"This will take some time." Zadra's voice was flat, emotionless. "Hovering around will only distract us."
Jacob assigned shifts to sit in the com room and keep a watch over the pair with specific orders to pull the plug on Taylor if it looked like he was in trouble. He didn't understand how Taylor was able to control the flow of information within the ship's systems with his neural implant when he could barely make his display the right information half the time even when he was consciously trying. When he'd asked the tech specialist, all he'd gotten was a sympathetic smile, which bordered on condescending, that made Jacob think perhaps he was having more trouble than most adapting to the computer that now lived in his head.
"I'll take the first watch. Go get some sleep, LT."
"Thanks, Murph." Jacob had been up for nearly thirty hours, and the strain was beginning to show. On the flight out to Empyrea Station, they'd had to explain to the other three that Sergeant Murphy was actually an NIS spook who had been sent to spy on them. After assuring a frantic MG that the focus of the investigation had nothing to do with underground fight clubs, and telling Mettler his creative import/export business he had going with the shipping contractor was off the radar, Murph was forced to divulge quite a bit of classified information to explain his presence.
The Marines took it in stride, but Jacob could tell the news had created a rift in the team. No matter. Once they ensured that Scarponi was a threat the Fleet could deal with, he'd return to Terranovus with Zadra and collect on the deal that would see him recommissioned into the Navy and put on a mainline starship.
"Not soon enough," he muttered as his shoulder brushed up against something sticky on the bulkhead of the filthy gunboat.
"They should have checked in by now." Webb rubbed his temples with his fingers. "Either something has gone wrong or they're way off the reservation."
He'd sent a ship to Niceen-3, one of the disguised deep-space freighters used by 2nd Scout Corps, and had the Corsair collected before someone on that planet decided to either take it for scrap or managed to dig out any secrets Lieutenant Brown and his crew may have left. Thankfully by the time the Northstar had arrived, the Corsair was still intact and appeared to be unmolested. The hatches were still locked up tight and the security codes Brown had given him still worked.
What he hadn't counted on, however, was how thoroughly Obsidian would scuttle the ship. It took tech teams from the Northstar four days to ferry the needed part down from orbit to get the ship just flight-worthy enough to haul herself back up to the freighter's hangar bay. Once they had her aboard, the Northstar's captain broke orbit and got the hell out of the Reaches. A bulk freighter of her size would be a tempting target for the pirates and thugs that inhabited that region.
"My teams weren't able to find any clues as to where they might have gone," Captain John Saraceno said over the slip-com link. "But while we were going back and forth to the maintenance terminals to get common parts for the Corsair, we did pick up on some gossip I think might have to do with Mosler's team. I didn't pursue it further because—"
"I realize that type of human intelligence isn't something 2nd Corps has the personnel for." Webb waved him off. "You did the right thing by not chasing down every rumor you hear, especially on some backwater shithole like Niceen-3. What did your techs hear the ground crews gossiping about?"
"Apparently, right about the time Obsidian went off-grid, there was an Impan crew that had their Eshquarian gunboat jacked," Saraceno said. "The reason my people were treated to the rumors is because some of the people at the starport swear it was a group of humans who took the ship."
"I hadn't realized exactly what ship they'd taken but their message said they were finding…alternate transportation," Webb said carefully. "Was that all?"
"That was just the shot, here's the chaser: that ship was running a load that was marked for the Blazing Sun Syndicate." Saraceno leaned back in his seat and the camera in his office automatically followed the movement to keep him framed.
"Shit. Mok's organization." Webb blew out between his lips. "Please tell me it was just a load of laundry for his servants."
"The surviving crew members were apparently being tight-lipped about what they were carrying, right up to the point they were collected by a merc crew that had Blazing Sun's logo on their ship," Saraceno said. "Rumor has it that the gunboat was being used to launder hard currency to the tune of hundreds of millions of ConFed credits and that the Impans had made an unscheduled, unauthorized pit stop on Niceen-3 for a little side deal involving narcotics before delivering it."
