Infinite Warship

Book 3: Starship Omega

by Scott Bartlett

Genres: Space Exploration; Space Marines

Synopsis

The Imperium is out for blood

Hunted through the stars, teetering on the brink of extinction, humanity clings to its last hope:

The Starship Omega, ancient alien leviathan of a battleship. Discovered by chance at our greatest hour of need.

An incredible future for our species is possible. But before that can come to pass, a terrible crucible awaits us.

Even with Omega, victory will require determination and sacrifice from every surviving human.

The future is calling...but are we worthy of it?

Can Captain Henderson and his crew withstand the full might of two galactic powers? Find out in Book 3 of Starship Omega, an engrossing new space opera from bestselling authors Scott Bartlett and Joshua James.

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Release date: April 15, 2026

Publisher: Mirth Publishing

Sample

Chapter One Captain Bill Henderson Bill leaned back in the command chair of Omega and considered their course. “How much longer until our scanners are in-range?” His Nav officer, Lieutenant James Ridding, looked over the controls. Ridding was a recent addition to the Omega bridge crew, though he and Bill had served together for years before the start of the rebellion. A prolonged illness had kept him from joining his colleagues for the first months of their time on the Primeval ship. An illness brought on by his poor treatment in one of the Ornu prison camps. Which meant that he, perhaps more than anyone else among the crew, was invested in their current mission. Bill, too, had personal reasons to care about their upcoming jailbreak, as his own father had been imprisoned along with the lieutenant. Unlike Ridding, who had only served a few months, Gordon had been labeled Defunct for decades. “We’ve got approximately three minutes until we’re close enough to get a read on their personnel numbers,” Ridding announced. “Though of course, when that happens, they’ll also be able to get a read on us.” “That’s what we have the SRJ drive for,” Bill said. “Keating, tell Captain Stone to alert you when the Can is ready to launch. Norder, you know what to do.” And then, there was nothing to do but wait. That was the worst part about these missions—the waiting. As tempting as it was to use the SRJ drive at every opportunity, it simply wasn’t possible. The drive was powerful, but it had its limits; according to Val’s calculations, three consecutive surges could cause structural damage to the Omega and cause the system to overheat. Thus, rather than risk either cooking his passengers alive or flinging them out into the vast and frozen expanse of deep space, Bill was left with no alternative other than to exercise patience. From a distance, the asteroid-based mining camp looked like any other they’d raided in recent weeks. At the outset, Bill had been horrified by the conditions in which the Defunct slaves were kept, but after the first dozen or so raids, he’d become numb to their horror. He was not proud of that—if anything, it was just one more element of his humanity that the Ornu’s repeated cruelty had stripped away. At least when he was in the command chair, he didn’t have to confront that sorrow head-on. “Thirty seconds,” Ridding warned. Come on. Bill bared his teeth in a cynical smile. Show me what you’ve got. Then the data bloomed across the screens in a series of scrolling analytics, ticking upward so fast that to Bill’s eyes they were little more than a blur. “Looks like they’ve got reinforcements,” Ridding barked as his eyes scanned the Nav controls. “We’ve got a full house in the mining encampment and six—no, eight Crendelen ships running defense. Two of those are on the far side of the asteroid.” “All right, then. Prepare to fire on my count. Three… two…” Bill closed his eyes. In an instant, he slipped into the simspace suspended outside of time, in the unknown medium where Val could implement his commands through Omega’s strange controls. Val was waiting for him, alongside a miniature three-dimensional display of the battlefield and their various opponents and targets. “Would you like me to initiate a surge, Captain?” Val asked, with all the poise of an old-world English butler. Bill nodded. “Take us in. We’ll start with a barrage of dumb rounds. I don’t want to set off a shrapnel storm that will make it difficult for the Can to get through.” Val bent slightly at the waist and offered a thin smile. “As you say, Captain.” There was a quiet bite to his words. Ah, so he was mad about something. Bill could think of half a dozen things he’d done that might have ticked Omega off, first and foremost being his failure to follow the ship’s explicit missives. A problem for another time, he decided. “Thank you,” he said, and slid out of the simspace. Bill opened his eyes just in time to feel the shuddering rush of the SRJ drive. In the brief moment it took to prepare for the jump, the drive made the whole ship tremble slightly. The tremors became more intense with each jump—hence the danger of taking too many jumps at once—but if he hadn’t known this first jump was coming, he might not have noticed the sensation. “One,” he said aloud. And then, in the blink of an eye, they were on top of the Crendelen. Norder unleashed a volley of targeted Hailstorm missiles on the closest ships, while Val did as Bill had asked and fired off dumb rounds at those farther away. “The Marine team is ready!” Keating called. Bill watched as the first of the eight Crendelen warships disintegrated into a cloud of shrapnel, blown away from the asteroid mine by the force and angle of the Hailstorm explosions. Back in the day, when he was still under the Imperium’s thumb, he had launched his fair share of surprise attacks, targeting everyone from human crews who’d rejected Emperor Albus’ rule to members of the Perseid Alliance. Being directed like a puppet had wounded his pride; turning against his own people had broken his heart. The Crendelen, though? They deserved it. The bird-shaped aliens adored their masters and would rather die than let a single member of an unwilling vassal species escape the emperor’s clutches. He felt no guilt whatsoever about killing them. Especially knowing the horrors that they subjected their Defunct captives to on a daily basis. Bill snuck a sidelong glance at Ridding, whose eyes were fixed on the destruction of the warships. A bitter, hateful smile tugged at his lips. Ridding had never been a particularly bloodthirsty man before his imprisonment, but there was anger in him now that was, at times, unnerving. But there was anger in all of them. They’d lost more than any of them deserved, and the time had come to visit justice on the Empire and its supporters for its crimes. And hopefully, someday, to stop them from ever hurting anyone again. Bill gripped the arm of his chair. “Keating, tell Al we’ve got this covered. We’ll clear a path for the Can and retrieve him when we’re done cleaning up the rubbish.” Keating nodded and relayed his message. Bill spared a glance at Omega’s metrics. His XO, Bina Chakravarti, was down on the engineering decks to help monitor the temperatures of the SRJ drive. They were still figuring out how long it took the drive to cool down between jumps. The better they understood their tools, the more efficient they could make their attacks. Three jumps in quick succession could destroy the ship, but what about a jump every two hours? Every hour and half? Did it make a difference how far they jumped? He’d tried asking Val, but according to him, the surge drive’s limits had never really been investigated. So Bina and Bill had agreed that collecting their own data would be best. He watched as the warships exploded, one by one, and smiled to himself. In the light of a dim and distant alien sun, a single dot of red floated toward the surface of the asteroid, untouched by Val and Norder’s well-aimed artillery fire: the Can. Al and his team wouldn’t return to the ship until every living human on that mine was finally set free. 

