In the Service of Luna (The Lunar Free State Book 4) Read online

  In the Service of Luna

  Book Four of the Lunar Free State

  By

  John E. Siers

  PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books

  Copyright © 2021 John E. Siers

  All Rights Reserved

  * * * * *

  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.

  * * * * *

  Dedication

  To Mike Nash,

  Editor, Philosopher, and Friend

  Your wit and wisdom will be greatly missed.

  * * * * *

  Cover Design by Shezaad Sudar.

  * * * * *

  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

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  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

  * * * * *

  Prologue

  November 2085, TerraNova City, Luna

  “We have the initial report from Arcturus, ma’am.” The young officer on the screen wore a sober expression.

  “It confirms everything we got from Galileo’s hyperprobe. The star has reached Stage 4 expansion. Nothing in the inner system could have survived. They found an observer satellite out near the hyper limit that recorded the details of the event, but it also confirms that Galileo didn’t get clear. We’ll have more details when Arcturus arrives at TransLuna in about forty hours.”

  The lieutenant looked very uncomfortable. Being the bearer of bad news was stressful enough, but when the recipient of that news was a four-star admiral of the fleet…

  “Thank you, Lieutenant, I appreciate the update.” Lorna’s voice was devoid of emotion as she signed off, but she felt a crushing weight on her soul, the likes of which she had experienced only once before, nearly half a century in the past. On that day, when the alien Mekota had destroyed Earth’s envoy ship, she had lost two people who meant everything to her. Ian Stevens had been her lifelong friend and mentor, and Carla Perry had been the love of her life, her committed partner for more than a decade.

  Once again, she had lost two people—a daughter who meant more to her than life itself and a son-in-law. All she had left was Carla’s last message, with Bjorn beside her, recorded for inclusion with the messages of other crew members and scientists aboard the doomed research vessel. The hyperprobe that carried those messages had arrived too late for a rescue mission, but one had been sent anyway. Arcturus had gotten there as quickly as possible, but to no avail, except to confirm what everyone already knew. She was a scientist, Lorna told herself. She was doing what she loved most in life. She remembered Carla’s excitement when the mission had first been proposed.

  The life of a main-sequence star spans billions of years, but its death—the final stage of it—takes place in a matter of hours. Scientists can guess the age of such a star, but it isn’t until the last year or two of its life that they can accurately predict when it will enter that final stage. The last hours bring rapid and violent expansion, which engulfs the inner system, while hurling much of the star’s substance far into space. This expansion is followed by a final collapse into a small, relatively cool red dwarf. The entire sequence is usually something noted with interest and recorded from afar.

  This star had been different. Seventy-four light years from Sol, New Lunar Catalog 60759 might have escaped notice until the light of its violent end reached Earth and Luna almost three-quarters of a century later, but it happened to be one of the twelve stars visited by LRS Copernicus during a two-year-long survey of that region. When analysis revealed the star’s imminent demise, a scientific mission had been planned to observe and record the event.

  The research vessel LRS Galileo had been outfitted for the mission, and it was only natural that Dr. Carla Greenwood—the Lunar Free State’s foremost astrophysicist—should head the scientific team. The plan had called for the ship to place dozens of observer satellites at various distances from the star, then withdraw to a point well beyond the star’s hyper limit to record the feeds from those satellites until the fury of the star’s death throes destroyed them. Galileo, though far enough away to be safe, would still have been able to observe the event from far closer than anyone ever had, and, if things got too violent, the scientists would have had plenty of warning that far out. Worst case, the research vessel could have jumped into hyperspace to get out of harm’s way.

  That had been the plan. Galileo had arrived in-system and found that NLC 60759 was only weeks away from its violent end. The scientists were hastening to place their observer satellites when something went terribly wrong. The hyperprobe had documented a catastrophic failure of the ship’s fusion plant that had left it stranded just four light-minutes from the star days before its impending death. The cause of the failure remained unknown. Such a failure had never happened to an LFS vessel, except under combat conditions. Three crew members had died in the incident, which proved the numerous fail-safe systems had not worked.

  The rest of the crew and the scientific team were going to die, and they knew it. Death hadn’t claimed them yet, but when the star died, they would die with it. At four light-minutes, the swelling star would engulf the ship, assuming the blast front of hot plasma hadn’t already torn it apart. Even before that, though, the humans aboard would have already died from the event’s massive doses of radiation. The only thing they could do was prepare the tiny hyperprobe and send it to Luna to tell those back home what had happened. It would arrive too late for any hope of rescue, but at least they could send a last message to loved ones. Scientists to the end, they had packed the probe’s memory with every bit of scientific data they had collected, which was an unworthy legacy of the doomed mission.

