Pursuit of the Bold

  Pursuit of the Bold

  Bold Trilogy #1

  Jamie McFarlane

  Fickle Dragon Publishing, LLC

  Copyright © 2018 by Fickle Dragon Publishing, LLC

  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.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Preface

  Prologue

  1. Joys of Leadership

  2. Piscivoru

  3. Crack in the Armor

  4. Star Fire

  5. Prize Court

  6. Match Point

  7. Remnant

  8. Born to be Wild

  9. Digitus Impudicus

  10. Abeline

  11. Information Drop

  12. Hunted

  13. Trading Up

  14. Hidden

  15. Into Darkness

  16. Any landing you can walk away from

  17. Kill Box

  18. Life

  19. Tight Squeeze

  20. Of Iskstar

  21. In Triplicate

  Epilogue

  Fury of the Bold - Preview

  Glossary of Names

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Jamie McFarlane

  Preface

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  Prologue

  One of the difficulties of writing a long running series is getting people back up to speed with characters they may have forgotten. I have two resources available for this. The first is a glossary at the end of this book. In this glossary, I have descriptions of the major characters. The second is on my website at fickledragon.com/privateer-tales-characters. And, don't worry, neither resource is required. I'll introduce each character as you run into them, just like you'd expect.

  Writing a trilogy is a new experience for me and I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting into when I started this venture. I can say that so far it has been very rewarding. I’ve enjoyed the ability to develop a much longer story and work through a full arc instead of a single story. Don’t worry, though. I stand first in line for my dislike of cliff-hangars. Each installment of the Bold Trilogy is a complete story with a satisfying end. You’ll no doubt have an idea as to where the next book is going, but of course, it will be another story entirely.

  Happy Reading!

  Jamie

  Chapter 1

  Joys of Leadership

  Petersburg Station over Planet Zuri, Santaloo System

  "Frak, Liam, exactly what do you have against Intrepid?" Nick's voice came over the comms. "You could have at least recovered the pieces; those were brand new engines."

  The quick cadence of my best friend and business partner's voice brought a smile to my face. For a ten-day, Intrepid had been sitting in the primary repair bay of Petersburg Station, which was in its permanent home over the planet Zuri in the Santaloo System. Nick and the brightly-colored, frog-faced alien Jester Ripples were finishing the rebuild of the heavy struts that would hold two of Intrepid's powerful engines.

  "Look out!" Merrie, a young and extremely talented engineer, shouted just after striking a frozen iron pipe with a four-kilogram sledge. I looked over in time to see a wash of aged bilge water stream toward me as the ten-centimeter-diameter pipe broke loose from its fitting. I attempted to spin away but was caught in the shoulder by the frigid slime.

  "That is disgusting," Sendrei Buhari, the former Naval gunnery officer we'd rescued from planet Cradle, complained in his deep baritone voice. I turned to find that while I'd taken a glancing blow, he'd taken the pressurized black water full in the back. Worse yet, Sendrei had turned at Merrie's call and a portion of the sludge had also caught him in the face.

  "Oh, I'm so sorry," Merrie, often the smartest person in the room and always the most impatient, pushed her sledge onto a magnetic clamp, flitted over and dabbed at the gunk on his face. "I thought that might free the pipe, but I had no idea the contents were under pressure."

  Sendrei took the towel from her hand and continued cleaning. "An unfortunate eventuality of working in a bilge." The heavily muscled, ebony-skinned gunnery officer had once been enslaved for more than ten stans by the bug-aliens we knew as Kroerak and was generally unflappable.

  "Why don't you head up and get cleaned off," I said. "Send Semper down if you see her."

  "I have arrived, Liam Commodore." Semper was Felio, a humanoid species with feline characteristics, including fur that covered the entire body, retractable claws, and a tail. For whatever reason, Semper, like most Felio, had difficulty placing a person's title in front of their name.

  "Merrie finally got this beast free," I said, laying my hand on the heavy pipe that floated in zero-gravity.

  Semper was unable to pull her wider-than-usual cat eyes away from Sendrei, her long tail twitching anxiously. "Buhari Sir, you are covered in fouled waters."

  "And so will you be. There appears to be more than enough to go around." Sendrei chuckled as he gracefully pushed off and glided upward through the tangle of piping.

  "There is malodor," Semper said, turning her attention to the long seventy-kilogram pipe I had marked for recycling in Merrie's forge atop Petersburg station. Even in zero-g, a special touch was required to move an object which out-massed you. Semper, however, had adapted to ship-board life and maneuvered it expertly.

  I shook my head. "I swear. You and Sendrei compete for understatement."

  "Sendrei Buhari is superior in this," Semper said as she continued guiding the pipe upward.

  I caught a humorous glint in Merrie's eyes as we exchanged glances. In addition to not understanding titles, Semper was notoriously slow to pick up on humor. This trait was something that gave me no end of entertainment and in Merrie, I shared a co-conspirator.

