Second Earth (19 page)

  
“What the hell is
that?” Krif asked in disbelief as he stared wide-eyed at the projection.

  
Melissa was equally
astonished at the sheer size and the unusual shape of the intruder. “Whatever
it is, it doesn’t look too friendly.”
    

  
“Amen to that,
sister. That’s one ugly-looking monstrosity. However, I learned long ago not to
judge a book by its cover—no matter how unsightly that cover was.”

  
“Captain,” Caitlin
called out from her station. “The
Agincourt
is nearing the position of the intruder. Range is three hundred miles and
closing steadily.”

  
“Status of the
intruder?” Krif replied, turning away from the table to look at the flight
control officer.

  
“Hawkeye reports no
unusual movement from the intruder, sir,” Caitlin said. “Red Skulls and Rapiers
confirm, sir.”

  
“Have the
Agincourt
close to one hundred fifty
miles and hold position, then have them repeat our initial warning in all
languages and on all frequency bands.”

  
“Aye, sir.”

  
Krif turned to face
the frightening holographic representation of the alien vessel. “They can’t
ignore us now that we’re nose to nose with them.”

  
“But is it wise to
get so close?” Melissa asked cautiously, hoping to avoid upsetting the captain.
When she saw that he didn’t respond, she decided to press him further. She
lowered her voice, careful not to alert anyone else that she was questioning
the commanding officer’s decision. “Maybe we should exercise some caution here,
Captain.”

  
“To hell with
caution,” he dismissed. “I want answers.”

  
Melissa took a wary
sidestep closer to Krif. “I’ll bet the
Valley
Forge
’s captain said the same thing.”

  
Richard glared at
her angrily. “Watch it, lady. Captain Jothia was a good friend of mine. He
never made a rash or unwarranted decision in his life. And considering that
you’ve never commanded a Sector Command vessel in your short existence in this
universe—let alone a fleet supercarrier—you don’t get the luxury of denigrating
his decisions. Needless to say, you’re treading on thin ground. I told you to
remain silent and I meant it. Unless you have something relevant to add to this
situation, I suggest you clamp it.”

  
“Captain,”
Fredericks said from the sensor station, drawing his attention away from
Melissa. “The intruder is changing position.”

  
Krif bolted down
from the command deck and stepped to the side of the sensor console. “Specify.”

  
Fredericks
requested the information from the sensors. “Sir, the intruder is coming about
to a heading of one-four-four mark seven-six. It’s aligning itself to bear down
on the
Agincourt
. Range is two
hundred fifteen miles.”

  
“Has the intruder
increased speed?”

  
Lieutenant Garcia
slid from Fredericks’ side and, without asking for permission from the captain,
assumed the secondary sensor console to Fredericks’ right. With seconds, he had
the information. “No, sir. She’s come to a dead stop; no forward momentum. It’s
just pivoting.”

  
Krif glared at him.
He instantly decided that now wasn’t the time to reprimand the lieutenant.
Richard needed all the help he could get, and it was too late to call in a more
trusted relief for the former
Icarus
officer. “Communications,” Krif barked. “Are we receiving anything from the
Agincourt
?”

  
Clifton held his
finger in the air, indicating that he was receiving a communication at the same
moment Krif was making the request. When Clifton had received the message in
its entirety, he instantly relayed it to the captain. “Sir,
Agincourt
is requesting to fire a
cautionary shot across the bow of the intruder.”

  
“Send a coded reply
directly to Captain Wayside. He has my permission to fire a warning shot, low
yield, tight pattern, across the intruder’s bow.”

  
Completely
disregarding protocol—not to mention the captain’s orders—Melissa ran down from
the upper command deck and was at Krif’s side in an instant. There was no way
she was going to allow Krif to put innocent people’s lives in danger based on
his personal conjecture of the situation. “Captain, as senior mission
commander, I would advise against—”

  
Krif cut off her
words with a burning scowl that could peel paint from a bulkhead. “One more
word from you and Commander Wamata will escort you from this compartment in
handcuffs, along with whatever else I can wrap you in. Do I make myself
clear
, Agent Graves?”

