Wings of Steele - Flight of Freedom (Book2) (8 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

FREEDOM, KLINGHOFFER:
SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND

Eyes closed, head bowed, the soothing sound and feeling of the hot spray raining down across his neck and back was only interrupted by the muted intermittent
zwump-zwump
of the Freedom's main guns pounding on the Oceania. A couple swallows sitting warmly in his stomach, the partially drained snifter of Diterian brandy was calling his name from the edge of the sink. If he could figure out how to drink it in the shower without diluting the precious liquid, he probably would. He leaned against the opposite wall so the water could undo the tension in his muscles, as he mentally reviewed the events on the ore ship.
Could they have done something different? hell, he wasn't sure what even happened, much less went wrong...
He hoped the surviving Marine that his team had rescued from the bridge, would be able to shed some light on what happened up there when he came out of his induced coma.
But would he even remember anything?

The dark, cloaked and hooded figure sipped his own snifter of Diterian brandy standing against the wall in the steamy room, reading the Captain's thoughts and emotions. “It is what it is Jack.
Let it go...”

Recoiling in surprise, Jack Steele bounced off the side wall of the shower, sliding and catching himself on the grab-rail.
“Shit! Voorlak?”
He leaned against the side wall, clutching the rail, oblivious to his own nudity,
“Dammit
old man, we need to put a bell around your neck or something... you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“
Not likely...”

Jack took the robe handed him by the old man and turned off the water, wrapping himself up in the soft, bulky garment before stepping out of the shower. He picked up his snifter off the sink and drew in a long swallow, letting the warm liquid slide down his throat. “So, to what do we owe this visit...?” They stepped into the salon area of the suite where the light was more subdued, he knew Voorlak's two-thousand year old eyes preferred the dark.

The Ancient pulled the hood of his cloak back to reveal his lined face and shock of silver-gray hair, “Well, we hadn't chatted in a while and I thought I'd stop in and say hello... the ship is looking good, full crew, new equipment...”

Jack plopped down on the sofa, ran his fingers through his wet hair and sipped his brandy. He smirked a crooked smile, “You are
sooo
bad at small talk.”

Voorlak nodded, chuckling, “You'd think by my age I would've gotten a little better at it, huh?”

Jack leaned back, smiling weakly, “Yeah, you'd think so.” He drained the last of the brandy from his snifter. “So you're really here because...”

“
You were dealing with a lot of darkness on that ship - I wanted to be sure you were OK. So, are you OK?”

“
When you say darkness, are we speaking literally, figuratively, or philosophically?” He stood up and padded barefoot over to the bar to refill his snifter with brandy. The warm golden-red liquid burbled thickly into the glass. Without asking, he reached over and added some to the old man's snifter as well. “Because I've had a pretty shitty day and honestly, I'm a bit drunk...” he turned and headed back to the sofa, “and I have absolutely no idea where I was going with this line of questioning...”

“
Darkness - as in
evil,
” offered the old man.

“
Oh,
that.
Yeah, I knew that,” Jack shrugged, “we
all
knew that... it was something you could almost taste.” He eyed the liquid in the glass as he swirled it and it clung to the sides. “So where did it come from?

“
It wasn't the ship; it was what the ship was carrying...”

“
But it was just an ore miner, what could...” Jack looked around but the old man was gone. “Dammit,
I hate
when he does that...”

“
When who does what?” Alité entered from the corridor in uniform, a platter of steaming food in her hands, the door swishing gently closed behind her.

“
The old man was here...”

She moved to the bar and spread out the food, “Voorlak was here? Awww, sorry I missed him. He could have had something to eat with us...”

“Don't mind if I do,” said The Ancient, appearing behind the bar, startling them both.

“
I swear to God,” said Jack wiping spilled brandy off his hand, “I'm getting you a bell.”

■ ■ ■

“How's he doing Doc?”

CABL M7, looked up from his e-Pad at the Marine standing in the doorway of the infirmary, “Come in Sergeant, your boy's stable, but he'll be out for a few days.” He put the e-Pad down, “What really happened over there?”

Gunnery Sergeant Dayle Alaroot just shook his head, “I was there and I
still
don't know... it was like the ship was intentionally trying to kill us.” He rubbed his forehead, “I've been in the Corps for six and a half years and I've never seen anything like it, we kept seeing phantom shadows...”

“
Visual anomalies...?”

“
Yeah we thought that at first, but when we were
all
seeing them it got pretty hard to disregard them. Then there were the sounds...”

“
Sounds? What kind of sounds?”

“
Once we got the gennys running, the Lieutenant restored the gravity and air systems from the bridge... as the atmosphere built up we started hearing groaning, bits and pieces of voices... then the heartbeat...”

CABL M7 thumbed over at the comatose Marine in the next room, “He kept repeating something about heartbeat when he was brought in, we didn't know what he was talking about. We thought he was worried about his own heartbeat...”

“Yeah, all through the ship, even the pilots in the shuttle could hear it,” he shook his head, “I don't know about the other guys, but it made my fucking blood run cold...”

CABL M7's mostly human face, twisted into an odd look of contemplation.

“
What's that look, Doc?”

“
Hmm... I'm just thinking about group hallucination or some form of mass hysteria,” he held up a hand, “no offense Sergeant - but brought on by stress and possibly high EM levels or something along that nature, it's possible.”