Chapter Two Marine Captain Alden Stone It had been a few weeks since the Marine team had expanded, and given how well training had been going, Alden Stone could have picked any of his recruits for his team. There was a reason people got attached to the classics, though. As Omega ramped up the number of assaults on Ornu resources, the missions became more and more complicated. The Imperium took greater precautions than they had in the old days. Which was why, after long consideration, Al had decided to bring his original core crew, supplemented only by two of their newest members, Kan and Awad. The team worked well together. They trusted each other. Al didn’t need to mess with a good thing. “None of the asteroid’s surface cannons are firing,” the Can’s pilot, Splat, observed. “Assuming they even have cannons.” It was entirely possible that this mine did not. For one thing, it was small, and its position—far from Perseid space, safely in the heart of Ornu territory—might have led the Imperium to think that installing surface-to-space cannons would be an unnecessary expense. Besides, according to Omega’s intel, the minerals found here were nothing special. They could be found on thousands of other asteroids all across Imperial space. The mine was likely scheduled to operate for three or four years at the most, and then the crew would move on to their next target. Ordinarily, if a mine like this came under threat, the Crendelen overseers would simply leave. They might not even bother to take their human vassals with them. But the Crendelen weren’t running now, because the minerals were no longer the point. The Imperium was fighting for its life, to restore its image as an ever-victorious, unstoppable force… and humanity was fighting to save the lives of as many of their people as possible. Al leaned forward on the bench that ran the length of the Can’s bulkhead. “Any idea where we’re headed?” “I’m not getting any readings on the surface,” Splat said over his shoulder. “And the mouth of the mine isn’t big enough for me to take you down into it.” Across from Al, Sergeant Shawn Piker—affectionately known as Funny Bone—rubbed his forehead and sighed. “Great. So we’re going underground again.” Two of the other exosuited soldiers, Guns and Termite, flinched. Al knew what they were thinking. After their battle in the tunnels of Kotbulo, none of them relished the idea of having a few tons of rock between themselves and open air again. They’d do it, though. Any of them would do whatever it took to secure the future of humanity. Al shifted himself to an angle on the seat. “All right, folks, we’re working in pairs. Guns, you’ll be staying at the mouth of the tunnel and watching our backs in conjunction with Splat, who’s going to keep the Can close in case we need to make a quick exit. Tubes and I will take the lead in case we need to deal with an airlock. Termite, you’re with Funny Bone. Kan and Awad, stick with them. You know the drill.” The rest nodded. Whatever other reminders he might have offered them were clearly unnecessary; they’d been through this before so many times that Al was losing count. “Touchdown in ten,” Splat called. The team hoisted their weapons, mostly a motley assortment of autocannons and hybrid rifles, and lined up behind the hatch with Al taking lead. The Marine captain rolled his shoulders a few times as he prepared for the jump. Sometimes when Splat said he’d ‘touch down,’ he was being literal. Most of the time, there was a gap between the ground and the ship. Today was one of the gap days. The Can’s hatch slid open, and Al leapt the three feet onto the rocky outer layer of the mine. He landed with a rattle that made his teeth clack. The exosuits weighed hundreds of pounds, and even if their structure meant that Al wasn’t personally carrying the weight, the impact of striking down, even in a low artificial gravity field like this one, left him shaken. As each of his team members landed, they fell into line, taking up their assigned roles and falling into formation. They followed Al into the darkness of the mine shaft like ants. In the larger, more established asteroid mines, there were more facilities: for example, airlocks that would allow breathable air to be piped through the tunnels, so that miners wouldn’t be required to breathe recycled air from their suits for hours at a time. That, in turn, required filters to protect them from particles kicked up in the mining process, and the ability to close off areas where the heavy-duty machinery was active. Very likely, the only truly protected space would be at the mine’s heart, where the gravity core would be