The Epherium Chronicles: Echoes (4 page)

Sanchez heeded Toronaga’s warning, raced out the door and down the corridor toward the ladder to the shuttle. The last of his team was already ascending. He started up the first rungs and paused. “Sergeant, I’m almost on the shuttle. How are you going to get out?”

“We’ll follow the pod. We’ll be on the hull when you swing over to get them.”

Sanchez climbed the rest of the way into the shuttle and secured both hatch doors. Inside, he accessed Toronaga’s camera feed on one of the shuttle’s terminals. “We’re clear, Sergeant. You’d better secure yourselves. Without the door, the atmosphere exhaust when that pod is released is going to toss your team into that debris field.”

Toronaga pointed to his legs, and each of his team activated their suit’s magnetic boots.

Sanchez noticed the floor beneath them. “Those deck plates aren’t secure. If they break free, you’ll go right with them.”

The camera focused on Toronaga’s MACE unit’s left arm. “Negative, sir, we got it covered.” Large metal claws sprang forth on Toronaga’s armored hand and he drove them deep into the bulkhead wall. His team did the same. “See ya topside, Commander.” Toronaga chuckled and opened fire with his MACE’s rifle on the access door.

* * *

Hood strode into the
Armstrong’s
med bay and right past the triage nurse still seated at her station. He managed a smile but didn’t stop. He didn’t like doctors, but nurses were devious and best to be avoided—especially Dr. Patton’s triage nurse.

Inside the treatment center, Hood found his XO half-dressed and talking to a dark-skinned man wearing a fitted white medical jacket. He nodded to both men. “Raf, is everything okay?”

“Fine, sir,” Sanchez said while he pulled on his shirt. “Just a routine decontamination. We didn’t have any exposure. The Marines have already run through the protocol and gone.”

Hood looked over at the decontamination chamber, still occupied at the far side of the room. “What about the survivors? Who are they?”

“Members of the bridge crew. The
Cestus’s
new XO is one of them, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to them yet.”

Hood hadn’t seen the full list of survivors, but he needed to talk to Styles.
Where is he?
He turned toward the other gentleman. “How long do they have left, Doctor?”

Dr. Derik Patton, the
Armstrong’s
chief medical officer, added information into his data pad and checked another set of readings on the terminal screen closest to him. “They should be out in a minute, Captain. Their suits weren’t lined to protect them from radiation. The levels in that part of the ship weren’t lethal, but I’ll have to keep a couple of them in med bay for extended treatment.”

“Good, I want to debrief them immediately. Can we use your office?”

“Certainly.” The Australian doctor led both men to his office and showed them inside. “I’ll bring them right in.”

Hood and Sanchez didn’t have to wait long. Dr. Patton escorted eight people, clad in gray robes, to the small office. Despite the number of people, it wasn’t cramped. Several of them smiled when they recognized Commander Sanchez.

Hood’s eyes narrowed. Styles wasn’t with them. The images of the bodies floating in space outside the
Cestus
clouded his mind. Styles was alive. He had to be.

The leader of the group stepped forward and saluted the two officers from the
Armstrong
.

Hood and Sanchez both returned it. “I’m Captain James Hood of the
Armstrong
, and as many of you have guessed, this is my XO, Commander Raf Sanchez.” Hood looked at the expectant faces before him. “Who am I addressing?”

“Sir, I’m Lieutenant Commander Isaac Turnbow, XO of the
Cestus
. I want to thank you for coming to get us. My crewmates and I are all who remain of the bridge crew.”

Anguish gripped Hood’s heart. “Where’s Captain Styles?”

Turnbow shook his head. “We don’t know, sir. We were in that life pod for so long.”

Hood noticed the look of despair on their faces. Sanchez must have too, and he challenged them. “Why wasn’t he with you?”

“Sir, whatever hit us was tearing the ship up fast,” Turnbow explained, defending his crewmates. “Captain Styles ordered all hands to evacuate. Just after he gave the order, the bridge was hit, and we lost atmosphere for a few moments. Those of us still alive made it to the environmental suit locker just outside the bridge. Three of them were damaged, and we ended up one short.”

A young, dark-haired officer stepped up beside Turnbow. His face showed signs of radiation burns, but his voice was still full of zeal. “Commander Sanchez, Captain Styles ordered us into the suits then into the life pod. He told us he was headed to the fighter bay. Maybe he got out that way?”

Sanchez threw Hood a concerned look. “Sir, the fastest path to that bay went right through one of the worst radiation zones on the ship. The only safe route had a major hull breach when we arrived.”

