Fire Storm

by Chris Ward

  Fire Storm

  The Fire Planets Saga #2

  Chris Ward

  “Fire Storm (The Fire Planets Saga #2)”

  Copyright © Chris Ward 2018

  The right of Chris Ward to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Author.

  This story is a work of fiction and is a product of the Author’s imagination. All resemblances to actual locations or to persons living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  Also by Chris Ward

  Stand-alone Novels

  Head of Words

  The Man Who Built the World

  The Fire Planets Saga

  (space opera)

  Fire Fight

  Fire Storm

  Endinfinium

  (YA fantasy)

  Benjamin Forrest and the School at the End of the World

  Benjamin Forrest and the Bay of Paper Dragons

  Benjamin Forrest and the Lost City of the Ghouls

  The Tube Riders

  (dystopian)

  Underground

  Exile

  Revenge

  In the Shadow of London

  Tales of Crow

  (science fiction / horror)

  The Eyes in the Dark

  The Castle of Nightmares

  The Puppeteer King

  The Circus of Machinations

  The Tokyo Lost Series

  (mystery)

  Broken

  Stolen

  Frozen

  About the Author

  A proud and noble Cornishman (and to a lesser extent British), Chris Ward ran off to live and work in Japan back in 2004. There he got married, got a decent job, and got a cat. He remains pure to his Cornish/British roots while enjoying the inspiration of living in a foreign country.

  www.amillionmilesfromanywhere.net

  Thank you for your interest in my work.

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  Thank you for reading!

  Contents

  Fire Storm

  1. Lia

  2. Caladan

  3. Lia

  4. Harlan5

  5. Caladan

  6. Lia

  7. Harlan5

  8. Caladan

  9. Lia

  10. Caladan

  11. Kyle

  12. Lia

  13. Caladan

  14. Lia

  15. Caladan

  16. Harlan5

  17. Caladan

  18. Lia

  19. Caladan

  20. Lia

  21. Caladan

  22. Lia

  23. Caladan

  24. Harlan5

  25. Lia

  26. Caladan

  27. Kyle

  28. Lia

  29. Raylan

  30. Lia

  31. Caladan

  32. Harlan5

  33. Lia

  34. Caladan

  Glossary of Characters

  Glossary of Systems

  Glossary of Races

  Glossary of Spacecraft

  Glossary of Terminology

  Contact

  Fire Storm

  1

  Lia

  The vast emptiness of space was at times a wondrous but depressing thing. Earth-months could pass with not even a stray asteroid or piece of space debris to break up the monotony of a background of stars, most of which would remain forever unknown and unreachable. The intergalactic rumor mill was always rife with theories of when the next Expansion would come, but until those long-departed deep space galleons made contact, space adventurers could only speculate. For many, the thousand or so known worlds were never enough, but for Lianetta Jansen, former Galactic Military Police turned smuggler, thief, and sometime-assassin, a new Expansion meant something else: more places to hide.

  ‘Is there anything left in that?’

  Lia looked down at the empty whisky bottle in her hand, then up at Caladan, the Matilda’s pilot. His single hand rested on the flickering pilot’s computer terminal. The other rested nowhere, lost from the shoulder down years ago in an altercation over gambling money. His eyes flickered with frustration, but his expression was mostly lost in the thick beard that covered his face.

  Lia turned the bottle upside down for emphasis. ‘Sorry, I drank it. There’s more in the cargo bay.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Four? Maybe, or five. I forget.’

  ‘I still have an ache in my leg after I fell off that wall on Compar 8.’ He glared at her legs, hooked over the arm of the gunner’s chair as she slumped in it side-on. ‘You’re not doing anything, are you? Perhaps you fancy a walk?’

  Lia scowled. ‘I’m the captain. I’m supervising you.’ Before Caladan could reply, she added, ‘I’d send the droid, but, you know, someone forgot to get his part while we were docked at Ford Town. That was why we stopped, you know.’

  Caladan groaned. ‘For the last time, I didn’t forget. I just got … sidetracked. If you hadn’t got into a shootout, I’d have had plenty of time to pick it up on the way back.’

  Lia shrugged. ‘Some traders were mouthing off about an old friend from the Galactic Military Police.’

  ‘I didn’t think you still had friends in there?’

  ‘One or two. Friends at a distance. They’d probably blast me if they had a chance, but I tend to be more forgiving. Are you going to get that whisky or not? We’re, what, a week out from the hop hole back to Feint?’

  ‘Four Earth-days. It would be two if we’d finished refueling, but I’m using auxiliary power. If we’d just had time to get ourselves organised, we could have used the main trading route and avoided this deep space round-trip.’