  
She neither spoke
nor physically acknowledged his statement. Regardless of her position in the
current mission, she knew without a doubt that any of Krif’s men would blindly
follow his orders and have her thrown in the brig. She glared into his eyes for
a moment, then turned and walked slowly back to the upper deck. She placed her
hands on the upper railing and leaned out toward the large view screen, knowing
that, even at this distance, the entire CIC complement would be privy to the
high-intensity beam that was about to erupt from the bow of the destroyer.

  
As expected, a
moment later there was a bright blue glow out in the darkness of space. The
Agincourt
had opened fire, letting loose
three short salvoes from its main particle accelerator cannon. The unbroken
beam shot out over the intruder’s bow and harmlessly out into space. It was
over in seconds.

  
Krif called out to
the communications officer. “Anything from the alien?”

  
“No, sir.”

  
“Sensors?”

  
“Nothing,” Garcia
and Fredericks said in near-unison.

  
“Flight control?
Hayes, what do you have from our recon wing?”

  
Caitlin, with one
hand on her control board and the other steadying the visual display on her
headpiece, shook her head. “No change, sir.”

  
“Sir!” Fredericks
examined a moment later. “Intruder
is
moving. Now showing their speed to be approximately eighty miles per hour.”

  
“Distance from the
Agincourt
?”

  
“Two hundred five
miles, closing slowly.” There was a slight pause as Fredericks and Garcia
adjusted their respective sensor matrix assemblies.

  
“Update, Captain,”
Garcia shouted. “Now showing the intruder at a dead stop, resting one hundred
seventy miles from the
Agincourt
.”

  
“It seems the
Agincourt
has their attention,” Krif
said triumphantly. “Maybe now we’ll get some damn answers. Communications, tell
the
Agincourt
to again transmit our
warning, all frequencies and all—”

  
“Captain.” This
time it was Garcia. “Some kind of…spatial distortion is appearing near the
intruder’s bow.”

  
“Spatial
distortion? Specify.”

  
“It’s difficult,
sir. The readings are similar to jump-drive byproducts, but there are some
really exotic quantum changes I can’t account for. Reading a massive
gravitational envelope.”

  
“Fredericks?”

  
“The sensors
are
registering a spatial distortion,
localized near the bow of the intruder.”

  
“How is that
possible?” Krif snorted in disapproval. “No ship could withstand that kind of
outside stress so close to its hull. Could it be a weapon?”

  
“Sir,” Caitlin
shouted from her station. “All communications with the
Agincourt
are down. All communications with our recon squadron are
out as well.”

  
“Communications
officer, send the emergency system-wide broadcast to all vessels; order their
computers to bring the vessels back to this point.”

  
“Yes, sir.” The
communications officer entered the emergency codes into the computer, allowing
his console to take control of all the navigational computers of Mitchell’s
ELINT, the interceptors, and even the
Agincourt
herself. Clifton’s voice was a mix of dejection and anger. “Sir, emergency
navigational override is not responding.”

  
“Try the backup
systems!”

  
“I have, sir. The
computer is saying there is nothing out there to lock on to. It’s as if they’ve
vanished.”

  
“Try them again!
Get those people out of there.”

  
“Massive radiation
surge emanating from the intruder, Captain,” Garcia shouted. “It’s jamming all
communications within a three-hundred-mile radius of the alien’s hull.”

  
Fredericks called
out, his voice overpowering Krif’s easily. “Sir, distinct energy buildup in the
intruder’s forward section.”

  
On Garcia’s screen,
the sensor image of the intruder—as well as all the Sector Command forces in
the area—blinked out entirely. “What the hell?”

  
“Lieutenant?” Krif
asked.

  
“They’re gone,
sir,” Vincent said. “I’ve…I’ve lost them.”

  
Suddenly the combat
center’s view screen was awash with a brilliant white-violet energy. Everyone
in CIC, including Melissa, had to shield their eyes from the flash. It lasted
for only a brief second and then was gone.

  
At the sensor
console, the long-range sensors came back online the moment the flash had
abated. “Sir, sensor report coming in!” Garcia shouted.

