The Black Flag (Crimson Worlds Successors Book 3) Read online

  The Black Flag

  Successors Book III

  Jay Allan

  Copyright © 2017 Jay Allan Books

  All Rights Reserved

  Contents

  Blood on the Stars Series

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  Black Eagles’ Force Structure

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  The Crimson Worlds Series

  Blood on the Stars Series

  (Available on Kindle Unlimited)

  Duel in the Dark (Blood on the Stars I)

  Call to Arms (Blood on the Stars II)

  Ruins of Empire (Blood on the Stars III)

  Echoes of Glory (Blood on the Stars IV)

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  Black Eagles’ Force Structure

  HQ Staff (approx. 150 personnel)

  Special Action Teams (approx. 300 personnel)

  Black Regiment (approx. strength 2,200 combat, 500 close support)

  White Regiment (approx. strength 1,800 combat, 400 close support)

  Blue Regiment (approx. strength 1,800 combat, 400 close support)

  Red Regiment (approx. strength 1,800 combat, 400 close support)

  Brown Regiment (approx. strength 1,800 combat, 400 close support)

  Gray Regiment (approx. strength 1,800 combat, 400 close support)

  Medical Services (approx. 700 personnel)

  Logistics Division – “L2” – (approx. 4,200 personnel)

  Garrison Battalion (approx. strength 1,600)

  “Nest” Operations (approx. strength 2,400)

  Training Depot (approx. 900 training staff and 3,000-5,500 trainees)

  Fleet Command (approx. 4,800 ships’ crew and 600 maintenance)

  Fighter Command (approx. 320 crew and 600 maintenance personnel)

  “Unassigned” (approximately 80 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

  Eagle Eleven

  Eagle Twelve

  Eagle Thirteen

  Eagle Fourteen

  Eagle Fifteen

  Eagle Sixteen

  Chapter 1

  UFS Vincennes

  Approach Route to Planet Atlantia

  Outer System – Epsilon Indi II

  Earthdate: 2321 AD (36 Years After the Fall)

  “We’ve got multiple contacts, sir. They’re coming in from the far side of the warp gate.”

  Captain Randall Harsimus leaned forward in his chair, his eyes fixed on the display, even as his first officer made her report. “Red alert! Activate all weapons stations.” His ship and the pair of freighters she was escorting had just come through the gate. He’d known his small flotilla would be most vulnerable just as they emerged, but there was nothing to be done about that. In truth, he’d expected his final transit into the Epsilon Indi system to be a safe one. The real danger had been earlier in the journey, Rimward of Atlantia’s central location. The planet was only three jumps from Sol, and the ruins of Earth that orbited man’s home star, and as endemic as the piratical activity had become, it hadn’t reached this far into the oldest colonies.

  Until now…

  His eyes darted all over the display. No patrol ships, no revenue cutters…nothing. He couldn’t understand why the Atlantians had left one of the warp gates leading to their world totally unguarded. Atlantia wasn’t a militarily powerful planet, not particularly so, but the Atlantians had kept tight control over imports and foreign ship traffic, especially over the past few years. Ever since they discovered their own source of stable trans-uranic metals.

  “Yes, Captain. Red alert.” Commander Stinson’s hands moved smoothly across her board, hitting the levers and controls that called Vincennes’s crew to battlestations and powered up her weapons systems. Stinson was cool, calm, her combat experience clear to see. Like Harsimus, she was a veteran of both the Shadow Wars and the Second Incursion.

  Vincennes’s captain knew he was lucky to have Stinson as his first officer. He was well aware she’d been offered her own command, and by no less a personage than Augustus Garret himself, when the legendary admiral first began assembling the United Marine Fleet two years earlier, from the various forces and mothballed ships he’d been able to scrounge up. Stinson had her reasons for refusing, he suspected, though he had no idea what they were. And he had never inquired. He didn’t need to know. He was just glad to have her aboard, especially since the two of them were the only members of the crew who’d fought more than a policing action against smugglers or pirates.

  You’re facing pirates now…but not really, of course. They may attack shipping, but there is more behind this than a criminal organization. Much more, at least if these are Black Flag raiders…and what else could they be?

  Harsimus had no idea who or what was behind the Black Flag, but the fact that the new threat to human civilization had pulled an aged Augustus Garret himself from retirement told him all he needed to know. The threat was real…and probably grave.

  “All weapons stations operational and ready for action, sir.”

