“Yeah,” Shawn chuckled halfheartedly. “She sure did.” He then turned back to Trent. “At least this time you can’t say that the damage was entirely my fault.”
“True enough,” Trent smiled. “But I certainly hope you gave better than you got. I mean, I’d hate to think of the credits they’ll have to spend to fix this thing—all going to waste by you letting those bastards use you for target practice.”
“I wasn’t keeping count, if that is what you’re asking,” Shawn said defiantly as he put his hands on his hips. “Let’s just say I did my best and leave it at that, shall we?”
Trent held his hands up in surrender and smiled. “Hey, man, don’t get your waste-tube tied in a knot. I’m tickled pink you made it back, okay?”
Shawn looked over Trent’s shoulder to a door that had just parted. Trent likewise turned his gaze when he discerned that Shawn had lost all interest in bantering with him.
There stood Melissa Graves, dressed in the dark gray and black suit of the Office of Special Intelligence. When she caught the eyes of the two men, she allowed the doors to close behind her as she walked toward them.
Trent turned his eyes back to Shawn and then began primping the commander’s disheveled flight suit—much to the surprise of the pilot. “Now, you play nice, okay? I don’t want to have to separate you two.”
Shawn slapped Trent’s hands away as they neared his matted hair. “Stop it, you idiot. Go get my fighter ready.”
“Ready? You mean you’re going back out there?”
Melissa would be there any second, and Shawn didn’t want to waste any precious time explaining the situation to Trent. “I’ve got my orders, Trent, and so do you. Just get it done, old buddy.”
“Yes, sir!” Trent saluted briskly, smiled mischievously, and then skipped off to his task.
Shawn watched Trent bound off, then regarded himself in one of the few reflective panels on the Maelstrom’s skin. Quickly fixing his hair, he turned back toward Melissa in time to see her to step within talking distance.
Melissa looked around the bay to see if anyone was watching. When she noticed several maintenance technicians and ordnance personnel scrambling toward the Maelstrom, she extended a shaking hand toward him.
“Welcome back, Commander.”
He removed his dark glove, then slipped his palm over hers. As he held her hand gently, he softly rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “It’s good to be back. I only wish I could say that I was staying.”
With their hands still embracing, she took a cautious step toward Shawn as a look of confusion crossed her face. “What do you mean?”
He leaned in close, smelling the enticing jasmine perfume, and lowered his voice. “Well, if you’ve taken a peek out the window lately, you’ll know that we’ve got a little problem out there; a trio of Kafaran warships just popped in, and I don’t think it’s a social call.”
“I know that,” she snapped at his condescending tone. “What I don’t know is why you’re going out again.”
Shawn sighed. “Honestly, honey, your guess is as good as mine. I’m not sure what Krif expects me to do out there.” He turned to a small view port on the starboard wall, and glanced out to the dangerously close Kafaran destroyer in his field of view. “I don’t think I can pull a rabbit out of my hat on this one.”
“Which is why Captain Krif has ordered a retreat,” she said emphatically.
Shawn nodded slowly. “Yep.”
“However, I have no intention of allowing the Kafarans or anyone else access to what could still be down on Second Earth. I’m in operational command of this mission, and if I order Krif to stay, he will have no choice in the matter.”
Shawn, wide-eyed, jerked his head back toward her. “Okay, hands down, that is the craziest thing I think I’ve ever heard you say! We can’t win against these odds, Melissa. Surely you must see that. I hate to have to agree with Krif on anything, but this time he’s spot-on. There is no reason to stay here.”
“I’m not about to lose Second Earth again.”
“If we stay, we’ll lose more than the planet. Besides, there’s nothing down there but crumbling buildings and skeletons.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?” he asked heatedly. “Because I can’t think of one reason to remain in this sector a second longer than is necessary to ensure we live to fight another day. Your father wanted you to be protected, didn’t he?”
Melissa nodded slowly.
