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  Table of Contents

  The Belt Loop: Book Three

  PART ONE: The Planet Killer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  PART TWO: Canno Falls

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART THREE: The Domino Effect

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  PART FOUR: The Enemy Within

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  PART FIVE: Calm Before The Storm

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  PART SIX: The Great Black Fleet

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  PART SEVEN: End Of An Empire

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The Belt Loop: Book Three

  End of an Empire

  By Robert B. Jones

  © 2011 by Robert B. Jones

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be published in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Cover illustration by Christopher A. Jones

  To Shirley A. Bova

  PART ONE: The Planet Killer

  Chapter 1

  War is hell. Captain Uri Haad knew that. He was prepared for it. But, no matter how many times he reminded himself of the importance of what he was fighting for, no matter how many times he engaged his enemies, no matter how many times he came out the other end of a fierce battle unscathed, he could only wish for the war to end quickly. What had started as a fight to repel the Varson Empire from the human colonies out in the Belt Loop and the Fringes almost a dozen years ago had now become a battle of survival for the Colonial Navy.

  The Colonial Alliance of Planets was a loose collection of seven worlds centered around the home star called Brophy-21, almost 800 light-years from Earth. His port of call was Elber Prime, a thriving planet of almost two million souls, humans attracted to the pioneer spirit of expansion, attracted to the adventure of colonizing the Orion-Cygnus arm of the Milky Way. Back in 2765 a routine patrol out in the Fringes — out past the planet Bayliss — had stumbled across an alien war party and had exchanged fire with them. That initial skirmish escalated over the next few months into a full-scale shooting war that lasted almost two years. The Varson War was finally settled after the Colonial Navy destroyed three Varson planets with nuclear weapons and an unstable truce was reached. The Varson were restricted to their core worlds and the Navy patrolled the Fringes to make sure they did not expand into human space. Superior firepower and advanced technology made that blockade possible and for ten years the truce held.

  But the seeds of discontent were nourished back on the Varson home world of Canuure and recently a madman named Bale Phatie had whipped up the defeated Varson Empire into a new aggressive stance, had launched a new attack on the humans, had captured a peaceful trade mission heading for Canuure, had infiltrated the colonies with all sorts of spies and murderers, and had gone completely over the edge with his latest rounds of attacks on Colonial Navy ships.

  While the Third Fleet of Elber Prime was out in the Belt Loop dealing with a menacing species of spacefaring worms — the Kreet — Bale Phatie had set his new plans into motion and after the blockade of the Varson Empire had been reduced to just a few picket ships out in the Fringes, the Malguurian madman struck. The body count was on the rise: 136 ships destroyed, over 42,000 good men and women of the Colonial Navy dead. Bayliss, a Colonial Navy stronghold orbiting Brophy-21, was under siege and the Varson Empire routinely engaged the Second and Third Fleets of Elber Prime with hit-and-run skirmishes and suicide missions, all designed to keep the Fleets bottled up around Bayliss and out of the Varson core systems. Using stolen Colonial Navy technology and relying on information supplied to the aggressors via planted spies in the colonies, the tide of battle had suddenly shifted the colonial strategy from one of repelling the attackers to one of desperately trying to stay alive.

  Uri Haad was a seasoned veteran of the Colonial Navy. He was in his early forties, tall and trim, and his sturdy face and hard eyes surveyed the bridge of his new destroyer, the Hudson River, a 635,000 metric ton behemoth he had sailed out of Bayliss only two months before. Haad wore his hair military-short, his uniform with pride, and his facial scars with dignity. He had three angry red scars tracing straight lines from his left cheek to a spot just above his left ear, souvenirs from his first encounters with the Varson Empire some ten years before.

  His last command, as captain of the Corpus Christi, a Corvette-class fast-attack boat, had ended with his ship being put into drydock for repairs after taking a beating from the Kreet out in the Belt Loop. From what he had been able to find out, the Christi would sail again, with his former XO, Commander Davi Yorn, at her helm. But that was something for another time, something to chat about in his ready room, something to speculate about when this current danger was past.

  Right now, he had seven Varson ships unfolding a million-plus kilometers off his forward starboard quarter.

  The latest Varson tactic involved sending out a wolfpack of ships in an effort to jump a lone Colonial Navy ship and blast it to space dust. The new Varson ships were fast, had sophisticated weaponry and well-trained officers. A far cry from the first war.

  “Paint them up, Mister Washoe, let’s see what they look like,” Haad said over his shoulder.

  Lieutenant Cain Washoe served as the Science Officer aboard the Hudson River and he’d served with Captain Haad through many campaigns. An older officer, Washoe was in the final stages of a not-so-illustrious career in the Navy. What had started out to be a upwardly mobile stint in the service had years before crashed and burned in a promotion-wrecking bout with narcotics. Somewhere along the way he had found the cure for his addictions and now stood at the bottom of the heap in the age-to-rank ratio.

