Enemy of my Enemy (Horatio Logan Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  The Enemy of My Enemy

  The Horatio Logan Chronicles

  Book 1

  Chris Hechtl

  Copyright © 2016 by Chris Hechtl

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book and or portions thereof in any form.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and locations are fictional. Some may be parodies. Some characters are with permission. Any resemblance of some characters and places to others are strictly in the mind of the reader. Grin.

  Cover art by Chris Hechtl, 2016. All rights reserved. The models are owned by their respective creators and used under the usage license. Some models were made by Chris Hechtl; others were purchased on Daz3d.com or Renderosity.com.

  Proofread and copy edited by: Duncan Anderson, Wayne Gaskin, Thomas Burrows, Mike Boos, Tim Brown, Poon Yee, and Jory Gray

  Professionally copy edited by Rea Myers.

  Formatted by Goodlifeguide.com

  Dedication

  I'd like to dedicate this one to the fans again, for sticking with me. You make this universe possible. And also to the betas like Jory, Mike, Tom, Thomas, another Mike, Poon, Tim, and so on and so forth. You guys keep inspiring and egging me on. :)

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  ACT I

  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

  ACT II

  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

  ACT III

  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

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Epilogue

  Author's Afterward

  Cast

  Appendix

  Sneak Peek

  Author's note:

  The following book takes place after the short story My Darling Caroline and during the latter events of Pirates Rage. It extends through most of Retribution, and into Gathering Storm.

  Also of note, I obviously retconned a mention of the size of the Bek sublight fleet in PR after I wrote My Darling Caroline. I had originally scaled it as a modest defensive fleet, but after talking to some of the new betas, we scaled up the size of Bek's population and therefore the size of their fleet.

  Oops.

  Introduction

  The United Federation of Sapient Star Systems was founded by several species and became a beacon of civilization for four centuries. Most of the Milky Way Galaxy had been explored in that short time period. One hundred and twenty-one sapient species counted themselves as full-time members. The Federation advanced technology and the evolution of its member species. It was a golden age for sentient life in the galaxy. That was, until they made the mistake of expanding their exploration from the Milky Way to the nearest galaxy.

  The wormhole gate that was meant to open new worlds to Federation explorers quickly became a portal to hell. Xenophobic aliens poured through the gateway, invading Federation space and laying waste to everything they found.

  During the war, Horatio Logan served to the best of his ability. When his last ship, the Washington, was shot up, he was deposited in a life pod outside the Pyrax star system. While he and others like him slept, the Federation burned. Six centuries later his pod was found. It and its contents were sold in a series of unsavory deals. Chief Petty Officer Logan was awoken to a new dark time. He was considered an indentured servant of the Anvil Space Station. He became her chief engineer and labored for nearly a century to keep her population alive. He fell in love, had a child in Shelby Logan, and lost his wife when she and thousands of others were executed.

  Horatio continued to labor as the chief engineer of the space station but was deeply embittered by the situation. He raised his daughter and did his best to teach the people on the station.

  Near the turn of the last century, a stasis pod was found in the outskirts of the Senka star system by a tramp tender the Io 11 running from pirates. Within the pod was a long lost Federation admiral, Fleet Admiral John Henry Irons.

  Admiral Irons and his internal A.I. helped the mostly-female crew escape the pirates and then rebuild the ship during their journey. The admiral dealt with his time shock by setting a goal of restoring the Federation and reigniting the light of civilization in the galaxy once more.

  But forces were at work to stop him. The pirates were far more than the simple scourge they had first appeared to be. Horath, their homeworld, declared itself an Empire under the leadership of Emperor Pyotr Ramichov and launched a brutal offensive to take control of the sector, and eventually, the galaxy. The Empire had started on a path of xenophobia and initiated acts of genocide against the populations it conquered.

  Admiral Irons was dropped off in Pyrax on Anvil station where he met a near death Horatio Logan. The admiral helped to stabilize the chief and then repaired the equipment in the sickbay to allow him and others to be treated and nursed back to health. While Horatio was recovering, Admiral Irons worked with Shelby Logan and the crew of the Io 11 to make some long overdue repairs to the station's infrastructure.

  When word came of the pirate attack on Agnosta by the yacht the Carib Queen, Admiral Irons marshaled the Logans and others to do something about the threat. Together they salvaged a Federation warship, Firefly. Admiral Irons gave a field commission to Horatio Logan to the rank of Commander and Shelby Logan a field commission to Lieutenant Commander.

