Shadow Play Read online

  Shadow Play

  A Military Space Opera Tale

  P. R. Adams

  Promethean Tales

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  * * *

  SHADOW PLAY

  * * *

  Copyright © 2019 P R Adams

  * * *

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  * * *

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Also by P. R. Adams

  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

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by P. R. Adams

  For updates on new releases and news on other series, visit my website and sign up for my mailing list at:

  * * *

  http://www.p-r-adams.com

  * * *

  The War in Shadow

  Shadow Moves

  Shadow Play

  Shadow Strike

  Books in the On The Brink Universe

  The Stefan Mendoza Trilogy

  Into Twilight

  Gone Dark

  End State

  The Rimes Trilogy

  Momentary Stasis

  Transition of Order

  Awakening to Judgment

  The ERF Series

  Turning Point

  Valley of Death

  Jungle Dark

  Chariot Bright

  Dawn Fire

  The Lancers Series

  Deep Descent

  Deadly Game

  Dire Straits

  The Burning Sands Trilogy

  Beneath Burning Sands

  Across Burning Sands

  Beyond Burning Sands

  Books in The Chain Series

  The Chain: Shattered

  The Journey Home

  Rock of Salvation

  From the Depths

  Ever Shining

  Dedication

  For all those lost because of lies about yellowcake.

  1

  Thunder shook the Azoren Federation Outpost barracks, and the lights flickered a few seconds later, then winked out. Major Talbot O’Bannon looked up from the private terminal he’d been working at and stared at the connection indicator. It wasn’t green or red but dark, powered off, like the now-silent heating unit.

  No surprise, really. Emergency power would be prioritized to the command and communications systems located in the operations center.

  When the slim panel of emergency lights above his door finally powered on, he rose from the chair that was nearly as much his home on the giant moon Jotun as the operations center. He pulled on the crisp, white shirt that would chafe against his skin throughout his shift, musty from the chemical that kept the material smooth. Over that shirt, he slipped the deep gray coat of an officer of the Grand Azoren Federation Army.

  He didn’t need to see his long, rangy body in a mirror to know how he looked: sharp, with not one single wrinkle visible. The hands that buttoned up his jacket were still strong and sure, but they looked deflated somehow, and they had acquired brown blotches somewhere along the way. He had seen the age settling into his face, though—bags under his blue eyes and gray in the waves of his thinning, pale brown hair. And there were wrinkles to be seen on his face, of course. It was a face that always looked drained.

  And why wouldn’t it be? On a huge moon named for giants but known among his men as Moloch.

  A dark god of blood and sacrifice from millennia ago, when his people knew only one world. It was a world that couldn’t contain such varied people with their wildly divergent views, a world dead now, depleted.

  Yet humanity had outlived that world and had survived long enough to reach the stars before splitting off and finding their separate ways.

  And now he was a proud officer in one of those ways, a leader of men.

  Because soon, men would be all that was left in the Azoren Federation. What need was there of women now that there were vats to preserve and spawn future generations? If all that mattered was war, and that was the domain of men, then why waste precious resources on women?

  He chuckled softly at that as he let himself out of his barracks room, pulling the door shut behind him with a metallic clank.

  What would Mia think if he told her how the younger men in his unit still talked about the hope of finding a wife someday? With her strong jaw and nose, she could never be mistaken for one of the idealized propaganda simulations, but when they lay together in the dark, she was as warm and soft as any woman could ever have been. And she was all he could have ever wanted.

  And men would sacrifice such a thing? For the greater good of the Federation? In his youth, he would have given up almost anything for a night with his dear, sweet Mia and the dark waves of her hair.

  But now he was old. His bones creaked and muscles cramped. And the Federation needed him far from home, on the frontier.

  “Listening,” he whispered, again chuckling.

  After all, what did he listen to?

  Chatter. The words of an enemy too caught up in its own struggles over identity and destiny and acceptance. He shook his head at his thoughts. It was hardly an enemy at all.

  His boots thudded on the concrete steps as he descended to the tunnel that ran beneath the barracks structure. He could have braved the biting wind and rain outside had he the light to find his overcoat and respirator mask and to bundle himself in all the insulating material.

  Not today, though. No gloves. No overcoat. No risk of boots slipping on ice.

