Space Cruiser Musashi: a space opera novel Read online

  SPACE CRUISER MUSASHI

  by Dean Chalmers

  Copyright 2016 Dean Chalmers

  Cover by www.bookcoverartistry.com

  psionicism, n 1. Common use. The science of causing wormhole formation at predisposed points in space/time via the will.

  2. Sci. The direction, control, or manipulation of the dimension of Human Consciousness by an individual mind(s).

  3. The use of any psionic ability such as telepathy, clairvoyance, coercion, or temporal displacement.

  Psionicist, n 1. One trained in psionicism.

  2. Rep. Noncombat military rank in Coreward Republic, equivalent to a Commander and granting specialized citizenship.

  - from The New Interstellar Unabridged Dictionary

  "Eighty years ago, the Valorian race made itself known to us, giving us the gift of psionicism and faster-than-light travel. And when they denied this gift to the cyborgs of the Corporate Systems, it escalated our economic conflicts into actual war. But not over psionicism! This war is about those Far Colonies which psionicism has allowed us to rediscover and claim. The Corporations hunger for their raw materials, undeveloped land, and potential laborers. And it is these same precious Colonies that we continue to ignore!We take all they have and we repay them with deprivation and Servitude ..."

  - Sen. Hela Shantil,in speech to the Senate,2996 C.S.D.

  Prologue

  Our destination: an asteroid field in the barren reaches commonly called Wasteland.

  A lone ship floats in the darkness, hiding amidst the tumbling rocks, the detritus of a solar system that failed to form.

  The ambush point is there.

  The ship itself, thirty meters long, wedge-shaped, crude ion propulsion and an ancient jump-drive, hull components perhaps centuries old. Scavenged, recombined, grafted. Crude and inelegant, an offense to God’s space that it occupies.

  Infidels.

  They have no idea how easy it is to sense their unclean minds. They cannot hide from the Unity.

  But their ship is small.

  Worth the harvest?

  The fruit is delivered unto us, and thus we shall gather it; even the low-hanging fruit, but not that which lay soiled upon the ground.

  It all serves a purpose in the plan of Heaven.

  Very well.

  Finding the point. Focusing…

  We are Valorian.

  By the will of God, space-time obeys us, and we travel at His will and in his service.

  Amen.

  #

  The surface of the asteroid on the main viewscreen was pretty to look at—Jan Dolan had to give it that. The big hunk of space rock was studded with giant ice crystals which glittered coldly in the light from distant stars.

  They were far from home, out in the nothingness of the Wasteland: a place of cosmic debris, dark matter, black holes and very little else. But their location was close to a jump-point for automated Coreward Republic freighters.

  That was why they were here. That was why the Spartacus was hiding behind the pretty asteroid.

  The cramped, shadowy control room of the ship was like the heart of an aging beast. Thick cables ran everywhere, and the controls themselves were a conglomeration of tech from different eras: modern Republic holo-touch screens next to banks of manual buttons, toggle switches, and digital displays.

  The Spartacus was a masterpiece of salvage: a hybrid, a testament to Colonial ingenuity and ambition.

  The ship would be no match against a fully armed Republican ship in a fight, of course. But all they had to worry about were robot drones. Or at least, she hoped that was the case.

  Balth paced behind her.

  Her husband, Balthazar Washington, was a towering man with a fearsome presence. And right now he was impatient, pacing restlessly, looking over the shoulders of his people.

  She turned to look up at her husband. He wore a sleeveless cotton t-shirt; his mahogany skin was stretched taut over his powerful, well-muscled arms. His face was boyish and handsome, though he’d tried to set it off with an evil little goatee. Of course, there were the long braids of his hair, studded with industrial steel fasteners down the lengths of them.

  Boyish looks or no, people were afraid of him, both at home and in the Republic… But to Dolan, he was her lover, protector, step-father of her seven-year-old son and father to her unborn child. He had a reputation as a badass, but his demeanor was usually very stoic, controlled.

