The Army Of Light (Kestrel Saga)

by Fender, Stephen

  In the last few minutes, the Sector Command interceptors had flown within visual range of Sylvia’s Delight. Shawn had to admit that he’d never seen anything like them before. They had a pointed center fuselage that gently swung back to widen and house two side by side engine pods. On the sides of the pods were small vertical stabilizers, useless in space, but required for atmospheric flight. In the rear, jutting forward at near forty-five degree angles to the fuselage, were long, graceful wings. The cockpit of the fighters, pushed far back on the body and aligned parallel with the wing roots, appeared to have a wraparound front screen, with smaller triangular windows on either side of the craft. Near the forward tip of the fuselage were small rearward swept wings, the same shape but a fraction of the size of their larger counterparts. He licked his lips absently as he imagined what it must be like to be behind the controls of one of the sleek silver and yellow trimmed fighters.

  Glancing back down, there was still nothing registering on the radar outside of Sylvia’s Delight except the carrier, though he could plainly see the two fighters out of his windows less than a hundred feet away.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, shaking himself from the daydream as he remembered Melissa had asked him a question. “No, we can’t just leave. Aside from the starboard engine problems, we have a gaping hole in our rear.”

  “And landing back on Minos is out of the question,” she agreed.

  “It has less to do with that and more to do with that carrier out there,” Shawn said as he inclined his head toward the Rhea. “You see, they’re obligated to help us out if we are in distress. And, by obligated, I mean ordered to—and that means not taking ‘no’ for an answer. Besides, right now we’re in as much distress as someone can get out here. If I don’t accept their help I could get my license pulled.”

  “I’m not keen on the idea of going aboard that ship,” Melissa sulked, slinking down in her chair as if to hide her face from anyone on the carrier that might be trying to look at her through the view port.

  “It’s better than going back to the planet and a hell of a lot safer. Besides, they can patch up the ship and we can be on our way.”

  “Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “Will I have to leave Sylvia’s Delight?”

  Shawn pursed his lips and then looked out of the window at the fighters once more. “I would think so. They’ve probably already scanned the ship, and I’m sure they’ll want to talk to anyone onboard.”

  “So, they know I’m here?”

  She sounded nervous. “If you’re asking if they know that you personally are onboard, I’m fairly certain they can’t read your DNA at this distance. Unless their scanners have vastly improved in the last few years, all they probably know is there are three humanoid life signs on this ship.”

  Her nervous expression indicated that this was not at all what she wanted to hear.

  Shawn turned his head to her and offered her a smile. “Just relax. It’ll be fine. It’ll be just fine. We’ll be back on our way to Corvan before you know it.”

  It was then that Trent came rushing through the door to gaze at the carrier. “Whoa, now that’s a thing of beauty. Sector Command?”

  “Yeah,” Shawn replied.

  “Finally, a chance to get off of this death trap.”

  Shawn scowled at the remark.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean death trap literally,” Trent corrected. “This is a fine… fine ship we’ve got here, Skipper. Unfortunately, it’s not really a ship anymore, since most of the propulsion systems are dead. And, someone was also kind enough to let all of the heat out of the cargo hold… and I’m not even sure the airlock is one-hundred percent sealed. All indications show that we’re slowly leaking oxygen. Oh, and the water purification system is down… as well as the waste processing units. So, I thought I’d come up and share the news about it with you all.”

  “Engineer’s description of the vessel’s status is confirmed,” The computer piped up cheerfully.

  Melissa opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by the communication speaker crackling back to life with the voice of the perturbed female flight controller. “Your ship has been identified as a Hypervarion Mark-IV commercial transport, designated Sylvia’s Delight. Please confirm.”

  Shawn leaned into the communication speaker. “That’s confirmed, Rhea.”

  “The Unified Merchant Trade Guild identifies the owner of that vessel as Shawn Kestrel, registered civilian cargo master. Please confirm.”

  “Confirmed, Rhea. This is Captain Shawn Kestrel speaking,” he tried to offer his most dashing smile to no one in particular.

