Paying the Price (Book 5 of The Empire of Bones Saga) Read online

  Paying the Price

  Book Five of The Empire of Bones Saga

  by

  Terry Mixon

  Paying the Price

  No good deed goes unpunished…

  Admiral Jared Mertz and Princess Kelsey Bandar saved billions of lives and staved off an invasion of the Terran Empire, but not everyone is cheering their success. Their triumphant return sets off a chain of events that threaten not only their lives, but everyone they hold dear.

  Crown Prince Ethan Bandar, heir to the Imperial Throne, will stop at nothing to claim his birthright. He won’t allow anyone to stand between him and ultimate power. Not his sister. Not his half-brother. Not even his father.

  Kelsey, Jared, and their battle-hardened allies must fight to survive his insidious attacks and race to stop a looming civil war. With the future of humanity on the line, can they save the world they love from blood and fire?

  Titles by Terry Mixon

  You can always find the most up to date listing of Terry’s titles on his Amazon Author Page.

  The Empire of Bones Saga

  Empire of Bones

  Veil of Shadows

  Command Decisions

  Ghosts of Empire

  Paying the Price

  Reconnaissance in Force (December 2016)

  The Humanity Unlimited Saga

  Liberty Station

  Freedom Express

  Tree of Liberty (October 2016)

  Anthologies

  Dirty Magick: Los Angeles

  Dirty Magick: New Orleans

  Want Terry to email you when he publishes a new book or when one goes on sale? Go to TerryMixon.com and sign up for his new releases notification list. Those are the only times he’ll contact you. No spam.

  Paying the Price

  Copyright 2016 by Terry Mixon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage and/or retrieval systems, or dissemination of any electronic version, without the prior written consent of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review, and except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Yowling Cat Press™

  Cover art - image copyrights as follows:

  BigStockPhoto.com/molodec

  DepositPhotos.com/innovari

  Cover design and composition by Donna Mixon

  She may be reached at: [email protected]

  Print edition interior design and composition by John McCarthy

  He may be reached at: [email protected]

  Follow him on Twitter: @SurfsideJack

  Logo design by Emily Karnes

  She may be reached at: [email protected]

  Dedication

  To my wife Donna. I love you more than life itself.

  Acknowledgements

  This book was a long time coming. After four books, the characters finally came home. Not to say their story is over. Far from it. But the first draft was a bit of a hot mess and I’m deeply indebted to my beta readers for pointing out things I needed to say. And things I didn’t

  Any remaining errors are all my doing, I assure you.

  My deepest thanks go to Tracy Bodine, Michael Falkner, Cain Hopwood, Kristopher Neidecker, Bob Noble, Jon Paul Olivier, Tom Stoecklein, Dale Thompson, and Jason Young for their insight. I would look like such an amateur without their keen eyes and incisive commentary. Thank you so much.

  A special shout out to Tom Stoecklein for really going the extra mile. Many of those five thousand new words are because of you, man. Thanks for pointing out so many places I needed to step up. Challenge accepted.

  Also, so many people have bought my books and left kind reviews. Thank you all so much. Every one helps.

  Special thanks go to John McCarthy for formatting the print version of this book. And for putting up with me. Seriously.

  A second special thanks goes to Veronica Giguere for doing the fantastic audio versions of The Empire of Bones Saga.

  Numerous others have participated through comments in one way or another. Thank you all.

  Chapter One

  “Admiral, do you have a few minutes?”

  Jared Mertz looked up groggily from his lunch in the officers’ mess to find Doctor Jerry Leonard standing beside his table. The fog of exhaustion that hung over Jared had dulled his edge. It seemed like a year since he’d slept a full night.

  He gestured for the scientist to join him. “Pull up a chair and order something to eat.”

  The older man sat down primly. “I had something in the lab an hour ago, but thank you. I’d like to take one more try at traversing the weak flip point before we pull out.”

  The strange variants of the standard flip points were new to all of them and the scientists were still struggling to understand them. Some only allowed one-way passage. Others were just as hard to find, but two-way. They knew so little about the new stellar phenomena.

  The one in the Harrison’s World system had eaten every probe they’d sent through it. Not one had returned. Not even when programmed to return as soon as the flip capacitor recharged.

  Of course, no enemy had followed them home, so that was good news. Jared thought whatever was happening to them was probably natural. Perhaps this flip point was one-way for even the smallest of vessels.

  “The fleet is performing the final checks before we leave for Pentagar,” Jared said. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

  “This won’t take long. We’ve devised a new probe. Well, actually, we built one that looks like Frankenstein’s monster. The core is a standard probe, but we added an external battle screen generator and bolted on the power system from one of the defunct war machines. We even added a second flip capacitor to speed its return.