  “Aye, aye, captain. Sensors active,” he said.

  “What have you got for me, Mister Hansen?” Haad wanted to know. He was addressing his Communications Officer Lieutenant Maxine Hansen. She had been with Haad on the bridge deck of the Corpus Christi and proved herself to be brave and fearless in the confrontation with the Kreet. Commander Yorn had recommended her for an assignment to the War College on Bayliss but that bit of schooling would have to wait until the hostilities with the Varson Empire ceased.

  Max’s son Harold was also on Bayliss safely tucked away at the Hayes Milita
ry Prep Academy. The twelve-year-old Har was also aboard the Christi during the Kreet melee but he was not an official member of the crew. He had been a stowaway.

  “No transponder codes, sir. It could be ships from the Second, maintaining radio and EMS silence upon unfolding, per standard operating procedures,” Max said.

  “Mister Gant, do you have a reading on distance?”

  “I make them out to be a million four, maybe five. Hard to pick them out of the background disturbance, sir,” Nono — short for Noname — Gant said. Lieutenant Commander Gant was an unrestricted line officer approaching the ripe old age of thirty-five. He had been with Captain Haad for many years now and controlled the helm with practiced agility, could compute courses and distances in his head and was known for his no-nonsense approach to his job.

  Captain Haad paced a few steps toward the forward blister, a wrap-around viewing screen on the forward bulkhead of the bridge. “Put some distance between us, Mister Gant, until we know for sure who these jokers are.”

  “Aye, sir,” Gant said, running his hand down the control stack on his console. “Thrusters on-line. Spinning up AM engines.”

  Haad nodded. Gant was using exhaust gas thrusters to ease away from the intruders, a gentle nudge to get the 635,000-ton ship moving away without leaving an hydrogen-burn trail from the more powerful antimatter engines. With any luck at all the Hudson River could slide another few hundred thousand kilometers away from the approaching ships without being detected. It may not seem like a lot, Haad thought, but an extra second, 300,000 kilometers, could mean the difference in a battle when the energy weapons were coming in at almost the speed of light.

  “How’s our weapons array, Mister Diggs?” Haad asked, looking over his right shoulder at his CIC — Combat Information Center — alcove. Lieutenant Commander Blaine Diggs was the WCO — Weapons Control Officer — for the Hudson River, a job that he’d had on the Christi. He was in the prime of his career at thirty-nine and if all went well, the next time the Hudson made port, Diggs was in line for advancement to Commander.

  “Sir, we’re ready on all decks, both flanks, forward-looking heliospasms on-line, topside and belly magazines armed and ready,” Diggs reported.

  Diggs had three other crewmen to supervise in his new role as a destroyer WCO. Under his watchful eye the three lieutenants at the weapons console monitored the ship’s heliospasm torpedoes, zanith-laser guns and static grenades. Unlike the Christi the Hudson River had magazines available on her topsail and her keel in addition to forward and aft energy guns.

  “Mister Hansen, anything?” Haad said.

  “Negative, captain.”

  “Sir, fold dampening subsiding. . . I’m looking at signatures from Varson ships,” Cain Washoe said.

  “Mister Hansen, who do we have nearby? Within hailing distance?” Haad wanted to see if he was alone out here or if there was any help close by in the form of other Colonial Navy vessels.

  “Captain, we’ve got five ships at seventeen million klicks, Captain Fuller’s team.”

  “Roger that. Mister Gant, standby for orders. Plot in a course to rendezvous with Fuller’s Lake Superior battle group. Max, send them a coded message, tight beam, and let them know we’re on the way. Once the Varson captains see our plume, they’re sure to follow. Time for a little trap of our own. What’s our delay time?”

  “At this distance, about five six seconds, sir,” Hansen said.

  “Fine. Get on the horn and let them know we’re coming. Mister Gant, await coordinates.”

  Gant and Hansen acknowledged their orders. Hansen sent the helm the LKP — Last Known Position — for the Lake Superior. Doing battle in open space required plenty of three-dimensional thinking and situational awareness. Ships materializing from folded space without warning, odd formations and attack planes, disruptive background noises from nearby stars, and less-than-reliable ship detection tools all frustrated any attempt to be on the leading edge of potential battle fronts. It was a cat-and-mouse game that Haad was very good at and his crew respected that. After all, they were still alive, weren’t they?

  “Captain, we’ve been spotted,” Bill Mason said. Commander Mason was the Executive Officer on the Hudson River and his new rank had been hastily forwarded to the ship with the last courier boat from Bayliss. Mason was an unrestricted line officer in his early forties and was a seasoned veteran of the Belt Loop and the Fringes. He had served as the Red Watch team leader on the Christi and was promoted to the rank of full commander so that he could serve as the “Number One” for Captain Haad. Haad’s last XO had been Commander Davi Yorn, who now convalesced at the Weyring Navy Base Hospital under the watchful eyes of Lieutenant Commander Milli Gertz and a gaggle of dumbfounded doctors still pondering Gertz’s “miraculous” healing hand.

