Silent Order: Wraith Hand Read online

  SILENT ORDER: WRAITH HAND

  Jonathan Moeller

  Table of Contents

  Description

  Chapter 1: Tamlin’s World

  Chapter 2: Survivors

  Chapter 3: Monastery Station

  Chapter 4: Merchant Prince

  Chapter 5: Overseer

  Chapter 6: Hunters

  Chapter 7: Logos

  Chapter 8: Ancient

  Chapter 9: Wraith Hunt

  Chapter 10: The Price Of Victory

  Other books by the author

  About the Author

  Description

  The galaxy is at war, but secret weapons can change the destiny of empires.

  When Jack March steals a sinister mind-control machine from the ruthless Final Consciousness, he needs to get device to his superiors in the Silent Order.

  But the Final Consciousness will burn entire civilizations to get the machine back.

  Starting with Jack March...

  Silent Order: Wraith Hand

  Copyright 2017 by Jonathan Moeller.

  Published by Azure Flame Media, LLC.

  Cover image copyright © Copyright mppriv | istockphoto.com & © Algol | Dreamstime.com - Spaceship With Blue Engine Glow Photo.

  Gunrunner Font used by license from Daniel Zadorozny.

  Ebook edition published October 2017.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Chapter 1: Tamlin’s World

  Jack March’s next assignment was simple.

  Naturally, he expected it to go bad, and he brooded about the possibilities for disaster as his ship traversed its hyperspace tunnel, powered by its dark matter reactor and protected from the macrobes by its resonator field.

  He presented a public face as the captain and owner of the Tiger, a Mercator Foundry Yards Class 9 light freighter, and he held letters of marque from the crown of the Kingdom of Calaskar. That meant he was a privateer, free to trade and travel as he liked within the star systems under the Kingdom’s authority, and to make war upon any vessels opposed to the Kingdom of Calaskar.

  In truth, March was an Alpha Operative of the Silent Order, the Kingdom’s intelligence and spy service. Alpha Operatives received the most dangerous and vital tasks, and March was among the best operatives in the Order. He knew that without false pride or false modesty, and knew the range of his skills and capabilities the way a master craftsman knew his tools.

  Normally, a simple delivery would have been a waste of an Alpha Operative.

  But given the nature of the machine secured within the Tiger’s strong room, March would have preferred to travel in the company of an entire battle group of the Royal Calaskaran Navy. He had no idea what the machine did, or even what it was called. But he did know that somehow the device could be used to suborn a human mind, to turn someone to the cause of the Machinists and the Revolution of the Final Consciousness against their will. March needed to get the device to the technicians of the Royal Calaskaran Navy, and hopefully, they could figure out how the damned thing worked, and more importantly, develop a defense against it.

  That part wasn’t his concern. March’s concern was getting the machine to the Navy.

  He suspected that might be a problem.

  On paper, at least, the plan ought to work. March was heading for Tamlin’s World, a semi-habitable planet beyond the boundaries of the Kingdom of Calaskar. None of the major interstellar powers claimed Tamlin’s World or its solar system, and multiple attempts to establish colonies on Tamlin’s World had failed. There were a few settlements on the planet, most of them dens of pirates and criminals, and the planet had developed a reputation as a dangerous waystation for those engaged in illegal behavior. The Royal Calaskaran Navy and the fleets of other powers sometimes sent patrols past Tamlin’s World, flying the flag to keep the troublemakers from making too much trouble.

  One of the Navy’s patrols was heading past Tamlin’s World, a heavy cruiser named the RCS Covenant. The Covenant was passing Tamlin’s World, and March would rendezvous with the cruiser and dock. A group of officers led by someone named Commander Malcolm Caird would take possession of the Machinist device in total secrecy. The Covenant would continue on its patrol, and March would proceed to Manzikert Station to receive his next assignment.

  March understood the logic behind the plan. If he headed to Calaskaran space and docked at a naval station, undoubtedly someone would wonder why a privateer was running deliveries to an installation of the Calaskaran Royal Navy. The space around Tamlin’s World wasn’t nearly as well-monitored, and it was likely March could make the handover without observation. The Covenant could continue its patrol without anyone the wiser.

  Nevertheless, March did not like the plan.

  He understood the need for secrecy, but if he had been in charge, he would have chosen security over secrecy. The Machinists knew March had the device, so secrecy had already been compromised. So many things could go wrong in an unclaimed system like Tamlin’s World, and March would have preferred to head to a fortified naval installation somewhere within Calaskaran space.

  But the orders had been given, and March would not disobey Censor, the head of the Silent Order.

  What was done was done, and if March had been dealt a bad hand, it was up to him to play it well.

  As the Tiger traversed its final hyperspace tunnel to the Tamlin system, March prepared. He first spent an hour in the cabin he had converted to a gym, starting with a run on the treadmill and then switching to strength exercises with the barbell and the weights. For that part of the exercise, he turned the local gravity to one hundred and fifty percent. His cybernetic left arm, his metal arm, could lift an astonishing amount of weight and strike with enough force to crush a man’s skull. To counterbalance its strength, his arm of flesh and the rest of his body needed to be strong.

