The old guard, p.1
The Old Guard, page 1
THE OLD GUARD
HOUSE ADAMANT
BOOK 2
GLYNN STEWART
CONTENTS
GlynnStewart.com
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
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
About the Author
Also by Glynn Stewart
Copyright © 2024 by Glynn Stewart
Cover art by Elias Stern for Faolan’s Pen Publishing
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Published by Faolan’s Pen Publishing. Faolan's Pen Publishing logo is a registered trademark of Faolan's Pen Publishing Inc.
GLYNNSTEWART.COM
Visit the website for series bonuses, special events, and release updates:
GlynnStewart.com
ONE
“I am delighted to be the first to welcome you to the United Worlds, Lieutenant Commander Adamant,” the naval officer seated across the desk told Lorraine.
He might even mean it, the young woman reflected as she smiled in response to his pleasantry. On the other hand, the tanned-skinned Adamantine woman was sure her smile and warm expression also came across as perfectly sincere.
“Thank you, Captain Wolfe,” she told her host. “I’m afraid my commission is suspended until we have a legitimate new King in Adamant, however. Pentarch is the correct title—but, as my documents note, Envoy is perfectly acceptable as well.”
Her Royal Highness Lorraine Alexis Elouise Nala Adamant was the Second Pentarch of the Kingdom of Adamant, one of five of her mother-the-King’s heirs and charged to stand for election to replace King Valeriya Adamant.
Except she’d been Fourth Pentarch until her uncle had killed her parents and two of her three siblings. There was a reason for the legitimate in her phrasing, and she saw that Captain Wolfe of the United Worlds Navy had picked it up.
The stubby man with the shaven head was one of dozens of administrative officers aboard MacDougall Station, the military platform her ship was docked with.
“I see… Envoy,” he allowed. “Your documents are entirely in order. We are aware of the current crisis in your home state, of course, but the United Worlds has received no communiques that would invalidate your diplomatic papers.”
“I appreciate that confirmation, Captain Wolfe,” Lorraine told him. She didn’t quite flutter her eyelashes at the man—that would be too obvious—but other body language was just as effective.
She was twenty-eight years old, with dark hair, pale skin and gold-blue hazel eyes. The UWN officer probably had a decade on her, but he was clearly not immune to her beauty—the result of long-ago genetic engineering by the ancestor who’d founded a kingdom of multiple star systems.
“Will there be any issues with my ship?” she continued.
“As Envoy of your Kingdom, you are authorized to travel aboard any vessel of your choosing,” Wolfe said calmly. “You are far from the only such Envoy traveling through the United Worlds on a frigate, Envoy Adamant.”
There was no way in stars or worlds that the UWN officer was going to give her a royal title of any kind, Lorraine could tell. The United Worlds was the galaxy’s oldest and largest democracy, the state that had subsumed Earth and all of her oldest colonies. The United Worlds controlled everything, in fact, between Sol and the wormholes reaching deeper into the void.
Wormholes like the one from the Bright Dream System to the Tavastar System—the one Lorraine and her ship had just passed through.
“Most such frigates are… well, in somewhat better shape,” Wolfe said wryly. “Though, given the reports of what happened in Bright Dream, that Goldenrod exists at all is impressive.”
“My uncle appears… very determined that the extent of his crimes not be revealed to the greater galaxy,” Lorraine told the local. “I regret the loss of Corsair and her crew, but Commodore Wray gave us little choice.”
“You were caught by a battlecruiser while aboard a frigate, Envoy Adamant,” Wolfe reminded her unnecessarily. “That you are in this office talking to me is damn impressive. Against those odds, no one will ever blame you for what was necessary.”
The United Worlds, for all of its many pretensions, did not claim pacifism or moral superiority over those who used violence. Why bother, after all, when they had so much else to claim superiority about?
“Captain Stephson’s Chief Engineer wanted me to ask if it was possible for us to purchase parts and repair services aboard MacDougall Station?” Lorraine asked.
Lieutenant Colonel Sigrid Stephson was the commanding officer of Goldenrod and about half of the reason Lorraine had survived the thirty-six-light-year, almost-six-month journey from the Adamantine System to Bright Dream and its wormhole.
The other half was the third occupant of Captain Wolfe’s very plain office. Major Vigo Jarret of the Adamant Guard was Lorraine’s right hand, her left leg, her backup, her support—her chief bodyguard and the man whose iron loyalty had carried her all of this way.
If Jarret was silent in this office, it was because he had nothing to say and believed Lorraine had their initial meeting with the people who would decide the fate of their entire Kingdom entirely in hand.
No pressure.
