Fields of Fire (Backyard Starship Book 9) Read online

  Copyrighted Material

  Fields of Fire Copyright © 2022 by Variant Publications

  Book design and layout copyright © 2022 by JN Chaney

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing.

  1st Edition

  CONTENTS

  Don’t Miss Out

  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

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Join the Conversation

  Connect with J.N. Chaney

  Connect with Terry Maggert

  About the Authors

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  1

  “You know, since coming out here, I’ve noticed that everyone is a refugee. More or less, anyway,” I said, feathering the controls to send four missiles streaking off downrange.

  Perry turned to me, his amber eyes glowing. He was a machine, an AI construct crafted like an oversized raptor, but his gestures and body language had evolved since I’d first met him. In the angle of his head, I saw what I took to be understanding.

  Of course, seeing all that in the angle of his head might say more about me than it did him.

  “As an aside, I’ve noticed that since coming out here, you’re way more casual about delivering fearsome destructive energy at the bad guys—like that, in fact.”

  He pointed a wing out of the Fafnir’s canopy, just as three pulses of light announced detonating warheads. The armored class 8 raider that had been their target simply ceased to exist, the shattered debris starting their long plunge toward the wind-torn, ruddy-orange clouds of the gas giant looming beneath us.

  I lifted one shoulder, but barely. “They were slavers, the scum of the scum. If there’s one thing that truly pisses me off, it’s the imposition of will by force, and we see it out here to a degree that makes me see red.” I sat back with a satisfied nod. These slavers, part of a cartel that worked out of Dregs, had been guilty of crimes that made even the normally unflappable Zenophir pause and curse softly when she’d read them.

  I turned back to Perry. “But even they were probably refugees.”

  “Color me intrigued. How do you figure?”

  I held up a finger. “Torina, have you got him?”

  She’d been watching her instruments closely. Our fourth missile had been loaded with a tracker warhead, intended to tag anything that might have escaped the destruction with a device we could use to follow it. And, sure enough, a class 3 workboat had been kicked free just before the slavers’ ship had been destroyed.

  She nodded. “Yup, got ’em. The tag’s signal is loud and clear. They’re not going anywhere without us being able to find them again. Our hound is on the trail.”

  The workboat’s small engine lit, struggling to deliver enough thrust to lift the ship out of the gas giant’s prodigious gravity well. For a moment, it looked like it wasn’t going to make it, and all our tag would show us was the thing’s trajectory into the howling oblivion under the racing clouds. But it slowly gained velocity until it was clear it would inevitably break free—at least as long as its engine kept firing. Of course, that freedom was an illusion since we just wanted to track the bastard to the next link in the slavers’ evil chain of misery.

  Torina turned to me, her face hinting at no qualms or remorse about the kill, either. She’d read the same list of crimes Zeno had.

  “So I guess whoever’s on that workboat are refugees now, too, and what makes you bring it up in the middle of a space battle anyway?” she asked.

  I stared at the retreating workboat.

  “Boss?” Perry asked.

  I blinked. “Huh?”

  “Wow, you’re a study in introspective distraction today, aren’t you? How do you figure? Everyone being a refugee?”

  I realized my whole crew—Torina in the copilot’s seat to my right, Zeno behind me, Icky behind Torina, and Perry perched in the middle—were watching me.

  I sighed, and even to me it sounded bitter. “We’re all running from something, aren’t we?”

  Icky frowned. “I’m not. Well, except maybe for the weird social convention of wearing pants.”

  I smiled at her. “Kinda think you’re running from your mother’s memory as well, aren’t you?”

  “I—” she began, then stopped. Her frown deepened, and she shrugged. “I guess I kinda am, yeah.”

  Netty, the Fafnir’s AI, cut in. “Van, I hate to interrupt this deeply philosophical moment, but did you want to actually pursue the bad guys we just tagged? Once they’re clear of the gas giant’s immediate gravitation, they’ll be moving fast—and we have to assume that that workboat is twist capable.”

  I turned back to the instruments and nodded. “Yes. By all means, Netty my dear. Keep us gaining on them but slowly enough that we won’t catch them before they twist. Hopefully, they’ll head for whatever they consider their nearest safe house to lick their wounds.”

  Ordinarily, when a ship twisted away, it was gone. There was no way to tell if it had spatially distorted itself just a few light-years, or hundreds, or even in which direction. But Icky, Zeno, and Netty had perfected a tracker that could effectively do the math as the ship to which it was attached started to twist, then squirted the data back to us via burst transmission. We could now discern the twist destination of a ship we’d tagged nearly ninety percent of the time.

