Fire brigade star dragon.., p.1
Fire Brigade (Star Dragon Book 2), page 1
FIRE BRIGADE
STAR DRAGON
BOOK TWO
JAMES DAVID VICTOR
Copyright © 2024 James David Victor
All Rights Reserved
Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All people, places, names, and events are products of the author’s imagination and / or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Cover Design by Christian Bentulan
CONTENTS
1. The Kobold Princess
2. Strewn Across 3 Star Systems
3. Mdenium
4. Dark Deals
5. The Merchant Princes of Zunip
6. The Demesne
7. Prince Yuri
8. Not a Brave Man, But a Very Wealthy One
9. The Dreams of Marine Keel Hennity
10. Warnings
11. Leadership Choices
12. Incursion
13. Monstrous Machines
14. Reboot
15. The Real Face of the Enemy
16. Distractions
17. Old Enemies
18. The Bond
19. Jailbreak
20. Prey
Thank You
1
THE KOBOLD PRINCESS
Outer Systems, Quadrant 3, Damala System
“The vessel has failed to comply. Three-Three Squad, you are a go!”
Major Ovid’s words reverberated through Keel Hennity’s suit, transmitted directly from the Imperium warship that hung in space behind them like a vast, two-part, steel-blue shadow against the canopy of night.
Not that Keel exactly ‘heard’ things, he thought as the airlock opened on their drone transport onto the long-nosed, fat-bellied merchant ship below them. He was, after all, a robot. A robot inside a robotic suit of power armor, inhabited by a downloaded consciousness—a ‘Soul,’ in Imperium parlance.
Private First Class Hennity felt the sudden burst of gases as the drone ship released its last atmospheres. He felt the sucking draw of the void, saw the glitter of space, and—
Woah!
He scissor-kicked as he rolled through the night, seeing the orange orb of the gas giant Damala 3 appear on his right, with stars ahead, stars below, stars above…
A moment of vertigo as the gas giant, the drone transporter they had come in, and the merchant ship ahead spun around him.
Mind over matter. It was ridiculous that he could feel vertigo. He was a robot. Or a digitally encoded consciousness. He had no stomach to churn or eardrums to pop. He was no biological.
But some habits were hard to break, and Keel still felt an echo of that terror as a part of him realized, once again, that he had just flung himself out into the endless, ever-hungry, ever-freezing void.
“Lafferty, you’re off course!” Keel heard Tobin Vandale’s urgent voice over their squad channel and cast an eye to his right to see that Private First Class Lafferty, one of their six, was indeed starting to tumble. He had misjudged his kick and was spinning perilously close to another 3-3 Marine—Private First Class Venez.
“Watch it!” Venez growled a moment before the two collided and spun off course, for a second looking like balletic zero-gee dancers as they caught each other’s arms.
“Stars damn it,” Keel muttered, but he had no time to voice an opinion. All six of their squad were supposed to be in formation, following the flickering green vector that their helmet visor presented for them that showed a path straight toward the slowly drifting merchant ship the Kobold Princess.
MISSION: Inspect and Secure
/ Target 1. Zero-gee assault on Kobold Princess.
The target is suspected of piracy violations in the Outer Systems.
Make contact and secure, neutralize if necessary.
Keel squeezed his fists, firing a burst of blue flame from the rocket pack built into the spine of his power suit. With a twist of his arms, he swerved out of the way of the spiraling Venez and Lafferty.
“Formation!” Tobin, their commander for the mission, said. He was supposed to be in the middle and on point of their vector but was now pushed to the right, leaving Sabo and Jamieson roughly holding the left side of the triangle, with Keel in front.
The Kobold Princess was just ahead and speeding close. Keel had a moment to see its long steel wedge over an extended, blue belly dotted with storage canisters. He flung his arms to his side and drew his knees up, ready for impact.
“Magnetize boots,” he whispered. Commands flickered across the top right of his vision.
WARNING!
But before he could hit, there were sparks of light across the hull of the Kobold Princess as small ports opened and distributed countermeasures. Keel saw a glitter of metals like stardust spreading out between them.
He managed to fling a hand over his head before he felt the impact of a thousand small hammers of metal.
/Suit Damage: All areas.
/Suit Damage: Breastplate 85%
“They’re firing at us!” Sabo—always expressive—snarled before Keel’s feet hit the hull and he was kicking forward, rolling through the void of space for a moment before slamming his feet down once more and running ahead.
He felt a few bone-chilling seconds of weightlessness, and then he was on the hull of their target once more. He had made it. He wasn’t going to spin off into space.
ERROR! Wide comms down!
His suit was spitting error messages at him. The Judgment, their home ship, had disappeared from his sensors. The small schematic of his squad was flickering in and out of existence.
“I think that was flak. They’re running interference,” Keel gasped as he slowed to a slide across the metal. He turned back to see that Tobin, Jamieson, and Sabo had made the jump, but Venez and Lafferty had disappeared off the plane of the ship’s horizon.
“Where’s the others?” Keel shouted, hearing his voice come back at him with static.
It was the damn flak the ship had fired! It was messing with their comms.
