Now, four years after the events that had supposedly decimated the planet, a new fleet of Sector Command ships approached the once-beautiful world. What they saw was nothing like the reports had claimed those few years ago.
The seas that had been ‘boiled away’ were still plainly visible, bright blue and gleaming with majesty, even from the fleet’s moderate distance. As the Rhea and her destroyer and cruiser escorts moved closer, they began to see that the surface was not at all covered with the impact craters from some ‘unimaginably devastating orbital bombardment.’ The valleys and forests, mapped out over a hundred years ago by the first explorers, were still as beautiful as they had been so long ago. Snow still covered the polar regions of the planet, as well the higher peaks of the great mountains of the Granite Forest on the northern continent of Erros.
The only thing that meshed with the after-war reports was the devastation caused in the cities, but even those reports seemed exaggerated. The greater part of Mendahar was unscathed, and Aberdeen fared little worse. The majority of the damage to the population centers had been done at Crystal City. From what the sensors of the Rhea were telling the crew, the city and the military base were in compete ruins.
Inside the computer- and personnel-laden combat information center of the Rhea, Captain Richard Krif stared out the single, expansive view port at the slowly spinning world before him. He didn’t need to read the litany of updated reports coming in every few minutes as the junior officers and technicians scanned the planet below to know the underlying truth: when it came to Second Earth, the majority of the public had been lied to. Having initially believed the reports that had originated from the Unified Council, Krif now had to second-guess his strategy for sending a landing team down. The game, it seemed, had irrevocably changed, and he was faced with a ever growing list of unknowns.
What would his landing team discover when they reached the surface? The intrusion-detection satellites—supposedly placed in orbit to protect the planet—were mysteriously missing. Richard needed to know why, and he needed to know fast. From the starboard side of the room, he watched as Lieutenant Commander Caitlin Hayes gave Shawn Kestrel’s Mark-IV permission to depart for a second time. He then turned to the large status screen at the head of the room as a pair of fighters streamed out from their launch tubes on the starboard side of the carrier, momentarily passed by the Mark-IV as it rocketed out of the bay. Not long after, several more craft exited their respective launch tubes and maneuvered into formation.
Krif watched in silence, the only noises coming from the odd computer terminal acknowledging some random request by its user. He sucked in a slow breath, held it for a moment, and then exhaled with equal gradualness. “Kestrel, you’d better get me some answers, and you’d better damn well come back alive. I’m sticking my neck way out on this one; I can feel it,” he said to no one in particular.
“Sir?” A technician addressed the captain from an astrometric station directly below the slightly raised platform on which Krif was standing.
Krif turned his head down toward the young man, annoyed that he was both talking to himself and that his one-sided conversation was being overheard. “I didn’t say anything. Don’t you have that sensor report for me yet?”
“Ah…yes, sir. Right here, Captain.” The young man fumbled when he almost lost his grip on the data tablet, turned, and then handed it to Krif. Retrieving the cartridge from the specialist’s shaking hand, Richard went back to observing the small band of mixed craft heading down to the planet as he waited, as patiently as he could muster, for their first report.
Chapter 2
Everything on this world looked just like the pictures of Old Earth that Shawn had first seen as a young child, save for the enormous moon hanging just over Second Earth’s horizon. That planetoid, Elennarah, named after the admiral who had commanded the fleet of colonists who’d landed here, was far too different from the moon of Old Earth to fool Shawn into believing he was back on the birthplace of humanity. Elennarah’s surface was a mottled mixture of orange and grays, a tribute to the high iron content of its surface, and interspersed with wisps of turquoise clouds which moved across the extremely thin atmosphere like micro-cracks on an eggshell. By all accounts, it looked more like the planet Mars before it had been terraformed and overpopulated.
“I never thought it would look like this.” Lieutenant Commander Roslyn Brunel, sitting in the copilot’s seat of Sylvia’s Delight, was in shock at her surroundings. Like the rest of the exploration team, she’d already made her assumptions about what they would encounter when they arrived, only to have those same expectations shattered to pieces.
