Katherine- War Master Read online

  KATHIERNE: WAR MASTER

  WAR MASTER CANDIDATE – BOOK 5

  BY WILL CRUDGE

  During the victory parade in Berlin in 1945, U.S. General Patton stood in the reviewing stand along with his allied counterparts. The Russian General pointed out the new, state of the art, tanks that the Red Army had just produced. The latest iteration of the famed T-34 tank had been produced too late in the conflict to make it to the front lines.

  Knowing that the legendary Patton had his own misgivings about allying with Russia, the Russian general pointed towards his new weapons, and said, “These new tanks can take out a Sherman from over seventeen-hundred yards away!”

  Unshaken, General Patton didn’t bother taking his eyes off of the precession, as he replied flatly, “If any one of my men stop to engage at any less than six hundred yards, then I’ll shoot him myself for being a coward!”

  Enter the War Masters…

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  WAR MASTER

  BOOKS OF HUMANITY WEAPON

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  UAHC SLOOP, FOEHAMMER…

  The CIC of the sloop was alight in order to indicate combat conditions, and the dull red lights provided an ideal atmosphere for the crew to focus on the task. Colonel Kara Elders knew this all too well, as she often insisted that the crew train in conditions that minimize distractions. She was not only the CO of the ship, but she was also the CO of the famed, Wrecking Crew. A hodge-podge of UAHC Soldiers, former cops, a UDF Officer, a War Master with a Zodiac, and a former pirate. The latter was her most competent space farer, and helmsmen.

  But this wasn’t a training mission. She scowled at the NAV display and the coordinates that it contained. It was her intent to transition into normal space in close proximity to the Mwargoth warships, but not this close.

  “James, I’m delegating maneuvering decisions to you!” Kara said as she stretched her neck up to make sure Lieutenant James heard what she had said. Her command console was situated to the back of the CIC, and the helm was at the fore bulkhead, and down a few steps from where she was sitting. James turned his head around and gave her a curt nod.

  She could see the serious expression on the young man’s face. The former pirate was still in his early twenties but held the space faring experience and skill of a man twice his age. If anyone can make rapid sound decisions in tight maneuvering, it’s James! She thought.

  She knew that giving him full autonomy of maneuver was their best bet to survive. He was a cunning pilot with natural instincts. Kara was no stranger to piloting, herself. After all, she housed her own LRF-90 directly below the deck plating beneath the CIC.

  “Ma’am, I’ve got the five-inch rail and our missile batteries locked and loaded. Permission to engage!” Lance Corporal Lisa sounded off. The young UAHC Soldier was an elite Fire Support Team Member or FISTER. Performing fire control and scan suite duties wasn’t her normal role, but the Foehammer was running on a skeleton crew, and Lisa’s broad knowledge of ballistics and fire support meant that she could handle the job.

  Kara looked over her right shoulder to Lisa’s scanner suite station that doubled as a secondary weapons control console and gave her an approving nod. She decided not to bother asking the young Soldier what she was firing at, because it didn’t matter.

  They all knew that there was nothing that the modified mine-layer sloop had onboard that could do any damage to a Mwargoth ship. The alien entities had superior energy shielding, and it took the heaviest weapons that humanity could bring to bear, just to weaken them.

  Besides, Kara knew that the young FISTER was fully capable of selecting targets. The FISTER’s provided artillery and mortar targeting data, as well as painting ground targets for fighters or orbital bombardment platforms. The young woman was a human targeting computer, and could accurately direct heavy weapons fire on just about anything without the use of an advanced firing solution algorithm.

  “Steve, how are Gail and the boys doing with those mines?” Kara asked the ship’s AI.

  “Mines are armed, and the deployment armature is calibrated. We can expect the first mine to be placed in the battle space within thirteen seconds.” Steve replied. Kara made a mental note to thank him for not being a smart ass in the middle of battle.

  As a former law enforcement spec AI, Steve had come along way. He ended up becoming a UAHC ship’s AI by happenstance and has thrived ever since. But his irreverent sense of humor often manifested at the most inopportune times.

  Kara asked.

  Skull, the LRF’s NAV replied.

  Crusher, the hull maintenance system replied cheerfully. Kara cracked a small smile. She loved her boys. Steve, Skull, and Crusher were like her scrappy little brothers. But Crusher was unlike other hull maintenance systems. He had gone through a profound transformation recently, and now he’s got a personality. He’s even prone to interface with humans directly, unlike a typical hull maintenance system.

 

  Skull said as he sent an animated icon of a pair of eyes rolling.

  She replied, and then cut the feed from her neural interface.

  “First six-pack of mines are in the black, boss!” Steve reported. Kara focused her eyes on her command console display. She saw the little flashing amber blips of the mines leaving a trail behind the ship’s path.

  “Thanks, for the update!” Kara replied. “Have the team launch one more rack, and then close that blast door. Looks like James is going to cut across the Mwargoth formation. We’ll cut out into open space, and reassess our next move.”

