Read Online Black Fleet Trilogy 1: Warship by Joshua Dalzelle - Free Book Online

starships. Jackson was semi-certain it was because the acronym COC led to a phonetic pronunciation that Fleet deemed to be inappropriate.
    The passive scan wasn't the only reason he wanted Commander Wright in the CIC. He wasn't entirely sure what was going on with regards to his orders and having her in the ship's nerve center was one more direct channel of information. So far Lynch seemed calm and unconcerned and he wasn't sure if he took that as a good sign or not.
    ****
    Commander Wright quickly made her way to the CIC and relayed Captain Wolfe's orders. As luck would have it, the second watch OPS officer, Lieutenant Peters, was in charge of the CIC during the transition back to real space. Having served on the Blue Jacket for three full cruises, he immediately understood what the captain wanted without Celesta having to spell it out for him.
    He offered her the command seat and quickly went to each station and got the operators moving in the right direction. A lot of the task would simply be data processing since the ship's passive sensors were recording at all times. The operators would need to go back from the time the ship emerged into real space and look for any anomalies. While the computers were good at picking out patterns and sudden shifts, they often overlooked subtle changes that a human was able to intuitively pick up on.
    As Celesta sat patiently waiting for them to sift through the data she felt a deep rumble resonate through the ship. The main engines starting up caused quite a bit more vibration down in the CIC than they did on the bridge. She felt the change in intensity and pitch and surmised that Captain Wolfe was moving the ship to the rendezvous coordinates listed in their orders. She assumed they were simply delivering their political operative to a ship in Fourth Fleet so that he could discreetly make contact with the New American government on behalf of Senator Wellington without raising any flags, and she really didn't understand Jackson Wolfe's increasing paranoia about the mission. While she would be glad to be rid of Aston Lynch, especially given the number of unwelcome advances he'd made since coming aboard, she had to admit to herself she was more than a little concerned about some perceived erratic behavior from her new commanding officer.
    "We have something, Commander," Lieutenant Peters reported. "Thermal anomaly, two hundred thousand kilometers off the port bow, twenty-two degrees elevation."
    "Show me," Celesta said, rising from her chair and walking over to the sensor station.
    "These two points of light, completely in the IR band, exactly seventy-three meters away from each other," Peters said. "They were there when our sensors came back up after transition and disappeared shortly afterwards."
    "You have an idea what they were?" Celesta asked.
    "Yes, ma'am. Those are the reverse thrust nozzles of a Descendant- class destroyer, flown exclusively by Fourth Fleet. That newer class only has two main engines instead of our four," Peters answered. "If you'll give us a moment we can tell you which ship it is."
    "The contact was that strong?" Celesta asked, surprised.
    "It was enough for us to get an engine profile for the ship, ma'am," the sensor operator spoke up. He was a young specialist first class and had a scar running down the length of his left cheek. Celesta read the name on the front of his utility top.
    "Get me that ship name as quickly as you can, Specialist Jacobs," she said. "The captain will want this information immediately." She waited patiently behind the operator while he ran the brief thermal flash against the ship's database of engine profiles for that class of ship.
    "Got it," Jacobs said. "She's the Oscar Marks , registry DS-8101."
    "Good work, Specialist," Celesta said. "Begin scanning real time data again and see if you can reacquire her."
    "Aye, ma'am."
    "They must have been out there, waiting for us, and closed off their reverse nozzles as soon as we transitioned