Fortunes of War (Stellar Main Book 1)

  FORTUNES OF WAR

  Richard Tongue

  STELLAR MAIN 1: FORTUNES OF WAR

  Copyright © 2018 by Richard Tongue, All Rights Reserved

  First Kindle Edition: September 2018

  Cover by Keith Draws

  With thanks to Ellen Clarke

  All characters and events portrayed within this eBook are fictitious; any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Prologue

  Victoria Carter scrambled down the ladder, her boots ringing against the cold metal, and dropped to the cavernous lower deck on the Thomas O’Dell. She walked along the cramped central corridor, frowning as she saw an open maintenance hatch. She paused for a second to try and seal it, only for the lock to refuse to engage. She smiled, shook her head, logged the malfunction on her datapad, and walked on.

  One more system to fix. The ship was fifty years old, reaching the end of its design lifespan, but she’d been walking these cramped decks since she was old enough to walk at all. One of the near-ubiquitous Hermes-class of fast freighters that were the standby of tramp traders from Altair to Orion, her father had picked it up a couple of decades ago, laboring under a savage mortgage to be able to afford it. Finally, the gamble had paid off, the last of the debt repaid.

  And she was increasingly convinced that they’d have to buy another ship within the year. Shaking her head, she ducked under the hatch into the cargo hold, the largest space in the ship, crammed full of crates, barrels and containers, all of them stamped with the insignia of the Olympus Development Corporation, all bound for one of half a dozen outposts scattered across the sector. The Purser, Norman Schneider, waited inside, leaning on a wall, scratching his bald pate, while Samantha Flores, one of the spacehands, dragged one of the crates into the small open space in the middle of the deck.

  As Carter made her way into the room, a vile smell assaulted her nostrils, and her face dropped into a grimace, her hand reaching to cover her mouth. She looked at the crate, spotting a brown stain on the outside, a slimy trail left on the deck where Flores had dragged it.

  “I guess you know what I’ve called you down here for,” Schneider said, gesturing at the crate. “I was doing my morning inspection, and damn near fainted. It was worse before I turned the air re-circulators to maximum. We’re probably going to have to seal off the lower deck.” Poking at the crate with his foot, he said, “Improperly sealed, and the contents are way, way past expiration. Years too old. I’ve done a spot check of ten of the ration crates, and eight of them are in the same way. Three of them I wouldn’t serve to a dog.” His face curled, and he added, “And I hate dogs.”

  “There anyone you do like, Norman?” she asked, looking at the crate. “We’re going to have to check the entire cargo. Spot checks aren’t going to cut it. And some of this is going to have to be jettisoned, I think.” Rubbing the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, she added, “We can’t risk any of this going into the local population, and ODC is going to need to claim back the losses from their insurers. As well as taking their suppliers to court, I guess.”

  “Every container?” Schneider asked. “There’s got to be six hundred packs of rations in here.”

  “I mean every container, regardless of its contents,” Carter replied. “Bad electronics can kill someone as easily as bad food, and I don’t want any deaths on my conscience. I know that might be an alien concept to you, but…”

  “That’s more than a thousand of them,” Schneider protested. “It’ll take hours.”

  “We’ll all help,” Carter replied. “We’ll have to.” Shaking her head, she said, “This contract was supposed to be so damned easy. We can’t afford to make a mess of our first run. Not with twenty-two more in the pipeline.”

  “Look,” Schneider said, walking towards her, “I know you’ve just come out of school with some nice ideas, and they’ll have poured all sorts of crap down your throat when you finished that fancy course, but we’re in the real world now. We certify the containers we’ve found as bad, keep the rest sealed, and hand them over. Then they’re someone else’s problem.”

  “And of course, you’ll be happy to sign the contract yourself, taking personal responsibility for the handover?” Carter asked, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not spending the next three years in court because you’re too damned lazy to get the job done.”

