Pursuit of Valor (The Tarvaax War Book 1) Read online

  Pursuit of Valor

  The Tarvaax War Book One

  Tripp Ellis

  Tripp Ellis

  Copyright © 2017 by Tripp Ellis

  All rights reserved. Worldwide.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents, except for incidental references to public figures, products, or services, are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental, and not intended to refer to any living person or to disparage any company’s products or services.

  No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, uploaded, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter devised, without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  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

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Free Book

  Thank You!

  The Galactic Wars Series

  Connect With Me

  1

  It had to be a malfunction.

  Petty Officer Grierson blinked his eyes and stared at the screen again. This time it was blank. Everything else on the station was broken, why should he think this system would be any different?

  Grierson refreshed the screen and ran a system diagnostic. These kinds of glitches were happening all the time. The Zeplovian Navy had recently updated their long-range detection scanners across the fleet. The retrofit had cost nearly a billion credits, and the new devices were not as accurate, or as reliable, as the old ones—bloated government and a failed bureaucracy. But someone, somewhere, got rich off the deal.

  The diagnostic scan came back clean. No system faults detected.

  Grierson chalked it up to a coding error and went about his business of monitoring the sector. He took a sip of his coffee—it was a necessary part of the job. Day in and day out he stared at the screen, monitoring the space around Zeplovia for threats. But there hadn't been a major attack on any of the Federation colonies in over 30 years. It was a thankless job in one of the worst outposts in the galaxy. Grierson required at least 6 cups of organic hazelnut coffee, grown in the lush tropical forests of Proclu, to get through his watch.

  There it was again.

  Grierson's eyes went wide, and he almost spit his coffee out. Then, with the blink of an eye, the screen was blank again.

  His eyes narrowed, and he stared intently at the screen, waiting for the glitch to re-occur. At least, he hoped it was a glitch.

  Grierson was nearing the end of his first deployment aboard Kamvel Station—a small, dilapidated space station located on the far side of Tycus (Zeplovia’s moon). Why the fleet even bothered to update the equipment on this old rust bucket was beyond comprehension. They should have scrapped the whole station and just built a new one. It had been around since before the First Dracovius War.

  Tycus didn't have much of an atmosphere, but it was almost the size of Zeplovia. An enemy could easily emerge from quantum space on the far side of Tycus undetected—hence the reason for Kamvel.

  The station was tiny and boring, and the rotations were long. Grierson hadn't been back to Zeplovia in six months. There were only a handful of people on board—the bare minimum to keep the facility operational.

  The screen lit up again with a swarm of red icons. Grierson stared at the potential threats for a moment, expecting the screen to go blank again any second.

  But it didn’t.

  There were dozens of red icons. And, by the size of them, they were destroyers or carriers. This was an armada. And they weren't friendly. The IFF (identify friend or foe) system didn't match them with any known Federation or Zeplovian Navy ships.

  Grierson hesitated a moment before he sounded the alarm. He wanted to make sure this wasn't a malfunction. He was on the graveyard shift and didn't want to wake his CO unnecessarily.

  The red icons vanished again.

  Grierson was getting frustrated. He stood up and walked from his terminal to the viewport. It offered a panoramic view of space. Grierson squinted into the inky blackness—he saw nothing but the flicker of distant stars.

  He stood there for a moment, then shook it off. He walked back to his console and took another sip of his coffee.

  The display lit up again. This time there were even more red icons.

  This couldn't just be a malfunction. There had to be something out there. Grierson contacted Captain Connolly.

  The old man's groggy face appeared on the display. “This better be good, Grierson."

  “Uh, sir… I'm picking up something unusual on the scanners,” Grierson stammered.

  Connolly scowled at him. He was a gruff man on a good day. On a bad day, he was nothing short of a tyrant. Waking the captain in the middle of the night without good reason could get you reassigned to an even worse location than Kamvel.

  “What is it?" Connolly barked.

  "I'm picking up what looks like an enemy fleet. There are dozens of them."

  Connolly looked skeptical. “I’ll be right there.”

  Grierson looked back at the scanner. The screen was blank again. His stomach clenched. Connolly was going to be pissed.

  Kamvel Station was a crap assignment, and everybody knew it. Nobody wanted to be there. It was one of several less than desirable places the Zeplovian Navy would send you when they couldn't promote you, but were prohibited from discharging you. Zeplovia had implemented strict measures regarding the employment of government personnel. Most of the time, it was easier to send undesirables to a remote location rather than jumping through the hoops to discharge them.

