Salvage Fleet

by Kevin Steverson

  Salvage Fleet

  Book Two of The Salvage Title Trilogy

  By

  Kevin Steverson

  PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books

  Copyright © 2018 Kevin Steverson

  All Rights Reserved

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  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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  Cover Design by Dawn Grimes

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  Acknowledgements

  First, I would like to thank the good Lord above for everything...literally, everything.

  I want to thank my wife, Stacey, for encouraging me to continue writing this trilogy. There were many nights I didn’t even go to bed. She made sure that I took a nap on those days.

  A grateful thank you goes out to my publisher Chris Kennedy. He took a chance on me and I'll never forget it.

  Thanks to the guys in Cypress Spring for their friendship and support. Chasing dreams is no easy task, something they know full well.

  I want to thank the guys that read my writing first, Mike and Dustin. Some things they read for me will never see the light of day. Thanks guys, more is coming

  Finally, like the first book, I would like to dedicate this book to my mother and father. She was an avid science fiction fan, and I'm sure she read it over my shoulder as I typed. I followed my father's footsteps into the Army; I know he would have liked the military aspects of the story.

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  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Book One of In Revolution Born:

  Excerpt from Book One of the Earth Song Cycle:

  Excerpt from Book One of The Psyche of War:

  * * * * *

  Chapter One

  As always, there was a moment’s disorientation as they cleared the gate. The entire ship was on alert and at battle stations. Connected to the battlecruiser Salvage Title by magnetic struts, both Hauler and TDF United were in the same status, though only Hauler had a weapons console.

  Captain Harmon Tomeral had ordered all nonessential beings to their quarters, and Salvage Title’s crew covered their normal positions. The coordinates that had been programmed into the navigation system for entry into the Bith Gate hadn’t been used for well over twenty-two hundred years; there was no telling what they might run into upon emergence into the Grithelaon system. Harmon couldn’t risk having a being who was still in training covering a position if they emerged into a hostile situation.

  Once again, luck had been with them, and they had emerged in the right system. If the gate here hadn’t been working, they would have ended up in the nearest system with an operational gate.

  They had come to claim more ships and find a navigational computer to transfer Jayneen onto. Jayneen—the only known artificial intelligence in existence—was their friend and crewmate; in the last battle, Clip had downloaded her onto a hard drive he had built to store his music when her original computer had been destroyed.

  The crew of Salvage Title didn’t know if Clip had been able to get all of her core programming—what made her Jayneen—onto it. Her existence depended on them being able to find a computer like the one she had been programmed to reside in over twenty-two hundred years ago. We need her now more than ever, Harmon thought. They had to add to the few ships left guarding their system, and she was the only way to get it done quickly.

  “Talk to me, Adam,” Harmon said, as he looked at the main screen. It showed him what the tactical officer could see, but he wanted to verify it.

  “Sensors do not indicate energy readings in the near vicinity. There are minor readings coming from the third planet from the star,” Lieutenant Adamtilabon answered. “The readings are consistent with major power plants in a dormant mode.”

  “How many do you see?” Harmon asked. “I count four.”

  “I concur, sir,” the tactical officer agreed. Adamtilabon’s goggles were pushed back on top of his head. Like all the other Leethog crewmembers on board, he had them handy due to his sensitivity to light, something not uncommon throughout the galaxy with marsupial humanoids.

  “Salvage Title, United. Hey man, you there?” Clip asked over the comms on Harmon’s chair.

  Commander Clip Kolget had opted to travel in the vacation liner for the twelve-day transit from the gate in the Tretrayon system to the gate in the system Jayneen had been created in. The liner had better quarters and swimming pools, something neither Harmon nor Clip had grown up with. They had both been born and raised on the planet Joth, a desert planet in the Tretrayon system.

  Harmon had spent four years on their system’s sister planet, Tretra, including time at the beaches there, as well as in the swimming pools on campus at the Tretrayon Academy, so he wasn’t quite as thrilled with the idea of swimming. He didn’t begrudge his friend the experience, though. He had also assigned Clip there to clear the coordinates for this system from any navigational systems. The crew operating United didn’t need to know the location; only those in Tomeral and Associates had the need to know until all claims were made.

  “I’m here. We’re looking at the sensor sweep now,” Harmon answered.

  “I know. I’m looking at what you’re seeing. Those power sources look like what we talked about, though one of them seems stronger than the others. Once we find a computer and get Jayneen transferred into it, we can check out both spaceports, then maybe go see what the deal is with that, man,” Clip said.

