Beta Sector- Anthology Read online

  Beta Sector

  Anthology

  A Collection of Beta Sector

  Stories

  Written by

  Stephen A. Fender

  Edited by

  Lynda Dietz

  Published by

  JRP ©

  Jolly Rogers Productions

  Beta Sector: Anthology

  Copyright © 2016 Stephen Fender

  www.JollyRogersProductions.net

  First Edition: 2016

  Published through Jolly Rogers Productions (JRP)©, a subsidiary division of StephenFender.com

  All rights reserved.

  Ordering information: [email protected]

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN: 1537093940

  ISBN13: 978-1537093949

  Cover art by pyraker ©

  Cover layout and final rendering by Stephen Fender ©.

  I’d like to thank to my family and friends who have been there through this whole process. I’m grateful for all of you, and each of you has a special place in my heart.

  I’d also like to thank my editor, Lynda. She spent countless hours going over this text, and it was time well spent. The finished product is amazing, and I’m exceedingly grateful for her assistance. I want to further extend a very special thanks to my wife. You have been my biggest supporter and my #1 fan. I love you.

  The following people were instrumental in getting this work published. Without them this would not have been possible.

  Adam John Matthews

  John Runyan

  Alan Stevenson

  Jonathan Shaw

  Andrew Cohen

  Judith Waidlich

  Arne Radtke

  Lawrence B. Nelson

  Babs K. Crump

  Leigh Hennig

  Brendon Phipps

  Lisa Lyons

  Brian Webber

  Marcus Horstmann

  Brittany Dudas

  Margaret St. John

  Caleb Sledd

  Mark Donnelly

  Cassie D.

  Mark Newman

  Catalino

  Matthew Luxa

  Chad Bowden

  Mike Crate

  Chris Kimpton

  Mike Medina

  Chris Mentch

  Nehemias

  Chris Merrow

  Nick Williams

  Chris R

  Norman Jaffe

  Christopher Flynn

  Paul Janssens

  C.J. Bai

  Rich Chang

  Crowe

  Richard Todd

  Cullen Gilchrist

  Richard Turner

  Dan Balkwill

  Robert Riddle

  Daniel Hippensteel

  Ronald Blocksom

  Darren Bavaro

  Ronald D. Hearn

  Darren Keith

  Scott Austin

  David Peterson

  Scott Early

  Derek Freeman

  Scott Maynard

  Don & Karen Albares

  Scott Pike

  Doug Eckhoff

  Shane Rose

  Ellis Coombs

  Shawn Crawford

  Eric Welsby

  Sonia Koval

  Erich Tauschmann

  Sonja Thiede

  Eron Wyngarde

  Steve Hochberger

  Eugene Alex

  Steven Baker

  Fred Davis

  Steven Pittman

  F.T.

  Steven Rowley

  Gerald Ottenbreit Jr

  Sven Berglowe

  Gustaf Bjorklund

  SwordFire

  Guy McLimore

  Tarus L. Latacki Jr.

  Hans de Wolf

  Terri Connor

  Hiram G Wells

  Terry Latacki

  Howard Beny

  Tex Albritton

  IAN H WEIGER

  The Wanderer

  ianquest

  Thijs ter Horst

  Ivan

  Tom Diffley

  Jack Gibbs

  Tom Martin

  James R. Vernon

  Tom Scott

  Jason Frisvold

  Tomas

  Jason Genser

  Seth Straughan

  Jeff Troutman

  Vernon Vincent

  Jeffrey Harlan

  Walter Gould

  Jim Traina

  Warren Rogers

  Jim Westbrook

  W.C.

  John A

  Will Stapleton

  John Baldwin

  William Vasich

  All characters, settings, and events depicted in this novel are the sole intellectual property of Stephen Fender. “The Crown of Gnar” is based on a concept by Randall Garrett. “The Best-Laid Plans” is based on a concept by Harry Harrison. “Shipwrecked on Moruta” is based on a concept by Neil Jones. Characters in this novel are not intended, nor should they be inferred by anyone, to represent actual living beings—either now or in the 24th century. However, if you’d like to infer, go right ahead. I can’t stop you.

  I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.

  Best in the Fleet (2351)

  This vessel is a piece of the Unified Collaboration of Systems. A sliver of an idea, plucked from her berth and sped out here. She is a piece of the best of the Unified Collaboration of Systems. She is out here to help offset the shortage of fleet carriers in this quadrant of Beta Sector. She is a movable base, zigzagging between our own systems and the ones occupied by our calculating enemy.

  We are all a part of her, as she is a part of the Unified Collaboration of Systems. Copper from Terra is in her. Plasti-steel from Polys is in her. Tritanium from the desolate flatlands of Edona and the Amber Forests of Amerind is in her, too. A core world cannot be named which is not represented in her somehow. The crew aboard are from all these worlds likewise.

