The Return: The Conglomerate Trilogy (Volume 1) Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE Nantalli

  CHAPTER TWO Battle Wagon Assault

  CHAPTER THREE Momentum

  CHAPTER FOUR Caleet Tabor

  CHAPTER FIVE A New Mission

  CHAPTER SIX Apprentices

  CHAPTER SEVEN Dinner

  CHAPTER EIGHT Briefing

  CHAPTER NINE The Dream

  CHAPTER TEN The Dojo

  CHAPTER ELEVEN The Escape

  CHAPTER TWELVE Chonka System, JAS Shrike

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Fourth Planet

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN Tea

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Chonka Battle

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN Retreat

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Rescued

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Return to Sol

  CHAPTER NINETEEN Earth, Philippine Jungle

  CHAPTER TWENTY Talk with Doc

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Neutral Zone

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO To Chonka

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Bizzen

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Felix

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Rendezvous

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Retreat

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN To the Rescue

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Trapped

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Surprise Attack

  CHAPTER THIRTY Rescued

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Grav Tanks

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Return to the Ultio

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE On the CIC

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Another Formal Dinner

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Shuttle to Bizzen

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Ambush

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Evac

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Back in Business

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE Setting a Trap

  CHAPTER FORTY Reunited

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE A New Danger

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO The Talk

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Josaka

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR In Defense of Athena

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE Old Voices

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX The Gauntlet

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN Sol System, Battlecruiser Leonis Ultio

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT Sol System, CS Khalid

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE Sol System, Battlecruiser Leonis Ultio

  CHAPTER FIFTY Wormhole to Josaka

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE Josaka System, Battlecruiser Leonis Ultio

  The Return

  By William S. Frisbee Jr.

  Copyright © 2017 by William S. Frisbee Jr.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please refer all pertinent questions to the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Nantalli

  “Four Caliphate cruisers, mark two seven zero, sun ward,” Elena said. It was a death sentence.

  “Copy four Caliphate cruisers,” Luke replied checking his heads-up display, Elena had let no emotions into her voice and neither would he. Icons of ships and space debris hovered in the air in front of Luke like multi colored ghosts as he drifted into his command chair and strapped himself in. The cramped bridge didn’t feel so cramped without gravity, it felt close and comfortable. More icons appeared as the passive sensors saw more. It would be hard to imagine worse. “They have an escort of six frigates too. They are coasting, trying to be stealthy, on intercept with New Alamo.”

  “Fiddlesticks, too many. Where did they get those cruisers?” Elena asked, finally showing emotion. “They aren’t supposed to have many functional cruisers. Jupe Intelligence has dropped the ball again.”

  “Only one thing to do now,” Luke said. They had been lurking on a lonely asteroid watching their sector. The asteroid was a known and numbered object in space, it was expected and plotted in every chart. Passive and most active sensors would tune it out without noticing the ships attached to it, lurking in the pitch-black shadows. The Caliphate ships were trying not to advertise their presence so they would only use passive sensors.

  This was Luke and Elena’s sector, their responsibility, and they were the only defenders between the enemy and home.

  Elena said. “Do you think they know about the wormhole transition?”

  “I don’t know,” Luke said, “but they have enough firepower to stop it.”

  Luke glanced at the picture of Elena taped to his console. She was a beautiful blond with captivating blue eyes and Luke treasured that picture because she was smiling only at him. Right now, he couldn’t see her and she was likely wearing her helmet anyways. Her hair was also nothing more than stubble and she was not smiling. Her scowls were not a pleasant thing but Luke touched the picture gently, and then removed it from his thoughts.

  Over six hundred thousand people were trusting Luke and Elena to keep them safe. The smaller frigates could be driven off. The cruisers were a different story because they had heavier, more advanced nukes. Most of New Alamo’s living spaces were rotating cylinders buried in the nickel asteroid, but the Aswads carried by the cruisers could crack New Alamo’s defenses and habitats.

  “Hold the line,” Elena said.

  “Semper Fi,” Luke said, his words automatic, his mind focused on solutions. The cruisers were four hundred meters long, shaped like a long ugly peanut, they had a crew of two thousand and were bristling with rail guns, sensor pods, and laser turrets. The Caliphate frigates were short flattened cylinders with a pointed front, like a well-used pencil that had been stomped. They were a hundred and twenty meters long and carried a crew of ninety. Over eight thousand fanatics in the fleet.

  The cruisers were in a vertical ‘Y’ formation with the fleet commander most likely in the center of the ‘Y’. The frigates were in two squadrons of three beside the length of the ‘Y’, but staggered so they were in front of and behind the cruisers.

  Two drone frigates attacking such a fleet would have only a single outcome. Elena and Luke were combat veterans, had been for decades, and they held no illusions. They had both seen too many heroes die trying to accomplish the impossible.

  “I love you Elena,” Luke said. You could never tell someone enough.

