In the Presence of My Enemies

by Stephen A. Fender

  “We’re going to crash?” she said in shock.

  “Let’s just say that I don’t exactly have control over the landing struts. A survivable crash is the best I think we’re going to hope for.”

  It was then that Trent appeared in the cockpit. “What’s shakin’, Skipper?”

  “Get back to the passenger compartment and make sure everyone is strapped in tight. This is going to get pretty rough.”

  “The ambassador, too?”

  “Against my better judgment, yes, him too. And make it snappy. You’ve got—,” but his words were cut off by the Mark-IV bucking up in a jolt before settling back down farther than before. “You’ve got even less than nothing. Get a move on!” Shawn then looked down to the instruments as a small blip came on the short range sensors. “We’ve got a strong signal coming in from the surface. Could be another ship.”

  “Meltranian?” she asked worriedly.

  “We’re going to find out. I’ll try to get us close.”

  “Is that wise?”

  “Better than wandering around the desert for 40 days.”

  As Trent hurried through the door, Melissa turned to Shawn. “You’ve done this before, right?”

  “Crash landed?” he asked incredulously. “What, you think I do this all the time?”

  “No, that’s not it. I’m just saying that—”

  Outside the ship, the ground was rushing up far too fast for Shawn’s liking. They were at less than a thousand feet, and the desert sand was looking mighty uninviting. “You’ll have to save it for later. We’re going down, and we’re doing it now.”

  Her mind was a jumble of thoughts, and she fought to get the right words out of her mouth. “I just … wanted to tell you that I love you.” Those were not the words she was hoping would come out.

  For Shawn, time seemed to stand still as he processed what had just come out of Melissa’s mouth—quite possibly the craziest thing she’d said to date. Par for the course, it was at the most inopportune time for him to do much of anything about it. The split-second thought that ran through his mind was, I wonder if she’ll be offended that I don’t have time to respond? That was when the proximity alarm went off.

  Shawn turned his attention back outside, out to the sea of beige sand rushing up at them. Pulling hard on the controls, he fired one last burst of the main drive engines—in effect melting the last of Trent’s makeshift patches—in a vain attempt to slow the craft. It was, as usual, already too late.

  First the stern impacted, causing the nose to dip down and do the same, sending a shower of sand cascading over the forward view port. Both Shawn and Melissa were thrown forward with enough force to knock out a prize fighter as Sylvia’s Delight skidded across the sandpaper surface of Falorin, shredding pieces of her hull as she burrowed into her own grave.

  *

  The sound of war drums beat loudly in his ears, followed a bright light, with rays streaking in a dozen different directions simultaneously. Then he became acutely aware of the pain in his right shoulder and grunted, which in itself took an enormous amount of effort. Slowly, Shawn moved his head to the right, and in doing so both checked the operation of his joints as well as making sure Melissa was all right. She, too, seemed to be just coming back to her senses. She raised a weary hand to her forehead and rubbed her scalp line, moaning softly as she brushed against a sensitive portion of her skin. There was a trickle of blood coming from a cut on her lower lip, but she looked remarkably well.

  “Glad to see you’re still with me,” Shawn said dryly.

  “I’m still not entirely convinced. It feels like my head got twisted off and slapped back on.”

  Shawn sighed heavily as he looked to the forward window. The glass was covered in a dusting of beige sand which had also pooled in the corners of the sills. Beyond them, he could see blue sky and two of Falorin’s six moons. That, in conjunction with the pull of gravity on his back, meant that D’s nose was currently elevated, and at a rather high angle. He looked at his instruments, now an array of blank monitors and useless readouts. Not a single button, switch, or control was illuminated. Testing his extremities in short, controlled bursts and finding everything seemingly in order, he tentatively reached for his harness and unlatched it. “I need to see if everyone else is okay.”

  Melissa nodded. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Stepping from his chair, Shawn had to grasp the overhead consoles to stay upright. The nose of the ship was indeed up, thirty or so degrees, he’d guessed. Reaching out for the panel near the door, he quickly removed it to access the manual release mechanism. As he gave the wheel several hard cranks, the door suddenly popped open.

