There was a marked silence between them as they each contemplated the motives of an enemy they still knew nothing about. The fact that the Unified Government was behind a galactic-scale cover-up didn’t sit well with either of them. They finished the rest of their meal in near-silence, each occasionally looking out the large view port window and wondering what had happened at this place, each wishing they had time-travel goggles that would allow them to witness who had been here and for what purpose. Melissa abruptly stood from the table and withdrew a blue bottle of wine from a nearby cabinet, but Shawn couldn’t immediately tell if it was the liquid or the glass that was colored. After pouring two glasses she took her seat once more.
She swirled the blue liquid around her goblet before taking a tentative sip. The liquid tasted sweet on her tongue, like fresh-picked strawberries. “What do you think we’ll find on Corvan?”
“I don’t know,” Shawn replied as he reached for his glass. “I’m sure whatever research your father encoded on the disk will be helpful. It’d be easier to take a look at it than to speculate.”
She smiled. “Yeah, we’re pretty good at formulating wild ideas as it is.”
Shawn stepped out from behind the table and sat down at the nearby computer terminal. Glad that it seemed to respond effortlessly—and wordlessly—to his commands, he went about transferring all the data from the drive into an encrypted directory on the computer itself, then shunted it over to the holographic display matrix embedded in the tabletop near where Melissa was seated. He returned to his wine just in time to see a small holographic input matrix appear a few inches above the table in front of him. He entered the necessary commands into the spectral keyboard, accessing the root directory of the media, and brought up an image of the contents of the device. The first folder he came to was labeled “Project Windstorm.”
“Computer, access Project Windstorm and display visual contents.”
The logo of Sector Command, the great angular blue bird with downswept wings, briefly appeared and rotated in the space above the table, then instantly dissolved and was replaced by a small, tapered cylinder. It rotated about its three axes with the words “Project Windstorm” floating above it. Shawn tapped at the controls once again and the holographic tube separated in four nearly equal parts, each labeled as a different component. From fore to aft the device was labeled “warhead,” “sensor suite,” “intermix assembly,” and “propulsion module.” He stood back, then reached out and touched the label for the warhead. This caused the computer simulation to again bisect the tip of the projectile into even more components. The computer began to read the contents of a stored text file.
“Displayed is the warhead of the Windstorm particle torpedo. Encased in Tireirim, the Epsilon-6 of the warhead should withstand temperatures in excess of one thousand five hundred Kelvin. This will be sufficient to enter the atmosphere of any planetary body known to exist.”
The animation panned out to show a very Earthlike planet, with a Sector Command cruiser in high orbit. The simulated cruiser fired the missile, which streaked away from the ship and headed directly toward the planet, the upper corner of the screen displaying countdown and altitude data. When the countdown reached zero, and the device had leveled off at an altitude of one mile, the simulated torpedo was detonated.
The shock wave from the device was immediate. It spread across a small section of the simulated world like a hell-born cancer, destroying every living thing in its path.
“Maximum initial impact zone is projected at less than one mile, with an overall blast shockwave radius of five miles,” the computerized voice stated during the animation.
The beautiful green northern continent of the world was awash in a red glow as a second counter, reading “Enemies Eliminated” rose with breathtaking speed, easily surpassing hundreds of thousands in the first few seconds after detonation. Fifteen seconds after primary detonation, the glowing red shockwave began to slow. With that, the computer began its audio playback once more.
“When the prevailing winds take hold, the remaining Epsilon-6 isotopes in the upper and lower atmospheres will begin to shift and fall along a precalculated trajectory, based on the programmed data and in-depth dimensional scans of the target body.”
The red glow began to move counterclockwise to the rotation of the planet, soon giving the small body an eerie red belt of destruction at its equator. It spread slowly toward the poles, making it nearly halfway between them and the equator before it slowed to a stop. The number of eliminated enemies began to rise again, this time surpassing tens of millions.
“The simulated world represented here characterizes the average-sized life-supporting spatial body in this sector. To assure maximum efficiency against such a body, no fewer than two weapons should be deployed to guarantee the utmost coverage.” Once the computer had finished speaking, the decimated planet and the simulated USC cruiser dissolved from the screen to be replaced by the Sector Command eagle once more.
“Ready for query,” the Rhea’s computer voice chimed in.
“My God,” Melissa said under her breath. “To think that we could have designed something like that.”
Shawn sat in silent contemplation for a moment before he began inputting commands using the holographic keypad once more.
“What are you doing now?” she asked.
“Well, in the first video we watched, your father said that his mission was twofold: to search for the weapon research information and then to discover a way to subvert it. He also said he met with partial success. I want to find out if he found a way of disabling the device.”
After searching through the data, Shawn stumbled across a folder with several other dimensional animations in it. He ordered the computer to bring it up on the holotable.
