Dark Space

by Stephen A. Fender

  Ramos smirked. “So, you’re saying that if Krif hadn’t come knocking on your door at Minos, you’d have joined back up anyway?”

  Shawn had asked himself the very same question a hundred times in the last few months, and each time he’d never had an answer. So when one sprang from his lips after only a moment’s consideration, it surprised him. “Without a doubt.”

  Ramos chewed the statement over in his mind. “Admirable.”

  “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder what the hell I’m doing here. I think ‘foolhardy’ would be a better term.”

  “You’re an interesting dichotomy, Commander. On the one hand you know what you have to do, and you’re convinced you can do it, and on the other you’re trying to justify your place in all this.”

  “One thing you’ll find out about me is that my brain can be a bag of nuts and bolts about things like this; you shake it up enough and something’s bound to thread together.”

  “And the rest?” Ramos asked, looking at Shawn thoughtfully. “What happens when it doesn’t come together? Or, more aptly, what happens when it falls apart in the cockpit?”

  Shawn tilted his head slightly at the captain without looking at him. “You’ve got wings on your chest the same as me. You should know.”

  Ramos nodded. “Yeah. I think we’ve all been there.” He then hooked a thumb over his shoulder, but still out of sight of the crewmen behind him. “But some of the people … most of them, I think … have no idea. That’s why you are where you are, Shawn. Those pilots down there in berthing, and the ones out in space right now on patrol … they need your help, whether they know it or not. You’re no good to them dead.”

  “Still trying to justify landlocking me behind a desk?”

  “No. I wouldn’t do that. Speaking as a former pilot—and a friend—I know how much this is upsetting you. It’s a bum deal, I know it.”

  Shawn gave him a confused look. “And here I thought you were the one telling me earlier this is a great career move for me.”

  Ramos looked at him sternly. “It is, Shawn. But don’t think for a minute I’m being pragmatic about the whole thing. If an officer transitions into the CAG position smoothly, normally, it’s because it’s the best thing for his career. If he’s forced into doing it, it’s because it’s the best thing for the fleet.”

  “You saying that you took the job kicking and screaming?”

  Ramos chuckled lightly. “That would have been difficult, all things considered.”

  Shawn turned to the captain. “What do you mean?”

  Ramos looked over his shoulder, and noticing the no one was watching, turned back and locked eyes with Shawn. He then nodded down toward the deck where his hand was now patting his left thigh.

  Shawn glanced down, eyeing the gesture, then turned his gaze back into the captain’s.

  “I lost most of it at Epsilon Tiranan,” Ramos nearly whispered.

  Shawn’s expression turned serious. “What happened?”

  Ramos shrugged almost imperceptibly. “Surprise attack while I was out on patrol. My fighter took a direct hit; the cockpit depressurized. Luckily I was near the carrier and was able to make an emergency landing.” He then smiled playfully. “Unfortunately, not all of me was so blessed. The shrapnel from an exploding console all but severed it above the knee. The doctors were able to repair almost all the major arterial damage, but I lost most of the leg in the process. Got this damn twitchy biotronic prosthetic now. Of course, I was dropped from flying status after the surgery. Been landlocked, as you so eloquently put it, ever since.”

  “Damn shame,” Shawn muttered apologetically. “I heard about the battle, but I hadn’t met anyone who made it out of it.”

  Ramos’s eyes became distant, forlorn. “Not many did. Anyway, like I said, you’ll get used to the new job … and you may even come to like it. I did … after a while.”

  “I can see why you might have some reservations about the Kafarans. After what they did to you—”

  Ramos sighed and shook his head. “I did it to myself, Shawn. I made a bad call, and tried to attack when I should have evaded. It was a stupid decision … pure, unadulterated pilot error. If I’d had a commander like yourself guiding me, I likely wouldn’t have made such a critical error in judgment in a blind panic.” Ramos then turned back to the wide view port. “Having said that, whatever you choose to do about Nova is entirely up to you, and I want you to know that you’ll have my full support.”

