Friends in Command (Sons of the Starfarers: Book IV) Read online

  Sons of the Starfarers

  Book IV: Friends in Command

  by Joe Vasicek

  Copyright © 2015 Joseph Vasicek.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, organizations, or events is purely coincidental.

  Editing by Josh Leavitt.

  Cover design by Kalen O’Donnell.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Table of Contents

  A Bloody Burden

  A Call Answered

  Friends Embark

  Foes and Allies

  Surprising Discoveries

  Questionable Decisions

  Whispers in the Dark

  Voices of the Lost

  The Enemy Within

  The Healing Ice

  Author’s Note | Acknowledgments

  THE FUTURE OF THE OUTWORLDS NOW LIES IN UNCERTAIN HANDS.

  The war for the Outworlds is on. The Imperials may have lost the first round, but they're back—and this time, a ragtag flotilla isn't going to stop them.

  When Aaron recieves a captain's commission in the new Outworld Confederacy, Mara is his natural choice for second in command. But Mara never expected to live past the first few battles. She only joined the resistance to avenge her father, and fears the monster she's starting to become. The only thing she has left to live for now is her friends.

  The Imperials aren't the only enemy in this war, though. The friends must face a threat from within in

  SONS OF THE STARFARERS

  BOOK IV: FRIENDS IN COMMAND

  Book IV: Friends in Command

  A Bloody Burden

  Mara Soladze never expected her greatest moment of triumph to feel so empty.

  The SMG bucked in her hand as she sprayed bullets across the starship bunkroom. Her hand was steady, her grip firm. The three Gaian Imperial officers cried out in terror as she cut them to the floor. They fell with bright red bloodstains on their uniforms, the immaculately white fabric soaking it up like a sponge. The fat one—her father’s killer—raised his hands to plead with her, his strength quickly fading as his blood pooled at his knees.

  Mara regarded him coolly, trying in vain to savor her victory. As much as she wanted to relish the moment, she found it impossible to feel anything at all.

  The man’s bulging, corpulent face began to sag. She tried to remember what he looked like when he’d given the order to the firing squad that had shot her father—that awful dispassionate look, as if he were squashing a bug—but for all the stars of Earth, she couldn’t remember what he’d looked like then. All she saw was a terrified man who didn’t want to die.

  Her finger squeezed the trigger, and a burst of gunfire exploded in the center of the man’s head.

  The Imperial officer slumped to the floor. “That’s for my father, you son of a bitch,” she heard herself say. The words hung limp in the air, losing their force almost the moment they left her mouth.

  The scene blurred before her, and her vision turned to darkness. This isn’t real, she told herself. It’s a dream—you’re dreaming this. She felt as if she had just watched the massacre through a stranger’s eyes. But, of course, it wasn’t a stranger; it was her. And the scenes playing out before her were more than just dreams. They were memories.

  “I did it for you, Father,” she shouted into the void. “I paid him back for killing you. Is it enough?” Will it ever be enough?

  The darkness did not grace her with an answer. She drew in a long, quivering breath and tried to focus on her father, but all she felt was an awful numbness.

  “Are you happy, Father?” she asked again, her hands quivering and her eyes burning. But as much as she wanted to cry, the tears simply would not come.

  “Mara?”

  Her father’s voice rang like a gunshot in her ear. She couldn’t see where he was, but she could sense his presence. She headed in that direction, and the darkness gave way to a long, upward-curving corridor.

  As she walked, details began to fill in. She saw throngs of people milling about the edges, with old, clunky ventilators and icons of cyborg saints posted above each lintel. The scent of burning incense filled the air, and a brilliant blue planetscape shone up through the floor windows.

  Megiddo Station, Mara realized. Home.

  She broke into a run, dashing through the crowd to her family’s apartment. The way was so familiar that she could have run there with her eyes closed.

  She rounded the doorway to the stairwell and took the stairs two at a time, snaking through a cluster of old women and drawing shouts from most of them. That didn’t matter, though—all that mattered was seeing her father again.

  “Mara?” he called out again. She rounded the final corner and there he was—tall and handsome, with his beard as neatly trimmed as she’d ever seen it.

  “Daddy!” she cried, running to embrace him.

  He recoiled the moment he saw her, pushing her away. The look of horror on his face cut her to the quick.

  “Who are you?”

  “It’s me, Father—your little Mara. Don’t you remember?”

  “Mara?” He frowned and shook his head. “No, you aren’t my Mara. Where is she?”

  Mara’s stomach fell, and an awful knot tightened in her gut. “Can’t you see? I’ve changed, but I’m still… that is, I—”

  “You can’t be my Mara,” he said in disgust. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”

  Her vision blurred around the edges, and the darkness returned to swallow her.

  “No!” she screamed, fighting against it with all of her strength. But then she saw the bodies of the men she’d killed, lying in their own blood. She looked down at her hands and saw that they were stained just as red as the officers’ white uniforms.

  “What have you done?” her father shouted. “Get away from me, you monster!”

