Predator (Old Ironsides Book 3)

  Table of Contents

  PREDATOR

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  XXXVII

  XXXVIII

  XXXIX

  XL

  XLI

  XLII

  XLIII

  XLIV

  XLV

  XLVI

  XLVII

  Unnamed

  PREDATOR

  © 2017 Dean Crawford

  Published: 21st March 2017

  ASIN:

  Publisher: Fictum Ltd

  The right of Dean Crawford to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Dean Crawford Books

  I

  Ayleean System

  Sol Date: 2418

  ‘Our estimated time of arrival is in seven minutes, senator.’

  Senator Isabel Gray nodded as her aide, Samuel, joined her on an observation post high above the vast hull of the senate cruiser Fortitude as the sleek spacecraft travelled at super luminal velocity through the utter blackness of the universe. At such a high velocity, all light information was stripped from the cosmos surrounding them, rendering the cruiser unable to send or receive any form of signal as it travelled toward its destination. Senator Gray often stood here upon the observation platform and stared into the absolute blackness, the hard light viewing panels providing no reflection of her ageing features and yet the darkness beyond so deep it provoked vertigo in many observers.

  ‘We should prepare, senator,’ Samuel went on. ‘A meeting such as this is something we never would have dreamed possible even a year ago.’

  Senator Gray glanced at the young man, his features filled with an idealistic hope that the two tribes of humanity, if humans they could all still be called, might finally settle their differences and become one race again.

  ‘Indeed,’ she replied, ‘and yet as so often it required an act of conflict to create the conditions for peace. I will await the end of the conference before I hold any hope for a lasting end to the wars we have fought among ourselves these centuries past.’

  Samuel peered at her curiously. ‘That’s not what you said in the briefing to Director General Coburn, before we left Earth.’

  Gray smiled. ‘That’s politics, Samuel.’

  The Director General of the Central Security Services, Arianna Coburn, was a long service fleet commander who had moved into politics after the end of her final combat tour a decade prior. Her tenure had lasted for the past three years and she had personally sent Senator Gray on this mission. A tall, graceful but determined person, Coburn was the rock that now held steady an increasingly nervous senate. The entire political class and the heads of the military knew what had happened just a few months before, although the public had been shielded from the worst of it: First Contact. Gray shuddered as she stared out into the endless and uncaring universe and reflected again on what had happened, of how close earth had come to destruction.

  There was something out there, and it was heading their way.

  ‘This isn’t the time for politics,’ Samuel pointed out respectfully. ‘This is the time for alliance, and action.’

  Senator Gray shook herself from her gloomy reverie and nodded, fresh resolve in her spirit as she turned to look at Samuel.

  ‘The Ayleean alliance will strengthen us,’ she agreed. ‘They are humans just like us, though they don’t care to remember it often enough. But after what happened outside Polaris Station, they know as well as we do that divided we will fall.’

  Samuel nodded but she could see the uncertainty in his eyes, a fear born of history, of what mankind’s estranged brethren were capable of.

  Four hundred years prior to this momentous day the earth had succumbed to a plague known as The Falling that had taken the lives of some five billion souls and rendered society utterly broken. Entire continents had been reclaimed by nature or taken forcefully by gangs of brigands and thugs who had roamed the wilderness and the crumbling wastelands of fallen cities. Only small pockets of true humanity had remained, those cities well protected by the remnants of the military, where studies had continued until a cure for the plague had been found.

  In those dark and terrible days, many possible means of eradicating the plague had been explored, and with them the darkest recesses of the human psyche. Enforced elimination programs designed to destroy, however humanely, those carrying the plague had cost the lives of millions more innocent citizens, those in power acting only in the knowledge that to do nothing would see the end of the human race entirely. Others such as the British had developed digital storage sufficient that those with the will and the means could surrender their physical bodies in preference for holographic bodies and digital brains, thus giving rise to a new species of man: Holo sapiens. Most, however, could not hope to achieve such immortality and instead were cut down in the last desperate days of mankind’s existence.

  Some of those slated for “elimination” had inevitably escaped, and in turn some of those had in fact survived the plague by virtue of losing limbs either by decay, by choice or from the radiation from countless untended nuclear reactors that spilled their toxic veil across the globe, curing the survivors of plague but in turn disfiguring them even further. Among those wandering, miserable hordes of grotesque survivors rose another new species of man, the Ayleeans, named after their leader Werner Ayleea, well versed in the art of bionic prosthetics, skeletal reconstruction and tissue regeneration, skills they used to replace their damaged limbs. By the time the war against the plague had turned in mankind’s favor, millions around the world were only half human, the rest of their bodies constructed from ever more complex biogenetic enhancement and even machinery.

  Two centuries years later and mankind was once again a technologically advanced species, with cities and space fleets and a renewed appetite to reach for the stars. For the Ayleeans, centuries of marginalization gave them the appetite to do more than just reach, and they had been among the first to leave earth in colony ships bound for a new home several dozen light years from earth, orbiting the fearsome glare of a red dwarf star. Ayleea, a steaming tropical world and one of the first habitable planets discovered around an alien star, had evolved them even further into a race of hunters with an abiding hatred of humans, their only true brethren in an uncaring cosmos.