  Melissa and Trent both rolled their eyes.

  “Prepare to lock navigational subsystems with the Rhea, Captain,” the voice said curtly. “We will slow down our data transfer rate. I’d hate to overload your computers. Please confirm.”

  “The computer is still working?” Trent asked in shock. “Wow, you didn’t break everything. I’m impressed.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Rhea.” Shawn said, disregarding Trent’s remark.

  “Say again?” The woman asked with a slight chuckle, obviously entertained by Shawn’s statement.

  “I repeat, negative on your need to streamline your data. I’ve upgraded the transfer link in my ship to Type-III specifications. As such, my systems can handle anything you can throw at it,” then he added smartly, “Please confirm.”

  “You’re awfully touchy about your ship’s abilities,” Melissa said mockingly.

  There was a small burst of laughter from the Rhea which was almost immediately silenced, probably by the acting senior communications officer in the room. The original woman’s voice, slightly muffled, came back online. “Confirmed, Sylvia’s Delight. Please transmit the encryption cipher key for your computer mainframe and prepare to lock guidance and navigational subsystems… and don’t say we didn’t warn you if your CPU melts down when our computer links up.”

  Surprisingly, the Mark-IV’s computer didn’t offer a single response. Shawn wondered if the computer was just as unsure about the navigational link as he was, timidly holding its proverbial breath in anticipation.

  Shawn kept a conscientious watch on the fighters beside his ship. Noting that they were holding their course, he realized that they were going to escort D all the way into the Rhea’s hangar. He turned his eyes back to the array of control panels before him, then entered in the sequence that would transmit the requisite codes to the carrier. A moment later the spear-shaped high-output antenna folded out from the top of the Mark-IV and began transmitting the sequence to the Rhea’s flight control officer.

  A row of blue indicator lights began flashing in a near random sequence as the Mark-IV’s navigational computer system and the carrier’s own began a cautious greeting with one another. Like two boxers in a ring, the computers sized each other up, each calculating the best method of achieving their own goals. In the span of a few seconds—a lifetime in a computational sense—both Sylvia’s Delight and the Rhea had met, communicated, battled, made compromises, and finally embraced one another as kindred spirits. The once random blue indicators now flashed in unison, giving Shawn a visual indication that D had relinquished control of the maneuvering and navigational systems to the Rhea’s flight control officer—or more precisely, to the Rhea’s computer itself.

  “Rhea has guidance control of your ship, Captain Kestrel. Sit back and enjoy the ride,” the female controller said a moment later.

  The expression on Melissa’s face told Shawn she wasn’t enjoying their current situation at all. The captain took his hands gingerly off the control stick as he acknowledged the carrier. “Roger, Rhea. You have control.”

  Sylvia’s Delight’s main engines—or what was left of them—began to shut down, and her maneuvering thrusters came online with a soft hum and a slight shudder in the ship’s deck plating. The Mark-IV banked slowly to starboard under the control of the Rhea’s landing computer, and the side profile of the carrier disappeared from the fo
rward window, allowing the vastness of space to once again filled Shawn and Melissa’s view. Melissa took the moment to steal a look over her shoulder, watching as Trent fiddled with the computer behind her chair.

  “Are we still losing oxygen?” she asked.

  Trent inputted a series of commands into the diagnostic terminal, then flipped a series of switches under one of the two monitors. “I think I’ve got it stopped for now, but the oxygen scrubbers are down, meaning we’re breathing on borrowed time until we repair it,” he turned his eyes from Melissa to the back of Shawn’s head. “It’s a real mess back there, Captain.”

  Shawn didn’t take his eyes from the panorama of stars before them. “It’s that bad?”

  Trent nodded solemnly. “Yeah, it’s really that bad. Maybe even permanent. Those Temkorian plasma bolts did a lot of damage to some very critical systems, not to mention the fact that both of the drive engines need balancing… again.” He forlornly cast his eyes to the deck and then turned to leave the cockpit. Before exiting, however, he turned back to Shawn and managed a faint smile. “I’m just glad I brought my tools with us. I don’t know what I’d do without them.”

