Second Earth

by Stephen A. Fender

  “So,” she asked, drawing out the ‘o’ in the word as she extended a gloved hand toward the lieutenant commander. “Friends again?”

  Shawn smiled as he realized that keeping up with Agent Melissa Graves was like surfing blind; you could never tell if you were about to get smacked headlong into the surf or ride the water smoothly back to the shoreline. “Why do I get the feeling that we’ll be repeating this little routine for a long time to come?” he smiled again as he gracefully took her hand in his own.

  Melissa returned his smile with an even more mischievous one. “Because you have wisdom beyond your years, Commander.”

  He sighed deeply and motioned his head over his left shoulder. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to the team.”

  * * *

  Melissa watched as a squad of Marines from the 92nd Marine Expeditionary Unit unloaded a small hover carrier from one of the two Pharaohs. The temperature was beginning to reach its projected zenith for the day, and was already well past ninety degrees by the time the Marines had finished setting up the makeshift camp. Their dull green and black armor, covering every inch of their bodies except for their heads, was thankfully cooled internally, and afforded them an unparalleled freedom of movement in even the harshest of environmental conditions. Melissa noted with approval that Sergeant Adams, who had been with her and Shawn aboard the doomed Icarus, was with them again today.

  Once the Marines had set up a two-hundred-square-yard patrol perimeter around the camp, Shawn, Melissa, Raven, and two ‘grunts’—Sergeant Adams and one Private First Class Ernesto Montoya—climbed into one of the two hover carriers. A second squad, commanded by Lieutenant Burgess, filled the other carrier.

  The utilitarian craft was moderately comfortable, with lightly padded seats and an open storage compartment in the rear for all the equipment the team needed. Melissa was sandwiched between the two Marines in the front of the craft, with Shawn and Raven sitting on a bench seat behind them. They sped away from Sylvia’s Delight and the rest of the camp under full power, the wind rustling their hair as it passed over the transparent windshield that wrapped around the bullet-shaped front of the craft.

  The first stop in their investigation was the enormous twin hangars they had sighted while coming down. One by one the team went in and inspected the crumbling remains. The first of the structures yielded very few clues. The colossal space was virtually empty, save for the occasional decrepit backup generator or portable lights—none of which looked to have been used in quite some time. The thick concrete floors had cracked in several places, and various ferns and other greenery had begun to sprout up through the openings. The overhead was littered with cobwebs and birds’ nests, and it gave Shawn and the rest of the team every indication that it had been abandoned for some time.

  When the team moved on the second hangar, however, there were definite signs of recent activity. Vehicle tracks and numerous footprints could easily be seen in the silt-covered floors. There was a water storage tank, used to refresh landing teams on the surface of arid worlds, that was still half-full and covered with only a fine layer of dust. Not far from the fifty-gallon tank was a garbage can full of food ration wrappers.

  As Melissa leaned down to investigate the boot prints, she withdrew her vid-recorder and took a series of three-dimensional images with the recorder. “Sergeant Adams,” she called to the Marine who was in a corner of the hangar conversing with Shawn.

  “Yes, ma’am?” the Marine called out, just as one of the infantry crawlers sauntered into the structure, its micro servomotors humming and filling the cavernous space with a beelike buzz. The six-legged mechanical beast, about ten feet tall with a Marine seated in the center of its body, came to a halt just inside the hangar doors. A small scanner-recorder extended from the forward nose of the vehicle, and its red beams swept across the entirety of the space, recording everything so it could be recreated holographically at a moment’s notice. The way it moved gave Melissa every impression that the huge techno-beast was hunting for its next meal.

  “Sergeant Adams, could you step over here for a moment?” she asked, turning her attention away from the mechanized unit.

  The dark-skinned Marine complied, stepping to her side and leaning down to examine what Melissa was looking at.

  “What do you make of that, Sergeant?” Melissa asked as the young man squatted down to her level.

  Adams locked his pulse rifle into a holster on his back, then reached down and placed a hand near the object in question. “Looks like a boot print, ma’am.”

  Melissa nodded. “Mind if I take a look at the bottom of your shoes?”

  The sergeant didn’t hesitate. He stood, turned around, and offered his foot to the OSI agent for her inspection. Melissa used a small recording device to take an image of the man’s shoe. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  The flash of the recorder having caught his attention, Shawn stepped up to where the two were poised. “What do you think?” Shawn asked as he leaned down to Melissa’s side.

  “I can’t be positive until I make a sample comparison, but my eyes tell me this is where the Valley Forge’s team set down and started lifting…well, whatever was in here up to their ship,” she said, waving her hand slowly around the space. “These prints on the ground seem consistent with standard issue Unified Marine Corps boots.”

  Unlocking his rifle from his back, Adams moved the weapon down to his side. “Any ideas about what was in here, ma’am?”

  She looked around the cavernous space, but could only shake her head. “It’s impossible to say at this point. I can’t even offer a guess. Hopefully something we find on Delta Base will tell us.”

  “You think they might have left a clue?” Shawn asked as he regarded the boot print embedded in the dust.

