[It's a bomb,] one of Tolsto's men confirmed over the open link.
Gray felt himself beginning to sweat. [Can you disarm it?] he asked, looking at Adri with an expression of grim determination.
[Attempting it now,] the ensign replied.
The lift arrived at its destination, and both Gray and Adri dashed from it along the narrow corridors towards the tertiary vehicle warehouse.
[Savon to Grayson!] another report came in. [We're in the munitions storeroom, and have discovered a bomb concealed within one of the crates for the heavy weaponry. Attempting to disarm now.]
Gray swore.
“Split up,” Adri ordered, and swerved off in the direction of the munitions stores. She turned her communicator frequency on to the security teams’ before hailing Gray. [Rael to Grayson. I'm nearly at the munitions stores now.]
[Good. I've got another call from team Two; they've found another bomb in the orellium lab. I'm on my way there.]
Adri was nearly at the munitions stores when the fourth bomb was discovered. There was still no word on disarmament. Overhead, the warning sirens were going off and Vice Captain Lowell's voice was demanded every non-security member to evacuated the aft of the ship. A pitifully ineffectual measure if the bombs managed to detonate. Running into the storeroom, she was greeted by the petty officer in charge of the squad. “Wragardon is working on it now,” he said.
“How long until detonation?” Adri demanded.
The petty officer wet his lips in ill-concealed fear. “Seven minutes.”
[Grayson to Rael,] came a call over the officer's frequency.
[Rael here. What have you found?] Adri stepped away from the security team as they worked frantically to disarm the bomb in the amount of time remaining.
[These things are complex, just what Duane was hinting at. We've got the one in the lab nearly undone.] A tense pause. [I'm sure we're going to make it.]
[We will.] Adri confirmed. She turned just as Wragardon straitened up, face dripping perspiration.
“We've got it.”
[Tolsto to Grayson,] she heard over the cheer in the room, [We've got success. Hammond's managed to neutralize the bomb so that we can remove it.]
[Jojara-sen to Grayson, we've done a deep sweep of the surrounding area. No bombs have been detected.]
[Eff to Grayson, team Five had completed disarming ours as well.]
Adri breathed in relief. [Rael to Bridge, all located bombs have been deactivated.]
[Excellent job, Rael,] Lowell replied. [Stay with the security team until the threat is gone.]
[Yes, sir.] Adri replied. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Strange how something as cataclysmic as complex plasma bombs could be discovered and dealt with in such a short amount of time. But something still didn't appear right to her. It seemed too easy, too pat. Perhaps she was just getting paranoid with all the recent action.
[Grayson to all squads, remove the bombs and take them to containment chamber one for dismantlement. Use extreme caution; they're still dangerous.]
Adri helped the squad collect all the pieces Wragardon had removed to reach the detonation cerebrum. Trailing behind the squad, Adri followed them to the door, her mind still deep in thought.
She wasn't sure how she heard it, that subtle humming that blended in with the constant and oft forgotten drone of the ship's engines. The noise alerted her instincts enough for her to turn back into the storeroom and give it a thorough glance. The security squad had already departed, so she walked slowly over to a stack of crates lined up along the wall. The humming was louder here. Adri pulled one of the crates away from the wall, creating a crack large enough to see two plasma bombs lined up side by side, blinking one hundred and twenty four seconds to detonation.
[Rael to Grayson. I'm in trouble.]
Gray dropped the hyperscanner he'd been holding as a wave of something ice cold and tasting of fear washed over him. [What is it?]
[Two bombs, one eighteen seconds.]
Gray started running.
Adri crouched down in front of the two blinking demons, terribly uncertain how to proceed. [Gray, I'm no specialist.]
[Don't panic, Adri. Take the cover panels off. I'll guide you through.]
With hands she refused to allow shake, Adri removed the cover panels from the two bombs and stared at the intricate mess inside. Suddenly she could hear herself screaming, flying through the air as a searing roar shook the air and the world turned white. Shaking her head to clear the strange image, she listed off what she could see to Gray.
