Rebellion (Rebel Wars Book 1) Read online

  Electrical stimulators activated the motor-nerves within her body, achieving instant pain-relief and recovery. The micro-current stimulators had one purpose, and that was to assist in physical therapy. By working the muscles at a rapid pace and forcing them to use the energy they had stored in them they would be able to achieve less pain, faster recovery, and increased muscle capacity. The therapy would take less time than ever, but it would still take time. Alice certainly felt heavier in the new armor she was clad in, this would only be natural of course. Pieces of Cal’s remaining armor had been dissected and re-purposed for her own use. Emitters collected from her foes had been assigned to new spots and replacing broken ones. The lab-rats had been able to increase the output capacity of her own emitters by splicing in power-cells from the other suits. They had increased the servo-motor output in order to keep her as ballet-like as possible. The suit felt good.

  “Good work ladies!” Alice said, congratulating them and patting Milly on the shoulder. When Milly screamed in pain, Alice pulled back her hand unsure of what had just happened. The youngest sister fell to the ground sobbing, Lisa dropping to her aid. Only Andreya seemed to be unphased.

  “Your fast-twitch muscle fibers are being upgraded as we speak. The servos enhance strength that is already there, Alice. Exercise caution as within a week’s time you’ll be able to load this transport ship on your own. There will be limits to what we can obtain by using your original flesh, but you’ll find them greatly reduced.” She said.

  “When you’re ready to get rid of my original flesh, let me know Andreya. I think this old heart is done for.” She smiled and looked down at Milly, who was pouting on the floor. She offered her a hand and Milly leapt up to her feet.

  “No thanks boss! I can do it.” She forced a smile, though Alice had no doubt that it was one forged in fear. At least she hadn’t broken her arm or anything, so what was there to be afraid of?

  A cycle of training exercises and practices filled Alice’s days before the launch. The rest of her crew had already retrofitted the transporter for their purposes and began to load it with the essential items. The intel they’d gathered from the ship’s database had been very useful, much of the correspondences between Gray-Son and his commander had also been quite unsettling. Gray-Son worked for a man known as the Demon, a Commander who was in charge of this particular section. His duties within the Corporation were more than military it seemed, he was also an established scholar and researcher of Earth and her humans. The Demon had sent Gray-Son there to collect the people that could be of use to him, but the horror was in the realization that more transport ships were arriving soon. These held the opposite purpose of Gray-Son’s mission, these ships were bringing undesirables to her colony. The Demon only wanted to recruit the most useful and easily controlled of humanity, anyone else was being shipped to her colony. The correspondences were unclear as to why they weren’t simply executed, though Lisa had brought up the point that the reason was more likely political. It wasn’t humane to execute an entire family, but it was perfectly okay to drop them off at a doomed point in space.

  The days passed with relative ease as the preparations were made and Alice had picked her line-up for the cabin. Lisa would be separated from her sisters and placed in the engine room to better guide their journey in the stars. Andreya would stand beside Alice and grant her immense tactical wisdom should the need arrive, and Milly would be monitoring the communications that were being passed along the Corporation Network. The man who was now called Hero had been given a lighter version of Paladin armor (made from what little materials they had to replicate it) and would stand post with a security team, monitoring any potential for trouble aboard the ship. Her crew was small, but they would be fierce. Another half-a dozen refugees were on various controls and stations throughout the cabin, and Lisa would have two or three to help her in the engine-room. If everything went as planned, and it wouldn’t, they would regroup with the other rebellion forces in only a few day’s time. The plan had already been drafted for interruptions. Alice was not naïve enough to believe they would make it there without incident, she never had that “win-the-scratch-ticket” luck.

