He opened the case, revealing two rows of glass jars containing objects and projectiles of various shapes and sizes. The largest one at the center contained one of the polished saw blades. Towards the side were a series of smaller canisters holding the small black slugs with glass chambers at the center.
“These were the ones we saw most but I think they can change the payload. I found all of these with small but noticeable differences.” He added as Grant picked up the jar containing the saw blade and turned it over in his hand before loosening the lid. “I wouldn’t touch that. I don’t know what’s on it.”
Mason produced a pair of folding pliers and handed them over. “It’ll be okay.” Grant replied and pulled the projectile free. Retrieving a sheet of paper from the table, he held it by the corner and ran the blade across its surface. It cut cleanly without leaving a single fiber out of place. “I’d like to see this in use but don’t know where we could safely test it.”
“I agree. Whatever is launching something like this would be far too dangerous.”
“What else do the bullets contain?”
“That I don’t know.” Scott replied as he watched Grant carefully replace and seal the metal disc inside the glass container. “There are variants of color so I’d imagine they are different. Maybe some nerve gasses, high explosives, who knows?”
Fox looked between the Patriot captains. “The rest of our passengers know they’ve been reassigned but most of them don’t know the extent of the operation. A few got a taste on the ground yesterday. We don’t have time at the moment but I’ll want you to explain all of this to the best of your abilities once we’re under way. We don’t need their introduction to the Lyrans to be any more difficult than it needs to be. I certainly don’t want to put them through the same confusion we faced.”
“What are you anticipating?” Wright asked.
“Hopefully we get welcomed back and everyone gets shuffled off and sent over to the med center for whatever implants they need to communicate. After that we’ll probably rally up, figure out our forces and start hashing out the next move. Maybe get some time to discuss what we’ve already uncovered, process the data we gathered.”
“Considering what’s already happened, that’s probably not far from the truth.” Grant replied. “If that’s it, then good luck. We’ll see you on the other side.”
***
Grant and Fox followed Lieutenant Wright to the command deck of the Patriot while the rest of the ship captains returned to theirs via shuttles. For a brief moment, the immense alien ship felt like home. There were no impending disasters, no residual marks from battle and their wounded were stabilized as best they could manage.
Without effort they took the central elevator to the bridge and soon watched over the rows of workstations to the starry night burning in the far field. A crescent view of their hellish planet slowly floated across, about the size of a marble at arm’s length but enough to draw their attention.
“What’s the countdown?” Grant asked.
“We’ve got twelve minutes until launch and then without a gate we’ll be underway seventy hours with three or so legs to complete the jump.”
The commanders shared a glance. They had discussed the possibility of backtracking to pick up a Lyran gate but at this point they were a significant distance out. To go back would have saved them relatively little time. Besides, they weren’t working to a deadline and they agreed the personnel needed a break from the constant action.
They waited as the timer ticked down, watched as the warp field opened and breathed a sigh of relief as they passed into the relative security of their undefined surroundings. Grant stood his ground until the operation was completed and took a step away from the rest of the crew.
“Hurry up and wait,” Fox said rhetorically. “What’s next?”
“Time to reload.” Grant replied. “I’ll make sure my shit’s squared away then take a few minutes off.”
***
The commander spent the time checking over his weapons at the central armory and scrubbing the remnants of dried sulfides from the crevices. Most of the heavy work had been done already by the maintainers. The customized ZiG from Dr. Jacobs was still in pristine condition but the pistol had lost nearly all of its metal treatment and had gained a significant coating of rust. Looking closer, Grant realized he’d been lucky that it hadn’t jammed during his escape.
Setting the pistol aside for decommissioning, Grant continued onto the rest of his equipment. His normal armor/flight suit hybrid was lonely after being ignored for the last few days however it was a far better scenario than bringing it along. After seeing the damage done to the heavy armor by the hot and corrosive Venusian atmosphere he was glad the specialized suit had been spared a similar fate.
***
After finishing in the armory, Grant took his leave to the upper observation deck: a wide, expansive room above and to the rear of the command deck. The space took up nearly a quarter of the floor space and resembled a planetarium with walls barely two meters above the ground floor. A dome that stretched skyward kept the room secure during normal operations but could be retracted to provide a spectacular view of space above.
He walked up a series of circular steps to the raised center of the room and took a seat in one of the Lyrans’ strange self-aligning chairs. Grant took a deep breath, staring into the darkness of the warp and feeling like he was flying unhindered among the stars. For a very brief moment he felt at peace.
The feeling left when he heard the door cycle. “Grant, you in here?” Commander Fox’s voice permeated the silence like the cycling of a rifle.
“Yes. What do you need?” he replied, not bothering to raise his head.”
“Nothing. We’ve just been looking for you.”
“For what?”
“We just wanted to save you from yourself.” Fox approached along with Scott, Othello and Mason, who each took a seat in the circle.
“I bet you do.” He replied and leaned forward. “It’s been a rough couple of days.”
“That it has.”
“Do you know how many we lost today?”
