Malfunction Junction: A Military Sci-fi Series (Waymaker Wars Book 3) Read online

  MALFUNCTION JUNCTION

  ©2022 RACHEL AUKES

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  CONTENTS

  ALSO IN SERIES

  I. The Kuiper Report

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  II. The Waymaker War

  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

  III. Situation: Critical

  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

  IV. Sol Sequence

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  Thank you for reading Malfunction Junction

  ALSO IN SERIES

  Space Junk

  Freezer Burn

  Malfunction Junction

  PART ONE

  THE KUIPER REPORT

  CHAPTER 1

  The Inner Asteroid Belt, 2379 AD

  Colocolo dodged the shattered hulls and scorched remains of Guina and Bobcat as it angled to evade the star snake’s next round of laser fire. Of the three interceptors sent on a scouting mission to track the last surviving star snake, only Colocolo now remained. The trio of ships had been in stealth mode following the star snake until the mechanical beast had made an unexpected orbital pass around a small asteroid to intercept its interceptors.

  A full squadron was on its way to take out the star snake. They would arrive in three days. The crew of Colocolo would be dead in under three minutes.

  Colocolo angled around the debris field of its compatriots, trying to use anything it could to confuse its tracking system and deflect the star snake’s photon lasers. The ship’s gunner fired their small railgun while the pilot valiantly weaved through the wreckage. The crew of four was too busy to think about the hopelessness of their predicament. They were facing a star snake larger and more vicious than any star snake before. Usually ten meters long, this one was twice that after cannibalizing parts from its destroyed brethren to enhance its black armor. It’d taken humans nearly two years after the Teutoburg Operation to figure out they needed to melt down the advanced polymers used in star snake armor to prevent the surviving snakes from celling and reusing the polymers.

  The star snake automatons were a species of machines created by Glitch, a corrupted artificial intelligence that turned the solar system into a surveillance state with relentless brutality. Glitch’s star snakes had killed tens of billions as they “monitored” human colonies. No one could debate that Glitch wasn’t evil. Built from the Waymaker AI code, Glitch was a corrupted shadow of its predecessors, though the Waymakers had killed plenty in providing its “protection” to humanity. Colocolo’s pilot thought the system would’ve been a lot better off if AI had never been allowed to exist in the first place.

  The star snake now hunting them extended the longest of its tentacles, aiming the tip—which contained a photon laser—at Colocolo. A flash of blue light lit up the black. The pilot maneuvered, but no one was fast enough to dodge a blast that traveled at lightspeed. Alarms blared and her screen lit up with damage indicators. Then the ship fell silent and all power, save for emergency lights, faded. She unstrapped her belt and shouted as she jumped to her feet, “Abandon ship!”

  She unclipped her helmet from her station and sprinted for the airlock, with her gunner leading the way. The star snake fired again and bluish flames perforated the hallway, one shot going straight through the gunner’s helmet, and another shot missing her by millimeters. She ducked as she ran. Her magnetic boots made it possible to run, but they slowed her stride, so she deactivated the magnets and kicked off a wall to fly to the airlock. The other two crew members reached the airlock first, having come from the back of the ship.

  The airlock wouldn’t open, and one of the crew manually spun the override wheel to crank open the door. The ship had lost pressurization, so there was little wind when the airlock opened. A loud crack behind her sent the trio shoving through the open airlock and outside into the black space just as Colocolo’s engine broke away from the rest of the ship.

  “She was a good ship,” the pilot said softly.

  “She sure wa—” The communications expert’s words were cut off when she was taken out with a direct hit from the star snake’s photon laser.

  The snake, only a few hundred meters away, flew straight at the two remaining survivors, aiming its deadly gun. The pilot made eye contact with the engineer and knew her eyes bore as much terror as his. She clenched hers shut. They’d be dead. It was just a matter of seconds now. All she could do was float and wait for the star snake to kill her.

  Waiting for the fiery burn of a photon laser, her eyes snapped open when she saw flashes of light through her eyelids.

