Star Glory (Empire Series Book 1) Read online

  Warren looked down at his empty plate. The sushi rolls and sweet potato had gone down fast. His big appetite did not surprise me. He pursed his lips. “And this trip to Kepler 22 will take sixteen days, right Nate?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Or actually it will take sixteen and a quarter days. Our best Alcubierre speed is 25 light years a day. As you all know.”

  All four of them nodded, their expressions a mix of worry, somberness and thoughtfulness.

  Faced with the sudden silence, I poked my fork into the lukewarm mashed potatoes and chowed down. My food might not be freshly hot, but a thing my Mom and Dad had taught me on our ranch was to eat what was put before me and my two sisters. Including veggies like broccoli sprouts, the taste and smell of which I hated. At least the snow peas were buttery flavored. And I looked forward to eating the orange, one of the limited outputs of the fruit trees in our Forest Room. When the cooks of the Mess Hall had to prepare three meals a day for 369 people, plus lay on fancy wine and scotch for the captain and senior officers, well, that limited what made its way down to the plates of Spacers, petty officers, other NCOs and civilians. Those limitations made smuggled aboard chocolate bars and chocolate chips the food of romance, or at least intimacy. Guys and gals were very willing to spend intimate time with someone who had a stash of nougats or Hershey bars. Plus, time to connect with others was essential on long voyages like the trip we had begun. We’d already spent almost nine days traveling from the outer limits of Sol to Kepler 37. Now we faced nearly twice that time in the captain’s search for the criminal underbelly of this Empire of Eternity, or for covert rebels who had never heard of humans. It seemed a long shot, what we were now doing. But I wasn’t in charge. Nor was my Chief. The captain was. His orders we all followed. I just hoped he had good instincts for hiding places.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  At 4 a.m. the next day I showed up on Engineering Deck and headed for my station in the center of the cage of vertical antimatter flow tubes. Passing by Gambuchino and her three Spacers, I waved to them. The PO was trained in inertial confinement fusion reactor functions, while the Spacers were all graduates of the A-Schools at Great Lakes. Gus was an Electrician’s Mate, while Cindy was an Electronics Technician and Duncan was an Operations Specialist. They did jobs assigned them by the PO. They waved back at me, their expressions friendlier than before our escape. Clearly I was on their list of Good Guys. Stepping through the rainbow shimmer of the AM tubes, I dropped down onto my cushioned seat, waited for the accel straps to criss-cross me, then tapped on the Systems Diagnostic checker program that was the first thing I did every time I began my shift. Green bars showed for all systems. Power flow, green. Tube magnetic fields, green. Antimatter containment field on the floor above, green, thank the Goddess. Inflow of new antimatter from the particle accelerator coil that wrapped around our stern was green. Replacing the AM we had spent to get away was exactly—

  “PO Stewart!” called Chief O’Connor from where he sat at his control panel for the thrusters and the Alcubierre space-time modulus generator. “Leave that be. Come with me. The captain wants to see us. Both of us.”

  “Yes sir, coming.” Surprise filled me. Then curiosity. I tapped the diagnostic program to automatic function and looked up at the ceiling. “Heidi, please take over monitoring of my station.”

  “Assuming monitoring of antimatter flow station,” she said, her tone lightly musical.

  Giving thanks the AI was not in the mood to try out one of her practical jokes on me, I released my straps, stood up and stepped out past the shimmering tubes that made a cage around my station. The Chief stood there, hands on his hips, his wide shoulders stretching the fabric of his brown khaki shirt, while his black pants looked newly starched. He did not look up at me. Which forced me to look down at him. I saluted.

  “Petty Officer Second Class Stewart is ready, sir.”

  His beady black eyes met mine. “Follow me to the gravlift. We have an invite to the officers conference room up top.”

