Professionally Published Books by Christopher G. Nuttall
Angel in the Whirlwind
The Oncoming Storm
Falconez Strike
Cursed Command
Desperate Fire
The Hyperspace Trap
ELSEWHEN PRESS
The Royal Sorceress
The Royal Sorceress (Book I)
The Great Game (Book II)
Necropolis (Book III)
Sons of Liberty (Book IV)
Bookworm
Bookworm
Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling
Bookworm III: The Best Laid Plans
Bookworm IV: Full Circle
Inverse Shadows
Sufficiently Advanced Technology
Stand-Alone
A Life Less Ordinary
The Mind’s Eye
TWILIGHT TIMES BOOKS
Schooled in Magic
Schooled in Magic (Book I)
Lessons in Etiquette (Book II)
Study in Slaughter (Book III)
Work Experience (Book IV)
The School of Hard Knocks (Book V)
Love’s Labor’s Won (Book VI)
Trial By Fire (Book VII)
Wedding Hells (Book VIII)
Infinite Regress (Book IX)
Past Tense (Book X)
The Sergeant’s Apprentice (Book XI)
Fists of Justice (Book XII)
The Gordian Knot (Book XIII)
Graduation Day (Book XIV)
The Princess in the Tower (Book XV)
The Broken Throne (Book XVI)
Cursed (Book XVII)
Mirror Image (Book XVIII)
The Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire
Barbarians at the Gates (Book I)
The Shadow of Cincinnatus (Book II)
The Barbarian Bride (Book III)
HENCHMEN PRESS
First Strike
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Christopher G. Nuttall
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542019569
ISBN-10: 1542019567
Cover design by Mike Heath | Magnus Creative
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
“That’s all you could find?”
The two officers winced in unison, as if they expected to be marched to the airlock and unceremoniously thrown into space for failing to accomplish the impossible. Once, Admiral Zaskar acknowledged ruefully, they might have been right. Failure was a sign of God’s displeasure, a proof that the failure—the failed—deserved to be punished. But if that was true, and he no longer believed it was so, what did that say about the Theocracy?
He studied the manifest on the datapad for a long moment, trying to hold back a tidal wave of depression. A few crates of starship components, some so old they probably dated all the way back to the early days of spaceflight; boxes of ration bars that were older than most of the men who were going to eat them . . . It was a far cry from the supplies they needed to keep the fleet alive. The fleet—the squadron, really—was on the verge of breaking down completely. In truth, he’d started to lose faith in his ability to keep his ships and men together long enough for the enemy to give up the pursuit.
“And the asteroid base?” He looked up at the officers. “Were there any people who might be interested in joining us?”
“No, Admiral,” the older officer said. “They refused our offers.”
And we can’t make them a little more compulsory, Zaskar told himself. We’d be betrayed within the week.
He cursed his former masters under his breath. His crew was composed of the ignorant and the fanatics, neither of whom could do maintenance work worth a damn. The only thing they could do was remove a broken component and slot in a replacement, which had worked fine until their supply lines were destroyed once and for all. Even the finest engineers in the fleet couldn’t repair everything, let alone build new components from scratch. He’d had to cannibalize and abandon a dozen ships just to keep the rest of the squadron going. And he was all too aware that their time was running out.
“Go see the cleric for ritual cleansing,” he ordered shortly. “And then return to your duties.”
The two officers bowed, then retreated. Zaskar watched them go and tapped a command into his terminal. A holographic image snapped into existence, flickering slightly. Zaskar’s eyes narrowed as he studied his fleet. The flicker was tiny, but it shouldn’t have been there at all. A grim reminder of their predicament. The onboard datanet was glitched, and no one, not even their sole computer expert, had been able to fix it. His entire ship was breaking down.
He wanted to believe that the handful of light codes in the display represented a powerful force. Four superdreadnoughts, nine cruisers, twelve destroyers, and a pair of courier boats . . . On paper, it was a powerful force. But one superdreadnought could neither fire missiles nor energize a beam, and ammunition was in short supply in any case, and five of the smaller ships were on their last legs. Each failure, small in itself, led to a cascading series of failures that simply could not be fixed. Zaskar rather suspected that the Commonwealth wouldn’t need an entire superdreadnought squadron to wipe out his fleet in a stand-up battle. A single superdreadnought would be more than enough.
Which is why we are here, he thought, switching to the near-space display. They won’t come looking for us here, not until we are betrayed.
