Counterforce Two by Jaxon Reed

Author:Jaxon Reed [Reed, Jaxon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-20T22:00:00+00:00

22

After breakfast, everyone waited in the Sub Rosa’s cafeteria for word from Diego.

No communications came through right away, so everyone sat and talked over coffee.

“What’s taking so long?” Callahan grumbled.

“If I know anything about the short time I’ve been with RNI since the war,” Lockhart said, “they’re talking about it. And they’re not going to tell us anything until they’ve looked at every single angle they can think of.”

Jenny noted the Commander seemed much happier this morning. He looked fresh from his nap in her bunkroom, and he had not stopped talking with everyone since waking up and joining them for breakfast.

The usual distance officers typically reserved for enlisted personnel had long since evaporated. This morning Lockhart seemed to genuinely revel in human companionship and the strictures of rank were forgotten by all, at least temporarily.

He spoke at length with the Captains, Callahan and Hoang. Jenny noted that even Trent seemed to perk up a bit at Lockhart’s presence. He added a fresh note of encouragement those on the Sub Rosa never realized had been missing during their long trip into League territory.

At last, shortly after 10:00 am, PLAIR’s voice came down from the ceiling addressing everyone present.

“Incoming call from Diego.”

Smithers’s face appeared in the central holo, taking in the room at a glance. His eyes found Lockhart.

“Commander, what’s your sitrep?”

“Commander Wolf was detained by local authorities on Petra Roe, sir. Lieutenant Halverson stayed behind in a rescue attempt.”

Smithers nodded. He knew this.

Lockhart wondered again at the man’s rank, which seemed to be classified for some reason. He settled on addressing Smithers as “sir.” That seemed safe.

He continued.

“We have been in pursuit of these seven battleships the moment they left PR. We’re outside the Euripides system awaiting orders. Everyone is rested and prepared for action.”

“I see. Under the circumstances, we’re combining your forces. Everyone present is part of Counterforce Two. Commander Lockhart is your CO until further notice.”

Hoang and Callahan nodded. The move made sense. Lockhart was the only officer left between the two groups.

“What are our orders, sir?”

“Your orders are to wait. What I am about to share with you is classified. But you need to know what you’re about to get into.”

The hologram shifted, displaying a picture of Miriam’s face.

“A Verberger employee stole a very special droid from their facilities some months ago. This one. In addition to her standard neural interface, which is designed to make the droid think she’s human on this model, he modified her with additional components making her more receptive to instruction, at least temporarily. In other words, he made her highly trainable, giving her a ‘child’ period of extra receptive input, in which characteristics and traits could be more easily ingrained or imprinted on her.

“Basically, he put the age of three to 13 in her, compressing it into a few months.”

Smithers gave them a brief overview of Verberger’s new line of bots that skirted the Droid Mandates, how the company found a loophole, selling them to governments and universities for research purposes only.

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.