"Got something up ahead," MG said calmly. "Looks like an appendage in a pressure suit. Not human." The term 'not human' made the hair stand up on Jacob's neck. The Endurance had been boarded by a hostile alien force, and they'd left some of their own behind.
"LT?" Murph prompted.
"Proceed," Jacob said once he realized they were waiting on him. "MG still on point. Murph, you back him up."
"Moving," MG said. Jacob watched as the pair moved off quickly and confidently. MG moved along the right bulkhead while Murph hugged the left and stayed a few meters behind so he could cover his partner. The offending appendage was sticking out of a hatchway on the right so the alien would see Murph first, but MG would be in position to take action if it was hostile…or even still alive.
Jacob could swear he saw the—leg?—twitch as MG approached and leveled his weapon. Even though there wasn't any sound in the vacuum of the dead ship the alien would still be able to detect the vibrations of the suited Marines walking over the deck. Was this an elaborate trap? He forced himself to calm down, well aware that his vitals were being transmitted back to the Corsair, and Captain Mosler was likely monitoring them all.
"Looks like we have a second body," Murph said. "Another pressure suit is laying across the first. SHIT! Second target is alive!"
"Converge! Converge!" Jacob shouted and ran forward as MG and Murph rounded the hatchway, weapons trained and yelling at the second figure.
The alien was unmistakable from his coursework: Korkaran. They were a bipedal, saurian species that had retained their long, muscular tails throughout their evolution. The first Korkaran had a huge hole blown through its chest, but the second was alive, though it wasn't making any move to get up or reach for a weapon.
"Report!" Mosler's voice came over the com. Jacob nodded to Murph to make the report back.
"Two Korkarans, sir, one still alive," Murph said. "Appears to be injured since it's just staring at us, not moving."
"Scans show extensive bionic upgrades," Taylor said. "Both arms and one leg are cybernetic but appear to be powered down."
"Must be damaged to the point it can't move," Murph said. "LT, you may want to hang back. You haven't gotten the full set of shots yet, and these things carry some nasty shit. It'd be a shame if you picked up something deadly on your first trip."
"Agreed," Jacob said and backed away. There wasn't any pressure within the ship, but there was still some air, and anything coming out of the hole in the first Korkaran might land on his suit. They would go through a decontamination cycle when they went back to the Corsair, but why take the chance?
"Brown, we need to know if Swank was able to hit the failsafes," Mosler said, subtly coaxing Jacob towards the needed course of action.
"Copy, sir," he replied. "MG, restrain and secure the living Korkaran. Murph, you and I will push forward towards the bridge. Everyone else will go to Engineering and check to make sure everything down there was purged."
"This way, sir," Murph said and continued up the corridor they'd been following.
The rest of the way to the bridge was as boring as Jacob secretly hoped it would be. He kept track of the rest of his team on the holographic display in his helmet and saw they had made it to Engineering before he and Murph actually stepped onto the bridge.
The bridge of the Endurance gave Jacob a pang as he looked around, realizing his dream of serving aboard such a vessel as a bridge officer was well and truly dashed. As with the rest of the ship, there were no signs of a struggle, nor were there any bodies of the crew.
"The bridge failsafe was triggered," Murph said, pointing to the captain's key hanging from the armrest of command chair. A small access panel had slid open when that key was turned, then whoever was on bridge watch would have hit the button to destroy the servers that were in a secure room one deck down. The button had to be punched with enough force to break the thin glass rods that were in place to ensure it was never accidentally pressed, but once it was, explosive charges would decimate the hardware below them that contained any classified information Earth wouldn't want to fall into unfriendly hands.
There was an identical system down in Engineering that would ensure all the computers that controlled the Endurance's slip-drive and weaponry were destroyed so that reverse-engineering the Pathfinder-class ship would be impossible. The hardware could be copied, but without knowing the drive field equations and look-up tables the Terran engineers and scientists had used, it wouldn't even be worth the effort.
"Engineering failsafe was also triggered," MG said over the team channel after Jacob had checked in with them and told them what he and Murph had found. "We're also near the hull breach so we're recording all the data we can to take back to the Corsair."
"Copy," Jacob said. "We'll work our way down to you now as soon as we gain access to the server vault and ensure the charges did their job."
"Belay that, Lieutenant," Mosler broke in. "Secure your prisoner for the recovery crews and get your asses back here, double-time. We have company…and it isn't one of ours."
Chapter 9
"It's been sitting just at the edge of our detection range for the last hour or so, but now it's moving towards us." Mosler pointed to the unknown ship's signature on the main display when Jacob walked back onto the bridge. "Good job getting your people out of the way when that bit of debris came in on you, by the way."
"Yes, sir," Jacob said. He'd gotten out of his pressure suit and back into regular clothes as quickly as he could. "You'd think the guidance system would be smart enough to automatically steer us around obstacles like that." Mosler and Sully exchanged a glance that didn't go unnoticed, but neither said anything.
"No transmission from the newcomer so far?" Webb asked.
"None yet," Mosler said. "It may be just another scavenger and thinks we're the same. How would you like this handled, sir?"
