Beyond the Shroud of the Universe (39 page)
Read Beyond the Shroud of the Universe Online
Authors: Chris Kennedy
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Alien Invasion, #Colonization, #Exploration, #First Contact, #Galactic Empire, #Military, #Space Marine, #Space Opera, #Space Fleet, #Space Exploration
Space Fighter Squadron-1
CO Lieutenant Commander Shawn ‘Calvin’ Hobbs
XO Lieutenant Commander Sarah ‘Lights’ Brighton
Pilot Lieutenant Carl ‘Guns’ Simpson
Pilot Lieutenant Kenyon ‘Bucket’ Salo
Pilot Lieutenant Samuel ‘Sammy’ Jakande
Pilot Lieutenant Hans ‘Schnitzel’ Hohenstaufen
Pilot Lieutenant ‘Tex’ Teksssellisssiniss
Pilot Lieutenant Jim ‘Sweets’ Sweeny
Pilot Lieutenant Jerry ‘Brick’ Johnson
Pilot Lieutenant Jiang ‘Tooth’ Fang
Pilot Lieutenant Simon ‘Straw’ Berry
Pilot Lieutenant Pablo ‘Bob’ Acosta
Pilot Lieutenant Jeff ‘Canuck’ Canada
Pilot Lieutenant Tatyana ‘Khan’ Khanilov
Pilot Lieutenant James ‘Speedy’ Swift
Pilot Lieutenant Denise ‘Frenchie’ Michel
Pilot Lieutenant Miguel ‘Ghost’ Carvalho
Pilot Lieutenant Steve ‘Heartbreak’ Ehrhardt
Pilot Lieutenant Phil ‘Oscar’ Meyer
NFO Lieutenant Tobias ‘Toby’ Eppler
NFO Lieutenant Neil ‘Trouble’ Watson
NFO Lieutenant James Alfred ‘Jamming’ Miles
NFO Lieutenant Dan ‘K-Mart’ Knaus
NFO Lieutenant ‘Olly’ Ollisssellissess
NFO Lieutenant Faith ‘Bore’ Ibori
NFO Lieutenant Erika ‘Jones’ Smith
NFO Lieutenant Jim “Ozzy” Osbourne
NFO Lieutenant Sasaki ‘Supidi’ Akio
NFO Lieutenant Gwon ‘Happy’ Min-jun
NFO Lieutenant Brian ‘Sherri’ Bouchez
NFO Lieutenant John ‘Trudy’ Douglass
NFO Lieutenant Thomas ‘Mays’ Yilmaz
NFO Lieutenant Poon ‘Harpoon’ Yee
NFO Lieutenant Ali Ahmed ‘Sandy’ Al-Amri
NFO Lieutenant Reyne ‘Rafe’ Rafaeli
NFO Lieutenant Aharsi ‘Swammi’ Goswami
The following is an
Excerpt from Book 3 of the Codex Regius
:
The Dark Star War
___________________
Chris Kennedy
Available from Chris Kennedy Publishing
Winter 2016
eBook, Paperback and Audio
“The enemy approaches,” Sal said, pushing himself back from the lip.
Calvin let the lizard slide past him and took his place in the narrow opening of the cave mouth. He slid forward until he could look down on the procession below. The creatures looked like the centaur-like beings you’d get if you crossed a longhorn steer with a four-armed man and then added on an extra pair of eyes on antennas. They were creatures out of his nightmares.
Shaitans.
They herded along three of Sal’s Ssselipsssiss countrymen with some sort of electric prod, laughing to themselves as they used it on the helpless lizards.
He pushed himself backward before one of the Shaitans could look up and see him.
“Yeah, that’s our enemy too,” he whispered. “Those are Shaitans, and it looks like they have captured three of your people. We’ve got to find a way to free them.”
“They are as good as dead,” Sal said, “just like the rest of this planet. It is more important to find a way off this planet and take word back to my people.”
“What are they going to do with the information?” Calvin asked. “Just knowing the name of the race fighting you isn’t going to help defeat them.”
Sal hissed, his annoyance evident.
“It doesn’t matter whether you like it or not,” Calvin said; “it’s the truth. We have the same problem. We know
who
we’re fighting, but we don’t know where their home planet is, or anything else about them. All we know is they have at least a limited mastery over time because they use it as a weapon. If they can do other things with it…more powerful things…then we are well and truly screwed.”
“My race is already, as you say, ‘screwed,’” Sal replied. “They have taken most of our planets, including my world and our capital planet. If we don’t find a way to stop them, and soon, we will be annihilated.”
Having fought them before, Calvin wasn’t sure the loss of the Ssselipsssiss race was something the galaxy would mourn, but he shrugged internally. Better the enemy you know than the one you don’t.
