Looking up at the command chair Boyd felt his jacket tighten again. The chair never looked so high when Major Featherstone had sat in there.
“The Resolute is in stable orbit around an asteroid,” Hemel said. “We need to get these systems in shape. We have a hull breach on the lower starboard quarter, if the deflection shields give out, we will vent atmosphere into the void along with any crew working in that section.”
“She took a beating, the old girl,” Boyd said, still looking up at the command chair.
The Resolute had defeated a Skarak warship in the battle of the Faction mining asteroid and had escaped with most of her hull intact, but she had lost most of her senior crew. The major was gone, Knole, Sergeant Dorik. All gone.
“What is the status of Enke Thresh?” Boyd said to Hemel.
“The Faction prisoner?” Hemel said.
“Yes,” Boyd said. “Her.”
Hemel tapped at the control panel and located her.
“She is still in the med bay. Doc Cronin is with her, along with a marine guard.”
Boyd stepped over to the engineering console. The systems were in total disarray. Orange and red warning lights across the board. Several systems were in emergency repair mode. All the port side weapons were offline. The defensive systems were at half power at best. The main reactor was the biggest concern, as power supply governors were struggling to regulate the power surges as systems failed, randomly increasing their power draw before feeding it back to the core.
“I could sure use her help,” Boyd said.
“I know you spent a lot of time with her when you were undercover, sergeant, but she is the enemy. She is Faction,” Hemel said. “We can’t let her loose on the command deck. There are critical systems up here, sensitive classified systems. We can’t let a Faction engineer look at them. It’s bad enough you let her out of her cell. You can’t bring her up here.”
“She can help us.” Boyd looked at the command chair. It looked so high. He could almost see Major Featherstone sitting there. The major never looked out of place in that chair. Boyd felt he was not ready to ascend to that level. But he was in command.
“We need more engineering support to get the Resolute back up to speed. We are not going to get back to Terra quickly enough. We have to risk breaking cover. Send a message directly to Terra. Tell them everything we know about the Skarak signal and request engineering support.”
“We won’t be sending any communications,” Hemel said.
“Don’t tell me, communications are down too?” Boyd turned his back to the command chair and looked across the command deck.
“That’s why you are in command,” Hemel said. “Nothing gets past you.”’
“Ok, forget the communication to Terra. Just try and keep the Resolute from exploding. I’ll be in the med bay.”
Hemel’s brows furrowed. “I can’t run this ship all by myself. I’m just the pilot.”
“You’re not just the pilot, Hemel, you are a Blue Star Marine.” Boyd answered as he walked off the command deck.
The Resolute was a small but powerful ship. Even though her systems were in disarray she was only a few hours dedicated work away from being an effective fighting ship again. All she needed was the attention of a good engineer. Boyd was lucky to have the best engineer he had ever met on board right now. The only problem was, she was the enemy.
The med bay was brightly lit and quiet. As Boyd stepped in from the corridor, the marine guard was instantly alert and ready, then he relaxed as he recognized Boyd. Stepping past the guard, Boyd saw the lines of med bunks covered in white sheets where the bodies of the lost lay. The major, Knole, Sergeant Dorik. Too many lost to the Skarak.
And then Boyd saw Enke Thresh, sitting on a med bunk at the far end of the med bay.
Her face lit up when she saw Boyd.
“Will,” she said brightly.
“Hold still, please,” Doc Cronin said. He was scanning her knee with a handheld medical scanner.
“Enke,” Boyd said. He stepped closer.
“Not too close, sergeant,” Cronin said, barely glancing up from his work.
“The Resolute is in bad shape. We need help.”
“I’m busy,” Cronin said.
“Not you Doc, I mean Thresh here. What do you say? Can you help?”
A half smile flickered over her face. She glanced down at her knee.
“Don’t look at me,” Cronin said. “I’m not keeping you here. To be honest with you I don’t know why I’m patching you up at all. They won’t care back on Terra if you are missing your entire leg, as long as you can stand on the gallows drop door long enough for them to put the rope around your neck.”
