Berne navy had just disappeared, gone, away to Avalon at the end of the Great War, but it would return in that nation’s greatest need.
It hadn’t, for reasons known only to the Creator and whatever ghosts had been aboard her.
“You’re sure?” Zakhar asked.
Javier nodded.
“Before you,” he said with a cold, menacing edge only slightly pointed at this man. “When I could sit patiently at the edge of one of the messiest star systems I had ever seen. Spend weeks, plotting every moon, every asteroid, and every comet to be seen. See the quiet transponder code of the First Rate Galleon Hammerfield, Flag of the Neu Berne Fleet, before she disappeared from history forever, eighty-five years ago.”
“Just like that?” Zakhar said.
Sykora seemed to have gone catatonic. Impressive enough in and of itself.
“No,” Javier growled. “It will take a navigation feat for the ages to get close to her. Plus, she was an AI ship, so Creator only knows if the Sentience is still alive, let alone sane. If we do get close, the Sentience will probably think we’re the enemy. Union of Man, or maybe Balustrade. We’ll have to fool it long enough to lobotomize it. Then I’ll have to reprogram the AI. Maybe from scratch.”
“Is it worth it?” Zakhar asked in an empty voice.
For once, Javier could see all the way into the man’s soul. The pain. The strain of holding Storm Gauntlet together for more than a decade, in face of all comers. Of doing evil, of becoming evil, for what he had told himself were higher goals. See the cost of denying himself a happily-ever-after with Djamila Sykora, when she would have happily walked away with him.
The fear of losing it all. Everything.
For nothing.
“You have dealt honestly with me, Zakhar,” Javier said, committing his honor, his own soul, to the task. The Bryce Connection. “I want my freedom, not just from you, but from all of them. But I want my revenge, more. Storm Gauntlet’s done. You can join me as a partner, or walk away and be done with it. I’ll go kill them myself.”
Zakhar retreated inside himself for a brief time. Then his eyes started on the captain’s left and made their way around the table one by one, making eye contact, before coming to rest on the dragoon.
She nodded. Nothing more.
Tight. Sharp. A blank wall of a face.
It still spoke volumes.
Javier considered the future.
Futures.
All possible tomorrows?
Zakhar turned back to the science officer.
Javier could see tears at the back of those eyes, unspoken.
Zakhar Sokolov made a fist with his left hand, and rapped it down once on the table, a hollow bang as his Academy ring, Class of ’49, thunked heavily on the hard surface.
The universal greeting among men of the Concord Fleet, anywhere in the galaxy.
“Let’s go get those bastards.”
Read More!
Be sure to pick up the other books in The Science Officer series!
The Science Officer
The Mind Field
The Gilded Cage
The Pleasure Dome
You can also get volumes 1-4 collected together in
The Science Officer Omnibus 1
About the Author
Blaze Ward writes science fiction in the Alexandria Station universe: The Jessica Keller Chronicles, The Science Officer series, The Doyle Iwakuma Stories, and others. He also writes about The Collective as well as The Fairchild Stories and Modern Gods superhero myths. You can find out more at his website www.blazeward.com, as well as Facebook, Goodreads, and other places.
Blaze’s works are available as ebooks, paper, and audio, and can be found at a variety of online vendors (Kobo, Amazon, iBooks, and others). His newsletter comes out quarterly, and you can also follow his blog on his website. He really enjoys interacting with fans, and looks forward to any and all questions-even ones about his books!
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Also by Blaze Ward
The Jessica Keller Chronicles:
Auberon
Queen of the Pirates
Last of the Immortals
Goddess of War
Flight of the Blackbird
Additional Alexandria Station Stories
The Story Road
Siren
The Science Officer Series:
The Science Officer
The Mind Field
The Gilded Cage
The Pleasure Dome
The Doomsday Vault
Doyle Iwakuma Stories
The Librarian
Demigod
Greater Than The Gods Intended
Other Science Fiction Stories
Myrmirdons
Moonshot
Menelaus
Earthquake Gun
Moscow Gold
Fairchild
White Crane
The Collective Universe
The Shipwrecked Mermaid
Imposters
About Knotted Road Press
Knotted Road Press fiction specializes in dynamic writing set in mysterious, exotic locations.
Knotted Road Press non-fiction publishes autobiographies, business books, cookbooks, and how-to books with unique voices.
Knotted Road Press creates DRM-free ebooks as well as high-quality print books for readers around the world.
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nbsp; With authors in a variety of genres including literary, poetry, mystery, fantasy, and science fiction, Knotted Road Press has something for everyone.
Knotted Road Press
www.KnottedRoadPress.com
The Doomsday Vault
Volume 5
Blaze Ward
Copyright © 2017 Blaze Ward
All rights reserved
Published by Knotted Road Press
www.KnottedRoadPress.com
ISBN: 978-1-943663-46-0
Cover art:
Copyright © Philcold | Dreamstime.com - Alien Space Base Photo
Cover and interior design copyright © 2017 Knotted Road Press
Never miss a release!
If you’d like to be notified of new releases, sign up for my newsletter.
I only send out newsletters once a quarter, will never spam you, or use your email for nefarious purposes. You can also unsubscribe at any time.
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This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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