"Oh, I intend to do just that," Jacob said. "Let's shelve that for a minute and talk about how the hell One World has caught wind of our missing ship. Another damn traitor?"
"More than likely," Murph sighed. "That's why Webb's got us so far off the grid right now, LT."
"Well, us, Cobalt, and Diamond," Taylor spoke up. "3rd Scout Corps mentioned they were bringing them into the hunt, too."
"And their orders will come through the normal channels, so Hollick will know exactly where they…" Jacob trailed off, tapping his chin speculatively.
"What?" Murph asked.
"I wonder if we could use the other teams' movements to throw Hollick off the trail," Jacob said. "Have orders cut that move them into an area we know the missing fleet isn't to force One World to shadow them in case they're onto something."
"We'd have to be able to get word to Captain Webb without it being intercepted," Murph said. "That's proving to be a bit of an issue lately."
"Let me handle that," Jacob said. "Also, we'll need to—"
Boom!
It felt like the ship had run into a wall. The deck lurched out from underneath them, and Taylor was sent flying out of the galley and down the central corridor. Jacob and Murph had been seated on a bench anchored to the deck, so they slid forward into the bulkhead, the impact sending icy spikes of pain through Jacob's chest.
"LT, you need to get up here," Sully said over the intercom.
"What the hell," Jacob groaned, pushing himself away from Murph and trying to breathe through the pain. "Go make sure Taylor's alive."
"Got it," Murph said, wincing as he climbed up off the seat.
"What the hell happened?" Jacob asked as he stepped onto the cramped flightdeck.
"Slip-drive kicked off," Sully said, pointing at the illuminated instrument panel. "The fields collapsed asymmetrically and jerked the ship."
"Why did the drive cut out?"
"Unclear, but what I can tell you is we've been pissing fuel into space. I isolated the leak to the secondary injection manifold and shut the valves. We're only using the primary side right now anyway thanks to the power MUX issues," Sully said, his hands flying over the switches to clear out the faults.
"While I'm glad the hydrogen wasn't venting into the cabin, how did fuel leak?" Jacob asked, sinking into one of the aft station seats and holding his side.
"The fuel system for this piece of shit is mostly outside the pressurized inner hull, but inside the outer hull plates. There are a couple reasons the engineers thought that was good design, but it makes it impossible for us to repair underway. I'd suggest leaving it."
"You're in charge of the ship." Jacob raised his hands to wave off the responsibility. "What I'm more interested in is if we have enough fuel to make it anywhere, and if the slip-drive is even functional to get us to that place."
"Let's see," Sully said, scrolling through navigational waypoints. "Our best bet is Pinnacle Station. It's a commercial shipping and passenger hub that has all the necessary facilities to repair this heap. We've got enough fuel to make it with some to spare. Reactor is still all in the green, environmental systems are green, too, so I'll begin diagnostics on the slip-drive and figure out what happened."
"Lovely," Jacob said. "I'll go down and make sure MG and Mettler aren't dead. Taylor took a pretty good hit but was moving. Murph is with him now."
"I'll come with you. I need to go down and inspect the drive in person," Sully said, climbing out of the seat. He rubbed his left wrist, where Jacob guessed he had caught himself when the ship lurched back into real-space.
"Let me know if you need any manpower down there," Jacob said. "I don't want to call this in as a mission abort if we can limp her to Pinnacle Station. Once we're there, we'll see about either repairs or swapping ships again."
"Got it."
6
"Everything came back up green. You feeling lucky?"
"Fire it up," Jacob said. Sully turned back to the flight controls and brought the slip-drive back online.
What they'd found was that the fuel leak, even though it had been on the secondary manifold, had caused reactor power to become erratic enough that the computer performed an emergency mesh-in. When it killed the slip-drive abruptly, the port side emitter bank blew out two power nodes, which caused the fields on that side to collapse more quickly than those on the starboard side. That was what caused the hard lurch that had sent them flying. More modern ships—or even just well-maintained ones—were able to absorb and mitigate those small field misalignments. The flying coffin they were in, however, apparently could not.
