The Galactic Chronicles: Shadows of the Void Books 8 - 10

by J. J. Green

  As soon as the Thylacine was near the shipwrecked pilot, Jas dispatched Squadron Leader Correia to bring the person in. Everyone on the bridge waited tensely while the rescue operation took place. The only information they had was the holo on Correra’s and the stranded fighter ships, which didn’t show them much. Trimborn gave regular updates on the signal from the pilot’s chip. It gave only minimal information: heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation of the pilot’s blood were all they knew of her or his physical state until the squadron leader made contact.

  Jas had a direct comm with Correia, and the rest of the bridge couldn’t hear what he said. They knew, however, when a message came through because Jas screwed up her face. The news wasn’t good.

  “Still in the land of the living, though?” she asked. When she heard the reply, she nodded, then spoke to the doctor, telling him to go to the launch bay to be on hand when the injured pilot was brought in.

  Telling Trimborn to continue to scan for more survivors, Jas stood up to leave the bridge. Knowing she wouldn’t be needed for a while—Kennewell could map the sweep by herself—Sayen jumped up and went after her.

  She trotted along the ship’s corridor to catch up to her long-legged friend.

  “Do you know who the pilot is?” she asked when she drew level.

  Jas shook her head. “The name isn’t on my manifest. Must be from another ship.”

  “Is he in a bad way?” Sayen asked.

  “Pretty bad. Burned up and unconscious, Correia said.”

  “Krat,” Sayen muttered. “Are you going to see him brought in?”

  Jas nodded.

  “I guess if the doctor can’t treat him here, we’ll have to jump to Unity medical facilities right away.”

  “Yeah,” Jas replied. “That’s not why I’m going down to the bay, though.”

  “Isn’t it? Why are you then?”

  Jas gave her an inscrutable look and didn’t reply.

  They arrived at the launch bay just as the doctor was bringing the patient out. Sayen couldn’t make out the pilot’s face, he was so badly burned. It was a miracle he was still alive. The doctor had put the patient on a life-support gurney and, along with Correia, he was pushing it toward them. A terrible smell of burned flesh hung in the air.

  “Excuse me, Commander,” the doctor said. “I must get this person to the sick bay immediately.”

  “Wait a moment, Doctor,” said Jas. “Did you scan him?”

  “No, of course not. No time. I can go through the formalities later.”

  He tried to push the gurney around Jas, who was in the center of the corridor. She put a hand on the plexiglass lid, stopping the gurney dead.

  “Scan your patient now, Doctor,” Jas said.

  The man tutted, but he comm’d a medic to bring over a Shadow scanner. “It’s a waste of time, in my opinion, Commander. What are the chances of the Shadows burning up one of their own in an attempt to infiltrate our ranks?”

  Jas folded her arms and looked at him implacably.

  When the medic with the scanner arrived, the doctor opened the plexiglass lid. The sickening smell intensified. Sayen put a hand over her nose and mouth, though it made little difference. The doctor passed the scanner up and down the prone patient. Without looking at it, he lifted the scanner and held it toward Jas, display side facing her.

  “Do you see?” he asked.

  The display read: Shadow Detected.

  Jas turned the scanner toward the doctor so that he could read it. As he saw the result, he turned pale. “I, er...” he stammered. Correia took a step backward and stared at the burned pilot in disbelief.

  The terrible burnt smell had already made Sayen nauseous. At this latest revelation, she clenched her teeth and swallowed saliva to prevent herself from vomiting.

  It had been another trap. The Shadow ship had vacated the vicinity, but they had left behind injured 'survivors’ as plants to infiltrate the UA ships. What wouldn’t they stoop to? Sayen wondered. Jas must have guessed that the doctor would be too caught up in saving his patient to remember, or bother, to follow protocol and scan him.

  “Airlock it,” Jas said. She stood against the corridor wall and spoke into her comm. “Patch me through to the captain of the Vespira.”