  Shawn was taken aback by the statement, and was unable to hide his surprise. “How do you know about that?”

  Ramos snickered. “You don’t get to be a fleet captain without knowing what’s going on at all times with all your people. Besides, I was in CIC during the battle. I don’t know the particulars of what happened out there today, and I’m not asking for them right now. Just know that, as my equal, you should be aware of what’s on in my mind … just as I should be about yourself. We’re going to need that kind of relationship if we want these people to survive to go back home to their loved ones.” The doors to the bridge opened, drawing their attention. It was Melissa, and she seemed to have something on her mind as she walked toward them. “Or the ones on board the ship,” Ramos muttered sideways.

  “What?” Shawn asked defensively, but was silenced when Ramos held out a hand to Melissa.

  “Agent Graves, I don’t believe we’ve had the formal pleasure.”

  “Captain Ramos,” she said, taking his hand and nodding smartly. The two men looked as if they had just been caught with their hands in the same proverbial cookie jar. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Her tone was inquisitive.

  “Not at all,” Ramos beamed. “The commander and I were just discussing the finer points of command in sometimes difficult situations.”

  Melissa’s eye shifted to Shawn, who simply bobbed his head deftly. The fact that the commander’s eyes darted quickly to Ramos’s was also not lost on her. “Respectfully, would you mind if I borrowed the commander for a short time?” she asked.

  Ramos bowed his head slightly. “By all means, Agent Graves.” Ramos then turned to Shawn, concealing his face from Melissa, and smiled at Shawn softly. Just as quickly, the expression faded as Ramos straightened his posture. “Carry on smartly, Commander Kestrel.”

  Shawn snapped a salute, which was returned briskly. “Aye, sir.”

  “When you’re light-years away from a port in the storm, you have to be able to place the ultimate trust in your people. It’s the glue of life. Sometimes—out here in the void—it’s all that brings your ship back home. However, with that trust comes great power, and when that power is abused, the culprit must be held accountable … or there’s no point to it all, and we might as well have given up Beta Sector to the Meltranians, Kafarans, or anyone else long ago.”

  -Admiral William Graves, Unified Sector Command (Ret.)

  Chapter 4

  Once outside the bridge, Melissa wordlessly moved toward the nearest elevator. As Shawn stepped in behind her, she immediately ordered the doors shut and secured.

  “I thought you were going to follow Jerry,” he said.

  “I did. I mean, I was.”

  He folded his arms across his gray uniform. “What do mean, you were?”

  She looked concerned, about as concerned as he’d ever seen her. “I followed him to the wardroom, where he got a bite to eat. Afterward, he made his way to his cabin.”

  “Sounds pretty innocent,” he said with a shrug.

  “Right, but not where he went next. Care to offer a guess?”

  “I hear the rose bushes are coming into bloom in the arboretum.”

  At that she cocked an eyebrow. “And just why would you be interested in that?”

  Shawn offered a shocked expression. “What? Can’t a guy take interest in flowers?”

  She shook her head unconvincingly. “Cheeky answer, but no, that’s not where he went.”

  “Then where? Engineering?”
<
br />   She shook her head. “No. One of the communications rooms.”

  This got his undivided attention. “Oh, now that is a bit more peculiar than roses.”

  “To say the least.”

  Shawn knew that there were a half-dozen such communications compartments on a carrier the size of the Duchess. “Where?”

  “Deck Seven, aft.”

  Shawn nodded. The auxiliary communications room. Small, sparsely manned, and far enough away to not rouse any suspicion. In fact, the compartment was so small Shawn doubted that Melissa and Jerry could have both been in the space without noticing one another. However, Shawn also knew that every command space—including all communications rooms—were specially coded, highly secured spaces.

  “He didn’t have a problem gaining access?” he asked.

  “Got in without so much as a whisper,” she said. “Just swiped his ident card and walked right in.”

