Stranger Stars: Iron Hammer, #6

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Space cities have been locked in war for centuries over the resources of an asteroid belt.

Humans pilot swarms of pod fighters to protect their city’s mining operations from other cities, risking everything and suffering multiple deaths and regenerations. Then Landry goes through a regeneration which introduces an error that will destroy the delicate balance of the war.

Resilience is a space opera short story by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper.

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Epic science fiction at its finest. Realistic far future worlds. Incredible characters and scenarios. – Amazon reader.

This short story has not been commercially released for sale. It is only available as a gift to readers who subscribe to Cam’s email list.

More details once you have read Stranger Stars

Table of Contents

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About Stranger Stars

Praise for Stranger Stars:

Title Page

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About the Author

Other Books by Cameron Cooper

Copyright Information

About Stranger Stars

A new hope for the Carina worlds emerges…

Danny Andela and her Carina allies make a desparate bid to recruit a new ally to their cause, one who could change their fortunes in the war with the Slavers.

Stranger Stars is the sixth book in the Iron Hammer space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. The Iron Hammer series is a spin off from the acclaimed Imperial Hammer series, and features many of the characters and situations from that series.

The Iron Hammer series:

1.0: Galactic Thunder

2.0: Stellar Storm

3.0: Planetary Parlay

4.0: Waxing War

5.0: Ruled Out

6.0: Stranger Stars

7.0: Federal Force

8.0: Redline Rebels

Space Opera Science Fiction Novel

Praise for Stranger Stars:

I was completely hooked me from the start, plunging me back into the action where 'Ruled Out' left off. It's satisfying and reassuring to be back with these characters.

This piece of the adventure definitely gets darker.

This series reminds me of why I originally fell in love with this genre. Cameron Cooper’s stories truly rival the greats, like Frank Herbert.

The inventive nature of this series is beyond any I have read. Simply Stunning!

The Carinds can't win, but refuse to lose.

The huge reveal at the end of book 5 plays a large role in this book in a rather unexpected way.

Fantastic series! Highly recommended! Two more books coming. I cannot wait to see what Danny and her team do next.

I loved this book! Great characters, great storyline. Old and new characters. I love this series!

—1—

Temar Mountain Offensive. General Andela’s Flagship, CMS Glory, One Light Year out from Beauramis III, Terran Union.

Y32 – Two Years after Formation of Carinad Federation.

I watched Brigadier General Jai Van Veen cross his arms and tilt his head as he stared at the tank display in the center of the bridge. The tank holo was a perfect sphere with a diameter of three meters. Inside the ball of blue light was arrayed a representation of the command fleet that hovered all around the Glory.

I waited for Jai’s opinion on the array of the fleet. We were in a rare moment of pause, when I could afford to take a breath and not do three other things at the same time.

Jai reached out and swiped sideways with his hand near the edge of the ball. It obligingly turned, showing the far side of the arrayed fleet.

You know you could just spin on one heel and look out the windows, right? I said. It was an old argument.

I like the simplicity of a facsimile, Jai replied absently. His typical response.

Instead, I looked out the windows. I never got tired of looking through them. The windows on the Glory’s bridge were floor to ceiling, which was four meters overhead, and wrapped from the starboard, around the near-semi-circular nose of the ship, to the port side. They were vastly different from the old Lythion’s narrow apertures.

Only, today, there wasn’t a lot to see through them. The blue sun to our starboard was a tiny disk on the black starfield. The fleet was spread out across a thousand kilometers. The farthest ship, Dalton’s Dominant, the fortified destroyer which had delivered Juliyana’s ground troops onto Beauramis, was too far away to even twinkle in the sun’s light.

Looks good, Jai Van Veen declared.

We should have brought more, I replied.

There were no more to be spared.

Which reminds me. I turned and looked toward the command chair, up on the higher deck at the back of the bridge. Slate stood at the station beside the chair. Slate, we need an updated production schedule from the shipyards.

Which shipyards, General? Slate asked, his hand already moving over the dash.

All of them, of course. Jai rolled his eyes.

Slate had the sense to not slump even though I’d just handed him several hours worth of work. At last count, thirty-seven Federation polities had retooled part or all of their facilities to build military vessels, or components of military vessels, to match the blueprints and standards available to anyone who cared to help with the war effort. There were never enough ships, even though the Marine Force bought every completed and certified ship.

There were never enough guns or railguns, cannons, small arms, armor, suits, ammunition, bolt boxes, hand-scanners and…well, it was a long list of what we were constantly short of, despite most of the Carinad worlds supplying us.

In times of war, resources got used up, destroyed, or became inoperable through constant use and lack of maintenance. That included ships and people, alas. We had just passed the second anniversary of the start of the war with the Terran Union…we were right on schedule for supply issues to become a real problem.

I turned toward the weapons wing. Commander Chowdhury, what is the status on that grenade launcher you were developing?

Calpurnia grimaced. About where it was last time, General. Maybe after this offensive…

I nodded, easily reading what she had not said. We’d all been too busy fighting the Terrans to spend time on development and research. Calpurnia was the director and coordinator of the weapons pit on the bridge, and I couldn’t spare her for the development work she was also responsible for. But that was also a fact of war. Pick one of your officers with the skills to take over the work and assign the project to them, I told Calpurnia.

