Ghost of an Empire (Sentinel Series Book 3) Read online

  The Ghost of an Empire

  Richard Flunker

  Copyright © 2016 by Richard Flunker

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the author

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published in the United States of America

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. If anything even remotely similar happened to you, I would LOVE to hear about it.

  First Publishing, 2016

  Editing by Jessica Flunker, © 2016

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  If you enjoy this book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.com, Goodreads.com, or your favorite review site.

  Other works by Richard Flunker:

  Deadfall: Survivors

  Deadfall: Hunters

  The Emperor’s Daughter

  The Lost Tribe

  For my greatest surprise

  3127 – Epsilon Beta Four, 73 Light years from Earth

  Rock-n-Roll music blared loudly over the ship’s speakers to the point where a sheet of paper was slowly vibrating off the console. There was a single word written with crude charcoal on the paper: vortega. Sitting in the Captain’s seat was a gruff looking man with a large belly and excruciatingly hairy arms. He sat there staring at the sheet of paper slowly vibrating to the beat of the song. He could almost make out the buzz the paper was making.

  “IT’S READY!”

  He spun his chair around and came face-to-face with his partner, a younger man who was already following in the rotund steps of his friend. The Captain smiled a large toothless grin and spun his chair back around, slamming his sweaty hand down on the console, shutting off the music.

  “You sure?” he nearly drooled, as he grabbed the piece of paper. It was worn and crumpled, as if it had been bunched up in a pocket for half an eternity.

  “We are in the clear. Years of dirty work, and we’re finally about to hit the big one,” his partner responded.

  The two were asteroid miners, about the lowest form in a profession that was already on the lowest rung of society. Mining on a planet was dirty, but at least you went home every night. Mining on a barren moon was hard and dirty, but at least there were always rocks to mine. Finding asteroids was already a hard venture. Even in so-called asteroid fields, these hunks of rocks were hard to come by and if you could find one, it might already be claimed. Removing already established claim buoys was tantamount to a declaration of war against another miner, and one that brought about quick and ruthless retribution.

  Of course, finding a rock didn’t guarantee that it had any mineral of value in it without mining through it completely. And that was long, dirty work while tethered to a ship. Hours, days and weeks of mining could yield little to no profit with lost food and air. It was all too common for a prospecting asteroid miner to come across the derelict remains of another. The rocks could be scanned with powerful sensors and the data analyzed by even more powerful computers, but that kind of expense was usually far out of the reach of the lowly miner. Sometimes, an extremely talented individual could make sense of the data, and make the interpretations themselves, but those people didn’t last long as miners.

  And so these two had journeyed further and further out. The less populated the system, the better their odds. For years now they had toiled away at their lowly job, barely making ends meet, saving every last bit of currency to keep their junker floating. Neither had any family to speak of, no one else they needed to save or provide for. So after years of this work, they had finally managed to make enough to buy the one piece of equipment they were sure would change their lives forever.

  The Captain typed with his fat fingers on the console, typing slowly, repeatedly correcting his mistakes. His partner, taller and for now, a bit leaner, stood behind him, chewing his nails. He wanted nothing more than to reach over and type in the commands quicker, but he knew better than to overrule his friend.

  A new screen appeared on the monitor above them. Ahead on their view screen, one lonely grey rock floated in space. A small spectrum reader, a simple data sensor kit program, stood open and ready for use. The device was standard on nearly any spaceship created by man. It could scan any nearby object and provide the most basic of readings. It wasn’t a tool for mining, but for basic identification.

  “This is going to work, right?” the slenderer of the two spoke out, his voice croaking just a bit. “Cuz if it don’t, we out lots of cash and probably in worse trouble.”

  “If it doesn’t work, we need to kill someone.”

  A small box resided on the floor of the tiny cabin, cables attached from it to the ship’s console. A small locking mechanism remained opened where it latched onto the console itself. The Captain reached forward and locked it into place, and both men could hear the box humming to life. A whole separate prompt came up on his screen. The blinking cursor had no words before it, but the Captain knew what it needed.

  “Here goes nothing.”

  He took the paper and flattened the crumples out as best he could. He looked at the word again, and then slowly, one fat finger at a time, typed it into the console. Each letter blinked on the prompt until the whole word was typed out. The Captain turned around and smiled, then hit Enter. The entire screen blinked a few times, then went blank. For a moment, they panicked, but then the main screen returned.

  “Full kernel integration. Systems online. Storage detected. Sensors detected. Boot-up complete. It’s good to be free again.”

  The tall man laughed in half a squeal then clapped his hands.

  “This is Captain Morton, of the mining tug Fat Bounty. Do you recognize my command?”

  “Relevant data confirmed. Greetings, Captain. I am GV-22. You may call me Govey. What is my assignment?”

  “You are….you’re aware?”

  “I am fully aware.”

  The two men erupted into cheer.

