Wings of Steele - Flight of Freedom (Book2)

by Burger, Jeffrey

  “Not likely...”

  Jack took the robe handed him by the old man and turned off the water, wrapping himself up in the soft, bulky garment before stepping out of the shower. He picked up his snifter off the sink and drew in a long swallow, letting the warm liquid slide down his throat. “So, to what do we owe this visit...?” They stepped into the salon area of the suite where the light was more subdued, he knew Voorlak's two-thousand year old eyes preferred the dark.

  The Ancient pulled the hood of his cloak back to reveal his lined face and shock of silver-gray hair, “Well, we hadn't chatted in a while and I thought I'd stop in and say hello... the ship is looking good, full crew, new equipment...”

  Jack plopped down on the sofa, ran his fingers through his wet hair and sipped his brandy. He smirked a crooked smile, “You are sooo bad at small talk.”

  Voorlak nodded, chuckling, “You'd think by my age I would've gotten a little better at it, huh?”

  Jack leaned back, smiling weakly, “Yeah, you'd think so.” He drained the last of the brandy from his snifter. “So you're really here because...”

  “You were dealing with a lot of darkness on that ship - I wanted to be sure you were OK. So, are you OK?”

  “When you say darkness, are we speaking literally, figuratively, or philosophically?” He stood up and padded barefoot over to the bar to refill his snifter with brandy. The warm golden-red liquid burbled thickly into the glass. Without asking, he reached over and added some to the old man's snifter as well. “Because I've had a pretty shitty day and honestly, I'm a bit drunk...” he turned and headed back to the sofa, “and I have absolutely no idea where I was going with this line of questioning...”

  “Darkness - as in evil,” offered the old man.

  “Oh, that. Yeah, I knew that,” Jack shrugged, “we all knew that... it was something you could almost taste.” He eyed the liquid in the glass as he swirled it and it clung to the sides. “So where did it come from?

  “It wasn't the ship; it was what the ship was carrying...”

  “But it was just an ore miner, what could...” Jack looked around but the old man was gone. “Dammit, I hate when he does that...”

  “When who does what?” Alité entered from the corridor in uniform, a platter of steaming food in her hands, the door swishing gently closed behind her.

  “The old man was here...”

  She moved to the bar and spread out the food, “Voorlak was here? Awww, sorry I missed him. He could have had something to eat with us...”

  “Don't mind if I do,” said The Ancient, appearing behind the bar, startling them both.

  “I swear to God,” said Jack wiping spilled brandy off his hand, “I'm getting you a bell.”

  ■ ■ ■

  “How's he doing Doc?”

  CABL M7, looked up from his e-Pad at the Marine standing in the doorway of the infirmary, “Come in Sergeant, your boy's stable, but he'll be out for a few days.” He put the e-Pad down, “What really happened over there?”

  Gunnery Sergeant Dayle Alaroot just shook his head, “I was there and I still don't know... it was like the ship was intentionally trying to kill us.” He rubbed his forehead, “I've been in the Corps for six and a half years and I've never seen anything like it, we kept seeing phantom shadows...”

  “Visual anomalies...?”

  “Yeah we thought that at first, but when we were all seeing them it got pretty hard to disregard them. Then there were the sounds...”

  “Sounds? What kind of sounds?”

  “Once we got the gennys running, the Lieutenant restored the gravity and air systems from the bridge... as the atmosphere built up we started hearing groaning, bits and pieces of voices... then the heartbeat...”

  CABL M7 thumbed over at the comatose Marine in the next room, “He kept repeating something about heartbeat when he was brought in, we didn't know what he was talking about. We thought he was worried about his own heartbeat...”

  “Yeah, all through the ship, even the pilots in the shuttle could hear it,” he shook his head, “I don't know about the other guys, but it made my fucking blood run cold...”

  CABL M7's mostly human face, twisted into an odd look of contemplation.

  “What's that look, Doc?”