  Zeplovia had recently seceded from the Federation. They had one of the largest economies of any colony, and they seemed to be at odds with the Federation’s politics. They thought they’d be just fine on their own. There had been peace in the galaxy for so long, the Zeplovians felt their Navy was more than adequate in the absence of any real threat.

  It wasn’t.

  Connolly stormed into the command center. He took one look at the blank sensor display and gritted his teeth. His eyes blazed into Grierson.

  “Sir, this thing has been acting weird all nig
ht. I swear, I saw dozens of warships.”

  “Do you see anything now?” He said, dryly.

  “No, sir.” Grierson's voice shook.

  “Now take a look out that viewport. Do you see anything?" Connolly was almost baby talking him.

  “No, sir."

  “Then there's nothing out there.” Connolly took a slow measured breath, trying to contain his anger. “How does reassignment to Alavatar sound?”

  Grierson swallowed hard. “Not good, sir."

  “Wake me up in the middle of the night one more time, and I’ll have your ass there so fast it'll make your head spin.”

  “Yes, sir."

  Connolly was about to step away from the terminal when the scanner lit up again. It was full of red icons.

  Grierson felt vindicated. He held back a slight grin.

  Connolly grimaced. He marched to the viewport and stared into the inky blackness. There was nothing out there. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the void. Then his eyes went wide.

  It started as a small pinpoint in the distance and grew larger. The object rocketed through space, spitting propellant. There was no mistaking what it was, and there was nothing that Connolly, or anyone else, could do about it.

  “So this is how it ends,” the captain muttered to himself.

  An instant later, the station exploded in a brilliant amber glow. A 20 megaton nuclear weapon had incinerated the dilapidated outpost.

  It was arguably an improvement.

  2

  Zack Salvator knew this was going to be a really bad idea. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. He felt his stomach tighten and nerves tingle under his skin. He clenched his jaw and frowned, debating for a moment. He knew better than to get involved.

  There was one little voice in his head that said just keep walking. Get to work. You can’t afford to lose your job. You need the money. But there was another little voice that was louder and stronger. It said this is screwed up, and somebody needs to stop it.

  School had just let out, and he was on his way to work at the container terminal. He had a minimum wage job running a mechanized loader. It was a mindless job that could have been done by a robot, but government mandates required employers to hire a minimum number of human personnel. High school kids worked cheap, and Zack’s boss kept him around to fill the quota. Zack didn't mind the job. He liked driving the loader, and he listened to music during his entire shift. It didn't take a huge amount of brainpower.

  It was a perfect spring day on Crylos 9—crystal blue sky, slight breeze, and 70°. As good a day as any to get your ass kicked, Zack thought.

  He walked this route every day—up Fulton to Pierce, then across to Lankford, where he caught the bus to take him down to the terminal. Fulton Street was lined with older buildings. Mostly concrete, brick, and steel structures that towered into the sky. The city was going through an expansion and renewal. It wasn’t uncommon to see some of the older buildings demolished and new towering skyscrapers emerge in their place.

  The trouble was going down in an empty lot on Fulton—the tattered foundation of the old McDougall building that had been razed a few weeks earlier. There were piles of rubble and rebar atop the cracked foundation slab.

  Zack could see Dean Dully, and three of his buddies, harassing the new kid. He couldn’t remember the kid’s name, but he was in Zack’s English class. He had just transferred in today.

  It wasn’t an unusual sight to see Dully throwing his weight around. He was freakishly large—6’9” and 300lbs. He had a slightly tubby face that was pocked and pitted with acne. He had droopy brown eyes and a pug nose that he never seemed to breathe through. His jaw was always hanging agape, dragging in breaths of unsuspecting air into his foul lungs. His hair was shaggy and matted, like it had never been shampooed. It hung down in his eyes and he constantly flicked it out.

  The new kid by comparison was struggling to reach 5’3”. He had short dark hair and dark eyes and was lugging a backpack that seemed like it contained every book he owned.

  “Pay up,” Dean grumbled, shoving the kid. The inertia from the heavy backpack almost toppled the little guy over.

  “What for?” the short kid said with a defiant tone.

  “Protection.”

  “Protection from what?”

  “From me, you little twerp.”

  Dean's gang of thugs chuckled.

  “I told you, I don’t have the money.”

