Second Earth (6 page)

  
“Is it…is it what I
think it is, sir?”

  
Krif nodded
solemnly and raised his eyes to the technician. Krif saw him now, perhaps for
the first time since the young man had walked up to him. “I’m afraid so, son.”

  
“The
Valley Forge
?” Fredericks whispered in
disbelief.

  
Richard nodded
again. “It’s probably the whole fleet, with the exception of the
Icarus
. There are enough identifiable
fragments in the debris to positively ascertain that at least the carrier and
one of the destroyers were here.”

  
The other man
looked stunned. He turned back to the main status screen at the front of CIC,
and the image of Second Earth that took up the majority of the display. “All
those people…just…gone?”

  
Krif looked at the
younger man. “Try not to think about it, Fredericks.”

  
Fredericks turned
and nodded curtly. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. It’s just that—”

  
Krif let a thin
smile cross his lips as he reached out and placed a hand on the specialist’s
shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll get the sorry sons o’ bitches that did this. I
promise you that.”

  
This time
Fredericks didn’t try to mask his anger over the death of all those service men
and women. He gave Krif a picture-perfect practiced salute. “Yes, sir. I know
we will.”

  
Richard was proud
of his people and their professionalism. There was no way in hell he’d let them
fall to the same fate as the
Valley Forge
.
“Good work on preparing this report. Now, get over to the sensor operations
console and keep an eye on the short-range sensors, mister Fredericks.”

  
The tech sergeant
narrowed his eyes at the captain’s remark. “Sir, begging your pardon, but
Lieutenant Stover has the sensor watch right now.”

  
Not used to his
orders being questioned, Krif nonetheless let the remark pass without one of
his usual heated rebuttals. He placed his hands to his hips and leveled his
eyes at the young man. “Are you saying you’re not qualified, specialist?”

  
Fredericks snapped
back to attention. “No, sir. I’m not suggesting that at all. It’s
just…well…he’s an officer, sir. I’m not allowed to relieve him, per Sector
Command Regulation 6.”

  
“Point of fact:
Stover is one of the most incompetent officers on this ship. If his daddy
wasn’t an admiral, and his mommy on the Unified Council, he’d be down cleaning
the waste tanks with his toothbrush. So, for the foreseeable future, I’m
suspending Regulation 6. I want someone I can trust on those sensors in case we
get into trouble. Do you think you can handle that, Specialist First Class
Fredericks?”

  
There was no
masking the wide smile that stretched across the man’s face. “Yes, sir!”

  
“Then, by all
means, go and relieve the Lieutenant under my direct orders. If he has a
problem with it—in fact, even if he
doesn’t
have a problem with it—send him to me. Man that post until either I or
executive officer Ashdoe sends someone to relieve you personally.”

  
Fredericks snapped
Krif another salute. “Yes, sir.”

* * *

  
With Sergeant Adams
in the lead, the administration building at Addison Field had been relatively
easy to locate. The cracked and worn concrete façade had definitely seen better
days. The two dozen windows that decorated it had all been broken out, and the
sign above the main entrance had been blown completely free and was lying in a
heap nearby. On Shawn’s order, Adams was to make a cursory examination of the
office. Five minutes after Adams had entered the building, he stepped back
through the battered opening and gave the all-clear for the rest of the team to
enter.

  
Save for two
overturned file cabinets, the main lobby was fairly intact. It wasn’t until the
six had traversed the first set of stairs to the administrative offices that
the real chaos was apparent. Paperwork had been thrown everywhere and binders
had been flung off the shelves with abandon. Desk and filing cabinet drawers
hung half-open, as if their last users were in too big a rush to close them
once they were emptied. There was a slight draft blowing in through the
decimated windows, and the fluttering papers held the familiar sounds of leaves
rustling in an autumn breeze.

  
Adams and Montoya
were ordered to scout any additional floors in the building that might be
accessible, while Raven investigated an office next to the one Shawn and
Melissa were inspecting.

  
Melissa was in the
far corner of the square-shaped office, moving aside a chair that had been
turned over and was blocking a worn computer terminal. After dusting off the
seat cushion, she sat down and attempted to access the terminal. She plugged a
small, portable power supply into the terminal’s emergency power port and the
computer hummed to life. Shawn, standing by the window and enjoying the cool
breeze, was surprised to hear the computer power up.

  
“That sounds like a
good sign,” he said as he stepped up behind her.

  
“We’ll see about
that.” Melissa watched as the machine went through its automated boot process,
loaded its firmware, and then displayed the command logo of Delta Base. It was
a simple white circle, surround by thin blue piping, with a red triangle in its
center. The words ‘Addison Field Supply’ were imprinted around the three sides
of the triangle, with the Unified Sector Command logo in its center. She began
inputting commands into the computer, but was almost immediately confronted
with a passcode screen.

  
“I don’t suppose
you have a logon for this terminal?” Shawn chuckled.

  
“I would if it were
still connected to the rest of the Unified government’s mainframe,” she said
with an air of frustration. “I’ll just have to crack into it.”

  
“That’s not exactly
legal, you know.”

  
“Really?” she asked
with a mischievous smile.

  
“Yeah,
really
. It happens to violates three
codes of the UCS Statute of Officer Ethics.”