  “Hmm... I'm just thinking about group hallucination or some form of mass hysteria,” he held up a hand, “no offense Sergeant - but brought on by stress and possibly high EM levels or something along that nature, it's possible.”

  “You're fishing Doc. We're Marines, we're not that deep. We see things, we kill things,” he ran his hand across the short ruddy scrub brush that was his hair. “Besides I've never heard of that happening with separate, isolated groups...”

  CABLE M7 raised one eyebrow, surprised at the Sergeant's knowledge, “I thought you said you weren't deep...”

  Dayle Alaroot shrugged, “I'm not, but I didn't say I couldn't read,” he retorted, flashing a Cheshire Cat grin.

  ■ ■ ■

  Jack Steele met the Admiral at the foot of the ramp of his shuttle and saluted, “Welcome aboard the Freedom, Admiral.”

  Kelarez returned the salute and moved to shake Jack's hand, “good to see you Jack, is Gantarro here yet?”

  “Yes sir,” they began walking across the flight bay toward the briefing room at the base of the tower. “I think you'll find this digital footage quite interesting. The senior pilots will be attending as well, in case you have any questions...”

  “So what happened aboard the Oceania, Jack?”

  “Well, I've prepared a complete report...”

  The Admiral stopped walking, “I'll read the report, but plain language, what the hellion happened?”

  Steele took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair, “Absolute insanity that defies explanation, Vince...” walking slowly, he continued, explaining the events as they unfolded, leaving nothing out.

  The Admiral nodded, “Do you believe in ghosts, Jack?”

  They paused just outside the doorway of the briefing room, “I've seen too many things in my life that aren't explainable, to arrogantly disregard the possibility...”

  Kelarez grinned crookedly, “That's a really long evasive way of not answering the question...” He waved his hand expressively, “With ships they're generally referred to as phantoms or wraiths and although I've never heard of them taking over a ship, I suppose it's not impossible - they can prove to be quite a nuisance. Although, I wonder where they originated...?”

  “They didn't come from the ship,” said Jack mechanically, remembering what Voorlak had said, “They had something to do with what she was carrying...” The ore..? But how could that be?

  Admiral Kelarez scratched his forehead in thought. “Ore?” He shrugged, “I don't see how...” he shook his head, “never mind, we'll come back to this later, let's see that video footage.”

  Already seen by the senior pilots, Steele and his command staff numerous times, Admiral Kelarez and Captain Gantarro watched with fresh eyes as the digital recording played back on the briefing room's big screen. When it was over, the room stayed quiet for a moment. “Play it again,” ordered the Admiral. They watched intently as the two pirate destroyers turned to port in unison, one positioned higher than the other, offering a broadside view of both to the approaching fighters. Neither fired, though gun turret motions could be seen on both ships. A nebulous, translucent sphere of color grew about mid stern, first on one ship then the other. Lacy tendrils reached out from the shifting spheres, enveloping each ship, creating a spider web of color that looked almost liquid, swelling to obscure the view of the ship and collapsing. When it collapsed, the ship was gone - both ships disappeared in about thirty seconds, almost in unison.

  Jack arose from his seat, turned and stood facing the group. “Admiral, before I had a chance to see the video, by description I thought perhaps we were dealing with some kind of optical camouflage... scientists on Earth have developed what they call nanouflage, the ability to hide thi
ngs using photo-reactive nano-plates. So I was relatively sure, being more advanced than we are, you would certainly have something like that available to you...”

  “That era has come and gone Captain,” replied the Admiral, “with the advance of sensors and instruments, we don't need to see a ship, to actually see a ship...”

  Jack folded his arms, “Then someone has built some form of shipboard jump system.”

  The Admiral pulled on his lower lip in contemplation. “Strictly off the record...”

  Jack nodded, “Understood.”

