End of the Line

Jit’Suku
Chronicles

End of the Line

by

Bianca D’Arc

This book is a work of fiction. The
names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the
writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to
be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead,
actual events, locale or organizations is entirely
coincidental.

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Copyright © 2012
Bianca D’Arc

Smashwords Edition January
2013

Cover Art by
Valerie
Tibbs

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

Dedication

This one is for the fans who help keep
me writing and off the streets. LOL.

And for my Dad, a real life “rocket
scientist” who helped put men on the moon and inspired my lifelong
fascination with science fiction as well as science fact. One of my
best memories was running my own laboratory straight out of college
and being able to call him in his laboratory to ask for help. He
never let me down. Love you, Dad!

As always, I want to thank Mom for
encouraging me to follow my dream. She surprised me by telling me
“do what you love” instead of taking a job that would have
furthered my career. I took her advice and the rest is history.
Love you, Mom, and I miss you more than I can say.

Chapter One

She saw the incoming fire too late to
save her ship. The one-man fighter was going down, and if she
didn’t pop her canopy in the next five milliseconds, she was going
with it.

Lisbet realized she had no
choice. Hitting the
catastrophic
failure
button, she checked herself out of
her ride split seconds before it blew into a million little
weightless bits. Out in the nothingness of space near the galactic
rim, she was in no man’s land where rescue was hard to come by. She
had either a long wait or a slow death to look forward to in the
next few hours.

The enemy jits had won this battle,
though hopefully not the war. Skirmishes on the rim had escalated
in recent years as the jit’suku empire looked for ways to gain a
foothold in the Milky Way galaxy. The expansion from their home
galaxy was fueled by the comparative ease of travel via an
inconvenient wormhole and several jumpoints that had been created
before humans had realized how the jit’suku truly viewed the human
race.

Inferior. That’s what the jits thought
of humans. Inferior in every way to their war-mongering race.
Though they looked very human in appearance—if built on a bit
larger scale than most humans—jit’suku society was one that most
humans had a hard time understanding.

They prized warriors and seemed to
scoff at diplomats or anyone who wanted to negotiate peaceful
coexistence. The only thing the jits understood was conquest, it
seemed.

Which was why they’d been fighting so
long and so hard out here, on the rim of the Milky Way galaxy.
Lisbet was just the latest in a nearly endless rotation of human
fighter pilots who had drawn the dreaded duty of patrolling the
rim.

Vast reaches of emptiness between
nearly lawless stations, dangerous jumpoints, and the occasional
star system, rim duty was enough to drive anyone crazy. But she
welcomed the emptiness of space and the loneliness of her own
thoughts after the humiliation she’d been through.

She’d been on this patrol for over a
week with nothing to report. Then this.

A jit’suku battle cruiser had appeared
as if from out of nowhere, and blasted her before she could even
get a message out. It had been lying in wait behind an asteroid.
Lisbet had known to be cautious, but honestly, her thoughts had
been elsewhere. As soon as she spotted the giant ship zipping out
from behind cover of the asteroid, it had already been too late.
Her signals had been jammed and a blanket of weapons fire had been
sent the distance between the two ships in all her possible
trajectories. She’d been dead already, and she’d known
it.

Popping her canopy and stranding
herself in the middle of nowhere in the emergency pod had been her
only choice. Not a great one, but there had been no other way to
get clear of all the incoming fire. The bastard giving orders on
that battle cruiser hadn’t been taking any chances that she would
get clear and report back. He had thrown everything but the kitchen
sink at her and she hadn’t stood a chance.

“
Human, this is Captain
Fedroval of the battle cruiser
Fedroval’s
Legacy
. Warrior to warrior, I give you the
choice. Would you prefer the fast death of missile fire or the slow
death of suffocation when your air runs out?”

For a moment, Lisbet thought of
ignoring the short range communication from the cruiser. He was
still blocking her long range transmitter, but he had allowed her
enough bandwidth to broadcast to his ship. Big of him. Damn,
jit’suku bastard.

“
How do you know I’m not
the advance scout of a much larger force? Could be my battalion is
hot on my heels and will pick me up after they blow you to kingdom
come.” Oh, how she wished that were true. She’d get a lot of
satisfaction right now at seeing the jit’suku ship blown into a
million pieces.