  We are not lonely on this carrier, for we have brought our homelands with us. We have extended our homelands to out here beyond the borders of Unified Space, if only for a short while. We speed along coreward for a coming engagement.

  Exactly what turn the engagement may take, we do not know. What may be waiting for us there in ambush, we do not know, either. But we have our own opinions, and we have our scuttlebutt. And we know, too, that on this attack we are going deep into the enemy's own front yard. This we know, for it has been told to us. It was told to us on the second day out from Beta Vergoris.

  We had had our guesses, of course, as to where we were going, and these guesses had proven themselves rather accurate. They usually do. But during that lecture in the wardroom, and while facing star charts and diagrams, it had been fun pretending we were surprised.

  In the staterooms are pictures of women, of men, of girls, of boys, of small children, and of babies. It is obvious that some of the young husbands, wives, mates, or whatnot aboard have not seen their own new babies except through these pictures or transvids. And some, especially the pilots and their gunners, may never see their babies at all. But it is best not to think of that.

  It is best for us instead to make this ship the fightingest ship there is, and to keep her that way. This is the trust of all those aboard. Nothing must happen to her. The flyers and their gunners are loaned to space, so to speak, but they are still attached to us regardless of how far they go. These decks, this small piece of the UCS, comprise the flyers’ lifeline, their home, their sanctuary—and their ammunition depot.

  And each time the flyers land aboard, when they climb down from their cockpits, when they remove their paraphernalia, it's like overhearing a splendid prayer to h
ear them say, "Hot damn."

  A carrier is not a temporary innovation, nor simply a product of these times. Still, it may be said that carriers will have served their purpose with this immediate era. After this war they may become museum pieces. Or relics. Something to be stared at on a Sunday afternoon by crowds curious to see a detached leftover of history.

  But if future generations do stare on that Sunday afternoon at some preserved carrier, a holdover from the Galactic War days, the staring had best be performed with reverence. For what a purpose these carriers, big and small, have served the Unified Collaboration!

  We aboard are not much concerned with such thoughts of the future. We haven't time for that. We are too busy preparing for this next engagement, too busy checking the fusion missiles, laser chargers, and such.

  There is so much else to do too, and to keep doing, that this carrier herself, as she floats between the stars, seems untouched by all the arguments which have taken place planetside about her and her kind during the past few years. She is above all that. Her own action speaks her worth. Her own need, as she plows coreward, speaks it too.

  What a different turn might the Battle of Imarex have taken without these escort carriers. And how much more prolonged could those dubious days have remained in Vega Quadrant. Some of those grand fleet carriers are dead now, destroyed or perforated and floating in space like cold mausoleums. But nobody—at least nobody on this task force—speaks with disrespect of those deaths. It would be like speaking with disrespect of those first terrible months themselves, those first desperate weeks. And it was right then, and immediately, when the few available carriers went out with whatever they had, which wasn't much, and helped put the stop to the Kafarans’ tidal sweep in all directions.

  Our few carriers then were under-armed for this war. Their destroyer escorts were pathetically few. But they stayed in space, fighting. They continued fighting. And the war on the rim of Beta Sector took a right turn.

  To have expected all those carriers to come through unharmed against such an avalanche of enemy numbers was an impossible hope. But the names of those carriers did not die with them. This is no figure of speech. This is literal. Their names are being carried today by their successors, which is only proper. Their names are represented in this same task force, on the offensive now, and going deeper and deeper coreward.

  Aboard are a certain number of officers and crewmen who were aboard those first carriers that went down in the fight. It’s always well to have such carrier veterans exchanged or seeded around this way. It helps with ideas, and it helps prevent overconfidence and under-confidence.

  We are aware of how important we feel aboard this carrier. We hold no false modesty in this respect. We know that this whole task force has been built around its carriers, and that this whole engagement will depend on us. Ours is the heavy role as well as the responsibility. We realize right well that the enemy—if given a chance—will try to get the carriers first.

  "Get the carriers first."

  The phrase has become a true one with each side in this war. And the phrase is the sincerest compliment of all. No wonder, then, that we feel our importance. Not speaking as individuals, of course, but speaking of our ship, of which each of us is a part—a thousand-thousandth part of the ship, to be sure, the same as the rivets, welds, or kilometers of wires and conduits.

  The signal “pilots, man your craft” is thrown onto a large display in the ready rooms, and sometimes the order is also sent over the loudspeaker into the same rooms and echoed throughout the corridors. It is then that the waiting pilots, with whom someone may be in the midst of exchanging the most outrageous of space stories, instantly become other beings entirely. It is almost as if they say to an everyday crewman, "Yes, a moment ago I was one of you. Now I am not."

  The next time you see them you will have climbed to your station, to view the takeoffs from small monitors peppering most of the compartments. But meanwhile the pilots will have vanished out a rear door of the ready room while you have gone out another. It's this sudden separation for the takeoff which seems to segregate them so sharply from your own realm into another realm not for ordinary people.

