Blue Resurrection, page 1
BLUE RESURRECTION
Book one of
THE BLUE PACK
by
Kras Vance
Copyright © 2025 by Kras Vance
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
2025
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
Reality struck her with merciless force. The blue haze of the hyperspace tunnel, until now a comfortable refuge, disintegrated. The stars, stretched into infinite, glowing filaments, snapped back into single, cold points. Inertia slammed Lieutenant Anika Reyes deep into the solid foam of her passenger seat. Her stomach turned, rebelling against the drastic shift in the laws of physics as the gravity compensators whined in a desperate attempt to compensate.
The Vector transport shuttle wasn't designed for comfort. It was a box with engines, filled with the smell of stale sweat and recycled air. Anika swallowed the bile rising in her throat. Her fingers slowly unclenched from the armrests. Her breathing evened out, obeying years of military training, but a ragged rhythm throbbed in her temples.
Welcome to nowhere, Lieutenant.
Her gaze slid to the viewport—a thick, triple-polymer pane, scoured by stardust. She expected the emptiness of a standard patrol sector, the boring black abyss of the deep rear, where they'd sent her after the Orion-7 incident.
But what greeted her outside wasn't emptiness.
It was a graveyard.
The vacuum ahead of the shuttle teemed with giant wreckage. Enormous hulls, shredded like foil, spun in a slow, sinister ballet. The asteroid belt they were vectoring towards wasn't a regular astronomical formation—it was a charnel house.
Anika leaned forward, her breath fogging the glass for a second. Her eyes scanned the torn shapes, seeking familiar markings.
The cruiser Vanguard, split in two.
The scorched skeleton of a frigate, its engines melted into shapeless slag.
Fighter debris, glinting like malevolent sparks under the weak light of a distant star.
These remains weren't old. There was no crust of cosmic dust, no erosion from countless micro-meteorite impacts. The sharp edges of torn titanium shone—the collision was recent. Maybe yesterday. Or mere hours ago.
Cruiser Vanguard... the same model as Orion-7.
Hull plating tearing like tinfoil under concentrated fire. Anika closed her eyes for an involuntary moment, seeing the bridge in flames, hearing the screams over the intercom. Twenty-eight souls. Now just another field of debris, tumbling in a funereal silence. Where in the hell have they sent me?
Command had called this a "redirection to a low-intensity strategic asset"—a euphemism for retiring inconvenient officers. But no one retired people to a graveyard of shattered fleets.
There was no sound in her headset. No standard greeting from traffic control. No customary hail: Shuttle T-4, you have an approach vector, welcome to the perimeter. The ether was dead. The static hissed softly, more menacing than any threat.
The pilot in the forward cabin, from whom she could only see the back of a helmet and hands moving over the control panel, didn't utter a word. He was merely a biological component of the machine, executing an algorithm. The shuttle banked, maneuvering jets coughing short bursts, correcting course through the labyrinth of wreckage.
A massive shadow fell across the viewport, swallowing the stars.
The asteroid was enormous, an ugly, rugged class-M rock, pockmarked with craters the size of cities. But Anika's gaze wasn't drawn to its natural ugliness, but to the parasitic structure grafted onto it.
Base "Silence."
The structure bore no resemblance to the standard Federation stations with their elegant rings and rotating gravity modules. This was a bunker. Crude, angular, built of a dark hull that absorbed light rather than reflected it. Sensor towers rose like spines. Gun emplacements were retracted, but their hatches gaped like bottomless hollows. No navigational lights shone. Only a few faint, amber pinpoints marked the airlocks, giving it a mortally-ill appearance.
"Acquiring beacon," the pilot stated flatly over the intercom. "Initiating hard-dock procedure."
Anika didn't reply. Her body tensed on instinct.
The shuttle slipped beneath an overhanging shelf of rock.
The light vanished completely, yielding to the artificial twilight cast by the ship's spotlights onto the base's hull. It was raw concrete and reinforced ferrocrete, studded with crude, hastily-made welds. This place wasn't built with care; it was carved from the rock itself with fury and desperate need.
A thought pierced her consciousness, clear and cold.
This isn't the rear. This is where they send things they want forgotten. Or people who know too much to be left alive, but are too valuable to be shot.
She checked her harness straps. Again. The motion was compulsive—a nervous tic seeking control where none existed. Her hand moved involuntarily toward her thigh holster, stopping halfway. The weapon was gone. They had taken it during boarding. "Standard transfer protocol," they'd said.
The absence of the pistol felt like an amputated limb.
"Thirty seconds," the pilot announced.
The main engine's vibration died, replaced by the distinct, stuttering whine of the correction thrusters. The shuttle shuddered, its hull groaning under the strain.