“If nothing else,” Calvin said, “at least we now know we’re fighting a common enemy. If we can put pressure on them in another place, maybe that will help your race at least hold on to what you still have. To do that, though, we have to get the word back to my people.”
“Truth,” Sal agreed. “How do you suggest we do that?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Calvin. “Do you think your people will come looking for you?”
“No,” Sal replied, with another hiss. “They are barely able to hold on the defensive. They will not send an offensive expedition to look for us. What about your people?”
“We may be even worse off than you,” Calvin replied. “We just lost our only super dreadnought fighting the Shaitans and one of their allies. We also lost two of our battleships. Unless we’ve built a lot more while I was gone, that only leaves us with a cruiser and a couple of battleships.”
“That’s all?” Sal asked. “You are even worse allies than I thought. I knew allying with you was a mistake. We should have just fallen back on your planets and taken them as ours.”
“You would turn your back on our agreement?” That quickly?”
“If it meant my race had a little longer to live and find a solution to the Shaitan menace? Yes, I would. Faster than I could kill you.”
“Well, happily for Terra, then, you’re marooned here with me, and that knowledge won’t make it back to your people if we don’t get off this planet.”
Sal hissed again.
“You know, you hiss a lot,” Calvin noted.
“We do that to show anger or frustration.”
“We do something we call sighing,” Calvin said. “I’m told I do that a lot too. If nothing else, at least we have that in common.” He held out a hand to the Ssselipsssiss. “Truce. At least until we make it back.”
Sal looked at his hand for a few seconds, causing Calvin to wonder if he would take it or bite it. As the alien had a mouthful of extremely sharp teeth, Calvin hoped for the former.
“Truce,” Sal said finally. “At least until we get back.”
“Fair enough. Now let’s go see if we can find a way off this rock.”
* * * * *
A bestselling Science Fiction/Fantasy author and speaker, Chris Kennedy is a former school principal and naval aviator with over 3,000 hours flying attack and reconnaissance aircraft. Chris is also a member of the SFWA and the SCBWI.
Chris' full-length novels on Amazon include the "Occupied Seattle" military fiction duology, the "Theogony" and "Codex Regius" science fiction trilogies and the "War for Dominance" fantasy trilogy. Chris is also the author of the #1 Amazon self-help book, "Self-Publishing for Profit: How to Get Your Book Out of Your Head and Into the Stores."
“
Red Tide: The Chinese Invasion of Seattle
” – Available Now
“
Occupied Seattle
” – Available Now
“
Janissaries: Book One of The Theogony
” – Available Now
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When the Gods Aren’t Gods: Book Two of The Theogony
” – Available Now
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Terra Stands Alone: Book Three of The Theogony
” – Available Now
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The Search for Gram: Book One of the Codex Regius
” – Available Now
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Can’t Look Back: Book One of the War for Dominance
” – Available Now
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Self-Publishing for Profit
” – Available Now
“Beyond the Shroud of the Universe: Book Five of The Theogony” – Available Now
* * * * *
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The following is an
Excerpt from Book 1 of The Scrapyard Ship Series
:
Scrapyard Ship
___________________
Mark Wayne McGinnis
Available Now from Avenstar Productions in
eBook, Paperback and Audio Book
Excerpt from “Scrapyard Ship:”
Christ, he’d forgotten how hot San Bernardino got this time of year. Even without twenty or more windshields focused in his general direction, it would still be blistering. Jason looked out at a virtual sea of broken automobiles—acres and acres of chrome, plastic, and rusted steel. Lifeless headlights peered back at him. It was strange how the abandoned cars now seemed to be waiting for something. He wiped sweat from his stubbled chin. He needed a shave; he also needed a haircut. But why bother? Jason balanced his chair back on two legs and propped his feet up on the nearby table his Grandfather Gus had fashioned out of a welded stack of F-150 rims. It felt strange to be sitting on the porch Gus built by hand some twenty-odd years earlier. The property had been in his family for three generations, but Lord knows, Jason hadn’t expected to be back here again.
He reached for the last lukewarm bottle of beer from a now empty six-pack carton sitting at his feet—do they even make this brand anymore? He looked down at the water-stained cardboard with its big Blue Ribbon logo, now faded more into grey than blue… a telltale sign that Gus’ refrigerator’s contents had sat undisturbed for a long time.
Jason’s father, Admiral Perry Reynolds, disappeared fifteen years earlier. Grandpa Gus had taken up the parental reins—assuming both father and mother roles to Jason and his older brother, Brian. Conflicting stories about the admiral’s disappearance spanned from him being killed by a crazed interstate trucker, to speculation that he had run off with a girlfriend, someone named Lilly.
When old Gus died, the property was on a fast track toward foreclosure. Jason stepped in at the last moment to pay the necessary back taxes. As Jason looked out at the yard, he let out a long slow breath.
