Interloper (The Askirti Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  “I don’t know what you are doing here, lady, but just remember ‘accidents’ happen on the battlefield,” Anderson said with an almost guttural voice.

  Jackie calmly appraised him as a predator would evaluate their prey. Perhaps an accident would happen, but it would not be to her.

  “PVC Anderson! Back to your place, idiot!” yelled Commander Amori, standing not six meters from her with two of his squad leaders.

  Just then they heard the buzz of gunfire. Thankfully it was all stun level, and computer monitored. Events like this were supposed to be safe. Well, as safe as simulated battle could be with dozens of soldiers on each side ready to crush one another to prove a point.

  “Jackie, you best come with me,” said Rick.

  “I’ve got other plans, Commander,” she replied.

  He looked at her with a curious eye as she walked away, right through a debris field of broken glass that should be crunching under her feet. To the surprise of the commander and his squad leaders standing right next to him, not a single sound from her steps could be heard. Then when she was about twenty meters away, she just vanished.

  Rick was in shock! It was dark, but it should not have been that dark that someone would disappear while directly in his line of sight! And the silence of her egress, not even the elite troops could manage that!

  Jackie was giggling inside. Again, her Askirti heritage came into play. She could emit anti-sound. It was enough to hide small noises but only muffle larger ones. She had lots of practice though walking through debris in her home city and learned the hard way how to be quiet. By using a soft step and avoiding the larger pieces of glass, her anti-sound could be eerie quiet. Though if she stepped on anything big, the gig was up.

  The invisibility, however, was hard to manage and required much of her concentration. It was not active camouflage as powered armor units, otherwise known as PAUs, or even tanks might have, but a temporary field that would prevent light from being reflected. What was actually seen, if evaluated closely, was more of a person-sized smudge of darkness. The black was all that would be perceived by the naked eye.

  All objects seen are seen only because of the light sources in the room reflecting off the hard surfaces and into the direction of the observer. What her field did was prevent visible light from being reflected. Her ancestors long ago ascertained that an electromagnetic field was being deployed, preventing the reflection of visible light. The anti-sound seemed related to this same principal but was easier to manage. Unfortunately, the light absorption was only known to last for upwards of ten seconds, at least that was the record. Jackie could maintain it for two or three seconds, but it was lots of work.

  She was reasonably certain she was far enough away from them when she employed her invisibility that with the darkness of the area she could explain it away.

  She continued silently down an alley, ducking from cover to cover. Her night vision was remarkable, another gift of her genetics. The night vision goggles were more of a hindrance to her than anything else. Oh, she didn’t refuse them once offered, but that was to be seen as “fitting in.” As if she actually could be seen as “fitting in.”

  Five men approached her position. It was a single fireteam from Charlie company. She looked around and found she was not close to her team, so no calling backup. That was all right with her, as these five would make a nice first meal.

  Considering her approach, she did not want a “black smudge of death” to be “seen” approaching them. The cloak was best for slow movements, not fast ones, as the human eye could more easily track moving objects. Avoiding line of sight with the enemy was the best approach.

  Night vision goggles, in of itself, would not necessarily pick her up. Not unless they were using the glasses in thermal imagery mode as none of her tricks would hide her body heat. Her bet was that everyone was so used to the “hold” side losing that her opposition was too careless to worry about thermal, so she would get to be the “black smudge” for at least a few moments.

  She waited behind cover until they were distracted. Funny thing the distraction would be their noisy squad leader going over their next moves. She immediately employed her cloak and her anti-sound and silently crept up behind their position.

  Three seconds was just enough time.

  She got into position in time for her cloak to fizzle out. One of the squad members looked up with a puzzled look on her face, but it was too late. Jackie was at the ready and stunned the entire fireteam!

  She walked over and stole one of their radios. By listening in to the network, she could hear each of their commands and had an idea.

  “Alpha leader, this is Puke-One,” they thought of her as a navy “puke,” why not live up to expectations?

  “Uh, this is Alpha Leader. Jackie, what are you doing?”

  “Got the enemies comms. You are about to have company on your western flank as three tangos are on approach to the objective with heavies in tow,” Jackie said.

  “Roger roger, and thank you Puke-One!”

  Suddenly she heard a sharp uptick on the western flank as the three tangos were found out and taken down.

  ##

  As Rick listened to the tempo of the battle, he could tell the opposition was diminishing significantly. Yes, he still had his losses to deal with, but it was not the massacre he was expecting.

  He had been on each side often before. It always played out the same. This scenario was unprecedented! He was supposed to lose! And yet this naval officer, of all people, was schooling elite marines! He snickered as he thought it would have been more tolerable if she was not so hot!

  Before he knew it, the sound of gunfire had ceased.

  “You can come out now,” said a female voice just outside.

  “Jackie?” Rick answered.

  “Yes. Charlie company are all night-night. But I didn’t read them any bedtime stories,” she responded.

  Alpha company came out one by one looking at this tiny woman who looked so frail, yet had taken down nearly an entire company single-handedly.