  “Back on the Icarus, Lieutenant Garcia said that the Valley Forge was sending down waves of transport craft to the surface. If the carrier and her escorts were destroyed before they had a chance to retrieve everything they came for, something might still be here.”

  Both Shawn and Adams nodded in agreement. “So, where to next?” Shawn asked, helping Melissa to her feet.

  She brushed the dust from her hands and twisted her head slowly, scanning the space and getting her proper bearings. “I’d like to check out the administrative building.”

  Shawn nodded with understanding. “You think there’ll be anything left in there?”

  Melissa shrugged. “It’s worth a shot. Maybe we can find a manifest or something that recorded the contents of this building.”

  The multi-legged crawler, having finished its scan, ambled out of the hangar and left the assembled officers bathed in silence.

  Adams looked down to the computer built into his left gauntlet. “I have a bearing and distance for the admin building, ma’am.”

  Melissa stepped over to him just as Adams initiated the computer’s embedded holo-emitter. A small map, with their current location indicated by a blinking dot, appeared and turned a few inches over the surface of the computer.

  “All right,” she said after scanning the map for a moment. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Back on board the Rhea, Richard Krif was anxiously awaiting an update from the planet’s surface. As he paced the walkway behind the communications officer’s station, a young technician approached him with a digital reader. Captain Krif recognized him as the specialist he had ordered to perform a deep scan of something unusual the sensor team had noticed lingering in low orbit not long after Kestrel’s team had departed.

  “You have something for me, specialist?”

  The young man seemed nervous as he approached the Captain. Krif knew this was par for the course for most of the younger people on the ship. Sometimes, it seemed, the majority of the crew paced the passageways and crawlspaces uneasily, constantly in fear of running into “the old man” in some remote corner of the enormous carrier. Krif maintained a tight ship, and that was the way he p
referred it. If some of the crew felt he was a bit overbearing, so be it. The Rhea wasn’t a democracy.

  “Yes, sir.” The specialist stopped a few paces from the captain, stood at attention, and offered Krif the computer tablet. “Sensor report of the material we found in orbit above the planet. It appears to be debris, sir.”

  “Debris, you say?” Krif took the device and gave its contents a quick visual scan. Everything he saw seemed to be in order, which wasn’t at all what he had hoped to see.

  “Sir?”

  Krif kept his eyes on the sensor report, looking for something that would dissuade him from the report he knew he’d have to file concerning the revelation. Sighing, Richard stole a glance at the specialist’s name tag. “Yes, mister Fredericks?”

  “Is it…is it what I think it is, sir?”

  Krif nodded solemnly and raised his eyes to the technician. Krif saw him now, perhaps for the first time since the young man had walked up to him. “I’m afraid so, son.”

  “The Valley Forge?” Fredericks whispered in disbelief.

  Richard nodded again. “It’s probably the whole fleet, with the exception of the Icarus. There are enough identifiable fragments in the debris to positively ascertain that at least the carrier and one of the destroyers were here.”

  The other man looked stunned. He turned back to the main status screen at the front of CIC, and the image of Second Earth that took up the majority of the display. “All those people…just…gone?”

  Krif looked at the younger man. “Try not to think about it, Fredericks.”

  Fredericks turned and nodded curtly. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. It’s just that—”

  Krif let a thin smile cross his lips as he reached out and placed a hand on the specialist’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll get the sorry sons o’ bitches that did this. I promise you that.”

  This time Fredericks didn’t try to mask his anger over the death of all those service men and women. He gave Krif a picture-perfect practiced salute. “Yes, sir. I know we will.”

  Richard was proud of his people and their professionalism. There was no way in hell he’d let them fall to the same fate as the Valley Forge. “Good work on preparing this report. Now, get over to the sensor operations console and keep an eye on the short-range sensors, mister Fredericks.”

  The tech sergeant narrowed his eyes at the captain’s remark. “Sir, begging your pardon, but Lieutenant Stover has the sensor watch right now.”

  Not used to his orders being questioned, Krif nonetheless let the remark pass without one of his usual heated rebuttals. He placed his hands to his hips and leveled his eyes at the young man. “Are you saying you’re not qualified, specialist?”

  Fredericks snapped back to attention. “No, sir. I’m not suggesting that at all. It’s just…well…he’s an officer, sir. I’m not allowed to relieve him, per Sector Command Regulation 6.”

  “Point of fact: Stover is one of the most incompetent officers on this ship. If his daddy wasn’t an admiral, and his mommy on the Unified Council, he’d be down cleaning the waste tanks with his toothbrush. So, for the foreseeable future, I’m suspending Regulation 6. I want someone I can trust on those sensors in case we get into trouble. Do you think you can handle that, Specialist First Class Fredericks?”

  There was no masking the wide smile that stretched across the man’s face. “Yes, sir!”

  “Then, by all means, go and relieve the Lieutenant under my direct orders. If he has a problem with it—in fact, even if he doesn’t have a problem with it—send him to me. Man that post until either I or executive officer Ashdoe sends someone to relieve you personally.”