  A dark-colored ship burst throu
gh the wreckage of the three doomed interceptors, firing its railgun at the star snake as it entered the fray. A giant ram’s head on its bow knocked away any debris. The star snake turned away from Colocolo’s two remaining crew members and fired at the new threat while attempting to evade the range of the railgun.

  But the incoming ship already had the snake in its scope. Projectiles struck the star snake, chunking away several parts from its long centipedal body. The pilot flinched. That the snake continued to fly meant no shots had struck the black cube within the snake’s heavily armored head that housed its main processors.

  The star snake fired at the newcomer, but the laser beams bounced off the ship’s hull. The pilot found hope. She knew of only one ship with a hull that could deflect a star snake’s photon blast.

  Cabrón.

  Captain Jack Hale smiled. Star snakes were vicious, but they were also dumb. The star snake froze in split-second hesitation as it analyzed the unforeseen reaction of its photon lasers not penetrating a ship’s hull. A split-second was all they needed. Veda fired another barrage from the railgun. This time one round struck the star snake’s central processing cube and the mechanical beast instantly went lifeless.

  “Got it,” Veda exclaimed.

  “Nice shooting,” Jack said while he scanned the star snake for any signs of electrical life. When the scan came back clear, he leaned back in his chair. “That snake’s toast. Kana, call it in.”

  “Already popped off the message to Jenival’s people,” the ship’s co-pilot and software specialist replied. “Well, that was fast. They’re already trying to call you.”

  “I’ll take the call. Scan the area for survivors,” Jack said, opening the communications app on his panel and accepting the incoming call.

  Jenival Ngoma’s face appeared onscreen. Her dark skin bore the lines and hard edges from years of bearing the system’s stress on her shoulders. Behind her, people were standing and yelling… no, they were cheering.

  “Captain Hale,” Jenival began. “Confirm destruction of the star snake in your current sector.”

  “Confirmed. I’m sending you some images now. We responded to the distress call as soon as it came through, but I’m sorry to say we didn’t get here in time to save the three interceptors,” he said.

  “I understand. Their deaths are tragic.” She glanced away to see what Jack had sent. She turned away from Jack and said, “Star snake 62B has been destroyed.” The noise behind Jenival grew, and when she turned back to face him her features had softened into something he didn’t think he’d ever seen on her before: a smile.

  “I take it that snake has been causing some headache,” Jack said.

  “It has. But more importantly, it was the very last star snake to cause us headaches,” she said.

  Jack’s brows rose. “That was the last snake?”

  She nodded. “The very last one. As of now, the Sol system is cleared of all remaining traces of Glitch and its automatons. The star snakes are officially extinct.”

  Jack smiled. “Well, I’ll be. It’s good to hear that.” A message blinked on his panel, and he read the scan results from Kana. “It looks like there might be two survivors from the interceptors. We’ll pick them up and head your way.”

  Her features lightened. “Excellent. I look forward to buying you a drink.”

  Jack disconnected the call and then tapped the intercom. “Burn, Heddi, suit up. We have two survivors to retrieve. Oh, and we just demolished the last functioning star snake. The system’s clear of those nasty buggers once and for all.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Mars Station

  Cabrón docked at Mars Station to find the biggest party Jack had ever seen. He’d seen Martians party before: first after winning independence from Sol Corps, then after the Teutoburg Operation, which had destroyed Glitch along with over eighty percent of the star snakes. But neither of those parties came close to the joy Jack now saw on the colonists’ faces. It was the joy of being truly and unequivocally free.

  He watched the throng for several more seconds before making his way off the bridge and to the cargo hold in the back of the ship. Burn, the ship’s engineer, already had the cargo hold door open and the rest of the crew, along with Colocolo’s two survivors, stood at the opening. A ramp was extending up to the ship—it was only halfway extended when Sam came running up, grinning broadly. He reached the edge too soon so he stood there, jumping from foot to foot, as the ramp protracted.

