Wardogs Inc._3_Metal Monsters Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Quantum Mortis

  More KU Books

  Castalia House

  Wardogs Incorporated #3

  METAL MONSTERS

  A Quantum Mortis Novel

  G. D. Stark

  Copyright

  Metal Monsters

  Wardogs Incorporated #3

  by G. D. Stark

  Castalia House

  Kouvola, Finland

  www.castaliahouse.com

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental

  Copyright © 2018 by Castalia House

  All rights reserved

  Editor: Vox Day

  Version: 001

  Prologue

  Ioannes Laedon lay in bed, watching the sky lighten to purple as a pink sliver of sun rose about the mountains. He’d chosen this apartment for the view alone. From its location high above the city, its floor-to-ceiling window commanded a stunning view of the bay and the craggy snow-capped peaks of the great Makken range that surrounded it. It felt luxurious, though the building itself was a typically severe block of utilitarian engineering, complete with exposed pipes, communal showers and very little in the way of privacy or personal space. Ioannes stroked his wife’s hair with his left hand.

  “Why are you awake, Io?” Kaly mumbled at him. “You’re worse than those damn birds!”

  He patted her on the head and said nothing. He was technically on call right now, but outside of the occasional drill, there hadn’t ever been an actual surface-to-space scramble that he could recall. His apartment was located only three blocks from the spaceport, so instead of staying on base like some of his colleagues, he stayed with his family and enjoyed the perks of civilization. Not to mention a little one-on-one time with Kaly.

  Laedon rolled out of bed and stretched, then went to the kitchen and grabbed one of his precious stash of ZZZgone! energy drinks out of the refrigerator. Imports were expensive and he rationed his luxuries but today felt like a holiday. He just had some reports to finish, then he planned to take his two boys, Ioannes Jr. and little Erasmus, to the bay for an afternoon of fishing. His on-call schedule ended at noon, then the rest of the day would be wide open.

  He grabbed a yeast bar from the cabinet and ate it as he pulled up the local news on the dining room table’s projector. Factory shut down by runaway welding bot, grain futures trending down due to excellent harvests, a statement from the Lords on new labor regulations, nothing of any interest to him. He washed down the last bite of the bar with a swallow of ZZZgone! and switched to the interstellar news so he could check the slingball stats. Nice, he thought. The Reavers edged out the ’Saurs. That’d be good for the Salamanders’ standing in the EC. Hope they sign Fokker before he gets picked up by someone else. If they can pull that off, they’ll be set for-

  His thought was interrupted as his transceiver pinged an alert. No way—they’re seriously calling me in today?

  “This is Sergeant Laedon,” he said after quickly calling in.

  “We’ve got multiple unidentified craft entering the system,” the dispatcher said. His familiar voice sounded unusually stressed.

  “This a drill?”

  “We’ve gone to max alert. What do you think? Better get in here now!”

  “Roger that,” Laedon said. He took a deep breath to calm his suddenly racing heart, then went to grab his uniform and sidearm from his bedroom.

  “What is it?” Kaly asked from the bed, squinting at him.

  “Dispatch called,” he replied, walking over and kissing her on the forehead. “Tell the boys I’ll take them fishing another time. It’s probably just a drill, but it could take all day. I’ll let you know as soon as it’s over.”

  “Be safe, baby,” she told him, pushing her hair out of her eyes. But he’d already left.

  Laedon checked in to the base eight minutes later and found his decade. Most of them were little more than half-awake, and several were, at best, hung over.

  “We may have a false alarm here,” Overseer Thallos informed them, “but SSD is reporting a squadron of deep space vessels incoming.”

  “Space systems defense is reporting incoming enemy?” said a nervous voice. “An invasion?” It was Trykos, the base’s pet journalist from the Laconian Free Press.

  “Yes,” Thallos said. “It’s almost certainly the end of the world. Now shut up when I’m addressing the men or I’ll bounce you out of here no matter what clearances you’ve got.” He turned to the unit. “All we know at this point is that the Nikolaos is sitting between us and what appear to be two troop transports and a handful of fighter escorts.”

  The Nikolaos was a modern cruiser, unveiled with much fanfare the previous year. She was more than suited for planetary defense; unfortunately, she was the only deep space defense the Stratocracy had. Even so, a handful of fighters and some troop transports wouldn’t be a problem for her, should they prove hostile. But who were they anyhow, and how was it possible that SSD hadn’t ID’d them yet?

  “If the transports make it through we’ll nail them on the surface,” Paulson continued. “This doesn’t make much sense from what I’m seeing. It’s probably just pirate activity again, or maybe a group of asylum seekers fleeing a war somewhere. I’ll keep you apprised. Ready transports and weapons for intercept on the surface.”

  After relaying the telemetry on the incoming ships to SSD Command, Captain Marinos ordered his crew to battle stations. On the long range scans, the two incoming transports and their eight light-fighter escorts did not appear to be intimidating. But the incoming ships hadn’t responded to the automated warning beacon or given any ID when hailed. They simply approached in silence, apparently without concern for any systems defenses, which made Marinos wonder what game they were playing. It would be a good test of the Nikolaos, though. Shooting down asteroids and clearing the planetary orbit of space junk lost its charm after a few weeks in space.