  “Both? Spaceports? Where?” Harmon asked as he looked at the screen. He couldn’t see any spaceports through the clear-steel ports on his bridge.

  “I went to visual and magnified the images,” Clip said. “This liner has a huge screen and great cameras. I guess it’s for displaying pictures in the main hall for tourists to see stuff like black holes and whatever else tourists go into systems to see. Solar flares…who knows? I’ll transfer them over; give me a sec.”

  Clip transferred what he was looking at to the main screen in the bridge of Salvage Title. Harmon shook his head; it seemed as if Clip could hack into anythi
ng he wanted. He was a genius with computers and programming. There was no telling how many programs Clip had changed, rewritten, or just flat-out created on United.

  Harmon could now see there were two spaceports—actually space stations, though they were called “spaceports”—with ships docked at both of them. They looked similar to the spaceport in the resupply system where they had claimed the salvage rights to the medium battlecruiser, Salvage Title. Both ports were completely dark. The sensor sweep hadn’t shown any power sources operating where they were; they had probably gone into an automatic shutdown long ago.

  “We’re going to head in, and when we get close to the first one, you can unlock United from us, and I’ll have Marteen do the same with Hauler,” Harmon said.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Marteen Yatarward, once Harmon’s nemesis at the Academy, was piloting Hauler with a crew of eight. Marteen was coming around. He used to be the type of person few wanted to be associated with, except for other spoiled Tretrayons. When his entire family had been killed in missile attacks on the planet Tretra, he had finally realized he needed to change who he was and how he viewed things.

  Second in command on Hauler for this trip was Warrant Officer Brickle Ganth, from Joth. He was a lifelong friend of Zerith Farnog, Harmon and Clip’s partner and the senior chief warrant officer on Salvage Title. He had worked for the Farnog Corporation as a fusion plant technician with Zerith for the last four years. Harmon had hired and commissioned him, along with several others, as employees of Tomeral and Associates.

  Brickle was a Caldivar. The race came from a dry planet much like Joth, several gate days away, though it wasn’t quite as hot and had oceans separating three large continents. He had a long nose on a slightly elongated face. Like all Caldivar, he had three eyes and two long ears that moved individually. The race reminded Harmon of the giant anteaters in the Earth zoo on Tretra. Well, except for the fact that Brickle had rough grey skin with brown and tan spots, instead of fur. He was six feet tall and weighed almost three hundred pounds, most of it muscle.

  Brickle was incredibly strong. Harmon had worked out with him several times in the warehouse where they’d lived before going into space and couldn’t come anywhere close to the amount of weight he put on the bench press bar. When Brickle picked it up, the bar remained bent until he put it back on the rack.

  “Helm, take us to the closest spaceport. At normal speed, we should be there in two days. There’s no sense taxing the engines, especially since one was just rebuilt,” Harmon said. Salvage Title had four fusion plants and four powerful engines, and they were once again able to use them all.

  “Zerith, you got all that?” Harmon called to Zerith, who was operating the power plant on United.

  “I did. I ssee you are not pushing the enginess. That is a wise move. The repaired one needss to break in a bit,” Zerith answered around a mouthful of something. “If you had deccided otherwisse, you would have had to let the little oness know yoursself.”

  “I told you before; that’s all you buddy. All you.” Harmon laughed.

  “I am not on that sship, sso I get to passs the credit to you,” Zerith said, pleased with himself.

  The last thing Harmon wanted to do was tell Chief Warrant Officers Kylatilaarnot and Veratiloolog that he intended to put their power plant or engines in harm’s way when it wasn’t necessary.

  The system had six planets orbiting its sun, a star with a slight orange tint. Scanners showed it was actually very similar to the star in the Tretrayon system. The spaceport they were headed to was just outside the gravitational pull of the third planet, which was the only planet within the temperate zone with a breathable atmosphere.

  “Sir, I show a power source coming online within missile range off to starboard! It may be a defensive platform,” tactical said, alarmed.

  Harmon looked up at the screen. He had thought about the system’s possible defenses while they were in transit between the gates. Defensive platforms were usually designed to be dormant, using very little power to avoid detection, so he had known it was possible that there could still be operational platforms; he had figured any automated defensive platforms would recognize the ship, though, and not engage. He was wrong. He had forgotten the signal their transponder sent out had been reprogramed for the Tretrayon system and galactic gate use.

  “I have missile launch. Multiples…ten missiles inbound!” tactical announced.

  * * *

  Down on the Defensive Bridge, Lieutenant Evelyn Stacey saw the launch at the same time the main bridge did. She was commanding the DB while Clip was on the other ship. It was new to her, but she had four experienced Leethog crew members who had fought battles from the DB before.

