The Epherium Chronicles: Embrace (20 page)

Hood opened a comm channel from his terminal. “Mr. Whitaker!”

“No, no...it goes over here...yes there,” could be heard over the channel from a slightly frazzled Whitaker.

“Excuse me?” Hood asked.

“Yes, Captain. How can I help you?” Whitaker replied quickly.

“Well if you’re not too busy down there, can you give me an update on jump battery status? We may need to leave soon.”

“We just jumped a few hours ago, didn’t we, Captain?”

Hood sighed. “Thanks for stating the obvious, Mr. Whitaker, but we have a situation. How soon can we be at full charge?”

“Ah, there it is,” Whitaker blurted out. “Found my spectrometer. Yes, the batteries, uhmmm... We have enough for one jump now, but it would leave the reserves very low. Not much for a second or even a fight with our shield. Can you give me a few hours?”

“I’ll give you as long as we can, but put the main drive on standby, just in case,” Hood said as he looked back at his flashing terminal.

“Will do, Captain. You give the call, we’ll be ready,” Whitaker replied smartly. As Hood closed the channel, he heard Whitaker yell, “Not there, I said over there—Are you deaf, man?”

Hood forced back the urge to laugh, but managed a quick smile at his XO as he stood and headed to the Tactical Station. Aldridge was staring intently at her terminal as Hood walked up beside her. “I saw your message, what do you have?”

Aldridge continued to type at her terminal and a vague 3D image of a ship came into view. “All we have is a very sketchy silhouette. We barely got a reading at all, but this is all we can make of it.”

“Can the computer match it to any known Cilik’ti vessels?” Hood asked and started to examine the ship closely, hoping to discover some clue to its identity.

Aldridge opened a new window on her terminal and started a separate analysis application. She executed a new data load, launched the analyzer and waited for the routine to complete.

“What’s this, Lieutenant?” Hood asked as he pointed to the screen.

“It’s a custom app I put together for analyzing Cilik’ti vessels and armaments. I programmed it to look for certain distinctive profiles that are not present in the current EDF analyzer database. It took me almost a year to compile it, and this is the first live target I’ve had to use it on,” she explained.

“Where did you get the data?”

“A little here and there. Most came from data captures of engagements in the last few months of the war.” Aldridge grabbed her data pad and handed it to Hood who started to review her notes on the application. “I started with a premise of peeling an onion, sir. I took a look at the different scanner wavelengths our ships use and was able to gain some good information on the different energy signatures from their vessels. Our current analyzer looks at design, physical characteristics, primary energy source, etc. But you know as well as I do that some of those can be masked.”

Aldridge’s terminal beeped as the first application completed, and once again, indicating the same for her own app. Hood looked over her shoulder. “Talk to me, Lieutenant. What do you have?”

Aldridge scanned the data from both applications. In disgust, she let out a frustrated groan. “The EDF analyzer cannot find anything in its database to identify it.”

“What about yours?”

“That’s what’s strange. I can definitely see that the ship has some version of a pidium-enhanced power core, but there are no definable signatures for weapons or other systems. But I can tell you one thing,” Aldridge said with a slightly positive uptick.

“What’s that?”

“Whatever ship that is, it’s definitely not a Cilik’ti vessel.”

Hood looked at his Tactical Officer in silent disbelief. “How can you be sure?”

Aldridge waited for her analyzer as it cycled through the report of each signature and pointed to one of the power system. “You see that there? Cilik’ti space-fold drives are de-coupled from their primary core and have a separate generator just for that system. It also provides them some redundancy in case of a primary core failure. They can do it because their cores are far more efficient and compact than our own. Our designs are much larger, and we use the space-fold drives as channels for larger power feeds to provide stability. Not to mention we need the constant power feed to our drives to prevent brownouts on cold startups.” She zoomed in on the ship signature and changed the view to a different scan. “See this scan on the Gamma High Band? This vessel uses a single power core and even though it’s trying to run silent, you can still see a higher energy spike for a feed to its space-fold drive. A design like this would be a tremendous backward leap for the Cilik’ti.”

As the fighters were on their way back to the
Armstrong
, Hood looked over to his Command Station then back at the mystery ship on Aldridge’s terminal. “If this isn’t a Cilik’ti ship, then what is it?”

“Unknown, sir. We may be looking at a new first contact, but we’ll need to get a better look at the ship to be sure,” Aldridge said as she saved the data from the analyzer to the main computer memory core.

“Keep working on it, Lieutenant, and see if you can work with the sensor team to prep the ship’s array to increase the sensor range. If that ship shows up again, maybe we can get a better look before they realize it,” Hood said.

