Starseeker: Baptism By Fire

By Jason Gaston

Ten years after the most costly war
in human history came to a close,
an ancient ship of unimaginable
power is discovered drifting between
hostile neighbors and race is on
to capture it and exploit its incredible
secrets that could affect the
balance of power in the entire galaxy.

To mitigate this crisis, Earth sends its
newest and largest starship, the
Starseeker, a vessel created to stop
wars before they start. Manned by
both human and alien officers, her
mission is to promote understanding
and friendship among galactic
neighbors.

Commanding this ship is Captain Ken
Hiller, a man pulled from retirement
and put back in the one place he
dreamed of returning to, but soon,
Captain Hiller realizes that his simple
mission is more complicated than he
prepared for as Starserker not only
has to fend of enemies from the
outside, but also those from within.

Not to mention the alien relic itself
which seems to have other plans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329630758

Book preview

Starseeker: Baptism By Fire

STARSEEKER: BAPTISM BY FIRE

By Jason Gaston

Copyright

Jason Gaston ©2015

Copyright © 2015

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2015

ISBN 978-1-329-63075-8

Dedication

To my Mom and Dad who honestly tried their best with me…

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Chapter 1

He always loved the smell of barbeque.

The instant the scent stimulated his nostrils; he was transported back to a happier time. The beach.  Socotra Island… several years ago. 

His daughter, Montoya, must have only been eight or nine years old as she played in the surf with children she had met only minutes before but carried on with like they were the best friends in the worlds.  One of the children wasn’t even human… he was a Plovian.  He looked near-human which seemed to be the most politically correct way of saying it during the time, but his eyes were larger than what his daughter would have considered normal and he did not speak English, but rather his native language of buzzes and pops, as though he were a fly cooking popcorn.  It didn’t matter to his daughter or to any of the other children splashing in the water.  To them, he was just another playmate.

He envied that about her… about all children.  They got along with others so easily.

Adults all over the galaxy could learn a thing or two from them.

His daughter knew nothing of hardship, separation, or war.  To her, the universe was still an amazing place… an open book ready to be explored and studied.  She had all of creation waiting for her and knew nothing of the horrors that her father well knew were really out there.

Niaya... his wife.  She was as beautiful as the day he first met her and here, in this distant memory, they were still in love.

She stood on the beach looking out as their child played in the surf, the warm steady breeze from the Indian Ocean causing her dress to ripple and dance.  Microscopic droplets of the crashing sea periodically rained around her body.  She cast a suspicious gaze at her daughter, the other children, and the alien boy in particular.  Niaya had been raised in a more religiously traditional and, in his opinion, closed-minded family and she didn’t care for offworlders, but knew her husband insisted that little Montoya be exposed to outside cultures as much as possible since the universe was open to them and the planet Earth was getting smaller and smaller every year.   The vacationing Plovian family and their boy was just another educational opportunity.

Niaya didn’t like it, but he was her husband and her culture and beliefs taught her to obey him.

A larger than normal wave unexpectedly crashed onto the rocks and showered her with countless heavy drops of seawater.  She yelped in surprise and he couldn’t help but laugh at her.  She slung the water off of her hand and, after a half-hearted attempt to look stern, as though she didn’t approve of his jovial attitude at her expense, she laughed as well.  

And then she looked at him and smiled.  It was a soft and warm smile, the kind of smile that told him everything was going to be okay.

Despite everything he knew she would do in the following years…  Despite all the ugliness and bitterness that was to pass between them, she was still stunning.  With most of her face partially covered by that stupid veil that she insisted on wearing in public, her dark eyes penetrated right into his soul as if they could find the very best part of him even in times that he couldn’t see it himself.

He missed that so much.

All the while, something tugged on him like an impatient child desperately trying to get attention from a parent.  He knew this wasn’t real.  He knew it was a dream.  There was no beach, there was no Niaya… this was a memory of a time long gone.  He knew something awful had happened and he needed to wake up.

He knew he wasn’t on Socotra Island.  His daughter was grown now… his wife was gone.

The warm sun was not shining down on him as it did on this idealized day.  Where he was now, the sun did not shine at all.  Where he was, it was cold, unforgiving, and perilous.

