M.J. Markgraf

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-12

Alexander stood at the back of the bridge as Mingyu limped the still-crippled ship back to the refueling station. The reactor had come out of the attack miraculously unscathed. Power cables had to be rerouted through the corridors to return power to the rest of the ship, but that had been easy. The hardest part turned out to be Alexander’s job.

He had to repair the underlying structure of the ship to keep it from tearing itself apart as they made their way back. A trip that would norm...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-11

A yellow light flashed on Alexander’s belt and he started wrapping up the work he was doing outside the ship. He knew things were going too well. Three days had gone by without so much as an alert from the other four. At least it wasn’t a red light.

He thought it might have been a fluke, or that his light bar had stopped working for some reason. When he returned to the shuttle on the first day, he found the other four relaxing. Turns out there hadn’t been anything to worry about. ...

Tarnished Chapter 54

Not one to sit by while others did the hard work, John joined in on the digging. By the time the sun was setting, they had covered an area of about a hundred feet to the east of town with randomly sized holes and pit traps. The torn-up nature of the area from the fighting had certainly made it easier to cover up the dirt work.

 As for how effective they would be, he couldn’t say.

One of the rotary guns was moved to this side of town, as well as the small cannon. That left t...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-10

When Alex had told her she would be staying with Sarah for a month, Yulia was more apprehensive than happy. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her friends, she did. She was just worried about being away from Alex for so long.

Yulia had tried to convince him to let her come along, but he wouldn’t budge. And that made her more worried. It meant whatever he was doing in space would be dangerous.

She tried not to let those feelings show as she attended her first sleepover. Even Clai...

Tarnished Chapter 53

Sorry about the late chapter, got wrapped up with other stuff this week.

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Once they were far enough away, the three of them paused to take in the damage they had done. John would like to say it was a complete destruction of the enemy armor, but someone aboard the airship had managed to get it to the ground rather quickly. That left some intact suits on the ship, as well as a few on the gr...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-9

“You sure you’re up for this?” Alexander asked the older woman.

Eva gave him a dirty look. “Just because I’m old, doesn’t mean I’m senile. I’ve probably forgotten more about ship systems than you even know.”

Alexander held his hands up in a placating gesture. “It wasn’t a comment on your age. Just the time you’ll be away from Markus.”

She didn’t look like she quite believed him. “My boy will be fine. I should ask you the same. We’re both going...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-8

“As you can see from the model, this shows the optimal output for any specific configuration,” Lund pointed to the twisting hologram.

True to her word, the woman had returned a few days later with enough math to make Alexander’s head spin. It wasn’t until she converted it into the quad-helix model in front of him that he understood what she was getting at.

“Where do the Omni and Sinorus engines sit on that model?”

“How should I know? Do I look like I have the o...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-7

After Damien left, Dr. Lund turned back toward Alexander. “That man doesn’t have much of a sense of humor does he?”

“I don’t believe so, no. So you were an activist at one time?” he asked, curious about the respected scientist's history.

She sighed. “More like I was a stupid girl following an even stupider man around. I hate to admit how naïve I was in my youth, but it took me a long time to realize the man was all lies. By then I was already pregnant with our son. ...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-6

“Uh, Boss, I’m gonna need some help with these new arrivals,” the security man he sent down radioed in.

“I’ll be there shortly,” Damien grunted in reply. Before he left the security room, he grabbed one of the stun sticks. He thought about grabbing a pulse rifle from the rack but decided against it.

It didn’t take him long to reach the hallway where the new arrivals were. One man was arguing with his security person while a few others were egging him on. He glanced o...

Tarnished 52

John jerked the ostrich to the left as an explosion of dirt appeared on his previous heading.

After their first attack, the three had repositioned to the next farm, but the mercenaries hadn’t taken the bait. They simply waited and gathered their forces with the intent to move forward as one group. It was a smart move on their part, but it didn’t help the three of them very much.

