Frontier's Destiny: A Space Opera Adventure, page 1
Copyright © 2021 by Robert C. James
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Yvonne Less, Art 4 Artists
Contents
Stay Up To Date
Fourteen Months Ago
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Present Day
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Two Months Ago
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Present Day
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Six Months Later
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Stay Up To Date
Stay Up To Date
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Frontier’s Destiny
Robert C. James
Fourteen Months Ago
One
Seeker Weapon Ship
The goliath-sized vessel rumbled, and its deck shuddered beneath Tyler Cassidy’s feet. Its internal supports squealed, and its hull shrieked. If the ship’s fate wasn’t terminal before, it was now.
“We have to leave!” His uncle, Conrad Althaus, waved toward the elevator to the port side of the chamber, past the ancient spherical relic at its center.
Tyler put his hand on his Jason Cassidy’s shoulder, who stood over the body of Christian Nash. “If we don’t go, we’ll die here with them.”
His brother gazed at his dead friend, unable to move. Nearby, Corporal Higgs and Corporal Burns lifted Doctor Susan Tai into their arms. Captain Nicolas Marquez tapped Tyler on the back and motioned him over to Private Utkin’s lifeless body on the other side of the chamber.
The pair grabbed the fallen Marine with each arm and brought him to his feet. But just as they were about to drag him away, the ship cried in agony as if she were a whale that had just been harpooned.
The deck sheared, and a huge split tore through the heart of the chamber. Tyler and Marquez glanced at each other in horror at being trapped on the opposite side to the others. Tyler approached the gap and peered into the fissure. Neither he nor the captain could possibly jump it to safety.
He stared at his brother, and their eyes locked. Jason didn’t have to say a word, Tyler knew what he was thinking. He hadn’t come all this way to lose someone else.
“It’s okay!” Marquez yelled across the breach. “You get down to the hangar deck. We’ll find a way to the Maybelle and meet you on the Argo!”
Tyler’s legs froze.
“Come on!” Marquez said to him. “Let’s get back to the transport pod.”
The ceiling collapsed, and beams tumbled toward them. Tyler’s adrenaline kicked in, and they both ran for the exit on their side of the gulf. They dove through the hatchway and down a set of steps.
Lumbering with Private Utkin in their arms, Tyler couldn’t help but notice the cracks appearing through the ship’s bulkheads. “She’s pulling herself apart.”
“Just ignore it. Keep moving.” Marquez upped the pace and bounded toward the deck they’d started on.
It was in a much worse state than when they’d left it. All the internal structures had fallen in, and what little lighting there was left all but flickered. Around one corner and past another, they arrived at the Maybelle, still latched on to the side of the Seeker weapon ship.
They bowed their heads through the hatch and guided Private Utkin’s body inside. Marquez allowed Tyler in next so he could take the helm, while he closed the hatch behind them.
Seated at the controls, Tyler powered up the transport pod, bypassing the pre-flight checks. With green lights across the board, he buckled himself in and ensured Marquez did the same in the rear compartment. The captain gave him a thumbs-up, and Tyler detached from the Seeker ship, firing the main thrusters at full power. He pointed the Maybelle away from the doomed Seeker vessel and dodged the exploding debris around them.
“Did the others get through?” Marquez asked him.
With one eye on the viewport and another on the scanners, Tyler checked the readings. It was a soup of data with all the flying fragments rattling off the Seeker ship. But he smiled at the sight of a solitary blip. “I’m picking up a Seeker craft on an escape trajectory ahead of us!”
“It has to be them…”
Something else caught Tyler’s attention. A bright blast of energy.
And it was coming from behind them.
“Oh God, no!”
“What is it?” Marquez wailed.
Tyler didn’t have time to answer. Astern of the Maybelle, the Seeker weapon ship exploded, taking the mysterious alien sphere with it. The viewport filled with a white flash, and the pair shielded their eyes. When the brightness dispersed, he breathed a sigh of relief, but he should have known better. “I’m reading a massive shock wave from the explosion, and it’s heading straight for us!”
The Maybelle reverberated, and a large boom of force thrust them forward, knocking them off their axis. Tyler’s head slammed against the helm, sending a dull pain through the rest of his body. The Maybelle’s hull groaned, and the engine howled, snapping free of the ship.