Yes, sir, she said, without a hint of resentment. We’d all had to delegate the more interesting aspect of our portfolios, these days, and had become accustomed to giving up pet projects.

As Calpurnia replied, something exploded over by the analysis wing on the port side of the bridge. Steam vented in a loud snarling hiss, and someone cried out.

We all turned to check.

Yoan—Major Saillins—stood with his arms crossed just beyond the edge of the steam venting from the wall. "I told you to keep the wrench on it until it was sealed." He was speaking to the three noncoms sweating and working at the guts of the wall, which was stuffed with a spaghetti snarl of leads, wires, tubes and more. One of them was on his rear, shaking his hand.

Yoan looked at me. Sorry, General. We’ll be done in five minutes.

That was what he had said ten minutes ago. Major Rosalie needs her scanners sooner rather than later, I pointed out. Gratia Rosalie, who looked far better in the dark blue Marine uniform than I had suspected she might, with her very long figure, was sitting with her hips propped upon the engineering dashboards at the back of the bridge, a patient expression on her face while Yoan’s crew worked on her dashboard and the bank of scanner displays she monitored at all times—when they were working.

The dashboard she leaned upon was Lyssa’s. Lyssa stood behind it, looking amused. She was the captain in charge of engines and ship’s performance, and three of her team stood at the tall screens behind her. As we were hung in space, far beyond any gravity wells, Lyssa and her team had little to do right now but watch Yoan direct the other bridge engineering team.

Major Rosalie will have her scanners in five, Yoan told me. His voice was not quite harsh. General, he added.

It wasn’t just supplies and resources we were running short of, these days. It was Yoan’s responsibility to keep the Glory running and able to defend itself, while also directing engineering operations across the Marine Force and on all current theaters of war. He was feeling the stress, the same as everyone.

I glared back at him.

Sorry, sir, Yoan said.

I nodded. Have Lyssa call for more people, if you need it. They won’t be in the way for a while.

Access to the bridge was tightly controlled by the Personnel AI. I’d arranged it that way not just for security reasons, but also because people standing in the wrong place cluttered up the bridge. In the middle of a battle, tripping over unexpected feet or cannoning into someone could delay an order or action by a crucial few seconds.

Anyone who wasn’t certified bridge personnel couldn’t enter. They weren’t just forbidden from entering but were physically repelled by forcefields at the entrance to the bridge. The forcefields were controlled by the AI, who could only be overridden by me, Jai or another full Brigadier General. The only other Brigadier General on the Glory right now was Fiori and she always stayed on the medical level. Hell, she lived in the medical level.

Lieutenant Ragno, standing at the Defensive Weapons station, called out. I have ion paths tracing into local space, General! Her voice was projected next to my ear by the active acoustics systems, so I didn’t have to strain to hear her.

How many? I replied.

She stared at her dashboard, her face stiff and emotionless, then looked up at me. Too many to count.

Jai, I snapped.

Jai turned the ball once more, so that it was oriented to show the Glory and the fleet surrounding us from our current perspective. Throw the traces up here, Lieutenant, he told Ragno.

Marlow, status on the ground troops, I called, and headed back to the chair and the dashboards. Slate reached over the chair as I approached it, and tapped on my dashboard, switching it from navigational reporting to tactical.

Anderson Marlow—Colonel Marlow—was listening on a dedicated, armored communications stream, which was tightly focused between him and Juliyana, who was leading the ground assault on Temar Mountain.

Marlow’s analysis team, working with Eliot Byrne’s intelligence unit, had determined that Temar Mountain was the location of a massive Terran military base and supply depot, while a shipyard hung in space directly over the mountain.

The shipyard was my target, which was why I had brought with me the bulk of the command fleet. But I wouldn’t attack the shipyards until Juliyana’s troops had reached their target and begun their offensive. As Juliyana’s people had to slog twenty kilometers in armored suits, from the drop zone to the mountain, we lingered here, a few wormhole-seconds away from Beaumaris and well out of range of the longest and most sensitive Terran scanners known to us.

The Terrans couldn’t possibly know we were here. The operation had been planned and executed with the tightest security because the Terrans had got so good at anticipating us.

I looked at Marlow as I settled in the chair.

He shook his head. All green, he said shortly.

Juliyana was reporting no problems—and green meant she wasn’t yet engaged. Blue was for when they had attacked and were committed to the offensive. I could halt her where she was right now, if I felt it was necessary.

But I hadn’t spent two months working on this just to pull her out because I was suddenly feeling antsy.

I drummed the flat arm of my chair, with its multiple coffee mug rings. Warn her we have ion paths coming at us, but tell her to move on at best speed, I told Marlow.

He nodded and spoke quietly, relaying my directions.

Warn the fleet, I added, to Slate. Slate was my communications specialist as well as my personal aide. It was a role that he was naturally suited for. He had once been a translator android for the Terrans. Now he had a human body, and was dedicated, body and spirit, to the Carinad Federation.

Already done, Slate told me.

General! Jai pointed at the blue ball in the center of the bridge.

I rose to my feet again, staring at the tank. The display had scaled up, reducing the fleet to a smallish blue dot inside the sphere. My heart skipped a beat and my stomach clenched as I watched dozens of yellow dotted lines trace the ion paths of the Terran ships coming at us. There was a possibility they would move straight through this section of space and not even notice us, but