Icarus (11 page)

   “Melissa!” he called out from the floor in desperation. There was no
response.

   After a moment of silence, he could hear the telltale signs of a
struggle coming from somewhere behind him. There was the crash of something
metallic against the cold floor, then another blast, this time from the distinctive
exodisintegrator rifle. Again, the entire space momentarily lit up in blue
light, but Shawn’s eyes had become too accustomed to the dark, and the flash
nearly blinded him. He heard what sounded like a grunt, followed by a muffled
cry from Melissa and then another blast of a pistol.

   Silence reigned in the room for a terrifying moment as Shawn wiggled
about the deck. He shuffled his feet until he came to a soft form on the floor
of the compartment. It was either a duffle bag full of old laundry, or a dead
body. He lightly kicked at it, looking for a sign of life. There was none.

   He pivoted, getting to his knees and leaning in to get a closer
inspection in the darkness, but before he could make out any details the
overhead lights came on, bathing the space in the brilliant white light of the
Darus Station’s built-in halogens. Shawn whirled to face off against where the
menacing voice had come from, squinting his eyes tightly in the process in an
attempt to filter the light now assaulting them.

   At first, he could only make out an ill-defined blob standing beside
another darker form about half the first figure’s height. As his eyes became
more focused, he saw that the second shape was a man sitting in a rather
expensive-looking chair, and the figure standing beside him was Melissa,
disruptor pistol in hand and pointed directly at the seated man’s head. Still
feeling the hit he’d received to his face—and trying to figure out what had
just happened—Shawn shook his head slowly and craned his head around to see
both Ra and Ja, their bodies in various poses of agony—hopefully dead—and
sprawled out on the unforgiving floor. Melissa must have been wearing the
spectral lenses she’d demonstrated in the
Rhea
’s observation lounge.
There was no other explanation for what had just happened.

   “Cal Vross,” Melissa said with satisfaction as Shawn returned his gaze
to her unharmed body. “A pleasure to meet you.”

   Vross looked like a cobra waiting to strike. His hooded, gray eyes
were like two large silver coins. Vross’ shoulder-length, chocolate-colored
hair was fanned around his head, accentuating his overly large ears. The dark
sheen of his skin reflected the overhead lights in all the wrong places and
made his cheekbones look abnormally high. He wore a well-tailored suit, its
colors split right down the middle, blue on one side and silver on the other.
Judging by the mist of sweat covering his face, Cal Vross was obviously
nervous, but he tried poorly to hide it behind a façade of overconfidence. “And
I’m afraid I still don’t know who you are.”

   “Does it matter?” Melissa smirked. “I’m the one with the gun.”

   “Perhaps not, but you could at least be cordial before you kill me.”

   “I’d rather just get the information I need.”

   “I see,” Vross leered. “Then, I presume, you’ll kill me?”

   A cheeky smile played across her face. “I haven’t decided.”

   “And what about you,
Captain
?” Vross asked of Kestrel. “Will
you sit by while I’m murdered in cold blood?”

   Shawn turned slightly to show off the fact that his manacles were
still securely fastened. “I’m not really in a position to do anything at the
moment.” He could taste blood on the edge of his lip as he spoke.

   Melissa motioned to Shawn with a nod of her head and he stepped to her
side. She pushed the barrel of her pistol into Vross’ temple, making the point
that he should continue to remain still. Shawn turned his back to Melissa and
offered his restraints for her inspection. A second later, the cuffs were on
the floor at his feet. Rubbing some feeling back into his wrists, he turned to
Melissa to inquire how she’d managed to release him so quickly. Instead he
noticed that her eyes were trained back on Cal Vross.

   “Go get the rifle,” Melissa said with little emotion.

   Shawn stepped back from the desk and found the weapon on the floor
next to Ja’s lifeless corpse. He could see now that Ja had a hole in his tunic,
just to the right of his left hip. It didn’t look like it could have been
fatal, so Shawn kicked the body once more to check it for signs of life.
Thankfully, there were still none.