Thresh looked up at Boyd, defiant and brave, but he had known her long enough to read the fear behind the bravado.
“Cronin is just stating the worst case scenario, aren’t you, Doc?”
Cronin looked up at Boyd with an expression that told Boyd he was being naïve if he thought Thresh had anything other than the certain prospect of facing the hangman the instant they got back to Terra. She was an active Faction pirate, implicated in the destruction of Union shipping and the death of Union marines. She would hang. No trial, no judge, no jury. Instant sentence and summary execution.
“We are not going back to Terra. We are not going anywhere if we can’t get the ship’s systems up and running. And unless I can fix this core problem we could end up as a ball of superheated plasma any second. What do you say, Thresh? It sure beats sitting in med bay.”
“Or a cell?” Thresh said. She swatted Cronin’s scanner away and dropped off the med bench. She winced silently as her feet hit the deck. She stepped over to Boyd. “No point hanging around waiting to… hang. Might as well use my time working.”
Cronin laid a hand gently on Thresh shoulder. “Your knee is ruined. Tendons are shredded and ripped. I’ve replaced the knee cap. You are lucky the joints were not completely smashed. I’ll give you a support med pack and some anesthetic. You should be able to move around in comfort, but no running or jumping. Try and stay off it as best you can, and don’t knee Boyd anywhere delicate.”
Thresh was staring into Boyd’s eyes as Cronin applied and programmed the med pack. The dark tendrils reached out to find the damaged knee. She winced as the pack pulled tight and then let out a sigh of relief as the anesthetic kicked in.
“This way,” Boyd said.
Walking along the corridor from the med bay back to the command deck, Boyd glanced down at Thresh’s knee, damaged during the desperate fight to escape the Faction asteroid as it broke apart around them. She had barely made it. And the only reason she had made it was because Boyd had let her come aboard his escape craft. He had been close to leaving her to her fate, but something inside him just couldn’t do it.
He wondered again why he had saved her at all. Maybe it would have been easier to let her to die in the crumbling asteroid.
“How’s the knee?”
“I’ll live.” She looked at Boyd. “Don’t know for how long, but I’ll live.”
Boyd looked at the way ahead. The last thing he wanted was for Thresh to be executed, but she was his prisoner technically and it was his duty to return her to Terra where, like all Faction pirates, she would hang.
Boyd had joined the Blue Stars, the Fleet’s elite marine force, to track down pirates and kill them after the death of his brother at the hands of the Faction. There was no way for him to know at the time that it would be someone he had already fallen in love with. He had always blamed Kitzov, always known he was behind his brother’s death. But there was one more piece to that deadly puzzle, and that piece was Enke Thresh.
“You’ll live long enough. Help me get this ship up and running and you will be in a good position to get clemency.”
“Instead of death, a lifetime at a slave mine or locked in a cell full time. I don’t know what’s worse.”
Boyd stopped at the end of the corridor that led to the command deck. “You’
d be alive. As long as we are alive there is hope.”
“When did you become a philosopher?”
Boyd looked along the corridor. “I need your help, Thresh. You are the best engineer I’ve ever met.”
“I’m the best engineer you will ever meet.” She folded her arms and stuck out a hip.
“No doubt. I need you now. The Resolute is falling apart and we need her in good shape if we are going to find Kitzov.”
“So you can kill him?”
“I wish it were that simple,” Boyd said.
“This is why I prefer ships systems. They don’t let you down, and if they do you can easily scrap them.”
Boyd had wanted nothing else but to kill Kitzov, but now he needed the Faction leader for a greater purpose. The Skarak were the greatest danger to the Scorpio system in its entire history. Only by working together could the people across the system hope to survive. With Kitzov on his side, Boyd could bring the Faction to the fight, to help the Union and overcome the deadly Skarak.
