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The “Starship Bonfire” Series
Science Fiction Adventure – Space Opera – Military Scifi
Series Overview
Shortcuts:
Main Series: Book 1 – Extermination
Main Series: Book 2 – Void Vagabonds
Main Series: Book 3 – Just Two Old Space Marines
Main Series: Book 4 – Robots and Renegades
Main Series: Book 5 – TBD
Main Series: Book 6 – TBD
Fan Exclusive: (TBD – Coming Soon)
Related Short: The Halls of the Shadowmancer (Alex Varia)
READ A PREVIEW OF BOOK ONE HERE!
“Extermination”
Starship Bonfire – Book ONE
A crew of unlikely friends gathers just in time to get caught up on the wrong side of a planetary mass extermination.
The Starship Bonfire is a salvaged Corvette-class light warship transformed into a hardened home for a crew of misfits struggling to survive on the frontiers of space; a warm fire for friends to sit around while surrounded by the dark, brutal, and uncaring void…
- Alex Varia is a space marine scout and a defector on the run from an oppressive multi-system power comprised of clones and slaves.
- Shara Fulton is a young robotics technician and reluctant hacker with a brand new twenty-year corporate contract, far from home and in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- Captain James Ashwell, the benevolent old man with a dark secret, Kix the alien engineer, and Elvira the Action Girl and Jill-of-All-Trades are three friends stuck on an alien-dominated mining planet, working for one of the major human corporations by day. By night, they’re secretly refitting their salvaged warship, the SS Bonfire.
After Alex Varia is rescued and these characters’ stories collide, none of them are expecting their corporate employer’s alien allies to suddenly launch a full-scale mass extermination of the entire planet. The aliens are hellbent on irradicating an ancient enemy–a lethal infestation–and will not risk allowing any humans to carry the corruption off-world. They cannot be reasoned with. There is no escape. There is only extermination.
When chaos and battles erupt on the colony, Captain Ashwell starts to take in refugees while defending their position from the alien threat, all while they try to get the SS Bonfire space-worthy. The Bonfire has a new crew, and many refugees to transport to safety, but will they be able to escape the planetary bombardment and extermination with their lives?
“Extermination” is a fast-paced science fiction adventure story and is the first book in the “Starship Bonfire” series about a crew of misfits struggling to survive together on the frontiers of space. If you’re a fan of Firefly, Warframe, BattleTech, and Warhammer 40k, you’ll love this. And if you dig books about guns, survival, space marines, cosmic horror, aliens, mechs and bots, and exploring strange new worlds … read this today!
Read Extermination, Book One of the Starship Bonfire Series SOON!
— Will Be Available on Kindle and in Paperback
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“Void Vagabonds”
Starship Bonfire – Book TWO
(Description coming soon. Stay tuned.)
“Void Vagabonds” is a fast-paced science fiction adventure story and is the second book in the “Starship Bonfire” series about a crew of misfits struggling to survive together on the frontiers of space. If you’re a fan of Firefly, Warframe, BattleTech, and Warhammer 40k, you’ll love this. And if you dig books about guns, survival, space marines, cosmic horror, aliens, mechs and bots, and exploring strange new worlds … read this today!
Read Void Vagabonds, Book Two of the Starship Bonfire Series SOON!
— Will Be Available on Kindle and in Paperback
.
“Just Two Old Space Marines”
Starship Bonfire – Book THREE
(Description coming soon. Stay tuned.)
“Just Two Old Space Marines” is a fast-paced science fiction adventure story and is the third book in the “Starship Bonfire” series about a crew of misfits struggling to survive together on the frontiers of space. If you’re a fan of Firefly, Warframe, BattleTech, and Warhammer 40k, you’ll love this. And if you dig books about guns, survival, space marines, cosmic horror, aliens, mechs and bots, and exploring strange new worlds … read this today!
Read Void Vagabonds, Book Two of the Starship Bonfire Series SOON!
— Will Be Available on Kindle and in Paperback
.
Books 4, 5, and 6 are still being designed. There will also be a FREE NOVELLA for fans joining my newsletter to keep up with news about the series.
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Preview of “Extermination” – Starship Bonfire Book One
Chapter 1 – Alex Varia
“Pleasant waking, Corporal Varia. You are under attack.”
The cheerful words of the ship computer smacked against Alex Varia’s slippery consciousness like a happy hammer striking a wall of thick, flowing mud. From the dead dreamlessness of cryosleep, Varia’s mind unfolded lethargically, as if he’d been frozen for a hundred years.
When the stimulants invaded his sluggish blood, his consciousness quickly rose through the dense fog of his black slumber until more and more of the real world seeped in around him. He felt the cool air on his skin. The odd sensation of zero gravity made his body and rebooting senses feel floaty and weird.
A warning klaxon from the front of his small ship came into focus, keening over and over, abrasive and scratching at his skull, louder and louder, again and again…
“Pleasant waking, Corporal Varia. You are under attack,” Simonn repeated. The computer’s polite and gentle male voice was much clearer now.
There was a loud crash, muddled in his waking senses, and the blurry bright scene shuddered.
“What the—?!” Varia tried to say, his mind numb and confused and grasping for connection. What came out of his mouth was oppressed and muffled by—
There was a mask on his face. He suddenly had arms and legs again, held by straps to keep him from drifting in zero G while unconscious. Varia woke in one of the ship’s three cryotubes, lying still with his hands at his sides, dressed in his sleeveless UEA sleepsuit. The ship was connected to the port in his arm, filtrating his blood and managing waste and biochemicals during hibernation.
Everything came back to him: his personal mostly-directionless mission, the ship, the UEA, the horrors he had seen on Earth Prime…
The tube’s door was open.
He was alone.
Him and Simonn. And HAL, but the symbiote—
Another crash made the entire ship shudder. His mind started connecting the last several seconds.
“Under attack?!” he exclaimed, muffled again by the breathing mask. Moving his arms, which were stiff and seemingly made of cold clay, he unsecured the retention straps then reached up and pulled the mask and its tubes and wires free from his face and cranium, letting it all fall floating to one side. He pulled at the spliced collection of cords installed in the port of his arm and wrenched the entire apparatus free, which sent a buzzing jolt through his nerves that made him gasp and buck his body once in place. The life support system let out a long, high-pitched beeping alarm.
