With thanks to the best team of beta readers any writer could ever wish for:
Rob Ballon
John Ashmore
Manie Kilian
Dawn Lynn Cline
Scott Walker
Marti Panikkar
Steve DeBacker
Charles Obert
A BIOGENESIS WAR FILES NOVEL
SUDDEN DEATH
LL RICHMAN
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SUDDEN DEATH
Copyright © 2021 by L.L. Richman
The Biogenesis War™ is a registered trademark of L.L. Richman
All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews, or promotions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by Delta V Press
Cover Copyright © 2021 L.L. Richman
ISBN-13:
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Produced in the United States of America
ALSO BY LL RICHMAN
You can always find the most up to date listing of book titles on L.L. Richman’s Author Page.
The Biogenesis War Series
The Chiral Agent
The Chiral Protocol
Chiral Justice
The Biogenesis War Files: The Early Years
Operation Cobalt
Ambush in the Sargon Straits
The Chiral Conspiracy
Sudden Death
Audiobooks
Chiral Agent/Chiral Conspiracy Publisher’s Pack
Chiral Protocol/Ambush in the Sargon Straits Publisher’s Pack
Chiral Justice/Operation Cobalt Publisher’s Pack
CONTENTS
Copyright
Also by
Dedication
Epigraph
PROLOGUE
1: PIRATE NEST
2: AT LOOSE ENDS
3: HELL WALK
4: CLANDESTINE MEET
5: MEMORY LANE
6: HEIST
7: LIBERTY
8: AMUSEMENT PARK
9: SPOTTED
10: SHOTS FIRED
11: SANDY BEACH
12: TRACK AND ASSESS
13: SWAMPER
14: RECON
15:CONTACT
16: ON THE MOVE
17: CONTACT
18: TAKEDOWN
19: NEW THREAT
20: ENFORCERS
21: ZIPLINE
22: NEW PLAN
23: SAFETY MEASURES
24: EVACUATION
25: DISTRACTIONS
26: REINFORCEMENTS
27: DETONATION
28: UNEXPECTED COMPANY
29: NOT YOUR FIGHT
30: ARCHANGEL
31: CAMOUFLAGE
32: SUSPECT
33: REGROUP
34: MISSING GIRLS
35: UPPED ANTE
36: TRACKING A TANGO
37: EXIT STRATEGY
38: INFILTRATION
39: UNJAMMED
40: TABLES TURNED
41: SAD FIVE BROS
42: REPORTING IN
43: HOSTAGE
44: FIGHT OR FLIGHT
45: POSSE COMITATUS
46: MAN DOWN
47: RECALLED
48: BAIT AND SWITCH
49: RIVER DANCE
50: TICKING TIME BOMB
51: LEFT SWINGING
52: AFTERMATH
Preview: The Chiral Agent
What’s real… and what’s fiction?
No one said there’d be math
Terminology
Weaponry and Armor
Also by
About the author
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For Rob, the original Archangel.
Sine Pari
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In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
– Theodore Roosevelt
PROLOGUE
Humanity has reached the stars.
With colonies established throughout the Sol System, explorers hungry for new ventures traveled beyond its borders to colonize nearby Alpha Centauri.
At the same time, a brave pair of ships set their sights a bit farther afield—on the binary stars Procyon and Sirius. Those who settled there called themselves the Geminate Alliance.
Such distances made interaction prohibitive. Even with the Scharnhorst drive’s ability to triple the speed of light, travel between the colonies was measured in months, if not years.
In the mid-twenty-fifth century, that all changed. The Geminate Alliance stunned the known worlds with the invention of the Calabi-Yau Gate. The gates folded space, enabling instantaneous travel between star systems. True interstellar commerce became a reality.
Humanity as a whole prospered, but it wasn’t perfect. In certain pockets within the settled worlds, dictators flourished. In others, organized crime had carved out a foothold. Free speech allowed dissenters a voice, yet some weren’t content with the results that came from such a platform.
In a word, humanity was still… broken. As a result, it still needed the service and sacrifice of rough warriors, willing to stand in the breach between the innocent and the profane…
1: PIRATE NEST
GNS Callaghan
The Atliekas
Nine Geminate Navy Marines shot silently through the black, catapulted from a destroyer’s missile tubes with a force no unaugmented human could withstand. Despite the one-hundred-g shove, the catapult added very little to the warriors’ velocity. The ship they’d emerged from was traveling more than nine times that speed. By default, that meant the Marines were, too.
Cocooned safely inside a viscous bath that dampened the catapult’s effects, Boone Brady mentally gritted his teeth and held on during two interminable seconds of agony. The lattice of carbyne nanofloss woven throughout his body might have kept him from turning into a slurry of organic goo, but it didn’t mean the push the GNS Callaghan had imparted was a fun experience.
