Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection)

by Jay Allan

  He shook his head. "Okay Ari. Okay. You're too hard on yourself."

  She shrugged. "Maybe. But I can be too hard on others, too. The hammer of the forge inside me won't back down sometimes, and it hurts the people I care about the most."

  "Oh don't you worry, I have a shield, Ari," Tanner said. "Made of crazy-strong bronze. It's a little battered, sure, but it's never let me down yet." He tied off the last of the makeshift bandages, and stood. "That should do it."

  She clambered to her feet, and blinked the sudden stars away. She didn't protest when Tanner bent to retrieve the Box from the melted snowpack. He could carry it. She was too exhausted.

  She'd escaped from the heart of darkness, from the domain of the only man she feared in this world. She hadn't been afraid of him earlier today. But she was afraid of him now. More than anything. But fear was good. The fire sword had made her cocky. Lesson learned. She'd think twice before throwing away well-laid plans again. A good man had died today because of her.

  At least they'd managed to plant a tracker.

  She and Tanner kept their weapons out as they retreated wearily across the snowpack. Her sword was painful and awkward to grip, but there was nothing for it. Some of the Direwalkers had remained behind, and followed in the shadows. Both of them knew it. She'd have to take a roundabout route to the hideaway, and perhaps arrange an ambush along the way.

  "I believe it's time we set up a meeting with The Dwarf," Tanner said.

  She raised her eyebrows. "The Dwarf?"

  "Yes." Tanner glanced at her. "The children restored his connection a few months back."

  "And what's that supposed to mean?"

  Tanner rested a gentle hand on her shoulder. "The Dwarf's the only one who can talk to your father."

  EPILOGUE

  Looking down from the balcony, Jeremy surveyed the clean-up of his reception hall. Some of the black-liveried servants mopped the blood and soot marks from the marble, others piled the mutilated bodies into barrows, while still others hauled the bodies away for burning in the kitchens. Some servants took down the ruined paintings. Some repaired the cracks in the walls.

  Ari. She'd pay for all this, he promised. Killing his Direwalkers. Interrupting his dinner party. Messing up his reception hall. Stealing his Revision Box. Oh, she'd pay.

  "You three!" he called down to the seamstresses he'd hired to cover the burn marks in his precious Living Carpet. "Careful now... that rug is worth more than your miserable hides combined! Make a mistake and you'll never sew again, I swear it!" There was no real damage the seamstresses could do to the thing, of course, other than make it look even uglier. The women were merely a convenient outlet for his rage. Still, fear would make them work with more care and diligence. Fear. His favorite spur.

  With a sigh, he left the balcony and returned to his room. He hardly noticed the luxury around him anymore. The tapestries of the underwater cities he'd dreamed about. The sculptures of sea creatures. The miniature coral reefs. All commissioned for outrageous fees. Art that fed his obsession. Art based on water. Water. The one thing this world lacked in profusion. Blast this icy place!

  Ah well, he wasn't here to brood on ice, art, or women. He glanced at the clock on his fireplace. Three o'clock. Right on time.

  He went to the mirror on the far side of the bed chamber, knelt on one knee, and inclined his head. The thread-of-gold tentacle on his sleeve caught the light.

  "Master," he said.

  When he looked up, the dark shape that called itself One lurked within the mirror, near the bed. It might pass as human in that black robe, with its face hidden in the shadow of the hood. But it was not human.

  As usual, Jeremy felt the undeniable fervor that accompanied the Great One's appearance, a fervor that nearly overcame him. He could have wept, shouted for joy, and laughed maniacally, all at the same time.

  He resisted the urge to turn around. The Great One resided in the mirror, his mirror, and nowhere else.

  Nowhere else.

  The thought filled him with ecstasy. Exclusivity. Such a drug.

  Those unseen lips spoke to him in a baritone that was too low to belong to any man. "Status update." The voice came from behind Jeremy, and again he had to resist the urge to look. He'd embarrassed himself far too many times doing that.

