The Last War: Book 1 of The Last War Series Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Front Matter

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  The Last War

  Book 1

  Of

  The Last War Series

  For my three favorite admirals: Kirk, Adama, and Ackbar

  To be notified of future books in The Last War series, sign up here: smarturl.it/peterbostrom

  Peter Bostrom is the pen name of Nick Webb co-writing with other authors. The Last War is by Nick Webb and David Adams.

  Copyright 2017 by Hyperspace Media

  Other books by Nick Webb:

  Constitution, Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet Series

  Mercury’s Bane, Book 1 of the Earth Dawning Series

  The Terran Gambit, Book 1 of the Pax Humana Saga

  Other Books by David Adams:

  Lacuna, Book 1 of the Lacuna Series

  The Polema Campaign, Book 1 of The Symphony of War

  Prologue

  Operations room

  Station 43

  Capella System, 42 light years from Earth

  “I can’t believe you’ve done this.” Petty Officer Third Class Leonard Alexander Jacobs jabbed a finger at the game tile on his duty monitor, as though the computer would change its mind. The tile stayed red. “Admin is a word.”

  “No, it’s a contraction,” said Petty Officer Third Class Suhina Iyer beside him, her thick Indian accent almost smothering her words, tapping on the key that denied him his precious points. “It’s not a word. Doesn’t count. Only administrator counts and you, my friend, are missing a T.”

  Every day was like this. Even among distant systems, Capella System was considered the back-end of nowhere. The frontier’s frontier, the only human presence a tiny space station orbiting the gas giant Euphrates. A giant coffin where the thirty-odd staff had nothing to do all day but perform the meaningless drudgery that counted as work, play stupid games they were bored of, and consider the chain of bad life decisions that had led to them being posted out this far.

  And arguing. Oh boy. Nothing kept the mind occupied like a good argument. All around him, the other station operations crew chatted away, also trying to stave off boredom.

  “Admin is a shortening,” said Jacobs. “A contraction is like…something else. Like how do not becomes don’t.”

  “That’s the same thing.”

  “No, it’s not,” he said patiently. “Admin’s like radar. It counts because it’s a word in common usage.”

  “Radar is an acronym,” said Iyer. “Totally different.”

  Oh, this was good. Jacobs readied the next chain in the argument he’d prepared, but then something flashed on the edges of his screen.

  The radar program was trying to tell him something, almost as though it had been summoned by the use of its name. He switched between programs, bringing up his actual work.

  A faint reflection, out near Euphrates’s third moon, right on the horizon of the gas giant. The size of a small ship or large fighter. A gunship?

  He almost ignored it, but even this tiny blip was more excitement than he’d had in a long time. “Radar contact,” Jacobs called out, trying to sound less bored than he felt. “494,400 kilometers distant, bearing 96.229 mark 11.812. RCS suggests gunship class.”

  The general hubbub of the operations room ceased. Everyone cast aside whatever tool they had been using to keep themselves from going mad and focused on work.

  “Confirm that,” said Lieutenant Ellis, stepping up behind him. Ellis was their short, nasty CO with the face only a mother could love, like it had been run over a couple of times with a cheese grater. “Iyer, send another pulse, maximum power.”

  The radar pulsed again, and this time, nothing came back, even with the higher power. That area of space was empty.

  “Again,” said Ellis. Another pulse. Another nothing.

  Iyer was staring at him. In fact, everyone was. But he was sure the ship had been there.

  “No transports or shuttles are due today,” Iyer said. “And they wouldn’t come that close to the gas giant if they were. Not picking up any distress signals, no transponder codes. Nothing.”

  “Petty Officer,” said Ellis, gently patting the headrest of his seat, “I think you’ve been out here on the edge too long.”

  Haven’t we all? Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. Maybe it was the damn rats chewing on the network cables again. Who needed the Chinese when they had rodents sabotaging every system on the station?

  “It was faint, ma’am,” said Jacobs, banishing the doubts in his mind. He’d definitely seen it. “If it was a recon gunship, we might have been seeing a refraction through the gas planet’s atmosphere. There could be something behind the horizon, observing our radar pulses without reflecting them. The Chinese used to do the same thing, back in the day.”

  “This isn’t back in the day, Petty Officer, and the Chinese are our friends now.” The tiniest hint of sarcasm slipped through Ellis’s carefully chosen words. “Stand down. It’s probably just a bounce from a pocket of gas in the upper atmosphere.”

  “Aye, ma’am.” Well, that was the most exciting thing he’d seen in weeks. A month, probably. Ellis’s boots
retreated behind him. Jacobs waited until the coast was clear.

