Valkyrie's Daughter (The Lunar Free State Book 3) Read online

  Valkyrie’s Daughter

  Book Three of the Lunar Free State

  By

  John E. Siers

  PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books

  Copyright © 2021 John E. Siers

  All Rights Reserved

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  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.

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  Dedication

  To physicist Lisa Randall, whose well-written books got me really thinking about the nature of that mysterious force we know as gravity and inspired me to name a starship after her.

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  Cover Design by Shezaad Sudar

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  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  About John E. Siers

  Excerpt from Book One of the Abner Fortis, ISMC

  Excerpt from Book One of the Singularity War

  Excerpt from Book One of the Chimera Company

  Excerpt from Book One of Murphy’s Lawless

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  Prologue

  “The first years of the Lunar Free State were a wild ride for all of us ‘original’ citizens. One day, I was just an engineer, happy to be working on the design and construction of experimental spacecraft for the Deep Space Research Institute, and the next day—or so it seemed—I was a project manager building a city on the Moon. One day, I was just ‘Hey, Mick’ to everyone who knew me, and the next I was the commander, and those same people were saluting as they passed me in the corridors.

  “The idea of a paramilitary society was the brainchild of Ian Stevens, though I suspect he got some help refining the concept from the two military veterans on his staff, Charlie Bender and Lorna Greenwood. It seemed—even to me—to be a crazy idea at the time, but I was willing to live with it and try to make it work. After all, a lot of other crazy ideas such as gravity-powered spacecraft and cities on the Moon had worked for us. I’ve never thought of myself as a social engineer, but I figured that if anyone could pull it off, Ian was the man. So, I put on the uniform, returned the salutes, and tried my best to act military.

  “It wasn’t difficult because my basic job hadn’t changed. I was still an engineer, and my military mission included the same tasks I’d always done—identify needs, come up with engineering solutions, build them, test them, and put them to use. After a while, the salutes and military courtesies became automatic, and the uniform started to feel comfortable, like an old pair of jeans.

  “There were some tough times, when supplies were running short, everybody on Earth wanted our heads on a platter, and people were throwing nuclear weapons at us. That’s when I really started to appreciate the advantages of living in a structured society. We all had a common mission—to survive and to continue to build a nation—and we all shared equally in the benefits and the adversity. More importantly, we all had our orders, we knew what was expected of us, and we buckled down and did our jobs. There was never a question about who oversaw what, who worked for whom, or what needed to be done. We were brothers in arms, and we trusted each other with our lives. We were proud of who we were—the underdogs, a few hundred people standing firm against a few billion enemies. I guess it was sometime during that period that I finally came to understand the meaning of esprit de corps.

  “Through all of that and the years that followed, I was still an engineer. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped being an engineer, but somewhere along the line, things started happening that forced me out of my quiet little engineering world and onto the center stage, a place I never expected to be.

  “It didn’t happen overnight. I gradually shifted from being the guy who was expected to come up with clever solutions to new problems to being the guy who was expected to keep everything we’d already built running smoothly. That was OK, because we’d built well, and running smoothly was the norm. I still had time to get involved in new projects, but mostly, my involvement was limited to looking over the shoulder of some bright, young—younger than me, at least—engineer I had assigned to the project.

  “I noticed those funny little uniform accessories on my collar and shoulders were getting heavier. People weren’t calling me commander anymore, they were now calling me admiral, but my command was still the Corps of Engineers, and I expected that would always be the case.

  “And then, overnight, everything changed with the arrival of the alien Mekota and the untimely death of Ian Stevens. Ian had not only been our leader for as long as the Lunar Free State had been in existence, but he was also my friend and my immediate superior officer. The shock of his death was followed by another shock—the realization that some people wanted me to take his place. I can’t describe the relief I felt when various constitutional issues were sorted out, leaving Lorna Greenwood as our acting CEO. I supported Lorna and led the charge in the Directorate to confirm her in the position permanently.

  “It wasn’t just my desire to avoid the job that made me support her. We had made First Contact with a hostile alien race. They had killed our beloved leader and seemed bent on conquest, perhaps even on our destruction. We were involved in an interstellar war, and I believed we needed a warrior to lead us. Lorna Greenwood was a warrior, perhaps the finest warrior the LFS has ever produced.

  “I think she did a fine job as CEO, despite criticism from various sectors and her own misgivings about her performance. I only found one occasion to fault her—when she decided to resign as CEO. She had her reasons, and I agreed with those reasons, but I thought she exercised terrible judgment in choosing me to succeed her.