  “Listen, kid, you might have the title of First Mate, but you only got the job because of your father, and when he finds out…” He was interrupted by the wail of a klaxon, the alarm ringing from the wall, and Carter raced to the nearest communicator, hand slamming on the control.

  “Vicky here, Pop. What’s the story?”

  “Incoming ship, and it isn’t answering hails,” her father replied. “Get up here right away. I need you on the helm.”

  “Coming,” she replied, taking off at the run, turning back to yell, “Get to alert stations, right now!”

  “Alert stations?” Schneider asked, visibly deflating. “We’re only hauling…”

  “Now, damn it!” Carter yelled, reaching for the ladder, climbing hand over hand to haul herself to the upper deck, then once again to reach the cramped cockpit. There were only three chairs, her father at the rear, hunched over the turret controls, the burly Grady Porter at the sensor station, and the helm vacant, waiting for her. She slid into the familiar couch, hands reaching for the controls, the display shifting around to suit her personal preferences as the station registered her arrival.

  “Single target, looks like an old Scimitar-class Gunboat,” Porter reported. “Bearing directly, weapons hot.” Turning to her father, he added, “That ship could smash us out of the sky with a single shot if it wanted to. What the hell is a ship like that doing all the way out here?”

  “Waiting for us,” Carter replied. She looked up at the screen, the dull brown dwarf dead center, surrounded by a halo of rocks. The Tachyon Drive had opened the stars to humanity, but nobody had ever figured out how to make a jump of more than a parsec, and they required gravitational anchor points to move from one location in spacetime to another. That meant a lot of time loitering around rogue planetoids and dead stars, waiting for the systems to recharge, waiting to make the jump. Inhabitable systems were few and far between, sometimes requiring a dozen jumps to reach. The Olympus Main had a greater than usual proportion of useful planets, a long chain of worlds reaching from Sigma Draconis out into uncharted space, and even here, it was going to take three stops to reach their distant destination.

  Assuming, of course, that they lived that long.

  “Going to full power,” she said. “I’ll try for the asteroid halo. How long before we can leave the system?” Turning to Porter, she added, “Ten seconds would be a great answer.”

  “Try three hours,” Porter replied, looking up at the engineering monitor. “And that’s pushing it.”

  “We’re not going to be able to dodge them for three hours,” her father said, shaking his head. “Intercept course, full speed.” He smiled, then added, “Prepare to depressurize our cargo hold.”

  “You’re going to throw five hundred tons of canned beans and freeze-dried bagels at them?”

  “Think of it as chaff,” he said. “Besides, from what I heard down there, we’re going to have to condemn most of it anyway.”

  “You’re the boss,” she replied, bringing the freighter around. The O’Dell had been a fast ship when it was first built, and the two of them had modified the engine and the thrusters to the limits of their skill, and even a little beyond, and now the ship danced through the sky under her control, smoothly gliding past the red line as she ran the engines to maximum accelerati
on. The enemy ship began to turn away, and for a moment, Carter thought that they might have pulled off a miracle, but it turned back, turrets locking onto them.

  They had one advantage. If they were pirates, then they wouldn’t want to destroy the ship. They’d want to cripple her, seize her cargo. As unimaginable as that seemed. This had been a test run, more than anything else, carrying a collection of miscellaneous near-junk that had hardly been worth loading on board. There was nothing down in the hold to justify this attack. At least, nothing they knew about.

  “We’re being hailed,” Porter said. “Calling you, boss. By name.”

  “Put him on,” her father replied. “Maybe we can buy some time.”

  Porter threw a control, and a distorted image appeared on the viewscreen, a blurry, hazy man standing in front of a totally dark field, hands behind his back, a vague smile barely visible on his face.

  “Captain Carter, this is the Fortuna,” he said. “Cut all engines and prepare to be boarded.”

  “Or what?” Carter asked.

  “Or I will destroy your ship and kill your crew.”

  “What guarantee do we have that you won’t do that anyway?” Porter replied.

