Dark Space

by Stephen A. Fender

  A moment later Shawn’s own craft began to heat up as it entered the upper layers of the planet’s atmosphere. The computer began reading off the outside temperature, but after several seconds Shawn silenced the annoying voice. His ship bucked underneath him as it was buffeted by severe turbulence. Outside, he could just make out the form of Jerry’s craft as it battled against the planet’s ionosphere. Grasping the control stick with both hands, Shawn wondered how in the name of Third Earth Nova was going to make it through this on only one engine.

  Then, nearly as abruptly as it had begun, it was over. Shawn’s fighter was high above the clouds, and for an instant he was reminded with longing the last time he’d piloted his Mark-IV in a similar situation. High above Mardron’s snowy plains, the gray and white clouds were beautiful, stretching for hundreds of miles in every direction. Then the sensors began beeping, letting Shawn know they had reacquired Nova’s beacon. Pushing down through several layers of puffy clouds, Shawn quickly found the smoke trail left by Jerry’s damaged engine. The lieutenant had miraculously made it, but how long his craft would remain in one piece was anyone’s guess.

  Down and down the two fighters went, until finally breaking through the last layer of clouds. Below them was an icy forest, speckled with tall, dome-topped trees made of light-blue ice crystals. Turning off the computer-controlled weapons, Shawn aimed and fired several rounds over Jerry’s bow to let the younger man know he was still being pursued. Nova’s response was immediate. He dipped his fighter even farther, choosing to try and evade Shawn inside the ice crystal forest.

  Jerry might have a death wish, but I sure as hell don’t. Taking aim at several of the tall blooms up ahead, Shawn fired two missiles that sailed past Jerry and hit against the lattice-like trunks of the crystal trees. The base of the structures shattered into a thousand pieces, raining debris in every direction and pelting Nova’s craft a dozen times over. Even more smoke began to eject from the craft.

  Then it happened. Waiting too long to bank, perhaps because he was unable, Jerry’s right wingtip impacted with a particularly nasty-looking spire jutting from the snow-covered ground. The force sheared off the last six feet of the wing, sending the craft skidding to starboard. However, this lasted only a fraction of a second, because the left wing slammed headlong into one of the crystal trees, toppling the structure and breaking Nova’s wing completely off. The fuselage finally touched the ground, rolling until the left wing fully separated, then continued to tumble lengthwise until it finally came to rest against another towering icy lattice, the impact of which caused ice crystals to fall off like dead leaves, pelting the stricken fighter from above.

  Flying in a single, tight circle over the wreckage, Shawn could see no sign of life from the downed interceptor. His sensors were telling him that a clearing was nearby, and he knew he’d have to set his craft down to investigate. Performing one more flyover, Shawn angled his fighter to its intended landing spot about three hundred yards from Jerry’s final resting place.

  “When I heard that Kestrel had gone off half-cocked, it didn’t surprise me one bit. He was always a loose cannon, and I think many of the upper brass thought the same thing—they just turned a blind eye to it. But after the incident involving Santorum, it was pushed so far into their faces they couldn’t see around it. They needed to deal with it … with him, once and for all. And we should all be glad they did.”

  -Admiral Richard Krif (Ret.)

  Annals of a Bygone Era: The Golden Age of Unified Sector Command

  Chapter 6

  Once Shawn had secured his fighter on an unbroken sheet of compacted snow, he removed his helmet and leapt from the cockpit. The snow-covered ground beneath his boots compacted several more inches before he finally stabilized. Looking around the small pasture of snow he found himself in, Shawn was momentarily awed by the size of the crystal-like trees rimming the area. Each stood more than a hundred feet tall, with faceted, transparent trucks, and mushroom-like canopies covered in sparkling snow. There was no wind or any other sound in the immediate area. In the distance, a column of dark brown smoke smudged the otherwise gray-white sky.

