Straker's Breakers

  Books by David VanDyke:

  Stellar Conquest Series:

  First Conquest

  Desolator: Conquest

  Tactics of Conquest

  Conquest of Earth

  Conquest and Empire

  Books by B. V. Larson:

  The Undying Mercenaries Series:

  Steel World

  Dust World

  Tech World

  Machine World

  Death World

  Home World

  Rogue World

  Blood World

  Dark World

  Storm World

  STRAKER’S BREAKERS

  (Galactic Liberation Series #5)

  by

  David VanDyke

  and

  B. V. Larson

  Galactic Liberation Series:

  Starship Liberator

  Battleship Indomitable

  Flagship Victory

  Hive War

  Straker’s Breakers

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Iron Tower Press, Inc.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  Part 1: Expatriate

  I, Derek Straker, united the majority of humankind into the Earthan Republic and defeated the Opter-Crystal invasion. We drove the Opters back and forced their Sarmok faction to quit, leaving the moderate Miskor in charge. After we won the so-called Hive War, we wanted to see humanity free, at peace, and prosperous for the first time in centuries.

  Unfortunately, this didn’t happen.

  Also unfortunately, it took me a while to realize it.

  As your Liberator, I’d hoped things would improve dramatically. Usually it takes a generation or two before the brutality and sacrifice of war is forgotten and the natural prosperity that springs up from a new peace is threatened by the greedy, the corrupt, the tyrannical. With strong, just, and wise rulers, those forces can be kept at bay. A golden age like this can be extended for decades, perhaps centuries.

  Historically speaking, that is.

  This time, unfortunately, the enemies of freedom and justice within the Republic—represented by the Victory Party—immediately began to undermine humanity’s best interests.

  I now clearly see my mistake. It was a simple lack of ruthlessness. I didn’t go as far as my opponent. Vic, the rogue AI who’d founded the Victory Party, was clever. He created a political movement that didn’t need him to function, infusing it with every sly dirty trick and shrewd political tactic culled from history. He essentially ran a deep-search on past civilizations to gather the most effective methods of political trickery. No despotic or fanatical faction was overlooked. The Caesars and the mobs of Rome. Machiavelli and the Papal States. Robespierre and Napoleon. Bolsheviks, Nazis, and Maoists. The Ayatollahs, the Bishops, and the Cabal. The Mafia, the Bratva, and the Tongs. The Sociomorphists, the Unionists, and the Mutualists.

  Born from this muck-racking of concepts, we have the Victory Party today. The available historical examples provided them with a reference book for terror and tyranny.

  So, even without their AI mastermind, the Victory Party managed to take control of the politics of the former Hundred Worlds first, and then spread to the old Mutuality.

  I’d purged the Mutuality of its collectivists and its secret police torturers, but I’d failed to purge Atlantis, the capital system of the Hundred Worlds. There, the worst of scum-sucking oligarchs and their paid-for politicians still lurked. Their money didn’t come from real businesses or investments, but from bribery and favors to acquire lucrative government contracts funded by ever-higher taxes—taxes they themselves evaded with cronyism and bribes.

  They were leeches and parasites, and they opened the door for the thugs and fascists.

  The Victory Party Blueshirts muscled in and took over this system with ruthless efficiency. Party-controlled government exploited the middle and lower classes instead of protecting them, becoming nothing but a conduit for the transfer of wealth to the Party elite and their buddies, while the Blueshirts intimidated anyone who didn’t comply.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but John Karst, who’d betrayed me so long ago, was a rogue humanopt, one of the many Sarmok Opter agents seeded throughout human space. He’d tried to derail my liberation once before by kidnapping Carla, then he’d escaped to my enemies in the Hundred Worlds and risen rapidly in the ranks of political fixers.

  With the reunification of humanity, John Karst adopted a new identity as John Steel, a demagogue and rabble-rouser. He joined the Victory Party early and eventually came to control it with a combination of personality and biochemical influence tricks, calling himself “The Prefect.” Once the Victory Party dominated the Republic and crushed the other parties, the old title of Prime Minister became only a footnote.

  As time went on, more and more power gathered to the hands of one man: John Steel.

  My first inkling of impending doom came when, despite the apparent strength of the economy, the military budget was cut to the bone. Some downsizing was expected, but during the five years since the end of the Hive War, over eighty percent of our fleet was scrapped, mothballed, or decommissioned and sold for cents on the credit. Ground forces were disarmed and dispersed into local populations. Eventually, veterans were forced to take the Party brainlinks if they wanted their pensions and benefits. Many were warehoused in grim apartment blocks like VR-zombies to make sure they didn’t cause trouble.

  Steel also secretly revived the Human Organic Command program, encouraging the use of the Hok parasite. Those who protested too strenuously against the Party, anyone deemed troublemakers, were turned into soldier-slaves and used as the perfect enforcers.

  This fate worse than death terrified many into compliance. To others it was the perfect revenge weapon, or a way of removing an enemy. Denounce your neighbor as a traitor to the Party and they might be turned into a Hok.

