Captains Malicious (The Liberation Series Book 1) Read online

  Captains Malicious

  Book 1

  of

  The Liberation Series

  by

  T.R. Harris & George Wier

  Copyright © 2015 by T.R. Harris & George Wier

  Published by

  Flagstone Books

  Austin, Texas

  CAPTAINS MALICIOUS

  Book 1 of the Liberation Series

  First eBook Edition

  April 2015

  ISBN13: 978-0-9913465-6-1

  Cover Design by Elizabeth Mackey

  All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, excepting brief quotes written in connection with reviews written specifically for a magazine or newspaper.

  Books by T.R. Harris

  The Human Chronicles Saga:

  Book 1: The Fringe Worlds

  Book 2: Alien Assassin

  Book 3: The War of Pawns

  Book 4: The Tactics of Revenge

  Book 5: The Legend of Earth

  Book 6: Cain’s Crusaders

  Book 7: The Apex Predator

  Book 8: A Galaxy to Conquer

  Book 9: The Masters of War

  Book 10: Prelude to War

  Agent to the Stars:

  Book 1: The Enclaves of Sylox

  Visit the author’s website at: bytrharris.com

  Books by George Wier

  The Bill Travis Mysteries:

  The Last Call

  Capitol Offense

  Longnecks & Twisted Hearts

  The Devil to Pay

  Death on the Pedernales

  Slow Falling

  Caddo Cold

  Arrowmoon

  After the Fire

  Ghost of the Karankawa

  Other mysteries:

  Murder In Elysium

  Collaborations:

  Long Fall From Heaven (with Milton T. Burton)

  1889: Journey to the Moon (with Billy Kring)

  1899: Journey to Mars (with Billy Kring)

  The Vindicators (with Robert A. Taylor)

  Anthologies:

  ’14: A Texanthology

  Visit the Author’s website at: georgewier.com

  If you would like to be included on the master email list to receive updates and announcements regarding the series, including release notices of upcoming books, purchase specials and more, please fill out the Subscribe form below:

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  Captains Malicious

  Contents

  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

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  “Spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard.”

  —A. Bertram Chandler

  1

  “CAPTAIN, I don’t like this,” said Commander Javon Steele as he hunched over the proximity screen, shielding it with his body from the glare of the lights on the bridge. “It sure looks like a six-master. I’ve heard rumors of one prowling around, and this could be her.”

  “And you don’t think we can take on a little six-master?” Captain Robert Kincaid asked with a smile. He remained seated in his command chair, knowing that joining his Executive Officer at the screen might be read as panic and negate the air of confidence he was trying to convey to his bridge crew. He could tell by their fidgeting and furtive glances that they were growing nervous knowing full well that if they could detect the other ship, then the alien warcraft could detect them as well. And if this was the rumored Vixxie DN-Z then trying to outrun her would be a waste of time. Their fate was sealed the moment the image on Steele’s screen resolved clear enough to show the gravity signature of the powerful starship, along with her six deadly dots of light.

  Steele left the proximity screen and went to where his captain sat, with legs crossed and appearing completely at ease. The tall, slender black man leaned in close so the others on the bridge couldn’t hear.

  “Robert, we cannot go up against a ship that big. I know it, you know it…and so do they,” he lifted his hand to indicate the remainder of the bridge crew.

  Kincaid kept a placid smile. “Your look of absolute dread isn’t helping things, Javon. The crew is scared enough already.”

  “This is serious, Captain,” Steele said, growing frustrated. “And by the way, you ain’t foolin’ nobody. Everyone knows we’re in some deep rhino dung when you start wearing that goofy grin. They’d feel better if you were the irascible, top-deck-dictator you normally are.”

  “Dictator! Dammit, Javon, I’m a captain, not a dictator.”

  “Six of one….”

  Kincaid took a deep breath and let the smile fade away. Shedding his fake countenance made him feel better since it was so out of character for him to mask his feelings just for the sake of his mostly-rookie crew. And his XO was right, it did betray the seriousness of the threat they faced.

  There were a total of twenty-two men and women aboard the Malicious, with eight on the bridge, including himself and Steele. Since going to General Quarters, the tension within the ship had notched up palpably. The remainder of his crew were either nervously sweating it out at weapons batteries or sat huddled in passageways with damage control equipment at the ready—just in case. The news of the possible six-master was no doubt spreading rapidly.

  Robert narrowed his focus on the forward viewport. The enemy ship was out there still light-years away, yet it represented the gravest threat his crew had ever faced—and everyone knew it. It was now time for some serious captaining. After all, one didn’t sit in this chair because you knew how to coddle a crew. You sat here because you knew how to survive.

