Invasion (Blue Star Marines Book 3) Read online

  Invasion

  Blue Star Marines, Book 3

  James David Victor

  Copyright © 2020 James David Victor

  All Rights Reserved

  Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All people, places, names, and events are products of the author’s imagination and / or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Laércio Messias

  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

  Thank You

  1

  The blue giant star appeared as a dim and distant point of light to the Ultimatum as she sat far beyond the boundaries of the Scorpio System. The lone ship, a state-of-the-art Union cruiser, remained locked in position, her power systems running in stealth mode as her surveillance systems ran at extreme range.

  She sat and watched.

  Captain Brendon Sheen slumped in his command chair—one leg slung over the other, hands behind his head, and a white root sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He looked down at the main holo-stage at the front of the command deck. Still no change after days of sitting and waiting.

  Moving his hand from behind his head was the first move Sheen had made in almost an hour. His second-in-command, Commander Jacqueline Briggs, looked up at the sudden movement.

  “Jumpy?” Sheen asked, looking down at Briggs with a grin. He moved the root from one side of his mouth to the other. The end was chewed and soggy, just the way he liked it.

  Briggs rolled her eyes, shook her head, and looked back to the sensor console readout she had been checking, looking over the shoulder of the sensor operator. She moved along the consoles that were arranged in lines between the command chair and the main holo-stage, her eyes scanning all the displays.

  “The Ultimatum is operating at peak efficiency,” Briggs said, walking back along the line of consoles. “She’s in excellent shape following our last service in the orbital base at Terra. The Ultimatum is a match for any cruiser in the fleet. We could run rings around the Goliath or any of the carriers. We’re fully tooled, loaded, and primed.” She walked over to the weapons console. “We are packing a fresh set of mass beam emitters and the redesigned spitz guns fresh from the Reyes Foundation. A loadout of thirteen combat drones.”

  Briggs walked back toward Sheen and the command chair overlooking the entire command deck. She stood in front of him, her hands behind her back. “They even say our captain is one of the best.”

  Sheen looked down with a grin. He moved the root with his tongue over to the favored left side of his mouth.

  “Why do I have the feeling you are about to make a point, Jaks?”

  “What are we doing out here, sir?”

  Sheen leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his head. “You know why we’re here, Commander. Or do you have somewhere you’d rather be than sitting here, a billion kilometers out beyond the Sphere, running dark?”

  “I’m just saying, the Skarak have only attacked the system twice, and both times, we sent them running away with their scaly tails between whatever it is they have that passes for legs. There has been no sight or sound from them for months. I think they know that if they ever risk coming back, we will just whip them again. And all the time we’re out here, waiting for an attack that may never come, the Faction are busy trying to cut off the Union from the outer system. We should be lighting up the belt, digging out Faction raiders, tearing their drives out, and leaving the terrorist scum to drift through the asteroids like so many dirty snowballs. But no, we are out here, holding still and waiting for an enemy that will never come.” Briggs took a breath before adding, “Sir.”

  Sheen smiled. “Ever the philosopher, Jaks.” He stood up and stepped down from his command chair. He held an arm out and put it on Commander Briggs’s shoulder, turning her around and walking her toward the main holo-stage.

  “I just think we could be better deployed,” she continued in a more relaxed tone. “We could position a drone out here, not a state-of-the-art cruiser and a first-class crew.”

  Sheen tapped the side of the holo-stage and zoomed out the view to show the entire Scorpio System. The blue giant displayed as a point of light at the center of the huge holoimage. Around the center orbited the planets: Proxima, Terra, Snow, then the belt, the ring of asteroids wrapped around the system in the plane of the ecliptic. Then the gas giants, Supra and Extremis, currently sitting on either side of the Scorpio star, and finally the outer planet, Lastone, the huge terrestrial planet constantly wracked by volcanic activity.

  Beyond the planets was the Sphere, a densely-packed area of asteroids that marked the edge of the Scorpio System.

  And beyond the Sphere sat the Ultimatum.

  “I have heard some say—” Sheen looked around the command deck. “—but not from anyone here, I hope, that we should just let the Faction take the outer system. Let the Skarak pick away at them until they are gone. But the Union is not just the planet Terra and Snow. The Union is not just the inner system. The Union is all the people of the Scorpio System. The people don’t want us to abandon them to the Faction, or the Skarak. We are the primary authority out here. We are the power. We are the only chance for rule of law for people from the Black Ice mines of the Sphere to the dawn line settlements of Proxima. The Faction is a sickness, and we are the cure. But we still have a duty to those settlements in the Sphere, in the cloud cities of Supra, the moons of Extremis, to defend them from all threats, and that includes the Skarak.”

  Sheen zoomed out the image further, the planets falling away. The nearby stars of the region appeared.

