Contents
Title Page
Ixan Prophecies
Free Books
CAPITAL STARSHIP
Chapter 1: Shattered Peace-1
Chapter 2: Cybele
Chapter 3: Military Applications
Chapter 4: PTSD
Chapter 5: Anything Anomalous
Chapter 6: Owning the Floor
Chapter 7: The Quince Engagement
Chapter 8: Feeling Unsafe
Chapter 9: Scapegoated for Wrongs
Chapter 10: As Carbon Steel
Chapter 11: Vanguard
Chapter 12: Debris Cloud
Chapter 13: As Though in a Warzone
Chapter 14: Defense Platform 5
Chapter 15: Progenitors
Chapter 16: Surface Tension
Chapter 17: Superheating
Chapter 18: On the Local Galactic Cluster
Chapter 19: It Rings True
Chapter 20: Fairly Specific Intel
Chapter 21: Head Fascist
Chapter 22: Asleep to Awake
Chapter 23: A Respect for Competence
Chapter 24: Warp
Chapter 25: Bash Back
Chapter 26: The Secured Zone
Chapter 27: Thumbs-Down
Chapter 28: A Ship That Size
Chapter 29: Blood on Hands
Chapter 30: Morality of War
Chapter 31: Invertebrate
Chapter 32: Not Compulsory
Chapter 33: Nonattendance Day
Chapter 34: A Lucky Guess
Chapter 35: Scythes Through Wheat
Chapter 36: What Toxic Actually Looks Like
Chapter 37: Both Killers
Chapter 38: Belay That Order
Chapter 39: The Taste of Sweat and Fear
Chapter 40: Brittle Silence
Chapter 41: Evil
Chapter 42: Innumerable
Chapter 43: Staring Back in Shock
Chapter 44: Copper Taste
Chapter 45: Supposed to Feel Like That
Chapter 46: Every Crease
Chapter 47: War Is Not Safe
Chapter 48: Old School
Chapter 49: Unbridled
Chapter 50: What It Means to Tangle
Chapter 51: Below the Ecliptic
Chapter 52: Peacetime Soldiers
Chapter 53: Ripped to Pieces
Chapter 54: Teth's Gambits
Chapter 55: No Pressure
Chapter 56: Major Peter Gamble
Chapter 57: Seems Irrational
Chapter 58: If the Captain's Left Us to Die
Chapter 59: Knots of Tension
Chapter 60: Shoot to Kill
Chapter 61: No Such Luck
Chapter 62: Pieces
Chapter 63: Not the Time
Epilogue: Jake Price
PRIDE OF THE FLEET
Chapter 1: Kick Down the Door
Chapter 2: Dishonorable Discharge
Chapter 3: Distress Call
Chapter 4: Munitions
Chapter 5: Hellebore
Chapter 6: The IGS Mylas
Chapter 7: Snapped in Two
Chapter 8: Predator
Chapter 9: Divided and Deployed
Chapter 10: Prison Planet
Chapter 11: Getting Paid Again
Chapter 12: Extremely Poor Taste
Chapter 13: Technically Insubordinate
Chapter 14: All It Took Was a War
Chapter 15: Not a Psychologist
Chapter 16: Blood Moon
Chapter 17: Too Far
Chapter 18: Fester and Grow
Chapter 19: Mechs Complicate Things
Chapter 20: Whirlwinds of Steel
Chapter 21: Adaptations
Chapter 22: The Sapient Brotherhood
Chapter 23: Trust
Chapter 24: Alarm Bells
Chapter 25: At the Expense of Peace
Chapter 26: Pressure Cooker
Chapter 27: Nothing if Not Entertaining
Chapter 28: A Calculated Risk
Chapter 29: Optimize for Speed
Chapter 30: Stellarpol
Chapter 31: Crowd Control
Chapter 32: Lucid
Chapter 33: Lines of Attack
Chapter 34: Flying Wedge
Chapter 35: Quantum Engine
Chapter 36: Every Parallel Fesky
Chapter 37: Reporting for Duty
Chapter 38: Face the Music
Chapter 39: Spire