  
“What happened?”
Krif belted.

  
“I’m still reading
all our craft, sir, but…”

  
The pause hung in
the air for a split second before Krif jolted the man out of his silence. “But
what, man? Spit it out.”

  
“They’re…they’re
not moving, sir. They’re just…drifting.”

  
“Radiation surge is
abating,” Garcia injected.

  
“Sir, all
communications are still down,” Clifton shouted from across the compartment.

  
“Confirmed, no
communications with our forces, Captain,” Lieutenant Commander Hayes added from
the flight control station. “Sir, I’m also not receiving any life readings from
the fighters
or
Lieutenant Mitchell’s
ELINT.”

  
“What the hell just
happened?” Krif shouted to anyone who could give him answers.

  
The control room
went eerily quiet. A soft voice came from behind Krif—so soft he barely heard
it above the static of the communications speakers. It was Melissa Graves.

  
“Why don’t you ask
the captain of the
Valley Forge
?”
With that, she turned and strode from the combat center, her next objective
painfully clear in her mind.

  
K
rif
moved quickly toward the flight control officer’s station and the young woman
standing there. With lightning-fast reflexes, Commander Hayes was inputting a
request into her terminal, already attempting to pull up the information on the
stricken Sector Command destroyer
Agincourt
and her fighter escorts.

  
“Commander,” the
captain asked frantically. “Can you confirm those life sign readings?”

  
“Trying, sir. The
readings are changing rapidly.” A bead of sweat formed on her brow as she
pushed back some hair that had been sticking to her scalp. “I’m not receiving
any communications for the
Agincourt
,
Captain. All power on the destroyer appears to be down. It’s the same with our
recon fighters as well as Lieutenant Mitchell’s ELINT.”

  
Krif spun to face
the two men seated at the sensor stations: the young but adept Sergeant Lance
Fredericks, and the lone survivor of the doomed cruiser
Icarus
, Lieutenant Vincent Garcia. “I want an explanation as to
what just happened, and you two are the only ones who can give it to me. What
kind of weapon was that? Some sort of EMP?”

  
Garcia was the
first to speak. “Unlikely, sir,” he said with a shake of his head. “At least,
not like one I’ve ever seen. Even an electromagnetic pulse should leave some of
the
Agincourt
’s normally offline
systems intact. As soon as main power was cut off, the backup systems would
have instantly initiated. I’m detecting no power of any kind from the
destroyer.”

  
Krif nodded in
comprehension. “Just like what happened on the
Icarus
.”

  
Garcia sighed
heavily, the memories of those final moments after the power had gone out on
his ship flashing through his mind. He thought of the last few gasps of air the
crew would have struggled to take before the life support equipment failed
completely and the entirety of them suffocated and froze to death in zero
gravity. It must have been an agonizing, hideous way to die. During his recent
two-week stay in the brig, Garcia had begun to wonder why he had been spared
when so many other—
better,
he
reflected—officers and personnel had perished.

  
Caitlin Hayes,
sensing the captain was pondering his next move, moved the few paces from her
station to Krif’s side. She lowered her voice to a whisper, hoping not to
arouse suspicion from the rest of the crewmen in CIC. “Sir, we don’t have any
kind of defense against weaponry like that. Perhaps we should consider—”

  
Krif held up a hand
to stay her next words. His tone was calm, but resolute. “No, Commander Hayes.
Not just yet. I want to learn as much about this intruder as we can. What we do
here now could be of vital importance to the Unified government. There’s no
telling if we’ll ever get another chance like this, and I’m not about to give
up this opportunity.”

  
“But sir?” she
pleaded quietly. “If this single ship is responsible for wiping out the
Valley Forge
and her escorts, we’re not
going to stand much of a chance. Perhaps discretion is the better part of valor
here.”

  
“I’m aware of that,
Commander,” Krif all but shouted. His eyes darted around the room, noticing
only then that his outburst had drawn unwanted attention. Caitlin, for her own
part, seemed to shrink away from him. He looked at her apologetically. “We’ll
have to take that risk, Caitlin. Every enemy has a weak spot. All we need to do
is find it and exploit it.”