  Fredericks snapped Krif another salute. “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  With Sergeant Adams in the lead, the administration building at Addison Field had been relatively easy to locate. The cracked and worn concrete façade had definitely seen better days. The two dozen windows that decorated it had all been broken out, and the sign above the main entrance had been blown completely free and was lying in a heap nearby. On Shawn’s order, Adams was to make a cursory examination of the office. Five minutes after Adams had entered the building, he stepped back through the battered opening and gave the all-clear for the rest of the team to enter.

  Save for two overturned file cabinets, the main lobby was fairly intact. It wasn’t until the six had traversed the first set of stairs to the administrative offices that the real chaos was apparent. Paperwork had been thrown everywhere and binders had been flung off the shelves with abandon. Desk and filing cabinet drawers hung half-open, as if their last users were in too big a rush to close them once they were emptied. There was a slight draft blowing in through the decimated windows, and the fluttering papers held the familiar sounds of leaves rustling in an autumn breeze.

  Adams and Montoya were ordered to scout any additional floors in the building that might be accessible, while Raven investigated an office next to the one Shawn and Melissa were inspecting.

  Melissa was in the far corner of the square-shaped office, moving aside a chair that had been turned over and was blocking a worn computer terminal. After dusting off the seat cushion, she sat down and attempted to access the terminal. She plugged a small, portable power supply into the terminal’s emergency power port and the computer hummed to life. Shawn, standing by the window and enjoying the cool breeze, was surprised to hear the computer power up.

  “That sounds like a good sign,” he said as he stepped up behind her.

  “We’ll see about that.” Melissa watched as the machine went through its automated boot process, loaded its firmware, and then displayed the command logo of Delta Base. It was a simple white circle, surround by thin blue piping, with a red triangle in its center. The words ‘Addison Field Supply’ were imprinted around the three sides of the triangle, with the Unified Sector Command logo in its center. She began inputting commands into the computer, but was almost immediately confronted with a passcode screen.

  “I don’t suppose you have a logon for this terminal?” Shawn chuckled.

  “I would if it were still connected to the rest of the Unified government’s mainframe,” she said with an air of frustration. “I’ll just have to crack into it.”

  “That’s not exactly legal, you know.”

  “Really?” she asked with a mischievous smile.

  “Yeah, really. It happens to violates three codes of the UCS Statute of Officer Ethics.”

  She smiled as she began rummaging through her pockets. “Four, actually. I’m surprised you’re that versed in UCS law, Mister Kestrel.”

  Shawn watched as she searched each of the half-dozen pockets of her dark gray flight suit. “I took on a few classes when I was in the academy. Besides, I’ve had my nose buried in books for the last few weeks. I was bound to pick up something.”

  Melissa smiled. “I’ll bet that would have made your dad proud,” she said as she finally found what she was looking for. “He was a lawyer, right?”

  Shawn narrowed his eyes at her, then stepped back from her chair. “I don’t recall telling you about him.”

  She pursed her lips and silently kicked herself for her blunder.

  When she remained silent, Shawn folded his hands across his chest, and his voice carried a note of irritation as he spoke. “I thought you said you’d never read my file.”

  “I did some minor research on you before I came to see you on Minos. I was an analyst in the OSI for nearly two years, you know.”

  “But you said my files were sealed.”

  “That was true, most of them were. I was, however, able to acquire your academy transcripts as well as your entrance questionnaire.”

  “I see,” he replied dubiously. “So you’re saying you still haven’t looked at my actual file?”

  Melissa examined the small, gloss-black object in her hand. She shook her head slowly as she flipped a slide switch on the device. “No, not yet,” she said as she pointed the device at the computer screen. “I tol
d you, it’s about trust, Shawn.” The display went blank momentarily, then popped back to life displaying a garbled string of characters. “I hope you’re not mad at me.”

  Shawn sighed, then stepped back behind her chair. He had to admit that he appreciated her honesty. “No, I guess not. It’s just transcripts.”

  The corner of her mouth raised in a half smile as she continued to adjust the small device in her hand. “So, since we’re on the subject, I noticed that you were…quite the student.”

  “Oh, really?” he replied cautiously. “What in my records gave you that impression?”

  She cocked her head slightly, this time smiling with both sides of her mouth as she watched the computer begin to respond to her device. “You had high marks in astronomy, astrogation, and astronautics. It’s not easy to master ‘The Three As’ before your senior year.”

  Shawn hadn’t heard the Three-As reference since he was a cadet. The resurfaced memory brought a grin to his face. “It wasn’t easy. What about you?”

  Melissa licked her lips as she continued to monitor the computer. “I decided to take astrophysics instead of astronautics.”

  “How did you do?”

  She laughed lightly. “Poorly, if it makes you feel any better.”

  “Depends on what you consider ‘poorly,’ Miss Graves.”

  “Let’s just say I passed by the skin of my teeth and we’ll leave it at that.”

  “So, what did you do well in?”

  With a twist of the dial on the bottom of the small black device, the garbled characters on the computer screen came into focus. Melissa smiled with deep satisfaction. “Computer operations.”

  “What is that thing you’re doing?” Shawn asked as he leaned closely over her shoulder. Even through the scent of misuse in the office, he could easily discern her jasmine perfume. Melissa held the small device up for his inspection. He regarded the glossy casing of the object. “It looks like a lipstick case.”