"I'm just a hitchhiker, not even here as an advisor." Webb put his hands up and shook his head. "This is your show, Captain."
Jacob tried to follow the action as Mosler and Sully went back and forth on strategy while the ship on sensors got close enough to begin making out some detail. The system they'd met the Endurance in wasn't populated. It was an unremarkable yellow dwarf star with a system of three uninhabitable planets. There weren't any significant resources that would make it attractive to a mining operation, and it wasn't close to any of the well-used interstellar lanes the larger ships in the quadrant tended to stick to. It was picked because it was a conveniently located navigational point. The fact that a ship had shown up here after the attack on the Endurance was beyond coincidence. Whoever it was skulking out near the edge of detection range had something to do with it.
"It's moving again," Sully said. "Coming straight for us."
"They've been painting us with active sensors since they arrived," Mosler said. "Now that they know how small we are, and that we don't fit any know military vessel classification, they'll probably get a lot bolder in trying to chase us off."
"We're able to get a bit more resolution on the target now that she's closer," Sully said. "Standby."
"We'll have to back off if they keep coming," Mosler explained to Jake. "From her size, that looks like a cruiser-class ship. The Corsair is quick and stealthy but no real match for it in an actual gunfight. What we'll try to—"
"Holy shit," Sully cut off his captain. "You're not going to believe this, Cap. The computer found a type-match for it. That's a Columbia-class starship coming towards us."
"That's impossible! Run it again." Mosler turned back to his station to look at the data coming in from the sensor array.
"Already did. Three times," Sully said. "The computer is sure within a ninety-six percent probability."
"Columbia-class?" Jacob asked. "I've never heard of—"
"It's a human-built ship," Webb said tightly. "They were in service back before the UEN existed, back when Terranovus was just a top-secret outpost and before Earth began adopting the unificatio
n treaties."
"Sir, that doesn't—"
"I'll explain later," Mosler said. "It's classified far above your level right now, but we can't exactly just tell you to forget you saw it. The real question is what the hell is it doing here? The only remaining Columbia-class ships were scrapped a long time ago."
"The only remaining ships we owned were scrapped," Webb said. "There were some that escaped."
"I'm so confused," Jacob said to himself. Pre-United Earth Navy starships? Who the hell did they belong to? The United States maybe?
"You won't be any less confused once it's explained to you…trust me," Sully said. "This does change things a bit, though. That old ship isn't much of a threat to us."
"You're assuming that it hasn't been upgraded," Mosler said. "But looking at these low power signatures, I'm inclined to agree with you. Let's just stay parked here for now and see what it does."
They monitored the ship for another five hours as it continued to hang back around the system boundary. The monotony of the job was so mind-numbing that Jacob found it difficult to maintain focus. He was still worn out from near-disastrous EVA mission to the Endurance and now he was staring at a dot on the display that seemed perfectly content to do nothing but sit there.
"Lieutenant, go grab something to eat a couple hours of rack time," Mosler ordered after watching Jacob fighting to keep his head up. "We'll sound the general alarm if you're needed."
"Yes, sir." Jacob didn't argue. He didn't even pull his boots off once he made it back to his quarters, sleep overtaking him the instant his head hit the pillow. So much about the day's events were bothering him, but it was so jumbled and chaotic in his mind that he couldn't see it clearly enough to know exactly why.
Jacob awoke four hours later on his own, feeling surprisingly refreshed. He tapped the screen on the bulkhead and saw there were no alarms and that everything on the Corsair was green across the board. He rubbed a hand across the three days' worth of beard, remembered what Mosler said about him looking too clean, and decided to leave it. After four years at the Academy, it felt decidedly strange to not be impeccably groomed and dressed while on duty.
He decided to grab something to eat before heading back up to the bridge since he'd skipped that in lieu of more sleep. While he was in the galley rummaging around, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. When he turned to look down the main corridor, he caught sight of Murph quietly slipping down the stairwell to the engineering deck. There was something about the way the man was moving that told Jacob he was trying to not be seen. His curiosity piqued, he decided to follow him.
The Corsair was not a big ship, so it took Jacob less than a minute to locate Murph and see what he was up to. The sergeant had gone into an avionics service bay, something that, as far as Jacob knew, he wasn't qualified to be messing around on.
"Lose something, Sergeant?"
"Shit! Damnit, LT. You scared the—"
"What are you doing down here?" Jacob asked. By the time he'd gotten to the service bay, Murph had already opened up one of the Corsair's avionics boxes and was poking about with a flashlight between his teeth.
"Just checking on something. What are you doing down here?"
"I saw one of my noncoms going into an area that didn't concern him and decided to investigate," Jacob said. "I've read your jacket, Murph. While impressive, it didn't include any training that you may have taken that explains why you'd be down here poking around in the guts of the ship."
"Look, LT, there are some things goin' on that you're not aware of," Murph said, apparently deciding that bluster was his best strategy. The odd thing was Jacob hadn't really suspected Murph of any wrongdoing until he couldn't come up with a good answer as to why he was down in Engineering. For all the fresh lieutenant knew, there was some extra duty that had been assigned to the cagey NCO that Mosler had neglected to tell him about.