He looked once again to his former wife.  She unveiled her face and he could see that her smile was gone, replaced by a dejected frown.  Her eyes glistened with tears. 

This wasn’t the way it happened all those years ago.  Sorrow burned behind his eyes.

He was leaving his family yet again… perhaps for the last time.

I’m sorry, he whispered.

Blackness overtook the sea, his daughter, the beach… the last thing to disappear was Niaya, the unhappy expression chiseled onto her beautiful face, unmoving as she faded away into his memories.

All that was left was the smell of barbeque…

A thick cloud of black acrid smoke invaded his lungs and he coughed himself back into consciousness. 

Almost immediately, he regretted that choice.

Captain Antwon Ward, commander of the light patrol vessel, Sutherland, felt as if he had been hit by a truck which had then been hit by a larger truck and then was thrown off a cliff before being set on fire and hit by a third truck. 

He was confused, near panic… his ship was burning and he didn’t have the slightest idea why.

Before whatever happened happened, Ensign Taub had been trying to hand him a report, but the captain didn’t have time to look it over because…

…because they were on a rescue mission. 

He had told Taub to wait a moment and then--

It all came rushing back to him like a wall of flood water… They had been on patrol… there had been a distress call from the other side of the border. 

Ship requesting help… power failure.  Life support system failure. 

Two thousand refugees on board.

Crossing the border was a mistake… he knew it was a mistake, but long range scans showed no Nuperi patrol ships in the area and two thousand souls were simply too many to ignore.  After his first officer half-heartedly voiced her objections as her duty required her to, Ward ordered his communications officer to signal both Earth and the Nuperi Dynasty of his intentions and then took Sutherland to the other side.  The refugee ship was only half a light year away… it should have been easy.

He never actually saw it happen.  When the dark, ugly, hulking refugee ship appeared on the foreword display, he turned to ask his first officer to perform a scan – Ensign Taub was trying to hand him a datapad – and then… the world exploded and something cracked against his skull.

Captain Ward felt as if his head had never stopped exploding.  A stream of blood flowed down his forehead and blinded him in one eye.  Quickly, in a borderline panic, he wiped it away with his uniform sleeve mostly to assure that his eye was actually still there.  It was… not that it did him any good.  His vision was limited to only a meter or two before the cloud of black smoke choked it off.  He could feel the heat of open fires to his right, but could not see them.  The command deck was like an oven, and that smell…

He stood and almost collapsed.  Something with his leg… From what he could barely see, his pants and his leg underneath were shredded.  Through the dim glow of the overhead emergency lights, he could see damaged skin and blood glistening in the wound.  Jagged shrapnel was still imbedded in his exposed muscle. 

Strange that it didn’t hurt as badly as it looked like it should.

Blood almost instantaneously flowed into his eye again.  He wiped it as he had before and then pressed his uniform cuff against his head with the palm of his hand trying to stop it. 

Alarms blared.  Computerized voices alerted anyone who could hear them that critical systems were destroyed or damaged.

It all felt so distant… as if it were happening in slow motion… in a half-remembered dream.

Standing in the smoke-enshrouded wreck of his ship, Captain Ward idly thought about the first time he set foot on Sutherland’s command deck.  How he felt a connection to the old starship that most other commanders his age would have sneered at.  It was his first assignment following the war and, like him, the ship had survived the conflict, though not without scars.  She was ancient, beaten up… if it had been any other time, she would have been drydocked and scrapped, but the war had cost Earth so many ships that her day of execution was deferred indefinitely.  Instead of the scrapyard, she was destined to be relegated to unimportant missions on the ass-end of Earthspace patrolling a normally quiet border.

Over the years, as the fleet was built back up, it seemed the Space Force had simply forgotten about the old girl. 

This was fine with Captain Ward.  He had commanded Sutherland for ten years by that time and had an attachment to the vessel no one else could ever understand.  In his opinion, they were perfect for each other.

His mind was wandering in the midst of chaos. 

Oh, hell… I’m in shock.

The deck pitched suddenly.  Captain Ward gripped a support rail to keep from toppling over. 

He recognized the all too familiar feeling in his stomach:  The ship’s FTL engines had just disengaged.  Someone else was alive and piloting his ship – hopefully out of danger. 

