Forged Under Siege Read online

  Jack pressed the electron blade into the hull. He cracked open a fissure. It opened just wide enough for him to press himself inside. He dragged himself forward, grabbing the loose flesh of the interior to pull himself deeper inside.

  He found himself in a thick, syrupy liquid. It made movement very difficult, but with a combination of swimming strokes and his suit’s thruster jets, he moved to the point that Reyes had identified as the weak spot.

  Jack had his scanner active for any Chitin movement. Surely a vessel this size would be crewed by hundreds of Chits. Jack’s scanners couldn’t penetrate the thick liquid very far, but as far as it could, it detected no Chitin crew.

  He came across a thick white sinew-like tendril. He avoided touching it but carried along on his route to the weak point. Then he found another tendril, and as he came closer to the weak spot, he discovered more of the thick sinews converging. At the coordinates of the weak spot that Reyes had identified, Jack found that the white sinews converged and formed a large, glistening white knot.

  The weak spot. The Achilles Heel. Victory.

  Jack carefully positioned his charge at the node where the tendrils converged. He set a detonation timer to give him just enough time to reach a minimum safe distance. His suit’s extreme environment capabilities were about to be tested like never before. Could they withstand the destruction of a nearby Chitin Leviathan? Jack hoped so.

  Jack moved away carefully at first and then quicker, more urgently, until he reached the escape point. The hull had begun to rejoin and the gap had closed up. Jack opened the incision further with his electron blade and forced himself out into space.

  The fluid from the Leviathan’s interior spewed out with Jack. It was as if the craft had birthed a Marine fully clad in a Marine extreme environment suit. The sticky fluid clogged Jack’s jet thrusters and he limped away.

  The Chitin armada lay all around. In every direction, he saw a Hydra or a swarm of Krakens. And dotted about the armada were the massive Chitin Leviathans. If their plan worked, three were about to suffer a sudden and unexpected catastrophic failure.

  Jack watched the countdown on his wrist display. The timer reached zero, and he watched in anticipation.

  Jack felt a year’s worth of tiredness fall on him. Anxiety, disappointment, and regret. All the sadness for lost friends. The entirety of his life slipping away as he began to fear that this was where it all ended, alone, in the dark of space, surrounded by a violent and remorseless enemy.

  He waited. Frozen in dread.

  The first flicker of light across the Leviathan ran the length of the massive ship, from its tentacle-like structures on one end to its large bulbous head on the other. Then the flicker of fine lines appeared suddenly over the entire outer surface.

  And then in a silent, violent, bright flash, the Leviathan broke apart. Huge chunks of outer hull moved rapidly apart, all separated by the fracture lines.

  A large fragment raced toward Jack as he stared in wonder and relief. The section was moving extremely fast and Jack realized he was in danger. He moved with his stuttering thrusters and put himself out of the path of the flying piece of debris.

  Away to his right, Jack spotted two other massive detonations. The light bursting out from between the huge sections of Leviathan hull.

  Jack punched above his head in elation. He had delivered a blow only previously managed by a combined carrier force of the Fleet’s most powerful ships. He had delivered a massive blow to the Chitin fleet.

  Then elation gave way to fear. Surely the Chits would come looking for him now. He wouldn’t be able to escape their wrath. Fear gave way to resignation. His fate was sealed, and he accepted it. Then with acceptance of his imminent destruction, Jack felt a sense of pride that he had fought as hard as any Marine, done his duty as well as any Marine. He had given everything to the Fleet Marine Service and given everything for the preservation of humanity in the Eros System. Hanging alone in space, he knew he couldn’t have done more. The pulse pistol in his hand would be little use against a Chitin ship. He deactivated the electron blade and held the pistol loosely at his side. He would not let the Chitins kill him when he had ammunition in his pistol. He would not let them take him alive either. He would not be corrupted and converted into a Chitin agent like others had been before. Jack would save one pulse pistol round for himself.

  He looked at the Chitin ships spread across hundreds of thousands of miles all around him. Surely one was on its way to finish him off. But through the still-expanding wreckage of the Leviathan, Jack saw the Chitin craft moving away. He checked his scanner to confirm the apparent movement. They were moving away, and they were accelerating. Then, as the Hydras retreated, the swarms of Kraken moved off at speed and with a strange grace, the remaining Leviathans turned and headed away into the black of space.

  Jack hung there. His arms and legs floating out from his body as he relaxed. For the first time since he had sat in the lecture theater on Eros, seeing that his grades had dropped and he was to be pressed into the military, he felt himself relax, truly relax.

  He had won. Jack had fought the toughest enemy. He had given everything he could, and more. Jack had once dreamed of all he could be. Now he knew who he was. He was a Marine, forged under siege.

