Imprint of Blood Read online

  Imprint of Blood

  Birth of RimFed, Book 1

  PHIL HUDDLESTON

  Copyright © 2019 Phil Huddleston

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-0-578-58186-6

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s creative imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales or persons is coincidental and not intended to infringe on any copyright or trademark.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express written consent of the owner or author, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the owner or author is illegal and is punishable by law.

  Cover art created by Christian Kallias

  ChristianKallias.com/art

  DEDICATION

  To the boys, and the girl – keep on making your mark.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Useful Terms

  Prologue

  PART ONE - THE UNHOLY THREE

  1 Geneva

  2 Ligeia

  3 A Whiff of Grapeshot

  4 Pete

  5 Cabin

  6 Saints

  PART TWO - THE COMMONER

  7 Zeno

  8 Lifeboat

  9 Rules

  10 Ribbons of Fire

  Epilogue

  Preview of Book 2

  Selected Entries of the Early Days of the Rim

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  This a book about future history. It is designed to be enjoyed as simply that, without reference to the past. If that is your sole desire, read on. I’d never ask you to do more.

  However, if you enjoy ancient history as much as I do, feel free to keep a reference close at hand (I recommend Wikipedia), to shed light on ancient names, places and historical references, as well as the legends of the female Amazon warriors of antiquity – if they were real. Jake Hammett says they are…

  Special thanks to the following people who helped with opinions, criticisms, proofreading, and just general comments like “What the hell were you thinking here?”

  Brandon Brown; Jeff Capehart; Ike Eberstein; Richard Edwards; Melissa Huddleston; Clayton Hunt; Karen Hunt; Rebecca Smethurst; Susan Summers; and many others... And to Eric Frank Russell, who started it all with a little book that branched my universe.

  And a special thanks to Craig Martelle. Craig, without you, this would be so much harder. And to David Weber, Ryk Brown, Jay Allan, Joe Haldeman, Jack McDevitt and Tim Pratt for providing inspiration.

  Thank you all!

  Useful Terms

  AI – Artificial Intelligence. Can be sentient (conscious) or non-sentient.

  AU – Astronomical Unit, commonly used to specify distances inside a solar system; about 150,000,000 km. The Earth is 1 AU from the Sun.

  Bottleneck Experiment – an experiment where a small population of creatures is placed into a strange environment to see if they can survive.

  Compensator – a device on a starship which reduces the effects of g-force on the inside of the ship, when the ship is under heavy acceleration (accel) or deceleration (decel).

  Corvette – the smallest class of armed warship, or a similar civilian vessel.

  FTL – faster than light.

  G-force (or g) – the force of gravity. When standing on Earth, you experience 1g of weight. If you were experiencing 8g, you would weigh eight times as much.

  Holo – holotank, a 3D display allowing the view of complex situations.

  IFF- identification friend or foe – a code used to separate enemy ships from friendlies.

  KPS – kilometers per second. Escape velocity to leave Earth is roughly 11.19 kps. To travel to the Moon in one minute, you’d need to average 6,407 kps.

  MEMSAI – Military-Grade Enhanced Matched Semi-Sentient Artificial Intelligence. A personal assistant and security device which has a limited ability to read projected thoughts and act on them. It cannot read normal thoughts, only those intentionally projected.

  QE Buoy – a small device stationed at a (relatively) fixed location in space, using Quantum Entanglement (QE) to send data to a distant point. Usually used by the military as an early-warning device or to monitor a planet.

  QE Squirt – a short coded text message sent via a QE buoy.

  Tholos – a large ceremonial tomb of the ancient Myceneans and Greeks, typically a circular chamber shaped like a beehive.

  XO - Executive Officer, the second in command of a ship, usually responsible for the day-to-day operation of the ship, leaving the Captain to concentrate on overall strategy.

  Prologue

  Sol System – Earth - Washington, D.C.

  June 21st, 2121

  She was a big, black starship and she went anywhere she damn well pleased. And right now, she pleased to land on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C. This scared the hell out of a lot of people, which made her day.

  She decided she would take the name Pandora with this species, because she was bringing a whole lot of trouble to the backwater primates on this little blue planet. She sat silently for an hour, just enjoying all the craziness she could see and hear going on around her, because she was that quirky kind of spirit that loved stirring up the natives. But finally, she sighed, decided she ought to get down to business, and posted a hologram on her outside skin. The hologram showed the pictures of three persons - images she had hacked from their driver’s license photos. Below the three images, she posted a short communication:

  I am Pandora. I am a sentient AI.

  Humanity is in great danger.

  If you wish to survive, bring these three.

  After that, Pandora spent a few hours running diagnostics, finished a short opera she’d been working on, caught up on message traffic from the Ruling Council in the Core of the Milky Way Galaxy, and supervised some bots cleaning her railguns.

  Finally, the primitive human government managed to locate the three individuals she had requested and brought them to her. When all three were standing outside looking confused, Pandora opened a hatch and let them in. Inside her entrance bay, all exits were closed except one, so they had little choice but to enter that space. This led to her favorite room in her whole starship body, the Club room as she called it. And it was exactly that – a perfect replica of a proper London Club - oak tables, padded chairs, heavy drapes on the windows, a bar at the back. And standing by the bar, drink tray in hand, was the clone she had made for this occasion – Atsuko - a clone fully human, intelligent and normal in every way, perfect for the task assigned to it – to welcome the three humans and help them bond into a whole greater than the sum of their parts.