  The passenger compartment was as dark as a cave, the only light coming through the shattered remains of the small starboard view port. In the shadows, Shawn could see the ill-defined shape of Colonel Tausan kneeling to help Trent to his feet. “Is everyone okay?” Shawn asked as he stepped down the handful of steps with Melissa close behind.

  “I think so,” Trent muttered. “But the jury is still out.”

  “Colonel?” Shawn asked as he neared the two.

  “I am unharmed, Commander.”

  Shawn nodded, then craned his head around the compartment. “Where’s the ambassador?”

  “He’s here,” Melissa replied from behind him.

  Shawn turned to see Melissa kneeling down to the unmoving form of Ambassador McDermott. He pulled himself over to her and took a knee. “Is he … ?”

  “He’s alive, but he’s in pretty bad shape,” she whispered. “I can’t tell the extent of his injuries without more light.”

  “More light coming right up,” Trent replied, stepping over to the port hatch. Grasping the emergency handle, he muttered a short prayer, then yanked. Shawn heard the door seals popping as micro charges exploded, freeing the hatch from the hull of the ship. With a swift kick, one that surprised even himself, Trent sent the door crashing down, allowing the lounge to be bathed in sunlight.

  Now able to clearly see the chaos the compartment was in, Shawn rushed to the small storage locker and withdrew the medical kit. As he handed it to Melissa, she wasted little time using the ample supplies to stabilize the ambassador. First stopping the blood flowing from a nasty gash in his forehead, she then bandaged his left thigh, which looked to have taken a minor electrical burn.

  “His right arm is broken,” she said, running the palm-sized medical scanner from head to toe. “He’s probably unconscious due to whatever struck his head. I’m not detecting any permanent damage.”

  Nodding, Shawn overturned the shambles of the compartment, looking for anything that could be used to form a makeshift splint. He quickly retrieved the paddle for the emergency raft, snapped it in two, then handed the pieces to Melissa, who was quick to put it to use on McDermott’s arm.

  “We can’t stay here,” Shawn said as he looked around the compartment. “That sunlight outside is going to turn this ship into an oven in no time.”

  “Agreed,” Tausan said. “With your permission, Commander, I will scout the area outside the ship before we depart.”

  “My permission?” Shawn asked in confusion.

  “Is it not standard procedure to ask for permission from the captain prior to departing a vessel?”

  “I’m not sure how much of this is still a vessel,” Shawn chuckled. “Permission granted.” He then stepped over to the open storage bin and withdrew his shotgun, which he then tossed to the colonel. While the weapon looked small in the Kafaran’s large hands, he knew Tausan would still be able to make use of it. “This is all I’ve got to offer you for protection, Colonel.”

  Tausan regarded the weapon with a groan. “Inefficient, but adequate, Commander.” He then stepped toward the open hatch, peered quickly around the opening, and leapt out.

  “I saw it, but I still don’t believe it,” Melissa said from the floor near the ambassador.

  “What’s that?” Shawn replied as he continued searching the compar
tment.

  “I can’t believe you gave Tausan a gun. Aren’t you afraid of what he might do with it?”

  “Not as much as you might think. Tausan is a trained field commander, and that makes him the best option for a scout. If something is out there, I want him to deal with it before it deals with us.” Grunting, Shawn tossed aside an overturned chair to get access to one of the storage lockers. Withdrawing several blankets, he tossed them at Trent’s feet. “We’re going to need the help of all hands to get out of here.”

  “So, what do we do next?” Melissa asked.

  “You do what you can for the ambassador. Keep him alive at all costs. I’ll gather as many supplies as we can carry.” Shawn turned, then went back to searching for the emergency rations he knew were nearby.

  She nodded, taking one of the reflective blankets, and covered McDermott as best she could. “Trent, you’ll need to construct some kind of stretcher to carry the ambassador out of here.”

