Friendly Fire Read online

  FRIENDLY FIRE

  AFV Defender, Book 1

  Michelle L. Levigne

  www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com

  Ye Olde Dragon Books

  P.O. Box 30802

  Middleburg Hts., OH 44130

  www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com

  [email protected]

  Copyright © by Michelle L. Levigne

  ISBN 13: 978-1-952345-09-8

  Published in the United States of America

  Ebook Publication Date: April 1, 2020

  Cover Art Copyright by Ye Olde Dragon Books 2020

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information retrieval and storage system without permission of the publisher.

  Ebooks, audiobooks, and print books are not transferrable, either in whole or in part. As the purchaser or otherwise lawful recipient of this book, you have the right to enjoy the novel on your own computer or other device. Further distribution, copying, sharing, gifting or uploading is illegal and violates United States Copyright laws.

  Pirating of books is illegal. Criminal Copyright Infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, may be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author's imagination, or are used in a fictitious situation. Any resemblances to actual events, locations, organizations, incidents or persons – living or dead – are coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  Contents

  FRIENDLY FIRE

  Explanations, Apologies, Thanks, Excuses, Whatever …

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  About the Author

  Explanations, Apologies, Thanks, Excuses, Whatever …

  Every story has its start.

  Mine, at least when it comes to seeing my mental meanderings in print, came through fandom.

  Specifically, Trek fandom.

  If you’ve read any meet-the-author pieces when I’ve participated in a book event, you’ve probably read that I got my start writing fan fiction. It’s a great place to learn how to put stories together, playing in someone else’s playground, using their props and scenery and characters.

  The crew of Alliance Fleet Vessel Defender have their genesis in the adventures of a Trek club I belonged to far longer ago than I can comfortably admit. Some of this misfit crew have a faint resemblance to people I knew when I belonged to the USS Defiance, NCC 1717, Sacramento.

  This constitutes my thanks to them for a lot of fun, a lot of crazy times, and the encouragement I received from my friends during those days when I was first seeing my stories in print. Several issues of Defiance Below Decks contain some incriminating evidence to my fledgling, wobbly, sloppy beginnings.

  One of our ship’s “adventures” detailed a nasty encounter with Klingons at a starbase, in which they incurred the wrath of our ship’s complement of Pernese firelizards (yes, we mixed a LOT of different universes on board the Defiance). In some ways, the whole meandering adventure contained in this first story of the Defender was spawned by the Trek fan story, “Fried Klingons.”

  With gratitude and a lot of fun, weird, treasured memories, this book is dedicated to the crew of the USS Defiance, to Trek fans everywhere, and especially the publishers of the fanzines who gave me a chance to be read:

  Defiance Below Decks

  On Wings of Light

  Firebird

  The Dreamer’s Loom

  Highland Fling

  Small Favors

  Chapa’ai

  And other fanzines devoted to Trek, Highlander, Stingray, Stargate, Beauty & the Beast, the Phoenix, and Starman.

  Especially Penny C, Peggy S, Carol S, Margie L, Cheryl M, and Stephanie P. Ah, the “good old days” of having to type everything on a typewriter, without aid of word processors (or spell check or the ability to fix typos with the touch of a delete key), and hauling everything to the local office supply store for printing. How did we do it, before computers?

  Somehow, we did.

  And the world will never be the same …

  Love ya!

  Chapter One

  Before the Defender got to Alliance Station Sheffroab for the refitting, upgrades and expansions, she was already being called the Nanny Ship.

  Captain Genys Arroyan expected something along those lines, but she still winced the first time she heard the name applied to her ship. Her shiny new command. Her upbringing on Gaea hadn’t included alcohol except for medical purposes. However, for the first time since graduating from the Fleet Academy on Le'anka, she seriously considered tapping the bottle of Gatesh Green, sitting in a place of prominence on the mirrored shelves of Friggley's. A bottle of the Green had always sat there to tempt newly fledged officers, taunt the ones questioning their worth, and dare the ones who until that moment believed they wanted to keep all their neurons firing in top condition. Friggley's, while not a top-of-the-line watering hole for spacegoing crew, was the traditional stopping place for all Fleet officers when they first arrived at Sheffroab for upgrade or repair work. Or decommissioning, for the lucky few who survived the catastrophes that struck those on the front lines of the Alliance's mission of exploration and diplomacy.

  Tradition brought her here, to sit on a stool at the bar and reflect and watch her glass of Tullian spicewater evaporate. That would probably be how long her prayers would take, thanking Enlo for her new rank and command and begging for protection for her and her crew. So what if most other commanders came here to Friggley’s to celebrate by killing some brain and liver cells? She wasn’t like most captains.

  Her ship certainly wasn’t like any other ship in the Alliance Fleet.

  Hadn’t that been proven a couple dozen times with every mission? The Defender had the kind of misfit luck that even legendary Captain Shryne and the Inquest couldn’t match.

  That bottle of the Green was really starting to look good …

  There it was again. That laughing, muttering voice directly behind her said, "Defender," and far too quickly added: Nanny Ship.