  Shawn coughed nervously, then straightened in his seat. “Yeah, well… about your tools.”

  Trent’s eyes narrowed. He recalled the last time Shawn’s voice had held that tone—the last time the captain had broken the ship and had vehemently denied it. “What about them?”

  Melissa likewise turned to face Shawn. “Captain?”

  Sylvia’s Delight was now pointed directly at the cavernous opening at the bow of the carrier. The rectangular aperture was about a hundred and fifty feet high and over three hundred feet wide. The enormous launch bay door had been rolled up, and the interior lights of the compartment were a soft red, flooding the entire space as far back as Shawn could see from their current position—which was a considerable distance.

  The proximity alarm sounded, breaking the silence on the control deck and saving Shawn for the moment. “Both of you hold that thought for a minute. We’re going to be touching down shortly.”

  “No, you wait a minute! What about my tools?”

  *

  The sleek fighter escorts that had shepherded the Mark-IV slowed on their course, allowing Sylvia’s Delight to pull slightly ahead of them as they took up flanking positions just behind the ship. The Rhea’s landing computer expertly guided the Mark-IV slowly through the large hangar doors. As the ship passed inside, the cockpit of Sylvia’s Delight was bathed in the warm red glows of the interior lights of the hangar bay.

  “Whoa,” Trent let out in slow pronunciation as he looked around the insides of the carrier. “This thing’s enormous. It looks even bigger on the inside.”

  Along the bulkheads of the hangar deck, spaced roughly twenty feet apart, were angular rib-like structures extending from the deck to the overhead. Each had a series of lights built into them running the length of their surface. However, the white illumination was nowhere near powerful enough to overcome the red lights cascading down from the overhead. In the end, Melissa felt as if she were traveling inside the ribcage of some monstrous prehistoric beast. “It feels like we just got swallowed by a whale.”

  “If that’s the case,” Shawn replied cautiously, “then I hope we get spit out soon.”

  She looked at him skeptically. “You were in the military. You should be used to this.”

  “For one thing, the carrier I was on wasn’t nearly this big,” he said, then caught site of another one of the sleek interceptors, trimmed in red and black and sporting a skull and crossbones insignia on its twin vertical stabilizers. Several of the fighter’s inspection and maintenance panels were removed, revealing bundles of glowing cables that Shawn had never seen embedded in any fighter before. “And it wasn’t nearly as sophisticated.”

  A small, six-wheeled tractor carrying some large diagnostic equipment rolled alongside the Mark-IV for a brief moment, then neatly darted under her on its way to another portion of the hangar. Sylvia’s Delight began to slow in her approach, but not before another fighter—an older orange and yellow tipped design called a Seminole—drifted past her bow, carried aloft by an unseen gantry.

  “Seems like a busy place,” said Melissa as she looked to the dozens of personnel scurrying about the hangar deck.

  Shawn had to agree. He got the distinct impression that the carrier’s crew was on high alert, at least from what he could see from his vantage point. There were ordnance personnel moving heavy missiles from one bay into another, and twelve man personnel carriers overloaded and moving about under high speed. He took note of the multitude of fighters, scouts, and bombers—either moving into launch position or being transferred into their respective bays for maintenance or weapon loading. To Shawn, this didn’t seem at all like a ship sailing under a flag of peace.

  “Do you think all this was for us?” Trent asked as he nodded his head in the direction of the view port.

  A thin smile crossed Shawn’s face. “You’re asking if they went to all of this trouble to save our skins? No, I doubt it. Those two fighters they sent out were more than enough to handle the Temkorian’s. This is…” he let his words trail off as he watched a fully loaded bomber move from her bay and into a side launch tube, the bright blue bands of its squadron insignia adorning the vertical tail briefly visible before it was obscured. “This is something else entirely.”

  “The Army of Light?” Melissa asked in a near whisper.

  “The who of what?” Trent asked.

  Shawn didn’t reply as he continued to study the cacophony of movement outside the ship.

