A Sword Into Darkness (15 page)

Both Nathan and Gordon looked askance at the full flute, but Nathan just shrugged and drank deep.

Lee shook his head.  “This looks to be a memorable evening in a variety of ways.”

Kris nurtured a soft, contemplative smile.  “Surely does.  More bubbly, Nate?”

Up in nearby space, the
Promise
kept accelerating continuously out from Earth.  Within a few hours, the dark, unreflecting probe would become the fastest manmade object in history, but it would not pause even then.  The probe adjusted its thrust vector, backing down to a third of a gee of continuous acceleration and changing its course to achieve a hyperbolic escape orbit from the Solar System.  It settled with its blunt, lead laminate shielded nose pointed several degrees to one side of the distant blue star of its destination, eschewing the direct meeting for an oblique, non-threatening approach.

Destiny, for good or ill, lay in its path.

8:  “AN UNEXPECTED GUEST”

April 5, 2043; Windward Tech Development Facility, Ingmar Rammstahl Ltd. Shipbuilding; Santa Clara, California

The
ship’s hull rang like a bell as the supercavitating torpedo narrowly roared by, detonating 100 yards off the destroyer’s beam.  Everything strapped down moved along with the hull as the underwater explosion battered the ship, shocked but survivable.  Anything not strapped down kept its position within three dimensions, in harmony with the laws of the universe, but suddenly at odds with the realities of war.

Captain Anthony “Tony” Jones flew through the air, over the tightly packed consoles in Combat, and crumpled to a heap next to the padded steel bulkhead, his head at an odd, telling angle.  Sparks fountained outward from power panels and consoles, lighting the dark, somber contours of the captain’s suddenly lifeless face.  From his seat in front of the TAO console, LT Nathan Kelley had an unobstructed view of his commanding officer’s resting place, and he could not help but think about how serenely artful the terrible scene was.

Then the regular lights went out, the brighter lights of the emergency fluorescents came up, and the artistry was gone, snuffed out as quickly as Captain Jones’ existence.  Nathan turned back to his console, barking orders he no longer remembered, feeling the shudder as another torpedo detonated, this one further away.  Despite the deaths and destruction, they were still in the game.  They had gotten their shots off and they were surviving the attack.  Nathan felt as one with the surface warriors of the last century, akin to the fighting sailors off Samar in WWII.

He turned to Senior Chief Edwards, a question upon his lips.  What had he been about to ask?  What had he been about to say that could not wait until they were out of danger?  What could Nathan have done differently to avoid what happened next?

Edwards smiled, but not as preface for one of the bad jokes he always had at the ready.  A ferocious, teeth-baring grin overwhelmed the bottom half of his face, counterpoint to the angry glare from his eyes as he punched buttons and watched the tracks move on his flickering display.  Then the last torpedo struck, detonating below their after keel.

There was a moment of discontinuity.

The world ceased to be, and then came back to Nathan in bleary flashes of sight, sound, and sensation:  the screams over the sound-powered phones; the spider web pattern formed by his forehead on his blank tactical display; the chairs and consoles broken free of their mounts, crushing their occupants against the forward and aft bulkheads; the insane rolling of what remained of the Rivero …

And Edwards lying on his back atop his broken chair, his console snapped free and slicing into both of his broken legs . . . .

Nathan opened his eyes into darkness, now so familiar with the dream-memory-nightmare that it no longer made him jump.  He had also passed the stage of crying out into the night, but that did not mean his heart no longer experienced the terrifying trip-hammer flutter it always had upon waking.

The vision did not come for him every night, but more often than not, and it was always the same, never clouded by fantasy or revisionism.  He sometimes prayed for a little dramatic license, for something to blunt the continuing horror of the attack, but after 12 years dealing with it, the memory was burned into unchanging stone.

Waking up was slightly different this time, however.

Nathan lay back on the couch in his shipyard office, having fallen asleep working, yet again.  The hours he had devoted to figuring out the kinks in their ship design took a heavy toll.  He found himself spending more nights here on his hated couch than he did in his Santa Cruz apartment.  He usually woke up in the pre-dawn hours with a horrible crick in his neck and a desperate need for a shower and a direct infusion of caffeine.  This time, though, he did not find himself clambering desperately off of the couch.

A warm, fragrant presence lay against him, inviting him to stay for a while, and Nathan found himself heeding the call.  Kris had taken to working late with him as well, but she usually left before it became
too late
.  This week, though, there had been a lot of integration issues with the environmental systems, the reactor, and the drive, so she had been staying later and later.  Tonight, she had apparently stayed too late.

Her loss of sleep was evidently his gain.

Nathan leaned forward and inhaled deeply from her wavy, bright maroon hair, partaking guiltily of the fruit and spice essences the strands hinted at.  He laid his head back and closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation of her warmth against him, his arm conveniently draped across her as she breathed in and out, ever so softly.  However had she wound up on the couch with him?

His eyes snapped open, narrowing.  Nathan was no idiot.  He knew exactly how she wound up there, and why.  A blind man would have noticed the way she looked at him, the way she acted around him.  She actively sought opportunities to work closely with him and had changed her manner of dress, losing her nose and brow rings, and wearing conservative, long-sleeve blouses and shirts in order to cover the tattoos upon her arm, features that he had honestly never minded.  He might have assumed she was just maturing, trying to be more professional, but there were also the looks she gave him, all the sly double entendres, the flirting.  She had done everything but throw herself at him, and anyone else would have done something about it by this point, whether that meant bowing to the seeming inevitable or putting an end to her coy advances.

