Henry Gallant Saga 2: Lieutenant Henry Gallant (2 page)

Outwardly the captain seemed unconcerned and it crossed Gallant’s mind that behind this man’s calm exterior, and dignified composure, was an underlying alertness conjoined with an abiding trust in his crew, such that, he felt prepared for any emergency. A methodical man, Cooper expected precision and discipline to be a natural consequence of his crew’s training. Despite being brawny and self-assured, Captain Cooper was surprisingly unassuming. Clean-shaven with well-groomed wavy black hair, square shoulders, and a ruggedly handsome face, the captain was approachable. His good-natured, loud, infectious laugh was frequently heard throughout the bridge whenever someone ventured a quick joke.

Gallant took a moment to survey the state-of-the-art bridge with its veteran crew, from among the best the fleet had to offer, especially picked for this mission. From their relaxed, casual appearance, they might have seemed slack, yet their eyes showed the keen resolve of a skilled meticulous team. They had each endured considerable privation and many challenges to reach their position.

It was natural enough to consider his career and what opportunities might await. He let his fingers touch his lieutenant bars as reassurance. They reminded him of his own struggles in the service. Fighting alien threats had been secondary to the concerns most senior officers expressed about his fitness since he had entered the Space Academy.

His reflections were interrupted when the astrogator reported, “Sir, we’re twenty light-minutes from Tau Ceti. There are five planets visible. The nearest to Tau Ceti is designated Tau-Alpha and has an orbital radius of thirty-nine million kilometers. Spectral analysis shows it’s a composite of a carbonaceous, silicate, and metal-rich rock covering a barren volcanic mantle.”

The planet’s radio-telescope image offered Gallant interesting views.

“No moons,” commented the senior chief, distracted from his conversation with the captain. Chief Benjamin Howard was a highly decorated veteran. His uniform’s well-creased trousers and mirror-glossed shoes reflected his pride of service while his significant physical musculature belied his thinning gray hair.

“The second planet, designated Tau-Beta, has a 121 million kilometer orbit. It’s a warm-water planet, Earth-type in size and character, sir,” continued the astrogator.

“With one large moon,” contributed Chief Howard.

“Very well,” acknowledged Gallant, his curiosity roused.

“The next two planets are gas giants with no moons. There is a small asteroid field followed by the last planet with a 311 million kilometer orbit. It’s a gas giant composed of hydrogen and helium with numerous volcanic methane moons, sir.”

At last, Captain Cooper stirred and moved to the astrogator’s station to examine the findings.

The semicircular bridge’s efficient layout with the captain’s chair in the center allowed for numerous AI and virtual screen resources. The entire bridge was buzzing with watch personnel conducting analyses, but everyone moved aside when the captain moved.

A variety of different active and passive sensor arrays supplied real-time data to supplement known astrophysics stats, which together plotted the planets’ orbits and looked for any contacts to compute their course and speed. The sensing equipment included seven different types of active radars and four passive telescopes as part of operations. Every contact tracked had a specific emission signature they could identify. The spectrum of the
Intrepid’s
emissions, electromagnetic, Fermion, and dark matter, on the other hand, was strictly controlled to prevent others from detecting and tracking them.

Gallant leaned toward the captain and quietly suggested, “I recommend we investigate the Earth-type planet, sir.”

The captain nodded and said, “Agreed. Officer of the Deck set course for Tau-Beta.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” acknowledged Gallant and soon the fusion engines reached their top speed of 0.002c. He calculated their flight path and reported, “We’ll reach Tau-Beta in about one hundred hours, sir.”

“Very well. I think I’d like to deploy a probe to investigate the moons of the last gas giant.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Gallant touched a few tabs on the virtual control screen sliding open the massive drone hanger hatch in the midsection of the ship. He called up the AI settings for plot control and touched the destination spot on the screen while adjusting the final coordinates. He looked at the captain. At his nod, Gallant pressed the Launch tab. Deep Space Probe 16 left the
Intrepid
and the eighteen-meter-long-projectile journeyed toward the largest moon around the fifth planet.

