Dark Space (13 page)

   “I do, sir.”

   Ramos looked to Hansen,
nodded, then sat down. Captain O’Connell took a moment to lean over, whispering
something brief in Ramos’s ear. The admiral turned to the captain with a grave
look on his face, nodded, and then turned to face Shawn.  “Then these court
proceedings are ended. You are all dismissed.”

   As Hansen clanked a metal
gavel on the desktop, Shawn was convinced he could feel the rock in his stomach
turn end-over-end. 

“It really bothered him
that he had to leave everyone out of the loop. I could understand that. In
fact, I was an expert on it. I mean, here was Shawn Kestrel and my only
daughter, being sent off to God knows where to find God knows what … and I had
to trust that he’d take care of her … that she’d take care of him … all the
while knowing that I myself still hadn’t told either of them everything I knew
about what was going on. Secrets were layered upon secrets, like some tiered
wedding cake that was liable to come crashing down on us all at any moment.”

-Admiral
William Graves (Ret.)

Admirals
and Generals: The Men Who Won the War, 2
^nd
Edition

   Back in his quarters, Shawn
was packing away the last of his things in a small duffel placed on the bed.
Gone were the decorations from the walls, his personal effects from the
connecting bathroom, and what few trinkets he’d managed to collect in his journey.
Melissa had been there, having shown up an hour before to get the news straight
from Shawn’s lips. Once he had told her, however, she broke down into tears.
She had ranted about how foolish he had acted, how selfish he had become. Her
voice had boomed more than enough to carry out into the corridors, but Shawn
couldn’t have cared less about that. After she’d dashed from the compartment
sobbing with fury, Shawn’s first reaction was to chase her down, but he knew
his transport off the ship would be leaving shortly. He needed to pack, to get
his affairs in order. He would find her later … if there was time.

  
Time. What had happened
to it all?   

  
When the last of his bags were filled,
Shawn gave the empty compartment one final look before heading out the door.
The passageway was full of onlookers, each giving him passing glances as he
walked down the long stretch of corridor. Arriving at the lift that would take
him down to the main hangar one final time, he was silently grateful that the
elevator was empty when it arrived. Dropping his bags to the deck, he pressed
the button that would send him down, and took a final deep breath of the ship’s
recycled air. Yes, he would miss the slightly acidic smell.

   When the lift stopped, he
grabbed his bags and headed out the door to the familiar space. However, when
he looked up, he saw that he was not, in fact, in the hangar. The lift had come
to a stop in a passageway, one devoid of anyone except for Admiral William
Graves, who now barred his path.

   “Bill?” Shawn asked in
surprise, then glanced back to the elevator in confusion. “This is supposed to
be an express straight down to the hangar.”

   “I thought perhaps we could
go for a walk?” Graves asked kindly.

   “My transport leaves within
the hour.”

   Graves held a hand out
toward the vacant passageway. “We have some time, son. Or would you prefer to
disregard the last request of an old friend?”

   Shawn chuckled, then looked
at his bags. “My things?”

   “Leave them,” Graves said
dismissively as he nodded toward the waiting lift. “They’ll be picked up once
the lift arrives down in the hangar, and brought to the transport for you.”

   Putting the bags back
inside, he watched as the doors quickly closed and the elevator continued on
its course. “So where do we go? Or is this where you take me to a deserted part
of the ship and threaten me with violence over what happened with Melissa?”

   Graves placed a hand on
Shawn’s shoulder and ushered him down the corridor. “Hardly. The affairs
between you and my daughter are entirely your own. I’ve learned—through much
trial and error—that you both know what you’re doing. I’ve come to trust on it,
to rely on it. It helps me sleep at night—both as a father, and as a friend.”

   “Then are you going to tell
me why you weren’t in that courtroom today? I sure could have used a friendly
voice.”

   Bill clasped his hands
behind his back as they walked. “No, I’m not. Besides, you didn’t need anyone
in there today.”