Fox’s expression fell. “Two hundred forty three on Clark’s Patriot. Three eighty on Sebastian’s when it crashed. He had a crew of fresh passengers too. Another five hundred and twelve pilots, ground troops, drivers and operators. Thank God most of them survived.”
“How about we explore this a little more?” Grant produced a glass bottle of brown liquid. Fox looked stunned. “Did you ever read your own manifest? You’d be surprised what gets packed away. And don’t be a baby; I knew you’d all be up here before too long.”
The commander turned a stern expression to a thin smirk, “Maybe you’re right. We’ve done all there is to do.” He replied and started the first round. “And what are you attempting to do here?”
“Trying to keep us mindful of what we’ve accomplished so far. To remember the sacrifices of those we lost and to not take them in vain.” Othello chimed in. “I never thought I’d see something like this in my lifetime and here I am. I can’t thank you enough for this honor.”
“You absolutely earned it.” Grant nodded at Othello and Scott. “We serve humanity, it’s only appropriate.”
Scott looked between the others. “Like he said, it’s beyond imagining. When I made the choice to leave Mars with you, I thought I knew what I would face but I still feel overwhelmed. I’m making it all up as I go along. At the same time, I’ve never felt so alive, like this is what I was meant to do.”
Grant smiled. “As was I. In a way we’re all lost.”
“There comes a time when there’s no going back.” Mason said. “Once we join the Lyrans we will lose another piece of our humanity. Make no mistake about that but I hope you’re ready for it.”
The commander nodded in understanding. “Let me tell you about two of us. Torch Lasky and Mittens Shafer, assigned to 1st Defensive Squadron, U.S.C. Flagstaff and killed in action during defense of Eart
h. Torch had deployed to Sol Bravo and Charlie to fight the Aquillians before taking a capital escort assignment on the way back. He had seven commendations for bravery, including one for using his fighter to draw the fire of an alien cruiser to allow time for a disabled freighter to evacuate. He nearly died in a deck fire when his ship’s engine melted down during a boarding action and barely escaped while defending the ship from the ground.
Mittens Shafer spent nearly the last year and a half going between Sol Bravo and Earth on supply runs. He had over sixty air-to-air kills on Aquillian raiders who attacked his formations. His first star for valor was from an attack where an alien destroyer attempted a kamikaze run against a civilian ship. Rather than give up the lives and supplies on board and while out of ammunition, he crashed his fighter onto their command bridge, rendering it unable to steer and allowing the freighter to escape. He ejected with only seconds to spare and had to be drug back to station while hanging on the outside of another SR-1.”
Grant looked at Scott. “How do you compare that to a life on Earth? Yes, we fight so twenty billion people can live in peace but it’s not a life for us we’re fighting for.” He looked off into the swirls of light above. “Torch and Mittens. Kael. Clark…” he paused again. “And while they go west, someone back home lives fat and happy in security. Cowards, the lot of them!”
“You’re right. I don’t think I’d be able to accept an option like that. I couldn’t ever live knowing what needs to happen.”
“Security is a harsh reality. If nothing else, think of the responsibility we’re walking into.” Fox added, “I have a feeling we’re approaching a world with a whole lot more than we’ve seen before. Our crew is thirty times larger than it was a week ago and they’ll be needing us to take them into harm’s way, accomplish the mission and get them home safe.”
Grant continued, “I had Scott pull the log from Lieutenant Clark’s Patriot. The captain’s final entry was a signed commendation for one of his men, Staff Sergeant William Perry. During the second assault, a Cygnan ship attempted to ram their Patriot. It was damaged beyond the point of being powered and nearly took the bridge out. Without an order or hesitation, Sergeant Perry was able to hit and deflect it before it could cause catastrophic damage.”
Fox looked at the commander. “You memorized the citation?”
He nodded, “it’s easy for me. I can recall a lot more than that.”
“That’s insane.” Scott mumbled, “How do you process that much information at once?”
“Here.” Mason offered the bottle to Scott with a chuckle, “Shots until it becomes manageable.”
The team shared a laugh. “So Major Ryan, what sort of shit used to go down on your transpo job?”
***
A few hours later, Commander Grant retired to his room within the Flagstaff. There was more space onboard the Patriot but in an odd way the obsolete craft remained more comforting; like there was something more familiar in the surroundings of a human ship versus the Lyran battlecruiser. The brushed metal walls, riveted in place and accented by wood veneer and fabric panels gave the appearance of a state room on a historical naval vessel and less like a foray into the unknown.
The stamped and textured floor was squared off and yet still clean of dust, thanks to the vents that cycled oxygen through as quickly as he could exhale. Even the distant rumble of the handlers was enough to calm his mind. Grant dropped a jug of water on the small writing desk and took a seat in the stiff leather office chair, letting his eyes flicker as his body began to shut down.
And then she was there.
From across the room, he saw an illuminated figure, a being clothed in a flowing white dress that descended past the floor and concealed her feet. In her face he saw a purity he had not seen in what felt like a lifetime.
“How are you here? You’ve been gone for years.”