  March checked the form of his exercises in the room’s narrow mirror. He detested the necessity of doing so. He did not like looking at himself, did not like seeing the scars upon his torso or the scar tissue where the metal of his left arm merged with the flesh of his shoulders. Nor did he like looking into his own eyes. The cold blue eyes and the close-cropped yellow hair made him look like a killer.

  Which, to be fair, he was.

  When he had finished, he cleaned off in the sanitizer booth in his cabin, dressed in his jumpsuit and coat, gun belt going around his waist. By then the Tiger was ten minutes from the exit point of its hyperspace tunnel, so he walked to the flight cabin. The Tiger’s narrow flight cabin had four acceleration chairs, with stations for the pilot, co-pilot, engineer, and tactical officer, but March could control the entire ship from the pilot’s station. He dropped into the pilot’s chair, the smart foam of the chair contouring itself to the shape of his body.

  His left shoulder hurt, but he ignored it. It always hurt.

  The console powered up, the displays glowing with diagrams and text, and holographic images swirled in front of him.

  “Good morning, Captain March,” said Vigil, speaking with the cool voice of a Calaskaran noblewoman. Vigil was the ship’s pseudointelligent computer, capable of almost any task save independent thought. It was a necessary restriction since throughout the history of humanity any true artificial intelligence had invariably descended into homicidal madness.
r />   “Good morning,” said March, looking at the displays. “ETA?”

  “Nine minutes thirty-two seconds until our arrival at the Tamlin system,” said Vigil.

  “All right,” said March. “Start precheck on the plasma cannons, the laser turrets, and the railgun. I want them running hot the minute we return to normal space. Do a precheck on the capacitors for both the kinetic shields and the radiation shields. I want weapons and defenses ready as soon as possible once we leave the tunnel.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Vigil. “Do you anticipate encountering hostile craft, Captain March?”

  “Maybe,” said March. “Best to be careful.”

  Vigil started running through the prechecks, but March followed along on the displays, checking the results himself. Before entering combat or even the potential for combat, he always preferred to check his own equipment and his own weapons. Throughout his time as an Iron Hand and an Alpha Operative of the Silent Order, caution had saved his life again and again.

  He had an intuition that such caution would save his life once again, and both the scientists of the Final Consciousness and the Kingdom of Calaskar thought that intuition was the result of subconscious processing in the brain. March didn’t know if that was true or not.

  He suspected he was about to find out.

  “Five minutes to the Tamlin system,” said Vigil.

  “Acknowledged,” said March. He finished the checks on the weapons and the shield systems. “Shift to tactical configuration as soon as we exit hyperspace.”

  He watched the numbers on the displays count down, flexing the metal fingers of his left hand as his right hand grasped the levers controlling the hyperdrive, the dark matter reactor, and the resonator.

  “Five seconds,” said Vigil at last. “Four, three, two, one.”

  March pulled the levers, and the Tiger exited from its hyperspace tunnel and returned to real space.

  Dozens of minor things happened in the flight cabin. The sight of hyperspace could induce insanity in a normal human mind, so the exterior views had been blanked. The viewscreens lit up with views of Tamlin’s World, a desolate-looking brown sphere orbiting an old, dimming star. The dark matter reactor and the resonator shut down, and the Tiger’s kinetic screens came online to block micrometeors and other debris. The fusion drive kicked on at low power, and the ion thrusters powered up.

  A dozen alarms flared across the displays.

  March had exited hyperspace on the edge of a battle.

  His sensors lit up with dozens of contact points and energy signatures, and a heartbeat after that a warning warbled through the flight cabin as the Tiger was scanned. March turned his own sensors to maximum. Using the radar, ladar, particle detectors, and dark energy scanners at maximum power was like lighting a torch in a dark room, but whoever was fighting here had already detected the Tiger’s arrival.

  “Multiple inbound hostile signatures detected,” said Vigil.

  “Acknowledged,” said March, staring at the sensor data scrolling across his screens.

  He spotted the Covenant. The Calaskaran heavy cruiser was about twenty million kilometers away, further down the gravity well of Tamlin’s World. The Covenant was a Cataphract-class heavy cruiser, over two kilometers long, a sleek, deadly looking shape bristling with railguns and plasma cannons and quad particle batteries and point-defense lasers. A Cataphract-class heavy cruiser also carried two squadrons of starfighters and a full complement of battle drones, and a Calaskaran heavy cruiser could fight an entire fleet of less-capable starships on its own.

  And the Covenant was about to be destroyed.

  The cruiser’s kinetic shields had collapsed, and its radiation shields were nearly gone. Massive hull breaches dotted its flanks where bombardment had torn through the ship’s heavy armor plating. Some of the plasma cannons and particle batteries were still firing sporadically, though to judge from the state of the ship the computer was controlling the fire.

  The Covenant was shooting at a group of Machinist warships.

