Earth Fleet (Rebel Fleet Series Book 4)

  SF Books by B. V. Larson:

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  Death World

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  Rogue World

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  Star Force Series:

  Swarm

  Extinction

  Rebellion

  Conquest

  Army of One (Novella) Battle Station

  Empire

  Annihilation

  Storm Assault

  The Dead Sun

  Outcast

  Exile

  Demon Star

  Lost Colonies Trilogy:

  Battle Cruiser

  Dreadnought

  Star Carrier

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  EARTH FLEET

  (Rebel Fleet Series #4)

  by

  B. V. Larson

  Rebel Fleet Series:

  Rebel Fleet

  Orion Fleet

  Alpha Fleet

  Earth Fleet

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Iron Tower Press, Inc.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  =1=

  Teaching new crews at Space Command never seemed to get old. Every three months a new crew would rotate in, and I’d take charge of their personal combat training—they didn’t call it that, but that’s what it amounted to.

  New crews gave me the opportunity to meet new people, fresh faces—and bash them down onto the deck.

  “Hey! Captain Blake!” an ensign called out to me on the first day of training. “I’m not falling for your scam today. I want you to know that straight-up, sir.”

  The class hushed and stared at the two of us. They’d been buzzing a little as I walked in and moved to the front of the classroom—but now they fell silent.

  Military decorum was lax in my classroom. Every attendee had been expressly informed about that before their first day. But even so, this ensign was the first person who’d spoken out loud, and I thought the kid was kind of rude.

  I stared at the ensign for a few long seconds, and he stared back. Finally, he dropped his eyes, but then he looked back up again almost immediately.

  I didn’t feel any special animus toward the kid—after all, he was right. This class was built around teaching fresh officers in Earth’s fledgling space-going navy how to hold their own in a galaxy that followed different cultural rules. Such moments of dominance were, in fact, critical to the training.

  After years of discipline, these officers had to be “untrained” in order to deal with the aliens out there among the stars. In the good old days, discipline was consistent in every serious navy on Earth. The British had really pioneered the naval standards of Earth’s past. In their day, they’d built a worldwide empire based upon one tiny island. That achievement still marked the largest empire humanity had yet to produce.

  But times had changed. We weren’t trapped on a single ball of dirt anymore. Earth’s various armed forces didn’t waste time squabbling amongst themselves anymore—at least, not often.

  Wars occurred in space these days. The combatants always consisted of humans and some other variety of Kher.

  The fact the ensign had briefly dropped his eyes was a good thing. It had saved him a harsh beating. He didn’t know that—but it was the truth.

  As a personal combat instructor, and an introductory liaison charged with teaching these service people the culture of the Kher, I couldn’t allow an open challenge like his to stand. It would reduce my status in the eyes of the others, making my job much more difficult.

  After one more tense moment, I waved for him to come up to the front of the class.

  The rest of the students—about twenty in all—released a collective sigh of held breath. They lit up, beginning to tease and laugh.

  “You’re in for it now, Billson!” shouted another ensign in the front row. “Jawbreaker is gonna work you over!”

  “Jawbreaker” was my codename among the security agents who watched everyone and everything at Space Command. I’d always been kind of proud of that name, and somehow it had leaked, becoming a nickname the students used as well.

  Billson looked a little bit worried, but defiant. He was a big boy. Easily the size of Samson, he swaggered up, rolling a set of broad shoulders he’d built up in a gym somewhere. His arms were impressive as well—but they didn’t really matter.

  Billson slowed down when he got close, but I waved him closer still. A moment later we stood at the front of the room, eye-to-eye.

  I had a stick in my hand—I usually did during these classes. Often, we put thinly-padded weights at either end of our fighting sticks, but those were off now. It looked like a plain broomstick, a hardwood shaft about a meter and a half long.

  Thrusting the stick toward him suddenly, I made him flinch.

  “Take it,” I said.

  After a moment’s hesitation Billson seized the weapon.

  “Listen sir,” he said, “I didn’t mean no—”

  “No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t back down now. You’ve made a statement. You’ve laid down a challenge. When you do that with any Rebel Kher, you don’t get to take it back.”

  “But sir, I was only—”

  “I know what you were doing,” I boomed. “You were warning me off. Every brave dog does that when he meets a new pack, challenging the leader. It goes the same way with the Rebel Kher.”

  “But I didn’t mean—”

  “Hold your stick up!” I ordered. “Don’t make this too easy for me.”

  Finally, he caught the look in my eye, and he realized he wasn’t talking his way out of this. He looked concerned, but determined.

  He took a practiced step back, spun the stick I’d given him over his shoulders and back into his hand again. These were the moves of a trained fighter.

  About then, I realized I was the one who’d been setup. This boy was a martial artist. He’d specifically trained in the weapons I liked to use—and that wasn’t an accident.

