Ship of Destiny Read online

  Table of Contents

  PART I CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  PART II CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  PART III CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  PART IV CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  USS Cam Ranh Bay Described

  *SHIP OF*

  DESTINY

  ***

  FRANK CHADWICK

  Ship of Destiny

  Frank Chadwick

  SURROUNDED BY DEATH, THE SECRET OF IMMORTALITY IS WITHIN REACH. A new novel of space exploration and alien contact from Chain of Command author Frank Chadwick.

  Sam Bitka, a naval reserve officer, is recalled to wartime service and soon earns a reputation for aggressive tactics and insufficient deference to his academy-graduated superiors. His latest run-in with authority earns him a transfer to command of an armed transport, USS Cam Ranh Bay.

  When a mysterious alien probe materializes from Jump Space and remotely reprograms The Bay's star drive, Sam and his crew begin an involuntary voyage that takes them three thousand light years out of known space, across the galactic rift to the Sagittarius Spiral Arm, and into the heart of an ancient, previously unknown civilization—the first encountered by Humans and the other five races of the Cottohazz—Stellar Commonwealth—in over a century. The genetically altered immortals known as The Guardians, a race so old they do not remember their own origins, soon turn murderously violent.

  Now Sam and his crew must elude capture by the Guardians, find some means of reprograming their own star drive, and then return to the Cottohazz with the news of a powerful new civilization bent on their destruction. But they may also be carrying the secrets of the origin of their own star drive and of the path to immortality.

  BAEN BOOKS

  by Frank Chadwick

  The Forever Engine

  Cottohazz Series

  How Dark the World Becomes

  Come the Revolution

  Chain of Command

  Ship of Destiny

  *SHIP OF*

  DESTINY

  ***

  FRANK CHADWICK

  Ship of Destiny

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Frank Chadwick

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN 978-1-9821-2443-4

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-759-9

  Art by Don Maitz

  USS Cam Ranh Bay diagram by Frank Chadwick

  First printing, March 2020

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Chadwick, Frank, author.

  Title: Ship of destiny / Frank Chadwick.

  Description: Riverdale, NY : Baen Books, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019054177 | ISBN 9781982124434 (paperback)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3553.H2184 S53 2020 | DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054177

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Electronic Version by Baen Books

  www.baen.com

  For Craig and Bev

  Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

  of that man skilled in all ways of contending,

  the wanderer, harried for years on end,

  after he plundered the stronghold

  on the proud height of Troy.

  He saw the townlands

  and learned the minds of many distant men,

  and weathered many bitter nights and days

  in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only

  to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.

  —Homer, The Odyssey

  Robert Fitzgerald, trans. 1961

  Under the wide and starry sky

  Dig the grave and let me lie:

  Glad did I live and gladly die,

  And I laid me down with a will.

  This be the verse you ’grave for me:

  Here he lies where he long’d to be;

  Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

  And the hunter home from the hill.

  —Robert Louis Stevenson, Requiem, 1879

  *SHIP OF*

  DESTINY

  ***

  In 2041 Earth experienced the single most momentous event in recorded history—first contact with an alien civilization. The Cottohazz was a stellar commonwealth of five peaceful, starfaring species led by the Varoki, the inventors of the jump drive which made interstellar travel and commerce possible. In 2064 the nations of Earth joined the Cottohazz as full members, the Sixth Race.

  Seventy years later the Cottohazz is recovering from its first interstellar war, fought between four Earth nations—forming the Outworld Coalition—and one Varoki nation, the uBakai.

  PART I:

  Voyage Into Darkness

  Cassandra

  Outworld Coalition Forward Headquarters on the planet K’tok,

  over one hundred fifty light years from Earth

  15 July 2134 (five months after Incident Seventeen)

  “First you bedded him, then you broke his heart, and now you want to know more about him? Commander, you might rethink the order in which you do stuff.”

  The words, delivered in Lieutenant Moe Rice’s deliberate west Texas drawl, momentarily left Cassandra as empty of breath as would a blow to the midsection. Commander Cassandra Atwater-Jones, Royal Navy, stared across her desk at the man who over the last months had become her friend as well as colleague and subordinate. Glared at him was probably more like it, the only way she knew to mask her grief and regret. Rice, a US Navy officer of considerable size and dark visage, returned her gaze unblinkingly. Of course he did: he was right—not that she was prepared to acknowledge that.

