Ghost Wing (The Ragnarok Saga Book 4) Page 17
The aliens were my first stab at a much more complex life-form development, too. In the past I’ve mostly written about alien species that were not too different from humans. They might look different, but tended to act a lot like us. Their motives and methods were easy to grasp and understand. But in the Jaernyth we see something very different from us. They represent not just a different look from humans, but a radically different mindset. Where we tend to value individualism and freedom, to them those things look like chaos and anarchy. They can’t conceptualize a race of sentient beings with individual free will any more easily than we can grasp a sentient race totally subservient to their leaders (and perfectly content to remain that way).
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next with them. Of course, the one ship got away. Will they return with a still larger invasion force? Why didn’t they just jump in the entire fleet, instead of sending one small ship?
I’d like to give a shout-out to the other authors in the Galactic Genesis collection, where this work first appeared. Six science fiction authors banded together to release the first book from a new trilogy all in the same book bundle. I don’t know that anyone had ever attempted that before us. It’s a grand experiment, and I hope you’re happy with the results!
The story will continue. “Ghost Squadron” is already out, and that will be followed by “Ghost Fleet” in late 2018 to conclude the trilogy. I doubt that will actually conclude the tales of this universe, however... In fact, I’m very sure it won’t!
If you missed the other books in the Ragnarok Saga and would like to catch up on them, the Accord trilogy is: Accord of Honor, Accord of Mars, Accord of Valor. The Valhalla Online books are: Valhalla Online, Valhalla Online 2: Raiding Jotunheim, Valhalla Online 3: Vengeance over Vanaheim, and Valhalla Online 4: Hel Hath No Fury (releases November 2018).
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this book, please do leave a review - those are a huge help for us writers, and we appreciate each and every one.
Kevin McLaughlin
Ghost Squadron Sneak Peek!
Chapter 1
Sam thought calling this place the 'Oort Cloud' was a misnomer. It wasn’t a cloud at all. There was stuff out there, for sure. Bits of rock and ice. But they were scattered about, so distant from each other that the whole region felt as empty as any other part of space. From her point of view, it was less a cloud and more a zone.
Whatever they wanted to call it, patrolling the place was damned dull. They were supposed to be out looking for trouble. If the alien ship which escaped the scuffle at Neptune was still somewhere in the solar system, the most likely place for it to be hiding out was in the Oort Cloud. Far enough from Earth that it would be nearly impossible to spot, but close enough that it could have made the trip without resorting to a jump with its Alcubierre drive.
That, they would have spotted. The energy surge when a ship went into a jump was nowhere near as dramatic as the one expelled when it arrived at its destination, but it was still easy enough to spot from a far distance. They hadn’t seen a jump signature. So unless the aliens had been extremely sneaky about their departure, they were still in the neighborhood
“Harald, you seeing anything at all out there?” Sam asked over her radio. There was a brief lag before she got a response. Her squadron-mates were all flying at a distance of several light-seconds from each other, spread out to cover more ground. It was still woefully insufficient. A ship trying to hide out there was a needle in a haystack, and they were combing through the stack one straw at a time.
“Still nothing, just like last time you asked,” he replied.
He’d been growing testier by the week. Ever since the battle over Neptune, he’d become more distant and reclusive. Instead of hanging out with the other pilots during downtime, he’d resided in his fighter. Sam stopped by a few times when he started the practice. He was only grudgingly talkative and mostly stared out into the stars. She wondered what he thought about while he sat there all alone. God knew they all had enough demons chasing them at this point.
Sam was evading hers by staying busy. There was a new crop of pilots to train up. Few of their original fighter wing had survived. But the core concept - using digitally uploaded minds as pilots of fighters, because they could survive accelerations and vector changes that would kill an ordinary human - was deemed a rousing success, anyway. Another recruiting drive brought in a host of fresh meat, and it was her job to turn them into a cohesive fighting force.
Easier said than done. Even after a few weeks in space, the pilots were still green as hell. They were all recruits from Valhalla Online, a digital afterlife where you got to play a fantasy game for all eternity. On the plus side, that meant all her new recruits were used to the idea of fighting. But they were also used to respawning after they ‘died’ in the game. A death in Valhalla Online might hurt, but it wasn’t the end of the road.
A condition the United Nations placed on allowing them to run around loose in the outside world was that each digital mind was encoded with a high-grade DRM. Copying them was supposed to be impossible. Sam knew nothing was truly unhackable, but it made it impractical at best to make copies of a freed digital mind. No copies meant that if the fighter your program was uploaded to blew to bits, you were gone. End of story, end of life.
Teaching these new recruits to take death seriously had been a struggle, especially since dying in a simulation was just like what they were used to in Valhalla. They ‘died’ and came right back again to run another sim. It would be very different when they got out in real combat though. The enemy’s guns would cause real damage to their fighters. When they blew up - and Sam knew some of them would die - they’d be gone forever. Wiped from existence. It was a tough concept for them to adjust to.
