by Tim Marquitz
Refuge in the Stars
Enemy Of My Enemy Book Two
Tim Marquitz
Michael Anderle
Craig Martelle
Refuge in the Stars (this book) is a work of fiction.
All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2018 Tim Marquitz, Michael Anderle and Craig Martelle
Cover by Tom Edwards tomedwardsdesign.com/
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
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Las Vegas, NV 89109
First US edition, August 2018
The Kurtherian Gambit (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2015-2018 by Michael T. Anderle and LMBPN Publishing.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Author Notes - Tim Marquitz
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
Books By Tim Marquitz
Books By Michael Anderle
Books By Craig Martelle
Connect with The Authors
Refuge in the Stars Team
Thanks to the JIT Readers
James Caplan
Peter Manis
Mary Morris
John Ashmore
Daniel Weigert
Keith Verret
Kelly O’Donnell
John Ashmore
Micky Cocker
If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know!
Editor
LKJ Bookmakers
Chapter One
The months after the accidental Wyyvan invasion of Krawlas were a whirlwind.
Taj stared out over Culvert City, but her mind couldn’t quite square what she saw with the city she’d grown up in. It was so…different.
After the desperate move of crashing the Wyyvan ship, the Monger, into the dead center of the old town to kill off the enemy, the destroyer having pulled everything into the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city, there was nothing left but memories where her home had stood.
The rebuilt town now rested five kilometers west of the original location in order to avoid the cavernous instability of the Monger’s impact crater. She and her people had filled in the secretive tunnels, given how they had mostly collapsed anyway, but they’d left a few of the entrances in place.
As it turned out, the alien destroyer hadn’t been completely wrecked. While it would never fly again, much of its technology remained viable. Taj and her crew went to work right away, scavenging what they could from the ship, with Lina leading the effort.
“There is so much here we can use,” Lina had muttered as she picked and pawed through everything, sorting bits and pieces and studying every one.
“You know what this stuff does?” Taj asked.
The engineer shrugged. “I’ll figure it out. Most of it’s pretty basic, bits and pieces of armor we can use to create defenses with, the guns we can mount as a sort of anti-ship or personnel devices around the perimeter of town.” Her eyes scanned the treasure trove of the Monger’s remains. “The biggest part of all this will be the data logs, if I can figure out how to crack them. That’s what’ll really help us when these guys come back.”
Taj nodded, glad to have anything that would better their chances against the Wyyvan forces.
“Hey, Kal,” Lina called out over the noise of their people poking through the wreckage. “Can I get you and Jadie to organize a collection and get all this stuff to my makeshift workshop? I need to examine it closer and can’t do it out here.”
“Sure,” Kal answered, waving Jadie, Torbon’s aunt, over from where she led a scavenging party sweeping the perimeter. “C’mon, Jadie, we’ve got a new job that needs doing.”
Jadie chuckled and waved her crew to follow as she trotted over to Kal. “What are we doing now?”
Kal started to explain, and Taj turned her focus to the sky. She grinned as she thought about the Wyyvans’ return.
She shook off the reverie of that day and glanced out at the desert surrounding the newly rebuilt Culvert City, and she imagined the surprises she had in store for the cruel aliens when they set foot on Furlorian land again. Buried beneath the scrubby, sandy terrain, hundreds of makeshift mines and anti-personnel weapons lay ready to be activated, powered by the exact mineral the invaders were in search of. The Wyyvan soldiers wouldn’t simply stroll into Culvert City as they had the last time. Taj smiled. No, they’d pay in blood for daring to set foot on Krawlas soil again.
On top of having prepped the city to defend itself, the crew managed to revive the Paradigm, the old Furlorian freighter that had brought Mama Merr, Gran Beaux, and the other survivors of Felinus 4 to Krawlas, fueling it with Toradium-42 and stuffing its cargo bays with more of the precious mineral.
Taj bit back a groan as she thought of the old Grans, both having given their lives to ensure their people made it to safety. A single tear ran down her cheek, tickling her whiskers.
But that was all she’d let fall.
She grunted and wiped it away in defiance.
Beaux and Mama Merr had entrusted her with the wellbeing of her entire race, and it was a burden that weighed heavily on Taj’s shoulders, but she wasn’t carrying it alone.
Her crew—even if the windrider, the Thorn, was now destroyed—was right there with her. Lina, Torbon, and Cabe were the backbone she could lean on, no matter what. She had friends, family, people she could count on in the direst of circumstances. They were there for her.
That thought chased the others from her mind, like a welcome sunrise burning away the morning’s clouds. Taj grinned and let out a long, slow breath, clearing her lungs and mind at the same time.
