The price of sacrifice
This is a short excerpt from my next book titled Secrets Of Lothoria, which you can find on Amazon.
The captain ordered his staff shuttle’s pilot to decelerate to 1/3 speed and slowly it then flew around the dock, allowing him to inspect his new starship IJSN Giri, in greater detail. Said vessel was completed in the span of a year, its impressive silhouette shrouded by the Great Martian Stardock’s shadow. One and a half kilometers long, the Terran frigate was paid in full and built by the powerful Shimazu clan. He knew that the vessel was anything but ordinary, yet on first glance it did look just like any other Terran starship of the same class. First and foremost, the most notable design feature of this frigate was the location of its main drive section. Instead of simply placing all of the engines clustered on the ship’s stern, half of them were integrated into the vessel’s superstructure. One on port, another on starboard and two by two on its ventral and lateral hull, they were protected by heavy armor and since the elongated hull was wider in the middle, even their plasma exhausts could be used as weapons against other starships from a closer range. The more he looked at it, the more this ship reminded him of olden sea-vessels of war, similar to what the intrepid humans used during their 20th century wars. The warship was dotted with quad point defense turrets and her heavy pulse laser emplacements were linked in batteries by two located on her bow, port, starboard, and aft. A dozen nimble turrets were placed both on her port and starboard side, each housed two forty millimeter, rail plasma cannons. Those, he knew were to be used mostly (but not exclusively) against smaller vessels, like corvettes or escort ships, and with powerful secondary batteries like this, few dropships would stand a chance of reaching the hull. The frigate’s main battery comprised of the powerful eighty eight millimeter guns, placed in six heavily armored turrets which held three cannons each. The eighteen, long-range, rapid firing railguns, were specifically located on her dorsal and ventral hull, to further complement the vessel’s already impressive pulse laser firing arcs. If that was not enough to turn the otherwise well-rounded fleet’s workhorse into a pocket destroyer, the Shimazu engineers bolstered the frigate’s armament with multiple torpedo tubes. Eight of the total of sixteen tubes were located on the ship’s dorsal bow, the rest were housed in her ventral armored casemates. Each battery could launch a salvo of four heavy torps to her port and starboard side, respectively. The captain was told that instead of some very complicated and easily disabled automated system, Shimazu engineers fashioned an old school, rugged mechanical device.
Of course, to back this up even further, they had equipped all crewmates with good quality exosuits, just in case everything went to hell. Automation often failed, space-age machines could be destroyed or even hacked, but the will of a Terran crewmate to persevere, one could always rely on. The Kil’ra captain was told of Terran warships, who returned fire by manually loading and launching torpedoes, long after their main systems were disabled or destroyed. The torp warheads themselves were fitted with a backup; a simple device they said, something he’d never seen nor heard of before, also the work of the Shimazu. He knew not much of Earth but every Kil’ra commander worth their blood in combat had heard a little bit of the samurai, their nation state and exploits on the galactic battlefields. In fact the pilot of his staff shuttle was Japanese and one of Shimazu’s best warriors, his doctors claimed. When he was suffering through the last of his painful cloned limb reattachment rehabilitation procedures, it was this human man by the name of Daisuke, who assisted him. At first he thought the human part of this medical facilities’ rehabilitation staff, yet the stern man was too gruff looking, he virtually emitted impending, constant eagerness to fight. Even in civilian (sort of) clothing, the samurai carried both his swords and a sidearm, acting more like a bodyguard than a medic. The middle-aged human was neatly clothed, always wore a stylish blue suit which was crafted in the usual Japanese style – with a comfortable sash so that any samurai can carry their swords. His stern face was covered with small scars and to him, as a much traveled Kil’ra, was evidence of both a long military career and extensive skin nano-restructuring. Daisuke’s posture betrayed a lifetime of soldiering, a couple decades at least, maybe even more, and hundreds of enemies vanquished. The otherwise immaculate, short haircut revealed some white strains – this warrior was no spring chicken like the Terrans used to say. His dark brown eyes were not replaced by cybernetics; just as most humans, this man probably thought that overuse of cyber-tech led to dependence and the Japanese did not like to be dependent on anyone for anything. The incredibly tall, broad shouldered, built like a PA warrior, helped Kuma during all of his rehabilitation period, he even pushed the Kil’ra’s grav-assist chair from his bed to the hospital’s pool and back. Daisuke san was a man of few words; often he continuously looked at the person who asked him something, and then smiling, just before the slightly confused individual was about to go away, answered. Kuma later found out that the warrior had a habit of studying people who got near the person or object he currently protected. A routine which had no doubt saved many a life during his long career, the Kil’ra captain assumed.
One morning during his hospital stay, Kuma noticed that the human, whom he counted as a companion, brother in star blood, came through the doors limping. Earlier that Lunar night, the well experienced captain felt some sort of a nudge, as if somebody was playing with the facility’s artificial gravity. Daisuke sat next to him on the bed, looked straight at his Kil’ra face and with a proud smile, uttered:
“I have a confession to make, Great Father. We got all of them this day, the Enemy of Man is finally finished!”
“Whom did you get, I don’t understand Daisuke san? Did some pirate clan attack you again?!”
“No, it was an Illuminati sleeper cell… The last one in existence, Kuma’Re Sama.”
“But I thought your and my people had already wiped them all out during the 1950s!”
“Indeed we did but not all of them were killed. A dark specter loomed upon our planet ever since our fathers and mothers fought to the last drop of their blood to vanquish them. I am not sure if you are aware, but there was one Illuminati base which completely vanished. That same, previously lost, facility was discovered and then an insanely brave assault conducted, in the process destroying the base and freeing all of their captives but a month ago, Father. I followed my orders from Lady Yukina to the letter and was forbidden to cause you distress while you were recovering. Now I am given the permission to tell you – the vile filth had a plan to blow up our homeworld’s moon.”
“They wanted to do… what!? But that would’ve slaughtered the very people they craved so vehemently to enslave for all those centuries! If their plan had succeeded, then they would’ve lorded over a barren wasteland of a planet. Vile fools, all of them…”
“Yes, Kuma’Re Sama, their madness knows no bounds and if we knew no better, our people would even feel shame that the Illuminati were humans too. Yet, we know that their evil is their own and these monsters – responsible for the atrocities that they have committed. I am proud to report that Luna’s I-sec operatives, bolstered by local security had long since taken out all of their sleeper cells, and every single one of those monsters, executed. We were informed, however, after one Psy corps investigator by the name of Boris broke the mind of their ‘Supreme Leader’, that there was one more, secret cell still alive, lurking about.”
“Wait, was that nudge I felt in the gravity plating…?” – Daisuke san smiled and again bowed slightly before continuing:
“Indeed, that was them being taken out. Once more I am amazed at the level of your experience, skill and mastery of senses, Great Father. I and the rest of your guard detail requested to be given this honor.”
“That is why you are limping, I assume.” – Kuma’Re smiled and moved his head closer, toothy grin reflecting the nightstand’s illumination – “Tell me, did the last authoritarian monsters of your race die just as pitifully as they lived their lives?”
Daisuke’s smile grew wider and the samurai extended his PDA holding arm:
“Do you want me to tell you, Kuma’Re Sama, or do you like to watch the whole thing?”
* * *
To those who still dream of the good old days when science fiction was still fun and not chalk full cancerous SJW crap, I say - give my Starshatter series a chance! They are available on Amazon both in Kindle and paperback format. Those of you who are willing and able, can support me on Patreon or Subscribestar.
