Breach of Peace Read online

  Breach of Peace

  Breach of Faith Book One

  Daniel Gibbs

  Gary T. Stevens

  Contents

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  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

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  Acknowledgments

  Breach of Peace by Daniel Gibbs and Gary T. Stevens

  Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Gibbs

  Visit Daniel Gibb’s website at www.danielgibbsauthor.net

  Cover by Jeff Brown Graphics—www.jeffbrowngraphics.com

  Additional Illustrations by Joel Steudler—www.joelsteudler.com

  Editing by Beth at BZhercules.com

  3D Art by Benoit Leonard

  This book is a work of fiction, the characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For permissions please contact [email protected].

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  FREE BOOK: Read the story of Levi Cohen and his heroic fight at the first battle of Canaan in Echoes of War: Stand Firm.

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  Also Available from Daniel Gibbs

  Echoes of War

  Book 1 - Fight the Good Fight

  Book 2 - Strong and Courageous

  Book 3 - So Fight I

  Book 4 - Gates of Hell

  Book 5 - Keep the Faith

  Book 6 - Run the Gauntlet

  Breach of Faith

  (With Gary T. Stevens)

  Book 1 - Breach of Peace

  Book 2 - Breach of Faith

  Book 3 - Breach of Duty

  Foreword

  Greetings readers! I’m Daniel Gibbs, Military Science Fiction author. I want to take a few moments to introduce you to a friend of mine—Gary T. Stevens. I’ve known Gary for a couple of decades now, and when I started my writing journey a few years back, I invited him along for the ride. You’re about to read his debut novel, Breach of Peace, that we co-wrote together over the last year. If you like my work, I promise you, Breach of Peace won’t disappoint.

  On the other hand, if you’ve never heard of either one of us, don’t despair! Inside of this novel you will find stirring characters that include reluctant heroes, villains, and everything in between. Above all, the Breach of Faith series focuses squarely on the cost of war. What it does to our souls, and how the system can grind down the best things within our being. Gary’s done a fantastic job showing this across the series, which will be released over the next few months.

  Enjoy!

  v/r

  Daniel Gibbs

  Author

  Prologue

  LS Marat

  Unclaimed System, Neutral Space

  3 August 2560

  The sheer scope of space can drive a thinking being mad. It is fundamentally a void, an airless vacuum of emptiness save for the occasional specks of gases known as stars, many orbited by insignificant microscopic grains of matter – planets, moons, planetoids, asteroids—forged eons before in the furnaces of the very first stars. Even the time frames are vast, defying mortal comprehension. A planet, from its inception, will orbit a star an uncountable number of times before said star reaches the end of its fuel reserves.

  It is exhilarating, humbling, terrifying. It makes a person feel like an insignificant microbe in a vast ocean. The very fact of this existence could hollow one out and breed the deepest fatalism, an inescapable nihilism.

  Fortunately, for men like Admiral Alec Hartford, there were ways to cope with the soul-blasting emptiness.

  Hartford was a severe man not given to frivolities. Every act, every breath, had to be justified. Justified for the cause, for the purpose that had united much of Mankind and would, in due time, he was satisfied, encompass their wayward cousins here in the Sagittarius Arm.

  Decades and thousands of light-years ago, Hartford sat in a room in the community school as an adolescent, learning about the galaxy and of humanity's destiny. Under the benevolent leadership of the League of Sol, humanity and any socially compatible species it encountered would inherit the stars. The socially superior model of the League would be brought to those cultures and societies who did not yet enjoy the unity of purpose that governed the core of mankind since the rise of the World Society in the first century of the Enlightened Era, the century known to the unenlightened as the 21st Century of the Common or Christian Era. There would be no more hunger or suffering. No longer would superstition and fear rule. A galaxy united, that was the purpose of the Society. It was Hartford's sole purpose.

  To gain Paradise… there were no means, no cost, that would be shirked.

  The vidscreen in Hartford's stateroom shifted at the press of a key. A vessel appeared, a boxy, gray-hulled shape designed for function and not aesthetic. The boxy shape was fitting; it was nothing more than a box. A container for goods strapped to a plasma drive and environmental system to sustain the handful of crew that drove it through the void. Solid beams of pale light gripped the vessel, the recognizable component for the streams of gravitons holding the ship in formation with another. "Another vessel," murmured Hartford. His voice betrayed the accent of a New Anglian, essentially an accent of Southeastern England with a slight drawl. "Another step."