She wasn’t alone, and she never would be.
Her comm device chirped in her ear, reminding her of exactly that.
“Yeah?” she answered after a moment, letting her renewed confidence bolster her voice.
“You’re gonna wanna see this,” Lina told her. The static of the comm did nothing to mask the trepidation in the engineer’s voice.
“Something tells me I really don’t want to.”
Lina grunted. “No, probably not.”
Taj swallowed hard and nodded, even though she knew Lina couldn’t see her. “Be right there,” she replied, her feet starting off on their own. She knew better than to ignore the tone in Lina’s voice. Something was going on, something bad.
She had a pretty good idea as to what that might be, too.
Taj m
ade her way to the Paradigm’s bridge, out of breath from her forced run. Though the freighter had been pulled from its quiet cavern and was parked on the other side of the old Culvert City, it was still a few miles from where Taj had been. She’d arrived quickly enough, but there was no way to hide the exertion it had taken. Taj huffed and struggled to catch her breath as Lina met her at the bridge door.
“You’re not gonna like this,” Lina said.
“I already don’t like it.” Taj coughed and cleared her throat, her words raspy. “Tell me what’s going on,”
The engineer led her to the array of sensors and displays that took up the front of the freighter’s bridge. Without a word, she pointed to the screen set dead center in the console. Taj followed Lina’s finger and her breath hitched in her lungs. A wave of lightheadedness washed over her and she clasped the seat back, then plopped into the monitoring chair with a grunt. Her heart didn’t know whether to pound or stall. Instead, it beat an irregular rhythm in her chest, a drummer out of sync with the rest of her body.
“Bloody Rowl,” she muttered. “There are eight of them up there.”
“Nine,” Lina corrected as yet another blip representing a spaceship appeared on the scanner monitor.
Taj looked closer, scanning the terminal’s readouts as they scrolled across the old, green screen. “Seven destroyers.” The words barely managed to escape her clenched lips.
“And there’s another one.” Lina came up behind her and set a hand on Taj’s shoulder. Taj could feel it trembling. She reached up and clasped the engineer’s hand in her own, offering reassurance. “And another. They keep coming, Taj.”
Taj dropped into the captain’s chair to think. Her tail fluttered and twitched, fury and frustration giving it a life of its own.
Cabe and Torbon came up behind the pair. She felt them staring over her shoulder at the screen.
“Uh, that’s not good,” Torbon muttered.
“Ya think?” Cabe asked, and though Taj couldn’t see it, she knew he was shaking his head.
“Don’t panic,” Taj told them. “We didn’t do all this work to cave now. This is what we’ve been preparing for.”
“But we didn’t plan for this many of them, Taj,” Lina said. “The mines buried along the city perimeter might delay them, but they’ve clearly brought enough troops to overwhelm our traps.”
“I really don’t think that’s gonna be a problem,” Cabe mumbled. He reached past Taj and tapped the monitor with a claw. A massive black blip appeared right where he pointed.
“What the gack is that?” Torbon asked.
Lina gasped, and everyone spun their heads to stare at her.
“It’s a…a…” she stammered.
“It’s a what?” Torbon shouted, slapping his hands onto his hips.
“A dreadnought,” she finally managed to spit out.
The word silenced the room, a heavy gloom settling over them as each of the crew thought back to their training holos and envisioned the monstrous battleship that went by the name of dreadnought.
“Rowl,” Taj managed to say. A cold chill ran like spiders down her spine.
“We’re gonna die,” Torbon whispered, and despite how often he said it, Taj thought he might be right this time.
Then she shook the thought off. Torbon was never right.
There was no way she was going to let these gacking aliens come in and take over again.
“Why in the gack would they bring a dreadnought for a mining expedition? It’s not like they don’t have an army of soldiers sitting up there ready to…” Cabe paused, his hand flying to his mouth. “Oh.” He seemed to realize the answer to his question.
A half-dozen more blips appeared on the screen.
“Oh?” Torbon asked. “Oh what?”
Cabe stared at the monitor for a moment longer, eyes wide, only seeming to wake up when Taj pinched his arm.
“Oh what?” she demanded. “What’s running around in that skull of yours?”
“We are sooooo gacked,” he answered. He tapped the screen once more, pointing out the dreadnought. “You apparently missed it in training, but that kind of ship has another name…”
Taj stared at the black blip and racked her brain, drifting back to the days of hunkering down in front of the holo vids, studying to impress Gran Beaux with her knowledge and aptitude. She flipped through her memories, chasing the elusive recall of the dreadnought. Taj had pushed that particular holo to the back of her mind as she doubted she’d ever come face to face with the monstrous ship, stranded on Krawlas as she was. But then it struck her.
