Alien Empress (Star Breaker Book 9) by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor [Victor, James David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2023-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

10

Hephaestus Station (Free Breaker Republic)

They came like a ripple in the night: a blur in the distant canopy of stars—a fire in the heavens.

“Sensors!” hissed the voice of Commander Max Holler, First War Chief and Acting Commander of the Free Breaker Republic. His eyes scanned the disturbances appearing across space, all across his vision.

The commander still stood in the safety of the command and control deck of the massive Hephaestus Station, but the screens before him, that fully occupied almost four floors of wall space, showed a variety of viewpoints and angles.

The largest central screen showed directly in front of the station itself. There were the large Breaker tankers and transport ships hovering in their tight groups and diamond formations before the giant orbs of stationary asteroids.

Further out could be seen the giant Breaker starcraft, a little off to the right to allow it a greater field of fire, hanging like a giant, starry omen before them. The light of a hundred ships and the station’s own floodlights caught the Breaker starcraft’s crystal points, highlighting their shimmering iridescence. Further out, a scattering of a few giant asteroids hung in the void between the Breaker starcraft and the distant expanse of the Inner System.

But it was out there, out in the gloom of the night, where something was happening. The stars were starting to shimmer and swirl, as many—many—ship’s thrusters disturbed the waves of light. Max knew what that ripple and gassy blur meant. He had been a mercenary for a long time. The Mad Dogs had even served their time as an unofficial unit for the Earth Alliance Marines, paid to take actions against other mercenary groups or corporations when the Earth Alliance couldn’t be seen getting involved.

He had seen that sort of light blur before. He knew that it was the sign of many ships, the break and burn of a whole ripple of light waves as a company of ships was heading his way.

But why didn’t the long-range scanners picked up on it? Max was confused. The Breaker Large Antenna Array. It should have picked up on their arrival an hour or more before it ever got to this point.

“Technician! Ping the Breaker Large Antenna Array,” Max Holler hissed as he flared a hand at one of the figures seated nearby at one of the control boards.

This should not have happened, Max knew. He should have been aware of the arrival of the Earth Alliance battle group hours before this. He could have prepared space mines, slow-moving torpedoes, fireships . . .

“Commander, sir, I’m not getting any signal. None at all!” the Breaker technician grunted. “In fact, I’m getting an error message every time I try to communicate with it.”

“What!?” This, at least, dragged Max’s attention away from the coming ships as he turned to glare at the technician. “Do it again! Run a diagnostics check—is there something wrong with the station main transmitter!?”

There was a small part of the commander’s mind that knew, even at this point, what had to be going on.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.