  
She nodded, and for
the first time Krif could remember, the young woman cast her gaze to the deck
in defeat. “I understand, sir. However, as second officer, I respectfully
request you accept my formal objection to remaining in this system.”

  
“You’re aware that
such an complaint will appear on your otherwise stellar service record,
Commander.”

  
She turned her eyes
to stare into his. “I do, Captain.”

  
Krif nodded in
understanding. There was no way such a remark would do anything to hinder
Caitlin Hayes’ promising career. If anything, it would probably solidify it.
Sector Command didn’t want officers who would blindly follow their captain’s
orders without considering the ramifications of those actions, and he was proud
to see that his choice in second officer understood that unspoken fact. He only
hoped they all lived long enough to see him pin a captaincy on her someday. “So
noted, Commander.”

  
“Thank you, sir.
Now, what are you suggesting we do?”

  
Richard did have an
idea. Actually, it was more of a loose theory than anything else. “The enemy
vessel didn’t attack until we fired a warning shot.”

  
Hayes agreed with a
nod. “It seemed that way.”

  
“And, based on your
observations, it totally ignored the reconnaissance patrol, correct?”

  
“The enemy salvo
was directed solely at the
Agincourt
.”
Caitlin realized what the captain might be getting at. “You’re suggesting that
our fighters may have been collateral damage?”

  
“Precisely. I want
you to order all hands to flight status. Equip them with the most powerful
missiles we have and launch everything immediately. I want every space-capable
vessel out there, from the interceptors to the Marines. Get everyone formed up
off our bow in ten minutes.”

  
“But if your theory
is off, then the intruder will wipe out the entire fighter wing, and the
Rhea
will be all but defenseless.”

  
“I don’t see that
we have much of a choice in this, Commander. If the fighters can’t stop them,
then it won’t matter. This is what we all signed up for when we joined the
ranks. We all knew a day like this might come. Besides, if we do need to
evacuate the system, the space wing is the best defensive cover we have.”

  
“Yes, sir,” Caitlin
said, lowering her eyes.

  
“Carry out my
orders, Commander Hayes,” Richard said just before he turned to leave her
station.

  
She nodded her head
sharply. “Yes, sir.”

* * *

  
Lieutenant
Commander Shawn Kestrel was in his small but adequate quarters. With a final
pull, he zipped the last closure on his gray flight suit just as a resounding
knock came from his door. Half expecting to see Melissa Graves, Shawn was
stunned that the person who entered his room was none other than Trent Maddox.

  
“What brings you to
this neck of the woods?”

  
Trent gave his best
attempt at a nonchalant shrug. “Oh, nothing really. Just stopping by to say
hello. You know how it goes.”

  
“Yeah,” Shawn
couldn’t help but smirk. “And right in the middle of everyone going to battle
stations with the ship on high alert. You have impeccable timing, as always.”

  
Trent smiled and
leaned casually on the commander’s bed. “Just another day in the service.”

  
Shawn went to a
bedside locker and withdrew his helmet, his call sign, “Hawk,” stenciled in
dark letters across the brow. “I wish I could say that were the case.”

  
“Come on,” Trent
said with a wave of his hand. “You’ve been there, done that before. Nothing new
under the sun for you.”

  
Shawn gave a
half-laugh as he absently fumbled with the helmet. “And that’s what brought you
up here, right? You just wanted to tell me that it’s just another day at the
office, and that I have nothing to worry about?”

  
Trent shrugged
again. “Sure. Something like that.”

  
“Uh-huh, and if
pigs had wings—”

  
“They’d give them a
commission and put them in command of a fighter squadron,” Trent offered with a
snap of his fingers.

  
“Oh really? Is that
a fact?”

  
“It is,” Trent
replied, as if indeed it was.

  
“Well, this
particular swine has to get down to the hangar ASAP. I’m on Ready-Five alert.”

  
“Yeah,” Trent said
as he slowly sat upright. “That’s what I came up here to talk to you about.”