  “Aye, Ma’am!” Steve replied as he sent his signature collage of horse penises to her command HUD. She just shook her head and reminded herself how grateful she was to have him. He knew just when to cut the tension with something silly, and it helped her keep her nerves in check.

  She looked at the flight path the sloop was following, and she was astonished that the enemy didn’t bother to fire on her. She couldn’t explain it.

  “Lisa?” Kara called out over her left shoulder.

  “Yes, Ma’am?” Lisa answered up.

  “Why do you think we haven’t been fired upon?”

  Lisa turned her eyes from her targeting display and locked eyes with Kara. The young woman blinked several times in rapid succession, and Kara knew that was her tell that denoted deep thought. While she waited for an answer, she couldn’t help but stare at the young Soldier’s silky dark hair. It was eerily similar to her own, after all.

  “It must be that the Foehammer lacks the tonnage to be of any real threat in the squids’ eyes, I suppose. That’s the most likely answer, anyway. Could also be that they’re standing by to coordinate a strike on the fleet itself.” Lisa replied. Kara nodded with sincere admiration for the young woman’s tactical instincts.

  “I concur with your assessment, Lance Corporal!” Kara said as she turned back to her display. But then a disturbing sensation arose from deep within her consciousness. It seemed like a fleeting thought at first, but then it evolved into a chilling realization.

  “James! Spin up our FTL generator, and place it on standby!” She rattled off abruptly. Something told her that this was the correct course of action.

  “Ma’am?” James said incredulously. Kara lifted her eyes over her console display and found the young blonde man giving her a look of confusion.

  “Is there a problem?” She asked as if to say
‘do it now!’

  “We need to bug out if things get hairy. Select a known point in space within a few light minutes of here, and dial it in for a slip-space solution!” Kara explained. She realized she probably shouldn’t have explained herself. James was still adjusting to life outside of piracy, and he needed to learn not to question every decision like a typical pirate would.

  “Aye, Ma’am!” He replied. “But I should make you aware that the FTL generators can only pull so much energy from the reactor at a time. I’d have to divert resources to pull it off quickly.”

  “What resources?”

  “I’d have to shut down our auto-defense cannons, dial back our shielding, and pull back on the throttle. We’ll be more vulnerable.” He explained.

  Kara stewed on it for a few seconds. It was a roll of the dice. They had just transitioned out of slip-space no more than five minutes earlier. The FTL drive generator had to expel a significant charge in order to rip a whole into space-time. As a result, she needs to make a call. Compromise their safety and defensive capability, or hold fast while in close proximity to a deadly enemy. Her instincts began to lean toward the former.

  “Do whatever you need to in order to get our FTL online! Don’t worry about the coordinates until she’s ready to pop, got it?” Kara ordered.

  “On it, Ma’am!” James replied.

  Steve said directly to Kara’s neural interface.

  Kara replied. Had Steve said it audibly, then it would undermine her position as the CO, and possibly shake James’ nerves.

 

  Who died and possessed Steve? Kara thought to herself. She was shocked that, the normal smart-ass, AI seemed to be sincere.

  Steve noted. Kara felt her face begin to flush slightly. She knew he was right. Ever since she met the love of her life, she’d been altered on some kind of quantum level.

  She had recently learned that trace amounts of War Master DNA run in her family, and her contact with Darius has seemed to have unlocked something within her. She just didn’t know what, or why. She knew she didn’t have enough of the genetic ‘gift’ to ever hope to become a War Master, nor did she ever aspire to do so. But what was her purpose? What was her destiny? It was the same set of questions that kept her up at night.

  It was why she had such insane dreams, as well.

  “Ma’am, I just realized we never reported in with the fleet CIC on the Thermopylae Since we popped out into normal space. Shall I call it in?” James asked.

  “Very well, James,” Kara said as she placed a palm over her face. She knew that that was the first thing she should have done. Time dilation would mean that their presence wouldn’t be detected right away, and they were sitting ducks for friendly fire.

  James got on the horn, and Kara could hear him begin to relay the standard audio hail.

  “Shit!” James jumped out of his seat and leaned into his display.

  “Shit!” Lisa shouted from behind Kara’s field of vision. Kara looked at her screen, and the blood drained from her face. An incoming alert was flashing.

  [WARNING! Multiple KEPL projectiles detected! IMPACT ETA 0 MIN 12 SEC]

  Kara wasn’t a physicist, but she knew that the distance of travel, time of flight, and closing speed of the projectiles meant that they were fired before they jumped into the battle space.

  Time dilation delayed their detection, and the scanning processors would have taken precious seconds to reconcile the cross-section of the projectiles. She knew that KEPL slugs traveled so fast, that it took even longer for the proximity warning to register.

  “Go into slip-space, now!” Kara spat.

  “We have no coordinates!” James spat back.

  “Blind jump! Now!” Kara ordered. The estimated countdown was within four seconds… three… two…

  Space-time ceased to be. The stars blurred out, and the photon absorbing dark layer that coexisted with the normally three-dimensional reality put a veil of darkness on all of the CIC’s displays.

