Starship Revenant (The Galactic Wars Book 3)

C
opyright
© 2016 by Tripp Ellis

All rights reserved. Worldwide.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents, except for incidental references to public figures, products, or services, are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental, and not intended to refer to any living person or to disparage any company’s products or services.

No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, uploaded, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter devised, without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

A
n inbound nuke
streaked across the star field. The LRADDS display lit up (Long Range Direction Distance & Speed). A brilliant red triangle zipped across the 3D display. In a few seconds, it would impact the hull of the
USS Revenant
—an
Avenger
class star destroyer.

It was under the command of Captain Edwin J. Dean. He was a crusty old bastard that had seen his fair share of combat. He had a stern face and stark white hair. He had a synthetic eye, and half his face was pocked and scarred from a shrapnel blast he had taken in the early days of his military career.

Dean was short tempered, and generally irritable—and who wouldn’t be, with all he’d been through? But his men loved him. He was hard, but fair. And the crew trusted him with their lives. If anybody could get them out of this situation, it was Captain Dean.

The history books are a little foggy about what happened next. Nobody really knows for sure. The Federation received a few garbled transmissions. They did their best to piece events together. But all it did was cause more speculation. There are a hundred different versions of the story. And each person who tells it seems to add their own embellishments. But the
Revenant
is the stuff of legends.

“Helm, starboard, full,” Dean commanded.

“Starboard full. Aye.”

“Fire control. Hit those bastards with the Mark 25s!”

“Aye, sir!”

The star field lit up with cannon fire from the
Revenant’s
massive turrets. Glowing tracers sprayed against the darkness of space. The staccato report of the guns rumbled through the ship.

The Mark 25 turret guns lined the port and starboard sides of the
Revenant
—three on each side. Another was mounted on the stern and one across the bow. Each turret contained three, 16 inch cannons. They were lethal pieces of equipment.

The super-sabot rounds had a titanium composite penetrating rod that was filled with an incendiary liquid gel core, S9, that when oxidized, burned at upwards of 4000 degrees. They were nasty little things that had been giving the Verge a run for their money.

The CIC was alive with activity. The crew frantically manned their stations. Klaxons blared. Displays flashed.

Dean watched as the cannon fire eviscerated the inbound nuke. The crew erupted with cheers. But Dean knew that more were coming. There was a Verge destroyer out there that had just launched a swarm of fighters. The Hornets would be strafing the
Revenant
within minutes.

Dean felt a quantum distortion ripple through the CIC. It made his stomach twist up in knots. The bulkheads warbled. He felt another wave. Then another. Then another one after that.

Four more Verge destroyers had jumped into the fray.

Dean could handle one enemy destroyer. But five?

No way.

The
Revenant
would be scrap metal tumbling through space before long. He needed to get the ship the hell out of there. But that was going to be a bit of a problem.

The
Revenant
was fresh out of the shipyard. She’d only been deployed for a month. Brand spanking new. She had a lot of bugs to work out. Glitches in the system. The slide-space drive seemed to be working randomly. No one had been able to track down the source of the issue. The IT guys blamed the engineering department, and the engineering department blamed the IT guys.

The
Avenger
class star destroyers had been rushed into production. They were going to change the course of the war. Crews were working around the clock to manufacture these warships. At the time, they were the pinnacle of modern space warfare. Heavy armor plated wrecking machines. Hunter killers. They were almost completely self-sustaining. They could venture out into deep space and stay there almost indefinitely.

Captain Dean was among the first to put an
Avenger
class destroyer through its paces in actual combat. Three of them had already been completed, with another 22 on order. The
USS Avenger
, the
USS Revenant
, and the
USS Scorpion
were all fully operational.

The LRADDS display lit up. An alarm sounded. Five inbound nukes streaked toward the
Revenant
from all directions.

“Sir, multiple inbound contacts!” the tactical officer yelled.

“Fire control!” Dean barked.

“I’m on it, sir.”

The Mark 25 cannons had an extremely effective auto-targeting system. They would scan and identify inbound targets and eliminate them. Still, shit happens. Targets can, and often do, elude destruction.

The turret guns took out most of the incoming nukes. But one of them slipped through. It slammed into the port side hull and detonated.

The blast rocked the
Revenant
. It was like an earthquake. Klaxons sounded. Many of the crew were knocked from their stations, crashing against the deck. Sparks flew from command consoles. Plumes of smoke billowed into the air.

