Reformation

By Mark Henrikson

Key Move Publications, LLC

Copyright Mark Henrikson, 2013

St. Louis Missouri

DON’T MISS THESE OTHER

EXCITING TITLES IN THE

ORIGINS SERIES

             
Book 1:  Origins

              Book 2:  Centurion’s Rise

              Book 3:  Reformation

              Book 4:  The Reich (fall 2014)

              Book 5:  The Greater Good (fall 2015)

Friends and Family:

A big thank you once again
to the usual supporting cast: my wife Tracy, my brother Jeff, my mother Donna, and Kim Callan down in Texas.  It takes an army to put these books together, so thanks once again for joining me in the trenches.

The Reader:

Writing a novel is a lot of time and effort to expend if no one is going to enjoy reading it.  Books 3, 4, and 5 in the Origins series might have remained in outline form had the wonderful fans of Hastelloy and his crew not spread the word.    It has been nothing short of amazing to watch this Origins story grow in popularity over the last year. 

Knowing so many of you were eagerly
awaiting the arrival of book 3 was flattering, motivating, and to be honest a little intimidating since there is now the added pressure of expectations.  Pressure makes diamonds though and hopefully you find that was the case here.

As always, I
would love to hear your opinions on this novel or the entire series.  Find me on Goodreads.com (a website every self-respecting bibliophile should join and use immediately), let me hear it on Amazon, or shoot me an email at
[email protected]
.  Good things are always nice to hear, and so is constructive criticism; just remember the constructive part.

ENJOY!!!

Precious few moments
in life compare to the exhilaration of combat; mortal combat.  The thrill of never being so alive one moment with the prospect of not existing the next was intoxicating.  Kuanti embraced it, he craved it and he considered anyone who thought otherwise not a true Alpha.  The only limiting factor to his high was knowing his adversary did not share the same mortal jeopardy.

The Novi and their infernal Nexus device
that was capable of regenerating lives lost in battle was infuriating.  On countless occasions Novi fleets were decimated by brave Alpha warriors and yet the Novi collector ship simply slipped away to safety through a space fold.  Then the lives lost were regenerated, ships re-crewed, and the Alpha reengaged in battle like nothing happened.  That was all in the past now though.

Space fol
d travel had one critical weakness.  If the ship sensors detected a solid object between the craft and its destination, an event horizon could not be formed.  This fatal flaw would be the Novi’s undoing.  The Alpha finally perfected the ability to generate a mass density field large enough to obstruct their escape. 

Today, f
or the first time, a perimeter of Alpha constrainer vessels had surrounded a Novi fleet leaving no easy escape.  Finally his adversary had to face the same specter of death hanging over their shoulder as Kuanti, and that fact sent the primal rush of adrenalin coursing through his body with renewed vigor.

“We’ve got them,” Kuanti exclaimed while looking over Cora’s shoulder as she
strained to replace the last blown power relay feeding the wave blaster systems.  “Their fleet is destroyed, and that collector ship of theirs is damaged and on the run.  It’s only a matter of time until we locate them and complete our victory.”

“Yes, but the cost was disastrously high,” Cora responded coolly without looking back from her repair duties.  “Our fleet Commodore was an inbred pup.  He had the advantage of surprise and four to one odds while the Novi faced the immobilizing fear of dying for the fir
st time in combat.  Even a half witted runt could have carried the day with a fraction of our losses.”

Kuanti let loose a frustrated sigh.  “You have to give the
Novi credit.  Rather than be rendered impotent with fear, they stood tall and held their own today.  They battled through the odds in what has to be the single bravest act I have ever witnessed; the Novi collector ship flew directly though a constrainer ship causing its destruction to create a tiny gap in the constraint field to escape through.”

Cora allowed an angry growl to resonate deep in her throat at
Kuanti’s praise for the enemy.  “Lucky for us Captain Goron is in command now.  He is the only reason we are even alive now to pursue that Novi collector ship.  All the other captains went after those Onager vessels like they were females in heat to try and claim all the glory for themselves.  Goron was the only one to use his head.  He sensed the trap and pulled us away before those Novi ships self destructed.  Otherwise we would be among the billions of atoms floating in space rather than making final repairs to win the day and possibly the war.”

