To Fall Among Vultures

by Scott Warren

  Table of Contents

  To Fall Among Vultures (Union Earth Privateers)

  The Story So Far

  Chapter 1 - Kreshna

  Chapter 2 - Similar Stories

  Chapter 3 - Wheelhouse

  Chapter 4 - Pedres

  Chapter 5 – A closer look

  Chapter 6 - Tether

  Chapter 7 – False Flags

  Chapter 8 – A Change of Hands

  Chapter 9 – In Motion

  Chapter 10 – The Enemy’s Face

  Chapter 11 – Forward Vitacuus

  Chapter 12 – Raksava Moves

  Chapter 13 – The Fate of Gavisar

  Chapter 14 - Alternatives

  Chapter 15 – In the Heat of Battle

  Chapter 16 – Return to Pedres

  Chapter 17 – A Cross of Swords

  Chapter 18 – Condor Descending

  Chapter 19 – True Colors

  Chapter 20 – To Fall Among Vultures

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Glossary

  PRAISE FOR VICK’S VULTURES

  UNION EARTH PRIVATEERS BOOK ONE

  "Vick’s Vultures is a lot of fun, and a book that completely delivers on its premise. It subverts a lot of our expectations, and does so to make for a stronger, more enjoyable story."

  - The Speculative Herald

  "Vick’s Vultures is a fast-paced thrill ride through a galaxy packed with scores of unique alien empires. Our hero, Victoria ‘Vick’ Marin, is a tough-as-nails lady that knows how to handle a crisis. Read and enjoy!"

  - Robert E Waters, author of the Devil Dancers Military SF series

  "A richly-imagined universe, three-dimensional characters, and a fast-moving plot give the reader a novel that is as interesting to the lover of hard science fiction as it is exciting to the lover of adventure. Vicks Vultures is a scientifically creditable, swashbucklingly exciting tale from a talented emerging author. Read it . . . while I wait for his next book."

  - H. Paul Honsinger, author of the Man of War Series

  "Vick’s Vultures shines a light on the dirtier side of space. The crew of the Condor will pull you into this gritty space opera and open the doors to a new sci-fi universe."

  - Bob Salley, creator of Salvagers comic book series

  "[A] fast-paced, at times breathless story that makes for a compelling reading while laying the background for the author’s vision of the future, one that is quite believable in its lack of glamorous technological advancement for Earth, whose people try to carve their own niche in the grander scheme of things, despite the obvious disadvantages they started out with."

  - Space and Sorcery

  Copyright Notice

  Parvus Press, LLC

  PO Box 711232

  Herndon, VA 20171

  ParvusPress.com

  TO FALL AMONG VULTURES

  Copyright © 2017 by Scott Warren

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, magical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

  Parvus Press supports our authors and encourages creatives of all stripes. If you have questions about fair use, duplication, or how to obtain donated copies of Parvus books, please visit our website. Thank you for purchasing this title and supporting the numerous people who worked to bring it together for your enjoyment.

  If this book is the same weight as any given duck, it is purely a matter of coincidence. This book is not a witch. Please do not burn it.

  ISBN 13 9780997661354

  Ebook ISBN 9780997661347

  Cover art by Tom Edwards Concepts

  Ebook design by Parvus Press

  Author photo credit by Rebecca Shelton and Taylor Loy

  When a Samaritan as he traveled came upon the stricken man who had fallen among robbers he was moved with compassion. The Samaritan came to him, and cleansed his wounds with oil and wine. He set the man upon his donkey and carried him to the safety of an inn.

  -The Parable of the Good Samaritan

  The Story So Far

  Untold ages ago, we witnessed the gods create fire through lightning and brush, and from then on we thought of little else but stealing it for ourselves. Through peace and war we discovered the engines of steam and combustion, of automobiles and aircraft and then rockets capable of carrying three men to our nearest neighbor: the Moon. Ionic and electromagnetic propulsion followed. Though slow, these engines burned steady and carried us to the red planet we named for the god of the wars that spurred our expansion.