“Probe away, sir. It’ll be a week before it begins transmitting.”

The captain didn’t respond, but Gallant could guess what he was thinking . . .

Tau-Beta—an Earth-type planet?

Clang!
Clang. clang . . .

The footsteps were fading away, allowing Gallant to exhale in relief.

Ever since he had started running, he had been operating on raw nerves and guesswork. Now with the medication taking effect, his natural mental and physical toughness began to return.

The enemy was an aggressive predator, but Gallant didn’t intend to be a passive prey. What he needed was a way to fight instead of run. He didn’t know how knowledgeable his opponents were about his ship, but he would need to adapt to stay alive and possibly help retake the ship.

With the AI and comm down, how can I contact the captain?

The captain would rally the crew around the bridge, so Gallant started walking on his still unsteady legs. Ideas flew through his mind while he tried to ignore the raw emotions tugging at him.

I can still fight. I know every bolt and duct in this ship. I’ll find a way to buy time for the others.

After a few minutes, he reached a point where several corridors and decks converged into a funnel-like passageway approaching the bridge.

This spot is defensible, he thought. I might be able to hold them here, at least for a while.

He found a weapons locker and pulled out a plasma rifle and several grenades. Abruptly he stopped to reassess his opponents. They were well-trained warriors in battle armor with plasma blasters, as well as AI assisted sensor equipment. Even in the pitch-black of the ship’s interior, they could track him using thermal imaging. If he fought using conventional weapons and tactics, he could expect to pick-off two or three in a firefight before they killed and bypassed him. He decided to fight asymmetrically.

He evaluated his assets: hand-to-hand combat skills, superior knowledge of the ship, and fighting in an oxygen environment against methane-breathers in environmental suits.

If I could mask my thermal image, I could become a stealth fighter,
he considered.
I could pick them off one at a time before they knew they were in danger.

He hesitated only a few seconds before adapting the risky strategy.

Taking a deep breath, he pulled a hose from the bulkhead and covered himself with cold lube oil to disguise his thermal signature. Then he picked up a crowbar and a titanium blade knife.

He hid behind the twisted door of an equipment panel and waited. He was ready.

Someone’s coming.

He timed his attack and threw a metal bolt across the room to let it strike against the metal bulkhead. The twang drew the attention of a pair of aliens entering the compartment. He stood up, moved quickly behind them, and with cat-like reflexes struck.

Whack! Whack!

The crowbar was sufficient to break the tubing to their methane-feed breathing apparatus. As they struggled to get their breath, he inserted his deadly knife into what he hoped was a vulnerable seal around their armor plating and completely cut open the breathing apparatuses, one after the other. Both aliens were dead in a minute. Not a shot was fired; no noise was made.

Looking down at their lifeless bodies, Gallant felt a moment’s hesitation. He’d killed before; it was never easy—never solely about right or wrong—just necessary.

For a second, he imagined the aliens standing over his dead body.
Would they hesitate?

The escaping methane gas caused him to gag and interrupted his introspection. Dragging the bodies to a storage locker, he placed them inside and shut the cover. With this act, he banished any misgivings.

The hunted is now the hunter.

He waited once more.

After several more minutes, two more aliens were similarly dispatched.

With his confidence growing, he decided to become more aggressive. Expecting all live crewmates to be with the captain on the bridge, he set a series of trip wires attached to grenades at key access points in the Operations compartment. Then he left the section and entered the engineering spaces. He found half a dozen aliens gathered nearby and quickly tossed several grenades into their midst which exploded destructively. However, the blast concussion knocked him down.

Quickly recovering, he got up and continued his breakneck ride through the deadliest battle he had ever fought. He fired his plasma rifle at the wounded aliens and tossed another grenade. The noise was thunderous and the flash of light gave him a chance to see down the corridor and get his bearings. His sense of smell detected the acid fumes rising from the explosives followed by smoke. Looking away, he sprawled across the deck and crawled back to the operations compartment. Losing himself in the smoke and confusion, he retreated to his hiding spot at the passageway junction and listened to the turmoil he had caused.