Shawn let out a measured sigh before responding. “Yeah.”
In fact, he couldn’t agree more. The world passing rapidly below Sylvia’s Delight was unlike anything the Unified government had led everyone to believe. Seeing the beauty and tranquility of the mountain range over which they were currently passing, he couldn’t help but speculate about the other lies the Unified Government may have told the public, or they themselves were told. When the end of the monolithic range appeared, Shawn took the Mark-IV gracefully down the slope of the last hills in the chain.
Sylvia’s Delight was now directly over a lush, green field on the outskirts of an ancient forest. On either side of D were Maelstrom-class fighters from Shawn’s squadron, the Rippers. In front of D, far too distant to be seen with the naked eye, was a single Mummy from the 215th Electronic Intelligence Gathering Squadron, the Discoverers. Behind them were two Pharaohs from the 8th Logistics Squadron, the Senders. The band of ships quickly came to a large body of water. Based on their current location, Shawn and Raven both knew it to be Arben Lake, purported to be the best place to fish on the whole of the planet. Its blue surface sparkled under the rays of the sun, sending back streaks of reflections that contoured themselves to the hulls of the low-lying Unified craft.
Knowing they were fast approaching their destination, Shawn called in a status report from the Discoverers’ lead ELINT. The sensor officer on the Mummy reported no unusual contacts of any kind in the immediate area of Crystal City or Delta Base, then notified Shawn that he was cleared to land at the former base’s airstrip and spaceport, Addison Field, at his convenience. A relatively undamaged small swatch of the abandoned tarmac was located by the recon craft on its third patrol of the area, and it would give Shawn—and the small squad of Marines in Sylvia’s belly—ample room to set up a base camp once they touched down.
Over the distant horizon, beyond the last ridge of trees, Shawn and Roslyn could now see the damaged but still upright spires of the center of the city, Crystal Towers. Each of the three structures had been nearly a mile tall when constructed, with thick bases that looked as if each were a tree trunk and rooted deeply into the pavement beneath it. From there they tapered off into the sky, ending at communications towers and disc-shaped observation lounges. Midway up the spires were a series of transparent connecting corridors that had linked the structures together. The three towers were home to the majority of the city’s inhabitants, as well as the main offices for the local law enforcement officials, the planetary Sector Command and Unified Government representatives, and the planet’s governing council—not to mention the hundreds of offices, retail, and dining spaces they held.
As Shawn brought the Mark-IV in closer to the remains of the structures, he could now distinguish the true punishment the towers had taken. On one of the spires, a seven-hundred-foot section was completely missing. A second spire had toppled about three hundred feet from the top, but was still dangling precariously from a few strands of girders that were holding fast. The third tower—the only one still completely upright—had two large segments of its lower base blown out, as if some enormous creature had swooped down and taken bites from the building.
Shawn deftly guided his old, faithful transport in a slow turn around the towers, giving every craft in the formation an opportunity to witness the same destruction he was privy
to. Something inside him had told him that everyone present needed to see this: if not for honoring the dead, then for posterity’s sake. As he came about to a heading that would take him directly to Addison Field, Shawn took the occasion to glance down to what few city streets he could see far below his ship. They were littered with vehicles and debris from damaged buildings, and pockmarked from overgrowth that had sprung up from the craters left behind after the Kafaran orbital bombardment. With a slow whistle from Raven, Shawn allowed Sylvia’s Delight to level off after the turn, and then headed straight for Delta Base.
With the ruins of Crystal City now slipping behind Sylvia’s Delight, the first things Shawn and Roslyn noticed as they neared Delta were the enormous arched hangars, each fully capable of holding the entire complement of the Rhea’s hangar bays and storage compartments combined. There were two such imposing structures, built side by side on the west end of two parallel runways that were in a north-south orientation. To the west of the hangars was the main military base, a grid pattern of empty streets and decimated, dilapidated buildings. To the west of the complex, now directly under the Mark-IV, was an enormous crater nearly eight hundred feet wide which had engulfed part of the base complex on its eastern rim and a part of a small forest on its northwestern border. Unlike the smaller craters in the city, this one had yet to show any signs of new life taking hold inside the colossal bowl shape.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Roslyn said breathlessly. “It’s massive.”
