Free Fleet Box Set 1

by Michael Chatfield

  “Give us war;

  Give us death,

  And know despair.

  We are Avarians.

  We are shadows,

  Blades, and claws.

  Hear our chant.

  We are war;

  We are death;

  We are despair.

  We serve battle,

  Masters lead us

  Not to victory,

  But to death.”

  My blood raced as they started over again. I saw Commandos joining in as I lowered myself and joined in, repeating with them their oath. It became fevered until the third repetition, when they continued their beat for a few moments before chanting again.

  “Battle Master,

  Battle Commander.

  Salchar,

  Salchar.”

  There was a pause of three beats before they spoke again.

  “We serve.”

  Then there was ringing silence as Avarians stood and inclined their heads in servitude.

  They didn’t say anything more as they kept up the new beat for a few more minutes before the ship went completely silent. I could see hungry grins that in my time being a gamer would’ve scared me. They were grins of hunters.

  I found myself grinning similarly. I was one of these hunters. I hadn’t been born one, but through the fire of battle I had become one. I had earned my place. I didn’t welcome a fight but I knew I would leave a mark on anyone who tried to take a piece of me now. Armored Marine Commandos of every races and species I saw had a similar grin. I did not welcome the upcoming battle, but now I wasn’t nervous. After all, I was taking my Commando brethren and Free Fleet with me.

  “You Commandos are crazy.” Eddie shook his head, unsure as to what just happened.

  He didn’t know the brotherhood of Commandos. It was cruel and unforgiving, but it was like a cloak, one that made you feel invincible, as though you could trust another Commando instantly even if you knew nothing about them, and you would do anything to protect their back as they would do the same for you.

  “You wouldn’t understand.” The adrenaline still rushed through my veins.

  Life started returning to normal and people began moving through the halls, grim looks but focused and steeled eyes as they went about their work.

  Eddie grinned; he didn’t and he was fine with that, and he knew I meant no ill will with my words, either.

  “These bastards will know when we hit them,” I muttered under my breath as I walked to the nearest rail car, my eyes dark, not seeing the golden lights of floors as we passed them to the bridge.

  I stepped off the rail car as it reached the personnel deck and I walked straight into my quarters. My touch-sensitive desk display glowed a light blue as it recognized me walking in, the rest of the lights still off.

  “Low power lights.” I waved my hand over my desk. The pounding in my head from multiple Wake-Ups dimmed slightly with the lower lighting.

  I pulled up the desk’s display into a hologram as I sat in my seat, studying the latest of the sensor readings Monk had sent to me. The Syndicate fleet was now moving into the system toward Parnmal; it seemed they were happy with their sensor readings.

  “Just need you to hold out for another five days,” I said to myself, knowing that five minutes, let alone five days, was a lifetime for those fighting.

  Patience is a Virtue

  Mad Monk sat in his command chair, his eyes transfixed on the main screen as the Syndicate fleet began to move.

  “Send the First Fleet the newest scans and estimates of Syndicate ship paths,” Monk said in a soothing, calming voice, as if he were commenting on the fall of a cherry blossom. “Comms, could you get me Felix, please.”

  The veteran comms controller just nodded, making Monk think about how most veterans before a battle grew quiet as they prepared to unleash hell upon their enemies.

  “Connected,” he said simply.

  Monk stopped his line of thought. “Hello, Felix. Are all the preparations made?”

  “The last crews are coming in now,” Felix said, sounding every bit as tired a man who had been working for weeks ought to.

  “Make sure you and your people get some rest—you’ve earned it. I have a feeling that we’ll be needing your people’s help soon enough.”

  “Understood.” Felix’s voice became grim, like the comm controller’s. “I could—”

  “Get some rest.” Monk’s voice was still calm but with a thread of iron to it.

  Felix sighed. “All right, I’ll get some food and rest.”

  “Good.” Monk’s voice was light and soothing once again as he sent a message to Commander Chen, making sure that Felix and his people got some sleep and were left undisturbed.