  Then we expanded farther to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and we discovered the keys great minds pondered and lusted after. Matter with the exotic properties required to hoist the Alcubierre designs for faster-than-light travel from the ideas of geniuses to the forges of the governments of America, India, and China. A new space race began, and within a quarter century, the speed of light and the petty differences between the two greatest world powers that Earth had ever known became distant memories. Humanity embarked on the greatest exploratory struggle they had ever undertaken as a species: the journey to another star.

  Less than a decade after we discovered the secret to interstellar travel, we also discovered that our journey was not at all unique. The stars were jealously guarded, and we learned to our regret that those xenos established among them had little regard for human life and even less respect for the territory humans claimed.

  But in the ashes these aliens made of our first interstellar pioneers, the raiders from the stars left a gift of untold value: a tear in the fabric of space near the core of the system. A second way around the threshold of light speed, a mystery of physics so utterly alien to human minds that the discovery of the horizon drive shattered our understanding of the natural world. And like fire before it, humanity could think of little else until it was ours.

  As the astronauts of Earth flung themselves ever farther across their corner of the Orion Spur, that narrow bridge between the Perseus and Sagittarius arms of the Milky Way, it became clear that we could not survive Earth’s discovery. So the Union Earth government elected to withdraw, to colonize planets in secret or cohabitate with other xenos as desperate as we. Until fleets from Earth could stand against the threat of interstellar war, humans would be as ghosts in the darkness between stars. To reach that day, to close that critical technological gap we needed a new method of advancement.

  The Union Earth Privateers were founded five decades after the first Alcubierre module pushed itself past light speed on a torus of compressed space. Granted almost unilateral authority, the Privateers had a single directive: Gather advanced technology from every corner of reachable space. Some forged diplomatic bonds, others turned to salvage or piracy. Some became rescuers in an uncaring galaxy, trading safe passage for scraps of xenotech. Through the tireless work and sacrifice of the Privateers, humans began creeping ever closer toward the day when they could stand among the other races in the stars.

  Chapter 1 - Kreshna

  The Condor hung upside-down in space. A tricky thing for her pilot to manage, the lack of gravity notwithstanding. Tilted 180 degrees opposite the locals’ plane of orientation, Victoria watched as the perforated Vautan destroyer drifted closer on her screen. Mauled lettering across the bow marked her as the Kreshna, which the computer identified as a predatory animal from the Vautan homeworld. The shredded aft of the destroyer’s dorsal section still glowed white-hot from the particle cannons that had carved out its propulsion system and main reactor, leaving the Kreshna as scrap to be cleaned up after the battle.

  The Vul
tures weren’t keen on waiting that long. Either the Vautan would win the ongoing battle and scuttle her as a loss or, more likely, the joint xeno fleet assaulting the Vautan mining colony would return and mop up. But before either outcome had time to play out, the destroyer was equipped with laser batteries close enough to human understanding to reverse engineer. Lasers which could bring the Union Earth Navy one step closer to force parity among the stars.

  Victoria thumbed her tactical team’s communication circuit. "Red, we’re two minutes out, what’s your status?"

  "Go for vacuum, Vick. I’m about to cycle the forward airlock," Red answered. His voice was tinny and muffled by the helmet on his armored vacuum suit.

  Those laser batteries could still be seen in the distance, even without the computer highlighting their energy signature. Human lasers were still limited to terrestrial warships and planes firing at terrestrial ranges of a few dozen miles. They wouldn’t even scratch the paint of xenotech hulls.

  As the Condor drew close the navigator, Huian Wong, slowed the ship with shielded thrusters. With the heat hidden by shutters, a xeno would have to look pretty closely to notice their approach, vectored as they were to slip between the stars. Someone must have been looking very closely indeed, because a new shortwave frequency appeared on Victoria’s command repeaters, accompanied by a red flashing alert from Avery in the sensor shack aft of the conn.

  "Shit, is that the Kreshna?" asked Victoria.

  "Aye Ma’am, a handshake protocol, someone over there wants to get our attention," said Avery.