  When she spoke, she made her voice hard.
>
  “Leftenant Rice, my interest in Captain Bitka’s command style is professional, as you very well know. He has been missing for five months and it seems as if every admiral in the Outworld Coalition insists that our working group list him as dead, and his command lost due to hostile acts of the uBakai Star Navy. The manner in which his ship disappeared is reminiscent of the uBakai jump scrambler weapon—”

  “’Cept it didn’t destroy his ship,” Rice cut in.

  “We don’t know that!” she answered, her own voice rising. She stopped and took a breath and closed her eyes for a moment.

  “What do we know about Incident Seventeen?” she said when she felt she could keep her voice from trembling. “On nineteen February last, a shuttle-sized craft emerged from jump space in this star system between the orbits of K’tok and Mogo. It emitted radiation on wavelengths consistent with a sensor sweep, made a single powerful burst transmission directly at the closest vessel, and then destroyed itself. The nearby vessel was USS Cam Ranh Bay, of which ship Bitka had taken command seven days prior. Bitka’s ship jumped almost simultaneous with the transmission. But it did not emerge from J-space at Eeee’ktaa, its intended destination nor, so far as we can determine, has it turned up anywhere else in known space.

  “Where did it go? What was its fate? Who was responsible?”

  “I know the damned questions, Commander,” Rice grumbled as he shifted in his chair. “Just don’t know any answers.”

  Normally Cassandra liked looking at his face, the whites of his eyes so white they were almost blue, set in a face the color of weathered and blackened bronze. Instead she turned to the third person in her office, more as an excuse to look away from Rice without it appearing quite so much like an admission of guilt. Vice-Captain Takaar Nuvaash of the uBakai Star Navy was clearly embarrassed by the exchange, an emotion easy to spot on most Varoki: the broad ears folded tightly back against the head, the hairless iridescent skin flushed pink, or sometimes a bit orange if the Varoki in question was also offended. The common Human epithet for Varoki—leatherhead—did them a disservice, she thought. There was something exquisite in the way the light played across their softly textured skin, colors coming and going as if through a kaleidoscope.

  Like Cassandra, Nuvaash was a military intelligence officer—what most Varoki navies called “Speaker for The Enemy.” Like her, Moe Rice, and seven other officers from four different Earth nations, he was part of the Incident Seventeen Working Group, although in his case the assignment was unofficial. It had to be as, unlike Cassandra and the others, he was a Varoki and a prisoner of war, their prisoner. Ironically, he was the only one apart from Moe Rice she felt she could really trust, which was a sad commentary on how tangled and toxic the politics of this entire incident had become. She turned back to Rice.

  “I am due to meet with the new station commander in half an hour to brief him on our progress. You know his identity?”

  Rice grimaced before answering. “Rear Admiral Jacob Goldjune.”

  “Yes, Rear Admiral Jacob Goldjune, brother of Admiral Cedric Goldjune, our coalition’s CNO.” She turned to Nuvaash. “Chief of Naval Operations, what you would call the Fleet-Guiding Admiral. He is the most visible advocate for restarting hostilities with your nation.” She turned back to Rice. “Our new commander is also the father of Larry Goldjune, who now commands USS Puebla, Bitka’s former boat. Wasn’t there bad blood between Bitka and young Goldjune?”

  Rice laughed but without a trace of humor. Yes, of course there was, she thought. Trust Bitka to pick a fight with the scion of the most powerful and well-connected family in the Navy of the United States of North America.

  “Excuse me,” Nuvaash said, “but I am confused. The Goldjunes are brothers? Father and son? I do not understand.”

  “There are three of them,” Cassandra said. “Here, let me draw you a picture.” She picked up a stylus from her desk holder, drew briefly on the smart surface of her desk, and then tapped the output control. A wafer of thin flexible composite emerged from the output slot. She checked it and handed it to Nuvaash.

  “Ah,” he said, “Very clear. But Captain Bitka was a successful warrior and they are all members of the same navy. Why do they dislike him?”

  Cassandra looked at him and fought down a surge of irritation. “Don’t be coy with me, Nuvaash. You are not so callow as all that, and I am not in the mood for games.” She turned back to Rice. “So what sort of reception do you expect me to receive in this upcoming meeting?”