  “We don’t know where these Skarak come from yet, but they could come from any one of a hundred nearby systems.” Sheen zoomed out further, the holoimage displaying a vast number of stars. “And we’re unlikely to find them if we just go charging off into the void. So, the reason we are here is to spot the Skarak’s approach, next time they come. And I agree with Union tactical intelligence, they will come. It’s just a matter of time. And when they come, I will be happy to be sitting on a full load of combat drones, a fresh set of mass beam emitters, a fully-powered battery of spitz guns, and to have you alongside me, the most pedantic second-in-command in the entire Union fleet.”

  “Yes, sir,” Briggs said. She turned and leaned against the holo-stage. “I guess I just got used to a bit more action on our last deployment.”

  “If you want to put a complaint in writing, I’ll be sure to hand it over to the admiral personally the next time I see him.”

  A single chirp from the sensor console had Sheen and Briggs on full alert before the sound ended. The holo-stage reset, zooming back in on the Ultimatum and displaying a sphere around the cruiser an astro-unit across, the outer edge of the Sphere just grazing the side of the display.

  Captain Sheen looked up at the holo-display on the main stage. He turned and walked over to his command chair and climbed up in a single bound.

  “It is a signal from the forward sensor drone,” the sensor officer reported, throwing the data to the main holo-stage. The data displaying the signal origin appeared as a short line of text.

  Unknown.


  “Send all sensor drones forward and make a broad sweep across the area of that signal,” Sheen said.

  The sensor alert chirped again as another signal was detected at the edge of sensor range. As the drones moved forward, the sensor range of the Ultimatum was extended and more signals were detected.

  “Check all relays to the weapons and defensive systems are primed,” Briggs said as she walked around the edge of the command deck, checking all operators’ work as she went.

  More signals were detected with every passing second, and the light chirp from the sensor console was now a steady stream.

  “Focus the entire sensor drone field on the next signal. Put everything on that one point and let’s see if we can get a look at what’s causing it.” Sheen needed to be sure, but he knew just as the rest of the command deck crew did that the only thing it could be was a Skarak ship. No Faction ships would have a reason to operate this far from the system.

  The holo-stage lit up with a hazy image from the combined sensor drone data on the edge of its range.

  “It’s a large signal,” Briggs said. “Huge, and it is moving fast. It’s several astro-units away but will be in range of our onboard sensor assembly in a few minutes.” Briggs turned to Sheen. “Should we bring the reactor online, sir?”

  “Negative, Commander,” Sheen replied as he coded a message to Union Fleet Headquarters, tapping away at his command chair armrest. “We need a positive identification before we break cover. If that is the Skarak, they have no idea we are here. I don’t want to tip our hand until I have to. Hold fast, Commander Briggs.”

  Sheen turned his gaze toward the main holo-stage and waited. A few seconds later, an updated image was displayed based on a fresh data sweep by the mass of sensor drones.

  The signal was unmistakable. A huge Skarak warship. Its forward section bristled with hundreds of stiff, thin, rapier-like structures, the large bulbous main body of the ship behind.

  “Shut down the sensor drones. Send them dark. Leave them collecting passive data. We’ll pick them up another time. Bring the Ultimatum about. Thrusters only. Make ready to initiate drive, but we are going to sit tight and stay dark. If they haven’t spotted us, we could get really close and gather vital close-range data scans.”

  The holo-stage showed the Ultimatum turn on the spot as the thrusters nudged the huge cruiser around.

  “At the speeds we detected using the sensor drones, the Skarak ship will be in range of our onboard sensors in a few minutes,” Briggs said. “I recommend loading all drone tubes with combat drones, Captain.” She looked up at Sheen.

  “Agreed, Commander. Activate the drone guidance, but leave the warhead in neutral for now. We’ll select the payload when we have a better idea of what is out there.”

  “It’s clearly a warship, a kravin Skarak warship,” Briggs said.

  “Calm down, Commander.” Captain Sheen leaned forward.

  “Copy that, sir,” Briggs said. “Weapons team loading all tubes now. They are sealing inner doors. All tubes ready. Open outer doors?”

  Sheen looked at the main holo-stage and the hazy image of the Skarak warship. The drone’s sensor range now extended to the far end of the Skarak ship. The Skarak was moving in toward the Scorpio System at pace but was still several astro-units from the edge of the Sphere.

  As the warship moved in, a new pair of signals was detected alongside the first—both in flanking positions and holding a few hundred kilometers back.

  As the three Skarak warships moved in, another new signal came into detection range, moving in formation behind them. It filled the sensor field of the many sensor drones deployed ahead of the Ultimatum. The drones gathered hundreds of petabytes of data a second, but the image was still indistinct. It was clearly a huge structure, the size of a small moon, but its outer hull was impossible to detect with accuracy. The image of the vast ship flickered and shimmered on the holo-stage.

  “Open outer doors,” Sheen said. He grabbed hold of the dry end of white root and twirled it around in his mouth.

