Hostile stars constellat.., p.1
Hostile Stars (Constellation Book 2), page 1
CONSTELLATION 2
T.E. BUTCHER
Copyright © 2024 by T.E. Butcher
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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CONTENTS
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
A word from the Author
Preview of Ghost Fleet
ONE
Lightyears from Earth
Jim doubled over. Ants crawled all over him, fire ants covering every square inch of him. They were biting. Stinging. Every cell in his body burned. He opened his mouth to vomit. Ants poured in, bile poured out. They were stinging and biting his insides. His vision whited out, and he heard someone screaming in the distance.
He blinked. He wasn’t crawling with ants, though his skin felt itchy. A pool of bile covered the glossy black floor that provided gravity to the massive alien vessel.
“Mister Jim, Mister Jim!” a little girl cried. “What happened? Why did you guys get sick?” Alice asked. That was her name. A young girl out of time.
He recalled another name as his foggy-mindedness began to lift.
“Minerva,” he croaked. “What just happened?” A glance out the command bridge window told him something was way off. None of the stars looked right, nor could he see Saturn or its moon Titan. “Minerva, where are we?” He looked around the room and noticed the others had had similar reactions to whatever had just happened. Zhou Song wiped bile from her mouth and stood, as did Lieutenant Yang.
“This feels worse than any hangover I had in college,” the Lieutenant groaned. “J— Sergeant Black, where is everyone?”
Jim keyed his radio and called out to the others.
“We’re good,” Knight replied. “Heading your way. Whatever whammied us hit the prisoners harder, and all the cells lock now.”
“Yeah, I’m up,” AJ added. “Reminds me of Rami making me try Patron.”
“Yo, I’ll admit it’s an acquired taste, but you can’t hold your liquor, man,” Rami replied.
Zhou snapped a few things off in Mandarin into her radio before nodding to Jim.
“We’re okay too, though I still feel sick.”
“Why?” Alice asked. “Why did you guys get sick?”
I’m sorry!” Minerva said as her image reappeared. Jim noticed Rami’s jaw slacken at the AI’s avatar, and he shook his head. “I’m soooo sorry. I should have warned you guys or had you get the shots first.” She looked at Alice and knelt to get eye-level with her. An oddly human move for a computer. “They got jump sickness. They don’t have the nanites or natural resistance to it that you have, so we’re going to have to give them shots.”
Jim walked over to the window and rapped on the transparent steel. “Uh, Minerva, these stars don’t look right, and we can’t see Saturn,” he said. “I’m going to assume your jump took us somewhere. I want to know where, and I want to know why.” The last bit had come off harsher than he’d meant, and Alice folded her arms and pouted.
“Hey! Don’t be rude to Miss Minerva!”
The AI set a reassuring holographic hand on the little girl’s shoulder.
“No, Alice, he wants answers and I owe that to them,” she said before adjusting her glasses. Her avatar gave the illusion that they had a college-age library intern standing on the bridge among a bunch of hardened fighters—it was a little disorienting.
“I don’t know the exact how or why, but this ship was sent to the past,” she said. “She was built in the year 2238, meant to be one of the last bastions of humanity. Admiral Packard had a vision for this ship taking the last of humanity and finding a new home along with her escorts. We got jumped by the Creeps, though, and he ordered an emergency jump.” Minerva shook her head. “I don’t know what happened after. When I woke up, you were here and he was gone, and your uniforms and rifles were just—” The AI seemed on the verge of tears, and Jim shifted uncomfortably.
“You jumped,” he said, refocusing the conversation on their situation. “What is that and what does it mean for us?”
Minerva looked at him and narrowed her eyes. “It sounds like Jean Renaudin hasn’t even been born yet. Your devices have Wi-Fi?”
“Yeah,” Jim replied.
“Hold on, let me sync . . . Oh, ohhhhhhh.” Her brow furrowed. “Oh no, it’s 2047?”
“Yeah, it is,” Knight called as he entered the room. “I assume you’re Alice’s Minerva?”
“Yes, so, we’ve gone two hundred years into the past. In theory, that would be possible, but . . . the Admiral would have had to disengage several safeties, and—” She glanced up and saw their blank stares. “Sorry, the Renaudin Sequence folds space between two points, briefly merging them and blipping the ship to the other side.” She paused and spoke in a measured tone. “Unless you have nanites in your system, the effects can be hard on your body, and if the sequence is fired improperly, at least in theory, it can fold time in unpredictable ways.”
“Yooo, did we go back to the future?” Rami grabbed at his head. “Duuude, we’re time travelers, dawg!”
“Or we’re in the distant past,” Jun said. “We have no way of knowing unless we can contact Earth somehow.”
“So we’re not taking the interdictor?” Les asked.
Jim sighed.
“I love you, bud, but sometimes I’m amazed you can blink and breathe at the same time.”