“
You're fishing Doc. We're Marines, we're not that deep. We see things, we kill things,” he ran his hand across the short ruddy scrub brush that was his hair. “Besides I've never heard of that happening with separate, isolated groups...”

CABLE M7 raised one eyebrow, surprised at the Sergeant's knowledge, “I thought you said you weren't deep...”

Dayle Alaroot shrugged, “I'm not, but I didn't say I couldn't read,” he retorted, flashing a Cheshire Cat grin.

■ ■ ■

Jack Steele met the Admiral at the foot of the ramp of his shuttle and saluted, “Welcome aboard the Freedom, Admiral.”

Kelarez returned the salute and moved to shake Jack's hand, “good to see you Jack, is Gantarro here yet?”

“Yes sir,” they began walking across the flight bay toward the briefing room at the base of the tower. “I think you'll find this digital footage quite interesting. The senior pilots will be attending as well, in case you have any questions...”

“
So what happened aboard the Oceania, Jack?”

“
Well, I've prepared a complete report...”

The Admiral stopped walking, “I'll read the report, but plain language, what the hellion happened?”

Steele took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair, “Absolute insanity that defies explanation, Vince...” walking slowly, he continued, explaining the events as they unfolded, leaving nothing out.

The Admiral nodded, “Do you believe in ghosts, Jack?”

They paused just outside the doorway of the briefing room, “I've seen too many things in my life that aren't explainable, to arrogantly disregard the possibility...”

Kelarez grinned crookedly, “That's a really long evasive way of not answering the question...” He waved his hand expressively, “With ships they're generally referred to as phantoms or wraiths and although I've never heard of them taking over a ship, I suppose it's not impossible - they can prove to be quite a nuisance. Although, I wonder where they originated...?”

“They didn't come from the ship,” said Jack mechanically, remembering what Voorlak had said, “They had something to do with what she was carrying...”
The ore..? But how could that be?

Admiral Kelarez scratched his forehead in thought. “Ore?” He shrugged, “I don't see how...” he shook his head, “never mind, we'll come back to this later, let's see that video footage.”

Already seen by the senior pilots, Steele and his command staff numerous times, Admiral Kelarez and Captain Gantarro watched with fresh eyes as the digital recording played back on the briefing room's big screen. When it was over, the room stayed quiet for a moment. “Play it again,” ordered the Admiral. They watched intently as the two pirate destroyers turned to port in unison, one positioned higher than the other, offering a broadside view of both to the approaching fighters. Neither fired, though gun turret motions could be seen on both ships. A nebulous, translucent sphere of color grew about mid stern, first on one ship then the other. Lacy tendrils reached out from the shifting spheres, enveloping each ship, creating a spider web of color that looked almost liquid, swelling to obscure the view of the ship and collapsing. When it collapsed, the ship was gone - both ships disappeared in about thirty seconds, almost in unison.

Jack arose from his seat, turned and stood facing the group. “Admiral, before I had a chance to see the video, by description I thought perhaps we were dealing with some kind of optical camouflage... scientists on Earth have developed what they call nanouflage, the ability to hide things using photo-reactive nano-plates. So I was relatively sure, being more advanced than we are, you would certainly have something like that available to you...”

“That era has come and gone Captain,” replied the Admiral, “with the advance of sensors and instruments, we don't need to see a ship, to actually
see
a ship...”

Jack folded his arms, “Then someone has built some form of shipboard jump system.” 

The Admiral pulled on his lower lip in contemplation. “Strictly off the record...”

Jack nodded, “Understood.”

The Admiral stood and borrowed the remote control from Jack, bringing the video back up and pausing the playback as the translucent sphere began to appear on the first ship. “The developers have been calling it a GOD drive. The unit on this ship is mounted right where you're seeing the anomaly start,” the Admiral pointed to the screen, his finger circling the event epicenter. “It has to be precisely calculated for the dimensions of the ship it's mounted to and the ship needs to be in motion for the unit to initiate a jump...”

“
Wait,” interrupted Jack, “a
GOD
drive?”

“
Gate On Demand,” replied the Admiral.

“
Holy shit,” groaned Paul Smiley, “this is bad.”

“
It's certainly not good Commander” continued the Admiral, “but it does have some limitations...”

“
Where can it jump to? How far?” Asked Jack.

“
Any gate within reach, or any location in normal space where you have the exact coordinates, but it still has to be within the unit's reach.”

“
What's the reach?”

“
I don't have that information, Mr. Steele... the prototype unit was lost during testing...”

“
Wait,” said Jack, interrupting, “lost as in
we've misplaced it and we can't find it,
or lost as in
someone stole it from us and we can't get it back?”

“
The second one. The company developing the system was doing test runs with their research cutter when it disappeared in...”

“
Research cutter?” Jack cut in, “It was an
unarmed science ship?
Holy crap, the level of stupidity in
that
decision has got to be off the scale on the idiot meter.”

Kelarez nodded, “I agree with you Captain, but the UFW Directorate was unwilling to take a commissioned fighting ship off the line and dedicate it
and its crew
to research duty. Available resources are an issue and they decided they couldn't spare it.”

“
Wow, my brain hurts just trying to wrap my head around that kind of thinking.” Jack leaned against the podium at the front of the room, “If you have a valuable project that can give you a technical
and
tactical advantage like this, why wouldn't you do whatever you could to protect it...?”