   “He’s dead, Shawn. I don’t think he’ll be bothering us anymore,”
Melissa called from across the room.

   “Are you sure?” Shawn asked, giving Ja’s body another tentative push
and making sure to stand a safe distance away.

   “Of course I am, and we don’t have time for you to continue kicking at
him. I shot him in the heart. Now pick up the exodisintegrator and get back
over here.”

   “Yes ma’am,” he cursed condescendingly under his breath, then reached
down and pried the weapon from the dead Erkelian’s hand.

   “You’re not exactly human, are you?” Vross asked Melissa.

   She pushed the gun farther into his neck. “What makes you say that?”

   “No human could have unshackled herself, killed my two best men, and
then have vaulted over here to secure me in less than thirty seconds, all in
pitch blackness.” Vross then gave Shawn a look of contempt. “And, it’s obvious
the
Captain
had nothing to do with it.”

   Shawn sauntered up to Vross, rifle slung under his shoulder. “Did you
hear the way he said ‘Captain’?” Shawn asked Melissa.

   “Yes. Very condescending,” Melissa agreed.

   Vross turned his eyes back to her. “So what are you?”

   “I’m a poor little farmer who’s lost one of her sheep.”

   “You take an awful lot of risks for some mutton.”

   Melissa raised an eyebrow. “Oh, it’s a very prime cut, I assure you.
Now, about that information?”

   “What’s in it for me?”

   “If I’m in a very good mood after you give it to me, I may be inclined
to continue sharing the air with you.”

   “I see,” Vross said, regaining some of his lost confidence. So he had
something she wanted, and she had something he wanted. As far as Vross was
concerned, this was business as usual. No matter that it cost the lives of his
two best guards. They could be replaced, and for probably fewer credits. He
leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers in his lap. As he did so,
Melissa’s sidearm fell away from his jugular. “Well, then. What can I do for a
wayward farmer?”

   Melissa looked to Shawn, and then set her eyes on a crate on the left
side of the room. Shawn took the hint and approached the six-foot-long,
military-grade container that was propped up waist-high on a table.

   “Open it,” Melissa called. “But be mindful of the content.”

   “Is it a bomb or something?” Shawn asked cautiously.

   Melissa’s eyes never left Vross. “Something like that.”

   With a flick of a single switch, the three magnetic latches securing
the lid unclasped. Shawn carefully lifted the crate’s dull gray lid. Reaching
inside, he withdrew a slightly charred but otherwise fully functional
Unified-issued pulse rifle—the same kind still issued to active Marine infantry
units. The weapon was one of twenty in the crate.

   Shawn let out a slow whistle. “Oh my, Mister Vross. I think you’ve
stepped into some deep, stinky doo-doo here.”

   Melissa eased onto the edge of Vross’ desk, her weapon still directed
at his snakelike head. “I’d ask where you got this, but you and I already know
the answer to that, don’t we Vross?”

  
C
al
Vross slowly turned his cobra-like visage to face Melissa Graves, the direction
of her weapon having moved from his face to his chest. “Perhaps you do need to
ask,” the dark-skinned man rasped.

   Melissa, still seated on the edge of his desk, leaned in and pushed
the muzzle of the blaster into his forehead, forcing his head back at an
awkward angle.

   “I’d tell her what she wants to know,” Shawn said, his highly lethal
rifle now cradled over his forearm. “She’s got a nasty temper sometimes, if you
know what I mean.”

   Vross’ gray, panicked eyes darted to Kestrel. “Get this inhuman
psychopath away from me, Captain, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

   “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Shawn sounded disappointed. 

   Melissa edged the weapon deeper into the skin of his high forehead,
sneering. “I don’t like being called names.”

   “Fine! Whatever. Just get that thing out of my face and I’ll talk.”

