Paragon the scourge war.., p.1
Paragon: The Scourge War Book I, page 1
PARAGON
The Scourge War Book I
A.A. Pierce
Pierce Publishing
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Copyright © 2024 by A.A. Pierce
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
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
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Acknowledgements
Also by A.A. Pierce
About the author
For L,
for her limitless patience, endless encouragement,
and enduring wisdom
choses interéssantes
Chapter One
Black. Solid, infinite, and unrelenting.
It was so impenetrable, it looked as if someone had constructed an anthracite column right next to the Byzantium’s hull in order to completely prevent even one beam of light from shining through the middle of the porthole. Ensign Ryan Monaghan gazed through the tiny circle into the FTL void. He still hoped to see at least one of those light beams streak by, even though he knew such a sight was physically impossible.
Toward the bow of the mid size cruiser, cold cerulean flashed and flickered like sunset rays dancing in the gently swishing currents below the surface of the Caribbean. Toward the stern, crimson smoldered like the dying embers of the many campfires he’d slept next to during countless summer nights as a boy.
His understanding of physics was limited, but from what he remembered of one of his intro classes at the United Earth Fleet Academy, the effect was due to the light through which the ship’s enveloping F-field propelled it. In all the years since his first FTL trip, he’d never gotten used to what space actually looked like at super-light speeds. That strobing blue and red always churned his stomach.
He self-consciously looked around the minuscule quarters he shared with his roommate, Lieutenant Jerry Vaughn. Jerry had already gone to breakfast in the mess hall about twenty minutes earlier. Ryan was hungry too, but desperate not to bump into her.
“Rip it off!” he shouted at his reflection. He knew he needed to remove the proverbial Band-Aid, but couldn’t. Not yet.
To distract himself from his impending humiliation, he dropped his gaze to the right epaulet of his black Fleet uniform, a single vertical silver bar.
For as long as he could remember, he’d dreamed of joining the Fleet, of helming his own ship. Not to fight the Scourge, though he understood that the war was necessary for humanity’s survival. He only wanted to see what was out there. Other aliens? Spatial anomalies that defied the current understanding of physics? Whatever it was, he wanted to discover it, experience it. But in the six years since he’d graduated from the Academy, he hadn’t advanced at all.
He didn’t know exactly why, either. While he wasn’t the greatest officer in Fleet history, he also wasn’t the worst. He consistently received satisfactory marks in his evaluations, though, he had to admit, he got no excellent ones. His CO, Captain Gerald McNeil, seemed to like him just fine. His supervisor seemed to appreciate his work. And yet an ensign he remained.
What really frustrated him was that it seemed about every six months, yet another colleague—who, as far as Ryan could tell, had performed no better than he had—somehow managed to get promoted. He strived not to grow too envious of them, but it was a challenge, always being passed over.
He’d even started to wonder, given his complete lack of progress, how he’d been lucky enough to be assigned to the Byzantium. She was a research vessel widely considered a launchpad for promising ensigns to build illustrious careers. Since his Academy grades hadn’t exactly been stellar, he’d fully expected to have been assigned to some waste disposal barge back on Earth. Yet lucky he was, and to her he’d been assigned—only to languish in Ops.
He glanced at his other epaulet, the rectangular gray division patch.
Years ago, he’d started to suspect that his problem was that he hadn’t distinguished himself. He’d seen no combat. There had been no battles from which to emerge the scarred yet victorious hero. He wasn’t a scientist so wouldn’t make any amazing contribution to any of the Byzantium’s research projects. Even in his department, the most he’d been able to muster had been a few policy revision suggestions, but his superiors had rejected them all because any benefit the Fleet might have derived from them wasn’t worth the cost of their implementation.
He played his daily part in the smooth running of the ship through paperwork, equipment requisitions, crew quarters assignments, procedure updates, and, well, more paperwork. He hadn’t given up on his dream to one day land his own command, but at this rate, he’d turn fifty before he even reached lieutenant.
The deck plates jolted under his feet as the ship dropped to sub-light. Outside, the void trickled away like streams of black blood, revealing normal space’s ocean of stars. As much as the sight of the FTL tunnel’s strobing colors troubled him, the shifts to and from FTL were even more jarring. “Weird. Thought we weren’t arriving at Ngüeri till later today.”
He stood up straight and heaved a heavy sigh. It would not get any easier the longer he hid in here. And besides, now he was starving. “Rip it off,” he grumbled in a resigned tone.
He didn’t know where she’d be. Near the mess’s entrance or somewhere in the middle. Wherever it was, he knew the sight of her would be inevitable, and the second their eyes met, the space between them would erupt in an explosion of social awkwardness. He’d want to ask her why and she’d most likely do anything but give him a straight answer.
What hurt most was it had taken him six solid months to even work up the courage to ask her out. He’d never found it easy to talk to women, and Lieutenant Melinda Larson, with her slim figure, bright smile, and free-spirited personality, made it no easier.
