Eagle (Jacob Hull)

by Debenham, Kindal

  The attacker saw the grenade coming and jerked back reflexively. Her motion sent a bolt of plasma burning through the roof of the chamber instead of Jacob’s chest. Jacob saw the grenade miss the guard cleanly, falling out beyond her and into the corridor outside. He had a heartbeat to curse his aim.

  Then the grenade exploded, still in midair, and as with horseshoes, close was good enough.

  Jacob threw his hands up at the flash, and then the shockwave slammed into him. A roar like a physical blow deadened his ears, and the force of the blast kicked Jacob up off the deck and then tumbled him back along the edge of the chamber like a rag doll.

  It was some time before Jacob could focus again. He lay on his back, blood trickling down the side of his face. Levering himself up on his elbows, he saw the Marine who had been about to kill him lying face down on the deck, the back of her armor a smoldering ruin. Pain lanced through Jacob’s chest when he sucked in a breath, and he forced himself to a sitting position with a groan. His ears still rang with the sound of the grenade, and he wondered, dazedly, what kind of payload the Marine had been carrying around in such a small package.

  Patel was nearby, but he wasn’t moving. Jacob staggered to his feet, and he made it over to the fallen bodyguard. Grabbing him by the collar of his body armor, Jacob began to drag Patel away from the smoldering wreckage. No matter who was left there, he doubted they would be friendly, and he wanted nothing more to do with them. Maybe he could reach the exit on the opposite side before more caught up to them.

  He nearly made it all the way around the circular chamber when he saw someone stagger out of the ragged hole that had once been the hatch. It was a Marine sergeant whose armor had been ripped and torn by the force of the blast. She carried a rifle in her hands, and she scanned the room in something of a daze before she saw him. He met her eyes, and saw a flash of recognition—and then hatred.

  She brought her weapon up, and Jacob braced himself for the impact of those rounds.

  The hissing sound of a plasma carbine shot came first. A lance of superheated gas speared the sergeant through the chest. She pulled the trigger on her rifle, sending a spatter of hollow point rounds into a nearby workstation, and then fell backward. Jacob looked to where the shot had come and found another Marine ahead of him, carbine in hand, and blinked. A response team? How had they gotten here so quickly?

  Jacob didn’t have time to ask before the Marine was running past him, a pair of his fellow soldiers coming through the hatch. They gestured frantically to him as they went by, and then ran toward the still smoking remnants of the other hatch. Gunfire erupted from the ragged hole, and Jacob instinctively ducked when the Marines returned fire. Someone grabbed his shoulder, and he started again.

  It was a Marine sergeant, her mouth open as if she was talking to him. Jacob made a gesture to his ears, and she shouted. “Admiral Hull! You need to get clear of this area. Corporal Nguyen will escort you out.”

  Another soldier stepped forward and took hold of his unwounded right arm. When Jacob tried to continue dragging Patel, the soldier shook her head. “Leave him and go!” There was an explosion at the far hatch, and more Marines rushed past to continue the firefight. “Go!”

  Jacob staggered through the nearby doorway and grabbed a nearby soldier. He pointed at Patel. “Get him out. Hurry.” Then he allowed himself to be led to a side corridor.

  On the other side of the hatch, a large group of Marines were setting up a defensive position while others pushed forward into Central Countermeasures. Jacob heard more shooting from that direction. A Medical officer rushed past him to get at Patel, brushing roughly by him on the way. When Jacob turned back to the rest of the Marines, a relieved-looking colonel in body armor saluted. “Admiral Hull. You have no idea how good it is to see you, Sir.” The officer turned to another corpsman. “Lieutenant, take a look at the Admiral.”

  Jacob allowed the corpsman to begin his examination, but he still fought to keep his ringing head clear. “What is going on, Colonel…”

  “Syssouk, Sir.” The officer motioned to the dead bodies lying further up the corridor. “From what we can tell, you were almost assassinated. A coup attempt of a kind.”

  It took a few moments for the words to register, partially because in all honesty, Jacob was still not used to being someone valuable enough to assassinate. “How did you know? Did our signal get through?”