He could smell fire suppressant mixed in with the poisonous smoke along with the hiss of an extinguisher nearby.

His crew… whomever was left of his crew were doing their jobs.

It was time to get back to his.

Finding his command chair, he tore open the survival pocket in the seat and took out an emergency breather.  Placing it over his mouth and nose, he took two deep breaths, each time launching into a coughing fit.  Despite that, it was a great relief to finally be able to breathe clean air.

Sound off, crew, he bellowed, his voice slightly filtered by the mask’s mechanisms.

Almost immediately, he heard a familiar voice reply.  Captain! it said with notable relief, I thought you were dead!

William Douglas: Ship’s second officer.  Third in line for command.  

I got too much to do, Captain Ward answered him, What’s our status, Douglas?  Ward looked for the crewman through the smoke, but couldn’t see him.  Not surprising.  Ward wouldn’t have been able to see an elephant if it were standing in front of him.

Douglas was chubby due to the lack of a physical routine on the ship and his complete inability to give a single solitary damn about his expanding waistline.  The quiet assignment had agreed with him and he had shown no desire to leave for more interesting or exciting tours elsewhere.  In fact, he seemed to be doing little more than biding his time on the ship until he could retire in a few years.

It wasn’t that Douglas was a bad officer, he was knowledgeable, dependable, and quite intelligent, but like so many others who lived through the last years of the war, he was damaged and thrown away.  His wife had divorced him when she decided that something temporary was better than something permanent and, as a result, he was in a funk and had been for years.  On any other ship seeking the best and the brightest, his demeanor wouldn’t be tolerated, but this wasn’t that kind of a ship and here, he received sympathy and leeway as long as his duties were not neglected.

That pudgy downtrodden officer was gone now, shaken out of his complacency by disaster.  In his place, was a reinvigorated Douglas with a fire in his eyes, the same fire that Ward recognized from days gone by when the war was still on and the two men had fought together and faced danger every day.  How odd…  A man damaged by conflict seemed to thrive in it even after all of these years.

In peacetime he was lost but in battle, he was found.

Sonsabitches fired on us, Douglas explained in that thick New England accent he was well known for on the ship, Caught us amidships along the engineering deck.  De Jesus managed to give us a minute or so of FTL that got us out of the enemy’s scanning range and back on our side of the border, but it won’t take them long to find us with the gasses we’re hemorrhaging.

Ward knew that a border wouldn’t make any difference to an attacker in this distant sector of space.  No help would be coming, either.  They were all alone.

The refugees shot at us?  Ward asked in disbelief, his voice cracking slightly at what he considered a sick betrayal.

It was the Nuperi, Douglas said, his eyes flashing raw anger.  The ship was a hollowed out decoy.  They had three Stingers inside.  Popped out and starting firing like a goddamn jack-in-the-box.

Ward prickled.  The Nuperi had never made a move this hostile before.  They were hardly the friendliest species, but relations with Earth had always been cordial.  Awkward, but cordial.

Hostilities should have been expected sooner or later.  They knew that the Nuperi were expansionists, they knew that they held dozens of worlds in subjugation – one of the reasons that Ward was so eager to help the refugee ship.  Where else would it have come from?  Ward always considered the Nuperi a threat even as the most brilliant tactical minds in Space Force assured him that the alien empire had no interest in taking on a foe as powerful as Earth.

If they managed to survive this day, Captain Ward would have words with those brilliant people who offered him those assurances.

I’ve got the atmospheric scrubbers working, but it’s going to take them a few minutes to clear the air, Douglas continued.

What’s the ship condition? Ward asked.

It’s bad, captain, Douglas reported, Internal sensors are down which means datalines are severed.  I would guess that the engineering deck is breeched.  Possibly other adjoining decks.  Shipboard communications are down so we don’t know who’s at station and who’s not.  Lifts are smashed.  We have partial engine power for the moment.  Thermal cannons are non-operational, we have the ten ship to ship missiles in the tubes, but can’t load more because the automated systems aren’t responding and no one seems to be down there to do it by hand.

Anyone else on the bridge alive?  We can send them down to engineering on foot.

Douglas shook his head, Aside from De Jesus, no.  The emergency bulkhead snapped shut after the initial attack, so we can’t go anywhere until we can retract it.

