Venusian Uprising Read online

  VENUSIAN UPRISING

  THE SOL DISSOLUTION – BOOK 1

  BY M. D. COOPER

  & LISA RICHMAN

  This book is dedicated to Catherine and Aaron. May your spirits find one another in the stars.

  Thanks to Just in Time Readers

  Gareth Banks

  Gene Bryan

  Scott Reid

  Copyright © 2019 M. D. Cooper & Lisa Richman

  Cover Art by Andrew Dobell

  Editing by Jen McDonnell

  All rights reserved.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  SOL IN THE 42nd CENTURY

  CLEANUP ACTION

  THE HUNT IS ON

  BREAK CAMP

  CRUITHNE

  UNCOMMON ALLIES

  FARMHOUSE

  FRAMED

  THE VENGEANCE PLAY

  PLAINS OF TARJA

  OUTSIDE THE WIRE

  UNRESTRICTED ACCESS

  UNEXPECTED HANDOFF

  UNWITTING TRAITOR

  COMING IN HOT

  FUEL DEPOT

  ABORT

  STRIKE FORCE

  RETREAT

  ADVANCE TO THE REAR

  COASTIE HOSPITALITY

  TWO IF BY SEA

  HEY, MICKEY

  FIVE-FINGER DISCOUNT

  SEVEN WONDERS THEME PARK

  COLOSSEUM STANDOFF

  JUST A SIMPLE BUSINESSMAN

  THE STREETS OF TARJA

  DEATH BY KELP

  RIVER CROSSING

  STORMING THE TOWER

  FIRE WITH FIRE

  PROPOSITIONED

  MEETING IN THE WOODS

  THE FULL CAST

  THE BOOKS OF AEON 14

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  FOREWORD

  The Sol Dissolution is a tale I started thinking about seven years ago, not long after Outsystem was released. I had painted a detailed picture of the Sol System, and then immediately left it behind! I wanted to spend more time around humanity’s home star, and so I began to write about the unrest that had been building for some time.

  It started with a tale about why Joe wanted to leave the Sol System, and blossomed from there. Eventually, that story about Joe was included in Destiny Rising, the Outsystem and A Path in the Darkness extended edition.

  In that series, we’re introduced to Katelyn and Rory, two of Joe’s sisters—sisters who are part of a rebellion in the Scattered Worlds. Elements of this rebellion have their roots all the way back in Tanis’s early years in the Terran Space Force. If you read the Origins of Destiny series, you’ll realize a few of the people she worked with and fought against are still players in the Sol System, and will be in this series as well.

  In fact, you might piece together how Tanis’s actions greatly influenced the course of the Scattered World’s rebellion against InnerSol.

  Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the other reason I really wanted to write this series, and that’s Williams. Depending on how long ago you read Outsystem, you might not recall him. Williams is the staff sergeant assigned to the platoon of Force Recon Marines that Tanis got assigned to the Intrepid. While he started out as a character similar to Apone from Aliens (who is one of my all-time favorite characters), Williams evolved a lot and gained a depth and nuance all his own.

  Enough that I wanted to write more of his story.

  I got that opportunity a few years back when I wrote a short story about the 242nd Marines returning to Venus, once again dealing with rebels on Earth’s sister planet. This story was included in an anthology, and later, I wrote a second part. Both of these were also released to fans at the time, and account for about one fifth of the story you’ll find in this book.

  I knew that I’d come back to Williams, the 242nd Marines, and Joe’s sisters (Katelyn and Rory)…I just didn’t know when.

  The opportunity arose when Lisa and I wrapped up the Enfield Genesis series and were discussing what to do next. I hit upon the idea of how if Lisa wrote from Katelyn’s POV, and I wrote from Williams’, we could have the two sides of the conflict have their own distinct feel.

  And that sealed it. Lisa became a coauthor on the Sol Dissolution series, and here we are now with the first book in your hands.

  It’s fun to be writing this series at the same time we’re writing Solar War 1, as there are a lot of parallels to be drawn. You’re going to get to see the rise of the Sol Space Federation, and you’re going to get to see its fall.

  I think, however, that you’re going to be a bit surprised about the result….

  Malorie Cooper

  Danvers, 2019

  SOL IN THE 42nd CENTURY

  It’s been a thousand years since the Sentience Wars and the emergence of the Sol Space Federation. Though it hasn’t always been ideal, the SSF has maintained order in the Sol System for the bulk of the fourth millennia and the beginning of the fifth.

  But now that peace is wearing thin.

  With trillions of humans filling humanity’s home system, resources are growing thin while InnerSol controls access to the largest resource of all: the Sun.

  Beyond Neptune’s orbit, in the Scattered Disk, even hydrogen is comparatively scarce, and the people living on the distant, frozen dwarf planets at the edge of the system have grown weary of the tariffs they must pay to gain access to fuel.

