"This would not be a good area for an ambush. We have multiple paths of escape, and he cannot engage us except from extreme ranges ahead and behind us. I am detecting no traces of explosives or electronic emissions consistent with a detonator."
"Got it," Jacob said, walking around the battlesynth and approaching the agent. "Tulden? You dead?"
"Nearly," Tulden said quietly. "Just taking a little break before meeting you in your remote base."
"I can save you the trouble. What happened?"
"Elton Hollick was able to surprise me," Tulden said. "I relied too much on my tech that would alert me to a primed weapon in my vicinity, and he came at me with an edged weapon. He found out I had failed to retrieve the core and was…displeased."
"He's not a pleasant person," Jacob said, taking in the severity of Tulden's myriad wounds. Some were deep, others looked to have been inflicted only to cause pain. The thought of Taylor being in the hands of a person who could do this turned Jacob's stomach.
"I don't have much time," Tulden said. "Reach into the pocket on the inside of my left pant leg…down near the foot. There's a data card that has the location of the fleet you're looking for. I would ask that you consider destroying the data core now that I have failed my mission."
"What's on that thing, anyway?"
"Raw intel," Tulden said. "In the wrong hands, it could destabilize the entire region. There are other threats outside of this upstart rebellion that would want it."
"Did you find where Taylor was being— Well…shit," Jacob said as Tulden's eyes closed, and he slumped over. Dead. Cringing a bit, Jacob reached up the dead agent's pant leg, rooting around until he found the pocket with the data card in it.
"Let's go!" he called to his team. "To the ship, double time."
They ran all the way back to the ship, rushing through startled throngs of aliens and ignoring angry shouts as they moved through the market areas and into the hangar staging spaces. When they got to the Boneshaker, they found what they'd most dreaded.
"That motherfucker!" MG choked out.
What was left of Corporal Taylor Levin laid in a pool of congealing blood near the starboard slip-drive nacelle. The body had been dumped in one of the two blind areas the ship's external imagers didn't cover. Jacob approached the body, his mind numb and unthinking as he looked down on his friend. A man who had trusted him to lead. A man who he had failed utterly.
Taylor's face was frozen in a rictus of pure agony and the damage that had been inflicted on him was beyond Jacob's ability to comprehend. This was not the act of an operative extracting information. This was purely sadistic and done for pleasure.
He was vaguely aware of Mettler trying to console MG and Murph staring at the body with the same dead detachment he felt himself. Without being consciously aware of it, his weapon slipped from his fingers, and he sank to the deck. When Commander Mosler had been killed, it had hurt, but Mosler had died through no fault of Jacob's. He'd been murdered by a traitor who had been placed on the crew well before Jacob showed up. Taylor, however, had been killed in as gruesome a way as he could imagine because he didn't know what the fuck he was doing. He was a kid out here playing space cowboy and pretending he had the answers, and his hubris and ignorance had just caught up with him, only he wasn't the one who paid the price. Any sane person would have insisted on being relieved and told Captain Webb Obsidian had to be recalled until proper, qualified leadership was found.
"Lieutenant, there will be time to mourn your comrade," 707 said gently. "But we should leave this place immediately. Hollick will have certainly alerted station security to the deaths and will have implicated your team."
"You're right." Jacob's voice was a hoarse whisper. "Let's get him out of here."
He turned and saw Sully standing there. The pilot had retrieved one of the stasis bags used for remains that Scout Fleet teams carried with them. When Jacob looked up, he saw tears standing in the taller man's eyes.
"Thank you," he said, accepting the bag. The four remaining Marines of Scout Team Obsidian knelt and prepared Taylor's remains for transport back home. When the bag was sealed and purged with a stabilizing agent that would stave off decomposition, the four of them remained kneeling for a moment. MG and Mettler held hands, their free hands resting on Taylor's chest.
"LT?" Jacob turned to MG, ready to fend off an angry, accusatory barrage.
"Yes?"
