Redline Rebels: Iron Hammer, #8

By Cameron Cooper

Danny and the Carinad worlds fight for survival.

The underdog Carinad forces face an enemy who knows nothing but war, whose culture is built upon the glory of battle.  As the Slavers fall upon the vulnerable Carinad worlds, Danny and her allies work to find a way out of the no-win scenario they face…

Redline Rebels is the eighth and final book in the Iron Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Iron Hammer series is a spin off from the acclaimed Imperial Hammer series, and features many of the characters and situations from that series.

The Iron Hammer series:
1.0: Galactic Thunder
2.0: Stellar Storm
3.0: Planetary Parlay
4.0: Waxing War
5.0: Ruled Out
6.0: Stranger Stars
7.0: Federal Force
8.0: Redline Rebels

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel
__

Praise for Redline Rebels:
 

Magnificent, satisfying conclusion to a grand saga.

Wow, what a ride. A great ending to a complex and interesting series. Deep complex, wonderful world building and character development.

…it was what happened to the cast of characters that made this series so enthralling for me.

Everything that has been happening in the series up to this point comes to a gratifying conclusion.

I can highly recommend this last book in the Iron Hammer series and especially advocate reading all the books in order.

…it was one helluva run. The ending is an extraordinary coming together of the people.

An incredible set of stories. There is nothing else out there like this.

Such a great end.

I really don't know how we got here, the story is so amazing and realistic.

Book 8 in a sprawling epic space opera spanning many long decades, this is the culmination of everything set into motion in those earlier books.

__

Cameron Cooper is the author of the Imperial Hammer series, an Amazon best-selling space opera series, among others. 

Cameron tends to write space opera short stories and novels, but also roams across the science fiction landscape. Cameron was raised on a steady diet of Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, McCaffrey, and others. Peter F. Hamilton, John Scalzi, Martha Wells and Cory Doctorow are contemporary heroes. An Australian Canadian, Cam lives near the Canadian Rockies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stories Rule Press
• Release date: Sep 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781774383711

Cameron Cooper

Cameron Cooper is the author of the Imperial Hammer series, an Amazon best-selling space opera series.  Cameron tends to write space opera short stories and novels, but also roams across the science fiction landscape. Cameron was raised on a steady diet of Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, McCaffrey, and others. Peter F. Hamilton, John Scalzi, Martha Wells and Cory Doctorow are contemporary heroes. An Australian Canadian, Cam lives near the Canadian Rockies.

Book preview

Special Offer – Free Science Fiction

Space cities have been locked in war for centuries over the resources of an asteroid belt.

Humans pilot swarms of pod fighters to protect their city’s mining operations from other cities, risking everything and suffering multiple deaths and regenerations. Then Landry goes through a regeneration which introduces an error that will destroy the delicate balance of the war.

Resilience is a space opera short story by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

__

Epic science fiction at its finest. Realistic far future worlds. Incredible characters and scenarios. – Amazon reader.

This short story has not been commercially released for sale. It is only available as a gift to readers who subscribe to Cam’s email list.

See details about this offer when you have finished Redline Rebels.

Table of Contents

Special Offer – Free Science Fiction

About Redline Rebels

Praise for Redline Rebels:

Title Page

—1—

—2—

—3—

—4—

—5—

—6—

—7—

—8—

—9—

—10—

—11—

—12—

—13—

—14—

—15—

—16—

—17—

—18—

—19—

—20—

—21—

—22—

—23—

—24—

—25—

—26—

—27—

—28—

—29—

—30—

—31—

—32—

Special Offer – Free Science Fiction

Did you enjoy this book? How to make a big difference!

About the Author

Other Books by Cameron Cooper

Copyright Information

About Redline Rebels

Danny and the Carina worlds fight for survival.

The underdog Carinad forces face an enemy who knows nothing but war, whose culture is built upon the glory of battle. As the Slavers fall upon the vulnerable Carinad worlds, Danny and her allies work to find a way out of the no-win scenario they face…

Redline Rebels is the eighth and final book in the Iron Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Iron Hammer series is a spin off from the acclaimed Imperial Hammer series, and features many of the characters and situations from that series.

The Iron Hammer series:

1.0: Galactic Thunder

2.0: Stellar Storm

3.0: Planetary Parlay

4.0: Waxing War

5.0: Ruled Out

6.0: Stranger Stars

7.0: Federal Force

8.0: Redline Rebels

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

Praise for Redline Rebels:

Magnificent, satisfying conclusion to a grand saga.

