The Dauntless: (War of the Ancients Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  The Dauntless

  Book 1 of the War of the Ancients Trilogy

  A novel

  Alex Kings

  Copyright © 2017 Alex Kings

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be resdistributed,

  photocopied or sold without the author's permission.

  To keep up with new releases and have access to extras, visit the author's website at www.AlexKings.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1: Something Interesting

  Chapter 2: Highly Irregular

  Chapter 3: The Stone Forest

  Chapter 4: Yilva

  Chapter 5: Equations

  Chapter 6: Tethya

  Chapter 7: The Spine

  Chapter 8: Contract

  Chapter 9: Extraordinary Evidence

  Chapter 10: Mr. Bell

  Chapter 11: Poison Beer

  Chapter 12: Ridiculous

  Chapter 13 : Barfight

  Chapter 14: Fish Tank Bureaucrats

  Chapter 15: Soaking Wet

  Chapter 16: Not Enough Space in Deep Space

  Chapter 17: The Afanc

  Chapter 18: Vance

  Chapter 19: Seventh Tentacle

  Chapter 20: Come In

  Chapter 21: Snoopy Tie

  Chapter 22: Hold My Breath

  Chapter 23: Docking Cables

  Chapter 24: Soft, Chewy Centre

  Chapter 25: Call Bloodtooth

  Chapter 26: Stealth

  Chapter 27: Shrapnel

  Chapter 28: Black Cat

  Chapter 29: Gang War

  Chapter 30: Fulfilling a Promise

  Chapter 31: Jump

  Chapter 32: We Do Have a Sickbay, You Know

  Chapter 33: Iona

  Chapter 34: Orlov

  Chapter 35: Hovercraft Melancholy

  Chapter 36: The Zephyr

  Chapter 37: Look Out the Window

  Chapter 38: Not Yet

  Chapter 39: Meeting Ecosystems

  Chapter 40: The Facility

  Chapter 41: Pacify All Ground Resistance

  Chapter 42: Invasion

  Chapter 43: No Signal

  Chapter 44: Orbital Defence Systems

  Chapter 45: Beginning Extraction

  Chapter 46: Lethal Dose

  Chapter 47: Emergency Decompression

  Chapter 48: Hanson Vs. Sruthur

  Chapter 49: Jump In, Jump Out

  Chapter 50: Burnt-Out Corridors

  Chapter 51: Sounds Like Fun

  Chapter 52: I Noticed You Have Some Thermonuclear Warheads

  Chapter 53: Drift

  Chapter 54: Mousy Assistant

  Chapter 55: Reminds Me of the Afanc

  Chapter 56: They Know We're Here

  Chapter 57: Startup Sequence

  Chapter 58: Is it Our Turn?

  Chapter 59: Make it Worthwhile

  Chapter 60: The Forge

  Chapter 61: Playing the Villain's Role

  Chapter 62: Coffee

  Chapter 63: Gone

  Chapter 64: Back to Tethya

  Chapter 65: One Last Plan

  Chapter 66: Chase

  Chapter 67: Armoured Shuttle

  Chapter 68: Celebration and Uncertainty

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1: Something Interesting

  Captain James Hanson drummed his fingers on the smooth chrome edge of the command station. It was smaller than he was used to, with the half-a-dozen display screens crowded together. “Any change in the planet's condition?”

  Sitting at the console to his left, Lieutenant Iris Miller turned to him. “No, sir … should there be?”

  Vane, a reddish-brown orb, half-shrouded in darkness, sat silently on one of the displays.

  “The technical term for our location,” said Hanson, “is the middle of nowhere. I thought that was where all the interesting events were supposed to happen.”

  He looked over at his XO, Commander Cillian Lanik, a tall but broad-shouldered man with an absurdly tidy uniform, cropped hair and high cheekbones. Lanik's response to the entire exchange was a brief, small frown at this display screen.