Hood contemplated Sanchez’s words. If anyone could have survived, it was Styles. Unfortunately for Hood, his old friend’s safety was secondary. He returned his attention to the
Cestus’s
XO. “Mr. Turnbow, when we received your distress call, I figured it was jump failure, but what attacked you?”

Turnbow recalled the entire encounter for Hood and Sanchez, with a few of the bridge crew filling in the gaps. After he finished, Hood escorted the group out of the office and released the ones who required more treatment back to Dr. Patton’s care. He stopped the
Cestus’s
XO at the door. “Don’t be hard on yourself, son,” he said with a supportive tone. “You and Captain Styles did everything you could.”

“Thank you, sir. How many of the crew did you manage to rescue?”

“Forty-three at last count. Repair crews are on board her now. We should have the radiation and plasma fires under control soon. They’ll do another sweep after that.”

Turnbow’s eyes were still bloodshot from the decontamination process, but they were full of hope. “Can they save her?”

“She’s taken a lot structural damage. I’ve been informed that the space-fold drive is a wreck, but her reactor is salvageable,” Hood assured him. “The repair teams will know more once they put in a temporary drive and jump her to Cygni.”

Relief washed over Turnbow’s face. “Thank you, Captain. She means a lot to us.”

Hood tapped the younger officer on the shoulder. “I know, son. Dismissed.”

Hood watched Turnbow join the other
Cestus
crew members who were still reminiscing with Sanchez. He motioned for Sanchez to join him and both walked out of the med bay. “Is the download from the
Cestus
complete?”

“It should be close. Before I went into decontamination, Lieutenant Wells mentioned it would be another fifteen minutes.”

“Good. I had Lieutenant Aldridge begin an analysis of the damage sustained and the debris field. If it’s the Cilik’ti, that’s one thing, but if our friends from the asteroid field are back, they’ve just upped their game.”

Chapter Four

On the Command Deck of the
Armstrong
, Hood made one final check of the repair crew’s status then walked to the Tactical Station. Commander Sanchez and Lieutenant Aldridge were already waiting for him. It had been a long twenty-four hours since they’d had to race to the
Cestus’s
rescue. The repair teams had worked around the clock to attach a maintenance drive to her hull, but the effort was worth it. The devastated cruiser was almost ready to jump back to the orbital repair platform near Cygni 4. Hood was eager for answers and he needed them soon. “Commander, you said you have definitive intelligence about the attack. What is it?”

“We do, sir,” Sanchez began. The pensive expression on his face told him it wasn’t all good news. “But it’s more what we didn’t find.”

Hood gave his XO a skeptical look. “I don’t follow.”

Sanchez gestured to Aldridge, who brought up a detailed representation of the
Cestus
and the debris field after the attack. She pointed to three areas along the
Cestus’s
hull. “Sir, our analysis shows that these holes were caused by a high-powered explosive. The tears are outward in each case, which means that whatever hit her pierced the hull first and then exploded.”

“I see,” Hood said as he studied the visual of the cruiser. “The Cilik’ti Stinger missiles can do just that. So what’s missing?”

Aldridge highlighted several more areas across the external superstructure of the cruiser. “These are the major locations of hull damage. All the others are all secondary ruptures. There aren’t any melted armor plates or scorch marks from particle cannon fire. If a Cilik’ti ship hit her, there should have been evidence.”

Hood shook his head. “Any Cilik’ti ship would have seen the state of the
Cestus
and sent in drones to finish her off. They could’ve stayed far out of her limited range and decimated her.”

Sanchez’s deep frown spoke volumes about his sensitivity toward his former ship. “True, but why didn’t they? According to the
Cestus’s
logs, they had ample time before we arrived and they got in close. Close enough for her damaged sensors to see them.” He paused and looked at Aldridge, who seemed to have come to the same conclusion. “If their weapons were limited, maybe they had to.”

“What about the video logs from the external cameras? Did they pick up the ship or any drones?” Hood asked, hoping to narrow down the answer.

“Negative on the video logs, sir,” Aldridge replied. “Lieutenant Commander Turnbow mentioned that their combatant used powerful countermeasures against them. It scrambled just about everything, but from the garbled glimpses we did get, the ship isn’t that big. The sensor logs and crew testimonies confirm it.” She pointed to the edges of the debris field. “Our scans did detect the remains of Cilik’ti drones in the debris field, but they’re only from drone fighters. Based on what I can find about the state of their point defense guns, hitting a target that small without tracking would have been a million to one shot.”

Hood didn’t say anything. He just stared at the images of the cruiser.

