Shattered Legacy

by Shane R. Daley

  “Saved my life? You’re the one who just shot at me, lady.”

  “Believe me; I saved your skin a few times. You have no idea what you’re involved with, Mr. Tyler.”

  “I’m sure it’s about money.”

  “Plenty of it,” Merrick said.

  “So how did Jacob Jackson get involved with someone like you? I thought he had better taste in friends.”

  Merrick tilted her back head in amusement. “Jacob? Hell, he plowed his share back into your company. My share is earning me twenty percent annually in overseas investments.”

  Behind the tank, Tyler closed his eyes. Small consolation, but his guess had been correct. Jacob Jackson had, in fact, been the one who sold Templar out. “So, the fire in my apartment and the assassination attempt was all part of your cover-up.”

  “The attempt on your life was courtesy of an old associate of mine. He’s not a threat to anyone, anymore.”

  “And those pictures you sent to my office? Who was that?”

  “A nobody. I sent them to rattle you. I couldn't look after you all the time, so I figured, why not let someone else do it for me? I set your apartment on fire to keep you mobile, and then I had Jacob arrange for you to be put under bodyguard protection. All the while, I fed you the misinformation to keep you off track.”

  “Lies, you mean.”

  “Misinformation. You believed what I needed you to believe. It confused and paralyzed you.” Suddenly her eyes lost their humor as she quietly walked over to the nearest tank on the side Tyler was hiding. She raised her gun with both hands. “We both do what we have to do. You protect a dirty company, and I exploit dirty companies. Our ends justify our means.”

  Tyler did not respond.

  “So what now, Samson? You’ve made a hell of a mess. Now I have to kill you, anyone you were working with, your friends, and maybe even your little girlfriend. What’s her name - Teresa? Yeah, I’ll have to make it painful for her.”

  Tyler clenched his jaw and bit down his anger. All he had to do was escape the room and make his way to a public place. Still crouched behind the tank, he shuffled around to one side and shoved his good hand into his pocket. “You don't want to shoot me in here.”

  “Why not?”

  “The chemicals,” he replied as he pulled out a coin. “If a bullet hits one of these tanks…”

  “My bullet isn't going to hit a tank. It's going to hit you.”

  With a quick motion, Tyler threw the quarter. As the coin struck the ground on the opposite side of the room, Merrick jumped at the sound and instinctively moved toward it.

  Tyler took the opportunity to crouch under the pipes and move behind the next vat. He remained out of sight from Merrick as she searched for him along the opposite wall.

  Looking around, he saw an exit door at the end of the aisle.

  Then he heard Merrick's footsteps. She was on his side now, checking between and behind each tank. He guessed that she was only a tank or two away from discovering him.

  He waited until he heard her footsteps again. Then, taking a deep breath, he quickly moved around the tank and padded down the center aisle. He considered making a quick escape through the door, but pushing the metal bar would make too much noise. He needed another distraction.

  A slow grin spread across his face as he noticed the small red unit beside the door - the fire alarm.

  Reaching out with his good arm, he yanked down on the small lever with bloodied fingers. As a deafening blare shrieked throughout the place, he shoved open the door and slipped into a small stairwell, where the alarm continued to sound. The noise was everywhere, pulsing and deafening. He forced himself to take long, deep breaths as he staggered up the metal steps. On the landing, he shoved open the door and found himself on a wide metal catwalk overlooking the private hangar wing of the VAB.

  The huge, cavernous place was dark and empty.

  No one was around anywhere. Tyler gripped the metal railing. He wanted to scream out in frustration.

  Where the hell was everyone?

  Down below were two small jet planes parked before the massive doorway. On the opposite end, under the dimmed ceiling lights, was the orbiter that he had seen earlier.

  He needed to find his way back out of the building before Merrick tracked him down. He had finally confirmed the truth about Templar, and it wouldn’t do anyone much good if he were dead.