“Yes, Corporal Varia,” Simonn replied cheerfully. “You are being pursued by the ICSS Dervish, a UEA Interceptor Class starship. Shields are at forty percent.”
“Forty…?!” Varia repeated dumbly, pulling his sodden body up to sit. The weightlessness was disorienting. He tried to swing his legs and bare feet over the side of the tube, but they were half-numb and still apparently waking up.
“I am still on course for the Dullus system, Corporal Varia, but at this rate, shields will be depleted within—”
“Well, take some evasive action or something, will you?!” Varia snapped, trying to shake the numbness from his brain. “Give me a little time! Make it harder for them to hit us until I can get up front!”
He rubbed at his face and eyes, finally feeling some responsiveness in his hands and skin. His vision came into sharp focus in the pale light of the back of his ship where usually a crew of two would hibernate between Dim Drive jumps, along with the capacity for an extra passenger … or prisoner. The crew of two that had piloted this ship before were long dead now.
How long…?
Varia had no idea. How long had he been asleep?
“Acknowledged, Corporal,” Simonn replied. The shipboard computer’s voice permeated the air, emanating through several miniature speakers through the small craft. “We have sustained three hits from the attacker’s lasers. I suspect that he is attempting to drop shields and disable the Aggressor.”
The beeping of the life support alarm was like an ice pick drilling into Varia’s head. He lashed out with a dumb hand and hit the reset, ending the noise and almost knocking himself off balance, half-floating above the pod.
How much time had passed? And where the hell was he?
There’d be time to figure all of that out after he dealt with the immediate threat, whatever it was.
He really had to stop waking up like this.
“Who the fuck is attacking us?”
Finally feeling almost back to normal, Varia drifted out of the pod, touching the soles of his cold and rubbery-feeling feet lightly down onto the metal floor. He stumbled and pulled himself toward the nearby locker and quickly changed into the synthetic form-fitting bodysuit that he wore under his armor. He briefly listened to his body to determine whether or not he’d need a quick piss before fully suiting up, but there was nothing. The life support he’d pulled out of his arm had been scrubbing his body like an artificial kidney for … however many years…
After zipping up his form suit, Varia started climbing into his Environsuit as quickly as he could. After securing his lower legs, the ship suddenly shuddered again as its shields took another hit. Varia slipped and tumbled sideways bumping against the wall and almost bouncing back out of control. He grabbed a rail and stayed there, trying to suit up without drifting anymore. He ignored his pale, sleep-addled reflection in the metal locker mirror.
“Shields down to twenty-seven percent,” Simonn said.
“Shit!” Varia replied, tugging his armored space suit up around his legs and waist, connecting the hard points inside. “Are you evading?”
“Affirmative, Corporal.”
“Who is it?”
“A UEA Operative,” Simonn replied. “I have not yet established communications with the pilot.”
Varia scrambled to get the rest of his Environsuit on. With his lower body secure, he grabbed his helmet and pulled himself along the rails to the front of the ship, past the Nanofabricator and storage, pushing into the small bridge as he pulled one sleeve on and straightened his wrist and forearm armor. He pulled down the back of a jump seat and clipped his helmet onto a tether point there. He pulled his other sleeve on.
“Get comms up. Hail the other ship. Give me back access to the helm.”
“Acknowledged.”
Varia finished getting his armor on, secured his chest plate, powered on his modules, and pulled himself up and over the cockpit, plunging down into the seat. He worked furiously to secure the harness before he could be hit again and drift away.
Clenching his eyes to will away the headache that was coming on, Varia realized that the emergency klaxon was still blaring, so turned it off. His cockpit was bathed in orange and red light. He grasped the controls, looked down at his HUD and saw that there was indeed a hostile ship bearing down behind him.
The stars outside the cockpit were swaying erratically to the left and right. Simonn was at least making the ship a little harder to hit than continuing on course in a perfectly straight line.
A pair of green laser beams flashed past his ship from behind, stretching out to the extreme limit of their range before diffusing into space for just an instant before vanishing again.
A bare miss.
“Fuck…” he muttered, opening up the throttle to max. He adjusted his distributor to put max power into shields, the rest into thrusters, and none into weapons.
Pulling up Navigation, Varia started a scan of the enemy ship, and while his sensors did their work, he took a quick look at the system he was in.
Vatanga. A K-Class orange star with only six bodies, all unregistered on the Aggressor’s UEA database.
Where the hell was Vatanga?
“Simonn, how far are we from Dullus?” he asked.
“Approximately one hundred and twelve Light Years to go, Corporal.”
“How long?”
The ship shuddered. Varia saw his shields over the Aggressor’s starboard aft section take a lashing from that cluster of lasers.
“Shields at thirteen percent,” Simonn said.
“Shit. How long to Dullus?”
“At maximum impulse, Corporal,” the computer continued, “Time elapsed on this ship will be 9.2414 years.”
Varia took the stick with his right hand and started performing some evasive maneuvers of his own. Rolling to one side and pitching far out of his previous path, he tried to shake the attacker, but saw the blip of the hostile ship following his random movements with ease.
“Damn it,” Varia said, scowling at the blip. “Nine years? Not so bad. How much time on New Earth?”
“Time elapsed on Earth of the Jonda system will be 113.9222 years.”
Holy hell. And he didn’t have far to go. How long had he been out?
Navigation beeped. A readout popped up on the HUD with details about his attacker:
ICSS Dervish, Interceptor Class, United Earth Alliance.
Pilot was still unknown. The readout showed the ship to be approximately the same size as Varia’s ICSS Aggressor, armed with four burst-repeater lasers, some sort of scattering dumb-fire missile system that Varia didn’t recognize, a point defense system, and … a tractor beam?
A tractor beam on an Interceptor Class sized ship?
Shit. Every damned time he went into cryosleep for a while, his enemies would show up afterwards with more advanced tech.
HAL suddenly moved in Varia’s digestive tract, warning him with a very unpleasant cramp that something bad was about to happen. The weird alien symbiote he’d picked in the bizarre wilderness of Earth Prime was never wrong, so Varia gritted his teeth against what felt like gas pain and pitched down and to port just in time to dodge four green laser beams lancing past him through the void.
“Damn it!” Varia repeated, trying to shake the Dervish, who stayed tight on his six. “Simonn, how long was I out since our last stop?”
