Read The Lost Command (Lost Starship Series Book 2) for Free Online Page A

soldier.
    With Riker at his back, the captain approached the corpse. Maddox was tall and lean. He moved with the lethality of a large jungle cat. He wore his uniform, tucking the night-vision glasses in a side pocket. Around them, spaceport lights began to come on.
    Maddox wished he could have captured the man alive. The enemy agent had refused to surrender, though, drawing a gun against them. Whatever else one could say about the enemy, his people were brave.
    “Be careful,” Riker whispered. “You never know, sir.”
    Maddox hardly heard the words. The enemy agent was dead, but this was still a break, perhaps an important one. Despite Brigadier O’Hara’s worry, the tip had proven correct, and that was rare in this deadly game of espionage against a superior foe.
    Even as the New Men invaded “C” Quadrant, the enemy’s secret service continued to infiltrate Earth’s government and the military, finding traitors among humanity. In reality, the enemy had been here a long time, decades, in fact. This time, however, Star Watch Intelligence had gotten the jump on one of them.
    Maddox stared at the corpse, wondering if the New Men had tampered with the agent when alive and if so in what manner. Expectantly, he crouched beside the corpse.
    Interestingly, the New Men had begun their invasion a few weeks after Maddox had brought back the ancient, alien super-ship. In their secret service attempts to stop the ship, the New Men had revealed some of their hidden hand. Now, in the Oort cloud, while surrounded by a Star Watch taskforce, scientists studied the alien vessel. Humanity needed the ancient technologies to help defend themselves against the onslaught of the New Men.
    The captain continued to watch the corpse. What had the agent had been trying to reach before dying? It was time to find out.
    “Let me do that, sir,” Riker said from behind. “I’m expendable, you’re not.”
    “Keep back,” Maddox said. “Let me concentrate.”
    The captain’s long fingers brushed the pocket’s cloth as he felt within. There was something cool and thin here. With his heart hammering, Maddox pulled out a communicator. He twisted it around, looking at the glowing screen. It had a single phrase: Begin Operation Odysseus.
    Had the agent sent the message, or had he been trying to erase it? What did the message mean?
    I should search the files .
    Before Maddox could begin, the words began to flash and the communicator to vibrate.
    A premonition caused Maddox to hurl the device from him. It exploded in midair, the blast knocking him down.
    “Captain,” Riker said, crouching over him. “Are you hurt, sir?”
    Maddox blinked at the sergeant. He was more surprised than hurt. “I’m fine,” he whispered, his throat dry. Then his forehead furrowed.
    Begin Operation Odysseus. What are the New Men trying to do now?
     

-3-
     
    Two days after Maddox shot the enemy agent, Meta sat in her apartment in New York City. She fingered the locket the captain had bought her several months ago.
    Meta sat before a mirror, wearing a tight party dress of shimmering Neptunian sequins. They glittered from hot pink to cherry red as she moved, and they clung to her voluptuous figure, revealing far too much cleavage and thigh.
    Meta hadn’t worn something like this since assassinating Baron Chabot, the owner of the Rouen Colony. She’d been born on the two G mining world, modified for strength like all the other indentured workers there. In her childhood, the leader of the Resistance had decided to use Meta’s already obvious beauty. Her secret training had begun then, and it had been thorough and difficult.
    As Meta stroked the locket pressed against her throat, conflicting emotions raced through her. Throughout her short life, she’d used her beauty to enter places others couldn’t. When she closed her eyes at night, she could still see the baron’s tongue protruding out of his slack mouth. In his bedroom, she’d choked the man to death,