Marine

by Joshua Dalzelle

"I'm not sure how to bring this up without making it seem like—"

  "Just spit it out, Lieutenant," Mosler sighed. "If it's serious enough to pull me aside then just tell me in a straight-forward manner. This unit doesn't operate any other way."

  "I saw Sergeant Murphy down in one of the avionics service bays on the engineering deck poking around inside one of the black boxes," Jacob said. "He seemed high-strung and was extremely evasive when I asked him what he was doing."

  "Murph?" Mosler seemed genuinely surprised. "He's not qualified to be fucking around with any of the avionics boxes. You said he was inside of one?"

  "Yes, sir," Jacob said. "He'd pulled it out of the rack enough to pop off the top inspection panel."

  "You remember which box it was?"

  "Yes."

  "Let's go. Show me."

  Jacob was inexplicably nervous on the way down to Engineering. Maybe he should have tracked down Scarponi, the ship's engineer, before going straight to the captain. Even on a ship as small as the Corsair, there were still proper protocols for these sorts of things. Mosler was visibly angry as they walked down the main corridor to the ladder well, and Jacob couldn't tell if it was with him for bringing his petty issues directly to the top of the chain of command or with Murph for digging around in areas he wasn't qualified for.

  "It was this box, sir," Jacob said, pointing to the avionics module he'd seen his NCO messing with.

  "This one? You're sure about that?" Mosler pressed. When Jacob nodded, the captain swore and began pulling the connectors off the box. "Shut that emergency hatch. I don't want Scarponi walking in on this."

  Jacob did as he was told and watched as Mosler pulled the box out of the rack and laid it gently on the deck. He pulled a multi-tool from his hip pocket and quickly undid all the quarter-turn fasteners to give him access to the box’s innards. Muttering to himself, Mosler quickly went through everything until he found a particular circuit board that seemed to offend him, judging by the scrunched-up face he was making, and pulled it out.

  "See this?" he asked. Jacob looked over the board in a glance, trying to see something amiss. Even to his untrained eye—or at least barely-trained eye—he could see something that stood out.

  "One of the chips on this board doesn't have any conformal coating on it," he said. "So, either it's been repaired or—"

  "Or someone has modified it," Mosler finished. He tapped his finger against his chin for a moment before putting the box back together and reinstalling it in the rack. "Follow me. Not a word until I say so."

  Jacob, now thoroughly confused, followed his captain back up to the command deck and into the SCIF. Once the hatch closed, and the light turned green to indicate the anti-eavesdropping measures were active, Mosler turned to him.

  "That board was not only modified, it was done so with a part that isn't approved for use by Fleet. The part number on the top of that chip was still legible," he said.

  "Which means it didn't come from our supply system," Jacob said.

  "Another sharp guess, Lieutenant Brown. I guess they didn't send me a dud this time after all," Mosler said. "You're absolutely correct. Furthermore, that box is part of the DataLink Routing and Management Subsystem. Remember when you mentioned that you were surprised the ship's guidance didn't move you around that obstacle automatically? It was supposed to. One of the jobs that box does is relay the commands from the computer to the com system for things like EVA and docking procedures."

  "You're suggesting sabotage."

  "I'm suggesting nothing, just stating a list of disassociated facts," Mosler corrected, turning to one of the terminals and logging in. "We don't know what that unauthorized part is doing in that box. For all we know, it could have been mistakenly installed by a backshop long before it made it to the Corsair, but the fact your whole team almost bites it, and then Murph is down there messing around? A little too coincidental for my liking."

  "So, what do we do about it, sir?"

  "I'm checking to see… Yep, it's like I thought. We don't have spare DataLink router aboard," Mosler said. "But…the Sunder will be here shortly, and that part is common enough they may be carrying one."

  "Okay," Jacob said, following the train of thought. "So, we swap out the suspect box for a new, good one. Then what?"