  The doctor was staring down at his blackened patient as Jas talked to the Vespira’s captain.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said. “How could they do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know,” Sayen replied. “They used to be so similar to their victims, we couldn’t tell them apart. But this, this is something beyond regular cruelty.”

  When the doctor still seemed to be frozen in disbelief, she added, “You’d better do as the commander said.”

  The doctor’s head hung low. He flicked off the switches to the machines on the life support gurney. The equipment and screens turned silent and dark. Together, he and Correia pushed the gurney along the corridor until they came to an airlock. Sayen keyed in the code to open the inner door, and the doctor lifted the Shadow in his arms, still wrapped in a sheet. He went into the airlock and lay the creature almost gently on the floor before returning to the corridor.

  Sayen sealed the door. She started the sequence to open the outer lock. Figures counted down in the display. She didn’t want to look, but somehow she wasn’t able to take her eyes off the burned Shadow that lay unconscious through the airlock window. Had it suffered when they’d burned it? she wondered. Had it volunteered or agreed to the deceit, or had it been coerced?

  The display reached zero, and the outer doors opened. At the sound or sudden loss of temperature and atmosphere, the Shadow stirred. Horror rising up in her throat, Sayen saw its eyes flick open. Then it was gone, swept into space, the sheet trailing behind it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jas went to the meeting at the Transgalactic Council like she was on autopilot. Nothing mattered anymore. She felt like a machine, going through the motions for as long as the war lasted.

  Pacheco was also there. He seemed to have recovered a little from the loss of the Camaradon. His eyes no longer had a distracted look, and he was as smartly dressed as ever. He was seated with the other seven admirals and two fleet admirals. The large room was packed full of Unity Alliance commanders and captains. Everyone had been scanned twice by separate, randomly picked personnel before entering, and as always, the meeting room was proofed against any kind of surveillance.

  Still, Jas couldn’t help but wonder if somehow the Shadows had slipped in an informant. Not a Shadow, but someone who had gone over to their side, perhaps on the promise that they and theirs would not be harmed.

  The golden insectoid alien who was the current head of the Council—Jas had heard that it was an unelected position, conferred by a lottery system among the qualified candidates—addressed the room.

  “Fleet admirals, admirals, captains and commanders of the Unity Alliance, I had hoped to have been greeting you in more joyful circumstances. I had mistakenly predicted that our most recent battle with the Shadows was to have been our last. Sadly, we now know that was a false hope.

  “Our intelligence reports were not entirely incorrect, but they left out important information. The Shadows drew us into a trap, resulting in the destruction of our most powerful starship. They removed our key instrument in the fight, and now it would seem that they have the advantage.

  “For this reason, I would like to suggest a different tactic, which is to be the subject of this meeting. I would urge you not to spend time regrouping, building new vessels, and so on. This is probably what the Shadows expect us to do. But we have discovered that our former strategy was not effective. We must not pursue old tactics. We must try something new. And for that reason, I and the rest of the Council’s leaders suggest that we must fight back now. We must commit everything that we have remaining at this moment. The longer we wait, the stronger the Shadows will become.”

  “But if we attack now,” interrupted a fleet admiral, “what
do we attack them with? We have nothing to withstand that monster ship that they have built. I’ve seen the vids of the destruction of the Camaradon. That ray they have is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Going against it with our current weaponry would be little short of suicide.”

  “We have a saying among my kind,” the golden councilor replied. “When you cannot be the strongest, be the smartest.”

  “It seems like the Shadows are the ones who have been the smartest so far,” grumbled the fleet admiral.

  Jas rested her chin on her hand and watched the councilor through half-lidded eyes. It had something up its sleeve.

  “We have carefully studied the reports of Admiral Pacheco and the captains and commanders who were present at the defeat of the Camaradon,” the golden alien went on. “We have detected a theme running between the lines of the reports. In fact, some of the reports overtly stated the observation. The ray that the Shadows used so effectively seemed to draw some of its power from the pulses it encountered. We cannot be sure of this, but if it is true, this fact offers us hope.”

