Prince Liberator (The Prince of Britannia Saga Book 6) by Fred Hughes

Author:Fred Hughes [Hughes, Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Theogony Books
Published: 2023-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

Fear nearly overwhelmed Lieutenant Marcus Mandrey. He was an experienced scout ship captain and had completed five missions investigating Swarm activity, but what he was doing now was totally insane. His small scout ship—the crew had nicknamed her Rainbow Dash—was about to sneak into an enemy held star system. Sure, I’ve done this before, but I always had the fleet nearby to pull my ass out of the fire. I’m three weeks away from Serenity and the rest of the force.

They’d already dropped into and investigated five other star systems over the previous weeks. The prince had given the scout ship and its crew the most important of the scouting missions. They were following a path straight toward Earth and investigating any star system that might contain a colony or enemy base. They’d found one small facility, totally destroyed years earlier, but it had been a mining outpost, not a colony.

Rainbow had been sitting in stealth and watching this system, MT Pegasi, for two days. According to the colonists of Serenity, it had been a thriving colony, eighty light years from Earth, when the Mordorians had declared war. Marcus hadn’t seen any human activity, but there’d been plenty of Mordorian ships coming and going.

Marcus’ XO had suggested the plan they’d used. He’d tucked Rainbow Dash behind an enormous ore carrier that was about to enter the system.

“Don’t worry, Skipper,” the XO stated. “I’ve got an emergency jump already plotted, and we can be out in ten seconds. Besides, we’re jumping almost five light hours out from the primary, and we’ll have a gas giant between us and anything else in the system. It’ll be okay.”

“Easy enough for you to say, Jerry,” Marcus said. “You’re not the one that’ll have to write the letters to wives and parents if I screw up.”

“You won’t be writing them either, Skipper—” the XO chortled “—since they’ll blast you out of space just like the rest of us.”

“Translating in five, four, three, two, one,” the sensor operator/helmsman counted down.

Marcus felt the familiar queasiness he experienced when passing through a hyper portal. Suddenly, the tactical display cleared, and they were in the system. It seemed like the longest ten seconds of his life as the sensors updated the displays.

“Jump complete,” the XO announced.

Then Marcus heard the most important report.

“No contacts within one light minute,” the sensor specialist announced.

Marcus could finally breathe a sigh of relief. Even if someone had detected them entering the system, no one was close enough to keep them from jumping out.

“I’m actually picking up human-type electronic signals, Captain,” the sensor specialist said.

“I can confirm that,” said the XO. “It’s old-style radio and vid. No different from the samples you see in the Imperial Museum from the old days.” The Imperial Museum had a vast collection of electronic and video devices from the early days of the colony.

“We follow the plan, people,” Marcus reminded everyone on the bridge. “We’ll sit here for four hours like a hole in space and wait for the sensors to completely update.

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