  The short, stocky man twisted in place on his black-shining shoes, then began a quick march to the center of the room where the gravlift stood, a gray metal shaft that ran from the deck up to the overhead and through it, all the way up to the Bridge Deck at the top. The gravlift was one of three on the ship. The other two lay on the starboard and port sides of the ship. They served as backup in case one shaft’s gravity repulsion plate failed. There were also stairwells on two sides of the ship, in case all power was lost to the gravlift shafts. In keeping with Navy, Army and Air Force tradition, there were multiple backups to all vital systems. Like fire extinguisher tubes hanging from each chamber’s walls as a supplement to the automated halon gas extinguishers that ran across every overhead ceiling. And like how the ship’s four orbit-to-ground shuttles could also function as space tugs to move the Star Glory into or out of orbit in the event she lost all fusion pulse motive power. Chief O’Connor stopped before the gravlift shaft, reached out and pushed hard against the Call patch that glowed red on the right side of the metal door that would slide to one side when the gravlift plate arrived at our deck. At that point the patch would turn green. Which it now did. The three meter wide slidedoor swished to the left. No one was inside the gray walled tube.

  “Get your butt in there!”

  “Aye, aye, Chief O’Connor.”

  Stepping in and then moving to the right, I turned and faced the shaft’s exit door. Which now closed as the Chief clomped in, his booted feet causing the plate metal to echo softly. He twisted in place and face the same way.

  “AI Heidi, take us up to Bridge Deck,” the Chief said. “Do not stop for anyone short of the captain. Obey per security code Alpha Romero Twelve.”

  “Transporting you up to Bridge Deck per security code Alpha Romero Twelve,” the AI said brightly.

  The Chief’s order surprised me. While Heidi would respond to any rating or officer on the ship, she would only obey orders given by line officers. Which the Chief was not. He was the staff officer who ran Engineering Deck. As were all the other people who ran the other eleven decks of the ship. As I had learned at Great Lakes, the AI had to know whom to obey as first priority, whenever any humans were present on the ship. Clearly the captain had given the Chief a security code that required the AI to obey his orders. This order was intended to prevent any stopping at intervening decks per service calls by other crew people. But why were we going to the officers conference room? I had never been there, nor had most ratings and NCOs on the ship. The man at my side did not act upset with me, just preoccupied with something. Anyhow, discipline due to an enlisted, a rating or an NCO would be delivered by his staff officer, not by the captain. Which fact was only a slight comfort. I did not like uncertainty in life. I’d had enough of that after Dad died, Mom had been forced to sell the ranch and she and my two sisters had gone to live in a condo apartment while I went to Great Lakes. Certainty in life was something I strove to achieve. Most people I spent time with seemed to appreciate that about me. But did the captain value me? Or was I about to find out how I had screwed the pooch somehow?

  Since the Chief chose silence rather than filling me in on why we had been called topside, I watched the vertical transport bar that glowed waist high on the shaft’s wall, just left of the exit door. Engineering was at the bottom of the 340 meter-long spearhead that was the Star Glory. Next deck above us was the Antimatter Fuel Deck, which occupied most of the deck. Only a single inspection hallway lay outside the shaft, since the massive doughnut that was the AM fuel bunker filled the entire deck. Next up was the larger DT Fuel Bunkers Deck. At thirty meters high, the several DT fuel bunkers needed only supercold refrigeration to maintain the integrity of the frozen DT fuel pellets. Feed tubes left each bunker and ran down the inside of the hull to feed Engineering’s fusion reactor and our three fusion pulse thrusters. Other feed tubes ran upward to feed the mid-deck and topside reactors. The red bar that represented our position rose up steadily, passing through the Medical, Mess H
all and Recreation Deck, then the roomy Residential Deck where everyone slept, snored or studied independently in the hope of future advancement in their ship function. We now passed through Supplies Deck, the place of empire run by the ship’s Quartermaster. It was rumored that anything could be found on Supplies Deck, if you gave the Q-master a proper inducement. Our red bar now crossed Armories and Weapons Deck where Bill and Warren had their stations, then Recycling Deck, followed by Farm Deck with its Forest Room. That was a place I enjoyed visiting, both to see the chickens, guinea pigs, goats and small pigs that provided the meat protein for our meals, and to breath in the smells of a living forest. Magnolia shrubs and yellow pine trees put out competing scents in the Forest Room. I loved those scents and the musty odor of dry dirt leavened with green grass smells. It all reminded me of the big ranch that had been my home. Next we passed through Science Deck, where Cassandra worked among her fellow academics. We were almost there. The red bar passed slowly through Astrogation and Intelligence Deck, which reminded me of Oksana’s insights about the captain’s choice of Kepler 22 as our next place to visit. The plate came to a stop as the bar hit the top level of Bridge. The slidedoor slid open. The Chief clomped out.