  “How? That makes things worse,” said the fleet admiral. “If we’re right about that, it only means we can’t even fire at it without that energy being fired back at us.”

  “It would indeed be a hopeless situation if all we were able to do was fire at it,” the golden councilor said. “But let us think laterally, just for a moment.”

  Jas had the impression that the Transgalactic Council leader was vastly more intelligent than those assembled around it, and it was simplifying everything while trying not to sound like it was talking down to them.

  It went on, “If this Shadow beam can in fact absorb the energy of the pulses it encounters, and then redirect that energy outward, that means the pulse power must be drawn into the Shadow weapon first. And if it takes in pulse energy, what else might it draw in?”

  There was a moment of silence while they pondered the councilor’s question. What could the Shadow ship take into its beam that could harm it? Then, Jas realized what the councilor meant.

  “A bomb,” she said.

  “Precisely,” said the councilor. “If we can disguise a bomb as a pulse, and fire it at the Shadow ship, we could destroy it.”

  “What kind of bomb?” the fleet admiral asked. “If it absorbs energy, we can’t increase the power of our pulses.”

  “Indeed not,” the councilor said. “But we may be able to disguise an anti-matter bomb in a pulse. A poison pill, so to speak. If the beam absorbs anti-matter, the result would be quite spectacular, I believe.”

  “Do you have such a bomb?” the fleet admiral asked.

  “No, but our scientists are working on it as we speak. They believe such a thing can be constructed, though it would be very unstable. No matter. For now, we must act as though the bomb will be ready in time for us to use it. We must find the Shadow ship and prepare for an assault.”

  The discussion went on for longer than an hour, but Jas sat back and let them argue it out. Some of the UA leaders saw the councilor’s idea as outlandish and unrealistic, and were more in favor of a guerrilla warfare style of resistance, similar to what the Shadows had been doing for the majority of the war. Others agreed with the councilor that a single, final, decisive blow was required as soon as possible. They said that their people would rather die than live in servitude and fear.

  But the anti-matter bomb was the better idea, Jas thought, and the majority eventually agreed to it.

  As she left the meeting to return to the Thylacine, Pacheco caught up to her.

  “I think we made the right decision, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You don’t sound enthusiastic about the idea.”

  “I’m not enthusiastic about much these days. This war’s been going on too long.”

  “I got the impression you weren’t doing so well,” Pacheco said. “I, er, wanted to thank you for making me see sense the other day. I went to the doctor. That post-battle shock isn’t to be messed with. I didn’t really believe how bad it was until I experienced it.”

  When Jas didn’t reply, he went on, “You know, you might benefit from a visit to the doc yourself. It doesn’t hurt to have a checkup. Talk things over, maybe.”

  She smiled wryly. “Giving me a taste of my own medicine, Pacheco?”

  “Think of it as gentle advice from a concerned friend. I’ve accepted you’re never going to feel about me the same way that I feel about you, Jas. But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring about you.”

  For the first time in a long while, Jas was moved. Pacheco’s concern touched her. She stopped and looked into his eyes. “Thanks, but there isn’t anything the doctor or anyone else can do that’s going to make me feel better. It is what it is.”

  Pacheco nodded. “Well, I’m going to be around to keep an eye on you anyway. Now that the Camaradon’s gone, I’m to berth aboard the Thylacine.”

  Jas’ warmth toward the admiral cooled a little. In spite of what he’d said, she had the impression that he still hadn’t given up hope of something closer between them.

  Chapter Twenty

  It took the Transgalactic Council only ten days to locate the Shadow’s flagship vessel, but their scientists took over six weeks to develop the anti-matter bomb. The idea for the technology wasn’t new, and they’d already been working on a prototype when the battle had occurred, so they hadn’t had to start from scratch. The greatest challenge, Jas heard, was to envelop the anti-matter in pulse energy for long enough after its manufacture for it to be fired and taken in by the Shadow weapon. Anti-matter was incredibly unstable.

