Ultimate Duty - Excerpt

ULTIMATE DUTY is available on Amazon and Audible. The $2.99 price for the Ebook is quite reasonable. If you are a Kindle Unlimited member, it's free. Can't beat that price.
Ultimate Duty
A military officer must choose between her sworn duty and her rebellious blood ties.

Remy Belieux, a woman born into a life of servitude on a repressive factory planet, is desperate for a different life. When she's accepted into the Space Service Academy, run by the organization that enslaves her planet, she discovers the truth behind generations of rebellion. Now, she must decide what to believe, where her ultimate duty lies, and fight for more than her life against impossible odds.

Available on Amazon for only $16.12, I actually get a few cents if you use this option.* First Duty is the PG version of the R-rated Ultimate Duty.Available on Audible or Amazon. It's a pretty long book and my narrator really needs the royalties (she gets half the royalties for every audiobook sold, and I'll give her my half if you buy the audio book).

Excerpt

One day, Remy spotted a small shipwhere it had no good reason to be. “Sir, we have a blip headingtoward the planet. Its course isn’t on the prescribed jump routewithin this planetary system.”
Captain Micah glanced at Remy, thenspoke to the communications officer. “Hail the ship.” Theradioman worked for a few seconds. “I can’t locate theirfrequency, sir.”
The Captain stared through the viewscreen at the rapidly receding ship. “Try a broad-range hail. Tellthem to stand down.” He glanced toward the communications station.“Any luck?”
“No, sir. I don’t think they havetheir ears on, at least in the usual frequencies.”
The ship shot away from the Excaliburand Remy tracked its course. “It’s heading for that planet. It’snot classified as habitable.”
Captain Micah opened ship-widecommunications. “Captain Micah here. Crew, go to battle stations.This is not a drill.” He looked at the pilot, who punched incoordinates for a wide turn toward the fleeing ship.
Remy’s stomach tightened as theklaxon alarms alerted the entire ship to ready for attack.Disappointment replaced tension as she watched the ship reach thesmall planet and circle behind the lifeless orb. We’ve lost it!
“Coward should stay and fight,”grumbled an ensign near Remy. She glanced his way and hushed him,tilting her head toward the captain. “Pay attention.” Theensign’s cheeks flared in embarrassment.
“Ahead slow,” the captain ordered.“This could be a trap. Put us into high orbit and extend allscanners to maximum range and power.” Excalibur edged its wayslowly around the airless planet thousands of kilometers below.
“I’ve got him, sir!” a crewmanreported. “A single blip on the short-range scanner.”
Remy added the short-range display to acorner of her own screen and saw the flickering dot representing thefleeing ship. She grinned. “Gotcha!” But nothing else appeared inrange. She hoped they might get some action now, even if only thecapture of a small ship.
“All right. Take us in slow,” thecaptain replied. The pilot cut back power and brought the ship aroundto the planet’s far side. The small ship came into view, hoveringin a stationary orbit.
“Hail them.” Again, the ship didn’trespond, and the captain gestured to the pilot to move in. Remyturned her scanners toward the planet surface, searching for anyactivity. Seeing nothing, she switched to thermal scan. Out ofnowhere, a red-hot dot appeared on the screen, then another. “Captain,I’m getting heat signatures moving near the surface.”
Captain Micah glanced her way, notexpecting to hear from the long-range scanning console. “What doyou have, Lieutenant?”
“Ten, no, twelve, maybe more heatsignatures. Nothing bigger than a cutter, and they’re all inmotion. It looks like they’re coming out of a fissure. I don’tdetect any structures.”
Remy feared her warning came too lateto do any good. Excalibur was fast, once it got moving but, like mostships its size, not very maneuverable this close to a planet.
The smaller ships exploded from thesurface. Too fast for normal takeoff velocity, the tiny vesselsclearly had a lot of extra power. It was a dangerous move since it’dbe easy to lose control traveling way over the limits for the smallships. But it worked.
Some attackers split to flank thecruiser on both sides. Two of them took station above and two belowthe ship, while two more moved to the stern, effectively surroundingthe cruiser. The engineers had designed Excalibur, like most ships inits class, as a pursuit ship, with most of its weapons aimed forward.They could only fire on the ships facing them until the gunnersbrought the smaller, less effective peripheral weaponry to bear.
Captain Micah glanced at his display.“Weapons, recalibrate for port and starboard, max angle. Fire atwill.”
The bridge crew cheered when a burst oflaser fire destroyed one of the ships. Metallic fragments driftedoutward from the single brief flash of the exploding drive.The Cellophane Queen
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Published on April 24, 2026 06:00
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