   Something in Melissa’s eyes was actually starting to concern Shawn.
Even with her fury at full force, she’d never burned at him with this much
repulsion. And while her methods had goaded Cal Vross into spilling his
proverbial beans, they were also striking. Shawn silently hoped he was never on
the receiving end of one of her interrogations. Just as he was about to raise a
hand to gently pull her back, Melissa lowered the weapon and leaned away from
Vross. The circular tip of the weapon had left a noticeable impression in the
man’s forehead.

   With her weapon still angled in Vross’ direction, she folded one long,
well-toned leg over the other. “To be honest, I’ve never used a gun like this
before. So you’ve got sixty seconds to explain yourself before I start pressing
buttons.”

   Cal Vross rubbed at his bruised forehead for a moment before
responding. “I got the crates from Indarax, out near the old frontier.” His
words seemed practiced.

   Melissa swiftly kicked the man’s shin, then pressed the initiator
button on the pistol. The discharge tip crackled to life, and a beam of white
hot plasma shot out and sliced the corner of Vross’ chair clean off. “One more
chance, Vross, or so help me, I will make those your last words.”

   “Fine! Fine!” he quickly stammered. “I got them from Second Earth,
okay? Is that what you want to hear?”

   “What?” Shawn sounded skeptical.

   “Keep your voice down, Mister Vross,” Melissa said coldly,
disregarding Shawn’s question. “Keep going.
Where
on Second Earth did
you get them?”

   Vross rubbed his shin briskly to lessen the bruise that was sure to
form in the next few minutes—if he lived through this encounter. “From the only
place on Second Earth you can get something like those, of course.” He nodded
to the open crate of pulse rifles.

   Shawn slowly stepped up behind Melissa and leaned over Vross’ desk.
“Delta Base?” he whispered cautiously.

   “Exactly right, Captain.”

   Shawn’s eyes darted as a dozen thoughts raced through his mind.
Throwing the exodisintegrator rifle to the floor, Shawn quickly stepped around
the desk in a move almost too quick for Melissa to catch. He reached down,
grabbed Vross by his crisp lapels, hauled him from the chair and pinned him
against the far bulkhead. “There’s nothing there! Nothing at all! Delta Base
was completely wiped out—every last trace of habitation, along with everything
else on the planet.”

   The lines of Cal Vross’ face contorted and he sneered with
unadulterated satisfaction at Shawn. “Oh, there’s lots there…if you know where
to look. First, though, you have to get past the bodies.”

   Shawn’s grip tightened and, with unrestrained rage, he lifted Vross
nearly two feet from the deck.

   “Captain,” Melissa put a gentle hand on Shawn, trying to get him to
lower Vross back down to the floor.

   Kestrel was unmoved. “There were no survivors, no functioning
technology, no habitable buildings!”

   Vross continued to look at Shawn blankly. “As you can see by those
stacked crates of
fully
functioning weapons, I’ve already proven one of
your points wrong, Captain. Would you care to try for two?”

   Shawn threw him to the floor, but kept his distance only long enough
to retrieve the exodisintegrator. He then planted a knee into Vross’ chest,
shoved the barrel of the weapon into the fallen man’s nose, and then leaned his
own face down over the slimy arms dealer. “You’d better start making sense,
little man, before I turn your head into a taco shell.” To prove his point,
Shawn pulled back the manual primer on the rifle.

   Vross could hear the exodisintegrator powering up to a slow, painful
discharge, knowing it would take about ten seconds before it got to full power.

   “Okay, okay! Yeah, there’s plenty of good technology on the planet,
and plenty of habitable space…if you don’t mind living under the stars. I don’t
think a single structure above a hundred feet has a roof on it, but most of the
buildings are still there.”

   “What about survivors?” Shawn was enraged. “Or do I start deciding
which wall to plaster with your gray matter?”

   “No-no-no survivors,” Vross stammered. “At least, none that I’ve ever
seen.”

