Icarus (21 page)

   “Auxiliary control. I need to get the electronic data records from the
Icarus
’ mission computers.”

   “Good luck with that,” he said sarcastically. “I tried to get in there
a few months ago. I was hoping to access one of the long-range transmitters.
Unfortunately I’d only found one spare plasma cutter in my search of the ship,
and those things empty pretty quickly when you’ve got a lot of bulkheads to cut
through. I barely made a dent into aux-control before my cutter went dry. Since
then, I’ve had to make do with whatever access I could discover. I can get to
the food lockers on deck eleven…and to the life pods on the starboard side of
deck twelve, for all the good they’d do. They don’t have any power either, but
they do have food rations stored inside.”

   “What happened to your suit?”

   Garcia looked at the worn and torn life support suit he was wearing.
“I got a little more use out of it than was probably intended when they built
it. I’d been stockpiling food up here for a few weeks. On my last journey back,
I snagged a particularly nasty conduit. It ripped a hole right through the
pants.” He looked down to his right leg and to the four-inch gash in the
material. “The only other EVO suit in here was too small, and all the other
lockers were sealed shut when we lost backup power. In hindsight, I should probably
have used my cutters to open the lockers, but food and shelter were my number
one priorities.”

   “It seems you did just fine for yourself, Lieutenant.” She smiled at
the young man.

   “Thank you. Now, about that little walk,” Garcia again gestured to the
hole in his suit. “I don’t think I could make it all the way. There are a few
manual hatches between here and there that I’ve closed to keep the pressure in
this compartment stable…sort of a poor man’s airlock, you could say. I’ll need
a new suit to go any further.”

   Shawn reached into his toolkit and withdrew a small laser welder.
“This should be just strong enough to cut into an EVO suit locker or two.” He
grabbed his helmet from the deck as he made his way to the makeshift hole
Garcia had cut. “Where are the closest ones?”

   With Melissa’s help, Garcia struggled to his feet. “Through that hole
there’s a passageway that extends for about ninety feet. Halfway down on the
left is a connecting corridor that goes for another fifty yards. There are five
EVO lockers in there.”

   Shawn looked first to Garcia, then Melissa. There was no way in hell
he was leaving her alone in this compartment with him. Garcia seemed sane
enough, but Shawn shuddered at the thought of what six months alone in a dead
ship could do to a man’s psyche. Fearing for Melissa’s safety, and not willing
to put his trust in the lone survivor, Shawn checked the charge on his
gun—making sure that both Garcia and Melissa saw him do so. “All right, let’s
get going then. You lead the way, Lieutenant.”

  
W
alking
down the long, unlit corridor of the
Icarus
, Shawn was reminded of a
haunted house he’d once visited as a small child. The house itself was little
more than an attraction, designed to scare small children while simultaneously
entertaining adults with its tongue-in-cheek gore. For his part, Shawn could
attest to the successfulness of both tactics. Shining his flashlight into the
dark passageway of the
Icarus
, Shawn could hear the echoes of his mom’s
roaring laughter in his mind. The fear he’d felt as a child came back to him in
spades as he wondered what—if anything—would pop out of the unassuming crates
or doorways he passed. A pang of guilt washed over him as he came to the
realization that, whatever monstrous horde awaited them, it would get to
Lieutenant Garcia first. Then again, if anything decided to creep up on them
from behind, it would attack Sergeant Adams before it had a chance to get to
him. It was a no-win scenario that didn’t have any favorable outcome, assuming
there was something to be terrified about in the first place.

   As it was, the short trip to the environmental suit lockers was
uneventful, save for a rogue steam pipe that’d decided to burst as soon as the
trio had passed it. On high alert, Adams had squeezed off a round from his
pulse rifle into the darkness behind them. Getting a sympathetic glance from
Shawn, and a subtle look of disapproval from Melissa, Adams had apologized and
the team had moved on.

   Prying open one of the suit lockers with Adams’ help, Shawn handed
Garcia a new suit, which he unabashedly donned in front of them. His
undergarments were as soiled and tattered as the decrepit space suit he’d
discarded, and Shawn was instantly distressed at the sore state of the young
lieutenant. Garcia had been put through hell—almost literally—and Shawn vowed
to make it up to him when they got back to the
Rhea
. Even if he had to
move Heaven and Third Earth, Shawn would make sure Garcia was given a proper
stateroom, one fit for an admiral, and he’d receive the best hot meal the
Rhea
’s
cooks could muster. Lieutenant Garcia deserved it, and more. Unfortunately,
Shawn also knew there were some things that neither a hot shower nor a good
meal would clear away. Again, Shawn swore to make any type of care available to
the man, should he desire it.