Through the glass, Anika saw the base's docking ring. Rusted, scored. No service drones orbited it, there was no movement at all. Just the darkness of the open airlock, waiting to swallow them.
No fanfare for the survivors.
The world outside narrowed to that black circle. Her heart beat in time with an imaginary countdown, syncing with the approach.
Three.
Two.
One.
Impact jarred the shuttle.
There was no soft magnetic embrace of civilian docking ports. This was brutal, mechanical contact—steel biting into steel. The station's locking clamps snapped around the shuttle's airlock with a jolt, the vibration traveling through the floor and seat straight into Anika's bones.
The sound was unambiguous: a heavy, clunking, final, and hopeless thud.
It didn't sound like coming home. It sounded exactly like the slam of a metal door on a prison cell.
Indicators above the hermetic hatch flared blood-red. Pressure equalized. Anika slowly unbuckled her harness. The click of the fastener echoed unnaturally loud in the ensuing quiet.
She stood. Her legs were steady, but a cold void had settled in her gut.
Whatever "Silence" was, it had just swallowed her whole. And it showed no intention of ever letting her back out.
* * *
The hermetic locks hissed. The sound resembled the last breath of a dying creature, abruptly drowned out by the howl of hydraulics. The shuttle ramp began to descend—slowly, methodically, like a metal jaw that had already swallowed its prey.
Anika Reyes stood in the frame of the airlock. Her hand reached for the empty holster—a reflex, etched deep within her, that neither will nor time could uproot. Her body was tense, every nerve on edge, anticipating the familiar: chaos. Screams. The smells of burnt kerosene and sweaty bodies. The roar of turbines spewing stench, scorching the air. Dust, choking the lungs with the taste of metal and fuel.
That was the breath of war. And she knew it.
The ramp struck the floor. The metallic thud echoed and died.
Light flooded in like an explosion. Not yellow, not red, but white. Blinding. Clinical. It was like looking into the heart of an exploding star, frozen the instant before destruction.
Anika squinted. Her pupils painfully contracted. The air that rushed into her lungs choked her.
The air lacked any natural quality. Ionized to sterility, it carried the odor of aggressive cleaning chemicals that burned the mucous membranes in her nose. There wasn't a hint of oil, nor of human sweat, not a single trace of life.
She stepped forward.
Her boots—sc
The hangar of Base "Silence" did not resemble a military dock. It was more like a cathedral erected for medicine.
The vaults were lost high above in an intertwining of white pipes and LED panels. The space was immense—enough to accommodate a "Destroyer"-class cruiser—but at the moment, it was terrifyingly empty. Ominously vacant.
The only sound was the low-frequency, rhythmic hum of the ventilation system. Voom-voom-voom. The sound resembled the heartbeat of a giant, slumbering monster buried under tons of concrete and steel. It wasn't heard with the ears; it vibrated in the teeth, in the bones of the skull.
At the bottom of the ramp, they were waiting for her.
But not an honor guard. Nor mechanics. An entire wall.
Six men bearing the insignia of the Military Police. Their armor had nothing in common with standard field gear. It was smooth, made of polymer composite the color of "deathly gray," without a scratch, without rank insignia. Their faces were hidden behind mirrored visors that reflected only the solitary figure of Anika descending towards them.
Their weapons—short-barreled assault carbines with integrated silencers—weren't aimed at her, but they weren't lowered either. "Low-ready" stance. Readiness for immediate reaction.
Welcome home, Lieutenant. They don't greet heroes here. They process cargo.
She straightened her back. Long-ingrained instincts took control, pushing the fatigue and disorientation into those corners of consciousness where insignificant things wait to be forgotten. Chin up. Gaze forward. Hands loose at her sides, away from the holster, but always on alert.
None of the six moved. There was no saluting. Not even a "Hello, ma'am."
Instead, her path was blocked by a massive frame—a biometric portal mounted directly into the floor and surrounded by temporary partitions. The tech looked more expensive than the entire shuttle she had arrived in.
One of the policemen, standing in the center of the cordon, raised a hand, palm forward.
"Subject will halt."
The words came through a vocoder, stripped of gender, age, or emotion. A synthetic, grating sound.
"Position yourself in the decontamination and identification zone."
Anika stopped a meter from the scanner. Her jaw tightened so hard her teeth grated.
"Lieutenant Anika Reyes, Black Snake Squadron, reporting by order of Command."
Her words were firm, but they sank into the vast volume of the hangar, finding no echo.
The vocoder didn't react. No movement, no confirmation. As if she had spoken a wrong word in a language the machine didn't recognize.
"Position yourself in the identification zone. Immediately."
Her name held no value. Her rank was metadata the system had yet to confirm. Anger, familiar and hot, rose in her throat, but she swallowed it. There was no place for defiance here. This was protocol. And protocol in "Silence" was clearly the dominant religion.