“I know that we have a chandlery on MacDougall to cover basic supplies for the warships that dock here, but the repair yards are usually restricted to UWN vessels only,” Wolfe said slowly. “What supplies your engineer can’t purchase here, I’m sure our chandler can help you source from Tavastar Station itself.”
“That should be more than sufficient,” Lorraine agreed. “We are free to travel to Tavastar Station, then?”
Goldenrod had received very clear orders on exiting the wormhole: all warships were to report to the UWN’s MacDougall Station and were not permitted to approach the massive civilian station supporting the wormhole.
“No non–United Worlds warship is permitted within one light-second of Tavastar Station,” Wolfe warned calmly. “Your shuttles, on the other hand, are authorized for both personnel and cargo transfer.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Lorraine said. “I am pleased with the welcome and support MacDougall has offered us, but I have business on Tavastar before I head deeper into the United Worlds.”
“Of course, Envoy.” He paused. “I do need to ask what your intended final destination is, Envoy.”
“Earth, of course,” she told him. “I intend to bring the sad state of affairs in my home kingdom to the attention of the Grand Assembly and ask for their assistance in restoring order.”
The last she’d heard was that the Royal Election for a replacement King had been suspended. Her uncle, Benjamin Adamant, ruled as Regent—a role never intended to last more than the six months of the Election.
Lorraine was going to see a proper Election held. She might lose it, but the Kingdom’s constitution and traditions would be honored.
And if she had to kill her uncle to pull that off, that was a bonus.
“We can’t just send you over to Tavastar Station in an unarmed shuttle,” Jarret argued silently as they walked through MacDougall.
Both of them had implanted neural links. While the technology wasn’t up to putting information directly into their brains, it was able to feed data to both the optical and auditory nerves. More than good enough for most purposes.
Including a silent conversation that no one around the two Adamantines could hear.
“We are limited in our options,” Lorraine told him, gesturing for her bodyguard—and the three other Adamant Guards that had waited outside Captain Wolfe’s office—to follow her into an observation gallery.
“The United Worlds has strict rules about weapons on and near space stations,” she continued.
With her Guards keeping a clear bubble around her, it took them a few moments to get to a point in the gallery where they could observe outside the station.
MacDougall Station was a large iteration of a rela
Most of the cylinder-style stations Lorraine had been on were enclosed artificial worlds, with full biospheres carefully assembled for long-term sustainability. MacDougall used the volume for the fleet anchorage instead—though it was still fully enclosed, with massive airlock doors allowing even the largest UWN battleships to enter and be repaired in atmosphere.
“We are allowed arms on MacDougall and Tavastar Station,” Jarret pointed out. He stepped up beside her at the railing, looking “out” at the holographic window showing them the space outside MacDougall Station.
If nothing else, the fact that the window was in front of them gave the lie to the apparent orientation of the room. Any actual view out into deep space, even ignoring the danger to the station of anything resembling a window, would have been beneath her feet.
Illusory or not, the “window” let them see the slow flow of traffic around the military station. The UWN carrier Fidelity was rising into view like a particularly grouchy moon, six million tons of armor, guns and combat shuttles. She was the flagship of the task force assigned to Tavastar, one of the farthest-flung major forces of the United Worlds Navy.
Past her, so far away that it was barely a yellow glint to the human eye, was Tavastar Station. Home to over forty million people, it was Lorraine’s most immediate destination.
“You are allowed hand weapons,” Lorraine conceded Jarret’s point. “Four bodyguards with sidearms. That’s all I’m allowed at any given moment—and I’m not supposed to be armed, at that!
“We are most definitely not allowed armed shuttles in the space between MacDougall Station and Tavastar Station,” she continued. “So, yes, we can and will ‘just’ send me over to the station in an unarmed shuttle. With you and three other Guards. Aboard one of the Guard shuttles, I think.”
“Stephson is going to need every hand she can get if we’re making repairs out of our own resources,” Jarret said grimly. “And every shuttle. She and Cheng Cortez are going to ask how long we’ll be here. You know that.”
Lorraine nodded, still studying the tiny fleck of gold that marked her next stop. Commander Rose Cortez was Goldenrod’s Chief Engineer—also known as the Cheng—and the woman tasked with making sure the crippled warship was able to fly again.
“And as soon as I have anything resembling a timeline, I’ll let them know,” she finally said. “But the Fund’s nearest office is on Tavastar Station—as is Adamant’s nearest attaché office.”
The United Worlds Stability Convention Fund was the money theoretically set aside to support the United Worlds Navy in enforcing the agreements of that Convention. Like many systems, Adamantine paid into the Fund—but whether the UWN would actually be prepared to support the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Adamant against an internal coup was an open question.
“I need to talk to both our people and the Fund before I can even begin to have a plan. I need more information, Vigo.”
