All That Was Lost Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright

  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

  Epilogue

  This book is dedicated to everyone who’s believed in me and has helped me push through and finish this book.

  Miz Lang, Mom, Rose, And of course, my darling wife Amanda. Without whom this would never have gotten finished, and who was able to push me through the dark times and encourage me to do this.

  Copyright © 2019 by Robert Byers Jr.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the email address below

  [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Credit:

  Beta read/edit performed by Marian Gray

  Ship image created by kalhh via pixabay.com

  Cover art created by Rose Marie Lambert

  Chapter 1

  “That’s where the cadets are trained, I take it?”

  “Yes, sir that’s the academy on Titan.” The man spoke to his superior while scrolling the images on the viewscreen, cycling the headshots of various cadets along with their records.

  They both sat on military standard issue chairs, the kind that killed your back after a few hours but were cheap enough for the requisitions office to order a thousand at a clip and not notice the credit exchange. The chairs were built for an average size man, the metal frame shone with the same brightness as the lights in the room would, had the Adviser not dimmed them.

  Fleet Admiral Turald Harcourt stood and cleared his throat, as he looked out the transpariplast viewport at the world below them, bringing the adviser’s head up from the tablet he was reading on. Both were in the adviser’s guest quarters aboard the SS Integrity, the flagship of the sixth fleet of the Terran Imperium. The Admiral knew there was currently an adviser on the flagships of the Second, Eighth and Fifth fleets as well, getting their Fleet Admiral’s opinions on the cadets that just graduated from the various academies.

  “Which of these would you say are a good fit for my fleet?” he asked, he was forced to rely on the advice he would be given since the advisers had seen the cadets in action. Some of the recruits were destined to be grunts, some showed the promise of leadership and would become ship’s captains and officers. But some of them, the very best, would become Marines.

  Adviser Bellamy gave him a weak smile, “Well, sir I would suggest these eight cadets come over right away.” He sent the recruits’ files to the Fleet Admiral’s tablet and smiled to himself, he knew they were all promising soldiers, and that at least three of them would make fine Marines. “Other than those eight any that are selected for your crew will be welcome additions after the battle at Hadrian.”

  As Admiral Harcourt briefly read the files he nodded to the adviser, “These are some good choices.” It was all he said as he turned and began walking from the room, the door sliding apart as he left the adviser sitting at his small desk looking shocked at the abrupt exit.

  Admiral Harcourt walked through the steel corridor towards the lift that would take him to his quarters. The walls were a bright white color while the tubes that provided their light were a brighter, if that was even possible, white that illuminated everything and caused headaches to the civvies and paper pushers that came aboard when they were in dock for repairs and such.

  “Captain’s Quarters.” He said tot he ships A.I., Galway. The lift rose and took him up three decks before opening to reveal two ensigns waiting for the lift, they saluted crisply as he passed them and tap his ear to activate his personal com unit. “XO.” He waited a second for the go ahead to know she was awake. “Meet me in my quarters in fifteen minutes.”

  “On my way, sir.” She responded as he walked to his room.

  On the doorframe on the outside of his room was a palm scanner, just like there was on his XO’s room and every other XO and CO room in the entire Imperium. Pressing his hand to the scanner it read his palm and the door slid open as he said, “Galway, bring up my crew roster please.”

  Here’s your roster sir, is there anything else I can help you with? The voice was surprisingly human, female and young. The Admiral had it modeled after his late daughter who was born in Galway, Ireland back on Terra nearly twenty years ago.

  “No, Galway thank you.” He looked over the roster and found quite a few spots where he could use the extra men. And some of the recruits he hadn’t been shown would be assigned to his ship, but he wanted to see to it he had his ship filled with soldiers that could be molded into fighting machines. That was what they needed on the front lines in their skirmishes with the terrorist group, the Rising Anvil, killing machines not little kid with toy guns.

  He took a seat at his desk, it was his desk from his old office back on Terra and he’d had to pay to get it moved aboard himself, it wasn’t military issue so if he wanted it he was responsible for it. The thing had been in his family for years and was made from solid oak, it had a screen built into the top and a projector so he could see the net anytime he wished. His chair was made from an advanced memory gel that formed to his body and kept him cool, he was a heater otherwise and it was one of the few reliefs he had around here.

  The walls were covered with pictures of his family, when they were together, and a bookcase with three small ship in the bottle models and a bunch of Naval Tactics books filled it. Even his bed made the room look less like a home and more like an office space, but that was in the adjoining room where his restroom was located.

