Forged to Lead

by James David Victor

“I’m sure you are doing more than that. So, are you making life difficult for the new commander yet?”

  Jack laughed. “You know me,” he said.

  Jack looked through the clear panels of med bay walls to where Sarah Reyes lay. He could just make her out in her bunk.

  “I heard the doctors say she could wake up at any time,” Torent said.

  Picking the crushed bottle up off the floor, Jack grunted.

  “That agent will probably want to speak to her as soon as she does.”

  Jack looked at Torent with a suddenness that gave away his unease.

  “Visser already spoke to me about it.” Torent held up his black sinewy arm and flexed the artificial muscles. “She asked me what happened to Finch down on that moon. I told her what you told me.” Torent looked at Jack. “I told her you said he was gone. You said, Finch is gone. And I told her we were deep in the krav and it was all a bit crazy down there. I told her exactly what you told me.” Torent fixed Jack with a stare. Jack knew what it meant. Torent didn’t know what happened to Finch, nor did he care, but he did care what happened to his friend. “I told her I wish I knew more. You know I wouldn’t keep a secret from the Fleet Intelligence. You know I’m not as clever as you, Jacky, but I’m not so stupid as to try and fool an agent.”

  Jack looked over at Reyes, nodding in agreement.

  “I guess Visser has interviewed you?” Torent nudged Jack in the hip with his new arm. He miscalculated and hit Jack hard.

  Jack winced at the sudden, unexpected pain.

  “Sorry, Jacky,” Torent said. “But that pain will be nothing if she wakes up and her story is different than yours.” Torent laid back on his pillow and closed his eyes. “I don’t know what happened to Finch. Does she? They are going to ask her.”

  Jack threw the broken bottle in a small trash basket next to Torent’s bunk. “I hope she’ll be alright, Sam.”

  Torent nestled into his pillow. “She’ll be fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “Why?” Jack said, looking down at the resting Torent.

  “Because you’ve got to try and lead that squad of ill-mannered, ill-disciplined Marines they call sixth squad.” Torent opened an eye and looked up at Jack.

  Jack smiled. “I’ll be fine. I hear the worst of them are not in the squad anymore. One is in med bay and the other has been made squad leader.”

  “They always make the worst Marine squad leader.” Torent let out a big yawn.

  “Don’t hurt yourself with that arm, Sam.” Jack walked toward the door.

  “Don’t ruin my squad. I want it back, you hear?”

  “See you on the Marine deck.” Jack turned to Torent, but he was already sleeping and snoring like a cow. Jack looked along the med bay. He needed to speak to Reyes. He had to keep her safe from Visser.

  9

  Jack walked away from the med bay and through the corridors of the Scorpio. A group of crewmen and a young officer were throwing dice in one corridor. Jack stepped around them and ignored their boisterous shouting. Jack knew where he was going. He knew in the back of his mind that there was only one way he could save Reyes, only one person who would help. There was only one person he could trust with this. The one department the rest of the ship overlooked. The one department that knew every panel and bulkhead of the ship. And that department was now run by only one man.

  Jack turned the corner and stepped up to the large doors of the maintenance hangar.

  The large double-doors were open just a crack, enough for one person to step between. The edges of the doors were a ragged mess where they had been sealed and then cut open following the Chitin attack on the Scorpio during the Battle of Kratos Fuel Station. The jagged edges caught Jack’s sleeve. He felt it tug, holding him back, preventing him from finding help. The jacket ripped, only a small tear, but it was a bad sign and made Jack feel that his efforts might come to nothing, that all was already lost and if he carried on with his plan, he would suffer more than a ripped sleeve.

  “Hey, Jack.” The shout echoed across the vast hangar.

  There at the back, in a small pool of light at a workbench, Jack saw a tall figure, his maintenance coveralls tied by the sleeves around the waist.

  “Hey, Slim. You got everything running smoothly yet?” Jack walked between the workbenches back toward his former maintenance colleague.