“Yes, Captain Goron is a worthy leader, strong and smart,” Kuanti admired
, but quickly changed the topic away from his better.  “Stellar cartography limited the number of systems they could have escaped toward down to three, and we have already thoroughly searched two of them.  I tell you, Cora, this is it.  These next few minutes will be a turning point in our history, and it is a privilege to be a part of it.”

Cora gave one last grunt and had her effort rewarded with a click of the power lead snapping into place and the soft hum of power flowing fre
ely to the ship’s weapon system once more.  “Now we have them,” she said with finality in her words as she stood up to face Kuanti, but only found empty air behind her when she completed the turn.  Her mate was off to give the good news and claim the credit.

“Wave blasters are back on line and fully powered,” Kuanti reported to his ‘superior’ with a familiar rush of adrenaline adding a hard edge to his words.  Combat was upon him once more, even if it was just the pursuit of a limping and unarmed Novi collector class ship.

“Excellent,” the chief engineer barked and then moved his relatively petite frame to a communications console mounted on the nearest wall.  Elohim was a very capable engineer, but reporting to such an unimposing individual pulled at Kuanti’s ambitious instinct.  If only he had the courage to challenge his leader he could be the one giving orders in engineering.

“Captain,” Elohim said into the intercom.  “Weapons systems are now online.”

“All of them?” came a curt reply.

An exacerbated sneer crossed
Elohim’s snout as he gently shook his head.  “No.  The fusion torpedo launchers are still offline and need more time to...”

“You’ve had almost an hour and only accomplished half of your orders.  This is too important for your incompetent excuses,” Captain Goron interrupted.  “You are to oversee the repairs personally to get them back on line.”

The captain did not wait for an acknowledgement; he simply cut off the conversation.  Elohim looked at Kuanti with resignation in his eyes.  “Even working miracles is not good enough for that man.”

“That’s why he’
s in charge,” Kuanti offered.

“That and he
stands a head taller than the rest of us,” Elohim said on his way toward the main corridor.  “You are in charge while I am in the torpedo room working another miracle for our dear leader.  Can you handle that?”

“Of course,” Kuanti responded with a bravado he knew deep down was only for show.

As he watched Elohim round the corner and vanish from view he felt a set of warm paws caress his shoulders from behind.  He glanced to the side and found Cora hovering over his left shoulder.  “Your first taste of leadership, he should not have done that.”

“You’
re right, he should not have,” Kuanti said while forcing a confident smirk to cross his lips for her benefit.  The woman’s ambition knew no bounds.  If she were a male, he had no doubt she could rule the entire galaxy.  Kuanti shrugged off her grasp and was about to address his subordinates looking on when the world around them erupted.

A powerful blast made the floor buck beneath them and sent everyone to the deck.  A sudden surge of air rushing in from the exit corridor drew
Kuanti’s attention.  He looked up in time to see an explosive fireball billowing toward the engineering chamber.  An instant before the flesh of every occupant in the room was consumed by the inferno, a solid metal bulkhead slammed shut over the doorway.

A moment
later Kuanti heard a deafening groan of metal shearing away from metal and then a sense of weightlessness overtook him.  He floated several inches above the deck plating before emergency systems kicked in to reestablish gravity and environmental support.  He landed painfully on his knees and paws but shrugged it off to stand and take command of the situation.

“What the blazes just happened?
” Kuanti demanded of no one in particular.

A junior officer
, whose name Kuanti was too flustered to remember at the moment, ran a damage assessment protocol on his console.  A set of silent heartbeats passed and then Kuanti watched the young man’s perky ears go limp.  “A fusion torpedo from the Novi vessel struck midship and tore us in half.”

“How is
that even possible?” Kuanti asked in open mouthed awe, but realized the answer was unimportant.  The question was not how it happened, but rather what should they do now that it did?

“Where is the rest of the ship?” Kuanti managed to ask.  “Was it destroyed?”

“No, it’
s floating toward the third planet along with the Novi ship which was incapacitated by our weapons fire before the torpedo hit.”

“What about us, where are we headed?” Kuanti insisted.

“Nowhere,” the young man answered with the ominous resignation of a death row inmate to his fate.  “We eventually might collide with a hunk of rock when we drift into the asteroid belt between the fourth and fifth planets a few hundred years from now.”

Kuanti stood motionless in the middle of the engineering room with thirty crewmen looking to him for guidance
.  He was at a complete loss for words.  The situation appeared hopeless. 