Aldridge smiled with a bit of excitement. “Good idea, sir. I’ll get with Ensign Pershing and see what we can do.”

Hood left the Tactical Station and walked over to his command chair. Sanchez had just finished instructing the fighter squadron commanders to maintain active patrol stations and looked over at Hood as he sat down. “Did Aldridge get a fix on that ship?”

Oblivious to Sanchez’s question, Hood sat in his chair and stared at the terminal.

“Captain, are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Raf,” Hood said softly so only his XO could hear. “I need you to re-open that channel to the fighters. Put them on a first contact protocol.”

Sanchez started to open the channel, but stopped when he realized what Hood had just said. “First contact? For a Cilik’ti vessel?”

Hood looked slowly over at his executive officer. “Aldridge’s analysis confirms it’s not them and until we determine what it is, that’s the mode we’ll be working from.”

“Understood. What’s our next move?”

“We stay vigilant, and we charge up our batteries. Once we have a strong enough charge, we’ll press on,” Hood said. “In the meantime, I want you to quietly bring the other Command staff up to speed and keep this on the QT for now. I’m going back to my quarters to send a message to Admiral Tramp on our situation.” Hood stood and started for the exit. “Contact me if there is any change.”

Chapter Fifteen

EDF Armstrong
Deep Space Route to Cygni
Wednesday
,
January 22
Earth Year 2155
Thirty Minutes Since Fourth Jump

Hood turned off the recording for his message to Admiral Tramp and sent it on its way via the hyper beacons back to Earth. He was glad to hear from the admiral so fast after his message following the encounter with the unknown vessel, but both he and the experts back home were unable to offer any new information.

Emotions were mixed onboard. Hood was sure his crew was ready for an encounter with the Cilik’ti, but this was something new. Even his own sense of apprehension was at a level he hadn’t felt since the war. There were only two people on board with first contact experience with an alien species; himself and Lieutenant Commander Walsh. Hood asked Walsh what he thought about that day. All the
Armstrong’s
Air Boss had to say was, “First you say it, then you do it.” Despite being a bit off color, Hood agreed with his sentiment. He just hoped this one would go better than the last.

Hood’s stomach started to growl as he realized he had missed dinner, so he grabbed his jacket and headed for the door, when his terminal beeped with a priority message. He threw the jacket back on his desk, sat down and opened the comm channel.

Maya Greywalker appeared on Hood’s screen and from the hard look on her face, he could tell it was serious. “Captain, we’ve had an incident at the Epherium office. I need you to come down here.”

Hood rolled his eyes and thought
Now what’s McCraken done?
He looked back at Maya. “What kind of incident, Lieutenant?”

“The lethal kind, sir. I’ll update you more when you arrive. I’d rather not discuss this over the comms,” she said frankly.

Hood nodded as he grabbed his jacket. “Understood. I’ll be right there.” He closed the channel, rushed out the door, and nearly bowled over his aide, who was concentrating on his own data pad as the door opened.

“Sorry, sir. I didn’t see you coming out,” Martin said, as he tried to make sure Hood was alright.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Martin. Totally my fault,” Hood explained. “Do me a favor. Run down to the mess and tell the chef to hold something for me. I have an urgent issue to handle, and I’m not sure how long it will take.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Martin responded. “Anything else you need?”

“If anyone comes by asking for me, I am tied up, but they can reach me on comms if it’s urgent.”

“You can count on me, sir,” Martin said, as he saluted Hood, who was already quickly walking down the hallway.

Hood admired the young man’s sense of duty, and he returned his salute with a smile. As he turned back toward the elevator lift and approached the door, the smile faded. The door to lift closed as he stepped inside, and he felt as if the air started to chill slightly. He had enough to worry about without McCraken causing more trouble. He liked smiling and being happy, but he was sure that he wasn’t going to be for the next several hours.

* * *

As Hood rounded the corner from the elevator lift, he was immediately met by two members of the
Armstrong’s
security force dressed in full riot gear and armed with assault rifles. The security force officer on the left immediately recognized Hood and gestured for him to follow.

Hood followed the security force officer down the hall toward Epherium’s office, and the sight was not good. In front of the office doors, he quickly recognized two members of Dr. Patton’s medical team in a discussion with Lieutenant Greywalker and Commander Sanchez, amidst a host of security.

Maya broke away from the conversation and moved to meet Hood. “Thank you for coming so fast. We are trying to keep this locked down, but word is going to spread fast.”