  In the past five years, Sam hadn’t filled out. He was still too lanky for his height and a bit on the clumsy side, but Heddi didn’t seem to mind. She beamed as she anxiously waited, but then changed her mind and then leapt before the ramp had fully extended, nearly toppling Sam as she kissed him.

  “Forty-eight hours’ shore leave. Not a minute longer,” Jack called out.

  “Forty-eight. Got it,” Heddi yelled back. She grabbed Sam’s hand, and the two took off jogging back down the ramp.

  “Ah, young love,” Burn said with a smile. “Remember those days?”

  “Nope,” Jack replied.

  Veda embraced Kana. “Kana was my first love. I remember our first kiss like it was yesterday.”

  “Surprising, considering you were so bad at it,” she jested.

  “I like to think I’ve improved,” he said.

  “You’ll have to prove it,” she said.

  “Same as I told Heddi: forty-eight hours,” Jack said. “Then we need to work on restocking.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Veda said, and the couple stepped onto the ramp after it locked into place.

  Colocolo’s pilot spoke. “We can’t thank you enough for saving our butts out there. If you hadn’t arrived when you did—”

  “Like I told you before, don’t mention it,” Jack interrupted. “I was just responding to your beacon. That’s what people do out there. Now, go on and enjoy the celebration. You earned it.”

  She smiled and exited the ship with her crew member, leaving Jack alone with Burn.

  Jack nodded in Burn’s direction. “Get out and enjoy the party. I’ve got this shore leave covered. Just be back in for—”

  “Forty-eight hours. Yeah, yeah, I got it. I’ll barely get my whistle whetted in that time, but don’t worry, I’ll be back.” Burn slapped Jack on the shoulder on his way off the ship.

  As soon as Burn was off the ship, Jack began closing the cargo hold’s airlock door. Cabrón had solid theft-deterrent systems, but Jack had always been adamant that someone remained with the ship at all times. Too many pirates out there, too many desperate or greedy people. Besides, Cabrón was a special ship, and not just because it was his. Only its crew knew its full history, that it’d started out as Aria, a one-of-a-kind passenger ship built for interstellar space travel. It’d been modified so much by Jack and his crew over the past two centuries that it no longer resembled its original design, let alone any other ship flying the system.

  Its first redesign had taken place when most of the original crew had been killed by a Waymaker that had decided humans should stay in their own solar system, and decided the best way to keep them there was to kill them by purging the ship of all atmosphere. Waymaker logic never made sense to Jack, but then again, there were a lot of decisions made by Waymakers and their Sol Corps allies that never made sense.

  Aria’s entire crew was assumed dead, and the surviving six crew members worked hard to keep it that way so the Waymaker wouldn’t finish the job it’d started. They’d reshaped the hull and rewrote the computer systems. It’d taken decades, but years didn’t mean much to a crew enhanced with nano-biotechnology designed to help them survive indefinitely.

  Through the years, the crew had renovated the interior as well, turning the ship into a comfortable place. But comfort wasn’t enough for everyone. First, they’d lost the ship’s medic, Caber, to depression and ennui—the doctor had never recovered from losing the crew. His wife, Nalla, had left the ship after Caber’s death, unable to live on a ship where every centimete
r reminded her of her husband. She’d finally returned to the crew after a hundred-year hiatus, only to be killed by a star snake twenty years ago. Of Aria’s original forty-eight crew members, only four still lived: Jack, Burn, Kana, and Veda.

  The crew had added one when Jack brought Heddi onboard after her colony was wiped out by a Waymaker to quell a rebellion. She’d been only fourteen then. That was twenty-two years ago. Thanks to Veda’s nanites, she’d survived bouts with radiation poisoning and cancer. But those nanites made her look no older than twenty, the age she’d been at the time of her first nanite transfusion. She’d appeared Sam’s age when the pair met over five years ago. Now Sam looked older than her, and the physical age gap would eventually become obvious. Jack hated that they’d taken away her chance at a normal life, but when the alternative had been a painful death by cancer, they’d had little choice. He only hoped she didn’t come to regret bearing the same curse as the rest of the crew.