Shadow of the Blue Ring Read Free Page A

Vulian empire should there be another galactic war at any time during the future.
    As for the Vulians themselves, they had withdrawn back to the Varduran sector and had been keeping a very low profile ever since the end of the occupation. Whatever Darien had been doing in his new position as emperor of his people, he had at least kept the peace that he had promised the members of the Freedom alliance when he ended the occupation of their worlds. James still found that he had mixed feelings on the actions of his former crew member. While his actions had resulted in the murder of the Vulian hierarchy, the death of James’s close friend Amario Richards and the destruction of the Morning Star, he had also ended the many years of war between the old alliance and the Vulian empire, resulting in the first years of truce between the two sides in decades and likely saved many tens of thousands of lives in doing so. While he could appreciate the ends that Darien achieved, the means by which he had acquired them meant that James could never properly trust him again.
    Shaking the memories from his mind, James pulled himself from his bed and groggily made his way over to his desk where his private terminal was continuing to interrupt the silence in his quarters. At this time in the night, it was almost always admiral Robert Jamerson, the admiral whom he answered to in the fleet. As much as he would have liked to ignore this and go back to sleep, he knew that when the admirals called him directly, there was no getting out of whatever task they had in place for him. Taking a seat at his desk, James pushed the button on his console, bringing the view-screen to life. As he did, he was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not Jamerson on the other end, but instead, the face of his old friend, admiral Michael Davidson.
    With the old fleets all wiped out and none of the former admirals having survived the war, Davidson was one of the lucky few chosen to form a new board of admirals. It was quite the promotion from his former position as a colonel but his service record during the occupation years, as well as his leadership skills, was enough to make him a worthy candidate and his part in setting the revolution in motion almost assured him of his place as one of the new admirals. With very few candidates to choose from, the respective governments of Earth had been forced to choose their new admirals from some interesting places. Jamerson, James’s superior, had been part of the Board of Human Interests that made up the joint Human-Vulian government during the occupation while fleet admiral Dmitry Sytchev had formerly worked at St. Petersburg academy as an expert in war studies and officer training.
    “Ah, captain James Tavarez,” Davidson said cheerily, “it has been too long has it not?”
    “Far too long,” James agreed, “but you chose your hour to call in, it’s the middle of the night.”
    “It’s only just gone midday on my end,” said Davidson, “I do apologise though, I forget the differences between time zones across the galaxy sometimes.”
    “So what is it you want admiral?” James asked, still half asleep and still a little more irritable than he might usually be when fully awake, “has Jamerson finally got tired of me and asked you to take over as my superior officer?”
    “I’m just calling in on an old friend James,” Davidson replied, “I was hearing from the other admirals that you were having a hard time and I wanted to check in to see how you were doing.”
    “I guess life in the fleet just never turned out to be what I thought it would be,” James sighed, “all this running around escorting cargo ships, patrolling borders… it’s just not the sort of thing I had imagined I would be doing when I agreed to join the fleet.”
    “I understand it can be frustrating,” said Davidson, “but I’m afraid we really need those supplies. With the Shaarians hijacking three of our freighters already this