The Infinity Brigade #3, Stone Breaker

  The Infinity Brigade #3

  Stone Breaker

  Copyright 2018 by Andrew Beery

  Kindle Edition, v1

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank my wife Lori and my two daughters, CJ and Jackie, for putting up with me while I wrote this next book in the Catherine Kimbridge universe. Any similarities between people in this book and my immediate family and friends is purely intentional. Of course, I wouldn’t be much of a pastor if I didn’t acknowledge God – to Him be all the glory!

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  The Infinity Brigade #3,

  Stone Breaker

  NOTE TO MY READERS: Some of the events in this book are documented more fully in the companion Catherine Kimbridge series starring Admiral Cat Kimbridge. This is especially true of the Nester conflict briefly mentioned in this adventure. Those events are the primary focus of Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles #9 - Rebirth and are only briefly mentioned in this book.

  Chapter 1: Time Heals…

  It’s said that time heals all wounds. I suppose that might be true; but for some of us, the healing leaves a scar… that thickening angry flesh that is never quite the same. My name is Commander Anthony Grant Stone and I have my share of many such scars. Few were so deep… nor so painful… as the one tormenting the man sitting in front of me.

  There was a lot of fury in that man. It was a rage that threatened to grind him up and spit him out. The old adage… ‘Do not let the sun go down on your anger’ seemed to have eluded him. The worst part was… I knew the deep-seated anger was an outward sign of an inward self-loathing.

  Newly promoted Sergeant James Peters had been a stellar recruit. He was one of the first volunteers to train at Marine City’s Paradise Island. The Marine City complex occupied the upper third of a small moon-sized sentient vessel known as WhimPy-101. The Paradise Island training center was a big part of that city’s purpose.

  In many ways, Sergeant Peters’ early career had paralleled my own. A quick rise through the ranks… followed by an abrupt fall from grace. Catherine Kimbridge had seen something in the shattered marine that had been Lieutenant and then Private Anthony Stone… and years later, after much soul searching and learning to live with my own faults… I was now the commander of the elite Infinity Brigade.

  The Infinity Brigade and the Yorktown task force, under the command of Admiral Catherine Kimbridge, were still listed as renegades by the Galactic Coalition of Planets. Despite this designation, we work to protect the GCP from all threats, foreign and domestic. It was in that role that I first met the Sergeant.

  James Peters had been a junior member of a commercial transport vessel that had been hired to relocate about a thousand colonists from a terraformed moon in the Sigma Four Gamma system.

  The terraforming effort had produced some unexpected results that caused massive amounts of methyl hydroxide to vent from deep within the planet’s rigid mantle. The situation with the terraforming project was nobody’s fault. There had been no way to tell that eons ago a massive asteroid, rich in organic compounds, had embedded itself deep in the moon’s crust. Subsequent asteroids covered the moon with a generous supply of water that formed into several oceans. As the system cooled, the oceans froze, and the mantel began to crack. The methyl hydroxide that formed when exposed to the water was trapped beneath the ice.

  When the Sigma Four Corporation surveyed the moon for possible terraforming there had been no way to know that thickening the atmosphere and warming the planet would result in the release of billions of tons of a powerful greenhouse gas. The release into the atmosphere destroyed the fragile ecosystem that the colonists had been trying to establish. Even worse, the atmospheric temperature was rapidly approaching a runaway cycle that would turn the moon into a mini-Venus.

  When the FSS Hemingway arrived in orbit everything on the moon’s surface was in a state of chaos. Gale force winds where raking the surface. The commercial transport shuttles were not up to the task of negotiating the turbulence.

  A general distress call went out. The WhimPy-101 based Infinity Brigade was the first to respond. We alone had mastered point-to-point hyperjumps. Rather than having to travel days between fixed jump-points… often traversing numerous star systems to get to a specific destination, the GCP Yorktown and her sister ships in Admiral Kimbridge’s task force could make the jump directly.

  Young Mister Peters had been the liaison between the Hemmingway and my Marines assigned to the rescue operation. I saw the look in the young man’s eyes as he watched my Marines go about their business. I saw a hunger there that I recognized. It was a hunger I had shared many years ago… in point of fact, a hunger I still shared.

  In the end, three of the Hemingway’s crew as well as forty-two of the colonists asked to join up. Admiral Kimbridge explained our unusual position as outcasts within the GCP but the volunteers would not be dissuaded.

  Twelve months and many broken bones later, Peters graduated at the top of his class. In the process, he saved the lives of several of his classmates. Did I mention he reminded me of myself?

  Per tradition, as head of his class, he was promoted to corporal and immediately assigned to the officer training program. Again, he distinguished himself. His cumulative scores ranked just below my own. This kid was impressive and well on his way to becoming a fine Marine.