“Worldbreaker,” she mumbled, having a hard time getting the word out as its meaning sunk in.
Cabe nodded, and without another word, he reached over her again and tapped a code into the console. Red lights flashed on deck, bathing the crew in bloody crimson.
“Sound the city alarms,” Taj shouted, “and get everyone mobilized. We need to get the bloody gack out of here. Now!”
Lina hesitated only an instant, but a buzzer sounded, reverberating throughout the bridge and spurring her into action. Taj swallowed hard, registering the flashes onscreen, which corresponded with the new alert. A cold emptiness clawed at her guts.
This wasn’t what they’d prepared for, but she couldn’t let that be a distraction. Her people were counting on her.
“Incoming,” Cabe shouted. He raced for his seat, scrambling to buckle himself in. Torbon followed suit, muttering to himself.
Taj stared at the screen. She didn’t like what she saw.
The Wyyvan invaders hadn’t come to Krawlas to fight a guerilla war on the surface like Captain Vort had been forced to. No, they’d come to obliterate the Furlorians in one fell swoop and claim all the Toradium-42 for themselves.
What better way to do that than to blast the planet from orbit?
Chapter Two
“Maximize shields overhead,” Taj screamed, clutching the arms of her seat. Her chest ached from the flush of adrenaline searing through her. “Get us over the city. Now!”
The ship rumbled as the crew powered up the engines, ignoring the pre-flight beeps and complaints, and pushed the Paradigm into the air.
“What’s going on?” Captain Vort asked from the doorway, pawing at the wall to keep himself steady as the Paradigm rose awkwardly. He stared across the deck at the scanner array, eyes wide as the first enemy fire struck. The ship rattled, the shields absorbing the crashing energy.
Taj snapped a glance at him over her shoulder. Kal, the young Furlorian she’d charged with guarding the Wyyvan captain, stood with him.
“What is he doing here?” Taj asked, returning her focus to the console in front of her.
“He demanded to know what was going on,” Kal told her.
Taj sighed. “Demanded? What part of prisoner do you not understand, Kal?”
The alien captain interrupted. “Berate your crewmember later,” he said, slurring the last with a sneer as he stomped forward to get a better look at the scanners. “Are those Wyyvan ships firing upon us?”
Cabe offered a sharp-edged chuckle. “Guess you’re not as important as you thought you were, huh, Captain?”
“Your admiral definitely has a weird way of showing his appreciation,” Taj told the captain, not bothering to hide the crooked smile that peeled her lips back. Much as she was sickened by the assault on her people, a tiny, cruel, and vindictive part of her flared happily at seeing the Wyyvan captain’s sour expression at his betrayal. “Now, if you’re staying, take a gacking seat, shut up, and stay out of the way. I’ve more important things to deal with than your hurt feelings.”
Vort grunted and flung himself into a seat. He fought with the safety strap as Kal took a seat beside him and did the same, keeping an eye on the alien captain.
Since his capture, he hadn’t been much of a threat. While still selfish, only offering what he knew when it suited his personal agenda, he hadn’t once lashed out or caused trouble, playing the role of a model pri
soner.
Taj figured he’d been waiting patiently for his people to arrive and free him. She cast a furtive glance at him and saw the defeat in his narrowed eyes, the droop of his jaw as he stared unflinchingly at the scanners. He looked more defeated now than he had when the whole of the Furlorian people surrounded him after crashing his ship.
Taj rather enjoyed that, too.
“We’re over the city,” Lina called out. “Hovering and dropping the ramp.”
Taj wiped the petty thoughts of Vort’s disappointment from her mind so she could focus on what was really important: the rescue of her people.
Culvert City already burned from the fury of the barrage. Below her, she could see her people gathering, instinctively running for the cover of the freighter’s shields, but not all of them had made it. Scattered across the streets and sidewalks laid a dozen Furlorians, sightless eyes staring at the sky.
Taj swallowed hard and hissed at seeing them. Too many of her people had died already, and she wouldn’t see more of them fall to the cruelty of the Wyyvan invaders.
“Give me the speakers!” she shouted. An instant later, a low beep told her that Lina had fulfilled her request, opening a channel outside of the ship. Taj cleared her throat. “Fellow Furlorians,” she said, doing her best to control the tremor that threatened to rattle her voice, “the Wyyvan are upon us once more.” She shook her head at the obviousness of her statement but went on. “Come to the Paradigm immediately. There’s no time to gather your belongings. Get to the ship and get aboard now.”