Steele's Hammer (The Glory Game #1)

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Damascus ‘Mac the Knife’ Steele, formerly a Captain in the Hereditary Republic of Caledonia Navy and now discharged on half-pay status, is asked by a beautiful woman to help liberate her father’s planetary kingdom from occupation by pirates. Steele soon discovers that things are not what they seem. The pirates are somehow involved with an interstellar conglomerate bent on dominating the newly-discovered network of wormholes between super-giant stars, and the Princess may be hiding a secret that could put Steele’s life in jeopardy. To complicate matters further, the Princess has hired a former HRCN Vice-Admiral notorious for her recklessness to lead the liberation effort. In the cold void of space, out-numbered and out-gunned, can Steele find a way to keep from being killed while he tries to figure out what’s really going on?

Excerpt:
Steele woke up to the sound of a call. “Captain here,” he said in a sleepy voice.

“Bridge, sir. Sorry to wake you, Captain, but something just happened that you should know about. Roughly thirty seconds ago, radar scans of the wormhole picked up a resonance wave. It only lasted for a second and a half, but it was quite noticeable, and we recorded it. I thought I should inform you right away, sir.”

Steele was now fully alert. A wormhole resonance wave happened when the tunnel of fast-moving ether, generated by a ship’s FTL vanes, just happened to be aimed precisely at a wormhole. No ship captain would order that to happen deliberately since it was almost impossible to aim a ship that precisely at long distances, and there wasn’t any benefit from doing so, but it could happen randomly. And if a ship was headed for this wormhole, it was quite possible that the ether tunnel had momentarily cut across the wormhole’s location. The implication was obvious. There was a ship out there that was heading in this direction. In all likelihood it was still far away, but there was no point in taking any chances.

“You did the right thing, Commander. Shut down our radars. I’ll be on the Bridge momentarily. You can bring the ship up to Condition Two. We’ve got company coming, and we’ll assume the worst until we learn otherwise.”

“Shut down radars and go to Condition Two, yes, sir.”

“Good. That’s all for now.” Steele got up and dressed. He had a hunch that this was not just some merchant ship nor was it Javelin or Minotaur. It was too early for their return. That just left Trajan’s heavy cruiser.

Keyword categories: Space fleet, galactic empire, military SF, adventure, space opera, hard science fiction