by Mark Wandrey
“It’s just crazy enough it might work,” Mika surmised.
“We’re really going to miss Dandridge on this,” Kelso said. The clock was under a minute.
Murdock nodded. Having a covert ops specialist, even an old one, would have been good. He had some ideas how they could get under Peepo’s skin. It would be nice to kick the rat bitch’s ass. He’d also like to find out who Skees was. Of course, they had to get their feet on the ground first.
“Thirty seconds,” Greenstein said, then looked at the captain. “Battle stations, Captain.”
“Your plan is insane,” the Maki captain said, pressing the button, bringing the ship’s small crew to alert.
“You can do the job, or fly home,” Murdock said, “your choice.” The alien’s little nose twitched, and it looked away. The captain’s sense of mortality had proven useful so far. Murdock wondered how long it would last.
“Here we go,” Greenstein said. “Five…four…three…two…one…” There was a brief sensation of falling, though they were already in zero gravity, and the trillions of stars reappeared.
“We’re in the Sol system,” the Maki navigator said.
Instantly an alarm sounded in the strange hooting alert the Maki used, the lights shifting to a reddish hue.
“Threats in our bubble!” Kelso yelled, working feverishly with controls he wasn’t completely familiar with.
“They can’t have figured us out already,” Greenstein said. The bridge’s big central Tri-V came alive with all the signals their sensors were picking up in the vicinity. First a few, then more, then many more targets were painted. Lines began to show their movements, additional lines and shaded areas for weapons arcs, flashing hues of color for debris.
“What the fuck is going on?” Murdock asked.
Greenstein turned to look at him, his eyes big. “We popped out in the middle of a huge battle. Dozens, no hundreds of ships!”
“What the fuck do we do?” Murdock asked. Greenstein shook his head.
Out in space, two fleets hurled death at each other in the endless void around Earth’s star, Sol.
* * *
Canaday floated aboard Big Bad Wolf. He wasn’t surprised to see Rex waiting.
“Fine disaster you oversaw,” the Besquith growled, huge teeth gleaming.
“We broke even,” Canaday said.
“We’re not out here to break even,” Rex snarled.
Sonia floated in just behind Canaday and winked at her captain, who gave a low growl somewhere between a greeting and a warning.
“Oh, calm down, Rex,” she said. “It could have been worse.”
Wil wasn’t worried; Rex took the long approach, unlike a lot of his kind. They might well have made a lot, if the Human mercs hadn’t come through and blown the shit out of everything just as it was getting interesting. Well, shit happens. He’d have to get a lot more pissed at Wil before he’d try anything. Wil’s license was far too valuable.
Wil left the robots to finish loading and retreated to his cabin. It was better to stay out of Rex’s target solutions for a while. They were heading to another prospect for the time being. This one looked prime—lots of credits—so Rex would be in a better mood soon.
In his cabin he stashed his duffel and grabbed his onboard slate, the one not scrubbed for safety. He logged in and accessed their unique GalNet node. Murdock, he typed, Human merc, and entered the query.
Twenty-nine Murdocks came up. He spent a few seconds narrowing it down by removing the dead and too young. None of the faces matched. Curious. He removed the criteria and reentered only the age parameter. Three came up; one was dead. All three images appeared. The fucker from Valais was shown as dead.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Abraham Murdock, reported dead on Chimsa in service to Cartwright’s Cavaliers.” He stopped. Cavaliers, he thought. What’re the odds of that?
Wil floated over to a locker and opened it. A bunch of junk floated out, the kind of stuff you jam in a drawer because you can’t quite bring yourself to throw it away. He plucked an item out of the air and looked at it. Wil Cartwright—Peacemaker was embossed on the triangular iridium badge. “What are the odds?”
# # # # #
About Mark Wandrey
Located in rural Tennessee, Mark Wandrey has been creating new worlds since he was old enough to write. After penning countless short stories, he realized novels were his real calling and hasn’t looked back since. A lifetime of diverse jobs, extensive travels, and living in most areas of the country have uniquely equipped him with experiences to color his stories in ways many find engaging and thought provoking. Now a bestselling author, he has no intention of slowing down anytime soon.
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Caution – Worlds Under Construction
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Titles by Mark Wandrey
Cartwright’s Cavaliers
Winged Hussars
A Fistful of Credits
For a Few Credits More
The Good, the Bad, and the Merc
Alpha Contracts
A Fiery Sunset
Earth Song: Overture
Earth Song: Sonata in Orionis
Earth Song: The Lost Aria
A Time to Die
A Time to Run
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Connect with Mark Wandrey Online
Website: http://www.worldmaker.us/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100007479075705
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The following is an
Excerpt from Book One of In Revolution Born:
The Mutineer’s Daughter
___________________
Chris Kennedy & Thomas A. Mays
Now Available from Theogony Books
eBook, Paperback, and Audio
Excerpt from “The Mutineer’s Daughter:”
Kenny dozed at his console again.
