by TR Cameron
Now if I could just get the kid to go to sleep rather than spending the late hours of the night discussing existential concepts, my summer would be charging along really well. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen. “I want to learn about wars,” at eleven pm when you’ve wanted to be asleep for the last hour is not a relaxing conversation.
Time for me to get back to work. Stop by Facebook and tell me what you’re watching or reading. I need ideas, people!
Until next time, Joys upon joys to you and yours – so may it be.
PS: If you’d like to chat with me, here’s the place. I check in daily or more: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorTRCameron. Often I put up interesting and/or silly content there, as well. For more info on my books, and to join my reader’s group, please visit www.trcameron.com.
Author Notes - Martha Carr
July 9, 2020
Day bejillion of sheltering of some kind. I’m not sure what to even call it anymore. Things are going well here. Lois Lane has a new boyfriend at doggie daycare. A golden retriever.
Apparently, they’re inseparable. I always knew that the good dog, Lois Lane had it going on. The sweet pittie, Leela and I go out on long walks every morning. Her max distance is two miles and I carry water and a cold pack for her these days. It’s hot first thing in the morning.
I’ve started a bucket list of things I want to do once it’s safe again. (Read – there’s a vaccine) Top of the list is travel, travel, travel. I want to rent a place in Tuscany for a week and write and wander in the village and be far away from electronics. And go glamping in Glacier National Park under the stars – again away from all electronics. Then take a small ship cruise in the Mediterranean Sea and finally see New Zealand, when they’ll let us back in. (It’s amazing how many people have mentioned looking in to moving there. I’m going to stick it out here. We’ll figure things out eventually.)
There’s also the Grand Canyon – never seen that. And my annual trip to New York City and one of my best friends – David – his annual birthday at someplace fabulous. Usually there’s a few B list celebrities there, which makes it even more fun.
Another best friend who I think of as a big sister, Dhyana is in Kauai and likes to remind me its my turn to visit. That’s on the list too.
Then there’s Game Night! I have already invested in the board games and they’re all stored away, patiently waiting. There’s Catan, Apples to Apples, Yahtzee, Uno, Balderdash, Pictionary, Guesstures and something called Stupid Deaths, which I’m really looking forward to playing. I plan to fill my dining room table with people and food and play games till we can’t hear over the laughter.
In the meantime, I’m still working on the embroidery and figuring out the mural down the hallway and next week I’ll be looking at new plans to turn the backyard into an oasis. The goal is to make it a certified haven for bees and butterflies.
Then there’s all the music I want to go hear around town. I’m in the live music capital of the world and it’s been too long since I’ve seen new talent that’s amazing and ready to break out. (And Jackie Venson of course.)
And there of course will be more books…. More adventures to follow.
Trust
Azophi Academy™ Book Two
Chapter One
Special Forces Captain Jackson Reese’s status as one of Major Anika Stephenson’s three subordinates got him access to the bridge of the Cronus on a pretty regular basis.
Today, though, he would have been just as happy to be below decks with his crew, who knew the ship was in for a fight but didn’t realize quite how poor the odds were.
The bridge was an oval, wider side to side than front to back. White bulkheads contrasted with colorful displays mounted on them, small ones along the periphery and a mammoth one set on the forward bulkhead. Control stations marched around the outside of the space, some occupied, others empty. He’d never quite figured out whether they were dedicated to specific tasks or not, since the singular uniform style of the Cronus’s crew made it impossible to guess their area of expertise.
Near the display was a long, curved control surface with two chairs. The helm operator sat in one, with the weapons control operator positioned beside her. The captain’s chair occupied the middle of the space. Jax and Stephenson stood behind the other curved control panel, a mirror of the one below, which was slightly above and a few feet to the rear of the seat of authority. Captain Jensen spun her chair to face them. The combination of piercing eyes and long black hair restrained tightly in a bun gave her a stern look.
“Pretty bleak picture, wouldn’t you say?” Her voice was more amused than worried, which meant she knew something he wasn’t aware of or was posturing for her crew. He would respect either, but hoped for the first.
Stephenson nodded. She was almost a decade older than him, with short-cropped blonde hair, a bodybuilder’s physique, and a strong face that was a little on the wide side compared to the rest of her. No wrinkles showed yet on her pale skin, except for some laugh lines here and there. “Indeed. Looks bad for us.” She gestured up at the screen. “That’s a lot of enemy ships.” She also didn’t seem particularly perturbed, increasing Jax’s sense that he missed some vital piece of knowledge. As usual, lately. I wonder if the captain was part of the Academy at some point too.
He followed his superior’s motion and took stock of the situation yet again. A sextet of alien vessels hung in space like a wall separating them from their objective. They were strangely organic, with spikes and bulbous projections utterly unlike the smooth lines of his ship. The Cronus had jumped into a system held by the Dhelear, a member of the Alien Coalition, who had recently stolen it from the Confederacy. The Coalition claimed it was an independent act and wrung their hands in false sympathy while carefully doing absolutely nothing to rectify the planets’ theft.