  The Defender's crew had been having children and raising the population for the last fifteen Alliance Standard years. With the full knowledge and permission of Fleet, and the attendant restrictions on assignments. Nobody had called it Nanny Ship in all that time. Why now, just because Fleet made a special designation, in recognition of the Defender’s “contribution”?

  "Bunch of narding indiferps," she muttered to her drink. Did she have to go back to her own ship and cabin to have a quiet drink?

  "Got a problem?"

  Later, she would swear the man's voice was just as greasy-gritty-rancid as the body odor that wafted over her left shoulder, as the speaker stepped up behind her. She met his gaze in the mirrors behind the rotating service pod in the center of Friggley's.

  Gleaner. A captain, according to the garish assortment of brightly colored enameled bits of metal sewn or glued all over his long tunic. Speculation said that smell added just as much to a Gleaner's rank as the number of pilfering missions he survived, and how much profitable loot h
e could haul away.

  "Getting there." She couldn't decide if the Gatesh Green was a good idea, or just an invitation for the Fates to open the doors of the nearest garbage chute of bad luck right on her head.

  As if they hadn't already?

  "Aww, the cute little captain-girlie's having a bad day, boys," the Gleaner growled, ending on a squeak. How he managed that without damaging his vocal cords, she couldn't imagine. She really wished he would. "What's your ship, sweetie?"

  Genys turned on her bar stool. Friggley's was one of the few bars left in this half of the galaxy with stools that spun. If she was drunk, that might be fun. Nobody got drunk on Tullian spicewater. Maybe she could turn really fast and hold her arm out, and the Gleaners would be polite enough to run into her fist?

  "Nah," one of his crew said, staggering up next to him, as if the station had temporarily lost its gravitic stabilizers. "She's not a captain. She just borrowed the uniform. Ain't possible anybody'd put somebody so cu - u - ute in charge."

  "And your ship would be …?" M'kar appeared as she had an incredible talent for doing, as if from nowhere, next to Genys.

  She fluttered her eyelashes to draw attention to her facial tattoos: two royal blue lines extending her eyebrows, a gold line enhancing the scar on her right cheekbone, and a lightning bolt in glow-in-the-dark red by her right ear. She clasped her hands behind her back. That was a promise of impending mayhem in a Nisandrian.

  To complete the picture, M'kar wasn’t in uniform, and wore a sleeveless ironcloth tunic, trimmed in crimson lizardskin, over Special Forces surplus holographic camouflage-print trousers, tucked into knee-high black lizardskin boots. Casual wear, for M'kar, and had the added benefit of showing off her sleekly muscled arms, with just enough tan to make the webwork of scars on one arm stand out like lines of ice.

  Every Gleaner in Friggley's took two steps from Genys’ Nisandrian half-blood Chief of Talents. Nothing more frightening than a Nisandrian with her hands out of sight. There was no way to predict what weapons she might draw from seemingly thin air. Legends said they had mastered N-space and could drag enough weapons along behind them, just slightly out of dimensional phase, to destroy a planet. Other legends claimed they could hide weapons inside body cavities. Genys always squirmed a little when she thought of that. M'kar never confirmed or denied those stories. Granted, no one had ever dared ask outright, but shouldn't her commanding officer have the right to know?

  Bottom line: Nisandrians were always ready to fight. No need for provocation. Nisandrians liked fights even more than Gleaners liked pilfering anything and everything in sight.

  One of these days, Genys vowed to learn how M'kar managed to enter a room without being seen. It was like she slit the fabric of space-time to just appear, when and where she was needed. According to the records of her training on Le'anka, M'kar didn't have teleportation among her psionic gifts. So how did she do it?

  "What's it to ya?" the Gleaner captain said, his voice softening and rising another half-octave, while taking another step back.

  Genys could almost call him a smart man.

  "Just wondering if you're the Gleaner doing the pilfering, out on Dock Seven, or the one being pilfered, that's all. Nice big hole blasted right next to a cargo hatch. Don't your people know how to knock? Or maybe they forgot the security code to get in?" M'kar raised her voice to be heard over the curses and yells. The Gleaner captain and eight filthy, garishly ornamented crewmen scrambled to exit through a door only wide enough for two.

  "Are they?" Genys met M'kar's eyes, wide in silent question. "Pilfering or being pilfered?"

  "Haven't the foggiest. The last I knew, this station didn't have a Dock Seven. Must be awful, the brain damage caused by a perpetually guilty conscience." She slid onto the stool next to Genys as the captain snorted, then her shoulders shook in silent chuckles.

  "I owe you one. Another," she hurried to add, knowing what M'kar was about to say. "Since you don’t drink, and your critters don't appreciate the smell of alcohol, I assume you're here for me?"

  "Funny you should say 'critters' … since I'm getting lots of critterly noise in the mental atmosphere." She pressed two fingertips on each hand against her temples.

  "Uh huh. Something we should report to station security? Maybe the Gleaners found a way through the sensor buoys surrounding an interdicted planet, to smuggle rare species?" Genys stood. Her traditional visit to Friggley's was officially over.