  Sylvia’s Delight shuffled slowly to port, now hovering only inches above the deck. On the ground before them was a large painted square, easily big enough to encompass the ship, outlined by broken yellow and orange lines denoting that it was a landing bay. High on the wall directly above the bay was a large, luminous number five. The retro thrusters ignited under the ship, indicating that the craft was seconds from touching down. A moment later the ship’s landing pads met the non-skid surface of the Rhea’s hangar deck, and Sylvia’s Delight stopped her descent. The Mark-IV’s computer—at the request of the carrier’s flight control officer—disengaged its systems one by one until only minimal power was provided to the most vital systems. Melissa watched from her seat as two men, outfitted in bright purple environmental suits, appeared from a nearby alcove and hooked large, tubular umbilical lines into the bottom of the ship.

  “What are those for?”

  Trent was watching the same men. “They’re replenishing our fresh water supply, taking out any waste in our tanks, and recharging the internal batteries. It’s standard procedure.”

  Shawn reached up, flicking the switch that would open the rear cargo hatch, then remembered that the hatch itself wasn’t there anymore.

  “Are we getting out?” Melissa asked nervously.

  Out of the forward view port, Shawn spied a pair of fully armed marines approaching the vessel from a nearby alcove. “I don’t think staying here is an option for any of us. Besides, with the ship at minimal power, there isn’t much in the way of hot showers or warm food. At least not until we get back in to space, that is.” He bent over at the waist, searching around his feet, then ran his hands above one of the overhead consoles.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “My hat.”

  She rolled her eyes before she too began searching, then noticed something on the floor behind the captain’s chair. It was his favorite hat alright, but half of the brim had been seared to a crisp. She handed it to him delicately, but it crumbled as he took hold of it.

  “This was my favorite hat,” he said sorrowfully.

  Trent kneeled down and looked under the captain’s seat. “Hum. Looks like the secondary auxiliary control linkage overheated. Your hat must have been sitting right on top of it.”

  Melissa watched as the captain fumbled with the useless, burnt accoutrement. “It looks like it’l
l never come out on top again,” she said, snickering at her own joke.

  “I have a lot of fond memories with this hat.” He continued to fondle the hat for another moment, then tossed it on top of the instrument panel. As Trent stepped out of the command deck, Shawn unbuckled his safety harness and headed for the door. It wasn’t until he was through the opening that he realized Melissa wasn’t following him. He turned, noticing she was still firmly secured in her chair. “Let’s get a move on.”

  “I’d rather not, if I have a choice in the matter.”

  “You don’t, so get your butt out of that seat and follow me. There’s no way I’m leaving you here by yourself.”

  “Why? It’s not like I can break anything else.”

  “That’s for sure,” Trent’s voice rang out from beyond the open hatch.

  Shawn didn’t turn his eyes from her.

  “Besides,” she continued defiantly. “Who’s going to make me?”

  Shawn stepped back into the control deck and leaned close to Melissa. “If you don’t get up, I’ll make you.”

  “And you’ll get a fat lip for it.”

  “And you’ll get a sore ass when I boot it out of this ship. Now, if you don’t mind, will you kindly get out?” He made a sweeping gesture towards the door.

  Under protest Melissa unbuckled her belts in frustration and stormed out of the control area.

  The trio made their way past the crew quarters to the airlock. Shawn entered in the airlock codes and they exited into the cargo hold. The entire area was in shambles. Bundles of cabling were dangling from a half dozen locations, and nearly every overhead light was out. The metallic smell of charred metal mixed with a wafting of melted plastic gave the captain a brief bout of nausea. Shawn watched as Trent moved to inspect the five foot wide hole the Temkorian fighter had blown between the cargo hold and the starboard engine room.

  “I always wanted a window there,” he said, trying to make light of the situation.

  With the cargo ramp now floating somewhere in space, there was no graceful way to walk out of the ship. The aft end of the Mark-IV was now three feet above the deck of the Rhea, and Shawn didn’t give it a second thought as he jumped down and began to walk away. It wasn’t until he heard Melissa cough from behind him that he turned around.