Hero of the Republic: (The Parasite Initiative, Book 1)
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Hero of the Republic
By Britt Ringel
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
HERO OF THE REPUBLIC
Copyright © 2016 by Britt Ringel
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
K—My Love, Always
Author’s Acknowledgments
Who reads this page? Well, maybe four people. That makes it worth writing.
The first acknowledgment goes to my new cover artist, Yvonne Less. She is seriously awesome and I cannot thank her enough for her quick responses and incredible talent. If you are a self-publisher, I really recommend you take a look at her website: http://www.art4artists.com.au/
I can’t believe my beta readers signed on to proof another series. Is it some sense of self-loathing or my nonstop “Please, please, please” that made them do it? Regardless, I can’t believe how much time and effort they invest into reading each beta book. Late night calls with Derek that last hours as we go over every sentence for grammar and internal logic (many “hads” were killed in this story courtesy of him), a veritable tome of information handed to me from Carol (not only does she edit with different colors, each color means something different: recommendation, grammar, synonyms, etc.) and countless hours spent at a pub with a bleary-eyed Law (as he breathes life into the story’s characters like telling me why no agent would dare make a joke when speaking with Adira Fane because she’s just that much of a badass).
I really have the perfect team of beta readers. Not only have you all attacked this ridiculously long book with the same enthusiasm as the rest but all of your inputs are so radically different from each other’s that, combined, they made my book far better than before I handed it to you. Thank you all very much for your time and efforts. I know you each have better things to do and I’m humbled that you spent that time helping me.
Finally, a separate paragraph for Karen. I bet you’re really tired of reading my books by now. Especially this summer. Not only do you get to be my alpha reader but you also get to do all the fun stuff like converting the document into kindle, nook, and smashwords formats, updating the webpage, helping me with twitter and facebook and everything else you take care of that I have no idea how to do. It’s criminal that only my name is on the book. In return, all you get is the same dedication that appears before these acknowledgments but it’s heartfelt and consistent. Thank you, Karen, and I love you.
For more maps, layouts and information regarding my books, please visit http://www.thiscorneroftheuniverse.com.
Contents
PART I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
PART II
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
PART III
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
PART IV
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
PART I
The Brevic Republic
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Chapter 1
Murky tendrils of red light brushed the darkened horizon. Piercing the gloom, an officer trainee’s singsong voice shouted, “Ree-cover!”
Three hundred eighty-nine fellow officer trainees sprang from the ground to stand at attention. In unison, they screamed, “O-T-S!” The thundering cry echoed off the buildings in the quad a hundred meters away.
Standing among the collection of men and women, OT Caden Twist distinctly heard a trainee somewhere to his right shout the letters in a clownish though sedated voice. The recurrent, mild rebellion in the darkness of predawn never failed to amuse him. Twist and his group stood at attention but the upperclassmen monitoring the large formation did so with a malaise typical during morning physical training. The exercise fields of the Naval Officer Training School, located on New London, were among the few places a lowerclassman could focus more on fitness than strict adherence to military discipline. The lush planet, christened after its namesake star, was the heart of a major military center inside the Brevic Republic.
“Pushups!” bellowed the fitness leader. “Ready!”
Twist dropped to the ground with his class. The tiny stones working their way into his palms were an aggravation he knew would quickly transform into real pain. The leader began to scream out a rhythmic four-count that would qualify as a single pushup. Twist recalled the intense program’s first weeks and the agony of the stones embedding themselves into his hands. He had learned quickly to subtly sweep aside the larger rocks while assuming the initial pushup position.
The count grew and Twist’s muscles began to ache. He only concerned himself with the final number of each four-count, willing the number “thirty” to arrive faster. Oriented toward the brightening horizon, a rich crimson spread over the flat, gentle line in the distance, evidence of New London’s small, sub-dwarf star preceding her larger sister, a G6V main sequence star that breathed life into the core Brevic system.
“Ree-cover!”
Twist pushed himself off the ground a final time with substantial effort. “O-T-S!” he shouted with the proper combination of volume, intensity and motivation. To his right, the mysterious comic mocked the absurdity of the situation again. How did I get myself into this, Twist asked himself as he stared toward the cerise horizon.
It was a question he had asked dozens of times before, the most poignant on his second night at the OTS facility. That black night, a new low in a life blessed with few of them, Twist had hand-drawn a calendar laying out the entire OTS program. Some would have seen sketching the crude calendar as a colossal waste of precious time at the start of a concentrated program that would offer scant little of it. The process had taken half an hour but given Twist much needed perspective. The representation made OTS seem accomplishable. Since Training Day 2, each night before grabbing his bathrobe from the closet, Twist marked out the day most recently completed. It was a cathartic ritual that offered him a meage
r, daily victory.
