The Prisoner of Eldaron: Crimson Worlds Successors II
Read The Prisoner of Eldaron: Crimson Worlds Successors II Online
Authors: Jay Allan
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Colonization, #First Contact, #Galactic Empire, #Military, #Space Marine, #Space Opera
The Prisoner of Eldaron
Successors Book II
Jay Allan
Copyright 2015 Jay Allan Books Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Contents
A New Series from Jay Allan
Shadow of Empire
Book One of the Far Stars Series
Published by HarperCollins Voyager
Coming November 3, 2015
Available Now for Preorder at All Retailers
(All Preorders will receive a special bonus set of stories)
The first installment in the Far Star series, a swashbuckling space saga that introduces the daring pirate Blackhawk and the loyal crew of the
Wolf’s Claw
, from the author of the bestselling Crimson Worlds epic.
Smuggler and mercenary Arkarin Blackhawk and the crew of the ship
Wolf’s Claw
are freelance adventurers who live on the fringe of human society in the Far Stars, a remote cluster of inhabited worlds on the edge of known space…and the only place humanity lives outside the reach of the brutal empire that rules the rest of mankind. A veteran fighter as deadly with a blade as he is with a gun, Blackhawk is a man haunted by a dark past. Even his cynicism cannot banish the guilt and pain that threaten his very sanity.
Sent to rescue the kidnapped daughter of his longtime friend Marshal Augustin Lucerne, Blackhawk and his crew find themselves drawn into one deadly fight after another. When the
Wolf’s Claw
is damaged, they are forced to land on a remote planet ravaged by civil war. Pulled unwillingly into the conflict, they uncover disturbing information about secret imperial involvement that could upset Lucerne’s plans for the Far Stars.
For the Marshal is determined to forge a Far Stars Confederation powerful enough to eliminate all imperial influence and threats in the sector. He needs a skilled warrior like Blackhawk on his side, but the mercenary, plagued by dark memories from the past, refuses to join the cause. All too soon, though, he and his crew will have to take a stand.
Far Stars Two: Enemy in the Dark
Release Date December 1, 2015
Far Stars Three: Funeral Games
Release Date: January 19, 2016
Also By Jay Allan
The Crimson Worlds
Marines (Crimson Worlds I)
The Cost of Victory (Crimson Worlds II)
A Little Rebellion (Crimson Worlds III)
The First Imperium (Crimson Worlds IV)
The Line Must Hold (Crimson Worlds V)
To Hell’s Heart (Crimson Worlds VI)
The Shadow Legions (Crimson Worlds VII)
Even Legends Die (Crimson Worlds VIII)
The Fall (Crimson Worlds IX)
Tombstone (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)
Bitter Glory (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)
The Gates of Hell (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)
Crimson Worlds Successors
MERCS (Successors Book I)
Crimson Worlds Refugees
Into the Darkness (Refugees Book I)
Shadows of the Gods (Refugees Book II)
(September 2015)
Portal Wars
Gehenna Dawn (Portal Worlds I)
The Ten Thousand (Portal Wars II)
Homefront (Portal Wars III)
(Coming Soon)
Pendragon Chronicles
The Dragon's Banner (Pendragon Chronicles I)
The Sword of the King (Pendragon Chronicles II)
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Black Eagles’ Force Structure
HQ Staff (approx. 100 personnel)
Special Action Teams (approx. 200 personnel)
Black Regiment (approx. strength 1,800 combat, 400 close support)
White Regiment (approx. strength 1,400 combat, 350 close support)
Blue Regiment (approx. strength 1,400 combat, 350 close support)
Red Regiment (approx. strength 1,400 combat, 350 close support)
Medical Services (approx. 600 personnel)
Logistics Division – “L2” – (approx. 2,200 personnel)
Garrison Battalion (approx. strength 800)
“Nest” Operations (approx. strength 1,600)
Training Depot (approx. 400 training staff and 1,000-1,500 trainees)
Fleet Command (approx. 3,200 ship crew and 600 maintenance)
Fighter Command (approx. 320 crew and 600 maintenance personnel)
“Unassigned” (approximately 40 intelligence agents and independent operatives)
Eagle Fleet
Eagle One
Eagle Two
Eagle Three
Eagle Four
Eagle Five
Eagle Six
Eagle Seven
Eagle Eight
Eagle Nine
Eagle Ten
Chapter 1
Freighter Carlyle
Epsilon-14 System
100,000 kilometers from Atlantia Warp Gate
Earthdate: June, 2319 AD (34 Years After the Fall)
“All systems fully operational, Skipper.” Cal Durham looked across
Carlyle
’s tiny bridge toward the freighter’s captain. “We can execute the burn whenever you are ready.”