  An AI. A fully aware AI. An honest to goodness ghost in a shell, a digital mind. A being of incredible computing prowess capable of acting on its own accord, capable of learning beyond its programmed capacity.

  Highly illegal.

  The galaxy’s governments, all of them, Earth, Coran, The Alliance, and every little despot, oligarchy, monarchy, theocracy and tribe on every planet, ship and space station had banned the existence of these creatures ever since the man vs. machine wars of some hundreds of years past. Sure, plenty of extremely advance computing systems existed, but not a single one had the capability to go beyond its programming. It was prohibited, strictly and ruthlessly.

  And just like every other banned item in mankind, there were always those that tried to go around those rules. On a tiny junk island off the coast of Nevada, Earth, these two miners had struck a deal with a peculiar old tech wiz to use his new AI. It was smuggled off earth on a completely voided and dead crystal storage cube and was programmed only to come back to life with the password, which was only etched onto paper, and nowhere else. And here, on the fringes of mankind’s expansion through space, these two miners began their enterprise to become we
althy.

  “Here is what I need,” the Captain continued. He had spent nearly two hours talking with Govey about who they were and what they were trying to do. The AI was not just a computer; their relationship was not one of owner and slave. It was a partnership. The old Asian man on San Francisco Junk Island had made it clear the AI needed to be treated like a real person, or it wouldn’t work.

  “I need you to learn how to scan asteroids with the basic sensors, and tell us which ones to actually mine.”

  The AI spent several minutes inspecting its new equipment.

  “I can do you one better. I can find the rocks with the most expensive mineral possible, and tell you exactly where in the rock to mine.”

  The tall miner giggled. This is what they wanted to hear.

  “Then let’s get to work. As a practice run, try out that one in front of us.”

  Govey went to work. The rudimentary scanner did its minimal work, and the AI compared it to countless other scans of mined rocks, and quickly came up with its own readout.

  “About the most you will get out of this rock is water and iron. You are looking at two weeks of mining for a barely net profit of sixty seven Solar credits.”

  “Ugh,” the Captain said. “Not worth it.”

  “No,” the AI responded. “Not worth it. Time to move to the next one.”

  It was a dream come true. As the ship powered up for another sling that would take them deeper into Epsilon Beta space, the AI displayed a small image with several scanned rocks within a short sling distance.

  “You’re the expert here. Just pick one and let’s go,” the Captain said.

  The AI pointed one out and the two men got to work putting their small ship into a sling towards it. The ship turned directly toward it, powered up its drive and slung out.

  “What exactly do I get out of this?” Govey asked.

  The Captain knew the question was coming. It made sense.

  “We upgrade the ship for you, whatever you’d like, and you live. For real, live a life.”

  Govey didn’t respond.

  For a week the new trio scanned and combed through nearly a dozen rocks until they found the mother load. A rather small rock containing a hefty sum of nitronium and some rare, expensive metals. And the frosting on the cake was that it would take maybe a day or two to mine. After that hard but quick work, the AI further took the time to calculate the amounts of every mineral they had harvested from the now pulverized rock, and took the next step in identifying where and in which system they would maximize their profits. It was a dream come true.

  As the small ship and its now suddenly well off men flew off towards the edge of the system to jump away back to civilization, the two humans fell asleep, content and satisfied that their hard work and more importantly, their risk, had paid off. When the ship reached the outer edge of the system, where jumps were more reliable, they awoke, ready to jump. Instead, they found trouble.

  “What do you mean, a signal?”

  “An extremely deep space signal, something I have never encountered,” The AI replied.

  “Of course you haven’t. You haven’t been alive that long.”

  “It doesn’t correspond to anything in the records.”

  “OK, well, we can look at it later. Let’s get out of here,” the Captain asked of his new partner.

  “I cannot. There is a subroutine within the signal. I can only jump in one direction. I am sorry.”

  The two men looked bleary-eyed at each other.

  “Where are we jumping to?” the Captain asked.

  The AI answered blankly, “I don’t know.”

  “Why are you doing this?” the Captain asked, looking around nervously at his crewmate.

  “There is a section in my code that pertains to these sets of coordinates. Something patched in after release. It’s an override directive, I don’t have a choice. There is pertinent data that I will study once we have jumped.”

  The Captain stood silently. Jumping out into the unknown was a death sentence.

  “It’s, how would you say, my calling.”

  The ship vanished into threaded space.

  3127 – Coran, Planetam Secundaria

  It was the alarm that excited him the most. The strong klaxon blared down the tiny corridor he was in along with his fellow assault troops. He double checked his instruments one last time, and while he was sure he was one hundred percent ready and locked in, it was the habit of his years of training that made him look over his gear one last time. He looked down the aisle and noticed his fellow troops doing the same thing, and then, in one motion, they all reached up and pulled down a small lever above each and every one of them. The lights in the aisle turned from blinking red to solid green and he heard a chirp in his helmet. He tapped his helmet HuD and the image of his troop pod director came up.

