The Eve of War

by Christopher Hopper

  Praise for The Eve of War

  “Christopher Hopper’s writing has such heart, such high-stakes action, and such mind-bending creativity that he will quickly become one of your auto-buy authors. If The Eve of War is your first Hopper book, get ready for a lifelong alliance.”

  —Wayne Thomas Batson, bestselling author of The Door Within Trilogy and The Myridian Constellation

  “Expertly plotted and deftly paced, The Eve of War evokes Star Wars with its cinematic scope, gritty battles, and wry humor. You won’t want to put it down.”

  —Kim Husband, Proofreader, Red Adept Editing

  “This is Star Wars meets Halo. Fantastic! A fun fast-paced romp around the galaxy that will have you cheering for more.”

  —Josh Jensen, Amazon Reader

  “If you love sci-fi and want to get your mind blown, look no further. Ruins ranks among my top three favorite sci-fi series ever.”

  —Aaron Seaman, Amazon Reader

  “Heart-pounding military sci-fi at its best! Own the field (OTF)!”

  —Dr. Aaron Campbell, Amazon Reader

  “I loved it. Fun characters, great story, you won’t be able to put it down.”

  —Ricky Adams, Amazon Reader

  “A grittier, more well thought out Star Wars style of universe. A lot of fun! Nice to know the next book is coming out soon.”

  —Matthew Titus, Amazon Reader

  “Astonishingly colorful characters that you can’t help growing attached to, painted in a universe you could only hope to one day visit.”

  —Elizabeth Bettger, Amazon Reader

  “Ambitious sci-fi, beautiful world building, kinetic action, and interesting characters I can’t wait to see more of.”

  —William Jepma, Amazon Reader

  “Superbly crafted characters with hints of Firefly and a touch of Star Wars. This is the best sci-fi space opera I have read since the Expanse series. It’s not often that a book has so many stand up and cheer moments. Ruins is Christopher Hopper at his best… truly must-read sci-fi.”

  —Shane Marolf, Amazon Reader

  “A galaxy on the verge of all-out war. Bad guys around every corner, and plenty of intrigue. Guaranteed to keep you reading from beginning to end.”

  —Kevin Zoll, Amazon Reader

  “This story is so captivating and exciting… a page-turner for the beginning. This is not just a battlefield, it is a character building saga. I cannot wait for the next installment.”

  —Myrna Pace, Amazon Reader

  “Pleasantly surprised and enjoyed every second. Hopper really brought his characters and universe to life… makes me feel like I’m part of the op. 10/10.”

  —Jaymin Sullivan, Amazon Reader

  “The Eve of War is science fiction that not only focuses on the world and cool technology but also the characters, something missing from many series of the same genre.”

  —Nathan Jaffrey, Amazon Reader

  “Ruins is amazing! ...Masterfully written with characters and a plot that draws you in from page one. A great read and re-read for years to come!”

  —Judd Ford, Amazon Reader

  “Classic intergalactic adventure has never been so new, nor the stakes so high. Prepare for paranoia punctuated by laughter, and try not to make too many guesses at the twists, turns and jumps!”

  —Caleb Baker, Amazon Reader

  “Exciting and engaging read. Can’t wait to see what comes next.”

  —John Clark, Amazon Reader

  “When it comes to the future of sci-fi, Christopher Hopper is not an author to be slept on. Ruins of the Galaxy is surely going to be among the greats as the series unfolds. I look forward to seeing where this journey takes us.”

  —Ollie Longchamps, Amazon Reader

  “A refreshingly different and unique take on science fiction, one that keeps you thoroughly entertained from start to finish. I couldn’t put it down!”

  —Matthew Dippel, Amazon Reader

  “The classic adventure tale spun into a space opera… readily accessible to everyone, cerebral enough for hardcore sci-fi fans, and human enough to be a darn good read.”

  —Joseph Wessner, Amazon Reader

  “As a science fiction lover, I am so happy to have another world to explore. As a veteran, Ruins reminds of the cost of war and the bonds it creates. And as an English teacher of seventeen years, Hopper’s writing speaks to me. It holds honest reflections of war and hope in the same hand.”