  "I've created ten thousand of the new gols, as you commanded, Great One, and garrisoned them throughout the city, near the portal hops. They are ready to march at your order. The unit leaders have been assigned, the instructions uploaded."

  "Excellent," the Great One said. "I am pleased."

  Jeremy felt his heart leap. "May I have my reward, then?"

  "Not yet."

  Jeremy lowered his eyes. It wasn't fair. But he couldn't say that. Not to the Great One.

  The voice assumed a strange inflection. "Have there been... difficulties?" It sounded almost accusing.

  "No, master," Jeremy said, maybe a little too quickly, and he twisted his lips at the sudden distaste in his mouth. "No difficulties at all."

  "Good," the Great One said. "Because if there were difficulties, and you didn't tell me..."

  Jeremy put on his best smile, and he looked right into the darkness of that face. "All is going according to plan, Great One."

  He gazed into that black hood for as long as he dared, and then lowered his eyes. When he glanced up again, the Great One was gone.

  Jeremy giggled, and spoke to the empty air. "All according to my plan, that is!"

  _o0o_

  Thank you for reading The Forever Gate Part Two!

  Parts three to five are available for download today, so if you enjoyed the story, feel free to pick up the other installments—you can also grab the reasonably priced COMPENDIUM EDITION, which includes parts one through five. See the author links at the end of this section for further information.

  BONUS CONTENT

  JUST ANOTHER DAY

  AN ATLAS SHORT STORY

  _o0o_

  Name's Facehopper. Well, that's my callsign really, but it might as well be my name. I've embraced it.

  Killed with it.

  I'm the Leading Petty Officer, or LPO, of Alfa Platoon, MOTH Team Seven. One of the most elite special forces units in the galaxy. MOTH stands for MObile Tactical Human. We're tacticians, corpsmen, snipers, astronauts and commandos rolled into one. Our specialty is what is known in military circles as DA, or direct action: we perform short-duration operations of surgical precision conducted in hostile, denied, or diplomatically sensitive environments. You want someone seized, recovered, or terminated quietly, and without stirring up a political shitstorm, you call us up.

  Let me tell you about this one time when...

  INTRODUCTION

  "Just Another Day" is a military science-fiction short story set in the ATLAS universe, and focuses on the backstory of one of the secondary characters. If you're unaware, ATLAS is a military science fiction novel cum space opera I published in late December of 2013. The book went on to sell more copies than I ever dreamed of, and was subsequently picked up by Amazon's 47North imprint.

  This story was published at the beginning of November, 2013, two months before the publication of ATLAS.

  I hope you enjoy it!

  - Isaac Hooke

  JUST ANOTHER DAY

  ISAAC HOOKE

  I was crouched in the cargo bay of a bulk carrier, in Tau Ceti system, deep in SK (Sino-Korean) territory. Aka enemy space: If we were caught, we'd be executed as spies. I suppose that's why I was dressed for a night on the town in my all-purpose combat jumpsuit.

  For the past eight months the intelligence boys at the Special Collection Service had been tracking a high-payoff target, Mao Sing Ming, one of the most infamous privateers this side of the galaxy. Known as the Malefactor of the East, this guy captured passenger liners for salvage, killing off the entire crew complement for laughs. Anyway, a few weeks ago the military brass finally gave the go ahead to perform a surgical strike against him.

 
Special Warfare Command chose me and three others from Alfa Platoon to perform the "surgery." A fire team of four guys. Half a squad. Me, in command. Big Dog, my heavy gunner. Trace and Ghost, my two snipers.

  The cargo hatch opened up into the void of space. The cargo bay had already been depressurized, so there was no explosive decompression or anything like that.

  We still had the artificial gravity of the carrier to contend with, so the four of us walked calmly to the edge of the hatch.

  The backdrop of stars stared back at me from the vacuum, spiraling, beckoning.

  "Just another day in paradise," Big Dog sent over the comm.

  "Thanks for the cliché, mate," I said.

  "Anytime."

  I could see our target, asteroid 99-Herculina, biggest asteroid in the Tau Ceti system, floating there in the vacuum. At its current distance, it was about the size of my thumbnail.