  “Helm, bring us to one-eight-zero degrees, down fifteen, all ahead flank.”

  Steele backed away from the command chair and gave his Captain a nod. “The Drift Current?” he asked.

  “Yep, the Drift Current. If this does turn out to be the Vixx’r forty-gun dreadnaught then she hasn’t been in the Reaches long enough to get a lay of the land. We just may catch her off-guard.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Steele said. “Seeing that we’re all going to die otherwise.”

  “Have faith, Number Two. Besides, they’re going up against the Malicious. They may be aliens, but they can still shit bricks, and I’m sure that’s what they’re doing right about now.”

  “Target tacking to starboard, sir,” Lt. Sean Sinclair reported from tactical. “They’re coming after us, Captain.”

  Kincaid noticed the sudden attitude shift on the part of the bridge crew—the abrupt passage from uncertainty to a resolve to carry on. This was what these people had trained for—even if hastily and mainly on-the-job. Yet already his young crew had four successful raids under their belts, and with each they’d gained proficiency, experience, and most of all, courage. Of course, none of their other prey thus far had been a 40-gun six-master.

  From pollywogs to shellbacks in such a short time, Kincaid thought. I’m proud of you people.

  Robert Kincaid shook his head as the series of strange terms came to mind. He had no idea where they originated, just their context as they referred to a time long ag
o and on a far-distant planet called Earth. He often wondered what life was like back then, in the days of real seafaring pirates, when all a man had was the deck beneath his feet and the wind in his sails? He’d read it was glorious.

  Many of the terms and traditions from those ancient nautical times were still in use. Sure, the sails they now unfurled were space-bending neutron projectors, and the winds they chased were ribbons of dark matter that guided the creation of the unpredictable and often dangerous stellar warp-currents they sought to catch. Still, the experience had to be the same. And now, like then, the price of failure was death.

  Captain Robert Kincaid—formerly of the United Peoples of Earth, 9th Tactical Assault Group—was a seasoned veteran of space warfare and experienced enough to know the reality they faced. It was simple: They would either live today, or they would die. There was no in between. And yet there was still hope, a way for Robert to cheat destiny’s deadly stare.

  All he had to do was reach the Drift Current in time.

  *****

  TAKE a few hundred trillion tons of the rich soup of the interstellar medium, lace it with a jumble of strands of invisible dark matter the size of a planetary system, and then stretch it over three parsecs of space. What you’d end up with is a region of space called the Drift Current, an almost invisible, nebula-like pool of gravitational spider-silk, strings, ropes and cables. The masts of interstellar starships, with their neutron projectors and electromagnetic accumulators, are but teacups in the roaring maelstrom of swirling, stellar stew. Navigationally, the Current is a hazard for even the most-seasoned helmsman, and its expanding boundaries are carefully marked on star charts as close to actuality as possible in light of the ever-changing conditions.

  Captain Kincaid had witnessed what happened to ships caught in the Current. The closest analogy was watching a vessel dashed to pieces on a coral reef. The trick for him would be to lure the Vixx’r into the Current without diving Malicious into the morass as well. It wouldn’t be easy. Not one bit.

  “They’re still closing, sir. Weapons range in five minutes.”

  “Very good, Mister Sinclair, steady as she goes.”

  Robert pressed a button on the armrest of his command chair. “Attention crew of the Malicious. Target will be in range in five minutes, and even though she may outgun us two to one, it’s a pretty good bet she won’t be expecting what we can bring to bear, so we’ll have the element of surprise on our side. Cannon crew: Wait until we’ve made the turn before locking on target. Once we change course, we’ll only have one chance to deliver a salvo, so make it good. And there’s going to be some rough seas for a few minutes after we drop anchor, so factor that in before committing. Anchor crew: Stand ready to drop on my command. Everything must go smoothly; that’s an imperative. Four minutes everyone. Stay frosty. This is where the fun begins. Captain out.”

  Robert turned to Javon Steele. “Get down to forward steering and make sure the anchor crew gets it right. We can’t afford to be off by even a degree.”

  “Roger that. I’m on my way.” Steele ran from the bridge. It would take him forty seconds to reach the small compartment five decks below the bridge where a nervous anchor crew waited.

  “Picking up current anomalies, Captain,” the helmsman reported. “I’m having to fight her quite a bit.”