  Certainly pilots must be welcomed there, for they are far from ordinary.

  Each laden down with his equipment, the pilots will disperse into the main hangar. You know them, and yet you don't know them. They are different people. Even their shapes are different, and their faces. The one thing common to all of them as they run toward their craft is concentration. There is no byplay and no joking, and no waving of greetings, either. Each mounts his craft and begins testing the gadgets in it.

  This is that strange moment, that quick moment, when these young officers are suddenly transformed into different people. Within seconds they have been changed from such as we into the magical characters of a childhood fable. And next they will be far aloft, uniting with others of their own kind, their own squadrons, out in the void.

  All of this seems part of the fable, too. It seems almost as if they always had belonged out there, different beings who had purpose, lived and died in the vacuum, and for the past few hours had been down to visit us as a joke.

  Their ships tested, their helmets adjusted, their comms operational, now the canopies are slid or flipped closed, sealed from the dangers of space. They are a new creation, one with the craft they inhabit. “Plugged in,” they call it. The signal is given; the lead fighter’s engines begin to whine as it’s held securely in its cradle at the end of the long launch tube. Seconds later the magnetic catapult kicks in, propelling the craft to unimaginable speed down the length of the tube and out into the void.

  The void—the pilots’ true home . . . and how much they’ve missed it.

  * * * * *

  “We’re closing in on the target. Is anyone having problems?”

  “Negative,” I replied to the squadron commander, having checked and rechecked my instruments several times over.

  “Looking good,” my wingman, Jim Stevers, likewise responded.

  “Ready for some action, Skipper,” came the reply from Lieutenant Junior-Grade Ames, the squadron’s newest member.

  “My scanners just picked up a squadron of Kafaran fighters approaching from dead ahead. They’re likely coming from the enemy carriers we’ve been sent out here to scope out for the fleet. There are four of them and four of us, so there’s no need for anyone here to take on more than they can chew.”

  “Understood,” we all replied in near-unison.

  “I’ve locked each of your targeting computers onto a separate target. When they’re within 2,000 kilometers, I want everyone to break formation and attack.”

  The speed at which we were traveling meant that we only had a scant few seconds to contemplate our next actions. I looked down to the glowing radar scope on my right, my target a blue blip only distinguishable from the other three by a rhythmic, heart-like beating. On the left, the targeting scanner indicated the makeup of my prey—a Kafaran KL-1 Greedy light fighter. Their light armor was little match for the heavy firepower afforded to our Sinclairs, but their mass gave them an edge over us on maneuverability.

  At 2,000 kilometers, our four medium space fighters broke formation.

  The Greedy tried a brash move—a head-to-head engagement with me. Its forward lasers leapt toward me, but I’d already pivoted my SF-8 ninety degrees. One of the shots bathed my cockpit in a momentary green flash just as I released a pair of self-guiding fusion missiles.

  Two contrails of vapor exhaust revealed the exact path from my craft to the target. Before I could close the distance, the warheads contacted their mark. A brilliant ball of orange plasma fire grew to life, a few stray fragments flying out of it like so many fireworks. The cold vacuum of space quickly devoured the blast, and then it was over. The Greedy was gone.

  Space combat is like that most times. A split-second decision is typically the deciding factor between life and death. Rarely did combat last more than a few minutes. Luck h
ad as much to play in it as skill, and over the last few months I’d had both on my side. Statistics told me that one or the other would eventually fail me, but for now I was glad to still be sucking air.

  “Target destroyed,” I radioed to the commander.

  “Confirmed.”

  I looked down at the sensor scope. Only Stevers still had an enemy craft to deal with, and it was tailing him like a shadow on a sunny day. Lieutenant Junior-Grade Ames was already on the move toward the combat area.

  “I have your Greedy in sight.” Ames’s voice came over the tac-net. “Locked on.”

  “I can’t shake him, Ames. Take the shot!”

  “He’s too close to you. If he frags . . .”

  “If you don’t shoot, I’ll be the one to frag!”

  The time for a split-second decision was now, and in the span of a single heartbeat, Ames fired two missiles. The Greedy exploded in a glob of red-orange fire, obscuring sensor and visual contact with Stevers. When the flames extinguished, Stevers’ Sinclair was also gone.

  “No!”

  But Stevers’ craft was still on sensors; Ames was simply too busy to notice. At the last possible moment, Stevers had banked and dipped, avoiding any fragments from the exploding Kafaran fighter.

  Skill. Luck. A split-second decision made with either or both would have sufficed. Whichever it was would be discussed at length in the wardroom once we made it back to the ship, perhaps even becoming a small legend in the process. There were hundreds of such stories, nearly as many as the initials “K.I.A.” were scrawled on the pilots’ roster.