Prelude to War (The Human Chronicles Saga Book 10) Read online

  Prelude

  to

  War

  The Human Chronicles Saga

  Book #10

  an Adam Cain adventure

  by

  T.R. Harris

  Published by

  Copyright 2015 by T.R. Harris

  ISBN: 978-0-9913465-7-8

  All rights reserved, without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanically, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  Novels 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

  Jason King – Agent to the Stars Series

  Book 1 – The Enclaves of Sylox

  In collaboration with author George Wier

  Captains Malicious – Book One of the Liberation Series

  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

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Epilogue

  Adam Cain is an Alien with an Attitude.

  His adventures continue….

  Chapter 1

  “It certainly looks like a Juirean,” Ensign Jimmy Link said. “But if that’s the case, then someone’s breaking about a dozen conditions of the peace agreement.”

  Commander John Frost checked his nav screen again. “Well it ain’t us. We’re on the edge, but still solidly in Human Space.”

  “Power readings are strong, but we haven’t been scanned, which is unusual. I’m sure they can see us.”

  Commander Frost considered the size of his little destroyer before making his decision. He did have right on his side, and besides, there hadn’t been any reported clashes between Humans and Juireans in over three years. “Helm, set course zero-nine-five, ahead one-half. We have every right to investigate. In the meantime, send an encrypted message to Fleet Command with a record of the last two hours.”

  “Aye, sir. And weapons?”

  “Activate shields, but keep the weapons de-energized. We don’t want to make them nervous.”

  “Nervous…them? That’s a Class-Four Juirean battlecruiser. It would take more than the firepower of the Tarazi to make that thing nervous.”

  “Bring the ship to general quarters just in case, Mr. Link. Let’s go take a look.”

  ********

  The Orion Union Starship Tarazi closed on the huge alien spaceship as nonchalantly as a vessel could traveling at nineteen times the speed of light, before dumping out of the gravity well and approaching at a meager forty-eight thousand miles per hour. When within visual range, Frost cut the power and used maneuvering jets to close within a thousand miles of the twenty-deck warship. For half an hour, Petty Officer Second-Class Hanson had been attempting to hail the alien craft, with no luck. The signal was being absorbed and an automated confirmation returned, yet so far no live Juirean had responded.

  “Nothing, sir,” Ensign Link reported unnecessarily; the captain of the Tarazi was fully aware of the situation.

  “Yeah, she appears to be dead in the water. Mr. Link, take a boarding party over to our uninvited guests and take a look.”

  “I’ll be sure to knock first, sir. They may just be taking some kind of alien nap.”

  “Hell, I don’t even know if Juireans sleep.”

  “You ever seen one, sir?”

  “Not in person. That was before my time. Peace came before I joined.”

  “Same here, just pictures and videos.”

  “Well, do the honors, Ensign Link. Just don’t go start the Second Juirean War.”

  “Sir, they’re in our space. If anyone starts something, it’ll be them.”

  Frost could see conflicted emotions cross the face of the young officer. He was excited, as well as scared out of his shorts. This’ll be a good training exercise for him. Also give him something big to talk about back at the base.

  ********

  Fifteen minutes later, the Tarazi’s lone shuttlecraft was firmly affixed to the side of the looming spacecraft, looking like a baby remora attached to the skin of a great white. The comparison was accurate, too, even though at this point the shark appeared to be asleep.

  Hatches were lined up and the seals tested before Jimmy opened up on his side. Even then, the five-man away team was dressed in environment suits and armed with flash weapons. Ensign Link reached through the short gap between starships, and with a heavy crescent wrench banged on the hull of the alien vessel five times. Then he waited. The Humans had fairly detailed schematics of the layout of a Juirean Class-Four, so he knew this hatch was part of the replenishment and supply system for the ship. There was a large airlock on the other side, and then a series of storage holds lining a long corridor leading to the center spine of the vessel.

  For good measure, Link hammered on the hull one more time. Still nothing.

  “I’m opening the hatch,” he reported over his throat comm.

  “Monitoring,” Commander Frost replied.