  “Only officers ranking lieutenant commander or higher can have direct access to those compartments, and even then—if you’re below a captain—you need to be escorted while inside.”

  Melissa nodded, pulling a strand of auburn hair from the front of her face and pushing it behind her ear. “It seems that Mister Santorum has gotten a hell of a promotion.”

  “Certainly not on approval from me.” Shawn mulled over the possibilities in his mind for a moment, then leaned back against the side of the lift. “What happened next?”

  “I set a personal scanner outside, programmed it to trip as soon as anyone walked out of the compartment. Then I hid myself and waited.”

  “Broom closet?” he asked wryly.

  She remembered their first conversation, when after asking for Shawn’s help in locating a missing person, Shawn had gruffly asked her if she needed help finding the one who had dropped a house on her witch sister. “Funny. No. It was a conduit cool room.”

  “Brr.” Shawn shivered, remembering how he’d hidden in such a space during a prank on a fellow junior officer long ago. “What then?”

  “I waited until the sensor was tripped. Once Santorum left the communications compartment I went inside to see what he’d accessed.”

  “Wait,” he said as he held up a hand. “You have access to command and control spaces?”

  She looked at him as if asking if his question was a serious one.

  “Oh, right,” he corrected. “I keep forgetting … you’re a super-spy.”

  “Covert operative, Commander. Stop calling me a spy. It’s so …”

  “Accurate?”

  “Demeaning,” she growled. “Besides, as the ranking OSI officer on the ship, I’ve got unfettered access to any compartment on this vessel. Anyway, after a bit of investigating—”

  “Spying.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I found that he’d accessed both the backup long-range data transmitter array and a series of folders hidden on the Duchess’s tertiary computer core.”

  “Both seldom used … both seldom monitored,” he agreed. “Who was he talking to?”

  She pursed her lips. “He wasn’t talking, per se. He was transmitting data.”

  “Okay. So, to whom was he transmitting this data, and what was it?”

  “He tried encrypting the coordinates, but I’m beginning to think your theory about him being a poorly trained spy was more accurate than I initially believed.”

  A smile crept across Shawn’s face. “You cracked it.”

  “I cracked it,” she said, looking extremely pleased with herself.

  “And?”

  “Vega Sector.”

  “Vega sector?” Shawn repeated in confusion.

  “The Torval system, to be precise.”

  Shawn’s eyes went wide. “Torval, as in—”

  She nodded. “Yes and no. While the Torval system was once a safe haven of … space traders of less-than-virtuous ethics—”

  “I agree: pirates, cutthroats, and murderers can be defined as traders with less than virtuous ethics.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said and dismissed his words with a wave of her hand. “It’s been long abandoned. The OSI kept a sharp eye on it for a while, but even they lost interest about three or four years ago.”

  Shawn recalled that, during the Galactic War, a virulent plague had come down to the planet from a stray freighter that had wandered into orbit. Sensing no life signs aboard—and being the opportunists that the people of Torval were known to be—they’d guided the craft down to the surface in hopes of plundering its cargo holds. All they found was a dead crew. One by one, the citizens of Torval began falling ill. Not long after, there was a mass exodus from the “Planet of Death,” as it would soon come to be known in the interstellar trade lanes.

  “I find it hard to believe the Office of Special Intelligence loses interest in anything.”

  “It may surprise you to know, Shawn, that at any given time there are hundreds, if not thousands of operations going on in Beta Sector. For one planet to fall through the cracks is not unheard of, nor is it implausible to think that the OSI had better things to do than watch dead worlds.”

  “Uh huh,” he muttered. “Just like they stopped watching Second Earth. We all know how that came back to bite them in the—”

  Melissa backed off slightly. “Point well taken. So … now, it seems, we have another world that demands our attention.”

