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  TIMBERWOLF

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, places, incidents, and dialogue are the product of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real, or if real, are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Tom Julian

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For more information, to inquire about rights to this or other works, or to purchase copies for special educational, business, or sales promotional uses please write to: [email protected]

  SECOND EDITION

  ISBN: 978-1-549619-89-2

  Timberwolf

  By Tom Julian

  For my wife Brenda and the beans, Izzy and Liam—you keep my imagination young!

  &

  For Bill H. You would have been first in line to read this. Miss you, friend.

  Acknowledgments

  To my parents, Tom and Catherine, who always encouraged me to write and to tell stories. I would not be a writer without the encouragement and the Legos you gave me as a kid. To my great influences—Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola, Joss Whedon, The Coen Brothers, Bono, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Charles Wilson, and Greg Bear. To my countless friends and family who supported me during the writing. To the podcasts and Web shows I watched when I needed a break — The Bearded Ones, Stuff You Should Know, Redletter Media, The Katering Show, The Bugle and the Wisecrack guys. To Fiona Jayde for the kickass cover and finally to Keri the super editor.

  TOC

  NEMESIS

  DEMONSTRATION

  ARCHANGEL

  CHOICES MADE

  THE BELIEVER

  THE OUTPOST

  WIDOW’S WALK

  CARGO BAY 4

  INSIGNIA

  BREACHERS

  UNKNOWN MESSENGER

  THE KEY

  COMING ABOARD

  VICE

  ARNOCK PRIME

  THE VAULT

  DECISION

  MEMORIES

  SAINT FRANCIS

  BREAKOUT

  THE BOX

  UNLEASHED

  THE RIG

  CONTACT

  THE LATTICE

  AWAKE

  A DEMON

  THE REED

  RETREAT

  DUEL

  STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY

  UNMASKED

  COMMITMENT TO THE FATES

  SLEEP AS THOUGH DEAD

  SHADOWS

  GOLGOTHA

  OVERHEAD

  KEES LEEDY

  EXCELLENCY

  RELAUND

  THE CLAN

  DARK HALL

  AFTERMATH

  NOVA

  UNBURNED

  ROAD TO HIGHLAND

  SECURITY RINGS

  ACT OF WAR

  SILENT PARTNER

  TRUTH

  THE DESCENT

  THE AIRLOCK

  HEAVEN’S LIGHT

  THE BURNING

  SHOOTING WAR

  SABATIN

  DIVERSION

  FORENSIC

  THE SACRAMENT

  TOM AND JERRY

  COPACETIC

  PASSENGER

  THE BUMP

  RECIEPT

  TIME TO LAND

  RESIDUE

  THE BULLET

  THE TORCH

  SELF

  ASSASSIN

  THE BOUT

  WHERE IS MY MIND?

  THE SHADOW

  VIOLENCE

  RECKONING

  NO REST

  SERMON

  REVELATIONS

  COMMAND CENTER PLAIN

  SUNRISE

  BLASPHEME

  THE STAIRS

  OVERCOME

  WITNESS

  PURITY

  THE WAREHOUSE

  THE LINE

  HER EYES

  THE CALL TO WAR

  COMMAND LINE

  TIME ENDER

  A VOICE

  RUN

  THE HILL

  THE FRAY

  SABACHTHANI

  FIRE

  THE COFFERS

  DETENTE

  MEETING KIZIK

  THE RUINS

  NUMB

  THE NEEDLE

  CARAVEL

  TITHE

  INTERROGATIONS

  DEATH BENEFITS

  THE PRECIOUS THRONES

  THE GIFT

  I’LL FLY AWAY

  NEMESIS

  Fangelsi Cryogenic Prison—July 22, 2265

  Nemesis settled into the clearing on Fangelsi as a herd of elk-like creatures bounded away. They stared at the frigate from the trees, their eyes glowing in the night. Just as Emmanuel Gray had planned, the spaceship had avoided the world’s security net and landed undetected two valleys over from the planet’s only structure, a maximum-security cryogenic prison. Gray called for the men to assemble in the galley for a prayer service and went back to his tiny private quarters to get ready.

