Forged to Hunt (Jack Forge, Fleet Marine Book 7) by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor [Victor, James David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2018-06-24T22:00:00+00:00

7

Sitting at the front of the tac boat in the pilot seat, Jack was only a few meters away from the rest of his small team, but he felt isolated. He wrote up the daily mission report as the rest of his team relaxed. He hesitated to add an official reprimand on Sam Torent’s record. It was true he had been out of position, having raced ahead of the search line yet again, but Torent was not leaving any area unchecked. He was clearing and moving on. Maybe speed was as useful as meticulous attention to detail. Maybe Torent deserved a break. Could he have prevented Horan’s destruction even if he had been closer? It might be that Horan would have been destroyed, or Torent might have been destroyed. The Kraken was a fast and powerful fighter. It was lucky that any of them had escaped.

Jack described the skirmish accurately and recorded the positions of all tac boats of the task force, including those that came to the fight. The report would not be an indictment of Torent in any way, but in Jack’s mind, Torent was on a last warning.

The next phase of the sweep would take Jack’s task force to the halfway point of the operation. It had been a long operation already and they were only halfway through. Jack had fought tough battles before, but this was proving one of the hardest.

The line of tac boats had been redeployed across the line to cover the space left by the destruction of Horan’s ship. Eventually, Jack would have to find a new squad leader to take over for Horan, but for now, he could only focus on sweeping the asteroid belt. He didn’t need to promote a new squad leader until he returned to the Scorpio.

The day’s sweep had been long and without incident. No ship of Task Force One reported any contact. The sweep had taken them through a region of low asteroid density. Only one boat had to set down during the entire phase to conduct a ground search of a large asteroid. Jack had remained seated in the pilot’s chair, monitoring the flight console for the last countless hours.

Amber warning lights had been flickering on the fight console intermittently for the last few hours. The ship had taken a pounding during the battle with the Kraken and some systems were beginning to struggle with the constant operational activity. The tac boat was limping along, but Jack was beginning to think there was no way the boat was going to make it to the end of the sweep without some maintenance.

The onboard supplies were limited. There were few tools apart from the very basic. Even if Jack had replacement parts for the systems that were on the verge of burning out, he wouldn’t have the tools to replace them. It was vital that Jack managed the tac boat and kept it limping onwards.

The communicator burst into life with the voice of an excited and nervous Marine.

“Chits.”

Jack was alert the moment he heard the message from the Squad Leader Erin Bevan’s ship.

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