Marine

by Joshua Dalzelle

  "You actually wouldn't feel anything," Murph said. "If the slip-drive screws up while it's engaged, we'll either just pop back out into real-space or, more likely, be extruded back into real-space as a single chain of molecules."

  "Cheery thought," Jacob said. "And on that note, why don't you take first watch? I'll take Mettler and begin taking stock of what's on this ship, and Taylor will begin checking all of the non-flight systems. If we need air, food, or water, it's probably better if we find out now."

  "Already on it, LT," Taylor said. "I'll have a report for you within the hour."

  "Let's go, everyone." Jacob clapped his hands. "The sooner we're done, the sooner we can start a normal watch schedule and people can get some sleep."

  It took the better part of three days to completely inventory the gunboat and inspect all of her systems. They found out that the ship was carrying a surprising amount of valuable cargo that they'd try to offload at their next stop, and Taylor's snoopers had ferreted out a handful of discreet trackers and booby-traps left by the previous owners that could have let them track the ship once it re-emerged into real-space. While not as roomy as the Corsair, the small ship had a decent size berthing bay, a tiny captain's quarters, and had been fully replenished with consumables while it had been on the ground at Niceen-3.

  Taylor spent most of the second day adjusting the gravity and atmospheric systems to more comfortable human norms, as well as programming the food synthesizer for rations that wouldn't make them sick. The unit was fairly standard and worked similarly to the ones on Terran ships. It was loaded with base digestibles and could create a reasonable facsimile of real food when programmed. It wasn't the same as the real thing, but it was pretty damn close. Thankfully, the Impans had the same requirement for pure water as humans so there was nothing to do there except inspect the tanks.

  "Here's the target: Formenos Prime," Murph said. "It's one of the Eshquarian-claimed planets that's just outside of the Concordian Cluster, but isn't considered part of the Empire."

  "In other words, they pay taxes and are subject to Eshquarian law, they just don't have any representation within the government," MG snorted.

  "More or less, but for our purposes, this is actually beneficial. Formenos had no useful exports other than semi-skilled labor, so it's probably still being ignored by the ConFed taskforce overseeing the Empire's…absorption, I guess. One more outdated Eshquarian gunboat that's been beat to hell and back won't even get a second look coming in to land on this planet."

  "We'll still need to be careful," Sully said. "When all this shit went down, most of the Eshquarian fleet went into hiding and—"

  "Most?" MG asked skeptically.

  "Ok, some of the fleet is hiding. Rumor has it that they fled into the Cluster at the order of their fleet commanders because the ConFed brought such overwhelming force and caught them by surprise there was no way the ships that weren't destroyed within the Eshquaria System would have been able to do anything."

  "What's the part we need to be careful about?" Jacob asked.

  "There will be patrols out looking for those fleet remnants," Murph said. "The ConFed Starfleet isn't known for incompetence or mercy. They won't leave an enemy force that large behind when they pull out the bulk of their battlefleet. I think Sully's point is that we'll still be flying into contested space in a military-type vessel and we'll need to take precautions. A ConFed cruiser may just blow us out of the sky rather than waste the time seeing if we're really a civilian-owned ship or part of the Imperial Fleet."

  "How do we find Zadra once we're there?" Jacob asked.

  "The data card had a list of dead-drop message services we're supposed to contact once we land," Taylor said. "There are specific phrases within the information she provided that will let her know we're the ones who found the data card and are there to retrieve her. After that, we'll be contacted with further instructions."

  "Doesn't sound very specific," Jacob grumbled. "This has been a hell of a costly wild goose chase so far."

  "We're coming out to get one of the most notorious information brokers in this part of the quadrant," Murph said. "She's not going to make it easy for someone to sneak up on her when she knows they're already after her."

  "Makes sense, I guess," Jacob said. "I'd still like to have a better idea what the hell we're flying into before taking a stolen, unregistered military vessel into contested space."

  "Welcome to Scout Fleet." MG shrugged.