Sanchez brought up another window on the terminal. “Sir, the
Cestus
managed to launch two fighters during the attack. We recovered just one transponder and flight recorder from the debris field.” He pointed to the location, which was several kilometers away from the position where they’d encountered the
Cestus.
“According to the data, that fighter was destroyed moments after she launched. The ship logs show the second made it out minutes later, but there’s no trace of her.”

Still in silent thought, Hood stroked his chin with two fingers. Without saying a word, he leaned forward and selected a
Cestus
video log from the list displayed on Aldridge’s terminal. It was the internal fighter bay cam. He fast-forwarded the video until he found what he wanted. A lone figure ran into the bay in a flight suit. A secondary explosion rocked the bay, and the person struggled to keep his feet. The catapult still held a fighter to launch, but its mechanisms were crippled. The man climbed up the ladder to the landing near the fighter’s canopy and hopped inside. Moments later, the fighter’s engines ignited, the prelaunch clamps holding the fighter snapped and the small craft edged its way out of the bay and into open space.

Hood rewound the video and zoomed in closer on the pilot. Elation and relief washed over him when he saw the nameplate on his left breast.

“That’s Captain Styles!” Sanchez announced. “He did make it out. But where did he go?”

Aldridge shrugged. “The entire investigation team has scoured every bit of data we could gather about the surrounding area and the debris field. There’s no trace of the second fighter.”

“They took him.” Anger was already beginning to swell in Hood’s voice.

Aldridge glanced up at Hood, but his eyes still focused on the nameplate on the screen. “Sir, I think we know who was responsible for the attack, but why would they try to mask it? Surely they had to know we’d be able to see through it.”

Images of the asteroid field incident from a few weeks before flooded Hood’s mind. “Of course they did.” He reached past Aldridge and closed down the images of the
Cestus
on her terminal. “They knew we’d be here. The attack was a test. It was meant to send us a warning.”

“Sir?” Sanchez and Aldridge questioned in unison.

Hood panned around the Command Deck, pausing at the other stations to observe his diligent crew perform their functions. At last, his vision settled back on Sanchez and Aldridge. “They wanted to let us know they can hurt us, that we won’t see the next one coming and there’s little we can do to stop them.” He took a deep breath and let it out in a long exhale, taking a little of the stress of the realization along with it. “Lieutenant, analyze every piece of data regarding the countermeasures used against the
Cestus
. If our systems can penetrate it, let’s use it to our full advantage. If not, find a weakness.”

“On it. I’ll let you know what I find.”

Hood and Sanchez left Aldridge to her work and moved to the Command Station. “They’re confident now, Raf, and they’re getting bolder.”

Sanchez agreed. “Sir, what about Captain Styles? There’s no guarantee whoever attacked his ship abducted him. If his fighter’s still out there, we need to resume the search.”

Hood could sense Sanchez’s apprehension. He had no desire to believe it either. “Commander, we’ve done all we can. We’re going to escort the
Gresham
back to Cygni with the
Cestus.
I’ve already ordered the
Isis
and
Repulse
to jump back here and search the debris field for any more intel.” His voice was stern now. “I’ll have them do a staggered sensor sweep to the best possible range of his fighter. Raf, if there was a remote chance, I’d be out there with you looking for him, but our sensors would’ve detected its trail. There isn’t any trace.”

Sanchez gritted his teeth at first, but relaxed.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find him,” Hood assured him.
When we do, the people involved in this had better pray hell isn’t real.
He clenched his jaw as images of his helpless friend came to mind once again.
Because I’m going to send them there
.

* * *

Nestled into the back corner of his new quarters aboard the
Armstrong
, Kree sat in silence. The large metal room had once been a storage locker close to the medical bay, but Captain Hood’s aide Mr. Martin had it cleared and converted to accommodations of his suiting. The choices on board were limited, and this was one of the few rooms with a door wide enough for him to pass unhindered.

The lights were dim, and Kree liked it that way. He’d grown accustomed to the darkness of the cave in the canyon he’d called home while on Cygni 4. Undisturbed by the light, he could focus on other things. The darkness brought silence and serenity, and he could listen. But it wasn’t sounds Kree was trying to detect. His mind stretched out from the boundaries of his room into other areas of the ship. Upon finding new crew members in each area, he listened and held out hope he could hear surface thoughts or feel their emotions. Even with all the activity on board over the past few hours, there wasn’t anyone he could sense—except one. Regardless of where he focused his mind around the ship, Kree could sense Jillian Howard’s thoughts. He could feel her anxiety and concern for those injured or dead aboard the
Cestus
.

