The Seryys Chronicles: Steel Alliance Read online

  STEEL ALLIANCE

  Book III of The Seryys Chronicles

  Copyright © 2014 by Joseph Nicholson

  Edited by Kristin N. Hamm

  Cover Copyright © 2014 by AcidKru

  Published by Clockwork Quills

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  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, businesses, and incidents are from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual places, people, or events is purely coincidental. Any trademarks mentioned herein are not authorized by the trademark owners and do not in any way mean the work is sponsored by or associated with the trademark owners. Any trademarks used are specifically in a descriptive capacity.

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  I’d like to thank my readers for their support and making this book series a reality. I would also like to thank two more people for supplying ideas for two of the three short stories pertaining to The Seryys Chronicles: my friend Dana and my wife Bonnie.

  Prologue

  General Khai’Xander Khail sat in the cockpit of his ship the Star Splitter, waiting for the moment to make a run for it. Using the thrusters to attach his ship to an asteroid within a million-square-mile asteroid field, he sat brooding over the loss of an entire fleet of ships at the hands of a new enemy; an enemy that until only a few hours earlier didn’t even exist, as far the average Seryysan was concerned. His best friend, Sibrex, sat behind him. The aged Vyysarri had the look of a man perplexed. Khai and Sibrex, together, ushered in an era of peace between the Vyysarri and Seryysans—ending a war that had lasted for centuries.

  Surveying the clearing in the asteroid field where they hid with his calculating, gray eyes, Khai wondered if they would ever get these ancient ships operational with an unknown number of ships roaming outside the asteroid field. Scratch that, he wasn’t sure how they were going to escape with their lives! The perplexed look on his albino white friend drew his attention.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked the man, meeting his dreadful, red-eyed gaze.

  “We will have to tell him,” he said.

  “I know,” Khai admitted. “But we have to get out of here first.”

  “Are you crazy?” Pual’Brennan Puar yelped from the co-pilot seat. “Tell Chuumdar about this?”

  “We have to, now,” Khai said, “as much as I hate to admit it. Truth will be our only ally at this point.”

  “He’s gonna be pissed,” Puar added.

  “Don’t I know,” Khai growled. “But now things are different. We need to pool our resources or we won’t survive.”

  “Do you really think this will bring us and the Vyysarri together, Sibrex?” Puar asked the aged Vyysarri.

  Sibrex frowned. “Difficult to say,” he said. “Our ceasefire is tentative at best. Though Chuumdar has accepted that his assassination attempt was not sanctioned by the Seryys Government, he does not entirely trust you as a people. This will make matters worse… for all of us. That being said, with this new threat, there is a possibility of forging a stronger alliance, but that distrust may never subside.”

  “But,” Khai added, “Chuumdar isn’t stupid. As long as we face the same threat, we will work together. Through that, maybe we can repair the damage this little secret will cause.”

  The secret was the weapons cache, complete with several ships that had once belonged to what the Seryysans refer to as the Founders, which Khai was staring at. It consisted mostly of ships that were so far beyond Seryysan technology that it made Seryys’ most advanced ship look like a child’s toy. They were there to procure these ships and the space station around which they floated. When the tentative peace between the Vyysarri and Seryysans was broken by the efforts of two men of opposing origins both fighting to resist the integration of Vyysarri and Seryysans, it took both Sibrex—a high-ranking officer of the Vyysarri Military, and Khai—the appointed Seryysan liaison to the Vyysarri people—to convince Prefect Chuumdar to accept a second ceasefire. Khai, Puar and Sibrex had accidentally stumbled upon one of the Founders’ ships crashed on a lone planet in the middle of space after barely escaping the destruction of both Sibrex’s and Khai’s ships at the hands of saboteurs.

  “It worked for us,” Sibrex offered, referring to him and Khai fighting side-by-side to save Puar’s older brother, Prime Minister Pual’Kin Puar’s life. It was that act that sealed a peace and an end to the war.

  “True enough,” Khai agreed.

  “It seems like such a shame that we have to abandon these ships of ultimate power,” Puar said sadly. “We could really use them right now with these F’Rosians cruising around.” Puar was referring to the new enemy they faced. “Do you think they were able to trace that distress signal back to Seryys?”

  “No. All naval transmissions are bounced off a SpySat orbiting a sun within a star system that is almost identical to Seryys, same number of planets and everything. From there, the transmissions are coded and bounced off of every SpySat between there and home.”

  “Thank the Founders for that,” Puar sighed.

  “Indeed,” Sibrex added.

  “Khai,” Joon, the Star Splitter’s on-board AI, called out.

  “Yes, Joon?”

  “The six-hour countdown you requested is up.”

  “Thanks, Joon,” he answered, and then to his friends he said, “Let’s hope everyone has had enough time to collect themselves.”