   Once Garcia was fitted with a new EVO suit, the trio headed off for
the
Icarus
’ auxiliary control. Shawn had lost track of how many twists
and turns they’d made on their way to what was arguably the most important part
of the ship behind CIC. Almost every door they’d come across was closed, which
meant they had to make do with access crawlspaces and service passageways.

   One of the utility passages, a particularly tight fit on deck eight,
had caused the team to slow their descent into the bowels of the
Icarus
.
Several of the water pipes had broken, and the team found themselves waist-deep
in crystal clear water. They’d managed to wade through, but not without
incident. Melissa stumbled over a pile of debris that had become lodged on the
unseen deck, and her EVO suit was completely soaked from head to toe.

   Once the team was safely—albeit it significantly saturated—on deck
twelve, they made their way to auxiliary control using guidance from Garcia, as
well as Shawn’s recollections from his time on board the
Daedalus
. In
front of them loomed the doors to their destination, complete with burn marks
in the compartment’s bulkhead from Garcia’s previous attempts to enter the
space.

   “Now what do we do?” the lieutenant asked of his rescuers.

   Shawn gave the door a cursory inspection. “I have just enough power
left in my field emitter for one last door. If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to
find another way in.” He reached into his tool bag and withdrew the device once
more, placing it firmly above the burnt crescent that Garcia had made.
“Hopefully you didn’t cut anything important when you tried to get in.”

   “Agreed,” Melissa granted with a nod.

   With a press of the initiator button, the small angular device began
its steady rise in pitch until it finally burst a field of energy from within
its microgenerator core. The main door into auxiliary control slid open
halfway, then ground to a halt.

   Melissa looked to Shawn for answers. “Commander?”

   Shawn reached up and pressed the initiator button on the generator
once more. Nothing happened to either the emitter or to the stubbornly
half-opened hatch. “The power core is depleted, but I don’t think that was the
problem.” He studied the frame of the door, then looked at the alcoves in which
the doors should have been resting. “I think the door is physically jammed. It
might be something in the tracks.”

   “Great,” Melissa replied, exasperated. “Of all the doors to choose, we
get the one that’s bent.”

   He studied the aperture with approval. “At least we can squeeze
inside.”

   “But we’re going to have a hard time hauling out anything larger than
two square feet from the compartment.”

   Not knowing what she could possibly want that was that large, he
agreed with her assessment regardless. “There should be some more power
emitters in here we can use, and I’m sure there’s at least one more door out.”
Shawn stepped through the half-cocked door, with the dripping wet Melissa and
Garcia following close behind. There was no power to the space, so the only
visible light came from Shawn and Melissa’s flashlights.

   There was also a fine mist in the air. The computer on his wrist told
Shawn that the compartment’s air was saturated with toxins typically associated
with melted wiring and cooked insulation. Even if this compartment were sealed
tight and afforded all the warmth of a summer day, the air quality was totally
lethal, bordering on acidic. “We can’t stay in here for too long,” Shawn said
as he turned off the computer on his wrist. “The concentrated mixture of gasses
in the air is going to start eating through our suits in about thirty minutes.”

   Following a round of affirmations from the small team, Melissa made
her way to the secondary navigational computer station on the farthest
bulkhead. She shined her flashlight on the non-functioning unit, trying to
figure out a way to get power to the undamaged screen. “This should contain an
exact duplicate of the bridge’s main flight computer. If I can access it, we
should be able to tell what happened here.”

   “Better just to crack open the unit and take what you need,” Shawn
said from behind her. “I can’t imagine the storage media bay would be damaged.”

   “This is a state-of-the-art astrometric navigational guidance computer,”
she said in frustration. “You don’t simply ‘crack it open.’ We could damage any
number of sensitive pieces of equipment in there.”

   “Well, while you’ve been busy gawking at this thing, I took a look
around. I found two more emergency power emitters, but the only other door out
of here is jammed worse than the one we came through.” He then looked at the
large computer at her side. “And this will never fit through our only exit, so
you’d better think of something else.”

   “All things being equal, I’m pretty good with computers. But I don’t
have the technical skills necessary to work on a navigational processor. This
is better suited to an engineer or an—”

   “I do,” Lieutenant Garcia piped in from behind them. Both Shawn and
Melissa had almost forgotten he was there. “If I could get your help,
Commander?  Just give me your tools and I’ll see what I can do.”

   Melissa looked to him skeptically. “You have training in this,
Lieutenant?”

   Garcia shrugged. “Some. I mean, I’m no expert, but I’ve had to repair
these units in the past. Under supervision, mind you.”

   Shawn looked to Melissa, who only sighed heavily. Not taking her
response as a good omen, he reluctantly slid the tool pouch off his shoulder
and handed it to Garcia. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

   “Unlikely,” he looked at the tools disapprovingly. “This is going to
take a little time, but I think I can get the holocubes out without too much
trouble.”

