by Daniel Gibbs
The Shadow Wolf burned on with her standard plasma drives, as did the pirate fighters who still had enough reserve fuel to attempt an intercept. Tia glanced toward Henry and remarked, "They must think their big buddy can slow us enough that they can get back in range before their fuel runs out."
"Boy, are they going to be disappointed," Henry said. He tapped at the intercom. "Gunners can stand down for the next…"
"Thirty minutes," Piper said.
"...thirty minutes. Pieter, we're going to want the fusion drive giving that extra power boost at that time too. And someone check on Ms. Sharma. Make sure she's secure. Bridge out."
Again came the hurry-up-and-wait phase. The Shadow Wolf burned on, as if she had shot her bolt and was just trying to get away, hoping against hope to avoid an interception she couldn't. The other ship was obliging them, in fact; maneuvering itself to be ahead instead of giving them a chance to pass. Henry expected they'd do such, since they'd seen what the Shadow Wolf's fusion drives could do.
Too bad for them that wasn't the only surprise his ship was packing.
The Jalm'tar-crewed ship ahead looked almost like a shark in space, if sharks had only small stubby dorsal fins. Obvious missile launchers on the bow, along with weapon emplacements. One of them flared bright blue, creating a lance of energy that slashed at the Shadow Wolf. Cera adjusted the course just in time to cause the shot to only deliver a glancing hit to their deflectors. "Looks like a particle cannon. Starboard hit this time, cohesion holding but weakened," Tia noted.
"What's our range?"
Piper checked the instruments. "Fifteen seconds to optimal range."
"Maintain course. Return fire with plasma cannons."
That was the worst thing about their situation. They had more means than a usual ship of their type, but it required a closer punch than weapons like xasers, UV lasers (or just “vaser" sometimes – ultraviolent-wavelength lasers), particle cannons and such. In space, there was nothing to slow a shot like atmosphere did, but specific physical rules could limit ranges of weapons, be it fuel for a torpedo or missile or containment field cohesion for a particle or plasma weapon. Light-based weaponry, moving at light-speed, had the best range and accuracy, but were generally the easiest weapons for deflector systems to deal with.
The approach was tense as the enemy pirate ship fired shot after shot. Those shots struck the Shadow Wolf's deflector fields, weakening them with every hit, and bringing closer the moment when their fire could cripple. They wanted to capture, not destroy.
He, of course, did not have the same objective.
"Optimum range reached."
"Retract the cover plates," Henry ordered.
Along the bottom of the Shadow Wolf, between the holds to either side of the lower deck, was a single cylinder that was slightly larger than usual for that model of ship. Those who observed undoubtedly considered it a slight enlargement of an internal cabling trunk or ventilation shaft. But such was not true for this ship.
At the tap of a key, a signal went to machinery in the Shadow Wolf's belly. The mechanism came to life, pulling back on four plates of hull alloy to reveal the bow end of the cylinder in the ship's belly. Said end was not merely an opening, of course, and anyone closely examining it would quickly realize that it was, in fact, the barrel to an anti-ship weapon.
Not just any anti-ship weapon.
"Neutron and energy capacitors at full," reported Piper. "Target locked."
Henry's response was quick and effective. "Shoot."
A beam of white-hot blue light erupted from the revealed cannon barrel, the particular signature of a full-powered neutron cannon. A lance of concentrated neutrons slammed into the Jalm'tar pirate ship's deflectors and overwhelmed them at the point of contact. Gas and debris erupted from the wound carved into the belly of the pirate ship, soon joined by flame as the neutron cannon's beam sliced its way through the enemy's vital sections to set off life support reserve tanks, fuel, and other sensitive parts. The beam ended, and the enemy ship desperately tried to maneuver, but Piper fired another shot before it could get out of the cannon's engagement arc. Again a blue beam carved a deep wound into the pirate ship, as flame and debris flowered from it.
Were the pirate ship a proper warship, even a destroyer, it would have survived the shots, but it was none of those things. Instead, power visibly died across the hulked ship as its damaged reactors shut down to avoid a disastrous meltdown. Incoming weapons fire ceased.
