Second Earth (25 page)

  
He leaned in close,
smelling the enticing jasmine perfume, and lowered his voice. “Well, if you’ve
taken a peek out the window lately, you’ll know that we’ve got a little problem
out there; a trio of Kafaran warships just popped in, and I don’t think it’s a
social call.”

  
“I know that,” she
snapped at his condescending tone. “What I don’t know is why you’re going out
again.”

  
Shawn sighed.
“Honestly, honey, your guess is as good as mine. I’m not sure what Krif expects
me to do out there.” He turned to a small view port on the starboard wall, and
glanced out to the dangerously close Kafaran destroyer in his field of view. “I
don’t think I can pull a rabbit out of my hat on this one.”

  
“Which is why
Captain Krif has ordered a retreat,” she said emphatically.

  
Shawn nodded
slowly. “Yep.”

  
“However, I have
no
intention of allowing the Kafarans or
anyone else access to what could still be down on Second Earth. I’m in
operational command of this mission, and if I order Krif to stay, he will have
no choice in the matter.”

  
Shawn, wide-eyed,
jerked his head back toward her. “Okay, hands down, that is the
craziest
thing I think I’ve ever heard
you say! We can’t win against these odds, Melissa. Surely you must see that. I
hate to have to agree with Krif on
anything
,
but this time he’s spot-on. There is no reason to stay here.”

  
“I’m not about to
lose Second Earth again.”

  
“If we stay, we’ll
lose more than the planet. Besides, there’s nothing down there but crumbling
buildings and skeletons.”

  
“That’s not the
point.”

  
“Then what is?” he
asked heatedly. “Because I can’t think of one reason to remain in this sector a
second longer than is necessary to ensure we live to fight another day. Your
father wanted you to be protected, didn’t he?”

  
Melissa nodded
slowly.

  
“Then let me
protect you. Listen to me, even if it’s just this once. If we stay, we are
going to die. We will end up like those poor souls down on the planet, or
worse.” He stopped talking long enough to place his hands gently on her
shoulders. “We have to think about the safety of the thousands of people on
board the
Rhea
and the
Breckenridge
.
You
have to think about them.”

  
She licked her
lips, pondering Shawn’s words without speaking.

  
He reached up and
tenderly brushed her cheek. “I don’t want to lose you…not over this.”

  
Her eyes softened.
“They might discover more about the Epsilon-6 weapon. We can’t let that happen,
Shawn. You know that.”

  
“If they do, we’re
as good as dead, I agree. But, if they don’t, we’re going to have the same fate
if the ship stays much longer. We have to take what we’ve learned so far and
survive. Otherwise, everyone down there on Second Earth died in vain. Besides,
Corvan is where the answers are.
That’s
the planet we need to protect.”

  
One of the
maintenance technicians walked up behind Shawn, putting an abrupt end to their
conversation. “She’s already to go, sir. Pre-launch in two minutes.” The young
man quickly saluted the commander, then dashed off to another part of the
launch bay, probably to call the command center to give them the same update.

  
“We keep having to
say goodbye,” Melissa said, smiling softly.

  
What could I possibly say to her?
 
Everything
I can imagine sounds so cliché, so utterly lame.
In the end, he simply
nodded and then turned to walk back to the access ladder for his fighter. As he
reached for the first rung, he turned slowly, only to see Melissa standing
directly behind him once more. They locked eyes, and he moved to quickly
encircle her in a tight embrace, kissing her passionately in the process.

  
Returning his kiss
with equal enthusiasm, she held her arms tightly about his neck for what seemed
like an eternity. When she finally pulled away, Melissa leaned her head gently
on his chest as a solitary tear began streaking down her cheek. “Damn you,
Shawn Kestrel.”

 
In his heart, Shawn
knew that if he didn’t let her go of her now, he never would. Forcing himself,
he once again placed his hand on her shoulder as they stepped apart. He turned,
putting one hand painfully above the next until he was at the top of the
ladder. He reached for the open canopy, regarding the interior of the craft for
a moment before turning around to stare at the beautiful, auburn-haired angel
five feet away.

