Savage Stars
Savage Stars
Chaos Core Book 3
Randolph Lalonde
Contents
Books by Randolph Lalonde
Savage Stars
At the beginning of the Basic Era…
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
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Thank you
Chronology of Science Fiction & Fantasy By Randolph Lalonde
Books by Randolph Lalonde
The Chaos Core Series
Trapped
Cool Pursuit
Savage Stars
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THE SPINWARD FRINGE SERIES
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 1 and 2: Resurrection and Awakening
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 3: Triton
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 4: Frontline
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 5: Fracture
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 6: Fragments
The Expendable Few: A Spinward Fringe Novel
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 8: Renegades
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 9: Warpath
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10: Freeground
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10.5: Carnie's Tale
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 11: Revenge
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 12: Invasion
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 13: Warriors
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 14: Rebel
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 15: Pursuit
Fantasy
Highshield
Brightwill
NEM: Awakening
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HORROR
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Dark Arts
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www.RandolphLalonde.com
Savage Stars
CHAOS CORE BOOK 3
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Randolph Lalonde
Savage Stars Chaos Core Book 3 Copyright © 2018 by Randolph Lalonde
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Randolph Lalonde.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Thank you for supporting the author by purchasing this book. Every honest reader counts.
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Revision 3
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EBook ISBN: 978-1-988175-17-1
At the beginning of the Basic Era…
Spin, formerly known as Aspen while she was a slave to the inhuman Countess, is dead. In an effort to stretch the few months of life she has before a mechanism deep in her genetic code ends her existence forever, their ship medic has put Spin in a state of necro-stasis while they make the crossing to British Alliance territory.
The procedure was painful, holding her seconds past the moment of death is well beyond what nature intends. Her entire crew worries that the revival process will be much worse, since sedation is not an option.
With the exception of one short stop at Deep Shadow Station, which was largely uneventful, her crew have been isolated aboard the ship for two weeks. Some tension has developed.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Spin and her crew, Boro is in his cell aboard a private armed carrier owned by Kort, the Countess' trusted consort. Boro, a well-liked crewman, uncle and father figure to Nigel, is waking from a nightmare wherein he frantically swims from eels with long jaws. They bite onto his legs, close their mouths until their fine pointed teeth cut through his flesh and swim away with their piece. Blood in the water draws more of them.
His eyes open, ending the nightmare in time for him to face a waking terror, one of Master Kort's guards is approaching...
One
He'd seen enough. Aldo, one of the Consort's Honour Guards, was almost caught vomiting in his quarters after the most recent torture session with Master Kort's favourite prisoner, Boro Lozel. His fellow guards seemed to grow only more desensitized, but the visibly flagging will of Boro mirrored his own.
The captive was out of information, long dry as a source of insight on their quarry. Aspen, the escaped doll and her mate Larken were central to Master Kort's focus, and as he failed to locate them, he took his frustrations out on Boro.
Until three days ago, the thick-bodied, robust man was able to keep calm with the exception of the occasional attempt at lashing out, but then he reached his breaking point. It was the interrogation system Kort was using. He'd stretch Boro out, strap him down and directly interface with his brain, sending experiences into him that were from recorded torture and horrific procedures. Live vivisections, the laying and hatching of alien eggs inside the body, and any other neurally recorded horrors Master Kort could get his hands on.
Three days ago, Boro had a different reaction to seeing the chair. He didn't simply turn and try to strike one of his guards, instead he had a full flight response. He flailed, screamed, chucked a guard aside entirely, clawed, and bit to at least turn away from the machine before he was strapped in again. It was animalistic, primal.
Master Kort laughed. Watching Boro resist six guards at once until he was stunned twice was entertaining for him. Couldn't he see the desperation? The fear? The breaking of a person? A trail of urine was left on the floor from the hall to the torture device after Boro was subdued, and Aldo stood back, watching two lower ranked guards strap him in.
Boro, once strong in mind and body, knew where he was the instant he started recovering from the stun shock. The struggle that followed was so frenzied, the panic so raw that Boro threw up on himself as he fought his restraints. He was down to instinct, everything else had been worn away. One of the arms almost came loose during his desperate struggle, even Master Kort stepped back in response to the ferocity of Boro's fight to be free. If he could have chewed a limb off and limp away, he would have.
