Star Glory (Empire Series Book 1) Read online

  I looked over to where Chief O’Connor sat before his thruster control panel. The wide-shouldered man shrugged as he saw my look. I glanced to where PO Gambuchino sat before her fusion reactor controls. Beside her sat her three Spacers. All four looked both relieved and worried. Which was exactly how I felt. We had defeated one enemy ship. But in doing so we had revealed the range of our deadliest weapon. If the pirate raiders had lasers with a range greater than ours, they could parallel our vector at 15,000 klicks and fire on us while we could not hit them.

  “Captain!” cried Louise. “The raider ship is changing vector! It is curving back up toward the edge of the magnetosphere. Its closest approach will be three million kilometers. Sir.”

  That meant the Hunter-Killer mines ejected by our topside railgun and the thermonuke warheads would miss. Maybe the captain would keep them alive until the raider was clearly moving opposite to our vector track. Then he might send the self-destruct order to the mines and the thermonuke warheads. There was no point in allowing the pirates to capture those weapons. Best to keep them guessing.

  “Good. Tactical, monitor the vector of the pursuing raider,” the captain said, sounding relieved. “Advise me if it changes course toward us. Also monitor the status of the other sixteen raider ships. And keep watch directly ahead. There could be raider ships hiding in one of the three asteroid belts lying ahead.”

  “Monitoring,” Chang said. “Will advise on the matters you list. Sir.”

  I looked again at the nine vertical antimatter feed tubes. Negative antimatter was still flowing down them. That antimatter was combining with the positive plasmas in the three thrusters to give us an extra push of one percent of lightspeed. Which made me wonder again about just what device or system was used by the Empire and these raider ships that allowed them to move at 15 psol through normal space? Maybe the pirate boss would know. After all, these protector ships worked for him. Which made me wonder how the lobster-centipede critter motivated the protector ships to hang around the edge of the star’s magnetosphere. Clearly they could leave on their Alcubierre stardrives at any moment. Instead, they stuck around. Why? And just what awaited us at this orbital base? Would the aliens there be as aggressive as these raider ships had been? We had just proven the deadliness of humans. So presumably we could now dock at the base, once we traversed the deep space void that lay between us and the base. But what would happen once we docked? All I knew was that I trusted Captain Skorzeny. He was a leader like few I had ever read about. And none that I had ever met. Follow him I would, to the ends of the galaxy and beyond.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A day and a half later we arrived just above the pirate base. It was a giant construct that orbited above a green and blue planet that clearly had oceans, forests and mountains. What else lay below I did not know. Or care. Instead I focused on the bulkhead vidscreen image of the orbital base. It was a monster. And there were twelve ships attached to the base by boarding tubes. The scale on one side of the true space image showed the misshapen monster to be ten kilometers long, four wide in one dimension and five in another angle. It appeared to be a mix of blocks, globes, transit tubes, domes, a few of which were made of clear something that allowed the local star’s light in to brighten spaces that were green and brown, and sheet metal angles that connected it all into a single whole. It was clear to me this thing had not been constructed all at once according to some master plan, like the stations above Earth and in orbit above our colony worlds. This thing appeared to be an accretion of sections. It did not spin. Which told me it must have gravplates inside and plenty of energy to power them. What else lay inside we were about to discover. In the vidscreen, a flexible tube snaked out from a boxy area and headed for our midbody hangar airlock.

  “You ready, Stewart?” called my boss from across Engineering.

  “Yes sir, Chief O’Connor.” I released my accel straps, stood up, grabbed my recorder tablet from where it was stuck to my seat, hung it from the belt of my black pants and walked toward him. XO Kumisov had told us not to wear vacsuits when she had called down to say we were part of the boarding group. It had felt good to feel the whisper of circulating air against my face and hair over the last day and a half. I’d enjoyed two lunches with my friends, one of which included Evelyn who gave me several winks and a come hither smile. Warren had intercepted her attentions, for which I owed him. Or did I? There had been no sign of Nehru, thank the Goddess. And the rest of the ship’s crew had gone into ease-off mode after the captain canceled General Quarters. While the ship had remained at Combat Ready status, our front and rear sensor arrays had not detected any alien ships near our vector track. There had been four ships heading out from the planet, and three of the protector ships had left the magnetosphere edge and headed inward. I assumed they were on break from their duties. But the captain did not ask the boss lobster and Doctor Bjorg, Cassandra and others on Science Deck had better things to do than speculate on the unknowable. I stopped at the chief’s station.

