by J. F. Holmes
Under a Different Sun
By
John F. Holmes
Note: This book was previously published under the same name in 2016. It is completely rewritten and approximately forty percent larger, and is published as a different title. Previous purchasers will not be updated through Kindle, but trust me, it’s worth it.
Prologue
Part I
Part II
Timeline for “Under a Different Sun”
Crew
We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
~ U.S. Constitution, 1789
Among my people, we carry many such words as this from many lands, many worlds. Many are equally good and are as well respected, but wherever we have gone, no words have said this thing of importance in quite this way. Look at these three words written larger than the rest, with a special pride never written before, or since, tall words proudly saying, "We the People". That which you call Ee'd Plebnista, was not written for the chiefs of kings, or the warriors or the rich or the powerful, but for ALL the people!... …These words and the words that follow, were not written only for the Yangs, but for the Kohms as well! They must apply to everyone, or they mean nothing!
~ Captain James T. Kirk, 2266
Prologue
It had once been a military base, far out on the western plains. Even though Fort Riley hadn't taken a nuke, almost three centuries had left it a ruin anyway. Nothing there had been of any use in the recent fighting against UN forces; it was merely a historic spot on a map to regroup. The buildings had become mere bumps in the ground, covered over by grass and sod; only the cracked pavement and an odd wall or two poking up from the ground gave any indication of what once was. It was a place, if anything, to keep the American spirit of independence alive.
They had rebelled before, and never really knew peace. Over the three-hundred-odd years since the Cyberwar, almost every generation had seen their share of fighting. Whether it was some local firebrand who decided that they'd had enough of the UN, or actual organized resistance, it always ended the same. Those who controlled the sky, won the war. Always.
The men gathered there were poor. Farmers, mostly, some scrap dealers, a couple of workers from the little used UN spaceport in far-away Topeka. They had ridden there on horses or battered ground-effect vehicles, taking precious time off from their business to gather and commission him. To send him off on his mission, after the latest bloody round of fighting and loss.
Raising his hand, the young, malnourished Kansan stated, “I, Nathanael David Meric, having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, in the grade of Second Lieutenant, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God."
The young man had memorized it long ago, dreaming of it. There was no President, of course, but the old man who heard his oath called himself a General, and according to the secret histories, was directly appointed by another officer, each in turn. Even a dozen generations after the war with China.
“Lieutenant Meric,” said the General in his quavering old mans’ voice, “your charge is to go out into the world of the Star Kingdoms, and do what you can. We’ve given you the education, and you’ve got brains, but there isn’t much else we can do for you. Just keep your eyes open, and take what opportunities come your way. There are others out there who will help you. Just don’t forget about us. Don’t forget your oath.”
Nate Meric—all of twenty years old, but already a combat veteran of a failed rebellion—looked around him at the cracked pavement and ruined dreams, and then up at the sky. Above him, an antimatter drive lit off, a scrapper hauling the loot of Earth outsystem. To Britannia, to the CCCP, to the French. All Earth was good for anymore, and after all this time, the pickings were slim.
He looked back down at the assembled men. Some suffered from radiation induced cancers; most looked old from the rough farm life. Still others bore wounds from their recent fight. Anger boiled up in him. How arrogant were the people who had denied them the right to the stars? Three centuries, and the name “America” was still a curse word.
“I’ll do what I can, even if it takes my whole life,” he said.
Part I
Chapter 1
On the bridge, all the work stations had their lights turned down low, so that the stars shone in through the view screens. Out here, on the western side of the Reach, the left screen showed an empty, hazy blackness, punctuated by stars more than three hundred light years in the distance. On the right, the stream of hard, shiny points mingled together to form a necklace more beautiful than any princess of Britannia had ever worn.
It never gets old, thought Nate Meric. Not even ten years after leaving the wastelands of Earth. Six years of sailing the Reach.
He must have said something out loud, because the crewman on watch looked over at him and said, “What was that, Captain?” or something to that effect. Warrant Officer Asote was an abo, an aborigine from the vast field of stars outside the Colonies. His guttural native tongue was hard to learn, and his English pronunciation wasn’t much better. Meric had spent two years surviving on Asote’s planet in the wilds, and spoke Abo better than most, but even he had trouble understanding the ancient tongue sometimes. Thirty thousand years of separation had done its work.
“Nothing. How’s the target? Any changes?” he asked the sensor officer.
“Sierra Two Nine is still on course, no deviations. Running ballistic. Radar transponder still signaling. Distance eight hundred kilometers,” Warrant Officer Johan Stueben replied.
The Lexington was on a stern intercept course, moving to overtake the target ship in three hours. All active sensors were shut down, and, providing they used it, the target’s radar would come back with nothing. The Lady Lex, as her crew called her, was built for stealth, all composite materials and radar defeating angles. No armor made for a light hull that gave speed instead of protection.