  
“Meaning?” Shawn
asked with a confused expression. “You didn’t get ahold of a spare hammer and
accidentally disable my fighter, did you?”

  
“Well, no, but I
figured you’d be heading out there soon,” Trent said as he inclined his head
toward the paltry view port that was all Shawn’s cabin had been afforded.
“I…uh…that is…I didn’t want you going out there alone.”

  
Shawn had to laugh.
“You have the worst case of space phobia that I know. You wouldn’t last five
seconds in the seat of a fighter. Besides, the ship only has enough room for
one. Now, we’re close and all, but we’re not
that
close, old buddy.”

  
“Oh no,” Trent
defended. “I’m not talking about me. There’s no way I’m getting in one of those
things. That’d be all sorts of trouble.”

  
Shawn gave his old
mechanic a puzzled look. “Then I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re refereeing
to.”

  
Trent stood up and
walked over to Shawn, stopping when he was within a few feet of the commander.
He held out a clenched fist, about chest-high. He nodded toward the fist, and
Shawn instinctively held his hand out to catch whatever Trent was about to
release.

  
At that moment,
Trent unclenched his hand. A small, gleaming object on the end of a delicate
chain fell neatly into Shawn’s palm. Shawn instantly recognized the cross, one
his departed wife had given him years ago. He smiled in amazement.

  
“Where on Third
Earth did you find this? I thought I lost it back on Darus Station.”

  
“Things come my
way,” Trent said with a wink. The disapproving look he was given by Shawn
coaxed the rest of the truth from his lips. “Actually, it was Clarissa who
found it.”

  
“McAllister?” Shawn
supplied the last name of the talkative, yet not entirely unattractive supply
officer who seemed to have formed a permanent bond to Trent’s side in the last
few weeks.

  
Trent nodded. “One
and the same. She found it lodged underneath an auxiliary cooling conduit under
the copilot’s seat in
Sylvia’s Delight
yesterday. I hadn’t had a chance to see you until now, so I thought…well, I
just wanted to return it to its rightful owner.”

  
Shawn regarded the
small, flat cross. Its surface had a few small scratches, just from normal wear
and tear, but it nonetheless looked as new as the day he’d been given it. He
smiled widely. “Thanks, man.”

  
“No biggie.
Besides, I can’t have you going up there without your good luck charm.”

  
Shawn quickly
clasped the chain around his neck. “You know I don’t believe in luck, Trent.”

  
“Yeah, I know. But,
you
do
believe in that,” Trent said
as he pointed to the cross. “And, after some of the tight fixes I’ve seen you
get out of, I have to admit there is something to that little symbol of yours.”

  
“It’s more than
just a symbol. Besides, I never thought of you as an overly religious man.”

  
Trent laughed.
“Well, we just got drafted back into the service to fight a war that nobody’s
sure we’re going to win. And now we’ve come across an enemy that can disable an
entire fleet destroyer with a single shot. All things considered, let’s just
say I’m checking out my options for the afterlife.”

  
“Wow. You’re all
sorts of optimistic today, aren’t you?”

  
“Besides,” Trent
continued, unfazed, “if it helps you get back here in one piece, then I’m glad
you have it.”

  
Shawn nodded as a
silence fell in the compartment. The two men shared a knowing look, and then
Shawn slowly extended his hand, which Trent grasped firmly.

  
“I’ll be back soon,
old friend. Until then, do me a favor and keep things together,” Shawn said,
offering the same farewell to Trent he’d issued countless times.

  
“I’ll be on the
flight deck, tending to any of the damaged craft that need emergency repairs.”
Trent smiled approvingly. “Go give ‘em hell, Commander.”

* * *

  
The small personnel
carrier, designed to accommodate six pilots, their associated gear, and one
driver, lumbered through the immense hangar deck of the
Rhea
, overburdened with the weight of six pilots, two turret
operators, and a mechanic. The carrier’s engine moaned under the added strain,
and when it came to a halt near a selection of waiting fighters parked neatly
in a triangular pattern, the vehicle seemed to sigh in relief as everyone—save
for the mechanic—departed for their respective vessels.