Dark Space

by Stephen A. Fender

  -Admiral William Graves (Ret.)

  Admirals and Generals: The Men Who Won the War, 2nd Edition

  Chapter 8

  Back in his quarters, Shawn was packing away the last of his things in a small duffel placed on the bed. Gone were the decorations from the walls, his personal effects from the connecting bathroom, and what few trinkets he’d managed to collect in his journey. Melissa had been there, having shown up an hour before to get the news straight from Shawn’s lips. Once he had told her, however, she broke down into tears. She had ranted about how foolish he had acted, how selfish he had become. Her voice had boomed more than enough to carry out into the corridors, but Shawn couldn’t have cared less about that. After she’d dashed from the compartment sobbing with fury, Shawn’s first reaction was to chase her down, but he knew his transport off the ship would be leaving shortly. He needed to pack, to get his affairs in order. He would find her later … if there was time.

  Time. What had happened to it all?

  When the last of his bags were filled, Shawn gave the empty compartment one final look before heading out the door. The passageway was full of onlookers, each giving him passing glances as he walked down the long stretch of corridor. Arriving at the lift that would take him down to the main hangar one final time, he was silently grateful that the elevator was empty when it arrived. Dropping his bags to the deck, he pressed the button that would send him down, and took a final deep breath of the ship’s recycled air. Yes, he would miss the slightly acidic smell.

  When the lift stopped, he grabbed his bags and headed out the door to the familiar space. However, when he looked up, he saw that he was not, in fact, in the hangar. The lift had come to a stop in a passageway, one devoid of anyone except for Admiral William Graves, who now barred his path.

  “Bill?” Shawn asked in surprise, then glanced back to the elevator in confusion. “This is supposed to be an express straight down to the hangar.”

  “I thought perhaps we could go for a walk?” Graves asked kindly.

  “My transport leaves within the hour.”

  Graves held a hand out toward the vacant passageway. “We have some time, son. Or would you prefer to disregard the last request of an old friend?”

  Shawn chuckled, then looked at his bags. “My things?”

  “Leave them,” Graves said dismissively as he nodded toward the waiting lift. “They’ll be picked up once the lift arrives down in the hangar, and brought to the transport for you.”

  Putting the bags back inside, he watched as the doors quickly closed and the elevator continued on its course. “So where do we go? Or is this where you take me to a deserted part of the ship and threaten me with violence over what happened with Melissa?”

  Graves placed a hand on Shawn’s shoulder and ushered him down the corridor. “Hardly. The affairs between you and my daughter are entirely your own. I’ve learned—through much trial and error—that you both know what you’re doing. I’ve come to trust on it, to rely on it. It helps me sleep at night—both as a father, and as a friend.”

  “Then are you going to tell me why you weren’t in that courtroom today? I sure could have used a friendly voice.”

  Bill clasped his hands behind his back as they walked. “No, I’m not. Besides, you didn’t need anyone in there today.”

  “You clearly haven’t read the transcripts,” Shawn sniggered. “I got flambéed in there.”

  “I read them, yes. Captain Krif’s testimony was … pretty damaging.”

  “Damaging? Are you kidding? It was devastating.”

  “So it was,” Bill said, nodding, then smiled. “But it’s all over now. Have you put much thought into what you’ll do next?”

  “I’ll likely go back to Minos. I’ve got some credits saved up—”

  “But not enough to get another ship. I heard about your Mark-IV,” Graves said, then shook his head. “Terrible business. Losing your ship like that.”

  “No, not enough credits to replace her. I’ll find something, though. I always do. Unless, of course, Sector Command wants to repay me for my ship.”

  “That, my friend, is highly doubtful.” Bill smiled again. “However, I’m sure you’ll make do. You’re one of the most resourceful people I’ve ever met, Shawn. And one of the most resilient. I can understand why Melissa fancies you.”

  “Even though those are our affairs?” Shawn said, mocking.

