Merkiaari Wars: 04 - Operation Breakout Read online

  Contents

  Join Mark's email list for new releases

  A word on language and pronunciation

  Operation Breakout

  1 ~ Cops and Robbers

  2 ~ Old Soldiers Bold Soldiers

  3 ~ Investigations

  4 ~ Betrayal

  5 ~ Oracle

  6 ~ Trading Places

  7 ~ Consequences

  Part II

  8 ~ Planning Ahead

  9 ~ Commodore

  10 ~ Stationmaster

  11 ~ Fallen

  12 ~ Prodigal Son

  13 ~ Rogue

  14 ~ A Deadly Gift

  Part III

  15 ~ Bad News

  16 ~ Round 2

  17 ~ Cleansing

  18 ~ Arrival

  19 ~ Desert Planet

  20 ~ Bang Means Stop

  21 ~ Intervention

  22 ~ Old Acquaintances

  23 ~ Resolution

  Part V

  24 ~ Questions

  25 ~ Leviathan

  26 ~ Conference

  27 ~ Hostile Territory

  28 ~ Revelations

  29 ~ Welcome to Hell

  30 ~ Last Man Standing

  31 ~ Incursion

  Other titles by this author

  About The Author

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  A word on language and pronunciation

  These books were written and produced in the United Kingdom and use British English language conventions. For example the use of ‘ou’ in the words colour and honour instead of the American spellings: color, honor. Another example would be the interchangeable use of ize and ise in words such as realise or realize. Both are correct.

  The Shan are an alien species with their own verbal and written language, but for story purposes all Shan dialogue is translated into English. However, names of characters remain as close as is possible to the actual alien name. See examples below for pronunciation:

  Shima = Shee-muh

  Tei’Varyk = Tie-va-rick

  Kajetan = Kah-jet-an

  Fuentez = Foo-en-tez

  Parcae = Pah-k-eye

  Operation Breakout: Merkiaari Wars 4

  By

  Mark E. Cooper

  v:1.01

  1 ~ Cops and Robbers

  Aboard ASN Warrior, Anti-piracy patrol, Border Zone.

  “Jump stations report manned and ready,” Lieutenant Ricks reported.

  “Two minutes to translation, Skipper,” the helmsman, Lieutenant Janice Wesley said. Unlike Ricks in the comm shack, she didn’t turn to face his station, but gave her report while hunched over her controls. “Drive is hot and in the green.”

  Captain Colgan nodded. “Thanks, Janice. Go as planned.”

  Hot and in the green meant the drive was fully charged and ready to perform its magic of wrenching two hundred thousand tons of men and material back into normal space. In other words, in the unlikely event the ship’s computer failed to do so automatically, a single button press by Janice would execute another routine jump to a nothing star system in the Border Zone.

  Just another day in an endless procession of days, he mused missing the anticipation he used to feel at such times. Nature of the beast he supposed. As a part of the Survey Corps his jumps back into n-space had held mystery and anticipation for him and the entire crew. Not knowing what they would see and discover had always been exciting. Those days were in the past now. The Corps was in mothballs again; all its ships were docked or parked in safe orbits, their crews reassigned. With the Merkiaari on the move again, and possibly ready for round two with the Alliance, no one expected Survey Corps’ reactivation any time soon.

  The biggest difference, Colgan decided as they approached the downward translation back to normal space, was not the ship he commanded, so much as his attitude toward his mission. Commanding a relatively new heavy cruiser—she was only five years out of the builders’ hands after all—was a promotion despite his rank staying the same. Why then was he feeling as if he had been demoted and shelved far from where the action lay? Was he really so shallow, so needy, that he was suffering from limelight deprivation?

  He hoped not. He expected better of himself than that.