  The ship’s sensors had told him the temperature was a chilly twenty degrees Fahrenheit, and this was one instance where he was thankful he was wearing his restrictive—yet fully insulated—flight coveralls. Turning to his wrist-mounted computer, Shawn trained it in the direction of the smoke funnel. Power readings were almost nonexistent, but he was getting a faint life reading. Something in him allowed Shawn to breathe a sigh of relief that Nova had survived. However, with readings this low, Santorum was likely badly injured—perhaps too critically for Shawn to do anything helpful with the paltry emergency medical kit he had taken from inside his fighter.

  Besides, even if Shawn was able to drag Santorum back to his own fighter, there was only room for one in the cramped cockpit. Add to that the fact that Shawn seriously doubted he had enough fuel remaining to take off, let alone maintain any kind of orbit while he waited for the Duchess to locate them—and who knew how long that could take. For the time being, he and Jerry Santorum were the only two humans in this entire star system, and a very real fear of isolation Shawn hadn’t known in a long time crept up on him.

  Reaching down, he pulled the black pistol from his holster. Checking the charge and setting the weapon on non-lethal, he slowly made his way in the direction where Jerry’s fighter had come to rest.

  %%%

  Nearing the edge of the ice forest, Shawn found himself on a small rise overlooking the spot where Nova’s fighter had crashed. He could see the trees that had been the eventual downfall of the Maelstrom, their once-beautiful faceted shells now shattered and sprinkled throughout the surrounding snow. A gust of wind—as surprising at is was unwelcomed—began blowing from behind Shawn as he gazed down the two hundred or so yards of slope to the fighter.

  After a moment, the wind became even more pronounced. Flakes of snow began to whiz past the commander with greater and greater ferocity. No sooner had the flakes begun to fly than the wind became even stronger. There was a howling behind Shawn, like that of a hundred wolves overlapping one another, and he turned slowly to see what the cause of it all was.

  A dark gray mass of snow and ice—not unlike a small tornado—was quickly bearing down on him. Shards of piercing ice crystals were being thrown about in the wind, some coming to land perilously close to Shawn’s position. That was when the storm reached out, like a hand trying to swat at the ground. A tendril of ice particles flung down, uprooting a fifty-foot ice tree as if it were made of feathers, and tossed it over Shawn’s head. He watched with awe as it landed less than fifty feet behind him with the sound of a hundred glass beakers breaking, carving a large gouge into the snowy slope beyond.

  Another large howl caught his attention, and Shawn turned back to the storm. It was closer. A lot closer. From within the twirling cloud shot a spear of ice about ten feet long. Shawn leapt out of the way just in time for the impromptu spear to whirl past his face. Almost as quickly another came out, this one lobbed high into the air. Thankful he had an extra moment, Shawn quickly pulled out his blaster and incinerated the spear before it had a chance to land on him.

  In the lull he could see shards flying in every direction, and knew instantly that he had far overstayed his welcome in this particular forest. As he looked for a way down the slope to Jerry’s fighter, another ice tree was uprooted, this one falling about ten feet behind him. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the ice storm died down. The howling winds quieted, and the ice particles melted into pleasant snowflakes. The wind calmed, and Shawn was one again surrounded by silence.

  Thank God that’s over.

  Then he heard something: a cracking, not unlike the sound of an ice cube placed in glass of warm water. There was a popping sound, which was quickly followed by another, and another. As Shawn looked around, he caught sight of it. The tree that had fallen behind him had begun to crack the snow sheet under his boots. He watched as t
he crack began to surround him, until he was finally facing in the direction of Jerry’s fighter. The crack stopped as it met up with the sliver carved out by the ice tree that had been hurled over his body a few moments before.

  “Oh, hell.” He only had a split second to contemplate what was about to happen before the entire sheet gave way and he slid helplessly down the side of the slope.

  %%%

  “Is he going to be all right?” Melissa asked, looking down at the battered form of Lieutenant Drok I’Rondus. The overhead lights of sickbay gave the man’s pallid features a sickly glow, and had it not been for the rhythmic beats of the nearby diagnostic equipment, Melissa would have been hard-pressed to believe Drake was still alive.

  The doctor placed a gentle hand over Drake’s forehead. He was still unconscious, and he’d lost quite a bit of blood from the stabs to his midsection. Still, the medical team had gotten to him in time. “He’ll be laid up for at least a couple of weeks, but I think he’ll pull through,” she said kindly.