  “Three minutes to torpedo range,” Ensign Cloris announced from his recon station.

  “All shields at maximum, ready one salvo of torpedoes,” Marinos said. “Strap in, gentlemen.”

  The bridge around him was modern and comfortable, with smooth edges and indirect lighting. Somehow it never felt right to Marinos, who had cut his teeth on an old Class II destroyer inherited from the Valatestan Navy, with its exposed oxygen tubes, outmoded digitals, and disturbingly green interior lighting. The Nikolaos felt like an interior design catalog in comparison. Its weapons were state-of-the-art TL-14 with a full bank of plasma cannons, torpedoes and shielding capable of keeping the ship cool while passing through the corona of a sun. It even had seatbelts.

  Marinos keyed the com. “Attention approaching vessels. This is Captain Lukas Marinos of the Nikolaos. Shut down your engines or you will be fired upon. This is your last warning. Repeat—stand down now or you will be destroyed.”

  “N
o response,” Cloris announced. “Wait—we’ve got two fighters picking up speed, outpacing the transports, moving into attack formation—damn, they’re fast! They’re coming for us, sir.”

  “Hold your course, Helmsman Lunis,” Marinos said to the man to his right.

  PO Eustis spoke from his weapons console. “Coming into plasma range in four… three… two… one… in range!”

  “How many have a shot?”

  “All the odd, less number one.”

  “Fire all five!” Marinos said. “Take ’em out!”

  The first fighter came in fast but the Nikolaos tore her to shreds with her plasma cannons before she could get in a shot. The second fighter banked hard to avoid the hail of searing energy and barely made it back out of range of the Nikolaos’s cannons as the five cannons spat heated fury in her direction.

  “They choked on that!” Cloris laughed.

  “Ready two torpedo salvos—nail those transports. First the one to spinward, then the other. We can pick off the fighters later.”

  A button was pressed and four deadly missiles flew from the mouth of Nikolaos. Tipped with armor shattering warheads, they were AI-controlled and capable of hitting 1/10 light speed only four seconds after launch. There was a pause, and then the ship belched forth another four. Marinos watched the tactical display as the torpedoes locked on their targets—four per transport for the sake of redundancy. By the book.

  POP—the torpedoes engaged their pulse drives—and then… nothing. The red dots of the transports did not vanish as expected, but continued on their path towards the planet as if nothing had happened.

  “Where are the torps?” Marinos gasped in amazement. “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know,” Eustis said. “They disappeared!”

  “What?” Marinos said. “All eight? You can’t see them?”

  “They’re gone, sir. Shall we fire two more salvos?”

  Marinos felt ice in his guts. It was impossible—the very speed of those torpedoes and the AI locks—there was no way! Something was wrong. But what?

  “Not yet. No point in wasting eight more when we don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Sir!” Cloris said. “Fighters coming back! Two!”

  “Ready cannons, Eustis—fire as soon as they’re in range. Smoke them!”

  The fighters flew in close to the edge of Nikolaos’s firing range but they’d learned from the first encounter. They split and tore around the perimeter of the ship. The plasma cannons opened up on them, but the range was far enough that the fighters’ shields held.

  “What are they doing?” Marinos asked as he watched the small red dots zip around the perimeter on opposite sides of Nikolaos.

  “They’re firing!” Cloris announced. “Looks like some sort of small projectiles or micro missiles.”

  They were coming in too fast for the anti-missile lasers, but they were so small that even nuclear-tipped warheads would barely scratch the ship’s armor.

  “We got a few,” Cloris said, swiping through screens on his console. “Most were small enough to slip past. Eight impacts. No real damage, though. All systems still 100 percent.”

  “Excellent,” Marinos said, watching as the two fighters rounded the ship and returned to their previous formation around the transports. “Let’s get closer and take out those transports with our cannon—they gotta be jamming our missiles somehow. We know the plasma works.”

  “Roger, Captain,” Helmsman Lunis said, setting a course. He pressed his fingers on his console multiple times in growing frustration. “Sir—my console—it’s jammed up.”

  “Cloris?” Marinos said. Cloris opened his secondary screen and tried to set the course himself. After a few seconds he shook his head. “Sir, I’ve also lost the ability to-”

  The lights blinked out on the bridge and strips of red light appeared on the floor, lighting the way to the exits.

  “What the devil?” Cloris said.

  The main viewscreen went to a solid blue screen reading SYSTEM RESTART. CONTINUE?

  “No!” Marinos said. “Don’t restart!”

  As he said it, half the screen dissolved into static.

  Lunis cursed loudly, jerking backwards at his console. “I just got shocked!”

  “Sir!” Cloris announced. “Life support is shutting down—the automatic bulkheads are going to seal!”

  VENTING ATMOSPHERE, announced the ship. ALL AIRLOCKS OPENING IN TWO MINUTES.

  “Sir,” Cloris said. “We have no control over the engines or the helm—we’re now on a course directly for Owannis.”