  “What about you, Van?” Perry suddenly asked.

  “What about me what?”

  “What are you running from?”

  I frowned. I guess it was inevitable that my refugees remark would circle back on me like this. I mean, the others were pretty clear—Icky ran to put distance between her and her mother’s criminal legacy, Zeno ran from her daughter’s untimely death, Torina ran from the stodgy, privileged life back on Helso that everyone assumed she’d quietly inherit—

  As for me?

  “That’s a really good question, Perry. And when I actually have an answer to it, I’ll let you know,” I said.

  I waited for more conversation, smart-assed or otherwise, but no one spoke. Instead, we all just flew along with our thoughts, running from things that were as inescapable as our own shadows.

  Netty interrupted our brooding reverie.

  “That’s strange.”

  I sat up. “Netty, when a spaceship tells her crew that something is strange, I think it’s customary to go into specifics.”

  “Sorry, Van, but I’m not sure if this is even significant. That workboat’s drive is behaving strangely.”

  “How so?” I asked, hoping Netty wasn’t about to say it was going to explode, turning our only decent lead in the slaver case to an ionized cloud of… well, shit.

  “It’s… pulsing. It’s very slight, only a miniscule fraction of a percentage change in power output.”

  “Yeah, now that Netty’s pointed it out, I see it too,” Icky said. “Just a teeny tiny bit of variation, but it’s regular.”

  “Some sort of harmonic?” Zeno asked. I expected that would be the answer—fusion drives were notorious for developing harmonic resonances while they operated, sometimes so severe they needed specific systems to dampen them out. But Icky shook her head.

  “Don’t think so. It’s repeating in some—yeah, a pattern,” Icky said.

  I sat up a little more. “What sort of pattern?”

  Netty answered. “There are two pulses. Then a pause, then three. A pause, then five. Pause, then seven, then eleven, then it starts at two again. It’s the first five prime numbers.”

  Now I was sitting up as straight as I could. “Okay, that is strange. What could cause it?”

  “Realistically, the drive’s power setting would have to be deliberately manipulated to result in repeated fluctuations that correspond to the first five prime numbers,” Netty replied.

  “Yeah, whether
it’s a computer or an AI doing it or a person, it would have to be on purpose,” Icky agreed.

  “Gotta agree. It’s really, really, really unlikely to be random,” Perry added.

  I gave him a quick glance. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  I glanced at Torina, who shrugged. “Somebody’s trying to get our attention maybe?”

  “Well, they succeeded,” I replied, then paused a moment, biting my lip. The whole point had been to let the workboat escape and lead us to a slaver safehouse. But such a subtle and deliberate manipulation of the boat’s drive just smacked of being a signal of some sort.

  Like maybe… a call for help.

  “Netty, change of plans. Let’s overtake that boat. Icky, Perry, you’re coming with me. Torina, you and Zeno watch our backs,” I said, unstrapping and heading aft.

  Icky grinned as I passed her. “Sweet. Maybe we’ll get to bust some heads.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “Hold that thought. I have a sneaking suspicion this isn’t going to be a boarding action.”

  Icky huffed. “Then what is it?”

  I grabbed my blade and began arming up. “A rescue mission.”

  I was right. We boarded the workboat ready for a fight but found it had been launched, and was being controlled, by its onboard AI. Unfortunately, its preset destination was Dregs, which wasn’t of any value to us since that’s where we’d picked up this lead in the first place.

  But while it wasn’t crewed, it wasn’t unmanned, either. Bound in the cargo bay we found two people. One was a lone man—human, powerfully built, and three inches short of six feet. He had lively hazel eyes, dark skin, and black hair shaved down to his scalp except for a busy topknot. His boots lay nearby, as did one of his socks, leaving him with one bare foot.

  The other was an alien of a species I’d never met or even seen before. Five feet tall and bipedal, it reminded me of a sloth, with a short tail and a thin coat of fine hair in tones of rust and gray. He had prominent, white-tufted ears like a caracal and bushy white eyebrows that somehow gave it a weary, resigned, and slightly puzzled look.

  I moved to the human and pulled the gag from his mouth. He’d been bound at wrists and ankles but had both feet near an open access panel filled with cabling. Icky assisted the alien.

  “Oh—I thank you,” the man gasped. “Was starting to get a touch despondent, thinking we’d escaped whatever happened to those bastards and their ship just to end up—” He frowned. “Where were we headed, anyway?”

