The Last Battlefield (Starship Gilead Book 3)

  CONTENTS

  Also in Series:

  Overture

  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

  Coda

  Thank you for reading The Last Battlefield

  Want More Starship Giliead for Free?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Grand Patrons

  PRODIGAL

  JOHN GRAVES

  ©2022 LITERARY OUTLAWS, LLC

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  ALSO IN SERIES:

  [1] RELICS OF UTOPIA

  [2] PRODIGAL

  [3] THE LAST BATTLEFIELD

  For James and Nell Henry

  OVERTURE

  Long ago and far away…

  The starship Godspeed was adrift in space. Her warp engines were offline, her shields had failed, and life support was operating at less than ten percent. She was five days out from Earth when trouble found them. They were fleeing Emperor Kokabiel’s latest pogrom, a ship of refugees searching for a place where they could live and worship in peace, but the emperor’s reach was long. They had arrived at the Corinth Beta colony in Sector Nine hoping they had outrun the Brethren stormtroopers that served the emperor with such fanatical zeal. Unfortunately, they were too late.

  Nothing remained of Corinth Beta except smoldering ruins. The Brethren had arrived in force and then nuked the settlement from space. Then they cloaked their murderous fleet and lay in wait. Pilgrims had been making their way to Corinth for more than a year, ever since Kokabiel enacted his executive order to arrest all persons of faith living within the boundaries of the Planetary Union. It didn’t matter what faith a person proclaimed—Kokabiel was a jealous god, and he tolerated no infidelity.

  Brethren ships decloaked as soon as the Godspeed arrived at Corinth. The pilgrim ship was disabled almost at once—she was no warship—and now her terrified passengers awaited their fate.

  “If it’s God’s will that we die here,” said Brother Oral Mizelle, the leader of the pilgrims, “then let us go to glory with our heads held high. Will you join me in a hymn?”

  On the bridge of the Godspeed, the pilgrims all joined hands. Oral closed his eyes and began to sing.

  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…”

  The starship trembled as a torpedo exploded against her hull.

  “I once was lost, but now I’m found…”

  A tractor beam locked onto the Godspeed. Oral opened his eyes and stole a glance at the view screen. A gigantic starship had arrived on the scene and was laying waste to the Brethren fleet. Oral recognized the vessel at once—it was the flagship of the Union fleet.

  The Jerusalem.

  “I was blind,” Oral sang, “but now I see.”

  The arrival of the legendary starship momentarily filled Oral and the rest of the Godspeed’s bridge crew with awe. Captain Lighttoller was the greatest hero the Union had ever known, but his presence here wasn’t necessarily a good thing for the pilgrims. Had he come to bring them back to Earth to spend the rest of their lives in an internment camp?

  Oral squeezed shut his eyes and tried to find the words to the ancient hymn. “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun…”

  The ship’s computer chimed, indicating an incoming transmission. Oral sighed, knowing full well that God wanted his people to meet their fate with their shoulders squared and their heads held high.

  “On screen,” he said.

  A handsome face appeared on the view screen—a face Oral recognized from the news.

  “This is Captain William Lighttoller of the starship Jerusalem,” said the man. “It looks like you folks could use a hand.”

  Oral eyed Lighttoller warily. “And what do you mean to do with us?”

  The captain smiled his charming smile. “My orders are to bring in any pilgrims I find for interrogation,” he said. “But as far as I’m concerned, your ship was destroyed by the Brethren.”

  “Sir?”

  “There’s a planet in the outer sectors,” Lighttoller continued, “a world where you can be safe and Kokabiel will never be able to find you. I’ve taken several other ships of refugees there, and I would be honored to escort you there as well.”

  Oral turned to face his people. They looked at him with a mixture of fear and hope in their eyes. He understood fundamentally that the decision was his to make.

  “How do I know I can trust you!” Oral demanded.

  Lighttoller just smiled. “You have to have faith.”

  Oral nodded, accepting that this was God’s will. “Very well then, Captain, our future is in your hands.”

