Boneshaker Page 2

  "Since we're up here alone, I feel like we need to—"

  "I'm way ahead of you, Lieutenant." Sully held up a hand, pausing to yawn. "Look…I fly the ship and keep her running, and I'm damn good at it, but that doesn't make me an expert at all the skulking about on the planet you guys do. I technically outrank you, but unless I feel you're putting the team at risk above and beyond what is normally expected, I don't plan on interfering with how you run your mission. Just remember, if this goes to shit, I'll be the one who takes the blame, so either don't screw up, or screw up good enough we don't survive to be court martialed."

  "I'll do my best," Jacob said, not sure if the pilot was serious about preferring death to a military tribunal.

  When Obsidian had successfully completed their last mission to retrieve a vital intelligence asset Command wanted, Jacob had been told to sit tight where they were until the political storm had blown over, then they'd be recalled back to Terranovus. In the course of that mission, their team leader, Commander Ezra Mosler, had been killed by a traitor who just happened to also be their chief engineer, so the assumption was that Obsidian would be stood down until new personnel could be brought in.

  Jacob, just freshly promoted to first lieutenant, should only be in command of his Marine ground team, and another Naval officer should be in overall command. Sully was rightfully the CO until they were assigned a new skipper, but the pilot seemed to be willing to divide responsibilities down the middle, at least as long as he thought the jarhead LT wasn't going to recklessly endanger them all.

  "Oh, shit!"

  "What? What?!" Jacob yelled. A moment later, alarms blared, and the smell of ozone and hot electronics wafted from the air vents.

  "Hold her steady!" Sully leapt from the pilot's seat and ran off the flightdeck without any further explanation. Before Jacob could gather his wits and object, the pilot was gone, and he was at the controls of a ship he had no idea how to fly.

  There were some discouraging bangs that reverberated through the hull, and the lights blinked a couple times, but the engine power levels stayed over eighty percent. That's when Jacob looked over to his right and saw that the main reactor output was at one hundred and thirty percent of the safe maximum…and climbing. The small antimatter reactor that powered the small ship had just been serviced and had passed all the safety checks, or so the ground crew claimed. He was no engineer, but Jacob had taken enough course work at the academy to know what happened when an antimatter reactor core breached. Thankfully, it would be a painless death.

  "Jake! I'm going to vent the reactor into space while we try to get this runaway resolved," Sully's voice came over the PA. "Bring the engine power down to fifty percent, but do not pull the power back below thirty-five while we're venting or they'll go into shutdown."

  "Copy!" Jacob grunted, reaching across the center instrument console so he could grab the engine power controls. He dialed them back and checked their course to make sure they were still on their declared flightpath and not about to wander in front of a heavy cargo hauler.

  There were a few more bangs, two new alarms and warnings on the displays, and then he saw the reactor vents were opened fifteen percent, and the plasma pressure in the manifolds dropped. Once the total power output of the reactor slipped below ninety percent, some of the alarms ceased, but the computer still told him the powerplant was critically damaged.

  "Okay, Jake…Taylor and I have fixed the issue with the fuel control module—I think—and we're ready to close the vents and see if it'll throttle back on its own," Sully said, the sounds of people shouting apparent in the background. "Just keep the engines over fifty and let me know if any new powerplant alarms come up."

  "Will do!"

  He watched as the reactor power dipped until it hit thirty percent, about six percent above where it would lose its ability to be self-sustaining, and then slowly crept back up. The manifold pressures held steady while the power climbed, and once they hit fifty-two percent, Jacob saw that the emergency vents also closed. All but one alarm ceased, and it looked like the reactor was now holding at sixty-one percent.

  "Engines back to full power, Lieutenant," Sully said, his voice much calmer now. Jacob pushed the engines back to maximum and held his breath as the demand on the powerplant caused the computer to ramp up the reactor. Once the output hit seventy-six percent, everything seemed to stabilize, and the last alarm light winked out. He sat watching the indicators on the display, transfixed as he tried willing them to stay in the nominal range.

