Soldiers of Misfortune: Cradle To The Grave

By Kyle Winter

A colonization vessel has returned from deep space after being gone for decades. The only question is has it returned with its crew or something else entirely?

Alistair Preest commands a special forces team called the Ebony Enforcers. Their job is to be prepared for the unknown and, if necessary, use force to deal with it. When a colonization vessel known as a 'dawn freighter' re-enters human-controlled space after decades of being unreachable, Allistair's Enforcers are called to check it out. When they board the vessel they find it's been picked clean. Every person and item on the ship has disappeared without signs of a struggle. To Allistair and his team it appears as though the ship is completely empty.

They were wrong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kyle Winter
• Release date: Dec 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005193867

Kyle Winter

Having failed as an author bio writer, I decided to try my hand at science-fiction. I'm basically just a guy who takes my imaginary friends too seriously.When not running my characters through a gauntlet of misery I run paper & pencil RPG's, get beat up at jiu-jitsu and train my dog not to put his junk on things.

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Cradle to the Grave

Kyle Winter

Copyright © 2019 by Kyle Winter

All rights reserved.

Edited by Patrick Burdine.

Cover illustration by Kyle Winter.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Corporations run the universe. The money we earn working for them is spent on their products. That feeling of safety and stability they provide means their marketing campaigns are working. Every aspect of our lives is controlled or manipulated in some way by people at the top of the corporate food chain and we are forced to live in their shadows.

Most companies are willing to conduct clandestine operations to drive their competitors into the ground. Blackmail, vandalism, thievery, kidnapping, and murder are just some of the ways companies knock each other down a peg. No self-respecting businessman would sully his hands with such a project, thus an underground network of civilian operatives fills that need.

Individuals who are brave (or insane) enough to assist in these secret missions are rewarded with either a fat check or a dirt nap. Due to the dangerous and unpredictable nature of these missions, civilian operatives are often called…

Soldiers of Misfortune

Also in this series:

Novels

Parasite Lost

Forerunners Anthology

Short Stories

Trial By Fire (Forerunners)

Cradle to the Grave (Forerunners)

The Black Maw (Forerunners)

Grudge Match (Forerunners)

Cradle to the Grave

Lieutenant Alistair Preest sat in the back of a transport shuttle, flicking the lid of an archaic lighter he had found in the slums of Vytal as a child. Each time the lid popped up it rang out with a satisfying ping and Alistair could thumb the wheel to ignite the wick. He loved the way the flame orbed around the wick in zero gravity, as opposed to creating that pointed flame he was used to seeing while planet side. A snap of his wrist would close the lid with an equally satisfying click and extinguish the flame, so he could repeat the process. He glanced up and noticed some of his squad members were getting agitated.

All right ladies and gents, let’s go over this one more time, Alistair began, speaking to his team of Ebony Enforcers, a special forces division of the Human Liberation Marines. "Th’boys upstairs got a distress beacon from th’vessel we are about t’board. Normally we don’t get called fer’this sort of thing, but th’beacon was sent over twenty years ago and we just found it. Command isn’t sure if anyone is still alive, but if they are, then chances are they’re not in good shape.

They suspect th’ship got lost in th’outer abyss and hasn’t managed t’enter human controlled space until now. One of th’guys who get paid t’be smarter than th’rest of us suggested there might be alien life forms on th’ship. It’s entirely possible we’ll get aboard and just find some piles o’bones, but on th’off chance shite hits the fan they wanted t’have the best damn janitors they could find on th’job.

That got a collective chuckle from the team.

We do not have authorization t’bring anyone aboard our vessel until they are quarantined. Our job is t’go in, find out what happened, and report back. Any questions?

There were none.

Good, let’s do what we do best.

All four members of his squad watched through the viewing ports as their small shuttle approached the monolithic colonization vessel. Commonly called a ‘dawn freighter’, the vessel was designed to house a small cities worth of people with all the supplies, tools and equipment they would need to begin life on the new planet. Often the ship itself would land and be used as the first construction on the surface, assuming the planet was already terraformed. Otherwise the vessel stayed in orbit and served as a remote facility to conduct business back and forth from the surface of the planet.

Attempts to hail the vessel have been unsuccessful, we’re gonna have to crack it, the transport shuttle pilot said over their comm. Docking clamps extended from their tiny vessel as the pilot searched for a suitable entry point. With a loud clunk, the clamps grabbed on to a buttress the pilot deemed sturdy enough to hold on to and began cutting through the dawn freighter’s hull with a boarding laser attached to the side of the aircraft.

Everyone had already checked their equipment several times over during transit, but they all checked again. Guns were loaded, armor was tight, hazard masks were sealed, comms were functional and everyone knew the plan. Now they just had to wait for the boarding laser to finish its job so they could begin theirs.

Once finished, the boarding door creaked open and pushed the cut hull slab through like a paper hole-puncher. The team unbuckled from their seats and floated in the zero gravity over to the breach in the hull with Alistair on point. Lana,