Captain Hood had come to see him about the incident with the cruiser a few minutes earlier. The human captain’s demeanor had conveyed it as an official inquiry for Cilik’ti involvement in the attack, but what Kree couldn’t sense from his thoughts or emotions, he’d read in Hood’s body language. Over the past several weeks studying humans, Kree had spent a significant amount of his time focusing on their nonverbal communication. He was sure Hood knew who the real attackers were and was indirectly asking for his, or rather, the N’lan’s help in locating them.

Kree had reached out to the Ota elders of the N’lan, but their response had been less than enthusiastic. Ut’liss and the other members of the Hal’ta, the leadership of the N’lan, were in deep meditation while communicating with the rest of the Shi Council and were not to be disturbed.

Kree raised his head and tilted it sideways as he concentrated. He could feel the sensation of a space-fold jump event about to occur and braced for it. An unprepared Cilik’ti mind during a jump could be sent into a whirlwind, leaving the victim incapacitated for hours. On board the
Armstrong
, the effects would be unpredictable. Human jump drives were raw and unrefined compared to those of the Shi. If he was in midcommunication with his Shi at Cygni during the
Armstrong’s
jump, he might be rendered unconscious for days.

A few moments later, the jump completed. He reached out with his thoughts again. There were more voices now. The ship had returned to Cygni 4, and he recognized the minds of the other colonists there.

He stood from his quasi comfortable position on the floor and walked toward the center of the room, filling it with the sounds of metallic pings as he skittered. The single piece of furniture he required was a long table, which was adorned with several small objects Kree had brought on board. The items had been scanned several times by security to verify they were indeed not weapons—despite his declaration of their use. He understood their precautions and was sure if humans had come on board a Cilik’ti vessel, the situation would’ve been the same.

To his left was his translator device. Just to the right of it were several packets of compressed pellets. The olive-green oval tablets each contained enough organic sustenance for a full-grown Cilik’ti for several days. After all his analysis of human behavior, Kree was still unsure of their dietary choices. He made certain to bring plenty of nourishment, should he be asked to stay on board for a considerable amount of time.

But he wasn’t hungry and moved on to the last two items on the table. The first was a triangular-shaped device with pointed crystals at the ends. His Kiri’na. Few Cilik’ti from each Shi could master the art of long-range telepathy, and the Kiri’na was the tool to harness their focus. All members of the Hal’ta used them for extended periods of time, and warriors dedicated to intership communication and reconnaissance spent years training with the devices. The Ota were the engineers of each Shi and developed the Kiri’na, but it was rare that any Ota could master one. Kree was the exception. He’d been identified as a strong telepath since his birthing and it came as no surprise to the N’lan Ota elders that Kree would one day use a Kiri’na to serve his Shi. Even standing close to the device, he could sense it with his mind.

He let the temptation to use the Kiri’na pass and picked up the last item on the table with his lower right hand. The green metallic box housed a complex matrix of crystals, which glowed with a pale light as it activated. The crystals stored all of his observational data on humans to date, but it also held his research related to the beacon he discovered on Cygni 4.

His mission to investigate and observe humans on Cygni wasn’t the only task entrusted to him by his Shi. Uncovering the beacon and deciphering the information it contained was of high value to the N’lan. If the legends were true, he’d unlocked a treasure any Shi would risk its own status on the council to obtain. The beacon was close to his cave on the planet, but the humans had discovered it too when they’d explored the canyon.

During his brief communication with Ut’liss before she’d boarded her ship, the leader of the N’lan had instructed him to continue his work with the beacon and unlock all its secrets. She’d warned him that the beacon belonged to the Shi and, despite the recent diplomatic successes, under no condition were humans permitted to access it. He was to keep her apprised of any developments.

Kree had silently accepted his charge from Ut’liss, but his agreement contained an omission. He was already aware that Lieutenant Wells had been studying the beacon and managed to decipher the code to unlock it. It would be only a matter of time before she understood what she’d discovered.

Kree focused his mind on the data recorder and started to catalog his latest observations, but paused in midthought. He’d never failed to offer any valuable information to an elder of his Shi before and to disobey a command from a member of the Hal’ta—let alone Ut’liss—could be punishable by banishment or death.

He shuddered.
Why had this one defied her command?
He thought about it for a moment. His time among humans and the relationships he’d formed with a few of them had already put him in direct confrontation with the elders of his Shi. Before the recent battle at Cygni, he’d shamed them in an effort to make them understand their culpability in the scheme set forth by the Chi’tan and their allies. He knew there was no other way to bring their dishonor to light. But now he realized he was protecting his friends for a different reason. He feared for them. Accessing the beacon was dangerous. If the other Shi should ever realize that humans had the knowledge the beacon possessed, the effort to obtain it from them by force would make the Chi’tan K’rveen look like a skirmish.