Rogue Navy (Green Zone War Book 4) by Jake Elwood

Author:Jake Elwood [Elwood, Jake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-08T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

“Status,” Tom said as he entered the bridge. The new bridge crew wore armbands with a dark red stripe. They had been the crew of a raider called Mist Along the Ground, now destroyed.

“There’s a supply ship inbound,” Brian Tucker said. “A Dawn Alliance ship,” he added unnecessarily. Once concern of Tom’s – that he would need a lot of time to break in a new bridge crew – was quickly fading. His people were learning their new jobs with commendable speed. In fact, it was forcing him to admit that sheer culture shock, rather than inexperience, was the reason for most of his earlier problems. Putting people back in the teams they were accustomed to was helping with that. Helping a lot, if he was honest with himself.

“The show’s pretty much over,” Tucker went on. “The UW lit them up while they were still five thousand K away. They had three fighters as an escort. Those were all destroyed. The supply ship landed, but she had three or four holes in her, and she was on fire by the time she touched down.”

Tom nodded. The destruction of the supply ship was good news, though hardly critical. Much more significant was the fact that the supplies had gotten through. Every piece of intelligence they had said the Dawn Alliance ground forces were desperate. Short of ammunition, short of food, they were rapidly losing effectiveness as a fighting force. Even one freighter full of supplies would give them a significant reprieve.

“They sounded All Hands before they knew it was just the one ship,” said Tucker.

It was no great inconvenience. The crew of the Kingfisher was due back aboard within another hour or two. “Since we’re all here,” Tom said, “we might as well get some work done.” He glanced toward the Communications station. What was the name of the man on the radios? He'd taken serious injuries when the Mist was destroyed. A couple of canes, magnetized to keep them in place, leaned against his console. Tom had barely spoken to the man, but he could see a fierce determination to do his part written all over the man’s face.

“Carter?” Tom said.

“Cortes, Captain.” Cortes grinned. “You were close.”

“Find out if anyone needs to go back groundside, if you please, Cortes. Then inform the crew that we’re going hunting.”

That brought smiles from every station on the bridge. Hunting was what the coyotes knew best. Waging a defensive war, floating in orbit and waiting for the enemy to attack, would never come naturally to them.

Nor was it necessary. The UW Navy was doing a bang-up job of maintaining a tight blockade around New Panama. Their emphasis was on protecting their own base and ground forces, but the blockade kept the colony more or less safe as well. Bombers still slipped through, of course, but an invasion force would never make it.

Which freed up the Free Neorome Navy to do what it did best.

They broke orbit and moved away from the planet with a quartet of small raiders behind them.

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