IronStar
Authors: Grant Hallman
IronStar
A "Second Contact" Novel
A novel by Grant Hallman – all rights reserved. ©
2013
(rev.e)
Cover art by Jennifer Garstang
http://jennifergarstang.com/art
An Exceptional Mission:
Marooned by treachery and alone on
an unexplored planet far from the frontier, Lieutenant Kirrah Roehl of the
Regnum Survey Service finds herself in exactly the sort of simple, pastoral
environment a jaded tourist, or a properly enthusiastic RSS field agent, would
give her eyeteeth to explore.
…Except that Kirrah is not
qualified for fieldwork, and dislikes tourists. She is a highly trained and
competent starship navigator, dependent on the technology she grew up with, and
far more at home on the bridge of a starship than wandering the surface of a
planet, trying to recall her rusty field survival training.
…Except for the raiders, the
politics, the monsters, and the young boy who saves her life, and the war she
must wage and win, to save his.
…Except for the locals who make her
their Warmaster, trusting their lives to her skills and her promise that help
will come, in the form of a ‘ship of iron’ that will appear in their sky as a
star.
…Except for the fact that she is
not nearly so alone as she believed. It seems her Regnum is neither the only,
nor even the first starfaring empire to discover this planet.
…And except that somehow, when
rescue finally arrives, things only seem to get worse. Altogether, a positively
except
ional mission.
Chapter 5 (Landing plus one): Dinner
21
Chapter 6 (Landing plus one): Picnic
.
24
Chapter 7 (Landing plus one): Malame’thsha
.
27
Chapter 8 (Landing plus two): Options
.
30
Chapter 9 (Landing plus three): Talameths’cha
.
36
Chapter 11 (Landing plus seven): Audience
.
46
Chapter 12 (Landing plus eight): Tourist
54
Chapter 13 (Landing plus twenty-five): Skirmish
.
56
Chapter 14 (Landing plus twenty-five): Arithmetic
.
59
Chapter 15 (Landing plus thirty): Supply and
Demand
.
62
Chapter 16 (Landing plus thirty-seven): Interlude
.
66
Chapter 17 (Landing plus thirty-eight):
Transformations
.
67
Chapter 18 (Landing plus thirty-nine): Stone
Surprise
.
69
Chapter 19 (Landing plus thirty-nine): Council
79
Chapter 20 (Landing plus forty): Celebration
.
83
Chapter 22 (Landing plus fifty-one): Judgement
88
Chapter 23 (Landing plus sixty-two): Cruising
.
94
Chapter 24: Tubespace, En Route
.
103
Chapter 25 (Landing plus sixty-five): Footrace
.
107
Chapter 26: Flag Operations Center, RNS
Belleville
.
Tubespace.
115
Chapter 27 (Landing plus sixty-five): “Welcome to
Talam”
120
Chapter 28 (Landing plus sixty-nine): Interlude
.
127
Chapter 29 (Landing plus eighty-five): “Only
resting”
129
Chapter 30 (Landing plus eighty-six): “Plan B”
135
Chapter 31 (Landing plus one hundred twenty):
Interlude
.
145
Chapter 32 (Landing plus one hundred thirty):
Parley
.
147
Chapter 33 (Landing plus one hundred thirty):
Plague of Screams
.
150
Chapter 34 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-two):
Accident
153
Chapter 35 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-two):
Interlude, Dreamscape
.
156
Chapter 36 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-six):
Contact
158
Chapter 37 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-six):
Ironstar
161
Chapter 38 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-six):
Another
166
Chapter 39 (Landing plus one hundred
thirty-seven): Debrief
171
Chapter 40 (Landing plus one hundred
thirty-seven): Sho’ito
.
180
Chapter 41 (Landing plus one hundred
thirty-eight): O'dakai
186
Chapter 42 (Landing plus one hundred
thirty-eight): Hostage
.
196
Chapter 43 (Landing plus one hundred
thirty-eight): Chain of Command
.
203
Chapter 44 (Landing plus one hundred
thirty-nine): Kaena’hachk
.
207
Chapter 46 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-nine):
Velocity
.
218
Chapter 47 (Landing plus one hundred
thirty-nine): Retribution
.
222
Chapter 48 (Landing plus one hundred
thirty-nine): Gifts and Promises
.
227
Chapter 49 (Landing plus one hundred forty-one):
Lessons
.
232
Chapter 50 (Landing plus one hundred fifty-five):
Happily Ever After
237
Chapter 51 (Landing plus one hundred sixty-two):
Interruption
.