  I discovered most of this later, but I’d had clues. Unfortunately, I’d been naïve, thinking that a representative government—a republic, as I’d decreed—would be self-balancing, without need of extralegal intervention from people like me.

  It turned out I was wrong.

  Fortunately, during this time I’d rebuilt the Breakers into a small but formidable regular formation. With the help of our own AI, Indy, we hacked the military supply corps. I used my waning pull to get all remaining mechsuits and pilots transferred to me, along with their support forces, instead of being disbanded. By these same methods I got a lot of surplus high-end conventional gear shipped directly to the Breakers, along with a steady flow of the best recruits, noncoms and officers from the disbanded formations.

  In fact, we’d ended up with a flood of veterans and their families moving to Culloden, the planet where we’d settled, more people than we could incorporate into the Breakers’ organizational structure. I formed two extra Breaker brigades, Second and Third, designating them as reserves for the active First Brigade.

  I collected some Hok, too. Better with us as clean, honorable warriors than as slave-thugs elsewhere.

  My sister Mara joined us on Culloden and worked tirelessly on a cure for the Hok parasite, but the Opters who’d created it and given it to the Mutuality so long ago had designed it to be irreversible. Mara was sure she’d eventually crack the problem, but progress was slow.

  Why didn’t anyo
ne in power, particularly the growing Party, stop me from gathering what I could? I suppose those in control thought ground forces were obsolete, useless when parked on a planet like Culloden, without conventional warships for support. Let Straker have his toys and live out his life in peace, far away from the centers of power. That was probably their initial idea. Later, when Karst took over as Steel, I’d already finished building my army.

  They began to worry about me at that point. After all, mechsuiter had led the Liberation and overthrown two governments. Once the Party had accomplished its initial aims and took control of the major systems, Steel and the Victory Party realized they couldn’t risk another rebellion.

  After they’d consolidated his power, they came for me and mine.

  Derek Barnes Straker, A History of Galactic Liberation

  Chapter 1

  Breakers Headquarters. Culloden star system, 2825 A.D., five years after the Hive War.

  Derek Straker paused at the edge of the rocky cliff that bounded his personal holding and gazed westward over the whitecapped ocean. The stiff onshore breeze felt clean on his face after its travel across the vast open sea. A sailboat skittered over the waves six kilometers out while seabirds, nearer, screeched and dove into the water after fish.

  “I never get tired of the cliffs,” Carla Engels said as she took his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. Her straight black hair, grown long now, flew up to tickle his nose and get in his eyes. “We should build something up here—a bungalow, a cabin. With a deck, where we can sit and eat breakfast and watch the wildlife.”

  “Something away from the kids, you mean?”

  Carla laughed. “I love them, but they’re a handful. Sometimes Johnny’s even more hardheaded than Katie.”

  “You’re surprised?”

  She laughed again. “Not considering their parents, no. Anyway, you and I don’t have enough time alone together, and we can certainly afford to build it.”

  Straker’s comlink in his pocket beeped. “So much for time alone together.” He stuck it in his ear and turned on the external speaker so Carla could hear too. “I thought I said no calls today.”

  The voice that spoke belonged to Indy, resident AI of the Independence, the Breakers’ flagship, in high orbit above. “My apologies, General Straker,”—as a purely ground-force commander, he’d given up the title of Admiral—“but this is urgent. I have twelve military-grade capital drives on my scopes, inbound for this location.”

  “ETA?” Straker asked, his tone becoming deadly serious.

  “Eight hours nominal for one pass. Twenty-six if they intend to decelerate and take up orbit around Culloden.”

  “Comms?”

  “None so far, sir,” Indy said.

  “Ominous…”

  “I thought so, too.”

  “Any IDs yet?”

  “I’ve tentatively identified them based on their emissions signatures—all Republic warships. Three dreadnoughts, three heavy cruisers, six destroyers.”

  “Pretty good guessing,” Straker said.

  “They’re not EMCON. They’re simply not talking yet. I’ve hailed them on FTL comlink. No answer.”

  “They should have at least one ship with an FTL comlink.”

  “All the more reason to wonder why they haven’t contacted us. They could have begun transmitting as soon as they transited.”

  “I agree. Combat assessment?”

  Indy paused, no doubt for rhetorical effect rather than to ponder, as the AI could think thousands of times faster than a human. “In space? I’d give them a fight, but I can’t win against these odds. Independence has no spinal weaponry. Eventually I’d have to run or die.”

  Straker did pause to think, wishing uselessly that Indy’s consciousness still occupied the old, gutted battleship Indomitable.

  Carla looked up into Straker’s face. “You think it’s our worst-case scenario?” she asked.

  Straker pressed his lips together. “I think we have to assume so. They’re not talking—that’s a bad sign.”

  “Then we have to implement the noncombatant evacuation order. Get the civilians out.”

  “Agreed. Indy, implement the NEO and the combat-ready plan.”

  “All annexes?” Indy asked.