There he sat—as brazen as ever—strapped down, suited up, jacked in…and completely checked out. One might make allowances for an overworked man falling asleep during a dull routine, watching gauges that didn’t move or indicators that rarely indicated anything of consequence, perhaps even during a quiet moment during their ship’s long, long deployment.
But Fire Control Tech Third Class Ken Burnside was doing it—yet again—while the ship stood at General Quarters, in an unfriendly star system, while other parts of the fleet engaged the forces of the Terran Union.
Chief Warrant Officer Grade 2 (Combat Systems) Benjamin “Benno” Sanchez shook his helmeted head and narrowed his eyes at the sailor strapped in to his right. He had spoken to the young weapons engineer a number of times before, through countless drills and mock skirmishes, but the youthful idiot never retained the lesson for long.
“Benno, Bosso,” Kenny would plead, “you shouldn’t yell at me. You should have me teach others my wisdom!”
Benno would invariably frown and give his unflattering opinion of Kenny’s wisdom.
“Get it, ya?” Kenny would reply. “I’m a math guy. Probability, right Warrant? The Puller’s just a little ship, on the edge of the formation. We scan, we snipe, we mop up, we patrol. We don’t go in the middle, tube’s blazing, ya? We no tussle with the big Terrans, ya? No damage! No battle! So, something goes wrong, back-ups kick in, buzzer goes off, we mark for fix later. And when’s the only time you or the officers don’t let a man walk ‘round and don’t ask for this, don’t ask for that? When’s the only time a man can catch up on the z’s, eh? One and the same time! So I doze. Buzzer goes off, I wake, make a note, doze again till I can work, ya? Such wisdom!”
Benno usually lectured him about complacency. He asked what would happen if they were hit, if the shot was hot enough, deep enough, destructive enough to burn through the backup of the backup of the backup. What if they did have to face t
he Great Test, to rise and work and save the Puller themselves?
Kenny would always smile, relieved. “Well, then I be dead, ya? No more maintenance either way. Good enough reason to doze right there!”
Benno could have reported him any number of times, but he never had. Putting it on paper and sending it above them was a two-edged sword. It would solve Kenny’s sleepy disdain for order, of that Benno had no doubt, but he also knew he would lose Kenny’s trust and the vigorous drive the young ALS plebeian applied to every other task. Plus, it would signal to the officers above that Benno couldn’t handle a minor discipline problem on his own. And it would indicate to the ranks below that Benno was no longer one of their own—when he had gone from Chief to Chief Warrant Officer, he had changed his ties, forever.
So Benno growled, but he let it slide, content only he would know about Kenny’s acts of passive rebellion. No one else would ever know why the young tech kept getting extra punishment duties. Besides, it wasn’t as if Kenny was actually wrong, in the fullness of things.
Then, before Benno could check his own side of the console to verify whether things were indeed alright, his internal debate was blown away by the unforgiving, indiscriminate lance of an x-ray laser blast.
The single beam struck the Puller a glancing blow, centered on a space just beneath the outer hull and aimed outboard. Armor plate, radiation shielding, piping, wireways, conduit, decking, internal honeycombed structure, atmosphere, and people all ionized and ablated into a dense, mixed plasma. This plasma exploded outward, crushing the spaces surrounding the hit and dealing further physical and thermal damage. Combat Systems Maintenance Central, or CSMC, lay deep within the Puller’s battle hull—three spaces inward from where the x-ray laser struck—but that meant little next to the awesome destructive power of a Dauphine capital-class xaser warhead.
The forward and port bulkheads in front of them flashed white hot with near-instantaneous thermal energy transfer and peeled away, blown out by the twin shocks of the outward-expanding plasma and the snapping counterforce of explosive decompression. The double blast battered Benno in his seat and threw him against his straps to the left. As the bulkheads vanished, their departure also carried away the CSMC monitoring console the two watch standers shared with them into the black, along with Kenny’s seat, and Ken Burnside, himself.
The young engineer disappeared in an instant, lost without ever waking. Benno stared, dumbfounded, at the blank spot where he had been, and of all the possible panicked thoughts that could have come to him, only one rose to the forefront:
Does this validate Kenny’s wisdom?
Benno shook his head, dazed and in shock, knowing he had to engage his brain. Looking beyond, he could see the glowing edges of bulkheads and decks gouged out by the fast, hot knife of the nuclear-pumped xaser. Only vaguely could he recall the sudden buffeting of explosive decompression that had nearly wrenched him through the straps of his acceleration couch.
He knew he had things to do. He had to check his suit’s integrity. Was he leaking? Was he injured? And what about Kenny? Was he gone, unrecoverable? Or was he waiting for his poor, shocked-stupid boss Benno to reach out and save him?
And there was something else, something important he needed to be doing. He wasn’t supposed to just sit here and think of himself or unlucky, lazy Kenny. Oh no, thought Benno, still trying to marshal his thoughts back together, Mio is going to be so angry with me, sitting here like a fool…
“CSMC, report!”