  He looked up. His beady-black eyes scanned me. Then he released his own straps and stood up. The chief was a foot shorter than me but his wide shoulders were broader than mine. The man grabbed his own recorder tablet and stuck it to the belt of his service khaki pants. He looked past me.

  “PO Gambuchino! You are in command of Engineering now. Run the diagnostics as usual and keep your Spacers from falling down drunk. Understood!”

  “Yes sir, chief,” replied Dolores from her fusion reactor station on the other side of the gravshaft tube. “Cindy, Duncan and Gus will have this place shinning brighter than bright!”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” rumbled the chief. He stepped past me. “Follow.”

  “Sir, following,” I said, turning and following him across the big room to the gray metal tube of the gravshaft.

  The chief tapped the Open patch. It went from red to orange. Which meant the gravplate was on the way down to us. “Stewart, you need anything from your quarters before we join the captain?”

  “No sir.” Then a thought hit me. “Uh, chief, do I need to bring a personal weapon?”

  “The captain will tell us that,” the chief said. The Open patch turned green. The slidedoor opened. We both stepped in. The door slid shut. “Heidi, take us up to Armories and Weapons Deck.”

  “Ascending,” the AI said brightly.

  The red bar slowly moved up from the bottom of the status tube. We passed through the antimatter fuel deck, then entered the DT fuel bunkers deck. I kept my mouth shut, having learned from the episode with Nehru that asking questions was a guarantee of trouble. The chief stayed silent, facing forward, his breathing slow and relaxed. His infrared glow was normal. There was no sign of excitement or anger in his glow. And what I heard of his body functions were very normal. His belly hardly made a sound. Clearly the man was not hungry. Nor was I. If we stayed long on the station I assumed there would be alien eateries there. Whether their version of food would be human palatable, who could tell?

  The red bar stopped at Armories and Weapons. The slidedoor swished to one side. The chief and I stepped out into the ring hallway. Like most of the other decks, different chambers of the deck stretched out in pie segments from the central gravshaft. The two backup gravshafts on the port and starboard sides of the ship, and the emergency stairs, were out of sight. The chief turned right and walked fast. I followed him, walking just as fast. He stopped before the outline of a medium size hatch. Above the hatch were stenciled the words Hangar One. He tapped the door’s Open patch. We stepped into a clatter of noise as a dozen people worked and talked inside a space that resembled a control room. This was the place where hangar pressurization, gravity and shuttle departure was managed. The people here chattered, gestured to each other and a few walked from one monitoring panel to another. Ignoring the seated Spacers and NCOs, the chief turned right, headed for a person-high hatch, tapped its Open patch, and stepped in. I followed. The hatch closed behind us. In front of us was another hatch.
Which appeared to be an airlock hatch similar to the one we had just passed through. The chief again tapped its Open patch. With a low creak of metal against Teflon gaskets, the hatch swung open. I followed him into bedlam.

  “O’Connor, over here!” came a yell from the far side of the hangar.

  My eyes and ears felt sudden overload. Before I could tell my senses to not inventory completely, they did just that.

  The call had come from Major Owanju, whose black face peered at us from within the helmet of his combat suit. His visor was flipped up, rather than sealed. The armored suit made him eight feet tall. Its external speaker amplified his words. Those words were supplemented by a Come Here gesture from his gauntleted left hand.

  “Coming!” the chief yelled.

