by M. D. Cooper
STORMING THE NORSE WIND
ORIGINS OF DESTINY – PREQUEL
BY M. D. COOPER
Copyright © 2018 M. D. Cooper
Aeon 14 is Copyright © 2018 M. D. Cooper
Version 1.0.0
Cover Art by Andrew Dobell
Editing by Jen McDonnell
Aeon 14 & M. D. Cooper are registered trademarks of Michael Cooper
All rights reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
STORMING THE NORSE WIND
THE BOOKS OF AEON 14
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STORMING THE NORSE WIND
STELLAR DATE: 01.08.4084 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Kirby Jones
REGION: Rimward edge of asteroid belt, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Commander Tanis Richards leaned forward in the captain’s chair on the TSS Kirby Jones, examining the ship floating before her on the bridge’s main holotank.
It was a medium tonnage freighter on a run from Cune to Makemake; a nondescript ship on a common shipping route. Yet something about the vessel felt wrong. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was more than the flag the freighter had on it from the Cune Port Authority.
Lovell, the ship’s AI, had run through the freighter’s manifest, and nothing stood out. However, the Cune dockmaster had reason to believe they had smuggled undeclared cargo aboard—some old engine flow regulators that were contraband for reasons Tanis couldn’t fathom—and were taking it out of Terran Hegemony space.
“Bring them around on our vector,” Tanis ordered her comm and scan officer. “No point in us wasting fuel. We’re low enough on volatiles as it is."
“Freighter Norse Wind, cease acceleration on current course, and come about to the vector we have designated,” Lieutenant James called out over the Kirby Jones’s comm systems.
The Norse Wind was only two light seconds away, but the response took almost thirty to come back.
“They’ve acknowledged,” Lieutenant James said. “They’re shifting course; should match up with us in thirty-five minutes.”
“I can tighten that up a bit,” Lieutenant Jeannie said from the pilot’s console. “If I give a little boost now, we can sync up in about twenty-five.”
“Do it, Lieutenant,” Tanis said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Tanis continued to stare at the holo, wondering why the Kirby Jones had been dispatched to check over this ship. The freighter was due to stop at Callisto in two weeks—inspectors there could have checked the ship over without sending her patrol craft off-course.
She could see the need for a mid-route interception if the ship had a poor reputation. But other than a few small infractions, the Norse Wind had a stellar rating—especially for a Scattered Disk ship that made runs into InnerSol.
“I’m going over on this one,” she finally declared. “Jeannie, you have the conn.”
Jeannie turned in her seat and gave Tanis a questioning look. “Ma’am?”
“You heard me, Lieutenant, you have the conn.”
“Aye, ma’am, I have the conn,” Jeannie replied.
Tanis nodded with satisfaction, pretending to ignore the look Jeannie shared with James. Either the two lieutenants were wondering what was the reason for the interception as much as she was, or they’d placed a bet as to whether or not she’d join the boarding party.
Tanis stood and raised her arms in a long stretch before turning and walking off the bridge toward the patrol ship’s sortie room. It wasn’t a long walk; the Kirby Jones was only one hundred twenty meters from bow to engines, but, like all good ships in the Terran Space Force, no empty space was permitted when it could be filled with conduit, storage, or power and munitions, and she carefully threaded her way through the maze.
Tanis walked past the crew quarters and galley, before slipping down a ladder and landing on Deck 3 with a bang. She stooped her hundred-eighty-two-centimeter frame under a low hanging duct while calling down to engineering.
Corporal Marian led the Kirby Jones’s four-person assault team. Under Marian served privates Yves, Susan, and Lukas. They were a good fireteam—though regulars, not Marines—and they had acquitted themselves well during the Kirby Jones’s overlong tour.
Three years? Tanis thought to herself. She double-checked the date she had been given the Kirby Jones as her command and saw that Connie hadn’t exaggerated. It would be three years in just one week. Time flew when you were out in the black chasing smugglers and pirates.
Not that they often found many smugglers and pirates. Mostly just ships that had let some permit or registry expire, and were seeing how long they could let it slide before anyone noticed.
Tanis decided not to give Connie the satisfaction of a reply; though the technical sergeant did give her a final snort over the Link before returning to her engines.
