Mission to Sector ZZ1219

by Jerry D. Young

  “As far as I know, Arabella has never met him,” Grant said, looking between the two curiously.

  “That is what she thought, too,” Willi tried to explain, but that was as far as she got when Grant interrupted her.

  “What do you mean, ‘that is what she thought, too’? Your mother would not forget meeting this man. He has had a reputation for many years.”

  “She did not know him as Johnny Oneshot when she met him the first time,” Willi continued the explanation. “But when he said something in a different voice…” When Willi saw Grant’s questioning look, she added a side explanation.

  “Johnny uses many different disguises and personas. He has been doing this a long time, like you said. He was someone else that time.”

  Grant saw the annoyance on Willi’s face. “And when he said something in a way that caused her to recognize who it was he was then, she kind of turned red. Embarrassed. You know nothing embarrasses Mother.”

  “Well...” Grant said speculatively, studying Johnny for a moment. “No, she doesn’t. Not about much, anyway. Certainly not since…”

  Seeing Grant’s obvious recognition of just what it was that had embarrassed her mother about having met Johnny, she frowned. “What? You figured it out, didn’t you? Tell me.”

  Thankfully, far more thankfully than he would ever admit, Grant was vastly relieved and thanked all that was holy to him that Johnny spoke up then.

  “It was nothing, Willi. Truly. Your mother is a fine lady and always has been. There is no point in putting Commander McKindrick on the spot. I will tell you what happened.”

  Johnny gave Willi a rather gentle look, but she saw the sincerity in it, as well, when he added, “And I ask you not to make more of it than it ever was. It was all of my doing, to accomplish a purpose that I required to have happen at the time. And used your mother in a very… ungallant… way to accomplish it.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” Willi asked in total confusion. She could see that her uncle was really and truly grateful that Johnny was explaining, and that he did not have to try to avoid explaining to her whatever it was, or to her mother, she suspected, that he had said anything at all.

  “It was six years after your father died,” Johnny said softly. He saw the remembered hurt in Willi’s eyes. She had absolutely adored her father. Every bit as much as her mother. And Johnny knew just how much she was hurting in those years after the illness had taken him. And how much Arabella had been hurting, too.

  “I needed to arrange for a regular trade route between… well, that no longer matters,” Johnny continued. “Suffice it to say, at the time setting up that trade route was important to accomplishing some things that I had committed to making sure were accomplished.”

  Johnny paused and Willi saw the distant look in his eyes, but also at least a bit of fondness, as well as the tiniest of lift of corners of his mouth.

  When he focused on her again, he continued with the explanation with a question. “Do you remember when Ambassador Algernon McElroy joined the Trinity Home for a month, seven years ago?”

  Grant hid his smile at the almost dreamy look that came over Willi’s face. Much as it had seven years ago. Very similar to the one that had come over his sister’s face at the same time.

  “Oh, yes! He was amazing,” Willi said, still smiling when she looked over at Johnny. “He even danced with me at a party that Mother arranged once when he was on the ship.

  “I felt so grown up. I remember that Mother had such a good time at that party, too. She was so sad so often, but when he was there, Momma sort of changed. She was happier after that. I remember seeing her dancing with him, too. She was laughing. I even wondered, kind of in that little girl way, if maybe they might get married and I would have a father again, and…”

  The look on her uncle’s face, and the soft look on Johnny’s, and her memories all coming back to her of that time. When she was fourteen and… Ambassador McElroy helped the McKindrick Trading Family set up the trade route between the center systems and some sector on the far side of the galaxy. That had been instrumental in…

  Willi’s eyes widened yet again as she stared at Johnny. She shook her head. Stared at Johnny some more. Gave her uncle a pleading look. And then stared at Johnny again. Another shake of her head. “That wasn’t… That couldn’t have… That couldn’t have been you! Ambassador McElroy was old! My mother’s age!”

  Johnny gave the tiniest of nods. “I have been very good with disguises for a very long time. Since my childhood.”

  “But… I thought she and he… I thought they might get married!” Willi wailed.