This left an opening for the United Constitutional Corporate Alliance. The transitional moment when a planet or system changed possession was a perfect opportunity to make it happen again. Sometimes, three or four capture and recapture cycles would occur before someone with the ability to take it also proved able to hold it. The Cronus had been tasked with arriving ahead of the invasion to drop its contingent of Special Forces soldiers—all three teams, this time—to prepare the battlefield on the lone inhabited world.
What they hadn’t expected was the blockade waiting to greet them. The intelligence communicated by their spy drones had apparently been manipulated. Wonder what other surprises they have up their alien-sleeve-equivalents. “A lot of enemy ships who knew we were coming.”
The Captain swiveled her chair to face forward. “Or they decided to throw up a blockade on the most likely entry route, and we stumbled into it. Either way, it’s true: six-on-one are pretty bad odds.” Her voice changed from musing to command, a sharp-edged decisiveness replacing the former amusement. “Sensors, any useful information yet?”
Jax had never managed to put names to faces among the bridge crew, as Jensen rarely referred to them by anything other than position. He supposed it made things easier, especially if she worked with multiple shifts of different personnel. Still, his sense of the woman was that she’d know each of those she led as completely as he did his team, so he judged it a conscious simplification. I wonder if it changes under times of stress? He looked up at the screen. I guess I might be about to find out.
A tall black-haired man at a station on the left replied, “Nothing new, Captain. Our scans aren’t permeating their hulls. They continue to emit trace elements consistent with engines ready and have shields raised.”
The senior officer grunted. “Tactical?”
A woman standing a few feet in front of Jax and Stephenson at the curved control panel answered quickly, her tones confident and bright. The back of her head showed long hair precisely restrained in a braid that coiled upon itself and was held in place with a metal clip that looked like it might double as a throwing weapon, to judge by the sharp edges. My kind of person. “
Openings in the ship’s hulls could be torpedo tubes. External cannons are aimed at us. No clear data on whether they’re projectile, energy, plasma, or other. Their shields are positioned in our direction.”
Captain Jensen drummed the fingers of her left hand on the arm of her chair, an inch or two away from the control panels set into the front end of each. “Science, what do we know about them?”
A tall woman with red hair turned to face the Captain from a station on the right side of the room while lacing her hands behind her back. Her face was covered with freckles, giving her an almost innocent look that contrasted with her words, which were delivered with a slight accent he couldn’t identify. “They’re wicked bastards, pardon my language. The Dhelear are considered to be among the most aggressive species in the Coalition, likely because they tend to strike out on their own as they’ve done here. Their physiology is similar to ours in the most basic ways: bipedal, two arms, two eyes, nose, and mouth all pretty much where ours are. They have three biological sexes, the first changing into one of the others at their equivalent of puberty. However, that’s where the similarity ends. Sharp teeth and claws are standard, and leathery skin with strategically placed bone plates beneath add to their martial prowess.” She shrugged. “Their culture embraces personal combat as the deciding factor in most disputes, probably an evolutionary result of their physical natures.”
Captain Jensen nodded as a small smile crept onto her face. “So, are these combats usually one-to-one? Dhelear to Dhelear, as it were?” The redhead answered with a single nod of assent. “Well, that screams opportunity, doesn’t it?” She swiveled again to face Jax and Stephenson. “Major, are your teams ready to go?”
His superior officer nodded. “Whenever and wherever, as always, Captain.”
Jensen rose to her feet. “Communications, hail the nearest ship. Put me on screen.” She pulled down on her tunic and ran a quick hand over her hair, which was as disciplined and pristine as the rest of her.
A male voice from somewhere on the bridge responded, “Aye, Captain. We’re connected.”
An alien appeared on the main display, to one side of the view of all the enemy ships. The science officer had neglected to mention that the Dhelear had turquoise skin, a strangely soothing shade given their martial nature. It said, “You are in our system. If you encroach any further, you shall be destroyed. Go back where you came from, human.” Its voice as rendered by the translation software was smooth and deep.
Jensen shook her head. “I’m afraid we can’t do that. We intend to take possession of the planet and the system. Soon our ships will outnumber yours, and we’ll do as we please. However, in recognition of your prowess in liberating the area from the Confederacy, we will honor you with a single challenge. Your ship versus the Cronus for the right of passage beyond your blockade. You win, we call off our reinforcements and leave you to it. We win, you and your ships depart.”
Jax turned away from the screen and murmured, “I don’t think the fleet is going to like that.”
Stephenson raised a hand as if she was scratching her nose and whispered, “Nor will they likely adhere to it. This is about survival.”
He rotated back without responding. It made sense. They weren’t going to be able to defeat all six with anything short of a miracle. The other ships would doubtless have an estimate of when the Cronus could jump again and would act before she could escape. That left stalling for time as the only real option.
The creature on the screen didn’t look fooled. Nonetheless, it nodded. “Very well. We shall begin in six minutes.” Jax assumed that some sort of temporal conversion happened in there that the translator took care of.