After what felt like a silent eternity,
Cora finally paced over to him and wrapped her reassuring paws around his shoulders once more.  “You are in charge, Leader.  How should we proceed?”

He swallowed hard and considered running from the situation
yelping like a newborn pup, but then a familiar and welcome sensation lifted his spirits.  He was scared to death and yet he had never felt so alive in his entire existence. 

A true Alpha embraced fear.  Fear of death, and now the fear of responsibility.  Kuanti slowly looked around the room and finally said with remarkable confidence, “Here is what we are going to do.
..”

Kuanti felt
A slight nudge to the shoulder that sent his body gently swaying in the hammock.  Moments later a more insistent shove brought him fully awake.  His upper body instinctively tried to sit up straight, but his snout smashed into the sagging occupied hammock hanging just above him.  A frustrated growl escaped his throat as he laid back, rolled to the side and slowly rose to his full height and squared off against his disturber with teeth showing from underneath his snarl.

“A
pologies, Leader,” his subordinate responded with contrition.  “It is time for a shift change.”

Kuanti exhaled his frustration while he slowly put his back against the wall and sucked in his stomach so the
crewman could climb into the hammock.  “I will be glad when we land so this hot bunking protocol will no longer be necessary,” he said softly to himself.

All along the narrow corridor hammocks were triple stacked and hung between structural support girders. 
Males and females alike were waking and taking their counterpart’s place in bed to execute the shift change.  Kuanti was anxious to reach the command deck and see if all was ready for their landing approach, but he had to wait.  The backlog of bodies in front of him took a few minutes to file out of the narrow corridor.  When he reached the exit portal, Kuanti had to bring in his shoulders and duck through a roughly cut hole in the bulkhead that served as a doorway.

The six foot gap between the outer and inner hu
ll of the ship was never intended to house crewmen.  With the exception of a few bare bulb light fixtures hastily added, the space was pitch dark and had extremely poor air circulation.  As a result, the small, narrow space was hot and muggy like a swamp on a hundred degree day.  The walls actually dripped with condensation.

Still, the crew needed somewhere to sleep.
  The engineering section had thirty crewmembers on duty when the Novi torpedo separated them from the rest of the ship.  There were no sleeping quarters in this section so a solution had to be improvised.  It was not ideal, but they were making it work.

Kuanti
paused to bask in the relatively cool environment he stepped into.  No longer feeling like a vegetable in a steam cooker, he zigzagged his way through a maze of occupied temporary workstations set up in the hallway leading to the command deck.  Quarters were so cramped one could not help but brush against workers on their way past.  Under normal circumstances such a violation of personal space would be a grave insult and draw a physical confrontation, but the rules of society had changed for the soon to be shipwrecked survivors.

As he approached the command deck Kuanti heard shouting that no doubt accompanied some sort of angry brawl.  Not everyone on board was as accepting of the new social order as others.  Kuanti finally stepped onto the slightly roomier command deck that was actually the main engineering work
space commandeered for the purpose of piloting the ship.  He saw a very pregnant Cora protecting another female in the corner.  Kuanti swallowed hard upon recognizing the male attempting to assault the female.  It was Priapus, and this would not be pleasant.

“You grubby little whore,”
Priapus hollered while trying to reach around Cora to get at his target.  “I’ll kill you for this.”

Kuanti grabbed hold of the
hound’s shoulders from behind and threw him back against the nearest wall.  “What is the meaning of this?”

“She’
s pregnant!” Priapus spat while pointing at the female cowering in the corner.

“Good. 
My orders were for every female on board to become pregnant as fast as possible,” Kuanti stated firmly.  “It will take several generations for us to leave the planet we will touch down on today.  We need all the offspring we can create to make a colony that will survive long enough to harvest materials, construct manufacturing facilities, and reinvent technologies so we can eventually send a message home.”

“Everyone knows I’m sterile and unable to father children,”
Priapus admitted.  “She mated with another male.  She dishonored herself and me.  I demand satisfaction.”

Kuanti released his grip on the enraged
crewman, stepped back and braced himself for what he knew was coming.  “I’m aware of her condition because she carries my seed.”

Priapus
spent several seconds processing the words.  Finally the anger behind his eyes hardened to a murderous rage and he lunged for Kuanti’s midsection.  He easily sidestepped the attack and gave Priapus a hard shove on his way past sending the attacker headfirst into a workstation screen.  Sparks and shards of broken glass shot past Kuanti as he pulled Priapus back to his feet, grabbed hold of his throat and squeezed. 

