Destiny: Cloud Fist: Destiny, #1

By S. C. Mitchell

A desperate exodus from Earth.

Indentured to the starship captain, young Michael 'Kip' Anders was his family's only hope of fleeing Earth and its constant attacks from the Korg. But even four years out, the colony ship Cloud Fist is unable to escape the Korg's firm grip on the galaxy. As factions form and unrest invades the ship, Kip finds his loyalties severely tested. Will the new colony fail before it even finds a planet to settle?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lake Scrawls Publishing
• Release date: Dec 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223602026

Book preview

Destiny: Cloud Fist

(Destiny Book 1)

By S. C. Mitchell

A close-up of several different types of text Description automatically generated

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my beta readers Jen and Helen. You ladies are the best. ♥

Edited by M.L. Foss.

Cover Design: Beth Stensvold

First Edition*

Text copyright © 2021 by S. C. Mitchell

All rights reserved . Published by Lake Scrawls Publishing. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic of mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher. All resemblances to real people are purely accidental or used fictitiously and are a result of the author’s imagination.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Destiny: Morning Star

Chapter 1

An explosion rocks the colony ship, throwing me out of bed, and across the cabin. I slam into the wall, opening a cut along the back of my left hand. My head throbs as I rub the sleep from my eyes.

A warning claxon sounds throughout the ship. Battle stations! All crew to battle stations. This is not a drill!

I grab a cartridge of synthskin from my cabin’s med-kit, spray some across the back of my hand to cover the wound, then throw on some clothes. I hobble into the hallway, shaking my head to clear the blurriness of sleep as I head for the bridge.

A second blast sends me and the four others in the hallway tumbling to the floor. Using the handrail on the side, I pull myself up and stagger ahead.

By the time I arrive on the bridge, the hull has already been breached.

Monitors display multiple angles of the power-suited Korg commandos streaming into the cargo hold through an airlock tube connected to a jump-ship floating alongside us. A huge Korg battleship hangs in the blackness of space beyond.

Get those shields back up now. Captain Pulsion’s tone stays surprisingly level considering our dire circumstances. And dispatch security forces to all the main corridors. Keep those commandos off the bridge and out of engineering and life support.

Confidence and relief wash through me seeing the Captain already on the bridge and in charge. Maybe we still have a chance.

Maybe.

My job is to be at the captain’s side whenever I’m on duty and to get to him as quickly as possible when there’s an emergency.

I’m just the ship’s boy, Captain Pulsion’s errand runner. I do what I can to help him.

Anders. The captain always calls me by my last name.

Yes, sir. A task. Something I can do to help the situation.

You’re on Com Two until someone show’s up who knows what they’re doing.

A chunk of the ceiling lies on the floor behind the Com-Two station chair with a body beside it. It could be Matt Chandler, the third shift communications chief, but I don’t waste time finding out for sure.

I like Matt. He’s a good guy.

Still, I ignore him and slide into the chair in front of the big communications control board. I hope he’s not dead, but combat protocol doesn’t allow for compassion.

I’ve got very little knowledge or hands-on experience with the shipboard communications panel. Still, I scan the controls for any indication of how they work. I’m good with computer stuff...usually, but I’ve never been trained on this equipment. Still, it’s not my place to question the captain’s commands, so I look over the Com-Two station to see if any of it makes sense.

Beside me, at Com-One, is Maura Reuter. She reaches over and flips a few switches on my panel then hands me the headset.

Damn it, where are those shields? The captain is red faced, but still in control. Com-Two, find me someone in engineering if you can.

I looked at the vast array of lights, switches, knobs and displays. Maura is carrying on about three conversations at once beside me as her hands fly across the controls of her own equipment, yet somehow, she manages to reach over and tap a display in the center of my station. She runs her index finger over a line of switches and gives me a reassuring nod.

I look at the display and note the listing of all the different departments on the ship, with a switch directly to the right of each department name. All of the switches are in the down position, so I flip up the switch labeled Engineering.

Engineering, report, I say into the microphone on my headset. My voice cracks, but I manage to get the phrase out.