  “There’s certainly no lack of materials,” he snorted at her. “I’ll have to rip up some of the chairs for padding, though.”

  Shawn reached for nearest chair and stroked it lovingly, as if grieving the loss of a beloved friend. “Do whatever you have to do. I don’t think D is going to mind.”

  “…And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,

  And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,

  Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags,

  And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shattered Navy of Spain,

  And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags,

  To be lost evermore in the main.”

  —Lord Alfred Tennyson

  Excerpt from “The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet”

  Old Earth calendar 1914.

  Chapter 8

  As he stepped out into the Falorin sunlight, it took a moment for Shawn’s eyes to become accustomed to their surroundings. Thankfully—if one could call their current situation as luck—Sylvia’s Delight had buried herself sufficiently so that the leap down to the sand was little more than a foot. Looking toward the bow, Shawn could see a large rocky outcropping bursting from the ground at a near-forty-five-degree angle. The material looked like a curious mix of quartz and marble, but regardless of its origins, it was very likely what had stopped D from further skidding along the surface. Another large boulder had perforated the hull, just below the cockpit, leaving the surrounding material warped and dangling from the exposed frame of the ship at odd angles.

  Shawn’s hopes of getting the Mark-IV back into space were further dashed to pieces when he turned to look at the stern. The impact with the large rocks currently propping D up at her unusual angle had caused the craft to buckle in her weakest portion—the area just aft of the airlock in the center of the ship. There was a large crack, which Shawn could see existed on both the port and starboard sides, extending nearly to the top of the ship. With the forward half of the vessel almost completely separated from the stern, Shawn knew her keel had snapped like a twig. His beloved Mark-IV was now little more than a useless pile of metal. Noticing that both of the newly installed drive engines had been torn completely free from their mountings was simply the icing on the already foul-tasting cake.

  Behind him, Trent gave a rather verbal tirade that outlined the internal monologue going through Shawn’s mind quite aptly.

  “Are you saying this is beyond your ability to fix?” Shawn asked, trying to find some humor in the despair of their situation.

  “I’m sorry to say, there are just some things that duct tape can’t fix,” Trent said as he kicked at a piece of debris and sent it flying across the sand. “This is just … perfect.”

  “You still have your health, you know.”

  “Yeah, right. A few days of sucking sand should clear that little problem right up.”

  Shawn surveyed the entirety of the craft once more, then turned to his mechanic as he folded his arms across his chest. “Got any clue as to who or what did this?”

  “Well, since you were at the controls, I’m pretty sure I know who did this.”

  “You see this?” Shawn said, pointing to his impassive face. “This is me not laughing right now.”

  “Fine,” Trent huffed, leaning down and retrieving a shard of the hull. The normally dull material was both cracked and burnt around the edges. “It was a bomb, plain and simple.”

  “A bomb?”

  “Not in the truest sense of the word, I mean, not like one that explodes.” Trent then fanned his arms out, making the requisite special effect with great fanfare.

  “I’m afraid I’m unaware of any other kind,” Shawn replied, quickly losing his patience.

  “It was a logic bomb.”

  “A what?” There was a rustling of metal behind them, and Shawn turned to face it.

  Melissa stepped out from the middle of the four-foot-wide gash in the hull. “A malicious piece of code, intentionally inserted into the ship’s main computer.” Shawn reached for her hand, helping her to step over a jagged piece of the hull that was still smoldering. “Thank you.”

  “I find it hard to believe that would’ve caused the explosion we felt,” Shawn said.

  “Technically, it was an implosion,” Trent replied.

  “Come again?”

  Melissa held out a portable computer to Shawn. On the screen was a gibberish sequence of code. “I’m a pilot, not a programmer.” He then tossed the computer to Trent. “Translate this.”

  As quickly as he had caught it, Trent pitched the computer over his shoulder. “Don’t need to. I already know what happened.”

