Frozen Soul, and other works: Chapter 73

Major Khan had to give it to the Commodore. He certainly provided the toys one needed to get from A to B in a hurry, and perform the mission when you got there. The Thunderfury was not as stealthy as the rest of the Black Star Fleet, but that was fine by him. The rest of the fleet relied on speed and stealth to keep out of fair fights, either by killing everyone before the fight started, or by overwhelming their defenses with massive attacks before their overpowered shields buckled. That was good for fast attack craft.

Marines, however, needed something more rugged, since they were called to go into the teeth of enemy fire and punch a hole for others to use, or pull out other teams that had called down more heat than they could handle. Light and quick was fine, but any Marine would tell you that they’d rather something that would stand up to any level of abuse they could throw at it, and keep working with maybe a field expedient repair until they got back to base.

Thankfully, the Black Star Company didn’t need to reinvent the wheel on that score. The Thunderfury was an Imperial Marine Transport that the crazy bastard in charge went and ‘liberated’ when he’d had a chance, even before he knew that there were a bunch of ex-Marines looking to join up. The ship was barely above a frigate when it came to crew complement, but with extra room for marines, their gear, and any other toys they might be bringing to the party, not to mention tons of weapons and armor, the thing massed almost the same as a light cruiser. The ship had the same blacker-than-black paint job, a ‘normal’ stealth suite, and overpowered shields and power systems that were pretty much standard for Black Star ships, but it wasn’t damn near invisible even when you knew it was there like the Shinokage, to say nothing of the Assassins.

The Thunderfury couldn’t land on a planet’s surface, but getting down in the atmosphere to deliver some ‘stern warnings’ via bombardment was something it could handle. They had five drop ships, capable of delivering pain and backing up marines in close air support, while taking a beating themselves. Of course, they only needed four drop ships to get the entire company’s 120 marine combat force anywhere they needed to go, but the Imperial designers clearly understood that shit breaks, or that sometimes you need to come back with more than you left with. The company was all Nomads, even the 10-man logistics section, since he’d put out the call for any retired Jarheads who wanted to be bona fide Space Marines.

Which is why the Thunderfury and the Black Star Marines were tapped for this gig. He’d seen the tape of the previous actions Commodore Mollen and his crews had fought. Those tactical teams they’d put together were bad ass, make no mistake, but they were scalpels. They used speed and surprise to overwhelm their foes and to take them out before they could actually resist. Khan just thanked whoever might be listening that Mollen didn’t let that shit get to his head, because he’d waited until he’d gotten Marines before he went after something needing a broadsword. Or a hammer.

Gathering his thoughts, he walked into the conference room where his command staff were already assembling the company to brief the teams on their first mission.

Raxicore Base did not exist. Balpheron’s Moon, orbiting a standard Jupiter-size gas giant in the Zeta Charybdis system, had no minerals or ores easily accessible enough to make mining useful, and the radiation from the planet’s rings which came close to the moon’s orbit made a colony, even a prison colony, untenable. Everyone knew this.

Everyone was wrong, of course. In reality, Raxicore Base was the center for the Imperial Fleet’s Research and Development group’s blackest projects, the kinds of things that were not ‘acceptable’ to research on in more open settings. Warship and most conventional weapons were researched and designed elsewhere. This site was for the things that no one wanted to admit ever existed. The Chimera project had been designed here in the initial stages, but had been moved to Luna before the death of the previous Emperor so that the specimen could have better access to any potential targets for assassination and replacement. Unfortunately, the initial specimen of the Infiltrator line escaped by doing just that to one of its handlers, using her face and ID to get off base. It took a lot of interrogating with the Nomad they found with the deceased handler, but the information was clear. The specimen had used its abilities to engineer its escape.

While the loss of the specimen was unfortunate, and its lack of recovery completely unacceptable, Doctor Denise Jacobi was thankful for it in one respect. That incident had proved her right when she had said six years ago, that the plan to move final development to the less secure Black Site located on the Luna Academy grounds was foolish. But who was she to question security arrangements, she was just a Doctor with advanced degrees in biology, chemistry, and half a dozen other sciences. Under a suitable alias, of course. No one was supposed to know Doctor Jacobi existed until they met her, or were central enough that they understood that some projects were necessary, for the safety of the Empire, even if they were distasteful in the extreme. Why, the process of producing the mimetic genetic code of the Chimera alone involved the vivisection and forced integration of DNA from over two hundred species, only a few of them sapient. But the price of progress was always steep.