  Straker had no choice but to activate all the annexes—the sub-plans to the standard combat operations order. Worst case meant worst case. He could always cancel if he was wrong. “All annexes. We’ll be back to base in half an hour. Straker out.”

  The aircar trip took only twenty-three minutes as Carla overrode the safeties and sent the vehicle screaming at near-Mach over the landscape. She brought it in hot onto the Breakers’ central aerospace pad and dropped Straker off.

  “I’ll see to the kids and start cracking the whip on the civilians,” she yelled before roaring away.

  Breakers and their ground vehicles scurried in all directions, exuding a sense of purposeful chaos. Pilots prepped rows of lifters and Marksman dropships, while in the distance dust showed where armored vehicles were forming into lines, heading for their loading points.

  General Johnny “Loco” Paloco was there to meet him. “The shit is hitting the fan,” he said with a smile.

  Straker began walking toward the headquarters building. “Then why do you look happy?”

  “Relieved, more like it. I knew this long break we’ve been on couldn’t last. Nothing does.”

  “You’re the most optimistic pessimist I know, Loco.”

  “I think that title goes to Gurung, actually.”

  “No argument there.” Straker had never seen the Gurkha without a broad smile, which became bigger the hotter things got. “But my point stands.”

  Loco shrugged. “I am what I am. Sucks for the civilians, but you and me weren’t made to sit in garrison and do nothing but train.”

  Straker turned to look Loco in the face. “You realize we have to either fight our own people or run, right?”

  “Are they our people?”

  “Humans, anyway.”

  “I don’t care who I fight, Derek. Figuring that stuff out is your job. As long as my kid is safe, me and my suit are at your service.”

  “Mine? Not the Republic’s?”

  Loco snorted. “The Breakers are loyal to you, Derek. To the Liberator, not to some government a hundred light-years away. Besides, the Victory Party doesn’t represent us.”

  Straker sighed. “We’re devolving into feudalism and tribalism. Loyalty to a lord, or a party, not to a constitution or nation. I’d hoped to move beyond that.”

  “You know, for a guy who reads history you sure do ignore its lessons.”

  Straker bristled. “What do you mean?”

  “People don’t fight for their governments. They fight for their buddies, for their families, maybe for the leaders they know personally.”

  “Sometimes they fight for their ideals, or a cause. For the people, or the common good. To destroy evil.”

  Loco held his hands out, palms down, one high, one low. He wiggled the bottom hand. “That stuff’s down here.” He waggled the top hand. “My stuff’s up here. Mine always beats yours.”

  “That’s…pathetic.”

  “That’s reality,” Loco replied. “You always wanted to serve something greater, something big, huge, Derek—the Hundred Worlds, the Republic, the people, the Constitution—the fucking galaxy, for Cosmos’ sake. But these guys—your guys—” he gestured around them, “—they look to you to figure that stuff out for them. Their ‘something greater’ is the Breakers. The Breakers are their family, and the Breakers are Straker’s Breakers. You’re the commander. They trust you. They trust me. They trust each other. They don’t trust them.” Loco stabbed his index finger up at the sky. “Do you?”

  “No. I don’t.” Straker’s heart was bleak as he surveyed the men and women rushing to do his will. “And yeah. I know all that, deep down. I just hoped we could’ve avoided this, could’ve been more.”

  “We are what we are,
Derek. You’re the Liberator, but we’re the Breakers. Now you gotta decide what the Breakers are gonna do.”

  “Fight or run.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think?”

  Loco chewed a lip. “I say fight. And you?”

  Straker sighed. “I’m not the reckless young man I used to be. Five years and two children…they’ve changed me. For the better, I hope. I like to think I’m wiser now.”

  “Which means…”

  “I’m tending toward running—still with Annex Zulu options, of course. Leaving the Republic entirely.”

  Loco shrugged. “It’s not my decision, though. Not really yours, either. It’s theirs.”

  Straker’s eyebrows rose. “You just got done saying how they’re all so loyal to me, and I’m the commander, but suddenly they decide on their own? Which is it?”

  Loco grabbed Straker’s lapel in his fist and shook it, stopping him in his tracks. “If we were fighting anyone but our own government, I’d say it’s your decision. But, if you do anything except comply with the civilian government, no matter how corrupt they’ve gotten, you’ve mutinied. Everyone has the right to decide that for themselves, whether to follow you into mutiny or not. You can make a lot of decisions for them, but not that one. You have to give them that choice for their own.” Loco released Straker’s tunic and patted it flat. “Just this once.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.” Straker sighed, and then stuck in his comlink. “Indy, you still listening?”

  “Of course, General.” Naturally, the AI could easily pay attention to many things at once. She probably had a permanent subroutine keeping tabs on Straker. A little creepy, but in this case, it made Indy the perfect aide-de-camp and divisional chief of staff.

  Straker eyed the big chrono on the wall critically. Twenty-six hours, best case. That wasn’t much time to prepare.

  “It’s 1120 hours now,” he said. “Pass the word for the key personnel to assemble in the Big Room at 1200.”