  The Admiral stood and borrowed the remote control from Jack, bringing the video back up and pausing the playback as the translucent sphere began to appear on the first ship. “The developers have been calling it a GOD drive. The unit on this ship is mounted right where you're seeing the anomaly start,” the Admiral pointed to the screen, his finger circling the event epicenter. “It has to be precisely calculated for the dimensions of the ship it's mounted to and the ship needs to be in motion for the unit to initiate a jump...”

  “Wait,” interrupted Jack, “a GOD drive?”

  “Gate On Demand,” replied the Admiral.

  “Holy shit,” groaned Paul Smiley, “this is bad.”

  “It's certainly not good Commander” continued the Admiral, “but it does have some limitations...”

  “Where can it jump to? How far?” Asked Jack.

  “Any gate within reach, or any location in normal space where you have the exact coordinates, but it still has to be within the unit's reach.”

  “What's the reach?”

  “I don't have that information, Mr. Steele... the prototype unit was lost during testing...”

  “Wait,” said Jack, interrupting, “lost as in we've misplaced it and we can't find it, or lost as in someone stole it from us and we can't get it back?”

  “The second one. The company developing the system was doing test runs with their research cutter when it disappeared in...”

  “Research cutter?” Jack cut in, “It was an unarmed science ship? Holy crap, the level of stupidity in that decision has got to be off the scale on the idiot meter.”

  Kelarez nodded, “I agree with you Captain, but the UFW Directorate was unwilling to take a commissioned fighting ship off the line and dedicate it and its crew to research duty. Available resources are an issue and they decided they couldn't spare it.”

  “Wow, my brain hurts just trying to wrap my head around that kind of thinking.” Jack leaned against the podium at the front of the room, “If you have a valuable project that can give you a technical and tactical advantage like this, why wouldn't you do whatever you could to protect it...?”

  “Truthfully, I don't think they believed in the project,” replied Kelarez, “and they didn't think the unit had enough reach to go far enough to be at risk...”

  “Brilliant...” Steele ran his fingers through his hair, “OK, so what are the limitations that you know of?”

  “The jump unit requires a tremendous amount of power, which might be indicative of them not firing upon your fighters; they needed all the power for the jump. Also, shields must be down, just like when we pass through a regular gate. Finally, the ship must be moving at a speed sufficient for passing through the jump bubble that the GOD drive creates.”

  “Any vulnerabilities?” Asked Paul Smiley.

  “The ship can maintain the jump transit corridor for as long as it can maintain the power level sufficiently to keep it from collapsing, which would result in being dumped out into uncharted null-space short of its destination.”

  “So it's possible they're low on power when they reach their destination,” interjected Jack, “leaving them vulnerable.”

  “Quite possible. And as you know, it takes some time for the generators to recharge all the ship's cells... she's a big, fat, waddling target then.”

  Jack grinned, “Our favorite type of target...” the pilots laughed. “So these two,” he motioned to the frozen video frame on the screen, “appeared to be coming from the Klinghoffer gate, but you didn't see them in the transit corridor. Why?”

  “Because they created their own separate corridor, the gate is basically an anchor point for their exit. If they came from any system other than Klinghoffer it would be a different path...”

  “Bridge to Captain Steele...”

  Jack keyed his earpiece mic, “Steele, go ahead.”

  “Captain, we have the VP of VirTech Mining on an incoming communique, he wants to know what happened to the Oceania... Do you want to speak with him?”

  “No...” Steele rubbed his forehead and sighed, “Tell him it was a serious danger to gate traffic and to the gate itself. Pirate destroyers had entered the sector and we were required to destroy it to prevent damage to the gate or allowing it to fall into the wrong hands.”

  “Understood.”

  Jack looked at the Admiral, “Think he'll buy that?”

  Kelarez smiled crookedly, “This isn't the first time we've had problems with VirTech, they're under UFW investigation for their irresponsible mining practices. So I don't think he's going to want to push too much anyways. I wouldn't worry about it.”

  “Irresponsible mining...?”