After several minutes he tired and started weeping, babbling. Master Kort smiled and left the room. "This is good, we'll leave him there until he calms down and then we'll put him in the Tranquil Pool simulation."
That was altogether evil to Aldo. The Tranquil Pool was made to be initiated wh
ile the subject was sleeping, so they began to think they were dreaming of drifting in cool water. Starting with small fish, things started to nip at them. As the simulation progressed larger and larger sea creatures came to feast until they were devoured. It was one of Master Kort's favourites. It was one of the few fictions created by an author who was known only as Mirage and the panic it instilled in the two subjects Aldo watched Kort use it on were deeply traumatizing.
Aldo could not have hated Master Kort more than he did thanks to all he'd witnessed. There were other atrocities, but nothing demonstrated the twisted cyborg's capacity for cruelty more than that device and what he did to Boro in it.
"Castillan," Aldo said to a guard as he strode into the brig. "How are those fungus farms paying off these days?"
"Oh, man, you missed out on a major investment opportunity," the guard replied, chomping his gum. "The yields are amazing, people are starving, they'll pay anything for raw food, no matter how bad it tastes."
"So, you're not going to need this gig much longer, I guess," Aldo said.
"I'm just along for the trip to the Geist System. I've gotta see what's there before I retire, you know. It's something almost no one will see, ever."
"I hear ya," Aldo replied. The Geist System, where some of the most advanced manufacturing in the galaxy used to take place. Now it was one of the most dangerous places you could go. Someone or something had taken control of the defences, which made most military organizations look like a glee club. "Master Kort wants another session with this one," he said, nodding towards Boro's cell.
"Isn't it late for that?" Castillan asked, looking at his wrist. "Oh-three-hundred, give or take."
"Do you want to talk to him? I'm sure he's interested in your opinion on his late-night urges," Aldo said.
"Opening cell Zero Three," Castillan said, punching his code in then joining Aldo at the cell door. "Heard this one gets all squirrelly when you take him near the Master's favourite toy now."
"Up!" Aldo said, kicking the bottom of Boro's bare foot. "You're not really sleeping, I can tell."
"Fucking eels man," Boro said. "Dream always ends on the bloody eels."
"C'mon, we're taking you to another site," he clapped the restraints on Boro's wrists, they turned red, indicating that they were secure. Aldo kept the control screen on his inner wrist display for easy access.
"I thought we were taking him to…" Castillan started to say, chewing his gum like an idiot, his helmet still affixed to the top of his thigh. There was a reason why he was usually stuck behind a control terminal - he wasn't exactly an intellectual juggernaut. He had money, though.
"I'm taking him where I was told to take him," Aldo said. He took one of Boro's arms and directed him out of the brig, down the main port side hallway. They all looked the same: royal blue and white walls with self-cleaning grey floors. The light seemed to come from everywhere, lending no sense of direction to the space. Aldo got around it by memorizing the hallways as shapes that fit together a certain way. He knew how to get to the tertiary launch bay extremely well.
"Man," Castillan said with a chuckle. "You are completely lost." They arrived at the double doors that would take them into a launch bay that had been patrolled, checked and sealed off for the third shift.
Aldo touched the doors, opening them with his security clearance. The pitch-black hangar beyond began to light up.
"Whoa, whoa, what are you doing?" Castillan asked.
With an alacrity that didn't seem to suit the man and a ferocity that did, Boro stepped back, put his cuffed hands over Castillan's head, wrapped his arms around his head tightly and turned around with a jerk. Castillan made a muffled, anguished sound, his hands reaching out in front of him as he panicked. With a tight grip, Boro bent and twisted the guard's neck until he stopped moving, it was only a few seconds; it was like watching a larger dog take something into its jaws and shake it to death. Boro let the corpse drop and regarded Aldo with a devil's grin, catching his breath. "Jailbreak?"
"Damn right, drag him," Aldo said, deactivating Boro's cuffs then grabbing one of his former comrades' arms and rushing into the hangar. As soon as the prisoner was inside, he locked all but the outer doors. "Get in the second ship from the left. The rear hatch is open."
