A Show of Force (11 page)

Jessica pushed off against the top of the jump sub and began to slowly rise to the surface. The weight of the breathing apparatus on her back was enough to compensate for her body’s natural buoyancy, and she drifted slowly, and motionlessly to the surface. Less than a minute later, she was through the cloud of dirty water that surrounded her impact site. She could see the faint shimmering of the surface above her as she continued to rise. She glanced back downward, noting that the cloud of dirt that surrounded their impact site appeared to be unmoving. With luck, there would not be any currents at the surface, either, and she would be able to locate the sub again without having to use the remote device in her thigh pocket.

Jessica began to push her arms outward and upward to slow her ascent as she approached the surface. Her head touched the surface of the water, rising slowly into the atmosphere of Kohara. The waterline slid down her face mask, revealing the glistening surface of the lake. The shore was nowhere in sight. Jessica used her hands under the water to slowly rotate herself around, taking great care not to make any sudden movements that might alert onlookers to her location. As she rotated, the distant shoreline came into view. The land stretched up and away from the edge of the lake. It was dotted with the lights of buildings. Businesses, residences, marinas… All the elements of civilization one would expect to find around such a body of water.

As she continued to rotate, the shoreline rapidly grew closer. She had come up with her back to the nearest point of land, and now she was facing that land directly. A marina, along with a long pier, was directly ahead of her, not quite a kilometer away. She could see activity. Men scurrying about in haste… And a boat. A boat was pulling away from the pier.

Something else caught her eye. Lights, high in the sky, coming toward the lake from the other side of the city. At least two separate sets of them, both flying relatively low. She watched them, and the boat for a moment. The lights were not gaining in altitude, and the boat now appeared somewhat motionless except for one thing… It was getting bigger.
They’re headed this way
, she realized.

Jessica used her hands again to push herself downward, submerging her head beneath the surface once again, taking great pains not to make any abnormal ripples on the surface that someone on the approaching boat might notice. A few more pumps with her hands and she was able to descend enough to flip over and swim downward toward the bottom.

Jessica’s mind raced as she descended, analyzing her options, none of which she liked. She pulled the remote out of her pocket and turned it on. She had precious little time, and she did not want to waste it groping along the bottom looking for the sub in the murky water. She wanted to call and warn Naralena, tell her to get ready to leave, but she knew that the underwater comms had an extremely short range.

Soon, she was back in the murky water. She moved the remote in front of her face as she continued swimming downward through the muddy water. She was on course for the sub. However, there was something else. The sub was transmitting a message, but she had no way of knowing what the message was, as the remote was not a communications device. It was only designed to perform two functions, one of which was to lead her back to the ship.

Jessica reached the sub, nearly running into it as the muddy water suddenly parted and revealed the ship directly in front of her and approaching rapidly. She flipped over, her feet moving in under her. “Avakian! Exit, now!” she ordered over the underwater comms.

Naralena popped up through the sub’s overhead hatch, her eyes wide. “What’s going…”

“Put your fins on and grab your gear bag,” Jessica ordered. “We’re leaving.”

Naralena looked panicked. “How are we…”

“Now!” Jessica barked, cutting her off again.

Naralena quickly moved upward, clearing the hatch and moving aft. Jessica stuck her feet down into the jump sub hatch and descended into its cockpit, facing aft. As she moved into the cockpit, she could see the sergeant’s face clearly through his face mask. He was terrified.

“What’s the situation, sir?” the sergeant asked.

Jessica could tell he was fighting hard to control the fear in his tone. The man was in pain, and he had to know by the tone of her voice over the underwater comms that something was wrong. “What’s your first name, Sergeant?”

“Fuck,” Sergeant Weatherly replied, her question confirming what he already feared. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass, sir.”

“I asked you your first name, Marine,” she stated sternly.

“Jerome,” he answered. “My friends call me Jerry.”

“I’m not going to lie to you Jerry; the situation sucks. There’s at least one boat headed our way, and probably more to come. There are two airships on their way as well. Shuttles, or something. I’m not sure.”

“The Jung?”

“Maybe. Not sure about the boats, but the shuttles are a pretty good bet.”

Sergeant Weatherly was fighting to stay in control of his emotions as he spoke. “Options, sir?”

“Call me Jess, Jerry.”

