The Crucible: Leap of Faith (15 page)

Every time my thoughts twisted
back to Max or the Enforcement Unit, I sunk my teeth deep into my
bottom lip and let myself experience the pain instead.

The access shafts
of this ship were far more generous than on the
Godspeed.
This vessel really was
megalithic. It had to be. It wasn't just one of the flagships of
the fleet, it also housed experimental weaponry
too.

It seemed that
every year the Alliance developed far more astounding weaponry.
According to rumors, the
Ra’xon
would soon be outfitted with experimental
triphasic rays that could theoretically allow it to destroy a ship
even whilst it was in beyond light mode.

There would have been a time when
such a thought would have filled me with pride. It would have been
further evidence that the Alliance was the greatest civilization
that had ever lived. Now it left nothing more than a hollow feeling
sinking deep through my gut.

My fingers were tight around my
scanner as I crawled uncomfortably through the access
shafts.

There was minimal lighting down
here, and I had to squint to see ahead.

"These blueprints are a mess," I
mumbled to myself as I checked the scanner once more. Something had
to be interfering with my small handheld scanner, because it kept
giving jumbled readings. As I came to a T-junction in the tunnel,
the scanner failed to recognize the shaft continuing down to my
left.

"What the hell?" My brow dug deep
down against my eyes as I positioned myself right in the center of
the T-junction and swept the scanner back and forth, jamming my
fingers against the buttons in a fruitless effort to make the
scanner work.

"This damn thing must be broken,"
I muttered to myself as I snapped the lid closed in
frustration.

A tide of guilt and anger
threatened to sweep over me.

I clenched my jaw so tightly, it
was a surprise I didn't shatter my teeth and spit shards onto the
grated metal below me.

I shook my head from side to side,
a few beads of sweat trickling down my brow and streaking across my
cheek.

Finally I pushed that bitter
torrent of emotion back.

I would just have to wait and see
what would happen next. If the Enforcement Unit came after me I
would know that they knew of my treachery.

Even if they never tracked me
down, would I be able to live with myself?

My entire identity was predicated
on my service to the Alliance Star Forces Fleet. I thought about
myself as a lieutenant commander, and every memory I cherished was
one that had taken me along the path of serving my
people.

Now my entire identity was
threatening to crumble from beneath me.

A heavy sinking feeling kept
pushing through my stomach, and if I concentrated on it for too
long, I swore it would see me sink right through the toughened
metal grating of the tunnel floor and right out of the bottom of
the ship itself.

If my father could see me now – if
he ever found out what I'd done – he wouldn't just disown me, he'd
probably push for my execution.

He simply could not abide fools,
but more than that, he hated traitors. He despised them.

One of his own commanders had once
betrayed him, and my father had made it a personal vendetta to make
her pay. He’d pushed for the death sentence, and she’d been
executed.

The more I thought about him, the
more sweat played across my brow until I groaned with frustration
and took a swipe at it with the back of my hand.

Even though I should have
continued further up the tunnel, I decided to stray off to the
left. I opened the scanner once more, punching new commands into
the screen, my fingers stiff, my movements angry. Fortunately the
little handheld scanner was built for endurance, and I wouldn’t be
able to shatter it, no matter how violent I became.

Some part of my mind was aware of
the fact I should be concentrating on my next mission. But what was
the point? The rest of me doubted I would ever make it that
far.

The Star Forces did not react well
to traitors. Once upon a time I had understood that as necessary.
We had the majority of the Milky Way to protect. Every citizen of
the Alliance deserved our best and bravest efforts, and they would
only get those if we stopped the free flow of secrets.

If someone was stupid and arrogant
enough to betray the Star Forces, they deserved everything they
got.

…
I hadn’t been stupid, and I
hadn’t been arrogant; I’d just been stuck in the wrong place at the
wrong time.

If Lieutenant Hargrove had never
called me, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.

…
And I wouldn’t know about the
mystery, either.

Max had been killed. Regardless of
everything else that was going on, I couldn’t forget that
fact.

I owed it to him to find out what
had happened. Even if it meant my career.

I shook my head and continued
forward, knees and hands starting to fatigue from all my
crawling.

But maybe pain was what I needed
to feel right now.

I crawled along faster and faster,
muttering at my scanner as it still refused to believe there was a
tunnel in front of me.

I had to keep manually accessing
the original blueprints of this ship to chart my path.

When the requisitions officer was
back, I was going to have to have a good chat to him about
maintaining accurate scans.

Though I was new
to this ship, I was good at navigating, and I was fairly sure I was
currently somewhere under one of the main engine cores. The
business of pushing a ship as large as this beyond the speed of
light was a complex one. The
Ra’xon
didn’t have only one engineering core, but 20.
They were spread around the ship at even intervals. There was a
central drive system right in the absolute center of the ship that
coordinated the power from each drive.

I kept crawling along the tunnel
until I reached another T-section.

I thumbed the scanner, flicking
back to the original blueprints.

And I frowned.

I twitched my head to the
right.

The tunnel before me wasn’t even
on the blueprints, let alone my scanners.

“…
What the hell?”