Hood nodded to Sanchez and looked into the office for any sign of what had happened, but couldn’t get a good view. “So what do you have for me, Lieutenant,” he asked his red-headed Chief Security Officer.

Maya turned and led Sanchez and Hood into the office. “We have four known fatalities.” Maya pointed to different locations around the room where gray sheets covered the obvious bodies, and several other individuals were busy taking pictures and gathering potential evidence. “I have one alleged assailant, but he is currently unconscious and not responding to the medical staff’s attempts to revive him. We conducted a full sweep of the office and living quarters. My forensics team is just finishing up, so we should have more details in a few minutes.”

“Who’s the assailant?” Hood asked.

“This way,” Maya said. The group moved around the office’s front desks and standing next to a medical gurney was Dr. Patton. On the gurney was a blond haired man, but Hood could not get a glimpse at his face while Patton was testing his eyes with a light pen. “The alleged assailant is one of your pilots, Captain. Lieutenant Harrison Krieg. I believe he’s the commander of Rook squadron.”

“Krieg?” Hood said surprised. “How is he involved in this?”

“Too early to speculate,” Maya said. “But, he was the only one found here in the office not on Epherium’s staff, and this was in his hand.” She held up a security taser.

Sanchez took the taser from Maya’s hand and examined it. “Where would he get this?”

“Not sure yet, but I plan to check our armory stores once we finish here. By the initial look of things, the wounds on the victims are similar to a prolonged taser strike, and this weapon has been discharged. I’m still waiting on Dr. Patton’s official word,” Maya said as she tapped Dr. Patton on the shoulder. “Doctor, Captain Hood and Commander Sanchez are here.”

Patton put away his light pen and began to massage the right wrist and hand of the unconscious pilot. After seeing no response, he looked up at the two officers. “Very peculiar, Captain.”

“What’s wrong, Doctor?” Hood said as he looked down at Krieg. The young pilot was dressed in an exercise suit that was popular among many of the younger officers for conducting workouts on the Rec Deck.

“I’m a bit perplexed, Captain,” the
Armstrong’s
Chief Medical Officer began. “The Lieutenant’s condition is strange. I’m trying to understand the cause for his current comatose state, but there are no signs of severe physical trauma other than these two puncture marks under his chin and some bruising on his left forearm. The bruises could have been caused during a struggle, but that level of bruising could have taken hours to develop.” Patton pointed to the wounds that Hood had noticed earlier. “These wounds match up with those of the taser, but there is no evidence of the taser activation against his skin.”

“What about a poison or nerve agent?” Maya asked as she accepted the taser back from Sanchez.

“My scans haven’t detected any known toxins in his system,” Patton answered, “but I have seen similar cases with severe allergic reactions back home in Melbourne. They can cause extreme and abrupt unconsciousness, but nothing like this. I need to examine him further in the med bay to get a better diagnosis, but that’s not all.”

Patton walked the group over to one of the victims and pulled back the sheet. The body was that of one of McCraken’s staff, but the face was hard to recognize due to the discoloration of the skin. The blood vessels were swollen and visible on both sides of his face, and the normal white of the eyes was now a bright crimson. A large burn mark surrounded two small punctures just under the victim’s chin.

Hood grimaced. He’d seen death before up close, but the state of the body and smell of singed flesh was nearly more than he could witness. He closed his eyes and stepped back to let Sanchez and Maya get a better look.

“As you can see, there is a distinct burn mark on the victim consistent with a taser attack, but fatalities of this kind usually involve severe nervous system and muscular trauma,” Patton explained. “What’s strange here is I can’t see any muscular damage that would track with a lengthy exposure to that weapon.”

Maya looked closer at the wound. “Our tasers don’t require a puncture of the skin to be effective, but strong fast attacks at a target do leave marks like these. Are you saying that the wound was made post mortem?”

“It’s possible, but I won’t know anything until I do a full autopsy.”

“What was the estimated time of death?” Sanchez asked.

“Hmm,” Patton mused as he checked his watch. “Based on body temperature and the state of rigger, I’d put it close to eighteen hundred hours, about ten to fifteen minutes after we jumped.”

Hood looked around the room for the other victims. “Are the others the same?”

Patton nodded. “All four seemed to have died in the same manner and all young chaps too. Cut down in the prime of their lives.”

Hood looked quickly back at Patton. “So these were all McCraken’s staff? He quickly moved to the other victims and removed the sheets covering their heads. “So where’s McCraken?”

Maya activated her security comm band. “Computer, I need the last know location of Henry McCraken.”

