by J. J. Green
Somehow, Pacheco’s recollection of that moment of gentle death steadied his racing heart and whirling mind. Even in her last moments, the fleet admiral had held onto hope. As Pacheco understood it, she had entered the reproductive cycle of her species, and piece of her could grow into a new Haidiren.
Would they survive the explosion and the cold and vacuum of deep space? Perhaps thousands or millions of years in the future landing on a watery planet and beginning to grow? Pacheco didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. The fact was, the fleet admiral had demonstrated that in the direst circumstances, hope can survive.
Pacheco blinked. He was back aboard the Thylacine. The empty corridor had come into focus around him. His hat lay upside down on the floor, having fallen off unnoticed. He picked it up and replaced it on his head before pushing himself to his feet.
With some effort, he concentrated on walking toward an elevator that led to the upper decks and the bridge. He needed to find Jas—Commander Harrington. He had to contact the ships that had survived as well as the Transgalactic Council. The Camaradon was lost, but that didn’t mean the war was over.
The elevator doors opened as he approached. He told it where he wanted to go, and it sped upward. Pacheco took the opportunity to check his appearance in the shiny steel of the walls. He straightened his hat and smoothed his uniform.
The elevator doors opened. The corridors were busy there, near the bridge. Pacheco ducked across the crowded thoroughfare and went quickly to the nerve center of the ship, where Commander Harrington was sure to be.
His arrival on the bridge caused a minor stir.
“Admiral,” Trimborn exclaimed as Pacheco entered and the bridge doors slid closed behind him.
Pacheco waited a moment while the man recovered from his apparent surprise and offered his salute. Pacheco returned it as the other officers on the deck offered theirs too.
Jas was standing. Despite everything that had happened in the last few hours, despite everything he’d been through, his heart still leapt at the sight of her.
She said, “Admiral, I’d like to speak with you in private if I may.”
They went out into the busy corridor, and Jas took him to a quiet area.
“Where have you been, Pacheco?” she asked. “We had a ship-wide alert going. Navigator Lee said you left the launch bay over an hour ago. Where’s your comm button?”
Pacheco looked down at the breast of his jacket. His button had been torn off in the crush aboard the evac vessel.
“I...I... needed to take some time to reflect. I didn’t know I didn’t have my comm.”
Jas tilted her head and peered at him. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Commander,” he replied. She was acting like he was some kind of weakling. “Thank you for your concern.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Admiral.”
“Have you been in contact yet with the Transgalactic Council over the results of the battle?” he asked, ignoring her tone.
“Of course I have. They gave us coordinates to report at in twelve hours. We don’t have any serious casualties that need better medical care than we have aboard ship.”
Pacheco’s mind replayed the destruction of the evac ship carrying the Camaradon’s wounded.
“Pacheco?” Jas asked. “Pacheco?”
“What?” he snapped.
“I said, do you have any instructions for the Thylacine?” Jas asked. “Are you sure you’re all right? You zoned out for a moment there.”
“Commander, I was present for the destruction of the flagship of the Unity Alliance fleet. I am not all right, but I expect I shall recover soon. Is that good enough for you?”
“Krat, take it easy, Pacheco,” Jas said. “I was only trying to help. Maybe you should see the doctor.”
Her words only irritated him further. He wasn’t in need of any medication. He was stronger than that.
“And what’s more,” he said, “I want to make it clear that the fleet admiral ordered me to leave the ship.”
Jas raised her hands in a gesture of conciliation. “Pacheco, no one thinks you’re a coward. You did absolutely the right thing.”
He ground his teeth. Though her words said the opposite, it sounded like she was accusing him of running away. A part of him knew he wasn’t being reasonable, but that didn’t change how he felt. He glared at her, and her expression grew angry in return.
Why did they always end up at loggerheads like this? Pacheco wondered. He remembered the years they’d worked together aboard the Infineon, after he’d been promoted to commander to replace Torbin.
“Pacheco,” Jas barked. “You’re zoning out again.”
“I’m—”
“You’re not fine. Go and see the doctor, or I’ll have you confined because you’re unfit to serve.”
“You wouldn’t—”
“Yes, I would. Go.”
Pacheco clenched his jaw and glared, but the look in Jas’ eye told him she wasn’t going to back down. He spun around and stalked away. Krat the woman.
Chapter Seventeen
Jas went back to the bridge and ignoring the inquiring eyes that met her, flopped down into her seat. They’d lost. Just when she thought it would all be finally over, they’d lost. The prospect of the Shadow War continuing stretched out endlessly in front of her. She’d thought she could make it through to the end. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
Everybody on the bridge was intent on their tasks, checking the Thylacine’s systems for damage after the battle, programming diagnostics and repairs, making sure everything was shipshape. But was there any point? How would the Unity Alliance be able to defeat that monster Shadow ship?
The Shadows must have been building it for years, Jas realized. Safe from prying eyes within their stronghold, developing new materials and weapons and biding their time while the UA slowly drew closer.
