Embers of War
Adventures of the Starship Satori: 8
Kevin McLaughlin
Role of the Hero Publishing
Copyright © 2016, 2017 by Kevin O. McLaughlin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Contents
Introduction
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
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
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Kevin’s Notes
Afterword
About the Author
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One
Dan looked around the empty bridge of the ship which would be his. Someday soon, it would be his command. For now, it was still a work in progress. Now that it was in orbit, Hereford ordered them to keep it there. Rather than bringing it back down to Earth where it might be vulnerable to attack, they would finish the repairs in orbit and launch from there.
The crew was only a skeleton at this point, but more would arrive soon enough. They would go over the Independence with a fine-toothed comb, making sure that nothing remained of the old Naga command protocols. By the time they were complete, no one would be able to steal the ship away again.
An insistent beeping noise broke into Dan’s concentration. Again. He glanced around, looking for whatever was making the sound. It wasn’t an alarm. It was something else, some sort of system alert. He was still new enough to the ship himself that he hadn't yet learned each sound the systems made, or what they meant.
There was no one else there to find the alert and shut the damned thing off. Dan stood from his seat and wandered over to the navigation station first. If their course was off even a little bit, the ship could re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up, or worse survive the descent and smash into a city.
But nothing was wrong with the nav console. It wasn’t anything on the scan, either. No nearby ships except for the shuttle which had just departed, headed down Earth-side. It carried Colonel Martelle, his remaining Marines, and the Naga prisoner who’d attempted to abscond with the ship. Hereford would have a field day with that one.
In a way, Dan almost felt bad. Garul was the Naga who’d captured him, once. He’d interrogated Dan, tortured him…and healed him from the wounds he’d given during the torture. That healing process had also rejuvenated the injury to Dan’s spine, repairing the damage which had prevented him from walking. Earth tech couldn’t restore the use of his legs, but one short stint with the Naga had done the trick.
They’d figured out where the Naga had come from quickly enough. The bridge had a secret compartment beneath it, housing an escape pod with a single canister-like unit. It must have been some sort of deep-sleep device. It had shielded the Naga commander completely from detection. Then they’d triggered a fail-safe during the changeover from Naga control systems to human ones. The ship’s computers had woke Garul back up to deal with whatever was going on. A last-ditch defense which had almost worked.
Now Garul was the one captured. He was a prisoner, not dead - that was something, anyway. If he hadn’t heard Dan’s voice and been willing to surrender? Well, the Marines were good at what they did. Garul would probably not have survived the encounter. Dan had mixed feelings about the entire thing. Did he owe a debt to the being who’d given him his legs back, even if it was an accident?
The beeping was coming from the communications console. Dan walked over and sat down at the station, looking over the logs. The system had been on when he first arrived, he recalled. Had Garul been doing something with it, working on something that Dan missed in his haste to call Earth?
It was an incoming message alert. Dan tapped the console key and activated the receiver, then put it on the bridge speakers.
The hissing sounds of Naga speech filled the room, jolting Dan upright in his seat. The message went on and on. It almost sounded like it was repeating itself.
Checking the logs, Dan found his own outgoing call to Hereford - and another message. The ship’s Naga communications array had been accessed shortly before he and Martelle had captured the bridge.
Garul had phoned home.
This call - whoever it was - had to be the response. Dan swore under his breath. Even retaking the ship wasn’t enough. No wonder Garul had given up so easily. He’d already gotten a message out. He knew that the rest of the Naga would receive it and respond. Now they were.
But Dan couldn’t understand Naga speech. He couldn’t decode what they were saying. There was only one Naga in the system who Dan could even begin to risk trusting, and he was on his way to a cell on Earth.
Reluctantly, Dan tapped the communications console again. He turned off the hissing Naga voices, recording the message for later. Then he contacted Earth again.
“Get me General Hereford immediately,” Dan said into the microphone. “He needs to turn that shuttle around and send it back to the Independence.”
“The shuttle that just left, sir?” came the reply.
“Yes. Just get Hereford right away. There’s no time to waste,” Dan said.
“Aye, sir.”
This couldn’t wait because the Naga wouldn’t wait. Whether they’d held off on sending another invasion to Earth out of worry or fear or just been distracted by other concerns, no one knew. But now they had a distress beacon from one of their commanders, telling them he was alive and in need of help, Dan was sure.
