Vapor Trails, page 1
Vapor Trails
Terran Scout Fleet, Book Three
Joshua Dalzelle
Contents
Introduction
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
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Also by Joshua Dalzelle
Afterword
©2021
Digital Edition
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.
1
"Your old man is looking for us. He wants his ship back."
"Where the hell did you hear that?" Jacob asked. "I haven't heard anything."
What was left of Scout Team Obsidian sat at the galley table in their current home, the ship Jacob had stolen from his father. The Phoenix was the property of Jason Burke and used by his merc crew, a group calling themselves Omega Force.
The gunship was an older vintage, but she'd been overhauled and rebuilt so many times that not much of the original ship was left. Her armament and flight systems were heavily—in some cases illegally—modified to make her one of the nastiest killing machines Jacob had ever flown on.
The Phoenix had been left on the planet his estranged father called home now. An out-of-the-way world near the edge of the Delphine Expanse called S'Tora. When Obsidian had found themselves on the run, out of options, and burned by their chain of command, taking the ship had seemed like an easy solution to their problems. But if Burke wanted his ship back, that could be a problem.
For all his insistence he had little use for his father, he also had a healthy respect for him and didn't want him or his crew on the wrong side of his rage. Jason Burke was a dangerous, unpredictable man.
"I still have some friends in the community," Murph said. Alonso "Murph" Murphy was actually Special Agent Murphy of the Naval Intelligence Section. He'd been embedded with Obsidian in a deep-cover operation, posing as an enlisted Marine, and found himself stuck in the assignment. It was a strange dynamic since, in real life, he was an assimilated O-4 and outranked Lieutenant Jacob Brown, but he was acting as a Marine NCO for his mission.
"They said Burke reached out to Captain Webb and asked where we were at."
"Damn," Jacob said.
"They're coming back," MG said over the intercom.
The weaponeer had been sitting in the Phoenix's cargo hold, watching out the back ramp, waiting for the alien members of their team to come back. Since Obsidian hunted rogue humans, they tried not to muddy the waters by being seen waltzing around starports asking questions. Instead, Jacob had sent his two battlesynths to poke around.
The problem with battlesynths was twofold. They were not subtle beings and tended to stick out wherever they went thanks to how rare the species was. They also generated strong fear and panic reactions in some due to their deserved reputation. Jacob had weighed his options and decided the stir two battlesynths would cause would be preferable to someone remembering they'd seen another group of humans running around.
"Let's go down and meet Tin Man and his sidekick," Murph said.
"You're really playing with fire fucking with them like that," the team's pilot, Ryan "Sully" Sullivan, said from where he lounged in an overstuffed chair. "They don't like nicknames, and they're capable of killing you in the span of milliseconds."
"I think 707 is warming to the name," Murph said. "I'm going to get him to open up. You'll see."
"It was nice knowing you." Jacob shrugged. "I'll be sure to let NIS know you died as a moron."
"Appreciate it."
Jacob walked out of the hatch and onto the mezzanine in the cargo hold, the hot, dry air of the planet blasting him in the face. Sergeant Angel "MG" Marcos sat on a transit crate with a cold beer in his hand as the two battlesynths made it to the bottom of the ramp.
"Any luck?" Jacob called.
"Some. The Ull we are looking for was here," 707 said, "but we cannot determine if it has left or is still in the area."
"The usual bribes didn't work, Tin Man?" Murph asked. He couldn't speak any further because 707's hand shot out and clamped over his entire face. Jacob winced as he saw the hand squeeze.
"I have repeatedly told you not to call me that," 707 said. "I would suggest you respect my wishes."
"Let him go," Jacob ordered. "Murph, stop being a dumbass."
707 released Murph, who fell to the deck, rubbing at the side of his face where the alloy digits had dug in. The idiot still had a smile on his face.
"It's just our friendly way of welcoming you to the team," he said. "It's a human thing."
"I assure you, I have no desire to be human," 707 said.
The other battlesynth, who went by 784, just stood impassively as his commander abused Jacob's people. The two had agreed to come with him to watch his back when he disobeyed his orders and set off to try and hunt down a woman named Margaret Jansen. They actually had little interest in Jacob himself and were holding up their end of a blood pact they had with his father, Jason Burke.
He hadn't gotten the entire story but, apparently, Burke had rescued them from imprisonment on their home world of Khepri. When they found out he was in mortal danger, they'd come to his aide. When he said he was going to hunt down Jansen, they promised to help.
The Jansen problem had seemed simple at first—she was just some bureaucrat after all—and had quickly snowballed into a cluster fuck of impressive proportions, even by Obsidian standards. It didn't help that Omega Force was now hunting them, too.