  
She smiled as she
began rummaging through her pockets. “Four, actually. I’m surprised you’re that
versed in UCS law, Mister Kestrel.”

  
Shawn watched as
she searched each of the half-dozen pockets of her dark gray flight suit. “I
took on a few classes when I was in the academy. Besides, I’ve had my nose
buried in books for the last few weeks. I was bound to pick up something.”

  
Melissa smiled.
“I’ll bet that would have made your dad proud,” she said as she finally found
what she was looking for. “He was a lawyer, right?”

  
Shawn narrowed his
eyes at her, then stepped back from her chair. “I don’t recall telling you
about him.”

  
She pursed her lips
and silently kicked herself for her blunder.

  
When she remained
silent, Shawn folded his hands across his chest, and his voice carried a note
of irritation as he spoke. “I thought you said you’d never read my file.”

  
“I did some minor
research on you before I came to see you on Minos. I
was
an analyst in the OSI for nearly two years, you know.”

  
“But you said my
files were sealed.”

  
“That was true,
most of them were. I was, however, able to acquire your academy transcripts as
well as your entrance questionnaire.”

  
“I see,” he replied
dubiously. “So you’re saying you still haven’t looked at my actual file?”

  
Melissa examined
the small, gloss-black object in her hand. She shook her head slowly as she
flipped a slide switch on the device. “No, not yet,” she said as she pointed
the device at the computer screen. “I told you, it’s about trust, Shawn.” The
display went blank momentarily, then popped back to life displaying a garbled
string of characters. “I hope you’re not mad at me.”

  
Shawn sighed, then
stepped back behind her chair. He had to admit that he appreciated her honesty.
“No, I guess not. It’s just transcripts.”

  
The corner of her
mouth raised in a half smile as she continued to adjust the small device in her
hand. “So, since we’re on the subject, I noticed that you were…quite the
student.”

  
“Oh, really?” he
replied cautiously. “What in my records gave you that impression?”

  
She cocked her head
slightly, this time smiling with both sides of her mouth as she watched the
computer begin to respond to her device. “You had high marks in astronomy,
astrogation,
and
astronautics. It’s
not easy to master ‘The Three As’ before your senior year.”

  
Shawn hadn’t heard
the Three-As reference since he was a cadet. The resurfaced memory brought a
grin to his face. “It wasn’t easy. What about you?”

  
Melissa licked her
lips as she continued to monitor the computer. “I decided to take astrophysics
instead of astronautics.”

  
“How did you do?”

  
She laughed
lightly. “Poorly, if it makes you feel any better.”

  
“Depends on what
you consider ‘poorly,’ Miss Graves.”

  
“Let’s just say I
passed by the skin of my teeth and we’ll leave it at that.”

  
“So, what
did
you do well in?”

  
With a twist of the
dial on the bottom of the small black device, the garbled characters on the
computer screen came into focus. Melissa smiled with deep satisfaction. “Computer
operations.”

  
“What is that thing
you’re doing?” Shawn asked as he leaned closely over her shoulder. Even through
the scent of misuse in the office, he could easily discern her jasmine perfume.
Melissa held the small device up for his inspection. He regarded the glossy
casing of the object. “It looks like a lipstick case.”

  
She smiled. “It
wouldn’t do these lips any good. It’s an information system cryptographic
decoder. It has a small, high-frequency transmitter built into the tip. I just
turn it on, point it at the computer I want to gain access to, and this little
baby makes the computer do the hard work for me.”

  
Shawn was
intrigued. “How?”

  
“Well, I won’t bore
you with the details, but suffice it to say that the computer keeps the
passwords inside its own database. This device tells the computer to simply
erase that sequence of letters, numbers, biometrics, or whatever and replaces
it with a digitally signed copy that the terminal simply skips over the next
time it starts up.”

  
“Again, highly
illegal,” he snorted.

  
“Yes, but also
highly effective.” She motioned to the computer screen with her hand. “And, as
you can see, we now have full access to this terminal. In fact, we should have
the highest access available to this computer.” She began inputting commands,
and the computer responded as if the two were composing a piece of music. While
Shawn knew his way around systems like this, he was in silent reverence of the
way she was able to extract and manipulate the data with little to no effort on
her part. “I think I can get the image emitter online.”

  
“What for?” Shawn
asked.

  
She narrowed her
eyes as she scanned a particular directory on the computer. “I’ve found
something…odd.”

  
“About what was in
that empty hangar?”

  
“Not exactly.” She
touched a schematic diagram on the screen, dragged it to another portion of the
display, and then input a string of commands into the device. “Let me show
you.” She got up from the chair and removed a small fragment of a ceiling tile that
had fallen to cover the computer terminal’s built-in holographic emitter.
Standard issue on all military terminals for the last ten years, the emitter
would project a perfect three-dimensional image of whatever was called up on
the screen. The image could also be fully manipulated by anyone who stretched
his hands into the holographic model.

  
Seconds later the
projector came to life, a topographical image of the base in its current state
of disrepair springing into view. Melissa inputted another series of commands
into the terminal, and a yellow triangle appeared over a building near the
center of the base. “This is where we are now. And this is where we need to
go.” Another triangle materialized on the screen, this time directly over a
collapsed pile of rubble.