  Furthering the discontent is the fact that the economic center of the Sol System has shifted from Terra and Mars to Jupiter. There, the massive Callisto Orbital Habitat (the Cho) is home to nearly half the humans in the system.

  The Jovian oligarchy has re-emerged after falling at the end of the Sentience Wars, and they resent the hold that InnerSol has on the rest of the system. The leadership of the Scattered Disk Alliance has seen this and believes, with a few flames in the right places, they can foment a rebellion, a conflict on a scale not seen since the end of the Sentience Wars….

  Ten years ago, the Scattered Disk Alliance held a vote at their capital on Makemake and voted to secede from the federation. Unfortunately, InnerSol wasn’t prepared to see the union break apart, and they sent one of their most formidable carriers, the TSS Normandy, to blocAaron the planet.

  A battle ensued, and the Terrans won, but it saw brother fighting sister, and former allies pitted against one another. The blocAaron of Makemake was the first big crack, and ever since, separatist forces have been slowly widening it, working to create a spark big enough to ignite all of Sol once more, just as the emergence of sentient AIs created that same spark a thousand years before.

  CLEANUP ACTION

  STELLAR DATE: 3227453 / 05.14.4124 (Adjusted Gregorian)

  LOCATION: District A19, Ring 11, Callisto Orbital Habitat (Cho)

  REGION: Jovian Combine, Sol Space Federation

  Staff Sergeant Williams watched the feeds on his HUD as the members of squad one moved through the massive waste processing facility. Squads two and three were visible on the edges of the overhead view, getting into flanking positions.

  Lieutenant Grenwald commented on the platoon’s command net.

  Williams glanced at the man who was hunkered down with him behind the boxy primary node chamber that managed millions of liters of effluent flowing through the facility. Grenwald’s comment carried with it a weariness that Williams was unable to ignore—something mirrored in the man’s posture.

  The sergeant felt it too.

  Until three weeks prior, the platoon had been on loan to the Generation Ship Service, providing security for the GSS Intrepid as it underwent its final stages of construction at the Mars Outer Shipyards before picking up several cargo cubes at the Cho.

  There, the mighty ship had left the Marines behind before
slingshotting around Sol on its outsystem trajectory.

  Williams tried not to think of it. He’d made more than a few friends on the ship, most notably Major Tanis Richards and Commander Joseph Evans. The knowledge that they were on their way to 82 Eridani, never to return to Sol, lay heavily on the sergeant’s mind.

  It was made worse by the fact that the Marines of Williams’ platoon had been saddled with taking out the last few elements of the Jovian conspiracy to destroy the Intrepid. They’d had little sleep in the past few weeks, and every rifle-slinger in the platoon was itching to finally be reunited with the 8th Battalion of the 242nd Marines after over a year on the special assignment.

  Lieutenant Grenwald asked.

  Williams grunted, refocusing his attention on the feeds, checking over his people.

 

  the sergeant muttered.

  The data they had indicated that the targets were nothing more than a team of security contractors who’d worked for STR, and had refused to submit to questioning on their part of the attempt to destroy the Intrepid.

  So far as Williams could tell, the contractors hadn’t done anything more than move a few pieces of equipment and surveil the loading bay where the Intrepid had docked. Technically, they hadn’t done anything illegal, and were nothing but a tiny loose end—until they’d refused to turn themselves over to the MICIs for questioning.

  That’s when someone got their undies in a twist and decided that a dozen contractors warranted Force Recon Orbital Drop Marines to come down on their heads.

  Of course, we’re in the bowels of a damn ring, so the only ‘dropping’ we’re going to do is those bastards if they don’t come quietly.

  Williams grimaced at his lame pun, glad that he hadn’t shared it on the combat net. he reached out to squad one’s sergeant.

 

 

  Staff Sergeant Kowalski laughed.

  Williams didn’t respond, instead checking squad two and three’s positions. Both were ready, the Marines in Green’s Second set up on the far end of the node, while two fireteams from Li’s Third were spread out a hundred meters on either side of the target.

  Everyone was in stealth, their armor hiding them from visible light, EM, and IR detection. However, once they started shooting, that stealth would only buy them enough time to move from cover to cover. If the enemy had active scan capabilities, then it wouldn’t afford them even that.

  Wish the TSF had tasked an AI for us…

  Without synthetic assistance, it fell to Lieutenant Grenwald and the NSAI suite in his armor to manage the electronic counterwarfare—most of which involved managing a microscopic drone fleet that swept the area around the Marines, searching for enemy surveillance and countermeasures.

  he asked Grenwald.

 

  The sergeant held back an audible laugh.

  Grenwald passed over the results of the microdrone scan.