Sam spotted a flash of light in the distance, out ahead of them. She lit it up with active scanners immediately. The fighter’s instruments fed data back to her about the energy discharge. It was an Alcubierre drive exit explosion, all right. When a ship came out of a jump, it brought with it a swath of highly charged particles that released all their pent-up energy in an instant. The resulting light show was impressive. At close range, it could blow apart a spaceship. Sam knew, since she’d seen it happen.
But this wasn’t enemy action. The friend-or-foe systems on board her craft identified the ship at once. It was the Intrepid, the one human vessel capable of making jumps. Well, it was more or less capable. The first time they tried, it had blown out the jump drive. They’d since made adjustments to get the system more or less working, but it was still new tech. Flying around in the Intrepid when it made a jump was a little like riding a C-130 full of nitroglycerin. It would probably make a safe landing. But if it didn’t, the explosion would be spectacular.
A signal came in from the Intrepid a few seconds later. “Ghost Squadron, any contacts?”
That was Admiral Thomas Stein, the captain of the ship. Technically, Stein was in command of the entire human space navy, but he’d taken direct control during the battle for Neptune and never relinquished it after. Sam wondered how long a member of the top brass would be allowed to remain in the field like that. It wasn’t for her to question his decision, but it seemed unwise to have him on the front lines.
“Negative,” Sam replied. “This sector is clean.”
“Understood,” Thomas replied. “Return to base to refuel and rest.”
“We’re still good for another sector if you want,” Sam said. Her tanks still had plenty of reaction mass left to convert into energy for her drive. They’d been coasting at high velocity for the last couple of days, not using much power.
“Negative. Your people need downtime to stay sharp. Bring them in. Rest, let the techs look over your ships, and then we’ll hit the next sector.”
“Understood, sir. Passing the word along,” Sam replied.
The downtime would be good. It was hard on the mind, being out in the black for too long. Even though the pilots could all connect to each other
and talk whenever they wanted, the brief lags in conversation caused by distance shut down discussion. That left all her pilots with a lot of time to sit alone in their fighters and think. Sam wasn’t sure how the rest of them were reacting to that, but it had worn on her enough that she welcomed a respite.
Grab your copy of Ghost Squadron today at http://mybook.to/ragnarok5 and continue the adventure!
Other Books by Kevin McLaughlin
The Ragnarok Saga (Military SF)
Accord of Fire - Free prequel short story, available only to email list fans!
Book 1 - Accord of Honor
Book 2 - Accord of Mars
Book 3 - Accord of Valor
Book 4 - Ghost Wing
Book 5 - Ghost Squadron
Book 6 - Ghost Fleet (2018)
Valhalla Online Series (A Ragnarok Saga Story)
Book 1 - Valhalla Online
Book 2 - Raiding Jotunheim
Book 3 - Vengeance Over Vanaheim
Book 4 - Hel Hath No Fury (November 2018)
Lost Planet Warriors (Military SF with light romance)
Book 1 - Desperate Times
Book 2 - Desperate Measures
Dire Straits - Free short story for email list fans!
Adventures of the Starship Satori (Space Opera blended with military SF)
Finding Satori - prequel short story, available only to email list fans!
Book 1 - Ad Astra: Book 2 - Stellar Legacy
Book 3 - Deep Waters
Book 4 - No Plan Survives Contact
Book 5 - Liberty
Book 6 - Satori’s Destiny
Book 7 - Ashes of War
Book 8 - Embers of War
Book 9 - Dust and Iron (May 2018)
Blackwell Magic Series (Urban Fantasy)
Book 1 - By Darkness Revealed
Book 2 - Ashes Ascendant
Book 3 - Dead In Winter
Book 4 - Claws That Catch
Book 5 - Darkness Awakes
Book 6 - Spellbinding Entanglements
By A Whisker (short story)
The Raven and the Rose - Free novelette for email list fans!
Dead Brittania Series:
Dead Brittania (short prequel story)
Book 1 - King of the Dead
Book 2 - Queen of Demons
Raven’s Heart Series (Urban Fantasy)
Book 1 - Stolen Light
Book 2 - Webs in the Dark
Book 3 - Shades of Moonlight
Other Titles:
Over the Moon (SF romance)
Midnight Visitors (Steampunk Cat short story)
Demon Ex Machina (Steampunk Cat short story)
The Coffee Break Novelist (help for writers!)
You Must Write (Heinlein’s rules for writers)
Exclusive for fans of the Accord series!
Find out how the story started… When Captain Nicholas Stein set out to stop one enemy ship, and set in motion events which shaped the course of human history for decades to come.
http://kevinomclaughlin.com/accordoffire/
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Kevin McLaughlin has written more than three dozen science fiction and fantasy novels, along with more short stories than he can easily count. Kevin can be found most days in downtown Boston, working on the next novel. His bestselling Blackwell Magic fantasy series, Accord science fiction series, Valhalla Online LitRPG series, and the fan-favorite Starship Satori series are ongoing.
I love hearing from readers!
www.kevinomclaughlin.com
kevins.studio@gmail.com