  Shawn turned from Melissa to Trent. “Would someone in this little dynamic duo please tell me what the hell happened?”

  “The computer blew the cargo door without depressurizing the rear bay,” Trent said.

  “That, in and of itself, shouldn’t have caused us to go down,” Shawn replied. “We’ve pulled that little maneuver once before, remember?”

  “But that was only half the equation in the bomb’s coding,” Melissa said. “Two seconds later, the internal air lock emergency release system was activated.”

  “That was the second jolt we felt?” Shawn asked, getting nods from the other two.

  “At the same time,” Melissa continued, “the main computer links were shut down, and the primary memory banks were completely blanked.”

  “If the banks were wiped, how did you find out what happened?”

  “All ships operating from Sector Command warships are required to have a secondary core installed for audit purposes.”

  Trent raised an eyebrow. “I never installed one of those.”

  “I know; the Rhea technicians did. However, the only one they could adapt to your system was a simple data drive capable of saving the last twenty-four hours of computer activity. While it wasn’t nearly powerful enough to operate the ship, we were lucky to get what we could off it.”

  “Did you hear the way she said ‘system’?” Trent asked. “Like it’s junk or something.”

  “It is junk, Trent,” Shawn replied. “And we’d like to have been notified about any modifications to my ship, by the way,” Shawn said, wagging a finger between himself and Trent.

  “You were too busy flying,” she said to Shawn, then turned to Trent. “And you were too busy with Clarissa McAllister.”

  “I, uh … well, that is—,” Trent stammered, but was saved by Shawn.

  “So with the primary banks offline, that explains why we lost control,” Shawn reflected.

  “Well,” Trent shrugged, “that, and the computer also saw to the fact that all the fuel was dumped. Without it, the emergency generators wouldn’t start.”

  “Backup batteries?” the commander asked.

  “Completely disconnected, probably before we even left the Rhea,” Melissa said, hooking a thumb at the opening she’d emerged from. “There was a bypass installed which allowed the
computer to believe they were still hooked up.”

  “Which is why we weren’t alerted to it on takeoff,” Trent finished before Shawn raised the question. “The only way I was able to give us any power at all was to manually bypass the batteries. So, even if the computer wasn’t fired before, that would have likely been the death of it.”

  “Unregulated power would do that,” Shawn nodded solemnly as he contemplated the demise of the troublesome, yet oddly entertaining voice of the computer. “So this was all set in motion before we took off.”

  “There was no way it could have been done after we left the Rhea,” Melissa agreed. “Not only was everyone on board constantly accounted for, it would take a higher level of programming skills than any one of us has.”

  “But we don’t know that about Tausan,” Trent replied. “For all we know, he could have—”

  “He didn’t,” Shawn said, cutting him off.

  “And you know this how?” Trent exclaimed, waving his arms frantically.

  “I just … know he didn’t. He could have killed us all.”

  Trent was unconvinced. “Maybe that’s been his agenda the entire time.”

  “That’s enough, Trent,” Melissa snapped. “Besides, if you’d bothered to read the computer before throwing it away, you’d see that there is a fingerprint.”

  “What kind of print?” Shawn asked, already knowing the answer.

  “A passcode. A very low-level one that’s inherent to your ship’s computer. It was used to backdoor into the system without alerting anyone. The timestamp confirms it was recorded several hours before we took off, and none of the Kafarans were anywhere near the hangar at that time.”

  “So, that little spy we’ve been searching for on board the Rhea is moving from larceny up to homicide. That’s likely who caused the explosion in the Rhea’s jump core.” Perfect. “And I have a pretty good idea who it might be,” Shawn mumbled in disgust.

  “That doesn’t seem so perfect to me,” Trent droned.

  “Who?” Melissa asked.

  “If I’m right, then everyone on board the Rhea is in trouble. Unfortunately, we’ve got more important things to deal with right now. Besides, we don’t even have a working transmitter, so we can’t do anything about warning the Rhea at this point. Is the ambassador mobile?” he asked, looking to Trent.