Death Never Wins (Guns of the Federation Book 7) Read online

  DEATH NEVER WINS

  GUNS OF THE FEDERATION BOOK 7

  ANTHONY JAMES

  CONTENTS

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Also by Anthony James

  © 2022 Anthony James

  All rights reserved

  The right of Anthony James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

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  ONE

  Captain Jed Grisham stared at the sensor feeds. The image on his screen was that of planet Shesa-2, a hundred thousand kilometres away. Shesa-2 was a lush world with a warm climate, a surface of mountains, lakes, rivers and oceans, and a population of almost sixty billion people. Every one of those people was in the gravest of danger.

  “The first of the evacuation transports should be here in twenty hours, Captain,” said Lieutenant Dan Bishop. “It has a one-billion holding capacity.”

  “Leaving only fifty-nine billion others to go,” said Lieutenant Mac Adler. “This is a catastrophe waiting to happen.”

  “We already lost much of our shipbuilding capacity,” said Lieutenant Kaci Lopez. “Three of the trenches on Loxor were holding part-constructed interplanetary transports. Now we’re having to start building them again from scratch, only on a different world.”

  “Enough talk,” said Grisham tiredly.

  They’d gone through this dozens of times already. The Ax’Kol had been defeated at Loxor, but they’d wrecked the planet. Now, the Human Federation was faced with the urgent need to evacuate two additional planets – Shesa-2 and Earth – but without having the vessels capable of holding so many people.

  Aside from that, there was nowhere for those people to go. Although there were many low-population worlds within the Human Federation, they all lacked the necessary infrastructure to cope with an influx of more than a hundred billion people.

  The entire situation was a complete disaster, and, though the members of the ruling Senate were pulling in the same direction for once, this was a problem that required both time and resources to fix, and right now, the Human Federation was sorely lacking in the former. The Ax’Kol might conceivably appear out of lightspeed at any moment, and when that happened, the casualties would easily climb into the billions – unless, of course, the badly depleted human fleet could hold off the enemy until sufficient transports were constructed to enact two vast and complicated evacuations.

  As the commanding officer of the immense alien warship Oblasar, Grisham was carrying a lot on his shoulders, since his was the only vessel in the fleet capable of inflicting real and significant harm on the Ax’Kol. Unfortunately, the Oblasar, advanced as it was, could not be in two different places at the same time.

  Added to everything else, humanity’s new allies, the Kijol, we also under extreme pressure. Five of their worlds were in imminent danger of Ax’Kol attack, so the aliens were not able to spare any of their own fleet to assist the Human Federation. The new alliance was holding well enough, but at the moment, there weren’t many opportunities for the two species to act in concert.

  Drawing his eyes away from the feeds, Grisham called up the transcript of his recent conversation with Senator Herschel Maynard. He read the words again, for what must have been the tenth time.

  Less than a week ago, more than a hundred members of the HF fleet had been destroyed while helping the Kijol defend one of their planets – Jarodar - against an Ax’Kol attack. The cause of the destruction had been a massive wide-area pulse of decay energy, which had not only wrecked the hulls of the affected warships, but had also killed everyone onboard at the same time. In addition, more than twenty billion Kijol on the facing side of Jarodar had also been killed, and the aliens had also lost nearly 150 warships from their own fleet.

  Despite the utter devastation wrought by the attack, there was no clear feed data of the enemy vessel – which was thought to be the Gavax’Kol. A couple of the Jarodar planetary monitors had captured a glimpse of a vast and indistinct shape, but no amount of enhancement would turn those images into anything which would provide useful intel.

  Given the poor quality of the feed data, it was believed the Gavax’Kol was equipped with sensor deflection technology. Grisham had also suggested to Maynard that the artifact controlling this terrible opponent might be able to create a telepathic block that prevented it from being detected. Although his experience suggested that telepathic powers weren’t effective against non-telepaths, Grisham wondered if the Gavax’Kol was different.

  “I hate not having a plan,” said Commander Lois Deneuve. She was in the seat to Grisham’s right and she bore a hard expression which, of late, was continually present on her face. “The thought of sitting here for weeks, waiting for the Ax’Kol to decide which planet they’re going to attack next, is chewing me up.”

  “That goes for all of us,” said Grisham.

  Of their own accord, his eyes went to the ammunition readouts for the Oblasar’s many weapons. For a warship which had existed for almost a billion years, its magazines were surprisingly close to full. When Grisham and his crew had first captured the vessel, its Kalor drive had been completely depleted – a process which had taken hundreds of millions of years – and yet it hadn’t run out of ammunition.