  "Then the Sunder takes the suspect box and tests it for us," Mosler said. "If we find out that the modification was responsible for almost getting your guys killed, we'll take further steps. That box does a lot more than just sent telemetry to suit guidance during EVA operations, so let's just keep this between us for now."

  "Yes, sir," Jacob said, still trying to wrap his head around the fact that the ship might have been sabotaged. "Oh, on an unrelated note, why did you look so pissed when you found out the Sunder was inbound?"

  "Actually, it's not so unrelated," Mosler said. "We got the call that the Sunder was coming just after the inbound cruiser turned tail and ran. I think it's safe to assume that they got the same call." When Jacob just looked confused, he went on. "I know you're well aware of the official story about the second alien attack on Earth."

  "Of course," Jacob almost spat out, the anger making his face flush. "A species called the Ull attacked us with the help of—"

  "That's not actually what happened." Mosler held up a hand, stopping Jacob before he could launch into another hate-filled tirade about his father. "The Ull were actually partners of Earth, unbeknownst to the general population. They're actually the species we got our initial slip-drive technology from, and they gave us Terranovus, a planet suitable for us that they had colonization rights to.

  "The other part you don't know is that the administrator for the Terranovus colony that the U.S. government put there had bigger plans for herself. She made a backdoor deal with the Ull and came to Earth with most of the Terranovus fleet. Your old man was the one who helped stop her by bringing his friends from the Cridal Cooperative along with their big capital ships. Most of the fleet surrendered when the Ull abandoned them, but the Terranovus administrator escaped along with about a third of our Columbia-class starships. It's almost certain the ship we saw was one of hers."

  "And equally certain she still has sympathizers within Earth's military command apparatus," Jacob said, compartmentalizing all the information he'd been given for the moment and focusing on the immediate problem. "You think someone let them know that a destroyer was on its way and they needed to clear out."

  "You're quick on your feet." Mosler nodded with approval. "What's not well known is that a lot of officers from the old Terranovus fleet ended up in the UEN when we were trying to cobble together an entire armed service with a few ships and a group of people with no experience serving in space. It's fairly common knowledge within the intel and special operations communities that there are still some loyalists among us."

  "This is…distressing," Jacob said, searching for the right word. "You think Murph may be one of them?"

  "I'm really hoping not," Mosler said. "He's too young to have served in the original Terranovus fleet, so that would mean the loyalists are turning new recruits."

  "I… Thanks for telling me this, sir."

  "You won't believe how highly this is classified, so keep your fucking trap shut about this," Mosler said. "Don't even talk about it with Webb. I told you not only because eventually you'd be cleared to know about it when I approve your permanent transfer to my crew, but because that chip on your shoulder about what you think your old man did—or didn't do—is heavy enough to cause you trouble. We're not having a Dr. Phil moment here, and I'm not your shoulder to cry on about your daddy issues, I'm just letting you know that you don't know as much as you think you do."

  "Thank you anyway, sir," Jacob said stiffly.

  "Now get out of here," Mosler said. "I have some people to get in touch with and you have bridge watch until the Sunder shows up."

  Chapter 10

  "The shuttle is on the way over," Mosler said. "I'll keep Scarponi up here and you grab t
hat new box, get down there, and swap it, and make sure the suspect one is on the shuttle back to the Sunder with Captain Webb."

  "On it, sir."

  As soon as the Sunder had appeared in the system, Mosler had requested a secure channel to her captain and made his unusual request for an avionics box out of their spares kit. Once he'd made it clear to the other captain that things needed to be done as discreetly as possible, he'd sent Jacob to get prepped on their side to make sure he could swap out the modules without anybody noticing.

  It'd been necessary to bring in Captain Webb, but they both figured if the NAVSOC commander had been compromised, they were more or less screwed anyway. When they'd briefed Webb about what they suspected and now wanted to prove, the ex-SEAL took it with his usual stoicism. He made it clear he didn't want Sergeant Murphy accused of treason without solid evidence since there was only one punishment for it on Terranovus, and there was no way to reverse it should they be mistaken. While he couldn't explain why a Marine NCO would be poking around in Engineering, he seemed to firmly believe that, if the box had been tampered with, it had happened on the ground and installed in the ship during routine maintenance.