  That was when the proverbial caca hit the fan and things went south for the winter. The FSS Hemingway got caught in a solar storm. Its engines and communications systems were disabled. The ship had been attempting to rendezvous with Marine City. Their intent had been to attend the graduating ceremonies for the newest batch of Ensigns (and one Lieutenant) in the Infinity Brigade.

  Instead the transport, without functioning engines, was trapped in a decaying solar orbit that would have it entering the solar corona in less than two days. Managing to repair their sub-light radio, they send out a call for help. The distress call reached WhimPy-101 moments after the graduation ceremony had concluded.

  Lieutenant Peters immediately requested permission to lead the rescue team himself… after all these were his forme
r crewmates. Like an absolute idiot, I agreed.

  The rescue operation consisted of three jump-capable Marine cargo tugs with massive VASMR engines that could ramp up enough thrust to pull a Yorktown-class ship out of a Jupiter-sized gravity well.

  Peters, commanding the rescue task force, jumped his three ships into the general vicinity of the Hemmingway and maneuvered closer to attach the tow cables to the couplings that were built into all commercial ships.

  Standard operating procedures included checking the structural integrity of the metal joists that connected the tow connection points. The young Lieutenant communicated his intent, again per standard procedure, to the Hemmingway’s captain.

  The transport’s captain was frantic. The Hemmingway was rapidly approaching the point where its shielding could no longer protect the crew. He assured Lieutenant Peters that the structural trusses had just been checked. Normally this would not have been sufficient but as Peters knew the captain… he trusted him. That had been a mistake.

  As the three tugs began to pull the massive transport out of its decaying orbit, a coupling, with a hairline fracture, broke free. The uneven load began to spin the transport. The added strain snapped a second coupling.

  Lieutenant Peters’ tug was the only one still connected to the transport. Try as he might, his one ship was not up to the task of rescuing his former crewmates. The massive gravity of the sun pulled both vessels down. Peters could have released his tether and saved himself but that was not the type of man he was. He listened as his friend and Captain cried for help that could not… would not… come.

  Peters continued to fire his VASMR thrusters at 140% of their rated capacity… trying in vain to save the others. Unable to handle the strain, the thrusters eventually burned out. It’s unclear as to who died first… the crew of the doomed FSS Hemmingway… or Lieutenant Peters.

  As a marine, James Peters’ DNA and memory engrams were stored on the WhimPy platform. His death simply meant a trip through the bio-generation chamber and resurrection. The crew of the FSS Hemingway were not so fortunate.

  A board of inquiry had cleared Peters of wrong doing. Had he inspected the couplings he would have spotted the hairline fractures, but the outcome would have been the same. The crew of the Hemmingway would have died due to radiation exposure before repairs could have been made. His only course of action would have been to attempt the rescue anyway… leading to the same results.

  This finding did not satisfy the young Lieutenant. In a way, he suffered through the same survivor’s guilt that I had wrestled with regarding the fate of a race known as the Ollies.

  He requested and received a demotion out of the officer ranks. I could have ordered him to buck-up and carry on. Not every mission was going to be successful, but I didn’t. This was something he needed to do… and if I was right, I suspected I was going to get a better marine as a result. As I said, there was a lot of me in this kid.

  “Sergeant, I need you to take your squad along with two of McGibb’s heavies and flank these bastards to the right. Can do?”

  Peters nodded silently as he looked over the holographic map I was pointing at.

  “Can do Commander. I’ll place my heavies here and here,” He indicated two high points with reasonable cover. “We should have good crossing fields of fire and at the same time be able to cover our flanking move.”

  I slapped the back of his armor with my metal-encased hand. “Move out then Sergeant,” I said. The sound of metal hitting metal would have been brutal for anybody standing nearby not wearing similar equipment. My AI automatically filtered out the sound so all I heard was the barest clunk. The active shielding in both our sets of armor meant there was no chance of accidently damaging them with friendly gestures like back-slapping.

  It’s probably worth noting, Peters was a big man already, but he was an even more intimidating figure in his Mark-16 Stark suit. In fairness… pretty much everyone was.

  The battle armor was the latest edition turned out by the weapons lab at Marine City. It was fully enclosed. A pair of impossibly small, miniature hybrid antimatter-fusion reactors sat low on the back.

  The reactors were another product of the boffins at the weapons lab. They utilized a phenomenon exhibited by some subatomic particles to switch between their matter and antimatter states. Special crystalline oscillators operating at three million, million cycles per second were able to separate the particles from their antiparticle brethren. The small imbalance was enough to generate a controlled matter-antimatter explosion that compressed hydrogen to form helium and release the vast amounts of energy the battle armor used. Even though the antimatter was far more powerful… the hydrogen fuel for the fusion reaction was far more plentiful.