The crew, a couple dozen men and women with the odd alien or two, had stood down from battle stations two days ago, after the initial excitement of the chase. Meric had put them back on a six on, six off shift schedule. From experience, they all knew a stern chase was a long chase, especially when they were coming in ballistic themselves and not running their engines. They had dropped into this empty star system on a random hunt for merchant ships. The recharge after a long jump was often assisted by a close run into the system’s primary, merchant ships using sunlight to recharge capacitors, and the initial sweep had turned up a radar beacon.
“Call Guns to the bridge. We should be in firing range soon, and I don’t want any surprises.” He thought back to an ambush that a Colonial France cruiser had tried to pull on them a few months back. Moving along fat and dumb, wearing the colors of a Nueva España passenger liner, with superstructure altered to match. Going to nullSpace less than a hundred meters off the cruiser’s hull had seriously damaged the Lady Lex’s engines and left a gaping hole in the side of the bigger ship. The idiot had let them get TOO close, hoping for the bigger “ALIVE” reward on the “Wanted: Dead or Alive” bulletin. Still, it was a lesson in caution.
Guns announced himself with a huge belch as he climbed up the ladder that separated t
he bridge from the main corridor. Scratching himself, he sat down at the weapons station, not even bothering to acknowledge either the Captain or Asote. Meric let him work, knowing that any interference would just get him a look and a scowl from the fat man. After about five minutes, he leaned back in his chair.
“Give me a Sitrep, Guns,” said Meric.
“Well, just to let you know, number two missile pod still isn’t working. Ain’t gonna work until we set this tub down on a rock someplace, and me and those worthless shits from Engineering can replace the motor actuator on the door.” He belched again and reached under his station, opening a mini-fridge and pulling out a can of what he affectionately called “Coke”. Meric doubted anyone had seen an actual can of Coke outside a museum in several hundred years.
“Noted. What about everything else?”
Guns leaned forward, tapped a key, and grunted. “Until we boresight the main gun, you’re going to be off a few degrees to the left.”
Meric let out a breath of exasperation. He knew the fat man was just trying to annoy him, and would compensate for any inaccuracies that the electro-magnetic rail gun was developing. Guns would continue needling him until he was given the chance to do a full refit on the ship’s armament. Lexington had been old when Meric had discovered her, a small corvette that had been part of the big battle off Sirius IV. As best he could tell, the Lady Lex had been a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She had been holed by one of the 10 centimeter mass drivers the battleships carried to hammer at each other. Stealthy she was, a scout ship designed to fast in, hit, and fast out, but the laws of physics didn’t care about stealth when two things tried to be in the same place at the same time. Her crew had died in place, atmosphere ripped out of the hole that transected the ship just behind the bridge. They hadn’t even suited up, cruising through a battle like that. Complacency got you killed in space.
An annoyed whistle broke into his thought. Guns stopped when he had his attention again. “I’ve been looking over the radiation output of the target. It’s all over the damned place. That, and backscatter from his radar beacon shows debris moving on the same course, but slightly divergent.”
They all knew what that meant. A wreck. That could be bad, or it could be good. Any loot that could be taken without a fight was good loot. On the other hand, whoever had taken this ship out might be gunning for them next. Warrant Officer Steuben looked over at him and said, “Captain, I’ve matched the ships silhouette and residual engine radiation signature. It is the Indomitable.”
“Jason Fuesting’s ship! What the hell are they doing way out here? Call him, see if he needs a hand.”
There was no answer to repeated hails. Meric hit the General Quarters alert, and as the full bridge crew scrambled in, ordered the two attack shuttles Knife and Poison launched on a recon. They could come back and pick up the boarding teams if necessary.
“Ski, give me a run down on Indomitable.” The Intel officer had just finished bringing up his console after downing a cup of coffee he had carried from the galley, something he needed to get his old bones working. Grey haired and stooped, his black skin wrinkled, he seemed to collapse into his chair more than sit in it. Meric fully expected one day to spin the chair around and find Solbliatski dead, clutching his chest, having that final heart attack without anyone noticing.
He spoke in his reedy voice, reading off the stats that he already knew before the computer told him. “Built in 2278 at the Jamesport Shipyards as a dedicated commerce raider. Twelve thousand tons displacement, crew of ninety-six. Operated by Captain Jason Fuesting, with Letters of Marque from Britannia, Nue Freisland, and the CCCP. Primarily targeted Colonial France merchant shipping on the west side of the Reach.” He took a break to breathe pure oxygen from the tank permanently affixed to his chair. “Armament two turret mounted Particle Accelerators, two spinal mounted EM Rail Guns, caliber 4kg each. Close in Point Defense, heavy gravity field shielding.”
The Indomitable had been a tough customer, designed to take on anything up to a Heavy Cruiser. Seventy-five feet longer than the Lexington’s own two hundred and fifty odd, and much more heavily gunned. To find her out here, like this, holed and drifting, meant she had really pissed someone off. Meric listened, and then said, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
The old man gave him the evil eye and said, “Colonial France Defense Forces upped the bounty to five million Francs after Fuesting captured a member of the Republic’s first family, and she refused to leave him. This despite their paying a ransom of one million Francs. Her prospective husband was quite furious.”