  Also, the UA couldn’t simply create the bomb, jump to the Shadow ship’s position, and fire it into the Shadow’s beam. It would have to send a ship that was carrying the bomb-making equipment to attack the Shadow vessel. If the bomb wasn’t fired in time from the ship where it was created, it would explode and destroy the ship. So, to disguise what it was doing and to protect the ship that carried the bomb-making equipment the UA decided to launch a regular attack.

  The Thylacine, as an average-sized destroyer of the Unity fleet—and therefore unlikely to attract undue attention from the Shadow ship—drew the short straw. Jas’ ship was to carry the bomb-making equipment and unleash what everyone hoped would be the final blow, destroying the gigantic Shadow ship.

  Six weeks of preparation for the battle hadn’t improved Jas’ feelings of hopelessness and exhaustion. She’d been busy attending all the meetings and briefings as well as overseeing a full update of all the Thylacine’s systems and equipment so that the ship was in tiptop shape. She’d also had to deal with a myth problem on the ship that Sayen had told her about. Somewhere along the line as they’d been releasing mythrin-bearing planets from Shadow control, the refined drug had gotten aboard. She’d ordered a thorough search of the ship, and screened every crew member, finding and dismissing several addicts. But even so, the time had seemed to pass slowly.

  She was responsible for the Thylacine’s crew and the ship’s operation, Pacheco was responsible for the installation of the bomb-making equipment and the deployment of the bomb. That part of the plan was top secret.

  Finally, the day before the battle arrived. Jas watched the officers as they went through their checks. A few supplementary crew members were arriving that evening, and Trimborn was responsible for settling them in.

  When everything was completed, Jas left the bridge and returned to her cabin for an early night. As she went through the corridors, the atmosphere aboard the ship was quiet and tense. The anti-matter bomb was a secret, but the crew couldn’t fail to have noticed the new equipment being brought aboard. Jas wondered if they had guessed that the Thylacine was playing a larger-than-usual role in the battle.

  Jas changed into her unflattering, Unity-issue pajamas, catching sight of herself in her cabin’s mirror. She turned away from her wan face and tired eyes and climbed into her bunk. She lay down on her back with one arm
over her eyes and mentally went through the battle plan for the next day. She’d had so much trouble sleeping lately, she’d gotten into the habit of drinking to relax herself. But it was the night before a battle and she had to remain sober, even though it meant that sleep would be a long time coming.

  A while later, as she was finally on the edge of drifting off to sleep, her door chimed. Jas removed her arm from her eyes and squinted at the clock. Who the krat could it be at that hour? Trimborn wouldn’t dare wake her unless it was something serious. Or was it Pacheco? She hoped that pre-battle tension hadn’t rekindled his feelings for her.

  She thumbed the door comm. “Who is it?”

  “Jas, it’s me,” said a voice. A voice that stopped her heart.

  Or was it only that she was tired and on the edge of sleep? She couldn’t believe it was who she thought she’d heard. “Who?” she asked again, a tremble in her voice.

  “Jas, open up. I have to talk to you.”

  Was her mind playing tricks on her? If so, Jas didn’t want to be seen in her bunk by a crew member. She didn’t give a voice command from where she was, but turned on the cabin’s half-light, got out of bed and padded over to the interface screen that would show her who was outside. She swallowed, and turned on the screen.

  At first, she almost didn’t recognize him. He was standing with one hand on the wall next to the door, his head bowed. She couldn’t see his face. His brown curls were gone, replaced by a cropped military cut peppered with strands of gray. He was thinner too. But it was him. It was Carl Lingiari. Her Carl.

  As she watched, momentarily too shocked to move, he lifted a hand to press the door’s comm button again, but before he made contact, she opened the door. He looked up. Their gazes met. The sound of her thumping heart rushed through her ears. She couldn’t speak.