“Neither have I,” Shawn replied in shock. He’d seen the aftermath of a lot of different weapons, and he thought he’d been familiar with everything the Kafarans had thrown at the UCS. It now seemed he would have to rethink that assumption.
“What do you think it means, Skipper?”
Shawn was at a loss for words as he took in the enormity of the wound in the planet’s surface. “I don’t know, Raven, but we’re going to find out.” He pointed a finger in the direction of the forwardmost control panel on Roslyn’s right. “Scan for radiation. Hit those two green buttons on the top, then the two blue ones below them.”
Raven did as she was asked. It brought the limited sensor report to her forward display screen.
Shawn watched as the dark-haired lieutenant commander squinted at the small display as she tried to read the report. “So what do the sensors say?”
“Not much,” she said with an air of defeat. “I mean, they really don’t say much.”
Fighting down the usual defense he would have put up over his ship’s honor, he licked his dry lips before he spoke with a restrained tone. “D’s sensor palette isn’t that advanced. I’m sure the ELINTs have more detailed information. I just want to have a general idea of what we’re going to encounter.”
“The radiation levels here are well within bipedal standard tolerances. The levels are only slightly higher here than in the city center.”
“Considering that big crater down there, that bit of news doesn’t surprise me.”
She cocked her head slightly. “But what may surprise you is that this is the only crater of this size on the entire surface.”
Shawn turned back to his controls as he assimilated the information. “That’s more than a little surprising. If the Kafarans had a weapon that could do this, why aren’t there more of these on the surface?” he asked, knowing there was no way for her to answer. They sat in silence for a moment before Shawn shook his head and spoke again. “We aren’t going to learn much more from up here. I think it’s time we got this mission underway. Let’s get the ship down to the landing coordinates.”
“Yes, sir,” Raven said, taking the cue to initiate a call to the Rhea to inform Captain Krif about their impending landing.
Throttling back the two main drive engines, Shawn put the Mark-IV into a leisurely counterclockwise circle of the landing area. There were large fissures in the eight-foot-thick runway surface: a spider’s web of destruction spreading out and away from the base complex as a result of whatever had caused the crater to form. Finding an undisturbed area large enough to accommodate the Mark-IV, Shawn extended the landing struts, setting the ship down with the finesse of a seasoned professional. He reached for the switch that would release the rear cargo ramp, and within minutes the ship was cleared of all personnel.
Now sitting on the tattered remains of the airstrip, as Roslyn watched the Marines unload the last of their cargo, Shawn’s attention was drawn to their fighter escorts as they flew overhead. Jerry Santorum and Clarissa McAllister were up there, covering the ground forces below with practiced precision.
As Nova and Bagpipes completed their low-speed turn, the two logistics Pharaohs made a lazy approach just south of Sylvia’s Delight. As graceful and beautiful as they were functional, the two craft swooped into a position several hundred feet from their landing position, their swept wings twisting up vertically as the horizontal thrust of their engines was turned into vertical propulsion. The craft hovered there for a moment, the high-pitched whining of the engines almost deafening, as the backwash from the blue-white thrust threw up small bits of dirt and debris from the long-abandoned tarmac. As the craft neared the surface, both Shawn and Roslyn had to cover their eyes from the onslaught, which ended a minute later when the ship powered down.
The crews of the VTOL craft immediately moved out of the light logistic ships and linked up with the Marines near the cargo area of Sylvia’s Delight—save for a single crewman who approached Shawn. As the pilot neared Shawn, he began to take off gloves, and when he was within a few feet of Kestrel he removed his helmet.