  This is definitely weird, Frost thought. The huge alien warship had been silent as a tomb since being detected forty light-years within the boundary of Human Space, a vast region of the Milky Way known to Humans as the Orion-Cygnus arm. To the rest of the galaxy, this region was referred to as the Far Arm, and Frost’s tiny patrol ship was tasked with monitoring a small slice of it just on the Human side of the Barrier from the Fringe Worlds—the last outpost of Expansion-dominated space. Juirean ships were expressly forbidden from entering Human Space without permission, and those that did came mainly through the more established space lanes at the other side of the Arm. To find this vessel here meant only one thing: it was a spy ship, tasked with monitoring the activities of the Human space fleet.

  Frost was sure the Union also employed spy ships of their own within the New Expansion, even though Humans were allowed more freedom of access and movement within the bulk of the galaxy than Earth gave the aliens
. After two devastating attacks on their homeworld—one by the Juireans and another by the Klin—mankind wasn’t taking any more chances. Aliens were certainly welcome within Human Space, yet only after the proper clearance and inspections.

  So this Class-Four starship shouldn’t be here, and if Commander Frost detected even the slightest sign of hostility he would retreat and wait for backup. As it was, he knew at least a dozen much larger warships were ripping through space at that very moment in an attempt to get here as quickly as possible.

  “The hatch opened without a problem, Captain,” Link reported. “Lights just came on inside the airlock…probably automated. We’re moving inside. Gravity still active. Wow, this is neat! What are they, about three-quarters of Earth’s?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  “This is like training on Galicie Four.”

  “Concentrate, Mister Link.”

  “Yessir. We’re inside now. Closing the outer hatch and activating the airlock.”

  The area beyond the airlock was a large processing center for most of the hand-carried goods loaded through this access point. Larger items were brought in through the main landing bays. This scuttle could also be used to transfer personnel from ship-to-ship, and gain access to the exterior for maintenance and repair.

  “No one’s around, Captain. Lights are on, and there’s atmosphere and heat.”

  “Proceed with caution. A Class-Four has a normal complement of four hundred mane-heads. They have to be somewhere.”

  “Roger that. Moving into the outer corridor.”

  ********

  The fact that he was now safely aboard the enemy vessel allowed Ensign Link to relax—at least a little. He was more concerned now with how he’d react when coming face-to-face with a Juirean. He’d only been in the service a little over two years, and although the Union was full of alien species, running across a Juirean was very rare.

  Just then something caught his eye—a pool of brilliant red liquid on the deck, oozing from under one of the dozen or so doors leading to the small storage rooms lining the corridor.

  “Sir, are you seeing this? Is this what I think it is? Juirean blood is red, right?”

  “I believe so, but blood of any color leaking from under a closed door is never a good sign.”

  Link motioned for the other four men in his party to flank the door before triggering the electronic opener on the wall.

  What he found inside was not what he expected. Sure, there was blood everywhere, covering the deck and splashed violently across the walls, across stacked crates of ships’ stores, even the ceiling. Yet there were no bodies. Drag smudges were evident in the shallow lake of blood, but no dead aliens.

  “Leave the room and proceed to the main corridor,” Commander Frost ordered. “Stay alert.”

  “Yessir.”

  There was a pressure door at the end of the long passageway of the supply section and Ensign Link opened it to find the triple-wide spine corridor for this level of the ship. Even though he’d been expecting it, the sight of even more prodigious quantities of alien blood nearly made him puke. A literal lake of the thick liquid covered the deck. All starships had a system of grates built into their flooring as drainage for fire-suppressant chemicals, as well as for handholds during times of zero gravity. The Juirean ship was no different, and without these grates, Ensign Link believed the floor of the corridor would have been filled with an inch or so of alien blood.

  “Where are all the damn bodies?” he heard one of his men ask though his helmet comm.

  “Dunno,” he answered softly.

  “To the left, what’s that?” Commander Frost asked. The captain was tied into the helmet cams of the boarding party, so he was fully aware of what they were seeing.

  Link moved to the location Frost indicated. “It’s an MK, sir.” He picked up the handgun and checked the battery pack. “It’s full. It hasn’t been fired.”

  “And all the visuals of the exterior of the ship shows no signs of hostile fire, either.”

  “Could they have all killed themselves?” asked another member of the boarding party.

  “And then what? They all threw themselves out the airlock? I don’t think so,” said Jimmy Link, a little too sarcastically. He was growing more frightened by the second and was in no mood for stupid comments. “Sir, I’m seeing no signs of defensive fire at all. It’s pretty slippery in here, but we’re at an elevator that should take us to the command deck. Permission to proceed. We might find some records of what happened.”