“Who was her prospective husband?”
“The Governor General of Colonial France,” answered Ski with a small smile.
“Oops. I guess that would do it.”
Ski wheezed his old man’s laugh and said, “Yes, and it looks like he has paid for it. It might also have something to do with him taking or destroying over twenty million tons of RF shipping in the last two Galactic Years.”
“Well. Looks like he might have drawn a bit too much attention to himself. Let’s see what the girls find.”
Chapter 2
Nadija “Jumper” Zlatcov flipped switches and felt the sweet rumble of the fusion bottle carry through the deck plates, shaking her ass as she sat in the pilot seat of Poison. On the opposite side of Lexington, the pilot of Knife, Jenny “Banshee” O’Neill, did the same. They dropped off the sides of the Lady Lex, feeling the floating sensation of null gravity as they moved outside the envelope of artificial gravity and inertial compensators from the bigger ship.
“Knife clear,” was followed immediately by “Poison clear,” Communication umbilicals disconnected, and both pilots bumped up their throttles, accelerating at a punishing six gravities. With no boarding parties strapped down in the hold, they could maneuver their stealthy attack shuttles close to the performance of a top-of-the-line Britannia Interceptor.
“Well, maybe not a top-of-the-line interceptor,” said Zlatcov out loud to herself, “But being invisible is better than maneuverability any day.” She often talked to herself when she flew; thankfully, no one talked back. Yet.
Both pilots cut their engines at the same time, flying in tandem and under complete radio silence. Asote had warned them of the debris field, and the preloaded course markers called for a high overhead pass. Depending on the status of the wreck, Poison would maneuver to investigate while Knife held back, keeping an eye on the skies around them.
They knew as soon as they came into visual range that the ship was gone. A cloud of frozen water and oxygen surrounded it, and Zlatcov could actually see a hole straight through the broken back of the ship, down closer to the engine room. Her Alcubierre drive ring was shattered in three pieces.
“Central, this is Poison. The ship is a wreck. I’m going in to check it out.”
“Watch out for short range fighters,” called Lt. Commander McHale.
“Roger that, war’s over, give it up,” said Zlatcov under her breath. McHale could be super military sometimes.
“Say again, Jumper?” came his voice over the radio.
“Disregard. Moving in. Poison out.” The ship’s flight operations boss, Lt. Commander McHale, was a former fighter pilot from Britannia. He just couldn’t seem to let his service in His Royal Majesty’s Forces go, and it annoyed the shit out of the Russian sometimes.
As they approached, O’Neill rolled her ship out and above, beginning a slow orbit around what was left of the Indomitable. Zlatcov went straight in, powering up her gravity deflectors to keep the random bits of metal and ceramic from impacting her ship. She had drawn to within half a kilometer when she saw the big letters burned into the ship’s hull by a very powerful laser.
PIRATE
When she closed the distance even further, dots that she had thought might be damage from rail gun fire resolved themselves into human forms. The crew had been chained to the side of the ship. In a line stretching from the forward airlock to
the bridge windows, several dozen space- suited figures were each fastened to heavy bars welded to the hull.
Nadija Zlatcov, veteran ex-Warrant Pilot of the CCCP Navy, one of the longest serving members of the crew of the privateer Lexington, survivor of four fleet actions and numerous skirmishes, threw up into her helmet. Those suited figures, in many cases, had been her friends.
“Central,” she radioed, after using a vacuum to suction the vomit out of her mask and drinking some water, “I think maybe you should bring the Lady in and see for yourself. They suit-chained them. All of them.”
Back on the bridge, Meric swore under his breath. Suit-chaining was a horrible way to die, and a traditional punishment that some of the more backward governments still used against pirates. The crewmen were fastened onto the side of a ship, and given half full tanks of air, maybe a few hours’ worth. The Captain was given a full tank so he would survive longest, and their radios were locked open so he could hear the screams and prayers to God for a mercy that never came. It was a horrible, horrible way to die. The ship had been left cruising on a dead straight course, radar beacon flashing, as a example to everyone about what happened to pirates.
“Guns, from the debris field dispersal, how long ago did this happen?” he asked.
For once, the man was measured in his answer. “Three, maybe four days ago.”
“So they’re all dead.”
“I’d say so, yes. If the Frenchies did this, they went through every compartment after the Indomitable dropped their flag and dragged the crew out. There won’t be anyone alive there, Captain.” The entire bridge crew sat quietly, stunned into silence by what had happened to a ship full of men and women that they’d drunk many a beer with, back on Miranda Station.
“As soon as we touch that ship, sensors will start screaming and a French warship will drop out of nullSpace. As much as I regret it, there’s nothing we can do except nuke it. Alex, call the girls back home. Set a course for Miranda, by way of the Graveyard and Saint Martin. Make sure we have enough juice in the capacitors for a very long jump out of Saint Martin. Ski, PM me a layout of Saint Martin’s City, specifically the Governor’s Quarters. Nobody suit-chains a friend of mine without paying a price. I’ll be in my cabin; alert me when we’re ready for jump.”