Operation Cobalt – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: The Biogenesis War Files Read online

  THE BIOGENESIS WAR FILES

  OPERATION COBALT

  LL RICHMAN

  Operation Cobalt

  Copyright © 2020 by L.L. Richman

  The Biogenesis War™ is a registered trademark of L.L. Richman

  All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews, or promotions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Delta V Press

  Cover Copyright © 2020 L.L. Richman

  ISBN-13:

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Produced in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  CONTENTS

  About the Biogenesis War Universe

  ALSO BY LL RICHMAN

  EPIGRAPH

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  PREVIEW: THE CHIRAL AGENT

  DEADLY DISCOVERY

  AWAKENED

  TERMINOLOGY

  WEAPONRY & ARMOR

  ALSO BY LL RICHMAN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  About the Biogenesis War Universe

  Humanity has reached the stars.

  With colonies established throughout the Sol System, explorers hungry for new ventures traveled beyond its borders to colonize nearby Alpha Centauri.

  At the same time, a brave pair of ships set their sights a bit farther afield—on the binary stars Procyon and Sirius. Those who settled there called themselves the Geminate Alliance.

  Such distances made interaction prohibitive. Even with the Scharnhorst drive’s ability to triple the speed of light, travel between the colonies was measured in months, if not years.

  In the mid-twenty-fifth century, that all changed. The Geminate Alliance stunned the known worlds with the invention of the Calabi-Yau Gate. The gates folded space, enabling instantaneous travel between star systems. True interstellar commerce became a reality.

  The Alliance as a whole prospered, but like in any nation, there were pockets of discontent. Free speech allowed dissenters a voice, but some weren’t content with that platform.

  In a less-populated sector of Sirian space, one such group decided to do something about it….

  ALSO BY LL RICHMAN

  You can always find the most up to date listing of book titles on L.L. Richman’s Author Page.

  The Biogenesis War

  – The Chiral Agent, June 2020

  – The Chiral Protocol, September 2020

  – Chiral Justice, February 2021

  The Biogenesis War Files: The Early Years

  – Operation Cobalt, December 2020

  – The Chiral Conspiracy, June 2020

  Want updates?

  You’ll get news of upcoming books, behind-the-scenes glimpses of life with a physicist, and views from the cockpit. And cats, because the feline overlords insist.

  Go to https://bit.ly/biogenesiswar and sign up.

  EPIGRAPH

  “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”

  ~ Sun Tzu

  “The way to win in a battle … is to know the rhythms

  of the specific opponents, and use rhythms that your opponents do not expect.”

  ~ Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

  ONE

  CMS Goblin

  Cobalt Mining Sector Twelve

  Big Blue (Sirius A)

  “Fred, no! That’s not a chew toy!”

  Katie Hyer planted her boots against the hatch she’d just sealed, and pushed away from the surface. The action sent her shooting across the cramped space toward the mining tug’s cockpit.

  The strains of a catchy, old-Earth tune filtered from the ship’s audio system as she snagged the pilot’s seat with one hand to arrest her forward motion. A reluctant smile tugged at her lips when she heard Carrie Underwood’s voice belt out, “The more boys I meet, the more I lo-o-ove my dog.”

  Jeremy’s timing, as usual, was impeccable. The traffic controller who worked Cobalt Mining’s first shift liked to spin the tunes during times when there weren’t any ships coming or going from the Sierra Twelve platform. Tuesdays were what he called ‘country music day’—whatever that meant. Katie had yet to figure out which country the music represented.

  “Betcha Underwood’s dog never tried eating his own safety net,” she muttered as she reached for her pet.

  The dog was floating butt-first just above the co-pilot’s seat. The netting that usually held him in place was bunched up all around him.

  His back feet were hooked into one end, while the other was clamped firmly between his jaws. The remainder of the net waved in the null-g environment, yanked this way and that as Fred worried at the material with his teeth.

  She reached for a corner when it floated her way, but Fred intuited her intent. With a whine, the basset puppy jerked his head back. The movement sent his hind legs forward just enough for him to make contact with the back of the co-pilot’s seat. With a shove of his feet, both dog and meshwork went flying toward the back of the ship.

  Katie sighed and followed. The netting Fred was teething on wasn’t hers; it belonged to Cobalt Mining. She’d intended to return it to the dock earlier in the week, but the order she’d placed for a baby seat hadn’t yet arrived, so she still needed it to keep Fred secure when she was maneuvering the ship—if he didn’t eat it first.

  Fred thought this was a fun, new game; she could see it in his eyes. His floppy ears haloed around him as he sailed across the small cabin, then flattened against the aft bulkhead when he bumped up against it with a muffled oof—Or was that a woof, she wondered—before she caught up to him and tugged at the material clamped between his jaws.