  Hanson had been aboard the SAV Dauntless for a little over three days now. He'd been promoted, in a sense: This was his first command. It was over a reasonably decent, normal ship – an independent frigate. But the mission, watching over outposts so far on the edge of Solar Alliance territory and so strategically unimportant that they weren't even manned, was slightly less prestigious than cleaning toilets.

  A new assignment was always difficult – this doubly so, as his first time as captain – but he was gradually gaining some familiarity with the ship. The exception? Commander Lanik. Hanson had learned as little about his XO in the past three days as he had in the first ten minutes of their meeting.

  Vane still floated on the screen. Hanson sighed silently to himself and looked over the unchanging screens of the command station.

  A warning alarm bleeped. “Captain,” said a second officer – Lieutenant Lachlan Dunn. “We've got an unscheduled jump-in.”

  “Details?”

  The relevant information appeared on his displays. The new ship had jumped in close, aiming for the planet. It was small, probably a science vessel, and it wasn't human. From the blocky design, probably Albascene.

  “See, what did I say?” said Hanson.

  “Yessir,” said Lanik, looking at his displays and tapping the screen. “Details, Lieutenant?”

  “It's been in a fight, and recently,” said Dunn.

  He was right. As the ship turned on the display, Hanson could pick out a trail of white-hot glowing scars down the side of the hull. One of its sublight engines was a blackened, half-destroyed husk. It was struggling to accelerate with its remaining two.

  “We've got a hail,” said Miller. “Audio only.”

  “Let's hear it,” said Hanson.

  Miller tapped away at her console, the speakers clicked into life. The message was in Isk – the interstellar common language – and came in a recognisably female singsong tone: “This is Yilva Vissin Avanni. I ask for immediate asylum. I have important –” The audio distorted into a short, metallic wail, then cut out.

  “We've got a second jump-in,” said Dunn. He looked up from his console. “They're jamming the signal.”

  Again, the details appeared on Hanson's display. The second ship wasn't human either. It was Glaber. Hunter class. It had appeared close to the far side of the planet. The Dauntless was now in between the two alien ships.

  “Glaber ship moving to intercept,” said Dunn.

  “Hail it,” said Hanson.

  “They're … accepting. Visual?” asked Miller.

  “Yes.”

  The pointed face that appeared on his display was dimly lit, but that was the only positive. Its loose grey-pink skin folded into fat wrinkles hanging off its cheeks and neck. Its rounded nose twitched. From its mouth, a pair of teeth, the colour of bone and razor-sharp, extended for at least half a foot. Smaller, but still big, teeth poked out from between its sagging lips further back.

  Glaber – not the species you'd most like to encounter in the middle of nowhere with no support. They had a well-deserved reputation for aggression.

  “What?” said the Glaber in an irritated half-snarl. “What do you want?”

  “This is Captain Hanson of the SAV Dauntless. The other vessel in this system has requested asylum,” said Hanson. “They're under our protection, and we'd appreciate it if you'd stop jamming their signal.”

  Lanik looked up from his console and muted the transmission from the Dauntless. “Sir?”

&
nbsp; The Glaber drew back its lips to reveal even more teeth. “This is not your business, Captain Hanson.”

  It was, technically speaking, correct. The statutes of the Solar Alliance were quite clear on this point: All interaction between aliens that didn't involve humanity were off-limits. Getting involved in the affairs of aliens tended to lead to messy diplomatic disputes.

  Neither ship had humans aboard, and while they were outside of Vane's atmosphere, they technically weren't in human territory. Unless the Glaber ship moved to attack them, the Dauntless could do nothing. Even with an asylum request.

  “Sod that,” Hanson whispered to himself. Then, out loud: “Action stations!”

  Immediately, Lieutenant Miller was speaking into her comms: “Action stations, action stations.” The CIC lights dimmed and reddened.

  Lanik looked up at Hanson. That small frown of his had appeared again.

  “I know what you're going to say,” began Hanson.

  “It can wait until after the encounter,” said Lanik. He turned to the lieutenants. “Well?”

  “All stations report readiness,” said Miller. “Firing solutions are prepared.”