  “Transition complete!” James sounded off, but there was an exasperation in his voice that echoed what Kara was feeling inside.

  “Now, do whatever you have to do to get us back into normal space, James!” Kara said sternly but took care not to direct any misplaced frustration at the young helmsmen.

  “FTL drive generators are in safe-mode, Ma’am! The jump drove their charge to dangerously low levels to force the transition.” James reported.

  “Say that in UAHC Standard English, James!” Kara said with a sarcastic scoff.

  “It means, we’ll be thousands of light years from the fleet by the time I can get the FTL to cooperate!”

  NO TIME TO WASTE

  I am a War Master now. I still haven’t had time to digest it yet. Apparently, I’m the first one to be initiated without completing my training in almost two thousand years. I can’t help but be concerned that I won’t be accepted by my peers, who have all completed their century of training. But so far, that hasn’t been the case.

  Killjoy accompanies me to the Thermopylae’s CIC complex. We chat about the days when I was a girl, and how the massive tiger was like a surrogate parent to me. My father did his best to raise me alone, but his duties often pulled him away. My mother died a lifetime before I was taken out of stasis to be raised, so I never knew her.

  Killjoy always joked about being my mother, and when I was really young, I believed him. It ended up being a shock to my system when I was old enough to know the truth. Not just the truth about my real mother, but the truth of what the War Master Guild really was… and how deadly my guardians really were.

  It’s odd to think that your father has killed hundreds of people… perhaps thousands… but yet he has always been so loving towards me. He really was a great parent when you consider his line of work. I spent so much time with children of my kind, and being raised in communal Guild camps whenever he was on a mission. The elder Zodiacs helped raise the human and animal offspring of the Guild, and so I always viewed Zodiacs as harmless creatures that loved humans.

  The truth is, that most of the Zodiacs that helped raise me were seasoned veterans, and had killed countless enemies. But now I walk with a half-ton tiger. He would never hurt me, and he would gladly give up his life to protect mine. Zodiacs don’t age past their physical prime. Unless something kills them, they’re effectively immortal. So, that is a lot to lose in order to save someone who has a decidedly finite lifespan.

  War Masters aren’t immortal. We age like any other human. Just very – very – slowly. Val is the only immortal human that we know of. Unlike us, his genetic makeup that perpetuates his physical form could not be passed to another human. Many of his gifts can be, but just not that one. Not that efforts weren’t made to try. The mad War Master outcast that created the Zodiacs tried. He could only make it work in other animals but failed to replicate it in any primate species. That’s why he refocused his efforts on four-legged predatory animals. Perhaps he might have discovered how to pull it off, but he was stopped before that ever happened.

  And now a War Master’s blood is a universally illegal substance throughout the human sphere. For the last two hundred years, most governments didn’t know we still existed, so no effort had been made to enforce it.

  Val and Midas believe that the clandestine efforts to obtain our genome by the paramilitary Crimson Agency was an effort to weaponize our gifts. But now a disturbing new theory turns
that on its head… Now it’s believed that the Mwargoths had been manipulating the Crimson Alliance to obtain or destroy any remnants of the Guild’s existence.

  That can only mean that we are a threat to them. The biggest question is, how did the alien entities know of our existence when most of humanity thought us dead?

  Only a very small group of Unum and UACH military entities knew about us and made it their mission to protect us. Granted, the Mwargoths tried to hack us and study us through subterfuge, and by convincing the senior Crimson command that they were helping them snuff out their enemies. Thus, the Alliance felt emboldened to seek vengeance of their former enemies.

  Now the Mwargoths’ “Grand Plan” has failed. They had hoped to have humanity blast itself back into a pre-space age level of existence, therefore eliminating the biggest obstacle in their ultimate quest for galactic supremacy.

  The other alien races in the galaxy give humanity a wide berth. To them, we are cancer. The only galactic civilization that has reached faster than light space travel, but yet has still maintained and cultivated the ability to wage war. To them, we’re the aliens.

  Aliens that can kick asses, to be more specific. But this isn’t the first time the Mwargoths have tried to take over our galaxy. They tried it once before the dawn of man but were defeated by another race. The Arcturians. The Arcturians are known to have common ancestry with the Mwargoths, and at least one other race, so they were best suited to counter them.

  It’s been said that the Arcturians had already abandoned war, but still retained enough of a racial capacity for it to retroactively adapt and overcome the Mwargoth threat. Not long after the Mwargoths were exiled to the Andromeda galaxy, the Arcturians ceased to exist. Some say they died out. Others say they ascended into a higher dimension of reality as they evolved past the need to exist in the physical world.

  Either way, they’re not here. Despite the return of the Mwargoths, the other alien races still shun us. They’ve offered no assistance… not even a polite ‘hello.’ Val says they believe that the other ‘more enlightened’ races can weather the storm with logic and diplomacy. But the Mwargoths subscribe to neither.