Inside the computer- and personnel-laden
combat information center of the
Rhea
,
Captain Richard Krif stared out the single, expansive view port at the slowly
spinning world before him. He didn’t need to read the litany of updated reports
coming in every few minutes as the junior officers and technicians scanned the
planet below to know the underlying truth: when it came to Second Earth, the
majority of the public had been lied to. Having initially believed the reports
that had originated from the Unified Council, Krif now had to second-guess his
strategy for sending a landing team down. The game, it seemed, had irrevocably
changed, and he was faced with a ever growing list of unknowns.
What would his landing team discover when
they reached the surface? The intrusion-detection satellites—supposedly placed
in orbit to protect the planet—were mysteriously missing. Richard needed to
know why, and he needed to know fast. From the starboard side of the room, he
watched as Lieutenant Commander Caitlin Hayes gave Shawn Kestrel’s Mark-IV
permission to depart for a second time. He then turned to the large status
screen at the head of the room as a pair of fighters streamed out from their
launch tubes on the starboard side of the carrier, momentarily passed by the
Mark-IV as it rocketed out of the bay. Not long after, several more craft
exited their respective launch tubes and maneuvered into formation.
Krif watched in silence, the only noises
coming from the odd computer terminal acknowledging some random request by its
user. He sucked in a slow breath, held it for a moment, and then exhaled with
equal gradualness. “Kestrel, you’d better get me some answers, and you’d better
damn
well come back alive. I’m
sticking my neck way out on this one; I can feel it,” he said to no one in
particular.
“Sir?” A technician addressed the captain
from an astrometric station directly below the slightly raised platform on
which Krif was standing.
Krif turned his head down toward the young
man, annoyed that he was both talking to himself and that his one-sided
conversation was being overheard. “I didn’t say anything. Don’t you have that
sensor report for me yet?”
“Ah…yes, sir. Right here, Captain.” The
young man fumbled when he almost lost his grip on the data tablet, turned, and
then handed it to Krif. Retrieving the cartridge from the specialist’s shaking
hand, Richard went back to observing the small band of mixed craft heading down
to the planet as he waited, as patiently as he could muster, for their first
report.
E
verything
on this world looked just like the pictures of Old Earth that Shawn had first
seen as a young child, save for the enormous moon hanging just over Second
Earth’s horizon. That planetoid,
Elennarah, named after the admiral who had commanded the fleet
of colonists who’d landed here, was far too different from the moon of Old
Earth to fool Shawn into believing he was back on the birthplace of humanity.
Elennarah’s surface was a mottled mixture of orange and grays, a tribute to the
high iron content of its surface, and interspersed with wisps of turquoise
clouds which moved across the extremely thin atmosphere like micro-cracks on an
eggshell. By all accounts, it looked more like the planet Mars before it had
been terraformed and overpopulated.
“I never thought it
would look like this.” Lieutenant Commander Roslyn Brunel, sitting in the
copilot’s seat of
Sylvia’s Delight
,
was in shock at her surroundings. Like the rest of the exploration team, she’d
already made her assumptions about what they would encounter when they arrived,
only to have those same expectations shattered to pieces.
Shawn let out a
measured sigh before responding. “Yeah.”
In fact, he
couldn’t agree more. The world passing rapidly below
Sylvia’s Delight
was unlike anything the Unified government had led
everyone to believe. Seeing the beauty and tranquility of the mountain range
over which they were currently passing, he couldn’t help but speculate about
the other lies the Unified Government may have told the public, or they themselves
were told. When the end of the monolithic range appeared, Shawn took the
Mark-IV gracefully down the slope of the last hills in the chain.
Sylvia’s Delight
was now directly over a
lush, green field on the outskirts of an ancient forest. On either side of
D
were Maelstrom-class fighters from
Shawn’s squadron, the Rippers. In front of
D
,
far too distant to be seen with the naked eye, was a single Mummy from the 215
th
Electronic Intelligence Gathering Squadron, the Discoverers. Behind them were two
Pharaohs from the 8
th
Logistics Squadron, the Senders. The band of
ships quickly came to a large body of water. Based on their current location,
Shawn and Raven both knew it to be Arben Lake, purported to be the best place
to fish on the whole of the planet. Its blue surface sparkled under the rays of
the sun, sending back streaks of reflections that contoured themselves to the
hulls of the low-lying Unified craft.