“We need him alive if he is going to convince the Faction, unless you think you can do it.”
Thresh shook her head. “The captains know me, respect me even, some of them, but they won’t listen to me. They won’t listen to anyone except Kitzov. He brought them together, made them a force, created a nation for the Faction. They will listen to him. But they might not like what he has to say if he tells them to fight alongside the Union. Plenty of Faction captains would like to hide out amongst the asteroids of the Sphere and wait for the Skarak to kill off the Union. Save us the trouble.”
“Us?” Boyd asked.
“I’m still Faction, Will. We can’t all change sides as easily as you do.”
For just a moment her words stung, but he wasn’t sure exactly why. With a wave of his hand, Boyd invited Thresh to walk with him, along the straight corridor to the Resolute’s command deck.
Hemel looked suspiciously at Thresh as Boyd showed her to the engineering console where he was working.
“I see you brought the help,” Hemel said, shifting a candy stick from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Take a look at the surveillance systems, Jim,” Boyd said to Hemel. “Give me a clear view of the local area. I want every asteroid down to the size of a pebble on the holostage.”
Thresh stood at the engineering console and studied the layout.
“You know these systems?” Boyd asked.
Thresh shot Boyd a withering glance filled with contempt. “I think I will be able to muddle through,” she said.
“Umm, sergeant,” Hemel said from the surveillance console. “We’ve got a small group of signals approaching fast from the outer edge of the Sphere.”
“What signals?” Boyd said, walking over to the surveillance console. “Who is it? Is it Union? Faction?”
Hemel pulled the candy stick from his mouth.
“Skarak.”
Boyd looked up to the command chair. There could be no more delay. He walked to the chair and stepped up.
“Thresh, give us whatever you can. Hemel, stand by to get us out of here.” Boyd activated the armrest holo-display and put the incoming Skarak signals on the main holostage. Then he opened a ship-wide address.
“Attention Blue Stars. Skarak ships on close approach. Stand by for action.”
3
The Union Fleet flag ship, Eminence, left her orbit around Terra and made for the rendezvous coordinates on the inner edge of the Belt. Ships were converging from all corners of the Scorpio system. All three of the Union’s carriers were to be in action together for the first time. All cruisers, frigates, corvettes and assorted support craft were massing for the largest fleet action in Scorpio system history.
Marine Admiral Tal Selby sat back in a large leather armchair in his office aboard the carrier, Eminence. The leather creaked under his large frame. He sat back, a glass in one hand, as Marine General Toby Lawrence appeared on the office holostage. Lawrence was sitting in his office at Forge Farm on Terra, the Blue Star Marine central command center.
“You’ve seen the report from Sentinel Nine, Marine General?” the admiral said. He swirled his drink and sniffed the strong aroma before sipping the sharp amber liquor.
“Yes, Admiral. The Skarak are here in force. So now it is just a matter of time.”
Selby pulled his lips back over his teeth and sighed as the strong liquid burned ever so slightly down his throat. “Yes, Marine General. The Skarak are clearly massing for an invasion of the Scorpio system.” He took another slow sip of his drink. “Battle is inevitable. We will face their armada with every ship at our command, and when the plasma fires cool there will only be one side left standing.”
“The salvage crews will be picking over destroyed Skarak ships for decades to come.” Lawrence spoke with stone cold determination. “The Blue Star marine companies are all active, sir.”
“We will need more than the Blue Stars to fight them off. The entire fleet has been mobilized. I am forming up a big wing to counter the Skarak. Your Blue Stars are going to be busy rooting out Skarak sleeper agents across the system. This is classified information, Marine General. This is only known to you, me and the most senior Fleet Intelligence agents.”
“Understood sir.”
Lawrence had joined the Blue Stars as a junior officer. He had completed his academic studies in engineering before joining the military. With offers of employment coming from several starship construction companies and energy generation companies across the Scorpio system, his first-class results had given him a choice of excellent civilian careers. But it was the Blue Star marines that had caught his imagination.