My voice is always cracking lately, skipping between registers all on its own. Puberty, they’d all said. The changes always happen later on extended star flights. Then they’d say something about there not being enough gravity on a starship that I don’t completely understand.

God, I hate the way my voice cracks and the way I’m sweating all the time. And whatever the heck puberty is, I hate that too.

There’s some static on the other end before a voice rings out in my headset. Kip, what the hell are you doing on Com?

Byron Levine just broke a bunch of protocol rules saying that, but it’s Byron, so I ignore him. I’m thrilled to connect with anyone over the com, especially someone I like.

Captain wants to know our shield status, Ensign. My voice cracks again, but Byron doesn’t laugh.

Put the ensign on monitor, Captain Pulsion orders.

Great, how do I do that? I scan the board, looking for anything that says monitor when a hand reaches over my shoulder and flips a switch in the upper left. I look up to see Matt Chandler, thankfully alive, blood still streaming from a wicked cut over his right eye.

Good job, Kip, Matt says with a pat on my shoulder. I got this now.

I get up and Matt slides into the seat and slips on the com headset. He looks to be in rough shape, but begins talking and flipping switches right away.

I rush to the med station to get something to bandage the cut on his head. That’s something I know how to do. And something I can do unless the captain has another task for me.

I need those shields now, Ensign, the captain commands.

Returning to Matt, I wipe away the excess blood with a steripad and spray the wound with synth-skin to seal it, then leave Matt and take up my position next to the captain’s control chair.

The bridge is an oval, with the captain’s chair on a raised platform in the middle. My seat is down a level and to the left. Workstations are located in clusters around the back of the oval. Three big, rectangular viewscreens dominate the wall at the front with changeable views from cameras mounted around the ship, inside and out.

A view of the vastness of space, distant stars twinkling here and there, displays on the right-most screen. Multiple views of the chaos of Korg commandos fighting with the ship’s security forces fill the left screen. And the advancing Korg battleship dominates the center display.

Sleek and silver in the darkness, the Korg vessel bristles with weaponry, and a good deal of those guns are pointed straight at the Cloud Fist.

Byron’s voice crackles over the open com channel. We need a few more minutes, sir.

We don’t have a few more minutes, Ensign, the captain replies.

Sorry sir, they knew just where to hit us.

Of course, they would. The Korg designed this ship. They know every detail of it.

A flash from the battleship sends a gleaming bolt of energy toward the Cloud Fist. Hit again, the ship rocks. A large chunk of the ceiling drops, crashing to the floor and crushing one of the navigation stations. Lance Reynolds, the navigator, had given me his piece of pie yesterday at lunch. Now his body lies ten feet away, a metal beam jutting from his chest. His lifeless eyes are open and staring straight at me.

My chest tightens, but I have to force my gaze away from the grisly scene.

The center vid screen suddenly goes black.

Maintenance, the captain shouts.

The display flickers back on, but the scene is vastly different. A man in a Korg commander’s uniform stares out from it. The Korg must have tapped into the Cloud Fist’s communications system.

Destiny ship, the man said, you are at my mercy. Surrender one hundred cryos and you can go free. Keep resisting and we will destroy you.

One hundred cryos. One hundred people who went into cryogenic sleep as free citizens on Earth will wake up as slaves of the Korg Empire if we make this deal, but there seems to be no other option.

Briefly, I wonder who the captain will choose, how he’ll choose, but deep down I know. There’s no way he’ll part with any of the military personnel. It’ll be farmers, shopkeepers, non-essentials. It’ll be my family and friends. The people I’ve been paying years of my life to bring to safety. The last in to fill the cryo-hold are always the first out if something goes wrong.

It’s part of the deal each made.

The Korg are slavers, abducting people to use as forced labor on their big industrial planets. The people in the Cloud Fist’s hold, being cryoed, are easy targets. Frozen people don’t struggle—don’t fight back.

The bridge’s entry door sizzles, then explodes inward. Korg commandos in power-armor march victoriously onto the bridge and level their heavy gauz rifles on the captain and crew members.

Teeth gritted, Captain Pulsion gives the order to release the cryo pods.