To top it off, the airship had moved in to support them from the air and was firing down on them, d...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-5

“Fight checks, ok,” Branston said over the radio.

It had been a few weeks since Alexander had met the man, and his speech had improved quite a bit since then. His ‘fight checks’ were the startup flight checks for the first converted shuttle.

Everything had been stripped out of the ship, repaired, or replaced. This wasn’t the first ship he had inspected. That reactor on that ship was far too badly damaged to repair. But two out of the sixteen shuttles had reactors that we...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-4

By the time the whole unwanted visitor issue resolved itself, Alexander realized it was getting late. Not wanting to disappoint his daughter, he headed home to spend time with Yulia.

“Alex!” the girl greeted him excitedly, “Look what I made in class today!”

“Ooh! What is it?”

“It’s you, silly. See the arms and legs and face.”

“I think your picture is upside down, sweetie.”

She paused and turned the picture around to stare at it befo...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-3

The Episilon’s Dawn jumped into the system known as Y6X-3H2, coasting at a relatively sedate pace of .1c. They were here to surveil the system, so there was no hurry. The trajectory they were on would take them just outside the orbit of the most distant satellite of the planet formerly known as Y6X-3H2-4. A planet recently renamed Eden’s End on the STO’s space charts.

They could maneuver without giving away their position if they needed to using their cold gas thrusters or even th...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-2

Alexander exited the facility and headed toward one of the shuttles. All of the intact ones had been moved to one landing pad, the closest one to his workshop. As he walked across the pad, he could hear the sounds of work in the distance. A large crew of workers were cutting up the scrap from the nearby railgun.

He glanced over but could see they hadn’t even finished cleaning up the surface yet. It would be three or four more weeks of work before all of the scrap was removed. Then the...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 2-1

LOCATION: EDEN’S END

SYSTEM: Y6X-3H2

DATE: 2399

“Alex, what color is the sky supposed to be?”

“Hmm?” Alexander paused his work to look over at Yulia who was sitting at a little table he made for her in his shop. “Why do you ask?”

“When I told Sarah and Claire they were coloring the sky wrong, they looked at me funny and said the sky is supposed to be blue, not yellow.”

He made a holographic hand appear on his avatar’s face to make...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 62: Book 1 Epilogue

A third pirate ship jumped into the system. Much like the previous two who had arrived a few hours earlier, it was venting atmosphere, but to a lesser degree.

The Epsilon’s Dawn watched all this through its passive scanners, the same as it had when the fifteen-strong pirate fleet had been here a week ago. None of the ships had ever detected its presence in the system. It wouldn’t have been a very good experimental covert ops ship if it had been detected.

“Sir, the three ship...

Tarnished Chapter 51

John hurried over to his ostrich but waited a minute for the chaos outside to die down and the mercenaries to split off after his two acquaintances. Once the sound of shouting got softer, he made his move.

As he tore out of the barn, he saw that not all of the men on foot had abandoned the protection of the walker. Too bad for them they were looking in the wrong direction.

He fired the cannon almost immediately, striking the walker that was stationed by the broken gate. His round ...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 61

In the end, the implied threat was enough to make the man spill the beans. It disgusted Alexander that someone could be so cold and callous enough to sell someone out for what amounted to less money than it cost Alexander to rent his small shop space on Petrov station for a year, and a promise from a pirate. Who could be dumb enough to trust the word of a pirate? Then again, the man didn’t strike him as very smart. If he were, he would have realized by now that the pirates had intended to k...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 40.5

You'll notice this chapter numbering is off. After reading comments, both on here and RR, I decided to add in a Yulia chapter after chapter 40 to show how she is adjusting to life on Eden's End. On RR, this will just be chapter 41, but I didn't feel like going back and renumbering 20 chapters on Patreon. And in case you are wondering, this does not count toward the 5 chapters I plan on releasing this week, you'll still get a chapter tomorrow.