  M'kar had great respect for most traditions. There were some she refused to obey, starting with political marriage. Followed by Nisandrian traditional teaching that the ancestors had tweaked their genetics enough that they couldn’t interbreed with allegedly inferior, un-changed, ordinary Humans. Granted, M'kar's parents were the ones who thumbed their noses at that particular tradition.

  The point was that M'kar wouldn't have violated the traditional private, thoughtful, what-has-the-Fleet-gotten-me-into-this-time visit to Friggley's, without good reason. As in something a captain with a strong sense of responsibility-at-all-costs might need to investigate.

  "Have you seen the latest additions they've made to the old lady?" M'kar asked.

  Genys flicked her hand out, gesturing for M'kar to lead the way. The nice thing about Friggley's, and part of what led to its descent from sought-after location on the station, was its convenient placement near the Fleet docks. Where the repairs, upgrades and additions and sometimes entire retrofits took place. Such as when some hapless captain gutted his craft so the remaining shell barely passed the vacuum test.

  Fortunately, the Defender hadn't done any of those things. Lately. Partly due to the unofficial special status of the ship, with its growing family population. They just didn't get the break-the-light-speed-limits-the-galaxy-is-poised-on-the-brink-of-destruction missions. That suited Genys fine. They were an E&D ship. Thanks to some of the best counselors, sensitives, and Talents the Le'ankan Academy had produced in this generation, the Defender had a stellar reputation on the D side of exploration-and-diplomacy. They had done some incredible follow-up work on the heels of other ships that had gotten themselves gutted, thanks to missteps and outright bloopers. For instance, dealing with newly discovered, violence-prone colonies of Humans who thought they were alone in the universe. Some took it badly when visitors dropped in on them from the sky and proved them wrong in their beliefs about their importance in the universe. While they didn't get the prestige points and bonuses of the ships and crews that took the bigger risks, the Defender still had long waiting lists of specialists wanting to transfer in. Thanks to the upgrades and expansions now taking place, nearly fifty new transfers were due to arrive soon. Genys didn't have to deal with the fussy details of integrating those new crew into the ship. That was what her Executive Officer, Veylen was for, but as captain she still had to worry about it.

  Later. She would worry about adjusting the structure of the family of the Defender when the time came. Ship and crew had only been on Sheffroab three days. Right now, it felt like they would be here forever.

  Genys followed M'kar down one of the high-security access ladder tubes (rank having its privileges) and reflected that sometimes being a groundbreaker wasn't all it was cracked up to be. After all, how many times had Shryne and her daring crew hung over the sword's edge of court martial, until they could prove once again that appearing to break the rules had actually obeyed deeper, more vital rules? In the case of the Defender, breaking new ground meant creating a new designation for their ship, and new regulations and guidelines. All of which would have to be rethought and rewritten over the next few years before they "fit" properly. The Defender had proven that having families on board didn't cripple the performance of the ship. The first dozen ship-raised children to attend the Academy had consistently outperformed all their classmates. Having the next generation of explorers, diplomats, and defenders enter training already aware of what it meant to serve the Alliance, with experience and sometimes battle scars, benefited everyone: cadets and Fleet
.

  So how come every time she turned around, Genys got a few looks that were either pitying or mocking? Why none of the envy she expected when she finally got her captain's stars and moved into the central seat on the bridge? Captain Rob Hollis hadn't fled the ship when the Defender got her new designation. He had applied some luns before to transfer to Le'anka for special studies, to transfer his Fleet service from Military to Sciences. Still, some rumors claimed Hollis had been the first one to attach the derogative Nanny to the Defender. Genys knew it wasn't true because he was the third one to contact her about the rumors and to deny them. He kindly included a report on who he thought had started those rumors, and a promise to hunt them down and whip their butts in a vicious game of zero-ball.

  "I still can't decide if she's being remade, if what makes her our lady has changed enough to be a new ship. Does your planet have the same superstitions about changing a ship's name, or giving it to another ship before the first one has been properly scuttled?" M'kar asked, as they stepped out into the transparent tube of the observation ring.

  "I think every culture has something along those lines. That might be an interesting study. Find out what pieces of Human culture the Gatekeepers fiddled with when they carried our ancestors across the galaxy, and which ones they left alone."

  "Could take a lifetime. I'll ask Mom." She snorted and leaned forward to rest against the curving side of the observation ring, braced on the tips of her fingers. "Might get more interesting information from my father." She and Genys exchanged grins.

  Chieftain Ashrock of Nisandros had turned novelist when he fled the planet with his foreign wife and half-blood daughter. For a time, he had specialized in children's literature, just to shatter the image of the muscle-bound Nisandrian barbarian. A difficult task. He was a mountain of a man, covered in scars enhanced by tattoos, with all the proper coloring and glyphs to proclaim just where he had earned them. He had dived into the cultures of the dozen-plus worlds of the Alliance with all the gusto of a carbohydrate-addicted child after an enforced fast. His passion was tracking down variations on the same essential story in all the planets and cultures. He had become quite as famous as his wife, Dr. Jeyn. The problem was that his passion could make him quite unbearable, and his size and fierce physiology made most people hesitate to either walk away or ask him to shut up.