The computer’s female voice responded almost immediately. “Henry McCraken. Last logged location, deck three crew quarters, Epherium office.”

“If he never left the office, then where is he?” Sanchez asked Maya as he headed toward the staff’s quarters.

Maya pressed her finger to her lips, “Shh...I hear something.” She looked toward McCraken’s quarters. “It’s breathing, shallow and rapid. The sounds are faint, but it’s definitely coming from in there.”

“I thought you said your team searched the living quarters?” Sanchez asked as the group jogged toward doorway leading to McCraken’s private room. Three security guards arrived first and fanned out into the room as Hood, Sanchez and Maya stood outside.

After a few moments of searching in the room, one of the guards yelled, “Clear!”

Maya moved quickly but silently into the room and motioned with her hands for her security team to hold their position and stay quiet. She paused to listen then slowly crept to a wide gray couch on the right wall. The cushions for the couch were attached to a plate that, when she shifted it forward and let go, a light spring catch mechanism underneath returned the plate to its original position. She pulled her flashlight from her belt and moved the plate forward again, this time using the flashlight to hold the plate open while she worked. Much to her surprise, she discovered the entire internal frame was made of a solid metal box. Maya moved to the side of the couch and pushed hard, but the couch wouldn’t budge.

Sanchez entered the room, walked over to Maya, kneeled down and looked behind the couch. “It looks like it’s attached to the wall,” he whispered.

Maya slowly passed her hand along the top of the metal frame and in toward the back of the couch. She smiled as she found the small handle she was looking for and pulled. A click could be heard, and a hatch opened slowly upward out of the couch’s frame.

Maya waited for the door to finish opening, removed her assault pistol from its holster, and peered inside. The hatch led down into a small chamber more than one meter deep, but it extended into the bulkhead wall behind where the couch was sitting for another two meters. The small room had dim lighting, but Maya could easily make out a single figure huddled in the back corner next to a few boxes.

“Mr. McCraken. This is Lieutenant Maya Greywalker, head of security. It’s safe, you can come out now,” Maya said soothingly.

McCraken curled into a near fetal position in the back of the room. “Has...” McCraken stuttered obviously overcome with fear. “Has the screaming stopped?”

Maya extended her hand toward McCraken. “Yes, Henry. It’s all over. Please let me help you.”

McCraken rolled slightly to his left and looked back at Maya. Compared to his normal well-groomed and confident self, he looked awful. He looked worn out, pale, and his shirt was ripped at his left shoulder. Seeing Maya’s outstretched hand, he turned onto his belly and started to crawl toward her.

As he drew close, Maya reached farther in, grasped his left wrist and began to pull him out of the little room. As she hoisted him to the door, she noticed he was still clutching his data pad tightly in his left arm.

Maya helped McCraken out of the room and onto his feet, but had to catch him as his knees buckled. One of her guards ran over to assist, and they managed to get him to a chair. McCraken sank back, his breathing erratic.

Dr. Patton rushed into the room and began to examine McCraken, while Maya moved back outside toward Hood. “Mr. McCraken, I need you to focus on me.” He quickly checked McCraken’s pulse and listened to his breathing. He held his index finger up in front of McCracken’s face. “Now, try to follow my finger with just your eyes.”

McCraken nodded slightly and managed to track Patton’s finger as he moved it from left to right. Patton reached into his medical kit and removed a vial of liquid and a jet injector. He inserted the vial into the injector and placed the injector barrel against McCraken’s right arm. “I am going to give you something that will relax you.” Patton activated the injector and McCraken flinched slightly. After a few moments, his breathing calmed and his arms slid to his side, allowing the data pad that was still in his hand to fall to the floor.

One of the security guards picked up the data pad and handed to Maya, who examined it briefly and tried to access it. A quick frown crossed her face as the data pad chirped the standard “Unable to Authenticate” message. Not wanting to risk damaging any evidence, she grabbed an evidence bag from her forensics team and placed the data pad inside.

Patton closed his medical kit, patted McCraken’s shoulder gently and walked over to Hood. “He’s calmer now, but I would give him some time before you ask any questions. He’s still in shock. I’ll have my staff get him to med bay and keep him under observation for a few hours.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Hood replied. “Let me know what you find with your autopsies and keep us posted on Lieutenant Krieg. I want to know the minute he regains consciousness.”

“I’m going to escort our lieutenant back to med bay personally and start a workup on him.” Patton nodded to the trio of Hood, Sanchez and Maya. “Good day gentlemen and lady,” he said with a witty smile and walked out of McCraken’s quarters.