Lieutenant Marcola Read online

  Lieutenant Marcola

  AGU® Border Patrol - Book 04

  Copyright ©2018 by Thomas J. DePrima

  19.g.28

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The scanning, uploading, downloading, and/or distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal, and punishable by law.

  No part of this novel may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the copyright holder, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-13 (eBook): 978-1-61931-036-0

  ISBN-10 (eBook): 1-61931-036-8

  ISBN-13 (Print): 978-1-61931-037-7

  ISBN-10 (Print): 1-61931-037-6

  Cover Image from: Shutterstock.com

  Photo Manipulation by: Thomas J. DePrima

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you share it. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to the owner and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  An appendix containing political and technical data highly pertinent to this series is included at the back of this book.

  To contact the author, or see information about his other novels, visit:

  www.deprima.com

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to my copy editor Myra Shelley ([email protected])

  and her team for a job done well and completed quickly.

  I also want to thank Ted King, Mike Norcutt, and Jim Hicinbothom

  for their speedy and detailed reviews of the rough draft before we entered the editing phase.

  This series of novels includes:

  AGU:® Border Patrol…

  Citizen X

  Clidepp Requital

  Clidepp Déjà Vu

  Lieutenant Marcola

  Other series and novels by the author:

  A Galaxy Unknown®…

  A Galaxy Unknown®

  Valor at Vauzlee

  The Clones of Mawcett

  Trader Vyx

  Milor!

  Castle Vroman

  Against All Odds

  Return to Dakistee

  Retreat And Adapt

  Azula Carver

  Changing of the Guard

  The Invasion Begins

  Beyond the Rift

  AGU:® SC Intelligence…

  The Star Brotherhood

  Colton James novels…

  A World Without Secrets

  Vengeance Is Personal

  When The Spirit…

  When The Spirit Moves You

  When The Spirit Calls

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  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

  Appendix

  Map

  Chapter One

  ~ June 25th, 2287 ~

  Sydnee's heart seemed to be beating faster than was humanly possible. It was after midnight, and the tiny sliver of light provided by a small, distant moon was barely adequate to illuminate the ground in front of her as she strained to hear any sounds that would indicate danger was near. This was her first trip down to the capital city of Yolongus, and when she managed to block out the pounding of her heart, the only other sounds she heard were the soft footfalls of her own carefully placed steps.

  She had studied the map before beginning the mission, but after fifteen minutes of trying to escape pursuit by unknown individuals, she had lost her bearings. She believed she was close to the deserted warehouse on whose roof she had parked her shuttle, but she was unsure in which direction she should be traveling.

  She stopped for just a moment to check the map on her viewpad. The light provided by the small device was extremely dim, but in the darkness that surrounded her, it was enough to give away her position. A flurry of laser flashes suddenly flew in her direction, all narrowly missing her. The light from the viewpad had been so faint that the shooters hadn’t been able to target her properly, and none had gotten lucky— this time.

  As laser flashes continued to barely miss, she dove for protection behind a low stone wall. Her cover story for this mission was that she was a human who’d been enslaved by the Clidepp government, so she hadn’t been able to wear the DS personal armor that would have enabled her to walk through the city almost without fear. Almost, because, as everyone knew, where there were laser weapons, there might also be RPG weapons and hand grenades, although the local police on the Clidepp home world were rarely so armed. Laser pistols and rifles were more than adequate to put down any citizen insurrection and even fight civilian crime on a planet where the citizenry wasn’t armed.

  Many decades ago, the government of Yolongus had required that all civilian-owned weapons be registered with the local police or the owner could face severe fines and even suffer imprisonment. When the registration process had been completed, the government then asked— purely in the interest of protecting the civilians from a small handful of deranged people— that the hundreds of millions of law-abiding civilians voluntarily turn in all weapons. The populace, for the most part, complied. After that, government law enforcement officers visited everyone who hadn't complied and confiscated the weapons the owners had failed to surrender voluntarily. A substantial number of citizens had died during those confiscations, all quite accidentally, according to the secret police charged with collecting all guns on the planet. A few civilians, those who wisely hadn’t registered their weapons or turned them in, still had their guns. Unfortunately, most were ancient lead-projectile weapons that presented little danger to anyone wearing armor. So, the people firing at Sydnee with laser weapons most likely had to be either the local police, the secret police, or the military. The local police might not have anything more dangerous than laser pistols or laser rifles, but the secret police and the military were well armed with much more deadly ordnance.