  1

  It was a new year, and the air on Ansalon-Prime was crisp and cold. This planet, an agrarian world that had been a part of Gilead’s barony since time immemorial, orbited its red dwarf star every three-hundred and seventy-nine days, but her people still followed the calendar of ancient Earth they had inherited from their ancestors. That left two weeks every cycle that didn’t fit in either year—the one that was waning or the one that was waxing. Two weeks where time didn’t matter, didn’t even exist according to the calendar, but the work went on as it always had and as it always would until the great creator of the universe decided to end the game. Winter was a time for rest, when the fields were covered over with a blanket of snow and the cows and pigs were sheltered in the barn, bedded down with straw and dreaming of green grass on the hill. No one in the village of Joad expected the arrival of the rangers of Gilead. Warriors in black armor stormed through the town, dragging men and boys out of their houses in the middle of the night. A few old farmers tried to put up a fight, but they ended up dead with smoldering disruptor holes cratering their chests. The womenfolk wept and pleaded for their men, but it was no use. Jeremy Ma
nthus, captain of the starship Gilead, was known for many things, but his mercifulness was not one of them.

  Jeremy stood before the crowd, a man in black armor with a great blue eagle painted across the breastplate. He wore a disruptor on his hip like a gunslinger of old and a black cape that fluttered in the cold breeze like something out of a bard’s tale. He liked the cape, thought it gave him a touch of dignity, and he would have put a hole in anyone that said otherwise.

  And, of course, no one was foolish enough to say otherwise.

  Jeremy removed his helmet and tucked it under his left arm. Before him stood half a hundred young men of Joad. They were wiry lads, every one of them—farm boys that never seemed to put on fat no matter how much of Ma’s biscuits and gravy they wolfed down between morning and evening chores. They were strong lads, no doubt—farm work required strength—but the lot of them together were no smarter than a pen of hogs. Jeremy could use their muscles and their thick heads in his army. The thicker the better as far as he was concerned. He didn’t want soldiers who would question his orders. That was his father’s idea of leadership—allowing his people to offer their say about how a particular thing should or should not be done. And look where that got him. Windham’s bones were mouldering in Gilead’s crypts as the great old ship orbited high above them. Meanwhile, Jeremy was done here, on a snowy field in the village of Joad, with a bunch of shivering farm boys staring at him like he was a god. Their parents stood a few meters off, terrified to come in closer, and between them was a wall of rangers with disruptor rifles held at the ready.

  “My name is Captain Jeremy Manthus of the starship Gilead,” he said. “I rule this barony, and therefore I rule Ansalon and every village on this backwater. Including this one. What do you people even call this place, Shitville? Sleezeburg? Well, it doesn’t matter anymore because the lot of you are the lucky ones. You’re not going to have spend the rest of your lives shoveling horse manure or whatever your great grandaddies passed down to you. Instead, you’re going to be rangers of Gilead. You’ll have the best equipment in the barony, the best training, and a warm, dry place to sleep at night. That sounds good, doesn’t it?”

  The young men, hardly more than boys, all looked at one another with terror in their eyes. Surely they had heard the stories by now—tales of Captain Manthus and his rangers drafting young men into his army and forcing them to leave their homes, never to return. Jeremy hated to do it, but after all the losses during the Battle of Jericho he had no choice. That was seven months ago, and still his barracks were almost empty. He couldn’t allow that to continue. His father had lost this barony because he was weak, and the only way Jeremy was going to hang onto these reclaimed worlds was if he remained strong. He couldn’t do that without his rangers, and if he couldn’t breed them and he couldn’t buy them, he was forced to draft them. And so here he was in Ingallside or Joad or whatever this town was called. He had been through scores just like this, and there were many other towns on many other worlds he had yet to pillage for his new army. The throne of Gilead would never fall from his hands; that was his vow, and he meant to keep it.

  “When I ask you a question, you’ll answer me quickly and clearly or I’ll make you regret it. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sai,” shouted the terrified young men in their night clothes. They trembled in the darkness as the constellations wheeled above them.

  “In time you will be permitted to contact your families,” said Jeremy. “But only once your training has been completed and you’ve proved yourselves loyal to the throne of Gilead.”

  “Captain Manthus!”

  Jeremy paused, annoyed at the interruption, and saw an old man waving at him from the crowd of shocked families. He was wearing a blue bathrobe and his white hair was sticking up like a fool. Whatever was on his mind, he must have thought it terribly important to interrupt the most powerful man in this sector. A cruel smile spread on Jeremy’s lips.

  “What do want, old man?”

  “Sai, please, I am the mayor of Joad.”

  “So what?”

  “Sai, it’s been a hard year on Ansalon. It started raining in the spring and never let up. Please, sai, don’t take our young men now. If we all work together we might just make it through the winter. But if all our boys are gone…”

  His words trailed off, and everyone was left to imagine what would happen if these lads were stolen away to Gilead. Jeremy felt his temper rise. “Let him through,” he said.