“All right, let’s do it,” he announced to the room as he turned away from the porthole and strode toward the door.
He paused at the bathroom mirror, getting a last look at himself, and ran his fingers through his short, wavy, chestnut hair. His icy blue eyes glared back at him.
His gaze fell to the guitar case resting in the closet. It contained his cherished chocolate-brown Fender with its starburst resonator and glass bottleneck slide. In desperate times, he found comfort in the warm tones the instrument produced.
He slapped and rubbed his clean-shaven olive cheeks and shook his head. “Not gonna get any easier, Ry.”
He dug a pair of earbuds out of his pocket, gripped the palm-sized tablet suspended from his belt, and tapped into its music player. Selecting “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” he tore himself away from his reflection as the bouncing rhythm of the blues classic’s slide guitar filled his ears. With a final breath—intended to boost his confidence, but only reminding him of how nervous he was—he exited into the hallway.
Chapter Two
Ryan marched toward the Byzantium’s mess hall, greeting a few people along the way. Of the ones who greeted him back, most had dour faces. He wondered how long it had been that everyone had looked so … depleted. As he pondered the question of the ship’s or even the Fleet’s morale …
Four security officers breezed past him. All wore sidearms. Two had automatic rifles. Two carried pump-action shotguns. Ryan was no firearms expert, but he knew these guys were packing some serious heat.
Wait. Those are regular civilian suits. They’re not Security. Almost look like Secret Service. But that’s impossible. What would the president be doing all the way out here?
As he neared the mess, there rose the distant voice of a United Earth News Network anchor. While McNeil sometimes allowed news broadcasts during World Cup or big government announcements, it was rare.
Ryan entered the mess. His fingers fumbled around the edges of a tray as he attempted to grip it. He was so much more nervous than he’d expected he would be. He threw a quick glance around the room. Maybe she’s already eaten. Maybe she ate in her quarters.
No such luck. There she was in all her blonde, porcelain, Nordic beauty. Lieutenant Melinda Larson. She’d transferred to the Byzantium a little over six months ago, straight into Ryan’s division, where she’d tortured him with daily morning smiles, genuine-sounding laughter at his stupid jokes, and frequent casual arm touching and hand brushing. The flirting was so much and so frequent that after only the first week, he believed she really liked him. Despite that, when he’d finally asked her out, after that subsequent six burning months, he was stunned when she’d said yes.
With Cooper.
Lieutenant Commander Cooper Stiles was taller than Ryan, better looking than Ryan, more charming than Ryan, and, with his red division patch, was on the Command track, likely to make captain in only a few years. It made perfect sense that Melinda had stood Ryan up for Cooper.
“Yo, Moyn. Gonna eat or what?” the voice of Ryan’s direct supervisor asked from behind him.
Ryan looked back at the tall lieutenant. He was several years Ryan’s junior, but had been promoted above him a year ago. Ryan paused his music. “Sorry, sir,” he said as he picked up his tray.
“We’ll cancel the court martial for today, Ensign.” The lieutenant chuckled as he passed by. It wasn’t an easy chuckle. He sounded serious.
Ryan nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
“How’s my Support Ticket E-Mail Formatting report coming?”
Oh crap.
“You haven’t even started it, have you?”
“No, I … I have, sir.” He hadn’t. As such, Ryan really hoped the lieutenant asked for no further detail.
“Moyn, we’ve talked about this.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t get why the rest of the team always manages to submit their reports on time and you … always don’t.”
Because I don’t care? Because it’s useless paperwork that does nothing for the war effort? Because even if I got all of my reports in on time, whoever actually processes them still won’t get to them for weeks? “I’ll do better, sir.”
“Performance reviews are coming up.”
“Yes, sir.”
The lieutenant saluted. Ryan saluted back. Then, without thinking about what he was doing, he drifted toward Melinda and Cooper.
“No, you were hot,” Melinda was saying to Cooper. “The way you danced your fingers all the way down my spine? Ooh …”
“Yeah, that was pretty smooth, wasn’t it?” Cooper replied.
Melinda smiled wide. It was stunning. She glowed with the kind of beauty that knocked mere mortals on their asses. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Oh, I won’t.” Cooper’s eyes shifted up at Ryan and narrowed with annoyance. “Can we help you, Ensign?”
Ryan had been standing directly in front of them for several seconds now, his tray still dangling from his hand. He’d said nothing to avoid being rude, but now his silent hovering had induced the exact excruciating awkwardness he’d been so desperate to dodge. He removed the earbuds and dropped them into his pocket. “The arboretum last night,” he said to Melinda. “You … You never showed.”
It wasn’t the greatest date idea, he knew, but the Byzantium seriously lacked decent date spots. Not like UE space stations. Some of those places, like the Fleet’s centerpiece floating gracefully above Earth, Terra Prima, had full-on Caribbean-style all-inclusives. The Byzantium had an arboretum.
