"It's decrypting now," Sully said. "Taylor has it running on a portable system we can take with us. He says within the next six hours it should be done."
Jacob had no real idea how encryptions worked past the very basics, so he couldn't say if his tech specialist was being modest, wildly optimistic, or just talking out his ass and they'd never have a destination. He had to assume Zadra would make it tough to get into, but not impossible. She'd also called on them specifically so leaving them information they could never access wouldn't do her much good. The decision he had to make was whether to trust that his tech specialist was able to get through Zadra's security or sit and wait to be sure and risk losing the one ship in the immediate area that fit their needs.
"Tell him to get it packed up and let's be ready to hit it within the hour," Jacob said. "Murph, you're going to be running point on the boarding mission. Sully, feed him any additional information you have on that Eshquarian ship that might be useful to us. Where are we on sanitizing the Corsair?"
"SCIF servers are purged. Charges on all the critical avionics boxes are primed. We also put charges on all of the command and control systems for the powerplant and main drive," Murph said. "We'll shut down the main reactor and purge the fuel load as the last thing we do. If our grand theft spaceship plan goes off without a hitch, we'll already have meshed-out by the time the charges detonate in here."
"You think Captain Webb is going to be pissed that we're scuttling the ship?" Jacob asked. "In theory, I agree with why we're doing in. In reality, I think that, as the mission commander, you've all set me up for a court martial."
"That's part of the fun of Scout Fleet, LT," MG said from the hatchway. "You never know if your teammates are trying to help you or fuck you over."
Jacob just rolled his eyes and went back to his quarters to get the rest of his gear. Mosler had been adamant that he not over-pack or bring anything he wasn't willing to never see again and now he understood why. Whatever he put into the small pack he pulled out of the wall locker would be all he took with him from the Corsair. Everything else would remain until starport officials dragged her away to be scrapped or another human ship came back to reclaim her. The latter was highly unlikely given the risks associated with flying into the Reaches. The Fleet wouldn't risk it for one small runabout flown by a forward recon unit.
"You got a minute, LT?"
"Barely," Jacob said, looking over his shoulder at Murph. "What's on your mind?"
"How much do you think that desk weighed that you threw at that Ull with the shield generator?"
"Couldn't tell you, Murph." Jacob already knew where this was going. "The adrenaline was really pumping."
"When MG and I tried to move it, we could barely get it to scoot across the floor. You threw it hard enough to send a relatively strong species to the floor."
"I'm not hearing a question in there," Jacob said.
"I was being honest when I said I'd vetted you," Murph said, moving around so he could look Jacob in the eye. "Our check into where you came from was a lot more thorough than most, and we found a lot of odd little discrepancies. When we tried to dig a little deeper, the hammer came down from on high and we were locked out of all records concerning Jacob Brown. So, Lieutenant, who are you? Or should I say…what are you?"
"You're admitting that my background was classified over your paygrade and now, after lying to all of us about who you really were, you're going to make demands of me?" Jacob laughed. "Who says I'm even allowed to tell you? Or that's there anything to tell other than I go to the gym a lot?"
"I'm not going to apologize for doing my job, Brown," Murph said. "And I'm asking because I think it's relevant. Our lives are at risk if you're not who you say you are." Jacob was a bit confused by that.
"What do you think I am?" he asked.
"Given the display of strength, your forged background, the unusual way you were recruited into Scout Fleet, I'm guessing maybe alien or human-alien hybrid," Murph said, trying to gauge Jacob's reaction at the accusation. When Jacob only laughed uproariously, showing no signs of defensiveness or anger, it was Murph's turn to look confused.
"I can promise you I am one hundred percent human," Jacob said. "There's some…irregularities…in my parentage that has given me some genetic gifts, but I've been assured by people who know there isn't a speck of spliced alien DNA in me."
"Your parentage…" Murph trailed off, then his eyes widened. "Holy shit! You're—"
"Don't say it." Jacob held a hand up. "Please. Just…don't."