He didn’t know Naga culture all that well, but they were not so dissimilar from humans. They would almost certainly come unless Garul replied. They’d come in force, to rescue their people. Earth had barely survived the first assault. There was no way they could weather a second.
Two
Dan glared at the Naga commander in front of him. Even in manacles, Garul looked deadly. Any human being looking on a Naga felt the immediate threat they represented. It might be something about their reptilian appearance, far too close to the giant reptiles that once hunted mammals on Earth. But Dan felt like you didn’t need to go to an ancient genetic memory to find answers.
Garul’s hands were powerfully clawed. His mouth was full of razor sharp teeth. His entire body looked like it was made of muscle. Dan recalled Andy going up against one of the things in hand to hand combat. He wa
s glad that he’d never been forced to do the same. He didn’t know that he would last more than a minute in a cage match with one of these things.
Right now Garul’s claws were handcuffed in front of him. His teeth were a small threat when there were two Marines with rifles standing directly behind the Naga, ready to put a bullet into him if he acted up. No, the problem here was more complicated than brute strength, and Dan was going to need to use reason to solve it.
“You won’t tell me what the message says, or you can’t?” Dan asked. He’d gotten Hereford to send the Naga back in hopes of getting the message translated, but his prisoner was being singularly uncooperative.
“Yes,” the Naga hissed. “Dan Wynn. Garul speak bad.”
His English was incredible for someone who’d never heard more than a couple of hours of conversation. Garul must have studied recordings of the session he and Dan had spent together - in the Naga’s interrogation room. It wasn’t a pleasant memory for Dan. How many times had Garul watched replays of that event? The thought stirred his anger, but for the fifth time since seeing the Naga, Dan shoved it aside. His feelings about the Naga were complex. He’d figure them out later.
“You don’t speak English well enough to tell me what they are saying?” Dan asked. Dan knew that the Naga would be able to understand his words well enough. Garul wore his own translator. The Naga enslaved an entire sentient species - small, slug-like creatures native to a watery world where they bonded symbiotically with local aquatic life. Their hive-like life on their planet had given them telepathic abilities. When anything was said around them, they could read the correct meaning from the thoughts of the speaker and transfer that information directly into the mind of the being wearing them.
The little creatures tended to enjoy orifices. Like ears. Dan tried not to squirm at the thought. He’d never had to wear one, but he had the feeling the day might come when that would change.
“Yes,” Garul said.
Dan narrowed his eyes. It was hard to read Naga expressions, but he’d been around them enough to begin figuring out their body language. He had the feeling that Garul was hiding something. Was his grasp of English really as poor as he was letting them believe? Or was he pretending to be worse at the language than he really was?
“What would you suggest I do, then?” Dan asked.
Garul hooked a clawed thumb at his chest and then pointed again - at the communications console. The message was clear enough.
“Oh, no. You want me to just hand you access to our communications array?” Dan asked, chuckling. “With no way to tell what it is you’re saying? I might as well just beam the Naga high command a full report on our defenses myself.”
“Then war,” the Naga said, shrugging his shoulders in an uncomfortably human way. Was that a gesture he’d learned from Dan? Or was that one bit of cultural body language that they would find on many worlds?
“There has to be another way,” Dan said.
All at once the communications console began flashing again. Was it the Naga, calling back once more? Dan hurried to see what they might say. He paused before receiving the call. Garul would understand their words, even if Dan didn’t. He might be able to glean some of the meaning from his reaction. But it would give their prisoner even more information to work with.
When he saw the icon indicating the source of the call Dan sighed with relief and put the message over the bridge loudspeakers.
“Satori, it’s good to see you,” Dan said.
“And you! Had a busy time of it back here, I gather,” Beth’s voice said over the speaker system.
Dan went back to the pilot’s seat and tapped some commands on the console there. He could control most operations from this point. As understaffed as the ship was, it was the best place for him to be. The main screen flashed on, showing a view of space. Earth tumbled in her slow orbit a short distance away. And there - just a point of reflected light at the moment, but drawing closer - that would be the starship Satori.
“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Dan said. Hundreds of Air Force and Marine soldiers dead, and it was all due to the actions of one Naga. He glanced over at Garul. That one alien had caused so much death and destruction seemed impossible. A lot of people on Earth would be calling for Garul’s head. But then again, Dan had killed Naga during his escape from Garul’s station. Were they so different?
