Betrayal (Jack Forge, Lost Marine Book 6) by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor [Victor, James David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2019-09-28T16:00:00+00:00

8

The small cabin deep inside the cramped mass of living quarters of the civilian ship was a far cry from her office aboard the Scepter, but Special Agent Mallet needed an unregistered location for her search. Jack Forge was out there somewhere, and Mallet wanted him dead. The scanning equipment she had stolen from the Fleet Communication Service recorded every conversation between every person on every ship. Picobits of data every second poured into her clandestine surveillance systems, every bit processed, cross-checked, cross-referenced, and stored. All to find the location of Jack Forge.

The last-known location of Jack Forge was aboard a tac boat squadron sweeping the far-left flank of the fleet, skirting along the edge of Skalidion space. Only communications from the tac boat squadron to the fleet could give away Jack's location, but he had gone silent and vanished just as Mallet had been prepared to pounce.

A well-placed combat drone far out on the edge of Skalidion space would be enough to cripple Jack's tac boat and alert any patrolling enemy fighters. All Mallet needed to do was give Jack a bloody nose. The Skalidions would close in and finish the job for her.

But he had been silent. Mallet just needed one communication from Jack and she would have him. And then the message came. Jack had sent a coded message to the fleet that he was going off-mission to defend a civilian transport on some swamp planet.

Mallet read through the report. It spoke of Devex allies and a trade with the Skalidions to deliver thousands of human bodies. It was intriguing, but nothing could divert Mallet from her single-minded mission to kill Jack Forge.

And now she had him.

The surveillance feed from Mallet’s micro-drones scattered dozens of meters away from her hidden location went off-line. They could have been any number of reasons why her surveillance net had been momentarily deactivated. The cramped and overloaded civilian vessel was forever experiencing power fluctuations, and some of these could affect her micro drone surveillance net. It was possible that a civilian had found one of her micro-drones and had deactivated it to sell it on the black market. Fleet Intelligence tech would sell for hundreds of ration blocks, or a dozen crates of Amber.

There were any number of reasons for the slight disruption in her surveillance drone net, but, ever suspicious, Mallet guessed correctly: She had been found.

Mallet powered down her equipment and set the micro-drones hidden inside the equipment to emit a broad-spectrum flash that would destroy all the data she had been gathering and analyzing. The huge amount of data was useless to her now that she had the one fragment that she needed: the location of Jack Forge.

With the data destroyed, Mallet grabbed her pulse pistol and stuffed it in her underarm holster. She fastened the front of her black jacket and stepped to the door.

The door opened before Mallet could get there. The empty opening looked out onto the narrow gray corridor, but the faintest shadow on the far wall told Mallet that enforcers were in cover on either side of the open doorway.

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