   “You clearly haven’t read
the transcripts,” Shawn sniggered. “I got flambéed in there.”

   “I read them, yes. Captain
Krif’s testimony was … pretty damaging.”

   “Damaging? Are you kidding?
It was devastating.”

   “So it was,” Bill said,
nodding, then smiled. “But it’s all over now. Have you put much thought into
what you’ll do next?”

   “I’ll likely go back to
Minos. I’ve got some credits saved up—”

   “But not enough to get
another ship. I heard about your Mark-IV,” Graves said, then shook his head.
“Terrible business. Losing your ship like that.”

   “No, not enough credits to
replace her. I’ll find something, though. I always do. Unless, of course,
Sector Command wants to repay me for my ship.”

   “That, my friend, is highly
doubtful.” Bill smiled again. “However, I’m sure you’ll make do. You’re one of
the most resourceful people I’ve ever met, Shawn. And one of the most
resilient. I can understand why Melissa fancies you.”

   “Even though those are our
affairs?” Shawn said, mocking.

   “I’m just not blind, that’s
all.”

   Very little was spoken over
the next half hour. Graves took Shawn on a proverbial tour of the ship. They
would go up one passageway, negotiate some stairs, only to head back in their
previous direction. They visited multiple decks more than once, took lifts
where possible, stairs when none was readily available. If Shawn hadn’t spent
so much time on this ship already, he was certain they’d be lost.

   “With all due respect,
Bill, I need to be getting back to my transport. She’s going to leave shortly,
and I’ve got a date with a discharge.”

   Graves nodded, then
withdrew an old pipe from his pocket. He stuffed it with tobacco and lit it
with a series of puffs. While smoking in any part of the ship was prohibited,
Shawn highly doubted some brash young junior officer would make remarks about
it openly. “So it is, Shawn.” He then pointed his pipe down the corridor. “This
way, I believe.”

   The two men rounded a
corridor and came to a lift, one with a placard stating that it was another
express elevator that would bring them down to the hangar. Graves stepped to
the side and pressed the call button. When the doors opened, Shawn saw that it
was not an elevator at all, but the entrance to a room. When Graves motioned to
the open door, Shawn cautiously stepped inside. As he did, Bill stealthily
reached out and removed the sign from beside the door.

   Inside the large square
room was rectangular holographic projection table, and surrounding it were
Melissa Graves, Doctor Ophelia Finly, and at the far end, Admiral Hansen
himself. Surprised at the assembly, Shawn was almost at a loss for words.

   “I’m sorry, the placard
said this was supposed to be a lift car …?”

   “So it did, Commander,”
Hansen said with a nod.

   Shawn took another glance
around the room. “I didn’t know they made elevators in this size.”

   “Shawn,” Melissa began,
“this is not a lift.”

   “Then it’s a going away
party,” Shawn replied almost bitterly, “because I’m pretty sure I just got
drummed out of the service. Unless, of course, Admiral Hansen has something to
add to his ruling?”

   “Bill,” Hansen began calmly,
disregarding Shawn’s tone, “are we good?”

   With Graves standing behind
him, Shawn couldn’t see his old friend nod in agreement. “We are, sir.”

   “Good?” Shawn asked in
confusion. “What good? What’s going on? I’m supposed to be on a shuttle in less
than ten minutes.”

   “And you will be,
Commander,” Hansen said. “I assure you.”

   “Then I’m afraid I’m at a
loss as to why I’m in the middle of a staff meeting, considering I’m no longer
on the staff.”

   Melissa stepped up to his
side and ushered him over to the projection table. “Shawn, you know I love you,
right?”

   “Yes,” he said carefully.

   She leaned in and kissed
him on the cheek. “I know this is going to be hard for you, but for your own
good, would you please shut up for a moment? We’ve got some things to go over
with you.”

   “Things? What things?”

   Melissa huffed, then turned
to Hansen. “I think that’s the best we’re going to get out of him, sir.”

   Hansen exchanged a worried
look with Bill Graves. “You’re still sure of this, Bill?”