  It only took ten minutes for his XO to make it to his room, she saluted and waited for him to say “at ease”, she was very by-the-book which was the complete opposite of Admiral Harcourt when it came to an informal setting such as his personal quarters.

  Once she was at ease he spoke, “Tomorrow morning we get new recruits. I need to know your take on where to put them. These eight are who Adviser Bellamy suggested for some of the good men we lost at Hadrian. The rest are just fill in the blank people.”

  “Will we be filling all eighty-three positions sir?”

  “We are taking on forty from Titan, the other forty-three will be from the academy in the colony Neo Victoria orbiting Jupiter. I’ve already moved four men from squads three and four to fill the holes in squad one.”

  The Admiral hated thinking about the men he’d lost, but it was inevitable. The battle at Hadrian cost them eighty-three souls between ground and air battles. They’d lost an entire squad of men during the first foray against the rebellion that has been gaining momentum in recent weeks.

  “Sir, I know who all was lost in the battle, are you sure we can even fill his position?”

  One nice thing about having a female XO was that she was intuitive and while she was by-the-books everywhere else here, when it
came to ensuring his mental state and constitution, she was willing to break protocol. “I don’t think we can ever fill his shoes, he was one of the best soldier in the Imperium. But I’ll be damned if I don’t at least try with these greenies. At least one of the bunch should be decent in a leadership role once they’ve got a few years under their belt.”

  She nodded and looked over the files a little more, “This could take a while sir, do you want me to get some coffee on?”

  “Sure thing, tar always works for me.”

  —

  Graduation day, the most eagerly awaited day in any cadets academy life. The day when you were finally free from the rigors of running five miles every morning, of getting woken at six in the morning and being broken down by the drill instructors whose job was to make you into a better man and soldier.

  Tiberius looked over his bunk, there was nothing out of place and he kept everything spotless.

  He looked in the mirror to make sure nothing was out of place with his uniform. Crisp gray-blue cloth covered his five-foot eight frame, with black shoulder pads and a navy-blue streak down the center of each leg. On his left breast was the patch showing Old Terra in black and white and an empty bar beneath that would be filled with the first row of combat metals he felt sure he’d be awarded in his time as an enlisted man.

  Checking his cuffs to make sure they were wrinkle free he looked then to his dress shoes. Buffed to a nice sheen he saw his reflection in the leathery blackness of them.

  Walking to his desk he picked up the hat he’d set there the previous night after checking it to ensure it looked perfect and held it at his side. No wearing their hats in doors, no sir that was something only the brass could do.

  Exiting his room, he made his way to the auditorium where he and his fellow recruits would graduate in less than an hour. The walls were the same mix of navy blue and skull white, white walls but blue trim, and nearly every corridor had the symbol of the Terran Imperium, Old Terra in black and white with the wings of a Terran eagle framing the planet. There were trophy cases in various corridors with the trophies that cadets had earned during their competitions against other academies. It fostered a competitive environment, but not a hostile one, it was the same as any school Tiberius had been to in his early years.

  Being early didn’t hurt anyone, and he would be later than some cadets, his three roommates had left nearly an hour before he did. But spending the extra time on his uniform was a wise decision when he walked through the double doors that led to the auditorium and saw everyone standing there commiserating with one another, and in his opinion his uniform was the best looking one there.

  It took them over an hour until the ceremony was finished, there were eighty soldiers graduating today, and he was one of them. Well, he and his friends were a few of the eighty, and Tiberius the rest of them were ready for some liberty and a chance to use their personal electronics and not the Terran Imperial Naval Academy issued ones that blocked all of the good stuff from them, like their contacts and personal messengers.

  He couldn’t believe the amount of graduates at the academy, two full companies of a hundred and fifty each had graduated in the last two days. But he’d had to wait for the rest of his company to be a fully enlisted member of the Terran Navy.

  It felt amazing to be graduated, but also slightly unnerving because it meant he could go to the Rim on the outlying portions of the galaxy, or stay here in the Milky Way. Graduating did come with some perks like he would get two weeks liberty once he arrived home, spending that time cooped up on a starship didn’t really make him excited for the prospect, but it was what he’d signed up for. Well, that and the bonus he got when signing up with the Terran Navy.

  He stood in his room, he and one of his bunkmates looking at their stuff thinking “how the hell did we live like this?”

  Quintus was Terran like himself, and so he understood that Tiberius was used to the comfort and elegance that was afforded to the home world natives, yet this room was practically Spartan in comparison of his room back on Old Terra.

  “Let’s go, it’ll be nice to get home for a little while.” Tiberius said as he turned to walk out the door while carrying his duffle bag full of his belongings.

