The Vanguard Emerges (Maraukian War Book 2)

by Michael Chatfield

  Ortiz coughed. “Come on. We’ve a few other issues we need to address.”

  Family, or the move. Still teetering on the edge, Jerome’s thoughts raced. Without the move, there would be nowhere for his family to live.

  Sucking in a breath, Jerome fought his instincts and followed Ortiz out of the medical bays and back toward his office.

  Chapter 15

  SLS Moby

  Leaving Sol System

  8/3354

  “We’re leaving the star system, Mark,” Ava commed to Mark as he nanite-welded a carbon hendral plate over a control run. Mark’s hand cycled back to its original form as he stood.

  “All right.” He knew it was coming. When he’d been at the citadel, he’d wanted nothing more than to leave, but it was always different when you left the star system you were born in. With the Maraukians’ new tactics and ruthlessness, he didn’t know whether he’d ever see it again.

  He made his way to the closest observation deck. Ava glided in after him. They sat, looking at the planets of Sol system. The optical display sensed their eyes, zooming in on what they looked at. The ship wasn’t on full alert, so they could see the planets with the high-resolution weapons sensors, the brown clouds of Venus, the rings of Saturn, the green paradise of Mars.

  Mark looked back at the United Shipping Company’s docks. They were a hive of activity. The lights of hundreds of ships docking to let people help with the effort illuminated the dock as it was covered in magnetically locked-down ships.

  The legion’s ships were at the halfway mark for the Sol system. Now, instead of circling it again, they turned outward, still staying in perfect formation as they headed for the jump point that would take them three days to get to the Andromeda system, and then onto Yelum system and finally Roma.

  After watching Sol system for a bit longer, Ava pulled Mark into the mess to have some food that wasn’t puree with taste elements and texture replication. It was still made from a paste, but you had to cut it to eat it at least.

  Charles miraculously didn’t show up for the rest of the day or even the next as Mark slept and sparred with Ava and Chyna. No one felt like playing sims just yet after their hasty escape. Mark didn’t blame them. On the second day, they were nearing the jump limit when Mark was called to the control room of the Moby.

  Admiral Ciriaco, Legate Alves, the senators, and the staff of the flagship and Moby were present.

  “Mark, what did you do to the United docks?” the admiral asked, everyone looking at him closely.

  “Why?”

  “Well, it seems that it’s moving.”

  Mark grinned as Sarah broke into the Moby’s systems.

  “What the!” the sensor officer said as her console noticed someone else was getting a direct feed.

  The United docks were indeed moving. He could see the power readings through the sensors from the thrusters they’d mounted to the rear of the docks. They’d pulled what had been the propulsion system from the half-made ship and any they had in stores and welded them onto the frame. The frame had been reinforced by the barrels and barrels of nanites that only needed material and power to reinforce the entire structure.

  Ships that had attached themselves to the frame were applying their thrust too, acting as the main propulsion or maneuvering thrusters.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the largest flyable and jump-capable structure in the entire known galaxy.” Mark couldn’t suppress the grin and pride on his face as the shipyards pulled from its orbit of Mars toward the jump point for Gilese.

  “That thing can jump?” the admiral said as the multi-billion ton structure continued to move, ships still moving around it to get the structure ready to jump.

  “They have the sensors, drives, and a pilot, as well as the massive fusion reactors they’ll need to transfer.”

  Jump worked on compressing the space between two large gravitational bodies. This created waves. The more waves, the more power required. At a high number of wavelengths, it also put stresses on whatever was going through the wavelengths as the objects between the two gravitational bodies became closer and closer, pulling more at the ship. A good pilot and navigator team could get around these obstacles if they’d had the sensor data; it might take a little longer but the stresses would be greatly reduced.

  The shipyards would only be able to use the Alcubierre drive periodically but it would mean that their travel time would take a few months, not the days or weeks of a legion warship—or the years of a EHC ship.

  “The gods.” Senator Weng looked at the shipyards. “Do you know where they’ll end up?” His eyes darted to Mark over the split view screen.

  “No idea, though I don’t think it’s going to be in EHC space.” Mark couldn’t deny the twinkle in the man’s eye as he absorbed that news. The only shipyard capable of producing ships of that size would be on the alliance side.

  “Might be an idea to give them a helping hand when they start out,” Mark suggested. Didn’t hurt to nudge people in the right direction.

  “That sounds like an idea. I believe I should make the alliance aware of our new visitors.”

  “What I don’t get is why those ships are still attached. I can see that they’re being used for propulsion but won’t they have to unattach themselves when they enter jump?” Legate Alves asked.

  “They’ve attached the jump pods not only to the structure but to the ships themselves,” Captain Chen supplied helpfully, letting the others draw the same conclusion as he.

  “They’re going to jump ALL of it.” The admiral looked at the hundreds of ships attached to the dock. “I better inform the jump stations along the docks path then.” He signed off the network.

  “Is this what you planned all along? I thought it was only the transport you wanted to add the jump drives to,” Captain Chen asked quietly, still looking at the view screen.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say I told them to do this, but I didn’t tell them what to attach it to. I guess they went with the motto of the docks.”