One of the leading Imperial Marines that Keel recognized as Tobin, because of the small bronze holo-shield that hung over his suit, was waving him closer.
What was the protocol for going through interference? Keel couldn’t remember the guidance they had received in their daily strategy sessions—lessons where they plugged into a training cradle to run through virtual simulations of past battles, drilling lore, tactics, and data into the premium warriors of the human galactic Imperium.
“Olok!” Keel grumbled. He couldn’t remember. The lessons hadn’t covered that.
PFC Hennity and the rest of the 3-3 Squad had only been downloaded as Imperial Marines for the past nine or ten months, and it had only been about two months since the events at Quadrant 4 and the arrival of the alien Jaali into the Imperium. So far, they had spent all that time on the Judgment, under the accusatory eye of Major Ovid, and had gone through any number of training assignments and missions. None of them, however, had featured what to do when the enemy tried to fire flak at you.
He ran over to where Tobin, Sabo, and Jamieson were. Tobin grabbed his arm, and the connection light in his vision flared a bright green.
“The Kobold Princess didn’t respond to the Judgment’s hail, and now she’s firing flak at us. I think it’s safe to say that this is a pirate ship, right?” he was saying, looking quickly between the three as they each digested what that meant.
They had to find and capture the pirates—who were already hostile—after losing communication with their parent ship.
It was just then that Keel saw a flash across Tobin’s shoulder, and they all turned to see a rising string of plasma bolts coming from the far side of the Kobold Princess, where Venez and Lafferty had landed.
Someone was firing on their squad.
“Go!” Tobin said, breaking their physical connection as they all turned and bounded over the hull towards the firefight.
2
STREWN ACROSS 3 STAR SYSTEMS
Keel heard Venez try to say something, but it collapsed into a static snarl before he could make out the words. He saw the horizon of the ship rising to greet him as he thundered over the hull of Kobold Princess, the giant jets of the ship’s engines ahead of them.
There. The string of plasma bolts striking out into the dark.
“They’re insane! We have an entire Imperial warship behind us!” Keel gasped, knowing that the Judgment could blow this ship out of the ether with less thought than it took to swat a fly.
He knew only too well, however, that desperate people lived desperate lives. Once upon a time, the biological Keel had come from the Outer Systems, where they now were. These systems were the farthest from the seat of empire: Emperor Mikhael XIII and his custom-built planet of Solas. The Outer Systems were considered lawless, for the most part, and no place was more unruly than Keel’s desert home planet of Dracis, where the Reptilis Draco Galactus—or star dragon—originated.
Sabo was pointing ahead, and Keel saw two gun emplacements on the lower hull. Both were streaking fire perilously close to their own hull as the two long-barreled plasma guns tried to focus on Venez and Lafferty, who were attempting to get close to the guns without getting blasted into space. They were leaping forward then clamping down on the hull behind any vent or port they could as bolts of metal-melting plasma seared through the void overhead.
Tobin waved his arm in a circular motion and then straight down.
Full assault, Keel knew, allowing his front foot to slide forward as one hand unclipped his plasma rifle from his hip and brought it to bear on the first gun.
Target ERROR!
His small orange targeting triangle flashed across his vision, and then started wobbling in and out of place.
What!?
It was the flak interference, even down here on the underside of the vessel. Keel could see the cloud of tiny fragments hanging in a corona around the ship, still interfering with their suit comms and sensors.
Freehand it is, he thought, twitching his hand to one side as he saw the base of the gun ahead. He pulled the trigger.
His suit measured and took the recoil from his rifle as three burning crimson plasma bolts slammed forward. One hit the gun carapace and burst apart in a petal of flames, the next striking the hull beside it, while the third…
There was a flash of brilliant white light and a spray of sparks. His shot must have broken apart some vital mechanism, because the entire gun was now wheeling wildly, cantilevering to one side as it continued to fire upward into the night.
Tobin had taken a knee and was firing at the second gun as Sabo and Jamieson advanced.
I know how to do this, Keel thought as his hours of training kicked in. Covering fire. Advance under fire. He threw himself forward, feeling the lurch of the void as he was weightless for a moment, before one heavy boot again hit the metal and he was closing in on the guns ahead.
WARNING!
His suit flickered a warning just in time as the second gun turned and strafed a line of plasma bolts across its own hull. Keel couldn’t hear anyone else in his comms, but he was sure that Tobin would be shouting, Down! Down! Down!
Time appeared to slow as Keel watched bolts of white light shooting toward him. He saw one explode across a set of antennae, while another seared the hull plate a couple of meters away. He kicked upward, closing a fist to fire his suit rockets.
With a rush that he had only ever experienced in his pit-fighting days, time collapsed back into adrenaline-fueled speed, and he was spinning through the void as a line of plasma cut through the space where he had been. He landed on the hull again, his magnetic boots locking as he fired at almost point-blank range.
He saw the gun housing shake and start to lift under the pounding of his bolts and then the combined fire of Tobin and Sabo. He was kicked backward again a moment before the entire long-barreled rifle burst upward, spewing plasma and fire behind it as it yielded.