  A tone came from his desk. Another tap of a key and the brown-bearded, pale countenance of Captain Nikos Zervakos appeared on the vidscreen. "Admiral." Zervakos was Earth-born, from the hills of Boeotia in Greece. The paleness of his skin was that found in a man who had not experienced unfiltered sunlight in decades. "Our Marines have successfully subdued the crew of the vessel. The capture is complete."

  "Very good, Captain Zervakos. Your judgment proved superb. The risk paid off."

  "Yes, sir." Zervakos showed little sign of appreciation for the compliment. The man was a professional about the entire thing, and that Hartford appreciated. "Engineering reports the drive will be ready to take us back to base in ten minutes. All scanners are clear, and we have confirmed the vessel did not successfully transmit a distress signal."

>   "Then the device is working as planned. Quite good. Take us back to Pluto Base when ready, Captain."

  "Aye, sir." Zervakos disappeared.

  Hartford considered his blank vidscreen for a moment before calling up one final image. A message from Fleet Admiral Pierre Seville, commander of the League's Expeditionary Forces Sagittarius Arm, the architect of the war by which the divisive reactionaries of the Terran Coalition would be ground into defeat. Seville was in charge of a grand plan, to turn their enemies' sentimentalism and war-weariness against them, and when successful—Hartford would not allow himself to use the qualifier "if"—it would significantly undermine their enemies.

  But Seville was not a man to trust victory to just one act. Hartford's project would soon bear fruit as well. His old mentor was counting on that as part of his strategy to finally bring victory over the Terrans.

  As always, we are just gears in the great machine of Society, Hartford considered. And that is why we will prevail in the end. The individual may fail, the gear may be stripped, but the machine will go on. A pity our enemies do not yet understand that.

  Minutes remained before Miri Gaon met her doom.

  The necessities imposed upon her by her past had prompted the meticulous planning the quiet woman was now enacting, even as her comrades on the Kensington Star remained docile for their conquerors. They were confined to their quarters by the guns of the League Marines and would not work up the nerve to pose any threat.

  Perhaps they would fight harder if they knew for sure what awaited them. The League's "socialization" camps were a new take on the old totalitarian idea of the re-education camp, where an individual could be pounded down by psychological manipulation and physical control until they accepted what the State wished them to. Miri knew, first-hand, what they were like. She was not interested in a repeat experience—although if the League found her, it would be an improvement upon what her fate would be.

  She stood now in the cramped little quarters she called her own, at one end of the Kensington Star's living spaces. Her skin was a slightly pale bronze tone, the paleness from a relative lack of exposure to UV rays inside the confines of the Kensington Star and similarly-shielded space habitats and stations. Her brown hair was cut neck-length, and an old scar from her past life marked her temple, just above her hairline. Her pale green jumpsuit, marked with the ship's name on the back, was a standard one for the crew of such a vessel, and like many of the same kind, it was made for everything from standard operations to providing a functional underlayer for an EVA suit.

  She was also alone, which was by design. Technically, her crew rating would not afford her private quarters, but with these quarters right beside the waste circulators, the unpleasant smell and the constant noise of the machinery made them undesirable for everyone else, and her volunteering to take the quarters relieved her peers of the need to draw straws. None of them realized she had her reasons to take the room and keep some privacy.

  After checking to make sure she'd packed away what few things here she needed to keep, Miri gave a last look to the smelly, dingy chamber and its uncomfortable cot before lowering herself through the floor plate she had so carefully loosened months ago for just this occasion. She dropped to a crouch inside the crawlspace that curved under the corner of her quarters. The stench was heavy here. Old Tomlin was right about the leak in the processor. But it couldn't be helped. She had to get to her destination now.

  Miri followed the dark crawlspace toward the port access airlock, her mind imagining the layout of the decks and the route she needed to take while she counted the seconds down. The lack of light was, in some ways, good practice for what was to come. Her plan was a desperate one, certainly, but the moment the League ship pulled along the crippled merchant ship, it was one she knew was her only chance of escape.