“You were in cryosleep for approximately two hundred and twenty Earth years.”
Wow.
Long stretch.
That meant that he was probably about five hundred or so Light Years from the Jonda system, so definitely well into the frontier.
“Where the hell did this ICSS Dervish come from?” Varia asked, trying to evade.
“I have not yet established communications with the Dervish, Corporal Varia,” Simonn replied. “It is unclear where—”
“Did you hail them? I told you to hail them.”
“Affirmative, Corporal. I have indeed hailed the Dervish. The UEA Operative onboard has not yet … ah … stand by. I am receiving a hail from him now.”
“Put him through.”
“Acknowledged.”
Varia did his best to stay ahead and out of the firing lane of the Dervish, but the damned hostile ship was nimble as hell, sticking to him like a master pilot. A quick look down at his HUD showed Varia that his ship’s shields were rebuilding, but still only at thirteen percent. One more good hit and he’d be vulnerable to real damage.
Evasion seemed hopeless. The pilot was either a much better pilot than Varia was, or his helm was being controlled by or being assisted by an artificial intelligence. Varia looked down at Navigation. The nearest body was Vatanga 2, close enough for Varia to see even, if he lined the planet up to shine in the orange light of the star.
Static flickered, and a voice sounded over the comm. It was a cold, hard voice, human male, completely devoid of Simonn’s artificial cheer and civility:
“ICSS Aggressor,” the voice said. “This is Captain Leon Cordone of the United Earth Alliance ICSS Interceptor. Who is piloting your ship? Identify yourself.”
The comms squelched. Varia sat staring at the HUD for a moment, contemplating the all-business human voice coming from the other ship. Over two hundred years had passed throughout the galaxy while he’d slept, and even the last few times he’s been awake—struggling to keep this ship in one piece in the face of alien bandits and horrific shit from the void—he’d hardly spoken to another human in … a long time. Well, a sane human, at least.
Varia began meandering toward Vatanga 2 along his path of erratic, evasive movements.
It was close. Definitely an option.
He hit the transmitter.
“Captain Cordone,” Varia said, feeling more than a little stuck. His eyes flickered down to the rebuilding shields again. Within a few seconds, the generator would top off and his shields would start rebuilding. No doubt this ‘Cordone’ pilot could see the same information. “Who do you think this is? Who are you expecting to find?”
He released the transmitter button. HAL churned around in his guts, not warning him, but clearly uneasy. No shit. The last time Varia came across a UEA squad coming after him, he’d come out on top, even salvaging some of their goods before blowing everything up and continuing on his way, but he hadn’t been taken by surprise. Cordone had come upon him while he was sleeping. He needed more defenses. If he could just have a little more time…
Varia flipped open the protective cover of the chaff launcher.
The voice replied.
“I have my ideas about who you are,” he said coolly over the comm. “But you and I both know that I am not in a position to answer your questions, Alex Varia…?”
Yep.
“What do you want, Cordone?” Varia spat. “I’m late for a rendezvous.”
“Corporal Alex Varia,” Cordone replied slowly, teasing out his name. “The only ‘rendezvous’ you are late for is reintegration back into the United Earth Alliance.”
“You can fuck right off with that, Captain.”
“We may end up disagreeing on fucking right off,” the hard voice replied. There was a little grinding to that voice; a subtle mechanical sound, like the man’s vocal cords were vibrating against moving metal parts. Varia had heard such voices before. Cordone might be a cyborg. “I would say, Varia, that unfortunately for you, my mission is to take you home, back into the All, but that would be inaccurate. It will be fortunate for you, in fact, to be reintegrated into the UEA, into the All. This state you are in currently, lost, astray, and fumbling … you are confused, Corporal Varia. Return with me. Do not resist, and—”
“No way!” Varia snapped back at him. Cordone’s words chilled him to the core, making HAL twist around in his lower abdomen like a bad stomach flu. “I’m not going back. What the hell are you doing way out here, anyway? We’re like five hundred Light Years from the Jonda system!”
“Your old shipboard computer alerted us to your position back near Burtus 226,” Cordone replied.
What?!
Again…?!
“Simonn?!” Varia cried out to the ceiling of his cockpit. “Are you serious?! You reported our position to the UEA?”
“Corporal Varia,” Simonn replied politely. “I am programmed to follow UEA protocol, which includes synchronizing my databases, communication logs, and any other relevant data, including answering any data requests as needed, whenever I pass within the proximity of a UEA network. I have told you this before, like back when we—”
“But I told you not to last time!” Varia said. “What the hell, Simonn?! We’re not part of the UEA anymore! You can’t just—”
“Listen to me, Varia,” Captain Cordone said over the comm, cutting him off. Varia felt a pit of coldness growing in his stomach; his own natural response having nothing to do with the alien symbiote inside him. “My mission is to bring you back or to destroy you. I never fail in my missions.”
“Gee, that’s nice.” Varia pushed the words out with vitriol, but he felt no bravado in them. He felt no courage. He was screwed.
His eyes flickered down to his rebuilding shields. They passed sixty percent and were climbing. Nice of Cordone to let him rebuild his shields like that…
“You are outgunned, and I am a superior pilot, Varia. Your ship is four hundred years old. You do not even have a Flux drive.” He let out a strange, disturbing chuckle. “You are still using cryosleep to travel. You’ve been lost for over three hundred years. It took me less than two days to catch up to you here. The only practical choice for you, Varia, is to return to the Jonda system with me. If you think that you can evade me here or on that planet, you are mistaken.”
Then let’s try something different.
“Inertial dampeners off,” Varia said off-comm. He focused on the HUD, then the view screen, feeling at the various weapon system triggers under his fingers and thumb on the stick.
“Acknowledged,” Simonn said. “Inertial dampeners off.”
Varia pitched over hard, still following his current vector, spinning space and the millions of stars around his canopy as he sought out the targeting blip on his glass of Cordone’s Dervish. With the inertial dampeners off, he was able to spin around within seconds while still moving in the same direction. As soon as the Dervish came into sight, and Simonn superimposed a bright red square over the distant ship, Varia called out again:
“Inertial dampeners back on!”
“Acknowledged,” Simonn replied. “Inertial dampeners reengaged.”