  “What would that be?” Chen turned to Mark.

  “Bigger is always better—your old lady’s lying to you.”

  Chen’s face cracked into a grin for a second before returning to his neutral mask, his eyes dancing as a few people chuckled around the command center.

  “Was that all, Captain?”

  “I believe so, Mark. We’ll be jumping in two hours.”

  Mark nodded to the captain, who returned it as Mark walked out of the hatch, a small grin on his face. Leo, that smart bastard, had done it!

  Chapter 16

  SLS Moby

  Roma Orbit, Hellenic System

  8/3354

  Ava, Mark, and the mergers had been working around the clock for four exhausting months when the call came. Ava’s breaths came in gasps as she fought with Mark in the simulator. He’d needed a release constantly and no one could push him like she could.

  So far he’d refused to talk about killing Nivad and Jones, but she knew it was only a matter of time before he did. She knew he had his breaking point. She was just making sure she was going to be the one who was there for him when he did. Not going to be long, she thought, watching his reactions carefully. Sarah was also patched into her, giving a detailed report on his mental health.

  Sweating and about to drop, Mark hesitated on a maneuver. Ava sideswiped him, bringing him to his knees, her knife at his throat. When he uttered the words, “Do it,” she knew and quickly pulled away. No matter how quick his nanites were, she wasn’t taking any chances on him throwing himself on the knife.

  “Don’t be so utterly stupid.” With that, she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him in tight. It had taken all her strength to hold him, to not let his anger do anything else he might regret.

  Eventually he’d calmed down, enough to actually look at her, his eyes red, not in so many tears but frustration and inner pain. The need to kill Nivad and Jones had been all he could focus on; now, with them dead, she knew he wa
sn’t sure of his purpose in the world.

  His eyes pleaded with her and she answered the unspoken question in them. “We need you. All of us do! Without you leading, it wouldn’t be the same. I became a merger because of you, to fight and protect those who can’t, but mostly because of you. Do you understand that? I need you.”

  The struggle within him was real; she knew that. But she didn’t know his reasons.

  Reaching forward, she ran a finger across his cheek and that was it—moment over.

  Mark pushed her back. “I can’t.”

  Just like that, he was gone.

  Ava plonked herself down, her back hitting the wall. “Sarah,” she asked. “What happened to him?”

  Sarah replied, almost silently. “I cannot tell you, Ava. I’m sorry. I do believe he will in his own time.”

  Ava let out a sigh. She knew she had time here with him, but as soon as the Maraukians hit, time might be the last thing they had.

  ***

  Mark sat, reading and catching up with everything he could.

  Klaxons sounded throughout the ship and he jumped up.

  “Another Maraukian barge has appeared. It seems to have a faster-than-light drive. It’s aimed at the Legion-protected system Otarvi,” Sarah informed him.

  Sometime later, the Moby launched its two shuttle craft and gliders. The troopers and the Pluto-armored mergers buttoned up; all of them grabbed the massive load holders. They were basic frames that fit around the user’s armor, attaching themselves. Charles had come up with it so that they didn’t have to slap everything to their armor but just step into the frame, engage the locks and walk forward with five times their normal ammunition, extra weapons, and any supplies they needed.

  Tankers jumped into their Bellonas. The nanite layers enveloped them as their power plants fired up, causing the floors to rumble. The parts for the other Bellonas were packed in crates as all of the prototypes and machines from the hangar and ammunition locker were packed up.

  The armored troopers and mergers moved to the hangar. The ground thundered underneath their feet, shaking the base as they ran. Orders were shouted the troopers and mergers quickly fell into their positions as the first gliders landed, taking on board their first load and tank. By the time the first glider was launched by the rail system back into the sky, the second had been loaded and the first shuttle had landed.

  Charles loaded with the last contubernium, which was Mark’s. They were on the second shuttle, which was on its third trip. Dodger was aboard the carrier, unloading the supplies and troops, and getting them in place. Chen’s engines where already warmed and ready to push out of orbit of Roma, waiting for the last shuttle.

  Charles mothered his prototypes, personally hacking the robots that carried them and operating them all to make sure that nothing was damaged. Finally the loading robots moved back into their charging recesses in the shuttle and the shuttle was moved to the rail system.

  “Check harnesses,” Mark said as everyone looked to their left and right, checking their buddies’ harness and giving them the thumbs-up. There was a few who had to correct their harnesses; there was always a few.

  “Ready, cargo master,” Mark said as the last name went green.

  Then the hammer dropped, as the pilots said. They accelerated so rapidly that for a few seconds the stabilizers didn’t kick in, making the legionnaires inside feel up to nine gravities for a matter of milliseconds before it settled down. By the time the legionnaires recovered, they were already out of the atmosphere and turning toward the carrier, which was a few thousand kilometers away.

  It took a special kind of person to be a pilot. They had to endure massive g-forces placed upon their body while watching their instruments for anything that would rip their ship apart if they hit it. Then they had to subject themselves to more gravities to evade the object.