  Once the intel session broke, and the crew went back to their assigned duties, Murph came up to Jacob in the corridor leading up to the bridge. "Here," he said and thrust a tablet into Jacob's hands.

  "What's this?"

  "It's the crew log for this ship," Murph said. "Taylor found it on a computer hidden in the captain's quarters. They kept surprisingly good records for a bunch of pirates."

  "Why do you think I should have this?" Jacob asked.

  "I think it might…help…with an internal struggle you seem to be having."

  Murph walked away before Jacob could ask what the hell he was talking about. He looked at the tablet and shrugged, grabbing something to drink and heading back into the captain's quarters. Out of curiosity, he began reading the logs Taylor had downloaded and, helpfully, translated into English.

  The more he read, the more horrified he became. The crew that owned this ship before them had been monsters. Detailed within the logs of the ship's captain were a laundry list of crimes and atrocities that made Jacob's blood run cold. The crew had been trafficking in kidnapped beings, buying them on one planet, transporting them like cattle, and selling them on another. They were part of an elaborate network of smugglers that would target and abduct specific species for tasks ranging from dangerous labor, reconditioning as shock troops—or cannon fodder—and the usual gladiatorial fighters and sex slaves.

  When they were between runs, the crew would amuse themselves by running narcotics or weapons for money onto worlds where such things were strictly prohibited. At first glance, the log disgusted him and burned away any guilt he felt for killing the crew and stealing the ship. He lay in his rack, incensed that the injustices found on Earth seemed to be a universal trait among other evolved, intelligent species. After he'd calmed and had time to reflect, however, he pulled the complete log back up and began digging down into the minutia of the former captain's records. Once he moved past the natural revulsion of the crew's actions, he found that it was a treasure trove of details about the quadrant's underworld.

  Hours went by, and he began making detailed notes about locations of safe harbors, contacts, hazards to avoid at all costs, and even found more than a few passages of how a merc crew that called themselves "Omega Force" had disrupted their operation by taking out suppliers and buyers. He read these log entries with some bemusement, as if his feelings regarding his father could be more confused. Of all the things he assumed, one of them wasn't that the old man was out here blowing up slavers and drug smugglers.

  Chapter 16

  Formenos Prime was a typical secondary world, far from the polish and money of the Core Worlds, but also not a sparsely inhabited hell hole. At least that's what Jacob's crew told him about it. Since Formenos was only the second alien planet he'd ever seen, he couldn't really form his own opinion. They called it a secondary world because Formenos had no indigenous species, or at least an indigenous intelligent species, though he had trouble figuring out where the demarcation line was for determining if a species was sentient enough to qualify for protections under ConFed law and which were fair game for displacement by colonization.

  The nine-day flight to the Concordian Cluster from the Kaspian Reaches had been hard on the small gunboat. They'd flogged her as hard as they dared while Sully and Taylor did their best to keep it running. Once they landed at a starport with engineering services, however, they'd have to dip into the ship's treasury and get the slip-drive re-aligned and the main reactor looked at. The power surges they'd experienced while in slip-space h
ad been enough to keep Jacob awake for most of the flight.

  "This set of transponders is still reading as clean," Sully reported. "The original set is still flagging as 'of interest,' and any ship that sees it is instructed to report the position and heading to Formenos Orbital Authority."

  "Running multiple transponders is highly illegal," Murph said. "They can't really claim a ship is stolen and give out four sets of ident codes with it. The crew we took it from probably didn't actually own it, so they're making some show of trying to find it without incriminating themselves."

  "They also probably want their cargo back," MG said. "Lots of platinum, loaded credit chits, and those buzz balls the LT made us dump out into space."

  "I still can't believe we dumped over seventeen million credits worth of drugs out the airlock," Taylor griped.

  "We're not drug runners," Jacob said firmly. "Even in a pinch like this, we're not going to start selling narcotics to fund the mission. Besides, the chits we found will more than cover our repairs and provisioning."

