The Mutineer's Daughter Read online

  The Mutineer’s Daughter

  Book One of In Revolution Born

  By

  Chris Kennedy & Thomas A. Mays

  PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books

  Copyright © 2018 Chris Kennedy & Thomas A. Mays

  All Rights Reserved

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental, except for the Red Shirts, who have given me their express permission to kill them in all sorts of wicked, nasty ways. The other characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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  For our Dads (Patrick Kennedy and John Mays) and our Daughters (Adrienne and Erika Kennedy; Isabel and Gabby Mays.) We love you!

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  Cover Art and Design by Konstantin Kiselyov

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: Benno

  Chapter Two: Mio

  Chapter Three: Benno

  Chapter Four: Mio

  Chapter Five: Benno

  Chapter Six: Mio

  Chapter Seven: Benno

  Chapter Eight: Mio

  Chapter Nine: Benno

  Chapter Ten: Mio

  Chapter Eleven: Benno

  Chapter Twelve: Mio

  Chapter Thirteen: Benno

  Chapter Fourteen: Mio

  Chapter Fifteen: Benno

  Chapter Sixteen: Mio

  Chapter Seventeen: Benno

  Chapter Eighteen: Mio

  Chapter Nineteen: Benno

  Chapter Twenty: Mio

  Chapter Twenty-One: Adelaide

  About Chris Kennedy

  About Thomas A. Mays

  Titles by Chris Kennedy

  Titles by Thomas A. Mays

  Connect with Chris Kennedy Online

  Connect with Thomas A. Mays Online

  Excerpt from “Cartwright’s Cavaliers:”

  Excerpt from “Wraithkin:”

  * * * * *

  Chapter One: Benno

  Kenny dozed at his console again.

  There he sat—as brazen as ever—strapped down, suited up, jacked in…and completely checked out. One might make allowances for an overworked man falling asleep during a dull routine, watching gauges that didn’t move or indicators that rarely indicated anything of consequence, perhaps even during a quiet moment during their ship’s long, long deployment.

  But Fire Control Tech Third Class Ken Burnside was doing it—yet again—while the ship stood at General Quarters, in an unfriendly star system, while other parts of the fleet engaged the forces of the Terran Union.

  Chief Warrant Officer Grade 2 (Combat Systems) Benjamin “Benno” Sanchez shook his helmeted head and narrowed his eyes at the sailor strapped in to his right. He had spoken to the young weapons engineer a number of times before, through countless drills and mock skirmishes, but the youthful idiot never retained the lesson for long.

  “Benno, Bosso,” Kenny would plead, “you shouldn’t yell at me. You should have me teach others my wisdom!”

  Benno would invariably frown and give his unflattering opinion of Kenny’s wisdom.

  “Get it, ya?” Kenny would reply. “I’m a math guy. Probability, right Warrant? The Puller’s just a little ship, on the edge of the formation. We scan, we snipe, we mop up, we patrol. We don’t go in the middle, tube’s blazing, ya? We no tussle with the big Terrans, ya? No damage! No battle! So, something goes wrong, back-ups kick in, buzzer goes off, we mark for fix later. And when’s the only time you or the officers don’t let a man walk ‘round and don’t ask for this, don’t ask for that? When’s the only time a man can catch up on the z’s, eh? One and the same time! So I doze. Buzzer goes off, I wake, make a note, doze again till I can work, ya? Such wisdom!”

  Benno usually lectured him about complacency. He asked what would happen if they were hit, if the shot was hot enough, deep enough, destructive enough to burn through the backup of the backup of the backup. What if they did have to face the Great Test, to rise and work and save the Puller themselves?

  Kenny would always smile, relieved. “Well, then I be dead, ya? No more maintenance either way. Good enough reason to doze right there!”

  Benno could have reported him any number of times, but he never had. Putting it on paper and sending it above them was a two-edged sword. It would solve Kenny’s sleepy disdain for order, of that Benno had no doubt, but he also knew he would lose Kenny’s trust and the vigorous drive the young ALS plebeian applied to every other task. Plus, it would signal to the officers above that Benno couldn’t handle a minor discipline problem on his own. And it would indicate to the ranks below that Benno was no longer one of their own—when he had gone from Chief to Chief Warrant Officer, he had changed his ties, forever.

  So Benno growled, but he let it slide, content only he would know about Kenny’s acts of passive rebellion. No one else would ever know why the young tech kept getting extra punishment duties. Besides, it wasn’t as if Kenny was actually wrong, in the fullness of things.

  Then, before Benno could check his own side of the console to verify whether things were indeed alright, his internal debate was blown away by the unforgiving, indiscriminate lance of an x-ray laser blast.

  The single beam struck the Puller a glancing blow, centered on a space just beneath the outer hull and aimed outboard. Armor plate, radiation shielding, piping, wireways, conduit, decking, internal honeycombed structure, atmosphere, and people all ionized and ablated into a dense, mixed plasma. This plasma exploded outward, crushing the spaces surrounding the hit and dealing further physical and thermal damage. Combat Systems Maintenance Central, or CSMC, lay deep within the Puller’s battle hull—three spaces inward from where the x-ray laser struck—but that meant little next to the awesome destructive power of a Dauphine capital-class xaser warhead.