YES! Keel was sure he could feel his nonexistent heart pounding.
My servo mechanisms? The thought flashed through his mind. Vestigial body memory.
That was what Recorder Sula from the Imperial House of Records had said. She was the one who had been appointed as his mental and spiritual ‘guide,’ just as every newly downloaded Imperial Marine had. It was her job to make sure that Keel, who was once a biological, didn’t go mad now that he was a robot and technically not even alive.
Keel, like all the others around him, had already died once. Surely, they should feel no excitement, no joy, no terror…but old habits appeared very hard to break.
Keel heard the static, but he turned more at the feel of the vibrations on the hull that heralded the charging arrival of Venez and Lafferty. The surly Venez was out front as usual, saying nothing but nodding at Keel as he took up position at his side, with Lafferty behind. Venez was pointing at something past the guns—an airlock.
Keel nodded, raising an arm to wave at Tobin, but as he did so, he felt another reverberation through the hull. A tremor, like a vast beast awakening.
Oh no, don’t do that, please don’t do what I think you’re going to—
He saw the giant circular engine port start to dimly glow a burnt amber.
Frack!
Keel shook his head, waving his arm and pointing at the slowly firing engine behind the other Marines. If the Kobold Princess fired at them, there was every chance that the Marines would get blasted from the face of the ship and possibly melted into a metal soup that not even the Imperial engineers could fix.
Over there! Behind you! Keel was gesturing and shouting, even though the rest of his squad couldn’t hear him.
Soon, the others felt the engine starting to wake up. He saw Tobin startle, waving at Sabo and Jamieson, as all three threw themselves toward the airlock.
“Come on!”
Venez’s metal hand clamped on Tobin’s, and Keel guessed it was so their suit-to-suit connection would work better. The gruff, usually annoyed Venez broke the connection the next moment, leaping toward the airlock as Keel followed suit, sliding to a halt to see the raised octagonal lock, standing proud of the hull, and whose lights turned a resistant red every time Venez did anything on the control panel.
Come on, come on, come on! Keel silently urged as he slid to a halt and looked back.
The engine was now a deep cherry red with a halo of gauzy plasma, like a shimmering heatwave.
Tobin, Sabo, and Jamieson were running toward them. Would they make it in time before the engines fired and the ship tried to outrun an Imperial warship?
There was a heavy vibration through the hull as Keel spun around to see that Venez had turned to brute force, hammering at the side of the control panel until sparks sprayed around him.
What the hell are you doing!? Keel could have shouted, until he saw Venez—after destroying the panel—pull at one of the shielding plates to reveal a heavy industrial crank.
There was clearly a method behind his madness. He was disabling the automatic open/close mechanism of the door in favor of the manual one.
But that would take ages, wouldn’t it? What if the airlock was pressurized on the inside? Keel didn’t know much about interstellar physics, but he was sure that would be almost impossible, wouldn’t it?
Venez gestured at him then at the door, and Keel knew, even in the stifling silence of space, what the Marine wanted. He jumped the short distance to grab one end of the crank beside Venez’s large, gauntleted hands. This close, and their suit-to-suit connection was crystal clear.
“On three! One, two, and heave!” Venez grunted, and Keel pulled himself back, feeling his suit augment his natural robotic strength as mechanisms whirred and clicked, and the tiny winches and cables tightened somewhere inside of his chassis.
The winch started to move, and he could feel the crunch of the gears from inside the door as tension ran through the handle.
“The others!” Venez was saying beside him, and Keel’s eyes shot up to see that the Kobold Princess’s engines were now glowing a bright, sunrise yellow. There was an eclipsing haze of light all around them. At the edge of this corona, Keel could start to see the lurid, fantastical ‘flames’ as plasma was being generated. The ship was creating the field necessary for it to power away.
Tobin, Sabo, and Jamieson were leaping forward, firing their rockets to speed themselves toward the airlock.
What will the Judgment do if the ship speeds forward!? A vestige of panic ran through Keel’s soul. Would they stop before they fired on her? Would Major Ovid even think twice before they destroyed the Kobold and the six Marines on it? Keel didn’t know. All he knew was that their training missions had been deadly enough.
“Pull!” Venez shouted.
Keel put his back into it, increasing the magnetic lock of his boots against the hull as he pulled. It felt like he was trying to pull the entire ship with him.
With a sudden crank, the airlock pulled open, releasing the trapped atmospheric gases like a sudden gale around them. Were it not for their boots, Keel was sure they would have been ripped from the hull.
He saw a large, white room inside with an octagonal door on the far side. There were more vibrations through the hull as Tobin and the others landed, and Keel pushed them inside ahead of him.
The engines were now blazing white, almost impossible even for his sensors to look at.
Keel dove inside. Venez and the others pulled the airlock shut behind him with a boom.
Flash.
Keel felt the sudden wave of plasma energy as the ship fired its near-light drive. The airlock seal was not as good as it should have been, because his vision was obscured by the sudden glitch of green numerals and static as errant particles must have flooded into their chamber. Keel even felt pain—an electric sensation like a headache as he tumbled backward in the vacuum.