  “Wow girl, you’ve got game!” said one of the female marines, smiling at her.

  ##

  “And so that’s when I started getting chewed out by the colonel saying ‘These screw-ups were supposed to be screwing you! There is no way I am going to report this to my superiors! As far as I’m concerned, this exercise never happened! Get out of my office!’” Rick said with tears in his eyes from laughing.

  Josh and Jeri both laughed loudly.

  “Barkeep, another round for my friends!” barked Josh. “Gee, Jeri. It looks like your mustang is a real hot deal! Yeah, I know she’s a looker. But I’m referring to the whole ‘super soldier’ thing.”

  “Josh, you sure there was nothing in her file?” Jeri asked, suddenly more serious. “Look, I want to keep her and all, but if I’m sitting on something I think it’s best to know now rather than later!”

  Josh did not speak for a moment. He had to consider his response. Jackie was an excellent officer and a credit to the service. But her actions were spooky. Finally, he decided the captain under his command was more important to be informed than to protect a young and promising officer. He just hoped it didn’t destroy her career.

  “She lied on her application to the navy.”

  After their last get together, Josh had pulled a few strings to get the full jacket on Commander Jacqueline Campo. Naval intelligence even having a file on her was a surprise.

  “Oh? Do tell,” Jeri responded a solemn tone. Lies were not something he viewed in a favorable light, not for any reason. And now he knew his XO had gone on record with a lie.

  Josh knew he opened the door and hated it. Here were a ship’s captain and a marine commander. Both were his friends. He felt a little dirty, but he would not hold back, not with his buddies.

  “Yea,” Josh said. “She lied about her origin. She said she was from Copus Prime. Look, people lie about where they are from all the time. And as long as they
are not from our enemies, we don’t care! But we have DNA records for most everyone ever born. If we don’t have you on file, we have a relative and can narrow it down in short order where you are from. It’s all part of our standard security checks.”

  Rick and Jeri both got a serious look on their faces.

  “Well crap man. So much for privacy,” Rick muttered.

  “Look,” Josh continued, “most nobody knows we do it. But it is necessary because the origin story is a common lie. People don’t like their hometown, don’t like their world, are running from something and just think they can disappear. So they join the largest, most paranoid organization who cares very much about you not disappearing! Makes no sense, but that’s how folks are. When there’s a discrepancy, we have a process to go through for clearing up the ‘why.' Your girl passed, so we looked no further.”

  “So where is she from?” Jeri demanded.

  “Earth,” Josh said slowly. “More specifically, Orlando.”

  Both of his friends went silent and became very still.

  Chapter 6

  WFS Colt

  The Kapa-Gamma-4 System

  Jackie woke at her predetermined time, thanks to an alarm on her tablet. And thanks to the needle. Ever since her participation in the marine exercises, her nightmares returned with a vengeance. She just could not function without the drugs even though she would be dismissed from the navy if she was found out.

  Thankfully highlights was not addictive, at least not chemically. Not only that, but all trace of it disappeared from your body quickly. Unless someone were tested within sixteen hours of use, the tests would always show negative. Not even hair growth samples tests revealed the illegal substance, which was something! Hair segments typically contained a record of every drug a person took during the period in which that segment grew. Highlights did not enter the hair follicles during intoxication. This complete lack of detectability made it an ideal high for anyone with jobs that may subject them to screening. Such as military.

  Highlights was known well in the military, and a real problem sometimes, with some crew showing up on the job high on the stuff. Anyone stupid enough to be caught high on the stuff received a dishonorable discharged that day!

  Jackie made sure she never took any when she was expected to be on duty within ten hours of injecting it. The dose she took gave her a high, but it was not substantial, and only lasted two or three hours. She has had sedatives that seemed to do more. But what it did was block out her dreams. At least the bad ones. She couldn’t remember if she had good ones on those nights she took the drug, but knowing she did not have the bad ones was enough for her.

  After showering, she got her white hair looking just perfect with a simple ponytail. She then put on her uniform, made sure everything looked just right and left her room.

  After grabbing breakfast in the officer’s mess, she made her way to the bridge and relieved the “night” watch.

  Having a day and a night on a warship in the middle of the abyss was a misnomer. The human body operated on twenty-four hour “days.” As such, warships in the Westly Federation ran more on “summer days.” That is, fifteen hours of “daytime,” and nine hours of “nighttime,” denoted by reduced lighting in all the common areas on the warship.

  The bridge of the Colt was not very big. It was a somewhat rectangular room with wall screens, consoles, and chairs. The room looked very dated. A dated command center for a dated destroyer.

  The Colt, while dated, at least had a CIC which could function as a separate bridge in the event of combat operations. Jackie had trained with the captain on its use and was horrified to learn that most captains thought it was a pointless waste of space and never trained their bridge crew to use it.

  She felt relatively sure the CIC could buy them perhaps a few precious seconds in combat to do real damage to an enemy if the bridge became disabled. But she had no illusions about her ship. It was old, and it was small. A few extra seconds would probably be all the ship had left to live.