  So it worried her to see him so visibly agitated.

  “What is it, Balth?” she asked.

  He sighed. “I just don’t like hunting in a ship this small.”

  “Ahem,” Albert Hawking said, clearing his throat theatrically.

  Dolan turned to look at the well-dressed dwarf in the seat beside her. Hawking was less than four-feet-tall, and a bit of a dandy by Colonial standards with his polished leather shoes and pressed cotton trousers. Today he wore a red satin waistcoat over a starched white shirt and, of course, his antique pocket watch with chain.

  His dark eyes glinted fiercely. His face, which was set in a bemused expression, seemed all the more ridiculous due to his muttonchop sideburns and well-oiled curled mustache.

  Hawking had explained his appearance once, saying that it came from some Old Earth fashion, but Dolan didn’t really care. Everyone just seemed to take it as Hawking’s style.

  “Never mind about size,” Hawking said. “Our girl here is a match for anything twice as big. This feisty little bulldog can take down any wolfhound that the Republicans decide to send at us.”

  Balth looked down at the little man, shook his head, and chuckled. “We should all be so confident,” he said.

  But Dolan knew both of them, and she knew that Hawking’s jovial nature and easy confidence did indeed have a tendency to inspire people. Even Balth.

  Hawking nodded to Balth and smiled. “Think like I do, dear Captain, and you’d be dictating surrender terms to the Republic even now.”

  Balth sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I’m just sick of stealing back our own damn food.”

  “Well,” Hawking said, “it’s a symbolic gesture, isn’t it? Unlawful taxation and seizure, so we seize it back from them.”

  Dolan shook her head and looked at Hawking.

  “Albert,” she said, “symbolic gestures are fine, but I’d just like to find, you know, something nice in one of these shipments to make it worth our while.”

  “Yeah,” said Bell, the tall albino gunner. “Yes, something nice would be… nice. I mean, not a haul of onions again, right?”

  The hold of the automated freighter which had been their last target had been filled to bursting with organically-grown sweet onions from the Colonies.

  Balth considered every successful raid on a Republic ship to be a victory. But, still…

  “Yeah,” Dolan told Bell, “there’s not that much you can do with onions, right? I mean, I think we have enough onion soup frozen in storage at home to feed the whole colony now for two years. If people could survive on onion soup alone for two years, anyway. I wouldn’t want to try it.”

  “It is a pity we don’t have access to the manifest,” Hawking said. The little man tented his fingers and squinted as if looking off dreamily into the distance. “I can just imagine a proper treasure for once. Gold, platinum, weapons, fine wines… Or perhaps a state-of-the-art immersive sim-pod, loaded up with a full range of erotic scenario files?”

  “Yeah,” Bell said, his pinkish eyes going wide. “Wow. You think we’d really find that?”

  “Not in a ship coming from our Colonies, moron,” Balth said.

  “Sorry captain,” Bell sighed. He fiddled with the colla
r of the drab green coveralls he wore. “It’s just fun to think about though. I mean, it’s something to get my mind off the worrying.”

  Dolan could understand this. She felt a twitching of anxiety in her own belly. Although that was perhaps just her six-month-old fetus being a bit ornery. Her unborn daughter had probably inherited Balth’s restless disposition…

  At any rate, she patted her stomach through her coveralls, to soothe both herself and the baby.

  “I think we’re all worried, Balth,” she said. “Too many ships and friends have just disappeared.”

  “Aye,” Hawking said. “How many this year? Three?”

  “No,” Dolan replied, “I think four.”

  “Don’t forget the Boudica,” Bell added.

  “Yeah,” Balth added, “don’t forget the Boudica. It’s been a month now; let’s be realistic. She’s not coming back.”

  Bell sighed. “Captain Chen… and Maureen, oh God, that hurts to think of her gone. And all the others, too. Damn Repubs.”

  Hawking stood and raised both of his hands. For a little man, he had quite a commanding presence when he wanted to.