  The male and the two females stumbled into the room, at a loss what to do next. Pandora grinned – well, the AI equivalent of a grin – and sat back to watch the show.

  The male was Jake Hammett, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot, 38 years old, from San Francisco. The females were Lt. Colonel Teresa Tolleson, a U.S. Air Force pilot, 33 years old, from Travis Air Force Base; and Dr. Kirsten Monk, 34 years old, from Austin, Texas, a scientist working on asteroid mining.

  Pandora had selected them to save humanity.

  PART ONE - THE UNHOLY THREE

  1 Geneva

  Bat Empire – an empire of fifty planets populated by an alien race which the Machine Ship Pandora called “Bats”. The home planet of the Bats is 805 light years away, behind the Pipe Nebula. Pan
dora warned that the Bats were a ruthless, genocidal race and would surely destroy humanity as soon as they discovered Earth. At their present rate of expansion, the Bats would discover Earth about one hundred years after her landing. That’s how much time humanity had to prepare…

  - Pandora’s Message

  Sol System - Lunar Orbit (almost)

  25 August 2123 - 26 Months after Pandora

  The Sirius was trying to kill them. Actually, it wasn’t the starship itself – just the Navigation AI – but that was enough to get the job done. They were on a direct vector for the Moon, and in sixty seconds would become a large cloud of starship parts and body fragments in the middle of a new crater in Mare Imbrium.

  The ship bucked again, throwing Jake Hammett hard against the straps, as another compensator instability hit the system.

  “Crap!” he heard Teresa yell.

  “Language, Terese,” he called out by reflex - Kirsten and Jake had been working on Teresa to clean up her language. Then - Jake laughed, as he realized how insane it was to correct her when they were about to die.

  Without looking at him, Teresa lifted a middle finger with one hand, while she kept trying to regain control of the NavAI with the other.

  “Fifty seconds to impact,” called Kirsten, acting as Science Officer. She was, after all, a scientist. Kirsten rarely wanted to be Captain on their little jaunts. She was normally happy as a clam to be working the Science Station…

  …Except when the new scoutship prototype they were testing was hell-bent on taking them directly through the Moon…

  The excess-g klaxon was loud, and the condition lights around the bridge were flashing red, warning of impending high g-forces – if they regained control.

  “Forty seconds to impact,” Kirsten called out. She was sweating. So was Jake. Only Teresa seemed immune, struggling to override the NavAI.

  Another compensator instability fluttered through the ship, not as bad this time, rocking them back and forth. Suddenly, Teresa whooped. “Got it!” she yelled.

  Jake felt some undamped Coriolis force as the little scoutship pivoted to an escape angle, and then the main engines went to full emergency power, crushing him back in his seat as the Sirius built to an internal acceleration of 8g. That meant the true external acceleration of the ship was on the order of 208g. The compensator could offset the first 200g of acceleration; but after that…if another compensator instability hit, they were going to be in the hurt locker.

  Jake, a former fighter pilot, unconsciously started the shallow, grunting breathing pattern that helped in a high-g situation, and he heard Teresa doing the same. Kirsten, with no military background, was flattened against her seat and making a low moaning noise, but Jake saw she was still watching the holo tick down the meagre seconds they had to live.

  “’Thirty - seconds.” Kirsten managed to grunt out.

  Jake stared at the indicator in the holotank, watching the altitude spinning down. A large blob of sweat fell off his brow and rolled down his cheek. Unconsciously, his hands tried to grip a non-existent control stick, a reflex from his days in the cockpit of a Navy fighter.

  “Twenty - seconds,” grunted Kirsten.

  The altimeter’s spin slowed, a bit, a bit more. A ray of hope started in Jake’s brain. He closed his eyes for a second, then decided he’d rather see his death, and opened them up again.

  The altimeter spun slower. Jake let out a long breath. They were going to make it. The altimeter bottomed out 3 kilometers above the lunar surface, and the ship began moving on a trajectory that would – just barely - miss the Moon. Waiting a few seconds until she was sure they were clear, Teresa dropped acceleration to a true 8g, in case the compensator fluctuated again. 8g was plenty to get them escape velocity from the Moon, and it gave a normal 1g inside the ship – assuming the compensator remained stable. Jake reached up and wiped the sweat off his face with his uniform sleeve.

  “Holy shit,” said Teresa, leaning back from her console, and this time Jake didn’t object to the language.

  “What the hell happened there?” he asked.

  Teresa shook her head. “The NavAI - some kind of bug. I programmed a course for Mars, and it immediately turned and tried to drive us through the Moon.”

  Jake grunted. He looked at Kirsten, sitting at the Science Console, staring off into space.

  “You OK, Kirsten?” Jake asked.

  “Just lovely,” said Kirsten, moving only her lips, like a semi-catatonic person Jake had once seen. Jake smiled at her and turned back to Teresa.