“We’ve got a bigger issue now,” Dan said. “Garul got a message out before we captured him. Worse luck yet, we’re receiving a reply.”
“Garul? You two on a first name basis now?” Beth asked. Dan could hear her smirk even over the distance. “Wait - Dan - is that the Naga who…”
“Captured me. Yes. He’s here with me under guard, so don’t say anything you wouldn’t want to in front of a prisoner,” Dan said. “He’s saying that he isn’t able to speak our language well enough to translate the message for me.”
“Garul no speak good,” the Naga confirmed.
“My god, I’m surprised he can speak our language at all,” Beth said.
“So was I. But not well enough. He claims.”
“You don’t believe him?” Beth asked.
“I’m not sure if I do or not, but I’m out of ideas. You have anything you might try?” Dan asked.
Another voice broke into the conversation, gently interjecting herself. “I might have a solution.”
“Of course, Majel. Your thoughts are usually clearer than mine are,” Dan said.
“When I tapped the Naga AI systems and acquired their database, it included a good deal of information about their language. I would not have been able to understand their data as well as I did without creating an algorithm to translate their language,” Majel said.
“Spoken as well as written?” Dan asked.
“Of course. Translating the stored radio communications in the Naga database seemed like it ought to be a priority,” Majel said.
“Just how much information did you pull?” Dan asked her.
“Several petabytes. I’ve had algorithms organizing and cataloging the data ever since,” Majel said.
Dan walked over to the communications station and tapped a few controls. He’d saved the message from earlier. Now he transmitted the string of incomprehensible hisses and clicking sounds to the Satori.
“Can you figure out what they’re saying?” Dan asked.
“Absolutely. I’m also sending over a translation package. It should be able to translate most similar messages for you in the future. It’s not perfect, but once you install the software on your computers, it should help solve any future translation issues.”
Dan tapped a few more keys and set the software the AI sent over to install on the ship’s systems. That required a captain’s override, which took him a few moments. The computers were designed to block easy installation of new software, for security reasons. Once the computers were finished setting up the translator, he listened to Majel’s translation.
“Commander Garul, we have received your transmission,” the voice said from the bridge speakers. Majel had set the translator to speak with a thick British accent. Dan blinked, surprised. It was challenging to think about a Naga speaking in cultured tones like that. He was used to seeing them as brutes.
“We have no ships to spare at this time. Our systems are under attack by the Kkiktchikut,” the voice went on. That last word had sounded pure Naga. It was something the translator hadn’t managed to figure out. “Your orders are to return with your ship to the home system, to rejoin the battle.”
Dan glanced over at Garul, wondering how much of the translated message he’d been able to understand. It was apparently enough. The Naga’s eyes were wide, and Dan saw something in Garul’s face that he’d never thought to see on a Naga before: fear. Garul sagged, sinking slowly to his knees.
“Kkiktchikut,” he said, his voice soft. His eyes looked haunted as he stared into nothing.
“Majel, what does that word mean? Any ideas?” Dan asked. “G
arul is extremely upset by it, whatever it is.”
“There was no mention of it in the entire database,” Majel said. “Similar words exist, but nothing identical.”
“What similar words?” Dan asked.
“The Naga word for terror,” Majel said. “And for death.”
Three
A short while later Beth Wynn and her second in command, Major Luis Ayala, were seated in the conference room aboard the Satori. General Hereford’s face sat on the giant screen installed on a wall.
They were about to get marching orders, but to where Beth didn’t know. The Satori’s mission was to be one of exploration, or so the General had told her. They’d see combat too. The Satori’s crew had already done so. But the primary mission would be to learn more about what was out there.
“It seems likely that we have a third player out there,” Hereford said.
“That may be jumping to conclusions, sir,” Ayala replied. “It could be a rebel Naga force. Maybe ‘Kkiktchikut’ is the name of a rebel group.”
“That could be, but then there’s the ship Captain Wynn saw out in the Cyan system,” Hereford said.
Beth nodded, remembering the encounter. She’d been alone in the Satori at the time - just her and Majel, anyway. Something had blown up an entire Naga battle station, but at first there was no sign of another ship. Then all of a sudden there was.
Embers of War (Adventures of the Starship Satori Book 8) Page 1