  That was only when they were leaving an atmosphere. When they entered one, they had to evade enemy anti-spaceship weapons, change from vacuum to atmosphere, adjust for additional gravity placed upon the ship by the actual planet, and they also had to hit the drop point for the troops in their bay. Then climb back into space again, get another chalk of troops and repeat the process.

  Mark was sure pilots were insane adrenaline junkies with a death wish. But damn, they could fly!

  The shuttle came along the carrier. The other hangers were closed already as the gravity clamps of the carrier took over pulling the shuttle inside, closing the final hanger. As soon as the shuttle was settled in its cradle, Mark felt the ship’s engines fire up and move away from Roma, toward the jump point that would take them to their destination.

  Mark merged, absorbing all of the available information before the shuttle came to a rest and opened all of its hatches. The troops punched their harnesses, stepped back into their frames, and filed out, following their individual bouncing balls.

  Mark dropped his harness off in the armory and walked through the ship to the bridge in the middle of the ship. Ava, Jarek, and Chyna joined him as he walked into the bridge. Dodger and the rest of the staff were still sorting out the troops and supplies, as well as getting the gliders ready for the drop that would inevitably come at the end of their trip.

  It was easy for them as Guella had made an easy-to-use guide. They would select the terrain conditions and expected combat and voila—it would give them a set loadout. Then they just had to find the equipment and put it on the gliders.

  Mark watched all of the troops around him. He could see they were tired by their body language but they were determined. Everyone had been pulling double shifts and running themselves hard building forges, Bellonas, Thunderbolts, and specialized machines. The mergers queued the forges and the troopers put them together.

  “Once we’re ready, forced rest, two shifts. I want them rested and fed before anything.”

  Jarek, Ava, and Chyna agreed readily as they entered the bridge. Mark saw issues immediately as Sarah pulled up items on his HUD. The bridge had been undergoing an upgrade to work with the new sensors and systems placed within the ship as the call had gone out. As a result, some systems were down, making the operators work on much slower hookups.

  “All right, people, let’s get to work. This isn’t going to fix itself.” They walked to the sides of the hatch and got out of their suits. It was easier to work on the systems if they weren’t armored as they wouldn’t necessarily stand up through the consoles. It also allowed them to use their morphed tools quicker than through the suit. Their arms changed into various tools as they moved toward the issues. Mark saw the wide-eyed stares. A few had seen a merger work on systems with their morphed tools, but to those who saw it for the first time, it was strange.

  Mark shrugged it off as he grounded himself and finished installing the new CPU and connecting the cooling system and power unit to a sensor array. Sarah noticed an issue in the view screen and sent a stream of nanites along the cables to fix the screen. Mark booted up the screen and ran a systems test. He found some interesting files, which were definitely not part of the system’s usual inventory. He deleted the rather crude videos from the storage center, instead placing an old music video with the words Rick Rolled overtop.

  Make the idiot think twice about putting his videos on military stations. Mark sealed the station and moved on to the next, pulling the old hardware and installing the new.

  “Spike in power!” Mark grabbed the surging wires using his nanites as a conductor, directing the power to his internal power storage. He bled the power off as he sent nanites down the wire. Finding the blown breaker, he reset it and fixed it. He released the wires and Sarah ran the POST as he had his nanites check every breaker and repair any faults.

  “You know you just became a human lightning rod,” Ava said, a grin in her voice.

  Mark replayed the feed in the bridge, watching himself as fat blue sparks jumped over his body before setting everyone’s hair on the bridge on edge from the released power. The mergers were the only ones wh
o hadn’t as they’d absorbed any released power.

  “Whoops.” Mark grinned to himself as he watched people try to pat down their hair and failing. Taelyon, the helmswoman whose hair was definitely not regulation length, stared daggers at Mark as her hair looked like a strange brown peacock.

  Mark hid his grin—barely—as he moved past her, trying to act as if he didn’t see her. He worked on her console, coughing violently under the table while she couldn’t see his face. He quickly finished and moved on to the next issue.

  “Well, thanks for putting my bridge back together. It’s good to have the systems all online and not have to use rigged-up secondary systems,” Chen said once they’d finished.

  The mergers’ tools returned back to hands, fingers, and arms, still getting strange looks from the bridge crew.

  “Glad to help. It’s better knowing everything’s working properly.”

  “Agreed. With our new systems, we’ll be in the first reaction force of stealth ships and cruisers.”

  Mark couldn’t miss the note of excitement and pride. The carrier was now even faster than the previous Moby. With beefed-up engines, power systems, and stabilizers, she was the fastest carrier in the entire space legion. It was scary to see a ship that massed over three hundred million tons move at the speed of a cruiser that weighed seven hundred thousand tons.

  Mark imagined Charles was giddy, running around the ship and checking every system, probably already thinking of what he wanted to add on the next upgrade. The man was constantly building things then rebuilding them as fast as possible, better than before. He always found something he wanted to change.

  “We’ll be passing a transport carrying forges. They’re going to give us a few to pass onto the Otarvi system.”

  “All right. From my information, the people of Otarvi have been doing little with their forge but make drilling and natural flammable materials collectors and purifiers. They are receiving word that the military has taken control of production until the end of the conflict. Production is being focused on armor weapons and armorite fabbers.