Hide the Lightning Read online

  Hide the Lightning

  Book One of The Coalition

  By

  Kevin Steverson

  PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books

  Copyright © 2019 Kevin Steverson

  All Rights Reserved

  * * * * *

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  * * * * *

  Cover Design by Dawn Grimes

  * * * * *

  This book is dedicated to my grandchildren. All ten of them: Braedyn, Bradley, Violet, Conner, Peyton, Caydence, Adalia, Ace, Beau, and Travis. I hope they find as much enjoyment in books as I have. No matter what they become or where they go, may they always have the ability to lose themselves in a story.

  * * * * *

  Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Super-Sync

  Excerpt from Book One of the Earth Song Cycle

  Excerpt from Book One of The Psyche of War

  * * * * *

  Chapter One

  Nazrooth System

  If a ship had its sensors and cameras turned toward the Bith Gate, its occupants would have seen the opaque swirling colors of alter reality for the briefest of instants. Four Nazrooth destroyers in a tight, diamond-shaped formation appeared in the ring from seemingly nowhere, headed into the system at battle speeds. If a ship had actually been close enough for its occupants to see through portholes or the clear-steel portals on their bridge, it would have been a thrill and something to speak of for years, for it was also a sight unseen in this particular system for more than a century.

  The Nazrooth, a race of amphibians, were pacifists, having hopped away from violence and war and anything involved with it. The four ships running point for the task force belonged to Salvage System, having been purchased from a military surplus company. It wasn’t the first time the ships had been sold, since the Nazrooth themselves had sold them when they turned from violence, but it would be the last time.

  “Sir,” the tactical officer on Diamond One said as he turned back to look at Captain Urlak sitting in the command chair, “I count nine ships that are not obvious trade ships of other than Nazrooth registration. An older model of one of the Wrantle medium battlecruisers, two very old Ithalqua destroyers, two frigates of an unknown design, what appears to be a large Nullgrip gunship, along with three Q-ships. One of the Q-ships is rather large. All show Nullgrip registrations. They’re together near the space port, twelve hours in-system at current speeds.”

  “Nine matches the number we were given in our briefing.” Urlak nodded. “That battlecruiser has to be really old. The Wrantle do not sell them often, not if they are still serviceable for their fleets. They have Ithalqua ships? The smell in them must be unbearable to oxygen breathers.”

  Urlak and his race didn’t breathe normal atmosphere. What they breathed was unique, as far as anyone in the galaxy was aware. The levels of oxygen on life-bearing planets was deadly to them. “Get everything you can on them and be prepared to send it to the task force flagship as soon as they make entry.”

  “Will do, sir,” the young lieutenant answered, turning back to his console with a sharp, toothy grin on his pale green face.

  Urlak—a Kashkal, like the crewmembers on all four ships in Diamond Squadron—couldn’t help but smile a little, showing his own teeth. He knew the tactical officer was still excited about his promotion, and the fact that everyone now held the rank titles used by Salvage Fleet and most humans. He was now a captain himself, instead of the Kashkal rank of LeeKa. Like everyone in his squadron, the lieutenant was young. Most of the crew members had come straight from the Kashkal training system in one of their race’s tender ships before they actually graduated. As young as they were, they were experienced in battle. Nothing beats experience as training, Urlak thought.

  “Helm,” Urlak ordered, “begin turnover procedures and slow us until the rest of Task Force Alpha emerges.”

  “Turning, sir,” the ensign answered. She spoke over the pilot’s direct link among the four ships, “Two, Three, and Four, turnover procedures on me.” She entered the changes, and the ship responded to her touches as if it were part of her. Her recent promotion had taken her from a cadet to an active duty rank in Salvage Fleet. She hadn’t graduated from the actual training, but she was still the most skilled pilot in the squadron. The other three ships turned as one, their systems, including shields, interacting with one another.

  * * *

  Nazrooth System

  Orbiting the Nazrooth space port

  Torglet’s Throne

  “Your Excellent Excellency,” called out the Nullgrip sitting at the information console on Torglet’s Throne, an old Wrantle-designed medium battlecruiser. Like all Nullgrip, the information officer was bipedal. He was not quite six feet tall, and had a mostly bald head, with a few bristles, and two long, floppy ears. Two black, beady eyes and a four-inch wrinkled snout with a long upward-protruding tooth on each side made up his facial features. He happened to be mottled black and brown, though his race’s skin patterns and colors varied. “A ship has come through the gate. It’s rather large and might be worth boarding to see what it carries, instead of only demanding our credit tribute. We still have sufficient room in the Jarbot’s hold for more goods.”