  “None at all,” the man said, his smile deepening. “I guess you’ll just have to trust me. Fortuna out.”

  “Do we trust him?” Carter asked.

  “Not a chance,” her father replied. “Time to intercept?”

  “Coming into range in thirty seconds,” Carter said.

  “Cargo hold evacuated, blast doors sealed, ready to activate explosive bolts on the airlock,” Porter added, his hand resting on a lever. “I hope you know what you’re doing, skipper.”

  “Me too, Grady,” her father replied with a roguish smile. “Work your magic, Vicky.”

  Carter pulled her ship around, trimming course, waiting to give them the best possible chance of escaping the trap. They were building speed, enough that the enemy ship would have a hard time catching them if he missed them on this pass, but that wouldn’t be enough to save them unless they could score a critical hit. She glanced at her father, his attention locked on the controls of the two maser cannons they officially didn’t have, running through the charge cycle. He’d get one shot. It would have to do.

  “Now!” he yelled, and Porter pulled the control, a loud crack echoing through the hull as the airlock burst open, spilling the contents of the cargo bay into the cold vacuum of space beyond, the spoiled supplies forming a rapidly dispersing cloud, hopefully enough to disrupt the enemy’s targeting computers for a brief second. The lights flickered as her father fired, bright emerald bolts racing across the void to smash into the enemy ship, angry burn marks on the hull. Hope swirled inside her as she began an evasive sequence, her ship smoothing sliding from side to side under her direction.

  Then the pirate ship opened up, firing again and again. They’d hurt the enemy vessel, caused some damage, but nowhere near enough, and O’Dell herself cried out in anguish as the enemy’s heavier plasma turrets hammered blow after blow onto them, slamming into their sides. The lights flickered again, finally dying, replaced by the dull crimson glare of the emergency systems. Porter turned to face her, his expression telling the whole story.

  “Power systems failure. Hits on our main and auxiliary reactor. They’ve got a shuttle on the way.”

  “Why?” her father asked, shaking his head. “We’ve got no cargo.”

  “Maybe there’s something else they want,” he replied, looking at Carter.

  “Christ,” her rather said. “Vicky, get out of here. Head to the escape pods. Right now.”

  “No!” she replied. “If you’re going to fight them off…”

  “We’re not going to fight them off. They’ll be boarding us in a matter of seconds. You’ve got to go, and you’ve got to go now. If you can take anyone with you, do it.” He paused, then added, “I’m not coming.”

  “If I’m going…”

  “Someone has to stay here to do what’s necessary. Grady…”

  “You need me, boss, right here.” Turning to Carter, he said, “Run along, kid. We’ve got this.”

  She rose to her feet, quickly hugged her father, then scrambled down the ladder to the main deck, Schneider and Flores waiting for her at the bottom. The Purser looked at her, shook his head, and sprinted towards the far end, not waiting for the others. Flores looked up at the cockpit, frozen in fear, and Carter grabbed her, pulling her along, racing after the fleeing Schneider. The escape pod could carry three people, but somehow, she didn’t think Schneider would wait for them to get there before ejecting.

  He had a lead, and was gaining, not encumbered by the limp Flores. She looked up at Carter, tears in her eyes, silently pleading for all of this to stop, for normality to return. They’d grown up together, but Carter had spent four years in college. All Flores knew was the ship, the occasional layover on one station or another. Her parents had died when she was a teenager, Carter’s father unofficially adopting her. She was the nearest thing Carter had to a sister, and she wasn’t going to leave her behind.

  As Schneider reached the end of the corridor, there was a loud report, then a growing whine as a laser cutter ripped into the hull, a boarding shuttle carving its own way onto the ship. Schneider turned, fumbling at his belt, trying to draw a pistol, but it was too late. A section of the hull flew to the far wall, and a trio of black-uniformed men stepped out, one of them gunning Schneider down before he could make a move. Carter dived for cover, pulling Flores after her, hiding behind a pair of barrels left in the corridor, overspill from the now-empty cargo bay.