  Fred doubled down, emitting a cute baby growl, and Katie did her best to harden her heart against it. Then he proceeded to jerk his head back and forth, which made it nearly impossible for Katie to get a good grip, given that the stuff was slick with drool.

  “No!” she scolded. “You can’t eat your seat belt. Now, gimme!”

  He let out another growl as she tried prying his jaws open, and a great gob of slobber went floating through the cabin.

  Katie called out to the ship’s Synthetic Intelligence. “Goblin, release containment nano, please. Cabin bulkhead, aft.”

  The pre-diaspora music streaming from the communications console cut out long enough for the SI to acknowledge, and then it resumed. From the corner of her eye, Katie caught a flicker of light as a haze of glittering specks leached from the bulkhead to envelop the floating droplets. A slight breeze grazed her cheek, and she knew the ship was directing the airflow to recall the nano back into the fabric of the bulkhead.

  She returned her attention to her recalcitrant pet. “Well, at least you left your d
iaper alone this time.”

  She’d purchased a portable, shipboard dogbox—which amounted to little more than a strip of artificial turf with an automated pump that evacuated any liquids deposited—but at six weeks of age, Fred wasn’t yet trained to use it.

  Intellectually, she knew that Goblin’s containment nano could just as easily herd any errant puppy pee into the ActiveFiber coating that layered the ship’s bulkheads, but the thought kind of grossed her out.

  Katie gave the cargo netting one last sharp tug, her feet planted against the aft bulkhead. It came suddenly free, which sent her rocketing back the way she’d come, her head rapping sharply against the short span of bulkhead that separated the cockpit from the tiny cabin.

  With a small groan, she dragged her hand through her shock of maroon curls, fingers poking at the tender spot the medical nano in her body was already in the process of healing.

  Schooling her face into stern lines, she shook the liberated material at him in mock-threat.

  “Bad boy, Fred! Bad! Your seat belt is not a toy!”

  Fred looked back at her with large, sad, brown eyes. It was a tactic Katie had discovered in recent weeks was her own personal kryptonite.

  She relented, gathering him up in her arms and placing a kiss on his forehead as she murmured gentle, scolding nothings into one floppy ear.

  Her thoughts snapped back to her surroundings when the music cut out once more and Goblin’s SI abruptly announced, {Warning! Unknown vessel approaching on an intercept heading.}

  Though startled by the unexpected intrusion, Katie’s training automatically kicked in.

  “Show me that ship,” she ordered as she grabbed Fred and shoved him into the co-pilot’s chair, securing him with quick, practiced motions.

  The view on Goblin’s main holoscreen altered to show the incoming vessel. With a muttered curse, Katie slammed herself into her own seat, fingers flying over the pilot’s board, bringing the drives online and sending the tug into a steep dive.

  Far from the nimble response she would have liked, the tug turned exactly as expected: like a bloated whale. She saw instantly that Goblin lacked the control authority to evade. The only hope she had to avoid collision was to release the load of metal ores she’d just secured to the back of the tug.

  She reached for the quick-release, her action sending the entire jackscrew-controlled tow hook assembly floating free.

  Now significantly lighter, the tug leapt forward like a thoroughbred released from the starting gate. Goblin’s massive fusion drives, now freed from all encumbrances, dodged the approaching vessel with enviable agility.

  Katie spun the forward viewscreen to receive the feed from the aft sensors. She mentally braced for the impact between the newcomer and the chunks of asteroid she’d just ejected, but it never came.

  The ship, still flying dark, jinked out of the way of the mass of netted rocks, its thrusters firing in a complex series that told Katie whoever was handling that vessel knew what he or she was doing.

  The effect on her free-floating cargo was immediate; the velocity imparted to the netted rocks when she’d released them altered abruptly. Katie sighed when she saw that the near-impact had also bestowed a spin to the mass of rubble—one she’d now have to match in order to reacquire her load.

  With one last twitch, the ship raced away, its heading now pointed straight at Sierra Twelve.

  “Jerks. Ever heard of karma?” Katie addressed the departing spacecraft. “Hope yours ends up biting you in the ass.”

  TWO

  DAP Helios, GNS Scimitar

  Decommissioned mining platform

  0.9 AU from Sierra Twelve

  Twenty-eight hours earlier….

  It was no accident that the mysterious ship that had nearly plowed into Goblin was flying dark. Its frantic pace was due to a surprise encounter with the Alliance Navy, nearly an AU away.

  It was a skirmish none aboard the Geminate Navy ship Scimitar had seen coming. Scimitar was a Helios, a fast-action craft crewed by highly skilled pilots equipped to transport the Navy’s special forces teams on covert missions and provide support for their operations.

  Today’s mission was routine, a training session pitting the Special Reconnaissance Unit against the 76th Coast Guard Regiment. The 76th was stationed at nearby Heliodor, a habitat orbiting the star originally known as Sirius A.

