Dark Space (10 page)

   The majority of the
Maelstrom’s fuselage, while battered and beaten severely, had fortunately
remained in one piece. One of the vertical stabilizers had been torn free, and the
other was still attached and showing the bright yellow markings of the Jolly
Roger squadron. Both of the engines were smoking from the exhaust ports, the
starboard one still glowing with an orange fury as its internal components
continued to melt away. The canopy was still attached, but ajar, with
steam-like smoke coming from the opening.

   Shawn approached the
cockpit on still-shaky legs, his pistol out and pointed at the opening.
Santorum, if still cognizant, could easily shoot through the canopy at him, but
Shawn doubted Nova’s visibility was any better than his own. Still, caution was
well-advised. Shawn’s boots compacted the snow beneath him, crunching the
powdery stuff until he was within reach of the glass. Reaching out a cautious
hand, Shawn pulled open the glass bubble and leapt back to a crouching
position, ready for anything.

   There was no movement from
Santorum’s crumpled form.

   Shawn took a deep breath,
then stepped toward the cockpit once more. Jerry’s right hand was a mangled
mess near what was left of the flight control stick. His left hand, bloodied
but intact, was still resting on the throttle. Shawn cautiously reached in and
pulled out Nova’s pistol, tossing it on the ground behind him with abandon.
Stretching out his own weapon, he prodded the still-silent form and was greeted
by a series of grunts. Holstering his gun, Shawn reached for the safety harness
latch at the center of Jerry’s flight suit and, with a yank, freed the young
man from the fighter. They fell back to the snowy ground, Shawn on his back and
Nova on top of him. 

   Shawn placed a hand on
Santorum’s shoulder, intent on pushing the lieutenant off when a searing pain
assaulted his left side, just below his ribs. Craning his head down, he saw
Jerry’s hand clutching a piece of the damaged fighter that was now wedged into
him.

   “This is how you die,” Jerry
sneered into Shawn’s ear, a trail of blood oozing from his mouth and onto
Shawn.

   Hefting his knee up, Shawn
managed to alter Jerry’s center of gravity, and the lieutenant rolled off him
while simultaneously dislodging the makeshift knife. The two men stumbled to
their feet a few yards apart, each hunched over and out of breath.

   “What the hell is the
matter with you, Jerry?” Shawn screamed, his right hand stretched across his
abdomen to stem the blood flowing from his wounded side. “Have you gone
completely bonkers?”

   Santorum laughed a sickly,
sputtering chortle. “Jerry Santorum is dead. He’s been dead a long time. Now … you’re
about to join him.”

   “You’re an imposter?” Shawn
spat, the pain in his side worsening. “That’s not possible. Your fingerprints,
your medical records, your DNA … that can’t be replicated!”

   “Replicated?” Nova spat a
mouthful of blood. “You humans, with your limited grasp of the universe. It
amazes us that you ever managed to make it out of your home system, let alone thrive
as you have.” He then lunged at Shawn, the shard in his hand coming down with a
speed Shawn would have thought impossible with regard to Nova’s wounds.

   Sidestepping the swipe,
Shawn brought both of his hands together and slammed them into Jerry’s side. It
sent him off balance, and using a little maneuver Melissa had recently taught
him, Shawn did a flawless spin kick, his foot striking Jerry in the stomach.

   But Jerry was faster. He
grabbed onto Shawn’s leg with his good hand, then slammed the bloody claw of
his other into Shawn’s face. Shawn could feel the cracking of bones under the
impact—he just wasn’t sure if they were his or Jerry’s. When Shawn tried to
deflect another hit, Jerry released his leg and landed a solid hit to the gash
in Shawn’s side. Wincing in pain, Shawn went down.

   “This is how you will all
die. And, in time, so will end the Terran blight upon the galaxy!” Jerry
grasped the shard with both hands and plunged down toward Shawn’s head.