To his chagrin, Shawn saw that the ‘he’ was in fact a she, and the ‘she’ was Agent Melissa Graves. He scowled at her defiance. “I thought I told you not to come down here.”
“You did,” she replied with a nod. “You made it perfectly clear that you wanted me to remain on board the Rhea.”
“And yet somehow, as if compelled by some twisted logic that says, ‘Let’s make Shawn as absolutely upset as possible,’ you failed to do exactly that.”
“It was my prerogative as lead agent,” Melissa replied smartly.
“So instead of talking about this with me—”
“You mean arguing, don’t you?”
“Instead of you arguing with me over this on the Rhea, you just decided to hop on board another ship.”
“First Lieutenant Burgess was very accommodating,” Melissa said, inclining her head toward the VTOL Pharaoh that had ferried her to the planet.
Well, she’s here, and there’s nothing I can do about it now, Shawn thought. He briefly entertained the idea of tying her up and locking her inside Sylvia’s Delight, but in fear of her ensuing wrath, he decided against it. He could order the Marines to guard her, but he knew Melissa well enough to know she’d just resent him more for it. In the end, he shook his head and reconciled himself to her presence. Besides, assuming that the landing site was safe, he would have called up to the Rhea and had her brought down anyway. Melissa’s little impromptu hitchhiking had just saved the team about forty-five minutes, and who could argue with that?
Shawn could. “So I’ve noticed,” he said with measured patience. “You sure have a funny of way of listening. There are such things as safety protocols.”
“Safety protocols?” Melissa chuckled. “You are really cute sometimes, you know that.” She placed a hand lightly on her chest as her laugher subsided. “Did you and Raven have a good chat on the way down?” she said teasingly, drawing out Raven’s name as she had done back on the Rhea after she’d had too much to drink.
He shook his head slowly. “You really are something else, lady. You know that?”
She rolled her eyes and stepped closer to him, easily invading his personal space in the process. “Look, I’m sorry about how I acted earlier.”
“Oh, and how was that?” he asked cynically.
“I was…rude. And inconsiderate. And—”
Shawn’s eyebrows rose high on his forehead. “And?”
“And unappreciative.”
Shawn held his index finger and thumb up about an inch apart. “And just a little bit crazy, too. Don’t forget to include that.”
Melissa dropped her arms to her side. “Fine, Commander. I’m sorry for that as well. It was entirely unintentional.”
Shawn grunted with approval. “You seem to be apologizing a lot lately.”
Melissa cast her eyes to the battered and scorched runway under her feet in silence. She kicked at a loose clump of asphalt near her boot, sending the debris scattering toward a pile of brush nearby. “I’m…I’m trying to say…that I…”
“Yes?”
His eyes were burning into hers, and though she couldn’t tell if he was angry or expectant, she knew it wasn’t the time to get into this conversation. “I…I just need a little time. That’s all, Shawn.”
He couldn’t help but carry a sarcastic tone to his words. “That’s all, huh?”
Melissa smiled weakly. “Well, that and a little patience on your part. Look, I’m really sorry for coming down here like this. I want you to know I really do have a deep respect for your concern for me and I want you to know that—”
In the distance, the rear doors of one of the Pharaohs opened, and a team of Marines began to unload the contents of the vessel: two small troop transports. Due to the sound of the two vehicles hovering out of the Pharaoh, Shawn couldn’t hear what Melissa was saying. For a moment her mouth moved, but the sound didn’t penetrate his ears. After a few seconds, her voice broke through as the skimmer’s engines wound down. “—you feel the same way. So, having said that, do you think you could forgive me?”
Having no clue what she’d said, he hoped he wasn’t about to agree to something he would live to regret. “You ask a lot.”
“Well, I’d like to think that I have a lot to offer…toward the mission, I mean.”
Of course she did. There was no way Shawn could argue that point. On the other hand, if she wanted to help a headache along, he was sure she’d be able to do that with marked efficiency. He rubbed his chin absently, admiring her guile—even if it was a bit misplaced.
Second Earth Page 3