  “I’m fairly certain Ramos has an anchor chain tying me to a desk right now,” he said, hooking his thumb toward the bridge doors. “Besides, you still haven’t told me what Jerry transmitted to the planet, nor who received it. I’m pretty sure Ramos would like to know them before he alters the ship’s course.”

  Her head wagged. “Both are … a little fuzzy.”

  Shawn raised an eyebrow. “How fuzzy are we talking about?”

  “Like trying to read a computer screen from a hundred yards away fuzzy.”

  “I’ve got pretty good eyesight.”

  “Well, I don’t. I’ve made a copy of the transmission,” she said, then held up a small data cartridge, “not that it’s going to do any good. I’ve never seen anything like it. We’re going to need someone with more expertise to analyze this.”

  Shawn nodded, thinking back to his new assignment and the responsibilities Ramos had given him. “Where is Santorum now?”

  “His quarters. My guess is that he’s turned in for the night.” She saw a look cross over Shawn’s face, one she had come to know well. “You thinking of paying him a visit?”

  “Do roses have thorns?”

  “You’re the blooming botanist here, Mister Arboretum. You tell me.”

  “Come on. We don’t have much time.”

  %%%

  Rounding the final corner, Shawn and Melissa came to a halt outside Santorum’s quarters. Pressing the door chime, Shawn waiting patiently for the lieutenant to answer. He wasn’t sure where he was going to begin when Nova opened the door, but he was certain that it wasn’t going to be good.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t inform the captain first?” Melissa asked.

  Shawn shook his head as he looked at the still closed door. “No. I want to have this conversation before we go any further. Rest assured, though, that no matter what, Ramos is going to know about it soon.”

  A moment later, one of the nearby doors opened, startling Melissa and drawing Shawn’s attention. It was Roslyn Brunel. She looked from Shawn to Melissa, then back to her former commander. Sensing something was hiding behind Shawn’s normally cool exterior, she pressed him for answers. “Something up, Shawn?”

  “Nothing you need to concern yourself with, Raven,” he replied, then turned back to the door and pressed the button once again. Where the hell was he?

  “I beg to differ,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “Nova’s one of my people, and I think you’d be asking the same question if the roles were reversed here.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” he muttered to the closed door as much as to Roslyn.

  “W
ell, you can press that button until the cows come home, but he’s not going to answer.”

  Shawn turned from the door and moved closer to his former first officer. “Why not?”

  “Because he’s not in there,” Raven said matter-of-factly.

  “Then where the hell is he?” Shawn asked, quickly losing patience with the situation.

  “Why? So you can give him another grilling?”

  Shawn looked at her with a mix of anger and surprise. “You know about that?”

  “Yeah, I do. He told me all about it. But I should have heard it from you first, Shawn. He’s one of my pilots. As his commander, I should have been a part of that briefing.”

  “I had every intention of informing you, Raven, but now—”

  “But you didn’t,” she cut him off, “and I can’t begin to tell you how upset that makes me.”

  “I can see how angry you are,” he said, trying to remain calm. “But this is bigger than just a simple misunderstanding. There are things at work here that are—not to put too fine a point on it—that are above your pay grade.” He regretted the words as soon as they came out, and the expression that crossed her face told him he’d made a mistake.

  “Oh, then we’ll just have to make them right in my pay grade,” she said with a scowl. “If you think you can just dress down my people and—”

  Surprising himself, Melissa, and most importantly Raven, Shawn reached out with both hands and grasped the newly promoted commander’s shoulders. However, the expression of shock on her face was profoundly more physically comfortable than the kick to his groin he was expecting. “Roslyn, we don’t have time for this. I know Jerry is your friend, and despite anything you may think to the contrary, he’s one of mine as well. But something has happened here, and unfortunately it’s not something I can talk about with you right now, but it’s extremely important I get to Nova before anyone else finds out what I’ve discovered.” Taking a deep breath, he glanced at Melissa, who had a look of worry on her face. Licking his lips, he turned back to Raven and softened his tone. “If you really want to help him, you’ll tell me where he is.”