  He found himself looking at his face in the mirror, wondering how he had gotten to this state. He felt old for the first time in his life; not tired, but aged. His sixty years showed in the gullies under his eyes, but he was still a vibrant man, able to run for miles and spar hand-to-hand with men half his age. His weariness wasn’t physical, but more a reflection of the journey he’d taken. He’d been a general, a governor, and now he was a wanted man leading an untested crew in a crusade that could charitably be described as insane. For Emmanuel Gray, there was no going back.

  He felt the short goatee on his chin. Since he’d left the Assault Corps, he’d grown some facial hair and he liked the way it filled his face out. It reminded him that his life was different now, that this hardscrabble free-fall was way beyond normal structures.

  Gray put on the white collar that marked him as a bishop of a religious order simply known as Believers. The core of the faith was a disdain for alien species. As humanity had expanded out into the galaxy, it had met an abundance of intelligences. First contact became routine and spiritually troublesome. Many species believed, like humans did, that they had been created in God’s image. The result was a crisis of faith and a series of wars with humanity as the aggressor—the fire that burned down dozens of worlds.

  Over the previous hundred years, humans had fought twenty-eight species to near extinction. In the last twenty years alone, it had been the Phaelon, the Tiaski, the Devorin, the Szykul…and the Arnock. The Arnock had finally been the force that stopped mankind cold five years ago. Gray balled his fists, feeling his fingernails dig into his palms. The Arnock. Goddamned spiders got into our minds, were ready for us. Slaughtered us. Made us desperate…He found his eyes in the mirror again. He knew desperate.

  “Timberwolf Velez.” Just saying the man’s name exhausted him. What he’d done had been desperate, perhaps unforgivable, but it seemed like the only way at the time. “Timberwolf Velez.” Maybe there’s no forgiveness for me…

  There was a knock at the door. Michael, Gray’s second in command, entered without being asked. His face was scarred by plasma burns and his bedraggled hair hung to his shoulders. “They’re ready, Emmanuel.”

  “Thank you, Michael. Hand me my vest.” Gray put on the black vest Michael handed him. He caught Michael eyeing the lightning bolt over the breast pocket. He wondered if one day Michael would shoot him when his back was turned. He would certainly have cause to do it.

  In the galley, the men kneeled on prayer mats, the tables and chairs piled off to the side. The Believer symbol hung on the wall at the front of the room. It looked like
a Jesus-fish turned downward and represented a closed eye. An eye that only saw the truth set out before it by God and excluded everything else.

  Gray stepped behind a podium and looked out at the soldiers—young, male, and all volunteers from prominent Believer families. Some of them had Believer marks on their foreheads and gazed up at Gray wide-eyed, like they might be raptured at any moment. All were veterans of some sort and all bragged of combat experience, but Gray doubted almost every one of them. Before he’d gotten into the upper ranks, he’d run the Assault Corps training program out of Fort Chancellor. He’d trained thousands of men to fight the Phaelon, the Tiaski and other enemies.

  The men before him didn’t have that thousand-yard stare Gray knew so well. He could tell none of them had endured days of artillery, or slogged their way through the Mile High Red Forest on Phaelon Prime, or fought street-to-street in the insurgencies that would flare up on human colonies. He’d wanted to fill the ranks full of mercenaries from Michael’s stable, but Gray had backers that insisted that his ship be crewed by Believers.

  So this is what I am now? A religious fanatic? Some closed-eyed warrior priest? He saw Michael in the back of the room, huffing and skeptical as he fell to his knees. Gray began, putting the boom in his voice from when he was a drill sergeant. “God showed us the way from our world and sent his Believers out to the stars. He told us to cleanse the way of all not made in his image.” Behind Gray, a wild-eyed fanatic named Izabeck took down his every word, scribbling frantically with a stylus into an electronic notebook.

