MissionSRX: Deep Unknown

by Matthew D. White

  “I think so. I’m questioning Wright’s judgment on the assault on the cruiser, but it wasn’t the worst disaster of the day.”

  “Well, the Lyrans gave us the job and the means. If they wanted it, I’m sure it was a good reason. It’ll pay dividends.”

  “Since when are you the optimist?”

  “I don’t know; it just feels right. Maybe because we’ve got nothing better to work with.”

  Fox nodded and watched a lighted meter on his console turn green. “We’re on. I’ll start the countdown.”

  ***

  The shock from the Flagstaff snapping into faster-than-light travel made the entire hull shudder enough to wake Scott as he lay on the cold, hard metal plate. He opened an eye and heard Commander Fox’s instructions through the intercom. They had four hours until reentry at the final location and needed to once again be ready for an engagement.

  There was nothing left of the special operations team with so many of their soldiers, not to mention their leader, down, Scott lamented. Even if he had the energy to fight, he was nothing but a pariah. Sure, he could search out whatever team was left on the battleship, but for the moment there was nothing for him.

  Who was he hoping to fool? He was no soldier; he didn’t belong out here on the far end of the universe. What was there to prove? The realization tore at his soul as he slipped back into unconsciousness, fighting between the conflicting desires to shrink back or to carry on.

  16

  Again the Flagstaff was set for the third incursion. Commander Fox announced the final hour along with ten- and five-minute-warnings followed by a ten second countdown. With any luck, it’d be the same profile as the first. The battleship ducked out of the warp and with another shock fell back into real space. Fox intently stared at the sensor scope, waiting for the environment to update.

  They were expecting another thirty to fifty ships of various sizes with at least half of the fleet expected to be similar to the cruisers they had become so well accustomed to. As the screen updated, only fifteen Cygnan vessels popped into existence near the far range of his sensors.

  “Dammit, they’re already launching!” Fox exclaimed, instantly switching gears and marking the targets. “Straight towards them! Engage them all! Keep them here!” he added, realizing the risk should the remaining armada decide to turn and fight his lone battleship. He silently prayed for the Patriots to get in place on time. The enemy ships continued to blink out of existence.

  ***

  Major Kael stepped on the bridge of the supporting Patriot as Lieutenant Rans and her pilot issued their final commands to the crew before reentry.

  “Sir, is your team ready?” Rans looked back as he approached.

  “Yes, ma’am. Teams are staged on the lower levels, flight deck and all landing bays. Standing by for your orders.”

  ***

  On the following ship, Lieutenant Commander Clark abided by the same instructions in preparation for their mission. “Five minutes on the clock!” he announced over the radio. “Prepare for danger!”

  He never saw the small black case shoved inconspicuously behind the workstation to his left. Releasing a blinding flash of energy, the unit melted down and in a tremendous nuclear firestorm, explosively vaporizing the ship from the bridge halfway through the body. The engines died under the shock and the remains of the alien battleship tumbled violently back into real space to slowly burn apart in the ensuing fire.

  ***

  Kael silently raised the service pistol in his right hand and held it unseen a few centimeters away from the back of Rans’ scalp. He paused for a moment in contemplation and released it and instead drove a bullet into the back of her leg. She dropped with a surprised yelp while the pilot leapt to his feet in response to the shot. Unflinching, Kael adjusted his aim and fired again, placing a round between the pilot’s eyes.

  Rans reached for her sidearm but Kael kicked the weapon from her hand before it cleared the holster. He stamped his foot down hard above the wound. She screamed out but fell silent as the soldier looked down at her. His eyes wore an expression of sadness and regret that quickly faded as what looked like blood and oil poured through his irises.

  “There is no redemption. Judgment has come!” he growled in a suddenly deepening voice and retrieved a small black cube from a fold in his armor. He placed it on the pilot’s console which flickered with light. The Patriot responded with a jolt and fell out of hyperspace. Red warnings and sirens blared while Kael stepped back and wrenched Rans back to her feet by the throat, dragging her from the bridge.

