Hunter's Quest (Colonial War Book 3), page 1
HUNTER’S QUEST
Richard Tongue
HUNTER’S QUEST
Colonial War: Book Three
Copyright © 2022 by Richard Tongue, All Rights Reserved
First Kindle Edition: July 2022
All characters and events portrayed within this eBook are fictitious; any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Prologue
The day dawned on a massacre. A dozen dead bodies, left where they had fallen, some scrambling over their erstwhile friends in a desperate bid to escape, others attempting in vain to at least extract a measure of revenge for their imminent demise. It mattered not how they had died. There was nobody left to care. Just another isolated outpost in the endless depths of deep space, one of a thousand on the Rim, beyond the Free Worlds. A light in the darkness, now extinguished.
Humanity had come late to Donovan’s World, named for the geologist who ran the first survey, found sufficient traces of uranium and thorium to bring a prospecting party out to the far frontier, the Cartel staking their claim to the lonely world, mapping and charting the planet for the exploitation they had hoped would follow, once the endless Colonial War was over. The minerals hadn’t panned out, but the base was built anyway, a new purpose brought to an otherwise desolate wasteland. A light now extinguished.
And yet, in the darkness, something still moved, a flicker of life from one of the otherwise silent control panels, the last act of the technician who had fallen next to the console, clutching at the wound in his chest. Green text flashed on the display, a message that had brought one final flicker of hope to a dying man in his final moments.
“Signal dispatched.”
Chapter 1
Nykolai Kozak walked down the main concourse of Cutter’s Rock, the two-credit outpost his ship, Samarkand, had spent the last month lazily orbiting, cleaning up the mess from the battle that had earned him his commission. He glanced at the single bars on each shoulder, so new they still gleamed from the overhead lights, still hardly believing that he’d won them, that he was now an office in the Republic Marine Corps.
He glanced at his watch, conscious that he was running behind, that the shuttle was waiting to take him and the last few members of the crew back to the ship, ready to break orbit within the day. They’d been loitering here too long, waiting for orders, and while nothing official had been received, the arrival of an unscheduled freighter that morning, combined with the sudden burst of urgency from the ship, had told him everything he needed to know.
As he was about to step into the airlock, his communicator chirped, and he reached for the device, saying, “Kozak here, go ahead.”
“Cortez here,” the commander of the local security force replied. “I think you’d better get to StarCom on the double.”
“Something wrong?” Kozak asked.
“Maybe, but I’d rather not put it out on an open channel.”
“Got it. On my way.” He tapped the screen to close down the link, and as he turned back to the street, sent a quick message to the shuttle pilot to warn him of the delay, advising him to return to the ship rather than wait.
StarCom was a deceptively battered building lodged between a bar and a bordello, one of the first built when the colony was first established, now all but forgotten, barely working through lack of care and maintenance. Soon it would get worse, the colony scheduled to be largely abandoned within the year, the population due to move to a better prospect a dozen light-years distant, a world that had a future. Cutter’s Rock only had a past, and it made grim reading at that.
A lone guard stood at the entrance to the building, throwing Kozak a curt nod as he passed through the threshold, dodging around a pool of green liquid on the floor, fed by a constant drip from the damp, mold-laden ceiling. He felt as though he needed a face mask just walking in the door, shaking his head at the condition of the place. It wasn’t the fault of the technicians who worked there. None of them had been properly trained, still less properly funded, but it hurt to see good equipment neglected like this.
The sooner he was back on Samarkand, the better.
“Nick?” Cortez said, leaning out of the control room door. “Good, I’m glad you’re here. We’re getting something interesting.” As Kozak walked inside, he added, “Ever heard of Donovan’s World?”
“Never.”
“Not a surprise,” Cortez replied, leading Kozak inside. “This is Al Potter, duty technician. He’s the one who picked up the signal.”
“Signal?” Kozak asked.
Nodding, Potter said, “It came through about thirty minutes ago, but it took me some time to break it down. Signal strength was low, and as you can see, our equipment is not the best.” He tapped in a control sequence, then said, “It reads out as a general distress call, but I believe that there is a lot more to it than that.”
“Can I hear it?”
“Of course.” Potter tapped a control, and a burst of static roared over the ceiling speakers, loud enough to cause an instant headache for everyone in the room before the technician could adjust the feed.
“…Donovan’s World. Under attack. Too late for us. Save yourselves. This is a general alert. Papa-One. Papa-One. I…”
Looking up, Potter said, “That’s it, Lieutenant. That’s all there is. The rest is buried too deep in the background static. There just isn’t enough data to break down, even with a quantum computer.”
“Was it an automatic signal, something on repeat, or a one-off?”
“I’d say a one-off, and the data strength collapses abruptly at the end of the signal. As though it was shut down at the far end, but not through any sort of normal means.” He looked up at Cortez, then said, “FTL signals always end with a code prefix to verify that the signal is over. This didn’t have that.”
“Then someone shut this down, someone not the sender?”
“I’d say that’s the most likely explanation, Lieutenant.”
Kozak turned to Cortez, then said, “Where is Donovan’s World?”
