“He on our side yet?” she asked.
“Yes,” Marshall replied with a nod.
“Good. We've got to get out of the system.”
A frown spreading across his face, Marshall said, “We'll be on our way home in four days.”
“No, no, faster,” she replied. “I've taken a first look at the data. Some of it is dynamite.”
“I'm sure you're anxious to get it back to Intelligence for analysis...”
“Home?” She paused, shook her head, and said, “No, not what I meant, sir. We've got to go to GJ 1116. It's on our way anyway, just a slight detour.”
“Into uncharted space,” Salazar said. “As far as I know, no ship has ever gone there.”
“Not and gone back,” Gurung added. “I remember hearing about one of our scout ships going missing in that region.”
“That clinches it,” Harper said. “Sir, the not-men, they sent a ship of their own out there, about a month ago, shortly after the Gladwyn Jebb left.”
“Did you know anything about this, Sergeant?” Marshall asked.
“No, but that doesn't mean a thing,” he replied. “I was never privy to everything that went on in orbit at the best of times.”
“It was one of their scoutships, sir, and they were planning to head out that way to recover it. Their top priority.”
“Harper, I don't think we can risk...”
“We can't not risk!” she said, pulling a piece of paper out of her pocket. “There are two planets in the system, and they sent two ships to scout it out. All contact was lost with one of them, some sort of viral infection, but the ship is still there.”
“Hold on a moment,” Salazar said. “You're saying that there is an empty scoutship, sitting in orbit around a planet in a system one jump away, and it's just waiting there for us to find?”
“It can't be a trap, not this time,” Harper said. “There's no way they can have known we'd find out about it. Sir, we've got to move on this. The Republic must know about this as well, from their own teams on that raid, and they can get forces in from Procyon faster than we can from Ragnarok.”
“Something out there that eats starships,” Salazar mused.
“How sure are you of this?” Marshall asked.
“Damn sure, sir,” she said. “The computer's got a big enough data sample that we've getting better at their language. Captain, the intelligence possibilities...”
“I know,” he replied.
“It's a big risk,” Salazar said. “Taking the ship into uncharted space in this condition. Even if it doesn't lengthen the trip home.”
Nodding, Marshall pulled out his communicator, and said, “Lieutenant Race, this is the Captain. I need you to plot a new course, to GJ 1116, with a departure as soon as possible. Department heads meeting in thirty minutes.”
“We're doing it?” Salazar asked.
“A wise man once said, Sub-Lieutenant, that sometimes you have to take a big risk or lose the whole game. Now go to your quarters and get some rest. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and this war has only just begun.”
Thank you for reading ' Not In My Name'. For information on future releases, please join the Battlecruiser Alamo Mailing List at http://eepurl.com/A9MdX for updates. If you enjoyed this book, please review it on the site where you purchased it.
The writer's blog is available at http://tinyurl.com/pjl96dj
Look out for Battlecruiser Alamo: Cage of Gold, coming in November 2015...
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29