  Commander Jacqueline Briggs had been with Captain Sheen long enough to recognize this sign of agitation. It was a minor hint and not obvious from looking at him that he was concerned, but twirling that short stick was a dead giveaway to her.

  “Set payload,” Briggs called to the operator at the weapons console, “maximum yield. Communications, ready a message for Union Fleet Headquarters on Terra. Launch a communication drone and prepare to dispatch.”

  Sheen watched the huge ship. It was unlike anything the fleet had detected in any of their encounters with the Skarak. As far as the drones could detect, the ship was a single dark oval bristling with stiff rapiers projecting in all directions, but the surface of the ship was proving impossible to scan with any precision.

  The fleet needed to know about this. Sheen knew he could not run until he had more information, but running dark and using only passive scans, he could learn little other than the new ship’s physical dimensions.

  But a well-placed combat drone would reveal more data from its detonation than could be picked up on passive scan. The only problem was that the launch would light up the Ultimatum like a small sun. It would be impossible to hide once he’d launched. After that, he could only fight or run.

  “Bring the reactor online. Get us underway, Briggs, but keep that big Skarak ship on the edge of sensor range. We don’t want to outpace them, not just yet.”

  Briggs issued the orders to the various operators around the command deck and then walked over to the holo-stage and stood to one side. She looked over her right shoulder at Sheen up in his command chair.

  “Target the warships in sensor range with a combat drones, but save one for that huge mastership,” Sheen said.

  “Two combat drones per Skarak warship,” Briggs said. She tapped the image of the warships on the holo-stage, marking them for the targeting systems. “And one for the mastership.” She tapped the huge dark image covering one side of the holo-image. “Standing by for combat drone launch. We had better be ready to move once we fire. They will attack us for sure.”

  As Sheen stood up in his command chair, his finger raised, poised to give the fire order, the image vanished.

  “Signal from all sensor drones lost, Captain,” Briggs said.

  Sheen sat down. “They’ve found the sensor drones.”

  “We are blind,” Briggs said. She tapped away at the console at the edge of the holo-stage.

  “Not for long,” Sheen said. “They will be in range of our onboard sensor array any moment, I expect.”

  No sooner had he said it than the holo-stage was filled with hundreds upon hundreds of signals, all moving in on the Ultimatum at high speed. The sensor console chirped with the detection of every new signal, creating a constant stream of noise.

  “Skarak fighters,” Briggs said, moving to the weapons console and standing alongside a nervous-looking weapons operator.

  “All systems, full power.” Sheen pulled the white root from his mouth and dropped it. “Stability field to full. Deflection shields angle to protect the Ultimatum’s drive section. Full power to the drive. Retarget drones, give us a detonation curtain to cover our retreat. All weapons, fire at will, release manual targeting to gun crews.”

  The swarm of Skarak fighters swept in on the Ultimatum as she accelerated up to maximum drive, diving toward the outer edge of the Sphere. The forwardmost of the fighter swarm closed into weapons range just as the wave of combat drones detonated.

  The antimatter eruptions from the drones ballooned across dark space, each creating a small and short-lived star. The spread of drones created a billowing plasma fire that merged into a huge plasma wall between the Ultimatum and the Skarak fighters.

  The few Skarak fighters to make it through raced toward the Union cruiser. They ran into a barrage of spitz gun fire, rapid-fire energy pulses streaming out from the cruiser, strafing the attackers and destroying one fighter after another.

  The remaini
ng fighters closed in and fired their blue crackle beams just as the Ultimatum activated its high-energy laser and mass beam. The energy weapons flickering past each other in the black of space. A laser sliced clean through a Skarak fighter. The beam vanished before reactivating and connecting with a new target. That too was ripped apart. The Ultimatum’s mass beam connected with the closest Skarak fighter, causing it to collapse under its own weight, crushed down to the size of a Skarak soldier’s skull in a second. Blue energy lines burst from the fighter as it collapsed.

  A Skarak crackle beam slammed into the cruiser’s angled deflector shield, the beam twisting and flickering about before the ship emitting it was crushed by fire from the cruiser’s mass beam.

  Sheen stood up and looked at the holo-image of the billowing wall of plasma fire thrown up by the combat drones. It was beginning to fade, but before it cooled and dissipated, it was flung aside as the huge Skarak mastership pushed through, plasma fire flickering off its hundreds of kilometers long rapiers.

  “Get us out of here,” Sheen said.

  The blue beam that burst out from the mastership enveloped the Ultimatum entirely, arcing around the deflection shield angled over the rear section. The blue crackle lines arched back and connected with the cruiser’s nose section. The forward composite exploded and boiled away into the vacuum of space.

  “All drones, target that mastership. Maximum yield. All power to the drive, we have to get this data back to fleet.”

  “We are losing power,” Briggs said as she ran to the engineering section. “Reactor is offline.”

  The holo-stage flickered and the image vanished, making the dark gray holo-stage base look bland and useless. Then the lights went out across the command deck before emergency lighting flickered on.