  Other than the Splitter, Khai’s other good friends, Dack’Tandy Dah and Brix were prepping the Bolt Bucket to break dock and make a run for it. Khai sat, lost in a reverie for a long while. Puar got up and went back to the Bucket where he was needed more, when Sibrex gently put his hand on Khai’s shoulder. Khai jumped and blinked rapidly.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No apology is necessary,” Sibrex soothed. “What were you thinking at that moment?”

  Khai took a long breath. “Actually, I was coming to a decision.”

  “And what decision was that?”

  “We’re taking one of those ships out with us.”

  Puar stopped dead in his tracks. “We’re what?”

  Using only thrusters, not the Splitter’s main drive, he maneuvered to the bow of the ship that rocked them all to their core. The Cerys II floated before them. The sister ship of the ship that most likely crash-landed on Seryys tens of thousands of years ago was going to be their ticket out.

  “Khai to the remaining tech shuttles,” he risked a quick communiqué. “Converge on my location. We’re stealing ourselves a ship.”

  Only a single overhead lamp illuminated the table, casting it in its own little spotlight. On the table in the middle of that spotlight was a resignation letter that he was planning on sending to the senate. The signature at the bottom was
his, Prime Minister Pual’Kin Puar. Next to the letter was less than half a bottle of the strongest liquor he could find in the Presidential Bunker Galley. After his assassination attempt, he figured his personal bunker would be the safest place in Seryys Space. Following the efforts of Khai and his friends, who were able to break in and save him while he was being held hostage by Tran’Ri Trall, many modifications had been made. The main hangar entrance that led out into the Kal’Hoom Karr Canyon was changed from a force field to two gigantic, three-foot-thick Ti’tan’lium doors—supplied by Dack’Tandy Dah’s identical twin brother, Dack’Tander Dah—that rolled on giant gears. The emergency exit, which was a long shaft that led down underwater into the river at the bottom of the canyon via a lift, was destroyed by charges that detected variations in water pressure. Being that a group of people had been able to penetrate it and get in; it was decided to leave it as is. Without the code, that only Puar knew, no one was getting in and not even a planetary bombardment would get through.

  He got up with a stumble and nearly tripped over the chair from which he rose.

  He was drunk.

  And why the hell not? He seethed. Seryys City, the greatest, most populated city in all of the Seryys Space was a total loss, overrun by the original inhabitants of Seryys, monstrous beasts called Reapers. They were strong, fast, agile, ruthless, mindless creatures with a singular purpose: to eat and reproduce. The Reapers of the first wave were slightly taller than a man with long arms that ended in oversized hands with deadly talons. They had double-backed legs like a hound, long narrow heads with needle-like teeth, no eyes and shiny, all-white skin. After he called the first general evacuation of Seryys in over a hundred years, he was getting unconfirmed reports of giant Reapers that bore burgundy skin. If that was true, they were even worse off than before because they couldn’t stop the normal ones!

  To make matters worse, the third largest fleet in the Seryys Navy was obliterated by a race called the F’Rosians. Ten Lance-Class Dreadnaughts with twelve squads of starfighters each, twenty Reaper-Class Support Frigates and six Protector-Class Shield Boats which projected an energy shield that, when overlapped, provided a nearly impenetrable barrier between the rest of the fleet and the enemy—perished along with tens of thousands of people. And for all he knew, Seryys’ greatest heroes, General Khai’Xander Khail, Admiral Sibrex and his little brother, Lieutenant Pual’Brennan Puar were among those tens of thousands lost. With Khai and Sibrex dead, he had no intermediary between him and the Prefect Chuumdar. Chuumdar didn’t trust him as it was, so without the only two people he did trust, things were only going to get worse, especially when he finds out about the secret weapons cache in the Unknown Regions.

  Even worse was that now, with the entire Sixth Fleet gone, they were severely outgunned if things came to throwing punches with the Vyysarri. It was a bleak situation; one that called for severe inebriation. He knew the media was going to have a field day with his resignation, but he didn’t care. He was through; old and tired. He longed for the days when he was in the SCGF, Seryys Combat Ground Forces, when he would just follow orders and fulfill them.

  He stumbled into the bathroom and looked his doppelganger in the mirror. It was an old, haggard version of himself, one he scarcely recognized. His military-style flattop had gone completely white from gray; his goatee had done the same; his chiseled face was creased with age and stress; even his pale green eyes looked glossed over—though that was probably just the alcohol talking. His visage scared him so much, that he decided to go straight to bed. To hell with my resignation, he thought, it’ll still be there in the morning.

  As he crashed face first into his bed, and the room began spin, he thought of his brother and hoped that he at least met his death on his feet facing his enemy.

