Empire of Bones by Terry Mixon Read Free Book Online Page A

“That’s excellent news. I officially retract my disapproval. Hell, you could’ve missed this briefing and I’d still be happy to hear things are improving on that front. Might I ask what happened to make things better?”
    “Princess Kelsey expressed an interest in the expedition. She wanted to hear everything I could tell her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she started working on an angle to help with future expeditions.”
    “I hope she does. An Imperial patron would be helpful in a number of ways. She could help shepherd an increased budget through the tight-fisted old men in the Imperial Senate. Of course, a major find by any of the teams will spark a full-blown follow-up and have incalculable benefit for Fleet.”
    Admiral Yeats rose and Jared stood. He clapped his hand on Jared’s shoulder. “I wish you the very best of luck, Commander. Go bring home the bacon, and bring your people back with it.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    He followed the admiral out of the briefing room and fought the crowds toward the upper levels of the orbital. Athena’s cutter waited there. The rest of the crew was already aboard ship so he was the only passenger.
    The trip was brief. He took a moment to admire Athena’s lines through the port. Athena was only a destroyer, so she looked like a toy beside Best Deal , the converted freighter housing the science teams.
    Freighters needed to be large to carry as much cargo as possible between systems. It stretched 3,500 meters and looked like a block 450 meters wide and tall. It displaced millions of tons and could only crawl along under that tremendous load, even with upgraded drives.
    The labs only took up a small amount of that vast space. They’d left the remaining cargo areas as-is to carry any recovered artifacts. Six cargo shuttles seemed like overkill to Jared, but the ship normally carried them as well as two civilian personnel cutters. Jared had to admit they might come in handy.
    The freighter normally flew with thirty officers, and three hundred and seventy crewmembers, but that took a full load of cargo into account. The Captain of Best Deal had released two hundred of his crew slots to the science teams. That made the remaining crew grumble, but if push came to shove, they could compel the scientists into manual labor. Although Jared was sure doing so would cause innumerable complaints.
    Athena might look like a minnow beside Best Deal , but she was a deadly one. She was a mere six hundred meters in length. Her hull was one hundred and twenty meters across and eighty tall. Her crew compliment was much larger than the size difference would suggest, with twenty-one Fleet officers and two hundred and twenty nine crewmembers. The ship also had a detachment of thirty marines to provide armed personnel.
    She also had twice the speed of the massive freighter. This meant that she could make the journey to the target star system in a little over two weeks if traveling alone.
    Thankfully, the flip points in a system were usually just outside the system’s habitable zone. If they were further out the trip would take even longer.
    The placement had something to do with the mass of the host stars, but that didn’t seem to dictate the number of flip points in a system. It made cosmologists a little crazy because no one really knew why only some stars had them. If someone ever figured out that mystery, he or she would win the Lucien Prize for sure.
    The cutter maneuvered adroitly to the forward docking port assigned it and mated with hardly a bump. Jared waited for the light over the lock to go green and entered his ship. Athena had three personnel cutters and two marine combat pinnaces. The marine small craft berthed at the aft of the ship near marine country. Up front, the cutters took up three of the four docks. The fourth was for visiting vehicles.
    The closest lift took him to the bridge in a matter of minutes. It wasn’t in the nose of the ship as the entertainment vids liked to portray,