  Williams appreciated the lieutenant asking him—in a roundabout way—to review the scan analysis. Grenwald was a good Marine, but the man was still just a couple of years out of OCS. Though he’d served as a fireteam leader in the corps before going the officer route, he didn’t have Williams’ decade of leadership under his belt.

  The staff sergeant’s HUD filled with an overview of the target area, defense turrets, choke points, and fields of fire all highlighted and outlined. The view covered nearly a square kilometer of the facility. The node chamber where the enemy was holed up sat in a relatively open space away from processing systems on a platform six meters above the facility’s floor.

  Other than the targets, there were no humans present—though a lot of bots moved amidst the machinery, controlled by the NSAI nodes and focused on myriad tasks.

  The node chamber was a secondary backup to the one Williams and Grenwald were crouched next to, a seven-by-ten-meter cube housing the non-sentient AI node within—and, based on the heat readings, seven humans.

  Or maybe six with one being heavily modded; it was hard to tell, with the node chamber’s shielding.

  Williams noted several areas where the enemy might have set up surprises, and then marked his approval, updating the combat net with his changes.

  he said to Grenwald, who opened up the all-team combat net, sending the signal along the low-power relays the Marines had dropped.

 

  Private Perez interjected.

  Sergeant Li coughed in annoyance.

  Grenwald waited a moment before continuing.

  An enthusiastic ‘Ooo-rah’ came back over the Link, and then the fireteam leaders signaled over the combat net their readiness to launch the attack.

  Williams announced.

  Sergeant Kowalski said, and the squad’s three fireteams began to advance through the facility.

  Williams flipped his HUD to show the view from the first fireteam, noted as ‘one/one’ on his display. He enlarged Corporal Jansen’s visual feed, watching as she ducked under a low pipe and eased around a vertical conduit riser without so much as brushing against a single surface.

  A rotund servitor came around a corner, and the corporal stopped short, waiting for the bot to pass, disappearing into the tangled maze of pipes and machinery within moments.

  It concerned him that the bot hadn’t been marked on the map. Even powered down, the drone sweep should have picked it up. He noted the omission for after-action review, and updated the combat net.

  The Marines were trained to expect the unexpected, but a note that scan had missed a bot was worth posting.

  Within a minute, one/one had reached the edge of the clear space surrounding the backup node chamber. Privates Cassar and Murphy were on the lower deck, while Jansen and Cheng were on catwalks several meters up, ready to cover the assault.

  With the first fireteam in position, one/two and one/three moved up, situating themselves on either side of the node chamber.

  Not for the first time, Williams wondered why there wasn’t a police presence with the Marines, or even a JSF liaison. In his experience, there was usually an attempt made by locals to reach a peaceful resolution before the corps took on the job.

  Granted, the locals had been heavily compromised by the STR consortium, and trust on the Cho was in short supply these days—which was the real reason the spec-ops platoon was still on the habitat, squashing baddies.

  Corporal Jansen advised.

  Lieutenant Grenwald replied.

  The corporal’s rifle fired, and a straight, blue-white bolt of lightning leapt out from her muzzle, plowing relativistic electrons into the node’s door.

  Cheng followed a moment later with a trio of bursts from his railgun, pellets trave
ling at over three kilometers a second, hitting the now-superheated alloy. The impacts fractured it, and a second volley blew it inward.

  Cassar and Murphy lobbed nano grenades toward the chamber’s entrance, but they hit an invisible barrier just inside the entrance and fell back to the ground.

  Jansen muttered.

  Another burst came from Cheng’s railgun, tearing through what was likely only electrostatic shielding across the entrance. Before the field could re-establish, two nano grenades followed.

  A pop and snap elsewhere in the facility caught Williams’ attention, and he saw that one/two was engaging a pair of automated defense turrets that had come online. The guns had been on the scan analysis, and the Marines were ready. More fire came from one/three as the fireteam on the node chamber’s left did the same.

  He was about to order one/one to proceed with their breach when Sergeant Li called out over the combat net.

 

  Kowalski ordered one/one while Williams turned his attention to Li’s feed.

  A dozen bots were moving toward second squad’s position, none of them high-threat, just maintenance drones that brandished plasma torches and molecular welders.

  Lieutenant Grenwald ordered, and shots rang out from the squad’s position.

  Williams sucked in a surprised breath when a lumbering hauler on segmented tracks suddenly dodged to the side, evading a stream of projectiles that Perez had fired.

  the private shouted.

  Sergeant Li advised.

  Chang barked a laugh along with his words.

  Seconds later, his crew-served weapon came to life, tearing through the nearby bots, cutting a swath of destruction through the facility.

  All around, Marines fired on automatons, servitors, and anything else that looked even remotely dangerous. The machines they fought didn’t wait to be taken out. Dozens dropped their camouflage, revealing a host of low-slung six-legged weapons platforms.