"There had been rumors about you in the intelligence community," Murph said. "Those involved in covering up what really happened during the second alien attack on Earth speculated that…he…might have had a family back home we didn't know about. There were some that seemed to know quite a bit about him but would never say one way or another."
"From what I understand, there are two stories about the man." Jacob shrugged. "He's either a hero the likes of which is rarely seen, or a criminal and a traitor that should be shot on site. I've only met him once so I'm leaning towards the latter. If you don't mind, I'd really rather not talk about it past this once. I didn't know him, but I inherited some of his speed and strength. Let's just leave it at that."
"Fair enough," Murph said, still speaking softly.
"What's all the whispering in here?" MG said from the doorway. "Were you two talking about me?"
"No, we—"
"Just kidding. I don't give a shit what you were talking about," MG laughed. "We're ready when you are, LT."
"Let's do it," Jacob said, shouldering his pack.
"This thing isn't in quite the pristine condition I had originally thought," Murph admitted.
"What gave it away? The patchwork hull or the puddle of something collecting under the port engine nacelle?" Jacob asked.
"Look, we need something quick and available. This is as good as it gets right now."
"Let's just get this done so we can get the hell out of here," Jacob said. "MG, Mettler! You're up."
The two Marines dropped their packs where the team was hiding near a small intra-atmospheric runabout and began walking casually towards the Eshquarian gunboat. They'd decided that the direct approach would be best since petty crime and assaults were mostly overlooked on Niceen-3, even at the main starport. MG and Mettler would recon the ship up close and give the team a go, no-go signal for the actual assault. Once they confirmed the ship was either lightly guarded—or, preferably, unguarded—they'd rush up the open loading ramp and subdue the crew.
They'd taken the time to familiarize themselves with the internal layout of the small ship, and Taylor was confident he could circumvent any automated security they might have, as well as bypass all the lockouts so they could actually fly it out of there. Jacob had no choice but to take the cocky young Marine at his word that he was actually that good at working on the alien technology.
"This ship will blend in better than the Corsair because the Eshquarians sell so damn much military hardware in the quadrant, including to private firms, that it'll be completely forgettable. The only issue I see is that this is a well-known class of combat ship whereas the Corsair was more subtle, designed to look like a high-speed courier," Taylor said.
"Is this something we really needed to know right now?" Murph asked.
"Well I thought it was interesting," Taylor grumbled.
"The ship is wide open," MG's voice came over the team channel. "We saw two Impans standing around in the cargo hold, both armed with only sidearms and not paying attention to anything going on outside the ship." Murph looked at Jacob expectantly. For his own part, Jacob realized he was about to authorize the killing of beings that were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. They had nothing to do with Earth, his mission to retrieve Weef Zadra, or posed any threat other than being a mild inconvenience. This is what Webb must have meant by needing Scout Fleet crews to have a certain moral flexibility.
"Execute," he said. "Make it quic
k, and make it quiet. We need that ship."
At his words, he saw MG and Mettler wheel and sprint up the loading ramp. He could just make out the surprised yelps from the Impans before they were silenced by his Marines, the cough of their weapons on low-power mode barely audible over the ambient racket of the starport's active ramp.
"We're up," Jacob said. "Let's move."
He and Murph grabbed the two spare packs MG and Mettler left and ran towards the ship. Taylor and Sully were both mission critical to gaining control of the gunboat and flying it afterwards so they brought up the rear, shielded by the other two.
"There's one more inside," MG whispered when they stormed up the ramp. "I can't tell if it knows something has happened to its friends yet."
"Take it out, clear the ship," Jacob said. "I'll escort Sully to the bridge, Murph will take Taylor to Engineering." He went over and found the controls for the rear ramp, the alien script giving him a slight sensation of vertigo as his neural implant translated it. It was an odd sensation because it didn't overlay English words he could readily understand, it just injected the proper meaning into his mind in a way that was disorienting. The others said he'd get accustomed to it the more he used it.