  “That’s the idea, Mister Devlin. Keep us in the channel the best you can, and get ready for a course change to zero-one-five, up twenty. Execute with anchor drop. On my order, not before.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Robert looked out through the forward viewport just as the stars began to change color, shifting more to the blue, while their single points of light began to stretch out. They were entering the edge of the Drift Current, and if the anchor wasn’t set precisely, they would be sucked all the way in, with deadly consequences.

  “Blast detected from the Vixxie ship, Captain!” Sinclair reported. “Tracking on target, contact in fifteen seconds.”

  “Crap,” Robert said. This is going to be close.

  “Captain?” the helmsman cried out.

  “I know. Five more seconds.”

  When Robert saw the surrounding starlight suddenly streak to port he pressed the intercom button. “Anchors away; prepare for heavy rolls! Helm, execute course change!”

  The ship suddenly shifted to starboard, sending the bridge crew surging against their restraints, inertial compensators pressed to the max. The rest of the crew should have been similarly strapped in by now—and if not, there were going be some serious injuries. The Malicious swung by on a course now one-hundred-eight degrees out from her original heading. The stars in the viewport became nothing more than streaks of white and blue lines across the field of view.

  Kincaid had a small tac monitor attached to his command chair and on it he could see a graphic representation of the Malicious as she followed an arcing course to starboard—just as the monstrous alien warship shot past them to port. Flashes of cannon fire erupted from the Vixx’r ship’s weapons deck, and for a moment his blood froze in his veins. He watched with relief as the plasma shells from the enemy vessel folded in upon themselves—an effect of the Current—revealing the alien’s inexperience with this region of space.

  “Cut the anchor!” Kincaid commanded. Commander Steele was a split second ahead of him, as the Malicious broke free from her radically-arcing course and shot away from the Drift Current at a ninety-degree angle.

  “Fire!” Kincaid shouted.

  From their new vantage point behind the Vixx’r dreadnaught, multiple clear targeting sights were presented to his hungry aft gun crews. Unlike the Vixx’r, his gunners were quite familiar with the odd effects the Current would play on their shots and had already compensated for them. Now Robert watched as the Vixx’r ship was bathed in small puff-balls of fire and light, a result of his crew’s dead-on accuracy.

  “Fire at will!” Kincaid yelled into the intercom, simultaneously—it turned out—with the first jolt of the ship as the main port cannon unleashed a deadly salvo of fire.

  Apart from the hellish onslaught from the guns of the Malicious, the unfathomable clash between regular and dark matter in this region of space also wrought its own brand of havoc upon the warp-sails of the alien starship. She lost all control and began to drift helplessly to starboard, drawn in by the invisible hand of the Current.

  Even more holes were blasted into her superstructure just below the main deck from the accurate aim of his gunners; however, Kincaid watched with interest as one of their plasma shells missed the side of the alien ship altogether. To his delight, the treacherous Drift Current plucked up the errant shot, and by a strand of dark matter, swept it back toward the aft mast, shearing it off completely. The giant, billowing sail broke apart and began to flutter off into space, appearing to be under the influence of some hidden breeze.

  “Sighting on target, sir; we’re really giving it to them now!” Sinclair turned in his seat.

  Kincaid’s smile—this time—was genuine. “Let me know when they can no longer return fire, Mr. Sinclair. I think I might want a souvenir from this battle.”

  “Aye, Captain.” His weapon’s officer swiveled back to his panel. “Readings indicate...plasma ignition onboard.” At that moment a brilliant sunburst lit up the bridge through the forward viewport. Hands lifted to cover sensitive eyes, even as the monitors polarized to block out the damaging light.

  “Damn…is she gone?”

  “No sir; that was her magazine. She’s...sir...she’s dead in the water.”

  “Cease fire!” Kincaid shouted, and watched as the salvos from his ship halved in number.

  “Cease fire, dammit!”

  Finally the deadly eruptions dropped to zero. Their blood is up, he thought. Years of Vixx’r occupation has made a simple command not nearly enough. By God, they hate them as much as I do.

  “Open a ship-wide channel, Mister Sinclair. I want to hear what’s going on below decks.”

  The sound of
cheering washed across the bridge.

  “Well done, people,” Robert said.

  “We did it, Cap’n!” an ecstatic voice called out, and he wondered who it was? He couldn’t help but smile.

  “You sure did, and you all deserve medals, if pirates gave out medals. Now secure from General Quarters. Set condition yellow. Damage control crews stow all gear. Gunners take inventory and then secure all armament.”

  Steele arrived back on the bridge a few minutes later, a big grin on his chocolate brown face. “I see now how spending your misplaced youth wandering around this part of space finally came in handy. Great job Captain.”