  “Father, please!” she cried, but he turned away and vanished into the darkness. The emptiness returned, and she was powerless to keep it from swallowing her.

  * * * * *

  Mara jolted awake with a gasp. Her undershirt was soaked with sweat, and her whole body still shuddered from the nightmare.

  She lay still and took deep breaths until the worst of it was past. It took her a while longer to recognize where she was; the dream had felt so real that for a moment she thought she was back home on Megiddo Station. But then, she read the troop roster on the display screen about a meter above her head, and it all came back to her in an instant.

  She was in her sleepcube, at New Hope Station in the New Pleiades. A little over two standard months had passed since their narrow victory at Colkhia. Her platoon’s base ship, the Aegis, had been destroyed in the battle, so they had been stationed at headquarters until the newly formed High Command assigned them to another starship. But High Command was taking longer to reorganize the Flotilla than anyone had expected, and the Aegis platoons had yet to receive their new assignment.

  That gave Mara a whole lot more time to herself than she’d ever wanted. She tried to keep herself busy with a rigorous fitness routine, but the exercise facilities on board the station were limited and she could only do so many pull-ups and sit-ups before she had to rest. Her muscles still ached from the previous dayshift, but sleep failed to refresh her.

  You’re a killer, she told herself as the images of the dead Gaian officers flashed across her mind. That moment when she’d leveled the SMG at the officer’s head, just before she’d squeezed the trigger—in
that moment, she’d felt alive. It was the only way to describe it.

  “You’re a monster,” she said aloud, remembering her father’s words. The walls of the sleepcube were hardly soundproof, so there was a chance that someone might overhear her. Even so, it hardly mattered to her. Nothing mattered anymore—not even the cause she was fighting for. She’d only joined the Resistance to exact revenge on her father’s killer. And now that she’d succeeded, the war seemed pointless and empty.

  Well, not completely empty. She still had her friends in Fourth Platoon. Jason Thetana, the star wanderer turned cybernetics expert from the Oriana Cluster not far from her home; Phoebe Trellian, the soft-spoken medic from Iayus near Imperial-controlled space; and Pallas, the deadly sharpshooter who went by a single name. She didn’t know much about him, but she knew that he was a killer, just like her.

  And then there was Aaron Deltana, the platoon drop-ship pilot and only other Deltan in the fleet. Growing up at Megiddo Station, Aaron’s sister Mariya had been Mara’s best friend. They’d been separated by the famine and subsequent exodus from the system, but Mara still remembered those happy days. They stood in stark contrast to the life she lived now.

  That kid is a piece of work, Mara thought, smiling to herself. He owed her for getting him as far as she had. It wasn’t like he had yet to prove himself—he’d pulled off some stunning maneuvers in the last battle, saving all their lives—but she’d saved his life back there as well.

  The Aegis platoons had taken so many losses, there was a good chance they’d be disbanded, and that she’d be sent away from all her newfound friends. The thought made shivers run down her arms.

  I should go back to sleep, she told herself. No sense worrying about something that’s out of my control.

  But nothing was in her control anymore. She was a monster now—so much so that her own father wouldn’t recognize her. And that was what frightened her most of all.

  A Call Answered

  Aaron slept through his morning alarm, but not through the banging on his sleepcube door.

  He groaned and lashed out with a kick, landing it squarely on the tiny hatch that was the only way in or out of the private sleepcube. The banging stopped, but the alarm was impossible to ignore. He slapped at it with a sleepy hand and only succeeded in banging his elbow against the wall. The pain was so sharp that he swore.

  Through the sleepcube’s thin walls, he could hear people rushing out to the ladders. He sat up as much as he could in the narrow space and tried again with the alarm. This time, he managed to switch it off.

  “All right, grunts!” he heard Mara yell in Gaian at the top of her lungs. “You know the drill. Chow’s in fifteen, and stragglers don’t eat, so line up!”

  The upshift run, first exercise routine of the day. Hell, Fourth Platoon was practically on the verge of being disbanded, and she still drilled them harder than any other unit on New Hope Station. Ever since the Battle of Colkhia two standard months ago, it had been nothing but drills and exercises. She worked them so hard, it almost felt like the fighting had been half a lifetime ago.

  Fortunately, he’d slept in his fatigues. All he needed to do was open the door and crawl down the ladder to line up with the rest of the platoon.

  Before he did that, though, he took his portable dream monitor and stuffed it into the storage unit behind the headboard. The sleepcubes were supposed to be private, but he didn’t want to risk anyone finding it. Not that it was something he shouldn’t have—plenty of soldiers had private entertainment systems that they used in their free time. But if Mara knew he was still using… Well, he figured it was best to be safe.

  He kicked open the sleepcube and dropped to the floor just as the others were almost all in line. As he hurriedly slipped his shoes on, Mara gave him a narrow glare.

  “Pallas, take us out in ten. The rest of you, I want you out of this module by the time he starts running. Let’s move, boys and girls!”

  The main body headed out at a brisk jog. Aaron slipped on his last shoe and took off with the rest of them, ignoring the nauseous groan in his stomach. It was only one lap—he could do this. One lap of torture this ungodly upshift hour.