  THANK YOU

  Thank you so much for reading Forged Under Siege, the sixth book in the Jack Forge, Fleet Marine series. I hope you enjoyed all the battle scenes and the (temporary) reprieve won for humanity. I plan to have the next story ready for you in June.

  If you enjoyed the story, it would be awesome if you left a review for me. That really helps me reach more readers because Amazon features books with lots of good reviews.

  At the end of the book, I have included a preview of Discovery which is the first book in the Niakrim War series which is published under my primary pen name (and real name) David J. VanBergen Jr. It’s right after the information about our newsletter. After you read the preview, you can download the book on Amazon.

  Get Discovery here: amazon.com/dp/B071NJBNH4

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  Preview: Discovery

  Space is so boring!

  This was certainly not what Violet had expected space travel to be like. She had dreamed of this since the first time she looked up at the stars in the sky, but none of those dreams had included endless days of nothingness. The only excitement she had experienced during the first days of the journey was when an occasional piece of space debris penetrated the warp field forcing the pilot to take evasive action. Even those potentially deadly encounters were brushed aside, as if they were no more bothersome than a fly buzzing around the room, by the Krim Sprinter's legendary pilot, Cyrus Jones, who was as much machine as man.

  The captain had assured her that the Krim Sprinter was the fastest ship in the fleet, which made it the fastest ship in the known universe, when he reluctantly brought her on board the week before. The problem with space travel was the incomprehensible distances between planets. Even at three hundred times the speed of light, the travel time to Proxima was listed as seven days. The captain had assured her that they would be there in five. When she asked what they would do on the Proxima outpost for two days while they waited for the rest of the crew to arrive, Captain Mitch Cooper had just smiled and walked away.

  After four days of watching countless specks of light
stream past in a blur, Violet wished her childhood dream had involved something less monotonous...like being an accountant. She was wondering if it was possible to actually die of boredom when the ship violently lurched, throwing her from her chair. She froze in the air momentarily as the warp drive was forcibly shut down, dropping the ship back into real time, before being slammed into the navigation console. Everything went black.

  When she came to, the ship’s bridge was in total chaos. Warning sirens were going off. Red lights were flashing. Captain Cooper was rushing from station to station, assessing damage and muttering to himself. She had a pretty good idea of what he was saying.

  "What the hell just happened, Cyrus?"

  "We were hit by a photon torpedo, Captain," he answered calmly as he stared at the seemingly empty space in front of the ship.

  "That's impossible!"

  "Yet here we are."

  Captain Cooper looked ready to explode. Instead, he took a calming breath as he ran both hands through his grey hair. "Did you drop us out of warp before we tore the ship apart?"

  "Of course," Cyrus replied without taking his eyes off the still empty space in front of the ship. "Belzaire's not gonna be happy, though. There's no telling how much of the warp system we tore up shutting it down that quickly."

  Violet had pulled herself to her feet and was using the navigation console to steady herself. "So what just happened?"

  "Somehow, we were hit by a photon torpedo while traveling at warp three," the captain muttered.

  "How is that possible?"

  "It's not."

  The captain raised his hand to head off further questions. "We'll talk later. Can you find your way to engineering?"

  "I think so."

  "Get down there and help Belzaire. There's bound to be damage of some sort."

  She was leaving the bridge when Cyrus quietly said, "There's something out there, Captain."

  "Where?"

  "Right in front of us."

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know," Cyrus answered. "I can't see it."

  "If you can't see anything, how the hell do know something's there?"

  Cyrus just shrugged.

  The captain pointed at Violet. "Get to engineering. Tell Belzaire to get that warp drive back online."

  "I'll do what I can."

  The last thing Violet heard as she headed to engineering with a renewed sense of urgency was Captain Cooper telling Cyrus to put everything they had into the shields. All their lives might depend on it.

  As Violet rushed into the warp room, she was confronted with a scene straight out of her nightmares. Glowing green warp fluid squirted everywhere. Steam leaks sprouted like geysers. Blinking red and yellow beacons were the only discernible source of light. When a huge man with deep red skin and jet black hair rounded the corner screaming curses, she thought, just for a moment, that she had been transported to Hell and was facing the devil himself.

  "What are you doing here?" the large, angry man growled through gritted teeth.

  "I...I...I'm here to help," she managed. "Captain said to help you get the warp system back online."

  "Oh," he said with a sudden smile. "Glad to have you. I'm Belzaire. Come with me. We've got a lot of work to do."

  Belzaire turned and walked straight into the chaos, not even bothering to avoid the steam blasts or leaking warp fluid. Violet followed tentatively, doing her best to avoid both. When she caught up to him, he was in the process of sliding a very heavy looking cabinet to the side, revealing a trapdoor in the floor.