  “I am sorry, Willi,” Johnny said. “Very, very sorry, for having put you through that. And her, then. I have always felt terrible for the way I treated her.”

  Willi could not think of a single thing to say. But her uncle did.

  “Johnny,” Grant said, and Willi quickly looked at her uncle. There was something in his voice. Something she had only heard a very few times. And tears formed in her eyes when he continued to speak to Johnny.

  “Do not, ever, feel terrible about that time. Or the way you treated my family. I wish I’d know then… But that time… It brought my sister back to me. My real sister. Not the carefully controlled Matriarch of the McKindrick Clan. But my sister, the woman, and wonderful person she always was, and was again, except during those few years after she lost Willi’s father.”

  Willi was sure there were tears in Grant’s eyes that he simply would not let fall. Because she remembered it much the same way. Her mother… had always been her loving mother… even during that time. But after she met… well… Johnny… even after his assignment was over, and he went… “I guess that doesn’t really matter,” Willi thought to herself. “But after the time she spent with Johnny, as Ambassador McElroy, Momma was her old self again. Just as Uncle Grant had said.”

  “I…” Johnny said, but Willi shut him up with just a touch on his arm, and then a gentle kiss she leaned forward to give him.

  Along with a whispered “Thank you for that time.”

  Johnny opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but after a glance at Grant, and then looking back into Willi’s eyes, kept silent, and just nodded.

  Concentrating needlessly on the communicator for a moment, Johnny then glanced over at Willi. “Uh-oh,” came the unbidden thought.

  And Willi, still watching Johnny, asked the question that Grant had been wracking his usually very agile and creative mind to find a way to ask without being too rude, even for him, and intrusive, again not something he usually worried about when it came to the safety of the family, which this probably was not. Thus the hesitation. But Willi came to Grant’s rescue, even though she did not know it.

  “How old?” Willi asked suddenly. “How old are you?”

  “You mean now?” Johnny asked, making a token effort to divert Willi, which he was pretty sure was a wasted effort, but still worth an attempt just to see her reaction. She did not disappoint him.

  “Now? Of course now.”

  The first word was reasonable, Johnny nodded. The next three were rising in inflection. “Hm…” found himself thinking, “she must have a million ways to…” He cut those thoughts off. “I am twenty-four. Or will be in a couple of months.”

  “Oh…” Willi thought. She had thought he might be about that age. Before. But she had suddenly been very unsure. She remembered Ambassador McElroy… or rather, Johnny as Ambassador McElroy, as being in his late twenties or early thirties those seven years ago.

  An almost instant calculation happened in her head, without any thought going to it, and she knew that she had been fourteen, of course, and Johnny would have been… only seventeen… and her mother… Willi’s mouth made a tiny ‘O’ shape, of which he had no clue, as her mother’s age at the time popped into her head.

  Arabella McKincrick had been thirty-two at the time. And had been enamored, at least a little bit, with a seventeen-year-old. Even if
she did think, as Willi had, that the man was approximately the same age as Arabella.

  The very soft “wow” slipped out. Willi was not sure if it was a wow about Johnny at that age, or about her mother, at that age, or any other. Knowing what she did now, she was more than a little surprised that the sharp green spear of jealousy had not struck her in the heart, nor had her eyes gone from blue to vivid green.

  She knew that could not actually happen, but there had been those couple of times… Well, perhaps five or six. Or ten… or more. That they sort of seemed to, when she saw a woman looking at Johnny a certain way. Or he looked at a woman… pretty much any way, she supposed.

  And though that tiny flicker that had sprung to life in the space port when her mother had blushed upon remembering her meeting with Johnny, had been minute, it had been there. But there was nothing of the nature now. It seemed to be a day and time for “Hm…” for she did another one herself.

  Suddenly everything personal was regulated to ‘later’ status, for transport communicator chimed slightly, and three words were heard.

  Cherokee did not wait for an order, request, or anything else. He did the equivalent of what pre-Dark Times people had done in like situations. He punched it.

  As Willi held on, to the vehicle, and to Johnny, because though he was secured, he was using his good hand to work the communicator rather than holding on.