  Across the leading hallway they went, Rans thrashing but unable to overcome the power of the armored soldier. The wall beside them disappeared and Kael threw her hard into a small, unseen alcove. The lieutenant slammed against the rear bulkhead but remained conscious as blood ran down her face. She looked back only to see the piercing red eyes of her attacker become instantly obscured by the wall as it rematerialized, sealing her off from the rest of the ship.

  ***

  The major strode back across and the door closed behind him. The small, alien object on the console instantly sealed every hatch on the ship as it gained control of each minor and major system. Once complete with the operation, it began to plot coordinates for another jump.

  ***

  Lieutenant Parks’ Patriot dropped out of the warp in time to flank the contingent of remaining Cygnan cruisers. Fox’s frantic voice snaked through the communication system a second later.

  “Dammit it’s about time you get here! Get their attention. They’re launching!” the commander yelled, watching from the Flagstaff as he drove straight at the enemy line. He’d take his chances as long as it kept them from pushing straight on to Earth. That said, they finally had some support. Parks’ ship would at least help keep the enemy busy. Clark was a no-show as the initial shield and Rans was a minute late as well.

  “Why they hell are we missing two Patriots?” Fox growled as the Cygnans split their forces, half returning to attack while the rest slipped into deep space. “Did you see them launch?”

  “They were the first two through the gate,” Parks reported. “They should have been the first to arrive.”

  Fox didn’t need another problem on top of everything else. All they could do now was mop up the last few ships, wait for the gate to show up, fling themselves at Earth, and hope they got there in time. Missing a third of the force made him uneasy.

  ***

  A hundred kilometers ahead of the Flagstaff a distress probe dropped into real space and began transmitting its location and final message.

  ***

  “Sir, we’ve got an emergency beacon from Clark’s Patriot!” the pilot announced.

  Fox brought up the feed and scanned over the data. It was a well thought out bit of technology. If there was anything amiss on a Lyran ship’s journey through hyperspace, it would deploy a probe loaded with the last position of the ship and a tome of information from its collection systems. In peacetime, the same probes served as basic communication between the fleets.

  “Foreign material detected. Explosion detected-bridge. Hull rupture-Bridge. Explosion detected-deck 30. Hull rupture-deck 30. Explosion detected-deck 29...” Fox’s voice trailed off while he scanned down the next twenty messages. “Something blew up half the damn ship!”

  “What the hell is going on?” Grant shouted up from his fighter’s seat in the landing bay.

  “Clark’s Patriot just spontaneously detonated in the gaddamn warp!”

  “What?”

  “Sit tight!” Fox snapped and scanned the rest of the feed. “The core is stabilized but has no navigation and no c-and-c to support a jump. If anyone survived it, they won’t die of radiation or hull breach.” He passed the feed to Grant in his fighter.

  “Jesus…dammit all!” he muttered and slammed his fists into the sides of his cockpit to dull the searing frustration that was building inside him.

  “Another probe!”

  “Let�
��s see it.” Fox switched his focus, fearing the worst. “Rans dropped out of her jump too.” He kept reading. “Primary commanding officer – extremity puncture wound, substantial blood loss. Primary operator encountered cerebral hemorrhage, instantly deceased.”

  “English!”

  “Someone executed the pilot and kneecapped the captain.”

  Grant scanned the file. Fox was right, that was the only way to interpret the statements. The following lines got more cryptic. ‘Foreign entity detected in mainframe. Engine control released. Facilities control released. Malicious code attempting brute force hack of probe. Probe launch commence.’ What the hell does that mean?”

  “Someone attacked the crew and planted a virus in the system. It locked the ship down and took control of the engines but failed to hack the probe.”

  “That can’t be human.”

  “No.” Fox shook his head.

  “We have to recover them.”

