Contents
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Part One - Rumblings
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Two - Arrivals
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part Three - Citizens
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part Four - Resolve
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Part Five - Sacrifice
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Part Six - Fulcrum
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
What Price Victory
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About the Author
RESOLVE OF STEEL
Book Two of the Halloran’s War Series
By J.R. Geoghan
RESOLVE OF STEEL is a work of fiction.
All names, characters, organizations and situations depicted in this novel are fictitious within the context of larger historical events or drawn from the author’s imagination. Sometimes both. Any resemblance to actual events, names, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright ©2019 J.R. Geoghan and Adventus Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. If you would like permission to use material from this book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Adventus Press supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
First U.S. edition, April 2019
Dedication
To everyone who reads my stories, and especially those who enjoy helping me make them better.
www.JRGeoghan.com
"I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way."
- John Paul Jones
Part One - Rumblings
Chapter 1
Planet Tavar - Struve System
11.53 LY from Earth
The howling wind competed with the ice particles whipping at his face mask for attention. With one hand lifted to shield his eyes from the white blast, he tried valiantly to concentrate on the valley before him. With his other hand he grasped a set of enhanced binocs.
After a few moments of naked eye, he placed the binocs against his mask and waited for the software to pair up between the two devices. When that desired result failed to materialize, he began to wonder if the intense cold had finally overpowered the batteries within them. He was about to lower the binocs to holster them when the sync beeped in his earpiece.
Grumbling, he leaned out over the retaining wall and ran his scan of the ravine and opposite sheer wall of ice. For the thousandth time. And, for the thousandth time, the scans all registered nothing. No life, no heat, no growth. Just galeforce winds rising up from the valley with enough force to lift a man bodily and throw him half a kilometer before releasing him to fall to his death. Mladin had been there when it’d happened. Holdar had been a buddy from Initial.
Mladin stepped back, scanning the swirling sky above. The thick cloud cover blanketed the frozen planet as always, its moisture and the ultra-low surface temperature causing a vicious ecosystem of frigid extremes. No one using such visible-spectrum equipment could hope to penetrate that blue-white maelstrom. He turned away from the observation post as he holstered the binocs, making a mental note to have the batteries checked before his next shift.
The entrance to the side of the mountain had auto-locked behind him, its triple-barred innards hardened against any and all incursions from without. This was always the part that Mladin hated; the specter of his access code failing or some sort of mechanical/computer glitch causing the unlock sequence to not initialize. He knew that, even fortified as he was against the weather in a military exposure suit, the cold would get him before anyone could reach his remote location.
As part of the planetary garrison, his unit was assigned to patrol duty throughout the incredibly large maze of tunnels and access points that made up the colony of Tavar. That meant that most of his comrades were out of touch with one another and their superiors very often. Even the most sophisticated comm systems found the unique rock formations surrounding the underground facilities virtually impossible to penetrate, forcing the guard substations to rely on old-school fiberline tech physically run through the hundreds of kilometers of conduit installed over a century ago.
Mladin placed his gloved hand on the locking panel, shifting his weapon higher on his shoulder; the mil-spec straps were too thin to get a good purchase on the exposure suit uppers, causing the rifle to slip from time to time. One more annoyance, Mladin thought as he keyed the code into the mechanism and held his breath.
The nearest substation—his—was almost ten kilometers away. And not an easy 10K, either. Several narrow passageways that required careful threading when fully laden with full pack. This spot was one of the lowest in the colony, and one of the least visited by anyone, whether garrison or civilian.
Mladin had rotated down only the week prior, grumbling and cursing at the wisdom of his Commander. He’d been scheduled for rotation to the spaceport above, located in synchronous orbit directly over the ground facilities. More bars, more possibilities of the female nature, more warmth…but instead he and several other career soldiers had been reassigned to the bowels of the colony to investigate anomalies in the readings.
For almost a year, techs had been chasing gremlins in the colony science systems, or so Mladin had been told at the briefing. Unexplained drops in power output from the life support reactors. Fluctuations in telemetry from the mining operations, deeper still within the core of the planet. At last, the smart people had isolated the anomalies to this sector of the colony. But—and this was a big but for Mladin—the absolute remoteness of this sector convinced the smart people to only send an extra squad to bolster the three-man substation. Fifteen warm bodies to patrol these catacombs and keep an eye out for the odd broken piece of something that would signal the source of the anomaly.
The hatch was taking a while to open, Mladin’s mind screamed silently in his ear. He rekeyed the code and allowed the scanner to register his biochip a second time; the security systems on this godforsaken planet were almost as old as the colony itself. Ancient, but tough and hard to crack.
