Winged Hussars (The Revelations Cycle Book 3)
Page 41
“New target,” Glick said. Another vehicle had moved from behind the derelict battleship.
“There’s the frigate,” Flipper said.
The strange alien shuttle was closing in rapidly, and the radio started to work again.
“Pegasus, Pegasus, this is Corporal Johansson in the alien shuttle.”
“We saw your wing waggle,” Hoot confirmed. “There is a ship behind you which just left the derelict ship. Is that more of your team?”
“Negative, Pegasus,” Johansson said. “We were attacked, and lost two marines as well as the engineer to some strange armored alien.”
“Acknowledged,” Hoot said.
“Orders?” Edwards asked.
“Target the alien frigate and fire at will,” Alexis told Edwards. “Lasers only please, we don’t know what nukes will do here.”
“Ranging shot,” Edwards announced and the weapons station chimed as a pulse fired. On the telescope, the distant frigate only looked like a lumpy stick. But the laser could clearly be seen impacting it with a bright flash. “Good hit,” Edwards said. “Firing for effect.” Three more lasers pulsed in quick succession. Flash, flash, flash. “It can take some damage,” he said.
“The unidentified enemy was resistant to laser fire,” Johansson said over the radio.
“Edwards,” Alexis said, “combined fire please.”
The TacCom waited while the four discharged lasers recharged. A second later, all eight fired at the enemy ship. It seemed to glow on the screen, then exploded. Everyone breathed again.
“Clean kill,” Flipper confirmed.
“No other targets,” Glick said.
“Recover the shuttle,” Alexis said. “Helm, move us away from the Maki ship, just in case.” Pegasus began to maneuver in the opposite direction.
* * *
An hour later, Rick floated in the engineering control center and watched as the much-reduced staff finished transferring the hard won F11 into Pegasus’ repaired storage tanks. He’d had a short debriefing with Paka and Lt. T’jto, telling them all Johansson and he knew about the new enemy they’d encountered.
When they’d landed the shuttle, the Geek Squad had shown up almost immediately and begun taking it apart. Dr. Sato and his team were ecstatic as they assailed the strange machine. Johansson had been a little annoyed. It had taken her quite some time to make the thing fly, after all.
“Pressurize the F11 manifold,” Long ordered. Rick should have been in his quarters resting, but he wanted to see the end of this. A marine would never be welcome if he just showed up in the CIC, but no one minded him here.
“Pressurized at optimal,” someone said. Long’s wide insectile head moved from side to side, examining readouts.
“Agreed, prepare for power transfer from capacitors. CIC, we’re about to start the new reactor.”
“Understood,” the captain’s voice came through the intercom. “Good luck.”
“To all of us,” Long said, making a final check of the system. “Stand by. Energize buffers.” The engine room began to vibrate with a deep, comforting thrum. “Inject hydrogen and commence compression in three…two…one…go!” The lights flickered, and the reactor performed its magic. It was almost quiet for a moment, then the hum gradually got louder and throatier. The engine room began to vibrate with a familiar feeling, and the power meters on the board started to climb.
“Self-sustaining!” a technician crowed. “One terawatt, two, five, ten!”
“Power levels climbing to optimal,” Long said. If it were possible for a ten-foot-long centipede to smile, Rick guessed this one had an ear-to-ear grin. “Command, we have good power-up.”
“Excellent job,” the captain said. “We all owe you a debt of gratitude.”
“Get us back home and consider it paid.”
“That was incredible,” Rick said. Long’s eyestalks swung to him, apparently noticing the marine for the first time.
“It is exciting, isn’t it?”
Rick nodded. “Now what?” he asked.
“Now, we see if our commander has any magic left.”
* * *
“Now what?” Alexis asked Ghost. “Even with a reactor at full power, we can’t run the hyperspace shunts and nodes.”
“
“That’s it?”
“
“Chug,” Alexis said, “power to the hyperspace nodes.” All three eyes turned to regard her in a Bakulu version of incredulity. “You heard me.”
“Very well, Captain. Engaging hyperspace node generators.”
The fusion reactor spun up to nearly full power, and the energy was transmitted through the ship’s web of hyperspace nodes. Instantly Pegasus was surrounded with a crackling nimbus of multicolored energy. The cameras and sensors began to go crazy.
“
“Oh, hell,” Alexis said, trying not to vomit. All over the ship, others were less successful. Flipper seemed completely unaffected.
“I have good sensor data again!” he said.
“Are we in hyperspace?” Alexis asked, still feeling nauseous.
“No,” Flipper said, turning to look at her. “We’re in normal space!”
“Can you get a position?” the captain asked.
“Easily. We’re Home.”
