by KT Belt
The Rogue Wolf
Mirrors in the Dark Book 2
KT Belt
Rubber Tree Books
The Rogue Wolf Description
Billions dead, entire worlds under siege, and no end in sight.
The most destructive war in the history of the galaxy has arrived and every able-bodied man and woman is mobilized, save one. Carmen Grey has been released from the facility into an uncertain future. The young Clairvoyant can fly and read minds and has been trained since the age of six to do one thing and one thing only: kill. Yet Carmen struggles with an entirely different battle—how to ring up customers without them running away from her.
As she tries desperately to keep her life from falling apart, everything changes when someone close to her is swept into the conflict. Carmen vowed to never fight again, but she will have to rely on her best skill in a race against time. When everything is on the line, will she be able to stay good?
Copyright © 2021 by KT Belt
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
* * *
ISBN: 978-1-954913-02-8
Cover design by: Tom Edwards
* * *
Visit KT Belt and sign up for the mailing list at:
http://www.ktbeltbooks.com
Contents
1. Sentinel
2. One Day, Every Day
3. How to Play
4. Long Shot
5. The Rogue Wolves
6. Mouse and Cat
7. Great News
8. No More Walls
9. Game Over
10. A Pawn Steps Forward
11. Unseen Worlds
12. Thresholds
13. Last Resort
14. Submerged
15. Pinpoints of Light
16. Deceptive Foundations
17. The Dark Depths
18. Truthful Deceit
19. Monster
20. The Mask of Twisted Reflections
21. Into Action
22. Nightmares
23. Atonement
About the Author
1
Sentinel
“Twenty billion. Twenty billion dead!”
“That’s the conservative estimate,” Admiral Carsono Wright replied after a brief pause.
He then looked into the eyes of his old friend. There was still the shadow of the fierce soldier that was one of his closest comrades in arms. That had not gone to seed; the oceans would turn to dust before that ever happened. Yet the holographic image of Admiral West was hollow in more than one way.
“Are you troubled?” Carsono asked.
West immediately opened his mouth before he bit the comment back. He looked away sheepishly. “How can I not be? Don’t get me wrong. I have no love for the sortens—”
“War is war,” Carsono interrupted, his tone even but not cold.
He then sighed. Soldiering was all he knew—all that most of the leadership of Space Force knew. They had been forged by the hard fighting during the Terran-Sorten War all those years ago. It would be kind to say the UTE was still recovering from that struggle, despite having decisively won. The memory of that conflict seemed to hang on everything everyone did, whether they realized it or not. And now there was this new war against the sortens, the Eternals, and the arkins. He didn’t think it was possible for any society to carry on with the losses that had been suffered on all sides.
“Yes, sir,” West said sharply. “But there is a difference between war and razing the enemy’s home worlds to the ground.”
“There is?” Carsono questioned. He then reached into his desk and pulled out a PDD. “Planet New Athens has fallen. 18 million casualties, 14 million of which were civilian. The enemy systematically hunted down men, women, and children who escaped the bombing of the cities,” Carsono read out loud. West shifted uneasily. “Third, eleventh, and fifth fleets have all fallen below ten percent strength with 1.7 million casualties. The recently repulsed attack on the Sol System: Earth SDF is effectively annihilated, Pluto starport was destroyed, the ISS Stalwart and countless other ships were lost with all hands. Total casualties are over 6 million and are still being tabulated. Planet Thycol will soon be under siege by the Eternals, and we can’t contest their advance. Total population of Thycol: 9 million. Planet—”
“No more. I understand,” West interrupted.
“I hope you do,” Carsono said. “Medusa will be deployed. We didn’t get to this point or come to this decision easily or lightly. Trust me, we have no hope of winning this war without it,” he added, raising the PDD for emphasis.
West made no reaction. He simply stared straight ahead for a second before he spoke. “How it’s come to this,” he said softly under his breath.
Carsono made no response other than to nod, and West looked at him. “Is there something else?”
West didn’t say anything at first. His lips pressed together and his jaw tightened, giving a hint at his thoughts. “Why me?” he finally asked. “There are better fleet commanders.”
“There are,” Carsono admitted. “But if any of them were assigned this mission, the conversation we are having at present would have never happened.” He took a deep breath before he continued. “Years from now, if we win or if we only exist in some alien’s history book, people will look back at this insane period and try to find the meaning in it all. I don’t even know if there is any. But we must go into this with both eyes open.”
West’s eyes fell for a moment in thought. “I understand,” he said. “I will report when it is done.”
Carsono nodded again. “Good hunting, Admiral.”
West said nothing and shut off his projection. Carsono sighed. His colleagues called him The Bull, and it most certainly was a reputation well earned. Even so, from the moment he masterminded this operation, its objective hung heavy in the pit of his stomach.