  “Very well.” He looked at the display. “Order the freighters to fall back.” Harsimus knew his people were in trouble. Vincennes was a heavy cruiser, but she was an old one, and small for her class, a vessel that traced its service all the way back to the Third Frontier War. That fact carried with it a certain irrational source of pride, even vague thoughts that the cruiser was a ‘lucky ship’ for having made it through more than half a century of conflict, but Harsimus tended toward the coldly logical, thinking more about outdated systems design and obsolete weapons than hopeful superstitions.

  “Freighters retreating, Captain.”

  “Very well. Maintain course and thrust…and warn those ships off, Commander.” He’d almost failed to issue that last command. The United Fleet was a new entity, light on the reams of regulations and regular process that tended to clog the pipes of organizations that existed
for too long. But every force he’d served had required an attempt at contact before engaging unknown ships.

  Even when it’s a waste of time…

  He knew the pirates, Black Flag or otherwise, had the advantage, in numbers if nothing else, and that they had no reason to run. But he was a creature of duty, and he went through the motions, even feeling an instant’s hope he was wrong, that these ships would respond, that they did not have hostile intent.

  “No response on any channel, sir,” came the entirely unsurprising response, perhaps half a minute later. Whatever infinitesimal shreds of optimism he’d had drained away.

  Harsimus angled his head, staring at the screen, watching as Vincennes’s AI updated the results with each new batch of scanning data. There were at least three enemy ships out there, possibly more. The proximity to the warp gate made scanning a difficult endeavor, and he knew damned well there could be half a dozen more raiders hiding right behind. He just couldn’t know for sure.

  It didn’t matter. Three was very likely enough. Vincennes was there to protect the pair of freighters, now hovering fifty thousand meters back, and the cruiser could handle one pirate for sure…probably even two. But three…

  He watched carefully, plotting his tactics, trying to come up with the best way to take out the enemy…or at least to buy time for the freighters to get to Atlantia, and safety. He didn’t like the self-sacrificial feel to that last thought, but duty had always come first to him, and he would do what he had to do in order to protect the ships under his charge.

  His gut told him they were Black Flag ships, almost certainly, but something still didn’t click. Atlantia was much closer to the central trade routes than the pirates usually operated, and he couldn’t completely banish the hope that this was some kind of routine outlaw force. Any pirates were dangerous, of course, but the Black Flag was terrifying on another level, the tech on its ships far in advance of that on any other rogue vessels…or Vincennes, for that matter. Fear of its forces had virtually strangled interstellar trade, even where actual attacks had not yet occurred.

  The shadowy organization had emerged from obscurity two years before, when hundreds of its modern, high tech vessels began a well-conceived and executed assault on interplanetary shipping. For six months, it had been a random onslaught, hundreds of systems subjected to unpredictable waves of predation. Only after economies were on the verge of collapse on half the worlds in Occupied Space, had the organization made its demands clear. Planets had a choice…yield, join the Black Flag and accept its suzerainty—and receive its protection—or see all commerce come to a halt.

  Harsimus still remembered his shock at how quickly many worlds surrendered. Only later did it become apparent that there was far more than had been apparent at first, that the Black Flag extended well beyond its pirate fleets, that its tentacles had already reached into the underworlds of many planets, as well as their mainstream economies…and often deep into their governments, too. Many worlds had gone over with their current regimes in place, their leaders having sold their planets’ freedom to preserve their own power and positions. Indeed, the Black Flag had been only too willing to allow cooperative governments to continue to exercise power locally, as long as they accepted occupation and gave their obedience. It was a brilliant strategy, one that allowed politicians to cement their authority and dispense with the often inconvenient democratic aspects of their planets’ governmental systems, while accepting what appeared to be light and undemanding overlordship.

  Much of the Rim had already yielded, accepting Black Flag ‘minders’ to watch over their affairs. Such worlds immediately saw the harassment vanish, and save for the economic benefits of renewed trade, life changed very little for the average citizen. There were rumors of increased levies and confiscations of property, especially from those unwise enough to speak out against their worlds’ craven surrenders, but such talk remained in the shadows. All official communications from the planets now behind the Black Curtain, as it had come to be called, told only of prosperity and contentment.

  Harsimus didn’t consider himself an expert on strategic matters, but he could see the depth of the threat, and the fact that perhaps half the inhabited worlds of Occupied Space were either openly siding with this mysterious enemy or secretly cooperating…while most of the others had been driven to the edge of ruin by what was rapidly becoming an effective galactic blockade.

  “Energy spike, Captain!”

  Harsimus turned abruptly, feeling the urge to order his ship to open fire. He knew it was the right move tactically, but one of the regulations the United Fleet did have—one that was very clear—was its ships did not fire first, not without positive ID of the target as a confirmed enemy. He understood the rationale, and the high road Augustus Garret had mandated for his new fleet, but sitting there, knowing those raiders were about to open fire on Vincennes, he cursed the restriction. His ship was in enough trouble…without letting the enemy have the first shot.

