Icarus (15 page)

   “And you did it?”

   “Twice.”

   Santorum looked astonished. “How long did it take them to find you?”

   “The first time was quick. I took a hit to my power stabilizer not
long after launch, lost all control of the ship, and then ejected. I wasn’t far
from the carrier, so they dispatched a retriever to come and get me.”

   Jerry nodded slowly. “And the second?”

   Shawn peered around the vast compartment before answering. “It took
them eight hours to find me.”

   “Holy hell! Eight hours?”

   “My primary beacon went dead and my secondary was only at half power.
They said it was a miracle they found me at all.”

   “That’s…wow. But, what did you do for eight hours to pass the time?”

   “At first I recalled some of the last letters I’d received from back
home, and then started with basic arithmetic tables and fuel equations. After
that, I moved on to give myself fictitious enemy scenarios and then challenged
myself to think my way through each of them.”

   “So you did the same basic stuff they tell you about in flight
school?”

   “Yeah, but it only lasted for about five hours.”

   “Then what did you do?”

   “I tried not to let the sound of my own breathing drive me crazy,” he
laughed, which Jerry shared uncomfortably. “Trust me: I’m sure it wouldn’t be
like that again. I hear they have triple-redundant systems for everything in
the flight suits nowadays.”

   “Yeah, the thing will even give you a back rub if you talk nice enough
to it.”

   Shawn managed a smile. “Good to know.”

   Jerry clapped his hands as if to symbolize that a change of subject
was in order, to which Shawn could scarcely disagree. “Hey, all this walking
and jabbering’s got me famished. What say we head up to the wardroom and grab a
bite to eat?”

   Shawn stretched a hand toward what he hoped was the compartment’s
exit. “Lead the way, Lieutenant.”

   “Yes, sir!”

* * *

   In the galley, Shawn and Jerry met up with the rest of the squadron,
who were just sitting down to eat. After about thirty minutes of small talk and
dining, Shawn heard his name being called over the compartment intercom.

   “Repeat, call for Lieutenant Commander Shawn Kestrel. Please respond
at the nearest terminal.” The voice of the female officer repeated the message
twice more before Shawn could get to a nearby computer.

   He held his IDC to the screen. “Shawn Kestrel,” he stated. “Open the
channel.”

   It was Melissa Graves. Her dark hair was spilling over her shoulders,
and her eyes sparkled. “Do you have time to talk, Commander?”

   “I’m down in the galley with my squadron right now.”

   “Oh,” she said with surprise. “I don’t want to bother you. It can wait
until—”

   He dismissed whatever she was about to say with a kind smile. “Don’t
worry about it. In fact, why don’t you come down? You can meet the rest of the
team.”

   “Are you sure?” she asked hesitantly, at the same time seeming
relieved that he wanted to see her.

   “Sure I’m sure.”

   She smiled a thin line and nodded. “Okay. I’ll be down in less than
ten minutes.”

   True to her word, Melissa was in the galley and standing at Shawn’s
side in less than ten minutes. She and Roslyn Brunel locked eyes, smiling
cordially at each other as Melissa took a seat opposite Shawn. Their brief
exchange was not lost on him. He began to introduce Melissa to his squadron
mates, giving their names as well as informing her of their call signs.

   When Jerry Santorum was presented, the Lieutenant offered Melissa a
wink and a nod after the introduction. She smiled back as if she were a shy
schoolgirl being introduced to a cute boy in her class. It was fair to say that
this was also not lost on Shawn.

   “So Lieutenant Santorum,” Melissa began brazenly after all the
introductions were finished. “What is the meaning behind your call sign?”

   Jerry smiled broadly. “Well, ma’am. That’s a long story.”

   “Come on, Jerry,” Brunel goaded, then nodded to Shawn. “I’m sure we’d
all like to hear it again.”

   Shawn nodded in agreement. “I have to admit, I’m a bit curious about
that myself.”

   Jerry’s smile got even bigger, if that were possible. “About two years
ago, I was flying with the Sundevils off the carrier
Totonagra,
and we’d
just jumped into the Tratavaris sector on pirate patrol.”