Of all the mysteries I was
currently facing, this appeared to be the most innocent, but still
captured my attention as I pushed myself down the
tunnel.

By now the base of my palms were
red and raw, but I ignored them as I shifted further down the
access shaft.

Slowly but surely the curiosity of
what lay before me started to push away my spiraling
negativity.

No matter how far
I travelled along this tunnel, both my scanner and the blueprints
were sure it didn’t exist. Just as I opened my mouth to
exclaim
what the hell,
my command PIP chimed.

I jolted backwards, shoulder
slamming into the wall beside me. Muttering to myself as I palpated
my arm, I extended a hand to support myself. These tunnels were too
cramped to sit or kneel comfortably.

Eventually I cleared my throat.
“Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd here.”

“Sir, this is Ensign Saxus. I’ve
been instructed to contact you. The Captain’s requesting your
presence in a meeting with Commander F’val.”

“Sorry, what did you just say?” I
locked a hand on the shaft beside me, brow compressing so hard over
my eyes it was hard to see in the bare illumination around
me.

“We’ve just
rendezvoused with the
Warden,
and Commander F’val has
boarded.”

“Commander F’val?” I repeated,
tone twisting high in surprise. “Why wasn’t I told he was coming on
board earlier?”

“It was on the ship-wide update
report this morning, sir. You must have missed it.”

I pressed my hand harder into the
shaft wall beside me, curling my fingers until they grated over the
metal plating.

Suddenly I couldn’t
breathe.

It had nothing to do with the fact
Commander F’val was supposedly an acquaintance.

It had everything to do with the
fact he’d been linked on multiple occasions with the Enforcement
Unit.

“Do you know when it was decided
that the Commander would come on board?” I asked in a stuttering
tone.

It was an odd question, I just
hoped the Ensign would know the answer.

“Ah, I guess I’m not sure, sir.
I’ll just have a look… the first mention of it on an update report
was at 2100 last night.”

2100… possibly an hour or so after
Hargrove contacted me.

Christ.

The Commander was here for me,
wasn’t he?

I’d underestimated the Enforcement
Unit. They must have known about Hargrove’s original communication
with me. The fact I hadn’t mentioned that to them this morning
meant I’d only solidified my guilt in their eyes.

They were here to arrest
me.

“…
Ah, sir, are you
okay?”

“…
Of course. I’ll make my way out
of the tunnels as quickly as I can. Tell the Captain I’ll be there
in 20 minutes and relate to her the reason for my
delay.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Lieutenant Commander out.” My
elbowed jerked, no longer capable of holding my weight, and my back
slammed up against the shaft wall. An echoing boom reached out
through the access tunnel in both directions.

“Shit,” I
swore,
“shit!”

I brought a hand up and pressed it
over my eyes, grinding the palm against them until I saw
stars.

This was it.

The end.

My entire career was now over.
Everything I’d worked for….

I swore again.

Then, just as sickness and guilt
threatened to take over me, my hand formed a fist all of its own
accord.

The anger flooded in.

The anger at Max’s death. The
anger that it could be this easy to sink my career. Technically, I
hadn’t done much wrong. I’d lied about Hargrove’s communication,
but I hadn’t sought out restricted information in the first place.
I had no intention of sharing that information, either.

So why should it cost me
everything I’d ever worked for?

I knew I couldn’t stay here
slumped in this tunnel forever. I had to face my future.

As hard as that was.

So I continued forward. I brought
my scanner up, trying to chart a path to the closest access panel
back into the main hallways of the ship.

The damn thing was still insisting
that I wasn’t in an access tunnel at all. I referred back to the
old blueprints, and they were still just as useless.

According to all the information I
could access, I was currently smack bang in the middle of a solid
wall. The problem was, I clearly wasn’t.

Feeling my rigid muscles lock with
tension, I forced myself forward. If I continued straight, I should
technically intersect with an access panel at some
point.

And what would it matter if I were
late to my own execution?

…

Ensign Jenks

Commander F’val was already on
board.

We’d docked with
the
Warden
– his
strike vessel – in one of the smoothest, quickest procedures I’d
ever seen.

It was clear that the Commander
was here for somebody.

Me.

My thoughts were a spiraling
mess.

Clearly I’d been incapable of
keeping my true identity hidden.

The Enforcement Unit were here to
take me back to Professor Axis.

I was currently walking along one
of the wide corridors that ran between engineering and one of the
many med bays. I had my handheld scanner and was completing yet
another shift doing sensor scans.

I paid no attention whatsoever to
what I was doing.

I had to decide what to
do.

I would not come
quietly.

I would fight the Commander and
whoever else tried to capture me.

One good thing about having
completed so many proximity scans was that I had a fairly good
knowledge of this ship’s structure.

If it came to a fight, I’d know
how to compromise it.

Not just one room, but the whole
goddamn vessel.

…
Would I kill everybody on board?
Was I that desperate to ensure my own freedom?

No. But there’d be a middle
ground. And I couldn’t… I just couldn’t go back to Professor Axis.
The future he had laid out for me was torture itself. Not just for
me, but for everybody else too.

He would use me to ensure the
Alliance’s continued strength. I would be forced to wipe out the
resistance, and then he would turn to his next goal.