   “I’ve never been more
certain, Salus. Shall we proceed? We have little time.”

   Hansen, by all rights Bill
Graves’s superior, nodded in compliance. “Very well. Commander Kestrel,” he
said, facing Shawn. “We need your … your particular brand of expertise.”

   Confused, Shawn looked from
Hansen to Bill and then back. “You mean my disloyal, subordinate expertise? The
one that balks at authority? After all, you made it quite clear I excel in
those areas.”

   Hansen dismissed Shawn’s
words with a wave of his hands. “Come now, Commander. There’s more to what’s
going on, well beyond your limited and uninformed perception of my views about
you.”

   “No. I think you and the
court made it pretty clear. Now, aside from a few parting words I’d like to
give the woman I love, would you please just let me leave?”

   Hansen took a measured
breath, then sighed. “I understand you and the former Lieutenant Santorum had
some words while you were on the planet’s surface. Isn’t that right?”

   “It was all in my report,
Admiral.”

   Hansen straightened. “A
report, I would like to add, that is now classified as top secret. Any mention,
outside this exact group of individuals, of that conversation between the two
of you would be … unwise.”

   Shawn considered this for a
moment. “Which is why no one mentioned it during the court-martial?”

   “You’re catching on,
Commander,” Hansen said agreeably. “Let’s see if you can keep up. So Santorum—or
whoever or whatever was claiming to be Santorum—told you in no short order that
he was an imposter.”

   “Something along those
lines,” Shawn agreed. “In any case, he certainly didn’t consider himself a
member of the human race. Seemed like a bunch of bull to me.”

   “Well, technically
speaking, he was both right and wrong in his statement.”

   Shawn cocked an eyebrow. “I
don’t follow.”

   Hansen turned to Doctor
Finly. “Doctor Finly, at the bequest of the otherwise-occupied chief surgeon on
the
Duchess
, performed the autopsy on Lieutenant Santorum. It’s the
reason she’s here and not he. Doctor Finly?”

   Ophelia typed a series of
commands into the holographic table. A dimensional image of Santorum’s body
appeared. Jerry’s uniform had been removed, and his naked, life-sized supine
form hovered a few feet above the table. It was just as Shawn had last seen it,
down to the mangled hand and bruised sternum where Shawn’s non-lethal round had
struck him.

   “My initial investigation
of body produced few results. I documented the injuries as I’d seen them,
catalogued them into his service record, and was preparing to make out the
official death certificate when I came across something … peculiar.” She tapped
another series of commands into the computer. The area at the base of
Santorum’s neck enlarged to fill the table. The skin and muscle tissue was
stripped away by the computer to reveal Jerry’s central nervous system. The
image began to flash with a blue brilliance.

   “What’s that?” Shawn asked.

   “To be honest, I’m still
not entirely certain,” Finly continued. “However, I
can
tell you that
something foreign has attached itself to the C-2 vertebra and intertwined
itself into the central nervous system.”

   “Something? As in, a
parasite?” Shawn asked.

   “In the traditional sense,
I would say yes. But it’s not a life-form. At least, not like one I’ve ever
encountered. It seems to act more like a biological computer.”    

   “What does it do?” Shawn
asked.

   Ophelia enlarged the
magnification. There were pulses of blue-white emanating from the base of the
neck throughout the nervous system. “It sends out its own signals to the body,
basically countermanding anything that would normally come from the host. This
one here,” she said, pointing to a tendril that went into the skull, “seems to
interface directly with the brain.”

   “To what end?” Shawn asked,
quickly getting out of his area of medical expertise.

   “If I continue along my
line of current reasoning, it interfaces with the brain, directly imprinting
its code over the original.”

   “So … what? You’re saying
Santorum was simply possessed by some alien?” Shawn jibed. “That’s a little
farfetched, considering there’s nothing in the known galaxy that could possibly
do that.”

   Ophelia nodded in agreement.
“Correct. Nothing we
currently
know about.”