Second Earth (27 page)

  
Richard turned to
her, and a small smile turned up the corner of his mouth. “All right, people,”
he barked to his officers. “You heard the Admiral. Let’s get going.”

* * *

  
An image of
Commander Caitlin Hayes’ face appeared above the centermost screen in Shawn’s
cockpit. “Lieutenant Commander Kestrel, we will shortly be moving into position
behind the Kafaran carrier. You are ordered to maintain a discreet distance
between us and the Kafaran carrier until further notice.”

  
Shawn blinked
twice, and then shook his head in utter bewilderment.
Did I hear that correctly?
“I’m sorry, Commander. Did you say you
were moving into a position
behind
the Kafarans?”

  
“That’s correct,
Commander. We’ve come into some new information about the intruder’s vessel.
The Kafarans are here to help us…if you can believe that.”

  
“I’m fairly certain
that I can’t.”

  
Shawn watched as
the visage of Commander Hayes smiled weakly. “Captain Krif shares your
sentiment. However, Admiral Graves has tactical control of the situation for
the time being.”

  
Once again, Shawn
was stunned into momentary silence. “I’m sorry. Did you just say ‘Admiral
Graves’?”

  
“Affirmative. He’s
on board the Kafaran carrier. The Admiral is coordinating the attack against
the Meltranians, our unknown friends out there. The Kafaran ships have some
sort of special barrier that protects them from the Meltranians’ superweapon.
The
Rhea
has been ordered to hold our
position astern of the Kafarans until the Admiral gives us the order to
attack.”

  
Still in disbelief
over the fact that William was on board a Kafaran ship—and apparently aiding
them in some way—he tried to sort the jumble of thoughts in his head before he
spoke. “And when will that be?”

  
“We honestly don’t
know. The Meltranian vessel is now inside the firing range of the Kafaran
carrier and is maneuvering, probably preparing to fire its main weapon.
Thankfully, they seem more interested in destroying the Kafarans than they do
us. Stand by for instructions.
Rhea
out.”

  
“Wait! Caitlin!” he
cried, but the image had already faded. Shawn sighed heavily as he assimilated
the new, staggering information.
Meltranians?
And Graves is alive on the Kafaran carrier?

  
There was a signal
coming in from Raven, and it broke Shawn from his momentary contemplation.
Shawn wasn’t a bit surprised to see it either, considering she was privy to the
same communication he had just received from the
Rhea
. However, Raven was requesting a secure channel, which would
separate the two fighters from the rest of the Sector Command forces while they
conferred.

  
She must have something important to say.
Better patch her in quick while we still
have time.
“Go ahead, Raven.”

  
“I can’t believe
they’re here to help us,” she balked without so much as a hint of military
bearing.

  
“Neither can I,”
Shawn agreed wholeheartedly.

  
“I have a strong
feeling that the Captain has his own reservations, too.”

  
Shawn nodded. Even
though they’d both served with Krif, Lieutenant Commander Brunel’s tenure with
the Captain had been longer. And, considering the Captain’s high opinion of
her, she probably knew him far better than Shawn did. Besides, Shawn had the
same reservations himself.

  
“Then why do you
think he’s following their orders?”

  
She shook her head
slowly. “I don’t know, but I’d bet my last credit that Richard has an ace up
his sleeve.” She then smiled softly once more before looking away the screen,
giving Shawn the impression that she was gazing thoughtfully at the
Rhea
. “That would be just like him. I
only hope he knows what he’s doing.”

  
Shawn could see
something in her eyes that spoke volumes more than her words were saying. “You
really like that guy, don’t you?” he asked.

  
She chuckled in
response, still looking out beyond her fighter. “Let’s just say we have…an
understanding.”

  
“An understanding,
huh?” Shawn repeated dubiously.

  
“He’s a good man,
Shawn. Really. He can just be…a bit single-minded at times.”

  
That is a universal understatement,
Commander.
“I’ll have to take your word on that.”

  
“Maybe you could
try to see his side of things sometimes, Skipper. It might make things easier
on you.”

  
I’d rather plant an open-mouth kiss on a
Minosian Goliath
. “It’s not that easy for me, Roslyn. He and I…” he let his
words trail off as the image of his late wife filled his mind for an instant,
then was gone just as quickly. “We have history.”

  
Her smile widened
as her expression changed to one of kindness as she continued to look back to
her commander. “I know you do, Shawn. I really do. Just try to remember that
you weren’t the only person to lose someone he loved during the war. We’ve all
had to lean on each other in the past few years. All of us. Richard is no
different.”

  
“Richard,” Shawn
chucked amiably. “So
that’s
how it is
with you two?”

  
She chuckled. “I
could say the same thing about you and Melissa.”

  
Shawn feigned
surprise. “Who said anything was happening between us?”

  
“Oh please, it’s
written all over your face, lover-boy. And besides, there’s nothing to be
ashamed about. Not anymore.” Shawn watched as she looked out her canopy toward
the Kafaran carrier and the destroyer escorts that were getting closer by the
second. An expression of uncertainty washed across her face as she turned back
to face Shawn. “This could be the start of something here, Shawn—something
bigger and uglier than the last war. If you…if you’ve found something good in
life to hold onto, then do it. Don’t let fear stand in your way, because you
might not get a chance to do it again. If you love her, then you owe it to
yourself and everyone else who’s died for it to tell her.”