His old man had made a few overtures over the years, all of which he'd rejected, but he wasn't sure Burke would just smile and ruffle his hair for stealing his beloved gunship. Again, seemed like a good idea at the time.
"If we can't find this Ull, we're dead in the water," Jacob said. "This mission is dragging on with little to show for it. At this point, I feel like we're just delaying our inevitable court-martials."
Obsidian had obtained detailed specs on Margret Jansen's communications network from one of her right-hand men, the now-dead Elton Hollick. The former NIS agent had kept tabs on her as a sort of insurance policy since nobody in their little One World faction seemed to trust each other, but once they'd dug into it, they saw Hollick had only breached the first few layers of security.
They saw the message routing and were able to decode a few drop locations but, for the most part, One World's com traffic remained encrypted and beyond their ability to break. The real problem was that their entire mission hinged on their ability to track Jansen through her communications network.
"This is how these things tend to go." Murph shrugged. "Intelligence and counterintelligence work are often long and boring. You've had a string of kinetic, fast-evolving ops that I think have skewed your perception as to what this job is about."
"Not sure what's more boring…watching an empty starport ramp or listening to you try and show off your vocabulary," MG said.
"The fact you think that's showing off my vocabulary is truly frightening," Murph said.
Jacob opened his mouth to head off the inevitable fight that comment would spark but stopped as something flew into the cargo hold. It bounced off some transit crates and rolled around on the floor in the middle of the deck. They all just stared at the small, blue sphere dumbly for a moment.
"What the fuck is that?" MG asked. Then the object exploded.
Jacob was flung back and felt something dig into his abdomen on the right side. As he slammed into the crates strapped to the deck behind him, he saw MG and Murph had also been launched away from the blast like ragdolls. He struggled to remain conscious as he lay in a heap on the deck. His teammates appeared to be down for the count…at least the humans were.
707 and 784 had both leaned into the blast and anchored themselves with the mag-locks built into their feet. As loose debris was blown around in the cargo hold from the force of the blast, both battlesynths switched to combat mode. The glowing crimson of their eyes stood out amidst the swirling dust and gave Jacob something to focus on as his brain insisted he just lie down and switch off for a bit.
Apparently, the munition had been some sort of anti-personnel stunner, but the battlesynths were impervious to such things. The rangy Ull that came bounding up the ramp learned that fact too late as both armored warriors turned on it before it could bring its weapon to bear, appearing to be going specifically for Jacob. The Ull raised its weapon and trained it on a still-incapacitated Jacob when it saw the two battlesynths bearing down on it.
The Ull got two shots off with its plasma carbine, one hitting 784 in the chest and splashing ineffectively against his armor, the second shot hitting the armory door, scorching the alloy. 707 reached the alien first, rip
The Ull spun to flee, but 707 clamped onto its left arm and spun it about. As it tried to get its bearings, the battlesynth threw a savage punch that crushed into the pink, rock-hard thorax of the Ull, cracking the dermal layer and causing it to let out a warbling screech.
784 reached the fray just as the Ull dropped to its knees and hit it at close range with a stunner shot from his arm cannon. The alien collapsed on the deck, its keening cries mercifully stopping. Jacob climbed up onto shaky legs and walked over to where the battlesynths picked through the Ull's belongings.
"Interesting," he said before walking to the bulkhead panel and hitting the intercom. "Mettler, get your ass down here. MG and Murph are hurt. Some sort of concussion grenade tossed them into some crates."
"On my way."
"Any idea who we're looking at?" Jacob asked as he rejoined the other two.
"Feature recognition scans indicate this is the Ull we have been searching for," 707 said.
"Convenient," Murph coughed as he struggled to sit up. "We could have saved a lot of time by having the LT sit outside the ship as bait."
"You good?" Jacob asked.
"Broken arm, I think," Murph said. "Mettler will patch me up. I think MG hit head first, so he'll be okay."
Jacob stepped back to allow the battlesynths to secure their Ull prisoner. Mettler came flying out of the upper hatch into the cargo hold, and Murph waved him over to MG. The team's medic went to work with a portable scanner, checking the weaponeer's vitals and making sure there wasn't anything that would pose a risk to him being moved.
Murph cradled his left arm, and the forearm had an odd bend to it, but the bone wasn't protruding from the skin. The Phoenix's advanced med-bay would be able to patch it back up in short order. Thankfully, the computers already had detailed files on human treatments given how many times its owner, Jason Burke, had to be patched up.
"Murph, go ahead on up to the infirmary, and I'll meet you there," Mettler called. He'd put MG into a neck brace and rolled him onto his back. The Marine's chest rose and fell regularly, and his color looked good, so Jacob was hopeful it was just a precaution.
"What about him?" he asked.