  “I love you too Luke,” she said.

  Luke wished they were in the same ship. One last hug, one last kiss. It wasn’t fair, but then life wasn't fair. Two weeks from now and they would have been able to live in peace, away from the wars and religious persecution. He stared past his heads-up display at her picture. They had been married for over seventy years, it wasn’t enough time.

  Luke checked the calculations. Their small Rapier class frigates acted as command and supply platforms for their eight dagger class drone fighters. At fifty meters and shaped like bladed arrows, they had racks for eight smaller, multi-purpose drone fighters. Luke and Elena were the only ones aboard their respective ships, which were the typical weapon platforms of the outer colonies. Automated and cost effective, it was the only way the outer colonies could defend themselves from the more populated and less technical Caliphate. On their own they could take on a Caliphate cruiser and a frigate or two, but they didn’t have the firepower to breach the defensive fires of four cruisers and their escort.

  “After a hundred
years,” Luke said. “A pity it has to end like this.”

  “You don’t look a day over twenty-five cupcake,” Elena said with a smile in her voice.

  “Nor do you,” Luke replied.

  “And here we were thinking technology would let us live forever,” Elena said. “This hoovers.”

  “Well,” Luke said, trying to find the positive. “If we luck out, at least some will escape the Dar Al-Harb wars and leave peaceful productive lives.”

  “I wanted it to be us,” Elena said.

  “We are warriors,” Luke said trying to keep the growl out of his voice.

  “We are husband and wife,” Elena snapped back.

  There was nothing to say. For over seventy years they had served in the military. From ground infantry on Earth to frigate commanders in the asteroid belt. They both knew how this conversation would end and how their lives would be spent. They could have done something else and now that chance was being stolen from them.

  A lot goes through your mind when you are about to go to your death and you ask yourself if it is worth it. There was plenty of time to think about it in the lonely cold depths of space.

  “We’ve got to stop them,” Luke said. This was a large force, an invasion force. It was likely troop transports were not far behind. Fleeing to the Jupiter colonies was an option only for lesser people.

  “With prejudice,” Elena said.

  “Two against ten,” Luke said. “I think the odds are in our favor.”

  Elena chuckled. Running away was not an option anymore. They had both done enough running.

  “We will hold the line,” Elena said.

  “We will hold the line,” Luke agreed. “Let’s use Naantali asteroid to mask our approach, by my calculations we can use its sensor shadow to get closer.”

  “We will have to pile on the G’s”, Elena said running her own calculations.

  “But we can do it, barely,” Luke said rerunning the calculations, comparing their speed and trajectory with the Rapier’s capabilities. The Caliphate task force clustered together as if afraid of the emptiness in space. If they could slip a nuke into their midst, they could take out three or four. Every Caliphate ship which died, would give New Alamo a greater chance to survive.

  “We will have to accelerate without mercy to keep us in the Naantali shadow and mask our acceleration,” Elena said after reviewing her own calculations.

  Luke said. “Naantali is big. The closer we get to them the less time they have to react.”

  “We will have about an hour before we can begin our burn,” Luke said. “Check my numbers?”

  Minutes later Elena responded. “I concur. Fiddlesticks, this will hoover. That is a lot of G, and after sitting around in micro gravity for what? Almost two weeks? It will hurt.”

  “Find me another option,” Luke said. They would be detected the moment they powered up and accelerated. “We have to get close fast while we can use it as a shield. Maybe we can do this.”

  “All nukes on the drones?” Elena asked.

  Luke said. “We’ll only get single shot.”

  Luke sent a tight beam transmission to New Alamo warning them what was coming and then helped Elena with the calculations.

  “It will take a miracle to get close enough to damage them,” Elena said. “We won’t have any fuel at the end either. We will be sitting ducks.”

  “If we succeed and survive, we can have a rescue team from New Alamo recover us,” Luke said. Chances of survival were slim, but there WAS a chance. Professional warriors always planned for survival, even against the odds.

  “This will hoover,” Elena said. She refused to swear, despite so many decades in the military. Hoover was a replacement for ‘suck’ in her vocabulary. Luke loved that about her, but swearing came naturally for him.

  “We will have to burn hard for at least an hour,” Elena said. “Not fun, not fun at all.”

  Luke did not want to think about it.

  The final preparation of preparing the drones and fine-tuning the calculations kept them busy until it was time. They received a message from Commodore Mark Harrison wishing them good luck and offering prayers for their success. At least New Alamo was warned and they would do what they could in preparation, perhaps other drone frigates could be recalled in time to make a difference.

  The Caliphate force entered the sensor shadow of Naantali and the two Rapiers began their crushing acceleration. Luke and Elena were both crying after twenty minutes and blacked out after thirty.