"Enemy ship is dead in space," Piper confirmed, although it was evident to all present. "Orders?"
"Keep us burning straight on until we can jump," Henry said. "We're home free now."
"I bet they're steamed," Cera said. "All the way out here, they lose fighters and a ship, and we're gettin' away."
"Bet they are," Henry agreed. He smiled with satisfaction and triggered the intercom again. "By the way, you can all thank Tia's contacts and friends on Trinidad Station for us getting out of that."
He glanced over to see Tia had a satisfied grin on her face. "I can't take all of the credit," she said. "You're the one who made the call to pay for it."
"And left himself nearly broke," Piper pointed out. She smiled at Henry. "You put everything on the line to make sure we'd be safer out here. Even if it meant facing old wounds."
Henry knew what she meant. After the Laffey and his dismissal, he'd never wanted to see a fusion drive again. Instead, he'd nearly bankrupted himself installing one into his ship. "Damn my past, I've seen what they can do, and how much help they can be. So I did the right thing for the ship and the rest of you." As he spoke those words, he felt a little of the old anger come back. He didn't deny it like he usually did; he just let it burn itself out. Whatever else, he watched out for his crew. No matter what ship he was on, or the cost, the team came first.
After all, Uncle Charlie wouldn't have had it any other way.
8
Tylerville
New Virginia, Terran Coalition
5 June 2546
* * *
After a week back home, Henry felt adrift. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, it was as if he'd been left in an escape pod in interstellar space, beyond any hope of discovery. Making this worse was his realization that coming home had been a mistake, as all he'd done was bring grief and worry to his parents. That was hardly the making of a good son.
Why didn't Erhart offer me a pistol with a single charge? Why did he insist on me being alive? He supposed that Erhart might’ve been devotedly Catholic, but he didn't recall seeing a Catholic patch on his uniform.
That thought reminded him of the family rifle. It'd been missing for days. Needed cleaning, his father insisted. Henry couldn't blame them for the little white lie. It just made him feel worse, of course.
At breakfast, Mary looked at Henry and proposed they take a drive. He hadn't been home in a long time. He didn't care much for sightseeing, since he doubted Tylerville was any better off than before. But seeing the look on his mother's face, he agreed.
They departed in the family car. It was an old, refurbished aircar, a Langford Skylark '97 model. It couldn't go into air lanes like a helicar, but it did make for a smooth journey over roads. "Finally moved up from wheels?" Henry asked absent-mindedly.
"It was a gift from your Uncle Charlie," she said. "He makes good money now that he's got that big job at the Spaceport."
"But he's still got that old T-bolt, doesn't he?"
"Of course he does."
Henry went quiet again, retreating into his thoughts. This was why he missed where they were going until the aircar was halfway down the Shenandoah Pike to the mountains of the same name. He breathed a little sigh when he realized it. Of course his mother was going to do this.
He said nothing for the rest of the ninety-minute trip into the mountain roads. They drove past sights familiar from childhood, to the long winding path leading to the old family cabin. When the aircar stopped, he stepped out of the car and took in the sweet mountain ai
r. He heard the rushing water of the nearby stream, full of fresh mountain water winding its way to the creek and on to the Madison River.
The cabin was painted green with white trim. It was three times the size of their home in Tylerville, since it was built to accommodate the extended family, with a second floor to fit the extra rooms. A Terran Coalition flag fluttered from a flagpole over the front porch.
Henry felt several emotions at seeing the cabin, the place of so many happy memories. It was a reminder of happier times. Times, he felt, were beyond him now.
As they approached, the front door of the cabin opened. From it stepped a broad-shouldered man in a casual polo and jeans. Sunlight piercing the trees overhead shined off the top of his bald head, contrasting with the dark color of his skin. A smile crossed his face, with a mustache and beard freshly cut into shape. "Jim, my boy!" The man walked up and grabbed Henry to pull him into a hug. "There you are!" Charlie's voice rumbled with a strong baritone sound.