Jackson Marne nodded. “Enter the course into the navcom, Cal. Acceleration at 3g.” Three gravities of thrust was a lot for a freighter, and he knew he’d get some grumbling from the crew. But Marne was a navy vet, and he didn’t have a sympathetic ear for pointless whining. Before the Fall he’d served in Augustus Garret’s fleet, where he’d become accustomed to stretches of five or six gravities sitting at his workstation—and thirty or more crammed into the acceleration tanks. And
no one
bitched to Augustus Garret about his orders, however uncomfortable they were.
These powder puffs have never been in a tank. They have no idea what real spacers deal with
.
Marne had been hauling cargo since the days just after the Fall, almost from the moment he’d mustered out of the fleet. He’d been born on Earth, and with the home world in ruins after the final war between the Superpowers, he’d chosen Atlantia as a place to settle, a decision made on data no more comprehensive than a few photos of the planet’s magnificent rocky coasts. Atlantia had lived up to its reputation as an achingly beautiful world and a fine place to live, but Marne was a spacer at heart, and perfect weather and beautiful coastlines were pleasures relegated to brief periods between voyages. He’d gone to the naval academy at eighteen, and the merchant services almost immediately after he mustered out, which meant he had spent most of his adult life within the confines of a ship in space.
He’d been an executive officer on his first freighter, but for the last twenty-five years he’d served as a captain. The job had become routine to him, even with the increased threat of piracy in recent years. But the veteran skipper was nervous about this run.
Maybe it’s the secrecy
, he thought, trying to brush aside the tense feeling in his gut. The public manifest stated that
Carlyle
was carrying pharmaceuticals, some medicinal, some recreational—and all derived from the sea life teeming in Atlantia’s bountiful oceans. For decades, indeed, ever since the planet had been colonized, its only exports of significant value had been an assortment of products derived from the oceans that covered 90% of its surface.
But that’s not what we’re really carrying
.
Our actual cargo is far more valuable, almost beyond price
.
Carlyle
didn’t have a load of drugs or a stasis-preserved hold full of delicacies from the sea, not on this run. Her bays instead carried very special ores, raw material rich in stable trans-uranium elements, the first shipment since production on Glaciem had been restored, after a still-unexplained attack on that world that had left dozens of mine workers dead.
Cavenaugh Freight was the oldest and largest shipping firm on Atlantia, the only one even marginally comparable to the great transport combines that had developed on the wealthier worlds since the Fall. Marne hadn’t been at all surprised when the government entrusted the very special cargo to Cavenaugh, but he’d been more than a little startled when Elsworth Cavenaugh told him he and
Carlyle
had been selected for the run. Marne was a senior captain, and he’d been reasonably close to old man Cavenaugh back when the company had been smaller and its operations more informal. But the firm was much larger now than it had been years before, and the former CEO was well over one hundred years old and long retired. Elsworth IV was now in charge, and Marne had never had a close relationship with the old man’s arrogant offspring. He was among the most experienced of Cavenaugh’s captains, but he’d never played the social and political games it took to obtain high profile voyages.
Whatever the reasoning that had put him in command, Marne knew the significance of the run. Atlantia, though one of the older colonies, had never been a particularly wealthy world. Its pharmaceutical products enjoyed heavy demand, but they were expensive to manufacture, and that kept profit margins fairly low. And the planet needed many imports—electronics, software, vehicles. Its general lack of industrialization created a trade deficit that had plagued its economy since the Fall. The final war between the Superpowers had freed all the worlds of Occupied Space, but Atlantia, for all its natural beauty, had been more prosperous under Alliance control than as a truly independent planet.
But now that will all change. All because of Glaciem
.
The frigid world on the outskirts of Atlantia’s solar system had barely been explored for most of the 130 years since the first colonization party transited in to the Epsilon Indi system. Indeed, men had lived on Atlantia for half a century before they’d even bothered to name it. It was far from the warp gates and so distant from the primary there was little reason to even think about it…just another lifeless rock of little value. That was until one of the rare scientific expeditions to the frigid planet discovered something extraordinary. Glaciem was one of the eleven places in Occupied Space where STUs had been found to exist in naturally-occurring deposits.
Stable trans-uranic elements were super-heavy metals, materials ensconced on the period table north of uranium, far north in the case of the very special isotopes in
Carlyle’s
hold. Many such elements had been synthesized in laboratories over the years, but most were extremely radioactive, with half-lives too short to allow the creation of meaningful quantities. However, the ore Marne’s ship was carrying was rich with a very special element, number 164 on the periodic table, dead center in a still poorly understood phenomenon known as the second island of stability.