  Hanson spoke first to the pilot, Mark Fermi: “I want a soft burn towards the distressed vessel. Try and put us directly between the two ships.” Then he unmuted the connection to the Glaber ship. “Let me make this clear: If you fire on them, we fire on you. If you have a problem with that, feel free to file a diplomatic report.” Part of him wanted to add You look like you'd be good at it, but he held his tongue. Glaber hive-leaders hated to be accused of playing politics, even though they did it all the time.

  The Glaber on the screen snarled at him, and cut off communication.

  Hanson hoped the threat would be enough. The Dauntless was a small ship, a frigate designed more for scouting and looking after outposts in the middle of nowhere than fighting. It was roughly equal to a modern Glaber hunter – a fight could be very costly for them both. Hopefully the Glaber wouldn't risk it.

  A deep, distant-sounding boom echoed through the ship, and the CIC shuddered. “They've opened fire,” Dunn reported, “on us and the Albascene ship.”

  “Suppressive fire,” Hanson ordered. “Go for their weapons first.” On the display, the Albascene ship lit up as a slew of kinetic shells and lasers tore into its hull.“And get us between them!”

  A line of laser turrets down the Dauntless's hull picked out their counterparts on the Glaber ship and fired. The main kinetic cannon, accelerating solid shells to a good fraction of the speed of light, lined up and fired with a thunder that made the whole ship shake. The first shell glanced off the Glaber's hull. The second hit true, and the nose of the ship flashed white, leaving a hole ringed with glowing molten metal.

  More booms filled the CIC – the sounds of parts of its armour heating to a thousand kelvins, exploding, melting away. The shield generators whined – they bled off enough energy to stop the ship from being destroyed outright, but enough got through to damage the hull. The gulf between the two ships lit up with silent fireworks as lasers from each picked off the other's shells mid-flight.

  The Albascene ship fired its remaining engines pitifully under the onslaught, just about managing to get behind the Dauntless and away from the Glaber's range of fire. But it wasn't enough. As they were on the edge on the Dauntless's shadow, a shell punctured their weakened shields and hit another of their engines. The engine exploded at once in a blinding flash, leaving a charred ruin. The Albascene ship lurched to the side and began to spin.

  “Keep them in our shadow!” Hanson barked. He turned his attention back to the Glaber ship. Because it was dividing its fire between the Dauntless and the Albascene ship, it was taking more damage. Half its laser turrets had been burned away, and without the suppressive fire they gave, the Dauntless's shells were tearing into its armour. Still it continued to fire.

  What was so important that the Glaber would risk losing a battle just to ensure destroying a defenceless vessel?

  The Albascene ship, still spinning slowly, fell towards the planet and back out of the Dauntless's shadow. The Glaber hit it once more. Then it seemed to unzip. A wound opened from nose to tail as its innards exploded outwards with a flash of light.

  Nothing was left except a cloud of molten metal, glowing a dull white, and a few fragments of hull.

  And escape pods! Six of them, heading outwards. Before Hanson could react, three were hit by chunks of shrapnel from the exploding ship, and tumbled away, destroyed. Another fell victim to a shot from the Glaber.

  But the Glaber hunter seemed to have no more stomach for a fight. Most of its laser turrets were gone, and one of its sublight engines had burned out. It took a few more shots at the escape pods, missing all of them, then pulled back and began to retreat.

  Its shields dropped. The few seconds before a jump were the most vulnerable for any ship.

  “Hold your fire,” said Hanson.

  The Glaber ship paused for a moment, turned back and forth, for no reason he could discern. Then at last it began to jump.

  For a second, the stars around it seemed to twist and ripple, like the reflections on the surface of a pond when the water had been disturbed – then the ship was gone.

  Hanson steadied himself against the command console. “Sit-rep,” he ordered.

  Miller scanned her console. “Eight laser turrets destroyed. Armour punctured in sections seven, eight, twelve, and fifteen. Sublight and jump engines intact. Eight crewmen injured, but no casualties.” She looked up from the console. “We're tracking the two escape pods. They're entering Vane's upper atmosphere now.”