  Owannis was the planet’s third moon.

  “What?” Marinos shouted. “Seal those airlocks!” He stabbed at the console in front of him, trying to see the ship’s course. The screen blinked white, then black—dead!

  “We’re accelerating, sir,” Cloris said calmly.

  90 SECONDS TO DECOMPRESSION, the computer said calmly.

  Marinos quickly came to a decision and keyed his com. Either the Nikolaos was the biggest lemon in the history of space ship manufacture or those micro-missiles had somehow permitted the enemy to commandeer its core systems. “All crew—abandon ship! Now! Now! Repeat—abandon ship!” At least the com is working!

  “Come on,” Marinos said, leading his men off the bridge. “Get to the pods—and may the gods be kind.”

  In the main hall of the ship, the walls were lined with single-man escape pods, each capable of sustaining a lost spaceman for years in stasis. Inside the system, it would be a matter of hours before a launch picked them up, but Marinos would be lying if he didn’t say he was beyond pissed at losing the Nikolaos. She was massively expensive, and only had one year in space—and now this? The Stratocracy would almost certainly demand his suicide, and he wouldn’t blame them. This was a failure of unprecedented proportions, and yet he had no idea what he had done wrong… or what he might have done differently.

  He jogged into the hall and counted his men as they entered their pods. 14… 15… 16… two more, and he’d jump in himself. The pods popped like champagne corks from the sides of the Nikolaos as she neared Owen’s gravity. Then with a resonating CLANG! the bulkheads slammed shut on either end of the hall. Two men were still missing, Marinos realized. He considering hunting down a pressure suit and reentering the ship to find his men. ATMOSPHERE VENTED, came the voice of the ship’s AI.

  Too late, he thought, cursing as he opened the lid of his pod and jumped into its small padded interior. There was nothing he could do for the missing men now. The lock behind him sealed and he strapped in, then pulled the ejection lever. The system wasn’t linked to the main computer system—thank the gods—and the pods still worked. Marinos blessed whatever engineer had designed that failsafe, not that survival would be any better for him than dying with the ship at this point. His death was all but certain either way. I should go down with the ship as honor dictates, but I have to tell the Lord Admiral exactly what happened. No one will ever believe it otherwise!

  POP! He was off, tumbling into space. A moment later the pod’s limited propulsion took over and moved him away from the dark face of Owannis. The pods had proximity detectors which automatically moved them away from gravity wells in case their occupants were incapable of piloting the limited systems on their own. Marinos flipped open the pod’s navigation screen and watched as it acquired the moving objects around them. Unlike the sophisticated targeting computers on Nikolaos, this was a simple chart of gray objects on a black background. Owannis was easy to spot, as it was the second-largest object on the screen after the planet. Farther off he saw the uneven shape of Stanley, the planet’s second moon, almost behind the planet at this point. His pod was a small x in the middle of the screen, and behind it he saw the larger shape of the Nikolaos still heading directly towards the face of Owannis.

  “Those bastards,” he muttered as he looked for the transports that had taken out his ship. There they were—still moving towards the planet. Almost there, in fact.
/>   As he watched, the Nikolaos crumpled into the face of Owannis—and a few moments later, the dots of the alien transports vanished into the atmosphere of the planet he had sworn to protect. He cursed them as they disappeared.

  It’s in the Lord General’s hands now, he thought. Gods help the poor bastard!

  Ioannes rode on the open deck of a Diosus 50 transport along with the rest of his squad. The Diosus skimmed just above the surface like skating on ice, its antigrav envelope deceptively smooth considering the speed at which they travelled. The report of the Nikolaos’s shocking demise had been immediately followed by reports of enemy ships entering the atmosphere.

  “We’re tracking ’em,” Overseer Zachaios had announced to his hastily assembled company. “We’ll nail them, whoever they are. Infantry units are being activated all over—once we’ve got a pinpoint on their destination, we’ll take them down. Be ready to scramble. Scouts, you’re going in first, then call in fire and we’ll clean up what’s left.”

  “Probably some religious nuts playing suicide by cop,” Orion muttered beside Laedon.

  “It must be something of the sort,” Laedon said back. “No one would invade an entire planet with nothing more than a pair of transports and some light fighters unless they’re suicidal.”

  “Or they’ve got better technology,” Addams said from Laedon’s other side. “Pretty impressive attack so far, taking out Nikolaos.”

  “Total fluke,” Orion said. “That ship was too high-tech for its own good. Wouldn’t be surprised if that advanced AI went insane under real combat pressure.”

  “We have a landing,” Overseer Zachaios announced, his hand to his ear. “Karabaldi Wilderness Reserve… at least one transport… it’s inside our zone… time to move!”

  Eight men rode inside the Diosus. It was not an armored transport so they’d be dropped a few kilometers out to cut in on the invader’s location and provide intel to the long range artillery already being deployed. The pilot held up two fingers. Two minutes, Laedon thought. He held his PGM-50 close to him and realized his heart was thudding. He hadn’t seen any active duty since his state-mandated year of deployment ended seven years ago. Not since before Kaly and the children, he thought.