SunSeeders

Sunseeders

Steven F. Jones

Published by Steven F. Jones at Smashwords

Copyright © 2011 Steven F. Jones

All rights Reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Seeing is Believing

Chapter 2: Another Job

Chapter 3: Journey to the gate

Chapter 4: Encounter at the gate

Chapter 5: The other side

Chapter 6: Shadowing the enemy

Chapter 7: Take your pick

Chapter 8: A secret request

Chapter 9: Breaking the news

Chapter 10: Friend or foe

Chapter 11: The defiant race

Chapter 12: The way I see it

Chapter 13: Crude but effective

Chapter 14: Don’t get too cocky

Chapter 15: A new beginning

Chapter 16: To build an army

Chapter 17: Time is of the essence

Chapter 18: The shock leak

Chapter 19: Stay or go

Chapter 20: To save a friend

Chapter 21: Knowledge is power

Chapter 1: Seeing is believing.

I'm sittin on the dock of the bay. Watching the tide roll away. Ooo, I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay. Wastin' time... – Otis Redding 1967

What a song, what music, what a time, they sure as hell don’t make music like that nowadays and I sure as hell can’t remember the last time that I had been able to just sit and waste time like I have done in the last 2 weeks, being able to just listened to my tunes and relax. I can’t get Otis Redding outta my head now though; I had listened to his hits over and over for hours! It’s now been 13 days travelling through subspace and I had the crew run through condition checks of the ship twice in the first 10 days and there was no way I could have had them do it again, without inciting a mutiny at least lol! It’s the 31st century for fuck sake and I know I’m a bit of a hard ass captain when I need them performing but we all need that little bit of time to reflect once in a while. I sure as hell hadn’t had any time to update my logs for the last 3 months whilst we’ve been fighting on the front line. So for the last few days, I put the crew on a rota that gave them some much needed time for reflection which helped settle those signs of mutiny ;-). Why shouldn’t they have been able to kick back and enjoy the invincibility provided by subspace travel, god knows they need it? They have all worked so hard for me recently in fighting those fuckin Hathen bastard’s. It takes allot of commitment from your crew day and night to get through those hard battles, and mine are the best crew in the fleet and we have gained the reputation to go with it. Anyway this morning I put them back to work as we are fast approaching our recall point, I still feel that there’s something really shitty about this recall though. It just doesn’t seem right that the Confederacy would pull us from the front line. My ship, the Spartacus, is the most advanced gun ship in the fleet and we have tagged the most Hathen kills this season by a victory mile!

So the recall read like this; ‘Captain Jonesia you are immediately ordered to proceed to sector 49, where you will be briefed for a new mission on arrival’ and that was it! No happy Admiral to look at on my view screen as they gave me a whopping great big presentation about a new mission, nor was there an Admiral’s administrator relaying another boring mission presentation from their superior, nope, just a fuckin one liner to read that has changed the path of over 500 people. It took so much for all of us to leave our friends on the frontline where they are under constant threat from the Hathen attack cruisers! I’ve felt so bloody helpless these last week’s sat on this bridge or in my office trying to waste time, I wish I had had a tide to watch as it may have helped me take my mind off of leaving them. If I didn’t care about being hunted down for treason I would have headed back to the frontline and to our comrades and gave the big finger in the direction of sector 49. But if I had done something like that then I wouldn’t have been going back to comrades, I’d have being going back to the executioner as they would have been the ones with an Admiral on their view screen giving them a seek and destroy mission with my name on it! You don’t defy orders from the Confederacy of Stars and live to tell the tail and unfortunately the conviction of treason is dished out all too frivolously these days! You can’t disagree with any Admiral even when you know your right and they are wrong. These times have been so hard with the loss of Earth still in the minds of many of the top Admirals that are old enough to have either been born there or had seen Earth in its hay day. Now Earths a relic in an erratic war filled history and maybe one day the dust will settle and the radiation expunged but that day is far out of my life time.

I’ve always known that the humans were spread through the Alpha quadrant of this galaxy with no home world. I have only ever thought of the Confederacy of Stars headquarters on Mars as being centre of our territory and that’s as homely as it’s ever felt to me. That said I couldn’t imagine the feelings that would have been generated in the first days when the war was started by the Hathen Empire. What a way to start a war by savaging Earth so literally and destroying every living thing and levelling every major city on the planet. Now, you can’t even see Earth’s oceans from space because of the dust in the atmosphere, not that you’d want to as the entire planet is irradiated now and will be so for a millennia. The Confederacy managed to launch a defence initiative, shortly after Earths destruction, which drove out all the Hathen forces to our border planets but by then our death toll was estimated @ 20 billion. Not only did we lose Earth but another 3 planets were hit that the Hathen’s believed to be key planets in our Confederacy but thankfully they were wrong and our Government remained intact. We would have been wiped out if we wouldn’t have had any leadership, with so many scared and confused by the news reports of Earth hitting the subspace channels, wow it must have been fuckin chaos! Well, we have held the Hathen Empire off @ our borders for around 80 years now but their tech is strong and they are slowly picking away at us, we need something major to happen to tilt this war in our favour.