He shook his head and then activated his intercom. “What’s next?” he asked.
“You have a meeting with Admiral Calbry in main operations, sir,” his aide responded smartly. Carsono groaned. Lance, he thought. They were on the same side, and Carsono was happy for that, but water and oil weren’t meant to mix. “Your escort is standing by outside your door,” the aide continued.
Carsono groaned again. “I don’t need an escort. I’m just going across the building.”
“Sorry, sir. By regulations, all flag officers are subject to mandatory escort, even inside fleet command headquarters.”
It was a sensible rule, but having someone follow you to and fro, even to the bathroom, got very tiring. Rules were rules, though. An argument would be futile.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” he said.
In actuality, he’d be out in less than a minute. The only delay was a brief pause in which he wondered if he should take his pistol. Don’t get paranoid, he thought, shaking his head. Besides, his pistol was more a pretty ornament than a weapon, loaded or not. It had been a gift from some dignitary that he could no longer remember. He left his office with no further pause.
“Gentlemen,” he said.
“Sir,” his escorts for the day replied.
This time, it was two Phalanx troopers watching his back. If he had to have an escort, he preferred the troopers to the Sol SDF detachment he was sometimes stuck with. The Self Defense Forces undoubtedly played a vital role, but Space Force preferred to exist on a higher level. Whether his SDF counterparts would agree with that assessment was a different matter. The troopers weren’t wearing their trademark armor, but they were armed with M12 rifles
, which was more than enough. He’d never met either man before, and he took a moment to study their name tags.
“Sanchez, Taylor, if you’ll follow me.”
“After you, sir,” Taylor replied.
The trio began walking with Carsono in the lead. That was no simple task, as outside his office door was complete chaos. Before the war, the floor his office opened onto was usually a paragon of organization and efficiency. Bureaucratic nonsense was an SDF luxury. But now things were different, and not all fighting was done with bullets and missiles. Nothing all too critical happened here specifically. This was more the building’s spinal column than its brain or heart. The computers and cubicles were manned mostly by secretaries, logistics staff, information analysts, and others who considered data, facts, and figures before it was sent somewhere else. His aide was buried in here somewhere.
Admittedly, Carsono had gotten used to the mania by this point. It had only taken a few months. What really threw the grenade and sent the ants scurrying this time was the recently repelled attack by the combined sorten and Eternal fleets. They had also been aided by one single arkin starship, the first time in the war that the arkins had ever gone on the offensive. He hoped and prayed that they kept their usual reticence. That ship was practically a fleet unto itself.
Almost everyone personally knew someone who’d died. Carsono could name several, and it was those aftershocks which caused the disarray before him. They were ill equipped to fill the vacuum left by Sol SDF which, for the most part, no longer existed. Space Force trainers assisted their SDF counterparts in coordinating how and exactly where the replacements for all those lost personnel would come from. The public relations department was working overtime to try to downplay the losses from the battle. In addition, there was the task of scraping together enough resources for the counterattack on the sorten home worlds that Admiral West was leading, while also combating the Eternals in their planet-hopping campaign. His overtaxed colleagues were taking the burden of two, three, and sometimes four people who no longer were.
The trio walked on, and the crowd did their best to make a path. After only two steps, Carsono and his entourage were reduced to walking single file. The reason the troopers didn’t wear their trademark armor was obvious now. If they followed protocol, they would have a personal shield—overkill for a place as far from the front line as this. Eventually they were able to escape into a side hall. No one stopped or said anything, though one of the troopers took a breath. Carsono wouldn’t fault him for that.
Their pace was relaxed, even though Carsono had never been the slow and steady type. A meeting with Lance always put his preference for haste to the test. He never looked forward to any meeting with that man. Fleet officers and Flight officers were not supposed to mix. Just then, he thought he heard one of his escorts speak, which broke his thoughts of the coming battle—err, meeting.
“Did one of you say something?” he asked.
“No, sir,” Taylor said. He looked at Sanchez, which prompted Carsono to do the same, but the trooper only shook his head.
Whatever, he thought. It was probably just one of the other people in the hall. This place couldn’t be emptied even if you fumigated it, especially now. As further proof of that point, Carsono had to stop to let a cloud of people walk by. But in due time, the trio reached an elevator farther down the hall, which promised a short respite.
There was that noise again when the elevator doors opened.
“One of you had to have said something this time,” Carsono said as they entered the elevator. The sound was too close for it to have been anyone else.
He stared at the two men hard, but the only thing they offered were shrugs. Then the noise could be heard yet again. It was outside the elevator, and Carsono turned to see what it was, but nothing was there. He looked at the two troopers. They glanced at him, shook their heads, and then looked back outside the elevator.
There was a soft voice in the air just as the doors began to close. “Sorry, boys. That was me,” it said.