  The forward and port bulkheads in front of them flashed white hot with near-instantaneous thermal energy transfer and peeled away, blown out by the twin shocks of the outward-expanding plasma and the snapping counterforce of explosive decompression. The double blast battered Benno in his seat and threw him against his straps to the left. As the bulkheads vanished, their departure also carried away the CSMC monitoring console the two watch standers shared with them into the black, along with Kenny’s seat, and Ken Burnside, himself.

  The young engineer disappeared in an instant, lost without ever waking. Benno stared, dumbfounded, at the blank spot where he had been, and of all the possible panicked thoughts that could have come to him, only one rose to the forefront:

  Does this validate Kenny’s wisdom?

  Benno shook his head, dazed and in shock, knowing he had to engage his brain. Looking beyond, he could see the glowing edges of bulkheads and decks gouged out by the fast, hot knife of the nuclear-pumped xaser. Only vaguely could he recall the sudden buffeting of explosive decompression that had nearly wrenched him through the straps of his acceleration couch.

  He knew he had things to do. He had to check his suit’s integrity. Was he leaking? Was he injured? And what about Kenny? Was he gone, unrecoverable? Or was he waiting for his poor, shocked-stupid boss Benno to reach out and save him?

  And there was something else, something important he needed to
be doing. He wasn’t supposed to just sit here and think of himself or unlucky, lazy Kenny. Oh no, thought Benno, still trying to marshal his thoughts back together, Mio is going to be so angry with me, sitting here like a fool…

  “CSMC, report!”

  Benno shook his head against the ringing he hadn’t realized filled his ears. He reached out for the comms key on his console, swore at how futile that was, then keyed his suit mic. “Last station calling, this is CSMC. We’ve taken a hit. I lost my technician, console is…down, hard. Over.”

  “CSMC, TAO,” the Puller’s Tactical Action Officer said through the suit channel, “pull it together! We just had a near miss by a capital class Dauphine warhead. The battle with the Terrans has spread out of the main body. I have missiles up but zero point-defense. I need guns and beams back, now!”

  “TAO, CSMC, negative, sir. Maintenance Central is no more. My console and the bulkhead it was attached to are gone, burned away. Petty Officer Burnside is dead!” Benno exclaimed. “That was no near miss. That was a hit. I have no idea how I’m alive, sir!”

  “Damn, it, Warrant Sanchez, Dauphines have a hundred xaser elements per and there are dozens of them expanding out from the main battle. A glancing hit by a single beam is a near miss. Now, get off your lazy, plebeian ass and get my active defenses back online!”

  Benno scowled. He knew the voice. It belonged to Lieutenant Commander Craig Johnson, ACV Puller’s Operations Officer, and a pompous ass if there ever was one. If Benno ever forgot his roots, LCDR Johnson would happily and nastily remind him. Only one thing had kept Benno from “re-training” OPS using the methods of the lower decks, and that was that the CO was a virtual twin to the man in his attitudes and manner. Benno knew it was not an argument he would win in the long run.

  Still, ass or not, the man was not wrong. Something needed to be done, or one hit would be the least of their damage. The fog finally cleared from Benno’s mind, and a plan of action coalesced. He keyed his mic. “TAO, CSMC, myself and some techs will be moving about. Request you keep evasive maneuvers or thrust to one G or less while we are operating unsecured.”

  “No promises, Warrant. The Damage Control teams make do. So will you. How long is this going to take?”

  “TAO, unknown ETR. Recommend you have mounts go to local fire, if they’re up, until we can reintegrate the combat direction suite.”

  There was a pause on the other side of the line while Benno unstrapped from his seat. “Sanchez, I am not about to turn over my point-defense mounts to the wild fire-support of a bunch of plebs, more accustomed to turning wrenches than solving defense in depth handoffs. The closest your mount techs have come to weapons direction is playing videogames on their data suites!”

  Benno stood, feet firmly planted on the deck by a near gravity of constant acceleration. They must still be moving with the main body of the fleet toward the planned engagement zone. If so, how the hell had the Terrans deployed Dauphines out far enough to hit them on the fringes? If they were retreating, Benno figured they would have been thrusting a hell of a lot harder than a mere G. He keyed his mic. “TAO, right now you have jack shit for PD. It’s either trust a bunch of kids playing Space Invaders for real, or hope the Terrans know you’re in charge and, therefore, not worth wasting a missile on.”

  Benno cut the channel before Johnson could respond and switched his suit radio to the Combat Systems Maintenance Net. “All stations, this is CSMC, we’ve taken a slice through our hull, and all our point-defense is offline. Assuming no mounts were hit, it means the beam cut the control runs, and we need to string emergency data lines and power. Mounts should switch to local control. Unless you’re a mount captain or a gunner/loader, I need you to unstrap and meet me outside CSMC, now. This is an all hands effort!”

  No one responded.

  Benno keyed his mic again. “I’m serious! Seal up and move your asses, or I am assured we’re all gonna be eating xaser rounds in about 15 minutes. Move!”