  Today, he trudged down the long tunnel that took him to the basement of the building that had been his command for the past eighteen months. He walked the shadow-draped length caught up in thoughts and regrets, wondering how it was that his father had fallen into such an ideology, an ideology that had brought the younger O’Bannon into the Azoren fold without any chance to consider whether or not he actually believed in the dogma that had put him in uniform at seventeen and in the trenches only a few months later.

  Memories of the many battles he’d fought seemed to ignite the deadened nerves where his arms and legs had taken bullets or laser beams or shrapnel.

  As he approached fifty, those memories were almost all he had of life.

  There had to be more to it than that, though.

  His steps boomed in the stairwell as he climbed first into the basement, then up to the bottom floor of the main structure. Breakfast aromas—sausage and reconstituted eggs, cabbage and potatoes—brought him around, but he didn’t have the stomach for anything like that today.

  He swung
through, took a pastry and a cup of coffee after waving at the hefty men working in the kitchen, then returned to the hall. The coffee was bitter and strong, the pastry crunchy and somewhat sweet. A few sips, a few bites, and the rest went into a disposal chute outside the operations center.

  Gurgling in his gut was all he needed to hear, the reminder of what lay ahead.

  “All hail to the Azoren Federation.” Muttered. Bitter as the coffee.

  And then he was through the heavy double doors that shut behind him with a solid mechanical hiss and pop. Lights glowed from rows of consoles, most not even manned yet. His staff came on in an hour or so.

  To listen to the stars and the whispers of the great enemies opposing our people, he reminded himself.

  Because that was the role of the listening station on Jotun.

  His command. His home away from home for another six months. His little slice of the Azoren concept of Valhalla—glorious war without end.

  O’Bannon patted the back of young Niels Andressen, who would make corporal soon.

  The fellow turned, gave a gap-toothed smile, and said, “Good morning, Major.”

  “Good morning, Private Andressen.”

  “The breath of Fenrir blows hard today.”

  “Best we stay inside where it’s warm then, heh?”

  The young man blew into his hands. “It is, Major.”

  And who would know better the pain the cold caused to hands than the man who had suffered injuries that had broken every bone in those hands? Yet Andressen was barely into his twenties. He had nearly forty years remaining before the Federation would be through with him.

  If he lived so long. The way the war was grinding on against the Moskav Alliance, none of them were likely to see retirement.

  Another of O’Bannon’s soldiers looked up from his console, a beefy young private named Lyonne. He suffered the misfortune of darker skin, something he blamed on the indiscretions of an ancestor. It didn’t matter. Lyonne would never rise to sergeant, despite a sterling record and decorations on the battlefield.

  “Good morning, Major.” Lyonne tapped his display with a crooked finger. “A busy morning already.”

  O’Bannon bent over to inspect the display. “And what is this, then?”

  Lyonne whispered, “It is the work of Captain Knoel, Major.”

  The younger man’s brown eyes flicked toward the steps that led up to the heart of the operations center, the place that had been the major’s little nest for the past eighteen months.

  The older man patted his subordinate’s thick shoulder. “Well done, Private.”

  O’Bannon headed up the steps slowly, unbuttoning his overcoat despite the relative chill. It would be warmer at his station, where the heat from all the equipment collected.

  Broad-shouldered Jan Franke was waiting there, the muscles of his cheek rippling beneath pale skin. He was a gaunt, unattractive man, with yellowing teeth from a condition suffered as a child.

  As O’Bannon hung his coat on a hook just inside the somewhat isolated open area that served as his office now, he glanced at the displays on the shared desk. “Updates on the latest tournaments, Jan?”

  The lieutenant turned. “Hm? Oh. Yes, Major. The glory of the western land has been confirmed after three elimination rounds. Gadsell advances to the finals.”

  “All hail to the Azoren Federation.”

  “Yes. All hail.” But the lieutenant never turned from the office opposite the little shared space that had once been his own.

  Light leaked around a privacy screen over the window, something O’Bannon had never believed in when he’d sat in the office.

  O’Bannon loosened his tie ever so slightly, and for a moment longed for the simplicity of exchanging artillery and infantry assaults with the Moskav. “What devilish work is he up to today, our dear Captain Knoel?”

  “You haven’t heard?” Franke ran a knuckle across his nose.

  “Only that things are busy, which never bodes well with our dear captain.”

