Professionally Published Books by Christopher G. Nuttall
Angel in the Whirlwind
The Oncoming Storm
Falconez Strike
Cursed Command
Desperate Fire
The Hyperspace Trap
ELSEWHEN PRESS
The Royal Sorceress
The Royal Sorceress (Book I)
The Great Game (Book II)
Necropolis (Book III)
Sons of Liberty (Book IV)
Bookworm
Bookworm
Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling
Bookworm III: The Best Laid Plans
Bookworm IV: Full Circle
Inverse Shadows
Sufficiently Advanced Technology
Stand-Alone
A Life Less Ordinary
The Mind’s Eye
TWILIGHT TIMES BOOKS
Schooled in Magic
Schooled in Magic (Book I)
Lessons in Etiquette (Book II)
Study in Slaughter (Book III)
Work Experience (Book IV)
The School of Hard Knocks (Book V)
Love’s Labor’s Won (Book VI)
Trial By Fire (Book VII)
Wedding Hells (Book VIII)
Infinite Regress (Book IX)
Past Tense (Book X)
The Sergeant’s Apprentice (Book XI)
Fists of Justice (Book XII)
The Gordian Knot (Book XIII)
Graduation Day (Book XIV)
The Princess in the Tower (Book XV)
The Broken Throne (Book XVI)
Cursed (Book XVII)
Mirror Image (Book XVIII)
The Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire
Barbarians at the Gates (Book I)
The Shadow of Cincinnatus (Book II)
The Barbarian Bride (Book III)
HENCHMEN PRESS
First Strike
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Christopher G. Nuttall
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542019569
ISBN-10: 1542019567
Cover design by Mike Heath | Magnus Creative
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
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
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
“That’s all you could find?”
The two officers winced in unison, as if they expected to be marched to the airlock and unceremoniously thrown into space for failing to accomplish the impossible. Once, Admiral Zaskar acknowledged ruefully, they might have been right. Failure was a sign of God’s displeasure, a proof that the failure—the failed—deserved to be punished. But if that was true, and he no longer believed it was so, what did that say about the Theocracy?
He studied the manifest on the datapad for a long moment, trying to hold back a tidal wave of depression. A few crates of starship components, some so old they probably dated all the way back to the early days of spaceflight; boxes of ration bars that were older than most of the men who were going to eat them . . . It was a far cry from the supplies they needed to keep the fleet alive. The fleet—the squadron, really—was on the verge of breaking down completely. In truth, he’d started to lose faith in his ability to keep his ships and men together long enough for the enemy to give up the pursuit.
“And the asteroid base?” He looked up at the officers. “Were there any people who might be interested in joining us?”
“No, Admiral,” the older officer said. “They refused our offers.”
And we can’t make them a little more compulsory, Zaskar told himself. We’d be betrayed within the week.
He cursed his former masters under his breath. His crew was composed of the ignorant and the fanatics, neither of whom could do maintenance work worth a damn. The only thing they could do was remove a broken component and slot in a replacement, which had worked fine until their supply lines were destroyed once and for all. Even the finest engineers in the fleet couldn’t repair everything, let alone build new components from scratch. He’d had to cannibalize and abandon a dozen ships just to keep the rest of the squadron going. And he was all too aware that their time was running out.
“Go see the cleric for ritual cleansing,” he ordered shortly. “And then return to your duties.”
The two officers bowed, then retreated. Zaskar watched them go and tapped a command into his terminal. A holographic image snapped into existence, flickering slightly. Zaskar’s eyes narrowed as he studied his fleet. The flicker was tiny, but it shouldn’t have been there at all. A grim reminder of their predicament. The onboard datanet was glitched, and no one, not even their sole computer expert, had been able to fix it. His entire ship was breaking down.
He wanted to believe that the handful of light codes in the display represented a powerful force. Four superdreadnoughts, nine cruisers, twelve destroyers, and a pair of courier boats . . . On paper, it was a powerful force. But one superdreadnought could neither fire missiles nor energize a beam, and ammunition was in short supply in any case, and five of the smaller ships were on their last legs. Each failure, small in itself, led to a cascading series of failures that simply could not be fixed. Zaskar rather suspected that the Commonwealth wouldn’t need an entire superdreadnought squadron to wipe out his fleet in a stand-up battle. A single superdreadnought would be more than enough.
Which is why we are here, he thought, switching to the near-space display. They won’t come looking for us here, not until we are betrayed.
He gritted his teeth in bitter rage. The asteroid settlement was the sort of place he would have destroyed, if he’d stumbled across it before the war. Smugglers weren’t allowed to operate within the Theocracy, which hadn’t stopped a number of high-ranking personnel from trading safety and political cover for items that they simply couldn’t obtain anywhere else. And now . . . He swore, angrily. The smugglers might be their only hope, if they could find something to trade. But the squadron had very little to offer the scum of the galaxy.
Except ships, he reminded himself. And we’re not that desperate, are