  “Get me if anything happens.”

  “Naturally.”

  With that, Felix cut the channel and Monk continued to focus on the star plot of his carefully laid defenses and decoys. Felix’s people had stopped all their secret projects and repairs and turned to making decoys when the Syndicate arrived. The decoys were ECM projectors made to imitate weapons platforms and attached to asteroids with air jet nav-packs. With the interference of the asteroids and the low emission of the nav-pack, Monk only knew where they were due to the real-time projections of the nav-pack’s guidance system. They were simple to make and there were tens of thousands of them littering the asteroid-ridden space around Parnmal, all away from the actual weapons platforms that were heavily shielded and not powered on.

  He sat there silently as he regarded the timer. It’d be eighteen hours before they came in range of the decoy live weapons system.

  “I’m going for a walk, Akatsuki.” Monk bowed his head to the station’s second-in-command.

  “Commander Kim.” Akatsuki bowed his head in return as he moved from his seat to Monk’s.

  He studied the room before walking through the opening bulkheads in a reflective light, seeing the work that had gone into the walls to hollow them from the asteroid Parnmal called home. He got on the rail car, nodding to those on it as he secured himself with a harness and was hurled through the station. A few got off before he got to one of the undeveloped areas of Parnmal waiting to be expanded into a habitable area for those who dwelled in her rocky interior. He walked through the rough corridors, reaching a hatch—one with a red light indicating that there was no atmosphere on the other side.

  Monk pressed his hand to the scanner on the wall. It connected with his identification chip and beeped open. There was no rush of decompression as Monk continued into a roughly finished corridor. The door shut behind him as he repeated the process with the second door and walked out onto a catwalk that connected to a rail car. He stepped into it as it shot out from a tunnel and into the expanse of a pressurized space dock.

  There was no one here—as Monk had ordered Felix to send all of his people to get rest. There were four more of the carrier ships in various stages of modification waiting in their cradles as fighters were stacked in their storage formations on both sides.

  Monk stopped his car as he studied the area more. There was another section of the massive space dedicated to experiments and projects. They had everything from side arms and Mecha weaponry to planetary weaponry and space drives in there. Whereas the people in the Free Fleet knew how to repair the systems and even make some of them, most of the Free Fleet didn’t understand the science behind it. The Kuruvians and their natural insatiable curiosity made them great researchers. They pulled apart everything Monk and Felix would let them so they could see how it worked. The people working in this massive space had progressed the Free Fleet and science of all the races by centuries in months.

  There were newly built assembly lines that chugged away, drones continuing their work even as their creators were sleeping.

  “We learn so much, yet it is in the hope to wage war more effectively,” Monk said sadly as a crate of rail gun cannon rounds were picked up and taken by a drone to a magazine that would feed them through the mass
ive weapons of destruction.

  Monk arrived at the command tower that hung from the roof. He wandered through the halls to the break room, grabbing a tea as he sat at one of the couches and looked out on the hangar, finding the drones that worked on various projects throughout the area.

  He smiled sadly to himself. He knew that Salchar would do everything in his power to keep his people alive, but lives were lost in war. Monk expected that he and the people of Parnmal might add to those lists.

  He drank his tea. Emotions such as fear and loss flooded through him, but slowly a smile grew across his face.

  “Well, it’s been a good run, anyway,” he muttered to himself, toasting the galaxy as he sat back, thinking about what he’d accomplished in his life, the people who followed him and the planets the Free Fleet now represented.

  He knew Salchar would ravage the Syndicate fleet with whatever he came up with. But the Syndicate had more than four times the force of Salchar’s, and most of the Syndicate’s ships were bigger in weight and amount of firepower they could put down.

  Grim determination filled Monk. Finally his resolve overcame his confusion. He finished off his tea and walked back to the rail car.

  If they want this station, they’re going to have to get through me. Monk felt excitement within his body now. He’d already accepted his death, and a man without a care for living was a deadly man indeed.