  Suddenly the alarms died away, leaving behind a yawning silence, save only for the ringing that continued in his ears.

  And then, behind him, the door opened.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “Close the doors!”

  Those had been the first words out of Noah Gettleman’s mouth after the computers went down. It was a code phrase to block all outside communications. No was allowed to leave the main control room as the facility went into a state of high alert and the flight techs began contingency procedures.

  Restoration of the computer systems was agonizingly slow. Every workstation in the room had crashed and needed to be manually rebooted. Network connectivity was partially down as well, so there was no mainframe access. During that time, the damaged Naiad continued to blaze through the atmosphere with no external guidance. Gettleman had prayed that the orbiter would still be there once communications were restored. Fortunately, it was. Only now, with the loss of computer control, the situation had gone from bad to worse.

  Brian Ebeling, the assistant flight director, stood beside Gettleman on the upper level, gazing out over the frantic control room. The younger man looked haggard. He clutched a clipboard to his chest. “Have we considered having the team eject?” he asked quietly.

  “Not unless a crash is eminent. And at their current altitude, an ejection is risky.” Gettleman grunted and rubbed his hands together. “I just want to know what the hell happened to our computers.”

  Ebeling looked at him askance. “Didn’t you hear? There was an explosion in the administration building.”

  Gettleman turned his head. “An explosion?”

  “At the main data center. They’re saying it’s pretty much destroyed.”

  Gettleman did not bother to ask what had caused the explosion. He took the news at face value; it was that kind of day.

  “Routing our communications through Houston was clever, sir.”

  “That’s another one we owe them.” Gettleman reached for the open bottle on his desk, and popped a few more antacid tablets into his mouth. “How are the transmission delays in the telemetry feed?”

  “We're suffering a few seconds of lag time,” Ebeling replied. “We're working on establishing a better satellite uplink.”

  “It’s hardly worth the effort.” Gettleman looked up at the wall and then remembered that the clock wasn't working. He checked his wristwatch. “They'll be landing soon enough.”

  One of the technicians called out. “We’re back online! The Naiad just completed its final roll reversal.”

  Gettleman grunted again, crunching his antacids. Finally something was going right.

  ***

  The glide approach over California was rough. Without power, the Naiad responded sluggishly as she plowed through the atmosphere. Commander McManus glanced down at the horizontal situation indicator. The readouts showed the orbiter's location relative to their various navigation points. Only another five hundred miles before they touched down at the Thomas Dorian Space Center.

  Suddenly the Naiad lurched and angled hard to port. Schwartz struggled to regain control as vibrations buffeted them. The roaring sound in the cabin intensified as the orbiter’s superstructure groaned under the stress.

  “What is it now?” McManus asked through gritted teeth.

  The vibrations made the controls a blur, but Schwartz still managed to make out the reading. “We just lost a left aileron.” A frantic beeping sounded. On the center screen, a schematic appeared, with part of the wing marked in red. “What’s left of the port engine is on fire.”

  “Control, we're
coming in hot,” McManus reported over the radio, trying to keep himself from shouting. Sweat beaded his brow, tickling him. He wished he could wipe it away, but his helmet prevented that. The Naiad was now lurching uncontrollably. He feared that another explosion would be their last. “You copy that, Control? We're coming in hot! Over.”

  ***

  “What happened?” Noah Gettleman shouted. His head turned from side to side, demanding an answer.

  “There was probably combustion of residual fuel,” volunteered a flight engineer.

  Gettleman spoke into his headset. “Naiad? What's your condition? Over.”

  “We're still on an optimal approach vector,” McManus replied, “but we may need more time to steady the ship.”

  Gettleman pointed to one of his station techs below, who looked up and shook her head no.

  “That's a negative, Naiad. You're not going to be able to pull another orbit. Landing here is your only chance. Over.”

  “Could we make a better landing in the desert?”

  “Negative, Naiad. We want you landing at DSC. We have support crews standing by. Over.”