  As Sydnee squatted behind the wall, looking at the map while trying to block the dim light from other eyes, she sought to determine which direction would take her to the warehouse and how she might reach it with her position now known. Her attention was instantly yanked from the map as a grenade practically landed in her lap.

  Sydnee instinctively jumped up and over the low protective wall of stone in a quick movement reminiscent of a startled housecat on Earth. Landing on her back on the other side, she remained flattened against the ground as an explosion shook the pavement beneath her. It was too dangerous to remain where she was, so she jumped to her feet again and began running in the direction where the laser flashes seemed lightest. Each ti
me she identified where a flash had originated and was able to see what appeared to be a person’s shape, she fired her laser pistol in that direction. She finally got a good look at one of the shooters when laser flashes in his background briefly illuminated his shape. From the uniform he was wearing, she knew him to be part of the secret police agency known as the Qummuc. Halting briefly, she managed to take down that attacker and three of his associates, then continued her flight and rounded the corner of a building at the end of the block. She didn't know if she’d killed any of them, but each had stopped shooting and fallen backwards in response to her fire.

  As she hurried down a side street, she seemed safe for the moment, but she couldn’t stop to catch her breath. The surviving attackers would be on her trail in a minute, and she knew there were a lot more back there than the four she’d shot at. At times, it had seemed like she was fighting an entire brigade.

  As Sydnee raced down another street, she spotted the one-story warehouse she’d been searching for. It gave her renewed strength, and she ran flat out to reach the safety of the structure. She entered the alleyway next to the building and pulled open the door to an interior stairwell that led to the roof. Bounding up the stairs two at a time, she reached the roof in just eight seconds.

  She opened the door cautiously and scanned the roof before leaving the comparative safety of the stairwell. Seeing no one, she hurried to her shuttle, raced up the ramp, and entered the small ship. She then smacked the plate on the bulkhead that would retract the ramp while sealing the hatch. As Sydnee began to relax, she released a sigh of relief. But she’d been premature. Before the hatch had fully closed, an RPG round entered the shuttle’s rear cabin. There was nowhere to run within the confines of the ship, nor was there enough time to get clear. As the round exploded, everything was suddenly bathed in blinding light, followed by total blackness.

  A few seconds later, her surroundings illuminated to normal levels, and a horn sounded somewhere as the holographic ship around her disappeared. Sydnee discovered that she was lying on a raised platform with low walls and not in a shuttle after all.

  "Excellent score for your first time through the new Marine Combat Range, Syd," Marine First Lieutenant Kelly MacDonald said as she walked up to the raised platform. "Congratulations."

  "Damn it, Kel," Sydnee said. "I thought I was going to make it to safety."

  "You came close, Syd," First Lieutenant Martin Aguilo, the range officer, said from behind MacDonald. "You just failed to check the surrounding roofs before lowering your guard. There was a member of the secret police hiding behind a pile of refuse on the roof of the building across from the shuttle location. A simple thermal scan would have revealed him. As you ran up the shuttle’s ramp, he stepped out and fired the RPG launcher."

  "What was my score up until that RPG round entered the shuttle?"

  "Your final score was four hundred thirty," MacDonald said. "If you’d spotted that secret policeman on the roof before he fired, you might have survived that final RPG round, and you would have been the very first to receive a perfect score of five hundred. As it is, you’re in the top five percent of the range leaders. That's incredible for a first run."

  "I'll do better next time."

  "Care to go again now?" Aguilo asked. “We’ll reset the game to another part of the city.”

  "Are you kidding? I'm wiped out. I doubt if I could score a hundred the way I feel right now."

  Kelly MacDonald chuckled. "Exactly the way I felt after my first time. And after my second and third time as well."

  "You've really outdone yourself, Martin," Sydnee said with a smile. "This has to be the greatest Marine Combat Range on any ship in the fleet."

  "Thanks, Syd," Lt. Aguilo said. "We spent a long time planning it and then even more time constructing it. I wanted it to be the best."

  "You succeeded. I'm anxious to go again— but not tonight."

  "I hope you have a chance before your next mission."

  "I should. I told Captain Lidden that my people and I need three weeks’ downtime before we deploy again. My entire crew needs a long rest after those months of surreptitious activity in Clidepp space. But I heard SCI is pressuring him already. They want us to drop off that Yolongi minister before he tries to claim citizenship in the G.A. from having been in our custody for so long."