  “Let’s take this bucket of bolts home before something else happens.”

  Teresa nodded. “Going to remote Nav, setting course for Yehliu,” she said.

  Jake called Engineering. “How you doin’ back there, Cassie? Everybody OK?”

  Cassie Blocker - the Cheng, or Chief Engineer, for today’s test flight – came back quickly.

  “We’re OK, sir. Bumps and bruises, possibly one broken arm. But mostly good. Thank the Lord you gave us Condition Red before the g-forces came in. That saved us. No idea what happened to the NavAI, Jake. But we did find the compensator problem. You should be good for full acceleration now.”

  Jake grimaced. “Cassie…I don’t want ‘should be good’. I want ‘you are absolutely good to start full acceleration’, OK? Don’t feel like getting squished.”

  “You are absolutely good to start full acceleration, Captain. Or Admiral. Not sure which you are today.” Cassie responded. Jake could hear the laughter in her voice, so that was a bit reassuring.

  “Thank you, Cheng,” said Jake, and motioned to Teresa. Teresa nodded and slowly advanced the main engine throttle – somewhat gingerly, not that she didn’t trust Cheng but…well, after all. 12g if it burped again.

  The main engine did have a failsafe; 12g was the theoretical maximum accel that would occur inside the ship to human beings if the compensator failed completely. Unless Teresa hit the override switch on her console, which would change the failsafe limit to 20g – just barely survivable for a short period of time, and which would result in everyone in the ship being unconscious, leaving navigation up to the AI. Which was totally screwed up right now.

  Teresa made double-sure the switch was reset back to the ‘Normal’ position, then ramped up slowly to 50g external. Watching the board carefully, she breathed a final sigh of relief as it appeared the compensator was working correctly. She leaned back and looked over at Jake. “We’ll be docking in forty minutes, O Admiral of Mine,” she grinned.

  Jake nodded at her, tilting his head back slightly at the humor.

  “Wanna be Captain now, Terese?” he laughed. Teresa shook her head.

  “I’ll wait ‘til Cheng gets this piece of crap sorted out, thank you very much,” she said.

  Jake smiled. He knew the tDrive – which included the compensator – wasn’t the problem. The tDrive design had come directly from Pandora, the Machine Ship that landed on Earth two years ago. That hardware was rock-solid.

  No, the problem was in the control systems. The NavAI was entirely human-designed, and someone had screwed up. When they got back to Geneva, Cassie Blocker was going to hand somebody their ass.

  Jake looked at Kirsten and said, “Set Condition Yellow for docking, please, Kirsten.”

  Kirsten nodded, recovered from her temporary trance, wiped her sweaty fingers on her pants leg, and moved them rapidly across her console. The red condition lights throughout the ship shifted to yellow, and “Set Condition Yellow” blared through the PA and their personal comms. There weren’t many crew to hear it. This was a test flight; the Sirius was the first new scoutship completed for the fledgling RDF – the Rim Defense Force, the newly commissioned Space Navy. Only a dozen people were on board, including the bridge crew and Engineering.

  From the outside, Sirius was disguised as an asteroid. She looked like an elongated, dusty rock, covered in patchy ice. She was designed to go deep into enemy territory and be undetected. Only when the drives were
active did a cover open in the rear and the engine fire out through the opening. Soon, this ship – and others like it – would be going into harm’s way, into the unknown of the Bat Empire - to learn what they could about the terrible, bloody enemy Pandora had revealed.

  When Pandora had landed a little over two years previously and called for Jake, Teresa and Kirsten, the world had been shocked to learn the universe was not the barren, empty place assumed by most. Instead, it was a busy and dangerous place – and humanity was unprepared for it.

  Pandora told humanity the inner part of the Milky Way galaxy – the Core – was reserved for artificial intelligence creatures only; that was called Machine Space. The outer part of the galaxy – the Rim – was reserved for biological beings – including humans. Under normal circumstances, Machine Space creatures didn’t interfere in the Rim.

  But the Ruling Council of Machine Space had made an exception for Earth. The bloodthirsty aliens Pandora called the Bats – 805 light years from Earth, behind the Pipe Nebula - offended even the Machine Space government with their bloody, genocidal expansion. The Ruling Council had – somewhat grudgingly – authorized Pandora as an emissary to warn Earth of the danger, and to assist humanity in achieving technical parity with the Bat Empire.

  But Pandora was not optimistic about humanity’s chances. She stated bluntly there was only a 20% chance humanity would survive the coming encounter with the Bats. And based on her calculation engine, she told humanity that their 20% chance of survival depended on Jake Hammett, Teresa Tolleson and Dr. Kirsten Monk creating a Space Navy to defend humanity.

  The Sirius reached turnaround and the ship reversed, firing engines to decelerate into Earth orbit. Twenty minutes later, she completed docking to the orbital station RDF Yehliu. The cigar-shaped spaceport was 960 meters in length and 468 meters in diameter; this was where RDF starships were assembled and tested before commissioning. Essentially a long hollow tube, the design allowed the assembly of spacecraft modules shipped up from Earth. There were also six docking portals at intervals along each side, allowing her to act as a transfer station.