"Med nanobots are reporting at least a moderate concussion they can treat," Mettler said. "I put the brace on just in case. He banged his head pretty good on that crate, and I want to do a full scan in the infirmary. I'll go get the board, and then have one of the battlesynths help me carry him up. You okay?"
"Bell rung," Jacob grunted. "I'm feeling alright now."
"Let me treat these two, and then I want you up there as well, LT," Mettler said. "Let's not take any chances."
"Will do, Corporal," Jacob said. "Go patch them up."
"Jacob, you will want to see this," 707 said.
Jacob walked over and saw the Ull had been carrying a small device with a screen not unlike their own com units, but with an oval shape and screen instead of rectangular. 707 had accessed the device and flipped through pictures and documents written in a language Jacob's neural implant couldn't identify. The pictures told the whole story, however. Most were of him, some were of his team, and two were of their old ship, the Boneshaker.
Boneshaker, a ship that lived up to its name like no other, sat in a rented hangar on S'Tora and would probably not get back into orbit without a major overhaul. The Eshquarian combat shuttle had been stolen by the team when they'd been in a pinch, and they had kept it far longer than they'd intended.
Once they'd gone rogue and were outside of Naval Special Operations Command's logistical system, they'd not been able to do anything about it. The mangled ship had been the reason Jacob had taken bold action and stolen the Phoenix. The powerful Jepsen gunship had already made their current mission easier by actually making it all the way to their destination without dropping out of slip-space with a mechanical emergency.
"The data is old. The shuttle is out of date, as is the fact they're still showing Taylor," Jacob said, his chest tightening. "He was killed months ago."
"The text on this device indicates this Ull has been instructed to capture you not kill," 707 said.
"This is a strange turn of events," Jacob said. "I thought we were hunting down a burned member of the Ull faction helping Jansen. Now, it looks like he was hunting us. Was this a counterintelligence op, and they know we have their com system cracked?" He rubbed his temples to relieve the pain of the massive headache that started to kick up right behind his eyes.
"Unclear at this time," 784 said. The second battlesynth had come back up the ramp after doing a quick check around the Phoenix for any other potential attackers. "It is also unclear how they knew you were on this ship."
"Probably saw one of those morons out there taking a leak by the fence or something," Jacob sighed. "Damnit! That means we've lost the advantage this ship had given us when it comes to sneaking in on Jansen."
"That was always a dubious advantage, my young Lieutenant," 707 said. "Your father was known to Jansen. He attacked her with this ship multiple times. I believe she would recognize it but possibly draw the wrong conclusions."
"What are we going to do with him?" 784 asked, nudging the Ull with his foot.
"Secure him and let's question him," Jacob said. "Do we need to treat that wound?"
"If it is not oozing blood, the dermal plates will fuse again without any help from us," 707 said. "Without the proper infirmary, you would be unable to treat him."
Ull were somewhat unique looking in a part of the galaxy that boasted almost a hundred different star-faring species. They were thin and tall with an almost pipe-like appearance. Their limbs and torsos were tubular, pink, and hard as nails. They had an almost rubbery texture to them, but it wasn't an exoskeleton, just a thick, strong skin adaptation.
They tended to be minimalist when it came to clothing, and this one was no different, wearing a utility belt and what looked like a cross between a kilt and cargo shorts…and that was it. Not even any shoes, which was insane on an active ramp full of starships that leaked all manner of caustic fluids.
784 propped the Ull up on the transit crate Jason dragged over while 707 strapped it down to the cargo loops on the deck. Ull were incredibly strong despite their willowy appearance, but the straps 707 had used should be more than enough to keep it in place if it went crazy. Jacob also figured the spidery cracks in its torso skin would slow it down a bit. Once they were done, it took another twenty minutes and some hard slaps to get the alien's eyes to flutter open.
"I see I have severely underestimated my prey," the Ull said, wheezing a bit.
"Why did you use a concussion stunner against two battlesynths?" 707 asked. "Are you unfamiliar with my kind?"
"I didn't know you were with him," it said. "I know all about you, of course. I'd even seen you poking around the starport. My intel said nothing about the human having battlesynths on his crew."
"We saw your information was dated," Jacob said, waving the oval device at him. "Any chance you're going to tell us why you tried to kill me?"
"Capture not kill," it said. "I switched my weapon to plasma shots when I saw the battlesynths coming at me. It was why my shot went wide, for all the good it'd do against them. I'd originally been set to stun again and get you out of here before your team could react."
"Who sent you?" 707 asked.
"That answer is a little more complicated than you would think. To be brief, I'm a private contractor. I was sent out to grab you and hand you over. They don't give me much more information than that."
The Ull's demeanor was unlike any of the others Jacob had encountered. Its speech patterns were relaxed and familiar, and it didn't look at the two species in front of it with the open derision and contempt he'd seen in the others. He asked his prisoner about that.