  The transport had a good ground suspension, but Cherokee was putting it through some aggressive moves as Grant manipulated the cloaking controls, flashing into and out of the cloak, and applying different looks during each change.

  Johnny spoke one word, and Cherokee abruptly changed course again, almost, but not quite doubling back on their route, three streets over. They were near the edge of the city proper, and near one of the large open areas that lay scattered throughout the other, more tree like growth that covered much of the planet that was not desert.

  “Easy,” Grant said, his hands on the cloaking device. Cherokee slowed significantly, until Grant gave one more word, “Now,” and did something to the controls.

  When Willi felt the transport lift into the air a good meter or more, while moving forward quickly again, and then came back down with a bit of a thump, despite the suspension, she was almost half on Johnny when she caught up with the vehicle’s downward movement.

  He grunted, just slightly, but Willi was looking out through one of vision ports to see where they were not. Cherokee had used the unexpected in that type of vehicle jumper jets to lift the vehicle high enough to clear a road divider, with enough height left, and forward momentum, to cross over the side barrier as well, and then disappear into some very tall foliage.

  Cherokee did his best, but this was not a tiny vehicle, and the foliage was both large and growing densely. So they banged into a few things, hard, several times.

  Willi gave up trying to protect herself from bruises, and did her best to protect Johnny, who was making no effort to do it himself, holding the communicator steady against one leg with his injured hand, and manipulating it with his good one.

  The jostling finally slowed, as the vehicle did, and then stopped. She heard Grant asking, “Status?” while Cherokee was already out of the vehicle, doing something at the rear of it.

  Grant looked back at Johnny and said, “Two minutes,” before getting out of the vehicle himself to go help Cherokee.

  Johnny put away the communicator, looked over at Willi, surprised her with a quick buss on the lips, and then said, “I love you.” Of course he also quickly added, in about the same tone of voice, which was much more suited to the second sentence than the first, “Gear up and go hot. Bogeys inbound.”

  Willi gulped, released Johnny’s hand that she realized he had managed to keep still despite his very strong urge to pull it free so he could do the same things he had told her to do.

  Seconds later both were outside the vehicle, helping get everything out of it, and away from it, though Willi could not really figure out why. Other transport was obviously coming, but why not just move everything from one vehicle to the other?

  They were in back-to-back stances, covering the full three-hundred-sixty-degree area a few long seconds later when Willi found out why they had moved everything from the transporter.

  A shuttle landed on it. The shuttle was cloaked, but there was no doubt about, because it pretty much could not be anything else based on both the sound, and the ground shaking impact that occurred at the same time. Plus, while the transporter did not reappear, quite a few pieces and parts did, when the transport’s cloaking device was destroyed.

  Willi was more than a bit impressed with the cloaking on the shuttle, which she admired for a few moments, since there was hardly a shimmer in the field effect.

  Then she was shocked once again when a rear cargo door popped open, a ramp flopped down, exposing the inside of a shuttle that was much larger than she was expecting.

  Though those facts were the lesser of the rest, which was Sydney and Clyde standing at the top of the ramp, motioning them aboard, and two Dominators appearing just a few feet away. Willi had not had any sense of them being there until they uncloaked.

  The pilots of the Dominators did not leave their craft. They did not only not get out, they did not even shut them down. They only blipped the cloaks enough for them to be seen.

  The Dominators, and their pilots. Captain Butler was one of the pilots. Captain Echart was the other.

  Willi gave Johnny a look that was asking a thousand questions, which Johnny returned with one that said, “Answers later. Leaving now.”

  Willi was staring at Sydney. She had recognized his features immediately. She had Clyde’s, too. But they were both in Confederation Navy uniforms.

  Two other men had run down the ramp and grabbed everything that Willi, Cherokee, Grant, and Johnny were not already carrying and were back in the shuttle moments afterwards.

  The hatch was already closing, and Sydney was running forward, with Clyde hard on his heels. Over his shoulder, Sydney said, “Good to see you, Sis. Got a couple of offers of marriage to look at when we get a minute. These Navy guys are always looking for someone to settle down with. Good offers, too.”