  Neither was armed, and they had only seconds to live. The escape pod waited for them at the far end of the corridor, door open, systems activated by the approach of Schneider. She looked at Flores, her eyes still wide, her cheeks pale.

  “I’ll go first,” Carter said. “Try and draw their fire. You run after me, as fast as you can, and if they get me, don’t stop. Just get to the pod and get out of here. You got that?”

  “But…,” she protested.

  “Damn it all, just do what I say!” Carter yelled. She waited for a split-second, watching as the three men emerged onto the deck, then rolled out of cover, sprinting towards them, shoulders down, laser bolts ripping through the air and slamming into the deck planting, the stink of ozone clogging her nostrils. From behind, she heard Flores running after her, but didn’t dare to turn and look, didn’t dare to do anything other than keep moving forward. One of the men reached for her, a lecherous smile on his face, but at the last second, she ducked and rolled out of his grip, elbowing him in the gut with enough force to send him tumbling into one of his companions, briefly taken out of the fight.

  And a few seconds was all she needed to leap into the escape pod, her hand throwing controls to prime the boosters for launch. She turned, watching Flores sprint after her, the three men firing again, a salvo of bolts racing through the air.

  One of them catching Flores in the back.

  The young spacehand staggered forward, and Carter reached for her, trying to bring her into the pod, but the blood spilling from the gaping wound burned down her spine made it clear that it was hopeless, and more laser bolts were hitting the wall all around her. It was the toughest decision she’d made in her life, but it was the only one she could make. She pushed back, closed the hatch, and fired the engine to catapult the escape pod clear of the side of the ship.

  She looked at the freighter that had been her home for almost her entire life, knowing what her father was planning, knowing why he had chosen to remain on the bridge. He’d waited as long as he dared, then activated the charges hidden deep in the bowels of the ship, deep enough to evade all but the closest inspection. Charges that tore the ship to pieces, reducing it to a cloud of rapidly dispersing debris. She killed the systems on the escape pod, letting it drift, just one more chunk of rubble.

  For what seemed an eternity, she watched the tracking sensors, watched as the pirate ship
approached, then made its way back into the halo of rocks from whence it came. Back to catch some other unsuspecting freighter, using this slumbering star as a recharging point on its journey across the stars. She was floating, aimless, unable to even activate the distress beacon for fear of attracting attention.

  Her crew was dead. There was a good chance that she would soon be joining them.

  The escape pod could only sustain life for a few hours, but it didn’t have to last for longer. Underneath the floor were three cramped compartments, coffin shaped modules. Cryogenic capsules. Theoretically, you could survive inside one indefinitely. Pulling open the hatch, she looked inside, tears running down her cheeks. Using one of these modules was a risk. Maybe one in ten who went in never woke up. Right now, that didn’t seem to matter.

  She climbed inside, hit the emergency control, and let the systems slowly put her to sleep, the chemicals flooding through her system to prepare it for the shock of ultra-low temperatures. As consciousness fled from her, she prayed for one thing.

  That she wouldn’t remember her dreams when she awoke.

  Chapter 1

  All was darkness, for a long eternity. And then, somehow, there was light, blinding light, forcing its way through her closed eyelids. Pain briefly wracked her body, and she was cold, colder than she had ever been before, shivering uncontrollably despite the warm air swirling around her, or the thick blanket placed on top of her. She could hear the bleeping of medical monitors in the background, the faint hum of a life-support system, and hands on her arms, placing sensors in position.

  “She’s coming around,” a faint voice said, as though in the far distance. “Quick response. That’s a good sign. The resuscitation systems worked perfectly, and brain wave activity matches her records.”

  “How long before she wakes up?” a harsher voice asked.

  “She can probably hear us now,” the first man said, a faint chuckle in his voice. “Watch your language.” He paused, then said, “Try and talk. There’s nothing wrong with your vocal chords. I’ll give you something to drink. That should help.”