Ultimate Duty
A military officer must choose between her sworn duty and her rebellious blood ties.
Remy Belieux, a woman born into a life of servitude on a repressive factory planet, is desperate for a different life. When she's accepted into the Space Service Academy, run by the organization that enslaves her planet, she discovers the truth behind generations of rebellion. Now, she must decide what to believe, where her ultimate duty lies, and fight for more than her life against impossible odds.
Available on Amazon for only $16.12, I actually get a few cents if you use this option.
* First Duty is the PG version of the R-rated Ultimate Duty.
Available on Audible or Amazon. It's a pretty long book and my narrator really needs the royalties (she gets half the royalties for every audiobook sold, and I'll give her my half if you buy the audio book).
Excerpt
Excerpt
One day, Remy spotted a small ship
where it had no good reason to be. “Sir, we have a blip heading
toward the planet. Its course isn’t on the prescribed jump route
within this planetary system.”
Captain Micah glanced at Remy, then
spoke to the communications officer. “Hail the ship.” The
radioman worked for a few seconds. “I can’t locate their
frequency, sir.”
The Captain stared through the view
screen at the rapidly receding ship. “Try a broad-range hail. Tell
them to stand down.” He glanced toward the communications station.
“Any luck?”
“No, sir. I don’t think they have
their ears on, at least in the usual frequencies.”
The ship shot away from the Excalibur
and Remy tracked its course. “It’s heading for that planet. It’s
not classified as habitable.”
Captain Micah opened ship-wide
communications. “Captain Micah here. Crew, go to battle stations.
This is not a drill.” He looked at the pilot, who punched in
coordinates for a wide turn toward the fleeing ship.
Remy’s stomach tightened as the
klaxon alarms alerted the entire ship to ready for attack.
Disappointment replaced tension as she watched the ship reach the
small planet and circle behind the lifeless orb. We’ve lost it!
“Coward should stay and fight,”
grumbled an ensign near Remy. She glanced his way and hushed him,
tilting her head toward the captain. “Pay attention.” The
ensign’s cheeks flared in embarrassment.
“Ahead slow,” the captain ordered.
“This could be a trap. Put us into high orbit and extend all
scanners to maximum range and power.” Excalibur edged its way
slowly around the airless planet thousands of kilometers below.
“I’ve got him, sir!” a crewman
reported. “A single blip on the short-range scanner.”
Remy added the short-range display to a
corner of her own screen and saw the flickering dot representing the
fleeing ship. She grinned. “Gotcha!” But nothing else appeared in
range. She hoped they might get some action now, even if only the
capture of a small ship.
“All right. Take us in slow,” the
captain replied. The pilot cut back power and brought the ship around
to the planet’s far side. The small ship came into view, hovering
in a stationary orbit.
“Hail them.” Again, the ship didn’t
respond, and the captain gestured to the pilot to move in. Remy
turned her scanners toward the planet surface, searching for any
activity. Seeing nothing, she switched to thermal scan. Out of
nowhere, a red-hot dot appeared on the screen, then another. “Captain,
I’m getting heat signatures moving near the surface.”
Captain Micah glanced her way, not
expecting to hear from the long-range scanning console. “What do
you have, Lieutenant?”
“Ten, no, twelve, maybe more heat
signatures. Nothing bigger than a cutter, and they’re all in
motion. It looks like they’re coming out of a fissure. I don’t
detect any structures.”
Remy feared her warning came too late
to do any good. Excalibur was fast, once it got moving but, like most
ships its size, not very maneuverable this close to a planet.
The smaller ships exploded from the
surface. Too fast for normal takeoff velocity, the tiny vessels
clearly had a lot of extra power. It was a dangerous move since it’d
be easy to lose control traveling way over the limits for the small
ships. But it worked.
Some attackers split to flank the
cruiser on both sides. Two of them took station above and two below
the ship, while two more moved to the stern, effectively surrounding
the cruiser. The engineers had designed Excalibur, like most ships in
its class, as a pursuit ship, with most of its weapons aimed forward.
They could only fire on the ships facing them until the gunners
brought the smaller, less effective peripheral weaponry to bear.
Captain Micah glanced at his display.
“Weapons, recalibrate for port and starboard, max angle. Fire at
will.”
The bridge crew cheered when a burst of
laser fire destroyed one of the ships. Metallic fragments drifted
outward from the single brief flash of the exploding drive.
