Wolf emperor, p.1
Wolf Emperor, page 1
part #1 of The Last Marines 08 Series
Wolf Emperor
Book Eight of The Last Marines
By
William S. Frisbee, Jr.
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PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books
Copyright © 2023 William S. Frisbee, Jr.
All Rights Reserved
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License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events, or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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Cover Design by J Caleb Design.
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Contents
Chapter One: Grain of Sand
Chapter Two: Tiger Stripes
Chapter Three: Vanhat Fleet
Chapter Four: Legionnaire
Chapter Five: Diagrams
Chapter Six: Valakut
Chapter Seven: Father
Chapter Eight: Raid
Chapter Nine: Abandoned
Chapter Ten: Battle for Jupiter
Chapter Eleven: Traps
Chapter Twelve: Ghost Station
Chapter Thirteen: Baskonian
Chapter Fourteen: Haunted
Chapter Fifteen: The Torag
Chapter Sixteen: Death Hunter
Chapter Seventeen: The War
Chapter Eighteen: Trapped
Chapter Nineteen: Abandoned
Chapter Twenty: The Commune
Chapter Twenty-One: Ghosts
Chapter Twenty-Two: Planet of the Torag
Chapter Twenty-Three: Scale
Chapter Twenty-Four: Valakut
Chapter Twenty-Five: Bureaucracy
Chapter Twenty-Six: Sergeant McCarthy
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Warzone
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Guardian
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Recon
Chapter Thirty: Guerrilla War
Chapter Thirty-One: Torag Prisoners
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Hunt
Chapter Thirty-Three: Defenders
Chapter Thirty-Four: Hunted
Chapter Thirty-Five: Legion Review
Chapter Thirty-Six: Mistakes
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Losses
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Fleet Engagement
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Loyalty
Chapter Forty: Valakut
Chapter Forty-One: Stathis
Chapter Forty-Two: Lost Patrol
Chapter Forty-Three: Sif
Chapter Forty-Four: Contact
Chapter Forty-Five: Fighting
Chapter Forty-Six: No Choice
Chapter Forty-Seven: Shuttle Flight
Chapter Forty-Eight: Sif Returns
Chapter Forty-Nine: The Romach
Chapter Fifty: Prisoners
Chapter Fifty-One: Insertion to Romanov
Chapter Fifty-Two: Romanov
Chapter Fifty-Three: Romanov Base
Chapter Fifty-Four: The Trap
Chapter Fifty-Five: Regimental HQ
Chapter Fifty-Six: Planetary Command
Chapter Fifty-Seven: The Duel
Chapter Fifty-Eight: Planetary Intel
Chapter Fifty-Nine: Return to Earth
Chapter Sixty: Asteroids
Chapter Sixty-One: The Organics
Chapter Sixty-Two: Waiting
Chapter Sixty-Three: Desertion
Chapter Sixty-Four: Fire Wind
Chapter Sixty-Five: Legion of the Wolf
About William S. Frisbee, Jr.
Excerpt from Book One of The Prince of Britannia Saga:
Excerpt from Book One of The Sergey Chronicles:
Excerpt from Book One of the Abner Fortis, ISMC:
Excerpt from Book One of the Lunar Free State:
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Chapter One: Grain of Sand
Vanhat Commander – Kafasta
A grain of sand, infused with hate and sleeping life. Cast out into the ocean between the islands where it has remained for millions of years. Waiting for the return. Waiting for the call.
Mankind could spend billions of years discovering those things between the stars and billions more identifying them.
This one grain of sand, so small on the galactic scale, hurtles through the void. Both an ark and a tomb. A weapon placed in a case until it is needed.
A whisper from another dimension and ancient generators pulse. Warmth spreads throughout the small planetoid hidden in the dark, surrounded by vast emptiness.
It is time to awaken. Time to unsheathe the weapon and unleash it upon those that dared stand against the masters.
Obedient slaves breathe the last of their life and knowledge into their receptacles of this ancient tomb. More slaves awaken who will receive this knowledge.
The ancient gods are angry. They have been thwarted. Their plans have been delayed and they are impatient.
There is a name they give their failure: Wolf Mathison, a United States Marine. All the demons now know his name; they now know of the Marines.
The weapons have been given a taste of the blood they must seek.
Awakening, the Weermag collectively scream their anger and pain. Awakening from stasis is not pleasant. It reeks of pain and confusion. There is no reason to pander to slaves kept only to fight, suffer, and die. One in ten died, but there are over a billion of them. The gods rejoice in their pain and suffering, feeding it, celebrating it, aiming it.