Benno shook his head against the ringing he hadn’t realized filled his ears. He reached out for the comms key on his console, swore at how futile that was, then keyed his suit mic. “Last station calling, this is CSMC. We’ve taken a hit. I lost my technician, console is…down, hard. Over.”
“CSMC, TAO,” the Puller’s Tactical Action Officer said through the suit channel, “pull it together! We just had a near miss by a capital class Dauphine warhead. The battle with the Terrans has spread out of the main body. I have missiles up but zero point-defense. I need guns and beams back, now!”
* * * * *
Get “The Mutineer’s Daughter” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BRTDBCJ
Find out more about Thomas A. Mays and “In Revolution Born” at: https://chriskennedypublishing.com
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The following is an
Excerpt from Book One of the Earth Song Cycle:
Overture
___________________
Mark Wandrey
Available Now from Theogony Books
eBook and Paperback
Excerpt from “Overture:”
Dawn was still an hour away as Mindy Channely opened the roof access and stared in surprise at the crowd already assembled there. “Authorized Personnel Only” was printed in bold red letters on the door through which she and her husband, Jake, slipped onto the wide roof.
A few people standing nearby took notice of their arrival. Most had no reaction, a few nodded, and a couple waved tentatively. Mindy looked over the skyline of Portland and instinctively oriented herself before glancing to the east. The sky had an unnatural glow that had been growing steadily for hours, and as they watched, scintillating streamers of blue, white, and green radiated over the mountains like a strange, concentrated aurora borealis.
“You almost missed it,” one man said. She let the door close, but saw someone had left a brick to keep it from closing completely. Mindy turned and saw the man who had spoken wore a security guard uniform. The easy access to the building made more sense.
“Ain’t no one missin’ this!” a drunk man slurred.
“We figured most people fled to the hills over the past week,” Jake replied.
“I guess we were wrong,” Mindy said.
“Might as well enjoy the show,” the guard said and offered them a huge, hand-rolled cigarette that didn’t smell like tobacco. She waved it off, and the two men shrugged before taking a puff.
“Here it comes!” someone yelled. Mindy looked to the east. There was a bright light coming over the Cascade Mountains, so intense it was like looking at a welder’s torch. Asteroid LM-245 hit the atmosphere at over 300 miles per second. It seemed to move faster and faster, from east to west, and the people lifted their hands to shield their eyes from the blinding light. It looked like a blazing comet or a science fiction laser blast.
“Maybe it will just pass over,” someone said in a voice full of hope.
Mindy shook her head. She’d studied the asteroid’s track many times.
In a matter of a few seconds, it shot by and fell toward the western horizon, disappearing below the mountains between Portland and the ocean. Out of view of the city, it slammed into the ocean.
The impact was unimaginable. The air around the hypersonic projectile turned to superheated plasma, creating a shockwave that generated 10 times the energy of the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated as it hit the ocean’s surface.
The kinetic energy was more than 1,000 megatons; however, the object didn’t slow as it flashed through a half mile of ocean and into the sea bed, then into the mantel, and beyond.
On the surface, the blast effect appeared as a thermal flash brighter than the sun. Everyone on the rooftop watched with wide-eyed terror as the Tualatin Mountains between Portland and the Pacific Ocean were outlined in blinding light. As the light began to dissipate, the outline of the mountains blurred as a dense bank of smoke climbed from the western range.
The flash had incinerated everything on the other side.
The physical blast, travelling much faster than any normal atmospheric shockwave, hit the mountains and tore them from the bedrock, adding them to the rolling wave of destruction traveling east at several thousand miles per hour. The people on the rooftops of Portland only had two seconds before the entire city was wiped away.
Ten seconds later, the asteroid reached the core of the planet, and another dozen seconds after that, the Earth’s fate was sealed.
* * * * *
<
br /> Get “Overture” now at:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077YMLRHM/
Find out more about Mark Wandrey and the Earth Song Cycle at: http://chriskennedypublishing.com/imprints-authors/mark-wandrey/.
* * * * *
The following is an
Excerpt from Book One of the Salvage Title Trilogy:
Salvage Title
___________________
Kevin Steverson
Now Available from Theogony Books
eBook and Paperback
Excerpt from “Salvage Title:”
A steady beeping brought Harmon back to the present. Clip’s program had succeeded in unlocking the container. “Right on!” Clip exclaimed. He was always using expressions hundreds or more years out of style. “Let’s see what we have; I hope this one isn’t empty, too.” Last month they’d come across a smaller vault, but it had been empty.
Harmon stepped up and wedged his hands into the small opening the door had made when it disengaged the locks. There wasn’t enough power in the small cells Clip used to open it any further. He put his weight into it, and the door opened enough for them to get inside. Before they went in, Harmon placed a piece of pipe in the doorway so it couldn’t close and lock on them, baking them alive before anyone realized they were missing.