Boneshaker Read online

  Boneshaker

  Terran Scout Fleet, Book Two

  Joshua Dalzelle

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Also by Joshua Dalzelle

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.

  Boneshaker

  Terran Scout Fleet

  -Book two-

  Joshua Dalzelle

  ©2020

  Digital Edition

  Prologue

  "This is a risky mission to give to a team that, frankly, should be recalled and stood down until it can be rebuilt."

  "You're not saying anything I don't know, but orders have come down from on high, and they're not interested in my excuses," Captain Marcus Webb sighed. "Scout Team Obsidian will be put on the trail of our missing ship."

  "So now, Central Command is micromanaging NAVSOC?" Michael Welford, director of Naval Intelligence Section, sat across from Webb in the NAVSOC commander's secure office on Taurus Station. The semi-secret base was isolated from the other settlements on Terranovus and was in the process of being dismantled in preparation for the big move to the new planet humanity had just acquired. The new world, named Olympus, was to be a military stronghold while Terranovus would continue to be developed as a colony world, accepting immigrants from Earth as quickly as new cities could be built.

  "Not normally," Webb said. "Right now, Scout Team Obsidian is what everyone at Command thinks of when they talk about NAVSOC after their last successful mission. You know how it goes…the brass hears a team overcame tall odds to complete a high-profile assignment, and then they want to use them over and over so they can tell the civilian oversight they put their best people on the job."

  "Thankfully, I have no idea what you're talking about. I was CIA back before there was an NIS," Welford said. "We always operated in the shadows, and most people had no idea what we were really doing, nor did they want to. So, what are you going to do?"

  "My hands are tied." Webb shrugged. "I'll have to tell Obsidian they're back on the job tracking down that moron, Edgars. It's my own fault, really. Before I knew what Command was really asking, I slipped up and said Obsidian was my only team not on assignment. I failed to specify that the reason for that was because they were without a proper team leader, a reliable ship, or the necessary equipment. By the time I realized what Admiral Sandor was even talking about, he was already walking back out of my office."

  Welford just grunted and took another sip of his drink. The entire mess started when one of the cruiser squadrons they had deployed with a Cridal strike group had been involved in a battle against the ConFed's main fleet. In the capital system, no less. Captain Edgars, the commanding officer of the Eagle's Talon, and in overall command of the Terran force, had stupidly involved his ships in an unsanctioned strike against the quadrants only superpower. The move had the potential for putting Earth in the crosshairs once the ConFed figured out who had attacked them and decided whether or not they wanted to retaliate.

  The quadrant's political structure quickly devolved as the first salvo of an open rebellion against the ConFed appeared to have been fired. All the UEN ships involved in the incident, except the Eagle's Talon herself, had come back to Terran space and reported on the incident afterwards. The squadron was currently quarantined in high orbit over the planet Olympus while Fleet Ops tried to figure out what the hell to do with them. Captain Edgars, along with much of the Cridal strike force, had not returned and were apparently throwing in with the burgeoning insurrection. Sources within the Cooperative's military command had let Webb know through back-channels that their own leadership was in a panic and, apparently, Admiral Kellea Colleran herself had led the attack and hadn't returned.

  "I guess I know why you called me to your office now," Welford said, putting the empty glass down beside the bottle of high-end scotch the captain had plied him with. "You want to keep Agent Murphy assigned to your team, right?"

  "You have me over a barrel here," Webb admitted. "Murph is your guy, but I have nobody to replace him with currently. If I take another experienced body from Obsidian, it will more or less render them ineffective."

  "Wouldn't that be doing you a favor? If I take Agent Murphy back, you'll have no choice but to recall the team."

  "You're forgetting two things. First, the reason I haven't brought them back to Terranovus already is that I'm trying to keep Lieutenant Brown out of the wrong hands. Second, we need to find the Eagle's Talon and get her back before Edgars uses her in another strike against the ConFed."

  "Ah, yes…I'd nearly forgotten the interest some on Earth might have in your new lieutenant," Welford said. "Very well, I'll authorize Agent Murphy for continued detached duty to the Navy, specifically to 3rd Scout Corps, but you do realize you'll have to give him back eventually, right?"

  "You can have him back after they track down our missing cruiser," Webb said. "Consider it payment from NIS for inserting agents into my scout teams without telling me first."

  "Fair enough." Welford yawned. "I'll make it happen. Have you talked to him yet?"

  "Who? Lieutenant Brown?" Webb asked. Welford just pinned him with a pained look that said he didn't believe Webb's innocent act. He knew exactly which him the director referred to. The NAVSOC boss sighed, leaning back in his chair. "Yeah, but I didn't have the balls to tell him that I rolled his one and only son into a frontline scout unit."

