Fates and Furies Read online

  EPOCH:

  FATES AND FURIES

  MICHAEL ORR

  FIRST FUTURIS MEDIA KINDLE EDITION SEPTEMBER 2019

  Portions of this book were previously published in the 2015 ebook Soulstice Book 1: Adventus by Michael Orr

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Your support of this author is truly appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, entities or institutions, living, dead or eventual, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art & design by Michael Orr, copyright © 2018

  (3D ship models by GrafxBox & VattalusAssets)

  Digital Edition ISBN: 978-1-7340145-2-5

  Print Edition ISBN: 978-1-7340145-3-2

  * * *

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  The EPOCH SAGA:

  BOOK I: QUEEN OF HEAVEN

  FATES AND FURIES (The SAGA Prequel)

  BOOK II: DIVINE RIGHT

  BOOK III: REFORMATION

  BOOK IV: MANIFEST DESTINY

  For the many healers, medical and otherwise,

  who've worked to put Humpty together again.

  Were it not for their talents, any I might have would now be silent.

  OUR GALAXY – LOGOS

  * * *

  CONTENTS

  * * *

  AUGERY

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK I

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  BOOK II

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  BOOK III

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  EPILOGUE

  APPENDICES

  APPENDIX A: EID – EARTH ISOLATION DISORDER

  APPENDIX B: FTL

  APPENDIX C: THE ORION ALLIANCE

  APPENDIX D: STAR SERVICE

  APPENDIX E: AUGMENTATION

  APPENDIX F: FAITH

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  EPOCH SOCIAL

  And precious, sightless innocents

  unmindful of the war that rages

  frolic ’round about the bunkers

  We, for whom the battle wages

  ~ Anita

  PROLOGUE

  * * *

  EFS VALKYRIE – ALLIANCE SPACE – JAN 12, 2352

  “Thirty seconds, sir,” Nav announced.

  Commander Jamus Castani stood in front of his captain’s chair, preferring to meet the galaxy on his feet. Exiting long-term slipstream was always an occasion, and Valkyrie’s bridge was quiet with anticipation.

  “Coming out now.”

  The milkiness of slipstream bled off into slo-space as Valkyrie’s engines ceased tormenting the gravity waves that pushed her well beyond c.

  “Location?”

  “Recalculating, cap’n. Something’s off.”

  Castani knew his officer couldn’t out-think the system. They’d get their answer when NEVA had one.

  “Stand ready,” he ordered to the bridge in general. “Lahm, expand your scans,” he said to Tactical. “We’re out of our zone. Let’s not get ambushed.”

  “Aye, sir.” Tac leaned into his holo, making the adjustments.

  “NEVA says we’re about four parsecs off, sir,” Nav followed up. “Twelve Cassiopeia...eight degrees ventral on heading one-two-one. Laying in course.”

  “No rush,” Castani was in a kindly mood. Four parsecs wasn’t bad after a week of flying blind. “We’ll be recharging for a while.” He turned to Tac: “Keep–”

  “Cap’n,” Tac cut him off, “I’m getting spacetime distortions up ahead. Nothing I’ve seen before, sir.”

  Castani took his chair and scanned the display. “Max shields.”

  “Already at full,” reported the XO.

  Tac was on edge. “Whatever’s happening out there is doin’ its thing!”

  Castani hit the claxon. “General quarters!”

  Out in front of Valkyrie the serenity of the cosmos ruptured open like a split seam, and unnatural light from some other reality spilled into normal space with all the welcome of an infection.

  Castani shielded his eyes against the miniature sun birthing itself from some horrible womb.

  All bridge activity ceased, seasoned men paralyzed in the face of the impossible.

  Tongues of plasma licked out from the intruder, collecting on the frigate like a lightning rod. Valkyrie shuddered from the attack and Castani braced himself.

  “Evasive! And launch a recorder!”

  “Aye, sir!” the XO’s tone matched his captain’s.

  Valkyrie’s bridge was a storm of activity, noises of frantic work everywhere. Castani’s peripheral vision told him everyone had their hands full, and he sent off the mayday himself. “How long t’make jump?”

  “Still eight minutes!” Engineering called. “Shields compromised!”

  “All weapons ready!” Tac reported.

  “Against a star?!” Castani’s dismay was aimed as much at his helplessness as his improbable enemy.

  Dwarfed by orders of magnitude, Valkyrie had nowhere to run. Otherworldly coronal ejections swamped the frigate in melting plasma and twisted her frame. Men closest to the bulkheads were roasted alive, their screams razed by a heat sharper than any arc welder. Men deeper in weren’t far behind.

  Valkyrie fell silent in seconds, a ghost ship manned by embers as she herself was reduced to a charred ingot.

  There’d been no chance for her captain to order ‘abandon ship’. No time for anyone to reach a lifepod, and nowhere for a lifepod to run if they had.