The sergeant gave her a half-hearted smile. “Options?”

Jessica found it hard to form the word. “None,” she said in a tone barely above a whisper. She felt herself overcome with sorrow, and had to fight it back to carry on. “You know what I have to do, Jerry.”

Sergeant Weatherly’s face cringed, his eyes squeezing closed forcefully as he fought back the tears. “I know,” he replied. From behind his dive mask, he looked in her eyes. The interior emergency lighting was minimal, and he could barely make out the features of her face. “What the fuck happened, Jess?”

“Somebody screwed us, Jerry.”

“You mean…”

Jessica showed him the remote. “The sub is transmitting its location to the Jung. Someone sabotaged this ship in order to get the jump drive to the Jung.”

“Fuck!” the sergeant exclaimed, finally losing control. “Fuck!”

“Sergeant!” Jessica yelled over the underwater comms. “I know! I know! This fucking sucks! But it is what it is!”

“Fuck!”

“Do you understand?”

The sergeant squinted his eyes together again, his face cringed in an expression of anger and fear. “Yes, sir,” he replied softly, his eyes opening again and looking around in a vain attempt at acceptance. He looked at Jessica again, peering through both their face masks to look in her eyes as he struggled to fight back the tears. “You’re gonna find him, Jess. You’re gonna find him, and you’re gonna kill him.” The sergeant was not asking a question.

“You bet your ass, Jerry,” Jessica promised, fighting back her own tears as well. “I’ll make the bastard suffer,” she added, her hand reaching out to touch the side of his head. “I promise.”

“Give me the remote,” the sergeant said. “I’ll do it myself.”

Jessica felt herself about to lose control. “I can’t do that, Jerry. If you might pass out, or something…” She looked at him. “I have to be sure.”

“If I pass out, it will just blow up when they try to open the hatch, right?”

“What if the message included the disable code?” she explained, tears streaming down her cheeks as she sniffled. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Jerry, but I can’t take the chance. It’s my responsibility.”

Sergeant Weatherly’s eyes squeezed together again for a moment, then a look of resolve came over his face as he again looked her in the eyes. “You’d better go, sir.”

Jessica looked down for a moment, unable to look the sergeant in the eye. Finally, she looked at him again, placing her hands on either side of his head. “You’re a hell of a fucking marine, Jerry.”

Sergeant Weatherly grabbed her wrist. “Good luck, Jess.”

Without another word, Jessica let go of the sergeant and rose up and out of the sub. Once clear, she spun around, closed the hatch, and locked it, sealing the sergeant inside. She moved aft, grabbed her gear bag, and secured it to her chest before closing the door to the gear compartment. She turned and looked at Naralena. Behind her dive mask, she too had tears streaming down her face, having heard the entire exchange over the underwater comms.

“Jess, isn’t there anything…”

“Eyes on me,” Jessica ordered calmly, pointing at her face mask as she ignored Naralena’s plea. “We stay along the bottom and swim parallel to shore until we’re down to about an hour of air, then we head in and hope we find a safe place to exit the water without being noticed. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Naralena acknowledged, her eyes locked on Jessica’s.

“I know this sucks, Avakian,” Jessica admitted, “but you know the stakes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep up, and don’t lose sight of me, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

Without another word, Jessica pulled out her remote, checked her bearing, and pivoted toward the shore. She then turned ninety degrees to her right, and began swimming away from the jump sub.

Naralena touched the side of the sub and whispered. “Goodbye, Jerome.”

Jessica swam at a steady pace, knowing that they might have to swim for quite some time before they found a spot to covertly exit the lake. She glanced behind her every so often to make sure that Naralena was keeping up. It took them less than a minute to clear the murky water that surrounded their impact sight, and within a few more minutes, they were nearing a safe range from the jump sub. A hundred names ran through her mind as she swam. Someone had gone to great lengths to deliver a working jump drive to the Jung, and she was determined to find out who. She was determined to keep her promise to Sergeant Jerome Weatherly.

Still looking straight ahead, and still swimming at a steady pace, Jessica punched in the code on the remote, and then pushed the destruct button. A confirmation signal flashed, and the track back to the jump sub disappeared from her screen. A second later, they heard a muffled explosion and felt a strong surge of water from behind them.