housed, along with the miners’ eating and sleeping quarters—the one place they would be able to seek relief from the discomfort of their ill-fitting mining gear. It was a miserable place. The only lighting came from the mounted headlamps on the Marines’ suits. Judging by the marks on the walls, the asteroid’s material was soft enough that the brunt of the work was done not by machine, but by hand. Al reached up to let his gloved fingers trace a mark left by some unfortunate prisoner’s tool. People have been worked to death in this mine. His team might as well be entering a tomb, dug by the hands of those who had lived and died without any hope of breathing a natural atmosphere ever again. “Still no resistance,” Funny Bone murmured. “Does that seem odd to you? Eight warships guarding against Omega, but no ground troops? They must know why we’re here. Why wouldn’t they leave any soldiers down here to guard the tunnels?” “Maybe they thought the warships would be enough,” Al said. “If warships can’t slow us down, what hope would individual soldiers have of fending us off?” Still, the sergeant had a point. A sick, anxious feeling pooled in Al’s belly. Not fear, but foreboding. The Imperium played dirty. Was this a trap? Had the prisoners already been moved off-site? Or worse… “I’ve got life signs up ahead,” Tubes announced, and Al let out the breath he’d been holding. “Looks like a hundred people, give or take. There are a handful of Crendelen, too.” “Why only a handful?” Awad asked. “Because the Crendelen are cowards,” Kan replied. “The rest must have retreated to the ships. They’ve seen what we’ve done to the other prison-mines we’ve crashed.” No, Al thought grimly. That’s not it. They’re planning something. They rounded a curve in the tunnel and stopped cold. A dozen or so humans in battered mining suits knelt in a row outside the entrance to the living quarters. Behind them stood the few remaining Crendelen. Al’s halt was so abrupt that the Marines behind him, unable to see what he saw, bumped into him. He held up a hand and tapped into the asteroid’s local channel. “Wait,” he said. “We can negotiate—” But the Crendelen, as ever, didn’t care to listen. They opened fire on their prisoners. Blood moved differently in lower gravity, as did the remains of the newly dead. As the Crendelen executed their Defunct prisoners, the miners didn’t simply fall to the ground. They began to drift, with their limbs extended toward Al as if begging him for the freedom they had already been denied. Al opened fire on the Crendelen, but it was much too late. Even for those miners who hadn’t died from the shots, the holes in their suits let in unbreathable air, both devoid of oxygen and contaminated with offgas from various mining processes. Al gritted his teeth as he shot the Crendelen to ribbons. They waited for us, he thought. They wanted us to see. “The hatch!” Tubes howled. “The hatch, Captain!” He shouldered past Al. Even with the warning, Al didn’t understand his intent until the petty officer reached the airlock that secured the miners’ living quarters. Both hatches swung on their hinges, waving back and forth as all the breathable air rushed into the tunnels. “No.” Funny Bone staggered forward. In his haste to reach the airlock, his boot caught on the suit of one of the fallen miners and nearly tripped him. Ahead, Tubes fired at a Crendelen soldier outside of Al’s line of sight. “The gasket on the hatch is blown. Even if we close it, it’ll leak. We need to get these people into their suits if they’re going to survive.” “These people?” Termite asked as he struggled forward. Al lumbered toward the open airlock and stared through in horror. The rest of the miners were inside, wearing nothing but their lightweight prison uniforms. No helmets. No suits. No gloves. They were already dying, hands clawing at their throats as they gasped silently for breath in the airlessness of the void, which had suddenly invaded their living space. The Crendelen who had stayed behind must have known they wouldn’t survive, but apparently they didn’t care. They’d guaranteed that, even if every warship and every last soldier was annihilated, Omega wouldn’t be able to claim this moment as a victory. They did this to punish us, Al thought as he reached for a painfully thin woman and tried to drag her to the row of mining suits along the far wall. She shuddered in his grip and clawed at his arm even as her eyes bulged from lack of oxygen. They timed this to get under our skin. They want us to see what they’re capable of. They’ll do anything they can to torment us. And they don’t care who gets hurt in the process. 

