Lost Marine (Jack Forge, Lost Marine Book 1) by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2019-02-23T07:00:00+00:00

10

The acceleration was almost too much for the frigate’s inertial buffer to overcome. Ripa felt the strain on her damaged ribcage. She bent over, clutching her broken rib as it struggled to cope with the forces pressing against it.

Bale held on to the armrests of his chair and steadied himself. He was not going to let Ripa see him looking weak or in any way uncomfortable with the experience. He watched the star field on the central holostage. The image flickered as ship-wide power fluctuated with the extreme acceleration putting a strain on all systems. The stars projected on the holostage quivered and all were showing the blue shift effect as the frigate raced forward.

“The superstructure can’t take it,” Ripa said. She moved uncomfortably from the navigation console to the engineering console and checked the cohesion of the hull stability field.

“The ship can handle it, Ripa,” Bale said. “You need to handle it, or you need to get off my deck.”

Stone walked onto the command deck. He appeared unaffected by the fluctuating strength of the inertial buffer.

“We should have told them what we were doing,” Ripa said. “We shouldn’t have left them. What if they get back to the fleet? He’ll put in a report to Fleet Intelligence for sure. They were Marines, for krav’s sake, and he was a major.”

“A major,” Stone laughed with a humorless grunt. “And that was his battalion, I suppose, a one-armed grunt. Not much of a force.”

“Nevertheless, it was wrong to leave them.”

“My responsibility is to this ship. Those Marines are only there to assist and support the fleet. Their job is to die for us. So, I’m not sorry that I asked them to stand in front of an enemy and hold them off so we could get away.”

“But we didn’t ask them, did we? We tricked them.” Ripa held her ribs.

Stone walked over to Ripa and grabbed her by the arm. “You need to take it easy, Lieutenant.”

Ripa shrugged Stone off. “Get your hands off me, Chief,” she spat. “You will respect chain of command or—”

“Or what?” Stone said, taking her arm again.

Ripa looked up at Bale. “Commander, you need to do something.”

“Yes,” Stone said, looking up at Bale with a threatening glare. “You need to take the lieutenant to the med-bay. I think she needs a rest.”

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