Counterstrike (Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the question. “This planet is the birthplace of humanity. To go crawling to the Confederacy and beg membership of the very people who had abandoned us in the first place was never a popular proposal. Earthers aren’t necessarily cheerful isolationists, but most of us just aren’t willing to let go of the old resentments.”
    “And you?”
    “I’m a bit more pragmatic,” Jackson said. “I understand the motivations of those first waves of colonists. I also had only wanted one thing for my life and that was to go to space and travel between the stars. Since the Sol Defense Force never ventures out past Saturn, the obvious answer was to try and snag one of the slots to the Academy that Fleet set aside each year for Earthers.”
    “But it’s always been a struggle, being from here,” she said.
    “Nothing worthwhile comes without sacrifice,” Jackson said with a forced smile. “I don’t regret my decision to leave.”
    They walked the rest of the way to the transit hub in silence. Jackson wasn’t sure if it was the casual way in which she now addressed him, the stylish civilian attire, or the fact that she insisted on walking so close to him that their hands would sometimes brush together, but he was becoming suddenly aware that Jillian Davis was a very beautiful young woman. He was also quite aware at how inappropriate things had become between them in the short time since leaving Geneva, but he wasn’t sure how to address it without embarrassing her. As her proximity wasn’t especially unpleasant, nor was he in uniform, he decided to let it slide for the time being.
    ****
    Admiral Joseph Marcum replayed the message one more time before leaning back in his plush leather seat and rubbing his temples with the heels of his hands. He’d always considered himself a good officer. The kind that was willing to do what was right even if it meant sacrificing everything he’d worked for. But after watching Jackson Wolfe practically single-handedly usurp half the fleet in order to make a stand for what was right, he had to concede that he’d become the very thing he’d always hated: a politician masquerading as a military officer. The sad part was that it had happened without him even noticing it.
    He was sitting in his well-appointed office aboard the TCS Amsterdam , a Dreadnought -class battleship, the biggest and baddest thing to ever come out of a Terran shipyard. The mammoth warship was sitting in between the Earth and the Moon while the rest of her squadron had taken up a high orbit over Mars in order to keep the traffic over the blue planet to a minimum.
    The latest com drone to buzz through the Solar System had delivered a lengthy message for him from Confederate President McKellar, who was still safely in a bunker on a planet they were calling the Ark. The President was typically pompous, absurdly out of touch, and managed to display a lack of understanding about their current situation that was simply breathtaking. Marcum had to assume that McKellar wasn’t actually a stupid man, he did manage to get himself elected to the highest office in the Confederacy after all, but the fact that he still considered himself to be “in charge” was laughable.
    Haven was gone. A smoldering, irregularly shaped ruin spinning through space without enough mass left to even stay in its original orbit. With its loss went any remaining stability within the Terran Confederacy. The more powerful enclaves like New America and Britannia were now declaring their independence, while envoys from the smaller enclaves were now filtering into the Solar System like lost sheep just looking for some sort of direction.
    “The man is a complete fucking moron,” Marcum muttered to himself. McKellar had sent a directive that he marshal any forces remaining from Wolfe’s “ill-conceived” effort in Nuovo Patria, take the senior captain into custody, and return to the Ark where they would regroup and discuss their strategy going forward.