He gritted his teeth in bitter rage. The asteroid settlement was the sort of place he would have destroyed, if he’d stumbled across it before the war. Smugglers weren’t allowed to oper
ate within the Theocracy, which hadn’t stopped a number of high-ranking personnel from trading safety and political cover for items that they simply couldn’t obtain anywhere else. And now . . . He swore, angrily. The smugglers might be their only hope, if they could find something to trade. But the squadron had very little to offer the scum of the galaxy.
Except ships, he reminded himself. And we’re not that desperate, are we?
Zaskar tapped the console, shutting off the display. He didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, but perhaps they were that desperate. His fleet was dying. And its crew was dying too. Discipline was steadily breaking down—internal security had logged everything from fights to a handful of unpopular officers being murdered in their bunks—and he didn’t dare try to crack down. His crewmen were too ignorant for now to realize just how bad things really were, but he knew it was only a matter of time. The squadron was well on its way to collapsing into irrelevance. The Commonwealth wouldn’t have to lift a finger to destroy them. They’d do that for themselves.
He took a breath, tasting something faintly unpleasant in the air. The air circulation system was starting to break down too. He’d had men cleaning the vents and checking—and rechecking—the recycling plants, but if their air suddenly turned poisonous . . . that would be the end. It wouldn’t even have to be that poisonous. An atmospheric imbalance, perhaps an excess of oxygen, would be just as bad. A spark would cause an explosion. Hell, merely breathing in excess oxygen would cause problems too.
The hatch hissed open. Zaskar looked up, already knowing who he’d see. There was only one person who would come into his ready room without ringing the buzzer and waiting for permission to enter. Lord Cleric Moses stood there, his beard as unkempt as ever. Zaskar couldn’t help thinking there were more flecks of gray in his hair than there’d been yesterday. Moses was nearly two decades older than Zaskar himself and hadn’t had the benefit of a military career.
And he isn’t even the Lord Cleric, Zaskar reminded himself, dryly. He just took the title on the assumption that he was the senior surviving cleric.
The thought brought another wave of depression. Ahura Mazda had fallen. The Tabernacle had been destroyed, and the planet had been occupied . . . if the wretched smugglers were to be believed. Zaskar wanted to believe that the smugglers had lied, but . . . he’d been there, during the final battle. He was all too aware that the Royal Tyre Navy had won. And his fleet, the one that should have fought to the bitter end, had been all that remained of the Theocratic Navy. He sometimes wondered, in the dead of night, if it would have been better to stay and die in defense of his homeworld and his religion. At least he wouldn’t have lived to see his fleet slowly starting to die.
“They found nothing, it seems,” Moses said, taking a seat. “They didn’t even find any worthy women.”
Zaskar snorted. Some of his officers had suggested, quite seriously, that they leave Theocratic Space entirely and set out to find a new home somewhere far from explored space. But his fleet’s crew consisted solely of men. Kidnapping women was about the only real solution to their problem, but where could they hope to find nearly a hundred thousand women? Raiding a midsized planet might work—and he’d seriously considered it—yet he doubted they could withdraw before the occupiers responded. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure he could punch through the planet’s defenses. His fleet was in a terrible state.
“No,” he said.
“And they heard more rumors,” Moses added. “More worlds have slipped from our control.”
“Yes,” Zaskar said. “Are you surprised?”
The cleric gave him a sharp look. Zaskar looked back, evenly. The days when a cleric could have a captain, or even an admiral, hauled off his command deck and scourged were long gone. Moses had little real power, and they both knew it. Speaking truth to power was no longer a dangerous game. And the blunt truth was that the Theocracy had alienated so many locals on every world they’d occupied that the locals had revolted almost as soon as the orbital bombardment systems were destroyed.
Moses looked down. “God will provide.”
Hah, Zaskar thought. God had turned His back. We need a miracle.
His console bleeped. “Admiral?”
Zaskar stabbed his finger at the button. “Yes?”
“Admiral, we just picked up a small scout ship dropping out of hyperspace,” Captain Geris said. “They’re broadcasting an old code, sir, and requesting permission to come aboard.”
“An old code?” Zaskar leaned forward. “How old?”
“It’s a priority-one code from four years ago,” Captain Geris informed him. “I’m surprised it’s still in our database.”
Moses met Zaskar’s eyes. “A trick?”
Zaskar shrugged. “Captain, are we picking up any other ships?”
“Negative, sir.”
“Then invite the scout to dock at our forward airlock,” Zaskar ordered. “And have its occupant brought to my ready room.”
“Aye, Admiral.”