As long as the ships it was battling were its own, the UA victory had seemed achievable. No one knew those ships better than those who had built them. They’d been perfectly prepared, exploiting their advantage of knowing exactly what the commandeered Shadow ships were capable of and what their weaknesses were.
But the beings from another dimension were far from dumb. They must have realized long ago what the outcome would be if they continued on the same path. They’d understood they needed to use a different tactic, and they’d chosen the correct one.
The devastation of losing the Camaradon was only the beginning. The Shadows had seen the success of their superior technology, and they wouldn’t be slow to press on, reversing all the gains the UA had made, retaking the planets they’d lost, restarting stalled invasions.
Jas slumped forward and put her head in her hands. She wanted to fight the Shadows. She wanted her revenge for them taking away the only living man she would ever love, but she was at the end of her tether. She wished she were just an ensign again, or a security officer, so that someone else would bear the responsibilities that rested on her.
She felt so alone. Pacheco, annoying though he was at times, had been someone to rely upon, but even he seemed to have lost it.
“Commander,” said a voice.
Jas looked up. It was Kennewell.
“I was wondering when we were going to return to look for survivors,” she said in a small voice.
Krat. Jas had been planning to return to the scene of the battle to check for fighter pilots who hadn’t made it to a ship.
“What’s the time?” she asked the bridge. When someone told her, she exploded.
“Why didn’t any of you say anything before? Are you all kratting idiots? What’s wrong with you? Do I have to spell every last thing out to you people? Sayen, plot the coordinates to put us a safe distance from the scene of the battle. Can you figure that out? Kennewell, prepare to jump.”
Sayen was staring at her, open-mouthed. Jas glared, and the navigator swung around in her seat to her console. Kennewell began hastily pressing her controls. The rest of the officers on the bridge
ducked their heads and focused more intently on their screens.
Jas slumped back in her seat and stared ahead, unseeing, hoping the war would end soon, one way or another. For her, it was already over.
Chapter Eighteen
Sayen’s coordinates put the Thylacine at the limit of scanner range from the scene of the battle. The limit of Unity Alliance scanner range, anyway. Sayen hoped that the Shadow ship, if it remained in the vicinity, didn’t possess superior scanners as well.
As a precaution, the first thing they did upon arrival was to throw up a maximum power force field.
“I’m not picking up anything besides residual heat from the battle, Commander,” Trimborn said, “and a lot of debris. The Camaradon blew to tiny pieces.”
Jas sighed and rubbed her eyes. “No life signs?”
Trimborn expanded something on his screen, pulling it wider with his fingertips. “Nothing at all, ma’am.”
“Take us in, Pilot,” Jas said. “Slowly.”
Jas looked awful. Sayen could now see what Toirien had meant when she’d said that her friend looked like she was on something. It wasn’t only that Jas had lost weight, she looked unhealthy and weak. In all the time Sayen had known her, no matter how hard things had been, or even when people close to them had died, Jas had never looked as bad as she did right then. She looked like she’d given up on life.
She didn’t seem to be despairing; it was more that there was an entire absence of emotion in her eyes. And what was worse, Sayen didn’t know what she could do to help her old friend.
“Picking up a ship,” Trimborn blurted. “It’s just jumped in, ma’am.”
Sayen’s heart seized up. Had the Shadow ship returned to trap them?
“Ma’am, it’s the Vespira. She’s hailing us,” the comm officer said.
“Thank krat for that,” said Trimborn, just loud enough for Sayen to hear.
Jas had a short conversation with the captain of the Vespira. They agreed to divide the battle area into quadrants and search independently for any signs of life among the debris. It would reduce the time spent searching and also the time any survivors had to wait to be picked up. The battle had been fought far from any star systems, so at least there were no planets to search.
The mood on the bridge was somber as the Thylacine undertook its slow, sweeping scans of the scene of the battle. The embedded chips everyone wore didn’t emit a signal a significant distance in deep space terms because their energy came from the wearer’s metabolism. That meant that the chips stopped emitting a day or so after the wearer died. This had seemed cruel to Sayen when she first learned of it, but she later understood that recovering the bodies of dead crew only to then give them a space burial was seen as frivolous by the Unity.
“I can see one,” Trimborn exclaimed.
“You mean you’ve picked up a signal?” Jas asked tiredly.
“Yes, we’ve got a live one. It’s a fighter pilot. Sending coordinates, Kennewell.”
The pilot eased the Thylacine closer to the stranded fighter ship, which was floating without power.
Sayen knew the procedure from rescue operations she’d taken part in previously. Another fighter would be sent out to either connect to the disabled vessel, or, if that wasn’t possible, to grapple it into the launch bay. Then it was just a matter of retrieving the wounded pilot, hopefully without having to cut him or her from the wreckage.
Sayen turned to read Jas’ expression. She hadn’t entirely given up on finding Carl one day, but it looked as though Jas had. Her face was blank as she looked down at the interface screen on her armrest.
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.