  Melissa nodded, pursing her lips as she looked into the eyes of Commander Ophelia Finly, the chief medical officer from the Rhea. “I still can’t believe you’re here,” she said. “If it weren’t for you—”

  Ophelia smiled, the crow’s feet in the corner of her eyes crinkling. The doctor appeared to have aged a few years since last Melissa had seen her. A streak of silver had cropped up in her dark hair, and discolored crescents that had not been there before lined the underside of her eyes.

  Then again, war has a way of doing such things to people.

  “If it weren’t for me, it would just as well have been someone else, my dear,” Ophelia replied in her kind, almost motherly tone. “The Duchess has some of the finest in the fleet, you know.”

  “But it was you. Thank you for responding to the call.”

  “I was just in the right place at the right time. If you have anyone to thank, it should be Captain Krif. He asked me to come along when he shuttled over here just after the Duchess entered the system. Besides, Doctor McElroy is still busy tending to the wounded from your last battle,” she said, then turned her head to nod at the Duchess’s chief physician hard at work on the far side of the room.

  “And why did he ask you to come along?” Melissa asked.

  Ophelia turned and raised an eyebrow. “Always the intelligence operative?”

  Melissa blushed, turning her head back to Drake coyly.

  Doctor Finly reached out and clutched Melissa’s hand. “Sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “It’s … it’s all right. I’m just—” she tried, then twirled her hands as she tried to get the right words to come out of her mouth. When her lips failed her, she brought her hands to her scalp and ran them through her hair. “Hell, I don’t know.”

  Ophelia smiled again, a twinkle in her gray eyes. “Is it Shawn?”

  Melissa’s arms folded across her chest as she looked to the overhead. “God, am I that transparent?” she whispered.

  “Care to tell me what happened?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know much, really. I’ve been told he stole a fighter and left a short time ago.”

  The doctor hummed in contemplation. “And did he tell you where he was going?”

  Melissa didn’t want to lie to her, but then again, she didn’t have the whole story herself. Ophelia was a friend, one of the few she’d made while aboard the Rhea. Still, something was going on, something Shawn and she were only now becoming aware of. The less the rest of the crew knew, the better. “I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for that.”

  Ophelia harrumphed. “That’s just like a pilot. Always on the move, not a care in the world about those back here who love him.” The doctor watched as Melissa’s face turned an even darker shade of pink. “Oh, dear. I’ve done it again, haven’t I?”

  Melissa sighed. “It’s okay. Really. I shouldn’t be so uncomfortable over it. I’m sure most everyone has figured it out by now.”

  “Well, it is written all over your face when someone mentions his name.”

  “Yes. I suppose it is.”

  Ophelia checked Drake’s vitals once more and, seeing they were still strong, looked back to Melissa. “But, does he know it? Shawn, that is.”

  “Oh, yes,” she replied, her mind focusing on their last kiss. “Yes, he knows.”

  “It’s settled, then.”

  The tone was resolute enough to draw Melissa from her daydream. “Beg your pardon?” she asked in confusion.

  “How’s your medical training?”

  Curious as to the doctor’s new course of questioning, Melissa shrugged. “Basic, but I’ve taken some advanced training courses at OSI field offices. Why?”

  “Well, there’s no sense in you roaming about the ship like a love-struck school girl. We’ve got some wounded pilots in here who need help, and the Duchess’s staff is shorthanded. Besides, about the only places you’d find yourself anyway is either on the bridge or in CIC, waiting to hear news of Shawn—both places that are swarming with people trying to do their jobs. Besides, I have a feeling that no matter where you are, when something happens, you’ll be the first to know about it.”

  Melissa was unconvinced, but knew deep down that something in Ophelia’s words was ringing true. “Are you sure about that?”

  The doctor reached for her shoulder. “No, not in the slightest. But you’re here, he’s out there, and I need your help. As far as Shawn Kestrel is concerned, what say we’ll both tend to the commander when he gets back.”