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Veteran officer Kafasta opened his eyes to stare at the metal centimeters from his face. Information poured into his mind. The nearness of the gods caused his cybernetics to sputter, but as they withdrew, the flood of information became an avalanche.
Kafasta roared and slammed the hatch before him. The gods were leaving him. Alone, bereft and suffering from the agony of waking, he let the information infuse him. He absorbed it.
Know thy enemy. You could not inflict the greatest pain and suffering on your foe unless you understood them. You could not make them fear you unless you could become what they feared.
Enemies of the past were gone. Defeated, lost in time. This new foe was dangerous.
Kafasta drank in more information.
Marines. An alien term, rooted in water. A word that changed based on who was using it and what they wanted to share. A deceptive term. One that could be associated with fun on the water, a creature that lived in the water, or one of the most lethal warriors known to this weak, pathetic species.
Only one term meant anything to him now, though, United States Marine. A dangerous enemy equipped with dangerous technology, able to defy the gods.
Kafasta understood evolution. The most successful creatures succeeded and survived. The best fighters lived and bred.
The humans called his kind the vanhat: ancient ones. This was an accurate statement. They called Kafasta “orja,” which meant slave. Not a false statement, but not complete either.
Absorbing human history, Kafasta sneered. A slave race, for sure.
The gods knew much. They had watched humanity for a very long time. They knew things mankind could never know about their history. There was too much information for him to understand it all, but it would be there, stored in his cybernetics for when he needed it.
“We awake,” his demon whispered in his mind.
“We hunger,” Kafasta whispered back.
“Only the blood of our enemies can sate our hunger.”
“Only the fear and agony of our enemies can satisfy us.”
His demon had no name. It was part of him, part of his cybernetics.
Another piece of information presented itself. These Marines had demonic assistants of their own. Their assistants had more free will, more freedom, and more capabilities than his own, but that would not save him.
Only four Marines? He was one of millions that would hunt them.
“No,” his demon whispered. “Their leader will build legions to oppose us. These Marines stand with others that are also strong enough to oppose us. The gods would not have woken us otherwise. They have seen this in the circles of time.”
“We will not fail.” Kafasta was sure of this.
“The incubators are being activated. Our numbers will grow. Your genetics will be used. We will triple our numbers in only a few years.”
Years, a human concept. A measurement of time based on their pathetic, insignificant planet circling their weak little star. The Weermag would use human terms and concepts. They would absorb anything humanity offered them. After the war, the gods would pick and choose which human traits and capabilities should be kept and which should be discarded.
The Weermag would absorb what was useful from humanity, but that was the nature of evolution and conquest. The conqueror took what it wanted, what was successful, and abandoned the rest. This was the truth of life and the universe. The weak did not survive. To the victor went the spoils. Those who did not understand that did not read history.
Any species that let an organization like the Social Organizational Governance take and keep control was weak.
The warships were being woken and serviced. His demon received orders assigning him to one of the first ships that would be ready. He would help spearhead the assault. Humanity thought they could withstand the storm. They were so very wrong. The storm was brewing, and it would come for them. A billion Marines would not be enough to stop the Weermag. The chitin covering his skin itched as it breathed in the ice-cold air.
Other vanhat were busy preparing the groundwork. They were luring troops away from their target. The fight for their worthless little planet would open the chink in their armor for Kafasta and his brothers. The humans were fools. The vanhat had not yet begun this war.
Around him, more hatches were smashed outward and his fellow orja stepped into the dust-covered tomb where they had been placed. The air was stale. Unused for millions of years.
These were the strong, the champions of the gods. These were the Weermag.
Kafasta roared and millions of his brothers roared back at him.
Let the hunt begin!
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Chapter Two: Tiger Stripes
Prime Minister Wolf Mathison, USMC
Mathison rubbed his eyes. Reading reports was mind numbing. Reading Feng’s personnel record was frightening. He and Skadi had considered him to be fanatically loyal to Nadya, the now dead secretary general and supreme ruler of the Social Organizational Governance.
Shing Feng had been one of her favorites, and he was a lot older than Mathison had thought. What was equally disturbing was that most of his record was in Nadya’s personal data store and Freya hadn’t been able to crack that yet. But the basic information was concerning enough.
Born in August 2210, a hundred and twelve years after Mathison and his Marines had been lost in space, Feng was almost ancient. His father had been one of the founders of the ODTs and died a hero in one of their first actions as a fighting force against the caliphate in 2227. That explained Feng’s appreciation of the ODTs.