Wow, what a ride. A great ending to a complex and interesting series. Deep complex, wonderful world building and character development.

…it was what happened to the cast of characters that made this series so enthralling for me.

Everything that has been happening in the series up to this point comes to a gratifying conclusion.

I can highly recommend this last book in the Iron Hammer series and especially advocate reading all the books in order.

…it was one helluva run. The ending is an extraordinary coming together of the people.

An incredible set of stories. There is nothing else out there like this.

Such a great end.

I really don’t know how we got here, the story is so amazing and realistic.

Book 8 in a sprawling epic space opera spanning many long decades, this is the culmination of everything set into motion in those earlier books.

Redline Rebels by Cameron Cooper - Title page.

—1—

It wasn’t like waking from normal sleep.

When I wake from sleep, I have a sense of time passing. Of dreams and stirring. This time, though, there was nothing. Blankness lay behind me and I couldn’t couple up going to bed with this moment of waking.

Something not-good had happened. That was my first, panic-tinged thought.

Danny, it’s okay. You can open your eyes. It’s safe.

I knew the voice. Low contralto. Pleasant. A hand picked up mine. Squeezed a little. A second hand rested over the top of mine, warm and alive.

I opened my eyes and instantly shut them again, hissing at the pain. I’d seen nothing with that quick blink but glaring light.

Lower the lights to ten percent, Elizabeth Crnčević murmured. Then, Try again, Danny.

I cautiously opened one eye by the slightest amount, until I saw light between my lashes. It didn’t hurt, this time. The light was a deep orange, almost brown. Cautiously, I opened both eyes.

Elizabeth stood beside the table, her eyes grave, but warm. Behind her was a room that looked like every therapy unit I’d ever seen—what I could see of it, at least. It was mostly in deep shadow.

I was on my back. I guessed I was on a therapy table because of the room and because Elizabeth wasn’t bending to reach me. It was her hands holding mine. A cover laid over me, hiding everything but my arms, sterile and clean.

Elizabeth wore spacer clothes, not her usual business gown. She gave me a small smile. Welcome back. She looked like she wasn’t getting enough sleep, but that was standard for her.

I tried to speak and felt an odd resistance to moving my mouth and jaw. Back to where? It came out slushy and ill-formed, which gave me another big clue. I died?

Lyth Andela stepped up next to Elizabeth. Black eyes, black hair, pale flesh. He’d lost all the grey in his hair that I remembered from the last time I’d seen him. He looked young again. His smile was as brief as Elizabeth’s had been. What do you remember last?

Lyth…hi. I was already tired, just from speaking a few words. "I’m on the Lyrhys?"

You are, Elizabeth said.

Didn’t know it had a transfer facility. I wanted to roll over and go right back to sleep.

We built a unit, Lyth said. Just for you. Although Elizabeth wants to keep it, for others caught in Union space.

Too much information. Too many big holes in my understanding to make sense of it. I died? I repeated. I don’t remember…

"What do you remember? Elizabeth asked. What is the last thing you recall?"

I reached back. The Glory. Battles. Too many to distinguish any of them right now. Terrans. War. Motherships. The Senate…facing the Senate. No, a Senate committee hearing. Judging me.

Going back to the Glory, dogged by a small man with too many muscles and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Shit… I whispered. What’s his name…the Senate watchdog.

Lyth let out a breath. There you go.

I shot him, I added. My jaw and throat and tongue were aching, now. They’d never been used before and weren’t used to working. "And Rayhel shot me!"

A throat cleared. Rayhel Melissa stepped closer to the bed, so I could see him. No offence, Danny.

I tried to sit up and was mildly astonished to find that I could move my hands, but I didn’t have the strength to sit up, yet. That would come, though. I’d seen too many other people through their first days after transferring to a new clone body and knew how it worked. I fell back, as the table moved to prop me up.

Rayhel wasn’t smiling. But, for a man who had technically murdered me, he didn’t look worried, either.

"You fucking killed me!" I railed at him.

A fervent, long held-dream of mine, Rayhel replied.

I gawped at him.

He rolled his eyes. It was the only option that would let us explain Barath’s death and have the Senate accept it.

"And they did accept it, Lyth added. Especially once Jai produced old Imperial Shield records revealing Barath’s true character and why he was drummed out of the Shield. It made his attempt to extort you into paying him for his silence look natural. Lyth’s smile appeared and evaporated. The Senate apologized."

I raised my hand. It worked properly enough to rub the corner of my eye. "Bet they’ve got another watchdog lined up, though. Is that why I’m on the Lyrhys?"

