Resilience (Warner's World Book 6) Read Free Page B

here deep in enemy space, over a rogan home world no less, so the Commodore could negotiate a deal with the Cheklin Resistance. Two rogan capital and two light ships patrolled the space above the planet along with the massive Dogon space station and its missiles batteries and fighter squadrons.
    This was not a good place to be for a single frigate, especially one carrying only two of its normal 100 missiles. It did have one advantage over its adversaries and it was a big advantage. The Phantom was one of the new third generation stealth ships. It had warped in cloaked and would remain cloaked till they left.
    While cloaked they were invisible to enemy radar and could only be detected by enemy ladar if they were directly looking at the craft. They could launch their stealth shuttles, known affectionately as warthogs, but otherwise they could not fire missiles, beam or pulse weapons or send radio signals, other than tight band, or emit any other emissions. Doing so would expose them to detection and most likely destruction.
    Aubrey’s blond ponytail bobbed at the back of her head as she entered the hangar bay walking briskly. She looked across at Julian as he yawned. 1 st Lt Tola Puchanski was next to him doing a pre mission check with Sergeant (Sgt) Madge Soderberg, leader of Bravo Team – the marines that would accompany them.
    “Don’t worry Sir we’ll be hanging around for the duration” said Aubrey.
    “That’s reassuring Aubrey” he said.
    It was at that moment that Aubrey was hailed. “Yes, what is it.”
    “You and the Commodore should see this before you go” said 2 nd Lt Neo Kone, the ships communications and intelligence (CI) officer. “It’s important.”
    “Sir, we have to go back up” conveyed Aubrey. Julian nodded without asking why. If the truth be known he was still trying to wake up. He yawned several times as they ascended the elevator to A deck.
    In the command centre Neo drew their attention to the report just in from Q2. “It’s from LCmd Simons” he said.
    Aubrey felt a gnawing pain in her gut. Five days ago she had left Q2 to deliver the Commodore to Cheklin. Her mission had been, in conjunction with the stealth frigates Spectre and Raptor, to secure Q2, pending the arrival of the rest of the 17 th Flotilla.
    Q2 was the second planet in the Qwantum system. It was in the rogan extended territories, further out from their home world systems, and the scene of the first use of a mass exchanger device. That device had created a massive gravitational anomaly on the outer gas giant, Q4. Q4 was now in the process of pulling the inner frozen giant, Q3, towards itself. It was estimated they had less than 12 months before the systems gravitational state made warping in and out of it unsafe. That would spell the end of the system.
    But Phil Yomoto wanted to use Q2 as a staging base, even if only for a year. His combined fleet was in warp to Q2, hence why it was important to keep it secure.
    They had already fought one action there against two enemy frigates and all three federation frigates were low on missiles. Against her own better judgement, Aubrey had let the Commodore persuade her to leave the defence of Q2 to the other two stealth frigates, along with all but two of her missiles.
    LCmd Art Simons was the political officer left on Q2 to liaise with the Resistance there. He would not be sending a trivial message.
    Aubrey read the message with the Commodore. Her worst fears were realised. They were under attack from the Third Rogan Imperial Fleet (3 rd RIF). The spaceport at Rollinium along with a good portion of the inner city had been destroyed. Their Control team at the spaceport were dead. Aubrey immediately thought of her friend LCmd Sue Chalker who was in charge of the support droids defending the spaceport. “Fuck it” she said out loud.
    “Wait” said Julian as he scrolled down to read more. Aubrey breathed a sigh of relief when she read ‘Sue’s fine.’ But then she felt her neck