by Jay Allan
One in particular.
Ethan’s eyes widened and he snatched the pad away from Caldin so he could get a better look. He found himself staring into the bright violet eyes of none other than Alara Vastra.
“What is it?” Caldin asked, frowning at him.
Ethan shook his head. “No, it’s nothing.” But it wasn’t nothing. Alara can’t be allowed to fly! She was in no condition to become a nova pilot, and even if she were—even on her best day she wasn’t a good enough pilot to survive what’s coming. He noticed that her score for the mission had been the highest of the group—5B—but he dismissed that with a shake of his head. Flying a recon mission is very different from flying in real combat.
Something began niggling in the back of Ethan’s mind, but he ignored it and continued paging through the mission report to see if there were any more surprises. When he reached the bottom of the report, he read Commander Adari’s conclusions and suggestions for whom should join the squadron, but when Ethan read the final line of the report, his eyes goggled.
The trainees performed surprisingly well, considering their lack of experience and the fact that this was a blind combat simulation in live novas—
Suddenly Ethan realized what it was that had been niggling. Alara’s rating was 5-B! The number referred to the number of kills she’d scored. For a recon flight that number should have been zero.
—None of them realized that the enemy contacts weren’t real, and although they didn’t work effectively as a team, they did manage to take out a total of fourteen enemy fighters to their eight, and they did this while outnumbered more than twenty to one by enemy forces. My recommendation is that all the pilots who scored at least one kill in this mission should be considered for permanent reassignment to Guardian Squadron.
Ethan couldn’t believe it. The commander had sent Alara, fragile as she was, into a blind combat simulation! Ethan had to work hard to control himself. He wanted to punch the table with his fist and throw the holo pad at the opposite wall.
“Overlord Dominic, sir? Is something wrong?” Caldin asked, her eyebrows drawing together with concern.
Ethan shook his head and pushed his chair away from the captain’s table. Standing up from the table and turning to her, he said, “Go to the bridge and plot a course to the gate. I’ll be with you soon.” Ethan was already on his way out of the operations center.
“Where are you going?” Caldin called after him.
“I need to speak with Commander Adari!” Ethan called back.
* * *
Alara sat watching the Guardians’ juvenile antics from a couch in the furthest corner of the pilot’s lounge. The lounge was much smaller than Aurora’s, and the pilots had to be their own bartenders, but at least they couldn’t get kicked out for throwing a raucous party. Besides that, on a yellow alert it was the only place close enough to the hangar for them to celebrate and still be able to scramble to their fighters in five minutes.
Alara’s arms were crossed, and she looked distinctly unimpressed. Shouts of laughter and camaraderie were rising in the air, and even as she watched, the group of pilots sitting at the bar broke out in song, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, their drinks sloshing over the rims of their mugs in golden rivers of fizz as they swayed to the off-key melody they sung. There was no alcohol being served, but the non-alcoholic equivalents seemed to have induced insobriety anyway. This was a celebration for the trainees, but Alara refused to take part. They tricked us! she fumed. Had everyone forgotten so soon?
She saw a flicker of a black flight suit in the corner of her eye, and felt a hand on her shoulder. The couch sagged, and Alara turned to see who’d sat down beside her. She found herself face to face with her wingmate from the mission, Captain Reese.
“What?” she said.
The captain frowned at her and removed his hand from her shoulder. “Why don’t you join us?” he asked, taking a sip from a mug he held in his other hand.
“Yes, and make an even bigger fool of myself than you already have. No thanks.” She had broken into tears when they’d finally landed on the Defiant again. The flight engineer who’d been the first to greet her as she’d come down the ladder from her cockpit had assured her it was just a delayed reaction to the stress, and not to feel embarrassed; then she’d thrown up on his boots, and he’d suddenly become much less sympathetic. Alara shook her head to clear away the memory.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Alara,” Adan said, “but you should know it wasn’t my idea.”
“No? You let me think it was real just like everyone else. That’s just as bad.”
“I had no choice. It was the commander’s orders.”
“Fine.” She shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“Alara . . .” he reached for her shoulder again, but she shrugged him off and stood up, walking away. “Alara!” he called after her.
“Leave me alone, Captain. I’m going to hit the rack.”
Just as Alara reached the entrance of the lounge and began raising her wrist to pass it over the door scanner, the doors swished open, and she turned to see the overlord storming in, flanked by two guards. The overlord’s pale blue eyes met hers, and he said, “Stay here. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Alara watched as the overlord stalked up to Commander Ithicus Adari where he sat singing at the bar with a group of trainee pilots. The overlord tapped him on the shoulder, interrupting his song.
“Hoi there, sir!” Adari said, grinning broadly. “Care to join us for a drink?”
“I think you’re celebrating prematurely, Commander—or should I say Lieutenant.”
Alara began to smile now, too, as she watched Adari’s smug grin fade.
“I’m sorry?” he asked.
“That stunt you pulled. Conducting a blind combat simulation in the cockpits of real novas. Not only did I not authorize that, but did it occur to you how dangerous that could have been?”