A bright light surrounded Nicolas, and he questioned whether this was in fact the end. But his death was the furthest thing he could think about. Thoughts of Susan lingered. The last he’d seen of his ex-wife was her slumped body on the deck of the Seeker weapon ship with a wound to her leg. He wondered if her and the others got away before the shock wave hit.
Up ahead someone appeared in the white surroundings. But it wasn’t the figure of Saint Peter he’d expected. Instead, it was Tyler yelling at him. But he couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“Cassidy?”
Tyler continued to yell with all his might, and Nicolas approached him to try and touch him. But his hand passed straight through his form.
“What the hell?”
Then a rapturous cacophony of noise surrounded him along with the panicked tones of Tyler’s voice. “Captain Marquez! Wake up!”
Nicolas’s eyes blasted open, and he found himself back inside the rear compartment of the Maybelle, strapped into his seat.
“Can you hear me!” Tyler asked frantically from the helm.
The Maybelle clattered uncontrollably, and the forward viewport shook so hard it was difficult to see what was ahead of them. What Nicolas could determine was that the stars were gone, and they were going headfirst into the atmosphere of a planet.
Psi-Aion?
“What happened!” Nicolas yelled. “Why aren’t we dead?”
Tyler juddered in his seat, doing his best to keep control of the helm. “I don’t know, we must’ve beaten the shock wave after all.”
The Maybelle lurched hard entering the exosphere of the planet, and the glow from the heat shield lit up the viewport. The transport pod tumbled on its axis, piercing its way toward the surface.
“The hull’s severely compromised. We’re damaged beyond repair,” Tyler said.
“Can you land it?”
Tyler glanced at him before returning his attention to the helm. “We won’t get that far, Captain.”
“What about communications?” If Nicolas was going to die, he wanted to at least send one last message to Susan. That’s if she was still alive.
“It’s blown to pieces like everything else. We—”
Another hard pocket of turbulence pushed the Maybelle beyond her limits. Every bone in Nicolas’s body jangled, and one of his straps came loose. He wrapped his hand around its remains to keep himself planted in his seat. The hull screeched, and a small part of the transport pod’s roof tore off. The sound of air bursting throughout the pod’ s carcass near sent him deaf.
They broke through the cloud layer, and the ground appeared. More of the ship sheered away, and the Maybelle began rapidly turning into a convertible. Tyler was right, there’d be nothing left to land on, even if they reached the surface.
Nicolas closed his eyes and thought of Susan. He tried to remember the first day they’d met, when she’d boarded the Vanguard. Or the time he’d rescued her on Caeneus II, on a mission during the war. Or their wedding day. But the only image he conjured up was her lying in agony on the Seeker ship.
He reopened his eyes at the disintegrating transport pod around him, while Tyler Cassidy continued to fight the controls. Then something caught his eye.
On the starboard side, a compartment door flapped in the wind. And inside it, a pair of EV suits.
He slinked out of his harness, keeping one hand wrapped round it and moved to the other side of the craft. He bounced like a pinball but did his utmost to stay on his feet. With his spare hand, he snatched the plating off the back of one EV suit and found what he was after. With a smile, he yanked the parachute pack from it and repeated the process with the other suit.
He stepped toward Tyler, and the younger man stared at him with a surprised but knowing expression. He relinquished the controls with the surface fast approaching, and they each helped one another attach the parachutes to their backs.
With the roof of the Maybelle gone, they took one last look at each other and jumped into the air.
Two
The bogus pearly gates didn’t greet Nicolas this time. In its place, a bright blanket of green sky filled his vision. The pain shooting through his body reminded him of a high school football game when he ran through a gap only to be laid out by a linebacker with the ominous moniker The Big Show. The kid ended up going to college and playing in the pros to run down many more bigger and stronger men compared to Nicolas.
“Susan?”
He rolled his eyes at his deliriousness. She wouldn’t be on Psi-Aion, and even if she were, she’d be in no condition to help him.
Pull yourself together!
He tried to heave himself up from the rocky surface beneath him, but his body wouldn’t budge. Wondering if he’d broken his back he turned over like a baby would for the first time and stared downward. However, instead of the ground he expected to see, the side of a cliff greeted him instead. He widened his eyes at the hundred meter drop.