She stepped forward into the area marked by yellow lines.
The moment her boots crossed the perimeter, the machine came to life. A quiet hum, on the threshold of audibility, irritated her hearing. A laser grid descended from the scanner's frame—hundreds of thin red lines that ran over her body, outlining the contours of her figure, her armor, her face.
An itch erupted where the lasers touched her skin. Not superficial—but deep, crawling under the epidermis, as if something invisible was threading thin needles under her pores. Anika clenched her fists. Her nails dug into her palms. Instinct screamed at her to raise a hand, to shield her eyes, to flee from this red grid that was stringing her up like a piece of meat.
She remained motionless.
The lights focused on her eyes. A retinal scan. Then they moved downward. Heart rate. Skin temperature. Hormonal balance. Adrenaline levels.
To the left of the frame, on a holographic display, data began to stream. Anika didn't move, but her peripheral vision caught the flow of symbols. She didn't see her name. She only saw codes.
SUBJECT: INBOUND. STATUS: BIOLOGICAL. CONTAMINATION: WITHIN NORMS. THREAT LEVEL: YELLOW.
Biological. Not "servicemember," not "officer." A biological component. Meat that operates machines.
The scanner hissed. Nozzles hidden in the frame released a cloud of disinfectant under high pressure. The cold mist hit her in the face, penetrating through her pores and clinging to her eyelashes.
Her stomach clenched. The taste of copper in her throat mixed with something sour, bitter. Her diaphragm spasmed. She felt her esophagus rise.
No.
Her eyes watered. Not from the chemical, but from the effort not to double over, not to choke in front of this impersonal wall of armored silhouettes. She stared into the mirrored visor of the policeman before her. She sought something—a sign of humanity, a flicker that would suggest there was someone behind that mask who breathed, who was afraid, or who at least felt respect.
Nothing.
Only her own distorted reflection in the black plastic. She looked small. Isolated.
On the front, you're a person until you die. A memory in her head—an instructor, long since turned to dust. Here, you're data as long as you breathe.
This place wasn't built to keep the people inside safe from the war outside, but to cleanse the war itself of the human factor. And she had just entered the centrifuge.
The machine chirped. A sharp, digital sound that sliced the silence. The red lasers died. The holographic display flickered and lit up in a sickly green.
ACCESS: GRANTED. STERILITY: CONFIRMED.
The tension in Anika's shoulders didn't subside. On the contrary—the lump of ice in her stomach became even more palpable. She had passed the test, but she felt she had left a part of herself on the other side of the yellow line. Her autonomy had been scraped off along with the dust from Tharsis IV.
The policeman in the center lowered his hand. Slowly.
"Proceed forward. Follow Corridor A-4 to the Indoctrination Sector."
The cordon parted with perfect synchronization, opening a narrow passage into the interior of the base. Behind them, a long corridor stretched, in the same white color, narrowing into perspective. There were no windows, no landmarks.
The lead guard gave a nod. A barely perceptible movement of the helmet, devoid of respect. It was a signal to start the next stage of the conveyor belt.
Anika took a breath. The air still scratched her throat. She tightened the strap of her bag, oriented herself forward, and passed through the ranks of the silent sentinels. Her footsteps echoed, moving away from the shuttle. Each step took her deeper into the belly of "Silence." Behind her, she heard the guards regroup, closing the passageway. A solid wall of armored backs.
There was no way back.
She was no longer Lieutenant Reyes. She was an asset in the base's inventory. And the inventory had only just begun.
* * *
The hermetic doors slid open, revealing a space untouched by human need. The air beyond the threshold hit Anika Reyes with the force of a blow. Climate control was set at absolute zero—a temperature fit for storing meat or cooling superconductors.
She crossed the threshold. The doors sealed shut behind her, forming a monolithic wall, severing her from the world of the living.
Admiral Vane's office was not a command center, but rather a sterile intervention chamber. The walls, sheathed in white polymer, absorbed light instead of reflecting it. There were no maps, no holograms of star systems; not even the banal trophies of past campaigns with which senior officers liked to pamper their vanity. Only a desk of matte black, positioned at the very center of the room, and the figure behind it.
Vane stood upright, hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the empty wall opposite him. His uniform—charcoal gray, without a single wrinkle—hugged his body like a second skin.
Anika stood at attention. The click of her boot heels echoed sharply in the unnatural acoustics.
"Lieutenant Reyes."
Vane did not turn immediately. His voice, flat, dry, devoid of any vibration, sounded as if it came from a synthesizer, not a larynx.
"Reporting as ordered, Admiral."
She looked for a chair, but there was none. The space before the desk was bare. This was not a meeting, but an inspection. Anika stood rigid in the center of the icy room, bereft of support, as the purification systems leeched the moisture from her eyes.