“About nine lights from here, a brown dwarf binary. Used for some sort of experimental genetic research connected to terraforming. I heard they were trying to produce crops that would grow in ultra-low-light environments, but who knows if that was accurate or not. Sure as hell they were a long way off the map to be growing crops.”
“Unless they were breaking the regulatory code.”
“You can go ahead and assume that, Lieutenant. It’s about the only reason they’d be out there on the Rim. We run a ship out that way once a year, but they only stop here to pick up supplies and let the crew have some leave.”
“Which company?”
“Guess.”
“Larson Logistics. Our old friends.”
“Got it in one,” Cortez confirmed. “Something else, as well. That ship. It only stops off on the way out, not on the way back. Heading home, they just sit up in orbit, calibrate their course, top off their fuel tanks and run back. No contact with the surface other than absolutely necessary.”
“Which tends to suggest that some sort of quarantine procedure is being employed.” He frowned, then said, “Genetic testing.”
“Yeah. Makes me nervous as well.” Cortez paused, then asked, “Does Papa-One mean anything to you?”
“Some sort of code, I guess, but nothing I’ve ever heard of. Maybe an ident of some sign. I’ll..” Before Kozak could finish, the lights went out, and he turned to the technician, asking, “What happened?”
“Don’t know. Auxiliary generator should have gone on automatically if we had a power failure. Though with the systems in the state they’re in…”
Cortez stepped out of the room, a shot ringing out a second later that sent him diving back into the office. Kozak drew his pistol, the weapon almost leaping into his hand as he moved to the side of the door, looking down at the security officer, blood running from a wound in his leg.
“First aid,” Kozak ordered, gesturing at the technician. Potter stared for a moment, then moved to the wall, ripping down the medical kit and moving to staunch the blood, Cortez cursing as he struggled into better cover.
“No sign of Tyler,” he muttered. “Either he’s in on this, or he’s dead. For his sake, he’d damned well better be, or I’ll shoot him myself.” Potter poked at the wound, and Cortez groaned, staring daggers at the engineer.
“Hold still,” Potter said. “I haven’t done this in a while.”
Kozak reached into his pocket, pulling out a periscope and swinging it around the corner with a quick action, risking a brief glance before a second shot rang out, destroying the instrument in a heartbeat.
“Two of them,” he said, “in the corridor. Has to be a hit and run job. Anyone else in here?”
“Sent them all away,” Cortez replied, grimacing from the pain. “Didn’t want anyone else to know about the signal. Guess I screwed that up.”
“Hold still, damn it,” Potter barked.
“Sirens should have sounded by now,” Cortez added, ignoring Potter. “Someone must have killed them. We’re spread thin.”
Kozak pulled out his communicator, grimaced, then said, “Jammed.”
“They really planned this well,” Cortez said.
“Not well enough,” Kozak replied. “Potter, have you ever fired a gun?”
“Never, Lieutenant,” he said. “And I don’t…”
With a grin, Kozak interrupted, “Relax, I’m not asking you to actually shoot anyone. I doubt you’d get anywhere near the target in this light. Take Captain Cortez’s gun, and on my signal, start firing at the wall, once a second until you’ve finished the clip.”
“I guess I can do that,” Potter replied. “Won’t they work it out?”
“If I do my part right, by the time they do, that won’t be a problem.” Cortez held out his pistol, Potter reluctantly taking it, and Kozak leaned out into the corridor, attracting a quick series of shots, the two gunmen moving cautiously closer to their position, demonstrating far too much confidence in their ability to take them out.
“On my signal,” Kozak said, Potter nodding in response, holding the pistol in his hand, finger curling on the trigger, snapping the safety off with the flick of his thumb. Cortez’s eyes briefly locked with Kozak, and he turned his pistol to the technician, leveling it squarely between Potter’s eyes.
“Drop it,” Kozak ordered, Potter freezing in place.
“What the hell…”
“I’ve got your friend,” Kozak yelled. “It’s over. You’re not going to win this round. If you try and take this room I’ll blow you away the instant you step across the door.”
Potter glanced at Cortez, then said, “Lieutenant, I don’t know what…”
“For someone who has never fired a gun, you seemed to work that safety lock rather well,” Kozak replied. “Not to mention that someone had to tell our friends outside that there was something going on in here.”
Footsteps rattled the floor, the two would-be assassins fleeing from the building, their plan foiled at the final moment, as Kozak kept Potter covered, his pistol not wavering for an instant. Cortez slid away, reaching into his pocket for his communicator, gasping as he caught the wound in his leg.
“Signal’s still jammed,” Cortez said. “Sooner or later…”
“How did you do it?” Kozak asked, glaring at Potter, who simply stared back at him. “Damn it, you tell me, or I will end you…”
“That’s obviously going to happen anyway. Right now, if you leave, I’ll get away, and should be able to take out Cortez on the way out. If you don’t, he dies anyway. On the other hand, if you let me…”
Kozak fired, the sound of the shot echoing from the walls as his pistol burned into Potter’s shoulder, sending him collapsing to the floor in pain.