  —Jon Bliss, Amazon Reader

  Copyright

  Ruins of the Galaxy

  Book One: The Eve of War

  Written by Christopher Hopper

  Copyright © 2019

  Hopper Creative Group, LLC

  All rights reserved | Version 1.0

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Edited by Sarah Carleton

  Proofread by Kim Husband

  Cover Art by Matt Flint

  Cover and Interior Design by Christopher Hopper

  Author photo by Sarah Bridgeman

  The galaxy awaits you.

  ruinsofthegalaxy.com

  Dedication

  To my wife for holding my hand in the void.

  I’d be lost without you, Jenny.

  And to Jim Krisher and Douglas Ort, my two snow markers in the whiteout.

  Chapter 1

  “You got any hostiles for me, Flow?” Magnus asked over a private channel on TACNET.

  “Negative, LT,” Flow replied. “A city of fifteen million Jujari, and we ain’t seen splick.”

  “Copy that.” Magnus touched his MAR30’s safety out of habit.

  Magnus’s Charlie Platoon of fifteen operators plus him had set security on what was one of the worst danger areas he’d ever been assigned to. The landing platform they stood on was forty stories up the side of a composite sandstone skyscraper in the center of Oosafar and jutted out like a waiter’s silver platter. The sun’s heat was punishing, pushing their armor-cooling capabilities to the limit and threatening to cook the men before any objectives were reached. While his platoon controlled the perimeter of the pad, a sea of buildings surrounded them, each rife with potential sniper nests or heavy blaster emplacements. Magnus couldn’t shake the feeling that his unit was being served up as some Jujari chief’s main course. They were, to put it in Marine speak, hanging out like dogs’ balls.

  “You don’t really think this is about peacekeeping, do you, LT?” Flow asked.

  “Not any more than you do. Since when has Recon been tasked with security? Plus, these dogs have alliances with five other systems and a fleet to match. No way they asked the Repub here to surrender all that after three hundred years of resisting us. Something smells off.”

  “Copy that,” Flow said with a sniff.

  The higher-ups had tried to assure Magnus that this mission was critical to Republic progress. And maybe it was. But the way Magnus saw it, his platoon was stuck babysitting sycophants in a chemical reaction of politics and cults waiting to go nova. It was just a matter of time before one of his Marines got killed in the name of progress, and that was not what he’d signed up for.

  “You know, I hear they bleed their prisoners for weeks,” Flow said. “Some ancient ritual sacrifice or some splick. ‘Living blood’ they call it. You think that’s true?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care, Flow.” Magnus looked over the platform’s edge. It was a long way down. “If we don’t
accomplish the objective, we’re dead anyway.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The Jujari drain us of our blood or the major drains us of our stripes. Either way, we’re done. But I’ll take my chances with the hyenas.”

  “Copy that, LT,” Flow replied with a chuckle.

  “Just own the field, and keep your eyes peeled for our bird.”

  A gust of wind blew up from within the city and buffeted Magnus’s men. He turned to see them covering their respective fields of fire with their MAR30s. The sooner they could get off this platform the better.

  “Heads up, LT,” Flow said. “I’m picking up an inbound Regent-class cruiser.”

  Magnus looked skyward and flicked his eyes through menus in his head-up display. A blue targeting reticle latched onto a square of empty sky and showed Repub designations fed from the orbital convoy overhead, including the shuttle’s code name, Falcon One. He let his eyes focus on the marker until his helmet’s artificial intelligence zoomed in. The AI’s neural-sensor suite was responding quicker than before. Nice update. Magnus reminded himself to thank the battalion’s coders when he got back.

  The sky expanded in his HUD, filling his field of view with a static-laden image of a diplomatic shuttle. Even from this distance, Magnus could make out the Order of the Luma’s insignia on the ship’s large vertical stabilizer: a single maroon flame within an unbroken circle. Magnus cringed. Blasted peacemongers, he thought.