  The bilge in which we stood belonged to our largest and one of our most recently acquired ships — Hornblower. Originally called Sangilak, we'd captured the 20,000 tonne cruiser from a pesky lizard-chinned Pogona pirate named Belvakuski. And while it was generally considered bad luck to rename a ship, I figured we were well within our rights. We were not only modernizing the light cruiser, but were upgrading it to be better classed as a standard cruiser.

  "Commodore, your attention is required in the engine room." Commander Greg Munay's voice came over the ship's comm.

  While Munay had originally been one of my most ardent and outspoken critics, he'd changed his tune when the Intrepid crew had seized Sangilak, now named Hornblower, rescuing him and eighteen other Mars Protectorate from Genteresk pirates. A younger version of myself would have held past behavior against the man, punishing or at least ignoring him. Even now, trying as hard as I could, I was unable to completely forget that Munay had once seen it as his right to threaten the seizure of Intrepid if I didn't do as he demanded.

  "On my way, Greg," I answered. I had issues using his previous Mars Protectorate title as it signified rank that did not fit within our current structure.

  "Are you good to keep going?" I asked Merrie.

  "Amon is on his way. These pipes are made from old steel," she replied. Merrie's husband, Amon, was a blacksmith by trade. "He will be better at disassembly than we are."

  "Are you sure he'll be okay?" I asked, pushing off the hull, aiming for the hatch five meters above our position. Amon had virtually no instincts when it came to moving around in l
ow gravity and he preferred to stay out of confined spaces like a ship's bilge.

  "Don't coddle him," Merrie said. "He's a big boy."

  "Don't worry," I raised an eyebrow as I passed in front of her. "I'll leave that entirely to you."

  "You are a wicked man, Liam Hoffen."

  Hornblower was by far the largest ship I'd ever been on. There were entire decks I'd spent no more than a few minutes on while passing through. The ship’s design had more in common with an ancient seafaring battleship than any modern spaceship I'd been in, military or otherwise. Just about every system was manual and good operation of the ship required a minimum crew complement of one hundred, twenty sailors. Hornblower could comfortably hold a couple thousand crew, provided they didn't mind sleeping on the rusted decks without much access to any sort of facilities.

  Like all aspects of the ship upgrade, the bilge refit was a massive undertaking. I'd worked with Nick on the redesign and we'd agreed to a plan that would completely replace clear water, grey water, and black water systems throughout. For now, we would save considerable effort by not plumbing the middle seven decks and instead stub off the main supplies and waste at each of those decks. There'd been some talk of installing a smaller system, thereby lowering the ship's crew capacity. In the end, I'd made the call to fully build out the bilge. Most of the human labor was in the removal of the older system components, anyway.

  With Munay's influence, Nick had been able to procure the IP (intellectual property) for naval hull repair bots. The bots’ sole purpose was to grind, weld, repair and paint interior metal surfaces. They weren't particularly good at replacing missing sections of hull plating, nor could they restore bracing. However, they could cut holes in bulkheads and build up mounting brackets for power, atmo, and the three different types of water. Left to their own devices, a fleet of these little bots would work tirelessly to bring the ship's hard spaces up to the Navy's high standards.

  Once we were done with the little machines, Nick was sure he'd be able to sell them for three times what we’d invested. The problem was fitting them into his production schedule. In the sixty-some days we'd been out chasing the Kroerak, Nick had piled up orders for twelve hundred stevedore bots and was struggling to expand manufacturing capacity to meet the demand. Even so, we both knew that pursuit of the Kroerak was critical and the short-term switch in bot production, while not a great financial decision, would get our small fleet back into the hunt more quickly.

  "Cap, where are you headed?" Marny, our chief of security, caught me as I arc-jetted aft to where Munay had requested my presence.

  "Munay has a problem in the engine room. Walk with me," I said dropping to the deck. The gravity had been turned up to .3g in the upper decks.

  "Sounds expensive," she chortled.

  I nodded with a lopsided grin. Between Nick's manufacturing orders and the repairs of Hornblower and Intrepid, we were burning resources like someone had dumped an oxygen tank on 'em. "Might have been cheaper to just make a new ship," I quipped.

  "Given any thought to manufacturing shells?" she asked. "Belvakuski's armory was nearly depleted."

  "Your boyfriend would have my head if I asked him to manufacture one more thing," I said.

  "Why is it Nick-my-boyfriend when you don't want to discuss difficult issues and otherwise he's your best friend?"

  "I'm going to consider that question asked and answered."

  "We also need to find a source for fuel," she said. "Hornblower's engines are like sieves. We burned over half of our stock just getting home."

  "Doesn’t Merrie have a line on a cluster of asteroids with trapped hydrogen in the silicate?"

  "Yes, but someone needs to go get it," Marny said.