  "The longer you wait, the worse he'll react. Have you thought about the fact that Jason Burke is almost certainly integral to this rebellion? What happens if the two happen to cross paths, and he finds out about Jacob's new job from someone other than the friend he trusted to protect the boy?"

  "Slight risk of them crossing paths," Webb said. "From what I've been able to put together, Burke's ship was shot all to hell during the battle, and he limped home to put her back together. I'll tell him when the time is right."

  "It's your funeral." Welford shrugged and stood. "Keep me in the loop on the hunt for the Eagle's Talon."

  "Will do."

  1

  "This piece of shit is a death trap."

  "Can you get it running or not?" Jacob Brown asked. The newly-promoted first lieutenant stood on the tarmac while his pilot, Lieutenant Junior Grade Ryan Sullivan, poked around in an access panel.

  "I already got it running," Sullivan—Sully to his teammates—muttered as another spark leapt out to zap him. "It's keeping it running that's the real trick. I'm a decent pilot, but I'm not an engineer…at least not enough of one for what this bastard needs."

  Jacob and Sully were the only two members of Scout Team Obsidian standing in the sweltering heat working on the ship. The Eshquarian gunboat had been a state-of-the-art combat ship…thirty years and fifteen or so battles ago. In her prime, she was a platform that rained death down upon her enemies
and delivered infantry or supplies with precision and speed. She was even capable of providing orbital superiority in a pinch thanks to an over-powered drive and an impressive array of ship-to-ship and ship-to-surface weaponry. When the model was first introduced, it was touted as being a more reliable alternative to the powerful but temperamental Jepsen D-Series gunships that had filled a similar role in militaries around the quadrant.

  In her days since being sold as surplus, however, neglect and outright abuse had turned her into a dilapidated shell of her former self. Most of the major drive components had been replaced multiple times, and not with parts up to the original manufacturer's specs. The weapons were a hodgepodge of pieces grafted on from several other ships and tied into a fire control system that wasn't designed to properly manage them. The powerplant struggled when the weapons and subluminal drive were both pushed hard simultaneously. Structurally, the ship was mostly okay. The hull was beat to hell, but its integrity was surprisingly good, and all the hatches and portholes had good seals.

  "What's the main issue?"

  "Power MUX controller is a completely different make than the bus interface," Sully said, wiping the sweat off his brow and sinking down to sit on the deck. He'd been working in the access panel that let him get to the box that controlled the power system's multiplexor. Since they had power off the ship, they'd not been able to run the environmental system to keep the inside cool. "Most of the major commands work the same, but there are some syntax differences between the two that, when they come up, lock the system up. When that happens, it does a hard reset, which takes fifteen seconds, give or take, and that's the weird glitch we're seeing. It doesn't happen all the time, but when you try and ask for a lot of current to multiple systems, you're just as likely to lock the fucker up as you are to have the guns and engines both come on."

  "Lovely," Jacob deadpanned. "So, the easiest fix seems to be we find a—"

  "LT! Message just came in for you!"

  "Maybe that's Command sending orders to recall us back to civilization and get us a decent ship," Sully said, groaning as he climbed to his feet to put the power MUX system back together.

  "I think you're being wildly optimistic," Jacob said over his shoulder as he walked down the ramp. He jogged back into the workshop space the team was using to try and get the dilapidated gunboat up to the Navy's minimum standards of spaceworthiness. Since they'd been ordered to keep as low a profile as possible, Jacob had not paid the exorbitant price the small air field was going to charge him for a full hangar that could house the Eshquarian ship. Instead, he'd paid the more modest fee for a full workshop, and then just parked the ship on the ramp outside. The shop had been surprisingly well-equipped, and they had been able to set up their own com equipment so they could keep in contact with Terranovus.

  "Message is in the buffer," Mettler said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to where they'd set up their secure com terminal. "It's just addressed to Scout Team Obsidian from NAVSOC. Maybe it's finally some recall orders."

  "Maybe," Jacob said, sitting down and logging into the terminal. Sergeant Jeff Mettler was one of Jacob's operators and also Obsidian's medic when needed. The junior NCO sat at a bench, cleaning parts from the ship's main hatch actuators before Sully reassembled and tested the system.

  "Lieutenant Brown," the image of Captain Marcus Webb said once Jacob had authenticated himself to the terminal. "Your team's new orders are attached to this message, but I thought the unusual circumstances warranted an explanation from me. Unfortunately, you won't be coming home just yet. There have been some…developments…and we need you to try and track down a missing ship. The UES Eagle's Talon has disappeared, and it's assumed at this point her captain has gone rogue, taking the ship and crew to join up with a rebellion that's brewing against the ConFed."

  "What the actual fuck?" Jacob murmured as Webb paused, looking off-camera for a moment before nodding and looking back.