Ward was a little shocked to hear that the emergency bulkheads were working at all.  On a ship like Sutherland, old and unimportant, they were hardly ever serviced because they were never used anymore.  Sutherland was not exactly a battle-capable starship anymore as she was tragically demonstrating. 

Vision was clearer now and Ward could see a vague outline of Hector De Jesus at the pilot’s station.  He gripped the steering apparatus with his hands so tight that, even through the haze, Ward could see the young man’s knuckles turning from their customary brown to pale white.  One hand came loose and danced over the controls of his console in movements that looked as though they had been choreographed by a master dancer.

De Jesus himself was small, thin, babyfaced and looked like he was only fifteen even though he was seven years older than that.  He had grown weary of everyone noting his young appearance and had attempted to grow facial hair on his face which was already blotched red with pimples he could never get under control – attempted being the operative word, but the crew was considerate and never mentioned how awful his patchy excuse for a moustache actually looked.

De Jesus was at the beginning of his career, eager to move on to other pastures once his 24 month stint on Sutherland was complete.  No one could blame him or the dozens of other young officers who had come and gone before him.  They had all been young with an entire career ahead of them.  They didn’t need to hang around a vessel that had more in common with a rest home than a military starship.

The young pilot was closely monitoring the screens around the pilot station – engine status, speed, fuel consumption, pitch, yaw – even though half of them were shattered and blackened from the explosion. 

De Jesus himself had a pretty nasty gash on his side from a piece of shrapnel, but he was tough… patched it with his own emergency kit.  Ward could tell the kid was in pain, though, but likely wouldn’t take painkillers because he didn’t want to dull his reflexes at the helm.

Keep up the good work, De Jesus, Ward told him.

De Jesus, lost in his work, didn’t acknowledge the comment. 

Scan the area, Ward said to Douglas, I want to know where we are exactly and what we have to work with.

Give me a minute, captain, the ship’s systems are a real mess, Douglas said.

Ward frowned deeply, I don’t know if we have a minute.  Do your best.  Do it fast.

Douglas nodded.

The smoke was quickly disappearing into the filters positioned around the control deck and the damage to Sutherland was becoming more evident.  An entire side of the deck had been blown out, the emergency bulkhead, shiny and seemingly untouched, was visible through the blacked and burned structure.  It would have snapped shut around the command deck like an eggshell in less than a second, fast enough to keep the crew from being exposed to space, but not fast enough to stop them from being exposed to the explosion itself.

Littered around him, resolving like fallen ghosts from the gray waning smoke, were the bodies of his crew.  Twisted, blackened… violated.

Commander Samantha King, his first officer, was going to get married in three months.  She had requested time off and Ward had been only too happy to comply under the condition she send pictures from her wedding. 

She had been pinned against the wall by a shattered support beam that had been blown across the deck.  Commander King remained standing against the bulkhead, her body limp and her hand still desperately grasping both sides of the beam.  She must have been alive for a few moments and tried to pull it out, unaware of how fruitless it was.

It must have been agony.

She wasn’t much older than my daughter.

Behind Ward’s command chair was the mangled body of Ensign Taub.  Ward couldn’t recall his first name.  He was a terrified graduate from the academy who was on his first assignment, only joining the ship a few weeks ago during a supply pick-up.  He had kept his head low, obeyed orders and, in the last second of his life, had shielded his commanding officer from the brunt of an explosion, quite probably saving his captain’s life in the process.  Taub still clutched the report pad he had been trying to give his captain.

The terrified ensign probably never knew what happened, much less had time to react but Ward was still alive because of him.

Ward would have gladly traded his life for the young ensign.  Taub was young.  Too damned young.

There was another body, he couldn’t tell who it had been.  It was charred by fires that had been extinguished by Douglas.

The smell…

Barbeque.

Anger swelled inside of him.  How many more of his crew had perished?  How many more were trapped below deck waiting for salvation?

But most importantly, what the hell had it all been for?

They’ve found us, De Jesus called out. 

Ward fixed his gaze onto the main view screen.  There they were… three crescent moon-shaped vehicles, painted orange with black wingtips, soaring silently among the stars. They were sleek and elegant as if an artist had sculpted them and, in another time and place, Ward might have actually appreciated the simple elegance of the design.