  ***

  Admiral Kelu looked over the ships that the lady herself had given him command over. His original fleet had increased with his reinforcements, minus the ones from Earth that would be there in two weeks. The Orvunut was as loyal as Kelu to the lady; once he’d gotten a message from her, he’d burned his ships up to travel here at her behest.

  Yet, his fleet stood at eight dreadnoughts, twenty-one BCs, forty-five destroyers, the same number of cruisers, and a hundred and sixty-two corvettes. It was the largest fleet assembled since the Syndicate had taken Union space, and Kelu hated it.

  “Captain Zestur is again requesting that we stop crawling like Forvud in muck,” the comms officer said tiredly.

  Kelu felt sorry for Urlow. He’d been handing all of the comms traffic from the unhappy pirate captains. With so many first-line ships, there was a massive problem with chain of command. Sure, Kelu was in charge, and no one would go against the lady, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t question everything he said, especially if it didn’t fit into their fighting tactics—which usually consisted of charging the enemy, and not caring for the casualties.

  Admiral Kelu would normally be endorsing these kinds of tactics, but that would be against a group of ships, not the biggest station in the sector with enough natural armor to take direct hits from planetary cannons for days. A few of those cannons littered around could take out a dreadnought’s shields in a few hits.

  So, nice and slow we go, Kelu thought, the other ships’ captains filling up space with their annoyed transmissions.

  Jorsht had shown smarts and cunning, but he wouldn’t fool Admiral Kelu.

  Urlow put down his headset, massaging his cranial receptors. “Captain Eilo now,” he said as he ended his latest complaint.

  “Weapons signature!” Sensors yelled.

  “Give me—” Kelu didn’t finish uttering orders when Tactical yelled out.

  “Weapons firing! Hit on first-line ship the Destroyer!”

  “Direct hit,” Sensors yelled out.

  Kelu watched as the first-line ship’s side was cracked. A scar ran across the left side and across the engines. Three engines blinked out and the ship started to vent atmosphere.

  They didn’t have their shields up, Kelu thought darkly. He realized he didn’t feel anything.

  “Tactical, why am I not feeling us returning fire?”

  “Captain.” Tactical looked to his station, his face greening like the Blurduz race did when they were embarrassed.

  “Gunners, take down that platform! Comms, get me the fleet.”

  “You’re on,” Urlow said a second later.

  Damn good pirate, Kelu thought. “Get your shields up! Otherwise, I’ll board you in the name of the lady and replace you.” His voice was filled with cold fury.

  As he did a cutting motion, Urlow closed the comm.

  “We got the weapons platform. It was a short-range rail cannon,” Tactical reported.

  “Sensors, I need an early warning system for those things. Helm, reverse thrust and coordinate with the rest of the fleet to hold position relative to us.”

  It took a full ten minutes for the fleet to break and pull back.

  Sloppy. Kelu looked at the five ships that belonged to his personal fleet, which had braked and come into position within three minutes.

  “Sensors!” Kelu drew out the word, making it a threat.

  Sensors felt a shiver run down their spine. They briskly replied, “They have sensor shielding but there’s a leak from the power generators. We’re isolating momentarily.”

  Kelu grunted as he waited another five minutes. His trigger finger twitched with the need to reinstate his command.

  Sensors stopped their furious flurry of activity. “Updating plot now,” they said with a relieved breath.

  On the main screen, the asteroid field added five more markers, each a red dot with a faint red circle around it.

  “Set our range, sphere two.” Blue circles overlapped for Kelu’s fleet; he could see his range was more than twice the weapons systems.

  “Comms, relay this to the rest of the fleet. Nav, correct our course to bring those weapon systems under fire before we get to them. Correct as needed.” Kelu sighed. Their approach was going to take a hell of a lot longer now. They’d need to play cat-and-mouse with the weapons platforms, and move around asteroids to get a clear line of fire, or waste their shots at useless rock. All of which would mean using ordinance Kelu hoped would crack Parnmal. Having shields up all that time with the power plants on some of the ships would be an interesting game of roulette.