  “Follow me.”

  “Following, Chief.”

  My short, stocky and determined boss turned right, walked a few feet, then stopped in front of a smaller slidedoor. Above the door was painted Officers Conference Room. The Chief spoke.

  “Heidi, open this slidedoor per Security Code Alpha Romero Twelve.”

  “Complying,” the AI said in a sing-song voice that sounded almost like something from a Singing With The Stars televid program.

  The door slid open. I followed the Chief inside. The big round room had control panels and flat screens on several sections of its gray metal wall. In the center was a rectangular oak table that had to be five meters long. Seated at the far end was Captain Neil Skorzeny. On his right sat XO Nadya Kumisov. On the captain’s left sat Lieutenant Senior Grade Martha Bjorn, another Swede who had joined America’s military forces. Sitting next to Bjorn was Major James Owanju, who was Bill’s boss and the man who told other Marines what to do. The Black man was wide-shouldered, big-chested, sharp-jawed and had a shaven head. Like the rest of them he wore brown service khakis. Apparently the Type III blue and gray MARPAT camo fatigues were just for the lower ranks.

  “Chief Warrant Officer Four Robert O’Connor reporting, sir,” the Chief said firmly, his right hand lifting to salute the assembled brass.

  I saluted too. “Petty Officer Second Class Nathan Stewart reporting, sir!”

  The captain looked us over. His brown eyes were bright and intense. His smooth-shaven face was trim with not a jowl to be seen. His collar tips had silver eagles on them. No one at the table wore shoulder boards, let alone stripes on a dress blue jacket. Clearly this was intended to be a working meeting, not a public display.

  “Welcome to both of you. Sit over by the XO. There’s plenty of room on that side of the table,” the captain said calmly. He gestured at the water pitcher in middle of the table. “Help yourselves to a drink as you wish.”

  I followed the Chief, who sat next to XO Kumisov. She nodded to him, her expression somber, as if the loss of her lover and the Velikiy still weighed on her. The Chief nodded back to her, then laid his elbows on the table, clenched his fists and sat silent. I sat to the Chief’s right, just across from Major Owanju. The major lifted his black eyebrows a bit as his eyes looked deep into me. I licked my lips and gave him a quick nod.

  “Thank you both for coming,” the captain said. “Lieutenant Commander Nehru is standing in for me on the Bridge. I pulled these other folks in here, including Third Shift’s Lieutenant Boxley from her sleep, for a simple reason. This ship should have died back in Kepler 37. The Empire ships had the speed and armament advantage on us. We didn’t die. Thanks to a timely counterattack concept put forth by PO Stewart.” The captain looked directly at me. “Tell me, PO Stewart, how did you arrive at the idea of releasing antimatter along our vector track?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Oh crap. “Sir, it just came to me. Sir.”

  Four sets of eyes watched me. The Chief turned and looked, adding a fifth set. The captain looked me over, ignoring the glass of water in front of him. From the ceiling and walls came a low hum. It was the hum I heard everywhere on the Star Glory. My blasted super hearing would not let up, even when asleep. Any unexpected sound in my cabin brought me awake with a jerk. Nobody else seemed to notice the low hum. Just as no one else had thought to do what seemed obvious to me. There I was surrounded by AM flowing down the tubes to the thrusters. We were not able to move faster than the eleven PSOL we achieved with the antimatter afterburners. We could not enter Alcubierre space-time. Our weapons could not reach the two Empire ships before their weapons creamed us. So it had come to me, as if the antimatter itself had spoken.

  Bjorn’s right hand tapped the oak table top with unpainted nails. Her blue eyes peered at me. Intently. “PO Stewart, what you proposed to Chief O’Connor, in a way that avoided vocal description and thereby the chance you would be overheard by Manager Smooth Fur, has never before been done in the history of the Star Navy. I know. A sideline interest of mine is the combat history of the Star Navy.” The slim, trim woman who appeared to be in her late thirties angled her head to one side, causing her blond curls to flare out. “So. Did the antimatter just talk to you?”