  
“I…” he began, but
the words caught in his throat as his mouth started working faster than his
brain. “I…I’ll be back soon.”

  
Melissa was
fighting back another wave of tears. “Promises, promises,” she said with the
most lighthearted voice she could muster, though she couldn’t help but sniffle
near the end.

  
Shawn retuned the smile
and stepped once more into the fighter. He watched Melissa through its
transparent surface as it closed and sealed itself around him. He offered her a
halfhearted salute as the fighter began to move into launch position.

  
Melissa loosely
held her hand to her lips, knowing if Shawn’s fighter didn’t depart soon, she
would surely collapse into a sobbing heap on the hangar floor.

  
Ten seconds later,
Shawn Kestrel was back out in space. A moment after that, Melissa fell to her
knees, weeping uncontrollably for the lives that had been lost, the ones that
were about to be lost, and the man for whom she’d come to care so much.

* * *

  
In the soft blue
glow of the Combat Information Center in the
Rhea
, the officers and specialists of Sector Command tried
frantically to coordinate the dozens of departments and hundreds of people
required for a vessel of this size to space jump at a moment’s notice. The crew
had trained for this, but those had only been battle simulations. Now, in the
midst of the real thing, the personnel in CIC were performing admirably, albeit
with a few difficulties.

  
Captain Krif’s gaze
moved from the organized chaos of his officers to the three-dimensional images
of the alien vessels that were now at his stern. Currently at one hundred
twenty miles, the
Rhea
was gaining
distance from both the unidentified intruder and the Kafarans, but far slower
than Krif desired. The moderate reverberations in the deck plates beneath his
feet told him the mighty engines of the supercarrier were attempting to hurl
the ship out of the enemies’ range, but the sheer bulk of the
Rhea
made that a near impossibility.

  
Fredericks, who had
been monitoring the unidentified carrier since its arrival, shouted from his
station as soon as he saw movement. “Sir, the intruder is moving off, putting
itself into a high orbit above Second Earth.”

  
Krif turned to the
holotable, scrutinizing the image as the enormous, skeleton-like vessel moved
into a position above the ice-covered northern pole of the planet. The three
Kafaran vessels, with the carrier positioned slightly behind the two
destroyers, was holding a stationary pattern near where they had jumped into
the system. They were oriented toward neither the Sector Command starships nor
the intruder carrier.
 
Krif watched as
the USCS
Breckenridge
, his only
remaining destroyer, slowly slid into a defensive position on the port-rear
quarter of the
Rhea
, and then
continued to monitor as all the capital ships slowly became equidistant from
one another, forming a huge triangle high above the scarred landscape of Second
Earth.

  
“Commander Hayes,
do you have any idea what we’re looking at?” he asked, unsure if he wanted to
know the answer.

  
“It’s impossible to
say, sir,” she responded over her shoulder. “We know very little about the
intruder or their tactics.”

  
“But we know a lot
about the Kafarans.” Krif nodded toward the holographic projection of the
bulbous, green-tinged forms of the Kafaran flotilla. “Have we ever seen
something like this before?”

  
Caitlin turned to
him and shook her head slowly. “Not that I can locate in the database, sir. The
computer has no record of this type of maneuver.”

  
“Or lack thereof,”
the captain harrumphed. “Those Kafarans are just sitting out there. I’ve never
seen anything like that from them. Besides,” he said, more to himself than to
Caitlin, “we
know
what the intruder’s
intentions are.” He looked to the projection again, watching as three small,
blue-outlined fighters swarmed slowly around the periphery of the
Rhea
. “Caitlin, who else do we have on
deck right now?”

  
“Shamrocks One,
Three, and Four are ready to launch, sir.”

  
Krif nodded. He
hoped he could avoid launching them altogether. At their present speed, they
would be able to safely make their jump in eight minutes. He only hoped their
luck would last until then.

 
All at once, his
dreams of an easy escape were dashed to pieces when Lieutenant Garcia piped up
from the secondary sensor control station. “Sir, we have movement from the
intruder!”

  
Krif balled his
fists, restraining himself from smashing them down on to the holotable’s
surface. “Specify.”