   Kestrel reacted quickly,
rolling onto his side and out of reach of Santorum’s blade. The commander let
out another kick from the ground, contacting Jerry’s knee and sending him
scurrying across the ice. That was when Shawn realized that Jerry was now in
the general vicinity of his own blaster. Shawn’s gun was still in his holster,
on his right hip, which was now firmly planted in the snow. As soon as he saw
Santorum leap into the snow, he knew the next few seconds would be the last for
one of them.

   Jerry appeared just above a
small snow drift, his blaster aimed right at Shawn. The shot of the blaster rang
loudly in the silence of the ice forest. It struck the ground where Shawn had
been a split second before. Drawing his gun as he rolled, Shawn quickly took
aim and fired from the ground, the shot hitting Santorum square in the chest
and sending the lieutenant flying backward.

   Rolling off his wounded
left side and onto the welcoming softness of the snow, Shawn exhaled deeply.
“I’m getting too old for this.” After a long moment, he pulled himself to his
feet.   

   Shawn approached the fallen
body with due trepidation. Jerry was flat on his back, his pistol several feet
away, the hole in his uniform still smoking where Shawn had blasted him with a
non-lethal round. Jerry’s eyes were wide with terror, and when Shawn cautiously
checked for a pulse, he strangely found none.  It was entirely possible Jerry
had finally succumbed to his wounds, but it still didn’t make much sense.
Holstering his weapon, Shawn sat down in the snow and retrieved the medical kit
from a pouch on his flight suit. Tearing open his suit, he began the process of
trying to heal the wound in his side before he passed out from blood loss.

%%%

   It’d taken nearly four
hours for the
Duchess of York
to ascertain exactly where Shawn and Jerry
had jumped to, and a further hour before they were able to effect a rescue and
retrieval operation. The
Duchess
herself had made the jump, along with a
single cruiser for support, leaving the remainder of the Unified fleet under
the care of former Rugorian pirate and now fleet captain, Ariah Voula.

   The
Duchess
had sent
down a pair of recovery craft, along with a handful of Marines to secure the
crash site. They had found Shawn precisely where he had sat, passed out in the
snow and slowly being covered by ice. Once he was stabilized, they took him and
Jerry’s body on board one craft, while the other was used to transport the remains
of Nova’s fighter back to the carrier. Shawn’s own fighter, parked some
distance away, was ferried up by one of the copilots of the support ships.

   Shawn awoke slowly to a
blinding white light. He was thankfully no longer surrounded by the cold of
snow, and was instead warmed by a heat radiating beneath his supine body. As
his eyes adjusted, he could see a familiar face smiling down at him. It was
Captain Richard Krif.

  
Okay. Now I know I’m in
hell.

  
“Welcome back to the land of the living, hotshot,”
Krif said.

   “Do me a favor,” Shawn
croaked.

   “What’s that?”

   “Either find a prettier
face for me to stare at, or put me back under.”

   Krif sniggered. “No such
luck, Kestrel. Now that we’ve got you back, we’ve no intention of letting you slip
away again.”

   Shawn’s throat was dry, and
he desperately needed a drink of water, no doubt the result of the medication
the doctors were pumping into him. “Then, as I said before, a prettier face to
look at.”

   “That’s quite enough,
Captain Krif,” a voice called from behind Richard. “If you’ll let me attend to
my patient, sir.”

   Shawn watched through
blurry eyes as Krif stepped aside and was replaced by Doctor Ophelia Finly.
“Well, I ask for a pretty face and I get one. Now, how about an ice-cold drink
and a sandwich?” He tried flashing a smile, but the muscles in his face didn’t
want to fully cooperate.

   Ophelia looked down at him,
her face a mixture of relief and humor. “I’m afraid I’m immune to your charms,
Commander. However, I’ll take the compliment.”

   “Am I … on the
Rhea
?”

   Doctor Finly waved a
medical scanner over his body. “I’m afraid not, Commander. You’re back aboard
the
Duchess
.”

  
The Duchess?
“Drake?” Shawn said, closing his eyes from the blinding light.

   “He’s been stabilized. He
should pull through nicely.”

