Coming Home (Free Fleet Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

building for the past ten hours reached it’s crescendo as I could feel my teeth vibrating. Then there was nothing.
    “Adjusting shield configuration!”
    “Scanning immediate area.”
    “All weapon systems are green, continue moving that ordinance!”
    “Close vicinity clear.”
    I watched as my team worked through the sequence of emergence protocols we’d made.
    “Emergence of all shield forces confirmed,” Rick said.
    “Troop transports have arrived. First Fleet is all accounted for and all ships are green.”
    “Thank you, COS. Sensors?”
    “Nothing detected in two light minutes.” Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. At least now we would get two minutes of warning before someone hit us.
    The miniature hologram beside me, as well as the main one in the middle of the bridge, began overlaying what scans had picked up with the last saved scan of the system.
    “Take the fleet into the system. I want everything scanned before we move into Sol System.”
    Ships sensor commanders where communicating with one another, breaking up the system into grids for their people to search and relaying the information to everyone else as the map started becoming populated with imagery faster and faster.
    I had taken off my helmet which sat on a rack beside my chair. I had only once jumped into a new system when not in a mecha and I’d had my leg cut off, which was not a pleasant experience let me tell you. Eddie had made me new armour, my third since training with scrap mechas to enhance me new strength and abilities. It was a scaled down version of the ones the Avar used. I still had my sword and my rail gun and pistol, and limited flight thrusters had been added after the space acrobatics the AMC had been called on to perform.
    My battle computer synced with the ship was throwing up information in the projected HUD with my helmet being off.
    In a half hour the system was declared clear.
    “Tactical, I want to know the minute all of the ordinance is secured in the correct place. Comms, signal the fleet down to twenty-five percent. Navigation, plot us a course to the Sol jump point. Helm, as that’s plotted and the other ships are in sync, take us there.”
    I opened a channel to Eddie.
    “Alright, Eddie, do what you can. I want the priorities on-”
    “Weapons, armour, and propulsion, I know, we’ve been over it enough times,” he said in an exasperated tone.
    “Then I’ll let you get to it,” I said with a smile.
    “Thank yee, sir!” he said, his tone eliciting a small laugh from me.
    Rick was calling me on a private channel. “It’s Commander Hoi’s watch. Should we get some food while he takes over and switch off some of the personnel that have been up for the majority? We’re going to need our first line crew.”
    “Understood, Marleen is to let people go at her own discretion as I don’t want another group coming in and not knowing what the hell's going on.”
    “I concur.”
    Commander Hoi was sitting at one of the VIP chairs along the wall which also could serve as any one of the stations in the ‘pit’ as we called it, because the lowered areas on either side of a catwalk in front of my chair split into vital areas. At the front was the helm and navigation side by side then in the right pit there was communications, tactical, and sensors. In the left there was the combined arms, engineering, damage control officers, and the science division - there basically to answer any problems and to brainstorm ideas.
    The view screens made it seem that we were on top of the curving hull of the ships, but in actuality we were buried in the centre of the ovaloid vessel.
    “Commander Hoi, you have command,” I said as I got up from my seat.
    Rick was finishing up talking to the people in the pit with private channels and he stood up too.
    “Thank you, sir!” Commander Hoi said, jumping from his seat as we exchanged two finger salutes, mine more of a general point in my Mecha. I grabbed my helmet, following