  “Well, that sucks for you, doesn’t it?” Dean balled his hand into a fist and wound it back, threatening the boy. Dean’s fists were thick and meaty, like bricks.

  The boy’s eyes widened, and he swallowed hard.

  “Last chance. Empty your pockets and give me everything you’ve got. Otherwise, you get the fist.”

  “I don’t have any money. And even if I did, I wouldn’t pay you.” The kid had guts. No doubt about it.

  Dean's face twisted up and flushed red. Rage boiled over his face. He was about to hammer his fist into the new kid. The little guy cringed. He knew it was going to hurt. Dean could throw the kind of punch that loosened teeth and broke noses.

  Just as he was about to let his fist fly, Zack interrupted. “Leave him alone, Dickhead.”

  Dean craned his neck to get a glimpse of the fool that called him a dickhead. He had a look of utter disbelief on his face. For an instant, he forgot all about the new kid. Dean's gang focused their gaze on the crazy guy who was sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong.

  Zack gulped. He really hadn’t given much thought to what his next move was going to be. He wasn’t a big guy by any stretch of the imagination. He was 5’10”, 150 pounds, with short brown hair. He was fit and had chiseled features, but he wasn’t a bodybuilder. Just an average high school senior.

  “This ain’t none of your business, Salvator,” Dean said, stepping closer. He was like a slow moving freight train, and Zack was caught on the tracks. Dean's hateful eyes blazed into him with the ferocity of a wild animal.

  The world grew smaller as the goons closed in on Zack.

  “It’s kind of embarrassing for you, don’t you think?” Zack said. “I mean, he’s less than half your size. Is that all you can handle?”

  Dean's nostrils flared. “You’re dumber than you look, Salvator.”

  “Not going to argue there.” Zack knew this was a pretty stupid thing to do.

  Dean charged at him, and wound his brick of a fist back. He swung with all his might.

  Zack ducked as the meaty fist whooshed overhead.

  The ogre’s weight carried him forward as Zack slipped around behind him. The giant turned around to face Zack with an even angrier look on his face. Dean was used to connecting with one punch and putting his opponent into a coma.

  “Hold him,” the ogre commanded.

  Two of Dean’s goons grabbed Zack by his arms. Their fingers dug into his biceps, holding him steady as Dean charged him. Zack struggled, trying to worm his way free. But he couldn’t break loose. He stared at the cinderblock of a fist careening toward his face. This wasn’t going to feel good at all.

  3

  “This sucks,” Aiden said. He was 15 going on 25. He had a look of perpetual angst on his face.

  Ronan shrugged. “Look on the bright side, things could always be worse." He had little idea of how much worse his day was about to get. Thousands of alien fighters, bombers, and troop transports were descending on Zeplovia. The early detection systems had failed, and the alien technology made the invasion force virtually invisible on sensors.

  "I don't see why I couldn't just stay with Mom for the summer."

  "Because your mother is out gallivanting around the galaxy with some guy named Ma’aveo." Ronan's voice was thick with disdain.

  "Ma’aveo is cool."

  "I'm sure he is."

  "Cooler than you."

  "Your mother seems to think so.”

  There was a moment of silence between them.

  Aidan flipped his shaggy hair o
ut of his eyes and gazed out the window. The pristine skyscrapers of Sol Vorta rushed by as they weaved through the crowded city streets.

  "I can take care of myself," Aiden protested.

  A knowing smirk curled up on Ronan's lips. "Oh, no. An entire summer unsupervised? I can only imagine what kind of trouble you, and those friends of yours, would get into."

  Aiden glared at him. "What have you got against my friends?"

  "Oh, I don't know. I suppose you were inclined to steal hover-bikes all on your own?"

  Aidan sighed. "Why do we have to keep bringing that up?"

  "Because you're still on probation. Do you have any idea what that little fiasco of yours cost me?"

  "So it's all about money?"

  "No. It's not all about money. It's about your future. And I'm trying to ensure that you have a decent one."

  "I can't believe you're making me go to summer school."

  "Idle hands are the devil's playground.”

  Aiden's face twisted up. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Ronan shook his head. "It means I'm going to find as much for you to do this summer as I possibly can."

  They pulled up to Aiden's school.

  The disgruntled teenager grabbed his books and flung open the car door. "You know, I don't blame Mom for leaving you. You suck." Aiden slammed the door. The car shook and rattled.