The Terran Gambit (Episode #1: The Pax Humana Saga) by Endi Webb Read Free Book Online

something?”
    “I’m sure mom. Go check again—I got confirmation that it’s there. Maybe you missed it under the junk mail.”
    “Well, ok. Be right back.” He waited for her to reappear, and when she did, she grasped a shining silvery envelope, on which he could clearly see printed the words ‘Happy Birthday’. Man, that computer’s getting good.
    “Jacob, really? You’re really coming up here?”
    “Yeah, mom. Happy birthday!” He glanced out the window, and saw that the grav-car was slowing down. Eglin Space Force Base loomed nearby. “Hey, look mom, I’ve got to go. I’m back on duty.”
    “All right, dear. Say hi to your father for me.” She forced a smile. Jacob knew that in spite of the nasty divorce twenty years ago, she tried to keep things cordial for him and his sister.
    “Dad? Heh, I haven’t seen him in years.”
    “But Jacob, he’s right there in Destin. Really? Years?”
    “Yeah, mom. Hey, gotta go. Good to see you—you look great, by the way.” He swore he could see her blush.
    “Bye, sweetie. Call soon!” Her face disappeared, and he handed the pad back to Crash.
    “Sweet lady,” said Crash as he folded the pad and stuffed it in his pocket. The door opened for them automatically as the car landed, just outside the command center at Eglin.
    Jake nodded. “She’s the best.” The woman basically sacrificed her journalism career to raise him and his sister Claire all by herself. And yet, still, after all this time, she was classy enough to send regards to her ex-husband. Maybe she was right. He decided the first thing he’d do when he got back from the next mission would be to look him up. Destin was only ten miles away, after all.
     
     
    * * *
     
    The main briefing room in Eglin’s command complex was immense, with hundreds of seats arranged auditorium style, and enormous curved viewscreens wrapping the walls. They settled in some seats next to a few other Viper squad members, and conversed quietly—there was an odd mood in the air, not at all what one would expect the day after such a stunning victory.
    Several hundred officers jumped to their feet, and Jake, not seeing who had entered the room, rose with them. Through the doors behind the podium, a tall, bald, elderly-looking officer made his way onto the central dais, and approached the microphone.
    “Greetings,” said Admiral Pritchard. “Please sit.” His voice was unusually subdued, and a knot began to form in Jake’s stomach.
    Kit leaned over to him. “This sounds bad, whatever it is.”
    Jake nodded, and focused on the wrinkled face of the Admiral. “At oh seven hundred, our listening post in low orbit around Arcturus picked up a gravitic signal. The signature of the spectrum indicates an imperial presence, and after careful analysis we’ve determined that the mass displacement at the source of the signal was on the order of three or four billion metric tons.”
    A gasp of disbelief rose from the assembled officers. Four billion tons? Jake tried to do the math in his head.
    “For those counting, that translates to between fifteen and twenty Centurian-class heavy cruisers. Our best guess is that the empire has wrapped up operations stemming from the rebellion in the November sector far earlier than anticipated, and is now heading here. As some of you know, for capital ships larger than ten million metric tons or so, the gravitic shift navigation route from Arcturus passes through the orbit of Vega, then directly to Sol. Our listening post shifted the datapod directly to Earth orbit of course, due to its minuscule mass.”
    This last part he said over the rising din of chatter among the increasingly nervous men and women. He paused, tapping the microphone with a finger.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, please. Hysteria will be of no service to us. We will press on, and keep calm, and do our duty. The fallen heroes last night demand it of us.” He paused, letting the memory of their friends steel their resolve.
    He