  “How? We have to get to Earth.”

  “Send a Patriot to each last known position.”

  “We’re shorthanded as it is! Most of our forces are on those ships!”

  The commander was right and Grant knew it. The largest special operations team they had available was in Clark’s medical bay being guarded by Othello Harris’ sizeable defense force. Major Kael’s command team was with Rans with the rest of his division spread throughout their meager fleet. Kael and Mason were resourceful, but he knew they couldn’t leave it to chance. “We have to divide the force.”

  “I don’t want to see the ships compromised but we can’t spare anymore.”

  Grant kept thinking. “Send one to Clark’s at least and get the survivors. They can turn around and get back to Earth just as fast. I’ll take Rans’ alone if I have to.”

  “No you won’t. There’s not a damn thing you could do for them alone. If they’re compromised by the Cygnans you’d be good as dead. Hell, if the ship is infected you probably won’t get close enough to land.”

  The commander rested his armored head on the rear of his seat and let the probe feed cycle through the rest of the messages before it switched to a security video. It caught his attention and he leaned forward, trying to interpret what he was seeing. Three figures on the bridge.

  “It’s Kael,” he announced.

  “What?”

  “Major Kael did it. There’s an embedded security feed,” he elaborated, watching the final loop of the major make his two shots before dragging the injured lieutenant off the bridge in a trail of blood. Why would he kill the pilot but not her?

  “What the hell? Something’s not adding up.”

  “No shit. Let me go stop him.”

  Fox clenched his fists, feeling a cold sweat building. “Copy.” He switched to the command channel. “Lieutenant Parks, change of plans. Pick up Commander Grant and his fighter. Rendezvous at Lieutenant Rans’ last known location and follow Grant’s instructions. Sebastian, Lieutenant Commander Clark’s Patriot has taken significant damage. Change course and locate his ship, repair it or evacuate all survivors and secure all sensitive material.” He switched back. “Jeff, I hope you’re right about this.”

  “Have them recover the probes too.” Grant thought through it again and switched to the ground channel. “Mr. Ryan, where are you?”

  “Sir, dorsal armory of the Flagstaff with the rear defense team.”

  “Grab your shit and get to my fighter, port side, upper deck. We’ve got a job to do.”

  Scott looked to the other soldiers. “He sounds pissed,” one of them offered.

  “No kidding. I wonder what this is about,” Scott mused, grabbing his bag of equipment.

  Another soldier held out his squad assault rifle. “You might need this more than we do.”

  He tossed the ZiG over his shoulder and accepted the larger weapon. Scott could tell it was heavier but not to the point of being unwieldy. “Thanks,” he added and ran out of the secured armory and back down the hallway, looking for the stairs that would take him one floor down to the flight deck. Vaulting down the four flights of steps, he crossed the final hallway to the wide entrance of the landing bay.

  Grant’s fighter was already running a few meters down the ramp and the commander was standing on the top of the fuselage. “Hurry up! Time to go!” he shouted, waving the engineer on.

  Scott bounded up the metal linked ladder to the top of the ship and hopped over the left stack of cannons beside the open canopy. The commander had already pulled his chair forward far enough to reveal a small utility seat stuck into the back of the cockpit. “What’s this?”

  “It’s for passengers, cargo or testing. Get in.”

  Scott dropped in and wedged the weapons between his knees along with his bag of equipment. There were a few small multifunction panels crammed in around him and two control sticks. There appeared to be enough to use a secondary operator to perform more menial or specialized tasks, if not fly the ship himself.

  Grant wasted no time and jumped down up front, closing the glass top at the same time. “Strap in. We’ve got to get going.”

  Fumbling with the belts in the small space, Scott barely got attached before the commander had the ship in the air. “What’s the plan?”

  “We’ve got reason to believe Major Kael destroyed Lieutenant Clark’s Patriot and has taken control of Rans’. We got a distress probe which I need you to parse through, see if anything is actionable and help me take it back while Lieutenant Sebastian recovers whatever’s left of Clark’s.”