  King Torglet wrinkled his snout in concentration as he thought about the change in the normal activity in the Nazrooth System. One of his pink ears twitched and shook, and the multiple hoop earrings running the length of it jingled. Things had been going the way he liked—not that he minded a little action, but the docile race in this system had given him and his fleet no issues for months. The tribute was good, and his kingdom’s account was growing steadily, not to mention his personal account. It was the way it should be. Everyone paid, except one small ship that had slipped through the gate and left the system without paying a toll first, while insisting the credit was processing, up until the point it slipped into alter reality.

  Every Nullgrip pirate king had that very goal in mind from the time they struck out from their home system to build their own little kingdoms and fleets—building up their kingdom and credit. In his society, if you had subjects, you were a
king. There was no way to overthrow the four kingdoms on the planet Nullgrip, so leaving the home world and system was the only option for a young being with big plans. Sometimes a Nullgrip king had to force a being or two to become a subject to start his kingdom, but whatever.

  His kingdom had started years ago, so all his subjects were of the same race, not the mixed group of ruffians making up the kingdoms his younger brothers had built for themselves recently. They seemed to take in whoever—or whatever, for that matter. That seemed like a headache to Torglet.

  He shifted in his command chair, grunted, and snorted. “What do the readings show? Where is it registered?

  “From what I can tell, Your Eminent Eminency,” the information specialist said, reaching up and scratching behind a floppy ear with a thick digit, causing his two earrings to clink together, “the ship seems to be of Nazrooth design. It has all the right readings. The system keeps fluctuating, telling me it’s one ship, then multiples in a tight formation. It’s strange. The shielding is incredible; it may be a warship. Yeah, I think it is a warship at the speed it’s moving. The registration I’m getting is from the Salvage System.”

  The pirate king shrugged his large shoulders in disinterest; after all, it was one ship. Then he remembered the video. “Salvage!” Torglet shouted, then he snorted three more times, a sure sign of nerves among his race. “Did you say Salvage System? As in the fleet destruction video? Get everyone moving toward that ship. We have to destroy it before any more come through the gate. If that is a warship, it has to be after us. Make sure the rest of the fleet goes ahead of us, and plot the fastest route to the gate in case they don’t take it out.”

  “Yes, my Stupendously Stupi…uhhh Super One,” said the ship’s pilot, a rather large, solid grey crew member nearly as big as he was.

  The head of security standing near the lift giggled. Torglet turned and narrowed his eyes at her as he was trying to figure out what his pilot had been about to say first. He snorted at his spotted sister, wondering if she and her mate had inside jokes. He turned back toward the main screen. “Are you sure no other ships entered the system before this one? Like maybe twenty or thirty others hiding behind a planet?”

  “Nothing all day, Your Exalted Exaltation,” answered the intelligence officer.

  “Zoggly, keep us away from moons…and planets…and asteroid fields, just in case.”

  “Yes, My Fantastically Fatass…uhh Fantastic One,” the pilot confirmed.

  Again the giggles.

  * * *

  Desert Wind

  “Ma’am,” announced the Caldivar at the tactical officer’s console, “we will emerge in thirty seconds.” He turned the two eyes he looked at her with back to his screens to join his third.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Garlonk,” the task force commander said. Forty seconds later, Captain Mayla Opawn hit a button on her armrest and announced to Task Force Alpha, “Stand down, Diamond Squadron reports no potential targets within the vicinity of the gate. We’ll move in attack pattern Delta Lima to meet the nine ships coming from the space port. It will be six hours before we can engage. Windswept with Diamond Squadron, prepare to break to starboard in three hours to keep them from attempting to swing around that gas planet to make a break for it.”

  “Windswept acknowledges the Corralling Plan,” Captain Evelyn Stacey answered from Salvage Fleet’s fighter carrier.

  “Forming on Windswept now,” confirmed Captain Urlak.

  “I doubt that ragtag fleet of Nullgrips has many fighters,” Mayla said to her new executive officer, “so if Windswept turns hers loose, they’ll wish they hadn’t attempted to run. Either way, if they don’t surrender…well, it’s their choice.”

  “They will get what they dessserve, ma’am,” Lieutenant Commander Dyleeth said. She was a Prithmar, laterally promoted from her command of a frigate in Salvage Fleet. “From the reportss, they murdered two full freighter crewss to prove their point early in their occupation.”

  “There is that,” Captain Opawn agreed. She settled back in her command seat. Like the other task force commanders in Salvage Fleet, she commanded her own ship along with the task force.