Still, even though the Chimera project had been taken away from her, she had kept copies of the original research, and had started using it for her own projects. While they wouldn’t compare to the ability of a Chimera grown from the initial tissues to the purpose of its line, she had theorized that it would be possible to use retroviral gene therapies to ‘graft’ some of the projected abilities of the Chimera project into already living beings, allowing them to give loyal servants of the Empire some of those capabilities, rather than trying to engineer loyalty through conditioning or strict controls that may leave the specimen unable to properly function. Imperial soldiers able to regenerate their wounds. Judges capable of stripping the truth from a defendant’s mind. Spies that were able to assume any form. Assassins that could be completely invisible, even as they drew the knife across their victim’s throats. The possibilities were endless!

Captain Am’Rica’s tail swung slowly side to side in pleasure as she stood on the bridge of her ship. The Thunderfury was a good ship, despite being made by those Imperial swine. They may have all the moral integrity of a hatchling who sees food and is told they can’t have it, but they knew how to build a warship. It was no small point of pride to her that her ship was the most capable when it came to taking a hit without getting knocked out of a fight out of all the ships in the Black Star Fleet. While Thunderfury lacked the raw killing power of the primary weapon of the Shadowdancer and her sisters, it was more than capable of wading into any mess that would leave the Assassins broken and bloody and coming out the other side only looking a little worse for the wear.

As far as she knew, she was one of only a handful of Ihm in this Company. There was another female who lead one of the Assassin’s tactical teams, but she was the only other female of her species in the Company. Not surprising, since it was a Confederate company started by an Imperial exile, if the stories were true. The majority of the company were humans and knelfi, with a good portion of felisans and gauz, naturally. But the other species, like hers, were rare in the Confederation, which made them rare in the company.

Her parents had been diplomats from the Imperium to the Empire. When war broke out, their whole family was enslaved in the night, and they were separated and sold. She still had never found out what happened to her mother, but she knew her father had died a year after their enslavement. She knew that because her master at the time thought it a treat to take her as his plaything while she watched her father fight to his death in the arena. Her master and his family, oh so unfortunately, had suffered terrible, painful deaths on their private yacht while touring one of the colonies near the Confederate border. She had managed to program the autopilot, and the ship took her to a Confederate world, where a sympathetic captain had registered her as a ‘refugee’ rather than an ‘escaped slave’.

Now, after some time as a mercenary, eventually rising to first officer on one of her old company’s ships, she was a Captain with the Black Star Company. The thought of taking this ship into battle with the damned Imperials and delivering a piece of the vengeance she longed for was mouthwatering. The fact that she would deliver trained men and women to wreck their facilities and take whatever research they were doing to use against them only made it sweeter.

She had been surprised, after only seeing a few of her species in the Black Star Fleet, to find out that there were ten Ihm in the new all-Nomad Marine company she’d be carrying around on the Thunderfury. Even better, they were all males! The fact that they were Nomads only made things more interesting. Everyone knew that Nomads were different. They had a strange ability to resurrect after death, and would sometimes disappear for hours or days at a time, and come back as though nothing had happened, and they often were completely ignorant about major parts of the cultures they supposedly came from.

When she’d worked up the courage to ask one of the Ihm marines about it, he said that the reason Nomads were different is because they projected their consciousness to this world. However, their bodies remained in their world, so they had to leave periodically to care for their bodies’ needs. And since time flowed faster here than in their world, a night’s rest at ‘home’ would leave them missing from this world for a day or more. That, too, was the secret of their ‘resurrection’. Dying simply kicked their consciousness from this world, and it took time to reestablish the connection.

She had been around enough politicians as a child, and intelligence types as an adult, that she could tell when someone was telling only a partial truth. What the marine had told her was true, so far as it went. But he either didn’t want to say more, or couldn’t say more. She couldn’t quite tell on that part. Probably didn’t want to, since he’d revealed a lot about his world, including that there were only humans there, and so he’d chosen to become an Ihm when he came here. When she asked why, he admitted that he liked the physical benefits of the male’s size and strength, since he used to be a soldier in his world.

Am’rica’s tail curled as she thought of that Ihm marine now, about to launch on his first mission with the Black Star Marines. She knew it was pointless to worry about him, since he was a Nomad, but she still did. Maybe when he got back to the ship she could teach him a few things about Ihm culture? She still had some chakmora tea in her quarters…

Previous Chapter Table of Contents Next Chapter

Be sure to read my published works!

Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):

Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT

Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37

Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy LitRPG):

Volume 1 - Tutorial https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VPRNDB

Omnibus 1 - Volumes 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0774T354X

Into the Black (Sci-Fi LitRPG):

Book I - Game Start https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LT5WGL

Omnibus I - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077X2KR7Y

City of Champions Online (Superhero LitRPG):