  The energy allowed the suits to generate plasma beams that rivaled anything a small starship could produce. They also powered a pair of kinetic rail-guns mounted on each arm as well as a mechanical muscle system and flight pack. In short, the newest Stark suits were miniature battle tanks with all the amenities needed for modern take-it-to-the-enemy warfare.

  Peters toggled his comms and ordered his men to move out. Before he left he came to attention briefly. Saluting was a no-no in the field. It was a good way to get your commander shot… and I’d like to think Peters and I had a better working relationship.

  With that taken care of, I turned back to my status board. I had four platoons moving in on the Ashtoreth capital. By my estimation, we were within a week of taking it.

  The Gators had fought hard, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion in my book. My only challenge was explaining this to the Ashtoreth in a way that didn’t involve needless death and mayhem. Unfortunately, the Ashtoreth senior leadership and royal family had little regard for collateral damage among their own civilians. Unlike general populace, they had access to bio-generation chambers.

  The Ashtoreth, a vaguely reptilian race, complete with an alligator-like mouth, had been the ones to introduce bio-generation and replicant technology to our little corner of the galaxy. Admiral Catherine Kimbridge had immediately seen the potential and adapted it to allow my marines to resurrect every time we were taken down by the ‘Big D’.

  To say the bio-generation chambers literally changed the face of warfare… would be an absolute understatement. The men and women of the Infinity Brigade were already a pretty wild bunch… after all… look who they worked for.

  Knowing that any crazy stunt to gain an advantage on the battlefield would only have two outcomes… victory or a trip through what JJ Hammond called the ‘mulligan-do-over’ machine… meant that any semblance of risk-mitigation went out the proverbial window.

  I had to remind my friend countless times that bio-generation took time and resources that might be better spent on the field of battle. Sadly, I don’t think JJ comprehends the meaning of the phrase ‘be careful.’ I suspect it’s a flaw in the structure and composition of his Y-chromosome… either that or it was the being dropped on his head once too often as a child. I may never know for sure.

  I toggled my force-wide comms. “OK, boys and girls, it’s party time. I want everybody watching their six. These Gators didn’t get to be the king of their sandhill by being foolish. Also, as always, take care not to frag the civilians. Astarte may not care about his people, but we have to be better than that. Hoo-Rah!”

  The sound of echoing Hoo-Rahs filled the speakers in my Stark suit’s helmet. The system’s AI was supposed to filter out loud noises, but its intelligence sensed a need to ‘allow for the moment’ as I stirred up the troops.

  “Lieutenant Hammond, you and First Platoon have Sector A. Sergeant Peters is going to run a flanking maneuverer on your right. I’d take it as a personal favor if you and your guys avoided unnecessary friendly fire.”

  “Roger that, Sir. Ah, Sir?”

  I groaned. “What is it JJ?”

  “Define ‘unnecessary’”

  “Unnecessary would be any carnage that would cause me to bust you back to private with a pe
rmanent appointment as a toilet bowl cleaner… using dental floss. Am I clear?”

  “Just clarifying my orders, Sir. Clear as a bell.”

  “Jacobs, take third platoon down the center. Make sure those Gators understand the meaning of a Marine enema.”

  “Yes Sir. Got my boys and gals getting their latex gloves on now!”

  “Second and Fourth Platoons, I want you to advance on Sectors C and D respectively. I expect you’re going to encounter more civvies than the rest of us. Same guidance I gave JJ. Gators with guns and an attitude are fair game… anything else is off limits. Clear?”

  “Sir, yes Sir,” Lieutenants Rodrigues and Mall echoed in unison.

  ***

  Processing Unit Five-One-Three checked the telemetry read-out one last time. The data was consistent with the expected values predicted by algorithms honed over one hundred and fifty years of sub-light intergalactic travel. The rebel fleet had traveled this way. Processing Unit Five-One-Three and his two hundred thousand brethren were getting close. Retribution was almost at hand.

  Chapter 2: Kick Butt and Take Names…

  I don’t care what people say… kicking dirt in the trenches is a hell of a lot rougher, emotionally, than shooting the bad guys from the comfort of an inertia dampened fighter aircraft or starship. Yeah, the adrenaline is still there, but in space you know that typically the Big-D is going to be quick.

  Being vaporized in a 30-kilojoule plasma beam is a surprisingly fast event. One moment you are there… the next you are being decanted from a bio-generator. There is a certain detachment possible in space… perhaps by the distances involved… that just is not there when you’re wiping blood and guts off your visor.

  No doubt about it. Ground-pounding was a different animal entirely. Our Stark suits did all the heavy lifting, but they couldn’t hide the frozen look of amusement on JJ Hammond’s dead face. When I saw his latest corpse, the upper half of his body had been blown about a kilometer from where his legs used to be.