  “Go to general quarters, Mister Mason. Helm, light up the bottle; Higgs at one hundred, Mister Washoe.” Haad barked out orders and never took his eyes from the forward blister.

  “Helm, aye,” Nono Gant said. His hands slid down and across his control stack and he punched in course codes. “Coming to our left zero four three degrees bow angle at fourteen down.”

  The bridge was suffused with yellow warning lights and a low wail from the alert was broadcast throughout the entire ship. “General quarters, captain,” Mason said.

  “They’re painting our tail with radar and LF sensors,” Washoe said, referring to the life-form scanners that picked up alpha waves.

  “Get us out of here, Mister Gant,” Haad commanded, “and wiggle our ass at them. Mister Diggs, let’s leave a few static grenades in our wake, something to slow them down a bit.”

  “Grenades, aye, captain,” Blaine Diggs said, activating panels on his console. “Sharks in the water.”

  And with that the Hudson River’s huge magnetic coils started firing hydrogen antimatter into the protonated hydrogen fuel bottle and the huge ship was launched away from the incoming Varson battle group, launched toward a rendezvous with Captain Fuller and the Lake Superior.

  Haad calculated the trip though unfolded space would take roughly ninety minutes.

  Chapter 2

  As far as K-class stars went, Mickens-13 was nothing remarkable. K-class stars made up roughly twelve percent of the stars in the Milky Way. With an average mean temperature hovering right around 5,200 Kelvin it was on the hot side of the temperature range and its yellow-orange glow was unremarkable in the pageant of star systems inhabited by the human race. However, Mickens-13 was blessed with thirteen planets: six gas giants and seven small rocky orbs, the largest of which was called Canno, named after the first person to set foot on its sandy landscape. Canno was slightly larger than Mother Earth and swept out an almost perfect circular orbit around Mickens-13 in 412 days of 21.77 Earth-Standard hours. Four harsh planets were inbound of Canno and eight were strung along the plane of the ecliptic at predictable intervals. The system was aligned almost perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy and if one was to draw a line from Earth to the B-class super-giant Rigel it would intersect Mickens-13 at a point 713 light-years away.

  Canno was also graced with three satellites: Horace, Holden and Luna-II, commonly referred to by the locals as Huey, Dewey and Louie. It was on Luna-II, a gray amalgam of basaltic rock and lava flows from its fiery birth, the human presence was manifested separate and apart from the three million souls on Canno. Peppered with hundreds of thousands of impact craters, Luna-II orbited Canno at only 321,000 kilometers and the visible escarpmemts, rilles, trenches and gouges painted a moonscape reminiscent of the original Luna as seen from Earth.

  It was in the shadow of one of the largest escarpments on the southern Mare Collosum that the Colonial Navy had its shipyards and erection facilities.

  Up from the Yellin Navy Base on Canno, Rear Admiral Josep Teals (upper half) was tasked with trying to resurrect as many ships from the almost defunct Colonial Navy’s First Fleet. The First had seen plenty of action during the last Varson conflict, but at that stage, the ships
had already reached maturity, some even reaching past old age and the inevitable retirement-home plateau.

  It took him almost two months to get the ships ready according to the new specs requested by his boss Admiral Geoff. While he understood the need to retrofit the ships of the First, he had no idea what the ceramic coating would do to their effectiveness in battle. The coating, only a few centimeters thick, added enormous tonnage to the decrepit ships, requiring extra fuel just to get them underway, and extra fuel should they have to be towed. Either way, Teals thought the request a bit odd. But his old-school Navy instincts told him to just follow the damn orders and try to get as many ships back into line service; the questions could be asked and answered at another time.

  Later in this day he would give the sailing orders for his reconstituted ships, all thirty-seven of them. Not much of a Fleet, he mused.

  But, in wartime, one did as one was told.

  * * *

  Speaking of doing what one was told, Harold Hansen — Har, for short — was not used to following instructions. After two months of intense discipline, two months of pure hell for him, sixty days of toeing the line, he still had a problem. After testing out in vocabulary skills, reading comprehension, mathematical analysis and spatial relations, he found himself in both an academic setting and a disciplinary one. The former he could keep up with, the latter not so much. Oh, he had avoided any more trips to Commander Holt’s office but his dealings with Midshipman Horace Taft — his Officer of the Deck for the second floor of his dormitory building, his dorm monitor — left much to be desired. For some reason the senior cadet was making his life miserable and Har could not figure out exactly why Taft had such a hard-on for him.

  Every day before classes, Taft would pull a spot inspection of room B-212, always finding some small infraction worthy enough of an extra head-cleaning detail or a blanket party, but nothing that would warrant placing him on report. Just nit-picking stuff: bed not made correctly, shoes not shined enough, hangers not arranged correctly in his cupboard, a stray hair on his soap. All designed to make life at the Hayes Military Prep School a living hell for Har.