  Lanik looked across the console at Hanson. “Well, that was certainly something interesting,” he said lightly.

  Chapter 2: Highly Irregular

  “We've tracked the escape pods. They've landed on the southern continent,” Miller reported.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Hanson said. “Transmit the co-ordinates to the shuttle. I'll be going down.”

  Miller seemed to give him an odd look, then said, “Yes sir.” She went back to tapping on her console.

  “You have the deck,” Hanson told Lanik, and strode to the door.

  Lanik followed him through the door, and Hanson stopped in the corridor just outside.

  “Captain,” began Lanik.

  “I know,” said Hanson. “It's highly irregular for command personnel to lead a team.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it is allowed by the regulations.”

  “Yes, sir. It is at your discretion. As for the battle we were just in, however …”

  “That was in breach of regulations. I know. But I wasn't prepared to let innocent people die just because some diplomat says we're not supposed to get involved in alien affairs.”

  Lanik looked at him quietly for a moment. “I understand that,” he said. “And perhaps your decision was the right one. But the regulations are in place for a reason. This could cause a diplomatic incident. More innocent lives could be lost.”

  He was right, Hanson knew. The first interstellar war humanity had ever been involved in, against the Albascene, had been because a human captain had got involved in a dispute. The war had been brief only because of the Tethyans – the oldest living civilisation in the galaxy – had stepped in to mediate. Still, thousands of people, both humans and aliens, had died because of that war.

  And yet.

  “I acted,” he told Lanik. “Maybe, maybe, someone will die because of that. But I know that if I did nothing, innocent people would definitely have died.”

  “I'll have to make a report to the admiralty, nevertheless,” said Lanik. He moved to return to the CIC, then stopped at the door and turned. “I will also add that I made no attempt to stop you. And that, given the circumstances, I agreed with your moral choice.” He nodded once. “Sir.”

  Shaking his head, Hanson turned away and headed towards the hangar. He felt he understood Lanik even less than he had when he first arrived o
n the Dauntless. A rules-freak, a jobsworth type, he could deal with. He'd run into plenty in his years in the navy. One of them, in fact, was why he had been “promoted” to a small ship in the middle of nowhere. But Lanik seemed more than that, and he was harder to read.

  On his way down the corridor, Hanson passed a couple of repair crews – the first scurrying past him to the next job, the second working on a stress fracture which had opened along the side of the corridors. “Don't worry, captain,” they told him. “No real structural damage.”

  In the hangar, a pair of shuttles sat cramped together. They looked like oblong boxes with sharp streamlining on the nose and tail and a series of vertical ribs lining the hull. In front of the closest shuttle, his ground team were waiting, already suited up. With the smart camo turned off, their armour glimmered a silvery black. The three of them saluted, and Hanson saluted back.

  “I hear you're coming with us, sir,” said the closest, Sergeant Lisa Moore. She held her helmet in her hands, and rolled it once using her thumbs as pivots. “Y'know, I don't think I ever ran into an officer willing to get his hands dirty with us. I don't know whether I should be scared or not.”

  “I like to do things myself,” Hanson told her. He started towards to adjacent locker room to get suited up.

  “If I may, sir,” said Moore, “is that the reason why they threw you down here? In the arse-end of nowhere, I mean.”

  Hanson paused briefly, then turned back to her. “Part of it,” he said, and headed into the locker room.

  Chapter 3: The Stone Forest

  Soon after they hit atmo, Hanson could hear a quiet but violent roar through the shuttle's walls, like the sound of a distant crashing ocean. Though the circular sapphiroid windows, air heated to cherry-red rushed past. Even with the gravity normalised, he could feel the remains of the heavy aerobraking deceleration as a slight forwards tug on his insides.

  The escape pods had landed near the planet's terminator, where it was early evening. According to their local maps, the location had once been a jungle, but several hundred years ago, the trees had contracted a local bacterial infection that fast-petrified the wood. Now the area was a desert, empty of all life, but the stone trees remained, slowly being eroded by the wind.