  “After her graceful exit from the CEO’s position, Lorna went back to what she did best—commanding the Lunar Fleet. I relied heavily on her and Charlie Bender, who served as our foreign minister for many years. Despite his insistence that he was not a diplomat, Charlie put together the alliance with the alien Akara which endures to this day. Once that alliance was forged, Lorna combined the forces of Luna with those of the Akara Copper Hills Clan and gave the Mekota a thrashing that got the attention of just about everyone in this corner of the galaxy.

  “There are, as we found out later, a lot of nasty characters out there, but everyone was afraid of the Mekota until we, with the help of our newfound Lizard friends, turned their fleet into scrap metal and sent them running back to their homeworld. As it turns out, that got us respect from people we didn’t even know existed and made the whole neighborhood a lot more peaceful. It was Theodore Roosevelt who coined the phrase, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick,’ and I guess that pretty much defined our interstellar policy from that point forward.”

  Excerpt from The Reluctant Admiral:
br />   The Memoirs of Michael O’Hara

  Third CEO of the Lunar Free State

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  Chapter One

  Valhalla—Lorna Greenwood’s Estate

  White Peaks Province—Planet Copper Hills Prime

  “Calling Doctor Carla…hello…”

  Dr. Carla Greenwood, Ph.D., Fellow of the Lunar Research Institute, Nobel Laureate, and Director of the LRI’s Astrophysics Division looked up from the screen in front of her and said the most intelligent thing she could think of.

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve had your nose against that screen almost constantly since you got here,” Lorna told her. “You’re supposed to be on vacation.”

  “Look who’s talking!” Carla snorted. “You’ve had three solid days of meetings with the Akara High Command. You’re supposed to be on vacation, too, Mom.”

  “I am, and thanks to those meetings, my precious leave time didn’t start until today. If I’m not mistaken, you are scheduled to lecture before colleagues at the Copper Hills Astrophysical Institute next week—which gives you the same sort of excuse for extra time away from the LRI. Meanwhile, you’re here to relax. So, kick back, take a deep breath, and enjoy the sunset. You won’t see one like this back in the Sol System.”

  “Of course, you won’t,” Carla admitted. “Alpha Akara has a totally different spectrum than Sol—much more in the blue range, which tints everything a lovely shade of violet. OK, it’s beautiful. I’ve seen it, but I really need to stay with this stuff. It could be the most important piece of research in my field that’s been done in the last century.”

  “You mean, the most important piece of research that’s been done by someone other than my daughter?”

  Carla glanced sharply at her mother, but Lorna’s obvious glow of pride made it impossible to take offense. Instead, she found herself smiling in return.

  “There are other people doing meaningful research out there,” she replied. “Not everyone in the known universe thinks I’m the most brilliant scientist alive. You may be a bit biased.”

  “Hey, the Nobel Prize Committee agreed with me.” Lorna shrugged. “But OK, tell me, what’s so special about this piece of research?”

  “If Takahashi is correct—and so far, I can’t find a flaw in his work—we are stuck in this universe.” Carla gestured at the screen. “There may be a thousand, or a million, or a billion other universes out there, but we’ll never see them.”

  “I should be concerned about this because…”

  “Well, at this point, it’s only of interest to theoretical physicists,” Carla conceded. “Bubble theory predicted other universes existed over half a century ago, but we’ve never been able to figure out how to prove their existence. If this work is correct, we never will. We thought hyperspace was the key. Twenty years ago, everybody knew you couldn’t exceed the speed of light. Einstein told us that, and, except for a few cases involving weird subatomic particles, he was right—in normal space. It wasn’t until we figured out that normal space wasn’t the only space available that we managed to find the way into hyperspace and discovered that general and special relativity don’t work the same way there. That gave us a lot of new avenues to explore, but now, Takahashi is telling us that hyperspace—our hyperspace—is part of our universe. It’s not a gateway to anywhere else and, in fact, according to the work he’s done, no such gateway between universes can possibly exist.”

  “I’m devastated…” Lorna looked at her in mock horror. “We’re stuck here! In another few million years, we will have explored the whole galaxy and then we’ll only have a few billion galaxies left. I feel claustrophobic already, like Alexander the Great, who went to the sea and wept because he had no more lands to conquer.”

  She hung her head and wiped an imaginary tear from her eye.

  “There’s no evidence Alexander actually said that,” Carla protested. “It’s a twentieth-century myth.”

  “Well, if he didn’t, he should have,” Lorna retorted. “And I’m sure he would have, if he had ever met this Takahashi person.”

  Despite herself, Carla began to giggle—she hated when she did that because it sounded so immature—but she couldn’t help herself. Once again, her mother had proven to her the folly of taking oneself too seriously.

  “You win, Mom,” she said. “I guess it can wait. It took us nearly a century to figure out how to get around Einstein. It’s probably arrogant of me to think I can get around Takahashi in a few days.” She touched an icon to save her notes, closed the interface, and pushed back from the desk.