  The probe had arrived a little over nine weeks ago, and the LFS Navy destroyer Arcturus—the nearest and fastest vessel available—had been dispatched immediately. It had taken the ship 32 days to reach the star’s redefined hyper limit and four more days to search the ravaged system for any sign the research vessel had survived. The search had uncovered several surviving observer satellites, placed by Galileo, in the extreme outer reaches of the system, and the Navy crew had found data from one of those satellites that confirmed the destruction of the research ship. There had been nothing more to see or do, so Arcturus had return
ed home.

  In seventy-four years, we’ll see it happen, Lorna thought. I’ll be long gone by then, but hopefully someone will remember. The tears came, unchecked, and dropped on the desk in front of her.

  “What’s wrong, Grandma?”

  Lorna brushed the tears from her eyes and looked up and saw her namesake granddaughter standing in the office doorway. It was late—almost 2300 hours—and she had thought little Lorna was asleep. How do you tell a six-year-old that Mommy and Daddy aren’t coming home ever again? For two months, she’d put off this moment, hoping against hope some miracle had saved Galileo and those aboard her. Now, that hope was gone.

  “Come here, honey. There’s something I need to tell you.”

  I was wrong, she decided. Carla and Bjorn left me with more than a message, much more. There was a message in the probe for little Lorna as well, but it would have to wait. She would show it to the girl later, after some of the hurt had healed.

  * * * * *

  Chapter One

  22 March 2100, Lunar Fleet Academy

  “That’s my bunk, Blondie.”

  Lorna turned and saw an Asian woman wearing the green and grey of a Marine cadet standing in the doorway, hands on hips, with a scowl on her face. The woman was of medium height, her dark hair was cut very short, and she looked like she had some serious muscle under the uniform.

  “Sorry.” Lorna heaved her gear off the bottom bunk and transferred it to the top.

  “You’re not supposed to say you’re sorry, Blondie,” the other woman growled. “You’re supposed to say, ‘It’s mine now,’ or ‘I don’t see your name on it,’ or something like that.”

  “And then what?” Lorna felt a scowl forming on her face. What was the woman’s problem?

  “Then I kick your ass and take the bunk anyway,” the woman said. “But that way, there’s no doubt about who’s the alpha dog in this room.”

  “Then we both end up getting kicked out of here on our very first day. Fine, you’re the alpha dog. I’ll take the top bunk, and we’ll just agree that you kicked my ass. Okay?”

  “Hmmph.” The Marine cadet snorted. She walked up to Lorna and looked at her name tag. “Greenwood…Greenwood! Oh, great, it’s not bad enough that they didn’t have another Marine for me to bunk with, but now they go and stick me with a fleet admiral’s daughter.”

  “Granddaughter,” Lorna corrected her, “and Granny’s been retired for a while now. I got here on my own, not because of any family connections.”

  “Yeah, right. Mommy and Daddy are only commodores or maybe vice admirals, I suppose.”

  “My parents are dead,” Lorna said, “and they weren’t even in the Fleet.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “I’m sorry,” the other woman said.

  “Why should you be sorry? You didn’t know them, and you don’t know me. They were scientists who were lost with the research ship Galileo. It happened fourteen years ago.”

  “No, I mean I’m sorry for being an asshole. I can’t help it sometimes; it’s just the way I am. Can we start over?” She put out her hand. “Nova Sakura, Marines.”

  Lorna relaxed and smiled despite herself. “Yeah, Marines. I noticed. Lorna Greenwood, Navy.” She shook the offered hand.

  “Lorna Greenwood…I thought so. Your granny was that Greenwood, the Iron Maiden herself. Damn! I am so screwed.”

  “Look,” Lorna protested, “I told you, no family connections. I got here on my own, without Granny’s help. She doesn’t even live here most of the time. She’s got an estate on Copper Hills. She just comes back to Luna a couple of times a year to visit. I don’t expect any help from her or any special treatment from anybody here.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Sakura shook her head. “You’re going to get special treatment, but you’re not going to like it. They’re going to run you ragged. Because of your granny, they’ll expect twice as much from you as from anybody else, and my concern is that some of that may splash on me just because I’m living in the same room with you.”

  “Fine.” Lorna scowled again. “Request a transfer if it bothers you.”

  “What? And let you get caught with your tits in the machinery?” Sakura favored her with a crooked grin. “They put me here, and now I have to save your tall, skinny blond ass. You got any prior military?”

  “No. I just finished university, went through the admission screening, got a recommendation, and came straight here.”