“Then let me protect you. Listen to me, even if it’s just this once. If we stay, we are going to die. We will end up like those poor souls down on the planet, or worse.” He stopped talking long enough to place his hands gently on her shoulders. “We have to think about the safety of the thousands of people on board the Rhea and the Breckenridge. You have to think about them.”
She licked her lips, pondering Shawn’s words without speaking.
He reached up and tenderly brushed her cheek. “I don’t want to lose you…not over this.”
Her eyes softened. “They might discover more about the Epsilon-6 weapon. We can’t let that happen, Shawn. You know that.”
“If they do, we’re as good as dead, I agree. But, if they don’t, we’re going to have the same fate if the ship stays much longer. We have to take what we’ve learned so far and survive. Otherwise, everyone down there on Second Earth died in vain. Besides, Corvan is where the answers are. That’s the planet we need to protect.”
One of the maintenance technicians walked up behind Shawn, putting an abrupt end to their conversation. “She’s already to go, sir. Pre-launch in two minutes.” The young man quickly saluted the commander, then dashed off to another part of the launch bay, probably to call the command center to give them the same update.
“We keep having to say goodbye,” Melissa said, smiling softly.
What could I possibly say to her? Everything I can imagine sounds so cliché, so utterly lame. In the end, he simply nodded and then turned to walk back to the access ladder for his fighter. As he reached for the first rung, he turned slowly, only to see Melissa standing directly behind him once more. They locked eyes, and he moved to quickly encircle her in a tight embrace, kissing her passionately in the process.
Returning his kiss with equal enthusiasm, she held her arms tightly about his neck for what seemed like an eternity. When she finally pulled away, Melissa leaned her head gently on his chest as a solitary tear began streaking down her cheek. “Damn you, Shawn Kestrel.”
In his heart, Shawn knew that if he didn’t let her go of her now, he never would. Forcing himself, he once again placed his hand on her shoulder as they stepped apart. He turned, putting one hand painfully above the next until he was at the top of the ladder. He reached for the open canopy, regarding the interior of the craft for a moment before turning around to stare at the beautiful, auburn-haired angel five feet away.
“I…” he began, but the words caught in his throat as his mouth started working faster than his brain. “I…I’ll be back soon.”
Melissa was fighting back another wave of tears. “Promises, promises,” she said with the most lighthearted voice she could muster, though she couldn’t help but sniffle near the end.
Shawn retuned the smile and stepped once more into the fighter. He watched Melissa through its transparent surface as it closed and sealed itself around him. He offered her a halfhearted salute as the fighter began to move into launch position.
Melissa loosely held her hand to her lips, knowing if Shawn’s fighter didn’t depart soon, she would surely collapse into a sobbing heap on the hangar floor.
Ten seconds later, Shawn Kestrel was back out in space. A moment after that, Melissa fell to her knees, weeping uncontrollably for the lives that had been lost, the ones that were about to be lost, and the man for whom she’d come to care so much.
* * *
In the soft blue glow of the Combat Information Center in the Rhea, the officers and specialists of Sector Com
mand tried frantically to coordinate the dozens of departments and hundreds of people required for a vessel of this size to space jump at a moment’s notice. The crew had trained for this, but those had only been battle simulations. Now, in the midst of the real thing, the personnel in CIC were performing admirably, albeit with a few difficulties.
Captain Krif’s gaze moved from the organized chaos of his officers to the three-dimensional images of the alien vessels that were now at his stern. Currently at one hundred twenty miles, the Rhea was gaining distance from both the unidentified intruder and the Kafarans, but far slower than Krif desired. The moderate reverberations in the deck plates beneath his feet told him the mighty engines of the supercarrier were attempting to hurl the ship out of the enemies’ range, but the sheer bulk of the Rhea made that a near impossibility.
Fredericks, who had been monitoring the unidentified carrier since its arrival, shouted from his station as soon as he saw movement. “Sir, the intruder is moving off, putting itself into a high orbit above Second Earth.”