That was his fancy move. It was just about the only fancy move that Varia knew. He wasn’t much of a pilot, or a tech, or even a navigator. He was a good soldier, good with stealth, and good with a rifle and his old shotgun, but none of that would help him here. Varia quickly adjusted the distributor to balance all systems so that his weapons could recharge quickly.
As his missile systems started a lock, Varia opened up with his lasers and even the dual plasma cannons that he usually reserved for battles in atmo, splashing the ICSS Dervish’s shields. Within a second of sustained fire, he could already see from the HUD that the Dervish’s shields were considerable, and that waiting until shields were down for his missiles would be a losing situation.
Another second later, he achieved missile lock, and fired everything.
Over a dozen seeker missiles streaked through space along with his laser beams and condensed plasma, leaving spiraling trails of frozen gasses behind them.
Just before they hit the Dervish, Cordone retaliated, firing only four green burst lasers that spattered across Varia’s ship and canopy, bright enough in his eyes to make him squint.
“Shields down to seven percent,” Simonn said cordially.
“Shit!” Varia exclaimed. He fired everything again, threatening to overheat his weapons systems, peppering the other ship with lasers, small purple plasma bolts, and another volley of missiles.
There was a light show of pink laser beams around the Dervish, and Varia watched many of his missiles explode harmlessly between the two ships, shot down by a point defense system. When the volley settled, the Dervish’s shields were only down to sixty-eight percent. In the chaos, Cordone fired again, and Varia felt his ship shudder violently. The holographic model of the Aggressor on the HUD changed; the depiction of the bubble around the electronic miniature ship vanished.
“Shields are depleted,” Simonn said. “We have sustained damage to the port wing and part of the bow.”
Varia rolled the ship to one side and fired just the lasers and plasma. He had to get through Cordone’s shields so that his missiles could do damage to the hull and systems. They weren’t doing shit as long as—
There were another four instantaneous bursts of green laserfire. Varia saw something explode on his ship outside the canopy. Fire bloomed in the vacuum, almost immediately snuffed out by the void, and metallic debris flew away from the ship.
On the HUD, one of his missile pods went red.
Destroyed. Shit.
Looking back to Cordone, Varia saw the Dervish moving again, pitching away and obviously positioning to take his place on the Aggressor’s six once more. Varia pitched the ship to point his nose at Cordone again, trying to reestablish missile lock. He punched the throttle, then cut it in time to turn tightly, striving to keep the more agile ship in his sites. It didn’t work.
A moment later, from just outside the canopy’s view, there was a rapid, repeating burst of green light, and Varia felt his ship tremble as Cordone’s lasers burned through the other missile pod, blowing up part of the wing with the stored ammunition and throwing off the thrusters until the explosions petered out.
The other missile pod went red.
“Alex Varia,” Cordone said over the comm, his voice like an iron trap. “This is pointless, Corporal. You cannot outfight me. Disable your shield generator so that I can lock onto you with my tractor beam. Come back home.”
Varia felt a flash of heat in his neck. Anger burst up from deep inside.
“I’ll die before I go back! I don’t want to live like that again!”
He meant it.
“Unfortunately for you,” Cordone said, “I am not required to bring you back alive. You have been in cryo for a long time, Varia. Things have changed. And to be frank, I am perfectly satisfied with my option of your destruction. This galaxy will be better off with one less natural born like you.”
“Natural born?” Varia repeated. “What the fuck are you talking about?!”
His missiles—his strongest weapon—were gone.
It was time to run.
He adjusted the distributor to full thrusters and secondary shields. He wouldn’t need weapons anymore. He’d have to take his chances outflying Cordone on Vatanga 2. He was already almost there. The planet looked like a great big orangish-red ball ahead of him off port side, lit up on the left by the fiery, orange star in the distance.
With that, Varia turned the ship as quick as he could and hit full throttle to close the distance to the unknown world. He hit the chaff launcher and heard the mechanism through the ship’s ceiling firing off loads and loads of chunks of metal and burning magnesium, leaving a trail of hot garbage behind him to confuse Cordone’s targeting for several seconds.
“How long until we get there at this speed, Simonn?” he asked.
Varia felt his heart racing in his neck, hammering in his chest.
He was thirsty.
The zero G combined with the stress threatened to make him sick.
“Forty seconds until reaching orbit,” Simonn replied.
“Shit, that’s a long, damned time!”
“If you say so, sir. Would you like to know more about this system, Corporal Varia? While we fly?”
Varia choked out a scoffing laugh.
HAL in his guts twisted painfully, making Varia grunt in agony.
Danger.
He immediately pulled to starboard on the stick, rolling off to the right as green laser beams flashed by him. Shit—was the chaff expired already? No, Cordone must be aiming manually…
Varia looked at his HUD with wide eyes, hoping…
His shields were still rebuilding in the generator. Still at zero.
That bastard had specifically targeted his missile pods. He would probably be targeting his thrusters or his reactor next. As long as those shields were depleted, he was one good shot away from being hauled back to New Earth and being mindwiped.
“The Vatanga system,” Simonn was saying, “is dominated by the Zargied Empire. The habitable zone—”
“Who the fuck are Zargieds? Humans or aliens?”
“Aliens, Corporal,” Simonn replied. “A warlike race of humanoids originating from the Ovar system, what they refer to as the ‘Zutuud Cradle’. The Zargieds became a spacefaring race in—”
“I don’t need to know all that,” Varia said, hurtling toward Vatanga 2 like a comet with the Dervish hot on his trail. “Are they hostile to humans? Shit—how long do we have left until orbit?!”
Cordone must be about to fire at any moment. Varia flicked his eyes to his rebuilding shields. They’d be renewed at any second now…
The planet of Vatanga 2 grew dramatically before him, increasing in detail until he could see craters and ridges and fissures, long, jagged mountain ranges and flats full of monstrously-sized cracks, all hazy through the pale ring of atmosphere. It was obviously an arid planet, maybe even desert wastes all over, but at least there was atmosphere.
“Fifteen seconds until orbit,” Simonn said. “I suggest you reduce speed to avoid—”
“Are they hostile?” Varia repeated. “Will they try to kill me?”
He hit the chaff launcher again, depleting his reserves. On his HUD, he saw the chunks large enough to register spread out behind him in a defensive cloud. Cordone wasn’t far behind. Reaching out to where he’d tethered his helmet on the jump seat, he unhooked it and threw it onto his head, quickly establishing the seal and powering on his comms like he’d done so many times before.