Captain Jensen replied, “Acknowledged. Cronus out.” She stalked back to her chair and punched a button to activate the whole-ship intercom. “All hands, we are now at Condition One.” Around them, the bridge personnel acted quickly but calmly to take seats, and the tactical officer pointed for him and Stephenson to do the same. They complied, pushing the chair’s arms inward to keep them from floating away if gravity was lost or being hurled across the room if the ship took a hit. Similar actions would be taking place throughout the vessel as her crew moved from Condition Two, preparing for battle, to the actual waging of it.
The communications officer rerouted signals, and the Captain’s voice emerged from the comm in his ear. “Tactical, confirm the other ships are retreating at a proper rate?”
The woman replied, “Confirmed. They will be out of range when the timer runs out.” He noted that a set of numbers was counting down on the main display, showing just over four minutes remaining.
Jensen nodded. “Good. Shields eighty percent front to begin. They’re likely to try an all-out punch in the mouth if our research on them proves true.” The UCCA hadn’t personally gone up against the Dhelear before, but their spies had retrieved information from the Confederacy, which had. “Then, watch out for sneaky stuff. Probably torpedoes set to loop and hit from an unexpected direction.”
Cronus’s tactical officer replied, “Aye, Captain.”
The captain drummed her fingers again. “Weapons, half-strength lasers and particle cannons at first. Torpedoes to strike from the sides. If they shift any power away from their front shields, hit them with everything except the railgun. We’ll hold that in reserve.” A man’s voice acknowledged the order. “Helm, evasive at your discretion. Don’t position us between them and the rest of their ships, though.”
She paused for almost a minute as the clock ticked down. Over his comm, reports from various sections of the ship came one after the other to confirm that the vessel was ready for combat. Then she asked, “Science, any evidence the bastards are likely to cheat?”
The woman’s voice held a note of amusement. “They’re rather like us in that respect, too, Captain.”
At that instant, with a minute and eleven seconds remaining on the timer, the Dhelear ship fired.
Chapter Two
Captain Jensen’s guess had been correct. Their enemy opened up with everything it had, which turned out to be a mix of lasers and projectiles. The shields dispersed the former and slowed the latter to the point where they bounced from the hull without damaging it, transmitting a sound like a light rain through the ship.
The tactical officer announced, “Defenses holding. Torpedoes launched, heading port and starboard. Balancing shields.”
Jensen nodded and ordered, “Weapons, let’s test their three-dimensional thinking. Four torpedoes, one top, one bottom, one to each side. Continue the underpowered lasers and particle cannons.” On the display, a quartet of small blue dots matched the two green ones already present, marking the powered projectiles as they traveled toward the ships.
The enemy’s missiles struck first, detonating as they met the energy of the Cronus’s shields. The sound of rain became a rattle as the powerful explosions were partially dissipated and the remainder spread across a wide section of hull, reducing its ability to penetrate in any single place. Stephenson grunted. “Scoured some paint off with that one.” Jax nodded. His experience with ship-to-ship combat was primarily theoretical, the practical portion limited to moments like these.
Their missiles slammed into the enemy vessel, causing blossoms of brightness to appear on each side. Jensen asked, “Tactical?”
“No penetration, Captain.”
“Well, if it were easy, they wouldn’t have sent us, right?” She tapped the control panel on her display. “Weapons, I want torpedoes to look like they’re going to the sides, then converge on this point. When they do, lasers and particle cannons simultaneously. Wait a moment, then give them a shot from the railgun.”
“Aye, Captain.” His voice signaled an eagerness to comply with that particular order. In his place, Jax would feel the same.
They weathered another pair of torpedo impacts from the enemy while the weapons officer put the plan into action. Jax leaned forward unconsciously to watch the torpedoes near their target. A few seconds befor
e they were to hit, Jensen shouted, “Evasive pattern Zulu, execute.” The ship heeled to port, and she continued, “Hold fire.” A moment after, a flash of light on the other vessel sparked an incandescent trail that reached for the Cronus but passed to their side. Had the Captain not maneuvered, they would have been hit. She growled, “That’s a big laser.”
The tactical officer agreed. “At least three times as large as any we’ve got. On the scale of the ones our biggest ships have. They must have some amazing energy throughput.”
“Let’s save the analysis for later. Hopefully, it’ll take them a while to charge it up again. Clever not using it right out of the box.” She shook her head. “Smart ship. Weapons, set up that attack again.”
The helm officer moved them back into proper alignment, and another pair of torpedoes shot out at their foe. As they struck, a barrage from the lasers and particle cannons peppered the spot. He understood the theory behind the strike, weakening the shields with the guns and putting major stress on that location with the torpedoes to drain it further. Alone, the attacks wouldn’t have penetrated. Even together, they probably only had a minimal likelihood of damaging the enemy vessel.
But the railgun was the real attack. A long barrel ran the entire length of the ship, completely hidden from view. Few ships the Cronus’s size would carry such a heavy weapon, but since she’d been designed from the outset to ferry Special Forces troops, the decision had been made to put a little extra iron in the glove. Electromagnetic force from oppositely charged rails on either side of the barrel pushed an inert spear of metal down the long tube. A panel in the forward hull opened in time for the projectile to fly out, pass through the weakened portion of the shield that might have slowed it, and slam into the enemy ship’s skin.