  "Us and every other xeno in this goddamn system. He’s turning up the volume, too. We better open the damn channel before he gives us away."

  Victoria completed the circuit, a section of the main viewscreen giving way to an ugly brown face. Moist folds of skin surrounding a central lamprey mouth with little black eyes asymmetrically scattered to either side. The display flickered as the low-resolution recorder captured the Vautan’s turbid countenance.

  "You are the men from Earth, humans, yes?"

  The computer didn’t bother to translate this, he was speaking Kossovoldt Standard, a language seeded across the known galaxy and adopted by the Union Earth. No one knew why or how the Kossovoldt instilled their language across a thousand alien races, and if a starship captain survived an encounter with them long enough to ask, his or her priorities were generally elsewhere.

  "Yes, I’m Captain Victoria Marin. We are not hostile, our intent is to—"

  "Yes yes, I know what it is you do, just get us off this blasted wreck. The battle is lost. I have fourteen crew and I am the ranking officer."

  There was another alert on her console. Her chief sensor officer’s voice had picked up a note of alarm this time.

  "Vick, we’ve got inbound, three contacts decreasing bearing rate. Thrust contrail suggests two fighter-type and a frigate. Must have picked up the active RF emission from the Kreshna. Designated Primary and Secondary One and Two."

  Victoria swore. The Condor might bloody the nose of those fighters and escape before the frigate arrived, but it would be a close thing. She was in one of the most advanced ships the Union Earth could float, but the xenos were just so far ahead on the technological power curve. Her XO was already developing the warships’ intercept solution, they would have time to grab the survivors or tear off part of the laser array, but not both. She knew which was more valuable to the UE government. But damned if she was going to have that blood on her hands. "Red, hold off on vacuum, we’re taking on rescues."

  "Aye, Vick," Major Red Calhoun replied. His marines would stand down, likely relieved, or maybe disappointed, at avoiding the inevitable firefight as they boarded the derelict vessel. The Vautan officer made a satisfied slurping sound that made Victoria’s stomach want to crawl out her ears.

  "I am pleased, Human Victoria, that in this the rumors proved true. I look forward to the sights and scents of your ship."

  "Passage ain’t free, you know. I wanted to tear those laser charging coils off your hull. What’s your hide worth to you?"

  An annoyed series of chirps followed, which the computer was kind enough to translate as an expression of frustration. "Surely you realize I cannot authorize the release of any of my ship’s weaponry. I would never hold command of my own vessel again!"

  Soft shudders went through the Condor as the magnetic clamps energized, locking Victoria’s Privateer onto the much larger vessel. At the same time, XO Carillo's intercept solution passed to Vick’s terminal. Less than five minutes until the enemy ships were in firing range. She keyed the circuit for the marine channel again. "Hold off on that airlock, Red. The captain and I are still negotiating passage."

  A nervous contraction of his mouth and throat muscles betrayed a hint of urgency in the ranking Vautan officer. Clearly, he too was aware of the approaching vessels and their intent, his distress call to the Vultures a calculated risk that he fell on the wrong side of. "Human Victoria—"

  "Captain Victoria."

  "Captain, time is of limited commodity in this venture, attempting to salvage parts in the midst of a battle is unwise."

  "It is now that you’re broadcasting our location to anyone with ears. Now if I don’t get the parts we need, I get stranded at a neutral station and don’t get to go home on time. But one of us gave away our position with that little radio stunt, and that bastard isn’t going home at all without something to make up for it. So if you want to keep all the broken pieces of your dead-ass ship until it’s blasted to atoms with you still inside? Well, I don’t see your prospects for command looking too good if you’re floating across the cosmos in a million pieces. What’s it going to be?"

  There was chatter from other Kreshna crewmembers offscreen, and a wave of static pushed across the transmission. Seconds passed. The ranging solution on the intercept fighters dwindled. Victoria waited.

  The Vautan officer regained his post. "This is not the altruism I was told your kind possessed!"

  "Altruism doesn’t fill the cargo bay and fuel tanks. What’s it going to be?"