Just like the colonists, Mladin thought as he forced his mind to relax and let the unlock mechanism do its work.
He was reaching for his comm unit, which he knew could reach all the way to the orbital station if needed, when the rock face shifted to the side a few centimeters before curling inward. The resulting opening was just a fraction taller than his two meters, and barely wide enough to fit his gear-lade
n form. But with the strength of a man who’d nearly been condemned to die in the merciless cold, Mladin shoved on the rock and forced his way into the warmth of the passageway within.
Silly, he told himself as he smacked the locking pad on the inner surface of the hatch and stepped further into the interior to allow the door to complete its closing cycle. Mladin knew intellectually that he was never in any real danger; he was nearly positive that a shuttle would be dispatched at his comm call should he have truly been stranded outside. Nearly. The fuel required to fly halfway around the world, just to pick up one underpaid grunt who’d lost his way... After ten years, he had better rate a full charging of ion fuel. Still, the re-entry always spooked him.
With a sigh, he lowered his face mask around his neck and extracted a wipe from his pocket, rubbing around his face vigorously. The exposure suit included a full mask for vacuum operations, but nobody used those on the surface teams, opting instead for the partial-cover mask that held a small supply of air—maybe half and hour’s worth. The low O2 count in the planetary atmosphere necessitated an augmented supply, but no one liked the bulkiness of the full cover. The price they paid after two minutes outside was numbed skin; after ten it was time for medical treatment to avoid skin loss.
Done resuscitating his epidermis, Mladin replaced the wipe and unslung his weapon to give it a quick check and clear it of any frost that might have built up outside. The cold particles stuck to any metal surface and clung on for dear life. Almost impossible to remove without a significant temp rise. But his rifle looked nominal. He glanced at the charge indicator on the side; full capacity...fifty bursts of clean, cutting plasma on tap. Not that I get to fire it much outside of a range.
He re-slung the rifle and looked up and down the passageway. All quiet.
After a moment, Mladin realized what it was that bugged him. It was too quiet. The quiet rumbling of life support that pervaded the mountain range was hushed...perhaps altogether missing.
He stopped in mid-stride and held himself as silently as he could. Nope, nothing.
“Huh.”
Mladin half-lifted his all-but-useless comm unit, glancing at the signal strength meter on its top. An empty readout returned his gaze.
“Figures.”
He turned around to head back up the tunnel toward his substation, wanting to report the issue as soon as possible. Not that he was in any immediate danger; the air pressure in the tunnels gave anyone needing breathability many hours of cushion.
Clunk.
Mladin paused in mid-stride yet again, listening intently.
After a minute of nothing, the odd sound repeated itself.
Now, Mladin’s senses were extended, his training kicking in. He crouched low, deftly removing the rifle and holding it at the low ready. He edged forward, downward, toward where he’d heard the sound from. Fifteen meters away was a slight bend in the passage, and it was toward this juncture that he now padded, his boots making little sound against the stone floor.
Although he knew that the atmosphere was still quite viable, his mind began ticking off a list of the ways a man could die in these catacombs; dropped down a previously unknown or recently opened chasm, stranded by an impenetrable rockfall, exposed to an open vein of the volatile mineral that made this planet so prized—precious yet immensely dangerous to human life in its raw form.
But when he peeked around the corner, none of those horrid eventualities presented themselves. Instead, he saw what looked like a man-made hatch standing open in the wall of the rock below him, perhaps thirty meters away. Impossible, he told himself. The garrison was well-versed in the old mining layouts that formed the infrastructure of the colony. Down, here, there were no chambers. No nothing…just empty and unused access points created multiple decades ago to provide options to the colonists should they choose to try new avenues for exploration. But there it was.
Then, before Mladin’s eyes, it swung shut with a clunk.
Now he was angry. With rifle in position, Mladin moved forward to where the door should be. It was set very tightly in the rock face, that much he realized immediately. The gap was almost invisible to the unknowing eye; indeed, had he not just seen the door open moments ago, he would not have picked up on its presence. “Nice,” he murmured to himself as he felt around its perimeter. The thought of retreating into comm range of his substation crossed his mind, but Mladin was a man on a mission now. His fingers ducked in and out of crevices, searching grooves left by the century-old laser excavators.
There it was. The small, ever-so-slightly discolored patch of stone, that gave under the pressure of three fingers. He stepped back, gun barrel trained, as the hatch made its quiet noise and swung open.
Nothing.