  "Disaster averted," Sully said, making Jacob jump as the tall pilot contorted himself back into a seat not really designed for a being of his size.

  "What was that all about?"

  "Just a little runaway reactor issue, nothing major," Sully said. "The module that controls the amount of hydrogen that goes into the fuel manifold to feed both the matter injectors and the antimatter generator lost its mind, for lack of a better term. This tub has four new modules in the spares compartment, so I'm guessing this has been a recurring problem the old crew has been fighting."

  "So, rather than get it fixed properly, they just stock up on spare parts?" Jacob was incredulous. Sully just shrugged.

  "You've seen the other field repairs they've done on this piece of shit. Just be glad they stocked up with new spare parts and not just a bunch of crap they found at some spaceport swap meet."

  "I'm having some real second thoughts about this mission," Jacob said, leaning his head back against the seat and trying to keep his mind off the fact that the same engineer who never properly troubleshot the powerplant issue was the same one who had worked on the slip-drive that was about to mesh them out of real-space.

  "Welcome to Scout Fleet." Sully smiled.

  2

  "Son of a bitch!"

  Elton Hollick, formerly Agent Elton Hollick of the Naval Intelligence Section, still couldn't get used to the prosthetic right hand he'd been temporarily fitted with while his replacement hand was cloned. His own hand, the one he'd been born with, had been vaporized when some snot-nosed jarhead second lieutenant had hit him with a plasma rifle. Every time the clumsy robotic hand he used now dropped a fork or caused him to stab a toothbrush into his own eye—which had also happened that morning—he was enraged and humiliated about the whole incident all over again.

  "If you weren't concentrating so hard on it, the calibration would go a lot faster."

  "Shut up," Hollick snarled. "If you hadn't fucked up your previous three operations so spectacularly, I wouldn't have even been in that warehouse when that little shit got a lucky shot off."

  "I’m not so sure it was a lucky shot," his breakfast guest said. "I've been hearing some rumors about who that Marine lieutenant actually is…but that's not why I asked to come see you."

  "Just get to the fucking point, Margaret," Hollick groaned. "Please, tell me you have something for me to do other than stay here on this Godforsaken planet with my thumb up my ass."

  "You're getting back in the game, Elton," Margaret Jansen said, smiling. The expression made her look more like a predatory animal than anything else, a comparison she didn't find insulting in the least. "You've been briefed on the battle in the Miressa System involving the scraps of the Eshquarian fleet and Seeladas Dalton's own taskforce?"

  "Of course," Hollick said. "What about it?"

  "It turns out that not only did Earth have ships deployed with the Cridal taskforce, but they participated in the battle…took out one of the ConFed's big battleships."

  "You're kidding!"

  "Not at all," Margaret assured him. "Now, here's where it gets interesting. Captain Edgars, who involved his squadron of cruisers, has apparently decided to throw in with this rebellion. The Eagle's Talon hasn't returned to Terran space along with the rest of the ships."

  "You seem to think that should mean something to me. I've been out of the loop for a couple years now, remember?"

  "The Talon is one of the new Victory-class heavy cruisers that Earth is
building," Margaret said. "And Edgars was more than just the CO assigned to lead that squadron. He was instrumental in the design and test phase of this class of ship."

  "Which means he would have almost certainly had access to the Ark." Realization dawned on Hollick.

  "Which means he would have had access to the Ark." Margaret nodded. "This is our next best shot at getting it. We find the Talon, we find Edgars, and maybe we can get the location of the Ark out of him and mount a retrieval mission."

  "A Victory-class heavy cruiser is no slouch," Hollick warned. "Our remaining Columbia-class ships are no match for her."

  "Let me worry about that," Margaret said. "Are you interested in the mission? Or do you want to sit and sulk because you can't get your breakfast into your mouth any better than a toddler?"

  "I'm in." Hollick ignored the barb. Margaret was relentless, always verbally jousting and trying to probe for weaknesses she could later exploit. She fancied herself a Machiavellian-type, able to manipulate people into doing things against their best interests, but to a trained intelligence operator like Hollick, she was just annoying. Her ham-fisted attempts to maneuver him were completely transparent, but he played along since he wanted the same thing she did. For now.