[All right baby, remove the brighter power cord, but don't jar anything else.]
Adri hastily did as he instructed, but the timer seemed to be moving much faster than her inexpert hands.
[I've got the first one, starting on the second,] Adri's voice was calm, but Gray's heart was beating so fast, he could barely hear her. Terror for the one he loved seemed to drown out everything else, even the sounds of those security men who could be spared from demolishing the bombs racing after him.
[I'm coming Adri, keep going. You've got plenty of time.] They both knew she didn't.
[Gray, I'm not going to make it!]
He heard her cry seconds before the explosion rocked the ship, sending him and his team flying across the hallway. [Adri!]
Adri woke to find herself floating through the dark room, blood down her nose and Gray shouting in her ear. [Adri! Adri, come in!]
[Gray?] she called, trying to turn her head in the darkness. [Where are you?]
[I'm outside the munitions stores. Are you all right? The bomb went off with you on top of it!]
[Uhm, yeah. I think I'm okay. I hurt like crazy.]
[Listen to me, you sound like you have a concussion. The emergency blast shield is down, so I can't get in to you. You have to find the oxygen suit in the far corner of the wall, or you're going to run out of air. You understand?]
[Yeah.] With a leisureliness born of not quite grasping the situation, Adri propelled herself through the room towards the corner that housed the emergency supplies for the room. [I guess I wasn't fast enough for once, huh?]
This time, she picked up the nerves in Gray's voice as he huffed a laugh. [You can't win them all, babe.]
Adri struggled into the oxygen suit. Its purpose was for maintenance outside the ship, or for such emergencies where oxygen was decreasing too rapidly to replace. Snapping the helmet on and pressing the auto respirator, she felt her wandering mind coming back together. [Okay, what's the situation?]
Gray pressed his hand against the tunsteel barrier that separated him from Adri. [There's a fracture along the wall on the other side of where I'm standing. Over half the warehouses have been wiped out on the port side. My team's still looking for other survivors, but the only reason you're still here is because you disarmed the first bomb in time. The second one was placed over an energy capillary, like you were saying.] He let out a deep breath. [I thought I'd lost you.]
[Scared me too.]
Adri glanced around what she could see in the room. [Some of the ceiling is gone, and most of the far wall. I can see the outside of the ship.]
[Lucky you weren't just sucked out.]
[I think the blast propelled me away, and I ran into an air pocket that didn't disperse.]
[Well babe, you can just relax and wait for rescue. I have a team suiting up to breach the blast door as we speak.]
[So we can just chat until they get here, huh?]
[Sure thing.]
The headache that she had been ignoring since she woke pushed to the forefront. [Gray, when this is all over, and I've rotted another eon of my life in the infirmary, and we finally make it to shore leave after our next assignment…]
[Yes?]
All courage fled. [Never mind. I forgot you had crazy notions about the two of us signing the contract.]
[Don't you forget it.]
On the bridge, Analysis Officer Devin Wede-Uctan, covering both his station and the security station,
shouted the alarm. “Enemy ship sighted!”
Captain Heedman cringed in his chair. “Are you sure its an enemy?”
“Undoubtedly. Signals state they're coming in fast, and by the way the energy's flowing, they're charging their main batteries.”
Vice Captain Lowell cursed softly. “With our warehouses blasted off and the rescue mission incomplete, we're trapped.”
“What?” cried Heedman. “You mean if we didn't have to rescue anyone, we could escape?”
“Well, we'd have to blast off any of the destroyed portions of the ship still clinging in order to make an effective retreat.” Wede-Uctan corrected in an academic tone.
“Then do it!” Heedman ordered.
Silence fell over the bridge.
“But sir, Lieutenant Commander Rael and five others are trapped in the wreckage as we speak,” sputtered Operations Officer Janag, “we have to rescue them.”
Heedman's face began to turn red. “We have to do what I say we do! I AM the captain! Lowell, command the port batteries to fire on the wreckage immediately! Quoditum,” he ordered the helmsman, “As soon as that's done, take us out as fast as you can. DO IT!”