  “Launch two spreads of the shotgun missiles. Set them to detonate two seconds from the meet point,” she ordered. The small missiles were armed with a shaped charge and lots of marble-sized steel balls. A missile traveling at great speeds could not withstand hitting even one of them.

  The Leethog in the DB knew what to do. The calculations and location determinations were performed quickly. “Eight missiles away,” said the Leethog sitting at Position One.

  “Thanks. I wasn’t sure which of you to designate,” Evelyn said.

  “We just go down the line, ma’am,” Position Two said. “I have the defensive lasers on standby.”

  “It allows us to get ready for the next command,” added the Leethog sitting at Position Three. “I have the next spread of shotgun missiles ready,” she added.

  “Nine missiles have been destroyed or knocked off track,” Position Four said.

  “Engage the defensive lasers,” Evelyn said.

  Small turreted lasers located across the hull of the ship turned, tracked, locked in on the missiles, and began firing short bursts as soon as the missiles came within range.

  * * *

  “One missile still inbound, sir,” the tactical officer said.

  “Thanks, Adam,” Harmon said. “Bev, engage that platform. We don’t have many missiles left, so just use a half spread. Defensive Bridge, you guys still have a little work to do.”

  “Ten missiles outbound, sir,” weapons said.

  “Missile destroyed,” Evelyn announced.

  Salvage Title was armed with fast, extremely powerful missiles. They were much more powerful than modern missiles from the Tretrayon system, which was something the Squilla had found out recently, much to their detriment.

  “The shielding on the platform held for eight of the missiles. The last two destroyed it, sir,” tactical said after the missiles reached the target. “I am not sure why it only fired one salvo at us,” he added, perplexed. “There was sufficient time for more.”

  “That doesn’t make sense to me either, Adam.” Harmon said. “You know, the shielding on that platform was pretty strong, taking eight missiles to destroy it. We’ve engaged warships with less shielding.”

  “Yes, sir. There were no defensive lasers fired, either,” tactical added.

  “See if you can use the readings and find the rest of them. I’m pretty sure there will be more defensive platforms in this system,” Harmon said.

  “Sir! Eleven more defensive platforms just powered up!” tactical called out.

  “Hey, if you see those stations powering up…it’s me.” Clip called over the comms. “I was able to stop the first one at one missile launch and shut down its lasers. I powered up the others and set ’em to ignore any of our ships. They won’t engage any ship with Tretrayon registrations now. It’s a good thing Jayneen taught me about their transponders and receivers. They would have fired us up like hot wings.

  “You could have let us know beforehand,” Harmon said, relieved. “And what in all the worlds is a hot wing?”

  “I don’t really know for sure, but they were the rage in the twenty-first century. Something hot made from a bird—a chicken, I think. I guess it was a staple meal on Earth,” Clip answered. “I’ll look ’em up sometime.”

  Ha
rmon shook his head and signed off. There were no chickens on Joth. Clip was always researching ancient stuff. Weapons, music—food now, apparently—and anything else he ran across. Harmon didn’t complain. Some of that research had paid off for them.

  “Helm, take us in to the closest spaceport,” he said, settling back into his chair.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Two

  “Stopped, sir,” the officer sitting at the helm announced.

  On the bridge of United, Clip stood behind the operating crew. They had just unlocked from Salvage Title and were holding a short distance away. Clip could easily see the spaceport through the clear-steel ports on the bridge. The ships docked to the station looked promising.

  “Thanks,” said Clip.

  “Marteen, go ahead and detach. Clip, you and Zerith come over in a shuttle and swing over and get Marteen. We’ll figure out our next move,” Harmon said over comms to both ships.

  Salvage Title was stopped closest to the small spaceport, which consisted of two rings. The outer ring had six docking arms with four ships attached. From what they could see, it appeared to be two frigates, a destroyer, and a light battlecruiser. The dock and the ships had no power, though, so there was little for the actual sensors to tell them.

  * * *

  On Hauler, Marteen Yatarward unlocked the magnetic struts and eased the ship away from the battlecruiser. For a trained military pilot, maneuvering Hauler was relatively easy, though she had a few quirks. He needed to suit up so he could exit the bay and jump across to the shuttle Clip had waiting nearby. The shuttle was a little too big to fit into Hauler’s bay. Clip may have been able to get about half of it in, but there was no sense risking a collision. Besides, Marteen was going across in his mech. It would be the first time he had operated it in space.