  The Centaur class destroyers, being an average age of one hundred and twenty years, were over seven hundred meters in length, one hundred meters tall and one hundred and forty meters wide. They were often called “Cruiser-bait” because an opponent in a heavy cruiser or even a light cruiser would see them as an easy kill.

  At least she was well staffed and versatile. With almost five hundred naval personnel onboard to manage and maintain systems, and a company of marines, the Colt could start a small war in the outer systems! The ship even carried two MACs, or Marine Assault Craft, to invade or even board other ships.

  If they encountered pirates, the navy ship was not exactly defenseless. The Centaurs had two railgun turrets, each center-mounted. One dorsal and one ventral. Besides railguns, they possessed two long-range lasers, eight-point defense installations with twelve lasers each, operating on a rotation to allow for cooling, and two Smitz drones.

  Arnold Smitz had perfected the first usable defense drones for military spacecraft several hundred years prior, and hence the name stuck. The drones would form a constellation of defense around the warship to which it was assigned. They integrated seamlessly into the warships defense suite and acted as an extension of it.

  The old drones were not as fast as the destroyers, hence would not be very meaningful while attacking. In the defensive role, for which they were intended, they were superb. Each had two point defense batteries, a full electronic countermeasures suite, or ECM, and could even spoof the signature of the ship for which it was defending. If a missile got through the defensive layers, an unmanned drone would be destroyed instead of a valuable starship, crewed with hundreds of naval personnel.

  In Centaurs, a constellation meant only two active drones, with a third in reserve, stored in the hangar. As Jackie was assessing the defenses, she had to sigh. Even the version of the Smitz’s they possessed was old and out of date.

  At least the destroyer looked cool. Long, matte black with various protrusions. It looked intimidating. But she doubted any pirates would fear the looks of this museum relic.

  At least the designers had been thoughtful enough to include a generous number of missile ports. With eight missile batteries and each battery having four ports, she could unleash significant trouble on her foes. Too bad the tubes were too short for the newer missiles that went much faster and carried better ECM. As a point of consolation, the missiles themselves packed the same punch as those on more modern destroyers.

  Jackie did not even like thinking about the stealth suite. It was part of her job to cover its status every morning and affect repairs via crews and repair bots. The thing was, it just wasn’t possible. That part of the ship was not replaced seventeen years ago during the last “complete” refit. Budget constraints. They had a very dated stealth suite and one that didn’t work well at that. The ship’s engineers tried to accommodate and even came up with some innovative workarounds, but she had her doubts.

  She sighed again.

  These are but tools. I will be victorious regardless of these antiques!

  “Captain on the bridge!” announced the marine posted at the entrance.

  Jackie immediately got up from the captain’s chair and went to her station.

  “XO, anything to report?” asked her captain.

  “The new Mark-4b’s are giving us much better detail in this system than before. Probes two, fifteen and sixteen have shown evidence of activity we did not see with the Troy’s,” answered his XO.

  “How recent?”

  “Not recent enough,” she replied. “But we’ve only scanned a fourth of the system at this point.”

  Jeri sat there considering his XO. In the past month since he left Anderson Station, she has performed as her usually professional self. Always calm, always organized, and rarely any hint of emotion. Hard to believe in this small frame of a woman was someone who just a few weeks prior took down a company of marines. He didn’t feel entirely comfortable with that knowledge, nor the
knowledge of her planet and city of origin.

  My God, he thought to himself. She was just ten years old when Orlando fell. What she had to have seen is just unimaginable. But what has she become? I just hope I can steer her the right direction.

  He had no way of knowing her real age of forty. He had no way to know she was previously married, nor that she had three children, nor the gruesome deaths they each experienced while Jackie was made to watch.

  ##

  After the shift was over, Jackie went to the officer’s mess to grab a meal. She brought her tablet with her as she often attended to her priorities while eating. Besides, work was easier than dealing with people.

  Lieutenants Emilia Shepard and Rachel Mansfield entered the mess soon after Jackie. Those two seemed to hit it off as best buds, not that Jackie cared. Once upon a time, she cared greatly, but now it just hurt too much. Letting people in, loving people, being loved and being known, only to have it all ripped away. Only to see them sliced up right in front of you, dying grisly deaths. She never wanted to be close to anyone again. Sure, she feigned friendship with Emilia when they were in the academy together, it was a genuine attempt to return to who she was, but it was too much work to appear “normal.” The cost of caring for someone was too high. Emilia was someone Jackie could lose. And she was tired of loss.

  Better that people think she’s cold-hearted than to know the real her. The fragile her. The broken hearted her. She so much wanted to love people again. She so much wanted to be loved by people again. It was just that part of her seemed so far away.

  “Hi Commander, mind if we join you?” asked Emilia.

  Crap. How did I lose track of time? I meant to be gone, and now they want to be friendly.

  “Sure, have a seat. And we’re off duty. Rank is better left outside of here,” answered Jackie, trying to soften perhaps a bit.