Dark Space (19 page)

   “They take things very
seriously,” Melissa said gravely.

   “What kind of things?” he
asked, hoping to avoid unnecessary insults or difficulties once they left the
ship.

   She turned her gaze top
meet his. “All of them.”

 “They can all go to
blazes—the entire lot of them. Because of their ineptitude, my research was
pushed back nearly ten years! If I simply had been allowed to finish my
research, this whole war might have been over years sooner.”

-Doctor
K’artl Uudon, Unified Historical Research Society

Uncovering
the Truth About the Meltranian Invasion, 5
^th
Edition

   High above the pink-white
world of Ogolo, Captain Darian Ramos paced the bridge of the
Duchess of York
nervously. It’d been several days since he and the rest of the fleet, under the
overall command of Rear Admiral Hansen, had jumped into the system. Shortly
after the jump, Hansen, along with Rear Admiral Bill Graves, had called a
meeting with all the ship captains in the fleet. Convened on the heavy battle
cruiser
Althea Melendez
, Hansen had informed his commanders that Ogolo
was thought to shortly become a major target of the Meltranian incursion into
this quadrant. Now, it was all a waiting game.

   And if there was one thing
Ramos hated, it was waiting for a fight.

   The cursory beeps and blips
coming from the various consoles surrounded him. He took comfort in it, the
ambiance of the noise calming his sometimes frayed nerves. Looking down to the
planet from the expansive view ports, he imagined its surface war-torn,
decimated, like so many other planets the Meltranians had ravaged. Ramos
silently vowed that this peaceful place would not be one of them.

   Behind him, he could hear
his helm officer, Lieutenant Ashlee Kidd, as she talked into her headset with
someone down in engineering on the topic of propulsion. Beside her, Lieutenant
Samantha Dorsey was sitting dutifully at the main sensor console, reading—for
the third time in the last hour—the long-range sensor scans of the Ogolo
system. It was unnervingly short.

   “Long-range scans complete,
sir,” she said to the captain’s back.

   Without turning, Ramos
nodded his acknowledgement.

   “Reconnaissance patrol
report coming in from the eighth planet, Captain,” the ship’s first officer,
Commander Jeannie Bates, said from the flight controller’s station.

   Squinting his eyes, Ramos’s
thoughts of the planet below were interrupted by the exec’s voice—one he wasn’t
expecting to hear. As he turned around, he noticed that the bridge, for the
first time he could ever recall, was entirely manned by female personnel. Even
the ship’s normal communications officer, Lieutenant Flynn, had been relieved
by a fresh-faced, pale-skinned yeoman who looked to be about two weeks out of
Sector Command Academy.

  
What in blazes was her
name again? McDonnell? McConnell?
Saving himself the embarrassment, he
simply addressed her by rank. “Ensign, could you pipe the incoming recon
transmission into the overhead?”

   “Yes, sir,” she stammered,
startled and evidently unprepared for the captain to speak to her. After
pressing a series of controls, a perfunctory chain of chirps was heard from the
unseen speakers in the ceiling. “Ready, Captain.”

   “Patrol Wing 6, this is
Captain Ramos.”

   “Lieutenant Serrano here,
sir,” the pilot replied. “We’re completing our last orbit of the eighth planet,
getting ready to head to our final waypoint before returning to base.”

   “Understood, Lieutenant.
Your report so far?”

   “There’s not much, sir. Not
a single contact within sensor range. We detected a small meteor about an hour
ago heading out of the system, and my wingman reports that there are currently
twenty-one particles of space dust per cubic yard out here.”

   Ramos sighed. “Very well,
Lieutenant Serrano. Continue on your flight plan. Contact us immediately if
anything changes.” The captain then looked down to the young ensign at the
communications station, giving her a nod that told her to close the channel.

   The woman—the name
McDonnelly now clearly visible on her uniform badge—began to close the channel
when a look of confusion crossed over her face. She glanced down to the
controls, and her expression gave every indication she’d forgotten what she was
supposed to be doing.