Only Nathan would have kept himself utterly oblivious on purpose.

He carefully slid out from her side, laying her down with hardly a stir from Kris.  He stood and stretched, wincing as his vertebrae and joints snapped and popped.  Nathan stifled a groan and turned back to look back at her peaceful face, feeling an unwanted, but undeniable longing.

Things were safe and simple between them.  She had the ideas they needed to make the mission a reality, he had the design and organizational skills to see it to fruition.  It was coming together.  They would be ready to intercept the Deltans.  They would.  All they needed was the data from the
Promise
—that, and no complications.

He and she, either together or as a dead issue, were a complication.

Nathan forced himself to look away and walked to the clear glass wall that separated his darkened office from the building’s fourth-floor circumferential walkway along with the open construction bay it surrounded.  Down on the bare concrete first floor, pieces of their future had started to become reality.  A radiator panel here, an allocarbium structural member there, with photon drive components, radar sets, hull-plates, environmental scrubbers mixed among them in a jumbled, disordered mess that nonetheless made complete sense to Nathan and the rest of the Windward Special Projects team.  The only system obviously by itself was a laser diode emplacement, undergoing power drain testing and well cordoned off from the rest of the mess.

Nathan could look at all the various components in their various states of completion and imagine the realized whole:  a spaceship in the truest sense of the word—not the fragile, spindly constructs of NASA and the ESA, but a real workhorse, capable of rocketing them out of the solar system and into destiny, ready to face whatever fate handed down to them, be it for good or ill, war or peace.

He sighed in frustration.  He could see a future of science fantasy made fact, but he could not see the way ahead for himself and Kristene, not one in which they both got what they clearly wanted and deserved, and also allowed them to complete the ship with little to no derailing personal drama.

Kris murmured softly in her sleep and rolled over.  Nathan turned and let his eyes linger over her, so close, yet firmly isolated by his own mores and idiosyncrasies.  They had orbited around each other for four years now, engaging in brief and not-so-brief opposing relationships, relationships that the other always remained discreetly apprised of.  And when each of these dalliances with the outside world invariably failed, they always found themselves circling closer and closer about one another, whether the other was completely available or not.  And it was always Nathan who kept them frustratingly and unreasonably from coming together.

Nathan found himself wishing she would just take the hint and move along—even as he dreaded her ever giving up on him, not when their future after the ship was finished was so wide open.

He turned back to his view of the construction bay and approached the window, shaking his head at his own screwed-up train of thought.  Waking up with her like this had made him excessively maudlin.  All-in-all, it would have been easier to keep a firm resolve if she would just stick to taking naps in her own damn office across the way.

He looked into her third floor office as he thought this and noticed that it alone of all the glass-fronted rooms had light spilling from it.  Her computer monitor, dormant for hours, inexplicably lit the otherwise darkened level.  A mild buzz of alarm crawled across the nape of neck, but the monitor could have been left on for any number of reasons.

Then the light shifted as someone walked in front of her screen.

Nathan jumped back into the uncertain security of deeper shadows.  The telltale monitor glow shifted in color and brightness as whatever it displayed changed.  No one came to her window, though.  Nathan remained undiscovered, apparently.

He turned and picked up his phone.  Relief flooded through him as the dial tone called out strong and clear.

Four digits later, the phone in the complex’s security office rang.  And rang, and rang, and rang with no answer.  Nathan stifled a nervous curse, his mind conjuring all manner of dire images, foremost among them the vision of his night guard’s lifeless body, lying only inches from the incessantly ringing phone.

Nathan hit the hook and dialed again, this time calling the shipyard’s security office.  There was no ring though—only the insistent, staccato buzz of a busy signal.  But their office was never busy, especially not this late at night.  Dismissing further visions of a trashed office filled with bullet-riddled bodies, Nathan dialed the number again.  This time, instead of a busy signal, he received three strident, piercing tones.  “We’re sorry.  Your call cannot be completed as dialed.  Please—”

He slammed down the phone, wincing at the sharp crack it made.  He looked down at the phone that had somehow become his enemy and shook his head.  He was loathe to do what necessarily came next, but he had little choice.

Nathan picked up the phone gingerly and dialed 9-1-1.  Whatever technical secrets their potential intruder failed to uncover would undoubtedly be compromised by the police and their eventual investigation.  There went all their remaining operational security.

The phone did not ring or answer, though.  Instead, he heard, “We’re sorry.  You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service.  Please check—”

Nathan set down the handset in its cradle with a mixture of relief and anxiety.  Something had obviously screwed with the landlines, no doubt as a preface to the break-in itself.  He briefly considered the cellular suite in his pocket, but knew that was a bust.  Security for the project had been as tight as they could make it.  They were dealing with world-changing ideas and technologies, and Gordon had been adamant that none of it get out until he was ready to release it.  As a result, none of their sensitive computers had a connection to the outside world, and the entire place was wrapped in the electromagnetic cocoon of a Faraday cage.  Wireless signals would never make it outside their complex.