  That meant either the Oblasar had never fired its weapons – which was unlikely, given the scarring on the vessel’s hull – or it had been resupplied at some point before its Kalor drive went offline. Grisham was keen to learn more about the species which had constructed his new spaceship, since their technology was more advanced than that of both the Human Federation and the Kijol.

  He was about to ask Lopez how her search of the Oblasar’s star charts was proceeding, when Bishop spoke up with some good news.

  “Captain, I’ve been told that a supply shuttle has just been launched from the Idon base. It should be in a position to dock with us in the next thirty minutes.”

  Grisham smiled. The Oblasar was lacking even the most basic comforts, and it looked as if that would soon be resolved. He’d put in a request for several portable replicators, mattresses, soap, shaving equipment, and various other essentials which would make life on the warship a little more bearable. Grisham had also requested some additional weapons a
nd ammunition for the personnel onboard, since their existing supplies were running low.

  “Any news about our backup crew?” asked Deneuve.

  “It’s the same situation as before, Commander,” said Bishop. “If we want a backup crew that’s fresh off a Tibor, we can have them at any time. Getting hold of officers with more experience is difficult at the moment. I’ve been told we should have our backups in a day or two.”

  In truth, Grisham wasn’t eager to have new faces on his warship, and he only partly accepted the necessity. He and his crew had been together for so long, he was doubtful if the new officers would fit in quickly enough that he’d be able to rely on them if the Oblasar was caught up in a knife-edge engagement.

  I’m getting stuck in my ways, Grisham chastised himself. There are thousands of skilled and experienced officers in the HF fleet.

  “Would you like me to request some additional ground squads while I’m on the comms, Captain?” asked Bishop.

  “Yes - they can come to the Oblasar with our backup crew,” said Grisham. “And they’ll be under Sergeant Maxwell’s command.”

  He turned his gaze back to the feeds. A couple of cruisers from the local fleet travelled slowly past the Oblasar. So far, almost every vessel stationed at Shesa-2 had come by for a look, and Grisham wasn’t surprised. At fifteen kilometres in length and with an incredible mass, the Oblasar was a technological marvel, which looked both ancient, yet strikingly capable at the same time. In this case, appearances weren’t deceiving.

  Grisham remembered he’d been about to speak with Lieutenant Lopez. “Commander Deneuve, you have the controls,” he said, rising from his seat.

  The muscles all over Grisham’s body felt tight. The on-duty times had been long, and the padding on the Oblasar’s seats had long since decayed to nothing, leaving only the metal. Despite the thickness of his combat suit, Grisham felt like each hour sitting was a punishment. He’d requested some seat covers, along with all the other supplies, and their arrival couldn’t come soon enough.

  “How’s your search of the star charts proceeding, Lieutenant Lopez?” asked Grisham, walking down the bridge’s central aisle and stopping at her console.

  “It’s a slow job, Captain,” said Lopez. “There are trillions of entries in the Oblasar’s charts. Some of those entries came from our suit computers, some from the Urzox, and the rest were either in the databanks to begin with, or the Edran artifact added them just before Sergeant Maxwell destroyed it.”

  “Those latest entries were also given to the Ax’Kol,” said Grisham.

  “Yes, sir – and those are the ones on which I’m focusing. We already identified the HF populated worlds which the Ax’Kol know about, and you communicated details of the threatened Kijol worlds to Senator Maynard before we departed Loxor.”

  “Assuming you’re hoping to find where the Oblasar was resupplied, is there any reason to believe the latest star chart entries are more significant than any of the others, Captain?” asked Lieutenant Eric Kinsey.

  “Just a feeling,” said Grisham. “When the Edran knew it was going to lose to the Ax’Kol corruption, it wanted to help us – that’s why it gave us command access to the Oblasar. Maybe it tried to help in other ways too.”

  “By adding something to the star charts,” said Lopez.

  “Maybe,” said Grisham.

  He was only guessing himself. During his last discussion with the artifact, it was on the brink of corruption. Perhaps it lacked anything resembling lucid thought, and Grisham was hoping for something which didn’t exist. And yet, at the very last, the Edran had spoken to him coherently – he could remember it well.

  “What am I missing here, Captain?” asked Adler. “On the one hand, you’re saying these final star chart entries were given to the Ax’Kol, while on the other, you’re suggesting the Edran might have been trying to help us. Surely if the artifact was helping us, it was helping the Ax’Kol as well.”