  Scott froze with wide eyes. He hadn’t considered anything the commander just said in the realm of possibilities. The fighter shot forward into space, thrusting him back into the seat as their gravity reacted. He immediately had a flashback to the simulator although the two sensations were hardly similar.

  Together they dropped into the leading bay of Parks’ Patriot. Grant whipped the fighter about and landed it hard on a pad to the side. Scott tried to reconcile the knowledge they were flying in an enclosed space with the immensity of the runway to the point they might as well been outside.

  The engineer climbed out after his pilot and saw they were at the far end of the bay, across from a shuttle where two soldiers carried a gray spire about two meters long down the loading plank to a waiting cart below.

  “That’s the probe?”

  “I hope so,” Grant replied as he slid down the ladder. “There’s got to be a way to pull the source data out of there somewhere on this ship.”

  Scott dropped down and released the visor on his helmet to get a closer look at the Lyran device. It was shaped like a long cone with a somewhat disjointed cylinder shaped section at the bottom that he surmised must have contained the propulsion mechanism.

  He had barely touched a Lyran workstation in training and this was sure to be a thousand times more involved. Then again, Commander Grant trusted him to do it and logically it wasn’t impossible. The soldiers pushed the object towards him, now captive on its carriage.

  “Sir, where do you want this?”

  That’s right; he was now the authority. He thought quickly and replied, “Keep it here.” Then turning to Grant he asked, “Can we find where they store more probes? That might be the best place to find a terminal to read them.”

  “Now you’re talking!” Grant exclaimed. “I’ll grab Parks and see if he knows how to get there. The commander had to admit, it was a relief to see Scott beginning to believe in himself, even if it was still miniscule. His expression was more focused, and he was starting to carry himself with the authority he had earned. “Don’t worry. We’ve got a few hours.”

  “Thank you,” Scott agreed and continued to study the probe while Grant recused himself and headed for the bridge. He took a platform straight back, deeper into the ship before switching to another which drove up at a steep angle to the massive command overlook above the top deck. Lieutenant Evan Parks was waiting at the landing for him to arrive.

  “Did you get the brief from Commander
Fox?” he asked before he got on solid ground.

  “Yes, sir. We’re standing by for the rest of the fleet to launch for Earth. I’ve got the coordinates programmed in, and we’ll hit the gate as soon as it’s clear.”

  “Good,” Grant nodded. “I don’t want to give them a second more than I need to. Also, where can we find the distress probe launcher? I gave Mr. Ryan the job of pulling the rest of the data from it.”

  Parks consulted a screen to his left. “There’s a service area three levels below the flight deck. That’s probably it.”

  “Thanks; I’ll let him know. We’ll be S.O.L. if he can’t get me a way in.”

  ***

  The Flagstaff slipped through the alien gate and left real space behind in its trek back to Earth. The waiting; that was the worst, Fox thought. He was hampered enough as it was, losing two-thirds of his fleet but now with them being too late to stop them all made him question how much of a difference they would be able to make.

  He hoped they would be synchronized well enough to arrive simultaneously to get the maximum effect from the enemy who undoubtedly knew they were coming, but also to warn the rest of their defenders to not engage the Lyran vessels. How would he ever explain this to the fleet? Would General Raley take a story of benevolent alien allies seriously, especially when he had to ask for more people to command the fleet during an attack on Earth?

  Fox did the math over and over in his head; even in the best case, the enemy still had upwards of a third of their total strength. If the survivors didn’t know about the other sites, they’d likely be undone by their own hubris, but the unknowns plagued the commander as much as his enemies. What if they had more sites? If the Lyrans’ assessment was incomplete, they could have another hundred ships on their way to Earth and despite it all; he didn’t have a clear picture what their tactics were. He added that to the pile of questions waiting for the Lyrans once they returned. If they returned.