  Warrior was quite a step up from his previous command of an ageing survey ship converted from a light cruiser. No matter how he had loved his old ship, he hadn’t been blind to her faults. She had been slower, less well armed, and less capable in all respects than Warrior. Command of this ship was a reward for good work, and it wasn’t the only accolade heaped upon him for his discovery of the Shan and his later dealings with them and the Merkiaari. He had been rewarded with a hand-picked crew too—a combination of Warrior’s existing hands and Canada’s surviving ship handlers minus her over-sized science department. He even had a couple of medals he was too embarrassed to wear lying around somewhere. No, it wasn’t the ship he was dissatisfied with, or his crew, though he did miss some of Canada’s characters who had transferred to ships better suited to their MOS (Military Occupational Speciality). It was that he missed the sense of adventure, the discovery of new systems and worlds, and hell, he missed Tei’Varyk and Tarjei too. They had become fast friends on the journey to Sol. He missed the sense of wonder he had felt every day the most.

  He sighed.

  “Thirty seconds,” Janice reported.

  He slapped his helmet visor closed and tensed against the disorientation to come. Not that it would do any good. It never did.

  “Three, two, one, exe—”

  ASN Warrior jumped.

  Colgan swallowed bile as his stomach rebelled. He knew everything he sensed was only in his head, but his gut knew different. It insisted he was falling. Worse, it knew he was spinning and falling, whirling around and down in a crazy spiral without end. His eyes rolled in his head as the bridge seemed to torque and twist ahead of him. He had seen the like hundreds of times but would never get used to it. Time in the jump seemed extended, though only a fraction of a second ever elapsed in any given translation. Counting silently in his head did no good. It didn’t distract him. He seemed to have an infinite amount of time to study his crew. They sat frozen as he did, unaware of his regard.

  Twisting...

  spinning...

  and whirling around and...

  Here!

  Warrior blinked into existence, and the telltale energy discharge blasted away from her. The jump signature was the only evidence of the awesome speeds attained in fold space. Speed that was literally impossible in n-space was converted to energy instantly as the ship arrived. Warrior seemed to flex one last time as she made her presence in the system a solid reality, and proceeded in system, coasting now at her residual and theoretical maximum n-space velocity of 0.83c.

  “Translation complete,” Janice said and gulped. “Point... point two five seconds elapsed.”

  Colgan swallowed hard and reached a shaking hand to raise his visor. Before he could, Warrior’s computer, finally able to analyse her surroundings again now that she had real data to work with, saw catastrophe looming.

  Collision alarms wailed.

  Colgan flinched, his eyes widening as his monitors cleared to reveal the danger. “Evasive starboard!” he screamed.

  Janice reacted a fraction of a second before the order was given. She slammed her stick hard over and pulled back, while at the same time goosing power to the anti-grav manoeuvring thrusters in the bow. The ship heaved up and around, still stooping upon the pair of ships in her path but at a shallower angle than before. The bridge crew yelled as Warrior sped by the ships, barely missing them.

  “J
esus god...” someone gasped.

  “Did you see that? Did you see? Did you? Man, we nearly dinged the frigging—”

  “Quiet!” Colgan snapped, his fright turning to temper. He removed his helmet and racked it beside his station. What were the odds of translating into a system at the exact time and place as two other ships? Infinitesimal! Statistically improbable... but not statistically impossible. Obviously. “Trim us up, Janice, and someone find our damn referent. Let’s be sure we’re in the right system, shall we?”

  “Aye, sir,” Janice said calmly.

  “Scanning... referent attained. Helios system confirmed, Skipper,” Francis Groves, his XO said from her position at scan. She murmured something to one of a pair of specialists working alongside her. Both of them were new to Groves and Colgan but experienced with Warrior’s systems. They had inherited the pair along with the ship. Specialist Sheridan nodded as she listened and began working her board. “The... ah anomalies? The ships are at dead stop, Skip. Perhaps an engineering casualty upon emergence and the second ship stopped to give aid.”

  “Skipper?” Lieutenant Ricks said. “I have a Captain Voyce on the line. He’s ah... a little hysterical.”