  My eyes flicked over him, and the rest of the class went wild.

  “This is on!”

  “Kick his ass, Billson!”

  “A hundred credits on Jawbreaker! All comers, place your bets!”

  My face and my manner revealed nothing of my new concerns. I considered breaking another stick out of the lockers that lined the walls—but it was too late for that.

  I’d misjudged the situation. I’d planned to take the kid down without a stick, adding to his humiliation and my mystique—but at that point I hadn’t realized he was more than just another muscle-bound loudmouth.

  For a few seconds, I lamented the natural leaking of secrets that always plagued a training like the one I’d been tasked with giving. The more crews I trained, the more they talked to the next generation. My surprises and tricks were old news by now.

  Gone were the days when I could take a fresh crew and whack them into submission with impunity. That sweet element of surprise was history. These days, I had to deal with crews who knew what was coming their way.

  And this boy, Billson—he’d prepared seriously for this inevitable moment of confrontation.


  He watched me the way a man might watch a rattlesnake on his porch steps. His stick was up, and his feet shuffled tensely, rocking a little with nervousness. His fingers flexed, gripping and re-gripping the stick I’d given him. He was nervous, tense, extremely ready—but not willing to cast the first stone despite all that.

  That was when I made my choice. My approach to the tactical problem Billson represented had formed in my mind.

  In situations like this, cheating was in order. I’m not proud of it—well… no… that’s a lie. I am proud of it.

  I’m a first-class cheater. There it is, out in the open.

  In my defense, I’ve read that politicians, CEOs of big companies, and even top military leaders were four times more likely to cheat at golf than the average guy—so I guess I’m in good company.

  Rather than striking a combat pose, I walked past the kid, heading to the lockers.

  His eyes tracked me, and the moment I passed him, he switched his grip on his stick.

  He held it like a baseball bat, and he went for a home run—aiming for the base of my buzz-cut skull.

  =2=

  I hadn’t been certain Billson possessed the balls to perform a sneak-attack like the one he’d just launched, but it stood to reason that he might go for it. That’s why I’d taken a gamble and given him a clear shot at my back.

  It had always been part of my training regimen to dishonorably attack my students during the course. The purpose of this was to teach students that among the Rebel Kher—which is what we called the wide variety of creatures inhabiting thousands of planets circling nearby stars—sneak-attacks weren’t against the rules.

  Billson had clearly done his homework. He’d known before he got to my class that a backstab was acceptable—it was more than acceptable, in fact. It was expected.

  Billson’s only mistake was in thinking he could strike me from behind and take me down that way by surprise. What he didn’t know was I was still watching him, even though my back was turned.

  To be honest, the kid couldn’t have reasonably been expected to anticipate my preparedness. After all, it had to do with my cheating nature.

  One power my sym gave me was that of “perception”. This was a catch-all term for the data-gathering the symbiotic creature living in my body did on a regular basis.

  Capable of linking through simple Wi-Fi, my sym could absorb information, process it, and provide me with a mental image of my surroundings.

  Usually, I used this power of data compilation to generate a view of local space. When I commanded a starship like Devilfish, my sym’s powers of perception allowed me to view a mental map of my ship’s tactical position. Gathered from probes, sensor arrays and the like, I could “see” where my ship was in relation to approaching enemies.

  Today, I employed a much simpler method: I accessed the classroom’s cameras. Using them, I watched Billson swing like a big-league batter for my bare skull.

  Ducking under the swing, I felt the stick clip the top hairs sprouting out of my head.

  Reaching up, I snatched at the stick, caught it, and yanked forward.

  Billson made his biggest mistake then—other than when he’d mouthed off in the first place. He hung onto the stick. A smarter man might have let it go and kidney-punched me.

  But I’d surprised him, so he instinctively tried to keep the weapon I’d given him, seeing it as an advantage.

  Pulled forward and off-balance, Billson’s face caught my backward-smashing elbow perfectly. My aim was precise. It was as if I had eyes in the back of my head—because I did.

  Over the next ten seconds, I made short work of the kid. Soon he was down, bleeding and wrapping bruised fingers over his face.

  I didn’t beat him to a bloody mess. After all, he’d dropped his eyes right from the start, and he’d initially challenged me because he’d known what was in store for him at some point during the training.

  The whooping classroom had quieted after six or seven well-placed blows from my stick. They were aghast, watching Billson grunt and writhe in agony.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I straightened up and leaned on my bloody stick. A wad of Billson’s dark hair was glued to the gory tip sprouting up between my tightly gripping fingers, but I barely noticed.

  My right cheek was burning and my ribs hurt, as the kid had gotten in a few good licks. But I struck an easy pose on purpose, as if I was relaxed and untouched.