  “Copy, Control. We’re lowering the landing gear now. Naiad out.”

  Gettleman turned to an aide. “Are the observation areas evacuated?”

  “Spectators have been moved to the south field. We’re moving people off the property. All of the orbiter maintenance buildings have been evacuated.”

  “Good.”

  Then Gettleman’s cell phone sounded. It took him a moment to realize from the ringtone that it was a personal call.

  He saw the caller ID, and his heart dropped.

  He pulled one earphone aside from his headset and raised the phone to his ear. “Hello, Ana.”

  “Noah? What’s going on?”

  At the sound of Commander McManus’ wife, Gettleman’s voice softened. “Hey, I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “What’s happening to the ship?” she asked. “I’m watching TV. They said there are engine problems and they might not be able to land. Is that true?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?”

  “Ana, please…”

  “Tell me what’s happening to my husband!”

  Despite his personal feelings, he knew he couldn’t share information with a civilian. But here was a friend looking to him for support and assurance.

  “I’m doing everything I can to get our men back safely,” he told her.

  “I’m scared, Noah.”

  He paused, searching his mind for the right thing to say.

  “Landing gear deploying,” reported a flight engineer.

  “Just keep praying, Ana.” Gettleman cradled the phone to his face. “I promise you that we’re doing all we can. I’ll … I’ll talk to you later. I have to go now.”

  Then he hung up. He set the phone down on the desk and put his hands to his face.

  “Landing gear fully deployed.”

  On hearing that, Gettleman took a deep breath and released it. He adjusted his headset and refocused on the task at hand. “Just keep it together, Naiad, you're doing good.” He watched the stations below for any sign of trouble. He brought his fist to his mouth and bit hard on his knuckle. On the main monitors that had just blinked back to life, he watched large portions of the Naiad schematics flash from yellow to red.

  “We can’t hold it!” McManus shouted over the channel.

  “Another explosion,” reported one of the techs. “Feather control on the right aileron is gone!”

  Suddenly, the control center erupted with shouted orders and status updates, but without computer control, they could do little but watch and wait.

  Gettleman lowered his head, letting the noise fade into the background. As he looked back up and stared through the observation windows at the blue horizon, one horrible thought kept pounding through his mind.

  They weren't going to make it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Samson Tyler lunged at Merrick with his good arm extended, knowing that he didn’t have a chance in hell of disarming her.

  He was right. Merrick sidestepped his clumsy attack and drove her left fist into his gut, driving the wind from his chest. As he doubled over, she followed through with a pistol butt across the side of his head. The impact of the blow didn't register until he fell against the catwalk railing, sending all sorts of new pain through his wounded arm. He hung onto the railing with his good hand. His eyes squeezed shut, blinded with pain. He tried to moan, but his lungs couldn’t manage to suck in a breath.

  Merrick walked up to him. Her arms were spread wide, the pistol hanging loosely from her right hand. She took a deep breath and exhaled. Her voice echoed through the cavernous area. “Had enough, Samson?”

  She kicked him in the gut. He doubled over. A coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. He put a hand to his lips and focused on the redness that smeared across his fingers. His vision began swimming as he slipped from the railing and fell forward on his hands.

  Merrick crouched down, grasped a fistful of hair, and yanked up his head to look at him.

  “It didn’t have to be like this,” she told him through clenched teeth. “What do you think you’ve accomplished here, Samson? You think you saved the day? Do you think I’m going to be arrested? Do you really think that the face you see here is my real face? Do you think Evelyn Merrick is even my real name?”

  Tyler’s eyes rolled upward. He opened his mouth and gasped for breath. Blood dripped from his lips and down his chin. Blood from his head wound soaked his collar. His arm was a red mess. Dizziness from the pain would overcome him at any moment.

  His eyes fluttered open and he focused on her. His brow knit into a frown as he worked his mouth, struggling to find the strength to speak. “I don’t care who you are,” he croaked. “But you messed with the wrong guy.”