  There were three of them, two destroyers and a fleet carrier. The Kingdom of Calaskar liked to build ships that looked sleek and deadly, even beautiful. The Final Consciousness eschewed such archaic and regressive concepts as aesthetics. The two destroyers and the carrier were blocky masses of dark metal, studded with weapon emplacements. The Tiger’s sensors picked up a large amount of battle debris floating around the ships. It looked like the Covenant had put up a hell of a fight. To judge from the wreckage, a Machinist corvette and cruiser had been destroyed during the battle, and both of the remaining destroyers had taken heavy damage.

  But the battle was over, and the Covenant was finished.

  And some of the Machinist carrier’s fighters had survived the battle and were heading for the Tiger.

  “Multiple transmissions inbound,” announced Vigil. “A distress call from the Covenant.”

  March tapped a key on the control board. A prerecorded distress call crackled from the speakers, announcing an SOS from the RCS Covenant, urging any and all Calaskaran vessels within range to render immediate assistance. There were a score of weaker transmissions coming from the hundreds of lifeboats that the Covenant had launched to get its crew to safety before the ship exploded.

  And there was a tight-beam transmission aimed right at the Tiger, coming from the four Machinist starfighters sweeping towards him.

  March’s mouth pressed into a hard line, and he flipped the switch.

  “Attention unidentified freighter,” said a human-ish voice with the distinctive metallic tone of someone modified with Machinist cybernetic implants. “This system is under the control of the Final Consciousness. You will surrender yourself and your vessel to our control at once.”

  “Hell with that,” muttered March.

  He ran quick calculations in his mind. The Covenant had shot nearly three hundred lifeboats into space. Most of them were making for Tamlin’s World, but they were flying right into the hands of the Machinists. The Machinists would take the crew of the Covenant captive and forcibly convert some of them into drones of the Final Consciousness while using those who were unable to join the hive mind as slave labor until they died, after which their bodies would be fed into the organic recyclers to extract valuable protein.

  March loathed the thought of leaving anyone to the Final Consciousness’s tender mercies, but the Covenant and the Machinist carrier were between him and the lifeboats, to say nothing of the damaged destroyers. Could he rescue any of them? He glanced at the scanner displays and blinked in surprise.

  Most of the lifeboats were trying and failing to reach Tamlin’s World, but one was driving for deep space.

  Likely the pilot was hoping to buy a little time in hopes of escaping, though it was a long-shot hope.

  Its vector would take it close to the Tiger.

  Perhaps March could be that long-shot hope.

  Assuming, of course, the starfighters did not blast the Tiger to dust first.

  He hesitated for just an instant. The Silent Order and the Royal Calaskaran Navy had to get their hands on the device in his cargo hold. Whatever it was, it was dangerous, and it needed to be analyzed and understood. March could do nothing to save the Covenant. He could do nothing to save its doomed crew. He might be able to rescue that one errant lifeboat, but he could get himself killed in the process, and the Kingdom’s only copy of the Machinists’ device would be destroyed with the Tiger.

  He could not allow that to happen. Perhaps his duty was to flee the Tamlin system and escape before the Machinists destroyed the Tiger.

  “The Machinist starfighters are switching to an inbound attack vector,” announced Vigil. “They are locking onto the ship.”

  Well, that settled it.

  The hyperdrive would not be ready for a jump before the starfighters came into range. March would have to fight them, and perhaps he would have time to grab that escaping lifeboat on his way out.

  “Acknowledged,” said March. “Weapon
and shield status?”

  “Ready,” said Vigil, and the tactical display lit up green.

  “Manual flight control,” said March, grasping the piloting yoke. He spun the Tiger through a tight turn, whipping the freighter around to face the four oncoming starfighters. “Configure laser turrets for point defense, get the flak launchers ready, and start calculating firing solutions. See if you can get a call to that lifeboat from the Covenant that’s heading our way.”

  “Processing,” said Vigil.

  March flipped a switch on the communications panel, opening a channel to the Machinist starfighters.

  “Attention unidentified freighter,” said the voice. “You will surrender…”

  “Turn around and fly back to your carrier,” said March. “Else I’m going to kill you all.”

  There was an instant of hissing silence. March suspected that few people had ever addressed the pilots like that.

  “If you do not surrender to us you shall be destroyed,” said the voice at last.

  “Try,” said March, and he terminated the connection.

  The starfighters continued their vector towards the Tiger, and March shifted to meet them.

  Data scrolled across the tactical display, and he saw that the fighters were light interceptors, fast and nimble, but armed only with a pair of plasma cannons and four missiles each. That was still enough firepower to take apart the Tiger unless March was clever.

  The communication display pinged. March was close enough to the lifeboat that he could communicate. March flipped the switch, and the flight cabin crackled with static.

  “Mayday,” said a male voice, dry and calm despite the danger. “Mayday. This is Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Caird of the Royal Calaskaran Navy calling unidentified freighter…”

  “I hear you, Commander,” said March. “I think I can pick up your lifeboat before any other fighters arrive from that Machinist carrier, but only if I engage those interceptors first.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Caird. “We are heading towards you. I assume you’ll have to pick us up at speed.”