* * * * *
Epilogue
Winged Hussars’ Prime Base
New Warsaw System
Alexis stood in the familiar three-quarters gravity of her office on Prime Base watching the slowly spinning view of Pegasus in the near distance. The drydock that enveloped her ship was a swarm of activity as the entire engineering section had been removed and was being rebuilt from the keel out. That problem of not being able to reach all the reactor buffers was being fixed, permanently. Since the ship had been so badly damaged, it hadn’t been much extra work.
A dozen other sections of the ship were open to space, and a multitude of components were being replaced, repaired, or upgraded. Pegasus looked like a patient on life support, undergoing multiple organ transplants.
The return of her surviving marines after the mission to secure the F11 brought both relief and further heartache. Still more casualties. Yet it was the shuttle they returned in which proved the most amazing part of the mission. Johansson and Culper reported finding the shuttle docked to the alien ship, it’s systems on and engines warmed up. While they found the controls unusual, they accessed their pinplants and found an interface that worked. The systems were similar to a race known as the C’Natt, which was now extinct. There’d been no sign of who’d left the shuttle there, or why. According to the marines, it was much too small to have held the alien which attacked them.
As soon as the shuttle was on board, Dr. Sato had descended on it with a glee she’d seldom seen. On her desk were the first preliminary reports from the Geek Squad. Shortly after coming Home, they’d taken the disassembled shuttle and retreated to their labs in Prime Base.
The report didn’t give a lot of details, although it confirmed the belief the shuttle was made by the C’Natt and indicated the shuttle operated on a micro-fusion power plant more efficient than anything the Union used. It also used very little F11. The rest of the shuttle was being investigated in a ‘logical progression of importance,’ according to Dr. Sato. Kleena confirmed she was carefully working to channel the brilliant doctor’s efforts. Sato promised the captain more details when they were available, but she hadn’t heard anything since. When Sato and Kleena were quiet, it usually meant they’d found something interesting. Alexis wondered what other tidbits the shuttle had yielded, but she’d learned to let the geniuses work without bugging them too much.
Parked a few miles to the other side of Pegasus, Task Force Two was disembarking personnel. They’d arrived yesterday, mo
re than a little surprised to find Pegasus had not only survived, but beaten them Home.
“I should be working on the reports,” she said to the empty office. The problem was she couldn’t concentrate. Too much had happened, too many had died, and too much was at stake. Someone, or something had tried their damnedest to see her and her ship dead. That effort had cost thousands of lives on the enemy side, and by last count, over two hundred Hussars. She burned with the desire to go back out and find whoever had done this. After ripping the reasons from them, she’d kill them slowly. Only, she had tens of thousands of lives depending on her, so a vendetta wasn’t something in which she could indulge.
Out the other window of her office, on the other side of the station ring, the planet they simply called Home lay. Five times the size of Earth, it received just 10 percent of the light. Only the equators were habitable most of the year, and that was still twice the land area available on Humanity’s home world, because Home had no massive oceans.
New Warsaw’s ancient red giant star cast its baleful glow on the planet, allowing life to eke out a minimal existence. For 100 years, the Winged Hussars had lived here, slowly engineering life that not only survived on the cold, dark world, but thrived there.
Elsewhere in the system, the F11 extraction mine on the remnants of an ancient gas giant was producing more than a gallon a day, and that would only increase. Research on Jupiter had paid off. The massive asteroid belt was now yielding vast amounts of minerals and rare earth elements. Finally, there was Prime Base, the ancient space station she stood on. Set to orbit Home before the First Republic was formed, it provided more room than they would ever need. Prime Base was four times the size of Karma Station.
“Why leave?” she asked the universe. “We have everything we need here.” A glint caught her eye, and she knew it was the stargate at the LaGrange point. An unmapped stargate, just like this station. Forgotten by the galaxy before humanity learned to make fire. “You gave us this for a reason.”
“” Ghost replied. “
“You were right,” Alexis said. “Leaving was a mistake. Let them have their conflicts, I’m done with it.”
“
“The other Horsemen know where to find us,” Alexis said. “Some of the Golden Horde are still here. We’ll continue to work with them until the defenses are finished. But we’re not going out there anymore, not after that.”
“
“We’ll have to consider that,” Alexis said. “Later.”
One of the Hussar’s many transports was loading next to the station. While she’d decided no more missions would be run, they had relationships outside that couldn’t be severed without dire repercussions. She didn’t worry that the location of the system could be stolen from these ships. Their computers were programmed by Ghost. Hacking an AI was a task no one in the Union would be capable of.
There were personnel out there who would want to come home, just as the transport held some who wanted to leave. Several hundred had elected to depart when it was announced that no more missions would be run. All aliens. Several thousand remained, most of those had families and lives here now. They were all welcome to stay.