  "The shuttle is docking now, sir," Sully said.

  "I want you to grab some rack time while the Sunder is here watching local space," Mosler told his pilot. "Call down and have Scarponi come up and babysit the bridge while we go down and greet our guests."

  "Yes, sir!" Sully said enthusiastically, the idea of sleeping in his bed rather than the pilot's seat overriding any questions he might have about the unusual order.

  "You ready?" Mosler asked Jacob.

  "Ready, sir."

  "Let's go."

  The ceremony for allowing the crew of the Sunder's shuttle aboard the Corsair took less than a minute and the three enlisted crewmembers that came over began unloading cargo onto the deck while the officers talked. A tall, Asian petty officer gently set a padded case slightly away from the rest of the cargo and looked Jacob right in the eye, pointing at it for a split second before going on about his task.

  Jacob made some show of shifting the transit cases around to organize them before hefting the soft case and walking out of the airlock antechamber. He didn't see anyone as he hauled ass down to Engineering and entered the security override code Mosler had given him on one of the bulkhead displays to disable any warnings to the bridge when he began pulling off connectors. Once he was in the right avionics bay, he verified that the part number on the box the Sunder has sent over matched the one they had in their rack and quickly swapped them out. When all the status lights on the new box switched from amber to green, he packed up the suspect module, reset the ship's monitoring and reporting system, and made his way back to the airlock.

  The Asian petty officer saw him coming and, without making eye contact, pointed at a spot near the hatch while the Sunder's crew finished stacking the cases. While most of it was an elaborate ruse to cover the exchange, it didn't hurt to take on extra provisions from the bigger ship since they were now going to press ahead with their mission.

  "A word, Lieutenant?" Captain Webb asked, having snuck up without Jacob noticing him.

  "Of course, sir," Jacob answered and followed Webb back to the ready room.

  "Mosler told me he'd partially briefed you on matters well above your clearance level," Webb continued. "For the record, I think you have a right to know if for no other reason to provide you some context for your…family…issues. Just be smart and keep what you've learned to yourself. It's fairly common knowledge within NAVSOC that there is a rogue human faction out here, but the regular Navy is more or less kept in the dark until we can manage to do anything about it. Even some of our mainline ship captains don't know about the Terranovus coup attempt, and we need to keep it that way for now."

  "Understood, Captain," Jacob said. He felt like he was walking a tightrope all of the sudden. Webb often presented himself as a mentor to Jacob, but he had no doubt if the captain perceived him as a security risk, he'd be spending some time in a holding facility.

  "You're doing good so far." Webb nodded. "Keep asking questions and keep those eyes open. Trust Mosler. He's one of the absolute best I have, and I can't think of anyone else I'd rather have training a brand-new butter bar lieutenant that I have a vested interest in. I know this isn't the career track you wanted, but there's a lot of reward to go along with the risk I'm asking you to take." Jacob's eyes narrowed at that, but he held his tongue.

  "I won't let you down, sir."

  Webb stared at him for a moment, looked like he wanted to say more, then turned and left the room. Jacob just shrugged and trailed along after him, taking a peek onto the bridge and seeing Scarponi lounging in the captain's seat, feet up on the console and looking completely bored.

  After Webb's lackluster pep talk, he, Mosler, and a full commander from the Sunder locked themselves in the SCIF for the next thirty minutes while Jacob supervised his Marines stowing all the cargo the shuttle had brought over. As far as he could tell, there was no difference in Murph's demeanor as he went about his menial task, joking with his teammates and altogether looking as if he didn't have a care in the galaxy. Of course, a trained espionage agent probably wouldn't be standing there sweating and stuttering, and it's not like Jacob was trained in counterintelligence.

  "Good luck, gentlemen," Webb said as the trio of officers walked back into the airlock antechamber. "This mission is still of critical importance regardless of the tragedy we've encountered here. Press on."