  “They have a very bad habit of wandering into regions that they don't belong in and they have a tendency to not clean up after themselves... creates a lot of friction with other cultures. In fact, it would be helpful if we knew where the Oceania had been before she ended up like she did.” The Admiral stood up, “I don't suppose we'll ever know. VirTech sure isn't going to volunteer that information. Well, we'd better get back to our duties, I can see I have a rather crucial report to get off to UFW Directorate,” he paused at the doorway leading out to the flight deck, “I'll leave it to you gents to work on some tactics that might help us deal with these jump drive ships...”

  Walking out into the flight bay, the group had to pause in the safe zone at the base of the tower as a Lancia passed slowly by the men, taxiing its way to the port launch tube, the pilot snapping a quick salute to the command officers. Reflections of the bay's overhead lights danced across its canopy glass, a low hum coming from its anti-grav landing feet. Two returning Cyclones passed over the fantail of the ship, through the open stern doors and stasis field, creating an electronic hissing sound. “Busy place...”

  “Yes sir,” replied Jack, “gotta watch yourself out here or you're bound to get run over...” A flight lineman gave them a signal to cross the lanes. “Looks like you're all set Admiral, your shuttles are ready to go.” The group exchanged handshakes instead of salutes and the two cruiser command officers trotted across the deck toward their shuttles.

  Paul Smiley tapped Jack on the elbow, “did you see what we found attached to our hull?”

  Steele looked at him quizzically, “Nooo... what are we talking about?”

  Smiley grinned, “Follow me,” he strode off toward the starboard side of the bay with Jack, Brian Carter and Mike Warren following closely behind. “We noticed it when we returned after those two destroyers gave us the slip, it was holding onto the starboard side of the hull just above our third and fourth defensive turret...” They trotted across the lane behind a taxiing Lancia heading to the starboard launch tube.

  The first revetment was full of tools and rigs used for maintaining the fighters and other craft on the ship, but there was something additional sitting in the middle of it, about the size of a luxury car covered in a gray tarp, a heavy power cable snaking out from underneath. “Mike, grab the other corner...” they pulled the tarp off to reveal what looked like a cross between a giant mechanical dog and an ant.

  “Blackmount forgot one of their repair bots...” said Jack stepping forward for a closer look. The open framework of the skeletal design allowed easy access to all its components for maintenance and repair. It wasn't pretty, but then again, it didn't need to be.

  Mike nodded, “Yep, it's called a Rhino. Chief thinks the power cells ran down and they couldn't communicat
e with it or call it back. He figures they just lost track of it.”

  “The Chief said he can reprogram it after it's recharged,” added Brian, “and we'll be able to use it for repair work inside or outside.”

  Jack walked around the unit, “Kinda creepy looking...” He examined the head, three optical cameras clustered in the center of the forehead, “And it has a heliarc laser... how nice.”

  “Well yeah, for welding,” replied Paul.

  Jack shook his head, “Or cutting... you don't want to know what kind of damage this thing can do... it's damn scary...” his mind was playing back the carnage on the Oceania when the alarm klaxons sounded throughout the Freedom, making him start.

  “Red Alert, all hands to battle stations! All hands to battle stations!” Standard lighting prevailed for flight deck visibility, but red lights throughout the flight deck strobed their crimson alert.

  At a full sprint, the four pilots were headed across the traffic lanes to the base of the tower and their flight gear, Jack activating his comm mic, “Steele to bridge, what's going on?”

  “Pirate cruiser, Captain. He appeared just beyond visual range, must have a jump system because we're hours from any gate...”

  “How many birds do we have out?”

  “Two out, two launching now...”

  Wrestling with his suit Jack continued, “You'll have several more in a minute, is he in range?”

  “Just barely Jack...”

  “Open fire Walt, target his engines... Ask the Archer and Bowman to move up and flank him on either side...” Running out of the tower and pounding across the deck, a line chief directed the pilots to fighters that were fueled and ready. Pulling on his gloves, Jack turned and headed for a loaded Zulu gunship coming up on the lift from the deck below, “I've got the Zulu... get me a crew!”