Battlecruiser Alamo - 7 - Battlecruiser Alamo: Sacred Honor Read Free

smile and bounded to his feet.
     “Anyone missing?”
     She shook her head, “All accounted for.”
     “Thank goodness for that.” He pulled his rumpled dress uniform, making a vain attempt to smooth out the crease, then shrugged. “Mr. Quinn…”
     “I’ll have a full report with you as soon as I can.”
     “Good. Do a full check of the other key areas of the ship.”
     “I already did, sir,” Quinn replied, quietly. “I don’t see how it can have been battle damage.”
     Marshall’s face dropped, “You know what you are saying, I presume.”
     “It has to have been sabotage, sir. There’s no other possibility that makes sense.”
     

Chapter 2
     
     There was something forlorn about a long-deserted bar. Quinn’s wife – during the time she was stationed on Alamo – had managed to con vert a cubby-hole in the maintenance levels into a squadron rec room; with no fighter pilots stationed on the ship any more, it had fallen into disuse. As far as Marshall knew, the only people who knew about the place were dead, light-years away, or on their way here for a quiet meeting.
     He glanced around the pin-up posters on the wall, shaking his head. Normally he’d be talking to his officers in a formal briefing room, all high-tech and holodisplays. Not in a dingy corner of a sparsely-occupied deck . Sometimes he forgot how big Alamo really was, spoiled by the elevators that whisked him from compartment to compartment. Half a mile of tangling corridors and compartments added up to a lot of room.
     Lance-Corporal Cooper was the first to arrive, frowning as he crawled into the compartment. Technically, Lieutenant-Major Diego should be representing the espatiers, but this was decidedly not a normal meeting. This one was invitation only, and Marshall was being exceptionally cautious with the guest list.
     “What’s this all about, sir?” he asked, looking around.
     “I’ll tell you when the rest get here. How’s your new officer working out?”
     “Seems fine so far, sir,” Cooper replied, puzzled.
     “Getting him broken in, then,” Marshall said with a grin. “ Havin g a new commanding officer is always fun for a while.” The young trooper began to blush, and he decided to let him off the leash a little, “Just keep doing what you’ve been doing, and I’m sure everything will be fine.”
     “Yes, sir,” Cooper said, gratefully.
     Lieutenant Caine, his Tactical Officer and one of his oldest friends was next to arrive, sliding in from behind him to land on a pile of scattered seat cushions. She peered around in the gloom, then looked up at him.
     “Should I get the drinks in?”
     “Not today, Deadeye. This is business.”
     “Spoilsport.”
     Quinn, for once in a fresh uniform, crawled in from another shaft, looking around quizzically, nodding at Caine. He tossed a datapad over the Marshall, who snatched it out of the air and started to scan it.
     “Report on the hangar bay. It was sabotage. A microscopic shaped charge. Really good work, it took quite a lot of digging to find it.”
     “Who else knows about this?”
     “Just you. I haven’t briefed Lieutenant, ah, Bailey yet. She’s still working on the software.”
     “Good.” He tapped a couple of buttons, encrypting the contents of the datapad. “This is excellent work. Unfortunately, Quinn, you found evidence that it was a malfunction in the hull sensors that caused your team to miss a microfracture after the last battle.”
     “What?” Shaking his head, he continued, “Sir, I checked the maintenance records twice. There is no way that a fracture of this sort would have been missed, and I found traces of the chemical used on the bulkhead. This was deliberate, Captain.”
     “I accept your word that this is sabotage, Lieutenant, but if we have someone on board, I’d rather they not be aware that we are onto them. That could easily lead them to try something desperate, and I don’t