  I was purposely trying to avoid several issues and Marny knew it. I'd slowly but surely discovered that immediate, urgent issues often got in front of the more strategic. Marny was reminding me that I couldn't afford to ignore ordnance or fuel.

  "Copy. The bilge project is moving without me. I can take on the munition and fuel issues now," I said. "According to Merrie, we're running short on iron. I'll have to talk to Hog and see if the York settlement has any more folks who'd like to stake a mining claim."

  Marny stopped me by grabbing my arm. "You're getting pulled thin, Cap." An Earther, Marny was physically imposing with broad strong shoulders and heavily banded musculature. While Earthers were typically larger than spacers, her proportions were out of the ordinary. Instead of shying away from her size, however, she'd embraced it and kept herself in top physical shape. It was a running joke amongst the crew that I had a crush on her. I'd be dishonest to suggest otherwise, but I would categorize my feelings more as … intrigued. "No reason for you to be working the bilge. You need to take higher-priority items. Lean on us harder and spread the load."

  "It's hard to let go of some things," I said. "Merrie has a good handle on the project. She's going to turn Amon and a dozen recruits from York loose on clearing the cast iron pipe. Even so, we're looking at two more ten-day just to clear it all out. The good news is with new waste and supply pipe, we're going to drop over a hundred tonnes of mass."

  "About the munitions," Marny continued patiently. "There's good news and bad."

  "I'm all about good news. Let's hear that first," I said.

  "I located a source on Abasi Prime for munitions," she said. "They have the capacity to manufacture shells that will fit Hornblower's 400mm, 250mm and 75mm kinetic cannons."

  "And the bad news?"

  "Six million credits for a full loadout."

  I whistled. I was used to expensive ordnance, but six million beat my personal high-water mark by at least twenty times.

  "How in the frak did Belvakuski arm this ship?" I asked. "She made decent money as a pirate, but that's insane."

  "She has no 400mm or 250mm shells in the armory," Marny answered. "I had my AI replay data streams from her return fire on the Kroerak cruiser. She only fired eight 250mm shells and there were no 400mm shells fired at all."

  "Sure. Explains why she only went after smaller fish. A 75mm shell is more than enough to get your attention, especially if you believe she'll follow it up with something bigger," I said. "I'll be honest, though, I'm not about to push off into the Dark Frontier without a full load. We'll come up with the money somehow, even if we have to delay for a few months."

  "Commodore Hoffen." Commander Greg Munay and three Mars Protectorate officers snapped to attention as Marny and I entered the starboard engine room. To the best of my knowledge, none of the officers who had been captured by Belvakuski had resigned their commissions to Mars Protectorate, nor were they about to abandon their mission to locate the Kroerak or secondarily, bring injury to the Kroerak war apparatus. Instead, Munay and the men in his command had decided we were their best chance to defeat those bugs. They had all sworn their allegiance to me, something I knew Munay had communicated to Mars Protectorate and had not backed away from.

  "Please go about your business," I replied. "Seems like we should work on loosening military discipline a little, don't you think, Greg?"

  "No sir, I don't," he replied, unflinchingly. If there was a type of soldier with 'all the right stuff,' Greg Munay was it. His greying sideburns, weathered face, and flinty stare left no doubt about the character that lay underneath; one of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. He was always in command and never without a strong sense of purpose. "Way I see it, we're going to need to bring on a lot more crew to launch this fleet of yours. You’ll require every bit of discipline we can muster and then some."

  "You requested I come up?" I asked, looking around the cramped compartment where all the panels had been removed from the walls. Wires, cables and conduit fell untidily from the openings and it didn't take an AI to recognize that the systems we were looking at were antiquated – by centuries.

  "We have good news, not so good news, and bad," he said.

  I caught Marny's eye and she grinned. Af
ter asking her for the good news first, I wasn't about to repeat that mistake with Munay. "Give it to me straight, Greg," I said. "Bad news first."

  "Senior Engineer Hawthorn, would you explain your assessment to the commodore?" Munay asked, turning to a man I'd met only briefly in passing. I studied the man for a moment. He had reddish brown hair that was cut short and a thin line of hair that followed his jawline.

  "The engines are shot, Commodore." My AI flashed up the man's full name – Adrian Hawthorn, graduated with honors from the Naval Academy on Mars. His field of study had been propulsion systems. I raised my eyebrows. Nothing like an expert opinion.

  "Define shot," I said. "Belvakuski seemed to do pretty well with them."

  Hawthorn's brief smile disappeared as he acknowledged my grasp of the obvious. "Unfortunately, the Genteresk did not keep tight maintenance records so we are only able to make assumptions based on forensic inspection, but I believe this ship regularly experienced engine failure while underway. The number of recent repairs in this section," he waved his hand at a jumble of wires and components that hung arbitrarily to the starboard, "is actually stressing the connective material to the point that if you were to place any pressure on the hanging components, they would likely become detached."

  "Control circuits should be something we can manufacture relatively easily," I said. "Do you just need time on the replicator?"