   “Problem, Ensign?” Ramos
asked with a smile. He’d remembered his own time as a junior officer, and how
he’d once made a similar mistake the first time his captain had asked for a
minor course correction. Ramos’s mind had blanked, and the entire bridge was as
unfamiliar a place as he’d ever seen.

   “No, sir,” McDonnelly
replied without a hint of stammer. “Something else.”

   “Something? Like what?”

   The young woman worked at
her controls, flipping switches and pressing buttons. “It’s definitely a transmission,
but it’s been scattered … probably at the source. It’ll take a minute or two
for the computer to reconstruct it.”   

    “Samantha,” Ramos asked
the sensor officer, “can you give me a bearing on where the transmission
originated?”

   “Yes, sir,” she answered. A
moment later she had the requested information. “If we project the path along a
straight trajectory, then the transmission originated somewhere in the Tau Beta
system.”

  
Tau Beta?
Ramos knew
the system. It was close to Jevol, the location of the 11
^th
Strategic
Squadron—not to mention the pompous Rear Admiral Darius Cody.

   “Is it coming from the 11
^th
?”
Ramos asked over his shoulder to the communications officer.

   There was a pause, long
enough for Ramos to turn and see the young woman frustrated at her controls.
“It’s difficult to say with certainty, but it
is
being carried on a
Sector Command frequency. I’m trying to clean it up now.”

   “Try running it though the
secondary computer core,” Commander Bates said. “It isn’t used much when we’re
at Condition-Green … should give you a little more processing power.”

   “Aye,” McDonnelly replied.
Doing as she was requested, she quickly shunted the garbled audio stream to the
secondary core. In a few minutes, she was provided the results. She began
playing it back in her headset, just to verify it was audible. “I’ve got
something, sir.”

   “On the overhead, Ensign,”
Ramos said, then leaned against the command chair off to the left-center of the
room.

   “This is … tain Danielson.
USCS
Evinr
… under attack by Meltranians for … eriencing heavy
resistance. They’re picking us apart one ship at a … somehow managed to breach
the Kafaran shields … we’re outnumbered on all fronts. Unable to locate … Cody.
Flagship is unable to account for his … sending out a general distress on all
frequen … don’t know how much long …” There was a burst of static, followed by
what sounded like an explosion. The computer indicated with a
beep
that
the transmission had completed.

   “That’s all there is,
Captain,” McDonnelly said, her mouth dry.

   Commander Bates exchanged a
worried glance with the captain, to which Ramos eventually nodded slowly. “That
was the voice of Captain Ru’all Danielson. He’s the skipper of the destroyer
Evinrude
.”

   “Experienced?” Jeannie
asked.

   Ramos nodded again. “Very
much so. Good man … tight ship.” It seemed Sector Command intelligence had
gotten the Meltranian movements wrong. Jevol wasn’t a fallback target as Fleet
Admiral Blackwell had informed Admiral Hansen several weeks ago. The 11
^th
Strategic Squadron was only half the strength of Hansen’s fleet. If Admiral
Cody was faced with the full might of the Meltranian incursion, there was no
way the 11
^th
would have had a chance. And here was Hansen’s fleet,
an awesome assembly of unparalleled might that was utterly useless, stuck in
orbit above a planet that wasn’t, in all likelihood, even a target for the
enemy.  In frustration, Ramos pursed his lips and slammed his palm into the
armrest of his chair. “Damn!”

   “What now, Captain?” Bates
said under her breath and out of earshot of the rest of the bridge crew.

   Still fuming, Ramos
straightened his uniform and looked out once again at the planet below. “For
now, Commander, we wait. Have Admiral Hansen alerted that we’ve received a communication
from the 11
^th
fleet, and have him meet me in the bridge conference
room as soon as possible.”

   “Aye, sir.”

   “And Commander,” he said,
stopping her before she’d strayed too far. When she returned to his side, he
lowered his voice once more. “I’d like to keep the knowledge of this
transmission to as few personnel as possible. Understood?”

