Repel Boarders Read online

  Derelict

  Book 1: Repel Boarders

  A LitRPG, Dungeon Core Adventure

  By

  Dean Henegar

  Copyright © 2020 by Dean Henegar

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

  — CONTENTS —

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Afterword

  Book 2, Chapter 1

  Book 2, Chapter 2

  “A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. Sail out and do new things.”

  -Admiral Grace Hopper

  — 1 —

  “Jump transit complete, Captain,” Ensign Jameson advised as the small escort ship arrived in-system. Hyperjumps were no longer a mystery and didn’t pose much danger for the ships involved, but habits were hard to break in the navy, and bridge crews always held their breath until all the fleet’s ships had safely arrived and were displayed on their scanners. The discovery of jump points had come as a shock to the people of Earth. The anomaly in space just past Pluto turned out to be the biggest thing to happen to humanity since its ancestors discovered fire. The jump drive was developed soon after, and mankind found its path to the stars. Humanity had joined together in a search for new worlds to inhabit and new resources to exploit.

  “We have confirmation that all ships have arrived safely in-system, Captain,” Jameson said.

  “Very well, Jameson. Raise shields and scan for any contacts,” Captain Slater commanded. He issued the order automatically, despite not expecting their scans to yield anything unusual. Humanity had now—with this one included—explored eighty-five systems and not found any sign of other intelligent life in the universe. What humanity had discovered was two worlds inside the Goldilocks zone. Both could support human life once the still-developing technology of terraforming was perfected.

  The small exploratory fleet that Captain Slater and his escort ship—the USS Franklin—were a part of had, with this latest jump, officially reached farther into uncharted space than any human ship had ever journeyed. He was proud of this moment, even if he was unhappy about the person in overall command of the fleet.

  “No contacts, sir. The board is clean except for the vessels of our expedition,” the ensign said. The wall at the front of the bridge was configured as a giant video screen. Most of the time, the screen played what it was receiving from the external sensors, giving the appearance to the bridge crew that they were looking out a window and watching their travel through the stars. In reality, the bridge was placed in the most protected part of the ship: its very center. The days of having a captain and crew looking out actual windows at the sea around them were long gone. The bridge of the Franklin was a cramped place; the five people stationed there found themselves wedged into a space that was never designed for the purpose it was now used for.

  “Very well. Secure from the jump. I want all sections to report their readiness,” Slater ordered. At this point, the mission had become mind-numbingly routine, so he had made a point to keep the crew active and productive as much as he could. All sections of the ship reported that their systems were green, and other than a small glitch in the food-dispensing unit, the ship was operational. A repair team had already been dispatched to work on the food dispenser, and Slater was confident the problem would be fixed quickly. If there was one thing a ship’s crew members were protective of, it was their chow.

  “Sir, we broke another record. Shall I enter it into the ship’s history?” His XO (executive officer) asked. Commander Bradford was young for his post but had proven himself enough that Slater had confidence in his abilities. The exuberance Bradford showed was contagious, helping motivate the bridge crew and remind them of their accomplishments, despite the often boring nature of their mission.

  “Very well, Commander. Have it entered in the ship’s log that on this date and time, the USS Franklin, first into the system, has set the record for exploring farther than any other human vessel,” Slater said with a smile.

  Humanity was still learning the ropes when it came to space travel and starship construction. Escorts like the Franklin were relatively small affairs, being similar in size to an oceangoing bulk freighter. The ship’s complement was a total of fifty-two crewmembers. Many of the ship’s duties were controlled by the main computer and its rudimentary AI. Various bots and automated systems took care of the mundane day-to-day maintenance and fine-tuning of the vessel. The human crew was there primarily as a backup, should any of the automated systems fail. Several completely autonomous vessels had been tried out as cargo haulers, but those ships would occasionally disappear after experiencing some small fault the AI couldn’t handle. For now, a nominal human crew was kept on every vessel.

  The crew on the Franklin was also there to man the ship’s weapons systems. A human crew member was required to designate targets and authorize deadly force if needed. There had been far too many bad science fiction stories of artificial intelligences going rogue, and humanity wasn’t quite ready to entrust the firing of weapons to a computer. The armament on the Franklin was meager: only a three-inch railgun in a single turret along with six single-shot missile launchers that had been hastily attached to the hull before the expedition set sail. A small point-defense turret to defend against incoming missile fire rounded out the Franklin’s armament. The pitiful weapons on his ship—compared to those of an oceangoing vessel—represented the extent of humanity’s combat power in space.

  “Sir, incoming comm from Admiral Lopez. Shall I put it on-screen?” the comm tech asked. Suppressing a sigh, Slater waved for the tech to put the call through, one he received every time they transitioned to a new system.