  Willi could tell he was laughing. Just trying to needle her, like old times sake, and had absolutely no knowledge of everything that had gone on the last few weeks.

  It did not really make any difference to Willi. A small ditty bag hit him in the back of the head with some force, as she shouted the words, “I told you to quit trying to sell me off to the highest bidder for marriage, Syd!”

  “Ow! Geez, Sis! I was kidding!” Sydney had stumbled into Clyde at the impact at the back of his head, but both were more than nimble enough to recover and go through the hatch into the flight deck.

  “Yeah! Me, too, Syd!” yelled Willi, more relieved than anything to see her brother and her friend. She had actually missed them.

  Johnny looked at her with a smile on his face, and Grant, though he was aware of the interplay between brother and sister, was at a loss as to why it was happening now. Grant shook his head and secured the bags, before securing himself.

  Willi let Cherokee help Grant and the other two Spacemen ratings and saw to it that Johnny was well secured. Unless she was seriously mistaken, there was no way Sydney would not be taking advantage of the situation to do some hot flying.

  With Johnny secured, she took one step toward the flight deck, but was drawn up short with Johnny’s good hand on one of her wrists. “Afraid not. Sit and buckle.”

  “But…” Willi shut up quickly and sat down beside Johnny. It was not like Sydney and Clyde could not handle things. But it grated not to be able to be up there making sure a Trinity Home daughter craft was putting its best foot forward. With her at the controls. It struck her, after a quick, slightly more detailed look at the inside of the shuttle, that this just might not be one of the Trinity Home’s many shuttles.

  Not to mention the fact that both Sydney and Clyde wer
e in Space Navy uniforms. And then there were the two Spacemen ratings, too. Both Three Stripers. No, this was not one of the Trinity Home’s shuttles.

  Even not being on the flight deck, Willi was rather wishing this shuttle did belong to the family. Just from the feel of the ship being maneuvered by Syd, and Syd was definitely putting it through some paces, very impressive paces, the craft was fully on a par with the family’s shuttles, and rather more, too, in terms of maneuverability and speed.

  She was still studying what she could see, to try and figure out what it was, and was becoming more impressed with the craft by the minute, when Clyde’s voice came from a speaker.

  “Mr. Oneshot, Sir.”

  Grant looked confused, again, and Willi rolled her eyes.

  “I am not Mr. Oneshot, or Sir,” Johnny said calmly. “Just Johnny. What is it, Lieutenant?”

  “Lieutenant?” Willi mouthed to Grant. She had not noticed his rank insignia. Or Sydney’s. “And Syd?” she mouthed then. Grant shrugged.

  It hit her then. Even having seen their uniforms, it had not really registered. “They’re in the Space Navy? Since when?” she asked herself. Willi could not believe she had missed that. She closed her eyes and did a few deep breaths. She needed to calm down. Too many things were slipping past her. And that could be dangerous anytime, but especially now.

  She tuned back into the conversation. “We have been ordered to uncloak, and vectored to the Flagship in high orbit. I thought we might slide between the sensors, but they saw us. The Flight Controller sounded kind of tense.”

  Willi and Grant both watched Johnny for a moment. He seemed somewhere far away as he thought. Willi wondered just how much information he was processing. Then he was speaking again. “Lieutenant, go into weapons console Quantum, shut down Legacy, and open up Seven. Just before you activate Seven, signal Sydney by hand, do not tell him by voice or console command, and activate Seven on a count of three.

  “Lieutenant McKindrick, on Clyde’s count of three, deactivate cloaking, count two, reactivate cloaking, roll one-eighty, rotate to forty-seven, pitch to thirteen, and go to one hundred twenty percent forward thrust. After a count of six, apply two seconds of portside bow thrust at ten percent and cut off. Stay at one hundred twenty percent forward thrust until we clear the one-two-one beacon that will appear for no more than six seconds. Throttle back to sixty percent and go to heading seventeen, one fifteen, ninety. I will let you know another course shortly.”