Starkiller Chronicle Bundle Part 2: Parts 4-6

by Lon E. Varnadore

  “So tired.”

  “Not yet, Garret. You can sleep when you’re dead.”

  “No, it’s worse than that,” Yamahara said. Garret turned his head to see she was behind Jennings. Her helm was so cracked, Jennings was leading her. They came for me? Again? “Cap, I have—”

  “I’m not done, Garret,” Yamahara said. “PFC Mike Garret, you can sleep when you are ordered to. You don’t die until I give you permission.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Garret said, a half-hearted salute thrown her way. “Whatever you say.” He closed his eyes and slipped into unconsciousness again.

  Before he did, he heard something that made him smile. “Starkiller actual, this is Yamahara. We need a pickup.”

  “Alright, so what is going on?” Garret asked. He looked at the collected crew in the cargo bay. He had been fine after some rest in the broken shuttle. Knapp fussed over him more than necessary. It hurt that Justin, Finn, and Cyrus hadn’t made it. It hurt to survive, something he knew all too well. “And why are we meeting here?”

  “Short answer,” Trevor said, “Alastair has the edge of Wild Space in a blockade. He has announced he will be dissolving the Interplanetary Council Body. Also, according to the datacube Captain Yamahara brought back, the Eridani had a plan to collect Starkiller’s AI, reprogram him, and kill us all, then return to I.S.S. central as Alastair’s personal ship.” He then took a deep breath. “And the captain wanted to meet here because she wanted Cerberus to know we were all together on this plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “Whatever we come up with,” Yamahara.

  “So, what are we going to do?” Garret asked the crew collected in the cargo area. He really needed sleep. “Are we going to let Alastair win?”

  “What can we do?” Knapp asked. “He’s the—”

  “He might be in charge, but he isn’t in charge of me,” Garret said.

  “Said the man who was thrown into cryo for being disobedient,” Yamahara said.

  “Your point, Captain?”

  “Maybe it’s time we take Garret’s advice,” Yamahara said.

  “Captain?”

  She looked at Garret. “Care to explain?”

  “What is the last thing that Alastair would expect?”

  Garret looked at her and felt a smile bloom on his face. “Us fighting back. He expects us to roll over. Or for Cerberus to take us out.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. Unless I had to,” Cerberus said.

  Garret looked up at one of the ever-present eyes of the ship AI. “Thanks for that, I think.”

  “So, we attack?” Jennings asked.

  “We go somewhere he wouldn’t think we would be,” Garret said.

  “Where?”

  “Stardock-08,” Knapp said from her position at the table.

  “Where?”

  “That place is still around?” Garret asked.

  “Yes. It is also the place where Alastair can’t get a grip,” Knapp said.

  “How do you know that?” Yamahara asked.

  “I have been monitoring communications for some time. I know about the unease between the two places,” she said with a shrug.

  “What about the blockade?”

  “We do the same thing we did to the Glory that we did to the Eridani,” Yamahara said.

  “And that was?” Garret asked.

  “She did an FTL jump while under full engine power,” Cerberus said. “I am still finding micro-cracks in the hull because of it.”

  “That is insane, Captain,” Garret said. “I like it.”

  Starkiller came out of FTL right where Glory was expecting them. Except for the fact they were speeding towards Glory. Starkiller fired a volley of shots at the ship, and Yamahara wasn’t surprised when Narrows called and begged to surrender. Neither was Garret.

  The trip to Stardock-08 was faster than Garret thought. There were no signs of Alastair’s cronies near this sector of space. He looked at Yamahara, who looked a little uneasy in her command chair. “Captain, you look uneasy,” Garret said.

  “Still don’t fully respect the position, do you Garret?” Yamahara spat.

  Garret held his hand up defensively. “I am still a bit insubordinate, Cap.”

  “I’ve noticed. But, if you must know, I was the captain of another ship near this sector of space, at the border of the Reach. I have… bad memories of those times.”

  “Captain, we have Stardock-08 on,” Knapp said.

  “Greeting, dogs of Alastair,” the burly female said from the screen. She looked like she had been in a fight recently, half of her face swathed in bandages. “If you are here to try and take us, I say good. I want more people to torture for doing this,” she said, pointing to her face. “Which of you—”

  “We are here for sanctuary,” Yamahara said. “We are deserters from the I.S.S.”

  The woman let out a pfft. “That is an I.S.S. ship of the line. Give or take a few years. It’s the Starkiller! There is no way—”

  “We disavow the idiot Alastair,” Garret said, stepping forward. “We aren’t on his good side.”

  “Proof?” The woman said.

  “Look us up,” Trevor said. “Look up what just got posted to the ‘Net.”

  There was a pause as the woman read something. Her face brightened for a moment. “Huh, ten thousand? I could turn you all in for…Yamahara is your captain?”

  “Yes,” Yamahara said, standing up. “Is that an issue?”