  “Give me an hour more and the Scorpio will be the pride of the fleet, as long as you soldier boys leave her alone, that is.”

  The coffee in the maintenance hangar was dark and thick, tasting of metal and composite and dirt. It was the best coffee aboard the Scorpio bar none, including the captain’s personal dispenser. Jack sat on the edge of a workbench and nursed the dirty mug in his lap. Slim leaned against the opposite bench, a hot mug in one dirty, calloused hand.

  “Soldiering getting dull yet? You need to fix some conduit for excitement?” Slim slurped his coffee.

  Jack looked up at the top bulkhead. The area where the Chits had cut through was repaired, panels of composite placed over the breach and welded into place.

  “That was a scroat of a job,” Slim said, following Jack’s gaze. “I should have been here.” He looked into his mug.

  “They would have taken you as well, Slim, and then who would keep the Scorpio flying?” Jack said. “Doyle sent you to do a job. I bet he was glad he had. He wouldn’t have wanted you...”

  “And what do you know about what Doyle would have wanted?” Slim spoke with venom and anger that took Jack by surprise. Jack looked Slim in his dark eyes and took a sip of coffee.

  “Do you think he’d have wanted you here?” Jack held the tall man’s stare. “Do you think you could have prevented what happened to them?”

  Slim sipped his coffee and shifted his weight on the workbench. “At least she got away.” Slim jerked his head toward Reyes’s workbench. “I haven’t been to see her yet. Too kravin busy.”

  “They won’t let anyone in.” Jack sipped and watched Slim for a reaction.

  “Why not?”

  “Fleet Intelligence wants to speak to her first.”

  Slim rolled his eyes. “Intelligence,” he said with contempt. “If they put a fraction of the effort in to maintenance as they do in to those agents’ uniforms, we’d have the fleet ready to take down those kravin Chit bastards.” Slim slurped his coffee angrily.

  “I need to get to her before they do, Slim.”

  Slim looked over his coffee cup at Jack. “Why?” he asked suspiciously, then he shook his head. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.” He put his mug down on the bench and began tapping at a control panel on the edge. A holomap of the Scorpio appeared on the bench.

  Jack jumped down and moved next to Slim. “How did you get that?” Jack said in surprise.

  “Can’t do much in maintenance without detailed specs of the entire kravin ship. You tell me where they got Sarah and I’ll tell you how to get there undetected.”

  “You can do that?” Jack looked into the green network of holographic lines that mapped out the Scorpio deck by deck, section by section. Every hidden panel and system, every coil, every conduit, every accelerator, compactor, fusion jet, and antimatter injector.

  “What we got here is a detailed spec on every piece of the Scorpio right down to the buttons on the captain’s jacket. This is maintenance, Jack,” Slim said brightly, his arms out wide as if he’d just performed a magic trick. “Nothing happens on this ship that we can’t know about.”

  Jack zoomed in on the med bay and then the compartment Reyes was being held in under guard. “Get me in there if you can, Slim. Get me in and I’ll do the rest.”

  10

  Bill Harts was awake. He was aware. He knew he was missing some part of himself. He knew he was different.

  He recognized this place. The pink sands towering above him in the intricate branching structures could only be one place. He was back on the moon of Kratos.

  The data overlay on his meat suit helmet showed him he was
dehydrated, hypothermic, and exhausted. Data also showed him he was not alone.

  Commander Finch was kneeling next to him. Finch reached out and took Harts’s hand, pulling him up off the floor.

  “Sir, I got lost,” Harts said, looking around.

  “Me too,” Finch said, but there was a hint of confusion in his voice.

  “I’ve been somewhere,” Harts said. He struggled to remember. He knew he was missing a memory.

  “No, Marine. We’ve been here all along. When the Leviathan was destroyed, we were concussed. It took us this long to initiate communication with the fleet.”

  “Yeah,” Harts agreed uncertainly. “Have we contacted the fleet yet?”

  “Have you forgotten protocol, Marine?”

  “Sir, I think have, sir.” Harts stood up. His legs felt weak.