The filaments of SmartCarbyne embedded throughout his soft tissue and critical organs were tied to an accelerometer inside his head. These automatically hardened when excessive forces were detected, but the material could also be triggered manually—which is what Boone and his team had done prior to launch. The feeling they engendered as they transitioned was maddening; his organs itched, and there was no way he could reach them to scratch.
Behind them, Callaghan continued its deceleration, coming about to keep pace with the Atliekas belt. Rigged for quiet running, the destroyer was a giant shadow, a silent sentinel guarding their six.
Their target was a derelict mining platform, located seventy-five thousand kilometers inside the Atliekas. Currently, it harbored a small band of pirates. If Boone and his teammates had anything to say about it, the station wouldn’t be their home for much longer.
Boone wasn’t worried about detection; the clamshell encasing each squad member was covered in the same tunable material as the stealth drakeskin suit he wore. The carbyne-reinforced suit he wore was made of metamaterials that used transformation optics to
guide incident waves around the wearer. The nanoweave was tunable, providing full-spectrum stealth.
Total flight time would be a little over an hour. Boone used that to cycle through his head-up display, keeping one eye on telemetry while reviewing the team’s playbook for the upcoming mission. He felt the clamshell sway as the onboard Synthetic Intelligence rocked him gently to one side to avoid a chunk of ice that had broken free from a nearby rock.
Despite conventional wisdom, asteroid belts weren’t densely packed. Space was vast, even deep inside the Atliekas. The rocks in orbit around Procyon’s main sequence star didn’t require much navigation; the suit’s SI negotiated the path with ease.
As they neared their destination, the voice of the squad’s sergeant sounded over the evanescent wire embedded inside Boone’s head. {Two minute warning,} the mental voice called out. The EM burst was localized and low-powered, designed to reach only those flying in tight formation.
The clamshell’s thrusters engaged, delivering a surprisingly gentle deceleration compared to the kick in the pants Boone had experienced at the beginning of the journey. The thrusters were encased in a unique ‘meringue’ spun from aerogels and metal foams. These concealed the bloom that came from heating the propellant gases. The material absorbed all emissions, effectively masking them from detection. As far as the SI running the platform’s automated defenses was concerned, the suits were little more than micrometeorite dust.
Boone’s position in the formation was toward the rear, but that would soon change. For today’s action, he’d be filling the role of overwatch, the rest dividing into fireteams to scour the structure and clean house. The Geminate Navy had a zero-tolerance policy for those who preyed upon honest merchants.
The platform enlarged on Boone’s HUD as the squad neared. They came to a stop relative to one of the platform’s maintenance hatches, its location provided by the manufacturer and confirmed by stealth drone the day before.
{Grant. Breach.} At the sergeant’s command, a figure moved forward, breaching canister in one hand.
{Boone.} That single word had Boone slipping behind Grant.
The breaching canister flashed green, the unit successfully hijacking the control plate governing the airlock. Grant flashed the all-clear hand signal and the hatch opened.
Boone followed him inside, the rest of the squad floating in behind. He snagged one of the built-in handholds at the same time he disengaged thrusters. The platform’s rotation did the rest, orienting him in the ‘down’ direction as centripetal force asserted the equivalent of one-third of a g of artificial gravity on his body. He heard a hiss over his suit’s speakers, the hatch sealing and repressurizing under Grant’s command.
{Power down,} the sergeant ordered.
Despite the fact they were once more in atmosphere, communication would remain nonverbal throughout the mission, the team using the combat network established before leaving Callaghan. The network was courtesy of an evanescent wire embedded in each Marine’s brain. They’d explained to Boone how it worked when it was implanted, but it might have been an alien language for all that he understood it. If it wasn’t a weapon, it was pretty much a black box to him.
Boone pushed his helmet’s visor up, unsealing his clamshell and sliding out of it. The armor landed with a soft clunk against the bulkhead as he laid it alongside the others. From the corner of his eye, he caught the glitter of audio chaff, tiny motes of light flickering in and out of view. The cloud of noise-cancelling nanostructures would attenuate the sound of nine Marines divesting themselves of their outer suits. Too cumbersome for direct action, they would remain in the airlock until the mission was complete.
{Boone, Grant: Recon.}
At the sergeant’s command, Grant stepped forward and applied the Bravo Charlie to the inner hatch. While it worked, both he and Boone slid their hoods over their heads. The hood was made of the same material as their drakeskin suits; its outer layer was covered in metamaterials that used transformation optics to guide incident waves around the wearer, shielding them from view.
Once the inner hatch was bypassed, Grant slid it open a fraction of a centimeter and launched a surveillance microdrone. The two Marines watched the feed as the drone scanned the area.
{Clear,} Grant said, palming the door open.
