"I see," Webb said noncommittally. "While I normally couldn't give two shits about some snot-nosed cadet's family drama, how about you fill me in?" And Jacob did. At length. Through the entire tirade Webb was a statue, making no comments and asking no questions.
"I'm not sure why this is even relevant, sir," Jacob finished his story. "Isn't Jason Burke an enemy of Earth? I'd heard as much on the news after the last time he disappeared." Webb didn't answer. The captain just continued to stare at him with that same unreadable expression.
"You still want him?" Webb finally asked.
"Sure," the shabby looking man in civilian clothes said, still not looking up from his com unit. "He's a whiny, self-absorbed little shit, but the Corps will burn that out of him. I don't need him for his winning personality."
"This is Lieutenant Commander Ezra Mosler," Captain Webb said before Jacob could open his mouth and ask. "He's the executive officer of 3rd Scout Corps and runs Team Obsidian. Once you complete the requisite training, you'll be reporting to him for your first assignment. You've heard of Scout Fleet, Cadet?"
"I have not, sir," Jacob said, his head swimming. What the hell was happening?
"Scout Fleet is the umbrella name for the composite, clandestine force that provides real-time intelligence to Fleet Operations," Mosler spoke up, walking around and sitting on the edge of Webb's desk. "We also handle discreet interdictions and tactical strikes when necessary. We're the ones who gather the intel Fleet requires before they send a taskforce into an area we've never been. Scout Fleet operates in small teams made up of sailors and Marines flying nonregistered ships we've either purchased from our alien allies or had purpose-built here on Terranovus."
"How much did you pay attention in class, Brown?" Webb asked. "Specifically, what do you know of the political make-up of the galactic quadrant?"
"I know that Earth is a full member in the Cridal Cooperative, a loose trading confederacy made up of a couple dozen systems, but the only true superpower in the region is the ConFed," Jacob said, not sure how deep he was supposed to drill down with his answer. "There's also the Eshquarian Empire and the Saabror Protectorate to round out the top four players. Would you like me to list all of the smaller nations and independent systems, sir?"
"Unnecessary." Mosler shook his head. "I can already tell you don't know shit."
"Sir?"
"What I'm about to tell you is highly classified," the Scout Corps commander said. "I'm not talking slap-on-the-wrist classified, I'm talking we-fake-your-death-in-a-training-accident-if-you-talk classified. Understood?" When Jacob nodded, he continued. "I'm only telling you this because I believe in giving you all the information you'll need in order to make your choice."
"What choice would that be, sir?"
"This is still a volunteer service, Dipshit," Mosler said. "You're not being shanghaied. If you don't want to be a Marine, you can still opt out and go back home to Colorado. You want me to continue?"
"Yes, sir."
"There is no more Eshquarian Empire," Mosler said. He said it with such dramatic flair that Jacob knew the right response would be to act shocked even if he wasn't sure why. "Three months ago, the ConFed hit them hard, took the capital system, and moved quickly to install their own regional government. Do you know why this is important?"
"Other than the fact a major power launched a preemptive attack on another? Aren't the Eshquarians major arms suppliers in the region?"
"They are the arms supplier for all the major militaries," Webb said. "They supplied weapons and small ships to the ConFed while retaining their own capacity for building capital ships. The big ships were only for their own fleet and were never offered to anybody who might use them against the Empire."
"If they were already trading partners, why would the ConFed risk such an overly-aggressive move?" Jacob wondered aloud. "They'll receive a negligible advantage in owning the small-arms and light craft production facilities outright, but they'll have announced to the entire region they're now willing to use their military to force concessions from their neighbors." When he looked up both officers were just watching him, Mosler with a bemused smile. "Sorry, sirs, just thinking aloud."
"And now you know why we exist," Mosler said. "Scout Fleet will be deploying throughout the quadrant to begin pulling in intel so Earth has all the information we can give them when the conflicts of the galactic core inevitably reach our shores."
"Is Earth at risk, sir?" Jacob asked.