  Scimitar’s crew had just dropped SRU Team Five onto a mining platform that belonged to the Cobalt Mining Consortium. The mining platform had reached the end of its useful life, and Cobalt had decommissioned it six months earlier.

  It was scheduled for demolition in the coming year, but in the interim, the Navy had gained Cobalt’s permission to conduct exercises aboard the abandoned structure.

  Scimitar was currently holding station, floating silently near the access hatch where Team Five had inserted. Its crew was monitoring nearspace in case the Coast Guard—or ‘coasties,’ as the Navy called them—decided to get clever and sneak a second wave of soldiers aboard to flank Team Five.

  None of Scimitar’s crew had any doubts about the outcome of today’s exercise, though some were taking bets on how long it would take the Unit men and women to hand the coasties their ass-whooping and then call for an extraction.

  Micah listened in on the team’s combat channel as they geared up, his duties as copilot now relegated to monitoring nearspace through the eyes of the drone swarm he held under his control.

  {Paintballs? Are you fucking kidding me, hoss?}

  The voice belonged to Lieutenant Thaddeus Severance the Third, Team Five’s second-in-command. A hulking Marine with dark skin and an easy smile, the man had the mind of a brilliant tactician and could give intimidation lessons to an apex predator.

  Micah hid a smile at Thad’s outburst. His tone dripped with disgust, making it evident he thought a paintball gun a wussy thing for a Marine to carry.

  {Dude. These are coasties. Plus, I spiked it with a little something extra. Get it? Spiked?} Jack Campbell was the team’s intel officer. An experienced hacker, he too was a Marine. He was also the only licensed pilot on Team Five.

  That came in handy on the rare occasion the special forces team couldn’t make it to the prearranged extraction point. At those times, Jack had been known to commandeer whatever local skiff he could get his hands on, while the flight crew aboard Scimitar maneuvered the larger Helios as close as they could for the hot exfil.

  Now, it seemed Jack had put his hacker skills to use, modifying a child’s toy into an offensive weapon.

  Micah saw Thad pick up the plastic-handled weapon to examine it more closely. His hands dwarfed the thing. {You integrated a Spike?}

  {Yep.} Jack sounded smug. {Tag one of ‘em with a shot, and they’re going to be wearing more than a bright blue spot. You’ll be able to track them anywhere they go.}

  {That’s an unfair advantage, Lieutenant.} Lane Reid’s voice sounded as stern and uncompromising as the woman herself. As Team Five’s leader, the captain was about as unreadable as a black hole, and half as approachable.

  {Aw, c’mon, Cap, we’re an unfair advantage,} Jack protested. {Besides, it gives us a chance to test out a new piece of gear in a semi real-world application, with none of the risk. How often do we get that?}

  {You’re going to add blue paintballs to our arsenal?} Elodie Cyr looked as incredulous as she sounded, one hand wrapped around her sniper’s rifle, the other holding a blue ball between thumb and finger as if it held a deadly contagion.

  {This is just a prototype,} Jack assured her. {And no, the end product won’t be embedded in a ball of blue paint.}

  Ell grunted but otherwise refused to respond.

  Undaunted, Jack continued handing out his modified paintball guns. They joined the team’s standard loadout of carbyne blades, flash-bang grenades, pulse pistols, and flechettes.

  By the time they were done, Scimitar had arrived. Rafe, the ship’s captain, floated the Helios gently up to the platform’s maintenance hat
ch and deployed the umbilical, which would allow the team to egress from the ship into the platform.

  Now Micah and the flight crew had nothing but time on their hands as they waited for the drill to conclude.

  With the exception of the two teams playing an elaborate game of capture-the-flag, the area should have been abandoned; fifteen minutes into the exercise, a blip caught Micah’s eye.

  As Scimitar’s co-pilot, he controlled the swarm of drones that encased the Helios in a protective sphere. A quick mental command sent the tiny vessels into a tight curve, angling back toward the platform itself.

  {Contact!} he sang out, sending the feed to Cass, the ship’s flight engineer, to verify. {Two ships, just cresting the top of the platform.}

  {You sure they’re not coasties?} Rafe asked.

  {Checking,} replied Cass. Then, a beat later, {The cutter says they’re not.}

  That sharpened Micah’s attention. The initial blip quickly morphed into a visual of the approaching vessels as Micah’s drones filled in the missing information. He sent it to Scimitar’s forward holoscreens.

  That drew a grunt of displeasure from the man seated to Micah’s right. Rafe’s hands danced over his controls, and in the next instant, the slightest tremor shuddered through the ship.

  An alert accompanied the action, appearing on Micah’s overlay. It informed him Rafe had just jettisoned the umbilical that tethered them to the platform’s hatch. A second telltale followed the first, this one indicating the airlock had just cycled shut. Scimitar was on the move.