Kuanti absorbed the moment with all his senses: the smell of
his opponent’s last breath, the soft gurgle escaping his throat, and the delicate feel of a limp noodle collapsing beneath his mighty paws.  Most of all Kuanti took in the sight as pure panic overtook his adversary the instant he realized the fight was lost.  Kuanti held tight until the body finally lay lifeless on the deck at his feet.  Every instinct demanded a roar of victory, but for appearances he could not publically enjoy the moment.

He
managed to contain his inner beast well enough to silently return to his full height and look about the muted command deck.  When his eyes met those of his mate, Cora proudly stepped forward to stand by his side.

“In the years to come we all will have children with multiple partners,” Cora declared.  “It is out of genetic necessity for our survival
, and it brings no dishonor to anyone.  Kuanti is my mate and will continue to be even when I carry the seed of another.  This is our duty.”

“Understood?” Kuanti added.  Silence and subtle nodding of heads lent the crew’s tacit approval to their lot in life.  “Good.  Now get this impotent whelp out of my sight.”

Kuanti stepped over the body and paid no mind as two crewmen dragged it away.  With that little rebellion settled, he turned his attention to the real task at hand.  After three months spent eking out an existence aboard the crippled engineering section, he was eager to land and get some space to himself for a change. 

“Retract the solar sail,” he ordered
while looking back at the three occupied workstations now pressed into service as a makeshift navigation system for the crippled vessel.  “We may still need the aluminized mylar material when we reach the surface.” 

It was by no means the best propulsion system since it to
ok over three months to traverse the measly twenty million miles to reach the red planet after being separated from their better half, but it worked.  Rather than spinning out of control in the vacuum of space until supplies ran out, the crew was able to fashion the solar sail to catch the high speed gasses ejected from the system’s star.  Unfortunately the current carried them away from the third planet where Captain Goron managed to safely land his half of the ship along with the Novi collector craft.

To be honest, Kuanti did not expect either craft to survive their perilous landings.  Both ships approached the pla
net at a suicidal speed of 200 miles per second and needed to execute an impossibly precise landing maneuver without the benefit of propulsion systems.  To his surprise, through the manual telescopes his crew fashioned out of spare parts, they were able to tell that no explosions or radiation spikes accompanied either landing.  Therefore, Kuanti had to assume both ships survived their descent.

“Bring the landing program online,” Kuanti calmly ordered.  “
Let’s run through the scenario one last time before trusting our lives with it.”

His subordinate complied by pulling up a three dimensional rendering of the red planet and the ship’s approach path.  As the sequence played out on
screen, Kuanti watched the ship orientate with its engines leading the way and enter high orbit around the planet. 

“The shielding around the engines is designed to withstand the rigors of a fusion reaction. Absorbing the relatively low heat from friction with the atmosphere upon reentry should not
tax the design limits too much,” the crewman narrated.  “Once in the atmosphere, where the gravity coils have something to push against, we should be able to control our descent and have no difficulty landing among the mountains you have selected in the north eastern quadrant.”

Kuanti watched
the screen as his virtual ship blazed a trail through the atmosphere and then finally floated down among the tall mountain peaks to touch down near what they all hoped was a vast network of caves.

“If we decide
the chosen landing spot is not ideal, will we be able to relocate the ship?” Kuanti asked.

“Only if we pick it up and carry it,” the crewman a
nswered.  “We are missing half our gravity coils from the rest of the ship that landed on that other planet with Captain Goron.  We can’t form a complete field.  All we can do is control our descent.  We cannot lift off again.”

“I certainly hope our
geologist knows his trade,” Kuanti exhaled, drew a deep breath and held it as he pondered his next order.  Everything was riding on it. “We’ve done all we can.  Turn the countdown over to the main computer.”

Content that everything was well in hand for a sa
fe landing, Kuanti turned his head to look upon Cora.  She stood beside him beaming with pride.  She leaned in to his ear and whispered in a sensual tone, “Well done, Leader.  I can’t wait for some privacy when we reach the red planet’s surface.”

Kuanti felt his pulse quicken at the sexual undertone of her words.  “
I thought being seen with the Leader by others was the whole point for you; power by association,” he whispered back and concluded by shooting her a knowing stare.