  Gray continued, “God means for us to cleanse his universe of aliens. We have closed eyes. No questions. We’ve done His will and fought almost every race we’ve come upon. Who fought the Phaelon?”

  The soldiers responded with a throaty cry of “I-ya!” and repeated it after the mention of each enemy.

  “The Devorin…The Tiaski…The Szykul.” Gray paused, scanning the room for someone he knew wasn’t there. “Who fought the Arnock?”

  No one responded. Their heads hung with hints of shame. Gray’s eyes saddened for a moment and then filled with anger. “We all fought the Arnock. Those damned spiders! You, and you, and me! We all gave too much to them. Like no other enemy. They took our minds. Drove us to madness on contact. There are no veterans from that war.”

  Michael stared daggers through Gray as he continued, “You’re the knights of a new crusade. The Arnock are what drives us. Our peace with them is a sin and those that forged it will perish.” The men nodded their heads. Gray grew in fury. “Today is our first step towards healing from that peace. First we need the keys, then we open the door. We’ll take the factory at Highland!”

  “I-ya!” the men erupted.

  “We’ll make an army and finish our work. God’s will be done, on all our worlds as it is in heaven.” Gray finished solemnly, hanging his head and closing his eyes like he was hung on the Believer symbol behind him.

  At the back of the room, Michael stood, interrupting the moment. Gray’s nostrils flared. Michael was always needling, questioning—unable to give up the past, looking for a way to settle accounts with Gray for what had happened so long ago. That goddamned sonofabitch.

  “And what about those who don’t believe?” Michael demanded. An argument hung in the air between them that no one else knew about. Old wounds, scraped raw again and part of it, even when he didn’t know it, was Timberwolf Velez.

  Before Gray could answer, the soldiers responded in unison with words out of their teaching. “Cut them down!”

  Gray had Michael in his sights, wishing the man had fallen to his death over Saturn’s moon of Enceladus so many years ago. “I-ya. Cut them all down,” he bellowed with as much love and conviction as he could muster.

  DEMONSTRATION

  “He took an arm right off the last handler and almost pulled him into the cage.” In Nemesis’s cargo bay, Thomas dropped hunks of raw meat into a slot in the cage. The beast within was a Sabatin, a bio-engineered killing machine that appeared to be halfway between a tiger and a salamander, but was made from alien DNA. He was named Wrath and Gray couldn’t hold in a smile when he looked at him. Wrath was a creature of grace and precision coupled with power. Gray looked to the muscle rippling under his silver biological armor. He doubted the cage really held him, but that, more to the truth, Wrath agreed to be held for the moment.

  The beast took apart its meal, one powerful claw pinning the meat almost delicately while his other claw deftly sliced it into pieces. The tiger stripes of Wrath’s muzzle quickly became marked with the blood of his meal and his dagger-sharp teeth gleamed red.

  The cage shook, moving along the floor of the cargo bay. “How’s Wrath doing today?” Gray asked.

  Thomas was the beast’s handler and had kept Wrath isolated for the past few months, training and imprinting him. “He knows he’s going to get out and play!” Thomas was excited and fiddled with his heads-up display goggles. He could see what Wrath saw through a camera mounted on the side of his head.

  Gray went close to the cage, too close for Thomas, who tried to step between. “I’d like to pet him. Can I?” Thomas’s face told Gray that he thought that was insane, but Gray knelt down and cooed softly to the beast. At first Wrath continued to growl and hiss, but soon he calmed and placed his snout through the bars. Gray patted Wrath warmly and the creature huffed and grunted.

  “Bishop Gray, are you ready?” Thomas asked.

  “Yes, Thomas, I believe we are.” The beast pitched inside his cage and it lurched forward. “Oh, and I would like you to show off a bit when he gets in there. Let’s see what Wrath can do.”

  The mission was imprinted onto Wrath already and Thomas’s job was going to be mostly monitoring. Gray found it ironic that Wrath was about to break into a maximum-security cryogenic prison to grab the man who had genetically engineered him in the first place. Michael appeared beside Gray. “You’re sure Ivan Dacha’s inside?”