  My face felt warm. Had it flushed red? I hoped not. “Lieutenant SG, no, it did not.” Mentally I searched wildly for something, any idea that would get me off this hot seat. “Ma’am, I’m just good at seeing what is wrong with a piece of machinery. Like when our tractor on our ranch in Colorado began jerking, then moving unsteadily. I realized it was the power feed from the photovoltaic panel on top of the electrocoil that feeds power to each wheel’s rotary electromagnet.” I did not say that I had seen a shimmer above the hood whose color did not look right. “Anyway, it seemed obvious to me that we were not going to escape on thruster power. Turning off the fusing of DT pellets in each thruster in order to allow the antimatter to flow unimpeded out into space seemed obvious. The ship would retain its forward momentum of eleven PSOL. And the loss of maneuvering power would not matter since the killing of the HMS Dauntless had shown the ability of the Empire gunners to adjust their beam fire to her jinking and jerking. Ma’am. Uh, Sir.”

  The captain looked over to his XO. “Commander, was turning off the three thrusters obvious to you at the time?”

  The petite veteran of the Russian Space Force, who hailed from the Siberian city of Irkutsk according to comments from Oksana, looked the picture of high brass, with her silver oak leaves shining on each collar tip. She shook her head. “Captain, no, it was not obvious to me. In fact, such an action went against all my training at Annapolis and later at Moon Base. No line officer should ever deprive her ship of its maneuvering power. Sir.”

  Captain Skorzeny gave her a brief smile, his slim lips lifting as if by habit. Then he looked to both sides of the table. “Major Owanju, Chief O’Connor, did shutting down the thrusters seem like an obvious tactical option to either of you?”

  “No sir,” Owanju said, his jaw muscles clenching. The man looked away from the captain and fixed on me. “It would be like a Marine killing the blowers on his hovercraft lander and relying on the waves to take him ashore. Sir.”

  My boss slowly shook his head, reddish-brown curls not moving at all due to how close-cut his hair was. The man who had always been fair with me from the time I boarded the Glory now looked intently at me, his eyes almost glowing. “Sir, it was not obvious to me. And I have served time as an AM instructor at the antimatter engineering A-school at Great Lakes. PO Stewart has always been outstanding in the performance of his duties as the operator of the AM flow tubes. This morning, as usual, he began his shift by activating the antimatter systems diagnostic program that is standard on every Star Navy ship that uses a particle accelerator coil to feed
AM to its thruster afterburners.” The Chief paused, poured himself a glass of water and took a sip. He put the glass down. “But Stewart’s actions in the last minutes of our time in Kepler 37 were . . . unique behavior. He called me to his station. I went over. He spoke briefly, then used his fists to show how closely the Empire ship was following directly along our vector track. With a nod of his head he indicated the AM tubes. I understood quickly what he meant. To do this counterattack required shutting down the thrusters. Which I advised you of by comlink. You approved that action. The thrusters shut down.” The Chief, still watching me, gave a half smile. “Liters of antimatter flowed out, creating a thick stream of negative neutronic antimatter along our vector track. The Empire ship did not detect the AM. It ran into the antimatter and kept plowing through it, in the way a wet navy ship might encounter the wall of water created by a tsunami. The Empire ship quickly exploded. Smooth Fur’s ship escaped solely because it was able to shoot off the vector track at a right angle.” The Chief sat back and looked to the man who ruled our ship. “Captain, later as I thought about it, after we made it into Alcubierre space-time, I realized shutting off the thrusters allowed us to create our own antimatter beam, similar to what the Empire ship used against the Dauntless. Our beam was not coherent or guided. But it did not need to be. The close pursuit of the Empire ships guaranteed they would run into our beam. The PO’s suggestion was a stroke of genius that saved us all. Which is why I sent you the email recommending him for a combat commendation. Sir.”

  The Chief had recommended me for a commendation? No boss I had ever worked for, either at Great Lakes, on our orbital training flights or during my deployment to Moon Base for six months, had ever commended me to a senior officer. They had all liked my work. Why had the chief done this?