Starblood: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 1) Read online

  STARBLOOD

  ©2021 N.D. REDDING

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  Contents

  ALSO IN WAR UNDYING

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Ellaine Laramie Comtois

  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

  Barhein Orvul

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Thank you for reading Starblood

  ALSO IN WAR UNDYING

  More In Sci-Fi

  ALSO IN WAR UNDYING

  STARBLOOD

  REDEEMER

  1

  I twitched as another Federation carrier took off through the yellow clouds of Persei Prime. It was a familiar sight and sound, though I somehow never managed to get used to it. It was probably bound to the Ulyx Cluster where the fighting was hardest and the casualty rates were at an all-time high around 90%.

  Ships were crammed to the brim with tens of thousands of soldiers who gathered in the capital city of Neo Carolina. They took off on an almost daily basis, all heading for the same destination and carrying hot-headed new recruits along with the occasional veteran specialist.

  My digital tablet buzzed as a priority message came in. I froze. The last time I had gotten a message on the thing was when my floater had been demolished by vandals. I pulled the damn thing out of my bag and stared at it in pure horror.

  Incoming Message:

  Sergeant Richard Stavos. Please report to the HQ for deployment at 0600.

  I tried not to acknowledge the tingling feeling that was crawling up and down my back. A fighter drone passed overhead, drawing me back out of my stupor. It was the same thing I felt each time one of the ships broke the sound barrier on their way to war, forcing me to remember my time back in the army.

  I knew exactly how those men and women up there felt: the brutal g-force that shoved you into the hibernation capsule, the terrified faces of the people around you, the confusion and shock upon awakening in the Ulyx Cluster, the adrenaline of planetfall, the fighting, and then the inevitable dying.

  It was one of those things that never managed to leave my system despite having left it behind me. I was now a law-abiding citizen of the Commonwealth Federation and a tech-master at Ion Industries, one of the wealthiest companies spanning the human worlds. I punched in at 8 a.m. standard solar time and punched out at 5 p.m. SST with a paycheck in my virtual pocket and a headache in my very real head.

  Although my employer was contracted by the government and the company dealt in nanite weapon tech, I no longer had to wage anyone’s war. I was done. Done with the fighting, the screaming, the dying, but most of all I was done with my shift. That meant a hearty drink was in order, then another, and probably a good dozen more after that if I had any luck.

  “Mister Richard? Are you off for today?” Marlon asked as his face turned into a grin.

  He was a man in his forties and one of the very few security guards we had on the property of Ion Industries. Drones and weapons of great destruction made sure no one did anything stupid, but then there were also people like me who could handle most things this world had to offer. More or less.

  “Yeah, I’m done. I just want to have a couple of drinks and head home. All of this—” I paused and looked up at the still-visible afterburner plumes from the latest carrier. “Is getting to me.”

  “Are you… all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, sir.”

  “And I just might have,” I muttered. “Sorry, something happened that…yeah, I need that drink very much now.”

  “Take care, all right? Have a good weekend, sir.”

  I nodded and flashed him a half-hearted smile before I walked out the gate and toward my floater. The air was chilly, just how I liked it, but the stench was abhorrent to someone not used to the smog our factories released.

  I took to the Lousy Scrag, my favorite bar, and parked down the road. With a spring in my step and a tired but honest smile on my face, I beelined for the building. The bar was a five-minute walk from both my apartment and the parking lot where I paid a monthly fee so I didn’t have to worry about someone smashing in the windows or scratching the paint.

  The apartment was just close enough for me to crawl into bed without losing myself in a drunken stupor on the streets of Neo Carolina when I was done drinking. It was a gigantic city, a Megapolis as they called them. Just over thirty million people living underground, above ground, and in the citadels up in the sky, clear from the smog and dirt.

  The police presence was extremely heavy ever since the place had become the gathering hub and one of the forward-base worlds from where the war machine was oiled up. I didn’t care in all honesty as I was now one of the locals, or at least that’s what I hoped. They didn’t give me any trouble despite knowing I was ex-Special Forces.

  I stopped at the front door of the Lousy Scrag. It still had those ancient door knobs which you had to literally pull to open. Although they were made illegal hundreds of years ago, some places, and especially lousy places like the Lousy Scrag, would rather pay the fine than fix them.