  The credit chits were almost like cash, but more akin to bearer bonds back on Earth. They were small, onyx discs that, when pinched, displayed the value that had been loaded onto them by the ConFed Centralized Banking System. They were one of the few forms of untraceable currency still in use in the quadrant and far more useful than the precious metal ingots sitting in the crates next to them. Exchanging or bartering with platinum or gold could make them memorable in some places, but cashing in a few chits to pay for services was normal for spacer crews that traveled between star systems and didn't feel like messing around with individual local currencies.

  "LT, a word?" Murph said, nodding towards the hatchway. Jacob nodded and followed him off the bridge.

  "What's up?"

  "I think we should take some time here and…establish…ourselves while given the opportunity," Murph said.

  "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "This ship has a fortune sitting in its cargo hold right now. Just handing it in to Command once this mission is over seems wasteful," Murph said. "That money could be used as a sort of covert slush fund for future missions."

  "Go on," Jacob said, skeptical that what the NIS agent was about to propose was at all aboveboard.

  "Formenos Prime is developed enough to be tied into the Central Banking System," Murph continued. "I think that while the ship is being repaired and we try to make contact with Zadra, it would be prudent to take the chits and the platinum to an Exchange and open up an account that only Team Obsidian knows about. You never know when we'll find ourselves up a creek again without Fleet support."

  "Can't Command just send us currency through the same system?" Jacob asked. He didn't want to point out the obvious that Murph wasn't actually assigned to the Scout Corps and was, in fact, an NIS spook whose mission was just busted when Scarponi escaped. There was also the fact that he himself was planning on taking Webb's offer of a Naval commission and leaving the Corps altogether.

  "Scout Fleet operates autonomously, for obvious reasons." Murph shook his head. "If we get caught doing something fucked up, it can't be tied back to Earth's government in any way. I still think it'd be nice if we had an independent source of funding for when shit went south." Jacob still wasn't sure what to make of Murph's idea, but he also had no idea what the hell he was going to do with all the valuables in his cargo hold if he didn't go along with it.

  "Okay," he said finally. "We'll set that up while Sully and Taylor supervise prepping the ship. MG and Mettler will remain here to guard everything and then, once we retrieve Zadra, we'll be the hell out of here and on the way back home."

  "Agreed," Murph said.

  Landing on Formenos Prime was a little more complicated than on Niceen-3 because the planet had a rigidly structured orbital control system and a well-organized landing authority you had to petition before even coming out of your holding orbit. Thankfully the clean codes they'd switched to didn't pop up as anything of interest on the controller's terminal, and the gunboat was cleared for landing at a starport outside of a city called Sarapis.

  The city was the fifth largest on the planet and the ship's database said it was an average urban center that seemed to exist only to support the larger cities. The planet's main export was a type of grain that was broken down into its base chemical components for use in cheap, bulk food stuffs that were then sold to overpopulated worlds like Ver. All things considered, it was an odd choice for someone like Zadra to hide out on, but maybe that's why she chose it.

  "Cycling gear," Sully called. "Standby for touch—" Boom! Everyone was thrown off their feet as the deck bucked violently.

  "What the fuck, Sully?" MG said from where he'd landed by the tactical station.

  "Huh," Sully said, completely unruffled. "I think I was reading the altitude wrong on this panel. I thought we had another meter and half to go."

  "Did we break anything?" Jacob asked.

  "Just my pride," Sully answered. "No alarms on the panel. "You want me to go ahead and call for engineering services now?"

  "Yes," Jacob said. "Also for fuel and consumables. Taylor, you make contact with Zadra and hang back here helping with the ship until she replies."

  "Sully, call for a cargo van large enough for all the shit that was left in the hold," Murph said.

  "I don't think they call them—"

  "Just get a fucking vehicle so we don't have to carry it by hand, will ya?"