He did his best not to panic and crept backward on his stomach, using the same muscles he’d used to crawl through the mud on Caeneus II. Around him, vast rock formations towered from the ground, while beyond, sparsely covered bushland stretched to the horizon where the morning sun rose high.
He peered left and right, wondering where his comrade was. They’d both jumped from the Maybelle together and cleared the doomed wreck before it broke up.
Nicolas checked the commband on his wrist. Like his body, it had seen better days, but there still seemed to be some life in it. “Marquez to Cassidy.”
There was no response.
“Can you hear me?” An ominous static filled the commlink and he gazed into the sky. “Marquez to Argo, are you reading this transmission?”
He shook his head in frustration at the white noise.
Something jabbed into his left shoulder and he turned to check the broken strap of his parachute pack digging into him. He eased it off and threw it to the ground. Small tears had ripped the edges, which explained the hard landing.
Nicolas walked along the top of the desolate cliff face where he found a path toward the bushland. He reached a summit that overlooked the local flora and studied it. The vegetation was unlike the vast tall forest they’d toured when they landed a few days earlier on Psi-Aion searching for the CDF beacon. It was more akin to what one would see in drier climates. He could only imagine they’d landed on another part of the planet.
Nicolas continued on, doing his best to scale the harsh elements the jagged rock presented. At the bottom, he stepped out onto a softer surface. He pushed through a bevy of bushes no taller than his waist and out into the sparser surrounds.
Along with some larger trees was the debris field of the Maybelle. No longer was she an intact craft the size of a bus, but several thousand pieces of shrapnel strewn across the landscape. He picked up a piece no bigger than his fist. It was still warm, and the alloy charred to a crisp. His ears pricked up to a sound in the distance and he checked in every direction.
He found his bearings and rushed off toward the cacophony. When he reached its source to find nothing, he darted his eyes left and right.
“Up here!”
Nicolas stopped and looked up. “Tyler!”
Up above in the twenty-meter-high tree, the younger of the Cassidy brothers was contoured around a series of branches with his parachute covering him like a blanket.
“Am I glad to see you.”
Tyler winced at the pain flowing through him. There wasn’t a single part of his body that didn’t ache.
Marquez steadily climbed and approached his position at the top. “And I thought I had a rough landing.”
“I guess I need more practice,” Tyler quipped, checking the Maybelle’s wreckage. A tinge of sadness flowed through him. The Argo’s reliable transport had seen a lot over the years, and while it was an exact duplicate of the Julieanne, for whatever reason, the former had been his favorite since he was a child.
Marquez untangled his chute and threw it to the ground. “Have you tried your commband?”
Tyler pulled up his wrist to find the device smashed to smithereens. “Yeah, I don’t see this working again.”
“Hopefully I can use some of its components to repair mine. Without any way to contact the Argo, it’ll be hard for them to track us down.”
Tyler squinted, looking farther in the distance. “Uh, I think we have company.”
Marquez slipped the pack from Tyler’s back and turned around. “Natives?”
“Natives, yeah, but not the ones were expecting.”
They weren’t as large as the inhabitants of Psi-Aion. They were sized more like humans, with slighter frames and more modern attire. However one was shorter than the other.
A child?
“We have to get out of here before they spot us.” Marquez fumbled with the branches, breaking them apart to free his colleague.
Now able to move, Tyler lifted his arm, but as soon as he put pressure on his right foot, a searing agony ran up it. “Holy hell!”
Marquez stopped him from falling out of the tree and peered below his waist. “Uh, don’t move.”
“Why?”
“Because I think you’ve broken your leg.”
Blood drained from Tyler’s face, and the pain hit him like a ton of bricks. He needed to vomit but held it back, not wanting to embarrass himself. Marquez slowly guided him downward, doing his best to keep his weight off his right side. When they reached terra firma, he put Tyler’s arm around him, and they scurried off as quickly as possible with the incoming voices coming ever closer.
Jumping behind a bush, the two peered out at the figures. One was indeed a child. A female. The other a man.
Her father maybe?
Their clothes were something akin to what farmers would wear. Their faces were mostly human, apart from a bevy of tiny freckle-like spots that ran from their forehead to the neckline.