Krif turned to the holotable, scrutinizing the image as the enormous, skeleton-like vessel moved into a position above the ice-covered northern pole of the planet. The three Kafaran vessels, with the carrier positioned slightly behind the two destroyers, was holding a stationary pattern near where they had jumped into the system. They were oriented toward neither the Sector Command starships nor the intruder carrier. Krif watched as the USCS Breckenridge, his only remaining destroyer, slowly slid into a defensive position on the port-rear quarter of the Rhea, and then continued to monitor as all the capital ships slowly became equidistant from one another, forming a huge triangle high above the scarred landscape of Second Earth.
“Commander Hayes, do you have any idea what we’re looking at?” he asked, unsure if he wanted to know the answer.
“It’s impossible to say, sir,” she responded over her shoulder. “We know very little about the intruder or their tactics.”
“But we know a lot about the Kafarans.” Krif nodded toward the holographic projection of the bulbous, green-tinged forms of the Kafaran flotilla. “Have we ever seen something like this before?”
Caitlin turned to him and shook her head slowly. “Not that I can locate in the database, sir. The computer has no record of this type of maneuver.”
“Or lack thereof,” the captain harrumphed. “Those Kafarans are just sitting out there. I’ve never seen anything like that from them. Besides,” he said, more to himself than to Caitlin, “we know what the intruder’s intentions are.” He looked to the projection again, watching as three small, blue-outlined fighters swarmed slowly around the periphery of the Rhea. “Caitlin, who else do we have on deck right now?”
“Shamrocks One, Three, and Four are ready to launch, sir.”
Krif nodded. He hoped he could avoid launching them altogether. At their present speed, they would be able to safely make their jump in eight minutes. He only hoped their luck would last until then.
All at once, his dreams of an easy escape were dashed to pieces when Lieutenant Garcia piped up from the secondary sensor control station. “Sir, we have movement from the intruder!”
Krif balled his fists, restraining himself from smashing them down on to the holotable’s surface. “Specify.”
“Sir!” Caitlin called out. “We have new contacts. Intruder is once again launching fighters.”
“Confirmed!” Garcia said.
Krif watched the holographic projections as another swarm of fighters sped out from the intruder.
“Fredericks, how many are we looking at?” Krif asked.
“I count sixty-three craft, sir. Alphas, Betas, and something new. It’s smaller than the other two, but it appears faster. The computer has registered it as a Charlie; classification is a high-speed interceptor.”
“Caitlin, get the Shamrocks into space, then order all remaining pilots to man their fighters for immediate takeoff.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Shawn watched on his sensors as the enemy fighters were launched from the intruder. I knew our easy departure was too good to be true. He’d just received his orders from Commander Hayes, and now it was his responsibility to order his wing mates back into combat.
“Commander Saltori, I need you and Raven to form up on my wings. I don’t need to tell you what we’re about to do, considering your sensors work just as well as mine. The Shamrocks will be linking up with us any minute. Once they do, we’ll form the main body of the defense until the rest of the Rhea’s fighters are spaceborne. Understood?”
Both Lieutenant Commander Brunel and Commander Saltori acknowledged Shawn’s signal.
Here we go again, he whispered.
Minutes later, Shawn’s group of fighters was five hundred miles from engaging the new wave of enemy fighters when Commander Saltori’s image flashed above Shawn’s screen.
Rylani’s voice was tinged with anxiety as he read out his latest sensor report. “Commander Kestrel, I’m now detecting movement from the Kafaran vessels as well.”
Of course, Shawn thought. There was no way the Kafarans would sit on the sidelines as their friends picked off the Sector Command fighters. They want in on the action. Still, the realization did nothing to quench the frustration he felt over the situation. “What kind of movements?”
“The two Kafaran destroyers are moving toward our position on an intercept course, picking up speed as they go.”