  “Those are our assets,” Magnus said. He wondered if Flow heard the disdain in his voice.

  “Roger that,” Flow replied. “Don’t act too happy about it, LT.”

  Magnus switched off the private channel with Flow and opened a direct line to Alpha Platoon’s leader and CO for the op.

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant,” came Captain Wainwright’s baritone voice.

  “We’ve got eyes on Falcon One, Captain.”

  There was a pause. Magnus knew Wainright was reviewing the HUD data. The captain was a legend in the Recon and one Magnus was proud to serve under. Alpha Platoon was charged with security for the Republic ambassador and his envoy, while Charlie was tasked with the Luma emissary. According to the mission plan, Wainright was fifteen minutes ahead of Magnus’s platoon and already topside at the meeting location.

  “Copy that,” said the captain. “You’re all green.”

  “Roger, Captain.” Magnus signed out. He surveyed the landing platform again and brought up a unit channel. “Look alive, Hunters. Shuttle inbound, ETA in three.” Magnus watched his HUD as each platoon member confirmed unit readiness with green affirmation icons.

  The private channel chirped. Flow was calling again.

  “Go, Flow,” Magnus ordered.

  “LT, I don’t wanna beat this to death, but this is splick. We’re three-sixtied. Hell, they’re probably covering our undercarriage too, and we can’t do a damn thing about it. The way I see it, the only thing good about this place is that we don’t have the squirts like we did in Caledonia.”

  “I get it,” Magnus replied. Flow was referring to the horrible intestinal bug that plagued every Marine who’d fought during the Caledonian Wars. The truth was that Magnus was just as frustrated as Flow. Their position was begging for an ambush. Oosafar’s urban environment was perfectly suited for veiled attacks from nearly every angle. Where any other world would have had solid windows in its buildings, the Jujari hung white curtains instead, combined with a low-level force field to keep out the elements. The fabric billowed in the late-afternoon wind, moving like ghosts in and out of a thousand cave entrances. The constant motion provided the ideal concealment for an enemy on the move.

  “Which desk jockey you think approved this op without reading the fine print?” Flow asked. “Feels like they’re playing Terberian roulette with us, ya know? The problem is—”

  “The house always wins,” Magnus finished.

  “Yeah, exactly. Only this house wants to kill us.”

  Flow was just talking splick. It was how they all processed the tension before a fight. But there was some truth to his words too.

  “A neutral planet certainly would have been a smarter choice,” Magnus said. “But no one expects jockeys to have streets smarts.”

  “Copy that, LT.” Flow looked at his MS900 sniper blaster. “So, that request for overwatch never went through?”

  Magnus knew Flow would much rather be in a perch somewhere, picking out targets with his weapon. Command had asked for overwatch positions but was refused access since the Jujari would not permit outsiders to tread in ceremonially clean parts of the city. As a compromise, they provided “unrestricted access” to building files, which, as it turned out, were a joke. They have every known descendant of the first mwadim inked in blood on tanned gorangi skin, Magnus thought wryly, but they can’t keep track of how many floors are in their structures. Perfect.

  “Negative,” Magnus said. “Brass said the Jujari wouldn’t allow us access. Something about us desecrating sacred ground with our unclean feet.”

  “I’ll have you know that I wash my feet daily, LT,” Flow said.

  “And that’s exactly what I told Colonel Caldwell.” The idiom telling Colonel Caldwell had become a joke around the unit, inspired by Magnus’s familial and combat connections with the famed commander. It was Colonel Caldwell who’d gotten Magnus and his three best noncommissioned officers, dubbed the Fearsome Four, a shot at Recon Indoctrination School. “Clean feet, I said. None cleaner. Pretty sure that’s the only reason he let you attend RIP with me.”

  “And what were Cheeks’s and Mouth’s excuses?”

  “Good looks and muscle,” Magnus replied. “The Four have to stay well-rounded, but don’t tell them I said that.”