Chapter Three Imperator Pertinax Emperor Albus’ cold eyes flashed from across the table as he looked Pertinax up and down. “Tell me, Imperator,” he hissed, “why I shouldn’t kill you right here and now?” Pertinax clamped his teeth together and gripped the edge of the long wooden table. The Emperor had dismissed his guards, though they were only on the other side of the door. If the Emperor called for them, they would return to imprison, torture, or execute Pertinax at a word. If he screamed, they would ignore him. Surely none of them cared what would become of him. He’d managed to claw his way into a position of power, only for that power to be stripped away in a single, spectacular military failure. He’d failed his emperor and disappointed the Imperium. Any one of them would happily strip his scales from his living flesh if given the opportunity. As the silence stretched on, Albus rose from his stool. His milk-pale tail flowed over the shining deck of the airship without so much as a whisper. Pertinax fought the urge to lean away from his ruler and made sure not to let his forked tongue slip between his lips. He didn’t need to taste the tension in the air to know that the room was thick with it. “One job,” the Emperor said. He extended a single finger by way of demonstration. “One. Job. And yet somehow, you not only failed to destroy Omega while it was at its most defenseless, but you even failed to stop its crew from installing a valuable upgrade. At one of our own shipyards!” Albus’ veneer of restraint cracked as he slammed all four of his palms down on the table, only inches from where Pertinax’s hands gripped the gleaming wood. The Emperor’s pupils narrowed to slits. “You know what is at stake. Our political order is fraying. Our public needs a scapegoat. The Perseids are breathing down my neck, and every vassal species under our control is waiting to see what will happen. The humans have already staged one revolt against us and incited another. Tell me, Pertinax, if you were in my skin, would you suffer a fool to live?” Pertinax took a deep breath and released it. One wrong word and the Emperor would do exactly what he threatened. There was not a doubt in his mind that his leader would take brutal pleasure in punishing his transgressions. “You ran,” Albus added in a whisper. “I gave you a command, and you ran.” “No,” Pertinax blurted. Albus cocked his head. “No? Did you say no? Because you are here, Pertinax, and the ships I sent with you are not.” “That isss true, Emperor,” Pertinax agreed, unable to entirely disguise his terror. The sibilance of a hiss always gave him away when he was at his most vulnerable. “When it became clear that our ships were outgunned and outmaneuvered, I made a tactical retreat—” Albus let out a bark of laugher. “—so that I could return to serve you further.” “A tactical retreat,” Albus mused, “looks very much like an act of gutless cowardice from my perspective. What differentiates the two?” “One is ssself-serving,” Pertinax said. “The other is a show of loyalty to the Imperium. To you, my Emperor. I knew what I had done, and how it would look, but I made no attempt to flee. I returned to you, to face your judgment. Which I intend to do.” “And if my judgment is that you should show me if you are as gutless as I suspect?” Albus’ eyes drifted toward Pertinax’s torso, a clear indication of his intent. “Then I will slit myself open, as you command,” Pertinax said. The Emperor met his eyes and held them for a long moment. He is testing me, Pertinax thought. He is always testing me. Pertinax possessed a great many qualities, and while loyalty could not be said to be first among them, neither was foolishness. He had bound himself to the fate of the Imperium long ago. If it collapsed, he would have nowhere to turn. ...