Talosian Chronicles 5: Raptor Squadron Read online

  Raptor Squadron

  Talosian Chronicles – Book V

  By Ben Winston

  Copyright © 2016 Ben Winston

  Published by Blue Space Publications, LLC.

  Disclaimer

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine, or journal.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Talosian Chronicles

  Olympus – Book I

  Star Dancer – Book II

  Talosian Alliance – Book III

  Neptune’s Massif – Book IV

  Raptor Squadron - Book V

  Armeggedon - Book VI (Release Date TBA)

  Dedication

  Respectfully dedicated to all the people of the planet Earth.

  May we find harmony in our diversity,

  Compromise in our differences,

  And may we join together to finally reach for the stars, in peace.

  Contents

  Raptor Squadron

  Disclaimer

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  About the Author

  Connect with the author or Blue Space Publications, LLC.

  Books Published by Blue Space Publications, LLC.

  Raptor Squadron

  The story so far…

  Roughly forty-five hundred years ago, a Talosian Federation warship, the Heavy Cruiser, F.S.S. Olympus, crashed on Earth’s moon as the result of an attack. Faced with almost irreparable damage to the ship, the loss of most of its crew, and the total destruction of their ‘race’, Commander Zeus came up with a radical plan to try and save his race.

  His plan was to leave the Olympus on the moon, go down to the beautiful blue planet, and breed with as many of the inhabitants as possible. The Olympus, under the control of the AI, would remain on the moon, make repairs, and then begin searching for someone with the correct genetic markers to assume command of the great ship.

  A young pilot trainee that was orphaned in the attack asked the Commander for permission to take her own life since she no longer wished to continue without her mother and girlfriend. Zeus didn’t have the heart to grant her request, so he asked her instead to go into cryogenic suspension and assist the new Commander, once one was found. Believing that she would never wake up, Talena agreed.

  After watching the last of the crew depart, the ship’s AI had his hologram walk young Talena to the Cryogenics bay. He told her he would be there when she awoke. She just smiled sadly at him and said good-bye.

  With Talena safely in cryo-sleep, the AI, also named Olympus, set about his first task of repairing and decontaminating the ship; it took far longer than it had estimated. 900 years later he had finally completed all the repairs he could. However, the ship remained on the moon for the simple reason that, since it was never intended to land, the ship had no means of lifting its large, multi-megaton mass off the surface.

  Hoping the new Commander would have an idea, Olympus turned its full attention to the planet the crew had emigrated to. After an exhaustive (even for him) survey, he was dismayed. It appeared that only a few of the natives showed traces of his former crews. Fearing that the Commander’s plan had failed, but bound by his final commands, the old AI resigned himself to monitoring the small planet and awaiting his eventual core systems failure.

  In an effort to occupy his time, Olympus rechecked for the proper genetic sequences once every fifty or so years. Realizing that the planet needed help, but knowing that interference could very well make things worse, he began to influence man in small subtle ways, avoiding politics and religion, that, while not correcting major issues, kept mankind from killing themselves long enough to learn how to fix it themselves.

  Then one day, one of his probes reported finding two young people that were almost exact genetic matches for Commander Zeus and Colonel Hera, the ship’s second in command and bond mate to Zeus.

  Taken somewhat by surprise, the old computer shifted his full attention to the young couple. The fact that they lived only four blocks apart and were best friends amazed him. Excited and full of anticipation, he continued to monitor them as they grew and directed his remotes to continue to check the entire populace – this time with far more optimism. Shortly before Ian Williams graduated from high school, Olympus convinced him of his heritage, and Ian accepted the responsibility as Commander of Olympus. Ian followed Talosian tradition and rechristened the ship ‘Star Dancer’ and changed the male AI avatar, ‘Olympus’, to a female, ‘Star’. He immediately began recruiting a crew after taking his best friend as bond mate. Suspecting that the ship had sustained further, possibly undetected damage, Ian ordered diagnostics run on the ship. After rescuing young Talena from her impossibly long four-thousand-five-hundred-year stasis, the small group found out how badly damaged the ship actually was, and even Star was surprised by how close to killing the new crew they had come.

  Not letting the unwelcome report deter him, Ian ordered major sections of the ship to undergo emergency repairs, to include the total removal and replacement of its primary power reactor. While waiting for the ship to become safe for occupancy once again, Ian and crew set up a corporate township in New Mexico as a cover for recruiting new crew members, as well as introducing suppressed technologies and ‘green’ research.

  The ship’s repairs finally were finished, and a method to lift off the lunar surface was devised. Shortly after officially assuming command of the newly rechristened Star Dancer, Ian and crew launched the old warship back into the heavens where she belonged.