“Sir, please reconsider,” Lowell gasped. “Rael is - ”
“Replaceable,” Heedman snapped. “As are you.”
His face turning a sickly white, Vice Captain Lowell brushed his earpiece. [Bridge to port batteries. Charge main weapons. Target, the wreckage of the portside warehouses.]
Gray's head whipped up as the command came over his communicator. “What the -?” he whispered softly. He brushed his earpiece. [Grayson to bridge, rescind that last order! We still have survivors to retrieve from the debris!]
[Negative, Grayson,] came Lowell's voice. [Captain's orders are as swift a retreat as possible.]
[But we still have five people to recover! My team is in the final stages of prep now. Give us twenty minutes,]
[Negative, Grayson.] A pause [I'm sorry.]
[Gray? What's going on, my communicator isn't picking up the bridge's command,] Adri had secured herself to one of the walls as she waited for the rescue team to arrive.
There was a short pause. [Oh Danwe, Adri,]
[What?] There was something terrifying in Gray's voice.
[Heedman isn't going to wait for rescue.]
[What?] she repeated. [I can't very well save myself here,]
[Adri,] Gray said slowly, so slowly that Adri's adrenaline began to rush again, [Kobane's ship is coming. They're within sensor range.]
Sometimes God is merciful and doesn't let you see death coming. And sometimes, he gives you way too much time to think about it. Adri realized in that moment that she hadn't been lucky enough to be the former. [He's going to let us die to save himself,]
It felt as though someone had reached through his skin, grabbed his heart and was now trying to pull it out, wrenching as it went. [You can't die,] he murmured, [Not now when I just found you. I love you,]
[Gray,] Adri felt something break inside, and feared it was her heart. [About those words you wanted me to say…]
There was a sound like roaring that burst through the nothingness of the space surrounding her. The searing white of the blaster cannon fire only feet from her body blinded her eyes, and she felt the horrible tug as everything around her flew away into that nothingness. The nothingness that was space. [Gray!]
There was an eternal second in which her body felt intense pain. Then the world faded to white, then gray, and she felt herself falling away into cool mist accompanied only by her fighting elegy. Her last thought was a fanciful one. Why, I have wings. How strange.
Then there was nothing at all.
Enemy Sabotage Damages Ship
5 Killed
The G.C.N. Oreallus was attacked on 02-24-1119 by the Belligerent Coalition en route to an undisclosed location. Bombs were discovered in the ship after the skirmish. While all but one was disarmed in time, the explosion killed 5 crew members; Ensign Kaitlin Mannerly, Ensign Undani Umbara, Ensign Sahar Tuian, Chief Petty Officer of Warehousing Meredith Hayden-Lloyd, and Second Officer Lieutenant Commander Adrienne Rael.
Chapter Sixteen
Mankind has fixed itself with technology to be bold, healthy, cunning and occasionally happy. It has cures for nearly every disease, solutions for nearly all inconveniences, and a way out of nearly every plight. It still has no cure for grief.
Thaddeus Grayson, a field lieutenant of the Galactic Commonwealth Navy's Advance Force division, was no stranger to grief. From a young age, he had learned that death walked hand in hand with daily life, and that the best way to avoid grief's clinging cousin misery was to look at the bright side. There was always a purpose; every breath of life held meaning. That's what his grandmother had taught, and that's what he'd always believed. All life was important, because all life had a purpose, a point or reason to exist. Gray had found that to be a comforting idea, and had spent most of his life looking for his purpose. No matter what the pain – the death of his grandmother, the sorrows of a career soldier – he'd moved forward. Gray had always managed to see some spot of light. Then there'd been that short space of time where he'd thought he'd found his point in Adri.
Which somehow made his current hell twice as dark.
Adri was dead. The Oreallus’s analysis officer had morbidly documented the debris impact on the surface of Junus. Pushed by the explosive force of the ship's batteries straight into the gravitational sphere of the planet, it had taken mere hours for the jetsam to burn through the atmosphere and disintegrate on the surface like shards of a glass.