  Colgan snorted. “Not surprised in the least—”

  Francis’ eyes snapped up from her instruments. “We have a problem. Two ships but only one IFF—a merchy out of Northcliff called MV Astron—and it’s squawking 7500.”

  Colgan stiffened. All ships used transponders to identify them by name and registry, all legitimate ships, and were licensed and registered by their home systems to trade. Part of the license agreement was the use of transponders which had the ability to have a four digit code for special circumstances appended to the usual information. 7500 was reserved for jacked ships, or for ships in the process of being jacked.

  Colgan turned his station to face the comm shack. “Put Voyce on screen.”

  Ricks nodded and did that.

  Colgan turned back in time to see a very frightened merchy captain appear. He was pale and sweat slicked his hair where it hung messily over his forehead.

  “Help us!” Voyce cried. “We can’t hold them off much longer!”

  “You have raiders aboard right now?”

  “Yes, yes! My crew is holding engineering, I have the bridge. Please, we can’t hold for long.”

  “Sound battle stations,” Colgan snapped and the alarms wailed throughout the ship. “How many raiders are we talking about? How many aboard?”

  “Maybe fifty? I don’t know. We killed some, but they have armour and better weapons.”

  “My marines have more and better, I assure you. Keep your people safe. I’ll deal with the rest.”

  “Hurry,” Voyce said and broke the connection.

  “Hail the raider ship, Mark. Janice, approach course but keep us in Astron’s shadow.”

  “Aye, Skip,” Janice said.

  “Battle stations manned and ready, Skipper,” Ricks said.

  Lieutenant Anya Ivanova, Warrior’s tactical officer, whispered instructions to her tactical team and monitored the enemy as well as the self tests being performed on her weapons. Missile tubes were loaded, the readouts on her board turning green one by one.

  The main viewer brightened, but no one appeared. Colgan glanced aside at Ricks but he nodded. The would-be hijackers were being coy. So be it. He didn’t need a face to make his demands.

  “Raider ship, this is Captain Colgan commanding ASN Warrior. Cease and desist your illegal action and prepare to be boarded. Do not attempt to get underway or you’ll be fired upon.”

  Janice guided Warrior closer, keeping her speed way down and the ship hidden in the shadow of the huge ship. The raider ship didn’t try to run, and that surprised Colgan. Pirates rarely did what they were told even when it was obviously the best course of action. He didn’t like their lack of reaction.

  “Warrior, this is Jean de Vienne, Captain Tait speaking. Do not approach or I’ll fire upon you and the merchy you so wish to protect. I don’t need to tell you what a half dozen missiles fired from this range would do to you both, do I?”

  Colgan’s face darkened. Warrior’s shields would probably keep her safe enough, probably, but he would take at least some damage and casualties. Astron though would most likely be destroyed utterly. She didn’t have shields except for the standard anti-radiation shielding that all ships were equipped with; particle shielding like that couldn’t hold against missiles no matter what kind of ship they protected. Military or civilian didn’t matter, they were designed to safeguard against solar radiation not nukes and lasers.

  “I’m waiting for your response, Warrior,” Tait said, sounding smug.

  Colgan made a gesture and Ricks muted the contact. “XO, your opinion?”

  Francis frowned. “Jean de Vienne is a Banshee class destroyer, Skipper. If her armament wasn’t stripped when she was decommissioned, Tait can do what he says.”

  “But?”

  Francis smiled. “But, he hasn’t reacted to our closing on him. Either he doesn’t fear us, or he hasn’t realised he’s inside our energy range now.”

  Colgan’s eyes sparked. A destroyer captain who didn’t fear an Excalibur class heavy cruiser like Warrior would be a fool. “And your vote is?”

  “He doesn’t know we’ve closed the range yet, but he will soon. I recommend we engage him with energy weapons immediately. Overwhelm him before he launches.”

  “Risky,” Colgan murmured, but he was leaning that way himself. Lasers and grazers were light speed weapons. Anya would hit Tait the moment she pressed the commit key. She couldn’t miss at this range, but neither would Tait and the merchy was vulnerable. “Maybe a decoy swarm set to go high above Astron and then dive between them, while we go under and take out his engineering spaces. No power, no bang-bang. Thoughts?”