  “Anyone else in a feisty mood?” I asked.

  No one answered. There wasn’t a whisper or even a cough. They stared at Billson’s shivering form in shock and alarm.

  “Unlike most of you,” I said, “Billson here chose to fast forward to the endpoint of this course. He went for the gold right from the very beginning—and I can appreciate that. In fact, I’m giving him a single rank-point right here, right now.”

  That got their attention. They sucked in their collective breath and stared at me instead of my victim. Rank-points didn’t fall like raindrops onto the faces of fresh recruits.

  The Rebel Fleet operated on an entirely different basis than Earth’s traditional militaries. As it was made up of literally thousands of different types of beings from different planets. None of them had any respect for local military structures. You could be a general, a viceroy or a king back home—in the Rebel Fleet you were nobody until you worked your way up from the bottom.

  I was a rarity on Earth because I’d done just that. I currently held the rank of captain in Earth’s Space Command, but I also possessed the rank of approximately lieutenant commander in the real fleet—the Rebel Kher Fleet.

  As a prerequisite to my high rank, I had somewhere around a million rank points in the Rebel Fleet. This gave me enough to hand out points to the lower ranks freely. They were subtracted from my own total—or another officer’s.

  Each level up the chart was a big climb, requiring exponentially more points. The system gave the higher-ups the ability to be generous when rewarding their most promising subordinates.

  Besides impressing someone high up the food chain, the other way people got their points was by defeating one another. That’s why duels were so commonplace among personnel with similar rankings.

  “That’s right,” I told my class as I tapped Billson’s quivering form with my stick. “In the eyes of the Rebel Fleet, this man now outranks you all.”

  One hand crept skyward from Billson’s huddled classmates. The hand was feminine, and it moved with a tremor—but at least she was brave enough to say something.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Captain Blake, sir? Shouldn’t we call the medics or something? Billson looks seriously hurt.”

  I frowned at her, and I toed Billson with my boot.

  “Billson?” I asked, leaning over him. “You want a ride in an ambulance? I’m warning you—if you take it, you’ll be giving back that rank point you just earned.”

  Billson shook his head and coughed up a little blood.

  I slapped him one on the shoulder and grinned.

  “You see?” I called out to the others. “He’s fine. Don’t humiliate the man! Remember, in the Rebel Fleet, it’s not just about winning and losing. It’s about how you do it. If you lose a fight with a superior foe, you might even gain a point or two if you demonstrate toughness in the loss. The key is to impress your fellow Kher. To make them want to follow you, even if they’re from a different world.”

  With wide eyes, they kept looking at Billson, then at me with my bloody stick.

  Marching back and forth in front of them, I twirled my stick around as I walked.

  Did something splatter among them now and then, making them wince and shy away? Maybe, but I didn’t care. It was time for these kids to grow up.

  “This galaxy is chock-full of hostile aliens,” I told them. “Most Kher are genetically compatible with us—but they aren’t nice people. They’re all at the top of the food chain on their respective planets. They represent the nastiest beings that evolution and se
lective genetics has managed to produce over thousands of years.”

  For the rest of the week, the class proceeded without further interruptions. In hindsight, I thought Billson might have done me a favor by blurting out a challenge in the first few minutes. He’d set a tone for the class, giving them all an unscheduled lesson which they never forgot.

  =3=

  A summons from Space Command woke me up just after four in the morning on Sunday. It wasn’t a pleasant way to awaken for me—or for Mia, who was sleeping next to me.

  She growled and rolled over with outstretched claws, but I dodged her curved talons easily. I’d become something of an expert at sleeping alongside a cat-girl.

  Grabbing up my pants and pulling them tight, I dressed quickly and headed into the hallway, chewing a hunk of cured deer meat and swallowing water from a bottle. There wasn’t time for anything better.

  “Admiral Vega called me,” I told the guards at the vault doors.

  They looked me up and down and had me take a puncture-test. It was something we’d devised recently to spot Nomads. The artificial beings could mimic any human they wanted to, but they couldn’t fake our blood—at least, not yet.

  Rubbing my fingers together until the bleeding came to a stop, I waited for the guards to run the results. At last, they nodded to me.

  “You’re on the list, Captain Blake. This way—I’m supposed to expedite your delivery.”

  “Let’s do it, then.”

  I followed him to a chute, and we stepped inside. A capsule like a small elevator car enclosed us. We shot down into the earth.

  Most people took a jeep or an electric cart down into the mountain. The fact I’d been cleared for transport using our latest gadgetry was alarming—it meant something was seriously wrong.

  No more than twenty minutes after I’d been initially called upon, I stepped into the control center. My uniform was crisp and my hair looked clean, although that was only because it was cut so short.

  “There you are, Blake!” Vega boomed. “What took you so long? Did you shit the bed again?”