   Not having the greatest of luck with electronics in general, Shawn was
doubtful he could do anything to help the lieutenant except to cheer him on.
“What do you want me to do?”

   “Nothing, for now. But I may need your help in a few minutes.”

   Shawn and Melissa stepped back from the computer as Garcia got to work
unscrewing one of the small, semi-metallic front panels. When Garcia was fully
immersed in his task, Melissa motioned Shawn into a sidebar. Shawn locked eyes
with Adams, then nodded his head in Garcia’s direction, giving the Marine a
nonverbal order to keep an eye on the lieutenant. Receiving a curt nod in
response, Shawn and Melissa stepped to the large, inoperative status screen at
the head of the control room.   

   “What’s on your mind?” Shawn asked her tentatively.

   She glanced over Shawn’s shoulder to Garcia, then lowered her tone to
barely a whisper. “I want to get a look inside the captain’s logbook.”

   Shawn nodded in understanding. He knew it was a breach of protocol to
look into the log book of a commanding officer without first going through the
proper channels—meaning someone of command rank or higher—but under the
circumstances, he didn’t see any other options. Besides, the rebellious streak
in him wanted to find out what happened to the
Icarus
probably as much
as the beautiful intelligence agent standing before him did.

   With a nod, he walked back over to Garcia and grabbed the unused power
generator that was lying on the deck next to the scruffy-looking young man.
When he got back to Melissa’s side, she moved over to a computer terminal
located on the bulkhead near where they’d entered the compartment. She reached
for the console’s chair, but when she spun it around, she found it occupied by
a cold, lifeless body. She briefly stared into the horrid face, which had the
unmistakable expression of terror frozen across its countenance. She
involuntarily gasped, turning quickly toward Shawn and burying her face in his
chest. He reached his arms around her and held her fast as both of their hearts
raced.

    “It’s okay,” he consoled her. “I’m right here.”

   “Everything okay over there?” Adams called from across the room.

   “Yeah. We just got a little…startled. That’s all,” Shawn called out,
Melissa’s embrace around his midsection loosening.

    After a few moments her breath slowed as her heart rate returned to
normal. She stepped back from him, a small strand of red hair falling down to
cover her right eye. “I suppose I’m going to have to apologize for acting
childish again.”

   Shawn instinctively reached up to move the hair out her field of
vision, then realized that they were both wearing their EVO helmets. Without
warning, he bent down and placed his visor against hers, which seemed to
instantly satisfy her.  Her eyes softened as she tilted her head up to look
into his face. Had they been in a different situation—and without the
transparent glass of the visors separating them—he may have tried to kiss her
in that fleeting moment—and she would have gladly accepted. However, a loud
clanking noise from across the compartment broke the momentary trance the two
were under.

   “Sorry about that,” Garcia yelled. “The power supply cover slipped out
my hands. It’d be nice if everything in here wasn’t coated in dinitrogen
trioxide, and I didn’t have to wear these damn gloves.”

   Melissa pursed her lips and laid a gloved hand softly against Shawn’s
chest, neither pushing him away nor allowing him to advance. She swallowed hard
once and looked back into his eyes. “I’ll be okay,” she whispered. “Thanks,
Shawn.”

   He nodded, then gently released her. She pivoted slowly and surveyed
the corpse in the chair once more, being careful in her inspection not to
disturb the body. She was no stranger to death, having seen it firsthand on
numerous occasions while serving as an operative with the OSI. However, this
was the first time she’d seen one in such a state, and she prayed it would be
the last. Looking from the dead man’s face to his uniform, she stepped back a
half pace and directly into Shawn’s chest. “Oh my God,” she gasped as she
looked at the neckline of the officer.

  “What is it?” Shawn leaned over her shoulder to see what she was
looking at.

  “This…this is the Captain.”

* * *

   On cue, Shawn looked to the rank insignia on the dead officer’s
collar. Sure enough, the body wore the rank of Captain. Above the left breast
pocket, frosted over but still plainly visible, was the golden, circular badge
denoting him as the commanding officer of a Sector Command warship. Shawn
reached out a cautious hand and wiped a thin layer of ice from the name badge.

   “Taggart,” he breathed the name as he saw it, but only loud enough for
Melissa to hear. Garcia was still having difficulties getting the navigational
logs out of the computer casing, and Shawn and Melissa were both silently
grateful for it, unsure of how Garcia would handle the sight.

   “Why isn’t he on the bridge? I mean, what’s he doing down here?”
Melissa asked in a hesitant whisper.

   Shawn was baffled.
Why, of all places, would the Commanding Officer
be down in auxiliary control during flight operations?
If what Garcia
had said was accurate—if the
Icarus
was screening the fighters and cargo
transports for the
Valley Forge
—then this should have been the last
place the captain would have been at that time. By all accounts, Taggart should
have been either on the bridge or in the combat information center. Why come
all the way down here?