The Fearless, book two in my new space fantasy, Star Legend, is nearly ready for release, which means it’s Saturday Snippet time again. Read ahead for the first chapter in the continuing story of Taylan Ellis and Major Wright in this mixture of Arthurian legend and space opera.

If you missed book one, The Valiant, you can read part one of the series here.

“Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Frank Herbert, Dune

Chapter One

Airless and zero-g, the umbilicus snaked out from the Cornflower’s starboard airlock. A steel scaffold protruded from the open end, a cage holding the molecular scalpel that would slice into the hull of the Fearless.

Major Wright pulled himself closer to the ship, hand over hand along grips lining the interior wall of the umbilicus. The crew responsible for attaching the scaffold to the BA’s former flagship were taking their sweet time about it, and he wanted to know why.

The Fearless hung silent and enigmatic in space, adrift in the Asteroid Belt. In the five weeks it had taken them to reach her, she hadn’t responded to a comm, run her engines, or betrayed any other sign of life. None of her airlocks were responding to security override codes, so they had no choice except to force entry.

“Corporal Marks,” Wright said, “is there a problem? You should be through that hatch by now.”

“No, no problem, sir!” she replied.

Her tone was way too cheery and confident. Something was bothering her.

The corporal was one of eight Marines assigned to the task of gaining entry to the ship. All looked nearly identical in their EVA suits, their pulse rifles slung across their backs, but he spotted her as she turned to face him.

Marks would be accompanying him into the ship along with others. He was to conduct a preliminary search to discover the state of things inside. Aside from lots of dead Space Fleet personnel, he had no idea what he might find. The last thing he needed was a jumpy Marine.

He grabbed a strut and came to a halt.

No one else was looking his way. That wasn’t so strange. They had to concentrate on what they were doing. But their movements seemed slow and reluctant. Whatever was bothering Marks, the rest of the team felt the same.

“Marks,” he said, “leave that a minute and come here.”

She pressed the magnetized square on her power tool to a pipe and propelled herself in his direction. Catching onto one of the bars used to manipulate the scalpel, she stopped in front of Wright.

Through the tint of her visor, he was surprised to see fear in her eyes.

This was the Marine who had courageously helped him blast into the mountain in West BI to find Arthur. She had also ventured out with him under fire to rescue Ellis, who had been immobilized.

He switched his comm system to one-to-one.

“What is it, Marks? What’s going on? Whatever it is, you can tell me. You won’t get into trouble.”

She broke eye contact. “It’s just…Shit, I feel dumb saying it.”

“Come on, spit it out. We don’t have forever. The EAC would love to get their hands on the Fearless, even in her current state. They could be on their way right now.”

Wright heard her swallow and then say, still looking away from him, “It’s just, some of the others are worried about what might be inside.”

He guessed she was also one of the ‘others’.

“S-some people have been calling it a ghost ship.”

“A ghost…?”

Dammit.

He’d heard it all: Gremlins causing system failures; mysterious alien predators living on moons with no atmosphere; and zombie hostiles rising from the dead.

Now it was ghost ships.

You could train Marines to keep on fighting against hopeless odds, to put their lives on the line every day, but you couldn’t train them out of being superstitious.

“Okay,” he said, “everyone on the Fearless probably died when the black cloud took her, or if they didn’t die then, they blued soon after. We’re going to find dead people, for sure. It isn’t going to be pleasant. If it’s any consolation, as long as you keep your visor down, you won’t smell them. But ghosts? Come on.”

His skepticism didn’t appear to have any effect on the corporal, who continued to look at him with dread behind her eyes.

“I’ve never seen a ghost,” he said. “Have you?”

“No-o.”

“Anyone in your family ever seen one?” he asked. “They’re miners, right?”

“Last I heard. I blocked them after they signed up with the Antarctic Project. I don’t remember any of them saying they saw a ghost—”

“There you go.”

“But they did used to talk about brownies that would take revenge if you accidentally broke into one of their caves.”

Wright suppressed a sigh. “All right, look at it this way: If there are ghosts on the Fearless, they’re BA ghosts. They’re going to be friendly, not try to hurt us. They’ll probably stay out of the way, in fact, to make it easier for us to give their bodies a decent burial. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“I guess so,” replied Marks, not sounding at all reassured.

“Good. Get back to work. If I don’t report to the brigadier soon that we’re beginning the search, she’ll come out herself from the Valiant to see what’s happening. We don’t want that, do we?”

Though the larger vessel, the Cornflower’s ‘parent’ ship was only a few hundred kilometers distant, Colbourn would be mightily pissed off if she felt it necessary to make the journey.

“No, sir,” exclaimed Marks. She thrust off with a hand and returned to the edge of the scaffold.

The brigadier was scarier than any ghost.

Wright addressed the team. “As you know, the Fearless is still maintaining an atmosphere, so we can expect some nastiness once we’re inside. You might see someone you once knew.”

It was doubtful any of the corpses would be recognizable, but it wasn’t impossible. “It’s going to be hard. I want you to remember the real people who manned the ship are long gone, and what you see is only the shells they left behind. When we’ve figured out the situation, they’ll be given all the respect they deserve, but for now, I want you to focus on doing your job.”

“Sir,” said Cole, “permission to speak.”

“Go ahead.”

“Should we expect to encounter hostiles, sir?”

“If anyone aboard her wanted a fight, she would have fired on us when we came within range hours ago. That answer your question?”

“Yes, sir,” Cole replied doubtfully.

Was the private imagining a space creature lurking on the former flagship?

“You have your rifles just in case,” said Wright. “But think before you shoot. The ship still has pressure. I don’t want one of you blasting a hole in the hull.”

When the scaffold was secured and the molecular scalpel was in place, the two engineers on the team guided the scalpel’s nozzle to the ship’s hull and started her up. Pre-programmed, the machine moved smoothly, slicing a vertical line through the thick skin, severing the layers like a razor passing through silk. Gases erupted from the slit, instantly condensing to ice. The scalpel turned a corner and swept along the horizontal, silent in the vacuum.

The molecular scalpel’s progress continued until the square was complete. The emerging clouds of frozen condensate faded. The engineers withdrew the machine, and then applied magnetized paddles to detach the excised section. The movement caused the motion-sensitive interior lights to blink on. They slid the thick slice of hull away and captured it in a net before securing it to the side of the cage.

The airlock looked normal. Beyond the small oblong window on the far side, the passageway lights were on, which Wright found odd. He’d been expecting the ship to be in darkness, though he didn’t really know why. Unanticipated nervousness hit him. Until that moment, he’d been focused on the task ahead, but now the oddness of the scenario reared up in his mind.

The Fearless had disappeared in the midst of battle, ‘swallowed’ by an amorphous mass of unknown astronomical matter. And now here she was, inexplicably hundreds of millions of kilometers from her original position.

How had she come to be here? What force had transported her and then abandoned her? What had killed everyone aboard?

“Major Wright,” said one of the engineers from inside the airlock, “the control panel appears to be working normally. Do you want to bring the team in so we can seal the breach before we open the inner hatch?”

“Affirmative.”

Thanks for reading! More next week. The Fearless goes live on Amazon on 16th March, or you can get a pre-publication copy by becoming a Patreon subscriber.