“It appears, Corporal,” Simonn said, now near his ears in the helmet, “that the Zargied Empire in this system have enacted an alliance with a human corporate entity known as the Ivory Mechanics Corporation. They work together.”
“Humans?!” Varia said, pulling violently to port just in case Cordone was drawing a bead on him again through the chaff. He corrected course and looked quickly at Navigation as he slowed down just enough to avoid outright destroying the ship when he reached the atmosphere. “Help me find the nearest settlement with humans.”
The chop began.
Making their way into the atmosphere, as the air pressure quickly grew denser, the ship started to shudder and shake.
“Acknowledged,” Simonn said. “Targeting the human and Zargied mining colony, Harmony’s Hollow, approximately two hundred and forty kilometers by minimum safe approach vector ahead. Corporal Varia, you must slow down or the ship will be destroyed.”
The chop became rougher, sometimes bucking and buffeting the Aggressor hard enough to throw it a little off course. Varia started to hear the violent wind outside, roaring and ripping at his damaged ship.
He looked down at the HUD, now dominated by the digital form of the massive planet below his position. The Dervish was following along at a safe distance, flying slower and more evenly that the Aggressor by a long shot.
Cordone wasn’t in a hurry.
Shit.
That cyborg asshole knew that he’d won.
Shields were rebuilding, already just past fifty percent. It wouldn’t matter. The Dervish’s weapons would cut through them again just as easily. The only chance Varia had to get away would be to outfly Cordone now. He didn’t feel good about that.
“Fine, we’ll slow down,” Varia said. “Calculate the maximum speed that we can enter without causing damage, and adjust the max throttle to that.”
“Acknowledged.”
Varia felt the ship slow down a little. The chop was still vicious, as it always was dropping into atmo, but at least it wasn’t trying to tear the wings off anymore.
Peering through the canopy through the thick cloud cover ripping past him, Varia searched for the colony. He stared out over the orange desert whenever there was a break in the wispy gloom, looking down upon a scorched earth full of cracks and canyons; angry-looking rock formations and red badlands in deep shadow. The colony wasn’t visible yet. Up ahead was the edge of night—they were flying just behind the sunrise—and the target indicator representing Harmony’s Hollow was still in darkness. Varia did see, however, between the Aggressor and the colony, an exceptionally deep trench of a canyon that stretched and carved through the planet for kilometers.
He pitched down and aimed at the canyon.
“What are you doing, Alex Varia?” Captain Cordone’s hard-edged voice asked in his helmet. “You cannot flee. You cannot fight. Allow me to take control of your stolen ship. Let me take you home, back to the All. Back to where you belong.”
“I can flee,” Varia replied. “I’ve been doing this just fine, and I’ll keep doing it after I deal with you.”
Cordone laughed, the mechanical grating suddenly not so subtle in Varia’s ears. “And how are you going to do that? You have no weaponry able to penetrate my defenses. You are a mediocre pilot at best.”
“I’ll lose you in that canyon up there,” Varia said, staring through the parting cloud cover. The reddish-orange world of Vatanga 2 hurtled closer and closer, now completely encompassing his entire canopy’s view. The edge of night continued retreating away from the Aggressor’s path, revealing the deep, massive canyons in the morning light of the orange sun. He aimed the ship at the largest, longest canyon of them all.
“Corporal Varia,” Simonn said cheerfully. “I must point out that the damage to the missile pods has caused structural instability on both of the Aggressor’s wings. “If you are planning … ahem … ‘aggressive maneuvers’ in the canyon, the ship may suffer catastrophic damage.”
Varia squinted against the bright red world, plunging onwards toward the canyon.
“I don’t know if there’s any way around that now, Simonn,” he said.
His heartbeat quickened as the ground flew up to meet him.
He checked his HUD.
Unsurprisingly, as soon as they were both past the choppy upper atmosphere, Cordone in his ICSS Dervish had rapidly closed the distance again, and was easily flying along behind him. The bastard could fire upon him at any time.
He just needed a little more time…
Cordone laughed disturbingly again over the comm. “That canyon up ahead?” he asked. “Try it, Alex Varia. Let’s see you ‘lose me’ like you said.
There.
He could do this.
Flying along above the jagged terrain far too fast, as soon as he reached the canyon, Varia plunged over the edge toward the dark gorge’s bottom. He flew like he was going to use another fancy maneuver; ‘fancy’ for a mediocre pilot.
The Dervish accelerated, hot on his tail, dipping with ease over the canyon’s steep cliff and following Varia to the bottom.
There, with the canyon floor and a narrow river rushing up to meet him, Varia waited until the very last moment, then pulled up, throwing his throttle to the max. Barely pulling out of his dive, he pitched up and immediately started climbing again, Cordone following closely through the same maneuver.
A half second after pulling up after him, Cordone laughed over comms.
“Trying to make me dive to my death, Varia? Is this what you think fighter pilots do? If you can pull out of that silly dive with your old Interceptor, don’t you think that I—?”
Varia cut his throttle to zero.
The ICSS Aggressor flew upwards with the Dervish right behind it, slowed, hung in the air for a moment with its thrusters totally dead, then fell back down, backwards toward the canyon floor like the massive piece of metal that it was.
The backside of Varia’s ship fell right into the rapidly climbing nose of Cordone’s ICSS Dervish.
Varia felt the huge crash. He was jolted to holy hell as the momentum of the Dervish pushed his own ship up, no doubt completely wrecking a huge portion of his stern; wrecking both ships. The entire HUD flickered from the blow, and before Varia lost any more altitude, he hit full throttle again.
The Aggressor responded strangely, listing and rolling to one side as if one or more thrusters were destroyed. He spun violently twice, watching the canyon walls and the lightening morning sky twist around the canopy. For just a split second, while HAL lurched around painfully in his guts and his stomach flew up into his throat because of all of the weird falling and heaving, Varia caught sight of the Dervish—gleaming in the sun—similarly hurling out of control. Black smoke belched from Cordone’s ship, and one entire wing was gone. The front of the Dervish was crumpled in several areas, and Cordone’s canopy seemed to be broken. Several panes may have been broken out.
He’d defeated Cordone.