You’ve remembered everything now, then, Elizabeth said, sounding pleased.

Yeah. I looked at the back of my hand. No raised veins, no scars, nothing but smooth, pale and young flesh. What am I, sixteen?

We had to bring your clone online before it was fully matured, Lyth said. It’s around twenty standard human years in development.

Fabulous, I said. I preferred to look like I knew what I was doing. No twenty-year-old I’d ever met had a proper grip on the way life worked, which didn’t inspire others to follow their orders. "Wait. You had to bring it out of development early? I’ve had a clone waiting in the wings for years. I looked at Lyth. Spill it. What’s going on?"

All three of them looked at each other. That didn’t inspire confidence, either.

Elizabeth said, The best way to explain this is to start by telling you that Barath’s shooting happened fourteen months ago.

A whole year, plus. I drew in a slow, deep breath, absorbing that. Something happened to my waiting clone? It would explain why they’d rushed a new one into service.

No, Lyth said. It’s fine. He hesitated. In fact, we transferred you to that clone the day after the shooting.

I could feel my thoughts slowing down. I picked out the implications, trying to put it together, but there wasn’t enough information there, yet. Better spill the rest. My voice was hoarse and not just because I hadn’t used it much.

Lyth spread his long fingers and smoothed out the sheet lying over the edge of the table, concentrating on it. "You’ve been commanding the Glory and the Marine Force for thirteen months."

I stared at him. "You mean there are two of me? What the hell? What the fucking hell? I tried to sit up again, and pummeled my thigh in frustration. It didn’t hurt much, because I had no strength. That’s against every tenet and rule and fucking law the Laxman Institute codified, right in the very beginning, when you first opened up transfers to the public!"

Lyth nodded. His gaze flickered to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was watching me carefully, which warned me to rein in my fury. Okay, so it was fear, most of it, but I got mouthy when I was scared. Too bad. What have you done? I demanded of Lyth. "And why?"

Rayhel crossed his arms. "It’s simple. The other you, the one on the Glory, can’t do a damn thing that isn’t monitored by the Senate, who don’t know, who can’t know what we’re doing here in the Terran Union. She has a new watchdog. One chosen with Marine approval and massive background checks, but a guard is a guard." He shrugged.

We’ve been working without you, for a year, Lyth said. "But we’re not progressing, because you weren’t here. The agents in the field want you. They won’t report in if it’s not to you. It makes them uneasy that you’re stuck on the Glory and aren’t covering their backs."

Elizabeth added, Every Carinad and every Terran we’ve turned, all our agents in the Union, need to know we’re working just as hard as them. It will give them the courage to continue. It became imperative that we bring you in.

Which we couldn’t do, not without telling the Senate and all their sub-committees what we’re doing here, Lyth added.

All their sub-committees and whatever spies are reporting back to the Terrans, I breathed. I was calming down. I’m illegal. A copy.

Lyth nodded. But you’re an essential copy. When we do go back to Federation space, you’ll have to lie low, but we’re spending more and more time in the Union now, so that won’t happen very often.

When you’re stronger, we’ll give you your memories from the last year, Elizabeth said. You’ll need them, and it will let you catch up quickly.

"Does she get mine, too?" I asked.

We think it best that she does. It will help her plan the war effort, if she’s in on everything, Lyth said.

So we’re both going to suffer through migraines every time I arrive back in Federation space, I muttered. I hope she thinks it’s worth it. I presume this was her idea?

Rayhel smiled one of his nasty smiles. She left you a message. We set up a secure message board where the two of you can coordinate.

Great, I muttered. Not only do I have my conscience yapping at me, but now I’ll have her, too. I sighed, and put a hand to my belly, which was flat, taut, and very empty. What do I have to do to get a steak, around here?

—2—

General Andela’s Flagship, CMS Glory, Terra Secundus, Arori System, Terran Union Space. Y34—3.5 Years after Formation of Carinad Federation.

Come on, come on… I muttered, staring at the tactical ball in the middle of the bridge. Brigadier General Jai Van Veen also watched it from a bare meter away. The ball glowed with ethereal light, a representation of the space outside the Glory.

Everyone else on the bridge was at their stations, watching their scanners and screens and early warning monitors. It was a big bridge, with sections on either side of the tactical sphere for teams of analysts, engineers, navigation and cartography and weapons experts.

The only one not watching a screen was Perele Johnathan. She stood on the other side of my command chair from Darcy, my assistant, with his multiple dashes and communications consoles.