  “Captain Slater, it is not productive for us to have to go over this every time we transition. I assure you that I empathize with your concern for the safety of the fleet, but the goal of humanity is to bring peace to the universe, not provoke any potential intelligent life with your belligerent actions. Drop your shields and maintain a less aggressive stance at the back of the formation,” Fleet Admiral Valentina Lopez ordered.

  Captain Slater made an effort to keep his dislike of Admiral Lopez off his face as he replied. “Acknowledged, Admiral. We’re dropping shields and moving to the rear of the formation as ordered.”

  The “admiral” was a civilian representative of the UEC (United Earth Collective), the organization that governed Earth’s space-exploration efforts. It was widely known within the navy that the admiral had campaigned hard to get the position to lead this fleet. Several former military commanders were put forth as choices for command, but the UEC decided to choose a civilian to head up this exploratory fleet. The admiral was part of the UEC faction that opposed having armed ships in space. Only the recent advent of piracy along some of the outer systems had forced the space exploration teams to cobble together makeshift escort vessels such as the one he commanded.

  The USS Franklin started life as a mining
transport and had been converted to military use while the navy waited for the construction of actual warships designed for space combat. The Franklin’s main gun was, in fact, just a repurposed weapon from the army’s arsenal. Her external missiles had been taken from oceangoing naval vessels, albeit heavily modified to function in space. The ore-hauling transport was chosen as the chassis for the escort ships due to their rugged construction and powerful main reactors. The hull was thicker, and the engines were more durable than those of most similarly sized vessels. The ship also had stronger shields, as there tended to be a lot of debris around asteroid-mining operations. Given the velocities involved in space travel, even a small object could seriously damage starships sailing through those areas.

  “Lower shields and move us to the back of the formation, Yeung,” Slater ordered the helmsman. He could feel the maneuver thrusters firing when suddenly the lights flickered. Red hazard lighting activated, and the ship’s klaxon began to sound out as they went to emergency backup power. Almost as soon as it began, the reactor came back online, and power was restored. On the main screen, he could briefly see the admiral’s look of panic as the same thing occurred on her ship. The comm then cut out along with several other systems.

  “Engineering, what just happened?” Slater asked. In the corner of the main screen, a smaller screen with the image of a shaken-up chief engineer appeared.

  “Sir, some kind of power fluctuation. We’re trying to track the source . . . but everything seems to be fine now, and all systems are coming back online. I’ll run diagnostics on the reactor and all the power couplings, but it appears we’re good for the moment,” the head of engineering advised. Chief Petty Officer Ramos was good at his job, and Slater knew that if there was a problem, the chief would find it.

  From the reports coming in from the rest of the fleet, it looked like the Franklin and the admiral’s flagship—Hope for the Future—were the only two vessels that had experienced a problem after their jump. Over the next few hours, the systems on both vessels were checked, and all appeared to be functioning normally. The anomaly was chalked up to some random glitch in the operating system ships used to automate most of their functions. After he was assured there was no danger, Slater excused himself and tried to catch some sleep once the ship’s XO relieved him.

  The ship settled into a practiced routine as the expedition began to explore the new solar system. Several weeks had passed when the admiral scheduled a conference call to announce their next moves. From what Slater could glean from the comm chatter between the survey vessels, there wasn’t anything exciting to be found in this particular system. A single planet orbited the small red dwarf star, and the few asteroid fields comprised useless rock. Being far too close to the sun, the planet couldn’t support life or make the mining of its sparse minerals worth the effort. The real question would be whether Admiral Lopez would continue with the exploratory mission or head back home to report their progress.

  “I believe we have everyone. I thought it prudent to explain what we’ve found so far in our exploration,” the admiral began. She seemed to like to repeat the obvious, an annoying trait that Slater had found in many senior leaders, both military and civilian.

  After pausing for effect, the admiral continued. “The planet is too close to the star to support life or even for our survey ships to get near enough to try and look closely for mineral deposits. While there are also several large asteroids in the system, scans from the exploration vessels SV1 and SV2 revealed no valuable mineral deposits worth exploiting.”

  Slater felt bad for the captains of the smaller survey vessels. Their ships had not been given names like the others of the fleet; some bureaucrat no doubt determined that alphanumeric designations were good enough. Slater and the rest of the navy transfers fought to have their ships named. The navy realized that having an attachment to a vessel helped with crew morale and that a vessel named Escort One or some other nonsense didn’t elicit much pride from those serving aboard it.

  “. . . and therefore, in the interest of science, we will continue on our historic mission to explore the universe for humanity. You and all your crews can take pride in the accomplishments you have achieved,” Admiral Lopez finished.

  Slater had tuned her out, lost in his own thoughts, and would have to review the feed later to make sure he hadn’t missed anything important. His only takeaway was that they would be out here for a bit longer as the survey vessels looked for another jump point other than the one they had used to get here. The scanners on the survey vessels were powerful, but it took them some time to sniff out a jump point. During their earlier travels through the system, the scanners had been tuned to search for mineral deposits, and the process to change them over to scan for the signature of a jump point was an arduous task, or so he had heard from the survey vessel captains.