  
“Sir!” Caitlin
called out. “We have new contacts. Intruder is once again launching fighters.”

  
“Confirmed!” Garcia
said.

  
Krif watched the
holographic projections as another swarm of fighters sped out from the
intruder.

  
“Fredericks, how
many are we looking at?” Krif asked.

  
“I count
sixty-three craft, sir. Alphas, Betas, and something new. It’s smaller than the
other two, but it appears faster. The computer has registered it as a Charlie;
classification is a high-speed interceptor.”

  
“Caitlin, get the
Shamrocks into space, then order all remaining pilots to man their fighters for
immediate takeoff.”

  
“Aye, Captain.”

  
Shawn watched on
his sensors as the enemy fighters were launched from the intruder.
I knew our easy departure was too good to be
true
. He’d just received his orders from Commander Hayes, and now it was
his responsibility to order his wing mates back into combat.

  
“Commander Saltori,
I need you and Raven to form up on my wings. I don’t need to tell you what
we’re about to do, considering your sensors work just as well as mine. The
Shamrocks will be linking up with us any minute. Once they do, we’ll form the
main body of the defense until the rest of the
Rhe
a’s fighters are spaceborne. Understood?”

  
Both Lieutenant
Commander Brunel and Commander Saltori acknowledged Shawn’s signal.

  
Here we go again
, he whispered.

  
Minutes later,
Shawn’s group of fighters was five hundred miles from engaging the new wave of
enemy fighters when Commander Saltori’s image flashed above Shawn’s screen.

  
Rylani’s voice was
tinged with anxiety as he read out his latest sensor report. “Commander
Kestrel, I’m now detecting movement from the Kafaran vessels as well.”

  
Of course
, Shawn thought.
There was no way the Kafarans would sit on
the sidelines as their friends picked off the Sector Command fighters. They
want in on the action.
Still, the realization did nothing to quench the
frustration he felt over the situation. “What kind of movements?”

  
“The two Kafaran
destroyers are moving toward our position on an intercept course, picking up
speed as they go.”

  
Raven’s face came
up on the screen next to Saltori’s. “What’s the plan, Skipper?”

  
With Shawn in the
lead, all that remained of the
Rhea
’s
combat wing was behind him, a total of twenty-nine ships, most of them
fighters. Another five minutes at their present speed and they would run
headlong into three times as many enemy vessels.
Plan?
There was no plan for
this.
It was going to be every man, woman, and being for themselves, and
Shawn knew it.

 
 
Shawn opened a fleet-wide channel to every
fighter. “At my signal, we will break from formation. Fire at will at any
target of opportunity, but make sure those shots count.”

  
Caitlin’s voice cut
off Shawn’s transmission before he could say anything else that might rouse his
fellow pilots. “Kafaran destroyers are now within weapons range of your group,
Lieutenant Commander Kestrel!”

  
Shawn looked out
the portside of his canopy. The two sleek Kafaran destroyers were bearing down
on them with uncanny speed. Even at this distance, he could see the plasma
turrets along the surface of their hulls slide out from their protective
alcoves. Each vessel easily contained enough firepower to obliterate the
remainder of the
Rhea
’s forces ten
times over and still have energy to spare. It would only be a matter of time.

  
“Skipper,” It was
Raven’s voice. “There’s a wide-range transmission coming in, and you’re not
going to believe who it’s from.”

  
“Specify,” he
commanded, hoping against hope that another Sector Command capital ship had
miraculously arrived to even the odds.

  
“It’s coming from
the Kafaran ship.”

  
“Maybe they’re
trying to talk to their buddies over there,” he replied sarcastically.
“Probably telling them to get clear of the zone before they open fire.”

  
“I don’t think so,
sir.” Raven’s tone was laced with confusion.

  
“Why not?”

  
“Because they are
requesting communications with the
Rhea
.”

  
“Confirmed, sir,”
Lieutenant Clifton said to Captain Krif, who was circling the communications
station like a hawk. “We have a wide-band communication coming in from the
Kafaran carrier.”

  
The only
acknowledgement Krif gave the communications officer was a soft grunt.

  
“Should I open a
channel, sir?”