For the next few seconds at least, he was still a free man.
Varia couldn’t help but smile as he spun out, trying in vain to power his way up out of the canyon…
And then, somehow, he made it over the edge, back out over the cracked wasteland.
“Ha!” he exclaimed.
There was no way out of this, but at least he took out that UEA creep!
He tried to aim his nose for the target indicator of Harmony’s Hollow, but there wasn’t much he could do. The ship was quickly going out of his control. Varia checked his harness again, now feeling the effects of gravity in all sorts of disorienting and unpleasant ways, and narrowed his eyes against the bright morning that he was about to crash into.
Simonn was saying all sorts of stuff about the various thrusters failing and the ship going down.
As the wind rushed and the ICSS Aggressor played a symphony of crazy, angry and metal-twisting noises—as the noise of the chaos enveloped Varia along with the emergency klaxon blaring again and again—he hoped for the best, crossed his arms over his chest, and watched the desert rise up to swat him out of the sky.
Just before the crash, Varia caught a brief glimpse of a widespread collection of dusty metal structures in the distance, glinting in the morning sun…
Chapter 2 – Shara Fulton
Shara Fulton waved at the two aliens that looked at her and the hovercart she was pushing. She offered her best timid smile, but immediately worried that instead, she’d flashed a weird squirmy smirk and maybe came off like she was doing something wrong.
The two Zargied guards watched her with their beady black eyes narrowed. Their snout-like mouths were slightly open. Their brutish, squashed face seemed chiseled into permanent scowls, the gouges between their frown lines and heavy brows etched deep into dry, pebbly skin that looked like dusky stone as orange as this harsh wasteland of a desert planet.
She looked away almost immediately, but not before taking another quick, closer look at the aliens’ wedge-shaped ears that stretched out to the sides like rocky starship wings. The Zargieds were big and strapping, like beefy human men, tall and broad, and their armor was dusted with the red-orange dirt of this world. They stood like sour fortresses with their rifles comfortable in their arms, armored but without helmets.
Shara couldn’t imagine what kind of helmets creatures like this would wear. They would have to be weird and wide to have enough space for those ears.
“Hey, don’t do that,” Elvira said, drawing the girl’s attention back to the hovercart. The rudimentary hover thrusters attached to each corner of the cart hummed lightly as the two women made their way through the streets of Harmony’s Hollow.
One of the four thrusters sputtered a little here and there, causing a minor but noticeable drop on one corner. Shara would have to fix that when they got back to the ship yard. She was happy to. Those little thrusters were very basic compared to the robotics she was capable of maintaining, tweaking, and reprogramming, but they were still technically droids.
“Don’t do what?” she asked, looking across the hovercart at her new coworker.
Elvira flipped her sideswept bob of blonde hair out of her face and squinted against the brightness of the hot, cloudless morning. Her blue eyes were oddly pale in the slight orange tinge of this world’s blazing sun. Elvira was taller than Shara; tall even next to most human men. From the moment Shara had met the older woman, she was a little envious of how athletic and fit Elvira was, especially with Shara being at least ten years younger and working out as hard and as often as she did to stay in good shape.
Some women were just born lucky.
“Don’t look at ’em,” Elvira said. “You don’t want those alien fuckers paying any attention to you.”
Shara adjusted her grip on the hovercart and continued, taking a brief look at the many dusty metal structures around them. Corporate workers milled around on their own business. Zargieds walked through the open dirt streets in small clusters, all nearly identical in their physical features and the odd spacesuit-looking armor they wore. The humans and Zargieds seemed to be keeping to their own.
A man at a human lunch booth waved at Elvira as the two women walked the hovercart past. Elvira straightened, smiled, and waved back. She was dressed in a strange miss-mash of practical men’s work clothing, pieces of spacer gear, and light wastelander armor. To Shara, the eccentric ensemble looked random, but she was sure that it all made sense to Elvira.
“What’s wrong with talking to them?” Shara asked. “Don’t we have an alliance?”
“Yeah, the company does,” Elvira replied with a smirk. Her lips were deep red, making her mouth appear much more animated, seemingly the only makeup she wore. Shara didn’t own any makeup. “But to individual humans? The Zargieds are mean bastards. They’re cruel.” She narrowed her eyes dramatically. “Real paranoid.”
“Paranoid…?” Shara repeated, releasing the cart with one skinny hand to wipe the sweat threatening to drip down her face. “Like … they think everyone’s out to get them?”
She looked up at the orange sun and squinted against it. It was going to be another hot day.
“Well, sometimes they are out to get each other,” Elvira replied. “Come on, don’t let that corner drop, girlie. We’ve still got another block to go with this shit.”
Shara retook control over her side of the load. It wasn’t heavy. That’s what the thrusters were for. But the cart required their constant guidance. Maybe at some point she could rig up some kind of coordinator array like on a multirotor craft so that the four corners could work together to stabilize the load instead of needing individual tweaking and constant babysitting to get from points A to B.
The devices stacked in the cart were heavy, dense, and felt like solid metal, but she knew from loading them that there were also circuits and lenses and other doodads revealed through openings here and there on their surfaces.
“What are these things for, anyway?” she asked.
“They’re replacement parts for Zargied mining lasers.”
Shara considered that for a moment. From what she’d seen in the last week at Harmony’s Hollow, this was basically a mining colony. There were less humans than aliens, and the aliens all seemed to be either miners or guards. “What do they use that Rodatrium for anyway?” Shara asked. “I’ve never heard of that metal before I came here.”
“Fuck if I know,” Elvira replied as they walked, flipping the wild half-bangs of her blonde hair out of her face again. “Probably weapons. Maybe starship armor.”
“So, Ashwell makes … mining laser parts?”
This was only her second day officially working for James Ashwell. Captain James Ashwell, as he called himself, even though he said that he’d been stuck on this planet for the last two years. A few months ago, Shara never would have guessed that she’d be leaving her home world where she’d lived all twenty years of her life to be put to work on an alien-dominated orange desert world, trapped on a dirty, hot mining colony, but that’s what happens when you sign a corporate contract, right?
The idea of being assigned to another world and shipped there on a transport free of charge seemed a little exciting, albeit very risky, but in reality, she felt more isolated here than ever before. Especially when the corporation screwed up her assignment and left her effectively homeless until Ashwell took her in and transferred her position.