  BOOK I

  * * *

  1

  * * *

  FURLOUGH STATION – ALLIANCE SPACE – FEB 2, 2352

  “You want action, ya gotta get inta corvettes.”

  “Corvettes?” The ensign wasn’t sure how to hold his own against two full lieutenants, but at least this was just a pub and they were all on leave.

  “On a cruiser you’ll spend yer whole career in a task force,” one of them explained. “You’ll never see the outer reaches; never come within a dozen light years of action. Nothin’ but routine ’n monotony.”

  “Besides,” the other chimed in, “on a cruiser you’ll prob’ly never see command. Might never even reach lieutenant commander. My CO got a frigate by thirty-eight, and he had a corvette for four years before that.”

  “s’A totally different path,” his buddy agreed.

  The ensign shrugged. “Sounds like what I signed up for, but how do I transfer outta the task force?”

  To the best of Viktor Ionescu’s knowledge, ensigns were required to spend their first deployment on a cruiser where there were plenty of hands to pick up after a noob’s mistakes.

  “Ya gotta request a designation that only functions on a vette. There’s an anti-piracy career path. Choose that and there’s only one place they can put ya.”

  “Piracy? In the Alliance?” Now he knew this was some kinda hazing.

  “Check the database. It’s there.”

  Ensign Ionescu was suspicious by nature and figured the lieutenants were jackin’ around. But if there really was an anti-piracy designation, he’d go for i
t. It was all he could think about during the rest of his leave. With four months of his first deployment under his belt, he knew for a fact that cruiser duty would bleed him of all zest for life.

  Joining EarthFleet had been a call to adventure, experiencing the vastness of the Alliance and being part of galactic intrigue. But a task force was nothing more than a parade of force representing Earth along the main routes.

  Always consisting of a cruiser, two or three frigates rotating in and out of the group, and a handful of corvettes on loan as escorts, task forces basically ensured there’d never be trouble nearby. No one was stupid enough to do anything but lay low with all that firepower around, and Viktor wanted more than drills and inspections. Broadsides and boardings ranked high on his bucket list, right beside alien ports-of-call and exotic female creatures.

  He wanted outright swashbuckling, but in a civilization at the zenith of technology the only place to find it was in the farthest outskirts.

  “According to those two lieutenants, it hasta be corvette duty,” he exhaled, pondering his career options after they’d gone.

  A vette carried four hundred and fifty men: one lieutenant commander as skipper, three lieutenants, six sublieutenants, several tiers of chiefs and sergeants, and a mass of specialist corporals. There was no place in a vette for greenhorns like privates or ensigns. Each man had to be able to pull his own weight as well as someone else’s, unlike the overstaffed capital ships with their complements of three-and-a-half thousand.

  Occupying the high end of the spectrum, immense cruisers were the safe havens of the fleet; the playpens where everyone first got their space legs.

  Viktor wanted out of his playpen badly. So badly that he barely noticed the parade of hologram flesh wallpapering his weekend. The only thing that mattered was getting off his cruiser and into one of those scrappy little ships that could seek out trouble.

  TYRRHENIAN SEA – EARTH – FEB 4, 2352

  Bastien had been down battling the ocean’s winter dance for three days now. Bot 11 on Corsica’s Mediterranean side was struggling with stronger-than-usual crosscurrents, forcing Bastien to shuttle over there at least daily to make sure the bot anchored itself in accordance with regs. Re-anchoring required a supervisor’s signoff, which meant he had to visually inspect it each time.

  Now on station for the fourth morning in a row, he linked into 11’s brain to get the gist of the problem.

  “Nice work, buddy,” he ripped the silent AI. Sarcasm wasn’t programmed into the bot, but he didn’t care. He scanned the bot’s situation with his SeaRunner’s powerful lights before anchoring in, and what he saw didn’t make him happy.

  “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

  11 needed to re-anchor against the current in a complicated way given the current’s angle of flow, and the runner’s arms didn’t offer enough dexterity. The only way he could get the bot back on track was to do it himself.

  “You gotta be fu–” He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair, preoccupied with a much more pressing issue. “Of all the fuckin’ days ta hafta dive!”

  He anchored his runner as close to the bot as he dared, then set the cabin’s pressure and breathing mix to mimic a properly-timed descent so he’d be ready to enter the water by the time he was geared up. Lastly, he dosed himself with Reco to prep his body for the coming pressure demands. Seven minutes later he slid out the wet-hatch in full gear.

  This far below the main thermocline the water was down into single-digits Celsius, and Bastien registered the chill in his feet and fingertips.

  Erratic bottom currents had been kicking up silt for the last week and viz was down to two meters at best. Nearly blind, he worked his way over to 11 and swam all around the bot in slow movements, searching for the best approach.

  11 had attached itself to the correct leg of the failing oscillator’s tripod, but in this current it needed to counterweight itself to a nearby beam. Left like it was, the best the bot could do was dangle.

  “Dumbass.” He knew it wasn’t really the bot’s fault. The AI’s troubleshooting was limited to repairing oscillators, not analyzing its own predicament.