  As she looked out through the clear-steel portals at the system and the gas planet within view, her thoughts couldn’t help but stray to the man she loved. Gunnery Sergeant Ron Harper was back in Salvage System. He was out of the physician’s care now, and working with physical therapists. He would be fitted with prosthetics, and should be able to walk with them without issue, but he might not be able remain with the Fleet as a marine.

  His injuries weren’t anything that hadn’t been encountered before. Soldiers and Marines lost limbs. Often prosthetic limbs replaced them, and the troops were able to resume duty, with the replacement being stronger than its organic predecessor. His injuries, however, were also to the nerves in the parts of his legs he had remaining. Nanite treatment had failed. They were extremely sensitive, and he might have to seriously consider retirement. She’d hated to leave him back on Salvage in the home they’d built together, but she had her duty, and he’d insisted on it. She was the commander of Alpha Fleet, and she belonged with it when it was assigned a mission. She intended to complete it quickly and get back to him.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Two

  Desert Wind

  Nazrooth System

  Task Force Alpha moved toward the pirate fleet in a stacked wedge formation. The flagship—Desert Wind, a medium battlecruiser—was flying point for the top three ships. The other two on each side were also medium battlecruisers, of similar size but different makes, both salvaged from past battles. Below in a similar wedge formation was a light battlecruiser between two destroyers, each assigned a medium battlecruiser to cover. The majority of defensive lasers were arrayed on the top and sides of the larger ships, so the positioning allowed the three to aid in missile defense from below. The formation ordered by Captain Opawn still allowed them the ability to go on the offensive with salvo after salvo of missiles.

  The light battlecruiser Combo Special was the first Salvage System–built ship started from scratch in the combined shipyards. There had been four others partially built when the yards were started back up, but this one was the first of its kind. It had the newest version of the powerful missiles designed over two thousand years ago and strong shielding, using both the ancient design and some of the technology the Nazrooth had developed, copied from the Diamond Squadron. Some Kashkal ingenuity had gone into the thrusters, and the defensive lasers were copied from the Bentwick ship in Task Force Command.

  The shields on the Combo Special were even stronger than the shielding Salvage Title had. The only shields in the fleet able to take more damage before failing were the overlapped shields used by the four Nazrooth destroyers flying in the tight diamond pattern. Offensively, the light battlecruiser was able to deliver massive damage, with pulse cannons as its main weapon, as opposed to the lasers on the destroyers.

  Desert Wing had pulse cannons as well, but they were an older design. Unlike Salvage Title, another medium battlecruiser and Commodore Harmon Tomeral’s fleet flagship, which had twelve pulse cannons, two fore and aft, and four on both sides, the smaller, newer ship had nine, three facing forward, two port and starboard, with two aft. The smaller ship also had three fusion plants to provide the charge needed for the cannons and to power its three engines, not the four on Commodore Tomeral’s ship.

  Slightly behind and offset to starboard, the fighter carrier Windswept and its cover ships, the Nazrooth Squadron, made up the rest of the task force. Eight ships were headed in-system to destroy the nine ships of the pirate fleet. Eleven, if one was to count the Nazrooth destroyers individually.

  “Ma’am,” the tactical officer called out, “they have launched fighters; I count sixty fighters of various designs. Oddly enough, thirty-eight of them are human designs. Leatara fighters, along with two Tretrayon ones. Now that I have some references, those frigates are Leatara with major modifications
as well.”

  “Oh, I am so glad they didn’t decide to surrender or run,” Mayla said with steel in her voice.

  “Ma’am?” asked the tactical officer, slightly confused at the change in her demeanor.

  “Leatara was a system that was destroyed,” she explained. “Its inhabitants were almost completely eradicated by the Squilla. The Tretreyon System lost its entire First Fleet, except for one ship, aiding in that war. I lost a lot of good friends and two cousins there.”

  “I remember the name of the system now,” the Caldivar said. “I was still in a fleet in another system before coming to Salvage Fleet. After fulfilling that contract, I came to Salvage System to join my brother and some of my cousins. I am sorry for your past losses.”

  “Thank you,” she said, careful to keep the anger from the past from overflowing and affecting how she interacted with her crew.

  She continued, “The Nullgrip king we’re facing might have bought the ships off the market, probably salvaged by some of the first to get to the system after the Squilla were defeated and their gate closed.”

  “Or he took them and killed the salvagers who were trying to earn honest credit,” the tactical officer suggested.

  “You’re right, Garlonk,” Mayla admitted. “That’s why it angers me so—their origin and how they were probably acquired. Since when do Nullgrip pirate kings ever conduct honest business?”

  “Either way, like the XO said, they’ll get what they deserve,” the tactical officer said, steel in his voice now. “I’ll let Captain Stacey know she can launch fighters.”