  "Thanks, Captain," Murph said with a wave before yawning and walking back to berthing. "I'm gonna catch a few more hours of sleep if you don't mind, LT."

  "Go ahead," Jacob said. "Everyone, get back on your regular watch hours and we'll pick training back up tomorrow. Police the galley and the common area before dispersing." There were a chorus of affirmatives before his team went about cleaning up the main deck and breaking off to find whatever distractions they could. All of them except Taylor Levin, his tech specialist.

  "You needed something, Corporal?"

  "When were we going to debrief from the Endurance op?" Taylor asked.

  "Tomorrow," Jacob said.

  "As a group or individually?" Taylor asked. The question caught Jacob off-guard, and he had to take a moment to think about it. If Taylor was asking about debriefing individually, he had to assume the young man had something he wanted to tell him in private about the mission but didn't want to have to ask for a private meeting.

  "I'll pull you each off one at a time in the coming days," Jacob said finally. "Write down a brief, bullet point synopsis so you don't forget any key details. Tell the others to do the same."

  "You got it, LT." Taylor walked off, and Jacob could see on his face that he was relieved by the answer he'd gotten. What the hell could be going on now? For such a small team of elite Marines, there sure seemed to be an overabundance of drama and intrigue.

  "Brown! Get your ass to the bridge," Mosler's voice came over the intercom. "We're shoving off, and I need you to man a station."

  "On my way, sir."

  When he walked onto the bridge, he saw that Mosler had taken the pilot's seat and was pointing to the captain's station.

  "I'm not waking Sully just to pilot us to the mesh-out point," he explained. "I'm a fully qualified pilot, but Fleet regs are pretty strict about there being an officer in the captain's seat while a ship is underway."

  "What should I do?"

  "Don't touch anything. I've got our course locked in and the slip-drive is primed. Once Scarponi clears us for slip-space, we'll be out of this system. We've wasted far too much time here as it is."

  It was less than twenty minutes later and the Corsair was streaking through the uninhabited system on her way to a mesh-out point. The points were really just arbitrary locations in space, the slip-drives could be engaged anywhere outside of a star's immediate vicinity, but they were the navigational points that were agreed upon by nearly all of the spacefaring sp
ecies flying slip-space capable ships in the quadrant.

  "Next stop, the Kaspian Reaches," Mosler said as he engaged the slip-drive. "Also known as the galaxy's anus. You're gonna love it."

  "I can't wait," Jacob muttered as the Corsair disappeared from real-space.

  For the next two weeks, the training Jacob was able to accomplish was minimal thanks to the second round of what Captain Mosler had called immunizations. What the injections actually were was a cocktail of engineered viruses, programmed nanobots, and a whole host of other microorganisms that would modify the symbiotic microbiota within him so that he could survive on most alien worlds. It was one of the first things humans had been forced to learn about when the initial group of explorers that went to Terranovus died shortly after they arrived from exposure to the alien atmosphere. Other than the slip-drive itself, the method developed to quickly adapt the human body to alien environs was the most critical component when it came to becoming a spacefaring species.

  Jacob knew all of this on an intellectual level, had been warned that the full work-up was much more intense than what cadets got before going to Terranovus, but still he was unprepared for the level of agony he was enduring. In addition to the near-crippling muscle cramps and the wild swings between raging fever and dropping body temperature, it seemed as if all the individual fluids in his body had made some sort of pact to leave…and they were finding whichever exit was most convenient when they made a break for it.

  "It looks like the worst has passed, LT," Taylor said one day when he stopped by Jacob's quarters to check on him.

  "I feel like it's toying with me at this point," Jacob groaned, leaning back in his chair. He'd been trying to at least get on the terminal in his quarters to go through some of the computer-based training on the Corsair that Mosler had sent him, as well as a daily regimen of exercises with his neural implant to master his control over the device. "But if it does decide to kick back in full force—just a fair warning—I will be cycling myself out the airlock."