  
Love her? Melissa Graves? The biggest pain
in my stern since…well, ever!
I
wouldn’t even know where to begin to love her, or anyone else for that matter.
Besides, I’m just a space hauler playing the role he’s been assigned. She could
no more reciprocate those feelings than Krif could make employee of the month.
Shawn looked at Roslyn’s image, not knowing how to respond. Luckily a
communications signal came in from the
Rhea
that broke the uneasy silence. “Raven, we need to break comms. I’ve got a
message coming in from Commander Hayes.”

  
She nodded, and
took it upon herself to close the channel.

  
Shawn quickly
opened the channel to the
Rhea
,
hoping that there was going to be good news attached to it. “Yes, Commander?”

  
“The Kafarans are
commencing their attack.”

  
As long as the
Kafarans weren’t attacking the
Rhea
,
then it was good news.

  
Shawn brought his
fighter out from behind the Kafaran carrier, hovering over the stern of the
massive vessel to get a better look at what was going on. He glanced down the
nose of his fighter, down the length of the unimaginably long and irregular
hull of the Kafaran ship, and out to the open space between it and the
Meltranian ship.

  
The dark void was
suddenly illuminated with dozens of green lances of plasma bearing the telltale
signature of Kafaran cannon fire. While their intended target was still too far
away to visually discern their effectiveness, Shawn knew full well the awesome
destructiveness the cannon barrage could wield against a vessel—or a
ground-based target. His eyes darted momentarily to the doomed word of Second
Earth spinning silently below the battlefield, and in his mind he heard a loud
a passage from the
Ulysses
novel
given to him by Sylvia those many years ago:

“…
the
dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind would lift those
waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining
down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead
sea in a dead land, grey and old.”

  
Shawn eyes turned back to the coming battle in time to see t
he
Meltranian vessel pivot slowly on its axis, pointing itself directly at the bow
of the incoming Kafaran carrier. A distant point of light began to shimmer near
the forefront of the alien’s vessel, and space around the craft seemed to warp
and twist itself right before Shawn’s eyes. The light grew brighter, almost
unbearably so, turning from blue to white. Just as it became too bright to look
at directly, it extinguished itself entirely, as if nothing had ever been
there. A split second later, a burst of hell-born energy reached out from the
Meltranian bow and smashed against the Kafaran carrier with such force that the
shockwave reverberated through Shawn’s fighter.
  

* * *

  
On the raised deck
of the
Rhea’s
CIC compartment
,
Captain Krif and the rest of his
assembled officers watched as the sensor scan displayed what was happening in
front of the Kafaran carrier ahead of them. An enormous bolt of energy, the
same kind that had destroyed the
Agincourt
,
sprang out from the forward section of the Meltranian vessel. Where it should
have impacted the Kafarans’ bow dead-center, the blast was somehow deflected
two hundred feet from its target. There appeared to be some form of energy
bubble surrounding the Kafaran ship, visible only when it was impacted by the
immense power of the weapon being used against it.

  
The Meltranian
blast fizzled and crackled around the periphery of the partially visible energy
sphere for a moment, then was gone entirely.

  
Krif was stunned at
the Kafaran ability to withstand the blast.
If
the energy shield was strong enough to take a handful of punishing hits from a
weapon like that, as Admiral Graves had described it could, then how long would
it last against the miniscule weapons in Sector Command’s arsenal?
His
momentary shock was broken by a call from the center of the lower deck.

  
“Sir!”
communications officer Clifton yelled. “We are receiving another signal from
the Kafaran cruiser. Admiral Graves is giving us the go-ahead to launch our
attack.”

  
Krif shot a look
over to the Flight Control Officer. “Caitlin, send the signal out to the
fighters. Remind them that Kestrel is in charge of coordinating the attack
until he’s dead, or until I can find another reason to relieve him. Then launch
everything else we have in our inventory. I don’t care if they’re held together
by duct tape and prayers. Get them out into space now!”

  
In the vast hangar
of the
Rhea
, the flight deck
technicians scurried about, moving from fighter to fighter in a jumble of
coordinated chaos. Last-minute details were checked and rechecked, and final
ordnance loads were installed. The first fighters to fly out were the remnants
of the Red Skulls, followed by the Cobra fighters of the Devil Dogs, and then
the remaining three fighter-bombers from the Gunslingers.

  
Trent Maddox, who’d
had little else to do while Shawn and the rest of the Rippers were out in
space, was hard at work with several other technicians prepping three full
squadrons of drone fighters for the coming engagement. The streamlined,
sea-ray-shaped craft were entirely computer-controlled, but could be manually
operated from a number of remote cockpits that were set up in a nearby
compartment.
 
Though lightly armed and
armored, and still highly untested in actual combat, the nimble fighters would
nonetheless provide adequate cover for the live pilots already out in the void.

  
With all the pilots
engaged in the battle, it was left to less experienced personnel to watch over
the drones, should the need arise for someone to take manual control. And, as
fate or misfortune would have it, Trent Maddox now found himself sitting in a
cockpit, not too dissimilar to the one Shawn Kestrel was in, but blessedly held
firmly to the deck of the
Rhea
. Trent
passively watched the short-range radar as the computer-controlled craft, and
the nearly two-dozen mirror fighters, launched from every available magnetic
catapult on the carrier. He placed a communications headset over his ears so he
could be privy to the battle for supremacy that was about to be waged.