“That brings us to our next question, I guess,” Yang asked. “Where, and I guess when are we?”
“Let me check,” Minerva said. “There’re a few different quasars we can use to get our bearings, then we can check the stars against galactic drift according to our records.” She zoned out, going stiff before relaxing again. “Well, I’m glad to inform you it’s still 2047.”
“Oh well, that’s good,” Jim said. “Where are we, though?”
Minerva blushed. “Please don’t hate me.” Jim thought he heard Rami utter “Never” but he pushed it aside.
“We’re kinda stuck with you,” Knight said. “Just tell us where we are, and we’ll figure it out.”
“We’re at the edge of the Vega system,” she said.
“Well, it’s a name I recognize, so not bad,” Yang said. The others nodded in agreement. “Can you jump us back? After we get these nanite shots?”
Minerva dragged a holographic foot across the deck.
“I may have used most of our jump fuel trying to move us back to my time,” she said.
“Well, how far are we from Earth?” Jim asked.
“Thirty-nine light years.”
Her answer brough a chorus of groans and curses, both in Mandarin and English.
“Is there some way we can refuel this jump drive?” Jim asked. “Please say yes.”
“There is,” Minerva said. “We have an exploratory shuttle in the forward bays. It has a scoop to recover the elements we need from debris disks, gas giants, and ice giants.” She pulled up an image of a blue star with a series of rings around it. “The disks are the least efficient, but this system has enough. We can scrape together enough fuel for a single jump.”
“One thing at a time. Let’s focus on getting fuel for the jump,” Jim said. “Can you fly the shuttle?”
“Passably enough, but I’m not really a skilled pilot,” Minerva said. “I know how, I can teach someone to fly it, I can operate it myself, but there’s certain instincts a pilot or specialist AI would have that I don’t.”
“How many pilots do you need?” Yang asked.
“Two to fly the shuttle, one to operate the scoop,” Minerva said. “I can show them how.”
“I’ll grab Kate from below decks,” Yang said as she turned to Jim, Knight, and Z. “But I’ll need a volunteer, preferably one from each group.”
“Chen has a recreational pilot’s license,” Jun offered. “But a racing skiff is different from a shuttle.”
“We’ll send Chen with your pilot, then,” Z replied. “And the scoop?”
“I’ll go,” Rami said quickly. “Send me, Sergeant.”
Jim nodded. “Rami’s a fast learner. He’ll figure it out.” He looked back at Minerva. “I’m not going to lie. You’re not what I imagined a warship’s AI would be like.” He waved a hand over her green cardigan, brown skirt, boots, long black braids, and round glasses. “Like, at all.”
Minerva blushed and held her hand in front of her mouth. “Well, I guess it’s not a shocker,” she sa
She spread her hands in front of her.
“Look, I’m not a fighter, okay? But no one else ran anything this big. I know how to use this ship’s weapons, on a technical level, but I’m not a warrior.” Tears welled up in her digital eyes, and Jim grimaced. “I was so worried I’d get people killed; I was terrified during the battle.”
Alice reached out to try and take the avatar’s hand, but it just phased through her.
“Minerva,” Yang said. “It’s going to be okay. Maybe you’re not a warrior, but you saved Alice.”
Knight stepped up next to the Lieutenant.
“That’s right, and the ship didn’t look damaged when it appeared,” he said. “If nothing else, you’re surrounded by warriors here.”
“You can show us how to run the ship,” Jim said. “Let us worry about weapons and defenses. We’ll do the fighting—just get us home.”
Yang tapped her radio.
“Katie, Rami’s coming down to you. Grab a guy named Chen and follow him; he’ll explain on the way.”
Jim grabbed the young Espatier by the shoulder on his way out. “Try not to drool on the equipment, alright Romeo?”
“Roger Sergeant,” he replied before heading down.
With a sigh, Jim approached the window near Yang.
“You know what, LT, I think you more than earned the right to use our first names,” he said. “What is today?” He sat in front of one of the workstations up front.
“Fitz, go keep AJ company up there. Make sure he doesn’t fall asleep,” he called.
“Roger, sarnt,” Fitz replied and headed out.
“Jun, why don’t you head up as well,” Z said. “Make sure the Americans don’t fall asleep.”
“No prob,” Jun said before vanishing.
Yang tentatively sat in what seemed to be the captain’s chair as the others took seats around the room. Jim felt so tired, he didn’t even hear Alice sit in the seat next to him.
“So is the boss lady’s name LT, or is it Yang?” she whispered.
“Her name’s Amelia,” Jim replied.
“Then why do you call her those other things?” she asked.
“Because it’s respectful. She’s our boss.” Jim turned and saw Les staring at a row of screens. “Hey Les, go . . .” He turned to Minerva and raised an eyebrow. “Is there a mop or anything around here?”