   There was a litany of “ooohs” and “ahhs” from all but Shawn and
Melissa. Unfazed by their taunting, Jerry continued.

   “Anyway, it didn’t take us long to find them, either. They were lying
in wait: a whole angry swam of them, behind a moon circling a gas giant.”

   “How many?” Melissa asked, intrigued.

   “They were like a hive of angry hornets. They had a modified freighter
they were using as a light carrier, which could launch about twenty fighters.
And they were mean sons of…well, they were a might testy, if you know what I
mean.”

   She nodded for him to continue.

   “So as soon as those pirates locked onto us, they launched everything
they had. And, of course, the
Totonagra
launched three squadrons to
intercept.”

   “Of course,” Melissa said as she hung on his every word.

   Jerry seemed to be eating up the attention. He started swooping his
hands through the air as if they were fighters, his explanation of the skirmish
getting more and more dramatic.

   “So here I was, mano a mano with this enemy fighter, when all of a
sudden my missile launcher locks up. I mean
dead
. And I’m already low on
energy, so I’ve got minimal power for lasers.”

   The whole galley now seemed intent on Jerry’s story.

   “He’s hot on my tail, and I got nowhere to go but back to the carrier,
right?”

   “Sure,” Melissa said.

   Jerry then leaned in closer to Melissa, his voice barely above a
whisper. “Then it dawned on me, right? Like a…like a bolt of
lightning
or something. I pointed my fighter right at the carrier and hit the thrusters
for full burn. I figured that pirate would’ve been crazy to follow me.”

   “Did he?” Melissa asked.

   “He did, but he wasn’t fast enough. I wedged my fighter through one of
the open launch tubes and, in a feat of acrobatic mastery, maneuvered right out
through the other side of the
Totonagra
without a single bit of damage.”

   “Except for the two tow tractors you smashed on your way out,” Roslyn
piped in, then sipped casually at her drink.

   “Yeah, well, except for those. But, like I said, I came out the other
side and performed a perfect nose over. I mean, it was textbook…right out of a
training video. Then he was there—the pirate—right in my sights. That’s when I
let him have it.”

   Melissa’s head cocked back in confusion. “But you said you were almost
out of energy and your missile launcher was jammed. What did you ‘let him have
it’ with?”

   Roslyn jumped in before Nova could continue. “With the only thing he
could: his emergency weapon. It’s designed to use all available power to launch
an attack that—in theory—is a last resort.”

   “Well, it was definitely that, I can tell you,” Jerry examined. “The
explosion lit him up so bright, it left his shadow etched onto the side of the
carrier.”

   “What was your emergency weapon?”

   “A phillium missile,” Roslyn all but snorted.

   The coffee that Shawn had just drunk nearly came out of his mouth in
shock. “You’re not serious!”

   “It was all I had left,” Jerry said in his defense. “Anyway, it did
the job.”

   “It did the job, all right,” Roslyn injected. “The concussive
shockwave knocked out the
Totonagra’s
long-range radar, and their
short-range sensors. There was structural damage to several decks, and numerous
casualties.”

   “None of them serious,” Jerry added quickly.

   Shawn shook his head in amazement. “How close to the carrier were
you?”

   Jerry gave Melissa a brief smile, as if the impending answer was one
he was extremely proud of. “Three hundred yards.”

   Shawn smiled at the younger man’s brashness. “On the one hand, I can
respect your quick thinking.”

   Nova smiled broadly. “Thank you, sir.”

   Shawn set his cup down. “But,” he continued, leveling his eyes at the
lieutenant, “if you ever try something like that while I’m in command, you
might as well turn in your commission, because you’ll never fly a fighter
again.”

   “Well, sir, when the rubber hits the road out there, sometimes we have
to make those last-minute decisions.”

   “That’s exactly why you need to make sure your head is in the right
place all the time. That way, when you need to make those same decisions, you’ll
choose the best one possible. I don’t want to see you putting other people at
risk just so you can save your own ass.”

   Jerry looked at him scornfully. “So you’re saying I should have just
given up and died out there.”