  Jacob left them to argue and went back to his quarters—he took the only private stateroom on the ship since he was still technically in command—and grabbed a sidearm and his credentials. The ship's computer said that Formenos Prime was fairly tolerant about personal armament, especially around the starports, but open carrying anything larger than a pistol was generally frowned upon.

  After he was done there, he went down to the hold and began pulling off the straps and cargo nets securing everything to the deck. The cases containing the platinum were all labeled and weighed, each containing nearly three hundred kilograms of the precious metal. With forty-six crates total spread over three loading pallets, he hoped whatever vehicle Sully secured had a loader.

  The chits were all secured in generic looking cases and didn't take up nearly as much room as the platinum. During the flight out to the Cluster, he and Murph had gone through everything to make sure there were no trackers or identifying marks of any kind that would hinder their ability to transfer them into currency. All told, there was nearly four hundred and fifty million credits worth of goods stashed on a ship that was only worth about a quarter of that. On Earth, that would have been roughly eight hundred million US dollars.

  "What the hell were these assholes doing with this much scratch?" Jacob pondered aloud.

  "Muling it for their superiors," Murph answered from the hatchway above. The cargo hold was as tall as two decks so the entrance to the main part of the ship was up a narrow staircase attached to the forward bulkhead. "I found this in the captain's quarters when we were clearing the ship initially." He tossed Jacob something that looked like an oversized amusement park coin. On one side there was an embossed emblem that looked like a stylized star with twelve streaming points coming off of it. The reverse side had a number in Jenovian Standard, the semi-accepted universal language in the quadrant.

  "What is it?"

  "A marker. The code on the back is trackable and can be called in to make sure some bit player doesn't jack the wrong crew." Murph skipped down the stairs and walked over. "The sun logo on the back is the symbol of a massive criminal organization led by someone called Saditava Mok. He's a major player in this area and not someone you want cross."

  "And we just stole a ship full of his money," Jacob groaned.

  "Honestly? Mok won't give a shit about this pittance." Murph smiled. "We're talking about a person who has his own private fleet with capital warships. This amount was likely being passed among the lower ranks within his syndicate to launder or as payment for s
omething. It's likely the surviving dipshits that left this unsecured on a planet like Niceen-3 will have to answer for their failure, but nobody is going to burn the resources to track down a few hundred mil across the entire quadrant."

  "If you say so," Jacob said, now anxious to get the hardware off their ship.

  "Relax, LT." Murph clapped him on the back. "This will be over before you know it." Jacob noticed that when in front of the other members of Obsidian, Murph kept up the ruse of being an ex-Force Recon jarhead, but once he was alone with Jacob, the tough guy veneer dropped and he could see just how intelligent and confident the man was.

  Once the heavy hauler showed up, and Jacob paid the fee for it, they were all delighted to see that it came with its own trio of service bots that would load and secure the cargo. The non-sentient, bipedal machines went about their task as the Marines breathed a sigh of relief that they wouldn't actually be required to do any manual labor. The precious metals and cases full of loaded chits were carefully piled onto the vehicles flatbed, and then a slick automated system both secured the load and covered the entire thing with a canopy to keep nosy onlookers from seeing what they were hauling.

  "We'll be back as soon as we can," Jacob told MG as the three bots walked over to the hauler, crawled under the chassis, and folded themselves back up into their storage compartments. Despite knowing that they were just programmed machines and not Synths, it was still a creepy spectacle for Jacob.

  "We'll hold down the fort," MG said. "Taylor has already pinged the three addresses that Veran chick gave us so, hopefully by the time you're back, we'll be almost ready to grab and get."

  "Hopefully," Jacob agreed. As he followed Murph to the hauler's passenger compartment, he realized their group dynamic had been changing subtly. He was no longer called sir by his men, but neither was he eyed with suspicion or barely concealed contempt as he was when first assuming this post. Small-unit dynamics are a tricky thing, and he found himself feeling a little proud that his Marines thought highly enough of him to treat him as one of them instead of one of them: an officer they just had to tolerate and babysit.