Above the table, the image of a modified shipboard pulse cannon came into view. Its circular base was capped with a familiar rectangular field coil housing, common to most long-range shipboard weapons, with its three large-bore barrels pointing out from within. However, instead of the field coil cover being a smooth, flat shape, this one had an unusual type of secondary device placed on top of it, roughly the same size as the cover and with a green central glow. The computerized voice noted that this was a proposed upgrade to the standard shipboard batteries, and that this new weapon would have nearly twice the range as standard cannons. The words “seventy-five percent success rate’” glowed in red under the image of the cannon.
Shawn brought up the next animation, which was a similarly modified shield generator, purported to give nearly three times the protective power as the current defensive systems. Yet another animation was a diagram of a radical new sensor palette design, and the plans for a new breed of supercomputer that would be used to coordinate all these new systems.
“What does it all mean?” Melissa asked as she watched the diagram of the nearly room-sized mainframe spin on its axis, the words “fifty-two percent success rate” spinning slowly below it.
“These look like prototype systems that were designed to destroy or negate the effects of the Windstorm torpedo. Based on their individual success rates, I’d say they were less than effective at stopping the device.”
“What if we were to use all these systems in conjunction with one another?”
Shawn entered the information into the computer, and the results came back more quickly than he had expected. “Whoever designed these systems thought of that already.” He pressed the key and small images of each of the prototype devices came into view. They oriented themselves accordingly, and then they became attached to one another by a series of power conduits and waveguides. The words “eighty-one percent effective” flashed on the screen.
“This may be what your father meant when he said he’d found the last piece of the puzzle on Corvan. This series of countermeasures would have to be one hundred percent effective in order to stop a device like the Windstorm from reaching the planet’s surface.”
“But this is all shipboar
d-based equipment. I mean, you’d need several ships operating in tandem to coordinate a defensive maneuver like that.”
“It would seem so,” Shawn said with a nod as he looked over the spinning schematics before him. “And those ships would have to be completely dedicated to destroying that weapon. They’d be wide open for an outside attack.”
“So we’d have to commit even more forces to protect them.”
“Exactly.”
Melissa’s shoulders slumped and she exhaled deeply. “It’s all just theory, anyway. If any of these prototype systems even existed, they would have been on Second Earth for testing. So either they were destroyed by the initial orbital attack, the Epsilon-6 detonation, or they were brought up to the Valley Forge and destroyed there.”
Shawn nodded. “My money is on them being aboard the Valley Forge. That had to be what they were ordered to retrieve.”
“And now they’re gone…and all we’ve got are some blueprints and a few equations…and no Windstorm device at all.”
“Unless—and I think this may be the case—one may exist on Corvan. Or, at least, a way to build one. Your father did say he was traveling between there and Second Earth quite often. We should consider that he found something on his last expedition.” Shawn rubbed at the bridge of his nose as he felt a headache coming on. “All things considered, we’ve got a pretty thin theory as to what’s been going on around here.”
“Very thin,” she agreed. “But it all fits, and that can’t be ignored.”
Shawn folded his arms across his chest and studied the diagram of the shipboard cannon for another moment before speaking. “I don’t want to say what I’m about to say.”
She smiled and stepped closer to his side. “I’d feel better if you said it, because I really don’t feel like saying it myself, let alone doing it.”
He nodded, put his hands into his pockets, and swiveled his head to face hers. “We’ve got to tell Dick.”
She mirrored his gestures. “Yep. And he’ll call us crazy. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Shawn shrugged, then turned back to the image of the weapon system. “And I’d half believe him.”
Melissa stepped over to the computer terminal and withdrew the gold computer disk. She wrapped it in the black pouch in which she’d found it and placed it back inside the wall-mounted safe. She then pulled out a small scrap of paper from her desk and jotted down a series of numbers before handing it to Shawn.
“The combination?” he asked in surprise. “I thought these safes were biometric.”
Melissa went to her desk and withdrew a small, magnetic keypad and likewise handed it gingerly to the commander. “I trust you. Besides, you were wondering when I was going to share my toys with you.”
He smiled as he examined the device. “All things considered, even though I now have access to everything in your cabin, I won’t be able to get to the safe if your front door is locked.”
She reached into her pocket and withdrew an access card. She handed it to him, trying hard not to blush. “I…umm…already thought of that.”
“You made a duplicate access card?”
Melissa nodded. “An exact duplicate.”
“You realize that this gives me access to everything your clearance entitles you to.”
“Uh-huh.”
As she stepped closer to him he lowered his voice. “And what if I’m a spy? What if all I’ve been trying to do is get into your…access?”
She held the card edge lightly against his breast bone. “Then I’m going to kill you, and make sure no one ever finds the body.”
While her tone was playful, something told Shawn that she meant every word of what she was saying. He reached out for the card, purposely brushing against her fingers as he slipped it from her soft grasp. “I’ll be sure to knock first if I ever have to use this,” he whispered.
Melissa could feel her pulse rate begin to climb as their bodies threatened to touch. “I…I don’t think that will be—”
Whatever she was about to say was cut off by the ship’s general alarm blaring through every corner of the vessel.
“Attention! All hands, attention! This is not a drill.”