   “I’m saying that you need to make sure you don’t put yourself ahead of
everyone else.”

   Knowing when to quit, Jerry nodded his head, but the cheeriness he
normally carried around with him had long since departed.

   For his own part, Shawn didn’t mind dressing Nova down. Impertinence
was dangerous, and he didn’t want to see anyone killed over hotdog antics.

   Least of all, himself.

  
O
nce
they’d finished eating in relative silence with the rest of the officers, Shawn
and Melissa retired to a private lounge a few compartments down from the
pilots’ wardroom. The compartment had two long couches lining the farthest
corner from the doors, and a single-pane view port looking out into space on
the opposite wall. Melissa sat on one of the couches, her head back and her
long red hair draped over the back cushions, while Shawn rummaged through some
cabinets looking for a glass.

   “Are you going to tell me why you were so rude to the Lieutenant?” she
asked, her eyes staring up to the overhead.

   “What do you mean?” he replied, opening and closing cupboards with
endless abandon.

   “One moment you were complimenting him, the next thing you were
shutting him down in front of his friends. It seemed…quite rude.”

   Shawn had finally found the item he was looking for and, once it was
filled with water, he returned to sit by Melissa’s side. “He seemed a little
too cocky about the whole thing.”

   “He’s a pilot. I’m sure it’s commonplace.”

   “Sometimes,” he conceded. “However, sometimes it can be dangerous, to
him and to his teammates. There’s very little margin for error in space, and
even less for hotdog heroics.”

   Melissa crossed one leg casually over the other. “As I recall,
Commander, you’ve displayed a fair amount of ‘hotdog heroics,’ as you call
them.”

   “That’s beside the point.”

   “Is it?” She was trying to lure him, but he wasn’t going to bite.

   Shawn sighed heavily. “As long as I’m wearing this uniform, I need to
act the part. Those pilots in there, especially the younger ones, expect it. In
fact, I’d go so far as to say they need it. I wouldn’t be doing anyone a
service by letting them down, even if I’m guilty of the same frailties.”

   Melissa turned her emerald eyes to him and smiled. “You really are
sounding more and more like an officer every day.”

   “Right now, I have little choice in the matter. If I’m going to play
the part, then I’ll be doing it the best I can. Jerry will be fine. You’ll
see.”

   She turned away from him, her eyes focusing once again on the
compartment’s overhead.

   Shawn looked at her with apprehension. “So are you going to tell me
what you and Krif talked about after I was dismissed?”

   “Oh, it was nothing,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

   “It’s never ‘nothing’ when it comes to Dick.”

   She scowled as she turned to face him once again. “You know, he really
hates that you call him that.”

   Once more filling his glass with water, Shawn plopped down on the
couch, close to her. “Good.”

   “What is it with you two, anyway?”

   Shawn shrugged. “Typical pilot stuff.”

   Melissa was unconvinced. “You’re being evasive.”

   “Then I’m in good company,” he retorted.

   She sighed lightly. “Look, I’m really…sorry. I am. It’s just that I’m
not used to explaining myself to others, let alone answering questions.”

   “Because of your job with the OSI?”

   Melissa looked deeply into his eyes. “Because of who I am.”

   “Now that you mention it, I’m still having a hard time figuring that
one out.”

   “And what is that?”

   “Who you are. I mean, one minute you’re angry with me, the next you’re
friendly, and then you’re…well…”

   “Kissing you?”

   “I was going to say affectionate, but yes.”

   “I suppose I owe you an explanation.”

   “I should think you do.” His tone was soft, but the inflection was far
from genial.

   “I’ve been…out of sorts lately. I haven’t been acting like myself.”

   “Because of your father?”

   She nodded grandly. “Because of a lot of things.”

   “Are you saying you regret some of the things you’ve done?”

   She laughed lightly, throwing her head back. “That’s a loaded question.”

   “In what way?”

   “Shawn, I could think of a great number of things I’ve done in my
career that I’m not proud of.”

   “Would you like to talk about it? I don’t mind listening.”