  Once back in space, Ian and his people focused on preparing for the arrival of a Caldarian ship and whoever else may be planning on showing up. After months of preparation and worry, the Caldarian ship arrived and immediately began searching the system for Ian and his people.

  Seeing the opportunity to play it safe and possibly save some of the lives of his people, Ian kept a low profile and began a guerrilla war against the Caldarians. During the attacks, it became impossible for Ian to keep his existence from the governments of the United States and the rest of the Earth. However, that wasn’t the only government to notice Ian and his people; just as the Caldarian Super Nova hadn’t been the only ship to make the jump to the Sol System.

  In the aftermath of the final battle, other ships that had jumped to Sol were revealed to be Talosian Heavy Cruisers, the same model as Star Dancer herself.

  Once the shock of discovering that all the Talosian people hadn’t been killed had worn off, Ian and the two newly arrived Commanders sat down and discussed the battle and what would likely happen now that the Talosians knew Ian had one of their ships.

  After discovering that the better part of the galaxy, the Alliance of Races of which the Talosians are a part, is at war with invaders from another galaxy, it soon became clear that there is a problem brewing in the Talosian Ruling Council. Nowhere
is that more evident than in the sour relations the Talosians have with the other races of the Alliance of Races.

  Half the Council believes that everything in the Sol System should fall under their control and in most cases dominance. While the leaders of the Council believe that the Sol System is a separate, autonomous entity. Two members of the Council along with the two highest ranking members of the Talosian Military came to the Sol System to negotiate the situation.

  After a sabotage attempt perpetrated by one of the Council members failed, Ian and the other members of the Talosian Council discovered the extent of the corruption in the Talosian Ruling Council, and the plot to over-throw the Council. Ian and his friends worked out a plan to help the Talosians prevent a civil war that would allow the Empire to over-run the Talosians.

  During all of this Star Dancer received a distress call from a Benesian ship; a civilian passenger liner registered to the Benesian ruling oligarchy. Cindy's new ship, the Raptor Damocles, is the closest and responds to the distress call first. Ian puts the dignitaries ashore at the moon base and heads out to assist the Benesians as well. Arriving first, the Damocles was heavily damaged by an Imperial warship that was destroyed in the initial exchange with the Damocles.

  The Benesian ship hid and began repairs. When Star Dancer arrived, they located the Benesian ship but not Cindy’s Raptor, Damocles.

  After locating the Damocles, Star Dancer helped the Benesian ship finish repairs, but while escorting it to a jump point, an Imperial Task Force arrived. After speaking to the Alliance of Races Military, Ian and the Star Dancer remained in the system to gather intelligence for the Alliance of Races. Impressed with Ian and convinced that the humans of Sol Sector are not the same humans of Talos, the Alliance of Races opened diplomatic relations with Sol Sector and invited them to take part in the assault on the task force Ian encountered while assisting the Benesian liner.

  The diplomatic relations allowed the people of Sol Sector to take care of another issue that had been waiting for the Council to make a decision. The underwater Caldarian base in the Atlantic Ocean under the sea mount called Neptune's Massif.

  Almost as soon as the underwater base was secured, the political situation on New Talos deteriorated into civil war. A militant faction intent on racial dominance staged a coup that killed almost half of the Grand Council of New Talos and took control of the population and all the military assets in the system. During the Coup, Admiral Goya and Councilor Noren tried to send the self-destruct commands to the Talosian fleet. Councilor Noren was gravely wounded in the attempt. A Council guard made a lucky shot and killed the assassin, and another Councilor assisted Goya in sending the Council override command to the fleet, destroying the ships controlled by the rebels, but leaving the loyal Talosian Military basically unarmed.

  Ian devised a plan to retake New Talos and restore the Council to power, but lacked the forces on his own. First Admiral H'Joles of the Alliance of Races sent several Talosian units under his command to Ian in order to restore New Talos. Before leaving, Ian ordered the construction yards in Sol Sector to begin rebuilding the Talosian Fleet and to use the new designs developed by the researchers in Sol Sector.

  While Ian and the task force were busy at New Talos, the Empire pulled their forces back to a forward staging area. The new Commander had a change in tactics to implement and wanted to take advantage of the New Talos incident to spread suspicion and mistrust in the Alliance.

  Shortly after Ian and his remaining forces returned to Sol Sector, the Empire began using their advanced hyperspace travel system to stage terroristic hit and run raids on unprotected Alliance worlds. It worked, the Alliance citizens began to panic and lose faith in the Council and the Military.

  The Alliance Council called for an emergency meeting of all races to discuss the situation. First Admiral H'joles also called for the Alliance Military leaders to meet and discuss options for countering this new threat to the Alliance.