Melinda threw Cooper a seductive glance. “Yeah. Was busy riding Coop.”
“You could’ve just said no,” Ryan pointed out.
“She’s saying no now, Moyn,” Cooper updated him.
“Mel, I waited for, like, two hours,” Ryan complained.
“Sounds like a personal problem to me,” Melinda replied.
“You didn’t even answer your comm.”
“Because I was riding Coop,” Melinda said with more than a hint of exasperation. “What are you not getting?”
“I was worried. You could’ve at least—”
Melinda’s grew cold. “We’re at war, Ry.”
“I … I know we’re at war,” Ryan said.
“So, yeah, I stood you up,” Melinda said. “Just gonna have to deal.”
Cooper rose to his feet. He towered over Ryan by about three inches. “Why don’t you get some breakfast, Ensign?”
Ryan looked down at his sad empty tray. “Yes, sir.”
Cooper slapped him on the shoulder, but it was more like a punch. “As you were.”
“Oh my God, Coop! Look!” Melinda said, pointing at the viewscreen at the other end of the mess.
Ryan turned to the screen.
On it, a UENN anchor, an attractive woman in a smart suit, sat at a desk next to the superimposed picture of an Earth-like blue planet with wisps of clouds scattered across its surface. She began her solemn report. “In the biggest battle against the Scourge so far, what remains of the Theta-19 colony …”
A rapid succession of chaotic shots, captured by the sensors of the Fleet ships, flashed by, showing a brutal battle raging over the frontier settlement at the very edge of UE space. Fifty Fleet ships pitted against more than one hundred Scourge vessels. Torpedoes detonated. Fighter cannons fired. The colony launched civilian transports while its defense systems spat out missiles. The Fleet valiantly tore into the Scourge, but the Scourge absolutely annihilated the Fleet.
Whenever the Fleet took down one of the Scourge ships, any remaining debris wiped itself from existence in what looked like self-immolation. Whenever the Fleet crippled an enemy ship, she released no escape pods or SOS beacon. She would simply self-destruct. Not once in the war's history had any Fleet ship ever captured any Scourge ship or fighter.
Other than the intel gathered from footage like this and from extremely dangerous reconnaissance missions, in all the years during which this war had raged, the Fleet still knew almost nothing about them. From their construction techniques to their propulsion and weapons technology, to where their home world was located, it all remained a mystery. It was as if—beyond any other warfare consideration—what the Scourge held in the highest priority was the preservation of the Fleet’s ignorance of them.
What the Fleet knew was that the Scourge could build a dozen battle cruisers overnight that had stronger armor plating, far more powerful weapons, and were faster than anything the Fleet had devised so far. Throughout the entire war, it had taken the UE’s greatest minds, as many mining colonies as it could hastily establish, and as many fresh cadets as the Academy could recruit just to stay leagues behind the Scourge.
Each time the screen showed a passing close-up of an enemy ship’s shining bronze hull, a wave of wondrous awe washed over Ryan. With their smooth lines, graceful curves, and no discernible seams, the vessels looked like Hephaestus himself had forged them each from the purest chalcopyrite and cassiterite ores. Their golden edges twinkled in the starlight like the finest aventurine glass fashioned by master Murano artisans. Torpedoes and beams split off from their hulls like water drops from the bamboo spouts in tsukubai fountains, with no visible gunports or any other type of aperture.
The UENN anchor hadn’t lied. The loss at Theta-19 had been devastating.
While Ryan had read the official tactical and casualty reports, including that the Scourge had sent the biggest mothership any of them had ever seen into this battle, he hadn’t yet seen any footage. It was harrowing, devastating, depressing, especially because in the entire history of the war, as far as he knew, this was the first time the Scourge had ever attacked a civilian installation.
The low rumbling of his stomach tore his attention away from the news. He put his earbuds back on and shuffled to a food dispenser. As disastrous as the battle had been, he had bigger things to worry about. Things like moping over Melinda. “You could’ve just told me,” he informed the machine.
“Please repeat your order,” the dispenser responded.
“Um, huevos rancheros with, uh …” He was so distracted by the confrontation with Melinda and Cooper that he couldn’t remember the names for beverages. “With, uh, orange juice.”
“Coming right up, Ensign,” the dispenser said.
That was another thing about the Fleet that bothered Ryan: even the dispensers reminded everyone of his lack of achievement.
Steam hissed out of the dispenser’s door as it opened, and a robotic arm extended with his breakfast.
“Huevos. Nice,” a lieutenant commander said as she dumped her tray in a receptacle.
Ryan smiled politely, but said nothing. Collecting his meal, he marched straight out of the mess and into the lounge. He wanted to be as far away as he could from Melinda and Cooper, but still have an angle on the screen.
