A fighter shot past their bow as they dove away, and in the next blink they were dodging two additional fighters and skimming the hull of a frigate. His stomach lurched, and if it hadn’t been many hours since he’d eaten, he would’ve vomited its contents.
The viewport briefly cleared—then another frigate was bearing down on their location. It didn’t know they were there, but it was moving far too fast to divert in any event.
“Shit!” Lekkas yanked the ship vertical, sending him thudding to the floor and skidding into the main cabin. His head slammed into the leg of a workstation as they finally leveled off.
“Okay back there?”
He massaged the back of his head and struggled to his feet. “That wasn’t funny.”
“You should’ve strapped in to the jump seat.”
“Given your certification scores, I expected it to be a smoother ride.”
“Must have been the extreme stress affecting my skills.”
When he reached the cockpit, he was relieved to see the surrounding space beginning to thin in a more permanent fashion. They had soared above the bulk of the fighting and were now racing away. Their job here was done, and the campaign would be won or lost without their participation.
“Are you going to point a gun at me again?”
“No. I simply needed to short-circuit your tirade and refocus you on the task at hand.”
She swung her chair around and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “Asshole. How could you miss? Do you know how many innocent civilians you killed?”
“Seventeen.”
“Are you kidding? That transport could hold four hundred people. Even if it wasn’t full to capacity—”
“There were seventeen people on the ship. A skeleton crew. And I didn’t miss. It was my target.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Why?”
He thought about Frannie, believing her husband was off at an engineering symposium planning a spaceport expansion and new levtram routes. He’d scheduled a series of messages to her to be delivered once the coup began so she didn’t worry. What would she think of him if she knew what he had just done, what he did for a living?
He met Lekkas’s furious stare with an equally cool one. “Because that was my mission.”
“Your mission? No. Your mission was to simulate an attack by the Alliance cruiser on our new warship, instigating the Thermopylae to open fire.”
“No, that was your mission. My mission was to hit the civilian vessel. It was specifically chosen since it would be all but empty, thus minimizing casualties, and Brigadier Gianno made certain the Thermopylae crossed its path at the pivotal moment.
“See, nobody will care how many people actually died. They’ll only care that the Alliance opened fire on a defenseless merchant vessel. Public opinion will be on our side, which means more colonies will offer support or even join the Federation. Money will flow to our cause so we can pay for the ships that are essential if we expect to prevail.”
Outside the viewport an amber burst flared. The sun was now behind them, and the eruption created a stark contrast to the space beyond it. Another ship destroyed, on and by one side or the other.
She shook her head as if to tangibly deny his point. “So that’s the real reason I wasn’t trusted to handle the shooting—and rightfully so. It wasn’t required. A shot at the Thermopylae would have been enough.”
“Possibly. Not my call to make, but I can’t disagree with the logic. We need every advantage we can create in these early hours and days if we’re to stand a snowball’s chance in Hell at winning this war. The Alliance military has nearly six thousand warships, and that’s before you start counting the fighters and support craft. We need them arguing over how to proceed instead of sending their entire damn fleet to Seneca. We need them doing what they do best: debating, prevaricating and creating a dozen committees to draw up rules of engagement. We need time.”
“Why lie to me?”
“I didn’t lie. I implied, you inferred.”
“Don’t play semantics with me. I’m not one of your marks. So….” She tossed her arms weakly in the air. “What now?”
“Now we follow the plan. We go home and go our separate ways. We keep our secret, no matter what happens—kidnapping, torture or a billion-credit bribe be damned, we keep our secret. Lastly, you stop having a nervous breakdown. You didn’t kill those people. I did. You sleep well at night because their blood isn’t on your hands, and I sleep well at night because it was…necessary.”
“Necessary. I refuse to believe that.”
Stefan shrugged. “Believe what you want. I believe their sacrifice will save far more lives in the long run—and that is our goal. If it helps, which I doubt it does, their families will be well taken care of. Our leaders will set a precedent by demonstrating the Senecan Federation honors its fallen war heroes.”
The burden of having started a war in which tens of thousands and perhaps tens of millions would die was a heavy one, but one he’d been prepared to bear. The burden of starting the war by murdering civilians…well, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t known it would be heavier.
He wasn’t a soldier, and dammit but he didn’t want to have been here.
The justifications stumbled over one another in a ragged loop in his mind. Lives would ultimately be saved as a result. War meant the spilling of blood. It meant death, and he’d be blindingly naïve to assert otherwise. But war also brought the prospect of a new world, a better world. He had to believe it was worth it.
