Hand of God Read online

  Hand of God

  Defiance #2

  Jason Krumbine

  Contents

  About This Book

  Untitled

  previously…

  Starbase Atlantic

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  USS Defiance

  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

  About the Author

  Also by Jason Krumbine

  about this book

  On the edge of UPA space a mysterious vessel has appeared.

  No one knows where it came from.

  It has no callsign or identifying marks.

  The vessel simply transmits a standard S.O.S. in a signal that hasn’t been used in hundreds of years: Morse code.

  While still recovering from their losses on Carlock, the USS Defiance is dispatched to investigate. But when they arrive they discover that every single individual on the ship has already been dead for hundreds of years.

  As Captain Mitchell and his crew work to unravel the mystery of this ghost ship, they soon find themselves confronted by something far worse than a simple space mystery:

  What killed this crew so long ago is still very much onboard and still is very much alive.

  Books in the Defiance Series

  Defiance

  Hand of God

  previously...

  One hundred years ago the United Planetary Alliance was attacked by a parasitic, single-minded species from another dimension that consumes and absorbs everyone and everything it comes into contact with. Today this species is known as the Unity. After this initial attack, the Unity was never heard from again.

  The Veneer Empire was a former member of the UPA until the Unity’s attack. In the aftermath, they withdrew from the UPA and reestablished borders that hadn’t been used in hundreds of years. No one has heard from the Veneer since.

  Today, Captain Gavin Mitchell commands the USS Defiance, an eighty-year-old starship that was built as a response to the threat of the Unity. The Defiance is currently based out of Starbase Atlantic where it patrols a region of space that is largely removed from regular UPA presence.

  Captain Mitchell is also, secretly, under the command of Admiral Philip Wanamaker and Directive 52, which is responsible for protecting the UPA from threats too dangerous for the public to know. Directive 52 operates at the upper echelons of the top-secret community and works independently within the governing body of the UPA.

  Starbase Atlantic is currently under the command of Commodore Kathryn Straub, Mitchell’s former first officer from an earlier command.

  President D’Ambra is the duly elected leader of the United Planetary Alliance. He believes in full transparency and peace at all costs. His administration believes the Unity is no longer a threat and is nothing more than a boogeyman invented by the military complex and espionage community to further their own agendas.

  Recently the Defiance was dispatched to investigate a potential Unity incursion on the planet Carlock. What they found was a previously uncharted stable wormhole and a secret Veneer base located on the planet. It was discovered that Veneer were using this wormhole as a secret backdoor in and out of Veneer space in order to maintain this secret base. It was also discovered that the reason that the UPA hadn’t heard from the Unity in the last one hundred years is because the Unity is unable to survive within our dimension. For reasons currently unknown, the Unity and the Veneer established an alliance decades ago in an attempt to solve this problem.

  During their encounter with the Unity, the first officer of the Defiance, Commander Grace Hawkins, was killed and absorbed into the Unity.

  During the attack Ensign Erin Calloway was engaged by the Unity. She and the Unity communicated in a language unfamiliar to anyone in this reality. Ensign Calloway is currently unaware of this encounter.

  With the death of Commander Hawkins, the D’Ambra administration is attempting to install a new first officer whose loyalty would lie with President D’Ambra before Captain Mitchell.

  Unbeknownst to everyone, however, in the aftermath of the Defiance’s encounter with the Unity something changed and for the first time in one hundred years, the Unity has a stable presence in our reality.

  Starbase Atlantic

  1

  Kathryn Straub’s head had already hit the pillow. Her eyes were closed long before that. From the moment she sat down on her bed, her brain had begun the process of disconnecting from its conscious state.

  In all fairness, though, she had begun the process even before she had even made it to her quarters. It had been a long day made unnecessarily longer by bureaucrats she wasn’t allowed to punch. Not that there were any bureaucrats she was allowed to punch, officially.

  Unofficially, the Vaul considered it to be an offense of the highest order if every political transaction didn’t start with a fist to the face. How long had it been since she had dealt with a Vaulian? Six years? Longer? Those were the good old days…

  That was the last thought that drifted through her head as she gave in to the exhaustion that she had been fighting with for the last eighteen hours.

  Straub’s eyes closed. Her head hit the pillow and she completely let go.

  And then her comm went off.

  “Son of a bitch,” she muttered into her pillow. She grabbed her other pillow and pressed it over her head, hoping to drown out the incessant chirp of the comm. Eventually whoever it was would give up.