Chapter 40: I'm Not Going to Ask
Chapter 41: Best for the Galaxy
Chapter 42: The Table of Power
Chapter 43: One Way or Another
Chapter 44: Political Prisoner
Chapter 45: Under Heavy Fire
Chapter 46: Enemy Subspace Squadron
Chapter 47: Filled With Fire
Chapter 48: Act as Turrets
Chapter 49: Something Has to Give
Chapter 50: Exploit Viciously
Chapter 51: Staring at a Tactical Display
Chapter 52: The Price We Pay
Chapter 53: Just Getting Started
Chapter 54: Across the Battlespace
Chapter 55: That's New
Chapter 56: Fading Light
Chapter 57: Back Down to Size
Chapter 58: Hail of Bullets
Chapter 59: With a Whimper
Chapter 60: Metal Giants
Chapter 61: Tattered
Chapter 62: Principled Stand
Chapter 63: Sidearm
Chapter 64: Sleeper Agent
Epilogue: Identify Yourself
DOGS OF WAR
Prologue : Other Husher
Chapter 1: Not a Request
Chapter 2: The Cavern
Chapter 3: Laying Waste
Chapter 4: Spread Too Thin
Chapter 5: Iris
Chapter 6: Cast Low
Chapter 7: Accelerate the Plan
Chapter 8: The Target Universe
Chapter 9: Not Meant for Mechs
Chapter 10: A Grim Logic
Chapter 11: Rogue MIMAS
Chapter 12: Some Unknowable Monster
Chapter 13: Bargaining Chips
Chapter 14: At Least One Version of Me
Chapter 15: Just One Lifetime
Chapter 16: Something to Think About
Chapter 17: Missile Damage
Chapter 18: You Won't Be the Last
Chapter 19: Long Shots
Chapter 20: Lucid
Chapter 21: Lavender
Chapter 22: Willing to Share the Galaxy
Chapter 23: Close-In Alpha Strike
Chapter 24: You Killed Him
Chapter 25: A Form of Robbery
Chapter 26: You'll Pursue It Now
Chapter 27: Breaking Point
Chapter 28: Half-Baked
Chapter 29: Making a Play
Chapter 30: Fly Again Someday
Chapter 31: Concerto
Chapter 32: Playing the Martyr
Chapter 33: Gunship Mode
Chapter 34: The Power to Stop It
Chapter 35: Unmatched
Chapter 36: Shrapnel-Laced
Chapter 37: Redouble
Chapter 38: Viper-Like
Chapter 39: Insanely Ambitious
Chapter 40: Permanently Compromised
Chapter 41: Blast Backward
Chapter 42: To Home
Chapter 43: Asking Price
Chapter 44: Becoming Something Else
Chapter 45: Nothing's More Destabilizing
Chapter 46: Looking to End This
Chapter 47: Limbs
Chapter 48: Enter the Brotherhood
Chapter 49: Snapped in Half
Chapter 50: Target
-Rich Environments
Chapter 51: Military History
Chapter 52: Death Struggle
Chapter 53: The Old Way
Chapter 54: A Proper Talking-To
Chapter 55: Orbital Fortress
Chapter 56: Warpath
Chapter 57: Merging
Chapter 59: Alpha Strike in Parting
Chapter 60: Old Friend
Chapter 61: The Moment I Return
Epilogue 1: Nostalgia
Epilogue 2: Right to Business
Epilogue 3: The Things That Keep Us Sane
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Other Books by Scott
Capital Fleet, The Ixan Legacy Collection
By Scott Bartlett
The Ixan Legacy Complete Series Box Set, Books 1-3
A military science fiction series
Ixan Prophecies
Twenty years have passed since the Ixa almost wiped humanity from the face of the galaxy. Now, they have returned - with a prophecy of doom. Can Captain Husher stop them?