  “I’m just not blind, that’s all.”

  Very little was spoken over the next half hour. Graves took Shawn on a proverbial tour of the ship. They would go up one passageway, negotiate some stairs, only to head back in their previous direction. They visited multiple decks more than once, took lifts where possible, stairs when none was readily available. If Shawn hadn’t spent so much time on this ship already, he was certain they’d be lost.

  “With all due respect, Bill, I need to be getting back to my transport. She’s going to leave shortly, and I’ve got a date with a discharge.”

  Graves nodded, then withdrew an old pipe from his pocket. He stuffed it with tobacco and lit it with a series of puffs. While smoking in any part of the ship was prohibited, Shawn highly doubted some brash young junior officer would make remarks about it openly. “So it is, Shawn.” He then pointed his pipe down the corridor. “This way, I believe.”

  The two men rounded a corridor and came to a lift, one with a placard stating that it was another express elevator that would bring them down to the hangar. Graves stepped to the side and pressed the call button. When the doors opened, Shawn saw that it was not an elevator at all, but the entrance to a room. When Graves motioned to the open door, Shawn cautiously stepped inside. As he did, Bill stealthily reached out and removed the sign from beside the door.

  Inside the large square room was rectangular holographic projection table, and surrounding it were Melissa Graves, Doctor Ophelia Finly, and at the far end, Admiral Hansen himself. Surprised at the assembly, Shawn was almost at a loss for words.

  “I’m sorry, the placard said this was supposed to be a lift car …?”

  “So it did, Commander,” Hansen said with a nod.

  Shawn took another glance around the room. “I didn’t know they made elevators in this size.”

  “Shawn,” Melissa began, “this is not a lift.”

  “Then it’s a going away party,” Shawn replied almost bitterly, “because I’m pretty sure I just got drummed out of the service. Unless, of course, Admiral Hansen has something to add to his ruling?”

  “Bill,” Hansen began calmly, disregarding Shawn’s tone, “are we good?”

  With Graves standing behind him, Shawn couldn’t see his old friend nod in agreement. “We are, sir.”

  “Good?” Shawn asked in confusion. “What good? What’s going on? I’m supposed to be on a shuttle in less than ten minutes.”

  “And you will be, Commander,” Hansen said. “I assure you.”

  “Then I’m afraid I’m at a loss as to why I’m in the middle of a staff meeting, considering I’m no longer on the staff.”

  Melissa stepped up to his side and ushered him over to the projection table. “Shawn, you know I love you, right?”

  “Yes,” he said carefully.

  She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “I know this is going to be hard for you, but for your own good, would you please shut up for a moment? We’ve got some things to go over with you.”

  “Things? What things?”

  Melissa huffed, then turned to Hansen. “I think that’s the best we’re going to get out of him, sir.”

  Hansen exchanged a worried look with Bill Graves. “You’re still sure of this, Bill?”

  “I’ve never been more certain, Salus. Shall we proceed? We have little time.”

  Hansen, by all rights Bill Graves’s superior, nodded in compliance. “Very well. Commander Kestrel,” he said, facing Shawn. “We need your … your particular brand of expertise.”

  Confused, Shawn looked from Hansen to Bill and then b
ack. “You mean my disloyal, subordinate expertise? The one that balks at authority? After all, you made it quite clear I excel in those areas.”

  Hansen dismissed Shawn’s words with a wave of his hands. “Come now, Commander. There’s more to what’s going on, well beyond your limited and uninformed perception of my views about you.”

  “No. I think you and the court made it pretty clear. Now, aside from a few parting words I’d like to give the woman I love, would you please just let me leave?”

  Hansen took a measured breath, then sighed. “I understand you and the former Lieutenant Santorum had some words while you were on the planet’s surface. Isn’t that right?”

  “It was all in my report, Admiral.”

  Hansen straightened. “A report, I would like to add, that is now classified as top secret. Any mention, outside this exact group of individuals, of that conversation between the two of you would be … unwise.”