Thankfully, the power nodes were items Sully had plentifully stocked in the spares kit when they were hastily outfitting the ship for their mission. The repairs were quick: manually lock the shutoff valves on the secondary fuel system to prevent the computer from trying to open them, and then replace the power nodes, all of which took less than an hour.
"Plasma channels open…emitters charging…containment fields stable," Sully muttered to himself as the computer reported the steps of the slip-drive startup on his display. "Pressures are looking good and the emitters are showing ready. This could have been a lot worse."
"How lot worse could it have been?" Taylor asked from the hatchway.
"There could have been a blowback from the port emitter array that caused the computer to stall the reactor for safety reasons," Sully said. "Remember…we have no fusion backup on this tub. If the main reactor goes down, we can't restart it. We're adrift and hoping the batteries hold out long enough for NAVSOC to get a recovery ship out here."
"Grim," Jacob said. "So, we're all agreed that Pinnacle Station is our best bet?"
"Agreed," Sully said.
"I'm just a corporal." Taylor shrugged. "I don't give a shit where we go."
"Once we're back in slip-space, I want you working with Lieutenant Sullivan, making a list of repairs needed," Jacob told his tech. "I want things listed by priority, and we'll work top to bottom."
"We were carrying a lot of relative velocity when we meshed-in," Sully said, ignoring them. "Standby…meshing-out in five seconds."
The combat shuttle accelerated and, mercifully, the slip-drive engaged without issue. Jacob pulled up a screen at his station and looked at the distance and time to destination, as well as their fuel consumption rate. It was going to be close, but doable…just as long as they didn't have to drop back into real-space before reaching Pinnacle. Another mesh-out charge would deplete their fuel to the point where they'd be stranded.
"You want to talk about the elephant in the room?" Murph asked, leaning against the doorway to Jacob's cramped quarters. The lieutenant had the only actual stateroom aboard the tiny ship. Sully took the rack just behind the flightdeck, and the others were all down in berthing.
"What elephant?" Jacob asked. All he wanted to do was go to sleep and let his abused body heal a bit more before they hit Pinnacle Station.
"The fact that you have a personal connection with Saditava Mok," Murph said, stepping into the cramped space.
"I was threatened by Mok," Jacob corrected. "Huge difference from knowing him. In exchange for us keeping this ship and the money, I owe him an unspecified favor should he call me on a specific com unit. I'm going to assume that doesn't mean I can just buzz him up and ask him to tell me where his super-secret squirrel rebel war fleet is parked. If the Talon is with Mok's ships, then it stands to reason he wouldn't be too keen about losing her."
"It's worth a try." Murph shrugged.
"And what if he decides I've annoyed him, and he has me killed?"
"I'll be completely honest with you, LT, I think this ship will kill us all well before Mok gets a chance."
"Well, I'm not going to worsen my odds by pestering the quadrants most notorious crime lord," Jacob said. "If he reaches out during the mission, I'll bring it up then."
"Just try to work it in casually," Murph said.
"Get out. I want to sleep."
"Think abo
ut what I said," Murph called over his shoulder as he walked out. "Because, otherwise, we have jack shit on where to begin our next search."
When the hatch slid shut, the lights dimmed automatically, and Jacob was able to, finally, lie back and relax. He thought about what Murph had said and had to admit there was merit in it, but Murph hadn't been there when Mok had confronted Jacob about the theft of the ship and money. It was the scariest thing he'd ever been through, including all the firefights and hand to hand combat with aliens up to that point. Mok had been calm, even polite…but the level of menace and power that radiated off him in waves had left Jacob shaken even hours after the crime boss had left. No, there was no chance in hell he'd be calling Mok to ask for a favor.
The major problem was that if Mok was involved, any call to him about it would make it sound like Jacob was threatening to expose him if his demands weren't met. Chances were good that Mok would no longer be amused by Jacob's antics enough to allow him to remain breathing, and the next port of call they made, some Blazing Sun opportunist would pop him to fill a bounty.