“On the other hand,” Kozak said, “I shoot you, and that keeps you on the deck long enough for me to go get help. Of course, you might die while you are waiting, but I guess that’s on you.” He tugged the pistol from Potter’s grip, then handed it to Cortez, saying, “If he moves, end him.”
“Will do,” Cortez replied. “Remind me to stay on your good side.”
Nodding, Kozak moved back to the door, cautiously leaning out of it to make sure the enemy had retreated, then charged down the corridor, sliding on the pool of slime and almost falling over before tumbling through the doors. The guard was missing, no sign of him, nor of his body. One more traitor in their midst. He holstered his sidearm, pulling out his communicator again, waiting for a signal, then shook his head, the channel still blocked.
The street was deserted, likely the sound of gunplay driving the locals into cover, the idea of coming to their aid alien to this world. He looked around, then raced into the bar next door, a pair of drunken patrons glaring at him as he burst into the room, running to the barman.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble…”, he said.
“You’re about to get more trouble than you know what to do with if you don’t listen to me,” Kozak barked. “You know any first aid?”
“Sure, but…”
“Next door there are two people that need your help, right now.”
“I don’t…”
“This isn’t a conversation.” He gestured at the communication panel on the wall, and asked, “That still working?”
“Last time I checked.”
“Good. Get moving. I’ll be right behind you.” He raced to the wall as the barman moved uncertainly to the door, tapping in a code as the panel lit up, activated by his presence. The screen flashed amber, and he cursed under his breath, pulling out his credit chit and scanning it across the display, the line finally activating as it leeched funds from his account, the image of Ensign Ibori, the duty officer on Samarkand, at last appearing on the display.
“Lieutenant?” she asked. “What the…”
“I need a medical and security team to StarCom right now,” he said. “Handle it from the ship, local communications are compromised.” He paused, then added, “I need to speak to the Captain. We’ve got a problem.”
Chapter 2
Captain Jack Hunter stood at the airlock, waiting for the shuttle to dock, glancing at his tablet once last time, scanning over the damage control report once more. Samarkand wouldn’t pass any fleet inspection, but she was ready for battle, all of her critical damage repaired, a series of dull grey patches littering her hull where the engineering team had sealed a series of breaches. It had been a nasty firefight. The fighting on the surface had been as bad, worse in terms of casualties. They’d won, but the price had been far too expensive.
With a loud report, the incoming shuttle latched onto the side of the ship, the double hatches sliding open to reveal the wry smile of Sam Singh, out of uniform for the first time in years, his hand reaching out to shake Hunter’s.
“They haven’t put you on the beach, have they?” Hunter asked. “I always figured you’d die with your boots on.”
“I still intend to,” Singh replied, gesturing at his ill-fitting suit. “This was General McBride’s idea. To keep a low profile. I gather you didn’t expect me.”
“All they told me was that a transport was coming out here with some replacement personnel and stores. I figured a courier, maybe one of Maggie’s aides, but…”
With a shrug, Singh replied, “She wanted someone out here who could give you a proper briefing, and all of her staff are running around trying to get the station ready for…” He paused, then said, “I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to brief you, Jack. A lot’s changed in the last month.”
“You got my report?” Hunter asked.
“Every word, and it’s raised all sorts of hell back home. Nobody knows just what we might be dealing with out there. We managed to identify the ship that carried the ancestors of the assassins, and it left Earth a little over two hundred years ago. Ten years before the ship that settled Sirius Prime, which means that we could be dealing with a major starfaring power.”
“Unlikely,” Hunter said. “If there was anything out there close to the size of the Colonial Federation, we’d have run into them long before this.”
“I’m not sure I share your optimism, but I’m hoping that you are right about that.” He grimaced, then said, “It’s all politics, damn it. The Cartel are pushing like mad for a task force to be sent out, preferably within the hour, but the Admiralty won’t release any serious ships from the Six Systems, and I’m not sure they aren’t right about that.”
“Will there be a task force?”
“That depends on you. Or, more accurately, what you find.”
“We’re going out?” Hunter asked. “A reconnaissance mission?”
“Let’s call it a reconnaissance in force, anyway. Or as much force as we can muster with no notice.” He paused, then said, “We’ll have three ships, at least. Hanoi, Tashkent and Palmyra. There’s talk of another Silk Road-class ship being provided by the Cartel, but I’ve no idea whether or not that will turn up in time. And a full Marine Strike Company, complete with equipment.”
“And Samarkand, of course,” Hunter replied. “Who commands?”
“That’s a damn good question.” Shaking his head, Singh said, “When you managed to solve the crisis out here, you went way off-script. There were a half-dozen flag officers lobbying for command of the peacekeeping force we expected to send out here. Would have been a great career move for whoever got the job. Guaranteed Cartel job, political advancement, the works.”
“Pity the conference worked out, I guess. Still…”
“Oh, the same names would love to be attached to this expedition, a chance to command an independent fleet, but the Cartel are causing all sorts of trouble. You realize, of course, that you’ve got friends in high places?”