  Shawn considered this for a moment. “Which is why no one mentioned it during the court-martial?”

  “You’re catching on, Commander,” Hansen said agreeably. “Let’s see if you can keep up. So Santorum—or whoever or whatever was claiming to be Santorum—told you in no short order that he was an imposter.”

  “Something along those lines,” Shawn agreed. “In any case, he certainly didn’t consider himself a member of the human race. Seemed like a bunch of bull to me.”

  “Well, technically speaking, he was both right and wrong in his statement.”

  Shawn cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t follow.”

  Hansen turned to Doctor Finly. “Doctor Finly, at the bequest of the otherwise-occupied chief surgeon on the Duchess, performed the autopsy on Lieutenant Santorum. It’s the reason she’s here and not he. Doctor Finly?”

  Ophelia typed a series of commands into the holographic table. A dimensional image of Santorum’s body appeared. Jerry’s uniform had been removed, and his naked, life-sized supine form hovered a few feet above the table. It was just as Shawn had last seen it, down to the mangled hand and bruised sternum where Shawn’s non-lethal round had struck him.

  “My initial investigation of body produced few results. I documented the injuries as I’d seen them, catalogued them into his service record, and was preparing to make out the official death certificate when I came across something … peculiar.” She tapped another series of commands into the computer. The area at the base of Santorum’s neck enlarged to fill the table. The skin and muscle tissue was stripped away by the computer to reveal Jerry’s central nervous system. The image began to flash with a blue brilliance.

  “What’s that?” Shawn asked.

  “To be honest, I’m still not entirely certain,” Finly continued. “However, I can tell you that something foreign has attached itself to the C-2 vertebra and intertwined itself into the central nervous system.”

  “Something? As in, a parasite?” Shawn asked.

  “In the traditional sense, I would say yes. But it’s not a life-form. At least, not like one I’ve ever encountered. It seems to act more like a biological computer.”

  “What does it do?” Shawn asked.

  Ophelia enlarged the magnification. There were pulses of blue-white emanating from the base of the neck throughout the nervous system. “It sends out its own signals to the body, basically countermanding anything that would normally come from the host. This one here,” she said, pointing to a tendril that went into the skull, “seems to interface directly with the brain.”

  “To what end?” Shawn asked, quickly getting out of his area of medical expertise.

  “If I continue along my line of current reasoning, it interfaces with the brain, directly imprinting its code over the original.”

  “So … what? You’re saying Santorum was simply possessed by some alien?” Shawn jibed. “That’s a little farfetched, considering there’s nothing in the known galaxy that could possibly do that.”

  Ophelia nodded in agreement. “Correct. Nothing we currently know about.”

  “What about removing it?”

  “Impossible,” she said, shaking her head. “It becomes completely entwined in the host’s system. Any attempt to forcibly remove it would cause a complete failure of the subject’s central nervous system.”

  “So,” Hansen began, “when you said in your report that Santorum already considered himself ‘dead,’ he wasn’t far off. Once infected … or whatever we choose to call it … there’s no going back.”

  “At least none we know of,” Finly finished. “My initial results contain—to be to blunt—a hell of a lot of conjecture.”

  Shawn studied the diagram for a moment in silence. “So, somebody stuck this thing inside him and turned him into some kind of covert operative?”

  Hansen nodded. “That’s our best guess. And, if that’s true, there could be a lot more infected personnel just like him.”

  “Some at the very heart of Sector Command,” Bill Graves chimed in, “or the Unified government.”

  “So, you can understand when I tell you that this knowledge is limited to only the people in this room,” Hansen said. “And they need to keep absolute security over this situation.” He then looked to Doctor Finly. “The doctor has verified than none of the people present here are infected, including yourself, Commander. Had you been, you would have never left the sickbay.”

  Shawn sighed. “Is it the Meltranians’ doing?”