  "I'll tell the fleet to expect you—"

  "I'm taking my team and that's it." Hollick stood and grabbed his jacket. "I'm not playing passenger to one of your incompetent fleet captains…no offense. I'll find the Talon on my own, and then I'll call in the cavalry if you're convinced you can put together a taskforce able to tackle a Victory-class heavy cruiser." Margaret's eyes flashed, and she straightened in her chair, but her complaint died on her lips.

  "Very well." She smiled again, chilling Hollick's blood. He knew he could only push her so far while she was still able to command the loyalty of the Ull faction that had thrown in with her. As long as they did her bidding, he had to step carefully around her.

  "Take your own loyal troops and track the ship down on your own," she went on. "You're certainly more experienced at this sort of operation than my fleet commanders are."

  "Undoubtedly," Hollick said. "Don't worry…I'll find her. Just remember, we don't actually need the Talon, all we need is Captain Edgars."

  The gunboat lurched back into real-space with a shudder violent enough to send Jacob's coffee flying out of his hand. It spilled all over the copilot's station.

  "Thanks," Sully said drily. "Because this thing doesn't have enough problems without you pouring coffee into the control panels."

  "It was more of a splash than a pour," Jacob said, wiping up the mess as best he could with his sleeve. "Why was the mesh-in so rough?"

  "The emitters won't stay in alignment," Sully said. "The variance is within tolerance, but on a ship this small, you'll still feel it."

  "MG just bit half his tongue off back there," Murph said, walking onto the flightdeck. Staff Sergeant Alonso "Murph" Murphy was the ranking NCO on Jacob's ground team. During their last mission, however, they'd found out he was actually Agent Alonso Murphy of the NIS and had been embedded into 3rd Scout Corps to sniff out traitors. For the time being, the agent was still acting as a Marine NCO and stuck in limbo working with Obsidian.

  "Good," Jacob said. "If it shuts him up for a few hours then all will not have been in vain."

  "I'll let him know how sympathetic you are." Murph stared out the forward porthole at the planet they approached. "So, this is it?"

  "Yep. Oorch Prime," Sully said, pronouncing it like ork. It's one of the nastier little smuggler shit holes within the Concordian Cluster, but NIS fed us this as a starting point."

  Murph snorted. "I'm highly skeptical this newfound rebellion has a presence here. As a rule, they'll want to avoid places that are mostly populated by scumbags who would sell them out for a reduced sentence."

  "You can buy intel on worlds like this by paying off someone's bar tab or tossing them a couple of buzz balls," Mettler's voice came from the hatchway. "It won't actually be accurate, and you'll just end up chasing your tail around for weeks." With four large men breathing on the flightdeck, the air was getting hot and stale.

  "I feel like there's a hidden meaning in your little anecdote, Mettler," Jacob said.

  "I'm just saying…this attack on Miressa is huge news all across the quadrant. Everyone knows the Eshquarian Imperial Navy—or what's left of it—spearheaded the attack, and the Cluster is the closest bit of wild space near Eshquaria. Everyone will know they likely ran back here, so every two-bit hustler on every backwater world will be selling information on Imperial warships to all the spooks combing through this region."

  Jacob didn't say anything, but Mettler's words stuck in his head as Sully called for an orbital approach vector and punched in the corrected flightpath into the computer.

  "That's weird," the pilot murmured.

  "What's weird?" Murph asked.

  "The computer keeps dumping the new flightpath every time I— Ah! There it goes. All set."

  "Holy shit, we're all going to die in this thing," Mettler grumbled.

  "Probably," Jacob agreed. "And it likely won't even be due to enemy fire."

  "Hey, it was a free ship," Sully snapped. "Since you all seem so attached to living through every single slip-space flight and deorbit, go steal a better one."

  "Why are you so defensive? It's not like you built it."