Boone’s P-SCAR—the Navy’s pulsed, special combat assault rifle—had been secured against his chest during the flight. He brought it around into high-ready and nodded once to Grant. The two Marines slipped through, weapons inscribing slow arcs as they swept the corridor. Grant motioned he would go left and for Boone to go right. Boone nodded and turned, disappearing into the shadows of the dimly lit corridor.
The place was a dive. Someone had clearly ransacked it, removing anything of value. Access plates hung open where wires had been stripped. He ducked beneath broken conduit that hung limply from breaks in the corridor’s ceiling, sidestepped around debris littering the floor. He launched a surveillance drone of his own, the tiny machine an advance scout, searching for traps—and warm bodies.
About all that could be said of its enviro plant was that it could generate a decent atmosphere and spin the structure enough to simulate a modicum of gravity. Boone had to modulate his steps to keep from bouncing and hitting the ceiling.
He was also pretty sure he’d be able to see his breath if he removed his hood. The temperature of his suit was as high as it could go while remaining stealthed, which made it damn uncomfortable.
Grant must have thought the same thing. His {Let’s bag these assholes and get back home where we can thaw out} made Boone grin.
Half an hour later, he and Grant completed their sweep and reported in.
{Tangos scattered in two main sectors,} Boone said, dropping pins on top of a map he pushed to the combat net. {Five are in this room here, looks like a dining facility. The rest appear to be asleep in their quarters.}
Grant supplied the locations for those.
The sergeant nodded and speared Boone with a look. {Catwalk in place like the specs showed?}
Boone nodded. {Can confirm.}
{All right then. We proceed as planned. Fireteam Bravo will take the D-FAC. Charlie and Delta, round up our sleepers. Boone, you’re Archangel.}
That meant Boone would go high, operating as the squad’s overwatch. Heads nodded and the fireteams formed up. Then nine stealthed figures slipped through the hatch.
The predictive systems of Boone’s drakeskin suit tied into the combat net and pulled the Navy’s IFF transponder code from each of his fellow Marines. The code squawked an ‘identify friend/foe’ signal that outlined each soldier in green on his overlay. Those who’d taken up residence on the platform didn’t have such an advantage; until the moment the fireteams struck, the pirates would remain oblivious to the Marines in their midst.
Boone slowed as he approached the catwalk, eyes tracking up the support beam to the framework above his head. The walkway encircled the platform, suspended from a support truss. Since the platform was built like a donut without the hole, it was the most unobstructed view he’d get of the space. Though Boone’s vision inside the buildings was limited to his optics’ infrared heat maps, he’d easily spot movement anywhere else.
He climbed to the top and settled in, deploying additional surveillance drones—one per fireteam. The small airborne devices jetted ahead of the Marines, advanced scouts that used active sensors to ping the area ahead of the men and women, with blips that cycled on and off too quickly to trigger the platform’s warning system.
Above their heads, Boone did much the same, using his P-SCAR’s reticle to methodically scan each area, in search of IR signatures indicating hidden tangos or unusual structures that might hide traps.
Bravo was closing in on the dining facility when the cluster of pirates split up, two of the five heading straight toward the fireteam.
{Bravo, two tangos coming your way, spinward, first cross corridor on your left.} Boone’s words were measured and calm as he
pushed the mental warning to the fireteam. From his position, he could just see the spot where the two groups would intersect.
{Copy.} The sergeant’s voice was curt. {Charlie, Delta: you’re about to lose your element of surprise.}
Boone realized he was right; the moment Bravo engaged the pirates, the rest would be alerted.
His hand tightened around his P-SCAR, the rifle’s barrel braced against the railing of the crosswalk high above their heads. The three Marines he’d just pinged sent back a round of two-clicks for reply. The sergeant was in the lead. Through his reticle, Boone saw the man send a flurry of hand signals to the two Marines with him. They broke apart, heading for the sparse cover a pair of exposed steel trusses would provide, while the sergeant took a knee behind a broken piece of equipment.
{Five seconds… three…two…} Boone’s mental voice was soft as he counted down the time to intercept.
{Eyes!} The sergeant leading the team called out the warning, his P-SCAR tucked into the pocket of his shoulder, the muzzle of his rifle aimed head-high.
The moment the two pirates rounded the corner, the sergeant fired. The P-SCAR’s ‘P’—its pulsed plasma burst—ripped electrons from the air in a laser pulse that lasted a mere quadrillionth of a second, creating an invisible ball of plasma. Another slightly longer pulse followed at its heels, detonating the ball of plasma in a combined flash-bang/flash-blind.
Dazed, and with both vision and hearing temporarily impaired, the pirates stumbled back. Reaching for their weapons, they blindly sprayed the hallway with fire. Return fire from the Marines cut the pirates down in seconds.
Sudden Death (A Military Sci Fi Thriller) (The Biogenesis War Files) Page 1