Shawn instantly recognized the voice of the Rhea’s operations officer, Commander Caitlin Hayes. He’d had an unfortunate run-in with her, leading to an awkward first meeting in the officers’ wardroom several days ago. He only hoped that she’d been able to get the spaghetti stains out of her uniform since then.
“Unknown vessel entering the sector,” her announcement continued. “Repeat, unknown vessel entering the sector. All hands to battle stations! Repeat, all hands to battle stations! This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. All gun crews report to your stations. Medical department stand by on decks five, seven, and ten. All flight crews prepare for immediate launch. Repeat, all flight crews prepare for immediate launch.”
“Get to the combat information center,” Shawn said, placing his hands on Melissa’s tightly. “It’s the safest place on the ship, and Krif is going to need his best intelligence officer at his side.”
“What about you?” she asked worriedly.
Shawn offered his best cocky smirk. “You heard the lady. I need to get suited up and prepare for takeoff.”
A look of puzzlement crossed her face. “Are you qualified for combat flying yet?”
“No, not exactly, but I’m certified in everything else. My squadron’s going to need me, regardless.”
They turned toward the door and, as it opened, Melissa pivoted quickly, grabbing Shawn and spinning him on his heels with surprising ease. She reached behind his head and brought his lips to hers. He placed his arms around her just as she pulled her head back from his and looked into his deep blue eyes.
“Be safe out there, Shawn.” she said, trying desperately not to sound worried.
He smiled confidently. “You know something? You talk too much.” He leaned in and gave her a more passionate kiss. As he separated from her, he brushed the side of her face with his index finger. “I’ll be back soon. Maybe then we’ll pick up where we’re leaving off?”
Melissa smiled. “Get out of here, hotshot, and take your ego with you.”
Chapter 7
The doors to the Rhea’s combat information center whooshed open and admitted Melissa to the compartment after she’d rounded the last corner and presented her IDC to the appropriate card reader. Upon entering the space, a male communications officer near the door was the first thing Melissa heard as she walked along the raised platform at the rear of the compartment.
“Unidentified vessel, unidentified vessel. This is the USCS Rhea. You have entered restricted space. Please identify yourself or leave the system immediately. I say again, please identify yourself or leave the area immediately.”
As the officer once again repeated his request, Melissa was nearly barreled over by Krif, who had stormed into the compartment a moment after her. After quickly sidestepping the stampeding captain, she watched as he headed to the far side of the room, where an attractive human brunette stood behind a podium-like station.
“Status, Commander Hayes.”
“Unidentified vessel entering the system, Captain. They appear to be on an intercept course. We are at condition yellow: all flight crews have been ordered to immediately stand by, all medical departments have checked in and are ready, and all damage control parties have mustered and are at station-keeping.”
Krif gave the tall, fair-skinned woman a curt nod. “Very good, Commander. Where is the executive officer?”
“Commander Ashdoe just reported in. He’s in auxiliary control, and has assumed operational command of the compartment. All primary and secondary computer and communications links to AuxControl have been established.”
“Good,” Krif said. He looked around with the utmost confidence, the master of his domain. “Communications officer?”
A young, dark-skinned man turned to face the captain. “Yes, sir?”
“Any reply from the unidentified vessel, Lieutenant Clifton?”
“No, sir. No reply.” The man’s voice carried a distinctive accent, but at this distance Melissa couldn’t discern if it was Creole or French.
“And you’ve tried every frequency spectrum?” Krif asked, his hands firmly on his hips.
“Yes, sir. Twice: all bands and in all known languages. Whoever they are, they’re either not receiving us or they’re ignoring our hails. I’m afraid I can’t tell which.”
“Sensors?” Krif yelled into the air.
Sergeant Fredericks, who had earlier relieved the incompetent Lieutenant Stover under Krif’s direct order, spoke up loudly from the long-range sensor station behind the captain. “Yes, sir.”
Krif half-turned and had to look up to the sergeant who was seated on the raised platform now behind him. “Fredericks, right here and now you are my eyes, understand?”
The young man looked calm and collected, the model enlisted man who had temporarily taken the place of a well-trained officer. “Yes, sir. Absolutely.”
“Good man. Tell me what I’m seeing.”
Sergeant Lance Fredericks looked into the wavering screen before him. He had his sensors’ headset on, which used a small screen that received everything the sensors could discern about the object directly. It glowed with a soft blue aura around his face as his fingers danced across the computer terminal to correlate the data. “I’m…I’m not exactly sure, sure.”
“That’s nowhere near a good enough answer, specialist. Now, give me something I can use or you’re fired.”
Fredericks typed away at the holographic keypad once more, trying to get the sensors to display something that correlated with his years of training and experience. The screen before him was awash in statistics and specifications about materials that had no known reference in the ship’s extensive library computer.
“Apologies, Captain. I can’t tell you what it is, sir, but I can definitely tell you what it’s not.”
“I’m waiting on pins and needles here, son. Just spit it out or I’ll call up your relief,” Krif replied impatiently.
Second Earth Page 12