  The rangers who were preventing the parents from sweeping up their sons parted, allowing the elderly mayor to approach. He did so cautiously, the rubber boots on his feet crunching the light snow on the ground.

  “Come on,” said Jeremy. “I don’t have all night.”

  They stood face to face, the old man with his slumped shoulders and thin white hair, and the captain of Gilead, standing tall in his gleaming black armor.

  “Sai,” said the old man, “please. Please don’t do this. We need our boys in order to—”

  Jeremy punched the mayor of Joad in the guts, and the old man folded in half, gasping for air as he fell to the snow.

  “You need to shut your mouth and obey when I give you an order. These boys belong to me now. This town, this planet, this barony—all of it belongs to me. Do you understand what I’m saying, old man?”

  “Y-yes, s-sai,” gasped the mayor.

  Jeremy turned to his new recruits, their eyes wide with horror and their lips blue from standing out in the cold for so long. He loved it when the people of these backwaters challenged him. It made it all the easier for their sons to fall into line if he could start their enlistment with a display of what happens when you challenge the captain of starship Gilead.

  “If the rest of you have no further objections,” he said, “then I’ll show you all to your new home.”

  “Captain, our sensors are picking up a distress call from the cargo ship Luskan.”

  Rowan Leigh sat in the captain’s chair of the starship Agincourt, his face hardened with a scowl that had not moved these past seven months. He had stopped referring to himself as acting captain five months ago, and no one seemed to notice. The Agincourt was his ship now, and his people would follow him wherever he led them. He wondered if this was how the captains of the outer baronies felt in the days after the fall of the Planetary Union while he listened intently as Sharon Gilbert, his communications officer, expanded on her report.

  “She’s taking heavy fire from a pirate vessel and is requesting assistance.”

  “Calculate our arrival time.”

  “Three minutes and nineteen seconds.”

  “Let’s go.” Rowan turned to Mikhail Heiser, his tactical officer.

  There had been nothing but trouble since the Affiliation’s third fleet was destroyed last year at the Battle of Trappist. The Agincourt managed to crawl away from that slaughter, the lone survivor left to tell the tale as the bard, Jon Galen, liked to describe it. Her captain and first officer were killed, leaving Rowan in command. He fled all the way to the outer baronies in search of Windham Manthus and the legendary starship Gilead, and had even helped Windham reclaim his barony from the treacherous Anton Gaines, but it had all been for nothing. Windham’s own son had murdered him in cold blood and had since turned Gilead into a tyrant’s galley, and the Agincourt had taken on a number of Gileadean ex-patriots, including Adrienne Manthus, the captain’s daughter, and Hollis Garner, general of the rangers of Gilead. These outsiders had integrated into Rowan’s crew, though they still held to their own ranks and customs.

  Hardly a day went by when Rowan didn’t consider heading back to Affiliation space. He had received a number of transmissions from his government requesting all remaining Affiliation starships to converge on Ross 128 b, where the high command was preparing for their last stand against Babylon. Emperor Kokabiel had been busy in the year since he emerged from that wormhole near Vanguard Station. He had conquered the Barony of Gilead and acquired the Barony of Jericho through an
alliance, though he had lost them both thanks in some small part to the Agincourt. Then Kokabiel set his sights on the Affiliation, conquering her sector by sector and destroying whatever resistance stood in his way. It was only a matter of time, Rowan knew, before the emperor reclaimed his throne in the Peace Palace on Earth.

  There had been some hope of defeating Babylon, a tiny spark in the great blackness of space, but that spark was quenched when Jeremy Manthus murdered his father. So the Agincourt had spent these months skulking in the dark, chasing legends in the hope they could find something—anything—to level the playing field against Babylon and her armada of Brethren warships. They were in the barony of Jericho now, cruising under cloak for fear of revealing their position, when their long-range sensors indicated disruptor fire only a few light-years away. The Agincourt’s crew had been greatly diminished since the defeat of the Affiliation’s Third Fleet at the Battle of Trappist, so General Garner and the rest of his men were serving in various roles on the Marathon-class vessel.

  “Time until arrival?” Rowan asked.

  “Five seconds,” said Mikhail.

  The Agincourt dropped her cloak as she emerged from warp speed. Before them, Rowan saw the wreck of the Luskan, listing in space and seemingly held up by a tractor beam. At the other end of the beam was a red-painted starship with a grinning white skull painted on her bow.

  “Identify that ship,” Rowan demanded.

  “She’s the Blackburne, a kestrel-class starship and known affiliate of the Saladin.”