  “Well, you better remember pretty quick, Marine. We’ll be back in the fleet soon and we’ll have to blend right in. Do you understand, Marine?”

  The memories came back slowly. Harts answered, but with only a dim awareness of what he was doing. “Sir, yes, sir,” he said.

  “Shout it out, Marine.”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” Harts shouted.

  “You starting to remember, Marine?”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” Harts shouted. He was starting to remember the time before, his time in the fleet. He knew who he was, he knew where he was, but there was a gap, a darkness between then and now. He struggled to remember.

  “Stop trying to remember something that hasn’t happened, Marine,” Finch shouted. “You can’t remember it. Just remember who you are and what you have to do. Do you understand?”

  Harts slumped back to the floor. He felt cold. He remembered being cold. He felt confused. He remembered being confused. He felt afraid. He remembered being afraid.

  “Do you get me, Marine?” Finch stooped over Harts and shouted even louder.

  “Sir…” Harts replied uncertainly.

  “Do you get me?”

  “Sir…”

  “Don’t think, Marine. Stop trying to remember. Just act like the Marine you used to be. Do you get me?”

  Harts knew he had been someone different. Now he had to remember how to be that person again. He had a job to do. He had to be that person from before.

  “Sir, yes, sir,” Harts shouted. Certainty began to return. Moment by moment, his memory of his old life returned and the memory of his captivity and interrogation by the Chitins faded.

  Lying on the sandy ground with tears in his eyes, he knew he was close to getting back to the fleet.

  11

  Jack found his way to the corridor Slim had directed him to and searched for the particular panel. Jack detached it and slipped into the cavity behind. Putting the panel back in place, he closed himself inside.

  His flashlight gave him a restricted view. He turned his head this way and that to have a better look at his surroundings. Jack was sitting on a bundle of conduits that ran along the narrow cavity branching of at intervals. Here one turned ninety degrees to the left and disappeared through the bulkhead. There another turned ninety degrees downwards and vanished into the depths of the Scorpio’s hidden spaces. At intervals, a conduit joined the bundle from one direction or another. Each conduit had a purpose, whether it was for ship defense, life support, crew comfort, or communications. The hidden conduits and circuits were as vital to the Scorpio’s functioning as the engine assembly or the gun batteries. It was a hidden world unknown to most of the Scorpio’s crew, and Jack was in it.

  Moving forward carefully, Jack looked for the one that Slim had described to him, a conduit as thick as Jack’s forearm and made of the dark composite material that the ship’s hull was made from. Jack spotted the conduit. He followed it another twenty meters where the conduit turned ninety degrees vertically. Jack began to climb.

  Slim had given him detailed instructions. The man had a detailed knowledge of this hidden world. Jack wondered if there was a nut or a bolt that Slim didn’t know about.

  The only way to access the compartment that Reyes was in without alerting the guards was via a floor panel in a small cabinet at floor level. Jack had been concerned that the glass panel compartments would mean that as soon as he crawled out, he would be spotted by the guards, or a nurse, or worse still, Agent Visser. Slim had told Jack how he could fix that too.

  The maintenance department was overworked and Slim was currently the only technician on board. Various crewmen had been transferred to the maintenance department, but they were performing tasks specific to their official stations. None of these emergency assistants understood the ship the way Slim did. He could understand the Scorpio, not just as a collection of systems, guns, targeting, drive, and crew support systems. No, Slim saw the ship as a single living entity built up from its component parts.

  “The medical bay negative air pressure system has been faulty for months,” Slim had told Jack.

  “Negative air pressure? What that?” Jack asked.

  Slim had explained, “If any microbial, bacterial or viral matter escapes the medical bay, it could infect the entire crew. The med bay is kept at a lower pressure than the rest of the ship so air only flows in and never out. A series of chemical and physical filter systems keep the air clean, but nothing can escape, just in case.”

  Jack reached a point in his long climb where the conduits pressed together. Slim had told him it would be a tight squeeze.