  Lia kicked out with one long black boot at the back of Caladan’s chair. It spun so he faced her, frowning so deeply his face was almost all hair and beard.

  ‘Let’s just agree that we’re both useless at this.’

  Caladan smiled. ‘And that it’s a miracle we’re both still alive?’

  Lia lifted her glass. ‘I’ll drink to that. Go and get the whisky and you can drink to it too—’

  An alarm blared. Lia rolled ungracefully out of her chair, hurrying to the monitor screens on the terminal whose function was to scan the deep space around them for anything that could be a threat. Lines of code were rushing across the screen, logging the coordinates, the size, and speed of anything not identified as inanimate rock. It had caught onto something large and synthetic, sitting far out in the endless nothing at the edge of Trill System.

  ‘You’re the pilot. Tell me what that is.’

  Caladan peered at his control screen. ‘It’s a freighter seeking contact. It’s sending out an automated distress call.’ He tapped some buttons. ‘Hang on, I’m getting a translation we can follow. Yeah … there it is … engine malfunction. They’re marooned. By the sound of things they were heading for an old wormhole out of the Estron Quadrant, but then they got into trouble.’

  ‘What kind of ship?’

  ‘Diamond Bulkhead X3 out of the Phevius System. Originating from the machine world of Galanth. Possibly transporting ore. Because the distress call is automated, there’s no way to know the makeup of the crew, if indeed any of them are still alive. We’re at the very limit of the fr
eighter’s transmission range, so it could have been floating out here for years.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘We can be there in an Earth-day with full thruster power. We actually wouldn’t lose too much time because we could use the wormhole’s gravitational field to slingshot us in that direction.’

  Lia rubbed her chin. ‘What does galactic law state about distress signals?’

  ‘That all free traders are obliged to respond, something that in reality rarely happens. Distress signals are almost always a trap.’

  ‘Why don’t you think this one is?’

  ‘Because it’s so remote, and it’s been corroded by age. Parts of the original message are unreadable.’

  ‘So what do you suggest we do?’

  Caladan grinned. ‘You’re the captain—it’s not my decision.’

  ‘But if it was, what would you do?’

  ‘I’d respond, of course.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To be a good galactic citizen. But if it’s as old as the signal looks, then the likelihood is that the crew are in stasis, dead, or both—in which case I’d do the only other responsible thing.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Loot the hell out of it.’

  ‘Then on my order, set a direct course.’

  With Caladan now legitimately busy, Lia headed for the level four cargo bay. While the Matilda was dwarfed by most stasis-ultraspace-capable spacecraft, she still clocked in at over one hundred and eighty metres in length with her eight spiderlike legs extended into cruise formation—when all were working, of course; one had been destroyed in a recent firefight, meaning the ship would veer to the left if her coordinates were not adjusted to correct it—and getting through her was a chore of opening and closing airlocks, shimmying down narrow ladder shafts, and ducking through spiraling corridors designed for someone a lot shorter than her. The Matilda was built for speed and agility, not comfort, but the trade had proved worthwhile on multiple occasions.

  At the bottom of the ladder to level three, she encountered Harlan5 tinkering with a damaged heating fixture.

  ‘Hello, Captain,’ the humanoid maintenance robot said with feigned cheerfulness. ‘My programming tells me I’m enjoying the ride in cattle class. How’s business?’

  Lia smiled. ‘The company’s better down here, I’m sure.’

  ‘There isn’t any.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. Look, I’m sorry about your part. We’ll fix you up in the next port for sure.’

  ‘My programming suggests I forgive you, but it would also like to point out that if one of you took the time to repair the central elevator, I could still return to the bridge, with or without full mobility in my hip area.’

  Lia patted the robot on the metallic shoulder. ‘I’ll get Caladan on to it.’

  ‘My programming would also like to point out that with full mobility I could easily fix it myself.’

  ‘There’s the paradox, isn’t it?’

  Before Harlan5 could reply, Lia slipped down the ladder to level four, the grating and groaning of the ship’s internal systems masking anything else the droid might have said. Strapped to the wall in one corner, she found the shipment of whisky they had stolen from a docked freighter a few Earth-months ago during a brief pick-up-and-drop-off stop on Bryant in the Quaxar System. It was of a decent quality, but not up to the standard of Old Earth Whisky, as valuable in some systems as diamonds were in others, but she couldn’t resist cracking a bottle before she went back up. As the ship rattled around her, its main rear thrusters engaging as Caladan turned them in the direction of the marooned freighter, she lifted the bottle and gave herself a silent toast.