“I thought the benefit outweighed the—”
“It outweighed nothing! What if your pilots had gone running off in all directions, fleeing for their lives and making emergency SLS jumps into the middle of frekking nowhere?”
Silence fell across the lounge.
“The AIs would have stopped them,” Adari said.
“Would the AIs have stopped them from running into each other and us in their frenzy to escape an enemy they thought was real?”
“I . . .”
“Would it have stopped them from ejecting from their fighters when they thought they were about to die?”
“Well, no, but—”
“How long do you think we’d have had to spend here recovering those pilots and their fighters before moving on to the next system? Those delays might have cost us the Defiant.”
“I thought that a blind combat simulation was the best way to evaluate the trainees in the shortest time possible.”
The overlord waved his hand dismissively. “How about the mental strain you put on already badly over-stressed officers?” Alara saw him turn and point to her. “Did you know that that pilot over there, who you rated as 5B, and considered the winner of your little sortie, is currently a mental patient aboard the Defiant? She doesn’t know who she is, let alone remember how to fly!”
“With respect, sir, I think her results say otherwise. She was the only pilot to make five kills, and she was the last one standing.”
“I don’t care! Get her off the roster. And as for you, you’re relieved of command, Adari. Your XO will take charge of this squadron from here on out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Alara saw the overlord turn once more, and now he pointed to Captain Reese who was still seated on the couch that she’d vacated.
“And you! Show my guards to their new assignments and then get to the bridge. We’re leaving the nebula now.”
With that, the overlord strode back to where Alara stood gaping at him from the entrance of the pilot’s lounge. “Come with me,” he said, hauling
her roughly by the arm. She stumbled along beside him in a daze. “I’m taking you back to your parents’ quarters.”
“What?” Alara dug in her heels and yanked her arm free of his grasp. “No.” The overlord turned to look at her with blazing blue eyes. His chest rose and fell quickly with the force of his fury. She shook her head, suddenly feeling more sure of herself. The last few hours snapped into focus and now she had a whole new perspective—a new purpose besides agonizing over who she was and who she wasn’t. “I’m not going back to them,” she said, crossing her arms.
“Fine, we’ll find you your own quarters, and you can hide there until we reach Obsidian Station.”
The overlord made another grab for her arm, but she resisted again. Her brow furrowed and she shook her head. “I’m staying with the squadron.”
“You’re in no condition to fly, Alara!”
“How would you know? That’s what I thought, too, but in the heat of battle, I completely forgot to wonder who I am anymore, and I became someone—someone who’s good at what they do.” She shrugged and smiled lewdly at him. “And something tells me you don’t want me doing the other thing I’m good at aboard your ship.”
The overlord’s eyes flashed. “Alara . . . you’re not okay.”
“And as far as anyone knows I might never be okay! I’m not Alara anymore. I’m not even Angel. I’m someone else, some strange mixture of the two.”
“Kiddie . . . please!”
Alara nodded. “That’s as good a name for me as any.” And with that, Alara turned and strode back into the pilot’s lounge. She passed Adan on the way in, and the young captain shot her a wry grin as he passed her in the doorway. “Nice to meet you, Kiddie,” he said, and gave a sloppy salute. “Glad you decided to finally join us.”
She nodded and continued on toward the bar. Maybe she could use a drink after all.
* * *
Atton escorted the pair of guards through the ship. As they entered a nearby lift tube, one of them asked. “What’s this about a new assignment?”
“You’re going to be promoted,” Atton replied, smiling at the two low-ranking corpsmen.
“To what?”
The lift quickly fell to the specified deck and then Atton nodded as the doors opened onto one of the lower levels of the ship. “You’ll see. After you.”
The guards walked out the lift first, their footsteps ringing across the deck as they wound their way through the bowels of the ship.
“Where are we going?” one of them asked, looking over his shoulder.
Atton shook his head. “I’ll explain once we get there.”
As soon as there could be no doubt about where they were headed, the guards’ footsteps began to slow. That was when Atton chose to draw his sidearm and point it at the back of the nearest man’s head.
“Drop your weapons,” he said.
“The frek . . .”
“I said drop them!”
Both guards did as they were told, and their rifles clattered to the deck.
“Now, keep walking.”
“What are you doing, Captain?”
“Keeping you two from shooting off your mouths.”
“About what?” One man asked. “Frek, we don’t know anything, brua, just cool it, okay? Let’s talk about this.”
“I’m sorry,” Atton said as they reached the doors at the end of the corridor. “But talking about this is exactly what I’m trying to avoid.”
With that, Atton pulled the trigger, shooting the first man in the back. He fell to the deck with arms and legs jerking spasmodically. The other man turned, holding out his palms in surrender. “Wait! Don’t shoot! I—”
Atton silenced him with another shot and the second guard collapsed. Frowning, Atton put away his pistol and walked up to the fallen guards. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “It was the only way.”