  With them and others at his back, they worked tirelessly to restore Firefly and along with her other long-forgotten ships. Together they were able to use the salvaged ships to fend off the initial pirate invasion. Admiral Irons then settled in to begin rebuilding the navy. His newly-reformed Federation Navy was on their way to rebuilding the Federation, only for the admiral to be driven out of the system into exile by Pyrax’s cutthroat politics, leaving Commander Horatio Logan in charge of the naval forces in the star system as senior ranking officer.

  While Admiral Irons had several harrowing adventures, he also did his best to send back information and care packages to Pyrax to keep the navy alive. Horatio did everything in his power to not only continue the navy but to do his best to expand it with the limited resources he had available.

  He dispatched forces to build a marine base on Agnosta, and sent ships to reach out to neighboring star systems to establish trade and picket forces. Admiral Irons sent word through freighters of discovery and restoration of the space city Antigua Prime in the sta
r system Antigua. A short time later, a frantic freighter came into Agnosta with a dire warning of an impending attack on that star system. Firefly rode to the rescue and was not only able to get there before the star system fell but to also crush the enemy fleet and save the day.

  Meanwhile, after helping to stave off a Xeno plague on Epsilon Triangula, Admiral Irons took his yacht, the Phoenix, to jump across the middle of the sector into an empty star system with the intent of transiting through it and others to get to an out-of-the-way star nexus called Bek. But when he exited hyperspace low on fuel, he fell right into the hands of the pirates who had been stationed there as a picket force. Unaware of whom they had captured, Irons was able to lead a successful mutiny and not only captured the ship alone but also other ships in the star system.

  Firefly received intelligence of another impeding attack so flew to the rescue of Pyrax. She passed through the star system and arrived in B101a1 where Admiral Irons had taken his small forces into the teeth of an enemy task force far larger than his own. Together they defeated the enemy task force and won the day.

  Once the battle was over, Admiral Irons took stock and split the survivors. Some of the salvaged ships with prize crews and all of the prisoners were dispatched under Firefly's watchful eye to return to Pyrax. The admiral led his remaining battered forces with the newly-captured and rechristened battle cruiser Maine to Antigua.

  The return of Firefly and the ships she had been shepherding caused a renewal of faith in the admiral and the purpose of the navy. She also carried long overdue promotions to the naval forces. Horatio was promoted to captain. He did his best to follow the admiral's plan to expand the navy once more.

  Admiral Irons' force managed to pick their way through the sector to Antigua. There he founded the new capital of the Federation. Once he had a shipyard and the beginnings of ansible communications underway, he took a side trip to a secret research facility he had used to create the nova bomb and where he had been given his rebuilt body and A.I.

  While there, he woke the sleepers that remained and tripped a Xeno virus. He was also declared president pro temp by the last president of the Federation in a message that transcended time itself.

  He returned from the facility with the group of sleepers, including two additional flag officers. Admiral White, a Neochimp, became their battle fleet commander and took the fight to the enemy in Protodon while Admiral Subert took over Pyrax from Captain Logan and set-up shop there. Captain Logan was relegated to running the shipyard itself again, much to his relief.

  Between the two shipyards, the Federation began to build the ships and weapons needed to crush the Horathian pirate threat once and for all. Horatio was tasked to oversee the construction of the fleet in Pyrax. His people started to draw the partially constructed ships they had been building for the past decade and then plugging in the components that Admiral Irons shipped in from Antigua.

  While they were doing that, pickets were established and reinforced in neighboring star systems. An expedition was planned and mounted to get into the Bek nexus through the rapids with the light cruiser Caroline.

  But the Horathians weren't sitting idle. They had begun expanding their empire, and when word of the admiral and his reborn Federation was picked up by forces en route to Protodon, they moved in with the intent to destroy the upstarts and crush the seed of free civilization once more.

  With grievous losses, Admiral White's Second Fleet fought them off and forced the remaining Horathian warships to retreat.

  As the battle for Protodon raged, Admiral Irons ordered Firefly to go to Epsilon Triangula to find out what was going on there. She was ambushed by a pirate task force led by Admiral von Berk, who then retreated when fresh Federation reinforcements started to flow into the star system. The Federation fleet did its best to stop them, but the enemy used captured and brainwashed victims to pilot their ships to get around the blockades.

  Word spread by courier vessel to the Horathian capital. A force was dispatched under Admiral De Gaulte, one of the Horathian Battle Fleet’s leading strategists. He, alongside his OPS officer, Commander Catherine Ramichov, the eldest princess of the realm, marshaled a fleet to oppose the reborn Federation in order to snuff it out before it became more of a threat.