  Chapter 4

  The pain in Alice’s head was dull and never seemed to go away. The medical staff wasn’t certain what exactly was causing it and the gentle pulses of the stimulators couldn’t seem to beat it away. She smiled to herself and gazed upon the well-lit cabin of her transport ship. The original name of the vessel was the “Hierarchy”, but she found she hated it. Christening it anew as “Stormbreaker” in honor of Cal and his men and their sacrifice had made her feel better. The ship’s dull blue coloring had been splashed with crimson paint and coloring to make it appear far more menacing than it was. Standing in the large semi-circular room gave her the feeling of some Earth Captain long since dead standing on the bow of their ship ready to discover a new world. Alice had become tired of discovering new things and wanted nothing more than to see the planet that was home to the rebel headquarters.

  She took a sip of the hot drink in her hand, a variation of caffeine and sugar that was quite similar to coffee but loaded with different nutrients and proteins. Her appetite had increased over the days and she imagined her weight would be returning to its old numbers soon enough. The liquid slid down her throat easily and rested in her stomach which threatened to send it back up. It was thicker than she was used to and had a syrupy texture. She held it down and looked back out over the massive view screen ahead of her. There were no open glass-viewports on the vessel, and anyone that had tried to design a ship with viewports was near the definition of insane. Space travel had been made much safer and easier than it had ever been before, but it was foolish to tempt fate with such insecure vanities. The view screen provided all she needed for it to, and that was a glance into the star-speckled oblivion before her.

  The first Earth Captain to pilot a vessel like this had compared the sensation to birth, as if he had transformed into something different than human. Only gods could see heaven, he had mused and she remembered these words now. Alice was no stranger to the various problems with space travel, however the sensations of hope that it gave were new. She was quite sure that there would be a slew of problems before she got to her destination, yet the hope of a new chapter in the rebellion’s history was enough to steel her nerves. The room was occupied by a few different members of her crew, most notably Andreya and Milly. Milly was happily playing with some of the communication files and making a few tweaks to the various noise pollution tactics that the Corporation employed. Andreya was pouring over charts and making final preparations for their journey. The ship had easily broken free of the Colony and had taken well to its new crew and equipment.

  Stormbreaker had little in the way of weaponry before Alice took command, and in comparison to other frigates, it would still be under-equipped despite receiving a substantial upgrade to its armory. Small cannons had been equipped throughout the ship’s hull to give it the appearance of a shark’s mouth, laden with violence capable teeth. Two large electromagnetic propulsion cannons (EPC) had been installed on tentacle-like appendages to give optimum aiming and range. The various defensive capabilities of the ship were upgraded to provide better protection against oncoming fire. In days of Earth before they’d reached deep space and understanding of how space combat would actually work, many dreamed of bubbling shields (much like what they’d employed on the ground) and brilliant bolts of energy. None of that in actuality truly made sense. Shields were replaced with resonators that disrupted projectiles heading towards their target, and laser weapons were replaced with giant balls of electromagnetically fired iron or various other payloads. Just like in the early days, ship combat was a test of timing and strategy vs. brute force.

  The engines spooled up and Alice took her chair at the center of the room. Most commanders of vessels opted for a chair at a station, but Alice was never really much for leading a ship. She couldn’t work the various stations nor t
ruly read the bleeps and boops of the equipment. She was here to monitor the people and make decisions, because if she didn’t then who would? Andreya was brilliant and fully understood the principles of leadership but her ability to make decisions with any promptness was impeded by her brilliance. Access to too much information gave her a case of “Analysis Paralysis” as she called it and ruined her reliability for quick decisions. It was much better that Alice be given command in her exaggerated chair, she had the knack for making quick decisions on limited information and usually coming out on top.