  She was not a slight woman, nor very brawny or big, making the crawlspace a challenge but not a severe one. Physical training and practice built her figure for speed and agility, and that was about to come in handy.

  In the darkness, she reached what she knew to be the bulkhead on the port side access way running down the port side of the ship. The crawlspace was meant to terminate twenty meters further down, but that would take her to the engineering area, and they would likely be guarding that heavily. Instead, she gently felt around in the dark until she found the tool she'd left here months ago, an autospanner, which she put to work on the bolts holding the plate in. Her heart raced faster with each bolt. Her pre-loosening was, for obvious reasons, only superficial, requiring several seconds each before the whirring device finished removing each bolt she'd place it on.

  After eight bolts in all, the plate came loose. She caught it with a free hand so it wouldn't clatter, and carefully moved it away, allowing the light of the access way to shine into the crawlspace. She checked for signs of League Marines and found none. She set the plate down and crawled out. The plate would stay where it was. By the time the League boarders realized what happened, they'd be in another system, and she would be—relatively-speaking—safe.

  The airlock was ten meters astern of where she came out of the crawlspace. It was a well-used thing, with a storage locker of EVA suits beside it. Miri moved with practiced efficiency. First, she divested herself of the gear she would need to have on the outside of her suit. Then the blue-painted suit's turn came, and she slid into it and sealed it up, helmet included. She used both the HUD interface and the manual reader to check her breathing air. With it maxed out, she would have some time, but just in case, she attached a second tank to her belly beside the rest of the gear she was carrying.

  As a last measure, Miri grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and opened the inner door of the airlock. She stepped in and let the airlock close behind her.

  This was the moment of truth. When she opened the outer airlock hatch, it would trigger an alarm on the bridge. If she left too soon, the League would halt the jump and come for her, and would all too quickly find out who she was. If she went too late, she would be drawn into the wormhole their drives generated. Either they would bring her with them to their destination, or she would be in the wormhole's maw when it closed, killing her instantly. Suffice to say, neither outcome was desirable.

  Miri drew in a quiet breath and willed her heart and breathing to slow. To maximize her chances, she needed to maintain a slow breathing rate. There were drugs that would have aided this process, but the circumstances forbade their application. She would have to do this unaided.

  That thought distracted her until the crucial moment. She felt the ship's acceleration pick up. She was confident it was from the towing vessel accelerating for a wormhole jump. She yanked down the lever to release the airlock door and smashed the button beside it. The airlock door irised open. The vacuum of open space sucked the atmosphere inside the airlock out within a second. The decompression effect pulled her with it, as was her intent, giving her a burst of velocity to carry her away from the ships. What she'd expected but not desired was that the air escaping the airlock chamber pushed her into a spin. She tumbled in the airless void, rushing away from her captured ship. The spinning effect kept her from getting more than glimpses of the League cruiser and the captured Kensington Star as the former pulled the latter with it into a generated wormhole.

  Once they were gone, Miri took hold of the fire extinguisher and started spraying its flame-retarding chemicals into the void around her. She did so carefully and, after a minute of calculated bursts, arrested the velocity of her spin so that she was no longer subjected to the disorientation of it. This task accomplished, she triggered the small transponder built into the suit and the more powerful transmitter she was carrying with her, raising the chance that a ship in the area would detect her and pick her up. She glanced at her air level and the suit's estimate of how long she had. With her back-up air tank, there’d be two days before she’d run out.

  Two days alone in the vacuum of space. The prospect was daunting from a mental point of
view. Minds did not do well when such an experience was forced upon them. To be alone in the infinite black of the void, with naught but the pinprick of light of a star millions of kilometers distant? It ruined minds. Snapped them under the strain of that constant reminder of just how vast space was, and how small and insignificant a single being was against that void. Even if rescued, Miri had to face the prospect that she might be mad by the time said rescue came.

  The consideration raised her heart rate and her breathing with it. She focused to bring it back down. From within the recesses of her oldest recollections, she found the memory of songs her mother sang to her as a little girl. Miri sang quietly to herself in her isolation, waiting to see if she had saved herself or merely delayed death and made it a lonely one, at that.

  1

  ISV Shadow Wolf

  New Hathwell System, League of Sol

  3 August 2560

  "Cutter's definitely coming for us."