  Admiral White's reinforced Second Fleet moved in to block Admiral von Berk, but before they could engage, the battle cruisers they'd fought earlier reappeared in the star system. The battle cruisers fought a delaying action, allowing von Berk to escape.

  As the fleet expanded, Admiral Irons pushed to promote officers to fill in the new gaps. Horatio Logan found himself promoted to commodore rank.

  A battered and humbled Firefly returned to Pyrax shortly before Caroline's triumphant return.

  Act I

  Chapter 1

  Commodore Horatio Logan admired his last stop before his departure from the capital ship line. He wasn't looking forward to getting back to his office and the mountains of paperwork waiting there … nor the scowling yeoman whose job was to keep him on task.

  He couldn't help but grin slightly like an errant boy playing hooky. Okay, maybe a few more minutes he thought as he looked over to Commander Hsu Tong. Tong was a good slip supervisor and construction manager. He had to be; otherwise, he would have never risen through the ranks to his present position, Horatio thought.

  Just like the commodore, the commander liked to get his hands dirty. One of the things that endeared him to the commodore. But he was also busy, and it seemed engaged with a thorny problem. As tempting as it was to sit in and listen or be helpful, Horatio restrained himself and instead did a bit of wool gathering and checking out the navy's newest toy.

  His visits to the slips helped his morale. It made him feel like all the paperwork he was drowning in was worth the sacrifice of his true love, getting his hands dirty. He did his best to check on the progress of each ship at least once or twice a week, schedule permitting. Lately he'd lost more and more of his time to the evil yeoman so he'd been forced to settle into checking on those almost ready to launch. He'd felt a bit guilty, but he understood he couldn't be everywhere. Besides, when he did get into the ship block construction areas he invariably forgot all sense of time. Since he had an appointment he couldn't avoid, he had to at least try to pretend to try to keep his schedule in mind.

  He smiled briefly at the thought as his eyes covetously caressed the massive ship in front of him. Here and there he could still see work crews doing a spot of last minute work, but to his eyes she was worthy of the fresh smart paint robots were touching up and the hull markings someone was working on programming into either side of the flanks just behind the bow as tradition dictated.

  The work on Argus, their first fleet carrier, was finishing up he judged—on budget and on schedule. Slightly ahead he noted with a mental check. In a day or so, she would leave her building slip for the last time and head over to the fitting slips. They only had a few pieces left in her grand blocks to connect and some trouble spots to run down. Teams of robots and suited figures could be seen working on all sides of her hull. Occasionally, he could see the spark and flare of welds going on as the tacked-together outer hull received its finished welds.

  As a fleet carrier, Argus would be the largest carrier in their inventory to date, surpassing even Spirit of America. Take that Vestri, Horatio thought with pride. Pyrax was turning into a carrier yard much to the amusement of people like himself and the annoyance of the battle fleet types that populated the rest of the navy.

  He didn't care, a ship was a ship. Every one of them was needed. It made sense to produce carriers considering the force mix they were up against. A carrier with the right compliment and armament could take down multiple ships well outside her class under the right circumstances. At the least they could push the sensor envelope of a fleet out and do attritional damage to an enemy task force or fleet.

  Their sensor coverage and flexibility allowed them to fill a lot of roles. And one carrier task force could cover
an entire star system if properly employed. The crew of Spirit of America could attest to that.

  Argus was massive—a 3-kilometer-long, 700-meter-wide, 400-meter-tall blocky rectangle with odd shapes sticking out from her keel, dorsal, and flanks. Two of the offset towers on her dorsal midships were her Flying Bridge and Primary Flight Ops. The one on her keel was her backup Prifly.

  She had multiple flight decks, one on each face to allow her compliment to come on and off quickly. The dorsal and keel decks were complimented by large flat stretches of hull to aid landing and launches. Long catapult tracks cut the deck like seams in the hull. The forward facing bays served as two of her three primary flight decks. The bow flight deck had clusters of sensors and grav emitters around it. She had one pass through flight deck in her flank; something considered a liability in her design by the ship architects since it had called for massive structural engineering to redirect forces around the open bay.

  There were also a lot of misgivings about the Broadway in the ships interior and the large elevators and maintenance bays. Having massive locks to connect Broadway to each of the bays was an engineering hassle and a half. He'd already read a few memos about the hatches getting stuck by debris. He didn't envy the crew when it came time to keep them in working order.

  On either side of the midships bay opening, her flanks were studded with hexagonal hatches for the small interceptors to launch on a moment's notice without having to go through the carrier's normal flight deck.

  Near her stern there were six nacelles with engine pods to allow her sublight propulsion. The two on the flanks were the largest, with double the number of pods as those tucked in between on her dorsal and keel stern.