Jessica did not look back. She just kept swimming… And kept running names through her head.

* * *

Vladimir stood beside the Aurora’s tactical station, staring at the main view screen that wrapped around the front half of the Aurora’s bridge. The image of the Karuzara asteroid filled the screen, with the Earth stretching across the bottom edge of the screen from port to starboard.

“Captain on the bridge!” the guard at the entrance announced as Nathan came out of his ready room and headed forward.

“What are you doing up here?” Nathan asked as he walked to the middle of the bridge and stepped up next to Vladimir.

Vladimir turned his attention away from the Aurora’s main view screen for a brief moment, turning toward Nathan. “I have never seen the Karuzara asteroid,” he replied. He pointed at the main view screen. “Not like this.” He noticed something moving across the face of the massive asteroid base. “Is that the Celestia?”

“She’s going in to make dry dock.”

Vladimir looked at Nathan again, a look of mild surprise on his face. “They finished it already?”

“Blew out the walls between the caverns on the way out, then sealed it up and installed the doors on the way back,” Nathan explained. “They still have a lot of work to do to finish it, but it will serve its purpose well enough for now.”

“Where did they get the doors?” Vladimir wondered.

“From what was left of the damaged doors on the main tunnels. Needless to say, the main cavern will no longer be pressurized.”

“Just as well,” Vladimir said. “It was a waste of resources to pressurize an area that large.”

“Yes, well, in the end, the decision was due to resources, or lack thereof,” Nathan told him. “Better a dry dock for one ship, than none. Are your people ready to receive the Celestia’s cores?”

“We will be by the time they are pulled,” Vladimir promised.

“How long will it take to get them installed?”

“With both crews working around the clock, we should be able to have them online within the week.”

“How about five days,” Nathan replied. “I’d prefer to have full power again, before we hit Pylius.”

Vladimir looked at Nathan again. “You do not care how little sleep I get, do you?”

“Not really,” Nathan replied with a smile.

“I suspected as much.” Vladimir looked at the screen again, just as the Celestia disappeared beneath the overhang that masked the entrance from the trench along the lower half of the Karuzara base into the main entrance tunnel. “How long until she is in port?”

“They should be hard docked, pressurized, and powered down in a few hours,” Nathan replied. “We’ll be going in just as soon as she’s clear of the main cavern… say, about an hour from now.”

“Then we have time to eat.” Vladimir suggested.

“You don’t want to wait for Cameron?”

Vladimir chuckled. “She will only criticize our food and try to get us to eat vegetables instead.”

* * *

Commander Telles gazed out the open side of the Kalibri airship as it flew over the compound. Below him were rows upon rows of men, one thousand of them, awaiting his inspection. His first impression was that the new Earth Security Force volunteers lacked discipline and self-control. More than half of them were looking at the airship as it descended, instead of straight ahead, as they had no doubt been instructed by the Ghatazhak instructors who paced the perimeter of the formation, barking orders.

Commander Telles and his trusted friend, Master Sergeant Jahal, stepped out of the airship just as it touched down onto the tarmac. The airship only sat on the surface for a few seconds, just long enough for its two passengers to get clear of the ducted-rotor wash, before lifting off again.

The commander could feel a thousand pairs of eyes on him as he approached the formation. Unlike the Ghatazhak, these men came in varying sizes, and diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. They had come from all of the surviving nations of Earth, and to them they would all return, once their training at Porto Santo was completed.

Commander Telles walked along the front row, scanning the faces of the volunteers of Earth. The idea that he could turn these men into anything remotely resembling a true Ghatazhak soldier was laughable. He did, however, believe that they could become a more effective security force than what most nations currently had in place.

“This planet does have an oddly diverse mixture of humans,” Master Sergeant Jahal commented to his commander as they walked the line.

“As do most worlds we have visited,” the commander replied. He turned away from the assembled men and moved further back, finally taking a position a few meters away and directly in front of the assembled men. He turned to face them again, pausing a moment before speaking. “I am Commander Telles of the Ghatazhak. Each of you has volunteered to help restore order to your respective nations. For that, you should be proud. Take a look at the men standing beside you. These are the only people you will truly care about from this point forward. Care about them first. Put their safety before yours, and together, you shall accomplish whatever tasks your leaders assign you.”