Rather than appreciation, Ward now at last had a focus for the raw and growing anger inside of him.  King… Taub… Collins… Smith… everyone else whose lives had been senselessly snuffed out for the sake of what Ward could only describe as intergalactic dick waving would be avenged.   He not only wanted to see those three ships blown out of the sky, he wanted to see everyone on board suffer.  The captain considered himself a rational man, guided by science and morality… but this was not a moral time.  He wanted revenge.  He wanted blood.  He needed a way to extract it.

I think I’ve got something, Douglas said in a whisper as though he were afraid the approaching ships would somehow hear him.  The star system De Jesus got us to is on our maps.  Fifth planet is a massive rocky super-Earth and it looks like its gravitational tidal forces have recently torn apart a large moon into a ring system.

Ward thought about that.  What’s the ring look like?

Nasty, Douglas explained, Rocks and ice as big as city blocks to grains as small as sand and everything in between.  Very dense as well.  The body probably broke up only a few years ago.

Ever the scientist, Ward knew that, in cosmic terms, ‘a few years ago’ likely meant several hundred or thousand years ago.  The captain nodded.  De Jesus, he said turning his attention to the young pilot.  We’re going to make a run for it.

Bad idea, captain, De Jesus said, We’re losing engine power.  Must be a ruptured supply line… we’ll never outrun them.

Forget outrunning them, then, Ward said quickly cutting him off.  Can we make it to that debris ring before they reach us?

De Jesus did a quick check.  I don’t know.  Maybe.  If we leave now.

Go, he said, Full burn.  Get us there.

The ship began to move before Ward had finished his sentence.

Going to be tight in there, Ward said, looking over the pilot’s shoulder at the incoming data gathered by Sutherland’s damaged sensors, Think you can handle it?

De Jesus nodded, giving his sensor screens a quick look, I can handle.  Just stay off my back while we’re in there.  When he saw Ward stiffen, he added, No offense, sir. I just need to concentrate.

Douglas’ panel beeped.  The lead ship is transmitting a text message, He said.  It is instructing us to power down our engines and surrender.  You have one minute to respond.

Ward didn’t need one minute.  Douglas, tell them I said to kiss my ass.

Marshal Pim Kobas, commander of the lead Nuperi stinger Tarzian, brushed a strand of hair from her ridged forehead as the translated text message from the Earth ship flickered onto the table-top display.  She stuck her tongue on the inside of her check and scratched the back of where her chin connected to her earlobe, jingling the half dozen earrings she wore.  Unconsciously, her thumb caressed the curve of every piercing… the rings that indicated her rank, the rings she was awarded as commendations of her duty to the Dynasty, the rings that symbolized her family and her marital status.  She had lost one of her earrings years ago and, ever since then, did a quick check every few hours even if she didn’t know she was doing it.

Her nose wrinkled, unsure as to what to make of the message from the human ship.

Is the translation matrix working properly? she asked her second-in-command, Colonel Ghy.

It is, he assured her.

She looked back at the troubling communique. I certainly hope that is an example of Earth humor because I have no intention of doing it.

Maybe it’s a tradition among their people before a surrender? Ghy offered.

Then you can do it as my second in command, she laughed, raising her cup to her mouth and taking a drink.  She relished the warm spicy beverage.  It wouldn’t shock me if it was some sort of human tradition, though. You’d be surprised some of the things I’ve heard about this species.

Marshal Kobas was a formidable woman on her own ship and a reasonably well-known soldier in the Dynasty, highly regarded by her peers and superiors and well liked among those she had worked with.  She was tall, taller than most of the males that she had served with over the years and she took great care in maintaining her personal appearance, exercising every day and taking care not to allow the advent of age to dull her form.   Kobas was not vain, but did take pride in herself and everything she did. 

The thing that she prided herself on most was that if one were to ask well-informed palace official or Dynasty commander about her, and they would all say the same thing:  Pim Kobas is a good liar.

But that was not enough.  She didn’t want to be regarded as a good liar… she wanted to be regarded as a great liar and the Earth ship she had lured to the other side of the border was only the beginning of her rise to grace.

"The ship is isn’t powering