  There was no loud noise or sudden lurch, the ship simply began to move forward. The charts had been programmed into the vessel’s piloting program, it would know where to go on its own. The engines reached maximum output and the ship moved swiftly through its environment. Faster than light travel was amazing, and Alice understood nothing about how it actually worked. That was up to Andreya or any other person insane enough to understand the philosophical and physical implications of travel at such speed. The ships were created with that ability and blessed with the endurance to withstand it. Even if Alice understood it, there were other things to concern herself with. The information they’d recovered warned her that the other transport ships would arrive in a month from today. They wanted to rescue the “undesirables” that were aboard the transport ships, yet they lacked the firepower to contend with what had to be a well-established fleet. The timing would be perfect if everything else, they would arrive at the rebellion base in time to group together the warships they would need and engage the fleet on its way back. They’d be able to tear through the guards and liberate those that were held against their will. Alice wanted blood, not prisoners and she would need bigger ships to do it.

  “Shit!” Milly shouted.

  It had been less than hour moving at their pace when Milly let out her profanity. She didn’t say much in the way of bad words on a typical day but this was not a typical day. The ship’s pace was interrupted and it stopped in the dead of space. The stars were far off, but offered their light as the best hope Alice had that they weren’t all about to die. A small object in the deep dark gave off a vibrant blue, this wasn’t a star. Alice stood up to get a better view before being slammed down by a sudden impact.

  “Boss, we have incoming!” Andreya shouted before running to a console to begin working whatever magic she could.

  “How many?” Alice managed, her heartbeat not changing even a slight amount. Alice wondered why she couldn’t get her body to respond to stress the way it once could. There was nothing to see on the view screen other than the ominous azure light.

  “Three contacts. Surrounded on all sides. Radar signals indicate Privateers.” Milly said

  That glowing light, it was an FTL trap. It emitted a signal that interfered with the process of FTL travel and could yank them back into the real world from whatever mythological world they went into while traveling at that speed. The trap had sung for its supper and would eat well tonight. Alice opened more view screens to gain full view of her ship. The lumbering giant easily dwarfed the vessels as she spotted them one by one. They had surrounded them and were firing streams of projectiles against her prized possession. She smirked, a cruel smirk that was nothing more than a harbinger for blood to sate her appetite with.

  “Defenses online?” Alice barked

  “Of course, their weapons don’t seem to be doing much to us now that we’re disrupting them. We can target that trap and get out of here.” Milly said

  “No. Their Privateers. It means they have every intention of gutting us open and taking us to the Corporation. Which means…transport ships aren’t far behind them.” Alice said

  “They aren’t scheduled for a mon-“ Andreya trailed off while scanning through more communiqués. “Unless they were feeding us misinformation on purpose!”

  Alice felt joy in her heart where there should have been fear. She assessed the situation and watched as the Privateers maneuvered around her ship, they had ceased firing. They knew that they weren’t going to be able to take down a ship like hers with their weaponry splashing against it and doing no more harm than a water-balloon to a diesel truck.

  “Kill them quickly. Do not disable the trap yet, instead, I want that thing brought aboard as quickly as possible. Milly, when it’s aboard the ship, go down there and see what you can use it for. I have a feeling we’re going to need everything we can get.” Alice said.

  Milly nodded in agreement and a bright twinkle lit up her eyes. It was the same look she always got when something new presented itself to her. She couldn’t wait to rip that thing apart and see how it worked. Only, Lisa was going to be upset that she didn’t get to play with it. Middle-children always felt excluded even if they weren’t. There was no sound in space. Unlike the old movies of Earth, there were no brilliant pulses of laser light and squealing sounds as shots were fired. Explosions seldom happened and when they did they were so brief it was like if they never happened at all. If the enemy ships had doubled down on their resolution to kill them, Alice didn’t know. Milly said nothing as the rest of her crew prepared the firing sequences on the ship. Alice increased magnification to get a good look at the ugly blots of privateer on her screen. Their ships were junk and held together by whatever magical tape they could their hands on. Their weapons were flimsy, and they were often times used only to scout. Some privateer squads were quite good, but this one was not one of those squads. Taking down a transport ship would require heavy weaponry that was much harder to disrupt, their smaller weapons were nothing more than a humorless joke- tiresome and not even funny.