"So, the Impans are already dead," Webb sighed. "And they'll have likely told their torturers everything they knew about the human crew that swiped Mok's load. Damn, damn, damn! There aren't enough humans out in the quadrant yet for this not to have some negative bounce-back on the 3rd Corps teams still deployed."
"That's all I have, sir," Saraceno said. "I'm bringing the Northstar back to Terranovus where we'll drop off the Corsair and rotate crew for our next assignment."
"It'll be a milk run this next time," Webb assured him. "You'll be shadowing one of the Galvetic Legions and providing them with signal intelligence while they handle a little border dispute that's erupted for one of their clients. Should be a short one."
"Look forward to it. Northstar, out." Webb waited until the screen blanked out and was replaced with his background image.
"Brown, you fucking idiot," he groaned as the full implications of what his rogue second lieutenant had done sank in. Blazing Sun controlled nearly all the major criminal activity from the Orion Spur to the Cygnus Outer Arm, damn near a full third of the quadrant. Saditava Mok's empire had grown exponentially during the last two decades, swallowing up smaller syndicates and adding them to his own while he somehow managed to stay out of the ConFed's crosshairs.
Well, maybe it wasn't such a mystery as to why the ConFed mostly left him alone. Mok was a peculiar type of gangster and kept most of his illicit activities from spilling out into the general populace in the systems he operated in. The old ConFed was more than happy to allow the underworld to regulate itself so long as they kept the civilian casualties to a minimum. The new regime, however, might not be so tolerant of such an expansive criminal enterprise skimming money off the top and not giving the ConFed their tribute.
The real issue now is that Brown's recklessness likely put humanity on Mok's radar. He'll almost certainly try and hunt down the crew that jacked his load if for no other reason than to send a message and his other 3rd Corps teams could now be in danger. Webb had no reliable way to try and contact Saditava Mok, nor did he think that would be a particularly wise course of action. He could try and ask his liaison within the Cridal Cooperative's intelligence service for assistance, but that would require admitting they'd been right and Earth wasn't ready to be operating out in the wild on its own.
"Bennet!" he roared to his aide. "Get your ass in here!"
"You bellowed, sir?" the unflappable young woman said, sticking her head in the door.
"Draft up recall orders for all Scout Fleet units, but don't transmit them yet." Webb stood and started pacing. "First, get me a detailed report on the last known position for all of our assets and call over to your contacts in the NIS and see if they'd provide the same information for theirs. I want to know where all of our people and ships are before we start calling them back home. Obsidian may have kicked over a hornet's nest, and we need to be prepared for any of the fallout."
"Aye-aye, sir," Bennet said and disappeared.
Chapter 20
"Don't give me too much credit. Your species is still ultra-rare in ConFed space so you're easy to track when you actually use identification labeling you as human. The Ull are only slightly less rare so the fact your traitors are working with them made it almost child's play."
"She's being modest," Taylor said. The Marine looked like a wet rag that had been wrung out, and Jacob was worried he'd overextended himself. "I was watching the datafl
ow and keeping up as best I could. The way she was able to dig into secure immigration records and port authority computers like it was nothing…amazing."
"Go to berthing and get some rest, Taylor," Jacob said. "You look like you're barely able to stand. Mettler, you go with him and check him over."
"I'm fine," Taylor insisted but trudged off towards his rack anyway.
"I'll keep an eye on him, LT," Mettler said. Jacob noticed that Mettler accidentally slammed his shoulder into Murph on the way out of the cramped room. Apparently, even when acting under orders, lying to a teammate was a mortal sin within the tight-knit unit. Murph grunted but didn't respond.
"Okay, out with it," Jacob said. "Where are Scarponi and his buddies?"
"A moon called Theta Suden," Zadra said.
"I've heard of it," Murph said. "It was a half-assed terraforming project that ran out of money. It has barely breathable air, but the biosphere is stable."