  “You’re forgetting one important fact, Lieutenant,” said Grisham. “The Ax’Kol are only interested in life - their primary goal is to kill as many living creatures as possible. They’ll seek out the populated worlds, and then they’ll move on to other areas of the universe.”

  “Assuming the Edran tried to offer us a last moment helping hand, what exactly do you think we might find at this hypothetical resupply station?” asked Bishop.

  “Tech,” said Grisham. The answer sounded lame, so he tried to pad it out with some guesswork. “The Oblasar was built to kick ass. How do we know the species which created it didn’t construct a hundred other warships like it? How do we know the Oblasar is even the best they could make?”

  “We know none of those things,” said Adler. He shrugged. “I guess doing something is better than doing nothing.”

  “That’s how I see it,” said Grisham. “Hunting through the star charts might turn up nothing useful, in which case we haven’t lost anything.”

  “But we’re still tied here to Shesa-2,” said Bishop. “If we find something, we can’t make the journey to see what it is.”

  “That’s another problem entirely, Lieutenant,” said Grisham.

  He spent another couple of minutes standing at Lopez’s shoulder. She continued to search through the most recent entries – of which there were thousands – in the hope that something would stand out as being different. It was distinctly possible this was no more than a wild goose chase, but with little else to do while the Oblasar was at Shesa-2, Grisham thought it was a chase worth pursuing.

  “Keep at it, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Grisham returned to his seat, grimacing at the discomfort as he lowered himself into it. He imagined how much his life would be improved with the simple addition of some padding to his seat, and a cup of shitty coffee from one of the portable replicators. A check of the supply shuttle’s progress told him it would be docking in twenty minutes.

  “I wonder if all those people down there on Shesa-2 truly know what’s happening,” said Grisham, after he’d spent another minute or two staring at the feeds. He’d made no effort to involve himself in the evacuation process and had no idea how the Senate and the military were handling the issue.

  “I reckon the people needed to be told the bad truth,” said Deneuve. “Sometimes, that’s the only way.”

  Grisham felt the same clenching in his guts that came whenever his mind began thinking too much about the wider realities for the Human Federation’s populace. In a way, he had it easy – he had a warship, and that gave him a degree of control over whether he lived or died. For everyone else, they could do little other than hope the military wouldn’t let them down.

  Another few minutes went by and Grisham’s thoughts wandered again to the contents of the supply shuttle’s hold. A faint smile came to his lips.

  The shuttle docked and the unloading was finished in only a few minutes. Sergeant Maxwell and the soldiers would deal with carrying the supplies into the habited areas of the Oblasar, and the task would keep them occupied for a couple of hours.

  Long before that was done, Lieutenant Lopez announced that she’d found something.

  TWO

  “Captain, you might want to check this out,” said Lopez.

  “On my way,” said Grisham.

  He nodded at Deneuve to indicate the controls were hers and then left his seat. Standing at Lopez’s console, Grisham narrowed his eyes at the data on her screen.

  “What’ve you got?” he asked.

  “This,” said Lopez, pointing at a set of coordinates. “The time stamp indicates the details for this location were entered into the star charts one trillionth of a second after all the others. The filters I was running didn’t distinguish between so many decimal places, so it was mixed in with everything else.”

  Grisham experienced a flicker of interest. “Are there any other entries with varying time stamps?” he asked.

  “No, sir. The other entries which came from the Edran were al
l inserted into the databanks with the exact same time stamp. Except this one. Like it was an afterthought.” Lopez clearly had something else to say – the big reveal – but before she could say what it was, Lieutenant Adler interrupted.

  “Or like the Ax’Kol forced the Edran to give up something important,” said Adler. “And the artifact showed us what it was at the same time.”

  “That’s a possibility,” said Lopez. “But we were looking for anything unusual, and here’s one such entry.” She gave the thin smile of someone who was about to shut down any further argument. “Besides, there’s been some additional text implanted into the entry.”

  “What does it say?” asked Grisham, leaning closer in anticipation.

  Lopez pointed again, at a single word that was right at the bottom of all the other data related to this star chart entry. Grisham read it once, twice, and then a third time.

  “Mordran,” he said.

  “That’s got to be more than coincidence, Captain,” said Lopez.

  “A sixth artifact?” said Deneuve. “Time and again we’ve been told there were only five.”

  “And there might be only five,” said Grisham. “But still…Mordran…the name would drop right in with the others.”

  “Before we go getting ourselves all excited, this could be anything,” said Adler. “But if it is a sixth artifact, it’s definitely information the Ax’Kol would be interested in. Those faceless bastards would prioritise the recovery of a sixth artifact above even the juiciest of planets.”