To The Strongest (The Bicentennial War Book 1) by C.J. Carella

Author:C.J. Carella [Carella, C.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

Well, here goes nothing, Jason thought. First for-real mission.

Silence in the ranks, Staff Sergeant Kinston said.

Neither of them had spoken out loud, of course. Before the Wraith Marines had come along, only warp fighter pilots, navigators and a handful of modified intelligence operatives had displayed telepathic abilities. After the Galactic War, the US had established very tight controls over all t-wave technologies. After living with his abilities for the past year, Jason understood why. Getting into other people’s heads wasn’t good at all.

Everybody was an asshole some of the time, some were assholes a lot of the time, and a sizable minority were assholes all of the time. And when you could catch every errant thought in their heads, those asshole moments grated on you like industrial sandpaper. You began to hate everyone. If the Wraith Marines hadn’t developed ways to manage and control their abilities, they would have all gone insane in short order.

The training had paid off, though. Jason could only ‘hear’ thoughts when they were directed at him or when he actively went rummaging into someone’s heads. It was the difference between being a comm receiver without control of what came through and being able to open apps in his personal system whenever he wanted to. He was aware of everyone in the squad and would remain so even if they were separated by relativistic distances, but he had to concentrate to hear their thoughts. Sometimes his control wavered, however, and his mind would accidentally broadcast in the open where anybody with the right talents could hear. That was why Kinston had admonished him. Jason was more worried than he’d let on, even to himself, and he’d let his mind wander.

They’d run through the op a bunch of times. A mockup of the target area had been built with painstaking detail and they’d gone in and out, in and out, over and over again. Thing was, their intelligence wasn’t perfect; things would not be exactly like in the simulations. They had trained for that, too, run through a dozen different scenarios, trying to prepare for as many contingencies as possible. He was still tense as he ran another system check on his armor.

He wasn’t worried about getting killed. He was worried about screwing up. About letting down his team.

Everyone else seemed cool enough. Kinston’s mental voice sounded almost bored, although she was good enough to hide her true feelings from any of them, telepathy or not. Edison was chatting with his ghost girlfriend; Jason could see her if he wanted to, but that would be like eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation, so he ignored them. Corolla was taking a nap. Lucky bastard.

Jason glanced at the rest of MSOT-One. The twelve Marines crowded the small cargo hold they were using as a stating area. The USS Liberator was a spy vessel, currently configured as the Vehelian freighter Consummate Voyager. The superstructure of the alien merchantman surrounded the Liberator like a giant eggshell; the real ship nestled

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