  “If the environment on the other side of the flip point is hostile—which at this point seems a given—that should allow it time to return with some readings. We’d like your permission to send it through.”

  Jared shrugged. “Why not? Let me wrap up my lunch and I’ll join you on the flag bridge. Say fifteen minutes?”

  The scientist beamed. “Thank you, Admiral.”

  Jared finished his meal and returned to the bustling flag bridge. Over the last few months, he’d selected a full-time staff of officers to assist him in commanding the fleet he’d assembled. They sat at their stations all around the circumference of the large control center, monitoring the preparations for departure.

  No one called out when he entered the bridge. That had been one tradition he was happy to dispense with. Everyone had work to do. They didn’t need to stop what they were doing just because he’d walked off the lift.

  He sat at his console. It swept a full 270 degrees around his command chair, giving him the ability to multitask like nobody’s business. It had taken him months to get fully accustomed to it, but now he was thrilled at how much data he could keep track of at once.

  Jared pulled a headset from the niche in his console and slipped it on. His implants could interface without it, but the headset allowed for much greater data throughput. When linked to his flagship, he could access anything at lightning speed and in tremendous detail.

  Part of his attention went to the scanner readings. The superdreadnought Invincible floated in a wide orbit around Boxer Station. They’d captured the Old Empire Fleet
base from the Rebel Empire AI that had once ruled this system.

  The rest went to the fleet he was taking back home. It consisted of his superdreadnought, a Fleet carrier, six battlecruisers, eight heavy cruisers, twelve light cruisers, and two dozen destroyers. It also had ten colliers with extra missiles and supplies, six Marine troop transports, sixteen fast couriers built for speed, twelve scouts built for stealth, a dedicated science vessel, two hospital ships, four factory ships, New York, and Persephone.

  The factory ships would come in particularly useful back home. They had all the tools needed to make the high technology items they’d need, like the cranial implants. They couldn’t make the Marine Raider equipment because Persephone didn’t have the details on the manufacture. That had been one of the Old Empire’s most closely guarded secrets.

  Once they managed to crack the secret of the Raider hardware, he suspected they’d have a crash course in bringing as many marines up to those specs as possible. They’d have to impose some stringent psych exams to keep from giving that kind of power out of the hands of the wrong people.

  Those factories could also duplicate themselves. With more manufacturing capability, they could build advanced shipyards and simultaneously lift themselves up to Old Empire tech levels. Arguably, they were the most important ships in the fleet he’d gathered. Two just like them would go back to Erorsi and Pentagar with his compliments.

  It would take a lot of reverse engineering or recovering the plans at some future point, but the factory ships could probably also build new AI hardware. The Empire would need to have more sentient AIs on their side in the coming fight. Though, he admitted it would probably take the emperor a while to come around to that point of view.

  All the ships were severely undermanned and only functional at the most basic level. Not even Boxer Station’s construction bays could perform miracles. They took in battered wrecks and repaired the critical systems. The rest would need to happen by hand, because there was an almost unending line of derelicts waiting their turn.

  They’d brought more people in from Pentagar and Erorsi, but that barely made a dent in their needs. They’d even begun careful, limited recruiting from Harrison’s World. They had to be certain those people were trustworthy before they told them the truth about the Rebel Empire.

  After a lot of thought, Kelsey had decided that the people there had to know the truth. They couldn’t just hide it from them. That was wrong. And the truth would get out. That would be damaging. They had to stay on the moral high ground.

  Plans were in development to roll out the knowledge once they were sure they had the existing implants scrubbed of the viral code. There would be resistance, but that was natural. They’d be upsetting the existing layers of society.

  They’d be giving the lower orders implants and medical nanites. The higher orders, used to being the lords of all they surveyed, would scream bloody murder. They’d deal with it. Learn from it. This process would eventually play out in many other systems, so they had to refine the process while they could.

  And in the end, everyone would be better for it. The hard part was convincing them of that. Kelsey had recorded a number of speeches that the leadership could play when the time was right. Jared hoped they helped explain the situation and keep the inevitable violence to a minimum.

  Back to his current situation. Even understrength, the ships he’d gathered represented more fighting power than the rest of the New Terran Empire. Hell, Invincible alone could conquer his nation. The rest was overkill.

  They also had thirteen Fleet transports for cargo and an upgraded cruise liner to carry civilians. Best Deal, the freighter that had housed their scientists, was far too slow to keep up. They’d be leaving her here.

  Captain Anton Keller, Best Deal’s civilian skipper, was thrilled with the larger and much faster ship Jared had given him. It had military grade defenses, systems, and engines. It also carried many times more cargo than his old ship. He’d lost no time renaming her Best Deal II. The original one would go to Erorsi to help rebuild the system.

  They’d even found a luxurious yacht to take home as a gift for the emperor. The current Imperial yacht was a fine vessel, but this one was much faster, had real defenses, and was even armed. Jared was sure Karl Bandar would like it.