"Good to see you, Uncle Charlie," Henry managed. Despite everything, a small grin came to his face.
"It's good to have you home, Jim. And good to see you, Mary. Where's my little brother?"
"At work," she said. "He'll be up later today."
"Good. I'd hate to waste a dinner for four on three." Charlie motioned to the door with some excitement, and Henry followed.
Once they were inside, he could tell his uncle had things to say, but first, Charlie let Henry settle in. Lunch eventually came, mostly cold meat sandwiches and salad, while Charlie continued his work on the dinner. It was one of his more elaborate dishes, requiring hours of preparation. Henry volunteered to help, if only to have something to do.
It was the afternoon by the time they were done. Mary was enjoying a show on the planetary network, letting Charlie bring Henry outside to talk privately. The sun was lower in the sky now, hinting at darkness to come in just a few hours.
"Jim, you've got a lot on your mind. Anyone can see that," Charlie said, his voice and demeanor somber. "And you're scaring your parents to death with the way you look at the family rifle."
Henry nodded in acknowledgment of the point. "I should know better."
"Then why, Jim?" Charlie gave him a sad look. "Why are you acting like you're gonna take your own life?"
Having to voice that truth, and the hurt that was part of it, was not something Henry wanted to do. The sense of betrayal was too fresh, the loss too recent. He found he couldn't speak of it, even to Charlie.
Charlie responded to his silence with a nod of understanding. "I think I've already got some idea from your letters. And I've read the news," he said. "What the CDF's said about you." He turned to Henry with a stern expression on his face. For a moment, Henry readied himself for the same doubt he briefly saw on his father's face.
None came.
That realization opened the floodgates for Henry. He clenched a fist in frustration and found words for his knotted-up feelings. "Maybe I don't see a point in going on," he said, his voice full of pain and frustration. "Everything is undone! My whole life, everything I worked for, it was taken from me. Stolen by the people I trusted!" Henry's fists clenched as he fought down the thought of explaining everything, in defiance of the deal that gave him and his officers their freedom. "Uncle, you don't know what it's like, to stand there and have one of your brother officers strip you of everything, denouncing you as if you were the lowest scum in the galaxy! That's what they put me through!"
After that, Henry took a breath, but that was it. He couldn't say anything more. It all hurt too damn much.
Charlie's hand came up and settled on Henry's shoulder. "You're right, Jim. I don't know what that's like. And I don't know what happened out there, only what people are saying. But God as my witness, I know you're not capable of the things they claimed. I believe in you, Jim, and you can go to the bank with that."
It was a surprising relief to hear Charlie say those things. Henry couldn't keep the tears of gratitude from welling up, and his throat caught when he tried to speak his gratitude.
"I know you can't talk about it, even to tell me the truth, Jim," Charlie continued. "I'm not pushing. I don't need to know. I know you, Jim. I know what kind of man you are, and not a word of what they said was true. You crossed someone, someone powerful, and the powerful did as they always do when someone's in their way. I'm sorry it had to be you." He held his nephew closer as the tears still flowed. "And I won't be having you end your life, not when you've got so much more ahead of you."
The day would come that Henry would look back and know this was the moment he banished thoughts of using that old rifle on himself. It wouldn’t be evident at first, of course, but an idea arrived at from the benefit of hindsight.
For the moment, even as his words gave Henry's spirit some much-needed balm, other concerns came to mind. "I've got no future, Uncle. That's a fact. Nobody wants to hire a disgraced officer. And the pension money they let me have isn't going to last forever."
"No, it's not. But I've spoken with your parents, and I've got an idea." He grinned at Henry, and the sight of his uncle's grin was enough to make him feel just a little flicker of hope. "We'll talk later. For this weekend, let's enjoy a family outing. It's about time we welcomed you home properly."
Thomas Henry arrived as the dinner was completed, a pot roast flavored by New Virginian-grown spices to give it a kick, and a number of other side dishes. The subject of the CDF was carefully avoided in favor of local issues and family news.