"Correct," Zadra said. "It was being set up to handle the population overflow on the system's second planet, but there was a geological event that made it unnecessary."
"I don't get it," Jacob admitted.
"Every living thing on the planet died," Zadra said without a hint of emotion. "Oh, don't look at me like that. It happened hundreds of years before either of us were born. Anyway, the moon project was obviously abandoned and started being used as a waypoint for deep-space haulers back when ships couldn't make it across the quadrant without refueling and replenishing. As happens often in this part of space, a waypoint became a trading post, a trading post attracted permanent residents, and the permanent residents formed a government. It's still technically listed as independent since it has no resources any of the bigger powers want, but it is protected by one of the more powerful drug cartels."
"Mok's again?" Jacob asked.
"No," Murph answered before Zadra could open her mouth. "Mok doesn't directly control any of the narco-gangs, likely in an effort to stay on the ConFed's good side. Of all the criminals in the galaxy, few are more willing to hurt civilians than the drug runners."
"This seems like a pretty obscure little rock. Why do you know about it?"
"Classified." Murph shrugged. Jacob gave him a flat stare at that. "What? Just because we're sharing some secrets doesn't mean I'm going to divulge everything I know to some Marine second lieutenant. Infiltrating Scout Fleet wasn't my first assignment."
"I don't suppose you were able to dig up an image of Scarponi while you were hacking into their immigration computers?" Jacob asked.
"Hacking?" Zadra spluttered. "What an insulting term."
"Slicing, whatever you want to call it," Murph said. "Just show us."
"Two for the price of one, boys," Zadra said and pulled up a series of images showing two human males, one Scarponi, the other unknown…at least to Jacob. "Not sure who his little buddy is."
"It's a ghost," Murph said, his teeth clenched together.
"Come again?" Jacob asked.
"His name is Elton Hollick. He's officially listed as KIA," Murph said. "He was—is—one of ours. It looks like NIS isn't immune to having traitors and sympathizers in the ranks, and now we know why Scarponi fled to Theta Suden."
"We don't know shit. You seem to have all the answers right now," Jacob said. Murph seemed to be genuinely conflicted, the emotions warring within him plain on his face as he struggled with his need to inform his team what he knew and the instinct of a highly trained intelligence officer to keep classified information a secret.
"Hollick is an OG intel spook since back before the NIS even officially existed," Murph said. "He was a CIA asset that had been put on Terranovus to keep an eye on the pop-up colony that was, in fact, nothing more than a military outpost. He was one of a handful of agents the US government had embedded to try and keep a handle on something they were hiding from the general public back on Earth."
"Makes sense," Jacob said. "Nobody in Washington DC would have been willing to just hand over an operation like that to an administrator without at least putting in a few watchdogs."
"Right," Murph said. "Hollick was actually aboard the Terranovus fleet that had come back to Earth during Jansen's ill-fated coup attempt. The ship he was on escaped with her, and he continued to send us intel, right up until he was discovered and killed. He was one of the first operational assets of the new military's intelligence service."
"How did you know he was killed?" Zadra asked. "Was it an assumption just because the stream of information cut off?"
"He was in the middle of a report when two Ull broke into where he was and shot him," Murph said. "The video is showed to all incoming agents during training. The man is a legend for staying at his post and doing his job despite no chance of being rescued."
"Wait, wait, wait," Zadra cut him off, waving her two smaller arms in front of her. "He was broadcasting video back to you? Full bandwidth video of just himself talking?"
"Yeah, so?" Murph's posture was defensive and he glared down at the smaller Veran.
"Come on, Murph," Jacob sighed. "The proof is right in front of you. He was a double agent. Needlessly transmitting so much information when simple text would do just as well should have been a red flag. He used the two-way slip-com channel to pull useable intel from our side to give to Jansen and faked his death once the charade had been played out as long as it could."