  Iyer glanced at him, corkscrewing her finger near her temple. Yeah, yeah… He put his fingers to the tab key, but right before he changed applications, another pulse went out.

  And his whole display lit up.

  It looked like a shotgun blast. A dozen bright, hot contacts simultaneously dropped out of Z-space in attack formation.

  Oh shit.

  “Radar contact!” Jacobs practically shouted, fingers frantically tapping at his keys. A whole damn fleet had just appeared. “Multiple skunks, fresh from Z-space, coming in from Euphrates’s horizon!”

  “Confirmed,” said Iyer, her voice charged. “Designating skunks Alpha through November. They’re squawking IFF. Firing interrogation…” She practically spat the words. “Nothing, dammit. I’m detecting IFF transponders, but they’re not any configuration I’ve ever seen. It could be a new Chinese system.”

  Could very well be. The United States and the Chinese had been at peace for nearly twenty years…plenty of time to adopt a new system of transponders.

  “Action stations, action stations,” said Ellis, the station-wide address radio in her hand. “This is not a drill.” She turned to Jacobs. “Give me a firing solution on the nearest skunk. Sparkle them with infrared lasers. Make sure they know we’re giving them the stink-eye.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” he said, flicking the plastic cover off the master-arm button and thumping it with his fist. The faint hum of energy grew around him as the station’s weapons systems, too long inert, came to full power. Time to blast those red bastards into the cold vacuum of space. He fed the coordinates for the closest contact, Skunk Alpha, into the computer. “Targets highlighted, ready to engage.”

  “Hold steady,” said Ellis, leaning forward behind his chair. “Iyer, establish inter-system communications. Get Fleet Command on the horn. Tell them we are”—the slightest hesitation—“under attack. Updates to follow.”

  “Aye aye,” said Iyer. “Transmitting.”

  Silence, save Iyer’s frantic typing. The hostile ships closed in on them.

  “Sent.” Iyer twisted around in her chair. “Lieutenant, are we sure—”

  A deafening blast stole the rest of her words, joined with the roaring of splintering metal. A pressure wave blew Jacobs forward, onto his console, smashing his nose into the screen.

  Air howled all around him. Dazed, confused, his nose a smashed wreck, Jacobs instinctively reached up to pinch it, to staunch the flow of blood.

  His hand was covered in the stuff before he even touched his face.

  “Iyer,” he said, his voice strangely muffled, having to shout over the sound of air rushing past, the wind throwing debris all around. “Hey, I think I’m bleeding.”

  Her headless body drifted upward, past his chair, into a massive hole in the hull and out into space.

  How had a single shot penetrated so far into the armored core of the ship?

  “Evacuate!” roared Ellis over the rushing air and wailing klaxons. “Operations is breached! Get to the escape pods!”

  Jacobs clambered over his chair, frantically trying to get to the rear of the room, to the armored door that led to the eight escape pods.

  Another round blew through Operations, crumpling a bulkhead and blasting debris everywhere. The screaming fragments of metal whizzed past his ears like a swarm of hornets. Ellis collapsed, dozens of red flowers blooming on her body, and then she too was sucked out.

  Jacobs felt the howling air tear at his legs, yanking him off his feet. He climbed forward with his hands, pulling himself from chair to chair. Three meters. Two. One.

  The door hissed open. He hauled himself into an escape pod the size and shape of a coffin, gasping with lungs that barely had any air to fill them. He pulled a safety belt around his body, clipped it securely, and then tugged the pod’s lid closed, sealing himself in the armored sarcophagus with only a tiny window the size of his fist in front of his eyes.

  “Wait!” shouted one of the other operations crewmen, his voice muffled. The ensign moved into view, bashing his fist on the lid. “Let me in!”

  There were seven other pods. “Take another one!” yelled Jacobs, right as a third round blew through the room. The crewman’s blood splattered against the pod’s window, painting it crimson.

  Nothing he could do. Jacobs drove his bloody fist into the launch button.

  The pod shook as it blasted free of the doomed station, the porthole instantly replaced with empty space. The howling disappeared, replaced with ominous silence.

  With its minimal fuel exhausted, the pod drifted through space, maneuvering for an orbit around Euphrates. Finally, he saw Station 43, atmosphere pouring from multiple breaches, the sparkle of debris drifting away.

  From Euphrates’s horizon, a massive ball of ice and rock, leaving a trail like a comet, swung around toward the station. Helpless, Jacobs could only watch as the object, almost moving quicker than he could comprehend, barreled into the side of Station 43 and blasted it into a billion pieces. The debris scattered into the void.