Knowing they were
fast approaching their destination, Shawn called in a status report from the
Discoverers’ lead ELINT. The sensor officer on the Mummy reported no unusual
contacts of any kind in the immediate area of Crystal City or Delta Base, then
notified Shawn that he was cleared to land at the former base’s airstrip and
spaceport, Addison Field, at his convenience. A relatively undamaged small
swatch of the abandoned tarmac was located by the recon craft on its third
patrol of the area, and it would give Shawn—and the small squad of Marines in
Sylvia’s
belly—ample room to set up a base
camp once they touched down.
Over the distant
horizon, beyond the last ridge of trees, Shawn and Roslyn could now see the
damaged but still upright spires of the center of the city, Crystal Towers.
Each of the three structures had been nearly a mile tall when constructed, with
thick bases that looked as if each were a tree trunk and rooted deeply into the
pavement beneath it. From there they tapered off into the sky, ending at
communications towers and disc-shaped observation lounges. Midway up the spires
were a series of transparent connecting corridors that had linked the
structures together. The three towers were home to the majority of the city’s
inhabitants, as well as the main offices for the local law enforcement
officials, the planetary Sector Command and Unified Government representatives,
and the planet’s governing council—not to mention the hundreds of offices,
retail, and dining spaces they held.
As Shawn brought
the Mark-IV in closer to the remains of the structures, he could now distinguish
the true punishment the towers had taken. On one of the spires, a
seven-hundred-foot section was completely missing. A second spire had toppled
about three hundred feet from the top, but was still dangling precariously from
a few strands of girders that were holding fast. The third tower—the only one
still completely upright—had two large segments of its lower base blown out, as
if some enormous creature had swooped down and taken bites from the building.
Shawn deftly guided
his old, faithful transport in a slow turn around the towers, giving every
craft in the formation an opportunity to witness the same destruction he was
privy to. Something inside him had told him that everyone present needed to see
this: if not for honoring the dead, then for posterity’s sake. As he came about
to a heading that would take him directly to Addison Field, Shawn took the
occasion to glance down to what few city streets he could see far below his
ship. They were littered with vehicles and debris from damaged buildings, and
pockmarked from overgrowth that had sprung up from the craters left behind
after the Kafaran orbital bombardment. With a slow whistle from Raven, Shawn
allowed
Sylvia’s Delight
to level off
after the turn, and then headed straight for Delta Base.
With the ruins of
Crystal City now slipping behind
Sylvia’s
Delight
, the first things Shawn and Roslyn noticed as they neared Delta
were the enormous arched hangars, each fully capable of holding the entire
complement of the
Rhea
’s hangar bays
and storage compartments combined. There were two such imposing structures,
built side by side on the west end of two parallel runways that were in a
north-south orientation. To the west of the hangars was the main military base,
a grid pattern of empty streets and decimated, dilapidated buildings. To the
west of the complex, now directly under the Mark-IV, was an enormous crater
nearly eight hundred feet wide which had engulfed part of the base complex on
its eastern rim and a part of a small forest on its northwestern border. Unlike
the smaller craters in the city, this one had yet to show any signs of new life
taking hold inside the colossal bowl shape.
“I’ve never seen
anything like that,” Roslyn said breathlessly. “It’s massive.”
“Neither have I,”
Shawn replied in shock. He’d seen the aftermath of a lot of different weapons,
and he thought he’d been familiar with everything the Kafarans had thrown at
the UCS. It now seemed he would have to rethink that assumption.
“What do you think
it means, Skipper?”
Shawn was at a loss
for words as he took in the enormity of the wound in the planet’s surface. “I
don’t know, Raven, but we’re going to find out.” He pointed a finger in the
direction of the forwardmost control panel on Roslyn’s right. “Scan for radiation.
Hit those two green buttons on the top, then the two blue ones below them.”
Raven did as she
was asked. It brought the limited sensor report to her forward display screen.
Shawn watched as the dark-haired
lieutenant commander squinted at the small display as she tried to read the
report. “So what do the sensors say?”
“Not much,” she
said with an air of defeat. “I mean, they
really
don’t say much.”
Fighting down the
usual defense he would have put up over his ship’s honor, he licked his dry lips
before he spoke with a restrained tone. “
D
’s
sensor palette isn’t that advanced. I’m sure the ELINTs have more detailed
information. I just want to have a general idea of what we’re going to
encounter.”