  “He has ordered me to take a squad out to the crater.”

  Fire lanced through O’Bannon’s body. “He has now, has he? And why?”

  Franke bobbed up and down on the toes of his scuffed boots, then turned to the console and typed in a command before swiping through the interface. It wasn’t graceful or quick, conducted as it was by hands more at home holding a Destiny-II battle rifle, but it brought up a report nonetheless.

  The lieutenant pointed to the image. “This.”

  “And what is ‘this’?”

  “Monitors. The satellites detected a strange signal.”

  “Hmph. We see strange signals all the time.”

  “Yes, but the captain feels this could indicate a potential communication.”

  “From the crater? And what would that be? A ghost? The crater and ruins have been abandoned for centuries, long before humans ever came here.”

  “The captain worries that is a lie.”

  O’Bannon dropped into the chair and studied the report. There were indeed signals of some sort, but there was no exact identification of the origin and even less data on the type of signal. It could have been an encrypted burst, or perhaps another of the inexplicable random radiation releases. Archaeologists had never managed to make heads or tails of all that remained of what they were sure must have been an advanced civilization, and thanks to orders from High Command, no one would ever enter the ruins again.

  “The satellites will be in place soon for imagery collection.” O’Bannon swiped through the interface until he had the satellite view on the screen.

  Franke shrugged. “The satellite covering that part of the sky no longer works.”

  “Everything here is breaking down. It is old and miserable. Like me.”

  That made the younger man smile. “You will outlive the rest of us, Major.”

  “Only if you make some very poor life decisions, Jan.” O’Bannon pushed himself out of the chair. “Don’t leave just yet.”

  “There is time for breakfast?”

  “Maybe time for you to eat and work on that growing gut of yours before you head to bed for the night, huh?”

  Franke seemed to relax a little. “These Black Lightning Commandos, they think they know more about the war than the Army.”

  “They have fought nothing. They wear medals to acknowledge such victories.”

  “The victory of the mind, Major.”

  O’Bannon tapped his temple. “So dangerous, this enemy, the mind.”

  “They speak of how ridiculous it is that we have yet to crush the mongrel horde and send them to slavery or a more permanent end.”

  “These Moskav ‘mongrels’ we fight pull triggers and launch weapons with every bit the effectiveness any Black Lightning Commando could hope to.”

  Franke once more turned from his staring at the office. “Careful, Major.”

  “Yes, careful. Or I will be the next one they seek to persecute.”

  “There is still a career to be wrecked for you, unlike mine.”

  O’Bannon adjusted the gig line of his shirt and belt, then pulled his coat back on. “Your career will be long and glorious, Lieutenant, something the angels sing about to babies when they spring forth from their artificial wombs.”

  The gaunt man shook his head. “You dance with danger, Major.”

  “After fighting the Moskav, what should scare me?”

  “These Commandos. They are all from those artificial wombs.”

  “They are still human. They are still our brothers.” But there was no conviction to O’Bannon’s words. Knoel and his comrades were smooth-cheeked, rhetoric-spewing, administrative heroes raised by the Federation, with no understanding of what it meant to be a human. They were not brothers. They were bright young things, toys for the Supreme Leader. “Go. Get some breakfast.”

  The lieutenant grunted, then took his coat and departed.

  Without even a perfunctory knock, O’Bannon entered the captain’s office—
the Jotun Commander’s office, which had been O’Bannon’s until the Commandos’ arrival.

  Knoel was on his feet instantly, his pasty face and dead, blond hair aglow in the light of a terminal. Like his men, he had a cadaverous look, with dead, silvery eyes. And like his men, Knoel’s face was smooth and soft as a baby’s, with features that hovered somewhere between masculine and feminine. Who had need of facial hair to tend to in the military? No one, so engineer it out of them.

  The engineered officer scowled. “Major O’Bannon! What—?”

  “Sit down, Captain. This is only a visit.”

  “You will knock—!”

  “And good morning to you on such a bright and warm day, Captain Knoel.”

  The captain managed a twitchy smile. “Do close the door, Major.”

  O’Bannon glanced at the door but stayed where he’d stopped, in the center of the office that had been his sanctuary for so long, a place where he could think of Mia and the children. “What is this I hear about you assigning Lieutenant Franke to search the crater?”

  “Ah, yes. A short laser burst in need of investigation.”