Psi Wars: Homecoming: A Military Space Opera Series by Rick Partlow

Author:Rick Partlow [Partlow, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2023-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

The shuttle’s belly ramp wasn’t open very wide, just about a meter down from the curving lower fuselage of the bird, and it gave the aerospacecraft an oddly anthropomorphic grin. Fontenot wasn’t smiling.

“Damn it,” she spat, still staring through the thick transplas window of the docking bay at the assault shuttle. “How’d they get that open with the power shut down?”

“There’s a manual crank,” Sandi told her, rubbing a hand over her face, looking embarrassed that she’d forgotten it. “It’s for emergencies; the last time I saw one used was in an hour-long class in flight school.”

“That’s just great,” Fontenot threw up a hand in frustration. “Now there’s at least three of them loose, and for all we know they could have gotten in through the emergency lock and are skulking around somewhere inside this ship.”

She wasn’t sure if it was the renewed threat that bothered her or the idea that the bloody, disgusting task of clearing the ship of hostiles wasn’t done yet. She’d kept reminding herself that these people were traitors who’d sold out their government and the oath they’d sworn to defend it, who’d been trying to kill them… but it just wasn’t as easy to live with anymore. Maybe she’d lived long enough that she wasn’t that person anymore.

“Or maybe not.” She turned, confused for a moment until she realized that Ash was addressing the last thing she’d said, not somehow reading her thoughts. He was pointing to a control panel on the docking bay bulkhead beside the transplas shield that looked out at the assault shuttle. Even from across the compartment, she could see a red icon blinking brightly in the display. “The portside escape pod is missing.”

“I see it on the sensor scan,” Sandi reported over the ship’s intercom.

Fontenot had sent her back to the bridge to keep an eye on things while her and Ash checked out the shuttle; if there were enemies on board, she hadn’t wanted them getting to the bridge while they were chasing their tails in the docking bay.

“It’s pretty far back from us now, since we’re still accelerating,” Sandi went on. “I think it’s heading back to Koppet Dag.”

“No way to tell if there’s anyone on board, I suppose,” Fontenot grumbled.

“Not from this far away,” Sandi admitted. “I can turn us around, go after them if you like. They don’t have much of an engine on that thing, just a small chemical rocket; we can catch up in a couple hours maybe.” A pause, and Fontenot knew Sandi well enough to picture her shrugging. “Maybe three.”

“Do we have any security video that’d tell us if they actually got on the pod before it launched?” She didn’t have much hope for the answer, but she tried to keep that out of her tone.

Another pause. Hopefully that meant she was checking it.

“Negative on that, Korri. The whole time we had Jackie suppressing the security scanners, there’s nothing but blank screen.”

Well, that certainly backfired on us, she reflected. Not that there had been anything else they could do under the circumstances.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.