  "What's in there?"

  "Warp fluid," he replied nonchalantly.

  Before Violet could ask why the warp fluid was stored behind a hidden trapdoor, Belzaire pulled the door open to reveal a deep chamber with hundreds of clear cylinders full of glowing green fluid. There was easily ten times the legal limit of warp fluid in there.

  Belzaire answered her unasked question with a mischievous smile and started pulling out cylinders. "We lost almost two hundred liters before I got the system shut down," he said. "I'll fix the leaks while you refill the system."

  "Two hundred liters is more than a ship this size needs for the entire system," Violet sputtered, finally coming to terms with what she was seeing. "Not to mention twice the legal limit of reserves allowed on a ship like this."

  "I've made some modifications," was all he said while he continued to pull out more cylinders of the precious liquid.

  When he had retrieved twenty-five cylinders, Belzaire stood up and looked at Violet, who was staring at him with wide eyes, trying to comprehend what was going on. "Now, look," he said firmly. "If the captain sent you down here to help, something is seriously wrong. We need to get this ship back up and running. You deserve an explanation, but now is not the time."

  Sensing the gravity of the situation, if not the cause, Violet nodded slowly. "What do you need me to do?"

  Belzaire smiled reassuringly and pointed across the warp room to the half-empty tank of warp fluid. "We need to refill the reservoir. Can you do that while I fix the leaks?"

  "I think so."

  "Good. Just put a cylinder on the fill pad and hit the green button."

  Those were the only instructions he gave before turning away and heading to a pipe leaking warp fluid on the far wall. Violet looked around the room briefly, wondering what she had gotten herself into, then started transporting the cylinders to the reservoir.

  It took far longer than she had anticipated because she was constantly stepping over debris and around puddles of warp fluid, which she learned the hard way were very slippery. By the time the last cylinder had been sucked into the tank, Belzaire had finished repairing the leaks and was gathering the empty cylinders and putting them back in the hidden compartment. When she attempted to ask about them, Belzaire simply said, "Later," and closed the trap door and slid the cabinet back into place.

  With the compartment of warp fluid again hidden, Belzaire turned to Violet and smiled warmly. "Thank you for your help," he said. "You should head back to the bridge. If something goes wrong, that's the best place to be."

  She wanted so say something, ask questions, or try to figure out what exactly was going on. Instead, Violet simply said, "Okay," and headed out of the warp room, back to the bridge.

  As soon as she turned to leave, Belzaire hurried to the control console and pushed the intercom button for the bridge. "Captain, we've got the system ready to power back up. We should be ready for warp travel in about five minutes, but we won't have full capacity until I can do a more thorough repair."

  "Got it," came the captain’s disembodied reply. "Call me when you're ready."

  Back on the bridge, Violet sat in the chair she had previously been thrown from, looking out into space. She was trying to piece together everything she had seen. Did the captain know there was enough illegal warp fluid hidden on his ship to get everyone on the ship executed? She thought it was likely that he did. And what did Belzaire mean by modifications? Nobody knew how warp travel really worked, it just did. Making modifications to something you didn't understand, and could kill you, was crazy. But then again, much of what she had seen and heard since coming aboard the Krim Sprinter was a bit bizarre.

  The captain's voice brought her back to the apparently tense situation. "Is it still there, whatever it is?"

  "Yes, it is, Captain."

  "And you still don't know what it is?"

  "Nope."

  Violet expected the captain to be angry, but he simply nodded, seeming to accept that there was something invisible, and possibly dangerous, just outside. Yep, things were definitely a bit crazy aboard the Krim Sprinter.

  "Captain, the warp system is online and ready to go," the intercom suddenly blared. "Tell Cyrus to keep it to warp one, one point five max. But preferably warp one."

  "You heard him, Cyrus. Warp speed one point eight."

  Cyrus looked at him with a disapproving glare, but simply asked, "Where to, Captain?"

  "Anyw
here but here."

  A moment later, Cyrus reported, "We're ready when you are, Captain."

  "Drop the shields and engage the warp field as fast as your robotic arm possibly can," the captain said as he leaned forward in his chair, staring intently at the still empty space in front of the ship. "Three, two, one, go."

  Everything happened so fast; Violet could barely comprehend what she was seeing. She could hear the click of the shields dropping and feel time freeze momentarily as the warp field formed and the ship jumped into warp speed. And in the same instant, she saw three photon blasts appear out of nowhere, heading straight for them. She squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed the chair, bracing for an impact that never came. When she managed to pry her eyes open, all she could see was the emptiness of space streaking past.

  Maybe space wasn't going to be so boring after all.

  Read the rest of the story here:

  amazon.com/dp/B071NJBNH4