Book 1: Supercarrier
Book 2: Juggernaut
Book 3: Reckoning
Want free books?
Scott is giving away Captain and Command (the Ixan Legacy prequel) for free, along with 2 other books set in the same universe. If you like free, you can get your books here:
Click here for your free books
Learn the truth about the Gok Wars.
Captain and Command reveals what role Captain Husher played in the Gok Wars, along with the events that led to his PTSD.
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Capital Starship
© Scott Bartlett 2017
Cover art by Tom Edwards (tomedwardsdesign.com)
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
This novel is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places, and events are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, businesses, or events is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Shattered Peace
The Gok carrier bore down on the IGS Vesta, and Captain Vin Husher cursed under his breath. The alien warship was clearly maneuvering for tactical advantage, but until it fired the first shot, there was nothing Husher could do.
With bureaucrats scrutinizing his every move, commanding the largest warship in the Integrated Galactic Fleet counted for less than it should have. He certainly felt less effective as a captain. The voices calling for his removal from the Vesta’s command seat seemed to grow louder and more numerous with every passing day, and it took everything he had to continue presenting himself as not only fit for command, but the best man for the job.
Of course, ideas about what “the job” actually was tended to vary dramatically. The way he saw it, his job was to prepare the galaxy for the onslaught he knew was coming. He knew that in his very core, which made it especially baffling when others described his “proper” job as doing his best to render war itself obsolete.
That particular view of his job had gained widespread popularity over the last twenty years, and these days, his every action was held up to a microscope, along with its justification, which he was required to provide in the multitude of reports and statements that had come to characterize his life.
He agreed with civilian oversight of the military. But he also thought that oversight should come from a well-informed, well-reasoned place. Sadly, it rarely did, anymore.
The politicians of the Interstellar Union hadn’t seen what he’d seen. They hadn’t experienced the ruthlessness of the Ixa in battle, and they hadn’t heard the conviction of the Ixan AI named Baxa, when he’d told Husher that he was but one of many superintelligences designed for war. The AI had promised that the others would come soon to finish the job of exterminating all life in the Milky Way.
In the meantime, there was this warship from the Gok, with whom the IU had enjoyed an uneasy peace for the last seventeen years. The Union did everything they could to maintain that peace, including mandating ROEs—Rules of Engagement—that left its own warships at a disadvantage against any Gok ship that might decide to attack.
“They’re not acknowledging our transmission request, Captain.” The Coms officer almost whispered as she delivered the news. She was Ensign Amy Fry, and she sat two consoles over from Husher’s, just ahead and a foot lower. Like every other officer in the CIC, she faced the main display.
“Keep trying,” Husher said, his voice tight with strain, even though he was trying his best to seem calm. Though unlikely, the possibility that the other vessel’s coms simply weren’t functioning would be enough to sink Husher’s career if he fired first. Never mind that the Gok was the only species with whom the Interstellar Union had gone to war against during the twenty years since its inception, or that the Gok still steadfastly refused to join the federation that included every other sentient species in the galaxy.
“Sir…” muttered Commander Fesky, Husher’s XO, her twitching wings betraying her unease. Not that he needed the indication—he’d served with her since just before the Second Galactic War, and Husher could read his Winger friend like a favorite book.
But that wouldn’t stop him from observing protocol. “Easy, Commander. I’m not about to go down in history as the captain who fired the first shot in the renewed Gok Wars.” Even so… He turned to his Nav officer. “Initiate reverse thrust, Kaboh, engaging engines at sixty-five percent. Let’s start inching back toward Zakros’ orbital defense platforms.”
“Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Commander Kaboh answered in the high-pitched tones of a Kaithian—one of the few that were aboard the Vesta. Most of Kaboh’s species preferred to remain close together, where the benefits of their psychic Consensus was multiplied. But under the direction of the Interstellar Union, the Fleet had assigned Kaboh to serve in Husher’s CIC, and Husher was pretty sure he knew why.