The team moved quickly through the ship. Jacob heard two more shots fired near the galley as he led Sully up to the bridge. When he walked through the round hatchway, a startled Impan leapt from where it had been lounging in its seat.
"Who are you? What do you think you're—" A single shot from Jacob's carbine ended the conversation, the low-power plasma shot hitting the alien right in the neck. It went down with a soft gurgling and was still.
"Get started," Jacob said to Sully, struggling to get the words out from the bile rising in his throat. He had killed the Ull and their human collaborators without much hesitation because they'd been trying to kill him first. This was different. The Impans that ran this ship had done nothing wrong other than to have something in their possession that Jacob and his team needed. Now they were dead.
"The bridge controls aren't even locked out," Sully said, seemingly oblivious to the dead alien a couple meters away. "As soon as Taylor gets us access to the main computer, we'll be ready to pull navigation data and get the hell out of here."
"I'll go check on him," Jacob said, passing Mettler as he did. "You and MG police the bodies and get them into an airlock. We'll jettison them into space once we're underway, I don't want to risk leaving them outside on the tarmac."
"Will do."
Jacob jogged through the ship and climbed down the ladder well—this one an actual ladder, not just steep stairs—into the guts of the ship's engineering section. Murph and Taylor were huddled around a terminal where they had what looked like an oversized tablet computer with cables snaked into an open panel.
"LT," Murph greeted him. "We'll be good to go in a few minutes."
"What's that?" Jacob asked.
"It's a tricky little intrusion AI the folks at NIS gave us," Taylor said. "It makes me seem a lot smarter than I am. You just plug it into any available data port and it goes to work. The computer aboard this ship is both outdated and not very secure to begin with. It should have complete access in about"—there were two beeps from the device and all the screens in Engineering flashed once and then began displaying data—"now. That should do it. Sully will be able to control all shipboard functions from here, and I'll start making sure all the individual terminals that aren't networked into the main computer are unlocked." Jacob blinked at a panel by the door that was labeled as the shipwide intercom and pressed one of the buttons.
"Sully, start getting her prepped for flight," he said. "Murph and I are going back to the Corsair for the last load, and then we're out of here. MG and Mettler, post up security in the cargo bay."
"One more load?" Murph frowned.
"I'd like to get as much out of the armory as we can," Jacob explained. "I piled everything up onto one of Scarponi's motorized carts so we should be able to do this quickly."
"We should have just brought it with us in the first place," Murph said. "I'd prefer we make a clean break while we have the opportunity and leave now...sir."
"We had no idea how much resistance we were going to meet here at the ship," Jacob explained. "Carting along a wagon full of munitions while getting shot at didn't seem that smart at the time. If we're heading into any more danger, I'd prefer we have more than just the few weapons we brought with us. There's a lot of weaponry I don't think we're going to be able to just purchase off the street wherever we're heading." He didn't like Murph questioning him so openly like he had, but he was unsure how the chain of command really worked now that Murph was outed as a NIS agent and Commander Mosler was dead.
"Sound reasoning," Murph relented with obvious reluctance. "We'll need to hurry."
"Probably want to make it fast, LT," Taylor spoke up. "My decryption routine just unpacked Zadra's data cards and compiled the data. There's a lot there, but the location we're heading to is in the Concordian Cluster."
"Fuck me," Murph swore. "That's the heart of the Eshquarian Empire."
"The same Eshquarian Empire that has just been invaded and occupied by a ConFed battle fleet?" Jacob asked.
"The same," Murph said.
Chapter 15
"Lieutenant, we have a big problem."
"Go ahead," Jacob said over the com. Sully had sounded relaxed when he had called, but even from their short time together, Jacob knew the pilot wasn't prone to hyperbole or needless hysterics.
"Group of six Impans are heading towards us, all heavily armed and leading one of those automated cargo sleds," Sully said.