Lekkas patched in to the Thermopylae’s internal comms so they could monitor the opening salvos of the clash. The chatter provided a welcome distraction from the troubled ruminations of his conscience.
Brigadier Gianno (SFS Thermopylae): “Elathan Seventh Regiment, your sole mission is to take out the Fuzhou. Cut the head off the snake, and do it now. Krysk Fourth Regiment, run interference and occupy the frigates protecting the Fuzhou.”
As they swung around on nearing the Lunar SSR Center, the full expanse of the battle spread out before them. The smaller, all-but-defenseless merchant vessels had vacated the area, leaving the military warships and armed civilian craft free to wreak havoc without fear of collateral damage. Most of the warships were outwardly identical, which made it difficult to judge the ebb and flow of the conflict. But it hardly mattered in an arena littered with debris and illuminated by incessant fire and explosions.
Once, humanity’s warriors had killed using swords and spears. Now they did so using weapons whose power approached the fury of a sun.
Brigadier Gianno (SFS Thermopylae): “Let’s show them exactly what this ship can do. Don’t hold anything back for the next battle, or there may not be a next battle. I see an Alliance cruiser and frigate lingering too close to one another W 43° −6° Z. Also, they’re harassing Auxiliary Group Three. Make them regret it.”
The Thermopylae cut through the fog of war, aggressively engaging an Alliance cruiser as it maneuvered with remarkable agility through the chaos. Attacks from multiple fighters and a damaged frigate splashed off its defense shields like rain off a pitched roof.
It was a beautiful ship, quick and powerful. A ship worthy of a new federation.
Stefan hoped the people building that federation proved themselves worthy of it.
Twenty-five years later, people live under an uneasy détente among the mammoth Earth Alliance, the defiant Senecan Federation and a handful of wealthy independent colonies. When a powerful force threatens humanity’s continued existence, their only chance to survive is to put aside their differences and unite against the threat. But despite the clear need to do so, the sins of the past…complicate matters.
STARSHINE
AURORA RISING BOOK ONE
(AURORA RHAPSODY #1)
Available in ebook, paperback and audiobook
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
I published Starshine in March of 2014. In the back of the book I put a short note asking readers to consider leaving a review or talking about the book with their friends. Since that time I’ve had the unmitigated pleasure of watching my readers do exactly that, and there has never been a more wonderful and humbling experience in my life. There’s no way to properly thank you for that support, but know you changed my life and made my dreams a reality.
I’ll make the same request now. If you loved APOGEE, tell someone. If you bought the book on Amazon, consider leaving a review. If you downloaded the book off a website with Russian text in the margins and pictures of cartoon video game characters in the sidebar, consider recommending it to others.
As I’ve said before, reviews are the lifeblood of a book’s success, and there is no single thing that will sell a book better than word-of-mouth. My part of this deal is to write a book worth talking about—your part of the deal is to do the talking. If you all keep doing your bit, I get to write a lot more books for you.
I love hearing from my readers. Seriously. Just like I don’t have a publisher or an agent, I don’t have “fans.” I have readers who buy and read my books, and friends who do that then reach out to me through email or social media. If you loved the book—or if you didn’t—let me know. The beauty of independent publishing is its simplicity: there’s the writer and the readers. Without any overhead, I can find out what I’m doing right and wrong directly from you, which is invaluable in making the next book better than this one. And the one after that. And the twenty after that.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
G. S. JENNSEN lives in Colorado with her husband and two dogs. She has become an internationally bestselling author since her first novel, Starshine, was published in March 2014. She has chosen to continue writing under an independent publishing model to ensure the integrity of the Aurora Rhapsody series and her ability to execute on the vision she’s had for it since its genesis.
While she has been a lawyer, a software engineer and an editor, she’s found the life of a full-time author preferable by several orders of magnitude, which means you can expect the next book in the Aurora Rhapsody series in just a few months.
When she isn’t writing, she’s gaming or working out or getting lost in the Colorado mountains that loom large outside the windows in her home. Or she’s dealing with a flooded basement, or standing in a line at Walmart reading the tabloid headlines and wondering who all of those people are. Or sitting on her back porch with a glass of wine, looking up at the stars, trying to figure out what could be up there.
Title Page
Aurora Rhapsody
APOGEE
Seneca
Lunar SSR Center
Stealth Reconnaissance Vessel
______________________
Starshine: Aurora Rising Book One
Author’s Note
About the Author
Apogee: An Aurora Rhapsody Short Story (Aurora Renegades #4.5) Page 3