   Melissa thought back to their time on
Sylvia’s Delight
as they
traveled to see Toyotomi Katashi. She thought of the brief moment she’d had to
talk with Shawn about personal things, and how instantly comfortable she’d felt
when she had. There was something about him she trusted implicitly, more so
than any other person she had met in recent years. Perhaps it was because this
man had been on good terms with her father—maybe even better terms than she
was. After all, the two had flown together, fought together, and had grieved
together in a time of great suffering.

   “I suppose I could start at the beginning…”

   “It would make things a lot easier.”

   “Okay, but first you have to agree that everything I tell you, you
promise not to repeat to anyone.”

   Shawn held up three fingers in the traditional Boy Scout salute. “On
my honor.”

   She smiled at the overhead. “I’m not sure that’s saying much.”

   “Hey!”

   She playfully backhanded his shoulder. “I was just kidding. And, as
payment, you have to tell me some things about you in return.”

   “We tried this before on Darus Station, remember?”

   Melissa cast her eyes to the deck briefly before returning them to
Shawn. “I promise to do less interrogating and more listening this time.”

   Shawn nodded slowly. “Then it looks like we’re all out of excuses.”

   “It would seem so.” She let a silence fall between them before she
began speaking again. “When I was a little girl, my father would tell me
stories about—”

   The door to the lounge swung open abruptly and Roslyn Brunel came in
quickly with Drake fast behind her. Shawn jumped to his feet in surprise, as if
his own father had just caught him kissing a girl on the family couch. “What is
it, Raven?”

   “Captain Krif wants you in CIC immediately. Both of you.” Roslyn’s
eyes moved from Shawn to Melissa and back. There was something in her voice
that told Shawn it wasn’t good news. “You need to see this.”

   “Why didn’t he pass it over the ship’s intercom?” Melissa asked with
haste.

   “Trust me,” Raven said with an almost-shocked expression. “When you
see it, you’ll know why.”

   Melissa’s thoughts ran instantly to her missing father, Admiral
Graves.
What else would be so important that Shawn and I would need to see
it together?
She quickly grabbed her discarded coat from the side of the
couch and raced toward the combat information center, with Shawn, Raven, and
Drake running to catch up.

* * *

   The combat information center on the
Rhea
was a dimly lit
space, punctuated by the occasional flash of a computer terminal or the sound
of one of the many technicians relaying orders to various parts of the ship.
The overhead lights of the space let off a dull blue hue, bathing the occupants
as if they were in a surreal underwater scene. During combat operations, the
heart of the ship moved from the bridge to this space. This was where all the
tactical, astrometric, gravitic, and associated sensor data was fed directly to
the dozens of technicians whose job it was to sort through the chaos of
information and turn it into order. The captain would then use that data to
relay orders to any number of components on the ship, including pilots and
weapons systems.

   Captain Krif, his large arms folded defiantly, was standing near a
glowing readout table when the Shawn, Melissa, Raven, and Drake entered the
space. “Come over here,” he said in their direction, beckoning them with a
three-fingered wave.

   The table was little more than a large, standard display that had been
placed flat on its back and was supported by a single metal beam that ran the
length of the eight-foot-long surface. The top was both touch- and
sound-sensitive, capable of displaying limited three-dimensional interactive
graphics across its entire surface. The table was currently displaying a
long-range sensor graphic of the sector the
Rhea
was currently
traversing. As Melissa and the three pilots neared the table, they could hear
Krif give orders to the technician standing nearest to him.

   “Bring up grid 2-2-7 and magnify to level four.”

   “Aye, Captain,” the young man said. At the terminal beside the table,
the specialist waved his hand over a small sensor and a glowing, holographic
keyboard appeared an inch or so from the surface. The technician inputted the
commands Krif had given him, and the image on the display table shifted from a
topographical view of the sector to an area of space about a light-year forward
of the
Rhea
’s current position.

   “Agent Graves, I thought you might want to see this,” Krif said,
nodding to the image.

   Melissa stepped toward the table and watched as the image of a planet
materialized in the space above the table, its statistics displayed in a small
chart beside it.  The world was small by galactic standards, only slightly too
large to be considered a moon. The surface was a mottled mix of browns and
greens, with nearly every color in between swirling across the partially obscured
surface. The planetoid had its own series of satellites orbiting it, each a
barren wasteland of unremarkable gray sand and craters.