It’s been ok sat here on the bridge in my command chair reminiscing for the reinforcing reasons why we keep doing what we do out there every day in the name of the Confederacy of Stars but, why the fuck my ship has been recalled to Sector 49 I just don’t know and it feels like it’s going to be a waste of time in my opinion. Sector 49 has a big ass research station as far as I know, but apparently there were strong rumours many years ago that suggested we have got one of those Spheres there too. A load of bollocks if you ask me though, spheres, what the fuck, ancient mini planets with an unknown core and infinite power for anything that’s in contact with it. Just fuckin stories to keep the kids interested at the Academy! Well if it does exist in sector 49 they must be in the shit because you don’t pull back me and my crew unless you’re going to fight something but fuck knows what there is to fight out here as this sector is at the back of our territory and over 2 weeks away from any sort of threat.

The way I see it its either going to be a waste of time and we are being recalled for an evaluation/strategic briefing and some shit like that or, well, they just might have one of those spheres and they might just be in the shit! Sir, we’re arriving in Sector 49 and there are some massive energy readings on sensors.

Just going through those reasons for this recall then, I now had the sinking feeling; it’s going to be the later! Well don’t keep me waiting Josh chuck it up on the view screen.

The emitters hummed and crackled as the viewer came online, the picture flickered a bit which always annoyed me but Jess insists she can’t fix it. I think she’s buying shit parts and pocketing the credits herself, but I can’t complain that much, she’s given me the extra juice in the forward rail cannons plenty of times to get us outta of trouble! Pop, the screen came online and there it was... something I never thought I would see or encounter and I didn’t really even understand what it was, ok it was round and it pissed power but, what else..?

Josh, just give me the low down, is that what I think it is?

Well sir, I would never have believed it unless I saw it and I am seeing it now. It’s a sphere sir. The power readings are off the chart and I can’t even begin to tell you what the crust is made of or why it’s giving off so much power. There is also a large mass that’s tethered to it which looks like it might be the research station sir.

You know what..? That was the first time I felt insignificant since I caught my misses using her vibrator when I was in the house! You gotta imagine, this thing was as big as the Earth’s moon back in Sol, and that wasn’t the vibrator that was this Sphere!

Sector 49 was at the edge of the galaxy and at the back of our territory and in no way vulnerable to the wars and disputes happening in the border sectors against the Hathen Empire. Fuckin freaky places these outer sectors, look one way and all you see is stars then look the other way and all you’ll see is black with the odd light representing a nearby galaxy. Took us nearly 14 days just to get here and the word from the front line is that we lost four Star battle ships in one incident in this last week. Losing ships faster than we can build them these days and the Hathen’s don’t seem to be letting up anytime soon, anyway gotta start forgetting about that shit and get focused on this recall.

The sphere itself looked like it was half covered in vegetation, but how could that be? The rest of the surface was bare metallic with, what looked like, impact scars but not from meteors. It looked like the outer crust had been hit with Planet Buster-Nukes, what the fuck have we been doing here. The research station was lit up like a Christmas tree but I suppose they don’t have to worry about power rationing out here when you have batteries the size of planets to hang off. The research stations docking rings look full of ships and some of them new ones too, I’ve only seen these types of ships in classified briefings and concept reports, what the fuck are we doin here!?

Sir, we’re being hailed

Here we go, Put it on the viewer Josh

The viewer did its annoying flicker and crackling as it changed from one input stream to the next. I could hear the murmur of a comment between Kayleigh and Josh, saying that I was gonna kick Jess’s ass one day because of it. It did piss me off but it was things like this that keeps me going out here, a little taste of annoyance keeps reality in check otherwise it all just seems too much like science fiction...

Fuck! Admiral Harrison Jones just popped on my view screen. Another one of those stories they told the kids at the Academy but this story to shit you up. This guy was in charge of anything big, scary and powerful in the Confederacy of Stars as well as having full autonomy over the fleet and the star soldiers. If he said you hadda do something you hadda do it or take a bullet for treason. I already met this guy once so I know about his story and yeah he still shits me up, not that I’d share that information with just anyone. The thing that really shits me up now was that he was here with the sphere, a heap of ships and what the hell did he want with me now..?

Suppose I better do the good soldier bit and stand up...

I stood up from my command chair and waited for him to speak first Captain Jonesia, good to see you again.

Admiral Harrison Jones, the feeling is mutual I could feel