  Except, it didn’t normally take this long.

  Her comm continued to chirp away, refusing to give her a moment’s peace.

  Straub sat up, violently throwing the pillow that had been covering her head across the room. “Son of a bitch!” she shouted again and this time it was followed by a string of curses in no less than three different languages.

  Of course, she was alone in her quarters, so there wasn’t anyone there to truly appreciate how adept she was at swearing in three different alien tongues. Four, if you counted her native English.

  Straub smacked the small touchscreen on her nightstand that was flashing with the communications icon. “I haven’t had more than three hours of sleep in the last three days. I left explicit orders not to be disturbed for the next six hours. So whoever the hell you are, you better have a damn good reason for bothering me right now. I swear, if we’re not under attack or President D’Ambra himself isn’t about to set foot on this station, I will find the most remote outpost in the UPA, and I mean the kind of place that makes the middle of nowhere look crowded. This place is going to be so remote that it’ll take weeks for a subspace signal to reach you. You won’t even have a plant to talk to. It’ll be dust or ice. Miles and miles of dust or ice. And you won’t get so lucky that it’ll be dust and ice. No. It’ll definitely be one or the other. I will find this desolate outpost and I will make sure that you’re stationed there until your dying day. And then, I’ll make sure, after you’re dead, you’ll be buried there. So that, even in death, you’ll be stuck out in the asshole of the galaxy.” Straub paused to take a deep breath. “With that in mind, who are you and why are you calling me?”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the comm
. Long enough that Straub had to double check to make sure the channel was still even open.

  “Hello?” Straub asked.

  “Ensign Ogletree can’t come to the phone right now on a count of the fact you just made him piss himself into a panic attack.”

  Straub recognized the voice immediately. Lieutenant Commander Marv Mallozzi. Third shift command officer.

  Straub sighed and rubbed her face. “Damnit, Marv.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like I was looking forward to waking you either,” he said. “I heard about what happened with the ambassadors from Struqoid and Aurrod earlier today.”

  Straub groaned loudly and dropped her face into her hands.

  “You know, considering how big a station we are, it’s remarkable how fast information travels around here,” Mallozzi continued. “Personally, I would have been more than content to not speak with you for another week. By my calculations, I figured that should be enough time for you clear out all of your pent-up hostility. But, hey, it turns out that’s no longer a problem. Of course, Ensign Ogletree here is going to be suffering with the lingering embarrassment of pissing himself while on duty and most likely a lifetime’s worth of post-traumatic stress disorders.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Straub muttered.

  “I’d rather not talk about my mother right now, ma’am,” Mallozzi said. “I think it’s probably enough to drive one officer to tears for now.”

  She glared up at the ceiling in the direction of the command deck. “Is there a reason you’re calling me right now? Or did you just want to try out some of your new smart ass material?”

  “Ensign Ogletree was calling you because we just received an interesting signal from a sensor buoy we have in the Uslen system.”

  “It better be damn interesting, Marv.” Straub didn’t make any move to get out of her bed.

  “Are you familiar with Morse code?”

  Straub rubbed her tired eyes, searching her exhausted brain. “That sounds familiar.”

  “It’s an old Earth method of transmitting information,” Mallozzi said. “According to the computer, it hasn’t been used in almost four hundred years.”

  “A history lesson is not worth waking me up,” Straub said.

  “It’s not a history lesson, ma’am,” Mallozzi said. “That’s what our buoy’s picking up out there. Somebody’s transmitting a distress signal in Morse code.”

  2

  The Atlantic’s command deck was centrally located. Buried deep in the starbase, it was only three decks up from main engineering and two decks down from the all-purpose storage spaces primarily used for docked ships. It was a large dual-level circular room with wide viewscreens that wrapped around the entire circumference.

  When Straub stepped off the lift, she paused for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dim lighting of the third shift. She mumbled a Sweezakaal swear under her breath as she made her way down the handful of stairs to the command table where a lanky man with unusually long limbs and a perpetually furrowed brow stood.

  “The least you could have done is turn up the damn lights,” Straub grumbled. Her uniform had a rumpled appearance and, in fact, had actually been fished out of her dirty laundry. Her gray hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail and she held a cup of Elwat spice coffee in her left hand.