"There's a lot going on I'm not aware of," Jacob snorted. "That'll happen when you're yanked out of training early and put in an operational unit. That still doesn't explain why—" The general alarm blaring cut him off, and the lighting along the walkways switched from soft blue to red, indicating there was a critical situation.
"Everyone, get to your stations," Mosler's voice came over the intercom. "Our visitors are making a move."
"We'll finish this later," Jacob said, waiting until Murph had closed the black box he'd been poking around in and exited the service bay before following him up to the main deck.
"That cruiser is on a direct intercept now," Mosler said as he walked onto the bridge. Jacob felt a pang of guilt as it was obvious his CO hadn't had a wink of sleep while he'd luxuriated in hours of rack time. "She's still taking her time, but this doesn't look like another half-assed feint."
"What's the ETA on our salvage fleet?" Jacob asked.
"Thirty-nine hours, but we just got word from Fleet Ops that they've dispatched an actual warship to help secure our position," Webb answered. "No word on which ship it is or how quickly it can make it here."
The next few hours were tense. The Columbia-class ship kept at its interminable crawl towards where the wreckage of the Endurance hung in a heliocentric orbit, trailing behind the second planet. Fatigue had finally overcome Mosler, and he'd left Jacob in charge with very explicit instructions to wake him if anything changed. The captain ordered Sully to sleep at the pilot's station in case they needed to retreat quickly.
Soon, all Jacob had for company was the soft hiss of the air handlers, the beeps from the bridge stations, and the not-so-soft snoring from the Corsair's pilot. He watched the sensor feed at the captain's station with great interest, wondering about a ship that, according to everything he'd been taught, shouldn't exist. The public knew very little about Earth's first foray into space as possessors of slip-drive technology, but what they'd been told unequivocally was that there had been no space-borne military fielded by humanity until they'd reached a partnership with the Cridal Cooperative. Looking at the sensor data on his display refuted that. How much more was out here that the civilians on his home world were totally in the dark about?
"What the fuck?" Jacob shot up in his seat as the incoming ship did something completely unexpected. "Sully! Wake up!"
"No, sir! I'm sober!" Sully exclaimed as he bolted upright in his seat.
"What?" Jacob asked
"What?"
"Never mind. Look at what our friend is doing."
"Interesting," Sully mused, rubbing at his face. The cruiser had come about hard onto a reciprocal course and was pushing back towards the system boundary at what appeared to be full burn for the aging starship. "She's pushing for mesh-out. The older ships needed a little bit of forward relative velocity this close to a star before the slip-drive could stabilize the fields. Why are they retreating? What did you do?"
"I didn't do shit," Jacob said, reaching over and sending an alert to Mosler's stateroom.
"Something has spooked them, but I don't see anything else on sensors, and ours are a lot better than theirs," Sully said. "This probably isn't great news for us."
"Report!" Mosler barked, looking refreshed and energized after only two hours of sleep. Jacob filled in his captain on what he’d seen, and then replayed the sensor logs so that Mosler could look for himself. "They've gotten new information about something. They're not running from anything in this system."
"Could they have gotten close enough for their sensors to detect what weaponry we have aboard?" Jacob asked.
"Virtually impossible," Mosler said. "Our armament is so well shielded that even the newer ConFed battlecruisers can't detect anything when we've passed within ten thousand klicks. Twice they've let us land without incident on ConFed worlds that explicitly prohibit unregistered warships, which we technically are since we're not flying a Terran flag."
"So now, the real question is, did the new information or orders they received even have anything to do with us?"
“Very good, Lieutenant." Mosler nodded. "For now,
we'll assume nothing. Maintain position and posture. Keep an eye out for anyone trying to sneak in on different vectors while we're staring at the tailpipes of a fleeing ship."
"Should we at least—" Sully was cut off by an alarm from the captain's station indicating a priority message was coming in over the slip-com node. Everyone on the bridge remained silent as Mosler read through the plain-text message
"That was a follow-up from Fleet Ops. The ship they dispatched ahead of the salvage fleet is the Defender-class destroyer, UES Sunder," Mosler said. Sully whistled softly.
"One of the new ones," he said. "I'd heard that most of the Defenders we built were being pressed into service with Cridal units."
"Keep your wild speculation to yourself," Mosler said. "We'll maintain watch here until the Sunder shows up, likely dump Captain Webb off on them, and then get the fuck on with our own mission. We've wasted far too much time here as it is."
"A word in private, sir?" Jacob asked softly when Mosler went to leave the bridge. The captain just looked at him for a moment before shrugging.
"Sure," he said. "Sully, you're in charge for a minute. Don't do anything stupid."
"No stupid shit, aye!"
"That may not actually stop him," Mosler said as he led Jacob into the room across the corridor from the SCIF, just aft of the bridge. It was a multi-purpose room dominated by a large table display, complete with holographic generators. Mosler used it as an office/ready room when it wasn't being used for mission planning. "What's on your mind?"
Marine Page 8