  Jacobs’s pod would be transmitting a distress signal in the open. His enemies would certainly pick him up. Being a Chinese prisoner couldn’t be too bad though. Hopefully they would acknowledge admin was a real word.

  Jacobs sat curled up in the pod, waiting for one of the enemy ships to make an approach to capture him. But as he watched the distant ships, they suddenly disappeared with a flash, one by one, until the whole fleet had departed as quickly as it had arrived.

  Then he was alone.

  Chapter One

  Shuttlecraft “Hestia”

  Cor Caroli System, 27 light years from Earth

  Meanwhile

  Admiral Jack Mattis had seen a lot in his day, but laying eyes on the massive steel space station through the window of the forward section of the shuttle left a taste in his mouth more sour than the cigar still perched between his teeth.

  Friendship Station. A massive ring perched in the asteroid belt of the Cor Caroli system, bristling with docking clamps, passenger umbilicals and radio antennas, it resembled a colossal crown floating in space; jutting out above it all was the American flag, flying beside the Chinese one, two massive cloth banners on twin flagpoles, motionless in space. A red floodlight illuminated the Chinese flag and a white one the Americans, while the light of Cor Caroli’s twin blue stars cast the remainder of the whole station in a pale cyan light that seemed cold. Foreboding.

  Red, white, and blue hues. Interesting patriotic statement for a station that stood for the biggest betrayal of the American people since the war.

  Mattis inhaled, sucking smoke into his lungs. The cigar tip flared. Now they were all friends, of course. The Americans and the Chinese. Oh, sure, they had shot at each other for almost a year, killed and died in equal measure…but now they were friends.

  He’d thought the nicotine might help. It didn’t. Never did.

  “You shouldn’t smoke in here,” said a voice from across the shuttle, its tone like sandpaper to his sanity. It moved, swaggered like the person who owned it, dripping with self-righteous smugness. Senator Peter Pitt.

  Pit. An empty hole in the ground. Pitt. An empty head in the black of space. The guy was tiny—barely five foot two—and dressed in a suit that seemed at once obnoxiously expensive and embarrassingly cheap. A pale little weasel, nearly sixty, someone far too old to be leading this delicate diplomatic mission, despite his freshly dyed yet receding black hair, a pathetic protest against age’s encroachment.

  “They say,” said Mattis, drawing in another lungful of ash and then blowing the smoke out into the shuttle’s atmosphere, “that smoking’s bad for me. They ain’t cured the kind of cancer these things cause. They say they can’t. That there’s just something filthy in them that burrows into the cell walls of the lungs and nestles in there real good, like some kind of varmint digging its nest, and once it does, it can’t be dug out for nothing.”

  Pitt lau
ghed—a noise high pitched and annoying—and slid over to him. “Right, right. So how about you put that thing out, hey, Grandpa?”

  Grandpa? Funny words coming from someone his own age. Mattis turned with slow, careful deliberation toward the man, the cigar tip flaring an angry red.

  Pitt held up his hands. “Easy now, big fella. I’m just sayin’.”

  Mattis stared him down, casually puffing on the cigar. The shuttle adjusted its course. Blue light crept up Pitt’s body as the craft tilted to one side. Mattis imagined the blue line was the shadow of some great hand crushing this tiny bug of a man.

  “Look,” said Pitt, all pretense of faux-humor fading away, his craggy face becoming an angry sneer. He jabbed his finger at Mattis’s chest. “You’re only here because the military big-shits want you here. I didn’t. They did. Some kind of show of trust or…whatever. Okay? Listen: you’re here to show these damn reds that we’re here in peace, and that even a bitter old dog like you can be brought to heel. That there won’t be any more plausibly denied, state-sponsored insurrections on their worlds. You’re here to say nothing, do nothing, and let me do my fucking job. I do the talking. You just stand there and don’t screw this up for me. Okay, Mattis? You get that? Huh?”

  Mattis glared down at him, a silent tower, smoke trailing from his cigar.

  “Say something.”

  Oh, you probably don’t want me to do that. Mattis bit back ten thousand bitter words and focused entirely on the practical. “It’s Admiral Mattis.”

  “Whatever.” Pitt snatched the cigar and crushed it underneath his slightly too cheap shoe. “And no more goddamn smoking, or I’ll ship you back to the States to live out your life giving speeches to kindergarteners and complaining about the neighbors, you senile old fuck. Capiche?”

  Senile. What a hypocrite. “Right,” said Mattis, his eyes two narrow slits. “No more smoking.”