  All eyes turned to Hansen. “Honestly, we don’t know. We haven’t had enough exposure to their technology to say with any certainty.”

  “And what about the Kafarans?” Shawn asked.

  Hansen shook his head. “No. At least, we don’t think so. We have more than ample evidence of Kafaran biology and technology, to say nothing about what they’ve shared with us in the current war. This would be something that’s just as foreign to them as it is to us, perhaps even more so.”

  “I still don’t get what you need from me. I’m out of a job, remember?”

  Bill moved to stand beside Hansen. “You intercepted a communication that was sent from the Duchess to a location in the Concordia system, Vega sector. The planet Torval, to be precise.”

  Shawn looked to Melissa. “That’s right. Agent Graves decrypted the destination, but not the content.”

  Hansen nodded. “Then you will understand when I say that the transport that is waiting for you in the hangar isn’t going to outpost twenty-two.”

  “Torval?” Shawn asked as his eyes shifted to the admiral.

  “Exactly,” Hansen nodded.

  “But I thought … I mean … I was relieved of duty.”

  “And you were, Commander,” Hansen agreed. “Don’t think for an instant that the court-martial was anything less than factual.”

  “It had to be,” Bill amended. “We can’t allow any suspicions to arise. If anyone else in Sector Command has been infected, we need to know who they are before they make their respective moves. Getting you off the roster was the best way to ensure you could make it to Torval unmolested.”

  Shawn then turned to Melissa. “But, you’re here. Does that mean … you knew?”

  “Not until after the autopsy of Jerry, but yes, before your trial … I knew.”

  “Then what was with all the tears and screaming in my quarters?” Shawn asked defensively. “Why the big show?”

  “Appearances, Shawn,” Melissa replied. “We can’t trust anyone now. It had to look real, and it had to look like I was leaving you … and that I needed solitude.”

  Then it dawned on him. “Because you’re coming with me.”

  She smiled. “Like you’d have it any other way.”

  “And the reprimand on my record? And the fact that I’m supposed to be processed out of Sector Command?”

  “All real,” Hansen added. “The one-week time frame for your discharge from Sector Command takes into account your current mission. Once it’s completed, I will personally make a further determination about your continued service withi
n the organization. In any case, the reprimand on your record will stay, regardless of the outcome.”

  “You took things a step too far, Shawn,” Graves said before Shawn could comment. “There aren’t any good deeds that are going to erase that fact. However, you do have a chance to redeem your status on the ship, and regain some of the respect you lost.”

  “And if we don’t succeed?”

  “Then don’t bother coming back, Commander,” Hansen said. “Your discharge will take effect whether you are here or not. As for Miss Graves,” he said, turning to face Melissa, “I fully expect you to return in the allotted time, successful or not. You’re too valuable a commodity to keep away for too long.”

  For his own part, Bill Graves was right, and Shawn wasn’t about to argue the fact even if he wanted to. Whether he agreed with Hansen, on the other hand … well, that was another story altogether. “So, you want us to chase down whatever is on Torval that received the transmission?” Shawn asked Hansen.

  “Not in so many words. I’ve already taken the liberty of dispatching a special forces team to the planet. Their job is to secure the installation we believed was the recipient of the transmission Santorum sent out. Your assignment is to link up with them and bring back anything you can find that will help vet any of Jerry’s coconspirators.”

  “But I thought you said no one else could be trusted. Why involve another team?”

  “Because they were already near the Concordia system, Commander,” Hansen said. “It’s going to take you the better part of two days to get there, and we needed to jump on the situation without delay.”

  “Besides,” Bill Graves began, “they won’t have any facts. Their mission is to secure the installation, not analyze it.”

  “And if they scare off whoever received the transmission?” Shawn asked. “What then?”

  “The Seventh Unified Special Services team has a track record for getting the job done, Commander Kestrel, whatever the cost,” Hansen said. “If anyone gets in their way, they’ve been ordered to detain them until you arrive, but will otherwise do no harm.”