Command Authority (The Last Hunter Book 5) by J.N. Chaney & Terry Mixon

Author:J.N. Chaney & Terry Mixon [Chaney, J.N.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Variant Publications
Published: 2022-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

18

David sat at his console in the operations center and parsed the data they were able to pull from the active sensors as Hunter approached Argent. They still weren’t picking up any Confederation radio signals, but based on how the Tardans had behaved on New Copenhagen, that wasn’t a surprise.

What did surprise him was that there wasn’t a great deal of debris and smoke in the atmosphere. Even on New Copenhagen, the destroyed cities had put a lot of particulates into the upper atmosphere where they could be detected. He wasn’t seeing anything like that on Argent.

They even had a space station still in orbit. It looked like Confederation manufacture, so he was shocked the Tardans hadn’t vaporized it. What had they been using it for? How had they taken it intact? There was something of a mystery afoot, and he was curious to solve it.

The Novarite passive sensors were able to pick up quite a bit of information as they approached the planet, and the more data they got, the more it confirmed his suspicions that things were definitely different on Argent than they had been on New Copenhagen. There was no sign of widespread destruction on the planet.

“What are we seeing?” a woman asked from behind him.

He turned and saw that Lisa had come into the compartment. He gestured for her to join him.

“Quite a lot, actually. It looks like the Tardans didn’t devastate the planet. They even left one of the space stations intact. It looks like a cargo and passenger transshipment hub. There used to be a Navy base in orbit as well, but that seems to be gone.”

“It seems like they wouldn’t have any incentive to leave Confederation hardware in orbit,” she said as she sat down. “They brought their own.”

“I’m not picking up any radio transmissions now that the Tardans have departed, so I believe they didn’t leave anyone in orbit. I have no idea what they could have been using that station for.”

“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” she guessed. “How long until we arrive in orbit? What is the commodore’s plan?”

“We’re still about an hour and a half out, so there’s plenty of time to figure out what he’s going to do. In any case, he hasn’t discussed his options with me. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on so that when he makes up his mind, he’ll have options. How goes your work with the Tardan military computers? Do they have any word about what was going on here?”

“I’m fully in. It mentions this system is a major control center for the Tardan occupation, but it doesn’t have anything as detailed as how many troops were assigned here or what they were doing. I expected it to be similar to New Copenhagen, but they obviously had something different in mind. They were trying to suppress New Copenhagen’s population and perform experiments. It hardly seems Argent would be so calm if they were doing the same here.”

He nodded. “Perhaps

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