  “And what does that make you, LT?”

  “I’m the brains, Flow. Always the brains.”

  Magnus’s pulse quickened as his armor’s cooling system suddenly increased power consumption. It was fighting to keep its occupant comfortable under the sun’s oppressive heat. Magnus was sweating enough to fill his reclamation bladders every few minutes. He could even feel his short beard soaking up sweat. He’d maintained a beard since the day he graduated from RIP, taking full advantage of the elite unit’s more permissive grooming allowances, but that day, it was annoying him. If it hadn’t been for his helmet’s air-treatment capabilities, he wasn’t sure which would smell worse, his body or the capital city.

  The men in his unit continued to scan every building with their helmets’ thermal imaging, tagging occupants with yellow indicators. Magnus cycled through the icons, checking floors and rooms against shoddy city records gifted to the Republic because of the “momentous exchange.”

  “Let’s just keep the emissary safe, let all the jockeys have their fun, and then get off this desert rock. Keep your eyes open and call it in. Own the mission, own the field.”

  “OTF. Copy that, LT.”

  Magnus closed the channel and turned from observing the buildings to see the Luma shuttle on final approach, matte gray and resembling a ferret—its slender crew module the animal’s neck and the command bridge cantilevering up and away like a head. The shuttle had a single vertical stabilizer in the aft and a narrow bridge window above the nose. Its engines vectored toward them to bleed off speed in a hotter-than-usual landing. Apparently, the pilots were as apprehensive as the Hunters.

  “SITREP,” Magnus called over TACNET to his team leads, asking for a situation report.

  “Good here,” Mouth said.

  “You know,” Corporal Miguel Chico said, “normally, I’m good for rolling in the sheets, but I don’t care if I ever see another set again.”

  “Can it, Cheeks,” Flow ordered.

  “Copy.”

  As one, the Marines braced themselves against the sand that blasted their helmets. The stuff had found its way into every crease in their armor, and they’d only been on planet less than thirty minutes. The armor’s mag boots engaged, sensing slippage, as the shuttle’s thrust threatened to pus
h each Marine off the platform. Magnus’s body vibrated, absorbing the ship’s ferocious energy. As soon as the landing gear touched down, however, the pilots killed the engines. It felt as though someone had shut off a midsummer Dustoovian cyclone just by flicking a switch.

  The Hunters in the platoon scanned their respective fields of fire with their MAR30s. This was the time for an ambush. Magnus looked to the ship’s hydraulic ramp as it lowered to the platform, awash in a swirl of white steam. The blue-uniformed flight steward came down the walkway at somewhere between a run and a walk, betraying just how nervous he was. He spotted Magnus, tapped the top of his head, then waited for the reply.

  “We good, Flow?” Magnus asked.

  “Still green, LT.”

  “Copy. Bringing out the assets. Eyes up, Hunters.” Magnus took a deep breath. Professional, he reminded himself. Be professional. For as much as the Jujari repulsed him and as much as the Republic’s bureaucracy annoyed him, neither compared to how much he loathed the emissaries about to walk down this ramp. They’d cost him lives, lives of Marines who’d never be able to argue their case against the Luma’s methods. Careless leadership.

  Magnus motioned to the shuttle’s steward with a knife-edge hand chop in the air. The steward signaled up the ramp, and a figure emerged in the white mist.

  “Splick. That’s your asset, LT?” Cheeks said over TACNET. “Wanna trade?”

  Chapter 2

  Awen hated atmospheric entry about as much as she hated raw Paglothian sorlakk: both made her vomit. The only difference was that she didn’t have to eat sorlakk on a weekly basis. Her hands scrambled for the small bag stowed in the seatback in front of her, but it was missing.

  “I got it,” Matteo said, reaching for his seat’s bag and handing it to her. Just in time too. Awen had purposely skipped lunch for that very reason, and there was still plenty of—whatever breakfast was—to fill the sack.

  “Thanks,” she said, wiping her mouth with the enclosed napkin. “Have I ever mentioned—”