"Please, tell me we're going to finish this," MG said. "Tell me we're not turning tail and running back home. You know that piece of shit is on his way to the Talon right now. We can finish our mission and nail that son of a bitch." Jacob blinked. He hadn't been expecting that, but the more he thought about it, he realized he should have. His men were pros.
"I won't order you to go on with a mission that should have been scrubbed already. This is really what everyone else wants?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Okay then…let's do it," Jacob said. "Sully, prep us for departure, please. 707, I assume you'll be following in your ship?"
"701 is coming here, and our ship has been sent home on autopilot," 707 said. "We will ride with you in the cargo bay of this vessel. Our ship was a specialized transport that is very high speed, but of little use in a fight. I will inform Captain Webb of our intention to assist you."
Before Jacob could answer, the Battlesynth stomped up the ramp and helped himself to the ship's com room. It had been interesting seeing the hulking machine maneuver into a space that was cramped for an average sized human. His team quickly finished prepping the ship, including a quick and dirty sweep for any bombs or trackers with the help of 784 and his extensive sensor suite. By the time the last of the cargo was cinched down in the hold, and all his people were accounted for, the engines thrummed with power, and Sully had already called for departure clearance.
With the last known location of the fleet now in his possession, Jacob felt like he could see the end of this Godforsaken mission. All he'd have to do now is get positive identification of the Eagle's Talon, and then call in the Naval strike force that was waiting to either retrieve or scuttle the stolen cruiser.
Easy.
"Sir, 707 has made contact."
"Give me the broad strokes," Webb said, waving his aide in and closing the hatch behind him.
"The three battlesynths that went to offer Obsidian assistance have decided to remain with Lieutenant Brown for the time being…at least until he completes the mission," Bennet said. "I pressed it for—"
"He, Lieutenant…don't call one of them an it. Apparently, they take the same type of offense to it that we would."
"Odd." Bennet frowned. "Why would a constructed, asexual being care about gender at all?"
"No idea." Webb shrugged. "I just know they do. It may have something to do with how they were created, or maybe it's a conscious choice in order to relate to biologic species better. It should be easy for you to keep straight since all of the members of Lot 700 are male."
"Fascinating," Bennet said. "Anyway, I pressed him for more information regarding Obsidian's actions and intentions, but he refused to provide anything."
"Not surprising. They don't really adhere to our command structure or authority. Those three left because Brown was in danger specifically, not because they give two shits about helping us get our ship back. Battlesynths in general, and Lot 700 in particular, feel like they owe Jason Burke a great debt, so protecting his son is high on their priority list."
"Could you imagine if Burke fully understood that he could command the loyalty of all remaining battlesynths in the quadrant?" Bennet asked. "He could overthrow the government of any planet he liked and name himself emperor for life." Webb gave an involuntary shudder at that.
"Let's hope he never fully realizes it," he said. "I like Burke well enough, but I'm not sure he has the temperament to rule. Try to contact Obsidian and get a status update from them and, in the meantime, I'll have Admiral Sisk move his taskforce towards Colton Hub."
Once Benn
et left the office, Webb sent a message to Commander Duncan, asking him to change their course. The Kentucky currently loafed towards the planet Olympus, but now he wanted to be nearer the action since it looked like Obsidian would be giving them targeting coordinates soon. He also wanted to make sure Admiral Sisk knew that Captain Edgars might try to enlist his new comrades to keep from being captured, so the human taskforce would need to proceed with caution.
He was carefully crafting his message to Admiral Sisk when a new message alert came in. Since he was a lowly captain, he wasn't really giving orders to an admiral. Taskforce Bravo had been put at his disposal by Fleet Ops to specifically hunt down and recover the Talon, but he wanted to make sure his message sounded like a polite request. It was the sort of political niceties that had to be observed within the flag ranks of any military. Once he'd finished that, he checked on the alert and saw that it was from Lieutenant Brown.