  Stations began to respond in sequence, their voices sounding reluctant and uncertain. Benno took one last look at the scar of melted alloy where his console and the corner of the space had been—where Kenny had been. It was nothing now, just a dark opening leading out into open space and the other wrecked spaces on the far side of the scar. If the xaser had been aimed only a fraction of a degree further over than it had, Benno would have died too. The thought made him shudder in a shameful mix of fear and relief.

  When he reached the door, he could not immediately leave. CSMC was in vacuum, while the corridor outside was still fully pressurized. Benno was loath to experience explosive decompression a second time. He forced himself to wait patiently as the damage control logics pumped the air out of the corridor and finally permitted him to open the hatch.

  Once the door swung open, what few hopes he had plummeted. Every mount and several auxiliary control stations had internal communication and data techs to handle problems locally as they arose. Anything they couldn’t immediately fix in situ, they would shut down and rely on backups, or they would send out maintenance drones to repair remotely. Given the number of techs he had called down, he should have been met by at least nine people to assist.

  In the airless corridor outside CSMC, there were a grand total of three workers standing by: Eric Goldman, Raoul Ortiz, and Liz Salazar.

  The door shut behind him, and air immediately began backfilling loudly, but Benno did not trust it. They would remain helmeted. He spoke loudly into the suit comm over the roar of inrushing air. “I don’t know where the others are. Maybe the damage prevented them from making their way here, or maybe they’re lost—”

  The large figure to Benno’s right interrupted him. “Or maybe they’re smart enough to recognize a shit sandwich, and they’re headed for the rescue pods.” Petty Officer First Class Raoul Ortiz was a great tech…but brave? Patriotic? Loyal? Hardly.

  Benno glared at him. “That’s enough, Raoul. This situation is salvageable, but with so few, we have to work smart, and we have to work fast.” Benno called up the ship’s schematic on his suit’s forearm info panel and was pleased to note Damage Control had just updated it. An angry, red scar sliced through an edge of the Puller’s long, hexagonal, forward battle hull, just in front of the amidships’ radiator banks. He flipped through a number of overlays, disregarding the layers for piping, structure, ventilation, and power, and finally stopped at the Combat Systems data network overlay. He made it live and pushed it to the others.

  Benno marked vital nodes and stretched out lines to note where they would string emergency fiber runs. Where the damage was too significant, they would have to work backward to a clear node and set up wireless re-transmitters to cover the gaps. Fiber would be more secure in a battle environment with electromagnetic pulses, nukes, and the electronically noisy snap of lasers going off all around them, but speed mattered more than fidelity. He hoped to be done at the same time or before the electricians finished rigging casualty power.

  While he took them through the emergent repair plan, two more techs—Kim Aquino and David Webb—finally showed up. Better, Benno thought, but it’s still going to be tight. Especially if things heat up.

  And, as if he had willed it, the deck beneath their feet began to thrum, sharply and rhythmically. Benno looked up, and Ortiz said what they all assumed. “Shit. Railguns are firing.”

  Webb, the most naive and least experienced of the techs, smiled uncertainly. “No maneuvers though. No PD guns or lasers. That’s good!” The rest of his round, bearded face belied his hope, however, showing the fear underneath.

  Ortiz scoffed. “The railguns go first, you goddamn greenhorn. Long range intercept artillery, but they ain’t hardly no good against maneuvering missiles. Warheads gonna get closer. We’re gonna start jukin’ ‘round. Then you gonna die, greenhorn.”

  “Enough!” Benno shouted. “You have your assignments. Get moving, and work fast.” He made sure Ortiz and the tech he had just put fear of the Terrans into had no more words
as they separated to their assignments, then he proceeded to his own tasks.

  Benno depressurized the corridor and passed back through the door into what remained of CSMC. Picking up a repair pack, he approached the melted, sparking scar sliced through the side of the compartment. A stationary, quiescent star field yawned wide over the top of the cut. Across the chasm, the other side of the gash was not a clean cutaway like one would find in a virtual tour. It was melted and torn, broken and jumbled, but Benno could just make out the arrangement of decks and compartments.

  He gingerly climbed down into the hellscape. His suit insulated him from the still-hot edges, but he had to be careful. The metal pieces would cool rapidly, conduction bleeding their heat into the structure of the Puller, but anything that had broken free of its mount, anything non-metallic or well-insulated, might remain white-hot for some time. Radiation into the vacuum of space was a slow method of heat transfer.

  Benno reached his first objective, an operational network multiplexer hub. The fiber data trunk it fed into had been vaporized, but the yellow and red LEDs on the hub blinked merrily away, waiting for the opportunity to send their data from radars and lidars to combat direction computers, and from direction systems to illuminators and weapons mounts. The network was designed to be fault and battle damage tolerant, to automatically re-route from damaged or missing components to backup data lines and remain working. Slice out half the battle hull, however, and you would overtax even a robust system’s tolerances. The copper backup trunk running through the centerline of the Puller only had enough bandwidth to maintain essential ship systems—nothing approaching the volume of data it took to accurately aim and direct fire across hundreds and thousands of kilometers of empty space.