  It wasn’t politically correct to have doorknobs because other alien races of the Commonwealth Federation might not have the appendages necessary to open them. What damn bullshit. Who cared about such trivial stuff? Those who slept in their high castles and were trying to please the Ka war machine.

  There were no aliens in this bar. There never were and there probably never would be. The Ka, the Iminnies, and other species that ruled the stars would never even
think of hanging out with the human workforce. We were just like ants to them, nothing more.

  Just as I was about to pull the door open, another boom echoed across the skies. Another one? That was already two in just the last hour. An eerie prescience washed over me as I felt a cold tingle run down my spine. Still, two carriers in one day? Could be just a coincidence. Yes, that was it. This was probably just a coincidence.

  I pushed the door open and was immediately greeted by loud music and the heavy stench of acrid smoke from cheap burners the working class consumed instead of the luxurious cigars or cigarettes. They mostly resembled cigars but were full of a tar-like substance that burned bright red.

  The bar was crowded with people from the so-called “upper class” of human society, though we were nothing but glorified slaves. Those lucky enough to have skills that promised a secure job in either tech, medicine, education, or other places of worth that didn’t require literal human strength to perform.

  I lowered my briefcase next to my chair as I sat and waved at the waiter. He brought me a black reindeer on ice, the usual I had whenever I came here. The synthetic alcoholic drink appeared before me and disappeared just as quickly.

  “Another?” the waiter asked.

  “Another,” I replied and tried to flash him what could pass for a smile that said “keep it going.”

  It was a Friday night and just the way I liked it: a crowded bar, a lot of chatter to get lost in, cheers, laughter, and me just by myself in a socially detached but rather good mood at the bar.

  People knew me in there and they knew that I wasn’t a chatty man. I was polite, sure, but every line on my face would tell them to speed up their conversation and leave me alone if they bothered me while I was drinking. Two more drinks made their way to my table and I downed one of them just as quickly as I stared out into the crowd.

  The club had a rustic, almost vintage look to it with real wood being used on the inside. Girls were dancing on the floor as guys tried to approach them but didn’t seem to be having much luck. I almost saw my old self in several of the young men, remembering some unpleasant situations. I shook them aside quickly when I noticed a young man in uniform walking straight toward me.

  “You’re that Rick guy, right?” he asked and pulled up a chair without so much as considering if I would mind him sitting there. For some reason, he seemed to think I was very approachable and talkative.

  My mood soured as I read his nametag. He wasn’t even enlisted yet and only had a recruit’s name tag. Leo Madrigo.

  “What of it?”

  “Is it true that you served a term? I could use some tips and pointers, if you know what I mean?” He laughed. I frowned, not interested to talk to the guy in the least. “See, I enlisted yesterday, but today is the last day of freedom. Thought I could catch a beer or two and have a chat with the one guy who seemed out of place here. Just like myself.”

  His way of thought was totally wrong as he had no idea who I really was. Leo probably didn’t know anyone at the bar and had heard some of the locals talk about me when I entered earlier. It was an unspoken secret, one to talk about me whenever I was around as the one ex-military man who frequented this place.

  “Why are you here?” I asked. “Military personnel don’t come to this bar. Is it because we’re so close to the base?”

  “Hah! You got me!” He laughed. “But seriously, you don’t seem so chatty.”

  “If you had bothered looking close enough, you’d have noticed I was sitting here by myself, Leo. I don’t like… company.”

  “Oh, come on, man! You’ll be one of my last memories as I head out there! Instead of chasing tail, I decided to have a drink with an old man in this bar! Isn’t that great?”

  He was relentless. No matter how hard I tried to stay calm, something underneath the surface started to boil. I didn’t like people, and I liked them even less if they were all up in my face like this kid.

  “Be nice to people,” I muttered under my breath. “No matter how utterly boring the young Federation recruit is, he won’t be able to keep this up all night, right?”

  “Huh? Did you just say something?” Leo asked as he saw my lips move.

  “No, sorry. I just remembered I could use another drink,” I replied and downed the last glass.

  He went on about the war, the navy, humankind in the greater scheme of things, and all the other topics I tried to suppress in my daily life. He just proved to me for the hundredth time that people were only a bother.

  “I gotta take a leak, but you feel free to go sit somewhere else so I can drink in peace,” I muttered as I got up and strolled off to the toilet. Leo called something from behind me, but I had already tuned out, hoping not to see him when I got back.