  She had got used to looting in the Earth-decade since her disgraced exit from the Galactic Military Police she had once envisaged to be her whole life, but, if they did rescue a stricken crew, perhaps she could feel a shred of honor again.

  ‘We’ve got it on the real-space visual screens,’ Caladan said. ‘See it? There.’

  ‘That black speck?’

  ‘That’s it. Nine Earth-miles long. Wow, it’s a biggie. Ore carrier, I’d think. Likely there’s nothing much on there to interest us, unless you feel like picking through the pockets of dead men, but we can at least cipher off a little fuel.’

  Caladan’s single hand worked across the touch screen, bringing up data as the Matilda’s scanners gave the freighter a working over. From a distance it looked like a giant needle with fish-like fins, but up close it was five hundred metres wide at its thickest point, rounding off at the rear with three massive trioxyglobin-burning thrusters that could push it through outer-system space at speeds the Matilda could only imagine.

  ‘We need to get the robot up here,’ Caladan said. ‘Get some history on this thing. It’s interplanetary, designed for moving ore between planets and moons in a single system. It’s not designed for stasis-ultraspace jumps, so it shouldn’t be anywhere near here.’

  ‘Think we should pull out?’

  Caladan shrugged. ‘It’s an old signal. Like I say, it’s been here a while.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A couple of hundred Earth-years, maybe. If it’s carrying anything radioactive, it’s likely on the decay by now. Minerals are no good to us, but if it’s precious metal, we’ll have to come back with a bigger ship. Your call, Captain.’

  ‘Take us in.’

  The freighter grew larger on the screens until its cobalt-grey bulk filled the sky. Caladan scanned the outer surface, looking for a loading bay, then, on Lia’s instruction, released a small override pod which embedded itself into the freighter’s armour and released a nano-program that tapped into the ship’s systems. Using a remote command, Caladan opened a pair of bay doors to allow them to dock.

  Inside a cavernous docking bay, the Matilda was alone. Caladan remote-closed the doors, and activated the gravity and oxygen functions. From the readings coming through on the Matilda’s computers, the oxygen level was dangerously low.

  ‘Filter masks on,’ he said. ‘We’ll need lights, too. There’s not much power left in this thing. We might not get lucky with a fuel stash after all.’

  As they passed Harlan5 on the way to the exit hatch, the droid protested at being left behind.

  ‘My programming tells me that whatever you’re about to do is highly dangerous. You have no idea who this ship belongs to. You shouldn’t go down there alone.’

  Lia suggested they drag the droid down the hatch to allow Harlan5’s shoulder cannons to cover them, but if they had to take off quickly, they’d never be able to drag the robot up quick enough.

  ‘We’re going to have to human this alone,’ Lia said, giving Harlan’s chrome frown a smile.

  ‘My programming would like to point out that Caladan is a human subspecies,’ Harlan said. ‘Just for accuracy’s sake.’

  ‘You know, robot,’ Caladan said, ‘it might be more cost-efficient to invest in a new maintenance droid, rather than repair the worn-out old one. I shall raise the issue to the ship’s captain at the next boardroom meeting.’

  Lia flapped a hand toward the exit hatch. ‘Can we get on with this, please?’

  ‘My programming tells me I ought to tell you to be careful.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Leaving Harlan5 behind, they headed across the dark hangar, with only the Matilda’s landing lights to show them the way. They carried torches, but Lia was hopeful they would find some way to turn on the power. LEDs flickered in some wall-consoles, meaning the freighter had some auxiliary power at least, but its main systems had gone into hibernation.

  ‘Through here,’ Caladan said, busting open a door hatch control with the butt of his photon blaster and inserting a computer chip key-card into an override port. The control gave a tired beep, then the door slid open to reveal a corridor lit by auxiliary lighting. ‘Nice.’

  They made their way into the bowels of the ship. They saw no one, and heard nothing. Eventually, after a couple of hours, they found their way to
the bridge, but with the exception of a single console, the systems were powered down, and not enough power remained to start them up again.

  While Lia prowled back and forth across the bridge like a frustrated tiger, Caladan took another gadget from his belt and inserted it into a port in the auxiliary computer.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to see if there’s a system log. Okay … got it.’

  Lia stopped pacing and came over. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Translating … all right. Rear engine failure. Left them drifting. Got caught up in the gravitational pull of a passing asteroid, pulled them too far from the main system shipping lanes to attract help.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Two hundred and forty Earth-years ago. Told you this thing was old, didn’t I? The crew jettisoned, took their chances in an escape pod. That this ship is still here tells me they never made it.’

  ‘Cargo?’

  ‘Phevian tungsten.’

  ‘What’s that?’