Hunter's Curse, page 20
“There’s no signal from that ship,” Cortez interrupted, “and they are heading off on a different vector. It looks to me as though someone has opted to rescind their surrender. Besides, even if we wanted to make the attempt, we’d end up crossing the flight path of the Olympians, and I don’t think we’d live more than five seconds in that battlespace.”
“There has to be something we can do,” Rogers protested. “I could…”
“No,” Kozak said, shaking his head. “You heard what the Commodore said. He’s irretrievable, and that situation hasn’t changed. Continue on our escape course, Ensign. I want us out of this system and on our way back to Valhalla before any of the myriad enemies we seem to have acquired decide to swing around in our direction.”
“We can’t just leave him here,” Rogers protested.
Flanagan turned to her, and said, “He wouldn’t want us to throw our lives away on a lost cause. We can’t possibly get him back, and we can’t stay here either.”
“This isn’t a conversation, Ensign,” Kozak pressed. “I am giving you a direct order. Take us out of this system, plot our course to return us to Valhalla at the minimum possible time. We’ve got to get back to tell the others just what happened here today.”
“Sir…” Rogers said, before turning back to her station. “Aye, sir.”
Cortez walked over to Kozak, then said, “I know it hurts, Nick, I know that it hurts like hell, but you made the right call, the only call that you could possibly make. There was nothing else that we could do in the circumstances. And at least we know that he’s still alive. There might be a chance of putting together a prisoner exchange, something like that.”
“No,” Kozak replied. “We can’t get him back today. I accept that. This isn’t over, though. We might not be able to snatch him off that battlecruiser, but they’ll take him to a prison camp. We will find it, we will rescue him, and we will bring him home.” He looked around the bridge, then said, “And we will not rest until we have completed our mission. Is that understood?”
Cortez looked at him, nodded, then said, “I guess I’d better start going through the intelligence reports. We’ve got a lot of space to hunt through.”
“Do you think we’ll be able to find him?” Rogers asked.
“We’ll find him, Ensign. My word on that.” He looked at the viewscreen with grim determination, and said, “Or die, trying.”
Thank you for reading ‘Hunter’s Curse’. For information on future releases, please join the author's Science-Fiction Mailing List at http://eepurl.com/A9MdX for updates. If you enjoyed this book, please review it on the site where you purchased it.
The saga will continue in ‘Hunter’s Exile’, coming in October 2022…
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