  “What makes you think he’ll need medical attention?”

  “Because if he doesn’t wise up and take that new desk job of his seriously, I have half a mind to break his legs and force it on him.”

  “Then you know about his new assignment?”

  “Yes,” she said, then rolled her eyes. “We all do.”

  Melissa caught the meaning. “Krif?”

  Ophelia nodded. “The captain was quite … verbose … when he heard about Shawn’s promotion to wing commander. I’m half-surprised he didn’t blow a gasket right there in the wardroom when he was delivered the message.” She chucked as she recalled the memory of Krif spitting out his coffee as he read the communique over breakfast. “I wish those two boys would just work it out.”

  “I’m sure they will,” Melissa smiled fondly. “When Shawn decides to come back.”

  Ophelia turned, withdrew something from a drawer, then turned back to Melissa. “Enough of that, dear. Hold out your hand.”

  Melissa compliantly did as she was asked. The doctor quickly slapped a dermal regenerator into her hand.

  “Now, come along. We’ve patients to tend to.”

  %%%

  Waking to a field of white, Shawn had no idea which was up or down. However, with his firm belief that hell was indeed a hot place—and heaven was very likely a tropical island oasis—he was sure that he wasn’t dead. The bitter cold surrounding him attested to that fact. He stretched out his arms, thankful they were still attached, and tried to decipher which way he should move his body. Slipping his arms under his chest, he managed to push himself free of the icy blanket covering him.

  He had no idea how long he’d been out, but the still-smoldering wrecking of Nova’s fighter only a few yards distant told him it hadn’t been that long. Peeling himself free of his frozen almost-grave, he checked to make sure that his pistol was still firmly attached to his side. Dizzy, and with a headache to boot, he nonetheless brushed off the remains of the snow and stumbled on uneasy legs toward the wreckage.

  The majority of the Maelstrom’s fuselage, while battered and beaten severely, had fortunately remained in one piece. One of the vertical stabilizers had been torn free, and the other was still attached and showing the bright yellow markings of the Jolly Roger squadron. Both of the engines were smoking from the exhaust ports, the starboard one still glowing with an orange fury as its internal components continued to melt away. The canopy was still attached, but ajar, with s
team-like smoke coming from the opening.

  Shawn approached the cockpit on still-shaky legs, his pistol out and pointed at the opening. Santorum, if still cognizant, could easily shoot through the canopy at him, but Shawn doubted Nova’s visibility was any better than his own. Still, caution was well-advised. Shawn’s boots compacted the snow beneath him, crunching the powdery stuff until he was within reach of the glass. Reaching out a cautious hand, Shawn pulled open the glass bubble and leapt back to a crouching position, ready for anything.

  There was no movement from Santorum’s crumpled form.

  Shawn took a deep breath, then stepped toward the cockpit once more. Jerry’s right hand was a mangled mess near what was left of the flight control stick. His left hand, bloodied but intact, was still resting on the throttle. Shawn cautiously reached in and pulled out Nova’s pistol, tossing it on the ground behind him with abandon. Stretching out his own weapon, he prodded the still-silent form and was greeted by a series of grunts. Holstering his gun, Shawn reached for the safety harness latch at the center of Jerry’s flight suit and, with a yank, freed the young man from the fighter. They fell back to the snowy ground, Shawn on his back and Nova on top of him.

  Shawn placed a hand on Santorum’s shoulder, intent on pushing the lieutenant off when a searing pain assaulted his left side, just below his ribs. Craning his head down, he saw Jerry’s hand clutching a piece of the damaged fighter that was now wedged into him.

  “This is how you die,” Jerry sneered into Shawn’s ear, a trail of blood oozing from his mouth and onto Shawn.

  Hefting his knee up, Shawn managed to alter Jerry’s center of gravity, and the lieutenant rolled off him while simultaneously dislodging the makeshift knife. The two men stumbled to their feet a few yards apart, each hunched over and out of breath.

  “What the hell is the matter with you, Jerry?” Shawn screamed, his right hand stretched across his abdomen to stem the blood flowing from his wounded side. “Have you gone completely bonkers?”