  “If anyone can do it, you can, honey,” Lorna assured her, “but the brain works better if you relax occasionally. Neither you nor I get a chance like this very often.” She waved a hand toward the windows and the stunning view of the mountains, the valley below, and the strange and beautiful colors of the sunset.

  “You’re right,” Carla admitted. “And it’s even less often we get a chance to do it together. I’m sorry I haven’t made more time to see you lately, Mom. I guess I’m not much of a daughter.”

  “Oh no, honey, you’re not the one who needs to be sorry. I’m the one who’s been off playing space ranger all these years. I should have spent more time with you when you were growing up.”

  “Stop it, Mom! I am proud of you and everything you did. You were my role model,” Carla insisted.

  “Right…” Lorna gave her a wry grin. “That’s why you became a scientist instead of joining the Fleet. Some role model.”

  “You were the best at what you did, and since I couldn’t hope to be as good as you, I decided to be the best at something else…and here I am.” She flashed a charming smile that took Lorna back more than a decade to the image of the brash, but already brilliant, girl Carla had been in her teenage years.

  “You turned out fine, honey.” Lorna regarded her daughter with pride. “And now, as you say, here we are. We’ve got an evening together to catch up on things. Tomorrow, Heart of the Warriors is coming here; I know he’s one of your favorite people, ‘Egg of the Queen.’”

  Carla grimaced as she remembered the nickname the Akaran Fleet Admiral had bestowed upon her. But her mother was right. Heart was one of her favorite people—a reptilian uncle of sorts when she was growing up.

  “And the following day,” her mother continued, “we’re going hunting for near-dragons along the western range. Heart says he knows an area where there are some real trophy-class giants. Want to come along?”

  Carla shook her head. “The only hunting I like to do is with a holocam, and I prefer to do that with creatures that aren’t likely to eat me if I get too close. Bring back some near-dragon steaks, and I’ll enjoy them, but stalking something that close to the top of this planet’s food chain is not my idea of relaxation.”

  “Actually, that’s part of the reason we’re going,” Lorna told her. “Since the Akara imported Terran beef cattle ten years ago, the near-dragons have discovered a new food source. They’ve been raiding the ranchlands in the valley and doing a lot of damage to the herds. In the past year, they’ve even taken a couple of Akara ranch hands who got careless. The ranchers petitioned the ruling council, so Heart of the Clan declared an extended hunting season in this province. I don’t think it will do much to thin out the near-dragon population, but it might teach them to stay away from the Akara and their livestock. Sure you don’t want to come along?”

  “No, thanks; I’d rather not be remembered as an off-world tourist with a camera who got careless like one of those ranch hands.” Carla gave her mother a wry grin. “Not that any near-dragon would dare to mess with my mom, but you won’t enjoy it as much if you have to watch out for me. I’ll stay here and play with Takahashi’s theory.”

  “Suit yourself, but you don’t know what you’re missing,” Lorna told her.

  “You really love it here, don’t you?” Carla observed. “All this…” She waved her hand around to take in the lodge with its luxurious accommodations, the bea
utiful mountain scenery around it, and the hundred-thousand-hectare estate the grateful Akara had given Lorna after the Lunar Fleet, under her command, had saved their homeworld in the Battle of Copper Hills Prime. Most of the estate was high in the mountains, which meant its climate was far more pleasant for humans than the hot, humid lowlands below. The Akara, on the other hand, with their reptilian metabolism, liked hot, humid places. They regarded those of their kind who lived up here as strange, eccentric, and a little bit crazy. Lorna likened them to humans on Earth who chose to live in Alaska.

  “Yes, I do love it, honey. For the last few decades, I’ve spent most of my time in a sealed environment on Luna or aboard ships of the Fleet, but, unlike you—and most of your generation in the LFS—I was born on Earth and grew up there. I love being under the open sky. I could spend all day watching thunderstorms move across the valley, hiking the mountain trails, or hunting near-dragons. I think about retirement all the time, and how much I’ll enjoy it here after that.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “I love Luna, and I love the Fleet, but I’ve been there and done that long enough. It’s time for the younger generation—your generation—to step up and take over.”

  “You’re not that old,” Carla snorted. “With the longevity treatments, you’ll be in your prime for many more years. Besides, Uncle Mick is older than you, and he’s not talking about retirement yet.”

  “Mick O’Hara would go crazy if he didn’t have interstellar problems to solve and titanic projects to work on every day. The LFS is his drawing board, his laboratory, his proving ground, and he’s done more to advance us as a nation than anyone could have expected in such a short time. Lord knows, he’s been a far better chief executive than I ever was. My most significant achievement as CEO was to arrange for him to take over as my successor, and you are right—fortunately for the Lunar Free State and its citizens—he’s not thinking of retiring any time soon.