  “We have no deal. Get out of here Captain Yamahara of the Topaz! Stardock-08 is closed to you and your crew.”

  Yamahara fell backwards onto the command chair, her face pale and a stunned expression on her face. “I’ve changed since then. I’m not her anymore… dammit!” She smacked the command chair’s armrest hard, and Garret thought he saw tears threatening to fall.

  “Yamahara? What—”

  “Another message for the captain,” Knapp said.

  “On screen,” Yamahara croaked.

  “Yamahara? Is that you?” The speaker was a one-eyed man in a dirty I.S.S. uniform with the insignias torn off. “It’s Vick! What are you doing out here?”

  Yamahara looked even more shocked than the first time. “Vick? What the… never mind,” she said, wiping her eyes, “We need some help. We—”

  “I know, I was listening in on Greta’s signal. You need a place to lay low. You can use my ship.”

  “You? Five-Finger Vick has a ship?”

  “You need a place to—”

  “Yes,” Yamahara said with a small smile. “As if any of my crew can really talk.”

  “I’ll send the coordinates to you.”

  Vick’s ship turned out to be a collection of two ice haulers and three former I.S.S. cutters that had been cobbled together into a drifting station. Vick greeted Yamahara and the crew like honored guests.

  And for a day, everything was as Garret had hoped. They had found a place to stop. Starkiller was being overhauled as best they could, though Vick seemed to have many parts that “fell off a cargo ship.”

  Garret felt that he could stay here if the Starkiller wanted to keep going. He wanted to fight Alastair as well, but he needed a longer rest than the forty-eight hours that Yamahara had given the crew.

  He had gone to the bar on Vick’s station, called Vick’s Place of all things. The swill they served didn’t make him go blind, but he wasn’t sure if there wasn’t an accumulated effect. He spied Yamahara drinking by herself, nursing a drink of some dark amber liquid.

  “Can I join you, Cap?”

  Yamahara looked like she wanted to bite his head off but stopped and waved her hand. “Sure Garret. Take a seat.”

  “What are you drinking?”

  She frowned at the glass. “Something from Vick’s private stash. Supposed to be whiskey, but tastes like kerosene.” She took another pull of it anyway. “What brings you here, PFC?”

  “I think I am going to make Vick’s station my stop for now, Cap. I need a rest.”


  Yamahara wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at the bottom of the glass. “Very well.”

  “That was easy,” Garret said. “Maybe I should tell—”

  “Garret, Mike… I have had a rough few days as well. I want to get out of here. I am too tired to deal with someone like you anymore. Leave. Not as if we really are part of the I.S.S. anymore.” She let out a sigh. “I only wish—”

  She stopped when an alarm went off on her wrist. “Shit. Garret, you aren’t dismissed yet. Armed?”

  Garret revealed the small pulse pistol in his waistband. “After the last space station? Yes!”

  “Good, follow me.” She simply stood up and bolted for the door.

  They were at the ship, which had been put in drydock and locked down. Yamahara punched in her override and was stunned when it gave an error message. She tried again and it went through. Garret saw concern on her face.

  “What is wrong, Jaime?”

  “Something with Cerberus. I had a separate alarm set up. If anyone tampered with him, I’d be notified.”

  Garret nodded and withdrew his pistol, as did Yamahara. They did a casual sweep of the hallways that lead to Starkiller’s core. They split up, each taking a door.

  They entered the main computer room from opposite sides. Their weapons were drawn, and they were looking for a target. Garret’s eyes were the first to find the problem. He stopped and pointed at the missing component. “That is a big problem, Cap.”

  Yamahara looked over and gritted her teeth. She bit back an expletive in Japanese, then walked towards the center of where Cerberus’s brain was supposed to be.

  The only things on the deck were four holes where the base of Cerberus’s computer brain was and a small square box that had been cut off somehow from it.

  “Isn’t that the—”

  “The nuke I had attached to Cerberus before we left Sol.”

  Garret saw Yamahara look up at him, the small nuke in her hand. “Isn’t that supposed to be impossible to take off?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking down at the device.

  “Now what?”

  She looked up at Garret and stood. “We go find our missing crewman.”

  For a moment, Garret wanted to ask a snide question about Cerberus being part of the crew, but he knew better. Instead, he brought a hand up to his brow. “Orders, Captain Yamahara?”

  End of Season One

  About the Author

  Lon E. Varnadore is an emerging science fiction and fantasy writer.

  www.lonvarnadoreauthor.com

  lonvarnadoreaurthor@gmail.com

  Also by Lon E. Varnadore

  I.S.S. Starkiller Bundle 1-3: the first three instalments of the Starkiller Chronicle.

  Starter Set: Want a sampling of all my serials? Check it out here.

  Blood for the Empress: a rollicking adventure with snarky cats, dinosaurs and a empress with a dark appetite.