  They’d done a few modifications to New York as well. They’d added battle screen generators and a second set of flip capacitors. The Old Empire versions of the capacitors were small enough to fit beside the current ones in engineering. They’d had to stash the battle screen controls in a conference room, but Captain Kaiser was happy to have the extra protection

  Jared had arrived with a small, old destroyer and a slow freighter converted to do science. He was going home with more than a hundred. Even with the surviving officers and men from Spear, Shadow, and Ginnie Dare helping to fill needed roles—both on his fleet and on Boxer Station—that left them with few Imperial personnel. Wallace had lost the light cruiser Titan and the destroyer One Bullet with all hands.

  He’d robbed the destroyer New York as much as he could, but Captain Kaiser needed her core team to work her ship. Her ship didn’t have the same level of automation as the Old Empire ships. He’d considered leaving New York here, but he knew the woman would refuse that order. And Fleet Command wouldn’t be happy, either.

  Jared had insisted that everyone get Fleet implants. That way they could work on any ship, if required.

  It amazed Jared that they’d been able to repair so many badly damaged ships in such a short time.

  This wouldn’t have been possible without the oversight of the AI on Boxer Station. Carl Owlet had used clean code to make a new personality for it that would be loyal to humanity and the Empire. It was able to juggle repairing multiple ships much better than a human team could have.

  That was possible because the AIs were truly sentient. That was the last big shock the New Terran Empire would have to accept. And Jared had made it hard to ignore.

  With the desperate need for command personnel, he’d reassigned Zia Anderson to command the Fleet carrier Zeus. He’d considered his original executive officer, Charlie Graves, but Zia was the more aggressive of the two. And Charlie was completely happy commanding Courageous.

  Zia’s previous slot as his flag captain went to Invincible herself. Or rather the AI that resided inside her. The AI knew the ship better than anyone else possibly could. Kelsey had made an Imperial ruling that the AIs were people and so entitled to give oaths of service.

  Invincible’s AI, who’d decided to take the name Marcus, now had a commission as a Fleet captain. Boxer Station’s AI—which had chosen the name Harrison—had one as well. That would give Fleet Command apoplexy and cause the Imperial Senate to implode.

  The crew had been a little spooked to have an all-seeing captain, but they were adjusting. They’d even found a crash test dummy somewhere, made it a uniform, and strapped it into the command chair on the bridge so they’d have someone to look at when reporting.

  Marcus used the speaker in the chair. And he didn’t use what he heard or saw in his oversight of the public areas of the ship in his captain persona. He kept it segregated and the crew knew how the subroutines maintained their privacy. It was working surprisingly well.

  With the three flip blockers the scientists at the Grant Research facility had built, they could lock down Harrison’s World, Pentagar, and Erorsi from Rebel Empire incursions. Except for when they needed to perform maintenance on them.

  That didn’t account for the weak flip points, though. They’d have to be very careful using them.

  Commodore Sean Meyer had two battlecruisers, four heavy cruisers, and six destroyers to guard Harrison’s World. He’d work hand-in-hand with Coordinator Olivia West to ease the planet into the New Terran Empire without letting most of the people know about the change in management.

  Someday, the general population would learn the truth. Just not right now.

  Pentagar was getting a number of ship
s, as well. They’d watch over the base on Erorsi, too, until more ships arrived. Since Jared was taking a long, unexplored path home, they’d only accompany him part way.

  By his best guess, it would take another six months to finish the final repairs on all the ships in his fleet. It would take even longer to get them fully manned with trained, enhanced personnel. He shuddered to think about how long it would take to work through the remaining tens of thousands of derelicts.

  They’d brought the mines in the asteroid belt back online, reestablished the automated fabrication units, and now had a mobile station to disassemble ships too badly wrecked to fly again. They called it the breaker. It salvaged what parts it could and melted the rest down. The critical and rare elements went into new parts.

  The crew there also pulled the dead from the wrecks and sealed them in body bags. If the medical teams could reactivate the person’s implants, they made note of their names and copied the data stored in implant memory.

  The cargo holds on several of the transports held the tens of thousands of bodies they’d recovered so far. Fleet was going to have to come up with a new means of burying their honored dead. The Spire couldn’t hold the many millions of corpses in these ships.

  The lift doors slid open and Doctor Leonard walked onto the flag bridge. Kelsey was with him.

  She smiled at Jared. “I hear we’re about to go exploring.”

  * * * * *

  Kelsey eyed her brother critically from behind her cheerful expression. He looked exhausted. That was understandable. He’d been putting in twenty-hour days for the last nine months.

  His implants and medical nanites reduced his need for sleep, but there were limits. Four hours a night wasn’t enough. Not over that long a timeframe.