“Well, I have a cleaning drone that I can—”
Jim held up a hand to silence her. “Les, go get the cleaning supplies from the shuttle and clean up all the vomit. Get below decks and the lookout too.”
Les nodded and went to do as he was told.
“Why’d you make him go clean?” Alice asked.
“Because he needed something to do, and this room will stink if we don’t clean it.”
Knight took a seat opposite Jim and leaned back.
“Look on the bright side, bud,” the big man said. “We’re the farthest anyone’s been in recorded human history.” He shot a glance at Minerva. “As of 2027.”
“I’m sorry I put you guys in this situation, but I promise you’ll get home,” she said. “I just wish I knew what happened.”
“What do these Creeps look like?” Yang asked. “We’ve never run into aliens before, though we have protocols for First Contact.”
“As do we,” Z added.
Minerva waved a hand, and a towering insectoid creature appeared. It possessed a chitinous shell, four arms, and a set of wicked pincers. The image made Alice cower and whimper behind Jim, and he sighed as he set a reassuring hand on her head.
“It’s just an image, kiddo,” he replied. “It can’t hurt you.” He looked up at Minerva. “Though that makes me think, are there any records of aliens in our path home?”
Minerva zoned out for a moment and brought up a map.
“There was a nasty group that lived among asteroids near Tau Ceti, but human fleets wiped them out a hundred years ag— From now, I mean. Other than that, we found some ruins, but not much else.” She wiggled her nose and smacked her self on the head. “I’ll reset the ships clock to the momment we entered this system, that way you guys still have some sense of time.
Jim rubbed his temples and looked out the window. Sorry Lynn, looks like we’re taking the long way home.
TWO
Constellation Day zero, seven hours, twenty-one minutes, thirty-eight seconds
he first thing Jim did as soon as the shuttle with the ramscoop departed was find a bunk, discard his armor, and take the longest, hardest nap he’d taken in years. Rest was the first order of business, or it had been for everyone except him and the mop detail who doubled as guards for their prisioners. Yang had tried to volunteer in his stead, but he had more experiance fighting sleep deprivation and won his spot keeping an eye on things. Once Yang relived him and the shuttle left, he was free to take care of himself. He slept a full twelve hours in a random officer’s bunk, but he awoke feeling like a brand new man.
Rolling out of bed and popping his back, he shivered for a moment at the chill air of the ship and pulled a jacket out of his pack.
“Tech Sergeant,” Minerva said as she materialized in his room. Jim nearly jumped out of his skin and took a deep breath. “Sorry, I should have announced myself.”
“Wanna try wearing a bell?” he asked. “And just ‘Jim’ works—you’re not one of my subordinates, so no need to stand on ceremony.” He dug his hygiene kit out of his bag and went to work shaving.
“I’ve taken account of the personnel that seem aligned with you,” she said. “Even with every Espatier, astronaut, and member of Panda, there’s insufficient crew to run Constellation.”
He frowned. “Well, how many more do we need? It’s not like we can dock somewhere and pick up more people to crew.”
“Well, Panda Squad has a secret ninth member,” Minerva said. “Private Cai is hiding near a pool of his own vomit.”
Jim grunted and shook his head. “Well, tell Cai he can come to the bridge, and tell Les he missed a spot.”
“There’s also the matter of the KDV prisoners,” Minerva said. “There are more than enough of them to fill in our manning gaps.”
Jim grunted and shook his head.
“I can’t make that call,” he said. “That’s a choice Lieutenant Yang is going to have to make—she’s in charge here.” There were times when an NCO could get away with acting in their commander’s name, pushing into the gray zone where their authority overlapped, but an overly ambitious man could easily push things too far and betray their own responsibilities.
“Really?” Minerva asked. “She seems to defer to you, and to Oliver Knight.”
“She’s the officer here; she’s in charge,” he said. “Does she weigh our opinions heavily? Yeah, but it’s because she’s inexperienced, young. She hasn’t had to make too many major decisions outside of a classroom or training environment.”
Minerva tapped her chin pensively.
“So you still draw your officer corps from higher education institutes instead of from the enlisted ranks?” she asked.
“Mostly. We do have officers that were prior enlisted,” he nodded. “They’re called mustangs, and they’re kinda rare.” He shifted to brushing his teeth, and Minerva suddenly reappeared, smaller and sitting on the edge of the sink with her feet dangling.
“In the United Systems, all officers have to serve at least a contract term as enlisted before being eligible to become officers,” she said. “If I remember the reasoning, they didn’t want a disconnect to form between the officer class and the enlisted.”
Jim spat his toothpaste into the sink and rinsed his mouth.
“Seems like a decent concept, but that’s not the system we’re working with,” he said. “So, we’re in the Vega system—what’s the closest thing to us? Like, that matters?”
“Tau Ceti, which marks the border of where the United Systems will be,” she replied. “We’ll have to go through some dead systems, but it will cut down significantly on our return to the Solar System.”