  Syssouk shook his head. “No, Sir. Colonel Ashford has always kept a detachment of the ship’s Marines at the ready in case a locator signal he carried was ever interrupted by jamming. When it cut out, we had your last known location and came running.” He paused. “Good thing, too. I understand they almost had you.”

  Jacob felt a sudden burst of fatigue. He tried to shake it off. “Ashford. Did he—”

  “We will find him and the others. We’ll take care of them.” The medic’s soothing voice did little to calm Jacob, but the man continued. “Please sit down, Sir. We have to get your wounds looked at.”

  “I’m fine.” Jacob's stubbornness peeked through the haze of his probable concussion. He looked back to the colonel. “Do they know who was behind it, Colonel Syssouk?”

  Worry crept into Syssouk’s expression, and he shook his head a second time. “No, Sir. We are still engaging the traitors as we speak.” A signal seemed to come over his helmet comm, and the colonel paused. “None of them have surrendered yet, but we’re going to…” He frowned. “That can’t be right. Say again?”

  “What is it, Colonel?” Jacob took a step forward, frustration coloring his tone. “What is going…” He trailed off. His feet seemed suddenly unstable, and Jacob had to reach out for support from Corporal Nguyen. Colonel Syssouk’s mouth was moving, but no sound came through the ringing in Jacob’s ears. “I can’t…”

  Then darkness came, and Jacob didn’t hear anything more.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Jacob woke, he moved slowly. He’d unfortunately had this sort of experience plenty of times, and he was in no hurry to feel the ache in his head more fully.

  The lights in his cabin had been turned down, likely to give him a chance to rest. Jacob felt a flicker of gratitude to the medical staff, since it meant he could open his eyes without an unbearable amount of light to deal with.

  He opened his eyes cautiously and looked around the room. It was, as he suspected, a normal berth in the Eagle’s medical wing. As the flagship, the Eagle had quite a bit more specialized equipment than most ships, and many more rooms as well. Some flag officers might have expected to wake up in a more luxurious place, but Jacob supposed an admiral with a concussion was as easy to treat as a crewman with a concussion—though Turley would probably say the admiral would whine more.

  Aside from the usual medical equipment, with which Jacob was becoming sadly familiar, he saw Al-shira was sitting on one side of the bed. She had settled in for a while and was dozing quietly in her chair. Jacob smiled and tried to reach over to her. He was stopped by a massive, full body ache that ran through every muscle he had. A groan escaped him as he fell back into the bed, and Al-shira startled awake. “Jacob?”

  Jacob gave her a wry grin. “Hey.” He looked around the room again; there were no other visitors. “I guess I’m still here, Naomi.”

  “No thanks to you.” Al-shira’s voice was a mix of relief and anger, and she looked ready to to punch him but wasn’t sure if it would cause too much extra damage. “Your Marine escorts said you practically wanted to charge back into the firefight when you passed out. A couple of them were talking about how old Ironsides seemed to think his courage was enough to substitute for body armor.”

  Her glare could have melted through a bulkhead, and Jacob shook his head. “No, I just wanted to know the situation.” His memories of the attack returned to him, and he grimaced. “Patel and Delaraza were down. Ashford…” Jacob caught a flicker of emotion across Al-shira’s face, and he stopped. “Did he make it?”

  Al-shira was silent a moment. “They sti
ll don’t know. He’s lost his arm—the plasma did too much damage for the medics to repair it—but he still hasn’t woken up. Commander Nichols says he still has hope, though. It just may take some time.”

  Jacob felt anger burn to life in him. Another friend wounded, almost dead, and all because someone had attacked him on his own flagship. “Naomi, who did it? Who ordered the attack?”

  Al-shira seemed to sensed the anger in his words and drew back slightly. “Reports are still coming in. There were only about thirty or forty of them on the Eagle, and they made taking any of them alive very difficult. We’re still only piecing together who was in charge of what.”

  It was hard not to growl in impatience. “Al-shira…”

  “Fine, fine.” She hesitated, then reached out and laid a hand on Jacob’s arm. “From what we’ve been able to tell, the Marines came onboard from a standard shuttle run. They changed into their armor and moved to the Intelligence section. You weren’t the first target; Captain Meriweather was found dead in her office.” As Jacob stiffened in shock, she continued in the same level tone. “They definitely had orders to target you next, however. Someone must have known you were going to meet with her after the conference.”