Chapter 16
Ethan turned to see his son come aboard the bridge. Atton strode in still wearing his flight suit, but there was no time for him to change. The Defiant was already cruising through the Taylon system at a considerable 81 km/s. It had taken the better part of the last half an hour at the cruiser’s top acceleration of 75 KAPS to reach that speed, but they’d already begun decelerating in preparation to reach the space gate on the far side of Taylon. They would reach the gate in another thirty five minutes, for a total transit time of just over an hour from the nebula to the gate. Forlax would be faster to cross, since they’d be going from one gate to another as opposed to coming from deep space, but in that smaller area of space they’d be much more likely to encounter enemies than they were to encounter them along the fringes of the galaxy.
Looking around the bridge, Ethan’s eyes fell upon Tova’s muscular frame. She stood down by the viewports as she cast her thoughts out into space to make sure no Sythian ships were nearby. Ethan gave an abrupt shiver. He wasn’t sure if that shiver was from the near freezing temperature of the air on the bridge—they’d set the climate controls and the lights down very low in order to keep Tova happy—or because of the alien’s fearsome appearance. Ethan rubbed his frozen hands together and blew into them to warm up. He turned back to the captain’s table and gazed down at it with Commander Caldin.
Atton reached the side of the table a moment later. “What’s it look like?” he asked, sounding out of breath.
Ethan looked up from the star map with a smile. “So far we’re clear to the gate. Let’s hope our luck holds.”
“Yes, let’s. Are you sure you don’t want me on the flight deck with the others? Since you made me squadron leader now, if we need to scramble, I need to be the first one there.”
Ethan frowned. He hadn’t thought of that when he’d decided to have his son take Lieutenant Adari’s place. “You can head back there in a minute. But first, I want to know if my guards made it to their new assignment.”
Adan nodded. “Yes, they did.”
“Good. Hopefully you didn’t have to use a valuable ship to send them back to Stormcloud Transfer.”
“No, just an old, beaten up shuttle.”
“Good.”
Caldin stood eyeing the two men from across the table. “I didn’t see any ships leaving the Defiant.”
Atton smiled at her, holding the woman’s steely blue gaze. “Perhaps you looked away from the grid at just the right moment.”
Caldin frowned back. After a long moment of trading glares with Atton, she turned to Ethan and shook her head. “You sent your guards away? At a time when we have too few hands on this ship as it is?”
Ethan waved away her objections. “I had to. They’re conducting a high-priority mission for me aboard the transfer station.”
“What mission?”
“I’m afraid that for now, that information is need to know.”
Caldin’s eyes darted to Atton and she scowled, no doubt resentful that Atton knew about it and she did not—yet one more reminder that he now outranked her—but she said nothing further and her eyes returned to the grid.
Atton nodded. “Well, it seems you have things under control here. I’m going to get back to the flight deck.”
“Right.” Turning to Commander Caldin, Ethan said, “It looks like you’ll be getting more time as the XO than you thought.”
She nodded almost imperceptibly, not looking up from the grid. Ethan frowned, hoping she’d get over her jealousy soon. He turned to watch as Atton left, still frowning. Now he had to worry about his son and Alara. If he’d had any say in the matter, he’d have ordered them both to stay on the bridge where he could keep an eye on them and make sure they were safe, but there was no excuse he could think of to order that. He’d already tried with Atton by making him the XO, and as for Alara, she’d decided that she wanted to be a nova pilot, and that gave him pause. In a time when Alara had no real sense of purpose or identity, being a pilot was filling that need—and it was hard to argue with her pilot’s rating. She was a better pilot than he’d given her credit for.
&nbs
p; Ethan turned away with a smirk. It felt like just yesterday that he’d suggested that he and Alara join the fleet to get away from Alec Brondi’s collection agents. At that suggestion, she’d started a huge fight with him, and they’d dissolved their partnership over it.
But now it’s you who wants to be the nova pilot. Ethan shook his head. How quickly things change. . . .
Ethan shivered again and he turned to glare at Tova. He saw Caldin rubbing her hands together to warm up, and then he came to a decision. “Tova!” he called.
“Yess?” she hissed, turning to him from the viewports.
Clearly she didn’t like being yelled at. Ethan didn’t care. She’d caused enough inconvenience to him and his crew. “Go get your armor. We’re turning up the temperature in here. This is ridiculous.”
Tova began stalking down the gangway from the viewports. As she drew near, she gave a toothy grin. “Now humans know how I feel in heat. You freeze in my climate, I burn in yours.”
“Yeah yeah, go get your suit—Delayn! Turn up the climate controllers!”
A collective sigh of relief went up from the crew.
“Yes, sir!” Delayn replied.
* * *
Dr. Kurlin sat in the med lab aboard the Defiant, testing the 72 different blood samples he’d gathered from the surviving crew members. The tests ran quickly, since they were each conducted in a matter of a minute by the lab’s computer. All Kurlin had to do was input the necessary test parameters and change the samples when the queue was empty.
That left him twiddling his thumbs most of the time, thinking. Mostly his thoughts turned to his daughter, Alara, and with that, an accompanying frown touched his lips. She’d been conscripted to join the Defiant’s nova pilots, and he was not happy about it. He had returned from the flight deck just a few moments ago. He’d gone there in the hopes that Alara had failed the training and would not be asked—ordered—to join the squadron. Instead, he’d found that she had not only passed, but she’d earned the highest score of any of the trainees.