  “Well, I figured that you were already pissed off,” Mallozzi replied, looking up from the command table. “So I didn’t really see the point in upsetting my shift any further.” He was an Aztix. In addition to his long limbs, his skin had a vaguely blue tint to it that was almost imperceptible in the dim lighting of the command deck. His face was long with narrow eyes that extended up towards his forehead and a flat nose. His lips were deceptively small, giving the impression that the rest of his mouth was as well. However, his jaw was double jointed and the sight of him eating made most of his crewmates intensely uncomfortable.

  Straub glared at him and took a sip from her coffee. The jolt from the Elwat caffeine made her toes curl.

  Mallozzi wrinkled his nose in disgust. “I don’t know how you can drink that stuff.”

  Straub set the cup down. “It’s the only thing keeping me upright now.”

  “I suggest you go see Doc Hogle,” Mallozzi said. “But I’m afraid that would set off a series of unfortunate events once they realize your blood has been replaced by that disgusting flavored cup of Elwat spices you call coffee.”

  Straub leaned forward, propping her hands against the table and looked her second-in-command right in the eyes. “I want you to listen to me very carefully. Are you listening?”

  “With bated breath.”

  “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”

  Mallozzi shrugged his slender shoulders and turned his attention back to the screens on the table. “Did you happen to spot a wet, balled up uniform on your way in?”

  “No, why?”

  “No reason. It’s just what’s left of Ensign Ogletree,” he replied. “I thought you might want to get a good look at him before somebody rolls him onto the next ship bound for Earth.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “You know how long he’s been here?” Mallozzi held up three long fingers. “I’ll save you the trouble. Three weeks. That’s a new record for you.”

  Straub took another sip from her coffee and waited for the little caffeine jolt before she replied. “You know, you were the one who had him call me.”

  Mallozzi nodded. “True enough. That was an unfortunate miscalculation on my part.”

  She eyed him. “Was it, though?”

  “I understand what you’re attempting to suggest, but I’ll have you know, I was planning on taking Ensign Ogletree under my wing. I was going to mentor him.”

  “Uh-huh.” Straub didn’t sound convinced. “Pass along your invaluable wisdom?”

  “That was the plan.”

  “Like how you ended up as third shift commander on a remote starbase next door the Veneer Empire?”

  “We all have humble beginnings.”

  Straub tugged at her collar uncomfortably. “What the hell’s wrong with the temperature in here? Feels like I walked into a damn sauna.”

  “I’ve spoken with engineering about it. They’re working on it. Honestly, though, I found it too be rather refreshing,” Mallozzi said. “So I told them not to rush it. Of course, this was before I realized I was going to have to endure your presence this evening.”

  Straub lowered the zipper from her neckline to just under her collarbone. “You know, I could find a worse assignment for you around here.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  “Somebody needs to clean the toilets.”

  “Nobody will ever accuse you of favoritism.”

  She twirled an impatient figure at the screens. “What’s going on?”

  Mallozzi shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

  “It’s a distress signal,” Straub said. “When I asked what’s going on, I already know. What I’m really asking for are the details.”

  Mallozzie continued, unperturbed. “The first portion of the signal is a standard S.O.S. No ship identification or callsign. Just a boilerplate distress signal. It’s literally S-O-S.”

  “Sometimes the classics are still the best.”

  “Naturally,” Mallozzi agreed. “Except the transmission is over eighty petabytes.”

  Straub frowned. “What’s the rest of it?”

  Mallozzi shrugged. “I don’t know. It has the computer…discombobulated”

  “You said it was Morse code,” Straub replied. “And the computer can’t translate it? What the hell’s wrong with the computer.”

  “Nothing. The problem’s not with the computer.” He gestured to the data on the screen closest to Straub. “The problem is with the code. It translates into pure gibberish.”

  “The hell?” Straub scrolled through the information. “What is this even supposed to be?”

  “I’m pretty sure ‘gibberish’ covered it.”

/>   “What else is out there?”

  “According to the buoy, nothing,” Mallozzi said. “Just our mysterious vessel and their equally mysterious distress signal in Morse code.

  Straub took another sip from her coffee. “I’m going to need something stronger for this.”

  Mallozzi raised both of his eyebrows. “Well, you may want to wait a moment before breaking out M’reth ale. After I got off the comm with you, we downloaded another update from the buoy before it went dark.”

  “Son of a bitch,” she muttered. “What happened to it?”

  Mallozzi shrugged. “It just went offline. Maybe it lost power. Maybe something blasted it.”

  “Did it look like something blasted it?”

  Mallozzi didn’t respond. Instead, he pursed his lips together and transferred another batch of data to her screen. This one included a video file.