He was an interesting guy, Captain Ashwell.
Nice guy.
“Eh, that’s some of it,” Elvira replied. “He does all sorts of shit for IMC. There are so many fuckin derelicts out there in the waste for us to salvage, he’s carved out a real nice spot for himself—and us, really—to always have shit to build, upgrade, and sell for the corporation and the Zargieds, both.”
“So, the Zargieds just, like, asked him to make mining laser parts?”
“No, the Zargieds made a request through the IMC Supply Executive, and that guy asked Ashwell. Cheaper to build em outta scrap than to bring em in from off world.”
“Hmm. Makes sense,” Shara replied with a nod. She paused to pull her long, dark hair out of her face. It was getting hotter already and her hair was starting to stick to her skin.
Elvira immediately glared at her for slowing down the cart, then scoffed and moved on when Shara shrugged a meek apology and grabbed her corners again. Shara felt her coworker veering the hovercart toward a dark metal IMC building coming up ahead of them. Across the sandy street from the IMC building was a large, squat structure cut into the side of a rise in the terrain. Several Zargied miners—they must be miners instead of guards, because they didn’t have rifles in their hands—stood around outside, scowling and muttering at each other in their deep, guttural language.
“This way, in here,” Elvira said, tilting her head toward the IMC building.
Shara followed the backend of the hovercart up a ramp to the structure’s front door.
“Is that a mine?” Shara asked, motioning to the building surrounded by Zargieds across the street.
“One of em,” Elvira replied, “yeah. Let’s get this shit inside and get back.”
Just inside the building, the not-quite-as-hot air forced to circulate around the entry area by massive, noisy fans was a relief from the growing heat and dead air outside. The instant Elvira released her side of the hovercart to approach a man working at a dull grey metal desk, Shara took the time to pull her hair back together and fix her clothes. If she was going to be on this planet for a while, and it looked like she would be, she’d need to find something cooler to wear than her standard issue IMC jumpsuit. Straightening her crumpled and sweaty collar, she watched Elvira interact with the IMC man.
“Yeah, Malcolm,” Elvira was saying. “Total of sixteen for now. Kix is working on twenty-two more. We’ll probably have some more for you tomorrow.”
“It looks like we should wait on transferring the credits until the rest of the order is in,” the man replied with a warm smile, pushing his glasses up his nose. He briefly passed over Elvira’s long body with his eyes.
“I don’t think that’s the deal you made with Ashwell,” Elvira replied, lifting a metallic figurine of a four-legged animal of some kind from the man’s desk. She leaned against the desk with one armored hip and peered at the figurine close to her face, much to Malcolm’s apparent dismay. “From what I understand, Mr. Beck,” she added, “you asked for them to be delivered in batches as ready, and Ashwell was to be paid per batch. Also, Ashwell prefers plat to IMC creds.”
The IMC officer laughed nervously, stood, and gently took the figure from Elvira’s hand. She let him. He put it back on the desk, visibly relieved, and sat again.
“That’s fine, Ms. DaCosta,” he said. “But you and I both know that I can only pay you in IMC credits. Not plat. Sorry.” He smiled. “Hand me your ledger and I’ll make the transfer.”
“You got it, Malcolm,” Elvira said with a smile. She handed him a device, and he punched at the small keyboard with his forefinger, looking over the upper edges of his glasses.
“There we go,” he said, waving to the back office through an opening near his desk.
Two men in corporate jumpsuits emerged from a door leading farther back, approached Shara and the hovercart without acknowledging her, and began unloading the goods.
Elvira looked over the ledger, returned it to her belt, and walked back to Shara and the hovercart. She waited for the men to finish offloading the parts.
“Thanks, Malcolm,” she said. “Probably see you tomorrow.”
Officer Malcolm Beck stood again, a little too quickly.
“Ah … yes … well, are you … doing anything tonight, Elvira? After it cools off? Maybe you and I might—”
“Sorry, Mr. Beck,” Elvira replied, turning back and flipping her sideswept bangs aside. “I … uh … don’t do humans.”
He replied with an open mouth and a stumped gaze. Elvira turned back to Shara and took a hold of her side of the hovercart.
“Um … see you tomorrow,” Malcolm replied meekly, sitting again.
“Yeah, see ya,” Elvira replied. Then, pushing the hovercart into motion again, said “Let’s go.”
Shara glanced at the supply executive, at the men carrying mining laser parts into the back, then jumped to her part of the cart.
They left.
“Don’t do humans…?” Shara repeated once they were out in the hot sun again.
Elvira smirked with her deep red lips and shrugged. “Eh, whatever.”
Making their way down the ramp, Shara felt the sun starting to make her sweat again already. The cart was far easier to maneuver on the four thrusters without the heavy load; goosey, even.
“So how long have you been working for Ashwell?” she asked.
Elvira looked up into the air as if in thought, sighed, and smiled back at her. “About a year, I guess.”
“What’d you do before this?”
“Oh, I’ve done all sorts of shit,” Elvira replied with a swagger. “Got my operator’s license from IMC about fifteen years ago. Ran mechs and heavy equipment for the corporation for a long time, security, and other shit. Ran with some merc outfits for a while after that. Been all over. Ran tactical and heavy armor for the Coalition of Mankind in the battles of Icarus and Kerbel.”
“You were able to do mercenary stuff and fight in wars while on IMC contract?”
Elvira scoffed and laughed.
“Oh, hell no,” she replied. “My contract was up by then.”
“You’re not under contract anymore?” Shara asked, helping maneuver the hovercart off of the bottom of the ramp back into the orangish-red dirt.
“Nah. I signed up for ten years when I was fifteen. I’m thirty now. How long’s yours?” Elvira asked.
“I signed up for twenty years,” Shara said. When the words escaped her lips, they felt like gravity, like a death sentence.
“Twenty?!” Elvira repeated, raising her eyebrows. “Why so long?”
Shara had to look away. For some reason, she couldn’t try to explain herself while looking Elvira in the eyes.
“I … I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea. I was … homeless a lot back on my world. Seemed like having the corporation take care of me for twenty years was a good idea.”
“And … you changed your mind already?”