  My mind extended its inventory of the fifty meter high space in which we now walked. Hanging from the overhead were the dart shapes of the four GTO shuttles. They hung from cables. That kept the hangar floor clear for an incoming shuttle, and for storage of fuel and combat supplies. As I walked behind the chief I finished my inventory. My friends Cassie, Oksana, Bill and Warren stood near the tall form of Captain Skorzeny, who waited at the other side of the hangar beside an airlock hatch that clearly connected to the ship’s outer hull. Close to my friends stood Doctor Bjorg, Lieutenant Morales and Evelyn, who waved my way and gave me a big smile. I waved back to her, pleased to see her. She and Cassie were the two people most vital to figuring out any aliens we met. Cassandra cause she had degrees in exobiology and anthropology, and Evelyn because of her evolutionary biology training. Standing next to the blue and gray camo dressed people were three more white combat suits, their visor plates down and sealed. Their bulky backpacks showed the noses of three rockets sticking out. Like Owanju each carried a laser pulse rifle, an MP3 automatic slugthrower, and a chest pack of blinking sensor devices. One of the three had the globe of a flamethrower unit strapped to his or her left arm, its flaring nozzle aimed wherever the suit’s hand pointed. The only weapon not visible was a mortar and its base plate. Maybe one of the backpacks held it. Or maybe Major Owanju had decided four combat suits with their loads of firepower were enough for what should be a peaceful stroll through the pirate base. The chief stopped not far from our boss. He saluted. So did I.

  “Captain Skorzeny, Chief Warrant Officer O’Connor reporting, along with Petty Officer Stewart, as ordered, sir!”

  The captain returned the salute. The man wore perfectly ironed service khakis with his ribbons and pins on his left chest, his nameplate above his right pocket, and a black recorder tablet attached to his black belt. His curly brown hair was covered by a standard officer’s hat with brim.

  “Welcome, Chief O’Connor.” The captain nodded at the people around him. “I figure four Marines in combat suits should suffice for our security. However.” He gestured to Owanju, who held a black bag that was filled with sharp-edged stuff. “We are about to enter a place we have never been before. And we are still in wartime status. So. Major, hand out the handguns and ammo to these people.”

  Owanju reached inside the black bag and pulled out a gray steel handgun. I recognized it as the Star Navy’s copy of the 1911A1 semi-auto. It held a clip with eight .45 caliber bullets, some of which might be armor-piercing. The gun was stowed in a brown leather holster with hooks that allowed the holster to attach to a person’s belt. The major handed the holster, gun and two clips to Bjorg, who took it, looked puzzled, checked to confirm a clip was already in the pistol, then clipped it to the right side of his belt. His bulging beer belly already made tight his blue and gray camo shirt. But there was room for the holster to attach. The two clips went into pockets. In a few minutes the major handed out the same grouping to each of us. Since all of us wore pants with belts, including the women, there was no trouble in mounting the .45s. And I liked having the semi-auto hanging from my right hip. I’d used a gun like that to take out rattlesnakes with shotshells, as I moved cattle from one pasture to another. While this type of handgun was frowned on for use inside a pressure vessel like a plane or a spaceship, still, its bullets had solid stopping power on anything weighing up to four hundred pounds. And who knew what size of aliens were inside this station? And whether they would be friendly?

  The captain nodded at the airlock hatch. “Through there, you three,” he said to the other suited Marines. “Major, bring over your entry security detail, please.”

  “Yes sir, captain,” Owanju said, tapping a spot on his chest pack.

  The clanking of heavy boots against the metal of the hangar deck hit my ears like someone shouting. I looked back the way we had come. Ten more eight foot high Marines marched our way, each enclosed in a white armored combat suit. Each Marine had weaponry similar to that worn by Major Owanju and his three escorts. The lead Marine stopped. He lifted a white armored left hand and saluted.

  “Major! Entry security detail reports!” came a female voice.

  The major smiled through his open visor. “Master Sergeant Jenkins, follow us down the loading tube attached to our ship’s hull. Once we enter the space beyond the tube, set up a security perimeter. Let nothing, no device, no robot, no AI and no living thing move past you into our ship. Understood?”

  “Understood!” came the foghorn loud affirmation from a woman whose combat tours stretched back twenty years, according to what Warren had shared with me.