It was a full status report from Obsidian, detailing everything since the last time they'd been in contact. As he read it, his mouth hung open in shock. Brown had lost one of his teammates, had been wrangling with ConFed Intelligence on a place like Colton Hub, and had been forced to counter the moves of Elton Hollick. This was the type of mission that would have pushed even his best team leaders to the brink, but the kid seemed to just be pushing ahead. His last paragraph said he thought it would have been best to scrub the mission given his string of failures, but his men asked to press on and to not let Corporal Levin's death have been for nothing.
Webb stopped reading and wiped his eyes. He hadn't known Taylor Levin very well, but he was familiar with the young man's record, as he was with all his Scout Fleet operators. It was sometimes easy to forget there was a real price to be paid when he sent these men and women out into the wild, asking them to risk their lives for information vital to Earth's interests. That the tattered remnants of Scout Team Obsidian were pressing on despite their losses was a testament to the type of people willing to take those risks.
As he read Brown's clinical description of what Elton Hollick had done to Corporal Levin, his rage built. This One World faction bullshit had gone on long enough. Margaret Jansen needed to be stopped, and if Earth wouldn't act decisively to put an end to the threat she represented, he would need to. But first, he needed to find her. There were some resources he could bring to bear, but using outside contractors for this sort of thing was risky. He'd need to be careful to keep his own involvement hidden.
All that would have to wait for the moment, however, as he had more pressing things to deal with. If he could get Jacob Brown and his remaining team back alive and deal with Captain Edgars, he would consider this a costly but ultimately successful operation. He doubted Navy brass would see it that way, however, and he was dead certain this would be his last stint in a leadership role. With most of Scout Fleet being wiped out likely due to leaks within his own organization he seemed helpless to stop, he would have a hard time arguing he was an effective leader who should keep his post.
Such was the nature of the job…but it still sucked.
18
"I wish there was something to look at…maybe just a planet or moon nearby to orient myself. These deep space locations are creepy."
"What's the difference between dying of explosive decompression closer to a planet as opposed to out here?" Murph asked.
"I just said it was creepy, I wasn't looking to start a fucking debate, college boy," MG shot back.
"Shut the hell up back there!" Jacob barked over his shoulder.
"If I survive this, maybe I can get a posting in Space Mobility Command," Sully muttered. "Just fly cargo back and forth."
"You'd miss us too much," MG said. The pilot turned around and fixed such an evil glare on the Marine that Jacob thought things might turn violent.
"Passive sensors are picking up drive signatures from dozens of ships," Jacob said. "It looks like they're forming up to mobilize."
"They probably know their location has been compromised," Sully said. "They'll mesh-out in small groups and form up again in another location to stay ahead of the ConFed. The computer is starting to populate known ship-type signatures. I see the Defiant, the rest of the Cridal strike force…and there's the Eagle's Talon."
"I see her," Jacob said, his heart pounding. They'd done it. The ship was right there, and now all they had to do was call it in. "Murph."
"On it," Murph said, slipping off the flightdeck and into the com room to call in the cavalry. While everyone babbled excitedly about actually having found the missing fleet, Jacob discreetly punched in a set of search parameters, narrowing down what he searched for in the vast cluster of ships before him. He didn't have an exact engine signature, and the ship he looked for tended to be modified so often that it would have been useless so, instead, he looked for just the generic classifications: gunship-class, medium-range.
When the search came back negative for anything even close to what he had been looking for he felt a surge of relief. His father didn't appear to be flying with a criminal, rogue element being hunted by a ConFed battle fleet…and that relief he felt surprised him. His anger and resentment towards the man remained steady and strong, but he'd been forced to acknowledge that the caricature he'd painted of Jason Burke wasn't quite accurate. From what he'd been told recently from people who knew him, Burke's situation was much more complicated than it appeared.
"Uh oh," Sully said, snapping Jacob's attention back. "The Talon has turned and is coming right at us, accelerating hard."