  "Technically, he's been in orbit around Yolongus for most of the time since we kidnapped him," MacDonald said, "although he's been inside a prison cell inside a Space Command vessel."

  "True. And he’s logged more kilometers in a CPS than most members of Space Command,” Sydnee said with a chuckle. “I’m reasonably confident after our last mission that we now have the right person in custody for the bombing of the trade show. So, all I want to do is drop the innocent minister off on his home planet and consider our role in this complete.”

  “We still have to seed the Clidepp Empire with the spy satellites.”

  “Maybe not, Kel. If we do have the real Citizen X this time, SCI may cancel that part of the operation. Bringing back his two top lieutenants was the icing on the cake.”

  * * *

  “What have you learned?” Prime Minister Gustallo Plelillo screamed at the military officer who’d just stepped into his office. Plelillo ruled his nation with an iron fist, demanding absolute loyalty and obedience.

  “The captain of your personal yacht keeps repeating the same story over and over. He says they were attacked by a ship they were never able to see with their cameras and that never showed up on radar. The captain of that mystery ship called herself Captain Anne Bonny. She demanded that the two top persons aboard the ship climb into a shuttle and fly over to their ship. They said they’d guide the shuttle once it left the yacht. The captain says they had no choice. The unknown ship had already destroyed the yacht’s temporal generator so it couldn’t get away. And they were threatening to completely destroy the yacht if they didn’t comply. The yacht has no offensive weapons and was helpless.

  “So, your son sent two of his people over. Bonny must have realized the two weren’t the top people, and she demanded that the top person aboard the yacht come to their ship at once. She again warned that failure to comply would result in the destruction of the yacht. Bonny then sent the yacht’s own shuttle back to ferry him over. The captain says they never even saw who was piloting the small craft. As soon as your son climbed in, the hatch was closed, and the shuttle pulled away. That was the last time they saw any of the three.

  “When they heard nothing for hours, they tried to contact the ship or the shuttle, but they received no response. The captain decided to take the course the shuttle had followed. They’d been able to follow its course on radar and could see it was still there, but when they arrived at its location, all they found was an empty shuttle. They performed a standard search of the area, but they never found the three individuals who’d gone to meet Captain Bonny, and they never even caught sight of the mystery ship.”

  “A ship that can’t be seen by radar? Impossible. Go back and grill the captain again. He has to be hiding something. Squeeze him until he splits wide open like a melon. I want to know what happened to my son.”

  “Sir, I heard a rumor that some time ago a Space Command ship stopped a freighter in our space and demanded food. They didn’t steal it. They paid for it in G.A. Credits.”

  “Yes, I heard about that. What of it?”

  “Well, I also heard that they never saw the ship until it was next to the freighter and threatening to fire on it unless it stopped. The security officer aboard that freighter swears they never DeTected the ship as it approached them, and it remained invisible to their radar even when it was stopped alongside.”

  “Are you sure of your facts?”

  “I didn’t speak to the security officer personally, sir, so I can’t swear to it. But the informant who told me has always been extremely reliable.”

  “A black Space Command vessel that can’t be seen on radar? Yes, it’s all startin
g to make sense. All the attacks on this planet occurred at night, and no one ever saw the attackers. Someone blacked out the city just before the attacks on our holding facilities and slave marketplace. There have been numerous attacks where no one ever saw a thing. Black ships that can’t be seen on radar would explain many things. I’ve heard that Space Command is using black ships exclusively now, but I never heard about them being invisible to radar. So, how do we target it the next time one attacks?”

  “I have no idea, sir. Perhaps one of our scientists might know.”

  “See what you can find out. Did you damage the captain of my yacht to a point where he’s of no further use?”

  “No, sir. He has some bruises and will need a few days to recover from muscle strains. That’s all.”

  “Very well. Release him and send him back to my yacht. It appears he couldn’t have done anything to stop the events that occurred.”

  “Yes, sir. Is there anything else you wish us to do regarding the unseen ship that took your son?”

  “Until we learn a bit more about it, there’s nothing to be done. But keep your people on the case, and report anything you hear.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  Lt. Sydnee Marcola stepped into the captain’s office when the double doors slid back into their pockets on either side of the entranceway. Walking to the captain’s desk, she stopped two feet away and braced to attention before saying, “Lieutenant Marcola reporting to the captain as ordered.”

  Lidden looked up from the viewpad he held in one hand and said, “At ease, Sydnee. Have a seat,” before returning his attention to the viewpad.