  “Permission granted. I’m pretty sure you’re not going to find anyone on board—at least not alive.”

  “There were four hundred Juirean military aboard, Captain. That’s a mighty big force to overcome without even firing a shot. And then why take the bodies?”

  “Good question, Mister Link. Maybe they recorded the event. I would be surprised if they didn’t.”

  The elevator opened at a wide foyer outside the ship’s bridge. To the right would be the combat center, to the left the comm room. Behind the elevator were the berthing compartments of the senior officers, including the captain’s quarters. Straight ahead, a wide, open portal led to the command bridge.

  There were pools of blood and drag streaks everywhere, including some thin parallel lines that appeared to be made from wheels. Yet still no bodies. The five Humans entered the bridge.

  “Roberts, check comm for any logs. Winston, take tactical—see if they recorded any outside threats. I’ll take the command chair.”

  A moment later Petty Officer Roberts reported. “Sir, I have a whole series of tracks here, and right up to the present. The recorders are still active.”

  “Can you transfer the most recent recordings to the Tarazi?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Mister Link, you should see this.”

  Jimmy moved over to where Petty Officer Second-Class Winston Jones sat at the tactical/weapons console. He had a video playing on the monitor, a recording of another starship closing fast on the Juirean vessel. The computers aboard the Juirean ship processed raw data concerning size and structure of the approaching starship and converted it into a detailed animation, yet once the vessel was within visual range, the animation was replaced with real-time images.

  The foreign craft had literally popped into existence approximately a thousand miles from the Class-Four. Then the image on the screen began to waver, as what appeared to be pulses of bluish light escaped from the other spaceship. From that moment on there was no indication of the Juirean crew taking any actions whatsoever, either offensive or defensive. Weapons remained uncharged, comm links fell silent, and generators spun in standby mode—just as they had been before the other vessel appeared. The ship was alive, even if the crew didn’t share that same status.

  Within the recording, four small disk-shaped craft swiftly departed from the black ship and made a beeline for the Class-Four. No shields were energized and no weapons fired from either party.

  The image became static once the smaller ships latched onto the hull of the Juirean battlecruiser. “Fast forward,” Link ordered.

  The recording jumped ahead several times, until it came to a point where the disk-shaped craft were seen heading back to the mothership. The time lapse read one hour and two minutes, standard.

  “Roberts, any internal recordings?”

  “I’ve only found two, one outside the bridge and another in the generator room. They appear to be from permanent security monitors.”

  “Transfer to the main screen.”

  “I’ll try, sir. The controls are written in Juirean.”

  The main screen to the left of the exterior viewport came to life, and what Ensign Link and the others saw on the screen caused their blood to run cold.

  Dozens of Juireans appeared to be meandering around both the bridge and the generator room, listless and unfocused. The word zombies came to mind, and Jimmy Link felt a chill down his spine. Moments later, several huge figures dressed
in thick black-armored suits came into view. They each carried weapons with wide, short barrels, and as they advanced the weapons produced not a discharge of projectiles or plasma bolts, but the same pale blue light as had come from the main ship.

  Ignoring the zombie-like crew, the invaders went to control consoles and placed small reading devices on most of them. They waited patiently for the lights on the boxes to glow steadily before removing them. One of the other black-armored aliens then nodded to another, this one with a thin white stripe running across its armor diagonally from the left collar to the armpit.

  On the split screen, the bridge view showed the alien with the white stripe approach the ship’s captain—a green-maned Juirean Guard of massive stature. Even now the officer appeared passive, listless, and only slightly aware of his surroundings. The other alien leaned in and said something to him.

  “Wait—back that up,” Commander Frost yelled into his comm. “I didn’t catch what he said.”

  Petty Officer Jones rewound the recording. He then turned up the audio and zoomed in on the image of the black alien, his face obscured by the tinted faceplate of his helmet.

  “Are you the builder?” the alien asked.

  “Did you get that, sir?” Ensign Link asked.

  “It sounded like he asked if the Juirean was the builder—whatever that means.”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me too.”

  “Excuse me, sirs, but the Juirean is trying to answer,” said Jones, irritated by the talking of the two officers.

  The Juirean captain was indeed trying to answer, yet the effort wasn’t coming easily. He opened his mouth and nothing came out, blinked several times and then tried again.

  “It sounded like he said, What do you mean?” Link reported.