  The corridor was narrow and windowless, with hatchways instead of automatic doors. Even if there had been windows, though, there wouldn’t be much to look at. New Hope Station orbited an uncharted rogue planet deep within the New Pleiades. When the station was angled just right, you could sometimes see the Good Hope Nebula, but that was it besides the starfield. After spending the last few years with his older brother on the Medea, Aaron missed the view.

  His older brother Isaac, who had gone missing at the Battle of Colkhia. A lump rose in Aaron’s throat, and not from the run. It had been more than two standard months since the battle, and Isaac was still missing. Everyone probably thought he was dead by now, but Aaron wouldn’t accept that. His brother was still out there somewhere—that was for sure.

  “Deltana! What’s the hold up? Move it!”

  He’d grossly miscalculated how much his stomach could handle, and now he felt as if he were about to throw up. Maybe he shouldn’t have spent so much time on the dream monitor last night. He clutched his gut and tried to pick up the pace, but he was definitely lagging behind.

  “Why do we have to run every upshift?” he grumbled in Deltan.

  “Because sitting on your ass in that simulator all day isn’t doing your body any favors, soldier,” Mara shouted at him in Gaian.

  Her answer made his cheeks burn. The anger gave him added strength, and he choked down the worst of the nausea. Still, he couldn’t help but glare at her. Why did she have to land on him like that? Stars, she was worse than Isaac sometimes!

  As he struggled at the rear of the pack, Mara fell into step beside him.

  “Come on, Mara,” he murmured in their native Deltan. Mara was the only other Deltan on the platoon—in fact, in the entire flotilla. When they spoke in their native language, no one else could understand them.

  “You know I can’t go easy on you in front of the others, Aaron,” she told him. “Can’t treat my friends any different than everyone else.”

  “Yeah, but do you have to be such a prick about it?”

  They slowed as the platoon reached the next hatchway. Only one person could go through at a time, so the lines had to alternate. It made for a bit of a bottleneck, but after two months of living on the station, they’d worked it down to an art. They jumped through with barely a hand’s breadth of clearance between each other and reformed the lines without stopping.

  “The Resistance needs more pricks,” Mara answered. “Besides, why were you up so late anyway? Were you on that dream monitor again?”

  She knows.

  “No,” Aaron said quickly. He paused to catch his breath. “Well, maybe a little,” he admitted. If she was onto him, there was nothing he could do to keep her from finding out everything.

  “Dammit, Aaron! What did I tell you about that thing? Don’t you know it’s dangerous? I swear to Sol, that thing is going to fry your brain one of these days.”

  She was right, of course. The neural stimulator program wasn’t exactly a kosher use of the dream monitor. He’d gotten it to help him learn the Gaian language faster, but now, he used it mostly just to calm his nerves. There was something immensely soothing about the program, almost like drinking a glass of wine. Surely in small doses, it couldn’t be that bad.

  “I’m careful with it, Mara, I’m careful.”

  He didn’t have to glance over at her to feel the full weight of her glare.

  “Pick up the pace, Deltana,” she said in Gaian. “You’re lagging.”

  “I’m going, I’m going.”

  As she took off to the head of the pack, a buzzing on his wrist caught his attention. It was his wrist console, notifying him of an incoming message. He pulled out the earpiece and slapped it against his ear.

  “Message from… central office,” the automated voice said. “Ensign Deltana, report to
Major Achilles in the briefing room promptly after mess.”

  Aaron’s eyes widened and his cheeks blanched. If he wasn’t awake before, he definitely was now.

  * * * * *

  Breakfast wasn’t anything special. Mara sat at the same table as the others, but a little ways off. The others would fill in around her—those who dressed fast enough to make it to the mess hall in time, that was. She couldn’t understand why so many of them waited until after their run to dress properly.

  Two of the soldiers missed breakfast, but Aaron wasn’t one of them. He made it in just as the mess hall’s doors slit shut. His fatigues were blue, a noticeably different color from the olive green of the rest of the platoon. Technically, as a drop-ship pilot, his command chain went through Commander Noah, not her. So long as he slept and ate with the rest of the platoon, though, she wasn’t about to clarify that point.

  Such a mess, she thought to herself as she stirred her bowl of gray synthmeal. It’s been that way ever since the Battle of Colkhia. Almost half of the platoon had died in that battle, and they’d been limping along ever since. If the rest of the Flotilla hadn’t been just as disorganized, they’d probably have been disbanded by now. The first campaign of the war was over, and they’d captured several Imperial warships intact. But no one knew who would command them, or whose authority they’d fall under, or even where the crews were going to come from. Some of the pilots were even starting to desert, saying that the Imperials had been beaten and that the war was as good as over. But Mara knew the truth. The Imperials wouldn’t give up so easily. They’d be back.

  “Hey there,” said Aaron, sitting down across the table from her. His tray was mostly empty, except for a bowl of dried fruit and synthmeal and a protein shake. That was different—usually, Aaron piled on as much food as he could eat, which was invariably more than her.