The calendar waited for him, sheltered in the small room he shared with OT Vix Kirkpatrick. Today there were nearly as many days with an “X” through them than without. Twist heard the order to form up into flights as a smile spread across his face. In less than a week, the reviled upper class would graduate and his class would elevate to that coveted status.
“Diss-missed!”
The massive formation disintegrated but dozens of smaller ones began to take its place. “Three-Twelve!” OT Roy Bell shouted while raising a hand to signal the members of Twist’s flight.
Twist walked, always with a sense of urgency, toward his gathering flight and lined up in the right column behind OT Marie Conrad. She was busily redoing her ponytail while waiting for the rest. The formation would consist of two columns of ten with a twenty-first OT in the lead carrying a guidon or military standard used to identify each flight. The final person in the flight would position himself at the rear and give the marching orders, or “drive” the flight to its destination. This morning’s destination was “home.”
“Forward, Harch!” OT Bell ordered and Flight 3-12 launched itself down the paved walkway toward Duprees Quad, the lengthy, narrow field of grass set between four enormous dormitories that housed the eight hundred officer trainees and casual students.
That seemingly large number of officer trainees would soon explode further, Twist knew. With the flames of war ignited by the Hollaran Commonwealth inside the Anesidora star system, the Brevic Navy was opening the spigot to the OTS admissions process. Presently, only an upper and lower class occupied the facility. Soon, however, New London’s OTS program would swell to four separate classes. Twist took pride in knowing that his class, Class 95-05, qualified by strict admissions standards. The bar would be lowered going forward to accommodate the rising need for naval officers to serve in the nascent conflict.
Less pleasing was the realization that his fledgling leadership training would be immediately tested in a shooting war. I didn’t sign up for this, Twist thought bitterly as his flight reached the covered shelter leading into his dorm. When I applied to OTS, we were at peace with the Commonwealth. The formation came to a halt and Bell ordered the left column out from the flight. Still at attention, Twist resisted the urge to shake his head as his musings continued. At least my folks are proud. He took great solace in that knowledge. Mother is positively gushing… I just hope the media doesn’t make a big deal at my graduation. Bell released the right column and Twist followed his line, single-file, into the dorm. If I graduate...
After reaching the stairwell, he jogged up the steps to the second floor, rounded a corner and moved quickly down the narrow hallway. Ahead of him, Kirkpatrick pushed open the door to their small room and entered at a breakneck pace.
It took only a few seconds for Twist to catch up but Kirkpatrick was already peeling away his sweat-soaked orange t-shirt and shorts. Arriving by transport eight weeks ago, Twist had witnessed dozens of bright orange-clad personnel marching their way toward destinations unknown. At the time, he had thought to himself, “Oh, those must be the safety guys.” That illusion was dispelled almost immediately when a half hour later, he was slotted into the third squadron of the wing of students. Squadron 3, known as the Tigers, owned the color orange, a hue that Twist had grown too familiar with over the last weeks.
“Vix,” Twist called out as he kicked off his shoes, “did you leave it unsecured?”
“Of course not,” Kirkpatrick answered while entering a small bathroom shared with the adjoining dorm room.
“I told you,” Twist teased with a smile. He kneeled at his small locker inside the room’s closet and pressed his thumb to the biometric reader. A green light flashed in conjunction with the soft click of the door unlocking. Twist grabbed his datapad and closed the door. “Next time I tell you your locker is locked, you ought to believe me,” he proclaimed loudly to his roommate.
Kirkpatrick’s reply came over the sound of running water. “But then we wouldn’t have the excitement of not knowing if I’d been gigged.”
Last week, Flight 3-12’s training officer, Lieutenant Boslet, had pulled a surprise inspection of quarters while the OTs were conducting morning exercises. To Kirkpatrick’s abject horror, he had left his locker unsecure and incurred Boslet’s wrath. The pain directed downward at the young officer trainee came in the form of demerits, revocation of certain liberties such as leaving his dorm for the weekend and worst of all, the singularly focused animosity of the upper class. Since enduring the trauma, at least once a day, Kirkpatrick’s normally casual demeanor was supplanted by the terror-induced frenzy of “Did I leave my locker open?”
Twist confirmed that the materials he would need for the day were on his datapad and then inspected the room. Desktops were lint-free with items “squared” on their surfaces. Uniforms hung precisely seven centimeters apart in the closet. The room’s tiny sink was completely clean and dry; the mirror above it was immaculate. The check had become second nature and constituted half of an entire procedure that would be completed by Kirkpatrick while Twist showered. Twist studied each bed with a critical eye but found only minimal tightening of the heavy, top sheets was needed. Making their beds to inspection standards was a painstaking process that was mercifully required only once a week. The other six nights, Twist and Kirkpatrick slept on top of their beds and used their bathrobes as blankets. It was a sly compromise worth the extra minute needed to fix the bed each morning. Truly “high-speed” OTs slept on the floor.