   Of course she did. It would
do nothing but demoralize the crew at this point. “Understood, sir.”

%%%

   With Shawn having
relinquished the controls to the computer, the
Nautilus
passed over the
former mining establishment one final time before setting down onto her
assigned landing space. It wasn’t until after the magnet-lined pads had firmly
touched the surface and the engines began to wind down did the Special Services
team relinquish their hold over the small transport’s guidance systems.

   “Computer control has
returned to normal, Commander,” the perfunctory computer voice said. “Shall I
open the outer hatch?”

   Outside the forward view
port, Shawn could see a military transport hovering toward them across the
otherwise-unused landing space atop the ore processing station. He couldn’t
tell how many personnel were present in the small craft, but assumed there would
be enough room inside for both him and Melissa—and not much else.

   “Pack light,” he said as he
nodded toward the transport. “Looks like it’s going to be a little cramped.”

   “I’ve got some equipment in
the cargo hold. Nothing too large, but I think it’ll come in handy.”

   After disembarking the
vessel, the two made their way aft. Opening a side hatch in the long cargo
container attached to the underside of the
Nautilus
, Melissa disappeared
inside. As soon as she was out of sight, the Special Services transport slowed
to halt a few yards away. The front doors slid up without a sound, and two
figures stepped out. They were wearing light, sheet-like garments, with sashes
tied around their heads that completely obscured their faces. As a gust of wind
kicked up around them, Shawn noticed through their fluttering garments that
each was well armed, with rifles slung over their shoulders and pistols in
holsters around their waists. The taller of the two men approached Shawn, while
the shorter one seemed to be taking stock of the
Nautilus
.

   “Commander Kestrel?” the
male voice asked.

   Shawn nodded.

   “And where is Special Agent
Graves?”

   Melissa’s voice called out
from inside the hold. “Here! I’m in here. Be out in a second,” her voice echoed
just before Shawn heard the clang of items being tossed aside and toppling
over. 

   “Problem in there?” Shawn
called into the open hatch.

   There was another crash
before she spoke again. “Nothing I can’t handle,” she said with marked
frustration.

   Shawn smiled as he turned
back to the obscure, well-armed figure. “Women. What can you do?”

   The man seemed unaffected.
He simply responded with a curt, “Yes, sir.”

   “I heard that,” Melissa’s
voice echoed from inside the hold, “from both of you.” A moment later she
appeared through the hatch carrying a small, black backpack. If she was
startled by the appearance of the two SS operatives, it didn’t register on her
face.

   “Agent Graves?” the man
asked in the same tone he had used with Shawn.

   “That’s right,” she said,
holding out her hand to the unknown figure.

   His head moved down to look
at her hand, he then jerked it in the direction of the hovering carrier nearby.
“The major is waiting for you both. If you’ll come with me.” He then turned and
headed off in the direction of his conveyance without another world.

   “Friendly bunch,” Shawn
muttered when the man was out of earshot.

   Melissa looked at him,
slung the stuffed pack over her shoulders, and then began walking away from the
Nautilus
. Giving the landing area a final, cursory glance, Shawn turned
and closed the hatch to the cargo hold, then quickly went in step behind her.

   Once they were inside the
craft, the pilot immediately engaged the engines. The transport quickly skimmed
across the wide surface of the landing platform, then down a series of winding
ramps before coming to the desert floor below. It then abruptly turned right
and entered an opened, well-guarded hatch that led into the ore processing
station’s innards. The long passageway they were now in was sparsely lit, and
with the hover car’s headlights dimmed, Shawn wondered how the driver was able
to navigate the darkness at such a high rate of speed. Then he recalled Melissa
having once performed a similar feat while wearing light-sensitive spectral
contact lenses. Hoping this was the case with the driver, Shawn tried to relax
as the car twisted down another long passageway, this one completely devoid of
any light whatsoever.