But maybe there was another way.
He rolled off his rack and opened the wall locker, rummaging around on the top shelf until he found what he was looking for. It was a gold disc about the size of a silver dollar. On one side, it was embossed with the symbol of the Blazing Sun syndicate, on the other side was the numeral five written in Jenovian Standard. It was a marker that identified the ship and crew as belonging to the syndicate. There was an ident chip embedded within it that could be scanned by someone with the proper decryption codes to authenticate who they were. The five on the one side referred to which of the Twelve Points—the twelve captains in the syndicate right under Mok himself—that the crew belonged to.
Jacob flopped back down on the rack, staring at the ceiling and rolling the coin around in his hand. The beginnings of a plan were forming, but it wasn't without significant risk. He hoped he wasn't operating too far outside of his orders, but Captain Webb had been infuriatingly vague about what methods were available to him to track down the missing cruiser. The NAVSOC chief had simply said, "Do whatever it takes." Not exactly helpful when it came to figuring out what his rules of engagement would be when dealing with a lord of the galactic underworld who commanded a private military large enough to conquer Earth.
He drifted off to sleep, still wrangling with the details of his plan as the ship shook alarmingly through slip-space towards Pinnacle Station.
"Has Obsidian checked in yet?"
"No, Captain."
"This is depressingly familiar," Webb muttered, rubbing his scalp. "That goddamn kid can't follow procedure to save his ass. Where's Diamond?"
"Still en route to the Concordian Cluster. They're…four days out."
"When's the last time we tried to raise Obsidian?" Webb asked his aide, trying to do the math in his head. If Obsidian had already reached the contact, then they should have already gotten the information needed and be on their way out of the Cluster. They also should have checked in as soon as they were outbound.
"Ten hours ago," Bennet said. The Navy lieutenant had served as Webb's aide for as long as he'd been in charge of NAVSOC. "Lieutenant Brown did mention their loaner ship's slip-com system was a bit unreliable."
"A convenient excuse for him to ignore regular check-ins, but I do remember reading that in one of the morning briefs." Webb leaned back and spun his chair to look out his office window over the flightline of Taurus Station, the remote base that was the home of Naval Special Operations Command, or NAVSOC for short. The ramp was littered with far more ships than it normally saw since Taurus Station was being packed up in preparation to move to its new home on the planet Olympus.
Earth wanted Terranovus to be a colony world for civilians, and the powers that be had ordered that the UEAS relocate to their newly acquired planet. The rationale was that Olympus didn't show up on most ConFed navigational charts, and it made more sense for them to base their shipyards and heavy weapons construction there. Webb didn't disagree, he just hated the disruption to his operations.
"Where are we with the Corsair's refit?" he asked. The Corsair was a one-off ship designed and built by humans on Terranovus specifically for Scout Fleet. It had been Obsidian's ship before Commander Ezra Mosler had been murdered by a traitor on his crew who had also sabotaged the ship before fleeing. Lieutenant Brown had been forced to scuttle her and steal another ship to pursue their objective and had, unfortunately, been a bit overzealous while disabling the Corsair. The deranged monkeys on Brown's crew had done so much damage that the ship had to be recovered by 2nd Scout Corps frigate and brought back for a total overhaul. The engineers were still trying to sort out the mess.
"The project lead told me he expected the ship would not be able to fly to Olympus and would need to be lifted to orbit and taken in one of the cargo haulers," Bennet said.
"It would have been better if they'd just set the reactor to overload and destroyed the fucking thing completely," Webb hissed. "But since they left the hull intact, the bean counters in Fleet insist we repair the damn thing and put her back in service. It would have been cheaper to just build a new one from the technical drawings."
"I don't disagree, sir."
"Whatever." Webb spun back around. "What else have you got?"
"This is low on the list with all of the current missions demanding most of your time, but 707 is asking for a meeting with you," Bennet said. 707, whose full designation was Combat Unit 707, was the current leader of a group of battlesynths living on Terranovus as political refugees. The sentient machines kept to themselves, and if 707 was asking for a meeting, it was certain it wasn't something frivolous.