The foggy bewilderment of the moment lifted just enough for Carsono to notice a small, almost imperceptible, distortion shift along the opposite wall. His eyes grew wide, and what happened next was too violently brief to ever really know what transpired. One of the troopers uttered a sharp curse, and then there was a loud noise. The next thing Carsono knew, he was on the ground with someone on top of him. Blood started pooling on the floor.
The doors closed.
“Shit,” Carsono said as he bolted to his feet.
His uniform was covered in blood, but he wasn’t in any pain. His hands flew over his body anyway. Everything is where it’s supposed to be, he concluded. He’d seen men get practically blown in half and not realize it.
It was then that he finally noticed the elevator doors had closed. Not only that, but it was moving as well. He saw Taylor’s body on the ground. Poor kid took the bullet for me, he realized. When Carsono turned, however, he saw that wasn’t completely the case. There was one solitary bullet hole in the wall right where he had been standing. The shot would have gone through both of them if Taylor hadn’t pushed him out of the way. The trooper had been wearing a personal shield. Few small arms could penetrate one of those in one shot and still have enough energy left to go through someone. Carsono stared at the hole with that in mind. Personal cloak, high power weapons… he thought. It was practically a Christmas list of state-of-the-art military equipment. It was quite apparent that this would-be assassin, whoever he was, meant business.
“Yeah, it seems like there’s just one of them,” Sanchez said into his communicator while the security alarm blared. “He was invisible, probably a Clairvoyant,” he added.
Carsono pointed a thumb at the bullet hole. “Clairvoyants don’t use guns,” he said. “A Clairvoyant would have just snapped our necks and remained undetected.”
Sanchez nodded. “Correction, he’s not a Clairvoyant. I say again, not a Clairvoyant. Definitely terran, though. He has a terran voice and is using projectile weaponry with a personal cloaking device.”
“Copy, not a Clairvoyant,” the voice on the other side of the communicator said. “Is the admiral injured?”
“I’m fine,” Carsono said.
Sanchez nodded. “That’s a negative,” he answered. “However, Taylor is KIA. The son of a bitch got the drop on us right when we got in the elevator.”
“Understood. The building is under lockdown, and a particle motion scan is already underway. A squad will meet you to escort the admiral to a safe room.”
“Right,” Sanchez said. He then looked at Carsono, silently asking if he had anything to add. Carsono simply shook his head. “We’ll be getting off on sublevel eight.”
“Copy, sublevel eight. Escort is down the side hall, your position in forty seconds.”
The doors opened and Sanchez turned to Carsono. “Just stay behind me, Admiral,” he said.
Carsono wouldn’t waste time arguing with the man whose entire job description was to keep him alive. On the other hand, he also wouldn’t stand quietly behind anyone. He picked up Taylor’s M12 and spare magazines—the trooper wouldn’t be needing them—and then made sure the weapon was set for indoors. When he shot this son of a bitch between the eyes, he preferred that the bullet would not go on to hit some poor bastard cleaning toilets on the other side of the building.
The two of them left the elevator. Their destination was the side hall. The alarm still blared, but Carsono was so focused that he barely even heard it. He pondered how this person had managed to break into Space Force Headquarters undetected. He saw to it himself that there were PMA scanners at every entry point. Perhaps they had an accomplice on the inside. Carsono would be sure to ask after giving a hearty thanks for getting him out of the meeting with Lance.
They rounded the corner and saw the squad of troopers running toward them. The four men were in full battle dress with Phalanx armor, tactical helmet, and M12 rifle. Even for Carsono, the sight of the t
roopers was enough to give pause, and they were on his side.
“I am Sergeant Miller,” the leader said. “We’re here to escort you to safe room S8C,” he added. He looked Carsono over before he continued and gave a nod and a small smirk when he noticed the admiral had armed himself. “Foster, Adams, cover our rear. Make sure you’re in PMA scan mode. This asshole has a personal cloak. Sanchez.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” he replied.
“Stay close to the admiral. If he takes a piss, I want you there, holding his dick.” Carsono could appreciate the sentiment, but, looking at his rifle, he’d do his own dick holding, thank you very much. “Move out, Phalanx formation.”
The troopers responded smartly, two to the front and two to the back with Carsono and Sanchez in the middle. The free-floating, heavily armored and shielded panel that was the Phalanx armor trademark hung like magic in front of each trooper. It only took two men to cover the width of the hall, making the formation almost indestructible from the front, and in this case, the rear as well.
“Corner,” a corporal calmly announced. Carsono didn’t know his name.
“Shift!” Miller commanded.
The troopers turned into the new hall in perfect unison. Their precise movements left only the briefest instances of vulnerability. If anything, Carsono found it hard to keep up. The troopers moved like a well-oiled machine, their doctrine and discipline born in the ship-to-ship, corridor-to-corridor fighting of the first Terran-Sorten War.