"We're a two-planet, emerging power signed onto a binding protection treaty with the weakest of the three remaining major powers," Webb said. "While the ConFed might not be fully aware of us specifically, we have to assume the risk level is certainly elevated. I obviously can't tell you any more than we already have until you're cleared."
"Why me? Why the Marines?" Jacob tried one more time to get his life back on the track he thought he wanted. "Why can't I serve in Scout Fleet as a Naval officer? I just don't—"
"Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?" Mosler mocked him in a singsong falsetto. "What part of service was unclear to you when you signed up? The offer is for the Marine Corps because that's where the UEAS needs you the most. Your test scores and grades show you'd be a mediocre bridge officer, at best, but your psychological profile and aptitude for small unit tactics suggests that serving as a detachment officer aboard a Scout Fleet ship would suit you just fine. And, of course, there's also your physical gifts. Not too many jarheads can run over thirty miles per hour or have to hide the fact they can bench press over six hundred pounds."
And there it was. He was being asked to throw away his dream and join the Corps for no other reason than his freakish, alien traits that made him useful as a weapon. It was the precise reason he'd tried so hard to hide them. He wasn't standing there because of any discipline issues at the Academy, it had been a convenient con to get him to where they wanted him. What the hell had he been thinking?! Of course, they'd be monitoring the exercise area! If that fucking Coulier had kept it together, I wouldn't have—
"Yes or no, Cadet?" Webb said. "I'm sorry, son, but I need an answer now. For the record, I don't like doing this to you. I'm breaking my word to a close friend by pulling you out like this, but desperate times and all that. My loyalty to that friend takes a backseat to my loyalty to Earth. It would be irresponsible of me to not recognize the potential I see in you and have it wasted as you wrote efficiency reports and fetched coffee for flag officers."
Jacob thought hard for a moment, his first instinct being to tell these two to shove it up their asses and put him on the first ship back to Earth. If he'd been in a better frame of mind, he would have been more suspicious about who Captain Webb's friend was and what the promise was involving him, but he was too busy wallowing in self-pity to analyze it that closely.
The thought of his grandparents back on Earth stopped him cold before he could tell Webb to piss off. If the alien attacks on his home world had taught him anything—other than that his father was an asshole and possibly a traitor to his species—it was that Earth was vulnerable. Even now, with their shipyards cranking out warships as fast as they could be assembled, he still felt that vulnerability as if it were a tangible thing he could reach out and touch. He'd come to the Academy to serve and protect the ones he loved the best he could. Maybe this path wasn't what he'd chosen, but it was still fulfilling that obligation.
"I'll do it…sir," he said finally. He hadn't meant for it to come out sounding like an admission of defeat like it had. "What's next?"
"I've already looked over your transcripts, and you've satisfied the requirements to graduate with your class without any special exemptions being filed that might draw undue attention," Webb said, now all business. "We'll swear you in tonight, right now. After that, you'll be turned over Lieutenant Commander Mosler."
"The voluntary training you took at the Academy helps…a lot," Mosler said as he flipped through the hardcopy of Jacob's file. "Survival school, both phases, the aforementioned small unit t
actics, and your major was in astronautical engineering, so you'll be easy to train up on ship operations. To be honest, other than SERE school here on Terranovus and a two-week stint on Restaria, I think he's ready to be tossed into the deep end. The best way to learn is to get into it."
"Restaria?" Jacob asked, alarmed. "You can't mean the same Restaria that's in the Galvetic Empire?"
"Oh yes, I do." Mosler smiled evilly. "We have a sort of informal training exchange program going on with them. You're going to absolutely love hand-to-hand combat training with the Galvetic Legions." Jacob returned the smile, but where Mosler's was full of malicious enthusiasm, his own was a little sickly. While most had only heard of the famed Galvetic warriors through their course work and had seen the images the instructors used, Jacob had actually been face to face with one when he was fourteen years old. It had been one of the single most terrifying events of his life. It was also one of those things nobody was supposed to know about, so he kept his mouth shut.