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Terra Secundus hung, a glorious ball of blue and white with touches of green that reminded me sharply of my first view of Terra itself, several years ago. It was said that this fourth planet in the Arori System was so analogous to Earth, that its name had been decided before anyone had settled on it.

We were close enough over the planet that it filled the windows. I could see continents, clouds and oceans rolling across the face of the globe, for we were just north of the equator.

Perele Johnathan stirred and turned to me. You are waiting, General?

Waiting isn’t one of the General’s natural talents, Jai said absently. He didn’t take his gaze away from the tactical sphere, which showed a green dot—us—and five other blue dots. Friendlies. It wasn’t the bulk of the Marine fleet by a long chalk. Not these days. We weren’t looking for a full scale battle today, though.

Faint yellow lines outlined structures, not ships. The structures were not far off our starboard. Through the windows I could see the structures themselves. Dry-dock gantries. Three docks and two of them had ships parked. They were not Terran navy motherships. Rather, they were flat, oblong, blocky freight ships, which the Terrans used to ferry goods between planets. The ships had no human crew. They were guided by an AI to the outer atmosphere of a planet, then brought down to land by remote control, where they could be unloaded, then stuffed full again before being sent to their next destination.

There would be crew working on them in the dry docks, repairing and maintaining them. If we tickled them enough, it would provoke a response.

If you are waiting, can I ask a question? Perele said.

It is part of the Senate agreement that you be permitted to ask questions whenever you want, and it is your right to expect answers, I told her. It wasn’t the first time I’d said it, so the words rolled off my tongue without effort. The first few times I’d said it, they’d sat in my mouth like last year’s sump detritus.

Perele Johnathan didn’t quite roll her eyes. She’s been aboard the Glory for a year, and in that time we’d barely moved beyond nodding acquaintance. It wasn’t her fault. She appeared to be a nice, centered, sensible woman, and no one argued she didn’t have the intelligence necessary to assess what I and the Marine Force were doing.

Perele Johnathan was a generalist specialist. One of the rare intellectuals who chose to spend all their time educating themselves in a broad array of subjects, all of them at depths beyond what most experts would consider necessary for their careers.

I’m not sure how generalists paid their bills. I suppose by accepting contracts like the one she’d taken up with the Senate, to watch over everything I did.

After the Heldar Barath disaster, the Senate had hastily reconsidered finding someone with comparable experience to mine to assess me. They instead went for the abstract—an intellectual knowledge of war, the history of war, and soldiering. That abstract knowledge, Perele Johnathan had in abundance. In the last year I’d not had to explain myself to the woman overly much, except when it came to non-standard things.

She was taller than me, with a mane of thick reddish-brown hair that she never tied back. The first time we hit weightlessness would change that. She wore boots with stacked heels, that weren’t the spacer mag-enhanced boots we all wore, also something that would change if we ever lost gravity. She favored brown and green clothes in muted shades, quite ordinary and sensible. As a result of her clothing choices, she stood out on the bridge, for everyone else wore the Marine blue fatigues.

Perele also drew attention to herself when she asked questions, like she was now. Although no one gave any indication they were listening, I could almost feel the uptick in attention. After all, no one else on the bridge ever got to question me about what I was doing. Perhaps they all appreciated the vicarious experience of cross-examining me.

What is your question? I said heavily. I’d agreed to the Senate watchdog. Didn’t mean I had to be polite to her.

The objective of this mission was to destroy the naval dry docks in orbit about the planet, yes? Perele had a very precise way of speaking, that involved her jaw and her teeth. She had a square chin and sharp jaw, so watching her speak could be distracting.

That is the mission objective, yes. And it was. It was listed at the top of the formal mission outline distributed to all department heads and other senior officers…and the Senate, with their leaky communications system.

Hell, even our communications system leaked, if we didn’t use the secondary armored communications protocol Lyth had distributed to only the double-handful of people I utterly trusted.

Yet you are waiting for something to happen, Perele continued. You said ‘come on’ just now, which implies you are waiting for someone to arrive. Reinforcements that weren’t on the Mission Brief?

No, no reinforcements. It’s just us, I told her. I considered quickly. She was going to see what was going on in a minute or two, anyway. Why not answer in full and look like I was cooperating? We’re waiting for some Terran motherships to show up. Only, they’re taking their time.

And in the meantime, we were flying rings around the dry dock facilities, taking pot shots that did nothing more than rattle their teeth.

"You want the enemy to