Raven’s face came up on the screen next to Saltori’s. “What’s the plan, Skipper?”
With Shawn in the lead, all that remained of the Rhea’s combat wing was behind him, a total of twenty-nine ships, most of them fighters. Another five minutes at their present speed and they would run headlong into three times as many enemy vessels. Plan? There was no plan for this. It was going to be every man, woman, and being for themselves, and Shawn knew it.
Shawn opened a fleet-wide channel to every fighter. “At my signal, we will break from formation. Fire at will at any target of opportunity, but make sure those shots count.”
Caitlin’s voice cut off Shawn’s transmission before he could say anything else that might rouse his fellow pilots. “Kafaran destroyers are now within weapons range of your group, Lieutenant Commander Kestrel!”
Shawn looked out the portside of his canopy. The two sleek Kafaran destroyers were bearing down on them with uncanny speed. Even at this distance, he could see the plasma turrets along the surface of their hulls slide out from their protective alcoves. Each vessel easily contained enough firepower to obliterate the remainder of the Rhea’s forces ten times over and still have energy to spare. It would only be a matter of time.
“Skipper,” It was Raven’s voice. “There’s a wide-range transmission coming in, and you’re not going to believe who it’s from.”
“Specify,” he commanded, hoping against hope that another Sector Command capital ship had miraculously arrived to even the odds.
“It’s coming from the Kafaran ship.”
“Maybe they’re trying to talk to their buddies over there,” he replied sarcastically. “Probably telling them to get clear of the zone before they open fire.”
“I don’t think so, sir.” Raven’s tone was laced with confusion.
“Why not?”
“Because they are requesting communications with the Rhea.”
“Confirmed, sir,” Lieutenant Clifton said to Captain Krif, who was circling the communications station like a hawk. “We have a wide-band communication coming in from the Kafaran carrier.”
The only acknowledgement Krif gave the communications officer was a soft grunt.
“Should I open a channel, sir?”
“Why? So they can gloat about us being outgunned?” Krif spat acerbically. He turned when he heard footsteps approach from his rear.
“And they’d be right,” a voice said.
Krif was now staring directly into the eyes of Melissa Graves.
“I don’t have time for you right now, Agent Grav
es.”
She nodded succinctly. “I’m not here to make trouble, Captain.”
“Good, because if you do, I’ll just have you shot. There’s no time to have you escorted out of CIC at this point.”
“What do the Kafarans want, Captain?” she asked cautiously.
“Our surrender, I imagine.” Krif turned slowly to the forward screen, which was displaying a tactical projection of the two groups of fighters, Sector Command’s and the ones belonging to the unidentified intruder, streaming toward one another.
“You mean you haven’t responded to their request yet?”
“I’m weighing my options, like any good commander would. It wouldn’t be wise to open communications with the enemy while we barely understand their motives.”
Melissa went wide-eyed and shook her head. “We don’t have time for you to play mind games with the Kafarans, Captain. Shawn and those other pilots are out there right now. They could be killed at any minute.”
Krif looked casually at his watch. “Three minutes, thirty-five seconds, to be exact.”
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think we are the only ones in danger of being destroyed at this point, Captain. If we can open a dialogue with them, perhaps we can keep them from blowing us out of the stars.”
Krif glared at her. “Are you suggesting that you, an OSI field agent, has the knowledge or the practical experience to tell me how to run an efficient combat operation?”
Melissa could tell by the tone of his voice that he was in danger of losing his temper. She sighed, then lowered her gaze in display of submission. “Of course not, Captain. All I’m suggesting, sir, is that a third of your pilots are dead or wounded, not to mention the fact that every lifeform aboard one of our destroyers has apparently been wiped out. The intruder is only moderately damaged, and now we have three Kafaran vessels staring us down, with two of them quickly approaching the position of our fighters. With all due respect, Captain, we don’t have anything going our way at the moment. But we may be able to salvage something from this.”
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