  He didn’t have long to think about it. Ten seconds later, Vincennes shook hard, a direct hit. Then, an instant later, again.

  “All gunnery stations, open fire.” Harsimus gripped the sides of his chair, leaning forward, his body tense. His mind was focused, but even so, images floated around the edges, scenes of past battles. The desperate struggles against the deadly robot ships during the Second Incursion, the almost unimaginable brutality of the fight against Gavin Stark’s Shadow Legions. Every conflict was different…and yet the same in some primal way.

  “I want full power to the guns, Commander. No…I want one hundred ten percent across the board. If these bastards want a fight, by God we’ll give them one.”

  * * * * *

  “Colonel Cain, we’re picking up energy readings from near the warp gate.” Captain Troy Grayson sat in the center of Eagle Fourteen’s bridge, his posture ramrod straight, almost a perfect example of military formality. The discipline and conduct of the Black Eagle officers and spacers was far from what he’d expected from a group of cold-blooded mercenaries.

  “Combat?” Elias Cain stood several meters from the captain’s chair, staring at the display. He was seeing the same thing as the Black Eagle captain, but he still had doubts. Still, Elias was no spacer, not really, and Grayson was a veteran of Augustus Garret’s old Alliance navy, one who’d served with the Eagles’ fleet for five years now. Elias was perfectly willing to substitute Grayson’s interpretations for his own.

  “It looks like it, Colonel. We’re too far for conclusive data, but it certainly appears that some kind of fight going on.”

  Elias could hear the tension in Grayson’s voice, carefully restrained but there nevertheless. Eagle Fourteen’s commander was a man used to making decisions…or taking orders from his superior officers. Elias Cain was neither. He wasn’t a Black Eagle, not really, and he knew he had no place in their chain of command, despite the courtesy rank his brother had granted him. But Grayson had his orders, and Elias knew they were absolutely clear. The officer was to do as Elias Cain commanded. Whatever else a Black Eagle captain might do, disobeying one of Darius Cain’s orders was almost certainly not among them.

  Elias had come to realize the Eagles were far from the undisciplined cutthroats he’d once though them to be. He’d even developed a respect for his brother’s military forces, one that had only grown when Darius had repurposed his army to fight the Black Flag, an endeavor which guaranteed few of the monetary rewards the Eagles had earned in their previous campaigns. Elias had expected most of the mercenaries to desert, to leave in search of greater rewards elsewhere…even to go over to the Black Flag, where the opportunities seemed far richer. But fewer than one percent of Darius’s soldiers had gone, and, as far as he knew, not one had been found in the ranks of the enemy.

  “Can you bring us closer without risking detection?” Eagle Fourteen was equipped with Tom Sparks’s latest stealth device, a system that was supposed to make her undetectable in most situations. Six months of practical
usage had produced promising results, but it still hadn’t been tested in a combat situation.

  “There’s no way to be sure, Colonel, but my best guess is we can remain undetected as long as we don’t power up any weapons or engage.”

  Elias nodded quietly. A moment later, he said, “Bring us in, Captain. I want to know what is going on out there.”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  Elias could tell Grayson agreed with his decision. There was a level of respect in the officer’s voice, one that had been creeping in slowly over the past few weeks. Elias’s transition to working with the Eagles had been an uncomfortable one, both for him and for Darius’s veteran warriors. He’d felt the resentment when he had first come aboard Eagle Fourteen, the hint of discomfort Grayson and his crew felt about being placed under the command of an outsider. Not to mention the vague confusion about reacting to someone they mistrusted but who was also the virtual image of their revered leader. Elias’s hair was shorter than Darius’s, and he lacked the scar his brother had on the right side of his head, but otherwise they were almost perfect copies of each other. Physically, at least.

  The two brothers hadn’t seen each other for more than a decade before the events of three years earlier had thrust them together…and that first reunion had not been a friendly one. Elias had worked up a casual hatred for Darius over the years, or at least all he’d believed his brother stood for, and he knew his twin had returned the emotion, thinking him little more than a jackbooted government enforcer, a slave to corrupt politicians who ruled callously over the population at large. They’d come a long way toward mending their relationship—and they’d agreed to join forces to fight the Black Flag—but Elias wondered if they would ever be truly close again, as they had been as children.

  “Colonel…you may want to strap in before we engage the thrusters.”

  Elias turned abruptly and moved toward the workstation a meter behind him. He shook his head, thinking to himself again that he just wasn’t a spacer at heart. He sat and pulled the black fabric harness up and over his body, snapping it into place.