  “I’d wear body armor if I was you,” Rice said, but he smiled at her, the bleak smile of condemned prisoners sharing the same cell. “Okay, you want to know what kind of cap’n Bitka was? He never gave up. Never. He relied on his crew, got us to do impossible things, I still don’t know how. Somehow made us believe we could do it, and then it turned out we really could.”

  He paused and thought for a moment.

  “Couldn’t abide dishonesty. I guess that’s what got him so pissed off at Larry Goldjune and his uncle Cedric, the big admiral. That last part got him a share of trouble. Still don’t know how he got out of that court martial, although I bet you do. I ain’t asking, but if you had a part in it, I thank you.”

  Cassandra nodded, and then Nuvaash spoke.

  “Your Captain Bitka reminds me of the archetypal trickster in so many of your Human myths and legends. He never met my admiral but he had an uncanny ability to know exactly what it would take to draw him away from K’tok at the final battle.”

  Rice shook his head. “Might have looked that way from your side, but the truth is it was just a shot in the dark. Cap’n figured a long shot was better than no shot at all. That’s what I mean—the son of a bitch never gives up.”

  He looked at her, a look full of meaning which she immediately understood. Were the roles reversed, Bitka would not have given up on her by now, would he? No. But she was not Sam Bitka. Listening to Rice made her almost believe he might still be alive, but that was absurd. Realistically the only riddles were how and where he had died, not if, and answering those questions would do nothing to fill the aching void in her heart.

  Still, if their working group filed a report declaring him dead and suggesting uBakai culpability, it would be all the excuse the war faction—including the assorted Goldjunes—would need to renounce the fragile ceasefire and restart hostilities, which could rip the Stellar Commonwealth—the Cottohazz—apart. Unfortunately, what little evidence there was pointed to the uBakai. Once the investigation stopped, that’s all the evidence there would be, and once Bitka and his crew were declared dead, the investigation would be quickly wrapped up.

  Bitka had fought so hard, and risked so much, to get them to this fragile peace. She owed it to him to hold the peace together, however and for as long as she could, and if that meant keeping him officially alive, well then so be it. She touched the desktop hologram of her daughter and then stood up.

  “Time for me to go if I am not to keep our new admiral waiting.”

  “Shirtsleeve order?” Rice asked, looking her over. “You at least going to put on a jacket to meet the big brass?”

  Cassandra glanced down at her white short-sleeved uniform blouse and blue slacks.

  “No, I think this will do. Remember what Ibsen said: ‘Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for truth and freedom.’ Now, where’s my hat?”

  The bulldog-faced American yeoman manning the reception desk touched his ear, listened to whatever was coming through his surgically embedded commlink, and looked up at her.

  “The admiral will see you now, ma’am. Go right in.”

  Cassandra rose, tucked her hat under her arm, and crossed the carpeted anteroom to the dark wood-grained door bearing the plaque which read, in glowing letters, “Rear Admiral Jacob Goldjune, Commander, K’tok Base Area.” She pressed the entry panel, the door whispered to the side, and she strode across the polished hardwood floor and came to attention in front of the admiral’s desk. His office was a much
larger version of her own, with the addition of a broad window behind the admiral looking out over T’tokl-Heem, the occupied Varoki capital of K’tok. In the background, K’tok Needle, the elevator to orbit, rose from behind the downstation complex, impossibly tall and slender, gleaming golden in the morning sunlight. As she watched, a cigar-shaped cargo capsule began its silent magnetically induced acceleration up the needle to orbit.

  “Commander Atwater-Jones, reporting as ordered, sir.”

  She noticed that Admiral Goldjune, his attention on the open files displayed on the smart surface of his desk, wore shirtsleeve order, the same as her.

  Nice to know I’m not underdressed for the ball.

  He glanced up at her.

  “Be seated, commander.”

  She did so, trying to form an impression of the man. Blonde, balding, heavy, his accent soft and southern, the sort she had heard quite often in Mississippi when she had been there on an exchange course. He had an intelligent face, not what she would call forceful or determined, but not really weak either. Guarded, she thought. Well, in military intelligence one got used to dealing with guarded faces and guarded minds. But there was something else in his face. Melancholy. That surprised her. Before he spoke he slid several open virtual folders into the center of his desk, studied them for a moment, and his mouth turned down in a frown.