He excelled in all physical and mental challenges provided by the regular marine training. After his mandatory service in the regulars he transferred to the Blue Stars.
Rising through the officer ranks rapidly, overtaking older more experienced men, had given Lawrence as many enemies within the Blue Stars as amongst the Faction pirates he was tasked with hunting down and destroying.
Lawrence was stone cold and didn’t care in the slightest who hated him. He wanted to be at the top of his game. He had been the senior Blue Star for longer than any other General. His next promotion would move him from the Blue Stars back to the regular fleet marines, but Lawrence wasn’t interested. He wanted to stay where he was, to be at the head of the elite marine force. The Blue Stars were the best of the best. Brave, fierce, smart; there was no other posting or position to rival it.
But promotion looked about as unlikely as surviving the Skarak attack. For all his bravado he knew that the Skarak had arrived with a formidable and dominant force. Lawrence was smart enough to know that their chances of surviving the Skarak invasion were close to zero.
Lawrence knew the Blue Stars could only play their part. When the battle came, they would fight alongside the fleet. The Blue Star ships were powerful battle ships, able to fight alongside the best of the fleet, but the marines of the Blue Star companies were a powerful weapon in their own right. Lawrence had briefed his senior officers with his plan to infiltrate the Skarak ships as the invader had infiltrated theirs. It would take every ship and every last man to overcome this enemy. But if the fleet was on the brink of destruction, the Blue Stars were to abandon their ships and attack individually or in small groups, landing on the Skarak’s mightiest ships and attempting to disable or destroy them from within. Advancing with pulse rifles and electron bayonets, the Blue Stars would be the last fighting force in the Scorpio system to challenge the Skarak.
The admiral stood up from of his chair and went to pour another hefty measure of the amber liquor into his glass. He knew he was drinking too much, but he also knew that the fleet was facing their toughest battle ever. It was likely to be their last if they didn’t get it right. He tipped his head back and swallowed the harsh liquor and then dropped the glass to his desk.
“Sleeper agents have been discovered throughout the fleet,” Selby said looking down at his empty gla
ss. “We have ships dropping out of service every few hours. Communications failures. Power fluctuations. Only a few hours ago a frigate lost power before her core overloaded. Surveillance went down on that ship just before the explosion, but we know it was a Skarak sleeper agent at work.”
Selby turned back to face the holoimage of Lawrence. “These agents are also sabotaging ships across the fleet creating communication and drive malfunctions. But we have a counter measure. It may be too late, but Fleet Intelligence has just released a device created by the Reyes Institute that is capable of seeking out the Skarak sleeper agents. The device is able to detect Skarak brain wave patterns. You will equip your Blue Stars with this device and destroy any sleeper agents you discover.
“The sleepers are everywhere. The Skarak have been preparing for this invasion for years. All Union ships must be swept for sleeper agents as a matter of urgency. I want the Blue Stars to sweep the fleet. We are talking about hundreds of ships and thousands of individuals. The only problem is that we have so few devices. Fortunately for you, General, the entire Union fleet is currently forming up and will be assembled into a big wing that will stand ready to meet this Skarak invasion armada. We don’t have much time. Find the sleepers, neutralize them and make sure our fleet is ready to meet the Skarak in open battle.”
“Yes sir. The Blue Stars can do it.” Lawrence was already selecting the companies to conduct the fleet sweep.
“Some Blue Star companies are already on task, sir,” Lawrence said. “The Bold, Insistence, Acclaim, and Surprise have been tasked to counter the civil unrest on the moons of Supra. We have mass civil disobedience on the moons. We need to make sure the planetary defense batteries will be operational so they can be used against the Skarak if the planet Supra is attacked.”
“Civil unrest?” Selby said. He tapped his holofile that was hovering in front of him as he dropped back into his large leather armchair. “This is not civil unrest, this is the Skarak. They have already started their invasion using our own people against us.”
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