Boneshaker: Terran Scout Fleet, Book 2 by Joshua Dalzelle

Author:Joshua Dalzelle [Dalzelle, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-30T07:00:00+00:00

15

Marcus Webb didn't like where the evidence he'd collected was pointing.

He'd been up for nearly three days straight, personally going through the raw data to try and figure out what happened to his Scout Fleet crews. It had been an effort borne of desperation as he frantically searched for proof that the obvious wasn't true. But the deeper he dug, the more he had to admit it to himself, someone high-placed within NAVSOC was feeding live intel to the enemy. It had resulted in the deaths of over two dozen highly trained operators and a trawler crew of eighty-six spacers.

The timing of the events left little doubt. The teams had been given recent move orders, all under tight security and through back channels, and all of them had been hit within days of relocating. The loss of Team Diamond was an especially brutal blow. With Ezra Mosler dead and Obsidian at half-manning, Diamond and Cobalt were the only full-combat ready 3rd Scout Corps teams he'd had available. The other five teams were all waiting on replacement personnel or hadn't even been fully activated in the first place.

After admitting to himself that someone within his inner circle was a traitor, he was now trying to zero in on who had opportunity. Now, he only hoped it was just one person who had betrayed their homeworld and not a network of people within NAVSOC. The former could be dealt with by a single execution, the latter meant not only would he be unable to chop the head off the snake, but his own life would probably be in danger once they knew he was on to them.

"Bennet!" he roared, not bothering with the intercom.

"Sir?" his aide asked once the hatch slid open.

"Tell Commander Duncan to get departure clearance from Terranovus," Webb said, standing up.

"Where are we heading, sir?"

"We'll file a flight plan for Olympus," Webb said. "We might detour along the way, but I want to be out of short-haul com range of Terranovus as soon as possible, and inform Taurus Station that all Scout Fleet operations will be run out of this ship. We have enough handlers, don't we?"

"We should, sir," Bennet said, consulting his tablet. "There are nine qualified black ops handlers aboard at any given time, and we're down to three units still left in the field."

"Good…then get your ass moving. Tell Duncan he has a move order and to start breaking orbit as soon as we have clearance."

"Aye, sir."

If he couldn't root out the traitors in time to help Obsidian, he could at least bypass them. By running the operations directly out of the Kentucky, he cut out at least three layers of bureaucracy and potential security leaks from Taurus Station's administrative and secure communications sections.

Even if he found them, he was just patching a leak in a crumbling dam. The real problem was Margaret Jansen and her goddamned One World faction. She'd managed to get a beachhead in among the UEN's officer corps and had been successfully recruiting well after the Cridal had chased her and her Ull allies away from Earth.

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