Something inside me dies as I watch the Korg shuttle make the journey between vessels. I don’t ask, but I know. Somewhere in that shuttle are my mother and father, Ben, Saygray, and the others.

Will I ever see them again?

I understand. The good of the mission. Sacrifice the few for the many. Maybe we are lucky they only demanded one hundred people. They could be returning from a slave run on another planet and only have that much room left in their hold.

Captain Pulsion is doing what he has to do to save the lives of everyone left on the ship. Everybody knew the risks when they signed on for the flight. One hundred people given up to save over thirty thousand.

It seems right, prudent...but the people being sacrificed are my friends and family.

And that hurts.

But I push my feelings deep inside and don’t let anything show. Others here are probably losing family and friends too.

Chapter 2

Fifteen hours of frantic work follow, to stabilize systems, begin the repairs on the Cloud Fist, and get the vessel back on course. The hull breach is patched, damaged areas of the ship are either repaired or sealed off, and the dead are sent to the Organ Recovery Center for recycling. The injured receive replacement body parts from the dead.

I shiver at the thought of looking into Lance Reynold’s eyes in someone else’s face.

By the time I’m released from duty to my quarters, I’m thoroughly exhausted, both physically and mentally. But as I lay in bed, I can’t find sleep. The dream of a fresh start on a new world, good rich earth to tend, my family and friends working hard by my side to create something new, something right...that dream is dead.

There hadn’t been any time to check the listing, but I know in my heart that at least some of my family or friends had been given to the Korg.

Was there something I could have done to save them?

My thoughts are jumbled as I drift off to sleep.

So cold. I’m coming out of cryo-sleep and looking forward to seeing my family and friends. But the first face I see is that Korg commander—his expression so cruel, so evil.

It’s only a dream, I know it. I’ve never been placed in cryo. Still, I wake screaming. Thankfully, my small cabin is secluded from the other living compartments. Hopefully, nobody heard me.

Dragging myself out of bed, I head to the shower. Clean water is at a premium now, there was a leak in one of our primary tanks, so my shower is necessarily short and cold, but it helps.

A bit.

I make my way down to the cafeteria to see what’s available. The food supply wasn’t touched in the attack. At least there will be plenty to eat. I take some warm cereal, toasted cana bread, and a few strips of smoky protienoid. The cooks are doing what they can to bolster the flagging spirits of the crew.

I sit at an empty table, and almost instantly I’m joined by Byron Levine.

I know Byron from before, from Ipswich, my old town, back when we both lived there. I think he’s about twenty years older than me. Dad told me Byron made a name for himself as the town tinker before he found the money to go off to engineering school.

They posted the list, he says as he sits down directly across from me.

I don’t want to know, but I have to ask.

All of them? There were eighteen people from Ipswich that I know in cryo, including my family.

All of them, he answers. Everyone from Ipswich except you and me.

I figured, but it still hits me like a punch to the gut.

We spend the rest of the meal in silence. When I’m done eating, I stand.

As I walk past him, Byron reaches up to gently grasp my upper arm. You need something, you let me know, he says.

We’re all that’s left of Ipswich.

Thanks, I say. See ya.

I’m heading to the bridge before my head even thinks about it. There’s no schedule now. Too much to do. Just work till you drop, then get back up when you can and keep going for as long as you can. We’re all going through the motions without any enthusiasm.

I spend the next eighteen hours running errands for Captain Pulsion, bringing food up to the bridge for overworked station personnel, moving twisted metal and melted plastics from the damaged areas to the Recycling Center, and assisting Medical in tending some of the less seriously wounded. The search is on now in earnest to find a habitable planet.

Our encounter has shown us that even four years of hyper-lightspeed travel is not enough space to get beyond the Korg’s sphere of influence.

We thought this sector was empty, but they found us here, and they could come back. We can’t match the Korg in space, but on the ground, once dug in, we’d stand a better chance.

Every so often I look up, above the science center, at the bold lettering on the wall. Destiny: Cloud Fist. Once it held such hope, such promise.

Yesterday the Korg took that hope and promise away.

For now, at least, it’s all about survival. Our fuel is running low. A world must be found soon. Our time is running out.

Chapter 3

"T oday you