  “Dregs,” I said.

  He blinked up at me, then sat up and grinned so big that it somehow made me want to grin right back. “Wait, you’re a Peacemaker,” he stated.

  “I am. Peacemaker Van—”

  “Tudor, right. You’re making a name. A good one, I might add. I like the targets you’re selecting.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. He gave Icky a grateful nod for untying him, then sat up and rubbed his wrists. “Please, no need to look so suspicious, my friend. I’m Peacemaker Blessing Mbana, though everyone calls me Essie.” He gestured at his companion, who’d also sat up. “And this is Cheerful Enthusiast, but I call him Funboy. He’s another inmate of our charming little Guild.”

  In utter contrast to the grinning man called Essie, Cheerful Enthusiast—a name I had difficulty using—gave me a look like a man who’d just seen the Internal Revenue Service appear on his front porch. “Yes. Thank you for postponing our deaths. I guess.”

  “Uh… you’re welcome?” I said, blinking at the alien’s dreary monotone. He reminded me of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, except not quite as upbeat or chatty.

  I turned to Perry, who dipped his beak. “Yup, they both match those identities—voice print, facial recognition, the whole ball of uniquely characteristic wax. And since I know you’re going to ask, Cheerful Enthusiast is a Surtsi, a race from outside known space and galactically down relative to the ecliptic. His name is the closest approximation our translators can manage.”

  “Which is why I call him Funboy,” Essie said, turning to the little alien. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Those bonds did some serious chafing. I hope it doesn’t lead to infection. Or worse.”

  Essie laughed and reached out a hand to me. I accepted it and he shook it like a paint mixer. Still, I gave him a wary look. “Okay, so you know me, but—don’t take this the wrong way, I’ve never heard your name before, nor any cases involving a Peacemaker with your description.” Sometimes, Peacemakers used field names for sensitive work that usually led to their deaths—or losing cover. Badly.

  Not that that really meant much. In four years, I’d probably either met or at least heard of the vast majority of Peacemakers, but there were still some loners who prowled the fringes of known space society. They did their jobs, but they did them in isolation, a few of them rarely even coming close to Anvil Dark. They hunted bad guys, caught them, then hauled them back to the Guild’s prison barge, The Hole. Lather, rinse, and repeat. I’m sure there were as many motivations for a solitary life of law enforcement as there were Peacemakers who pursued it, and Essie must be one of them.

  As for Funboy—

  I had no idea what to make of him, aside from his unrelenting grimness being so unlike Essie’s equally boundless good cheer that I was almost afraid to let them touch in case they annihilated each other in a colossal blast of pent-up karmic opposition.

  “You not ever hearing of us is a good thing,” Essie said. “It means we’re doing our jobs. Well.”

  I’d removed my helmet and now cocked my head quizzically at him. “Sorry, I don’t get it.”

  “Our specialty is undercover work, mostly gathering criminal intelligence. You know when you get a briefing or read a report about some bad guys and it says sources report this or that? Well, say hello to sources.”

  I glanced back at Perry. “Two for two, boss,” he said. “Netty just checked, and both Peacemaker Blessing and Cheerful Enthusiast here had open Guild records until about five years ago, and then they both went dark under a Master’s Security Seal. That’s pretty much a giveaway.”

  “Well, okay then. If Netty and Perry are good with you guys, so am I.”

  As I helped Essie to his feet, Icky peered into the open access port. “That line, right there, it’s gotta be one of the data cables from the cockpit to the drive, right?”

  “It is,” Essie replied with a firm nod.

  “And you somehow used that to affect the drive?”

  He nodded. “Credit for that goes to Cheerful Enthusiast. He managed to get his gag out and talk me through it.”

  I turned to the little alien, who gave a languid shrug. “This model of workboat went out of production at least ninety years ago. There’s no evidence it’s ever been upgraded, so I presumed it still had its original metallic conductor cables. By pressing it against that power conduit beside it, I assumed it would induce enough variable impedance to make the drive controller think the flight controls were varying the thrust demand from the drive.”

  “Wow. That’s… brilliant,” Icky said.

  Cheerful Enthusiast gave another slow shrug. “I suppose. There were many reasons it might not have worked, though.”

  “But it did.”

  “But it might not have.”

  “But… it did—"

  I’d been tennis-balling my attention between Icky and Funboy, and I shook my head, then interrupted them. “Okay, wait. So you’re saying you figured out how to make the drive pump out prime numbers—” I turned from Funboy to Essie and pointed down. “And you actually did it with your feet?”