  Intending to send them out searching for intelligence after providing security for the meeting, Ian took all available Raptor teams with him to the meeting. However, once they arrived, the First Admiral shared some new information with him. An Alliance social survey probe had captured images of three large rings near the main Imperial base. It was believed that these were the devices that gave the Empire the ability to jump hundreds of light years almost instantly. Ian and H'joles agreed to send Ian's Raptor teams to investigate and destroy the devices. After briefing the team leaders and their AI, First Admiral H'joles dispatched the Raptor Squadron.

  CHAPTER ONE

  "I've… seen things you people wouldn't believe; attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion; I've watched C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those… moments… will be lost…in time, like tears… in rain."

  - Rutger Hauer as replicant Roy Batty

  Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982)

  Raptor Apache

  Hyperspace Transit Vector

  Aris Sector, Imperial Occupied Space

  Major Jana Cromwell, Commanding

  "Jana, I was going to ask you, are you familiar with the traditions and customs of all the allied races?" Major Rathbone asked via the comm.

  "Just the major ones, Rat, I'm still studying a few of the minor ones," she shrugged. "After what happened at Rataac I felt it would be smart to know the customs of those we might be working with," she replied referring to the incident with the Admiral in command of the Rataac Sector attack fleet.

  "That just seems an impossible task to me. There are so many different customs and traditions, I'd get them confused," Rathbone replied.

  "It helps that a good portion of the customs and traditions are shared between multiple races," Jana replied.

  "That just seems odd to me. They adopted the customs of their enemies?" Major Thomas of the Raptor Gotham said.

  "These folks have known each other for thousands of years. Almost all of them are former enemies of each other. When the Caldarians almost wiped out the Talosians, the five most powerful of them had already banded together to deal with the Caldarian threat. Once the Caldarians had been dealt with, civilian exploration was allowed to begin, and the new Alliance simply stayed together and began working things out with words instead of guns. More races joined up, one of them was a new race discovered by the explorers. Then, a mission was sent to a nearby dwarf galaxy where they encountered the Empire.

  "As far as we know, the explorers were killed and the ship dissected to discover where it came from. A couple of years later, the first Imperial battle fleet arrived. By the time the Alliance knew of the threat, they had already established bases here and amassed a considerable force. When the Empire attacked, many believed the Alliance would fall because of losses incurred early on.

  "Now, all the races in this half of the galaxy are members of the Alliance of Races, and the other half of the galaxy is controlled by the Empire," Jana finished.

  "What does that have to do with why they share customs?" Thomas asked.

  Jana grinned. "Think about this; your enemy takes two of your planets. A few years later, you retake those planets and capture three of his. You go back and forth like this for a couple hundred years; what do you think is happening on those worlds that keep changing hands? The cultures are blending, traditions, and customs become a mix of the two warring nations. Since the worlds that change hands are not always the same ones, the effect spreads. After a few centuries, the two societies end up sharing customs and traditions."

  "I never thought of that. Does that effect eventually stop the hostilities then?" Thomas asked.

  "Maybe in some cases it does, but the two races are still different, and the original purpose for the war still exists: territory, minerals, or resources may still be contested over," Jana said.

  “It makes me wonder what we'll see once we begin taking back worlds that have been captured," Rathbone replied. "Will we see this cultural effect on the worlds that used to belong to the Alliance
?"

  "It’s hard to say," Jana replied. "From what we know, the beings on captured worlds are treated more like slaves than citizens. They may very well adopt what they observe as the customs of the Empire, simply because they have forgotten their own. Remember, there are some worlds that have been in Imperial hands a long time, such as the one we are headed to right now. It may very well be that the civilians may be citizens of the Empire now."

  "Nor does it have a rebel faction that we know of. While they are still civilians, we must also consider them to be 'hostile' civilians in that if we are seen, they will report us immediately," Rathbone added. "They most likely will not attack us themselves, but they will not do us any favors either."

  "We will have to be careful; we must also remember that if they do attack or act against us, they are not our targets. The actions on Grimaria are the distraction, not the mission. No matter what happens there, we must always remember that," Jana said.

  "I still have difficulty believing that in all the centuries this war has been going on, the Alliance has never retaken a single bloody world. There is just something very wrong with that picture." Major Carl Mountbatten of Raptor Dynasty said.

  "I heard that Admiral Williams is going to be changing that. He's going to retake one of the farming," Jana said.

  Carl snorted. "With the way the Empire is flinging their forces about the galaxy, I'd think such an attack would draw their attention. He'd just get started and the Empire would drop a hundred ships on him from those bloody rings!"

  "You know, that might be a way to counter what they're doing. If the Alliance could attack multiple worlds at the same time, it might force these assholes to fire off their ships to those worlds and not on terror attacks. Too bad we can't call back and tell them!" Rathbone replied.