“The radiation
levels here are well within bipedal standard tolerances. The levels are only
slightly higher here than in the city center.”
“Considering that
big crater down there, that bit of news doesn’t surprise me.”
She cocked her head
slightly. “But what
may
surprise you
is that this is the only crater of this size on the entire surface.”
Shawn turned back
to his controls as he assimilated the information. “That’s more than a little
surprising. If the Kafarans had a weapon that could do this, why aren’t there
more of these on the surface?” he asked, knowing there was no way for her to
answer. They sat in silence for a moment before Shawn shook his head and spoke
again. “We aren’t going to learn much more from up here. I think it’s time we got
this mission underway. Let’s get the ship down to the landing coordinates.”
“Yes, sir,” Raven
said, taking the cue to initiate a call to the
Rhea
to inform Captain Krif about their impending landing.
Throttling back the
two main drive engines, Shawn put the Mark-IV into a leisurely counterclockwise
circle of the landing area. There were large fissures in the eight-foot-thick
runway surface: a spider’s web of destruction spreading out and away from the
base complex as a result of whatever had caused the crater to form. Finding an
undisturbed area large enough to accommodate the Mark-IV, Shawn extended the
landing struts, setting the ship down with the finesse of a seasoned
professional. He reached for the switch that would release the rear cargo ramp,
and within minutes the ship was cleared of all personnel.
Now sitting on the
tattered remains of the airstrip, as Roslyn watched the Marines unload the last
of their cargo, Shawn’s attention was drawn to their fighter escorts as they
flew overhead. Jerry Santorum and Clarissa McAllister were up there, covering
the ground forces below with practiced precision.
As Nova and
Bagpipes completed their low-speed turn, the two logistics Pharaohs made a lazy
approach just south of
Sylvia’s Delight
.
As graceful and beautiful as they were functional, the two craft swooped into a
position several hundred feet from their landing position, their swept wings
twisting up vertically as the horizontal thrust of their engines was turned
into vertical propulsion. The craft hovered there for a moment, the
high-pitched whining of the engines almost deafening, as the backwash from the
blue-white thrust threw up small bits of dirt and debris from the
long-abandoned tarmac. As the craft neared the surface, both Shawn and Roslyn
had to cover their eyes from the onslaught, which ended a minute later when the
ship powered down.
The crews of the
VTOL craft immediately moved out of the light logistic ships and linked up with
the Marines near the cargo area of
Sylvia’s
Delight
—save for a single crewman who approached Shawn. As the pilot neared
Shawn, he began to take off gloves, and when he was within a few feet of
Kestrel he removed his helmet.
To his chagrin,
Shawn saw that the ‘he’ was in fact a
she
,
and the ‘she’ was Agent Melissa Graves. He scowled at her defiance. “I thought
I told you not to come down here.”
“You did,” she
replied with a nod. “You made it perfectly clear that you wanted me to remain
on board the
Rhea
.”
“And yet somehow,
as if compelled by some twisted logic that says, ‘Let’s make Shawn as
absolutely upset as possible,’ you failed to do exactly that.”
“It was my
prerogative as lead agent,” Melissa replied smartly.
“So instead of
talking about this with me—”
“You mean arguing,
don’t you?”
“Instead of you
arguing with me over this on the
Rhea
,
you just decided to hop on board another ship.”
“First Lieutenant
Burgess was very accommodating,” Melissa said, inclining her head toward the VTOL
Pharaoh that had ferried her to the planet.
Well, she’s here, and there’s nothing I can
do about it now,
Shawn
thought.
He briefly entertained the idea of tying her up and locking her inside
Sylvia’s Delight
, but in fear of her
ensuing wrath, he decided against it. He could order the Marines to guard her,
but he knew Melissa well enough to know she’d just resent him more for it. In
the end, he shook his head and reconciled himself to her presence. Besides,
assuming that the landing site was safe, he would have called up to the
Rhea
and had her brought down anyway.
Melissa’s little impromptu hitchhiking had just saved the team about forty-five
minutes, and who could argue with that?
Shawn could. “So
I’ve noticed,” he said with measured patience. “You sure have a funny of way of
listening. There
are
such things as
safety protocols.”