240
Chapter 52 (Landing plus one hundred
seventy-five): Interlude
.
243
Chapter 53 (Landing plus one hundred
eighty-five): Postlude
.
245
Appendix 1: Dramatis Personae
.
248
Appendix 3: Naval Specifications
.
253
Appendix 5: Talamae Language & miscellaneous
.
257
Appendix 7: Author’s comments
.
262
“The
use of the element of surprise as an effective weapon and force multiplier is
well known throughout the annals of military history, and will be thoroughly
covered in your tactical training exercises. Most frequently, however, the
emphasis has been on the
offensive
uses of surprise. We now turn to its uses as a
defense
.” - Introductory address, Regnum War Academy,
Tactical Training Class of 242 A.F.; Admiral the Right Honorable Dr. Cornelius
Mansing, guest lecturer.
In her dream it was dark, dark as
Tubespace, but without its faint familiar warmth. This nightmare had a raw edge
to it, ugly undertones of panic and hopelessness, and the dream-borne sense of
something small and deadly in pursuit. Scattered across the darkened plains
around her were others, people barely visible in the deep gloom, all fleeing.
Something like black robes billowed behind each figure like ebony flames in the
wind of their flight.
Whatever was chasing them drew
steadily closer, taking down one fleeing shape after another. She could see
them tumbling into pathetic bundles of black rags, left behind on the plains.
Soon the pursuer would be upon her. Kirrah felt herself starting to slide over
the edge into panic. She began to moan and shake. No, something was shaking
her….
“Rise’n’shine, Lieutenant Roehl!” A
familiar voice cut across her roiling images. Kirrah came awake with an abrupt
gasp and sat up, but cautiously, an old sailor’s reflex acquired over years of
bunking in narrow spaces. She blinked in her cabin’s dim red nightlight. A
wedge of whiter light spilled in through the open hatch, along with a dozen
subtle, familiar sounds of a Regnum Tubeship in transit.
“
Doris!
… Uhhh, gimme a
minute…” Her comrade and shipmate Lieutenant Doris Finch withdrew a slender,
dusky-brown hand from Kirrah’s shoulder. She sat up straighter, ran long
fingers through tangled dark-chestnut hair, tried to shake the clinging images
from her mind.
“Twenty-hundred, this is the shift
we wanted, kiddo. First Approach, you’n’me.”
Kirrah’s dark mood lifted a little
at the thought.
First Approach
, the best silver lining in the mostly
tedious life of the Regnum Survey Service. Weeks of boredom, punctuated by
moments of terrifying intensity - a lifestyle familiar to pilots since Kirrah’s
pre-space ancestors took to the oceans of Earth in open longboats, over
twenty-five centuries earlier.
Just then her personal wake-me
chimed. Its display showed ship’s time, ‘19:45’. She absently reached across
her tiny cabin to the workstation, tapped an acknowledgement.
“Thanks, Doris. See you at mess,
five minutes.” A quick visit to the head, a slither into a fresh shipsuit, a
ride one deck up via the narrow portside manlift, and Kirrah stepped into the
ship’s small galley. The bright even lighting, familiar breakfast smells and
clean efficiency of the room banished the last residue of Kirrah's sullen dream
images.
After a hasty grab at the first
thing on the automated breakfast menu, she stepped through the open messroom
hatch. As always, she glanced reflexively out the ninety-degree wraparound
polycor window. Unsurprisingly, all it showed at the moment was the dead black
of Tubespace a few dozen meters outside. Her distorted reflection stalked her
steps to the single long dining table.
Doris and Master Chief Sammy Lee
sat on the other side, facing her. Seated with his back to her was Captain
Leitch, to her mild surprise having come off daywatch a few minutes early. She
slipped into one of the comfortable anchored chairs on the same side, two down
the table from the Captain, and pulled the cover off her breakfast.
“Well, I'm betting we find
ourselves a hablet this time,” continued Master Chief Lee to Doris, or, given
her present interest in breakfast, possibly to no one in particular. “The
remote survey looks good, and besides, it's our turn!” Hablets – Survey Service
slang for inhabitable planets - were the reason the Service existed. Finding
one almost always made a crew both wealthy and famous.
“What, you already spent the bonus,
Sammy?” asked Doris around a bite of reconstituted fruit.
Sammy Lee’s oval, half-Oriental
face took on the mock-wounded look he did so well. “Our dauntless Sensor
Specialist, gone all cynical? Or you're still disappointed from last time?”