  Fifty-three minutes after they started their acceleration the frigates flipped and decelerated so they could use Naantali’s minimal gravity sink to curve their trajectory toward the task force. With the decreased acceleration, the computers woke them both up, injecting them with stimulants and painkillers. It was a blessing and a curse. It was a few precious seconds of freedom from the crushing force but it was also just a small prelude before the pain resumed.

  Death couldn’t be this painful, Luke thought, trying to figure out if there was anything that didn’t hurt. He sent a tight beam pulse to see how she was doing before he began his internal diagnostics. She was waking up to and the first thing she did was ‘curse’. They were about to skim past Naantali and Luke suspected he could stand on the hull of his ship and touch the asteroid as the Rapiers zipped past. One bad calculation though and they might slam into it.

  “Fiddlesticks, mud fudge and frog breath! We need to find another job. We are getting too old for this. This is really, really starting to hoover.”

  She was coherent and in pain, like Luke, which was a good sign. Checking their passive sensors, the Caliphate force was right where they expected and still unaware. They should be alerted to the Rapiers screaming up their exhaust any minute though. Every second they delayed the Rapiers would get closer and closer, and the less time the Caliphate ships would have to spread out.

  Luke watched the fuel. It would not be much longer before they were out, but if they did not get closer, it would not matter. New Alamo would die.

  New Alamo needed only two more weeks. Two more weeks before they could escape the Sol system and the religious fanatics conquering the Sol system.

  He looked at his and Elena’s medical condition. It would not be pleasant but they could pile on another G. Maybe.

  “Adding another G,” Luke said.

  “Fiddle Sticks,” Elena said in obvious pain. “Do it.”

  They both came close to blacking out again but the Caliphate task force still had not given them any sign they had been noticed. The fuel was almost gone.

  “Time,” the computer chimed, and the drones launched. Sixteen nuclear-armed drones launched at the Caliphate ships, using the already high velocity of the Rapiers, they accelerated on their own. Without a soft biological inside, they could accelerate at much greater speeds. The drones’ primary target was the cruisers but the robot squadron would save a missile for each frigate.

  With the drones away, the two Rapiers flipped and tried to bleed off their velocity.

  “Fuel reserves depleted,” Luke’s Rapier reported. Elena’s Rapier reported zero fuel at the same time. They both still had a lot of velocity and no way to maneuver. It was all up to the drones. Without the brutalizing acceleration Luke and Elena could finally move. Every muscle was sore, every joint was in pain, and they were both nauseous and suffering headaches.

  “Hoovers, hoovers, hoovers,” Elena said, Luke could hear the pain in her voice. She sounded ready to cry. “Maximum hoovers. We need a new job.”

  “Yea,” Luke said watching the sensors. They would not go full active until they saw a response from the Caliphate ships. They still had not responded. Luck was on their side, or God was, depending on your religious orientation. Luke put his faith in neither.

  One frigate began to pull away. They had been seen. Luke’s heads-up display lit up like a Christmas tree as sensors went active. Laser range finders pinged targets, radars powered up and focused, all sensors calculating exact vel
ocity and direction. Missiles locked onto targets while still in the drones' racks. The computers tracked incoming laser and radar targeting locks. Luke turned off the lock on notifications and let the computer talk to itself. The Caliphate ships would bleed first.

  It took several minutes before the other Caliphate ships acted, a panicked attempt to spread out. It would be too late and Luke smiled. The drones kept piling on the acceleration, they were expendable. Missiles launched. Thirty-two missiles accelerated at the ten targets. Each drone only had two missiles, and each missile carried a pair of warheads. Sixty-four warheads would detonate soon turning that portion of space into hell.

  The Caliphate cruisers and frigates ejected counter measures while trying to pile on acceleration, it was likely crew members were dead or dying, unable to get to acceleration stations in time but it wouldn’t matter. They would die. The drones used their superior sensors to help the missiles ignore the counter measures. The missiles entered the Caliphate’s point defense envelope and spewed their own counter measures, trying to fox and confuse the point defense lasers. Seconds later the missiles popped, releasing their warheads. Now it was all over except for the dying. Luke stared at the display. Surprise had been complete.

  Nuclear fireballs erupted among the Caliphate ships. Even the first frigate to detect them was caught and hammered without mercy by the devastation sweeping through the enemy formation. When the fireballs faded away the lone frigate was the only survivor moving under its own power. A telescope focused on it showed a long plume, a hundred meters of fire and atmosphere, dying in space.

  The threat indicator light went on and Luke watched as a single missile arced out from the mangled frigate and turned back toward Luke and Elena. A minute later, a second missile launched and turned, the final efforts of a dying ship. The computer pinged, warning Luke they were both Ignes, ship killers, and each one had a pair of warheads.

  A secondary explosion on the remaining frigate lit it up. The engines were dead, but it didn’t look like a shattered wreck yet. Atmosphere was venting from the stricken ship and Luke could see at least one body drifting away surrounded by wreckage.