“And we’ll get it for you,” he conceded with a sigh. “Just… let me talk to the locals before we head over to Tavastar? I’ve been going over the rules for us bodyguards and I think I may have a chance to conjure something for our trip over.”
“I could probably use the rest, but so could everyone else,” Lorraine admitted.
The transit through the wormhole had taken roughly an hour—an hour during which they were utterly safe from anything in the universe. Less than a dozen hours before that, though, they’d been fighting for their lives.
And Lorraine Adamant was not so foolish as to believe they were entirely safe in the United Worlds.
TWO
The Midas-type modular combat shuttle was the mainstay of the Royal Kingdom of Adamant Navy’s shuttle force. Depending on the modules hooked up to the cube-shaped core of engines and cockpit, it could be everything from a bomber to a transport shuttle carrying ten thousand tons of cargo.
Its “standard” configuration was a light transport craft capable of carrying twenty people or a few hundred tons of cargo—and that was the configuration Charlie-Two was rigged up in as Vigo Jarret took his charge over to Tavastar Station.
Four of the sixteen shuttles aboard Goldenrod belonged to the Adamant Guard, part of the detail assigned to the ship to protect Her Royal Highness Lorraine Adamant, who happened to share the same body as Lieutenant Commander Lorraine Adamant, the commanding officer of Goldenrod’s Bravo shuttle flight.
Or had, at least, before everything had gone to pieces. Lorraine had to be the Pentarch these days, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t miss the Lieutenant Commander.
“We are clear of Mom and heading for our designated rendezvous point,” Lieutenant Juturna Deering reported. Now the second-in-command of both Goldenrod’s Charlie Flight and Vigo’s Archangel Section Three, she was their pilot.
Vigo might only be allowed to bring four armed bodyguards to protect his principal, but the big Adamant Guard was perfectly willing to bend definitions.
Deering and the other half-dozen Guards aboard the shuttle wouldn’t be boarding Tavastar Station, which meant the fact that they had battle armor and proper rifles stocked away on the shuttle wasn’t violating the local rules.
“Escorts are on the scope,” the copilot, Chief Jayesh Laszlo, reported. Laszlo was a loaner, a senior RKAN noncom seconded to the Adamant Guard to make up for their personnel losses.
From what Vigo’s subordinates had said, the Guard didn’t want to give either of the NCOs back. They’d stepped into holes opened by treachery—the original commander of Section Three had been murdered by his second-in-command as part of the attack on Lorraine—but they’d more than proven themselves.
“I was promised a proper security detail for Her Highness,” Vigo noted. “What did they send us?”
The Pentarch had to play by the rules, entirely aboveboard and talking to senior people. Captain Wolfe’s whole job, Vigo judged, was to manage senior foreign officers who tried to throw their weight around—helped, he figured, by the fact that Wolfe’s bland “Captain” was actually the equivalent to many navies’ Commodores and junior Admirals.
The United Worlds Navy was the largest military force in human space, with no less than eighteen officer ranks. Captain Wolfe’s insignia—three blue squares over three red squares—marked him as an O-9, equivalent to an RKAN Lieutenant Admiral.
Only battleships and carriers ranked full Captains for commanding officers in the United Worlds Navy.
Vigo, for his part, had spoken to the far more junior officer—a mere Commander who still technically outranked Goldenrod’s Lieutenant Colonel CO—in charge of MacDougall Station’s shuttle squadrons.
“I have four Falcon-type ‘starfighters’ on the screens,” Laszlo reported, his tone sharpening at the term for the spacecraft. “Which are, so far as I can tell…”
“Modular combat shuttles in interceptor mode,” Vigo agreed with a grin. “They call their MCSes starfighters, Chief. Apparently, it makes recruiting much, much easier.”
“When do they tell the wannabes that they’re going to spend most of their careers hauling cargo?” Deering asked. “I mean, sensors tell me I want one of those babies, but the basic concept is the same and I’m guessing their flight-hour ratios would look pretty familiar.”
“So far as I know, yup,” he agreed. His grin didn’t fade much as he tapped his gold ace wings. Even among the RKAN’s shuttle pilots, those were a rare adornment. He’d earned them decades earlier, before transferring from the Navy to the Adamant Guard to take care of Lorraine as a very small child.
“Whatever they call them, they’ve got the engines and the beams to keep us safe for the journey,” he told Deering. “And while I’d love to think that’s unnecessary, well…”
“We were supposed to be unnecessary on Goldenrod,” Deering agreed.
Enough of the Guard had supported Benjamin Adamant’s coup to clear the way for the King and two of the Pentarchs to be murdered. Lorraine and her brother Nikola were alive—or, at least, Nikola had been alive when the last news had left Adamant months earlier.