“The Gok carrier has doubled its acceleration, Captain,” the sensor operator reported, from two consoles to Husher’s right. “Her main gun is aligned with our forward starboard engine.”
Husher’s fingers tightened around the cold steel of his chair’s armrests. Peering at the CIC’s main display, he raised his right hand to a sturdy white switch positioned on the side of his console, flicking from a tactical representation of the two warships to the view from an exterior visual sensor. It showed mostly empty space at the moment; the Gok ship nothing more than a distant gleam.
Flicking the ivory switch once again, Husher changed the display back to a tactical overview. That likely wouldn’t be what the other officers saw on the display. When his Coms officer looked at the main display, she likely saw a data readout on the warship’s communications array, or maybe reports from subordinates in her department as they worked together to hail the Gok ship. The sensor operator would likely be managing multiple streams of information provided by various sensor types—RADAR, LIDAR, visual, and so on.
Of course, Chief Benno Tremaine, his Tactical officer, probably did have the tactical display up, alongside multiple targeting calculations. Husher had long ago drilled into the man’s head that he should always be ready with multiple firing solutions whenever a nearby ship had even the slimmest chance of becoming violent. It was far more efficient to modify an existing firing solution than to whip up one from scratch.
Without Oculenses, it wouldn’t have been possible for each officer to see something different on the main display—the invention had certainly been a boon for CIC operations. The public had found plenty of other uses for Oculenses, of course, but Husher didn’t consider all of those to be quite as beneficial.
As captain, he could tap into what any of his CIC’s officers were looking at while they were on duty. He did so now, switching to his sensor operator’s overlay. “Winterton, c
ollaborate with Nav to provide me with an estimate of when the carrier will enter an optimal range for—”
“Captain, the carrier just launched two squadrons of third-generation Slags!”
Husher’s head whipped toward his Tactical officer. Normally, his sensor operator would have delivered that information, but Winterton had been looking away from his readout, at Husher.
“Have any of them started firing?” Husher asked. Slags were the Gok’s idea of space fighters, so-named for their close resemblance to melted hunks of metal. If they’d begun to attack, then so could Husher. Scrambling Slags at all seemed like a clearly hostile act to him, but he knew the politicians would say differently.
“Negative.”
With the Vesta’s present course locked in, Kaboh didn’t have much to do. His muscular head-tail shifted against his chair’s back as he turned toward Husher, looking totally relaxed. “Captain, I would remind you that the presiding ROEs prohibit—”
“I’m familiar with the ROEs,” Husher snapped. “Helm, punch the engines up to eighty percent.”
“The Slags will overtake us at this rate, Captain,” Winterton said.
“They’ll overtake us no matter what we do,” Husher muttered. His ship’s top speed was—well, it was superluminal, thanks to the warp tech that had come online fleet-wide during the last five years. But her sheer mass meant that accelerating to any meaningful velocity took time, even if he were to have his Helm officer bring the engines up to full power.
Slowly, he shook his head, his heart pounding an increasing cadence in his ears. The Vesta truly was a wonder—much bigger and far more powerful than anything ever fielded before her. But her capabilities were nearly wasted under the limitations the interspecies government had placed on military action. Husher had been expecting a situation like the one developing right now for a long time. It was just his luck that it was happening to him—and at a time when the battle group that normally accompanied his ship was already halfway to the darkgate into the next system.
“Ready point defense systems, Tactical,” Husher growled, eyeing Kaboh as he finished. “Unless you’re going to tell me the ROEs forbid that, now?”
“No more than they forbid readying firing solutions for ships that never end up attacking us, Captain,” the Kaithian said, his tone conspicuously neutral.
Husher caught himself grinding his teeth at the implied dig, and he forced himself to stop. Modern military doctrine gave subordinates far more leeway when criticizing their superiors than was once considered proper. The thinking was that encouraging debate would reduce mistakes made by the CO and others in command positions.