Adri was dead.
It had taken a squad of his own security team to pry him away from the dangerously thin walls that separated the service hall and what used to be the portside warehouse. His mind had gone numb and he'd fought wildly, until one of his team took matters into her own hands and stunned him. He'd woken hours later in the infirmary, feeling hollow on the inside and groggy on the outside, with Duane sitting in the visitor's chair next to his bed, head in his hands.
Duane wascrying. Gray closed his eyes and pretended to still be sleeping to allow his companion some privacy to grieve. Strangely, he didn't feel the need to weep, although he was sure the need would come at some point. Instead, he simply felt…empty.
And well he should, since the love of his life had just died, before he'd even had the chance to show her just how much she was the love of his life.
He'd never even had the chance to dance with her.
About those words you wanted me to say… Had she understood what he'd wanted to hear? He'd never know.
From words of love to words of condolence in a matter of hours, Gray thought bleakly the next day. He'd been released from the infirmary without the usual harassment Doctor Geiger usually enforced the evening before. “I've informed the captain that you require a day of personal leave before returning to work,” the doctor had told him when handing him his communicator and ATF. “I suggest you try to sleep, but barring that, I recommend you steer clear of the bridge. The last thing Lieutenant Commander Rael would want is a massacre of bridge command which would end with a good officer being court martialed.”
Was the doctor a psychic? Gray had thought. But he'd avoided the bridge, and had ended up getting drunk on bootlegged Tuor rum with Duane in a forgotten corner of the weaponry and tactical analysis complex. While the humacoms continued their work, oblivious to the goings on of the day before, Gray had shared silence and rum with the paranthian. When the rum ran out and Duane fell asleep, Gray continued to stare into nothingness until the bell chimes warned of the change in shift. He then hefted his companion to his dormitory before staggering back to his own. Alone.
A few short hours later, and here he stood with most of the available crew on the Oreallus, listening to the vice captain recite the funeral text for those killed in defense of the ship. Everyone in Adri's squad showed up, along with a good many others who had liked or admired her. Even Piontek hobbled in, despite his
near-mortal injury. During the ceremony, Gray could feel the negative mood of the crowd directed at Captain Heedman. Gray's own feelings were clear-cut, but lacked enthusiasm. Heedman was weak, and not only deserved to be court martialed for cowardice, but also but be flogged. Before Gray killed him. But none of that would bring Adri back. Nothing would.
The ceremony ended with the symbolic jettisoning of a capsule of dust in lieu of bodies. Gray watched it spiral away through the viewscreen out into the far reaches of space. Vice Captain Lowell's approach barely registered until he spoke. “Lieutenant Grayson, I understand you were a close friend of Rael's,”
“Yeah.” What else was there to say?
Lowell made an inarticulate, sympathetic gesture. He stood awkwardly for a moment, tugging on the black armband he'd worn for the service. “She was an excellent officer,” he said by way of condolence.
Gray continued to stare out into space. “Sure was.”
“Listen,” Lowell said quietly, “No one wanted her dead. But if we don't follow orders…you understand.”
Gray did. “I'm sure you had something to say, other than condolences, sir.” Gray said, finally facing his superior officer.
The vice captain nodded. “Rael's personal effects need to be dealt with. Since we've lost our second officer, a replacement has to be found, and is entitled to the officer's quarters it goes with.”
“I really don't think this is the time to discuss this,” Gray replied flatly.
Lowell hissed out a breath. “Listen, I hate it too; I worked with Rael longer than you did. She was the best. She would have made captain at the last candidacy call, but she was overlooked because she had no high rolling sponsorship. Instead she got shunted onto the Oreallus with Heedman. Rael deserved to be captain. But she didn't make it and now she's dead. The whole deal is rotten, but there's nothing to be done!” there was a pause as Lowell took a calming breath. “In all the years I've known her, Rael's never been close to anyone. The paranthian from Engineering, perhaps; but she got a look in her eyes since you came on board.”
Universe of the Soul Page 14