  Al-shira paused, waiting for Jacob to digest the information, and then she continued angrily. “The assassins are mostly refusing to talk— is, the few we managed to take alive, which wasn’t all many—but we have managed to identify them. The grand majority of them served on the Lamorak under Captain Toulon’s personal direction. The shuttle was supposed to have come from the Kay, but the logs have been faked. It was sent from the Lamorak as well.”

  “The Lamorak.” Jacob growled the words. “Admiral Yeseti’s flagship. I’m assuming Captain Toulon is claiming he has no knowledge of what happened.”

  “Right. In the end, it was the information in Captain Meriweather’s files confirms who really was behind it.” She drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Admiral Yeseti is the one responsible. Meriweather was going to brief you on security concerns about her during your meeting, and Yeseti must have found out her position was compromised.”

  Things started to fall into place as Jacob digested the details, and he started to relax. His surprise faded into understanding and anger. “She told me our intelligence assets have been drying up, that the Odurans have been harder to get information on. They were waiting for us at Kryshaen too, like they knew we were only planning on going for the main supply bases. Yeseti’s been behind all of it, hasn’t she?”

  Al-shira nodded. “That’s what we’ve been able to piece together so far. The remaining Intelligence officers are all trying to work it out, but we’re looking at the highest-level security breach possible. Yeseti knew everything.” She shrugged. “We’re going to be recovering from this for years.”

  “Damn. I know.” Jacob struck his bed with a fist. “Damn! She knew everything, Naomi. About our deployment patterns, our intelligence efforts, even the plan to lure the Odurans to New Manasses. If she gets to the League…Where is she?”

  Al-shira grimaced. “From what we can tell, Yeseti boarded a merchant ship that riftjumped out minutes after the attack began. Her destination wasn’t listed.”

  “A merchant ship?” Jacob leaned back in his bed, frowning. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why didn’t she take the Lamorak with her? It would have kept anyone on that ship from being questioned during the aftermath.”

  “Unless Captain Toulon was supposed to be the fall guy for the entire operation.” Al-shira smiled grimly. “If she wanted to look like her hands were clean, it would have been better for her to be out of the system. She could have returned without looking like she was responsible, and maybe even implicate other people like Isaac in the process. As it is, Toulon is spilling his guts to us, but doesn’t seem to know anything. Even with the evidence we’re uncovering, she’s bought time to get further away.”

  “Where is she going, though?” Jacob furrowed his brow, still processing the depth of the betrayal they faced. “A merchant ship is a bad choice for a fugitive. She could have commandeered a courier or an escort craft if she wanted to escape to the League. Why take a larger, slower ship?” Then his eyes widened as a new suspicion struck him. “The merchant. Where was it registered?”

  Al-shira blinked. She brought up a personal reader and tapped at it for a moment. “The ship was registered to the Border Freight Company. BFC has owned it since the ship was built. The world of registry was—” She stopped.

  Jacob let a hint of grim humor touch his tone. “Let me guess. San Marcos?”

  Al-shira let out a string of curse words no officer should have used in the presence of a superior officer. “The separatists? They were behind this?”

  “Maybe.” Jacob shrugged. “Maybe Yeseti only allied with them once she realized she needed help with her plans. She was always more a Federalist than an Independent, but traitors don’t get to be choosy about their friends.”

  The feeble joke didn’t improve Al-shira’s mood. “If you say so. If she’s headed for San Marcos, she’ll try to claim asylum there. It’s going to cause even more problems in that area. What are we going to do?”

  Jacob thought for a moment. “Our most direct action would be to put a fleet in orbit around San Marcos right away—but we can’t afford to do that while the Maxwells and von Clarence are there. They’d hold them hostage to try and force us to withdraw; even worse, we’d be vulnerable to division over whether or not the Navy should even respond.”

  Al-shira didn’t protest that the politicians were too wise to act divisively during a crisis; both of them had too much experience with Celostian politics to be that naïve. Instead, she snorted. “If we can’t hit them directly, what do you plan on doing? I doubt a strongly worded letter would do.”