There was a slight delay in the answer
she’d expected would come back right away. He probably knew she was
bluffing. If he’d been hiding out behind that asteroid for any
length of time, he had to know hers was merely a patrol craft on a
regular route.

“
Who is this? What is your
name, rank and gender?”

He sounded mad now, for some reason
she couldn’t imagine. And why would he ask her gender? That seemed
odd in the extreme. But she’d play along. She’d be alone out here
for a long time—if he let her live after this encounter—and she was
going to have a lot of time before her air ran out with her own
thoughts. Might as well talk to someone while she had company, even
if he was a damned jit.

“
Lieutenant Lisbet Duncan
of Earth. And I’m female, not that it should matter to you. I’m a
qualified pilot who graduated at the top of my class from pilot
training.”

While there had always been a lot more
males drawn to military life than females, Lisbet wasn’t too much
of an oddity. Many women had the natural skills needed to fly
shuttles and other spacecraft. She was unique in that she’d
requested fighter duty. She liked shooting at things and would have
tried for a gunner position on one of the big battleships if she
hadn’t qualified as a pilot.

“
Prepare for retrieval.”
The order was brusque and he sounded even angrier.

“
Now just wait a darn
minute! What?”

He didn’t answer, but a moment later
she saw two small craft launch from inside the battleship and head
straight for her. The bastards were going to pick up her pod. She
was going to be a prisoner of war.

Dammit!

Although… it was probably better than
dying alone in the vastness of space, she had to admit. At least if
they picked her up, she might have a chance to do some damage to
them before she died. She didn’t like the idea of possibly being
tortured, but she’d trained for it, like all the other pilots, and
thought she was mostly prepared. She didn’t know much that they
could get out of her. She wasn’t privy to any battle strategies or
troop deployment information. She only knew her current mission and
those she had been on previously. Not much of value to the jit’suku
empire.

Sure enough, the two craft flanked her
and deployed some kind of netting that encompassed her pod. As soon
as she was secure, they flew back toward the cruiser. The ship was
even larger than she’d thought. It had the latest in jit
technology, from what she could see of its outboard arrays. This
was no battered old warhorse. This ship was battle ready and
gleaming, though she could see a few spots where repairs had been
made—after engagements with human forces, no doubt.

The two patrol craft deposited her
inside a spotless hangar bay, bumping her only once as they set her
down. Their nets retracted and they parked on either side of her.
She waited patiently inside her pod, gathering what little
information she could. Her instruments told her the hangar bay was
pressurized with a breathable atmosphere and she saw big jit’suku
men working on various other craft parked nearby without breathing
gear.

The hangar bay had a giant force field
at one end, keeping the air in. Nice. On most human battleships,
the hangar bays were kept at zero atmosphere. Pilots loaded into
the canopies above and were dropped down and secured to the
fuselages below via a small chamber that was sealed, then evacuated
of its precious air before opening to the hangar deck
below.

The pilots who had caught her pod and
brought her here climbed out of their cockpits and moved closer to
investigate. One made the sign for her to pop her lid and she shook
her head, refusing. They went on like this for a few minutes,
arguing via sign language through the window until suddenly
everyone on the flight deck jumped to attention.

At the far end of the long deck,
Lisbet could see a giant of a man—even among the very large
jit’suku warriors—coming toward her at a fast pace. He looked
absolutely furious. And handsome.

Damn. Why did she have to notice how
handsome he was? She should be completely immune to men after what
she’d been through. But this guy—this angry guy—flipped her
switches in all the right ways.

He grabbed something as he went,
nearly tearing the piece of equipment out of a tech’s hands. It had
to be magnetic because it clamped onto her canopy the moment he
stopped and touched the device to her hull. He held something on a
wire up to his mouth and suddenly his voice boomed through the
internal speakers in her canopy.

“
Stop playing games and
come out of there now or I’ll have you cut out.”

Lisbet sighed. She would have to open
the hatch sooner or later. She admitted to herself that she was
scared. These jit’suku were all huge and everyone she could see so
far was male. She had no idea what they had in mind for her, but
she wasn’t looking forward to finding out. Still, she couldn’t hide
in here forever. The time had come to take her punishment. Whatever
that would be.

Releasing the hatch, the canopy popped
with a hiss of equalizing air. Whirring gears indicated the hatch
was rolling up and back the way it had been designed to do and as
it cleared, she got her first good look at the glowering man with
the captain’s insignia on his uniform.