  "You’re a scoundrel, Human Victoria, but I will do as I must, you will have your trophy. Terminate connection."

  The section of the viewscreen winked out as the circuit was severed by the Vautan officer, replaced by the countdown until the frigate and fighters reached expected weapons range. Victoria’s sensor team was still trying to identify their class and race of origin, but the derelict destroyer was blocking any view of the Condor`s sensors. She was cutting it awful god damned close.

  "Major, get them off that fucking wreck, double time. Whether or not they manage to pry something loose, those crewmen don’t deserve to die because of one asshole officer."

  "Roger Vick, sounds like the crew of the Kreshna is already lining up to get off that tub."

  Victoria looked over her command repeaters, the various ship’s subsystems reporting their status. Engineering, tactical, sensors, and navigation all showed nominal. In the brief moment where every task was assigned and a captain found herself with no orders to give, the weight of the lives resting on her decisions seemed to grow even heavier. She looked at the back of Huian Wong’s head, watching her run trajectory programs to double-check that their egress route back to the horizon jump was the fastest available. Victoria could find fault there if she looked hard enough. The impotence of waiting made her want to vent her frustration, but jumping down her pilot’s throat would only undermine the girl’s confidence in the midst of a crisis. She settled for calling up fire control instead.

  "Carillo, prep countermeasures as primary response. If those interceptors were listening in then they have an idea who we are, and today isn’t the day to make enemies by smearing more xenos across the stars if we don’t have to."

  "Aye, Vick, dummy loads, anti-fighter munitions in reserve."

  Her executive officer, Cesar Carillo, preferred to lead the fire control team from their targeting room instead of his station on the conn. The Argentinian was busy
plotting firing solutions on the three ships bearing down on the Condor.

  The view on the main screen swiveled at a gesture from Victoria, superimposing a projection of the expected flight path of the fighters. They were Tallidox war birds, though the Tallidox manufactured and sold arms and equipment to many interstellar governments at prices Earth couldn’t hope to afford. And unfortunately, they were always improving their export fighter designs.

  Active sweeps began to bounce off the Condor’s hull, and the iconography for the fighter craft jumped from the projected path to within line of sight.

  "Shit," said Victoria. The engines on the fighters either received an upgrade since her last encounter with them, or they were running extra hot.

  "Conn sensors. Targeting sweep just hit us. Fighters are 50KK and accelerating. Designating Primary and Secondary target now."

  "Seal the airlock, take what we’ve got and cast off."

  The profile of the active sensors changed from a wide sweep to a focused cone as the fighters struggled to maintain a lock on the Condor’s slick hull. The active radiation signature was similar to Earth radar, enough so that the surface of the privateer ship was conditioned to shrug it off. Xeno fighter craft by nature couldn’t carry the advanced gravitic sensors that xenos in this stretch of space favored on their larger ships.

  Victoria’s pilot pushed the ship away from the Kreshna. And not a moment too soon, as visible-spectrum lasers began peppering the remaining active defenses of the derelict ship with quarter-second bursts of indigo light. At thirty-thousand kilometers, the beams weren’t focused enough to do much more than warm up the hull and melt off the remaining automatic defenses on the Kreshna just in case a few of them still had power, but as the distance closed, those indigo beams became more and more lethal. The fighters began carving shards of red-hot composite hull off the Kreshna even as they maneuvered to keep the Condor in their active sensor overlap.

  Something in the Kreshna took poorly to the lasers, and ignited plasma began to vent from the dorsal port-side. The force of the release sheared a fissure across the top of the ship that split the derelict in two. The aft section spun freely on the main viewscreen, the magnification level growing while the Condor accelerated away on a plume of ionized xenon with enough thrust to overcome her newly upgraded inertial dampeners. Victoria grunted against the g-forces pushing her back into her captain’s couch. The frigate began to decelerate, launching missiles and more indigo lasers into the wrecked scrap of the Kreshna. The fighters kept on course, closing the distance with alarming speed even as their sensors struggled to find purchase on anything but her engine’s heat signature.