  Jacob chuckled, despite the bitter rage that filled him over the betrayal. “I agree, Captain.” He paused. “As soon as the Eagle finishes repairs, we’re moving to Tiredel. It’s far enough forward to allow us to respond to an Oduran strike, and we’ll be close enough to San Marcos to watch them as well. We might even be able to threaten them into giving up Yeseti and her co-conspirators.”

  “As well as letting von Clarence’s people go. Good plan.” Al-shira hesitated. “Though now you’re going to have to rebuild your profile on the Odurans. For all we know, Yeseti has been lying about everything. The enemy could strike tomorrow, and we wouldn’t even know it.”

  “One thing at a time, Naomi.” Jacob tried to push himself up off the bed again, grunting as pain shot along both his arms and down his back. “Right now, I think getting to the nearest toilet would be good. If you don’t mind?”

  Al-shira laughed and stood. “Oh, the heavy burdens an admiral must bear.” She started toward the door, then stopped. “Jacob? You really need to stop almost getting yourself killed. Some of us might actually get worried about you.”

  Jacob felt some portion of his humor fade, remembering the plasma carbine leveled at him. He nodded. “I’ll do my best, Naomi.” Then he couldn’t restrain a smile. “Not that I seem to be good at it, but…”

  She laughed again, and left. Jacob stared at the door, slightly amazed at how badly he wanted to call her back. Then he touched a control to call one of the medics. Wounded or not, he had a nation to care for, and he doubted the Odurans were going to wait for him to feel well.

  The door to his medical cabin chimed, and Jacob looked up from the report he was studying on his personal reader. He glanced at Leon, who had come to visit him, but the other officer simply shrugged. Jacob looked back at the door and touched the control that would let him speak to the guards outside. “Admiral Hull. Who is it?”

  His new Marine bodyguard, a harsh man named Colonel Hernandez, responded. “Admiral Mirov here to see you on official business, sir.”

  Jacob paused, raising his eyebrows in surprise. He hadn’t expected any of his fellow admirals to see him until the next conference, let alone Mirov. There was a reflexive desire to
refuse to see Mirov; he had suffered all he wanted to from rebellious fellow officers in the past few days. Then Jacob’s sense of duty asserted itself and he sighed. “Send him in. Thank you, Colonel.”

  The door slid open, and a weary-looking Admiral Mirov stepped into the room. For a moment, he studied Jacob’s room, his gaze wandering over the medical equipment, the personal reader, and Jacob himself. He came to a dignified attention. “Admiral Hull. I would like to speak with you.”

  Jacob gestured for the other officer to take a seat, though Mirov remained standing. “Of course, Admiral Mirov.” Then he smiled. “I hope you’re not offended if I don’t get up.”

  Mirov’s lips actually twisted into something like a smile as well. “Of course, Admiral.” His eyes flicked to Leon, as if unhappy to have a witness, and then he spoke in a half-rushed tone. “Admiral Hull, I would like to tell you I am adding my name to those who support your nomination as High Admiral.”

  Shock went through Jacob, and he jerked upright in his bed. Unfortunately, the movement caused pain to stab into him. It was a moment before he could respond. “Thank you, Admiral.” Then he paused, wondering if he should press the man further. To go from sullen silence to support was a dramatic move.

  Some of his thoughts must have showed on his face, since Mirov offered him another half-smile. “Are you surprised, Admiral Hull?” Jacob hesitated, still uncertain about how far he could push things, and Mirov continued. “My opposition to you was for the most well-intentioned of reasons, Admiral, and I hope I have not engendered any terrible ill will in doing so.”

  Jacob tried to smile back. “I…could understand some of your reservations at the time, Admiral. I would mention it seems like you’ve changed your mind very suddenly.”

  Admiral Mirov seemed to grow tired. “Indeed, you could say I have come to some rather disturbing realizations recently. Admiral Yeseti’s treachery was a shock to all of us, and the possibility my actions influenced her to betray us has weighed heavily on my mind.” He glanced around at the medical suite and sighed. “Of course, the reasoning of my fellow officers has also helped to guide my decision; both Admiral Borgens and Admiral Siddiqui seem fairly confident in your ability to lead.”