  “You’re right,” Quintus picked up his pack and followed, “I think when we get home I’m going to see if my mom can make me some of her famous Cacio e Pepe for me.”

  They walked through the hallways until they reached the landing pad, it was large enough to be considered its own field. With the whole of the Titan terraformed to suit human needs they were able to build some remarkable structures here. Including the best academy, the Terran Navy has ever seen. It turns out a company every month, but this month was special because of so many graduates, and it was the tricentennial anniversary of the Imperium.

  The Integrity was in a synchronous orbit with Titan and would receive the larger transport shuttle that was taking the Integrity’s newest crewman to it. It was accompanied by the Europa, Starfall, and Infineon as they awaited their reinforcements. The shuttle held three dozen soldiers and Tiberius wasn’t sure which was better, knowing the few faces he talked to that were from his company, or if he should learn each of their names and faces to better acclimate with the ship and ensure he was a good fit for his future home.

  It was set to take off at 15:00 standard time and he was ready to be on his way home already. Together they looked back at the academy and felt a pang, not of loss or regret, but of sadness. For recruits at the Titan academy this was home for over three months, not two as in most cases because they spend more time teaching leadership and guerrilla tactics to weed out who would work better in the special forces companies.

  Seventy-eight percent of the ship Captains and Fleet Admirals graduated from this prestigious academy, as such they put an emphasis on their leadership classes and on tactical knowledge, two things that without having you would never make it as anything higher than a squadron leader.

  “I guess home isn’t just back on Terra anymore.” Tiberius said, his fire-haired friend nodded and they walked up the gangplank of the transport shuttle. It was boxy and ugly, the sort of uniformity that they came to expect from the space navy.

  Inside were all of his soon to be shipmates. And he couldn’t be less thrilled with the prospect. Catching sight of two seats next to each other they stowed their gear in the overhead racks and secured their crash webbing. It had become habit for them to check each other’s gear during their last month when they had to practice working as a fireteam and switching off who was the squad leader so they all had practice.

  Inside the ship there were only a handful of lights, red and on the dimmer side of light, that filled the area once they closed the hatch. It felt as if they were about to enter a war zone from how quiet everyone was and the red light appearing as blood covering every person’s face. The entire compartment had that blood red hue to it, and the ship had a tail gun, and two wing guns to protect them all.

  Once they lifted off it was only a short ride into orbit to dock with the Integrity, but once they set down and the docking clamps locked into place on the nose and wings of the shuttle the lights changed to a bright white that made each man squint automatically. But when the hatch made a hissing sound and the bolts holding it in place retracted with a popping sound the cadets were filled with a mixture of excitement and dread.

  As the door slid downward and a smaller gangplank extended from the end of it the recruits exhaled in relief. One of the instructors moved from his seat to stand at the head of the gangplank and called out. “When I call your name double-time it to the hangar. Henricksen…Clausen!”

  The two cadets double-timed it to where they were told. As the instructor went on calling names the cadets were moving to their spots on the hangar floor. It felt like an eternity before he called out. “Vesper…Claudianus!” and the two hastily unbuckled their webbing and grabbed their belongings so they could make it to their spots.

  Standing at th
e base of the shuttle were the other recruits, which meant they were to join them and standing just a few feet away from them was an imposing figure with a woman beside him and the man’s stare seemed to go straight through Tiberius’ soul. Around the hangar Tiberius could see smaller fighter ships being cleaned and maintained by the men and women who kept them in not just working order, but also kept upgrading them when possible. There had to be a few dozen ships there and it made him wonder just how many enlisted were aboard, a hundred? Three hundred? More?

  For a ship their size they could easily have that many if not twice it in medics, soldiers, even engineers. He only hoped he was able to make it to the position he wanted, he wanted to become an officer as soon as possible to make his family proud. But he also wanted it so he could make a difference.

  He stood with the rest of his company and waited for the instructor, one he’d never met before, but had been assigned to their ship to make their disembarkation process that much easier, to call out the last of the names. With that finished the man marched to a spot just in front of and to the left of the first line of recruits and said, “They’re all yours Fleet Admiral.”

  With a crisp salute he waited for the nod that he was allowed to leave, and then he double-timed it back up the shuttle’s gangplank while the cadets all stared slack jawed at the Fleet Admiral.

  The Fleet Admiral stepped forward and the woman with him stood just to his right flank, both of them had unreadable reactions to the cadets. He opened his mouth and began to speak, his voice boomed in the hangar even with the crew members cleaning their ships. “Alright boys and girls, now it’s time to turn you all into real soldiers. Welcome to the front line.”

  Chapter 2