"You'll be fine," Webb said distractedly. "I believe Mazer Reddix is still running the school, and he'll take a special interest in making sure you survive the training."
"That doesn't make me feel any better, sir," Jacob said.
"That's a shame," Webb deadpanned. "Because I feel completely fine about things."
Chapter 4
Jacob was whisked out of the office Captain Webb had commandeered and into a small briefing room where Admiral Cornett was waiting. The superintendent looked less than thrilled that he was being inconvenienced by a mere captain, a cadet, and someone who could have been mistaken for a shiftless bum.
"Let's get this over with," he growled, gesturing for Jacob to take his place in front of the red backdrop. The cadet did as instructed, flanked on either side by the United Earth and Terranovus flags. The former was a blue background with a green circle in the middle representing the unified Earth governments, while the latter looked like the Polish flag with the red and white inverted. Jacob thought both designs showed a shocking lack of imagination…but nobody had asked him.
The normal tradition for a graduating class was to fly back to Earth and hold the ceremony there so that families could be in attendance so that Fleet PR could really sell the idea of a spaceborne military to a public still having a hard time adjusting to their new reality. Instead of standing tall, resplendent in his service dress with his grandparents watching on, Jacob would be sworn in by a reluctant Admiral, into a branch he didn't really want to be in, and handed over to a commanding officer who made him extremely nervous.
As Admiral Cornett droned on, reciting the ceremony with all the enthusiasm of someone watching paint dry—he actually paused twice to yawn—Jacob's thoughts drifted to his current predicament. He hadn't completely given up on the idea of being a Naval officer and serving aboard mainline warships, he just had to figure out how one would transition from the Marine Corps to the Navy. The problem was that the UEAS was such a new organization that they were still ironing out all the procedures and policies for mundane personnel issues like some junior officer wanting to switch branches.
"Now, raise your right hand and repeat after me," Cornett yawned. Jacob went through his Oath of Office, feeling humiliated and cheated as he stood there alone. The universe had once again decided to shit on Jacob Brown. It just wasn't fair, damnit.
"Congratulations, Lieutenant Brown," Cornett said, managing some enthusiasm finally. "I have no doubt you will do the Marine Corps, this Academy, and your home planet proud. Serve with honor." The shift in the Admiral's demeanor from when he'd berated Jacob in his office to now congratulating him didn't escape the new lieutenant's notice and he suspected that the scene had been an act the whole time.
"Now what, sir?" Jacob asked Mosler once Cornett and Webb had said their congratulations and left the room.
"Now that you're a lieutenant, you can take it easy with the sirs," Mosler said. "And as to your question, you belong to me for now. We'll head back to base, and I'll get you checked into billeting. You'll start your medical procedures for off-world service tomorrow, and then we'll see about getting you a ride to Restaria."
"Wonderful," Jacob said.
"This may not be what you think you want, but believe me, if you want to make a difference—really make a difference—you want to be in Scout Fleet," Mosler said.
"I can't refute what you're saying, but I can't help but feel I'm being boxed in by this forced commission into the Marines," Jacob said. "My options were just limited to detachment duty on a starship, a dirtside assignment, or NAVSOC."
"Kid, life isn't fair," Mosler said and nodded towards the door. Jacob rolled his eyes at the comment and followed his new CO out into the hallway. "It's especially not fair for someone who, through no fault of his own, was given special abilities that made him too damn valuable to waste on the bridge of a cruiser out shadowing one of the Cridal ships."
"Fucking alien blood in me," Jacob muttered. The revulsion he felt about why he was so different wasn't as sharp as it had once been, but he was far from making peace with it.
"Alien? What the hell are you blathering about, Lieutenant?"
"You know why I'm so fast, right?" Jacob asked as they got into the elevator.
"I know exactly why." Mosler nodded and hit the button for the roof. "I've not only been briefed but I've met the source, in a manner of speaking. You think you have alien blood in your veins?"
"You're saying I don't?" Jacob frowned. "Wait! You've met my… The man who—"
"Yes, I've met your father…sort of." Mosler cut off Jacob's stammering. "Our paths crossed very briefly on a shithole planet called Nott."