   “How many times?” Shawn continued to disfigure Vross’ nose with the
rifle muzzle.

   “How many times w-what?”

   “How many times have you
been
there, you little weasel?”

   “T-t-twelve. No more, no less.”

   “And you’ve never seen anyone at all.”

   Vross’ voice became still. “Just…the remains. Hundreds of
them…thousands…maybe more. They’re…everywhere.”

   Not knowing if Shawn was going to make good on his threats, Melissa
stood safely away from the two men. “Then you’ve seen Crystal City?” she asked.

   “Of…of course I have. It’s right outside Delta Base. I passed over
it…ten times. On the eleventh run I came in from the other direction.”

   “And the twelfth time?” Shawn’s face showed his disdain.

   “Twelfth?”

   Shawn placed his full weight into Vross’ chest, knowing that the man’s
ribcage couldn’t hold the pressure for very long. “Yeah, the twelfth. You said
you were there twelve times, ‘
no more, no less
.’”

   “I…I don’t like to think about it.” Vross’ voice was suddenly distant.

   “Well you’d better start reconsidering your stance on that particular
statement.” Shawn disengaged the safety catch on the rifle, caring very little
that a discharge at such a close range would easily kill them both, and possibly
even Melissa as well.

   “I had to…I had to go through…the city.”

   “Meaning?” Melissa asked.

   “My skimmer was damaged. I had to…to travel on foot. The streets are
full of debris. I had to park my craft in an old hangar outside the main
citadel. I took a mag-cart with me to haul out the weapons. There were…there
were so many bodies…so many.” Vross then started sobbing uncontrollably. His
emotions and his brain were probably fighting each other for control of his
mouth.

   Melissa went to her knees beside Vross’ head. “How did you get past
the Sector Command satellite drones?”

   “My ship…has…a jamming transmitter.”

   “Uh-uh,” Shawn disagreed, shaking his head firmly. “No way. There’s no
way you can have a transmitter capable of that. Second Earth is guarded by the
most sophisticated automated defense systems the Unified Collaboration has.”

   Vross stopped his sniveling for a moment. “You’re right, Captain.
Exactly right. My jammer wouldn’t have been strong enough to go undetected. But
it didn’t matter, because the satellites weren’t there.”

   “You’re not making sense again, Vross. I thought you’d have figured
out by now how much I don’t like when that happens. My finger gets all itchy,
you see, and I feel like I want to start pulling triggers, if you catch my
drift.”

   “I can’t make it any plainer than that, Kestrel. The satellites are
not there. As in, ‘They are gone.’ Vanished. No longer present.”

   “You destroyed them?” Melissa asked skeptically.

   “Of course not. That would have instantly alerted Sector Command.”

   “As would tampering with them,” Shawn agreed. “So what did you do with
them?”

   “Nothing,” Vross cried. “Nothing! They simply aren’t there. I don’t
know where they went. There was no debris. And if anyone stole them, there was
no residual ion trail.”

   Filing those facts away for future reference, Melissa reached out a
hand and grabbed Vross’ chin, forcing his head to the side and directing his
unblinking gaze at her. “What did you see when you went to Delta? Tell me about
Delta Base.” She tried to keep her voice as calm as possible, her OSI interrogation
training telling her that his mind could quickly splinter in its current state.

   “I saw…I saw things. Many things. Horrible things…horrible things
everywhere.”

   “More bodies?” Shawn asked.

   “Yes, lots more…almost a whole city’s worth.” Vross began sobbing
again. “If Hell is a real place, then Second Earth is it. A dead world.” He
repeated his final phrase several times, each once becoming less intelligible
due to his weeping.

   Shawn shot Melissa a glare. “Delta Base had a normal complement of about
three hundred, most of them scientists. That means the people in Crystal City
must have known…
something
. Why else would they have flocked toward the
base?”

   “What do you mean?”