Zaskar leaned back in his chair as the connection broke. A priority-one code from four years ago? It could be a trap, but outdated codes were generally rejected once everyone had been notified that they were outdated. The Theocracy had been so large that it had been incredibly difficult to keep everyone current. And yet, four years was too long. It made little sense. The code dated all the way back to the Battle of Cadiz.
“They wouldn’t need to play games if they’d found us,” he said, more to himself than to Moses. The scout could be crammed to the gunnels with antimatter, but the worst they could do was take out the Righteous Revenge. “They’d bring in a superdreadnought squadron and finish us off.”
“Unless they want to be sure they’ve caught all of us,” Moses said. “The Inquisition often watched heretics for weeks, just to be certain that all their friends and fellow unbelievers were identified.”
Zaskar smiled. “We’ll see.”
He couldn’t help feeling a flicker of shame as the guest—the sole person on the scout, according to the search party—was shown into his ready room. Once, it would have taken a mere five minutes to bring someone aboard; now, it had taken twenty. He dreaded to think of what would happen if they had to go into battle. A delay in raising their shields and activating their point defense would prove fatal.
Their guest didn’t seem perturbed by the delay, or by the armed Janissaries following his every move, or even by the obvious fact that Righteous Revenge was on her last legs. He merely looked around with polite interest. Zaskar studied him back, noting the hawk-nosed face, tinted skin, and neatly trimmed beard. The man had gone to some lengths to present himself as a citizen of Ahura Mazda. Even his brown tunic suggested he’d grown up on Zaskar’s homeworld.
And he has a dozen implants, Zaskar thought, studying the report from the security scan. The visitor was practically a cyborg. And that means he’s from . . . ?
“Please, be seated,” Zaskar said. He kept his voice polite. Advanced implants meant that their guest was from one of the major powers. The Commonwealth was right out, of course, but there were others. Some of them might even see advantage in backing his fleet. “I’m Admiral Zaskar, commander of this fleet.”
“A pleasure,” the man said. He inclined his head in a formal bow. “I’m Simon Askew.”
“A pleasure,” Zaskar echoed. The name meant nothing to him, but he rather suspected it wasn’t the man’s real name. “You seem to have come looking for us.”
“Correct,” Askew said. He leaned forward. “My . . . superiors would like to offer you a certain degree of support in your operations.”
“Indeed?” Zaskar wasn’t sure whether he believed it or not. Keeping his fleet going would require an immense investment. “And the price would be?”
“We want you to keep the Commonwealth busy,” Askew said. “It is in our interests to see them get bogged down.”
“Is it now?” Zaskar frowned. “And who would be interested in seeing them bogged down?
”
“My superiors wish to remain unnamed,” Askew informed him. He reached into his pocket and removed a datapad. “But they are prepared to be quite generous.”
He held the datapad out. Zaskar took it and scanned the open document rapidly. It was a list of everything the fleet needed to keep functioning, everything from starship components to missiles and ration bars. It was . . . it was unbelievable. It had to be a trap. And yet . . . and yet, he wanted to believe. If the offer was genuine, they could keep wearing away at the Commonwealth until it withdrew from Theocratic Space. They could win!
Moses reached out his hand for the datapad. Zaskar barely noticed.
“You want us to keep the Commonwealth busy,” he said. It was suddenly very hard to speak clearly. “It seems a reasonable price.”
His mind raced. No smuggler could transship so much material into a war zone, not without running unacceptable risks. And no smuggler would have access to cyborg technology. Only a great power could supply the weapons and equipment . . . and only a great power would benefit from keeping the Commonwealth tied down. The list of suspects was relatively short.
And it doesn’t matter, he told himself. They’d have to be alert for the prospect of betrayal, but that was a given anyway. The Theocracy had been the least popular galactic government for decades, even before the war. We could win!
“Very well,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
AHURA MAZDA
The sound of a distant explosion, muffled by the forcefield surrounding Commonwealth House, woke Kat Falcone as she lay in her bed. Others followed, flickers of multicolored light dancing through the window as homemade rockets or mortar shells crashed into the forcefield and exploded harmlessly. She rolled over and sat upright, blinking as the lights automatically brightened. Her bedside terminal was flashing green. Pointless attacks had been so common over the last year that hardly anyone bothered to sound the alert any longer. The insurgents had yet to realize that no amount of makeshift rocketry would pose a threat to the Commonwealth HQ. Even without the forcefield, Commonwealth House could take the blow and shrug it off. The blasts wouldn’t even scratch the paint.
Not that we’re going to turn off the forcefield to let them try, she thought morbidly as she crossed her arms. That would be pushing fate too far.
Debt of Honor (The Embers of War) Page 1