Master General (The Aternien Wars Book 6) by G J Ogden

Author:G J Ogden [Ogden, G J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ogden Media Ltd
Published: 2024-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

VESTA’S VEIL

Carter stood at the viewing gallery window inside the Vesta’s Veil tomb facility and peered out at the radiation-bleached, monochrome landscape. Despite being large for an asteroid, Vesta’s Veil wasn’t massive enough to generate anywhere close to standard gravity, which meant that the familiar tug of artificial generators hummed throughout the facility. Even so, Carter could see something resembling an atmosphere through the window. It had a faint green hue and it swirled and danced like an aurora borealis, providing an enticing backdrop to the Ascalon. The ship was holding position a few hundred meters away, looking majestic in the way that only a Longsword-class battleship could.

Watching the Ascalon had the perverse effect of making Carter feel suddenly melancholy, because while he was proud of her and her crew, he missed his own ship. Not a day had gone by in all the lonely years of his voluntary exile when the Galatine hadn’t crept into his thoughts, at least for a moment.

Carter took some comfort from knowing that the honored battleship was safe and well on Terra Two, and that it was still serving a purpose, just as he was. Without the Galatine, there would be no Ascalon, just as without General Rose, there would be no Master Commander Larsen. He’d spent the last four years preparing the next generation of master officers to fight the next war. Yet, he couldn’t shake the feeling that even after nearly two centuries, war wasn’t quite done with Carter Rose yet.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” Carina said.

Her arrival startled Carter. He’d been so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t noticed her approach.

“She is that, and so far she’s performed admirably, as have her crew,” Carter said. He turned to Carina, his hands pressed to the small of his back. “But there will be sterner tests to come.”

“We’re ready for them,” Carina said. There was no ego in her answer, only a hard-won confidence. “The Admiral is waiting for us, and your old friend, Dwight, has been asking to speak with you too.”

Carter groaned then caught sight of the Grand Vizier. The noble was directing a small army of Aternien High Overseers, who were unloading equipment from shuttles that had arrived off the Dauntless, laden with boxes and crates from the Aternien enclave on Bastet Island. Another High Overseer was standing with the Vizier, a woman whom Carter hadn’t seen before. Unlike many of her fellow nobles, she’d chosen to retain a human appearance, though in true Aternien fashion, she was impossibly beautiful – the sort of processed beauty that had adorned adverts, magazine covers and billboards for centuries, and still did.

“He can wait,” Carter grunted.

The deck plates suddenly began to shake, and Carter turned back to the viewing window. The first of the three corvettes that had accompanied them to Vesta’s Veil had landed on the barren asteroid. The ship was already in a bad way, and not all of its thrusters were functioning, but the low gravity meant that the skeleton crew could complete the task without wrecking the ship in the process.

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