A dripping Kirkpatrick emerged from the bathroom while calling out, “Done.” The announcement triggered a frantic OT from the adjacent room, ready to take his turn in the shower.
Kirkpatrick used his heel to close the door behind him and began toweling off. “Why the hell don’t they just install a sonic shower?”
Twist began stripping off his clothes. He tossed each discarded article on the floor underneath his hanging laundry bag in the closet. “That’d be too fast and easy. They want us to have to scramble under pressure. They want us to have to adapt,” he explained for at least the tenth time.
Twist fished out his one towel from the laundry bag and wrapped it around his waist. He quickly collected the exercise clothes from the floor and gently pushed aside the clean clothes inside the laundry bag to reach the very bottom where the truly dirty clothes belonged. Each OT had a small, faux-wood dresser in the room but only one set of immaculately laundered and folded clothes resided within. Those were the “inspection clothes” that were for display purposes only. Twist’s socks and undergarments for daily wear were safely ensconced inside his laundry bag near its top, safe from the prying eyes of any upperclassman or training officer who might decide that his socks were not “smiling” or his underwear not perfectly folded.
“Done!” called out a voice from the bathroom.
Twist charged toward the bathroom door as Kirkpatrick began donning his uniform. Outside, in the hallway, the bellowing voice of OT Troy Pagnosky cautioned, “Eight minutes, Three-Twelve!”
“What’re we doing today?” Kirkpatrick asked through the bathroom door.
“You really have to ask?” Twist shouted back.
“For the morning,” Kirkpatrick clarified. “Everyone knows what’s happening this afternoon.”
“We’re starting Republic Principles and History,” Twist answered as he stepped into the freezing shower. He spent barely a minute under the chilling water before rushing out without turning it off. “Done!” he screamed, followed by, “Dale, make sure you dry the floor off.”
Once back inside his room, he toweled off and then dropped to his hands and knees to dry the water on the floor. Finished, he crossed the room and pulled out the day’s lineup of socks, white t-shirt and underwear. He quickly put them on and began the more deliberate process of dressing into one of his cleaned and pressed uniforms from the closet.
“Principles and history,” Kirkpatrick muttered to himself before looking at Twist
with a grin. “So, do you think anyone will figure it out?” he harried.
Twist frowned at the question. “See, I knew you were aware of what we were doing this morning,” he scolded while stepping into his dark blue pants. After a beat, he warned, “Nobody better get any help figuring it out.”
Kirkpatrick stood in the center of the room, waiting for his friend. “I don’t understand why you’re so touchy about it. I’d be screaming it from the rooftop if she was my mother.”
“I’m proud of her but I don’t want any special treatment because of her, Vix. I don’t want people to know because when they find out, I’ll never live up to the expectations… I’m just a normal guy.”
Twist finished tying his shoes and took three steps forward to stand in front of Kirkpatrick. His eyes started at his roommate’s neckline and slowly, critically swept downward. Every crease was examined, every seam scrutinized for a stray thread or piece of lint. Kirkpatrick turned around and Twist continued the scrutiny. “You’re good.”
The OTs switched positions. “Nice butt,” Kirkpatrick joked.
“Idiot.”
Chapter 2
The duo had an extra two minutes to straighten their room further before Pagnosky issued the call to form up. Outside once again, the murky, crimson light from New London Minor had been usurped by the system’s primary star.
Although every member of Flight 3-12 had experience driving from location to location, today OT Pagnosky commanded the flight. Even though he was just another officer trainee in a facility filled with them, his natural charisma had thrust Pagnosky into de-facto leadership of the flight early in the program. Likewise, his formidable ability to command had not gone unnoticed by the upperclassmen or the training officers. In four days, when the upper class graduated and Twist’s class ascended to fill that role, OT Pagnosky would be “promoted” to the officer trainee rank of “OT Captain.”
Of course, officer trainee ranks were meaningless outside of the four square kilometer facility that was used to turn prior enlisted and civilians into officer-grade material. Inside the compound however, OT ranks carried real weight. OT captains oversaw each of the three squadrons while OT commanders and lieutenant commanders brought life to each captain’s will. Further down the chain, OT lieutenants and junior grade lieutenants supervised the flights of the upper and lower classes while lowly OT ensigns had no extra duties and focused solely on graduating from the demanding program.