  The crew went about their routines while the survey vessels searched for another jump point. He kept them busy with maintenance and training to preserve their edge, should anything ever happen. Slater had placed a special emphasis on damage-control drills ever since they experienced the strange power fluctuations upon entering the system. His crew numbers were limited, and they needed to be able to react quickly if the automated systems failed. Slater was looking forward to seeing the next system once they located the jump point; this system was about as boring as they came.

  After serving his latest watch on the bridge, Slater hit the ship’s mess for a meal. There were a few other sailors present, but Slater wasn’t in the mood to socialize with the crew and only nodded in reply to their greetings. Having never been the chatty type, he was known for using his meal breaks as a time for quiet contemplation. The galley’s three food dispensers looked like large stainless-steel boxes with multiple narrow doors on the face. Using the touchscreen, he selected his meal and opened the door once the meal had been rehydrated. Tray in hand, he grabbed a bottle of flavored water and left the galley, heading toward his cabin to eat in private.

  The food on the ship wasn’t too bad, and one of tonight’s meal choices was spaghetti, which was on his list of favorites. Some of the sailors complained that it was “navy ketchup with noodles,” but Slater wasn’t too picky after so many years at sea and now in space. Having some choice in the food dispensers allowed the crew to avoid their least favorite meals. Still, if they kept out here long enough, the choices would decrease as the ingredients for the most popular meals were depleted.

  Walking down the passageway toward his cabin, the captain shook his head at the slapdash nature of his vessel. The passageway was painted in a bland gray color that seemed to have been taken from the traditional navy. Every thirty or forty feet, a pressure hatch had been installed to compartmentalize the vessel in case of a loss of atmosphere. In theory, the hatches would close automatically to seal off a breach in the hull, but closing them manually was also part of the crew’s damage-control drills. What wasn’t very military about his vessel was the bright-orange smiley face symbols of the mining company the vessel had originally belonged to. The bright corporate logos bled through the thin layer of gray paint that had been slapped over them during the ship’s hasty conversion. After scarfing down the chow, Slater hit his rack for some sleep, hoping to catch up on some rest before he was scheduled to be back on watch.

  Even though he was the captain, his quarters were tiny. There just wasn’t much space on a ship, given all the areas taken up by propulsion, weapons, life-support systems, and provisions. It didn’t help that the Franklin had started life as an ore-hauler designed to be automated to the point that only five crew members were needed to sail her. Much of the interior of the ship had to be reconfigured to include an enhanced bridge, more crew quarters, weapons control systems, and enhanced sensors. Other than the small fold-out bunk, Slater had a chair that was bolted to the floor and a small writing desk next to his locker. There was no private latrine for the officers, so the captain had to use the same centralized latrine that the rest of the crew did.


  It seemed to Slater that he had just fallen asleep when the intercom blared, the XO’s voice piping through.

  “Sir, we have an unknown contact on the board. You’re needed on the bridge,” Bradford shouted. The man was usually unflappable, and his excited tone let Slater know that whatever was on their sensors was not some random glitch.

  “On my way, Bradford,” he replied, the urgency of the moment helping him shake off the last vestiges of sleep. After donning a fresh uniform, he hustled down the narrow steel passageways toward the Franklin’s bridge.

  — 2 —

  “What am I looking at, people?” Slater asked as he took his seat on the bridge. On the screen in front of him was a large starship of unknown origin. Details were few at this distance, but it was obvious to everyone aboard that this was no stray asteroid.

  “Sir, the unknown contact is closing rapidly. Admiral Lopez is on the horn,” Ensign Jameson advised.

  “Place the admiral on-screen. Let me know when that thing hits the outer edge of our missile range. Helm, take us between the fleet and the new contact,” Slater ordered, only to be cut off by the admiral.

  “You will do no such thing, Captain! This is a momentous occasion for all of humanity, and I won’t have some careless and aggressive maneuvers disrupt our first contact with what very well may be an alien race. You will move back in position at the tail of the formation and lower shields. I will take the lead on this,” the admiral ordered and abruptly cut the commlink.

  It took all the discipline and self-control that Slater possessed to not countermand the admiral’s order. It was foolish to put the expedition at such a disadvantage if the contact proved hostile.

  “Bring us back behind the formation, helm. Lower shields. What do we know about this thing, people?” Captain Slater asked as he watched the range to the target shrink.

  “It’s big, sir. Double the length of the flagship, which makes it triple our size. No idea of its intent, and so far, it hasn’t responded to the admiral’s hails,” answered the crewmember manning the sensors. “We’re being scanned, sir. The system they’re using is operating on a different band than ours, but I’d bet my next month’s pay that what just hit us was a targeting scan.”