One of those leaving was the Tortantula, Oort. She hadn’t taken the loss of Jeejee very well. Alexis couldn’t exactly blame her; their kind shared a deep, symbiotic relationship. Oort was going to Lycosa, her race’s home world. Oort had thanked her for the ride home when she accepted her severance pay. She also thanked Alexis for the books on philosophy. The captain had been feeding her the texts since she discovered the former killing machine was having a crisis of conscience.
“What are you going to do when you get home?” Alexis had asked her.
“I intend to share what I’ve learned,” she’d replied. Alexis wondered what she’d turned loose on the galaxy. Considering how the galaxy had treated her lately, she considered turnabout fair play.
“For now, the galaxy can go to entropy.”
* * *
Rick stood in the huge promenade as dozens of people and aliens moved about. It was like the main promenade on the station around Earth, only much, much bigger. The window was spectacular. Easily 100 feet tall, it extended 1,000 feet in either direction. He’d been told the window was a single piece of perfectly clear quartz, something that no one had been able to make for thousands of years.
New Warsaw was an amazing system where a red giant had flared eons ago, scouring all the inner worlds. Somehow the Dusman had shielded the world the Hussars now called Home, maintaining a minimal ecosphere. The Hussars had added to the biosphere, and now it was a vibrant, if cold, world. More than 10,000 lived there, and seven times that in space.
“A dead-end system,” they called it. The stargate wasn’t in the Cartography Guild’s database. No one would come here. Eons ago it had been mined out. That was before the sun flared, destroying several worlds and releasing gigatons of valuable elements into the solar system. It also had blasted off most of the gas giant’s atmosphere, making the F11 accessible. Someone, long ago, had hacked the Cartography Guild’s database and taken it off the records. For all intents and purposes, New Warsaw didn’t exist. “Brilliant,” he said to himself.
“I guess this is home,” he said. The word had come down that no more missions would be taking place for the foreseeable future. For now, Alexis Cromwell would allow any who wanted to leave to do so. Only after whatever was happening played itself out would they resume merc operations. A vast plot to kill the Winged Hussars was the rumor. The powerful woman who led the Hussars wanted no part of it. He wasn’t sure if he’d leave or not. He’d bled and died with a lot of these people.
On his slate was an invitation from Nemo, the Wrogul physician, and Dr. Ramirez to attempt surgery to repair the damage to his brain and maybe restore both his memory and his emotional balance. He’d decided he would take them up on it. It felt like he was living a half-life, and that wasn’t right. There was also an invitation to dinner from Sergeant Johansson, and that interested him too. Maybe he’d be even more interested after the surgery, if it worked.
“Excuse me, Corporal?” a voice asked. He almost didn’t respond, still not accustomed to his new rank. Corporal of the reformed Zenith Squad. He turned to see Paka standing there.
“Yes, sir!” he said and stood at attention. The Veetanho waved casually.
“We don’t go in for that formality,” she said. “I just wanted to say hello and ask if you had gotten settled in.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, yes, Paka. I got an apartment here on the station.”
“Not down on Home? I thought Humans preferred it dirtside.”
“I’m from Texas originally,” Rick said. “It’s too darned cold down there for me.”
“I see,” she said. “So, you’ve decided not to leave?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think I will. Maybe someday. We’ll see.” Paka nodded and turned to go. “What about you?” he asked. “There are only a handful of Veetanho here.”
“I like my job,” she said. “It suits me.” And with that, she strolled away. On the promenade, scores of Humans moved about their business, interspersed with a good number of aliens. It was an interesting world they were building here. Maybe it was the future? Rick decided he’d like to find out.
# # # # #
About the Author
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
Titles by Mark Wandrey
Cartwright’s Cavaliers
A Fistful of Credits
A Time to Die
* * * * *
The following is an
Excerpt from Book Four of the Revelations Cycle:
The Golden Horde
___________________
Chris Kennedy
Available from Seventh Seal Press
August 4, 2017
eBook, Paperback and Audio
Excerpt from “The Golden Horde:”
25 Miles East of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Earth
The Tortantulas covered the hills at the edge of First Sergeant Muunokhoi ‘Mun’ Enkh’s vision like a black blanket. If Mun looked hard, she could see the hillside moving, crawling with the giant spiders. She had never seen Tortantulas wait before, and it was disconcerting; normally, they threw themselves into combat recklessly and attacked at the first chance. In fact, they usually only took contracts that offered maximum carnage, which didn’t bode well for the waiting Humans.
They should have charged, but they hadn’t. Obviously, there was someone from another race in charge of them. Based on that observation alone, Mun suspected a Veetanho lurked somewhere in their command structure, holding their chains until the exact moment the time was right. Tactical experts, the Veetanho rarely lost; Mun knew the attack would commence at the worst possible time…for her.