  I splashed my face, then loafed about as I tried to kill some time. The only reason I came to the toilet was to try and get the kid to leave.

  I nodded to Paul who was just leaving one of the stalls. He nodded back as I stood there with my hand in my pockets, staring at the graffiti on the bathroom tiles. Some came to sit and think, others just to shit and stink. I couldn’t help but chuckle and shake my head. It was truly marvelous what people came up with when they had more free time than they knew what to do with.

  I turned on the faucet again, washed my hands, and looked in the mirror, accidentally meeting my own glance. Immediately my INAS, or the Internal Nanite Analysis System, pulled up my status: Richard Stavos: Civilian: Technomancer: Sergeant of the Commonwealth Federation Forces—Decommissioned.

  The INAS was a system created by the Ka that allowed soldiers to communicate over vast distances by just thinking the words they wanted to say. It constantly gathered information on their surrounding: temperature, geographical position, health, nanite status, enemy location and strength, etc. There was brutal backlash from the public when the system was introduced. They called it too invasive, but it wasn’t the Ka who defended the system; it was ordinary soldiers who realized the endless benefits such communication services allowed in combat situations.

  I shook my head and cursed as I just noticed I forgot to turn off my INAS after work. It usually never flared up in mirrors unless I suffered from a debuff, which in this situation was slight intoxication. I didn’t like to be reminded of my current state, especially after work, but it already happened so there was nothing I could do about it.

  The INAS usually filtered out civilians and laid dormant until it made contact with military personnel, enemies, or situations that the system recognized as threats. Because of my prior service in the Federation’s forces and my current work, I retained the system. It rarely had a purpose beyond work where I interfaced with machines and was only an ugly reminder of the battlefields I had left behind.

  With the INAS removed from my field of vision, I washed my face yet again and stared at the reflection in the mirror for several long seconds before I mentally recalled the INAS back up to check something.

  The term “Decommissioned” nagged me. In the eyes of the Commonwealth Federation Forces or CFF, a Technomancer specialist wasn’t even a person; we were seen as equipment to be used as the military saw fit.

  I closed the interface and sighed as I left the toilet, mentally making a promise to not get upset by bygones. With my fingers crossed that Leo had moved on to bother someone else, I walked back to my table. As luck wouldn’t have it, not only was Leo still there but two more people had joined him: a stocky young man and a tall woman.

  They were both in their twenties, just like Leo, and they surely knew how to occupy most of the space around my favorite seat. I rolled my eyes at the scene and prayed to anyone willing to listen that they’d leave me alone so I could drink in peace and go to sleep.

  “There he is!” Leo laughed as he swayed drunkenly to one side. “Hey, Rick! These two are Layla and fat Timmy! They’re just about to be soldiers too!”

  “Don’t call me fat!” Timmy hissed under his breath.

  I mustered my best piss-off-politely face a
nd grabbed yet another drink from the table. Suddenly I remembered it hadn’t been there before, but that didn’t matter anymore. It was my table, so the drink must have been mine as well.

  “Hey, where are you going? Come on, sit with us,” Leo almost pleaded. He looked genuinely interested to talk to me for a while longer, or talk at me if I wanted to be more precise, but just as I was about to take my leave, Timmy jumped in with a jab.

  “Maybe he doesn’t like soldiers.” He laughed and patted himself on the shoulder.

  It looked both awkward and idiotic, but then again he looked as smart as the doorknob from earlier. I loudly breathed in and looked at my almost empty drink as I spoke.

  “You guys enjoy yourselves, all right? I’m a bit too old for your company.”

  I let go of my drink and picked up my briefcase, hoping the conversation would end there, but I very well knew it wouldn’t. The three adolescent wannabe heroes were already quite drunk, and since they would be flung across the galaxy tomorrow to fight an interstellar war, a bit of roughhousing wouldn’t be the worst thing they were getting themselves into.

  “So, having a drink with people who protect ya’ civilian asses is too much of a bother for you?” said the young woman, pointing her glass at me.

  Life forbid if I had to count on their protection… I’d just rather not think about it before I ripped my own brain out.

  “It’s not that. I’m tired of working a nine-hour shift. I just wanted to have a drink and go home, so if you ladies and gentlemen don’t mind?”