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Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 60

Alexander had been notified of the arrival of the new ship. Due to their uplink to the satellites being offline, it wasn’t clear who they were until they started firing on the pirates in orbit. If it wasn’t for the facility's sensors, which were designed to monitor the local star, they may not have even known another ship arrived. Even then, the consensus was split on it being someone here to help, or another faction of pirates.

He was glad to see it was a friendly face. “While I�...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 59

The Talon was pushing as fast as possible back to Eden’s End. They had been halfway to Varlen when Matthews was woken up by a high-priority ship comm. He would have preferred a hostile attack to the actual issue they had woken him up for.

One of the techs responsible for reviewing Qcomm messages going out from Eden’s End had failed to enter the comm data into S.A.M. for analysis since he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in the messages. It wasn’t until an after-action rev...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 58

What's this? A new chapter on Tuesday! That's right. In celebration of completing Book 1, I will be posting 5 chapters this week. Enjoy!

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Arkonis ground his teeth in annoyance from inside his powered armor suit. He had seen one of his shuttles go down as his shuttle was landing on the far side of the facility. Likely due to pilot incompetence. He was certain all the people aboard were ...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 57

“Alex!” Yulia shouted as she ran into his workshop in a panic.

He wasn’t there though. The place was as quiet as everywhere else. She had been heading home from classes when the lights went out. Then the voice on the speaker said there was a pirate attack. She knew she should have headed straight for the shelter, but she was afraid to do so alone.

When the voice called Alex to the security room, she knew where to find him, so she did her best to hurry over there. It was a lo...

Tarnished Chapter 50

John turned to look behind him as he heard wood creaking. Seline was hurrying over while crouched.

“You got a better angle on the walker.” She held out the gun she named Bertha. “Aim for the leg joint. If you hit it right, the thing will go down. And even if you don’t it’s going to make it stumble.”

He accepted the hefty rifle. The barrel on it was nearly half the size of the one-pound cannon on the ostriches, so he knew it was going to kick like a mule.

Seline d...

Changes to BSE Chapter 56

I heard your feedback and reworked the chapter a bit. The guns still get knocked offline, but now they manage to do something before that happens. As a bonus, the chapter is now almost 700 words longer. Give it another read and let me know if you like the changes better than the original.

Tarnished Chapter 49

“It’ll be dark enough in a few more hours. Last time to change your mind.” John stepped up beside Sheriff Blackwood who was watching the forest from the roof of the saloon.

The man just snorted. “You’re as mad as our resident artificer if you think that’s happening.”

John shrugged as Wyatt watched him from the corner of his eye. “I trust you have it handled. But I’ve been around long enough to see people I thought were stronger than me buckle at the last moment. ...

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 56

The small two-man ship floated silently in the system, its passive sensors watching and waiting. Their little vessel stank after having to play scout for two weeks. It probably didn’t help that the individuals inside weren’t the most hygienic at the best of times. It wouldn’t improve anytime soon either as they had another week of monitoring before another ship came to relieve them.

They couldn’t even get drunk anymore because their booze had run out after two days. So the two p...

Release schedule for BSE

I've seen a few people bring this up so figured I would ask. Would you rather have a Mon-Wed-Fri release or Mon-Tue-Wed?

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 55

“It's that day already?” Alexander asked Matthews over the video conference.

“We have a few days yet. But we are going to begin pulling our people back to the ship. I just thought you could use the heads up.”

“Thanks for the notice. I wish you could stay longer, but I understand why you can’t.”

“You may see some of our people sooner than you think. I believe Travers and Jallen have expressed interest in coming back here once their contracts are complete.” 2024-07-24 12:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post

Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 54

The next week went by rather quickly for Alexander. The station was starting to take shape with his new robotic drones being run through their initial tests.

He did have to make some design iterations and launch those replacement parts into orbit, but overall they were working out well. Then engineers would continue to monitor their work for the remaining time they were in system, but they said they didn’t expect any major issues.

Alexander hoped that was true. While the drones ...