  The captain turned, touched open the airlock hatch and entered. The rest of us followed him. Fourteen people, with four in bulky combat suits, filled the airlock chamber. Behind us the outer hatch closed. The ten suited Marines would clearly follow once we exited the airlock into the tube. The captain tapped on his comlink tab.

  “Life Support, have you confirmed the presence of air and pressure inside the boarding tube?”

  “Sir, there is Earth-normal pressure and oxy-nitro air close to Earth standard in the boarding tube,” Becky Woodman responded.

  I heard her words over my own comlink tab. It was attached to my right shoulder. On my left shoulder was pinned one of the translator tubes given us by Hatsepsit. Everyone in our group had a translator tube attached to them, including the combat-suited Marines. I noticed Warren looking up at Owanju and the other three Marines, a yearning expression on his face. I understood the look. He was a Marine corporal. He wanted to enter this place dressed like a Marine in full combat gear. Instead, he wore only a .45 semi-auto. Why the captain had ordered him to come with us wearing only camos, when three-fourths of the Marine platoon were now involved in providing entry security and security for our contact group, I did not know. Likely Warren didn’t know. He just followed orders and stayed combat alert. As I could tell from his posture. Bill, I now noticed, had a small laser pistol stuck into his back belt. Being a proton laser gunner, I was not surprised my friend wanted a laser with him. Surely the captain had noticed the pistol sticking out above his rear belt. The sight of the laser pistol was reassuring as its range greatly exceeded a .45 bullet’s usual range in a one gee grav field. Which made me wonder just what level of gravity we would find once we entered the station? The captain tapped the Open patch beside the airlock hatch. It swung open. Beyond lay a yellow-lighted space. He gestured to Owanju and his Marines.

  “Major, you go—”

  “Entering, sir,” the boss Marine said, his visor now closed. “Jones, Osashi and Khan, follow!”

  Owanju entered the boarding tube with his laser pulse rifle aimed forward. His three Marines followed, each aiming their rifle in a way that avoided cross-fire which could hit the major or another Marine. The captain followed after the last Marine. Next went Lieutenant Morales, then Doctor Bjorg and Chief O’Connor. The rest of us followed. I stepped in front of Cassie, Oksana and Evelyn. It was something I had been trained to do at home in Colorado. Always precede any woman to open the door for them. Course the sensor activated automatic doors at stores now made that an antique behavior. Still, my Natural parents had insisted on that courtesy from me. So I did it for my Mom and two sisters
, just as my Dad did it for them, until he passed from the cancer that killed him. Warren and Bill brought up the rear, with Bill closing the airlock hatch so the ten Marines could safely enter the airlock room. As soon as we stepped away from the ship’s hull we hit null gravity. The Marines reached out to the opaque brown walls of the tube, pushed on them and floated ahead, rifles aimed forward. The rest of us did the same. In short order fourteen people became a flock of human birds, each one following after the shoes or boots of the person ahead. While the tube was two meters wide, we fell into single file mode out of habit. And out of training in small unit tactics. Even the civies of Science Deck had taken basic combat training courses at Great Lakes, as a requirement for boarding the Star Glory. The captain arrived at the end of the tube. Facing him was a circular red metal hatch. A blinking green oval lay in the middle of the hatch.

  “Tactical, how are things up on the Bridge?” the captain called.

  “Nominal, sir,” called Chang over the comlink tabs we each wore. “Twelve other ships are tube-docked like us. No other ships are within ten AU of the base. There is no sign of any threat from the planet, local space or from the edge of the magnetosphere. And Lieutenant Commander Bjorn sends her regards.”

  “Good. Keep an eye on neutrino emissions from the system’s edge. If the Empire shows up, I want early notice so we can fly away in the opposite direction!”

  The reassurance from the Bridge was nice to hear. Even nicer was knowing that Martha Bjorn was in command. I liked the woman. She was a Swede like Bjorg, but her personality was quite different from that of the high-brow academic. She was military first and foremost, and she showed it in how she took care of her shift people. And in her ease at speaking with enlisted Spacers and NCOs. With her covering our back, I felt a bit more at ease entering a totally unknown space station.