Dean’s old body hit the deck. It seemed every time he fell, it was harder to get back up. He grabbed onto the command console and pulled himself to his feet. “Hit them with a
Widow-Maker!
”

“Aye, sir.”

Widow-Makers were the pinnacle of the
United Planetary Defense Force
arsenal—50 megaton nukes that were 3000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Two of them streaked from the
Revenant’s
launch tubes. Propellant spewed from their thrusters as they sliced through space. One of them slipped through the Verge defenses and impacted a destroyer. The blinding explosion lit up like a supernova. You could see it from all the way in the Antari sector.

The Verge destroyer was ripped to shreds. This was well before the Saarkturians had developed their smart armor—back when nukes actually had an effect on their warships. What wasn’t incinerated in the initial blast was reduced to glowing fragments of debris. Twisted bulkheads and mangled structural components littered the star field.

One ship was down. Four more to go. But that was four too many.

“Lieutenant Beck, plot a jump and get us out of here!” Dean commanded.

“Aye, sir. Where to, sir?”

“The Draconis sector.”

Beck punched in the coordinates, and a few moments later, he responded. “Ready when you are, sir.”

“On my mark, in three… two… one… mark!”

Beck activated the slide-space drive.

Nothing happened.

Dean had a sinking feeling in his stomach the moment he gave the command. He knew what kind of day he was having. He had that feeling when he woke up in the morning—it was going to be a shitty day. All day long. Something bad was going to happen. He just knew it. And Dean wasn’t a superstitious guy. But sometimes you just get that inexplicable feeling that your number is up. That your luck has run out. And you pray to whatever higher power you believe in that you’re wrong. It came as no surprise to Dean when the slide-space drive didn’t work properly.

“Engineering, Conn.” Dean yelled into a handset. “Give me a status update.”

“Conn, Engineering. Everything is working here. I can’t find a fault anywhere. The quantum array is working perfectly.”

“If it was working perfectly, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Fix it.” He slammed the handset down.

An alarm sounded. Dean knew what was triggering it without looking at the LRADDS display. More nukes, and a swarm of Verge Hornets, were attacking the ship. There must have been at least fifty of the fighters inbound.

The
Revenant’s
Mark 25s peppered the star field. But many of the nimble enemy fighters broke through the defenses. The rumble of weapons fire vibrated the ship. The Hornets pelted the
Revenant
with bullets and small tactical rockets. They were more of a nuisance than anything else. Sure, over time, they would cause a problem. But the Hornets weren’t what was causing sweat to bead on Captain Dean’s brow. It was the 12 red flashing triangles on the LRADDS display.

12 inbound nukes.

As tough as the armor plating was on the
Revenant
, it wouldn’t hold up to too many more direct impacts. The standard Verge armament was an array of 20 megaton thermonuclear weapons.

“Beck, keep trying to jump us out of here.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Fire control. Throw everything we’ve got at those nukes.”

“Aye, sir.”

Dean watched the red triangles draw closer. The Mark 25s took out 7 of the inbound nukes. Just before the other five impacted the
Revenant
, Dean felt a quantum distortion ripple through the CIC. Beck had activated the slide space drive.

But something went wrong.

It seemed as though time dilated. Everything slowed down and stretched out. Dean’s stomach turned, and he felt lightheaded. He was neither here nor there.

Usually a quantum distortion only lasts a few seconds. But this seemed to go on for hours. That’s what it felt like anyway. It could’ve been a millisecond in actual time. It was like a bad acid trip. The
Revenant
seemed to be melting through time and space, crossing dimensions, warping the very nature of reality. There was no telling if, when, or where they would materialize.

T
he minute
the
Skylark
lifted off the ground, they were in trouble. Enemy scans would surely pickup their movement. In a matter of moments, attack fighters would be on their tail.

Delta Vega was in ruins. Europa City smoldered as the
Skylark
rocketed toward the upper atmosphere. The craft shook. The massive Hughes & Kessler engines rumbled.

The
Skylark
was a
Raven
class SXR 959 heavily armored drop ship. It could hold 16 troops in the cargo area, plus a pilot and a gunner. It had 2, 30mm chain guns and had four weapons stations mounted on sub-wing pylons. It was typically armed with an array of
Exterminator
rockets. The craft was built with multiple redundant systems to improve combat survivability. The
Skylark
could take a tremendous amount of punishment and keep flying.