“Jeff, I never left you. I’ve been by your side every step you’ve taken.” The words flowed musically.
“That’s a lie. This isn’t real. You’re not real anymore.”
“Maybe you’re imagining this, but it doesn’t make it any less the truth.” She stepped forward. “Have you really made a single decision without me in mind?”
Grant got to his feet to face the apparition toe-to-toe. “I suppose you’re right. So what would you have me do?”
“Let me go.”
“No.”
“Jeff, you must. Or else you will spend the rest of your life in pain. You’re too good of a person to harbor such hatred.”
“But if this is what I want…” Grant said, pleading.
“No. Let go of me. Your life is of value. It will always be so to me, but there are others whose lives depend on you. You cannot let them down.”
“That’s not how I want to live.” Grant wrapped his arms around her. “I want it over. Save me. Come back.”
“You know I cannot do that. I’m not your savior and your service is not yet complete.”
A tear fell from his face as the vision evaporated and the commander attempted to hang onto the memory until the final fleeting second.
33
The fleet completed the first three legs and rallied up on last time before the straight shot into the Lyrans’ home galaxy. Their stops only lasted minutes since the improved navigation of the Patriots allowed for highly accurate and correlated jumps, even across a galactic cluster. With the completion of each step, the timer counted down and soon left the ship with only minutes remaining on the clock.
Standing on the command deck, Grant felt far different than he did at any point in the exercise thus far. Rather than being overwhelmed with fear of the unknown, he held inside an energetic optimism as if he was reporting to a new assignment without the ongoing dread of what had come before. It was as if Dr. Jacobs was walking him into the bunker to fly the SR-X off the lot all over again.
Every member onboard was as ready as they could be. Every station was manned and every passenger was standing by for orders. Grant didn’t expect they’d be sent to duty immediately but he felt it would have been imprudent to have the corps on leave when they arrived. Besides, they were half the purpose for the entire mission.
“How close is this going to drop us?” Grant asked Lieutenant Wright.
“It should be very close. With the distance of the jump we should exit right at the boundary of the fabrication yard, just as Omega requested.”
“Having second thoughts?” Fox asked the commander, “It’s a bit late to pull back now.”
“Nope. Are you?” Grant responded and waited as the timer ticked to zero.
With a flash of light before them, they dropped out of the warp to see a burning Patriot in its last throes of death stretching across their field of view. Time froze for an instant as if the collective air was sucked from the room. The officers and crew processed what they were seeing in a momentary pause.
“TURN!” Grant thundered before Fox could gather a breath, “Evasive action! Don’t hit it!”
Their pilot bore down hard on the controls to change the momentum of the rapidly decelerating battleship against its will. Their view slew away from the Patriot in their line of fire, to be replaced by dozens more spewing plumes of smoke and plasma into the night sky.
“Gaddammit, what the hell did we just walk into!” Grant pointed to the operations officer. “Bring all the guns up. Full alert every station!”
Far in the distance, the crew watched as the shadow of an immense ship, dwarfing the Patriots, carriers and everything else in the foreground. From their range Grant could only guess at its size, having no real landmarks with which to establish a scale.
“Is that the Lyrans’ capital ship? The one Omega mentioned?” Scott asked the group.
“No effing idea. What kind of shit is this?” Grant looked about the room, across the audience of stunned faces while the battlefield screens populated with a distributed cluster of hundreds of signals sporadically tagged. “Open every comm line. Find Omega. Get
anyone you can. Find out what the hell just went down.”
“Sir, we’ve got Cygnan cruisers on the scope.”
“Bring the shields up.” Wright ordered. “Return fire only.” He looked across to the others. “Where are the others?”
“I don’t know. The second they show, bring them in line with us and build a front. That’s all we’ve got.” Grant looked from the screens to the star field outside, still populated with more burning ships. If the rest of the formation was already compromised, they were about to be in the shortest offensive in Space Corps history.
“Lead Cygnan cruiser just opened fire.”
“Shields! Get the guns online.” Grant shouted. “Take it out!” He couldn’t think of anything else. With the screens populating farther out, he was blind. Their only hope to maintain an advantage was overwhelming force. Violence of action. He heard his first infantry company commander instructing across the echoes of time: “The rest are still coming. The second they drop, bring them in line with us for a unified front.”
The leading guns discharged as the first wave struck with a deep rumble through the Patriot’s expansive network of corridors and facilities but made no progress on digging through the fully-energized shields. Cutting hard to the side, their pilot put their target in line with the rest of the deck cannons, which opened fire in quick succession, quickly overpowering the smaller vessel’s defenses.
More shots from neighboring ships engaged the Patriot, shaking the structure like an earthquake but still didn’t breach the fully-charged shields. Grant held on to the console before him and watched the first Cygnan ship erupt in a flash of light and fire.
A burst of static swept through the room, layering another level of confusion upon the chaos of the room. A mechanical voice came through the channel without inflection or emotion.
Prime commanders. Confirm receipt upon arrival. The voice resembled a computerized audio program, driven by an operator typing on the far end.
MissionSRX: Deep Unknown Page 34