   “What am I looking at, Captain?” she asked, leaning over the table
with perked curiosity. Shawn was doing the same over her shoulder.

   “This is Tamar, and the smaller moons are Chaka, Skron, and Refa.”

   Not immediately noticing anything out of the ordinary, she studied the
image once more before speaking. “It looks very uninteresting, Captain.”

   “It isn’t the planet itself I wanted to show you: it’s what our patrol
wing found.” Krif looked back to the young technician at the side of the table
and gave him a nod. “Go ahead, Mister Thursat. Bring it up.”

   “Aye, sir.”

   The glowing outline of a square appeared, then centered itself at the
midway point between Tamar’s northern pole and the surrounding space. With a
fizzle of the pixels, the selected area panned it at breakneck speed and filled
the projected area above the table. Everyone noticed a black, undefined shape
spinning end-over-end near the pole.

   “Bring it to full magnification, Thursat.”

   “Aye, sir.” The young man pressed another series of controls on the
holographic keypad, and a three-dimensional representation of the sensor
readings erupted from the tabletop.

   Melissa leaned toward the tumbling shape, now nearly two feet long and
at eye level with her. It was still an unbelievably dark and ill-defined mass.
“I still can’t make it out, but it looks like a ship.”

   Krif’s tone was ominous. “It’s a cruiser, actually. Or what’s left of
one.”

   “One of ours?” Shawn turned and asked as the remaining officers
continued to gaze at the form.

   Krif nodded solemnly. “Correct. She was part of the fleet that was
dispatched with the
Valley Forge
.” The captain leaned over, entering a
command into the table’s control panel. This time, the three-dimensional image
was enhanced with simulated lighting and information from the
Rhea
’s
library computer. The hulking ship turned over itself as it rotated in the
center of the table. “Sensor scans show that it’s the USCS fleet cruiser
Icarus
,
sir.”

   The normally sleek cigar shape of the hull was pitted and scored with
numerous battle scars. Near the aft end of the ship, where the bridge and
communications tower should have been, there was only a mass of twisted and
holed-through metal plating. The dorsal sensor pallets lining the spine looked
as if they had been turned into Swiss cheese, and the entire, bulbous forward
hull was nearly gone—a gaping hole now opened where several thousand tons of
hardened, three-foot-thick
tellurium
armor
plating had once been.

   “What happened to her?” Raven asked, nearly breathless at the scope of
the destruction.

   “It’s hard to tell. Visual scans are only giving us so much
information. There was an ion storm in the system two days ago, and its
leftovers are playing hell with the ELINT’s sensors.”

   “Survivors?” Drake asked nervously. He had never seen destruction of a
warship of this size and on this scale.

   “Doubtful,” Krif replied sharply, yet somberly. “But we can’t say for
sure. There may be pockets of habitable spaces on board, but considering that
this ship has been missing for over six months, I doubt anyone could have
survived that long. The food and water requirement would make it extremely
untenable.”

   “But you said yourself you aren’t positive,” Shawn replied.

   “That I did, Commander Kestrel. That I did,” Richard nodded slowly.
“I’d very much like to be proven wrong.”

   “You want us to go over there?” Melissa asked.

   The captain turned sharply to Melissa. “You must think I’m out of my
mind. Go over there? I don’t want anyone going over there! That thing is a
death trap, not to mention a hazard to navigation. We can’t even get detailed
readings on the ship’s jump core. If containment has been breached in any way,
the ship could explode; or worse, it could vanish altogether and take whoever’s
on board to God knows where.” He shook his head emphatically at her, then
turned his attention back to the lifeless hulk of the once-proud cruiser.
“Nonetheless, I need to figure out what’s happened here. Since you’re the
reigning intelligence officer, you’re hereby drafted to render your services in
that regard.”

   “Well, like it or not, I’ll need to get over there to perform a
thorough investigation.” When Krif turned his eyes back to her, she finished
with “sir.”