  "Good luck, Facehopper," Chief Bourbonjack sent on the comm line. As my chief, Bourbonjack operated the platoon, while I ran it.

  "Thanks, sir."

  "Wish I was coming with you," Chief Bourbonjack sent. I could hear the jealousy in his voice.

  "I know." He was a warrior, like the rest of the platoon. Everyone wanted to go. This was our job. This was what we trained to do. I almost pitied the Chief and the rest of the platoon.

  Almost.

  "Go go go!" Chief Bourbonjack sent.

  I leaped forward through the opening and activated my jumpjets, thrusting out into the void.

  I didn't have to look back to see if the rest of my fire team followed. I could see the green dots indicating their positions on the HUD (Heads-Up-Display) map overlaid in the top right of my vision. Like me, every member of the fire team wore standard MOTH jumpsuits. We didn't have any ATLAS mechs with us this time round: The mission profile specifically excluded them. Kind of too bad, actually. We were one of the few teams with the training and authorization to use them. Wrapped up inside an ATLAS mech, you were one sick killing machine.

  "Gear launched," Chief Bourbonjack sent.

  On the HUD map, I saw the dark red dot that indicated the gear payload slowly gaining on my group. With my jumpjets, I accelerated to match its speed, then navigated beside the payload, which was a metal box roughly the size of eight sniper rifles stacked together. I attached the payload buckle to my belt and wrapped an arm around the metal so that any course corrections I made would be transferred to the payload.

  "Settle in, boys," I sent over the comm line. "We got a long wait ahead."

  Ten hours, to be precise. The jumpjets carried a limited amount of fuel, so we used the jets solely to adjust our individual trajectories. Moving slowly also insured we wouldn't be picked up by the asteroid's LIDAR. Sure, Intel said the base lay on the far side of the rock, but that didn't mean the privateers hadn't setup LIDAR projectors all over the rock.

  It took a lot of mental fortitude to be able to sit still for ten hours, babysitting the autopilot on your suit. Not everyone can do it. MOTH training weeds out those who don't have what it takes. It's one of the most brutal training regimens in the galaxy. Anyone who's ever experienced MOTH training will tell you that it changed their life. All I can say is I trusted the brothers in my platoon more than anyone else in the world. They were closer than even real brothers to me. I knew that every person on my fire team was fully alert and ready to respond to a threat at a moment's notice, ready to cover my back without question and to the best of his abilities. We relied on each other in the teams. Trusted each other absolutely. If one of my teammates told me he'd hold on to me when I was hanging from a cliff three thousand kilometers above the Earth, then I knew, without question, that there was no chance I'd fall.

  If one of my teammates told me he'd watch my six while I explored a privateer base twelve lightyears from Earth, then I knew, without question, that there was no chance I'd be attacked from behind.

  The asteroid grew bigger very very slowly. One hour became two, two four, four eight.

  "Eightball has reached the surface," Big Dog sent. Eightball was the callsign we'd given the HS3 drone that had launched ahead of us. HS3 stood for Hover Squad Support System. HS3s were small, basketball-sized drones with 360 degrees of maneuverability. They had limited fuel, like our own jumpjets, but because of their small mass and the inverse magnetic field they generated, HS3s were able to levitate without any fuel expenditure—their jets were used mostly for directional changes. Nice, huh? Don't ask me to explain it any further than that though, as my understanding of the tech is a tad limited to say the least.

  Big Dog was the drone operator for this mission, so he'd be receiving Eightball's telemetry. Did I say drone operator? Drone babysitter was a better term: Big Dog gave his instructions and the drone went on its merry way, doing much of the reconnaissance and scouting for us. Most of which we'd end up double-checking on our own anyway, but hey.

  "Affirmative," I sent.

  Another two hours to go.

  Eventually the gray, crater-pocked surface filled my entire vision field.

  "Passing through high-altitude missile engagement zone," Big Dog sent.

  We all held our collective breaths. Now was the moment of truth. Had we come in too fast? Tripped one of the LIDAR detectors?

  But the silence of the void continued. The crater-pocked gray surface continued to grow near, surprisingly fast now.