  He spent fourteen minutes battling the current to get 11 all tidied up and ready to do its thing. Then, with nothing left but to wait for the bot to get going, he took in his surroundings.

  The surface loomed somewhere far above him, lost in black haze. There was nothing here to suggest it was daylight on the surface. Nothing here but the drowning dark. The water at 155 meters opaqued in the bleed-off of his headlamp, creating an eeriness that Bastien found both disquieting and intriguing.

  His fellow supes all itched to move up out of the field, but on any other day he actually enjoyed being down here. There was something fascinating about coming to the depths to work instead of just sightseeing like a tourist. He had a legitimate reason to be here, and that gave the experience a significance he wouldn’t have found as a rec diver.

  But then, he was only twenty-five. Such things would naturally lose their appeal with time, as he’d been discovering more and more lately.

  The few times he’d gone skygliding were already enough. One would hardly expect that wingsuiting to a chute-less landing from forty kilometers up would lose its thrill, but these days it was barely pushing his heart rate into triple digits. The physical world was a pretty playground, but he felt himself quickly outgrowing it.

  A sudden *bing* over his comm told him 11 was finally back on the job.

  “I can get on with my life now?” he snarled. “Nineteen gawdam minutes...”

  2

  * * *

  SYDNEY MEGAPLEX – EARTH – FEB 4, 2352

  Admiral Vasquez gripped his podium with stout fingers, waiting for the committee to settle in. A barrel-chested physique testified to his Columbian blood, and wizened eyes looked on from the vantage of Earth’s highest military post as ministers and Conglomerate officials filled the auditorium.

  This would be his first official briefing as EarthFleet Commandant, and you didn’t get to his position without polishing the inner diplomat to mirror-smooth perfection.

  Still, he clenched, not the kind of opener I’d prefer.

  The latest leaked EarthFleet holo was causing a tsunami of fear and knee-jerk mayhem throughout the public sector. His best approach would be direct and to the point.

  A green light on the back wall cued him:

  “Thank you for coming. Last month on January twelfth at oh-nine-forty in the Twelve Cassiopeia system, the frigate Valkyrie succumbed to the same apparent phenomenon that claimed the Alekto task force late last year. All hands on the Valkyrie were lost, but not before transmitting the following...”

  He swiped a panel and the wall behind him exploded into the image of a blinding ball of light emerging from empty space like a rogue star. Everyone in the room had seen the leaked transmissions, but the sight was still staggering enough that several committee members gasped.

  Yellow-green plasma fire leapt out at the monitor and enveloped the entire wall in the blinding chaos of obliteration. A second round of footage from the remote recorder started up almost immediately, showing Valkyrie in the distance as it surrendered to the coronal ejections. The ship crumpled into a lump, its heat-glow fading while the star burned itself out like a match and dissolved. The combined elapsed time of both transmissions was 10.1 seconds.

  “Alliance sources claim unfamiliarity with this phenomenon, so we have no idea whether we’re dealing with a race or an unknown natural event. At this point, everything we have is pure speculation. I’m opening the floor to questions.”

  Vasquez waited for the committee to collect itself.

  “Admiral...”

  The new voice brought an inward wince.

  “...while these attacks are disturbing t’say the least, what troubles me more is the security breach in EarthFleet. How’d this get leaked?”

  “We’re currently investigating that, Minister.” Vasquez had clashed with the Minister of
State before and developed defenses specific to her.

  “Are you aware, Admiral, that the public is starting ta panic? There’ve been moves toward martial law in several cities amidst cries of religious revival. The number of people calling this ‘god’s retribution’ is not insignificant. Your leaks are causing global hysteria.”

  The Minister was a taut, sharp woman from Myanmar with a cutting voice and a birdlike demeanor. She was well known for her stance against the all-male EarthFleet, but in this instance her concerns were justified. Megaplexes across the globe were suffering civil unrest as a result of the holo and all it implied. Many were calling the lethal stars ‘angels’ and preaching god’s wrath at Humanity for leaving its ordained home. Others even claimed that space was god’s domain and the human race had no right to invade it.

  For the first time in centuries, secular Earth was facing a global crisis of faith. It was unthinkable after all the advances they’d made.

  Vasquez acknowledged the woman’s concerns with a nod. “Madam Minister, considering the impact of Earth Isolation Disorder on our deployed crews, there’s no way to guarantee the discretion of every serviceman. Lack of judgment is one of the first things compromised when the syndrome hits.”

  Her response came without pause: “Then perhaps more severe constraints are in order — t’make such leaks impossible.”

  “We’ve considered that approach,” he countered. “But EID is also highly corrosive to morale. Imposing draconian measures t’keep these distressed men from contacting their loved ones would be crippling to the integrity of the service. Without the will to fight, a fleet is useless.”

  The minister’s eyes were darts. “So once again, EarthFleet operates with impunity while Earth itself pays the price.”