  She stared at him for a heartbeat, and then released him. As he fell on his hands and knees, she stood up, straightened her arm, and lowered the barrel of her pistol to his head.

  Rather than cowering from the weapon, he spat blood and looked up at her. “What else did you want to know?”

  “What?”

  “When you captured me, you said you had two questions. You only asked me one.”

  Merrick’s expression softened a bit, though the pistol remained carefully aimed. “I wanted to know how you discovered this identity.”

  Tyler considered not telling, simply on principle, but every moment he was talking was another moment he stayed alive. “I lifted your prints,” he said, licking blood from his lips. “When we ran them though the company’s personnel files, there you were. Evelyn Merrick, a former high-security clearance contractor. Never got around to deleting your company records, did you? That’s sloppy.”

  “My fingerprints?” Merrick cocked her head to one side, trying to recall where or when he could have picked them up.

  “The dance club. From the shot glass at the bar.”

  She nodded slowly. “Of course. When you made that toast…”

  Tyler’s head and arm still throbbed, pulsing with the rapid beating of his heart. Blood that trickled down his arm had pooled on the floor.

  Then, behind Merrick, he noticed movement.

  “Before you do this,” he said, focusing his attention back on Merrick’s face. “I think … you should know something.”

  Merrick switched her stance to a two-handed grip.

  Tyler crouched down, drawing a ragged breath as he kept eye contact with her. “Jacob Jackson… He turned on you. He turned over everything he had on you. He taped phone conversations. Recorded your meeting places. The works. Hell, he even has you on video. Federal investigators have this evidence as we speak. Jacob set you up from the beginning. He used you, Merrick.”

  “No.”

  “Jacob's been working with the FBI for some time now.”

  Merrick’s confident smile faded a bit. She lowered her pistol. “I don’t believe y
ou. Jacob wouldn’t do that.”

  “Sure he would.” Tyler pushed himself up to a crouch. He gave her a bloody grin. “Who do you think matched the prints for me, Evelyn? As soon as I started asking questions after my apartment fire, he folded like a cheap wallet. He let me in on everything.”

  “No… No, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  Tyler grunted and used the railing to put himself to his feet. “Those disguises of yours are pretty good, but do you honestly think that we’d just let you walk into this facility? You’re not that clever, Merrick. Hell, Jacob and I had a bet as to whether you’d even show up at the spaceport. I didn’t think you’d be that stupid. Guess I lost that bet.”

  “You're lying.”

  This was the moment.

  “Yeah,” he said, finally looking up with a harsh glint in his eye. “But like you said, sometimes a little misinformation is all it takes to confuse the situation.”

  A shadow crossed Merrick’s face, and in that instant of hesitation, Tyler sprang up from the floor and shoved himself headfirst into Merrick. She staggered back into another pair of arms.

  It was Lynn Anholt. The bodyguard immediately put Merrick into a chokehold. Merrick gasped and struggled as Lynn slammed the woman to her knees. The gun clattered away.

  Tyler pushed himself to his feet, fists clenched at his side, breathing raggedly.

  Merrick was still struggling against Lynn’s hold when the bodyguard shoved her down, rammed an open palm behind her neck and smashed her face to the floor. Then she reached for her flex-cuffs and bound Merrick’s wrists. Then Lynn dragged her to the railing and bound her to the steel support bar.

  When she was finished, Lynn glanced over at Tyler. “So this is the infamous Evelyn Merrick?”

  Merrick struggled against her restraints as Tyler took a shaky step forward.

  “Don’t get near her,” Lynn ordered. She knelt and started patting Merrick down for weapons.

  “Why didn’t you just shoot her from behind?” Tyler asked.

  “Bad angle. A ricochet could have hit you. Or she could have shot you out of reflex. If I ordered her to freeze, she might have taken you out. It was better to sneak up on her. Nice distraction job, by the way.”