  There was no attack.

  We made it.

  I applied reverse jets and used up half my fuel to slow the payload. We entered the dark side of the asteroid, and I activated my helmet lamp, setting it to the dimmest setting possible. Then I unbuckled myself from the metal box and let the payload slam into the surface below me. It sent up a small cloud of dust. I cringed, hoping the tremors wouldn't be detected by the privateer base.

  I landed gently, feet-first, beside the gear payload. I opened up the box and strapped on the weight attachments: four osmium clamps measuring a handspan in width and height and weighing five hundred pounds each (in Earth gravity). Of course, on this 0.025g asteroid those clamps weighed only twenty-one pounds each. By placing the weights on the designated area around my waist, I ensured that my center of mass was pretty close to what I was used to. Without those osmium clamps I'd basically reach escape velocity with every step I took. Not a good way to travel.

  The others strapped on their own osmium attachments and gathered up the remaining gear. I grabbed an M4 rifle and clipped a loadout of grenades to my belt. The rifles came with an adjustable recoil buffer to dampen the effect of the kickback. I had mine currently dialed down to zero for obvious reasons, but depending on the tactical situation, a slight recoil could actually be good, especially when you were low on jumpjet fuel.

  "Distance to the observation point?" I sent on the fire team channel.

  "Approximately ten klicks, sir," Big Dog replied.

  "Bounding overwatch formation." I split the fire team in half. Big Dog and I would proceed forward a hundred meters, then halt, taking cover. Then Ghost and Trace would "bound" past, stopping a hundred meters ahead of us and dropping. This would be repeated until we reached the observation point. Maybe I was being overly vigilant by assuming this formation, but I always did like to err on the side of caution.

  So yeah.

  Bounding overwatch.

  Spacewalking was always kind of fun. It reminded me of jumping on rocks to cross a creek as a kid. You used this hop-step kind of walk, bouncing forward from one foot to the other, tilting your torso so that your center of mass stayed ahead of you, otherwise you ended up just hopping up and down. And just like crossing slippery rocks on a creek, it was all too easy to lose your footing and fall.

  Ahead, the observation point was painted on my HUD, this flashing blue dot on the horizon that never seemed to get any bigger.

  After about two hours advancing in the bounding overwatch formation, Big Dog sent an alert. "Eightball has reached the observation point five klicks from the base. Everything checks out so
far. Looks like Intel actually lived up to its name this time."

  "Good," I sent. "Maintain formation."

  After a few minutes we passed into the light side of the asteroid, and deactivated our helmet lamps. I didn't feel any hotter—the suits were good at maintaining a constant temperature.

  When we arrived at the observation point, we took cover in the craggy surface of the asteroid. I focused on the distant base on the horizon and activated the optical zoom in my facemask. Shiny, dome-like structures filled my vision. Each structure was connected by aluminum-can shaped passageways. According to the target information report, the skeletal frames of each module were made of titanium, while the outer shells were comprised of ten centimeter thick layers of Kevlar and other ceramic fabrics meant to absorb impacts from tiny meteors. These shells were coated with thermal blankets that deflected excessive solar radiation, which was why they appeared so shiny.

  So, this was one of Mao Sing Ming's few known ports of calls. The SK government sanctioned these privateers. This base was in protected space. He'd never expect an attack here, in home territory. His guard would be down.

  That was the theory anyway. Why then did the drone detect cameras setup all over the base, along with laser tripwires? That's something military intelligence had neglected to pass our way. We couldn't get much closer, not without setting off an alarm. Nor could the HS3 drone, which hovered nearby.

  "Do we have confirmation on the HPT?" I sent. HPT stood for high-payoff target.

  "HPT is en route, but hasn't arrived yet," Trace sent. In addition to sniper, he was also our communicator this time round, and carried all our communications equipment in a rucksack strapped on above his jetpack.

  "All right. Comm silence. Gonna be a while."

  Communications sent to HQ were designed to look like background radiation. But if you sent too many messages back at once from the same place, it became obvious that something more was going on.