Uncle Charlie remained in his room the following morning, taking his breakfast there while Henry joined his parents for breakfast, a morning walk, and a little fishing in the stream. He and his father each caught one of the fish native to the planet. All things considered, they didn't look much different from fish transplanted from Earth. With lunch planned to include the catch, they returned.
Charlie only came down when lunch was ready. When they were finished, and Henry's parents were tasked with doing dishes, he approached Henry and said, "I'd like to show you something. Mind coming out to the spaceport?"
"I've got nothing else going on," said Henry. "So, sure." He didn't need to add that a few hours in the T-Bolt were not something he'd avoid.
"Damned right." Charlie gestured toward the front of the house. "Then let's go."
They departed the cabin in Charlie's old Cantiac T-Bolt, a wheeled car running on a cheap hydrogen engine that worked better than anything thanks to Charlie's skill as a mechanic. It lacked the feel of an aircar or helicar, but as always, Henry felt there was something magical about the way it let him hug the road. On the drive back to town, he gave the mountain countryside a closer look than he'd done the previous day. The two men shared stories from their respective youths while around them the view changed to that of the green-topped foothills, then the open farmlands down the Shenandoah Pike.
When they got to Tylerville, Henry gave his hometown a closer look than he'd given on his return. The passage of time showed on the small city, really just a regional town, and Charlie directed his attention to which stores and shops and restaurants were still open, which were gone. He was shown the finished roadwork on Haismith Drive and the new construction at the on-ramp for the E1 Highway to New Richmond. Seeing his hometown continuing to live on, in that way they always did on the border between thriving and stagnant, brought back memories of his childhood, dreams of glory now that now seemed extinguished.
Henry forced the feeling away. Uncle Charlie had something to show him, and he wanted to give it his full attention.
On the other side of town, facing away from the mountains, was Tylerville Regional Spaceport. It was meant more for providing an alternate arrival point for ships incoming to Manassas or New Richmond than a center of transport in of itself. Big enough to take in vessels or aircraft that couldn't make it to either of the larger ports in this hemisphere, but hardly an active port in of itself. There were bi-daily flights to the other major ports, and weekly flights to even s
maller local ports across the northern region of Roanoke, New Virginia's primary continent.
"You're still working the maintenance crew?" Henry asked Charlie.
"Damn right I am, Jim," his uncle answered, a grin on his face.
"I heard you had a bigger job now."
"They made me the boss, but I still get my hands dirty. I'm not retiring yet." He sighed. "But I'm getting there. Anyway…"
The car turned, much to Henry's surprise. He'd imagined they were heading to the maintenance center, where his uncle oversaw the port's ship maintenance crews that serviced the port's clientele. But instead, they headed to the nearest hangar, the one furthest from the terminals and the runway and landing pads for ships. With the press of a button, Charlie opened the hangar door. The lights within started coming on as the car pulled in, engine roaring until Charlie brought the car to a stop and turned it off. "There. Look at that."
It was a sizable light vessel, a transport ship, a hundred and thirty meters long, he guessed, and nearly thirty meters wide. Given the shape of the bottom, it had six internal holds, with the crew quarters probably on the top deck. At the center of the ship's bow was the command module. He could make out the transparent alloy window of a manual astrogation station at the bottom while the top had comm gear arrays fixed. It reminded him of a wolf's head, and with the four landing struts as legs that gave the ship an almost lupine appearance. The dark color of the hull gave it a look of being in perpetual shadow… save for the evident holes of hull breaches, that was.
The more Henry looked at it, the more the ship looked like it'd seen better days.
"The Lucky Lacy," Charlie said. "Or not so lucky. The damned fools who ran her nearly got blown up when they ran into a meteor."
"How'd they get her down?"
"Because old Jeff Holstrom's the best damn orbital space controller I've ever known. Not that I'd say it to his face, the man's got enough of an ego. He talked the pilot down while the crew panicked." Charlie stepped around the car to stand beside Henry. "She's a Holden-Nagata Mark VII."