  
“Why? So they can
gloat about us being outgunned?” Krif spat acerbically. He turned when he heard
footsteps approach from his rear.

  
“And they’d be
right,” a voice said.

  
Krif was now
staring directly into the eyes of Melissa Graves.

  
“I don’t have time
for you right now, Agent Graves.”

  
She nodded
succinctly. “I’m not here to make trouble, Captain.”

  
“Good, because if
you do, I’ll just have you shot. There’s no time to have you escorted out of
CIC at this point.”

  
“What do the
Kafarans want, Captain?” she asked cautiously.

  
“Our surrender, I
imagine.” Krif turned slowly to the forward screen, which was displaying a
tactical projection of the two groups of fighters, Sector Command’s and the
ones belonging to the unidentified intruder, streaming toward one another.

  
“You mean you
haven’t responded to their request yet?”

  
“I’m weighing my
options, like any good commander would. It wouldn’t be wise to open
communications with the enemy while we barely understand their motives.”

  
Melissa went
wide-eyed and shook her head. “We don’t have time for you to play mind games
with the Kafarans, Captain. Shawn and those other pilots are out there
right
now
. They could be killed at any minute.”

  
Krif looked
casually at his watch. “Three minutes, thirty-five seconds, to be exact.”

  
She lowered her
voice to a whisper. “I think we are the only ones in danger of being destroyed
at this point, Captain. If we can open a dialogue with them, perhaps we can
keep them from blowing us out of the stars.”

  
Krif glared at her.
“Are you suggesting that you, an OSI field agent, has the knowledge or the
practical experience to tell me how to run an efficient combat operation?”

  
Melissa could tell
by the tone of his voice that he was in danger of losing his temper. She
sighed, then lowered her gaze in display of submission. “Of course not,
Captain. All I’m suggesting,
sir
, is
that a third of your pilots are dead or wounded, not to mention the fact that
every lifeform aboard one of our destroyers has apparently been wiped out. The
intruder is only moderately damaged, and now we have three Kafaran vessels
staring us down, with two of them quickly approaching the position of our
fighters. With all due respect, Captain, we don’t have anything going our way
at the moment. But we may be able to salvage something from this.”

  
Krif, deciding he
would give her thirty seconds of his humoring, folded his thick arms across his
chest. “So, what do you propose?”

  
“Let’s open a
channel with the Kafarans and see what they want. Maybe we can stall them long
enough for reinforcements to arrive.”

  
“The carrier
Duchess of York
and her battle group are
two days out at maximum speed. That means one day to get to the jump gate,
transit it, and one more day to get to our current position. We can’t stall the
enemy for that long.”

 
 
She rolled her eyes. “Do we have choice? It’s
not like we can just tuck tail and run. The intruder has enough fighters on
board that carrier to whittle our defenses down to nothing, not to mention an
unknown number of fighters that the Kafaran carrier is holding. We’ve got to do
something, and sending out our pilots to be slaughtered is not what we need
right now. Let’s buy ourselves some time.”

  
Regardless of
whether he liked it or not, Richard could see her point. “Fine. We’ll listen to
what they have to say, but let’s just get one thing straight right here and
now, okay? Since this is your idea, and since you are in operational command—as
you so often enjoy pointing out—
you
are going to be the one sticking your pretty little head out. I’m not about to
be court-martialed for opening a communications channel with the enemy in a
time of war.”

  
Melissa stepped
back, her eyes round with surprise. “Me?”

  
“Yes you.”

  
“Based on what? I’m
not a military—”

  
“You’ve had
training in negotiations and diplomacy, haven’t you?”

  
“Yes, of course I
have, but—”

  
“And advanced
interrogation skills as well, correct?”

  
“Yes. All those
things, but I—”

  
“Then you’re
perfect. Besides, if I can’t shut you up for more than five seconds, maybe you
actually
could
get the Kafarans to
talk to you for two days straight.”

  
“That’s not funny,
Captain,” she said drily.

  
Krif gave her a
sneer. “I wasn’t joking.” He then turned to Commander Hayes. “Caitlin, inform
Kestrel that we’re going to open a dialogue with the Kafarans. Then tell him to
stand by.”