  Decades of false histories, the distorting of tales and political games had forged a race for whom only the destruction of humanity could expunge the flames of hatred fanned by a willing political leadership. The Ayleean War was fought for the next thirty years out on the edge of the solar system between the Oort Cloud and Pluto. The last encounter between mankind and the Ayleeans had been a protracted battle that had nearly cost the lives of everybody aboard the fleet’s flagship Titan and the orbital city of New Washington, when the Ayleeans had attempted to breach the solar system and attack earth in a last ditch attempt to seek reven
ge for their own distorted view of history. Although humanity won the war and managed to repel the Aleeyans, there was no longer any appetite for the conflict on either side and peace negotiations had begun almost immediately. Now, they were on the verge of a lasting peace treaty to be signed in the coming days on Ayleea.

  A soft beeping intruded on the Senator’s thoughts and Samuel straightened his uniform.

  ‘We’re coming up on Ayeela,’ he reported. ‘It is time.’

  Senator Gray nodded, and for a brief moment they looked at each other. Isabel smiled and out of habit she reached out and adjusted Samuel’s uniform.

  ‘I’m proud of you, son,’ she said as she looked down at him. ‘It’s more than I could have hoped that you would be with me to sign the accord with the Ayleeans that will finally reunite us as a species. Humanity has waited over two centuries for this moment.’

  Samuel nodded, still a little tense.

  ‘Let’s hope they haven’t changed their mind in the two hours it’s taken to get here. This ship isn’t heavily armed.’

  Senator Gray slipped her arm through her son’s and led him off the observation platform and into an elevator shaft.

  ‘The Ayleeans are just as tired of conflict as we are and they were soundly defeated in our last engagement,’ she assured him. ‘There would be no tactical advantage in attacking us or taking us hostage. Their fleet was decimated and they have everything to gain now that we face a new threat.’

  A slender, silver walled elevator took them down to the bridge of the cruiser. Gray led her son out onto the bridge deck, where CSS Captain Miguel Cortez held court with his crew. As a ceremonial vessel, the ship only had eight officers on the bridge deck with a support crew of thirty in engineering, technical and communications roles. The ship had no military contingent, and most of the hull was given over to dining halls and recreational facilities. Senator Gray’s role aboard Fortitude was to wine and dine the political leaders of humanity’s various colonies and assure the strength of the alliance.

  Captain Cortez, a stocky and dark skinned man of South American descent, glanced over his shoulder and waved them forward as he sat in his command chair.

  ‘We’ll exit super luminal cruise in two minutes at the assigned entry coordinates,’ he reported as they approached. ‘The Ayleeans will be waiting for us.’

  Samuel spoke, his voice clear but tinged with concern.

  ‘We should come out of cruise with our shields up.’

  Senator Gray squeezed her son’s arm. ‘That wouldn’t present the kind of message we’re trying to send. The Ayleeans must recognize our willingness to trust in them.’

  Cortez eyed Samuel with interest, clearly missing the heavy weapons of the frigate Valiant, his normal command. ‘I’m inclined to agree with him, Isabel. We know how often the Ayleeans have breached our trust in the past.’

  ‘And yet their emissaries allowed us the right to come out of cruise at the closest gate to their home world,’ Senator Gray pointed out. ‘Close exit from super luminal was once a favorite CSS fleet tactic for ambushing Ayleean convoys, was it not?’

  Cortez frowned and rubbed his chin with one hand.

  ‘I’d be happy to oblige them in an armed frigate,’ he replied. ‘I’m not so sure about jumping out of super luminal one planetary diameter from Ayleea in this glorified river boat. One well placed salvo and we’re history.’

  ‘Maybe we could set an emergency leap coordinate,’ Samuel suggested. ‘It will allow us to jump out of the system at short notice if this all goes sour.’

  ‘Already done,’ Cortez reported.

  ‘That wasn’t part of the agreement,’ Senator Gray said as she stepped up onto the command platform. ‘We are an unarmed delegation. If the Ayleeans detect any attempt by us to…’

  ‘There’s risk and reward here,’ Cortez cut her off, his voice gravelly but bestowed with the authority of decades of fleet experience. ‘I know what’s at stake, but even if the Ayleeans are in earnest for this alliance there are elements of their race who would like nothing more than to see it fail. The coordinates will be ready but we won’t punch them into the computers: the Ayleeans can scan us all they want, they won’t know a thing about it.’

  Senator Gray clenched her fists but she said nothing as a crewman called to the captain.

  ‘Thirty seconds.’

  ‘Okay,’ Cortez said as he turned away from Gray and straightened his uniform. ‘Prepare for sub luminal cruise, and keep your eyes open.’

  Senator Gray reached out for a rail surrounding the command platform and held onto it along with Samuel. Holographic display panels charted the ship’s plotted course to Ayleea, a speck demarking the vessel closing on its destination at a rate of six planetary diameters per second.