  “Stop it, both of you,” he said. “Even automated convoys get lucky. But I’m sure luck’s all they’re—”

  “Not this time,” Balth said, interrupting him. “Luck ain't got nothing to do with it, and we’re ready for them.”

  Dolan felt a surge of pride at his words. Balth could be moody, abrasive with his people, sometimes seeming far from the ideal of a leader. But when he rose to the occasion, they all did believe in him. It made her proud to be bearing his child, and to have him as her son Jeremy’s guardian as well.

  There was a low tone from her console now, an insistent buzzing. Dolan’s heart leapt.

  This was the moment. If there was danger, they’d know shortly. But it was time to act, time to claim their prize.

  “Here it comes, boys,” she told the crew.

  Instantly, all of the chatter ceased. Each one focused on the console in front of them, managing controls with swift, well-practiced precision.

  Dolan’s eyes scanned over the ancient touchscreen on the console in front of her. Graphs and numbers appeared, the signal growing in intensity.

  “It sure looks like a Republic freighter from these readings,” Dolan told the others.

  “Can we see it on screen?” Balth asked.

  She nodded, and her fingers quickly ran over the touchscreen. The static feel of the haptic feedback was reassuring under her fingertips, as she focused the ship’s main screen on the area where the freighter should emerge.

  Space seemed distorted, shimmering, flickering…

  And then the Republic ship came into view.

  “Looks like the jump was successful,” she told them.

  Sometimes it did fail, as they knew. These automated freighters relied on pre-programmed routines to calculate jumps. The way that they shifted space was crude and prone to errors, unlike the newer ships of the Republic that used human Psionicists. The Spartacus herself had suffered a few mishaps now and again.

  But now, the Republic convoy had arrived.

  “Right on schedule,” Balth said.

  Dolan thought that she saw the trace of a smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

  “It’s a Dromedary-class transport,” she told them, “and four Wasps as an escort.”

  The freighter itself looked like a several hundred meters long rectangular box of gray alloy, with thrusters at one end and a ring of jump-pods circling the center of it.

  The drone escorts weren’t very pretty either. The four fighters were little more than cylindrical shafts, with thrusters at one end and guns and missile pods at the other.

  Balth referred to them as “flying sticks” and, indeed, they looked like little more.

  With Hawking at the helm, the Spartacus roared out of its hiding place behind the glittering asteroid, the ion thrusters flaring to life, accelerating them so that they barreled right into the path of the oncoming freighter and its escorts.

  The ships’ gravity spike helped to dampen the inertia, but Dolan was still pushed back into her seat by the acceleration, the entire ship shaking and rumbling as they jetted forward.

  “Just hold together, baby,” she said in a silent prayer to herself as she clutched her shaking console.

  She looked over to her left where the tall albino, Bell, was manning his gunnery console, his hands working rapidly on the twin sticks with which he controlled the plasma turrets.

  The energy signature of one of the Wasp fighters disappeared from her console. She looked up to the main screen and saw a flicker of debris in the space where it had been. Then the second exploded in a sphere of flame, and the third.

  The fourth, however, zoomed in a curved trajectory straight at the Spartacus.

  “Woooh!” Bell shouted. “Stay in my sights, you little mother-lover! Albert! Hey! Hard to port!”

  The dwarf, Hawking, smiled and jerked his own stick. Dolan was pushed sideways in her seat as the ship shifted violently.

  She looked up to the main screen where bolts from the Spartacus’ plasma cannons rained around the lone-remaining fighter.

  Its thruster cluster was clipped, and it spun wildly. A split second later another bolt hit it, and the drone craft exploded in a zero-g bloom of flame.

  “Wooot! He shoots and scores!” Bell announced, pumping his arms in the air.

  “Hawking, get the grapples,” Balth ordered.

  “Aye, Captain,” the pilot responded.

  “Arr, shiver the mainsail and batten down the timbers!”

  “Eh?” Bell asked.