"Get us out of here! Come about and—" Jacob's sentence was cut off from a series of muffled explosions that shook the shuttle. Alarms blared, and emergency pressure hatches slammed shut all over the ship. Sully fought with the controls, but it seemed clear that whatever had happened had completely disabled them.
"Can we kill those alarms?" MG shouted. A moment later, main power flickered and failed, plunging the flightdeck into darkness and silence.
"That quiet enough for you?" Sully asked. They all floated in their restraints as artificial gravity failed.
"Murph! Please tell me you got that message out!" Jacob yelled, his voice painfully loud without the ambient noise of the ship.
"Wish I could," Murph said, floating back onto the flightdeck. "It was still establishing a connection when the power died."
"Is Mettler okay?"
"He's on the other side of the pressure hatch, can't talk to him."
"Where the hell is the emergency power?"
They all sat in silence for some time, nobody wanting to say aloud that if the Boneshaker's emergency power system was dead, so would they be in short order. It would just be a race to see what killed them first, the lack of oxygen or the cold of space leeching the heat from the cabin. Already, Jacob could feel the temperature dropping. Most small ships weren't well thermally insulated, the limited space being used up by the more critical radiation shielding. At least, it seemed more critical until you lost power.
A metal-on-metal grinding along the outer hull was the first indicator they weren't about to freeze or suffocate to death. The bangs and screeches that reverberated through the interior confused the hell out of them until spotlights hit the ship, blinding them. The sounds they'd been hearing were a clumsy boom operator trying to grapple onto the stricken shuttle to be pulled inside a yawning hangar bay. Jacob shielded his eyes and looked out at what ship was retrieving them.
"Shit," he said, breath fogging in the stale air. "It's the Talon. I guess they made us right when we meshed-in."
"Be careful! There are humans in there, goddamnit!" Captain Edgars bellowed as he walked across his hangar deck towards the absolute junk heap of a ship his crew had pulled aboard.
The older generation Eshquarian combat shuttle had certainly seen better days. There were missing outer hull plates, spots that were riddled with corrosion and ravaged by metal-eating parasites. The grappling boom operator tried to gently right the shuttle, but the angle wasn't optimal, and the ship slippe
d from the mechanical grip and slammed onto the deck with a deafening boom that almost took Edgars off his feet.
"As promised, Captain…one shuttle containing a United Earth Navy Scout Fleet crew, as well as the encrypted data core that you wanted."
"All I see is one dilapidated hunk of shit, Hollick, so don't go celebrating too quickly. I'm still going to have you tossed out an airlock if this isn't what you said it is."
"Of course, Captain," Hollick said, smiling so widely it looked painful.
"All right…let's get them out of there!" Edgars shouted. "Ground team, tac team…you're up!"
Two separate crews of spacers rushed forward and swarmed over the shuttle. The first was a group of technicians who would work to open the ship, the second was a tactical response team, armed to the teeth, who would cover all the hatches in case the occupants made a poor decision.
The tech crew pulled over a low-current power umbilical and hooked it into the ship, giving them enough power to do things like operate the hatches, get air recirculating, and turn the lights on. It wouldn't give them enough juice to do something like energize weapons or try to restart their powerplant. As soon as power was applied, the marker lights on the horizontal stabilizers blinked, and the whine of hydraulic accumulators filled the space.
"Sir, this is patched into their intercom through the maintenance port," a technician said, handing Edgars a headset. The captain didn't bother putting it on. He just held the mic near his mouth since he had no intentions of a two-way negotiation with the people aboard the shuttle.
"Attention occupants of the hunk of garbage sitting on my hangar deck…this is Captain Edgars. We know who you are, and I can guess why you're here. Drop the ramp to your cargo bay and get down on your knees, hands on top of your heads, and wait for my Marines to secure the ship and you. Nobody needs to die here today. You're just doing your job and, if you're smart about this, I'll be sending you back to Terranovus where you can keep doing it. Do something stupid, and I'll kill each and every one of you. You have two minutes to comply."
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