   “More than I can say for
you,” Krif spat.

   Shawn paid the words little
mind. “Melissa?”

   “She’s—” Finly began, but
was cut off by Krif.

   “You’ve really got a one
track mind, don’t you?” Krif barked. “If you’re intent on asking about the
health and well-being of every member of the crew, stow it. The person you
should really be concerned with is yourself.”

   “Doc,” Shawn implored
Finly. “I’ve got terrible screeching in my ears … like fingernails on a
chalkboard. Anything in your bag for that?”

   She failed to mask the
smile on her face, but continued to wave her scanner for a moment longer. “I’m
afraid not, Commander. Captain Krif is here under orders from Admiral Hansen.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get these readings to my computer.” She
stepped away from his bedside and was replaced by Krif. However, before she was
out of sight, Shawn heard Krif mention something about an autopsy being
performed on Jerry’s body. There was a curt “yes, sir” from the doctor before
her footsteps faded in the distance.

   “So,” Shawn began after a
cough. “What’s on your mind, Dick?”

   Krif put his hands on his
hips as he regarded the commander. “You look like crap, Shawn,” he said with a
lowered tone.

   “If you think that’s
something, you should see how I feel.”

   “I don’t doubt it. Care to
tell me what went on down there?”

   Shawn thought long on the
entire incident, from the time he downed Jerry’s fighter to the moment he
passed out. Mostly he thought of Jerry’s words, and how little sense they made.
“I wish I could. I can’t make much sense of it myself.”

   “Well, you’ll just have to
be more precise about the details, Commander. The court will want everything
you know.”

   “Court? What court?”

   Krif inhaled deeply, then
let it out slowly. “The court-martial that’s being convened against you.”

   Shawn’s vision suddenly
cleared. He’d known something like this would likely happen. It was only a
matter of time. He just wasn’t prepared for it the moment he got back on board
the ship. He closed his eyes and swallowed, trying in vain to quench his
parched throat. “When?”

   “Doctor Finly says you’ll
be out of sickbay by 0800 tomorrow morning. The hearing is scheduled for noon.”

   “Tomorrow?” Shawn said in
surprise. “That’s not a lot of time to get—”

   “You’ll need to make sure
it is, Shawn,” Krif said in an almost-worried tone. “There’s nothing I can do.
Admiral’s orders.”

   “What could
you
have
possibly done?” Shawn said as he closed his eyes once again. Suddenly a large
headache had come on. “Or wanted to do? I’m sure you’re jumping in your boots
over this.”

   “If it’s any consolation to
you, I
did
request a stay on the proceedings. Even with that keen wit of
yours, I don’t think you’ll manage a coherent paragraph in less than
twenty-four hours. You’ll need to be at one hundred percent, or so help me they
will hang you by your bootstraps.”

   “Not possible.”

   “Oh,” Krif said in
surprise. “And why is that?”

   “Bootstraps went out of
fashion a few hundred years ago … about the same time as the yardarm, where
they would likely have hung me from.”

   Krif gave him a look of
pity. “You never give up, do you?”

   “Never seen a reason to do
so before. Not much sense in starting now.”

   Krif moved closer, to
within the distance that a soft whisper could be carried on. “I wish … I wish
there was something I could do. For what it’s worth … I think you did the right
thing.”

   Shawn turned to see Krif
staring at him intently. “Okay, now I
know
I’m in hell. Did you just
sanction something I did?”

   “Santorum assaulted Sector
Command personnel … Drake … someone I consider a friend. But more importantly,
he took a shot at Roslyn … and very nearly succeeded in killing her. In my
book, that little stunt alone sanctioned your …
actions
.”

  
Oh, God. I forgot about
Roslyn.
Shawn raised a hand and clutched at Krif’s uniform.
“Is
she—?”

   “She’s fine,” Krif said,
placing a gentle hand over Shawn’s and guiding it off his shoulder. “A little
shaken up, but none the worse for the encounter. Resting comfortably in her
quarters here on the
Duchess
.”