Inside the sortie room, her assault team was already gearing up. Yves spotted Tanis first, and moved to salute, but Tanis stopped him with a wave of her hand. “At ease, everyone. Don’t stop on my account.”
“Is everything alright?” Corporal Marian asked, clearly wondering why her CO was present.
“Couldn’t be better,” Tanis replied. “I just thought I’d come along for the ride and see what there is to see over there. Maybe they’ve got some better food than what’s left in our tanks, and we can buy some rations off them.”
Corporal Lukas chuckled. “They could have dried monkey turds and it would be better than what’s left in our tanks.”
Yves and Susan chuckled quietly while Marian cuffed Lukas on the side of his head. “Stow it, private.”
Tanis was glad to see that Marian had taken their little chat about maintaining discipline to heart. There were just ten of them on the Kirby Jones, and after months together in the black, things had become a bit too lax. She wasn’t about to start running one of those ships.
An eleven month tour was uncommon—usually they were only out for three to five—but right now, the TSF needed all the patrol craft it could muster; which meant that their run had gone on almost twice as long as it should have.
Long patrols like this happened every few years, when Mars passed between Earth and Ceres—an alignment that always heralded more than one snafu.
Ceres was a member of the Terran Hegemony, the most powerful member of the Sol Space Federation—but the Marsian Protectorate now lay between it and the rest of Terra. This didn’t place Ceres in any da
nger, but it did make shipping tricky, as the direct route between Earth and Ceres now involved passing through another state.
Though the planets, stations, and habitats of the Sol System all purported to be happy members of the Sol Space Federation, there was unrest on Mars, in the Jovian Combine, and out in the Scattered Disk.
The mess made for a smugglers’ paradise.
Tanis listened with half an ear as the assault team discussed the layout of the Norse Wind, and the path they would take through the freighter to clear it.
“If you’ll escort me to the bridge, I’ll hold it and keep an eye on their command crew,” Tanis offered.
“That would be very helpful, ma’am,” Corporal Marian said. “I’ll have Yves and Susan take you up there, and then they can start their sweep from the bow back.”
“Thank you,” Tanis replied, as she stepped out of her uniform and hung it in a locker.
She turned to the armor rack and grabbed her armor’s initial layer. It was the under layer—a carbon-fiber mesh that could stop nearly any handheld ballistic round, and shed heat from beams. However, the most important feature while out in the black was the airtight seal, and compression it provided against vacuum.
A bad seal on an umbilical between two ships in space was far more likely to kill a boarding party than any enemy action. For that reason alone, Corporal Marian did not use the umbilical when boarding. She preferred to float through the black, airlock-to-airlock. That way, a blowout wouldn’t send anyone spinning off into space—or an engine.
Once Tanis pulled the seal up on her base layer, the thick fabric drew out all the air between it and her skin. Then it attached to the hard-Link port at the base of her neck, and made the lower service connections. She raised her arms over her head and gave a little shimmy to make sure the layer was well seated, and wasn’t binding anywhere.
“Fit looks good, Commander,” Susan commented.
“Thanks, Private,” Tanis nodded, before stepping toward the armor rack and holding her arms out before her. The rack sensed her, and spun out the second layer—wrapping her from the feet up in layers of alloy and carbon plating until it reached her neck, where it stopped after clasping the neck seal around her throat.
She inspected the armor’s deployment, and twisted side to side to ensure the waist and torso plates lined up properly. Sometimes the rack screwed up, and a sharp turn would drive a plate under her ribs.
Satisfied that the armor was properly applied, Tanis reached behind her head and gave her ponytail a sharp tug, signaling her hair to detach from her scalp. It came free in her hand, and she placed it in a pouch inside her locker. When the mission was over, her nano would reattach the follicles in a matter of minutes.
“It’s a good look on you, Commander,” Yves smiled while running a hand over his permanently hairless scalp.
“On you, maybe,” Tanis replied. “I’m no fashionista, but I’m pretty sure this noggin of mine looks better with a thick covering on it.”
“Nah, you’re just not used to it,” Yves said. “Hair’s just an ancient leftover in our genetic code. It doesn’t serve any purpose, anymore. We’re beyond it.”
“Why don’t you get beyond putting your armor on?” Marian asked. “Let’s start there, before we give the commander fashion advice.”