The space behind the entrance was dark and narrow. He nosed in, looking around it. Tall, too.
Finally, and not a moment too soon, discretion took over for valor and Mladin decided that it was time to get back to where the reinforcements were. It would be a long ten kilometers uphill, but he wanted gone—now.
With his rifle still angled toward the silent, clever opening, he began backing away. At the corner he paused, never taking his eyes from the threat vector. With a final glance he turned to sprint up the passageway, back to the outer entrance.
But a huge form blocked his way, and he stumbled in confusion.
It loomed over him, filling the passage and blocking the light emanating from the nearest wall fixture located near the outer door. He ducked instinctively, seeing more motion in the passageway behind the thing immediately before him. In fact, the passage was teeming with silent, moving apparitions. And he saw, just as the thing reached down and plucked away his rifle as though taking sweets from a naughty child, that the outer door stood open.
And then the cold and dark washed over him like an electric shock and he was slammed with brutality against the nearest wall. Sometime later—probably only moments—he felt the hardness of the rock floor beneath his exposed cheek. The pain overwhelmed his senses, crushing him beneath its weight. He guessed that his skull had been crushed by the force of the impact.
Before his eyes closed forever Mladin had a moment left to curse this frozen planet one more time…
Chapter 2
Aboard USS Serapis, formerly Prax Warship Trellixan
Luyten System - 8.73 LY from Earth
“It just won’t work.”
“Try it again.” Chief John Parker was leaning hard on a valve set into a large elbow, putting all his weight on the handle. Though Parker was normally a substantial individual, his weight—as was true of most of the crew—was down from the lack of hearty Navy food. Parker’s energy was low as well. “I’ve got my whole weight on this thing now.”
Machinist’s Mate Al Nunez’s voice filtered back from the tight access tube he was currently crawled into. “Not seeing any flow back here, Chief.”
“Now?”
A moment passed. “Wait, I see that this meter is registering something.”
Parker exhaled slowly, feeling the edge of the valve lever pressing into his ribs. “Giving it all I got, Nunez.”
“Hold that…right there, Chief!”
Parker glanced up in annoyance, his tired muscles aching with the exertion. All he could see of the other man was the soles of his boots protruding out of the tube over his head.
“Okay. Okay. Will it stay like that?” came the muffled question.
Parker gingerly let the pressure off. The valve appeared to stay in the same position. “I think it is.” He took his calloused hands off the valve lever gingerly, exhaling in relief.
“Hang on a moment.”
More than a moment later—maybe thirty seconds, actually—Nunez had extricated himself from the tube and dropped nimbly down to land on the decking beside the Chief. He tapped the valve. “Seems to be holding. Not full flow, but call it eighty-five percent.”
“Better’n nothing.” Parker gathered up the tools he’d dropped during their repair session a
t this end of the B deck mechanicals compartment. “We’ll have to check the showers again.”
Nunez took some of the tools and set them in a bag he’d found in a crew cabin. It was a prized possession now for the life support specialist; everyone was making do with ad hoc tools and equipment, attempting to regain a semblance of military order and discipline in their tasks. The bag was a simple but strong mesh, not unlike something he would have picked up at the local big-box home improvement store, designed for handymen.
But there was no supply depot. Or big-box store. No handymen. In fact, no planet to have big-box stores on. For Nunez and the other three-odd dozen humans aboard this alien spaceship, virtually everything was foreign…as in totally alien. Gauges read backward, upside down and using characters that constantly needed deciphering. Every hatch, access tube and lever was labeled neatly in lettering that was incomprehensible to humans.
Nunez prized his bag.
Parker handed him one last tool, something that acted like a screwdriver but vibrated when you held it a certain way. Unnerving. “Your bag is cool.”
“You can’t have it. Chief.”
The Chief shook his head as he turned to examine the valve one more time. “I don’t want your bag, Nunez. I want a hot shower for a change.”
“I’m going up to A deck now to find Bert James—he said he needed some help figuring out a set of relays that he was afraid to test without a second opinion. Want me to stop by the bridge and tell the Old Man that we may have fixed the hot water flow issue?”
Parker tapped the valve, nodding meaningfully. “You realize that we’re recycling water for the showers? That's—.”
“—Washing up using our own bodily fluids. Yep, figured that out early on, Chief.”
“Yeah, now we’ve got to find out where the component is that actually purifies the stuff. Hate to have that go on the fritz and not know it.” Parker grinned. “You stop and tell the Captain, that’s fine. Thanks for crawlin’ up there—no way I’d fit in.”
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