  Dack’Tander Dah strode the lavish corridor of his multi-billion-credit home, smiling to himself. He had just returned from his flight to the unknown regions where he went completely undetected, thanks to his new stealth technology. He’d watched, firsthand, the destruction of the Sixth Fleet at the hands of just a handful of F’Rosian ships. A self-made billionaire, Dack’Tander was the military’s main Ti’tan’lium supplier. By day, he was a hardworking, savvy businessman, but he moonlit as both Stiprox and Warthol, the respective Vyysarri and Seryysan leaders of the Resistance against integration. He had spent years and millions orchestrating assassination attempts; recruiting people from both sides; paying off more people in both administrations than he could count; he setup SAVR, Seryysans Against Vyysarri Relations, as a front for many of the illicit acts he was committing; and he even paid a Vyysarri to release the Reapers from his own mining facility— Reapers that now roamed Seryys City. His objective was to escalate tensions between the Vyysarri and Seryysans and hope the situation spiraled back into nonstop war. Yes, he had helped Khai and his twin brother save the Prime Minister and that lulled Puar into his confidence. It was a risky play that had both hurt and helped him.

  All of that changed a few days earlier. After Prime Minister Puar contracted him to go into the Unknown Regions to locate a massive weapons cache, he left a tracking beacon where he found the cache hoping that it would draw unwanted attention… and attention, it indeed drew. Now, though somewhat counterproductive, he no longer cared about the relationship between his people and the Vyysarri. With a new threat that outgunned them both, he was going to make a fortune, enough to retire and pay for his brother’s retirement, too… If that fool will ever retire, he thought. The war machine was about to blossom for both Seryysans and Vyysarri alike. Puar would come to him for the Ti’tan’lium for his ships and, because he had played such an integral role in his rescue, Puar would be his best referral system to the Vyysarri.

  Furthermore, what good is a fortune if it can’t be enjoyed? He wasn’t stupid; he knew that his people would not be able to stop the F’Rosians alone. They were going to need the Vyysarri for support. Only together were they going to be able to stop this new threat.

  He sat down at his finely-crafted wooden desk and caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of his computer screen. He was the spitting image of his twin brother with hazel eyes under boxer eyebrows; black hair—though his was parted on the side and Tandy’s was slicked back; strong cheek bones and chin and muscular build—though his was from busting his ass in the mines, and Tandy’s from his days in the SCGF. The only difference was a recent injury. An angry Vyysarri raked his claws down Tander’s face, leaving deep scars and removing his left eye. He now had a prosthetic eye that saw even better than his original one. A reminder of what happens when one becomes complacent.

  Through all this, he worried about his brother. He was piloting the Bolt Bucket well within the asteroid field when the attack came, but there was no guarantee that he was going to make it out. He felt bad leaving his brother out there and splitting, but he was afraid that even though his tech shielded him from their sensors, if he got too close, they would be able to spot him with their bare eyes. That was when it struck him! The F’Rosians used flat black hull plating that made it very difficult to get a good look at their designs. If he employed that method, plus his stealth tech, his ship would be virtually invisible! That would make him a hefty sum of credits from the military… that’s if he wanted to sell his secret weapon…

  “What you got for me?” Khai asked Puar.

  “Sibrex and I were able to get two of the six consoles on the bridge working. The engineering teams are working in engineering to get engines and Eve’Zon drive—er, whatever they would’ve called it—up and running. The MicroStar is working just like on the ship we found earlier, so it should just be a matter of deciphering this tech and gaining control.”

  MicroStar Technology was a type of power source that utilized a miniature sun fed by space-born gases as an unlimited source of energy. It powered everything from propulsion to weapons. Highly sophisticated technology such as this was worth its weight in Ti’tan’lium. If Khai could get the ship home, Seryys’ top scientist
s might be able to reverse engineer some of this tech and make better weapons to combat the F’Rosians.

  Khai was surprised how well everyone was working despite the fleet of highly-advanced dreadnaughts outside the asteroid field that was undoubtedly hunting them. All the engineering crews, who weren’t soldiers, were facing this crisis with the courage of seasoned SCGF soldiers and Khai could respect that.

  “Khai?” Joon asked.

  “Yeah, Joon?”

  “Hypothetically speaking, if you were to get this vessel working, how would you control it?”

  “Well, Joon,” Khai said with an expectant tone, “I was hoping to link you and Amber together. With the power of two onboard computers acting as slaves, we were hoping to be able to control the ship from here and the Bucket.”

  “So I’ll have to converse with an unknown computer?”

  “That’s the plan, Joon. I hope your firewall is up to it.”

  Chapter One

  Dark matter coalesced into a single point of pure black before a flash of light revealed two hundred ships of a flat black color dotted with white. They blended perfectly into the speckled backdrop of space that surrounded them. Long and rectangular, they were massive with spike-like antennae spaced evenly down the port, starboard and dorsal sides and large mandibles forward that housed powerful weapons pods.

  Vor’l, leader of the F’Rosian fleet, stood staring out the main view port at a star system to which they tracked The Sixth Fleet’s final distress call.

  “Alpha, sensors indicate—” the young hound-like man was cut short by the wave of a clawed hand.

  “Fire the weapon,” Vor’l said without hesitation as a sneer stretched across his long snout, revealing sharp fangs. His ears were flattened back against his furry skull and his eyes were narrowed to slits.