Alliance (Jack Forge, Lost Marine Book 5) by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor [Victor, James David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2019-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

Jack was instantly awake the moment the flight console alerted him that he had crossed into Skalidion territory. The tac boat flotilla was arranged in its search pattern, a line abreast covering a hundred kilometers with a passive search radius of several thousand kilometers. Scepter Three hung back a few hundred kilometers from the line, directly behind Jack at the center.

With all the activity in this area, Jack knew it would not be long before he detected the Skalidion.

And he was right. The huge swarm of Skalidion fighters was moving across the front of his flotilla at speed, no doubt patrolling the boundary of their territory.

The formation moved across the tac boat front. The boats closed in, holding their speed. Jack held his nerve and hoped the other pilots could remain calm also. If one made a bid to escape, they would surely be detected at this close range.

The Skalidion swarm cleared the starboard end of the formation and moved off along the border. Jack replayed all the data gathered from the swarm and re-watched it on his flight console holostage. The swarm moved as one and looked like a huge teardrop-shaped ship all together, but on closer inspection, Jack could see the movement from the individual Skalidions within. They flitted back and forth in jerky motions, moving seemingly at random but not ever coming too close to another fighter. Their jerky motion was slightly hypnotic and unpleasant. Jack wondered if it was fatigue or the strange alien motion that was making him feel nauseous.

Releasing an antiemetic into his system made Jack feel instantly better. He drank some water and took a bite of a ration block he dug out from a supply pouch on his tactical suit sleeve. Then, switching from the recording back to the forward view, Jack resumed his hunt into Skalidion territory.

The passive scanner showed a Skalidion fighter swarm moving along behind the boats. Jack looked at the data. It appeared to be the same swarm moving back along its patrol line. The formation had advanced so now the Skalidions were patrolling behind Jack and his flotilla.

They were inside Skalidion territory now. Up ahead, Jack saw an even larger mass, a huge swarm of Skalidions, larger than a hundred teardrop-shaped fighter swarms. Moving in closer, Jack saw the familiar shape of the sleek Skalidion fighters dominating the swarm, but there were also other types, all about the same size but with clearly different abilities.

Toward the outer edge of the swarm were the largest Skalidion craft. They were roughly spherical and were covered in antennae. They had huge dark regions on their surface. Jack would need to capture and study one of these craft to understand their role in the swarm, but that was not his mission.

Within the swarm of fighters was another type of spherical craft, but these were missing the antennae and dark regions. They also had a large, flattened end. They were difficult to understand at first, but as the flotilla came closer, Jack noticed the rasping teeth in the round flattened end.

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.