  “When you are in position, I will start work on the faulty air system,” Slim had told Jack. “It will cause the lights in the medical bay and the detector systems to fail.”

  Jack squeezed through the tight gap and found himself in a wide opening. A large bore pipe ran across the space. Jack followed the pipe to his left.

  “I don’t want to get you into trouble,” Jack had been seriously worried about Slim and his enthusiasm to help. Slim had reassured him.

  “There are so many systems that need attention. I can’t help it if I accidentally cause one to overload another. It’ll look like a complete accident. I have a work order somewhere. They’ve been waiting for me to deal with that med bay air pressure problem for weeks.”

  Jack reached the bulkhead where the large bore pipe met and intersected with another. This was the point he’d been looking for. Two meters right of that intersection and Jack was finally in place.

  “The lights and the alarms will only be off for a few minutes,” Slim had told Jack. “It’s the best I can do.”

  “How will I know when you’ve caused the system failure?” Jack had asked.

  “You won’t be able to take any communicators if you don’t want Fleet Intelligence to find out. Any device might give you away.”

  Jack found the panel and detached the small clips. They were right where Slim had said they would be. Then Jack took out his small pocket watch.

  “I’ll create the system failure at the start of third watch,” Slim had said. “But how will you know when it’s third watch?”

  “I’ll know. Leave that to me.”

  Jack sat in the dark and watched the second hand on his pocket watch tick around the small white face. The world around Jack was reduced to a small pool of light from a small head-mounted flashlight. He concentrated on his watch. The second hand hit the point where Jack knew third watch would begin. He’d synchronized his old family watch with the ship chronometer. He switched off his flashlight and quietly removed the panel.

  The panel opened into an almost empty cabinet, only a small composite dish and a few packets of disposable items littered the space. Jack carefully removed them and set them aside.

  The cabinet door opened easily with a gentle touch. Outside, he could hear the voices of the Marine guards and a nurse. One guard was shouting for emergency lighting.

  “Does nothing work on this old ship?” another voice complained.

  Jack crawled out of the cabinet and crossed the compartment floor. He stood up next to the bunk near Sarah Reyes’s head. Jack had thought of
how to leave her a message. He could leave his watch for her. When she woke, she would know that he had been there. Maybe she would guess that she should talk cautiously. Jack could break his watch in the hope that that would tell her they were in danger. Jack knew a handwritten note would just land them both in trouble and possibly side by side on the gallows back on Eros.

  There was one way Jack could be sure Reyes didn’t ever speak… If Reyes didn’t ever wake up. She was lying there completely at his mercy. Jack cursed himself for allowing the thought to cross his mind. He knew he couldn’t hurt her, or betray her like that. He couldn’t bear the thought of any harm coming to her. She was beautiful and interesting, and she’d saved 6th squad from the Chits at the Battle of Kratos Fuel Station. Maybe they could both disappear. The system was huge, and the war wasn’t everywhere. There were rogue settlements dotted across the galaxy. They could escape the fleet and live together somewhere.

  Jack knew all these ideas were hopeless. Maybe he had only come to be with her one last time.

  Jack touched Sarah’s hair. He felt her thick hair under his sweating hand. He could feel her beauty. He wished he could look at her, but his flashlight would give him away to the guards. The guards would arrest him and then Visser would be all over him like a mass of Chitin tentacles.

  He felt the soft skin of her forehead and her smooth cheek. He remembered it now, flushed with the effort of work, smeared with sweat and dirt. She looked good in her overalls, busy at her workbench. Jack wondered if he’d ever see her there again.

  “Sarah,” Jack whispered in her ear. “I need you to know.”

  “Jack?” Her voice was weak.

  Jack’s heart leapt. He felt an urge to yell out in triumphant joy. She was awake. Sarah was awake.

  “Yes,” he whispered, his lips so close to her ear.

  “Jack,” she said again. “I can’t see.”

  “You are safe. The lights are all out.” Jack knew they’d be coming back on at any moment.

  “We were on Kratos,” she said.