To add to the chaos, several trip wires went off. Blast followed blast across the nightmarish metal landscape. He was satisfied he had disrupted the boarding party’s advance. Possibly he had given the captain enough time to organize the bridge’s defense.

Again he waited.

After a few moments of agreeable respite, he was beginning to enjoy a glimmer of optimism when . . .

Why has everything gotten so quiet!

EARLIER IN THE DAY . . .

Gallant stood in the entrance to the wardroom where half dozen officers congregated around the dinner table. From the variety of their comportment—good-natured bantering, rapt debate, disgruntled complaining—they could have been young businessmen casually relaxing after a hard day’s work, yet the subtle tension of their body language suggested they were concealing a shared disquiet. Noting the absence of the captain, Gallant tried to further assess the tenor of the room, but his fellow officers’ temperaments were distorted by the executive officer’s presence. Such was his insight—garnered over the course of their interstellar journey, wherein he contrasted the inspiration of their amenable captain against the repression of their perfectionist XO, Anton Neumann.

Lieutenant Commander Anton Neumann let his perfectly even white teeth sink into a succulent piece of filet mignon. He chewed the morsel thoroughly before fixing his strangely penetrating blue eyes on Henry Gallant. For a brief moment their gaze met and exchanged a measure of their intense dislike.

“You’re late,” Neumann said mildly with a questioning nuance.

“My apologies,” Gallant replied formally. “Number two reactor’s criticality safety rods required recalibration.” He selected the seat at the foot of the table—the farthest from Neumann.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Gallant?” asked Neumann. He paused, waiting for a reply, and then added, “I trust you completed the realignment protocol.”

“No, sir, no problem, and yes, I completed the protocol realignment according to standard procedure,” said Gallant. While Neumann was strict about protocol and performance, he couldn’t be called a martinet; still Gallant resented being questioned by the XO in front of his peers.

“Very good,” concluded Neumann.

The son of a rich and powerful asteroid-mining magnate, Neumann had enjoyed a life of privilege, growing up poised and self-assured. “Winners always win,” was his favorite saying, and, having inherited his father’s ruthless competitiveness, he seemed to epitomize it. Tall with a powerful physique, jet black hair, and cold blue eyes, he was strikingly handsome. When he chose to, he could display a dazzling smile. He looked every inch the “winner” he professed to be. He had even represented the Space Academy in the 2166 Solar System Olympics where he had won two gold medals in track and field events, which were prominently displayed in his quarters. A product of advanced genetic engineering, he was, in every way, the prototypical example of Earth’s evolutionary aspirations.

In contrast, Gallant was born without genetic engineering, and, as an orphan, he had to struggle above his family’s poor circumstances to reach his current rank and position. Ironically, the lack of opportunity which had deprived him of the advantages of genetic engineering had resulted in his emerging with unique mental abilities—the result of a natural selection mutation. His goal of being the engineer on the first FTL spacecraft was the culmination of all his endeavors. Now that he had achieved the desired position, serving under Neumann cast a pall on it.

The two men had first met several years earlier, both as midshipmen aboard the battle cruiser
Repulse.
Both were fighter pilots with exceptional records, and, after a while, they had developed a healthy respect for each other. However, their rivalry intensified when they each began wooing the same young woman, Kelsey Mitchel.

Gallant served two years at the Space Academy on Mars, before traveling to Jupiter for a two-year deployment on the battle cruiser Repulse. Attractive brunette Kelsey Mitchel was assigned as the navigator on his fighter. They served together through many hazardous missions, and, as their relationship thrived, Gallant took it for granted she would eventually choose to marry him. That she made a different choice surprised and disheartened him—she agreed to marry Neumann when he returned to Earth after this voyage.

Given what Neumann had to offer, Gallant never blamed her. Rather he harbored an abiding spite toward Neumann, who Gallant suspected merely pursued Kelsey as a prized conquest.