"Points for the young pup," Zadra said. "They either discovered him after the fact and turned him or he'd been working with them the whole time. Either way, your Agent Hollick is obviously with the enemy right now since he and Scarponi are hugging each other like long lost friends in this image."
"Damn." Murph looked away, his jaw clenched.
"Does this tub have the legs to make it out to Theta Suden?" Jacob asked.
"Lieutenant, we need to call this in," Murph said. "I indulged your whims as far as allowing Zadra to track Scarponi and see if she could find out where he rabbited to, but this has blown up into something well beyond just tracking down a single traitor. Fleet Ops and NIS need to be informed of this immediately."
"And how long after that do you think it will be before one of the many leaks within either organization sends word to Hollick that they've been compromised?" Jacob countered. "By the time Fleet got around to sending a ship out to this moon, they'll be long gone and well aware we know Hollick is still alive and Scarponi is working with them."
"So, what do you want to do, Lieutenant Badass?" Murph scoffed. "Swoop in, guns blazing, and try to take on the entire One World faction with five Marines and one Navy pilot? They'll kill us all before we make it off the back ramp."
"It's four Marines and one lying ass NIS agent," Jacob countered, squaring off to the taller man. "Why do you assume that we're going to run this like an infantry operation? They have no idea we've found them, no clue as to what ship we're flying… We have every advantage to try and do this right now."
"Once were there, I'll be able to much more accurately track them," Zadra said. "We have the range to make it with the current fuel load aboard."
"Don't encourage him," Murph snapped. "If you don't want to report it through official channels, why not talk to Captain Webb directly? Let him dispatch a—"
"It's still the same problem." Jacob shook his head. "I might get a message to Captain Webb that isn't intercepted, but then he'll have to spin up a mission, hand it off to his operations and logistics people, they'll have to call up to Fleet Ops and request a ship, and since we don't know what parts of NAVSOC could be compromised, we have to assume they all are. The real question here is do you accept my authority over this mission?" Murph visibly deflated at that. The crew had an odd mishmash of ranks between a Navy officer pilot, an assimilated rank officer NIS agent, and a freshly minted Marine Corps second lieutenant who had been given overall command of the mission by the NAVSOC Chief of Operations. It made for a tangled web when trying to determine who had the final say according to UEAS regulations.
"While I have
n't looked up the specific reg, I'm going to assume that my NIS rank means zilch in this situation," Murph finally said. "I'm not sure what Naval regulations say, but I can already tell that Sully isn't going to buck Captain Webb and take over unless you ask."
"That's not the same as saying you're willing to still take orders from me," Jacob pointed out. Murph took another long break before answering, staring hard at Jacob.
"Why are you pushing for this? Are you trying to prove something? Want to make a name for yourself right away? I know for a fact you don't want to be a Marine and you damn sure don't want to be stuck in Scout Fleet. Now, all of the sudden you want to play spec ops and assassinate someone? Why accept so much risk to go so far outside the boundaries of your mission? Just go home and turn the Veran over to NAVSOC and be done with it!"
"I think you're forgetting that I've still not agreed to willingly assist Earth yet," Zadra interrupted. "At least not until we neutralize the risk this Scarponi poses."
"Bullshit," Murph scoffed. "Scarponi has already made contact with his leadership and you know it. What's the real reason you're leading Brown down this path?"
"Ezra Mosler was a friend," Zadra said after a long pause. "One of the few real friends I have…had. I take it personally when some half-wit traitor kills him for convenience. If I'm about to leave this part of the galaxy forever, I'd like one my last actions to mean something."
"And you're adamant you won't honor your agreement with Earth unless we do this?" Murph asked.
"My agreement was actually with Webb. He's the one who set all of this up," Zadra corrected. "He's also the one who arranged for my passage across the expanse and for my immigration into Avarian space. If you help me do this, I'll still consider the contract I have with him valid and turn over my entire information network as promised."
Marine Page 17