Tanis sent a wry smirk Marian’s way before pulling her helmet off the armor rack. She turned it over, giving its external sensors and plating a visual inspection on several spectra to ensure no signs of damage or microfractures were apparent.
Satisfied that the helmet was in good condition, Tanis sent a signal over the Link, and it split in two. She set the back half behind her head, and it slotted into the neck ring. Her internal heads up display registered a solid lock on the ring, and she set the front half of the helmet in place.
The two halves reconnected and locked together. For a moment, Tanis was blind—until her visual systems switched over to the armor’s feed.
The ship’s AI wasn’t required to review their armor status before they went on a sortie, but Tanis had never objected to it. Extra eyes on any situation—whether virtual or physical—were always welcome.
Lovell placed a countdown on Tanis’s HUD, which she synced with the rest of the assault team—all of whom had just finished settling their helmets in place, and were doing a final visual inspection on one another’s armor.
Tanis nodded—as much as her armor allowed—and turned with her arms raised while Marian checked her over. The corporal never questioned Tanis when she joined the assault team on boardings; but she did take extra care to ensure that her CO’s armor was in perfect condition, and properly assembled.
A minute later, Marian pronounced herself satisfied, and Tanis selected her weapons from the rack while Yves checked the corporal’s armor.
She wasn’t expecting anything serious, so she placed a standard TSF concussive rifle on her back. No weapon was particularly safe for ship and station combat—even a pulse rifle’s concussive blast could blow a seal, and treat them all to explosive decompression—but a pulse rifle was less likely to cause catastrophic damage than beams and projectiles.
Still, she wasn’t going to go in there without something that could provide armor penetration capabilities. She slid a large-bore slug thrower into a holster on her right thigh. A lightwand on her left hip finished up the weapons. Tanis checked the action on the rifle’s firing mechanism before placing it on her armor’s shoulder sling, which would allow her to pull it forward or let it slide onto her back in one fluid motion.
She grabbed two EM-flash grenades, spare powercells, and ammo for the slug thrower, while Lukas and Yves discussed the food they might be able to trade for.
Tanis knew she shouldn’t have laughed, but did anyway. Marian was right; they all needed to get some time off the Jones if they were to retain their sanity.
She felt a few adjustment burns in the deck below her feet, and then Jeannie’s voice came over the 1MC.
“Burn ceasing, burn ceasing. I say again, burn ceasing. Zero-gravity in 5…4…3…2…1.”
As Jeanine gave the countdown, Tanis and the boarding team activated the maglocks on their boots. When the burn ceased—Tanis felt the disconcerting sensation of her organs lifting in her torso—the team all stayed anchored to the deck.
Yves led the way, followed by Susan and Lukas. Tanis fell in after them, and Marian brought up the rear. Slowly and carefully, the five of them settled into the airlock, and Marian triggered its cycle. The lock detected that the assault team was armored, and ran a quick atmospheric purge, flashing green above the exterior door when it was complete.
Marian looked to Tanis, who nodded.
opened to the blinding light of space.
Tanis’s helmet adjusted its pickups—attenuating the noon-bright radiance of Sol, while increasing the contrast around the approaching ship. The indicator on her HUD showed the freighter at just over five kilometers distant. The orders James had passed over called for them to hold position at a hundred meters on the Kirby Jones’s port side; Tanis knew that Corporal Marian wouldn’t give the go-ahead until the Norse Wind had settled into the proscribed vector, and powered down its engines.
As the freighter grew larger, more of its boxy shape became apparent. The main hull was only three hundred meters long, but several tanks were clustered around the ship’s bow, and cargo crates were attached to exterior frames all around the ship.
Normally, hauling that much external freight would be a nightmare to mass balance; but the Norse Wind had three widely spaced engines on its stern, which allowed it to adjust thrust as needed to compensate for any imbalance in its load.
Tanis took a deep breath. While sitting on the bridge, a boarding always seemed like a fun excursion; but now, staring across a hundred meters of hard vacuum at a ship that could be filled with hostiles, there was no anticipation of fun—only concern over the thousand instantly fatal things that could happen in the next few minutes.
Lukas unslung his heavy rifle, a weapon capable of firing punishing concussive blasts as well as high-velocity projectiles. It was the fight-ender. If they had to use that weapon, they were sentencing anyone who wasn’t in armor or EV gear to a cold, airless death.