  Francis nodded. “A modification. We go under in stealth mode towing a decoy mimicking our emissions.”

  Colgan’s eyes brightened with interest. “I like that. Anything else?”

  “Assault shuttles full of marines take care of the raiders aboard Astron while we take out the destroyer. I didn’t like how rattled Voyce sounded.”

  Colgan nodded, neither had he. Voyce had sounded like his crew was hanging on by their fingernails over there, but it was a huge risk to send the marines in before securing the hostile ship. If he got it wrong, his marines would join the merchies in death when the missiles arrived. He would have to ask Major Appleford for volunteers. He grimaced at the thought. Appleford was the sand in Warrior’s gears, and had been since Colgan took command.

  Appleford’s file showed him to be a capable marine and his leadership was solid. His men certainly respected him, and they should; his file was replete with commendations for his cool handling of some delicate situations while under fire. He had been in action all over the Alliance and had a reputation for making the right decisions when making the wrong one would cost lives. Some thought him a brash glory hound—he did always seem to land where things were hottest as if seeking them out—and put his successes down to luck not skill, but those who really knew him denied that and wanted to emulate him.

  No, his meteoric rise to his current rank of major was deserved in Colgan’s opinion; he put no stock in the glory hound business, and felt that he knew the man quite well from his reading. Appleford had no patience for the hero worship that others offered him. How well Colgan knew the frustration of that from his own experience of it after the Shan campaign. Appleford was a lifer, one of the Corps’ true heroes, and Colgan would have been pleased to claim him for a friend, but the man had made it abundantly clear that he would not welcome overtures of that sort from him.

  He didn’t really understand where the enmity came from; he’d found Warrior’s old hands very welcoming of him and Canada’s crew. He had made new friends here, but Steve Appleford rebuffed him with no explanation. Well, he couldn’t win them all over, he supposed, but he did wonder about it. In the end he had to put the pro
blem down to a clash of personalities and was looking forward to the end of Appleford’s current deployment. He was due to rotate out of Warrior when they returned from their current mission. That was less than six months from now all being well. He had dealt with the problem the best he could by limiting his contact with the man. He usually used Francis as intermediary, but that wasn’t something he could do now. Not when he was putting Appleford and his men’s lives on the line.

  “Get it set up, XO,” Colgan said making his decision and Groves joined Anya at tactical to work. “Live mic, Mark.”

  Ricks nodded and made an adjustment on his panel.

  “Captain Tait,” Colgan said. “It appears we have a standoff.”

  “Do you think so?” Tait said sounding amused. “From where I’m standing, it looks as if I have you where I want you. I’ll give you one hour to exit this system, or I’ll launch my first broadside into Astron. You have one hour. Tait out.”

  Colgan’s eyes hardened and he spun to Ricks. “Get me Major Appleford. I’ll take it in my day room. You have the conn, XO.”

  “Aye, sir. I have the conn,” Groves replied moving to take the chair.

  Colgan entered his day room heading for the desk and its comp. The tiny cabin was directly off the bridge and Colgan rarely used it. His own cabin was larger and had an office, but this one was better for this. He didn’t want to be more than thirty seconds from the bridge while they were at battle stations, and it was private. No sense in making a tense situation public. The crew already knew there was bad blood between him and Appleford, even though both of them strove to be civil in public. They didn’t know the cause, hell, Colgan himself didn’t know the cause, but they sensed it.

  Colgan sat and activated the comp. Appleford appeared on screen. “Major.”

  “Captain,” Appleford said stiffly.

  “You’ve no doubt been monitoring the situation,” Colgan said by way of asking without asking. Appleford nodded. That was something. “We have upwards of fifty armed men aboard Astron attempting to capture her. Voyce, her captain, tells me that his people hold the bridge and engineering.”