  "All we need you do to do is locate the Talon and call it in," Webb went on. "There will be strike teams deployed along the Concordian Cluster to retake the ship once she's found, but we can't send in UEN ships to do the actual search for obvious reasons. Your team is an unknown and currently available, so you drew the short straw. The Eshquarian boat you've stolen should be decent cover for you…lots of surplus Imperial ships in the Cluster. The accompanying data will brief you on the ship, her CO, and the circumstances around her disappearance. I can't stress to you enough how important it is we find this cruiser and bring her home. The quadrant is a powder keg right now, and the ConFed just got punched in the face, hard. Earth cannot afford to be connected to this rebellion, so it would be good if you find the Talon before ConFed Intelligence does.

  "I know you're supposed to be heading home so that Obsidian can get a new commander and you can finish training, but this is too important, and the brass has asked for you specifically. I'm pulling Scout Team Cobalt off their mission and sending them your way as soon as they make contact again, but that could be some weeks out still. Once I'm able to reposition them, Obsidian will operate under Cobalt's command if you haven't found the Talon by then. Good luck, Lieutenant."

  The image winked out, and a directory of all the files Webb had sent scrolled across the monitor.

  "Screwed again, huh?" Mettler asked, not even looking up.

  "It would appear so, Sergeant," Jacob replied, reading through the redacted brief of what was apparently a full-scale naval battle over the planet of Miressa Prime, the capital of the ConFed. It looked like a remnant force of the Eshquarian Imperial Navy had arrived in the Miressa System, intent on exacting some sort of revenge for the ConFed invasion that toppled their empire. They attacked the system's defense force, but then another ConFed battlefleet meshed-in, this one much more capable, and went after the Imperial fleet. Then, against all probability, another fleet arrived, this one called Taskforce Starfire in the report, and slammed into the ConFed fleet from its exposed flank.

  So much was redacted that it was difficult to follow the action while reading it, but what he could get out of it sent chills up Jacob's spine. This must have been the start of the rebellion against the ConFed Webb had referred to. While they seemed to have a hodgepodge fleet of ships, they managed to take out a ConFed dreadnaught, a ship so rare and expensive it was thought by some to exist in myth only. All of this right over the seat of ConFed power, no less. No wonder Webb was spooked. If a human ship had been involved, and the ConFed found out, all of humanity would be at risk.

  "Hey, Mettler, does the name Taskforce Starfire ring any bells for you?"

  "Yeah, that does sound familiar," Mettler said slowly. He turned his head and bellowed down the corridor. "Hey, Taylor! What the hell is Taskforce Starfire?"

  "It's a Cridal Cooperative taskforce." Corporal Taylor Levin, Obsidian's tech specialist, walked into the main shop area, holding a tablet. "It's actually Admiral Colleran's taskforce, the big dog enforcer the Cridal use when they want to send a message. They're also the unit that has a squadron of our own heavy cruisers deployed with it. Why?"

  "It looks like this Admiral Colleran may have gone rogue," Jacob said. "Give me an hour to read through all this shit and I'll brief everyone. Short version for right now is that Starfire may have just kicked off either a civil war or an insurrection, depending on who authorized the attack."

  "That's not good news," Mettler deadpanned. "What's our job going to be?"

  "One of the heavy cruisers, the Eagle's Talon, has disappeared with Taskforce Starfire after the surprise attack in the Miressa System," Jacob said, queueing up the files to read in order. "We're going to go find her and call in the recovery teams to get her back."

  "We think one of our own captains has gone that far off the reservation?" Taylor whistled. "This one is going to suck."

  "Tell Murph and MG to get their useless asses out to the ship and help Sully get her back together," Jacob said. "We need to be fueled, provisioned, and ready to go by the end of the day tomorrow
."

  "That's going to be tight, LT. Just putting the fire control system back together will take—"

  "Then you'd better stop wasting time talking about it and get started, huh?"

  "Just another great Marine Corps day," Taylor grumbled, walking back down the corridor.

  "This feels like a whole different ship after letting that crew service the emitter alignment again," Sully commented. "Power came up a lot smoother when we climbed to orbit."

  "That's good," Jacob said.

  "I didn't say good, I said better," Sully corrected him. "This piece of shit is still a flying deathtrap, but now it's a deathtrap that can get her sorry ass into orbit without the main drive surging and fighting me the whole way."

  "How long until we mesh-out?"

  "It's another twelve and a half hours to the mesh-out point," Sully said. "The one we want is surprisingly deep in the system, so it'll be a short flight. Normally, they want you jumping into slip-space well the hell away from any populated planets." Jacob and Sully were the only two on the flightdeck, and the pair sat in silence for a time, listening to the ship groan and pop as she pushed as hard as she could for the mesh-out point.