"Go ahead and tell him that I can make myself available at any time for our most honored guests," Webb said. "Use those exact words: most honored guests."
"Most honored guests…got it. I'll send the message to him when I leave."
"If we don't find the Talon within the next couple weeks, there's going to be hell to pay. I want options. Just having Diamond and Obsidian flying around trying to track it down isn't much of a plan. By this afternoon, I want a list of all our available assets we could reassign to this, and I want to know what efforts the NIS and Cridal Intelligence are putting in," Webb said. "And right in the middle of such a critical mission, the brass decides now would be a good time to move the base."
"Not to mention all the spies we probably flew in with the crews breaking everything down," Bennet said, standing up.
"Thanks for that cheery thought. Ask Director Wellford, as a professional courtesy, if he'd let us know if he has anyone operating on Taurus Station. Be sure to let him know we're about to initiate our own security sweep, and if he tells us the NIS doesn't have any operatives here, we'll assume anyone we find is a One World mole and act accordingly."
"I'll let him know, sir. Is there any reason you don't want to talk to him yourself? I thought you were on friendly terms."
"That's part of the problem," Webb sighed. "My friendship with Michael stems from our time here on Terranovus, back when Margaret Jansen was the planet's administrator. He and I both worked on the Jason Burke problem together and, since we're still here on this planet, the friendship continued. But NIS and NAVSOC should always be distrustful of each other as a checks and balance on two powerful, covert organizations. The two people in charge being too buddy-buddy jeopardizes that, so we'll be going through official channels for things like this."
"Understood, sir. I'll handle it."
"Good. Get started."
Once his trusted aide left and closed the door behind him, Webb spun and looked out across the tarmac again. The Corsair sat on the maintenance ramp, where she'd been towed from the hangar so the building could be used as a staging area for the equipment being lifted up to orbit to the waiting starship that would take it all to Olympus.
There seemed to be no happy middle ground in his job. He either had too many highly trained people sitting around with
nothing to do, or he had half a dozen full-blown emergencies and not enough people to cover them all. Having to reactivate Obsidian was the least optimal thing he could have done for such an important tasking as finding the Eagle's Talon. He had faith that Jacob Brown would be every bit or better than Ezra Mosler…one day. In the present, however, he was still an overeager junior officer that was a little too confident of his own abilities after a successful mission that he managed with as much luck as skill. Having him go poking around for a group that had the balls to attack the ConFed's homeworld may be setting him and his team up for a bad fall, and in a game with stakes this high, that meant none would likely survive.
He opened up his private slip-com terminal and started to draft new orders that would recall Scout Team Obsidian back to Olympus, where they would stand down until the rest of 3rd Scout Corps caught up. It would still keep Brown out of sight and mind of the people in Fleet Command who had thoughts of using the kid as a stepping stone in their own genetics programs, and it would allow him to take a moment to figure out how he wanted to restructure that team. Murph was technically not even a Marine, and Jacob was a first lieutenant, too junior to be in command of a scout team. He was getting around that technicality by listing the pilot, Sully, as the overall team commander, but Sully wasn't the one calling the shots right now.
His hand hovered over the send icon as he re-read what he'd typed out. Obsidian was still a Scout Team, and Fleet Ops made it clear they viewed Scout Teams as expendable resources. Was he making excuses to recall the team because of his personal connection to Brown and his family? Even if Obsidian was eliminated, they still might manage to forward back useful intel that would help them narrow down the search for the Talon.
As if of its own will, his hand lowered and his middle finger caressed the spot on the glass panel that said 'SEND.' Recalling Brown's team was the right thing to do. Many years ago, when he'd been on the front lines as a US Navy SEAL, he'd not considered himself or his team expendable. Now that he was in charge of NAVSOC and controlled dozens of special warfare teams, he'd not changed his mind. It was vital the Talon be found and recovered for the safety of all humanity, but putting that burden on Jacob Brown's young shoulders was too much. They'd find another way.
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