  “Oh, so you’ve already got a degree, huh?”

  “Just a bachelor’s in engineering. How about you?”

  “No. While you were at university, I was doing three years as an enlisted Marine. While you were going through screening, I was fighting off a hundred other Marines who wanted this slot.” Sakura’s voice had turned sarcastic again.

  Lorna said nothing.

  “Damn!” Sakura muttered. “What’s the matter with me? I’m really acting like an asshole. Look, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault, and I’ve got nothing against you. Just first-day nerves, I guess.”

  “Nerves?” Lorna suppressed a skeptical snort. “After three years in the Marine Corps, you’ve got nerves about this? I would think this would be easy for you. You already know most of the military stuff. This can’t be any worse than the basic training you went through when you signed up.”

  Sakura shrugged. “Not worse, just different. In Marine Basic, you’ve got to do things. Difficult things, maybe, but they show you how to do them, they convince you that you can do them, and you drill over and over until you can do them in your sleep. Then they give you an order, and you just do it. Most people who wash out don’t listen, don’t follow orders, or just don’t put forth enough effort. It’s more about willpower and confidence than anything. After that, if you just pay attention, you can get through okay.

  “Here at the Academy, they expect you to know things, to study, to learn stuff. This place is a university, and if you don’t study hard and keep all that stuff in your head, you’re out of here. You have to follow orders, sure. A big part of it is military, and that part doesn’t worry me, but by the time you’re done here, they expect you to give orders, the right orders. You’ve got to have it up here.”

  She tapped her forehead. “I was never that good in school,” she admitted. “I had to work like hell just to get decent grades. I guess that’s why I never went to university in the first place. Now, here I am, and yeah, I’m nervous about it.”

  Lorna began to understand. She was mostly concerned about the military and physical requirements. She knew the Academy had rigorous standards for academic studies as well, but those didn’t bother her. She’d taken advanced placement courses in high school and had graduated near the top of her class at Luna University, even though she was two years younger than most of her classmates. That kind of learning came easily to her.

  “Well, maybe the people who put us in the same room weren’t so dumb after all,” she said. “Look, I did pretty well in school. I’ll help you study if you’ll help me get in shape and handle the military stuff. I mean, hey, the Marines and the Navy always work together. It takes both to get the job done. What do you think?”

  Sakura gave her another crooked grin. “I think you’ve got a deal, Blondie, but there’s one more thing to settle. You really want that bottom bunk?”

  “Match you for it,” Lorna said with a grin of her own. “Odds or evens?”

  “Evens,” Sakura said. “On three. One, two, three.” She looked at the two fingers Lorna had thrown out against her own single digit. “Fair enough, Blondie. You’ve got the bottom, but I’m still the alpha dog.”

  * * *

  17 September 2100, Lunar Fleet Academy

  “Greenwood! Get your butt down! When you do push-ups, I want to see a perfectly straight line from your head to your heels. Is that clear?”

  “Sir! Yes, sir!” Lorna responded, adjusting her position as ordered. She knew why Gunny Lawrence wanted her butt down—it was har
der that way. She had been trying to do the exercise correctly, but her body, seeking relief from the task, had betrayed her.

  “On your feet,” Gunny ordered as they finished the exercises. “Listen up. It has come to my attention that the men’s deck—in particular, the head—was not ready for inspection this morning. In fact, it was so not ready, Lieutenant Novak found a pubic hair in one of the urinals. For that reason, you men will spend the next period scrubbing and shining every fixture in that facility and will be prepared for another inspection at the end of the period, to be conducted by me, personally. Is that clear?”

  “Sir! Yes, sir!” the men shouted.

  “You ladies,” Gunny continued, “are more fortunate. Through some mischance, or perhaps a temporary attack of nearsightedness on the part of the inspecting officer, the women’s deck passed inspection. You may, therefore, hit the showers, get cleaned up and in uniform for your next classes, and spend the rest of the period studying for said classes. Is that clear?”

  “Sir! Yes, sir!” the women replied. Though they were slightly outnumbered by the male officer candidates, their response was somewhat more enthusiastic.

  “Greenwood!” Lawrence once again turned his attention to Lorna. “How many times did I call your name today?”

  “Sir! Twice, sir!” Lorna replied.

  “Right. That means you owe me two trips around the dome in the one point five lane. After that, you may join the rest of the ladies in the showers. Sakura!”

  “Sir! Yes, sir!” Nova replied instantly.

  “You will accompany Greenwood to make sure she doesn’t stop to smell the flowers. I expect you to set an appropriate pace.”