  "Because, Mettler, I'm the one—with no fucking help, by the way—who has spent the last four months trying to repair every system on it with incomplete tech data and limited parts." Sully turned around to glare at the Marines standing behind him.

  "I helped!" Jacob protested.

  "Carrying boxes and sleeping in the hold isn't the help I needed. In fact, all of you get the hell out of here…now! I don't need an audience to pilot this thing. Go back to the main deck and do whatever it is you disgusting jarheads do when you think nobody is looking."

  The Marines, including their lieutenant, quietly filed off the flightdeck, somewhat taken aback by their normally-stoic pilot's outburst. There was some grumbling about naval officers in general, and Sully's parentage specifically, but they still left the pilot to do his job in peace.

  "While you're all here and sober, are there any questions on our mission?" Jacob asked. When Angel "MG" Marcos raised his hand, Jacob just rolled his eyes and clarified. "Any questions that aren't more whining about why us?" MG's hand went down.

  "So, we're just supposed to find this rogue ship? No boarding actions or trying to take on a whole shipboard detachment of Marines loyal to Captain Edgars?" Mettler asked.

  "Just spot it, call it in," Jacob said. "We'll try to put a tracker on it, but I doubt we'd be able to get close enough. NAVSOC has scrambled specialized strike teams to take the ship once they have a location."

  "Why do you think Edgars did it?" Taylor asked. "Is he a traitor or a revolutionary?"

  "Right now, the ConFed has labeled him a terrorist, and we need to find that damn ship before their intelligence service traces her back to Earth," Jacob said. "From what I understand, the Cridal Cooperative has already gotten out in front of things and declared Admiral Colleran a rogue operative and thrown her under the bus. They've publicly claimed she took her taskforce without their authorization or knowledge and are cooperating fully with the ConFed to track her down."

  "So, wouldn't that cover Earth? If this Cridal admiral was calling the shots, why would the ConFed want revenge on Earth?" MG asked.

  "The Navy isn't taking that chance," Jacob said. "The ConFed isn't known for being light-handed when it comes to doling out punishment, and there's still the matter of one of our more advanced warships now being in the hands of people with unknown intentions."

  "Seems pretty cut and dry," Mettler said. "People have finally had enough of the ConFed's shit and decided to do something about it with some real firepower for a change."

  "Let's all get one thing crystal clear right now. Earth does not recognize this fledgling rebellion." Jacob's voice
was stern, and he meant to cut off that line of reasoning before it could take hold in the minds of his team. "They're not plucky freedom fighters, and we're not the bad guys here for trying to make sure our hardware isn't involved. We have no idea who these people are…we don't know if those Imperial ships were even manned by Eshquarians. What happens if the next time one of our Victory-class cruisers opens up on a civilian target and Edgars kills untold innocents with weapons whose fissile material can be traced to Earth?"

  "But—"

  "No buts, goddamnit!" Jacob slapped the table. "This isn't a poly-sci class at a university. We're not here to debate policy, we're here to do a job and go home…assuming we all don't die in agony from explosive decompression when this scow suffers a critical hull failure."

  3

  Oorch Prime was exactly what Jacob had expected it to be when he thought of a Tier Three world deep within an undeclared region of space. While all the Tier One and Two worlds had a common aesthetic depending on the dominant culture there, a Tier Three world was a jarring mix of dozens of cultural influences that seemed to be tossed together at random. From the moment they stepped off the ramp after Sully had slammed the gunboat into the tarmac while landing—he claimed the aft repulsors had cut out—Jacob could tell they were on a lawless, dangerous world.

  "The smell here isn't so bad," he remarked.

  "You're just getting acclimated to life out here," Taylor said. "But yeah, this planet is surprisingly clean smelling.

  "Let's hurry up," Jacob said.

  They moved across the tarmac to where a few kiosks were advertising ground transportation. On Oorch, there were no entry control lines, no customs inspections of the ship, and nobody looking twice at a squad of heavily armed humans strolling casually up to a place that claimed to have new and clean vehicles available.