Feng had joined the ODTs at seventeen and rose quickly. One of his numerous citations was for not hesitating to fire on insurgents using children as human shields. There was another from when he was a crucial witness against another ODT trooper who had committed an act that endangered the lives of his fellow ODTs and the integrity of a Governance warship. Mathison didn’t bother reading after that.
Feng had been a loyal member of the ruling elite since birth. His mother was murdered fighting insurgents in China, and his father murdered defending the Governance. It was little wonder that Feng was obsessed with defending it. It was burned into his blood.
Feng had fired on children to kill an insurgent? And at such a young age. There were additional entries for when was selected for officer candidacy school and later commissar training.
A tiger didn’t change his stripes, no matter how old it was. There was no questioning Feng was a fanatic.
On a whim, Mathison checked the records for Operation Razor.
Nothing.
“Have you found anything on Operation Razor, or Haberdash, as the Republic calls it?” Mathison asked Freya.
“To be honest? I haven’t had time to look,” Freya said. “I’m busy enough trying to figure out what is going on now. Not much I can do about the past. Who controlled that assassin is priority number one.”
“Let Feng track that down,” Mathison said.
If Feng was behind it then Mozi would help cover any tracks so Freya wouldn’t discover the truth. Feng was not a fool.
“Now that you mention it, though, there really is a dearth of information on Operation Razor. The information appears to have been purged from SOG databases some time ago.”
“Even the super classified files?”
“Don’t you think that is the first place I would check?”
“Skadi,” Mathison asked aloud, “why would SOG purge any records regarding Operation Razor, or as you know it, Operation Haberdash?”
“If I had to guess? It was embarrassing for the Governance,” Skadi said. “When they failed and things went badly, they had to shift to damage control.”
“What happened?” Mathison asked.
Skadi winced. “I’m not entirely sure,” she said. “We believed it was some kind of mind control experiment that got out of hand. Somehow, word leaked, and it became a race to steal or destroy the technology. The SOG was developing it, but then the Golden Horde became involved. Once they found out what the SOG was doing, they decided they wanted it. It was a paska lounas. Why?”
“Feng was involved in it.”
“Lots of Governance agents and troops were involved. I don’t remember encountering Feng, but that doesn’t surprise me.”
“Thank you,” Mathison said, turning back to his display.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it,” Skadi said.
“Sorry,” Mathison said, looking back up at her. He remembered her, Niels, Vili, and Bern talking about it when things got bad, but he had never asked for details. Now it looked like even the SOG wanted to forget it had ever happened.
“It was a lesson for all of us,” Skadi said, reaching out to her display to bring up some more information or issue a command.
She was likely bothered by Vili’s absence as well.
“I had no idea the SOG had this much firepower,” Skadi said. “There are five dreadnought squadrons here, near Luna and Earth, and three out near Jupiter, and double that many battleship squadrons. General Duque says there are two more dreadnoughts and about eight battleships, as well as numerous battle cruisers, frigates, and corvettes under construction. He’s having them accelerate construction.”
Which meant little to Mathison. They were just numbers, and they didn’t seem like much compared to the millions of defensive platforms spread out through the Sol System.
“If the Chechens want to tangle with us, they’re going to have their hands full,” Skadi said.
“Unless they have a weapon they think gives them an advantage,” Mathison said and queued a request for Feng to join them. The Chechen problem was festering in the back of his mind. They continued to probe, but it made little sense.
Minutes later, Feng joined them.
“What can you tell me about the Chechens?” Mathison asked.
“Harsh and brutal,” Feng said. “Culturally they are Muslim, but the Governance has managed to twist and usurp their religion.
“They have developed an interesting place in the Governance hierarchy. They started out as a satellite state of the Russian Federation. When the Federation collapsed during a revolution and the Governance rose to power, Chechnya became even more of a vassal state. The Governance exploited this, encouraging their religious zeal. Their loyalty to the Governance was rewarded by giving them several colonies, and those colonies continued their tradition of servitude to the Governance. There are Chechen units and fleets, and they are frequently used as a terror weapon. They considered Nadya to be a descendant of their prophet and the ruler of a sort of new caliphate. Though their mental gymnastics of taking orders from a woman is impressive, they have managed it. I doubt their current religion resembles what it originally was.”
“So why are they getting aggressive and threatening Sol?”
“Perhaps they seek a return of Mecca and Medina?” Feng said. “That is likely the official reason. They have not been allowed access to those areas since the Fifth Israeli-Arab War when they nuked each other. Many holy sites in the Middle East are radioactive ruins. There have been reclamation attempts and some of those places can be visited if you wear protective suits, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.”