   “If the civilians knew the Kafarans were orbiting the planet, they would’ve
gone to the base for shelter. It was the most fortified place on the planet.”

   She looked at him dubiously. “But that assumes the people knew they
were about to be attacked, and all the official reports—”

   “—say the attack was a complete and total surprise to them,” Shawn
finished. “The civilians purportedly never had a chance to get to shelter.”

   “No chance…no…no chance.” Vross blathered.

   Shawn turned his attention back to the howling wreck of a man. “What
are you babbling about? What do you mean ‘no chance,’ Vross?”

   “Delta…D…Delta. At Delta.”

   “What about it?”

   “It was there…
at
Delta. It was always there.”

   The way he said it gave both Shawn and Melissa pause. “What was there,
Cal?” Melissa asked sternly. “What was there at Delta Base?”

   In a moment of clarity, Vross stopped shaking and turned his
near-pupil-less eyes to Melissa. It was an expression she hoped she’d never see
again, and it chilled her to her very core. His eyes were wild, and sweat
poured off his forehead. “The…the beginning…of the end.”

   “He’s just spouting gibberish at this point,” Shawn said sideways to
Melissa. “We all know the end of the war started at Delta.”

   Vross could only laugh. “You don’t know
anything
, Captain.
Neither of you do. If you go there, you won’t come back. No one ever has.”

   Shawn leaned in closer to Vross’ face than Melissa would have been
comfortable with. “You did.”

   “No, Captain. Not…all of me did. I left a part of myself there;
everyone who goes there leaves a part of themselves there. That’s why most
never come back. If you go—if you stay longer than only a few hours—you’ll
change. If you do come back, you won’t be…the same.”

   “What’s he talking about?” Shawn asked Melissa. “What does he mean by
‘everyone’?”

   She shook her head slightly in confusion. “I don’t know. No one has
reportedly ever gotten close enough to Second Earth to get readings about the
surface. Before Intelligence stumbled onto this little man, the majority of the
reports were centered on atmospheric readings, and they stated that the air was
entirely unbreathable, poisonous to all life forms.”

   Shawn let out a sigh, then turned back to Vross. “Shows how much the
OSI knows. Look at this guy. He might be half-crazy, but he made it there and
back.”

   Melissa gave no sign of whether or not she could agree with Shawn’s
statement.

   “What else do you need from him?” Shawn said, slightly lessening the
pressure on Cal Vross’ chest.

   She withdrew a small scanner from her pouch and waved it over Vross’
body from head to toe, storing the information for later retrieval. “He’s given
us everything we need. I just…had to be sure.”

   Something in her tone told Shawn that although Vross had provided her
what she’d wanted, it hadn’t sat well with her at all. “About the planet?”

   “Yeah,” she replied with a slow nod. “What should we do with him?”

   Shawn turned back to Vross, his face contorting into a crooked smirk.

* * *

   Trent was tossing an old football into the air when Shawn and Melissa
arrived back at the makeshift hangar. When he caught sight of the duo, he
tossed the ball into the cargo hold of
Sylvia’s Delight
as they
approached.

   “Everything all set?” Shawn asked, sounding far more tired than when
he’d last seen his ship.

   “Yeah, Skipper. The supplies are in and everything’s ready.”

   Shawn eyed the four stacked pallets inside
D
’s belly. “Did you
have any problems?”

   “Not really. Security came down and checked everything out, asked me a
few questions, that sort of thing.”

   “But no problems?”

   “Well, there was a severe lack of dancing girls, and the food in this
place sucks, so I don’t think I’ll be giving them a good review in the near
future.” Trent then kicked at a broken pallet on the floor. “And the
furnishings could use a little updating.”

   Shawn gave him a look that told Trent he wasn’t in a very jovial mood.

   “You mean did they find anything?” the mechanic offered with slightly
more tact.

   Shawn dipped his head, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “Yes. Did they
find anything?”