  And it’s up to me to make sure I don’t have anyone charging in. Patience is key, but I don’t think I’ll be able to hold onto it by the time we get to Parnmal, Kelu thought as the fleet continued on at a quarter of the speed that they’d been traveling at.

  It Always Starts Off Slowly

  I read the latest reports from Monk. The Syndicate fleet was still at a crawl, still two days from bringing their weapons into range of Parnmal.

  In the room, I had all of my staff. Shrift had even dragged Eddie out of his hiding spot. Which he didn’t looked pleased about as he reclined in his seat with his arms crossed, his cowboy hat tilted forward as he chewed on a piece of something that looked like a toothpick.

  Rick, In Sook, Ben, Milra, Walf, and Krat were in the room with me, while ship commanders, Henry, Bok Soo, and Dreckt used holograms.

  “Rick, are we ready?” I asked.

  “We’re mostly there. Eddie?” he conferred with Eddie.

  “All asteroids are attached and fighters are in place. Though, the ridiculousness of it is beyond anything I’ve ever seen.” He tried to look glum but I could see his eyes sparkle. He was probably just jealous that I had come up with the idea.

  “All right, are we ready on your side?” I gestured with my head to Ben, Milra, Krat, and Walf.

  They looked grave before Milra spoke. “We’re ready. We’ll be mostly running off Resilient and without her help, we wouldn’t be able to do the translation so quickly. We’ve been running drills for as long as we’ve been able to. We can jump in our sleep now. We’re as ready as we’re going to get before people start to tire themselves out.”

  I noticed that she didn’t say anything about our likelihood of survival.

  “Good work. If we pull this off, it’ll be in a large part due to our wormhole emergence crews across the fleet,” I said soberly, looking in their eyes as they visibly straightened. Pride returned some of the energy they’d lost over the two weeks of drills.

  “Commander Heston, are your
people ready?”

  Heston looked to Xing, who nodded, his face sour as his lower lip jutted out in a perpetual pout, his tired eyes doing nothing to make him look like a fighter commander.

  “As much as they can be. They know that there’s only a slight possibility that they’ll be used in the battle. They’re annoyed that they’ll be sitting back as we watch the battle.” As their friends die, his eyes seemed to tell me. “But if we have an opportunity, we’ll take it and smash the bastards.”

  “Good.” I looked to them all as I took a breath. “Forced rest for eight hours. We’ll begin charging our wormhole generators in five. Two hours before, we’ll go to yellow; red at thirty minutes to jump. Questions?” There were none left; they’d all been answered before we’d prepared.

  “All right, dismissed. I’ll see you in twelve hours.” With that, holograms disappeared as Eddie practically rushed out of the room, giving his two-finger salute. The rest gave their salutes and I returned them.

  “Make sure you get some sleep, as well as your people. You’re going to need it,” I said, seeing each of them agree before I waved them from the room.

  Rick and I reclined in our chairs, doing nothing as we looked at the ceiling.

  “The things I’d do for a beer,” I said to the ceiling.

  “You don’t even drink,” Rick said, his eyebrow arched.

  “It’s the premise.” I scowled.

  “Isn’t if you’ve never done it.”

  My scowl deepened as he grinned.

  “Just trying to kill a man’s hopes, eh?”

  “Not at all. If you want, I could get some Druv,” Rick said with a grin as my scowl became a grimace.

  Druv was infamous throughout the fleet, due to the fact it tasted like gasoline and got you stinking drunk in record time.

  “I think I’ll pass. I thought someone would’ve gotten some good-tasting alcohol from Earth at least.”

  “Well.”

  “Rick?” I drew out his name as if he’d better tell me what was on his mind.

  “Ah, it’s nothing. You should get some sleep.” He had a sparkle in his eye and a grin on his face that made me think it wasn’t nothing.