My own little piece of Eden
, he thought. Which was true. Because right now, he had nowhere else to go.
He noticed the black monitoring device snugly secured around his left ankle.
It wasn’t always like this
, he thought. He was both husband and father and, like his own father, a U.S. Navy officer. He had reached the place where his life had seemed, well… fairly settled, and for the most part he was content. With that said, commanding a naval vessel was often arduous and required a high-degree of dedication. Something Jason’s ex-wife complained about on a regular basis. But naval life fit him like a glove. His personality was well suited for weeks, even months at sea. Staring out at the hundreds, if not thousands, of scrapped vehicles, Jason was coming to terms with the bleak fact that his own military career was probably ending, along with his pension and the chance to reestablish family connections.
The last remaining rays of the sun bounced off an old Chevy Bel Aire’s bumper. Jason took a final swig of beer. He toasted the setting sun with his now empty bottle. “Here’s to house arrest, day two!” He collected the empty beer bottles and headed back into the house.
The kitchen window, along with the porch and whole rear of Gus’ house, enjoyed the same vista of the Central Valley Scrapyard. Jason hadn’t always thought of the property merely as a scrapyard. As a kid it was more like a magical playground. A place where he’d spent countless hours investigating and discovering what their modern-day-waste pile could conjure up. Summer mornings were especially filled with new and exciting adventures. Looking back at his youth, Jason’s embarrassment about where he lived occurred later, when he was well into his teens. That’s when rival school kids and buddies alike started teasing him, and girls…well, they wanted nothing to do with a boy from the neighborhood scrapyard. About that time, Jason stopped telling people where he lived. Jason chugged the last drops from his beer, set it down and walked into the house.
He pulled out his cellphone. Three bars. It was only after trial and error, running from room to room, that he’d discovered the kitchen was the golden place to make and receive calls. He dialed and by the third ring, Mollie answered.
“Dad?”
“Hey Kiddo, what are you up to?” Jason asked with enthusiasm.
“Just studying… well, MTV and studying. I got a Social Science test in the morning, and I can’t seem to concentrate. Last day of school—half day tomorrow!”
“Why don’t you turn off the TV? Maybe that will help.”
“No, that only makes it worse. I need background noise. Maybe I’ll put on a movie,” she said, thinking out loud.
Mollie was a straight-A student, which he never was, and so any advice from him would certainly be wasted. He changed the subject. “So what else is going on? Did you make up with your mother yet? You still grounded?”
Mollie paused. Then annunciating each and every word separately, she said: “Don’t–get-me-started, Dad, I’m-never–talking-to-that-woman-again!”
Jason barely held back laughing into the phone, just barely. At that moment he realized how much he’d missed the banter, the everyday problems, all the things that came with family. A lifestyle he no longer was a part of. “Well, don’t be too hard on her,” he said, with more conviction than he actually felt. “You’ll get plenty of space away from each other this summer.”
Beep. “Oops, I think I have a call waiting. You want to hold on, Dad?” But Jason could hear the call to greener pastures in her voice.
“No-no, sweetie, I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to our spending some time together. Get that studying done, OK? I love you.”
“Can’t wait—and I love you too, Dad… bye-bye.” She clicked off. Jason stood there, hovering over his grandfather’s battered old sink for a long while—hanging onto the hollow silence of a disconnected line.
* * *
A slow, heavy scraping sound woke Jason up in the middle of the night. He’d taken to sleeping on the couch in the family room, which was situated directly off the kitchen.
He squinted into the near total darkness, just barely able to make out the soft blue glow of the digital clock on the microwave: 3:23AM. Noises were common here—stray dogs running through the yard, cats on the hunt, and rodents scampering around. Most of those animals made their way into the yard at some point in time. Even after all these years, Jason still knew what sounds were what: the gentle scraping of a hubcap against chain-link fencing, or something munching on the last vestiges of upholstery.
But this was a different kind of sound. There was an intelligence associated with it, like a pattern of noises joined together—something that required conscious thought. Jason sat up and listened, straining to hear anything abnormal. A minute passed without another sound. It must have just been a critter, he decided. Yawning, he started to lie back down… Hummmm, Chickink, Hummmm. It was coming from outside, somewhere out back. He went to the window and peeked out through the mini-blinds. He surveyed the property—a collection of dark geometric shapes, dimly lit by low-voltage security lights, which casted long, distorted shadows into the near-darkness. Jason could hear shuffling sounds, like feet moving.
It was in the tool shed. Jason needed a weapon. He remembered Gus always kept an old Louisville Slugger within easy reach of the back door. Gus was never big on firearms around the house, not since Brian, Jason’s older brother, was killed in a friendly-fire incident in Iraq. And there it was, right where Gus had left it, standing sentry by the sliding glass door. Jason snatched up the bat, slid open the door and tiptoed out onto the porch. The security lights didn’t quite reach the back of the house, so he had some semblance of stealth. He only wished he’d pulled on a pair of pants—it was hard to play tough-guy when you’re lurking outside in your boxers.