Slade felt the weightlessness of space as they left the atmosphere. Delta Vega was in shambles. Attacks on multiple cities had occurred simultaneously. It was clear that the enemy didn’t want to use nuclear weapons. They had preferred a conventional attack. Nuclear armageddon would render the planet uninhabitable for thousands of years. Clearly the Decluvians had designs on the natural resources.

The Saarkturians had made a deal with the devil. The Decluvians were going to oust those pesky humans from the
Holy Land
. But with the Saarkturian fleet in shambles, who was going to oust the Decluvians?

“Send a transmission to the Federation,” Slade said. “Let them know what’s going on.”

“Can’t,” Harding replied. “Transmissions are jammed.”

Several enemy carriers were in orbit around the planet. They had met with little resistance, and the drop ship was still unable to contact the
USS Ardent.
There was a layer of debris in a low planetary orbit. It was probably all that was left of the
Ardent
. Bits of metal pinged off the hull of the
Skylark
as they rocketed into space.

A proximity alert sounded. An enemy fighter was on their six. Gunfire blazed toward the Skylark. Tracers streaked past the ship. The pilot took evasive maneuvers, zigzagging across the star field. The aft turret of the
Skylark
took aim at the trailing enemy fighter. The gunner, Lieutenant Jack Roland, unleashed a flurry of 30mm fire.

He wore a special visor that allowed him to see 360° around the
Skylark
. The targeting system tracked his eye movements. The automated system would recognize and identify threats. All the gunner had to do was pull the trigger.

But the Decluvian fighter was nimble and evaded the onslaught. Shaking this scumbag wasn’t going to be easy. To make matters worse, the fighter launched a targeted missile. The rocket homed in on the
Skylark’s
thrusters.

Another proximity alert sounded.

The pilot, Lieutenant James Harding, deployed electronic countermeasures. Two ECMs ejected, mimicking the emissions signature of the
Skylark’s
thrusters. Harding pulled on the controls, veering the craft. The enemy rocket locked on to the ECMs. A few seconds later, the rockets exploded in a blinding fury. The blast shook the drop ship, and slammed Slade against the bulkhead.

Roland returned the gesture and fired an
Exterminator.
The rocket streaked toward the enemy fighter. But it didn’t get very far. The Decluvian craft blew it out of the star field.

The proximity alarm sounded again—two more incoming missiles blasted toward the
Skylark
. Harding deployed another round of ECMs. He yanked hard on the controls and veered starboard.

One of the rockets exploded in the chaff. The other clipped the port side thruster. The explosion tore the engine to shreds and sent the drop ship tumbling into space.

It was a miracle the hull wasn’t breached.

The
Skylark
was a sitting duck. Alarms were blaring. The control panel was blinking and flashing. It was pure mayhem. The enemy fighter circled around for another pass. Harding regained control and straightened out the vehicle. The
Skylark
hobbled along like a wounded animal.

“Is the slide-space drive still functional?” Slade yelled.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then what the hell are you waiting for?”

“The system hasn’t verified coordinates yet.”

“I don’t care. Just get us out of here.”

Harding grimaced. He didn’t have much of a choice. The enemy fighter was closing in. The
Skylark
would be scrap metal in a matter of moments. But an unverified slide-space jump could lead to the same end.

Harding mashed the button and activated the quantum drive. The tiny ship rippled and warbled as two incoming rockets plowed toward them. The
Skylark
vanished in the nick of time.

The slide-space jump was particularly unsteady. It was like sloshing about during a violent sea storm. Slade felt her body, and her mind, pushed and pulled and squeezed and mashed.

It was a short jump, lasting twenty minutes. The exit from slide-space felt like an abrupt jolt. At least she was still alive, Slade thought. She was in one piece. They weren’t stuck in quantum space. They had one functional engine. All things considered, it could be a lot worse.

“Where the hell are we?” Slade asked.

“Working on it, sir,” Harding said. A moment later, his eyes went wide. “Holy shit.”

“What is it?”

“Epsilon Centauri. It doesn’t seem possible. This ship isn’t capable of a jump that far.”

Slade grimaced. “That’s a thousand jumps away from the nearest colony.”

“That’s not the only problem,” Harding said.

Slade arched a curious eyebrow.

“That last jump overloaded the quantum field generator. We’re stuck out here.”

Slade’s face was grim.

The
Skylark
drifted through deep space. With one conventional thruster they wouldn’t be able to make it to the nearest habitable planet within their lifetime. With only a handful of MREs on board, and little water, it was a death sentence.