Shara looked across at the mining building surrounded by Zargieds. They weren’t just standing around muttering anymore. The stony aliens were gathered around the wide entrance to the structure. A group of eight or so Zargieds with rifles were talking to a handful of aliens that were exiting the building. It was so weird being on an alien world where humans were the minority.
“Not … really…?” Shara replied, looking at Elvira again. The started heading back. “I just … when I got here, I was supposed to have a Junior Tech job lined up, a new home, all that ready to go.”
“And IMC fucked it up,” Elvira said.
“Yeah, I guess you can say that. If I wasn’t sent to Ashwell about the robotics stuff, I don’t know what I would have done. I’ve been here a week. There’s no food here except for what’s brought in. It’s not like I can be homeless here, you know? I was able to survive on my own back home without work, but … this place is just work. There’s nothing else.”
Maybe she could have hacked some IMC ledgers, lifted an account from somewhere to use under an alt ID, and skimmed enough creds to feed herself. But then again, there were less than three hundred humans on this colony. Not much room for a thief. She would have been discovered quickly, no doubt.
Besides, Shara never wanted to have to steal to live again…
“Ashwell’s a good guy,” Elvira said. “I respect him. You will too. He … ah … helps people. You don’t see that much … in … this…”
She trailed off, stretching tall and looking back at the Zargied mine. Shara paused to look too. They both stopped the hovercart as the many Zargieds gathered around the entrance became visibly agitated, barking loudly in their thick and rough language. The crowd seemed to back away as a whole from a group of Zargieds that had emerged from the mine’s entrance and were facing off with the guards, who all had their rifles shouldered and ready to shoot.
“What the heck…?” Shara said.
“Something’s up,” Elvira replied. “Something bad. We’d better get the fuck outta here.”
“What? Why?”
“Shit’s going down,” Elvira said. “Let’s go.”
As they watched, Shara noticed something different about the group of alien miners who had emerged; something subtle but definitely off from the other Zargieds around them. Their coloration was different. Instead of the garish orange appearance like the rest of their race, these miners—where their stony skin was exposed, anyway—were stained by splotches of black. Their faces were the worst of all, their squashed snouts and wide mouths thick with inky-black … sludge? Their eyes were surrounded by the black stuff too, as if dark crud was seeping out of all of their openings and spreading across their chiseled faces.
“Oh my god…” Shara muttered. “Something’s wrong with those guys! Look at their faces! They’ve got—”
They were interrupted by the guards suddenly opening fire on the entire group. Shara’s heart jumped up into her throat and adrenaline shot through her arms and legs in waves of numbness as bright red plasma erupted from the many trained rifles, instantly bursting and disintegrating the faces and chests of the black-splotched miners. Pieces of alien flesh exploded and flew all over, splashing against the outer wall of the mine, onto the faces and gaping mouths of several Zargieds watching. Aliens all around bellowed in shock and started shouting. Some stood still. Others ran in random directions. Others flocked into formation behind the guards.
“What the hell?!” a human man exclaimed.
Shara recognized the voice of the supply executive from inside, Malcolm Beck, and several men including him rushed out of the supply office to see what was going on.
“Come on!” Elvira snapped, bumping Shara in her thighs with the hovercart. “Let’s go! Don’t wanna get involved in this.”
“Okay,” Shara replied. Her lip trembled.
Turning, her heart still racing in her ears, Shara helped Elvira push the hovercart away from the area, back the way they’d come. Her arms were numb and felt rubbery. Her knees were weak. They hustled back toward the ship and salvage yard as aliens argued loudly behind them. Thank goodness there was no more gunfire, but she’d seen it. She saw those weird aliens’ heads explode with plasma fire. She saw that group of miners splattered all over the entrance area of the mine.
What the hell was that?!
Why…?!
“Ashwell, come in,” Elvira said over her radio, pushing the hovercart quickly along the road, double-timing it. “Captain, are you there?”
“I’m here, Elvira,” Captain Ashwell replied. Shara could hear Ashwell’s age. His voice was like a creaky and comfortable leather armchair. “What’s the matter? Beck trying to put off payment again?”
“Transaction was fine. Something’s happening here at the mine, Captain,” she replied, blue eyes straight on their path and hyper-focused. “We’re coming back now, but the Zargied at the mine; they—”
“I’m glad you called back when you did, actually. Done already? Great. Please hurry back. We have a high priority salvage to get to ASAP. You and Shara will be heading out with Kix on the skiff to get it. Extremely high value salvage six kilos away near Garbage Gulch. Hurry back, now.”
“Uh, yes, Captain,” Elvira said. “Will do. Ashwell, there was a shooting at the mine. Some of the Zargied guards disintegrated a bunch of miners.”
“A shooting?” he repeated. “I wonder why. We’ll look into it. Please hurry back.”
“Yessir,” Elvira replied. “Back in a few.”
“Don’t delay!” Captain Ashwell said. “See you in a few.”
Elvira clipped her radio back into place and hustled ahead in silence for a moment.
“Extremely high value?” Shara finally said, hurrying the hovercart along with her.
“Yep. Should be interesting.”
Shara shook her head. Moving the cart at almost a jogging pace in the hot sun was starting to work the adrenaline out of her limbs, but her heart was still hammering and her mind was reeling.
“What the heck happened back there?” Shara exclaimed. “Do the Zargieds fight like that a lot?”
“That wasn’t fighting,” Elvira said. “That wasn’t some sort of dominance shit or anything like that.”
“Then what?”
The commotion was long behind them now. Looking around now, it was as if nothing had happened at all.
“I don’t know, kid,” she replied, shaking her head. “But whatever that was, I have a feeling it was bad.”
“What’s Garbage Gulch?”
Elvira seemed to snap out of whatever thoughts were keeping her staring straight ahead. She smirked and brushed that bit of sideswept blond hair out of her face. “It’s a huge fuckin canyon not far from the colony. They call it Garbage Gulch because—like a lot of this planet—it’s full of wreckage from the Zargied wars. Gotta say, though, I haven’t heard Ashwell this excited about a salvage in a while. Should be interesting.” Elvira shot her a renewed grin. “Hey, this’ll be your first salvage mission! I love going out on the skiff.”
“The interesting day goes on,” Shara replied, pulling her hair out of her face.
“You got that right,” Elvira said.
They rushed back to the ship and salvage yard.
These were the first two chapters of “Starship Bonfire – Extermination”
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