"Been planning this awhile?" Boro asked.
"Three days," Aldo said, pulling his helmet off and deactivating it. Anyone with a high enough security level could see what he was seeing while it was on, not exactly ideal. With a jerk he pulled the control chip for the small, nine man ship out of the collar of his armour and woke the systems up from standby. The rear hatch was already closing. "Are you any good at flying?" Aldo said.
"I can fly this thing, sure," Boro said, joining him in the cockpit.
"Can you fly it well?" Aldo asked. "I'm not a great pilot and we're going to be staying close to the ship for a few seconds while the transit systems make an emergency wormhole. It will take a better pilot than I am."
"Shouldn't be too hard." The main hangar doors opened, revealing the warped edge of the side of a wormhole. "Never done this before, never flown this ship before," he looked at the controls and the status displays quietly.
"Guardsman Aldo Seamark," said a voice through his communicator, filling the cockpit with Supervisor Austin's bored tone. "What are you doing? We're still twenty-eight minutes away from emergence and I don't see anything in front of me saying you'll need a combat ship now or when we complete transit."
"That's Honour Guard Seamark, to you, Austin. I'm on a secret mission for our commander. You'd best not test me, or you'll have to face him."
"Yeah, I think I'm going to see what he says about this. I'm locking you down."
"Hang on," Boro said, nodding nervously and taking the controls. The ship lifted off from the deck, nudged the shuttle next to it hard, sending the smaller ship half way across the hangar. Aldo was tossed onto his butt and then clung to a seat before he was thrown against the side of the cockpit. He could hear the corpse behind them flopping around. "Oops, forgot the dampers, this would have been a short trip," he pushed three buttons. "There we go."
"Maybe it would be better if I took over?" Aldo asked, scrambling to get into the co-pilot's seat and strap in.
The nose of their shuttle was pointed towards the bow of the carrier, parallel to the wall of the wormhole. The hangar door was beginning to close. "No, no, I know what I'm doing. Just going to ease out of the bay so we're parallel to the edge of the wormhole horizon," he said, guiding the ship sideways through the hangar doorway, rotating the ship onto its side for some reason and scraping the side against the lowering door. The dorsal side of the shuttle was facing the hangar, so the door was all Aldo could see as he looked straight up. "There we go, like a pilot fish hanging around a shark," he said.
"We have an alert here," announced Supervisor Austin. "Do you have a prisoner with you? Is Castillan dead? It says here that he's dead!"
"Just getting the prisoner back to containment, he almost got away," Aldo replied, starting to feel sweat gather under his nose and palms. This was going badly, very badly.
"Turn on the shields," Boro said.
"What?" Aldo started looking at the panel in front of him and saw navigation, blinking red notifications about proximity alerts, but no shield systems.
"There," Boro pointed across Aldo's chest. "That panel there!"
He turned and saw a whole panel dedicated to shields with a friendly green query in the middle of the screen asking; ACTIVATE DEFENCE SHIELD?
He pushed it and heard a hum behind him. The prompt disappeared and was replaced with an image of their ship with a fine line around it and more, much smaller icons.
"Navigation?" Boro asked. "Can you make sure the emergency wormhole generator is working? We can't bloody well stay here."
"Right, last chance," Supervisor Austin said. "Dock with us or I'm going to have to blast you." As if to support his ultimatum, a large pair of double cannons swivelled in their direction, the
white and black painted barrels glinting in the light.
"Make sure the wormhole generator's charged!" Boro bellowed, fighting with the controls a little, setting off alarms as the shuttle strayed too close to the wall of the wormhole. He hit the accelerator a bit too hard and the ship burst ahead of the carrier. "Oh, great, we're in front of their big guns now," he said. "Wait, I know a trick," he said mostly to himself. After examining a panel to his left, he pushed a series of buttons and let go of the controls.
Aldo immediately reached over to take them but was abruptly pushed back into his seat. "What are you doing?"
"Auto pilot is watching the bloody carrier and staying in position in front of it," Boro said as he worked on the faster than light navigation panel. "If they don't blow us out of this merry existence, then we'll be fine until… there it is! You did charge the wormhole generator. You're either smart or lucky."