  Gray huffed. “He better be. I put him here.”

  Wrath burst from his cage and the men who had gathered in the cargo bay scattered. Wrath ignored them and climbed up into the rafters and back down again, excited with pent up energy. He was a flash of silver, over eight feet tall and covered in biological armor. His claws scraped the floor, leaving long scratches on the metal.

  “Ra shir!” At the command from Thomas, the beast calmed and poised himself for the next order. Thomas raised his arm and with a hand signal, he ordered Wrath down the gangplank and out into the night.

  Gray and the rest crowded around a monitor and watched as Wrath tore through the thick forest, easily avoiding the security traps and pressure sensors. Fangelsi was an expertly designed prison, but it was no match for a creature like Wrath—dexterous, smart, and fast. He gingerly scaled the exterior fence, slipping between the laser sensors. He perched at the top of the fence for a moment, the cameras and sensors on the interior walls peering his way. When he knew he had been seen, Wrath leaped from the fence.

  The ground on the other side of the fence was covered entirely with pressure sensors. As soon as he touched the ground, the place lit up like a Christmas tree. Auto-cannons swiveled and plasma bursts raked the ground. Wrath leaped up to a cannon on the wall and tore it apart, its plasma cell bursting as he tossed it away. He leaped to the next cannon and paused a second so the other cannons could target him. As they fired he sprang away, the cannon getting blasted to pieces. He leaped to the next one and repeated, only the occasional plasma burst bouncing off his armor.

  Wrath leaped to the last cannon and held it with one of his merciless claws so it couldn’t swivel. With his other claw, he gingerly opened up the mechanism and disconnected the plasma cell. All cannons silent now, he loped unhurriedly over the next fence, the plasma cell tucked up under him like a football. Before him now was the main facility. Without breaking his stride, he shook up the plasma cell and scraped its connector along the concrete until the friction made it sizzle. When he was a hundred yards from the m
ain gate, he launched the makeshift bomb and dove for cover.

  Back on Nemesis, the crew felt the explosion and Wrath’s feed went dead for a moment. When it came back, the crew gasped, Gray smiling uncontrollably. The facility was cracked open and burning. Most of the power was out, just a few red lights spinning meekly. “Can Wrath enter?” Thomas asked.

  “Oh yes, get him in there!” Gray said.

  Wrath slipped in through the wreckage and went up the stairs, meeting the first guards on the third landing. Before they could even react, he’d slashed through two of them. The other got off random shots before succumbing to his flurry of teeth and claws. Gray grinned widely as he watched, leaning on Thomas’s shoulder.

  On the levels above, giant iron doors rolled closed as red lights flashed and sirens wailed. One guard remained on the wrong side and pounded on the door as his colleagues looked through the porthole and shook their heads.

  “We are on facility lockdown,” a computer voice repeated.

  The guard emptied his weapon on Wrath, but the plasma bursts deflected harmlessly away. The beast approached closely, scanning the door, the guard struggling to reload. Wrath absently slashed the guard down as he examined the lock. Then with his shoulders flexing, he turned the wheel on the door until its gears snapped and spun free. Bayonets extruded from over his forearms and he dug into the lock mechanism. He peeled the door outward, tearing it off its hinges. He tossed it away as two guards on the other side unloaded their weapons on him.

  Wrath lashed out with his razor-tipped tongue, taking one guard’s head clean off. His plasma clip empty, the other man just stood there, terrified and unable to make a sound. Wrath backed up, dropped his head and drove his iron-crowned skull into the man’s chest, smashing him against the wall. The guard crumpled like a rag-doll. Beyond the second door, there was no resistance.

  The guards inside the command center watched Wrath’s silver flash go past twice, hoping beyond hope the Sabatin wouldn’t find them. But after a few agonizing minutes, he’d checked every other door and he approached the command center almost casually, panting lightly from the action.