  
“He’s already
standing by, sir.”

  
“Then have him
stand by again, damn it! Just make sure he’s ready for anything.”

  
“Yes, sir.”

  
“Did you get that,
Raven?” Shawn said to the video image of his first officer.

  
“I got it, but I
have no idea what they think they’ll accomplish. It’s not like the Kafarans are
known to prattle on about things. They’d just as soon use their cannons to blow
us out of the system.”

  
“I would tend to
agree.” He looked from his sensors back to Raven’s image. “We can’t hold this
position forever. Those enemy fighters are going to be on us in less than two
minutes.”

  
“Understood.”

  
On the upper CIC
deck of the
Rhea
, Krif leaned against
the railing forward of the holotable that displayed the slowly rotating,
double-boulder form of the Kafaran carrier. His gaze was locked on the forward
view screen, waiting for the show that was about to commence.

  
Melissa was
standing behind communications officer Lieutenant Clifton, trying to rub the
sweat from her palms. She had no idea what she was about to say to the Kafaran
captain—assuming that was the being she was to address. She turned nervously to
Krif, who only nodded slowly in her direction. She nodded back and licked her
lips, then placed a gentle hand on Clifton’s shoulder.

  
“Okay, Lieutenant.”
She breathed in deeply as she hovered near the communications officer’s
station. “Open the—”

  
Her request was
interrupted by a shout from Commander Hayes.

  
“Captain Krif! The
Kafaran destroyers are opening fire!”

  
Out in the void,
Shawn watched as green-white beams of energy lanced out from the bow of both
Kafaran destroyers simultaneously. As they reached out toward Shawn and the
rest of the Unified pilots, he was surprised that his last thoughts were not of
his dead wife Sylvia, but were instead focused on the beautiful Melissa Graves.
He was saddened by the fact that he would never get to hold her again, to tell
her how he actually felt. He hoped that death would come quickly to himself and
his fellow pilots. They were a good lot, every one of them. They deserved for
it to be quick.

  
As the beams
reached their position, Shawn’s cockpit was awash in the bright, globular
fireballs associated with special explosion. His Maelstrom was rocked by
multiple shockwaves, each one overlapping the one before it until he nearly
lost control of his ship.

  
Still, in the midst
of the chaos, he was amazingly still alive. As the brightness of the explosions
tapered off, he was intimately aware that his ship had miraculously gone
unscathed. Even more shocking, Raven and Saltori were still on his port and
starboard sides as if nothing had happened. He scanned the area, looking for
any sign of survivors from the rest of the carrier’s attack wing. What he saw
nearly stopped his heart.

  
As the damage
reports flooded in to the
Rhea
, there
was a high-pitched burst of static, followed by an unintelligible string of
sounds emanating from the overhead speakers. Just before the Kafarans had
opened fire, Clifton had initiated the communications channel with them.
Melissa had instinctively gone to cover her ears from the barrage of noises
coming from the audio speakers, but before her hands could reach her ears, the
pitch of the noises decreased. The voices coming out—if that was indeed what
they were—were almost gibberish. She looked down to Clifton, who only raised
his eyebrows and looked back to his station.

  
“It’s been a long
time since I’ve heard Kafaran, ma’am,” he said as he tried to adjust the
controls.

  
“Is there anything
you can do?”

  
He switched another
series of controls. “I’ll pipe it though the language banks in the computer.
Even after all this time, we still don’t know their language much better than
we did during the war.”

  
“What does that
mean, exactly?”

  
Clifton shrugged.
“I guess you could say all we have is an introductory course, and almost no
conversational skills.” He inputted the commands, feeding the audio stream
directly into the ship’s main computer core. “The ship will translate what it
can, then throw it up on the big monitor on the forward bulkhead.” He nodded to
the large screen at the forefront of the command deck.
   

  
“Sensor report
coming in now,” Lisa chimed in.

  
Seconds later, the
forward screen flashed a string of glowing white characters across the lower
half of its surface.

  
“REQUEST TRANSFER
VIDEO.” The message repeated several times before anyone spoke up.

  
“What the hell does
that mean?” Krif barked.