The shed, a patchwork of corrugated steel sheets and old pieces of plywood, was located about thirty yards behind the house. Like the hub of a big wagon wheel, multiple concrete pathways connected the shed to the rest of the scrapyard. Crouching down and trying to avoid the lights, Jason headed off in the direction of the strange noises. “Shit!” He swore as the soles of his bare feet crunched across a patch of broken headlight glass.
When he reached the back of the shed, he moved around to its side where there was a small blocked-off window and the shed’s only door. The noises were louder here—something electric, a buzzing sound.
From under the door a bright band of light pierced the darkness. With the bat raised in one hand, he slowly reached out to open the door with the other, but his hand never made it to the doorknob. The door flew outward and smacked Jason square in the face—sending him sprawling to the ground—flat on his back. In a quick blur someone streaked past, off and running. “Damn!” His cheek throbbed.
Jason knew the smartest thing to do would be to just let him go. But with the kind of year he’d just had, nobody was sneaking onto his property, knocking him flat on his ass, and then dashing off freely into the night. Frustrated, Jason kicked out at the metal door—a loud clang reverberated into the night. He collected his wits and got back to his feet. Spinning around he tried to determine which direction to go. Then he heard distant running, heading away—going deeper into the scrapyard. Jason ran off in that general direction. He quickly closed the gap.
“Stop!” he yelled, to no effect. Each side of the pathway was a blur of rusted metal—but now only five car lengths separated them. Squinting down the dimly-lit path, Jason noticed that whoever the guy was, his head barely reached above the level of a car hood.
He was wearing a blue LA Dodger’s baseball cap and he moved surprisingly quick for a little guy. He looked to be tiring though. “I can do this all night,” Jason hollered after him. The little trespasser darted from one side of the pathway to the other, his small head turning this way and that—looking for an escape route between the mountains of wheel rims, tall columns of tires, and three- and four-stacked-high car chassis.
Good luck, dude
, Jason thought to himself.
This yard is packed tight
. If nothing else, Old Gus had been organized—everything, every piece of scrap metal had its own specific allotted slice of real estate. No wasted space.
Jason could see the little guy was just about spent. His short arms flailed spastically up and down. Truth was, Jason was losing steam himself. They were quickly approaching the far end of the property and Jason was almost within reach. Jason made one more extended stride and, arms outstretched, dove for the little man.
Mid-air, his ankle bracelet started to vibrate, and then a “beep-beep-beep” sound followed.
What the hell is that?”
Jason’s fingertips had only grazed the man’s shoes before he ran off into the night. Jason’s bare legs hit the ground first, then his elbows, then his hands.
Sprawled on the cement, he looked down and saw the LED on his ankle monitor was flashing red, letting him know he was past the specified GPS limits of his confinement. The police had made it perfectly clear: “That device goes active—you’re going to jail. Don’t fuck with us on this, you understand?” Jason quickly got to his feet and ran back towards the house.
Damn!
Nervously he looked towards San Bernardino in the distance, and the soft glow from the city’s lights in the sky. Jason wondered if a cruiser had already been dispatched.
And there go any hopes of seeing Mollie again. Crap!
Halfway back to the house, the LED stopped flashing red and turned to green. Jason bent over, hands on his knees, and let out a long breath. He just might have caught a break. He turned and looked back down the pathway one more time. The short hoodlum was definitely gone—
well good riddance
. Jason hobbled back toward the house, following the trail of his own bloody footprints.
He made a quick detour to the shed to see what had attracted the odd visitor. The door was still wide open. Insects frantically darted around a 60-watt light fixture, its long cord swaying from the ceiling. Like walking into a time warp. Jason wondered when the last time was that he’d been in here? Five years, ten? He had spent much of his childhood in this shed, watching his grandfather tinker with old carburetors, starter solenoids, alternators, water pumps... but now the workbench held a different kind of machinery. Futuristic things Jason had never seen before. Things machined to tolerances far exceeding anything required by the auto industry. There were three separate cylindrically- shaped metallic components, each lying side by side atop the bench. Some kind of fiber-optic cable connected them together. All three components had a similar glowing blue light, pulsating behind a curved glass panel.
He bent over the bench, his face mere inches from the devices, his brow raised. He noticed several other toaster-sized pieces of equipment, similar to oscilloscopes, but much more advanced. These were lined up on the back of the bench, connected to the other glowing devices. He felt a slight vibration through the bench top. He shook his head and stood back. Probably best to leave everything
as is
. Jason found an old padlock and its key buried in one of the workbench drawers. He turned out the light and locked up the shed. Until he knew what those things were, he didn’t want anyone going near the place.
* * * * *