First Strike



  FIRST STRIKE

  THE KURGAN WAR – BOOK 1

  BY RICHARD TURNER

  Copyright © 2016 by Richard Turner.

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  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

  1

  Lieutenant Commander Moore’s commanding officer once described convoy escort duty as nothing more than herding cattle. Freighters of all shapes and sizes filled with fuel, food, and spare parts, the lifeblood of the outer colonies, followed close behind the warship. Until they became self-sufficient, which Moore knew could take decades if not centuries, the colonists and military detachments on the far-flung borders of the ever-expanding human colonization of space needed constant re-supplying.

  It was the third watch aboard the Terran Star Ship—Raleigh and Moore, as second officer, was on duty on the bridge. The Raleigh was a light cruiser armed only with guided missiles for engaging targets and anti-missile batteries for defense, not that she had fired a weapon outside of training since she had been commissioned nearly twenty years ago. Aside from the occasional skirmish with rebellious colonists or acts of piracy, the Terran Fleet had not fought a war in almost a century.

  Moore sipped his coffee as he paced around the bridge. A tall, thoughtful man, Moore had never intended to make a career out of serving in the military; however, after twelve years of service, he did not see a good reason to change professions. He turned his head and studied the tactical display on the main viewing screen. There were two dozen dots on the screen, each one indicated the exact location of the ships in the convoy trailing closely behind the Raleigh. He had made the run from the supply depot in orbit above Valerin-7 to the outer colonies four times in the past year.

  It was becoming routine and dull. He had asked for a transfer in the hopes of doing something more exciting but had been turned down. He would have to finish his two-year assignment on the Raleigh before moving on.

  On duty with him were three other people: Lieutenant Takeda, the navigator, Chief Petty Officer Murphy, the helmsman, and Petty Officer Ramirez, the ship’s communications officer. They were halfway through their watch when one of the vessels in the convoy reported that they were having engine difficulties and asked if the Raleigh could cut her speed slightly so she wouldn’t be left behind.

  Moore nodded and then asked the navigator to re-compute their arrival time at Tyr-431, a barren rocky planet used as a military surveillance station monitoring the Disputed Zone. The Terran-Kurgan War fought almost one hundred years ago had ended not in victory but in a ceasefire. Both sides still claimed vast stretches of space; however, the treaty strictly forbade either side from entering the Disputed Zone without the permission of the other side . . . and this was never forthcoming.

  Lieutenant Takeda, the navigator, looked up from his screen and said, “Sir, we can adjust our course and skirt the asteroid field on the far side of Tyr-431. We should be able to make up for any time lost due to the ailing freighter.”

  “Do it,” replied Moore. “PO Ramirez, please inform Tyr-431 that we’ll be arriving a little late and that their shuttlecraft should be prepared to receive the freighters once we are in orbit.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” replied Ramirez.

  Two hours later, Moore finished his duty report and started to get ready to hand over the bridge to the ship’s captain. He glanced down at his watch and saw that he had less than fifteen minutes left on shift. Moore was looking forward to getting a bite to eat followed by a run on a treadmill in the ship’s gym before putting his head down. On the tactical display he could see the convoy passing by the asteroid field. There were millions of rocks floating about. Some were no larger than a pebble while some nearly dwarfed the Raleigh in size. He ordered the helmsman to keep a respectful distance from the asteroids until they reached their destination in three hours’ time.

  The doors to the bridge slid open.

  Moore turned his head and expected to see the captain. Instead, Lieutenant Ford, a pale, slender blonde-haired man, who usually kept to himself, walked onto the bridge.

  Perplexed, Moore said, “Mister Ford, what are you doing here? You’re not due on watch for another eight hours.”

  Ford looked past Moore, his eyes fixed on the tactical display. “Where are we?”

  “Passing an asteroid field near Tyr-431,” answered Chief Petty Officer Murphy, the helmsman, without looking up from his station.

  “Good,” said Ford, his voice cold and emotionless.

  Something told Moore to be wary. “Mister Ford, I asked you a question. Why are you on the bridge?”

  “To do this,” replied Ford as he suddenly pulled a hidden pistol from behind his back. Before anyone could react, he fired three shots, coldly killing each man on the bridge with one shot to the head. Ford walked over to the engineer’s console, locked the doors to the bridge and quickly changed the passcode preventing anyone from overriding the computer to open the doors. Next, he moved over to the weapon’s console and with the flip of a switch, he turned off all of the ship’s self-defense systems. It was now helpless against an attacker. Ford smiled, made his way over to the communication’s console and pushed the dead body of Petty Officer Ramirez onto the floor. Using his sleeve to wipe away the blood on the workstation, Ford opened a channel.

  “It is done,” he reported.

  A second later, just over three hundred kilometers away, a dozen triangular-shaped fighters detached themselves from behind some of the larger rocks they had been using as cover in the asteroid field and raced toward the hapless convoy. As soon as they had a lock on all of their targets, the fighters let loose with a barrage of missiles. Without waiting to see the impact, the fighters quickly banked away and sped back into the asteroid field.

  Alarms rang throughout the ship. Ford shook his head. He had forgotten to disable the alarms. Not that it mattered anymore. He stood there watching the incoming missiles speed toward their intended targets. He felt nothing for the thousands of people that were about to die. He was doing his duty. Over the speakers, he could hear the ships calling, pleading for help. None would be coming today. He reached over and turned off the comms system. Ford sat down on the captain’s chair and watched as one by one the ships vanished from the tactical display. Behind him, people were frantically banging on the sealed doors demanding to be let onto the bridge. He knew that it would not take them long to find a torch to cut their way in, but they would be too late. Ford stared intently at the screen as three missiles streaked through the vacuum of space toward his ship.

  Opening his arms as if he were about to embrace a loved one
, Ford warmly smiled, closed his eyes and said, “Lord, protect me and cleanse my soul of all my sins.” A second later, the first missile struck the Raleigh, obliterating the bridge section and Ford with it. In the blink of an eye, the other two missiles hit, blasting the cruisers into a million pieces, killing the fifty men and women on board.

  The first act of a bloody war had just been played out.

  2