The Clones of Mawcett by Thomas DePrima Read Free Book Online

breathed a silent sigh of relief.
Jenetta had just taken her first steps to leave the cargo bay when an SC officer standing outside the ship requested to come aboard. Although she couldn't see the officer from where she was standing, Jenetta immediately nodded to the officer of the deck. She'd recognized the voice as belonging to Commander Kanes of Space Command Intelligence. As she moved to greet the five-foot eleven-inch SCI officer, she saw that each shoulder now sported four wide gold bars, instead of the three he had worn previously.
“Welcome aboard, Captain Kanes. Congratulations on your promotion, sir. I hadn't heard.”
“Thank you, Jen,” he said, fixing his piercing steel-grey eyes on her. “It only became official at the beginning of the month.”
“Will you be accompanying us to Nordakia, sir?”
“Yes, and then on to Higgins Space Port at Vinnia.”
“To clean out your desk, sir?”
“No, I'll be staying on at Higgins.”
“Oh, I would have thought that the promotion would bring you back to SCI on Earth.”
“I've been appointed Head of Intelligence for that entire deca-sector now. My position gives me certain latitudes and I've decided to make Higgins my base of operations. It will be easier to control things if I'm out where the action is.”
“I see.”
“There's still a job open for you if you want it. I need all the good people that I can get.”
Jenetta smiled. “Thank you, sir, but I'm happy just being the second officer aboard the Prometheus.”
“Okay, Jen, but the offer remains open.”
“Thank you, sir. Shall I escort you to your quarters, or would you prefer to see the Captain first.”
“Captain Gavin has been notified that I'm coming aboard. I'll go to my quarters now and see him later.”
“Very good, Captain.”
Jenetta escorted Kanes to the deck reserved for special visitors, and, after arranging for a VIP suite, took a few minutes to inform him of the gift she'd received from the Raider commandant, Mikel Arneu. After promising to bring the cases to his suite when a time could be arranged, so that he might examine them, she walked to her own quarters and prepared for bed. Kanes' offer of a job was probably the sixth time that he had asked her to join his unit. He'd been after her ever since she'd been court-martialed for detonating the bomb that destroyed a Raider base and killed more than eighteen thousand Raiders. When she later killed an armed assassin with a single kick to the head, he stepped up his efforts to recruit her, but her heart still belonged to Prometheus. In her mind, he was the best ship in the fleet, and she couldn't imagine leaving to accept a post anywhere else.
The nearly two-kilometer long battleship backed silently away from the spaceport dock and departed for Nordakia while Jenetta was still deeply cocooned in slumber. They were already trillions of kilometers away from Earth by the time she awoke, showered, and prepared herself to attend dinner on the VIP deck with the delegation. Captains Gavin and Kanes were regaling the delegates with stories from their years in the service, when she arrived. Gavin interrupted his current tale to greet Jenetta and again introduce her to the Council members. She smiled and shook each representative's hand once more.
The delegation of three male and two female Galactic Alliance Senators seemed intent on hearing every detail of the adventure for which Jenetta was being awarded the medal by the Nordakian government, so she was the center of conversation on this first night out. She was kept busy answering questions until it was time for her to leave for her 2400 duty shift. One of the delegates, Justine Gordal, even asked the Captain if she might be allowed to stay longer, but Gavin responded that they had months to hear about her adventures and that Jenetta was needed on the bridge to command the watch for the next eight hours. Jenetta was grateful that she could finally get away from the questions for a while.
The ship