"I've never heard of it."
"I'm not surprised. It's in a region of space called the Kaspian Reaches," Mosler said. "It's a lawless, wild bit of space no government has been able to subdue enough to lay claim to. Your pop's crew was working on something of their own when Team Obsidian got in a bit over our heads. He took the heat off us enough that we could get airborne and escape."
"You're saying I'm going to run into that son of a bitch out there?" Jacob asked, unable to keep the venom from his voice.
"Unlikely." Mosler shrugged. "It's a very, very big galaxy and your old man tries to keep off of the radar as much as he can. Anyway, everything you have comes from him. There's no alien DNA anywhere in your makeup."
"I don't underst—"
"That's between you and him." They arrived at the roof level, and Mosler led Jacob out to where a small intra-atmospheric runabout was parked on the landing pad. "Your family drama isn't my concern. You do your job, and do it well, and I'll make sure to make it worth your while. That's your ride. The pilot knows where to take you, and one of my NCOs will meet you at the base."
"You're not coming?"
"I have to talk to Captain Webb about some…stuff," Mosler said darkly. "I'll be there before you undergo the neural implant procedure and all the nasty immunizations you'll get pumped full of."
"Lovely."
The flight out to the remote base NAVSOC called home was uneventful. Jacob had been met at the landing pad by a bored looking Marine noncom who was dressed much like Mosler had been, so determining his exact rank was impossible. Like most NCOs, he looked at the fresh new lieutenant as nothing more than an unwelcome burden. He was shown to his spartan quarters and told to dump his gear and change out of his service dress and into utilities. Later, he was led over to medical to begin the preliminary workups and baselines before they installed the neural implant.
"I thought we weren't going to start this until Commander Mosler got here sometime tomorrow," Jacob had said after being brusquely pushed into an exam room.
"You got anything better to do right now?" the noncom had asked before walking off. Jacob had never gotten his name.
The Mercury Mk.2 neural implant, named for the Roman god of communication—among other things—was the latest and greatest in Terran nanotech. It was largely copied from alien tech provided by the Cridal
Cooperative as part of the treaty deal, but human engineers had adapted this version for use specifically with specialized military units, Scout Fleet being one of them.
The unit was made up of millions of specialized nanobots that, when injected into the victim—er, subject—would travel up to the base of the brainstem and assemble themselves into the implant's processing center. Nanobot chains would then form to access specific parts of the brain directly. The whole unit only had the total mass of around one- and three-quarter grams, but the way it was described to Jacob, it sounded like they were going to be driving railroad spikes into his cerebral cortex. When assembled and functioning correctly, the implant would allow Jacob to understand any alien dialect that was spoken to him as long as it was loaded into the translation matrix. The implants were one of the most common devices in the quadrant and, aside from faster-than-light ships themselves, were the main reason such a vast interstellar community could even exist.
"Good evening, Lieutenant. My name is Commander Ellis, and I'll be overseeing your procedure." Jacob looked when Commander Ellis walked in. She was flanked by two more enlisted nurses from the Medical Corps, both of whom immediately went to work prepping the machines for the implant procedure.
"Will this hurt?"
"I won't feel a thing," Ellis said. "Go ahead and strip down and hop up on the table. While it's not necessary, we typically administer a general anesthesia for this procedure. There can be some…discomfort…in some patients. Once the implant has formed and integrated, we'll wake you up."
"How long does that take?" Jacob asked.
"Depends on the person," Ellis said. "Count on being out for at least a twelve-hour period."
Jacob just shrugged and began peeling off his uniform despite two females still standing there. The Academy was a fully gender-integrated institution; any modesty he'd once harbored about being nude in front of the opposite sex had been burned away within the first six months. The school, due to its daunting task of prepping personnel for the rigors of service in space, was part U.S. Naval Academy, part Army boot camp, and as much emphasis was placed on practical skills as on the usual coursework needed to become an officer.
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