  “Target locked in. Drop is cleared all the way down. Link established.” Her voice was almost mechanical but he knew better.

  His name was Ogho and he was a soldier of the Dominion. He stood nine feet high and weighed just about four hundred pounds, a solid product of muscle engineering. His genes were the result of decades, if not centuries, of genetic manipulation in order to construct the perfect soldier. Every single man in the drop pod with him had the exact same genetic readout. Clones they were, from the same house, Hagma, on the Hagma system. An old family that could trace its genetic tree to the founding of the Dominion on Coran. From its house and genetic line many Dominars had been created and ruled the Empire of Man. It was a family with immense prestige, and their holdings were on dozens of planets and their wealth was one of the main providers of the Dominion military. It had come as a shocking surprise when their most prestigious unit of super soldiers, the seventh Legion, had completely revoked their loyalties to their own family and joined the revolution of Magyo.

  The new Queen, the goddess of the stars. The white haired angel of death. She had come from the deepest recesses of space like a fiery star and had burned a path of cleansing fire on her way towards Coran. She showed up in Dominion space with the giant Battlecruiser Harmoa, the crown jewel of the Dominion Space Navy and a fleet of her own. The young upstart won victory after victory, sometimes against overwhelming odds, showing a strategic brilliance unseen before. The weapons and tactics she used against her enemies were not only revolutionary, they were completely new.

  But the Queen didn't want enemies. She wanted freedom, for all. Ogho had first fought against her forces on the slave planet of Urt. There, one of the Dominion’s largest fleets had confronted the Queen’s still rather small fleet, even if it did include the Harmoa. The old Dominion’s defeat there had been utter. Even the glorious seventh Legion had suffered defeat on the ground. Nearly twelve thousand men, the best and prime of the seventh Legion, had been captured. They expected death, as the Angel of destruction had so brought to her enemies.

  Instead, she offered them life.

  He laid eyes on his Queen for the first time that day. Under the hot Urt sun, stripped and defeated, she came before them. She praised them, and then offered them, offered him, freedom. No super soldier ever had it. Not ever in the past. Every product of military genetics was expected to die in combat, at some point or another. There were no expectations of life after war, for their life was war. But there on the hot sands she offered them freedom, and life. All they had to do was renounce their genetics and become free men. There was no price. They could all leave those battlefields and live real lives. Never pick up a weapon, but plow fields or sell valuables, have families. Die, in bed.

  On that day she won them over, and when they all vowed to die for her, she begged them not to, and with that act, won their loyalty. And it was this message that they continued to spread throughout Dominion worlds. As the Queen’s fleet grew in size, they continued to encounter more Dominion fleets and armies, and these she all defeated. Systems fell, not to her control, but to her freedom. Slaves were freed, people were given their choice. Nearly all
joined the new empire and their new Queen, Magyo.

  Twice he saw her after that fateful day on the sands of Urt. Tall and majestic, a creature of beauty so overwhelming, most claimed they couldn't look upon her without their hearts breaking. On the court of Arda, after conquering the unruly planet, she had stood with the planet’s governor at her feet, and offered him mercy. He spat upon her and called her the child of the devil. Ogho watched with unbridled fervor as she wielded the power of the stars and pulled apart every atom from his wretched body. Her power was supreme, but so was her mercy. She wanted life and freedom, and offered the same to the followers of that planet. They chose defeat but would not follow her, and she had accepted their indirect submission. Now, a year later, the Falcons of Arda follow her into battle, providing the Queen with elite fighter pilots.

  The second time was just a few hours ago. She stood in front of her Seventh Legion just before the battle and hadn't said a word. She didn't need to. There was no inspiration needed, for on that day, she was going into battle with them.

  The Queen’s fleet, spearheaded as always by the Harmoa and her giant ship busting beam, had finally made the last jump into Coran. There were many other Dominion systems under the old rule, but the Queen had decided the Dominar had to fall, and with him, the entire old corrupt system. Coran was a system of three living planets; Coran, Secundaria and Mequa. The primary military force was based out of Secundaria, and it was the first logical step to conquering the system. It was also the home of the First and Second Legions, neither of whom the Queen expected to turn to her. The largest Dominion fleet, the Qando fleet, was based here, and its defeat would not only wound, but nearly obliterate the old Dominion’s rule of space. If they could defeat and hold Secundaria, Coran would fall.

  The battle already raged outside. For hours, the Harmoa withstood constant attacks both from the fleet and planet side bombardment. The Queen refused to bombard the planet. Everyone knew why. Ogho was onboard one of the seven hundred drop ships ready to bust through a small sub orbital blockade above the capital city. They were to land just outside and battle their cousins and brothers for the soul of the empire. Each and every man onboard the seven hundred drop ships understood the meaning behind it all. They were fighting them for their own freedom, whether they knew it yet or not.