  It would require too much power to prepare the gratuitous EPC’s, so they opted to pepper the little privateer bastards with their small guns. Alice watched as without even moving Stormbreaker, multi-colored streams of projectiles tore through space and subsequently the vermin that harassed her. The ships didn’t explode, they instead were breached and ripped apart by the sudden exchange of gas in space. There had been no need to communicate and the privateers knew that. They should have ran, and yet they let themselves get slaughtered. It felt good, Alice’s heart gave no response to the action, but her mind sure drank in the victory.

  “Done boss. Getting the trap now.” Milly said.

  Her cheerful voice showed that the excitement of the space-battle lifted her spirits some. For once the rebellion’s small family within the cabin felt in control of the situation. They felt powerful when beaten down for so long, and it was a charming and redeeming sensation. Feelings were fragile paper cups being thrown into a tornado. It could survive, though the odds were quite slim. Nothing lasted long when blasted with reality, feelings being chief amongst the nothing. The screens filled with dull-blue lights as the trap was pulled into the cargo bay, one of the Stormbreaker’s appendages snaking it from the depths of darkness. Milly was in the process of moving from her station when the three ships appeared, and she fell backwards.

  “Shit!” She said, opting to use profanity again this time it being warranted in the worst way. Andreya said nothing as her eyes narrowed to analyze the situation. Her line of work allowed her to work at a turtle’s pace and a discovery years in the making seemed quick to her. Trying her hand as a ship-mate was not something that had ever occurred to her and she doubted now was the right time to pursue such a thing. She sighed to demonstrate her stress and did everything she could to not panic. Andreya was a redheaded beauty, unlike her bald and blonde sisters. She had never cut her hair nor put it up, instead wearing it like a dress along with her curvy torso. Alice peeled her eyes away from and back onto the screen. Shit was the most appropriate word for this situation.

  “Get those defenses up! Milly, I need you to get to the bay now! I need you to look at that damn thing and tell me what you think. Get creative! We are going to war!” Alice said.

  The blood lust inside of her was crawling out of her skin and raising its ugly head up. Ever since she’d blasted Gray-Son’s smug face she had wanted to do it
again. Every time she thought of the Corporation and their human thralls it made her hate. Hate seemed to be the only thing she could feel now, the only thing she was allowed to feel. The other transport ships were gathered close together in a formation flanked by privateers. These seemed better armored than the other ones if that said anything at all. A light ringing flooded the cabin as it did when any communicator received a request to speak. The temptation to hesitate was there, but Alice shooed it away. There wasn’t going to be anything she could do but stall them for a moment. They had to get away, even with their advanced weaponry she wasn’t confident in their chances.

  “Gray-Son. Are you there?” the voice said as she activated the communication.

  “He is not. He has been killed on the colony world. My name is Alice, rebellion commander of the colony world and now this vessel. I suggest you surrender your hostages and ships, and we’ll let you live.” These words were not the ones she’d rehearsed in her head. They seemed natural and correct, and she rather liked them even if they were signing a death warrant.

  “Ah. Figured that’s what happened to him.” The voice came back. Alice watched the enemy ships as they moved to spread out, their weapons lighting up and preparing to fight. Alice expected this response though she had not readied her own response. The call ended abruptly and the other ships began to open fire on Alice. The crewman responsible for any ship the move made that wasn’t automatic trembled.

  “Steven. Get us moving.” Alice said and Steven obeyed. He had been through the basics of space maneuvering during combat and how to create a smaller target of his ship. What training of any kind never could prepare someone for was the way the body reacted to life or death stress. Steven had been in the fight for the colony and he had been wholly ineffective. He had not cowered to them but he had not been able to fight against the Corporation soldiers either. Alice mused to herself that she would have preferred one way or the other not somewhere in the middle. Steven had shown the best knack for the complicated geometry of moving such a large vessel through space despite his indecisive attitude. That was what she was there for, right?