  ‘On my mark,’ Cortez said as he watched the countdown displayed before him on a transparent screen. ‘Three, two, one, now.’

  Senator Gray felt the familiar tug of gravity in the direction of flight as the cruiser’s mass drive disengaged. In an instant, a large screen that had previously been filled with nothing but the absolute blackness of super luminal cruise flared brilliant, bright white.

  For a brief instant of time Senator Gray saw the bridge flicker with a kaleidoscopic rainbow shimmer of the light spectrum and felt a vague nausea twist inside her belly as the mass of the cruiser was restored. On the screen the brilliant flare of light faded and she saw the dark orb of Aleeya loom up out of the blackness, the steaming jungle world a paradise and yet filled with dangerous creatures and…

  ‘We’ve got energy fluctuations across the board!’ the tactical officer yelped as he jumped up out of his seat. ‘Shields up!’

  Senator Gray saw the planet grow rapidly to fill the viewing screen as Fortitude slowed to sub luminal velocity, and almost at once she saw a speck of light that soared toward them, glittering and sparkling like jewels.

  ‘Evasive manoeuvres!’ Cortez snapped. ‘Get us out of here!’

  Senator Gray was about to question why they would leave so suddenly when the glittering array of sparkling material around the planet resolved itself in her mind. Suddenly she realized that it was debris: vast, incalculably immense clouds of wreckage enshrouding the planet’s atmosphere like a glittering veil. She could see the shape of hundreds of shattered vessels, both military and civilian alike, venting clouds of gas and glowing like embers in the night sky as fires raged within their fractured metal carcasses.

  ‘Oh no,’ she gasped.

  The jungles below were smeared with endless banks of dark smoke, like black wreaths enveloping the continents, and although they were presented with the daylight side of the planet she could see what looked like city lights glowing on the surface.

  ‘Ayleea’s burning!’ Samuel said in alarm as he pointed at fires raging across entire cities. ‘They must have suffered a civil war over joining our alliance!’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ Gray said. ‘The Ayleean Council spoke to us only two days ago. Surely they couldn’t have caused such destruction in so short a time?’

  The helmsman hauled Fortitude into a tight turn as the navigation officer installed the escape data into the computers. Cortez bellowed orders at his crew.

  ‘Jump as soon as the mass drive has spun up! Send a priority signal to CSS!’

  A reply came back from the communications officer almost immediately. ‘We’re being jammed!’

  ‘By whom?!’ Cortez shouted.

  The communications officer stared at her instruments for a moment and then looked at her captain with a stricken expression.

  ‘Signals unknown. They’re too powerful, we can’t broadcast or receive and…’

  Senator Gray never heard the last few words. As the cruiser turned away from Ayleea and prepared to leap into the safety of super luminal cruise, she saw something huge looming before them to blot out the stars. Bizarre tendrils of icy material enveloped the viewing screen and the hull reverberated as it collided with the mass swarming around them
.

  ‘Look out!’

  A moment later and Senator Gray’s world plunged into blackness as a terrible, frigid chill enveloped her in its icy grip.

  ***

  II

  Phoenix Heights

  New Washington

  Erin Sanders stood beneath her hard light umbrella and waited alongside a couple dozen other commuters for the Mag Rail to hum into the platform overhead 15th and Constitution, the rain clattering down around them in big, fat drops from the overhanging buildings above and falling in thin veils beyond. In contrast the sky above was a vivid blue flecked with little white clouds that drifted across the heavens, at odds with the wet ground and soaring buildings rising up around her.

  Alongside the city’s northern beltway was a series of high rise projects visible from her vantage point that had long been the blight of New Washington, a haven for the criminal low life packed inside. Fuelled by the drug trade, which prospered despite the complexities of living in such a city, North Four festered like an open metallic wound in the heart of New Washington. Phoenix Heights had become the epicentre of the Shiver trade: a new form of bio implant drug that caused the user to experience two lives of unimaginable ecstasy at once via an exotic and highly dangerous shifting of perceived reality, the user “shivering” between each. The drug took advantage of the fact that the human brain could “lucid dream”, a near awake state that allowed dreams to be experienced as absolute reality. The phenomenon itself was natural, but short lived and hard to control. Shiver gave the user that control, creating an addiction that led to substance abuse, brain overload, an inability to distinguish between reality and dreams and eventually death by misadventure. The proximal cause was usually suicide, either from the use of the drug or by an individual’s inability to procure more of it, forcing them to face reality on its own terms.

  Erin hated the projects and longed to return home to her apartment amid the safer, gleaming spires of the southern quadrant. Having just finished work, she had to make the commute on the Beltway because she couldn’t hope to afford a personal transport. She looked up into the bright blue sky and saw the blade like tips of the southern quadrant apartment buildings pointing toward her on the far side of New Washington’s vast circumference, as personal vehicles hummed through the air above them. Behind the spires, she saw the vast blue earth turning slowly, brilliant sunshine flaring through the pillars of the space station’s arms as it slowly rotated to generate the centrifugal force required for its residents to keep their feet on the ground.