  “It’s pirate-speak, Isaac,” Hawking replied. “You must get into the spirit of these things.”

  On the screen, Dolan could see the grappling lines shoot out from the Spartacus like metallic tentacles locking on to the Republic freighter.

  Dolan worked on her console, trying to access the freighter’s manifest, rapidly transmitting an array of standard Republic codes.

  “I think I’ve got it,” she said.

  “More vegetables?” Balth asked.

  “Well there’s food,” she said, “but also a small quantity of gold.”

  “An amazing booty,” Hawking added, having accessed the manifest from his own console. “The finest doubloons in the Spanish Main, and—uh—a few decommissioned plasma launchers, apparently.”

  “Infantry weapons,” Dolan said. “But we could use those, couldn’t we?”

  Balth nodded. “Seems too good to be true. I don’t like it.”

  “Hey?” Bell asked, “Captain, do you like anything?”

  The door to the control center hissed open, and Jeremy jogged forward, sputtering happily. Dolan had hoped her son would stay occupied where he’d been coloring in the back. But all of the noise and excitement up front had apparently aroused his interest.

  The seven-year-old walked over to Hawking’s console and, without hesitation, grabbed the main stick, working it rapidly.

  “Zoom!” he said. Hawking ruffled the boy’s hair affectionately, but Jeremy paid no attention.

  Dolan pushed herself up from her seat, her half-asleep feet and ankles buzzing painfully as she tried to keep herself balanced with the weight of her pregnant belly.

  She gently grabbed Jeremy and pulled him back. “Jeremy, come on. Now is not zoom time.”

  “Zzzzzaaaaa!” he exclaimed with a grin, squirming right out of her grasp and going back to the controls.

  Jeremy was what the doctors called a non-verbal autistic. He understood more than most folks gave him credit for, but he could be frustratingly single-minded, and it was impossible to know when he truly didn’t comprehend something and when he was just being obstinate. The others loved him, though, and indulged him. Maybe too much, in her opinion.

  There’s so much about him I don’t understand, she thought. God, I wish I knew what was really the best for him.

  She knew that the Republic had all kind
s of technology that might help him, but that was for citizens, not backwater colonists. The Republic liked to think of themselves as flawless, with all of their genetic engineering and surgical enhancements. She doubted that they could have any true sympathy for a Colonial boy born naturally from his mother’s womb. Another part of her wondered if Jeremy would really be happier if he were normal. Sometimes his perpetual childishness seemed like a blessing. He was her sweet, angelic boy.

  “It’s all right,” Hawking said. The dwarf gave her a reassuring, gentle smile. “Thrusters are off, and it makes him so happy.” He addressed Jeremy, “We little folk must stick together, right?”

  “Zoom, zoom, zoom,” Jeremy said, still playing with the stick.

  Balth sighed. “I still can't believe I let you bring the kid.”

  “Well,” Dolan told him, “you do remember what happened last time when we left him behind—the kind of fits he throws. It’s safer for him to be here.”

  “No one is safe here,” Balth said, “not with me—the Republic’s most wanted.”

  Dolan sighed.

  Balth never missed an opportunity to remind her that he was wanted by the Republic. Militia leader, pirate, terrorist… but she didn’t care. Balth was protective towards her and her unborn child, and had been a staunch guardian for Jeremy as well. Despite the boy’s disability, Balth had made valiant attempts to form a meaningful connection with the boy, but his efforts had, for the most part, come to naught.

  Jeremy suddenly stopped playing with Hawking’s control stick. He turned and walked out without a glance back, as if moving towards the next thing on his unspoken agenda.

  “Don’t worry, lad,” Hawking called after him. “I’ll make a pilot of you yet.”

  “Thanks, Albert,” Dolan told him. “I just worry that he’s always in the—”

  She was distracted by flickering on her screen. Energy readings flared to life, the magnitude of them growing exponentially, off the charts.

  “Guys! Weird readings aft,” she told the others. “Something like—”