"Impans aren't that common in this region of space that there would be two crews of them. They're likely the hard cases that were on Niceen doing a job when we went and wiped out the crew of their ship," Murph said, also transmitting on the open channel.
"Agreed," Jacob said. "Options?"
"Mettler and I can't hold them off," MG said. "Too many of them."
"And Niceen isn't that lax that they'll look the other way if we engage them with the ship's weaponry," Sully added. "Are you still at the Corsair?"
"Negative," Jacob said. "We're only halfway to the ship."
"Stay there, I'm coming to you," Sully said. "I'm calling for clearance to taxi for a cargo transfer, and then I'll relocate to where you are. I'll drop the ramp, you hop in, and we'll be out of here while these guys think that their own crew just jacked the ship." Murph and Jacob just looked at each other and shrugged.
"Do it," Jacob ordered his pilot. "We're ready as soon as you touch down."
It was another five minutes before they could begin to detect the subsonic thrum of repulsors as Sully moved the gunboat along the taxiway at an altitude of two meters. He swung it around so that the loading was facing them and settled into a low hover, not even dropping the struts so he could land.
"Let's go! We have to move, NOW!" MG was waving frantically as Jacob and Murph ran into the waiting ship. Mettler hit the controls to close the ramp while they were still on it, and once the inner pressure doors slid shut and locked, Jacob could feel that they were accelerating away quickly despite the artificial gravity nullifying their inertia.
"What's happening?" he asked, running onto the bridge.
"The Impans weren't as indecisive as I figured they'd be," Sully said. "They already declared the ship stolen and offered a reward for anyone who can bring us down intact."
"They've been calling on the com," Taylor added. "We were right in that they're assuming the crew was stealing the ship for themselves."
"The call came after we'd already been cleared for orbit," Sully said. "Once we're up top, we'll switch over to the second set of transponders they have on this tub and try to blend in with the rest of the traffic."
"Just do what you have to do and don't bother asking me for permission first," Jacob said, feeling hopelessly out of his depth as they were about to be chased by mercs and pirates looking for a payday.
"Don't worry, LT, we're almost home free." Sully smiled as the sky outside the canopy turned black and the ship shrugged off the last tendrils of Niceen-3's atmosphere clinging to it.
"Mesh-out point is locked in, slip-drive is…ready," Taylor said. "The rest is up to you, Sully."
"This thing is actually a lot faster than you'd expect it to be," Sully commented. "Handles like shit, but damn she's got some legs. LT, you want to cycle that airlock and get rid of our passengers?"
"Cycling starboard airlock," Jacob said, watching the display as the Impan corpses were blown out into space once the static barrier was dropped.
For the next four hours, the rest of the crew watched while their pilot skillfully used the sensor shadows of the bigger ships in orbit to hide the small gunboat, switch over to a different set of transponder codes, and then casually meander out of their final transfer orbit, and make a mad dash for the mesh-out point. When they were well past the orbit of the fifth planet, they were spotted, but by then, it was far too late for their pursuers. As three other small ships tried to converge on them, Sully opened up the drive to full power, the vibrations and alarms from the souped-up main drive causing Jacob some distress while they shot ahead. As they closed in on their target, blast shields automatically deployed up and over the transparent canopy to protect the occupants from the brilliant slip-energies released by the drive as well as the increased radiation.
"Mesh-out in three…two…one…and we're out of here!" The ship shuddered for a moment, and then everything was nearly silent, the racket from the main drive gone as the slip-drive took over and all the proximity alarms on the tactical displays were silent in the absence of any enemy ships. Sully checked over the instruments at the pilot's station one last time before climbing out of the seat and stretching, almost looking bored. "I need someone to sit here and babysit the controls while I go back down to Engineering and do one more check on things. I'd feel better before I hit the rack knowing that the reactor and drive are operating within normal limits."
Marine Page 13