James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 06

by Crucible

  “He’s assigned to my Combat Squad.” She sounded resentful about this.

  “Za, I redirected him. He was scheduled to support Tactical Control, but I thought he could be more useful to the landing team than bringing kava and sandwiches to the Tactical Staff.

  Taurus crossed her arms. “I have six of the best Warfighters on the ship… and then I have Johnny Rook and Max Jordan.”

  “Rook had an exemplary training record,” Redfire told her. “And Max is bright, resourceful, and brave. He’s like a son to me… in the sense of being the male offspring of my wife.” Redfire halted, as he always did when he heard himself talking like Commander Keeler.

  Taurus frowned. “Neither one of them belong in combat, sir. And if we go in to a firezone, which I understand is a distinct possibility, I can not assure their safety.”

  “This is a reconnaissance mission, not combat. If I thought there was likely to be combat on this mission, I wouldn’t be sending them,” Redfire told her. “But the probes indicate our primary landing area is entirely void of advanced life. Accipiters will be running patrol patterns, and the party should be safe. I’m sending those boys in because, frankly, they could use the discipline… especially Max.”

  “With all due respect, TyroCommander, this isn’t the time or the place to train a couple of wild boys to act like Warfighters.”

  “They’ve been trained. They will contribute to the squad. I am positive of that.” She sighed. “If they don’t, I’ll put them back on Pegasus so fast it will make their heads spin.”

  Redfire would not have it any other way. “Treat them like any other warfighter… but keep them under your watch.”

  “Keep him under my watch?”

  “Max is smart, good, but he’s also impetuous, reckless, unpredictable. I don’t know where he gets it from. Halo… Flight Commandant Jordan was never like that.” Redfire leaned forward. “The way I see it, Max has had problems because he’s been out-of-context ever since he arrived on this ship. He’s used to living on a dangerous planet, using his wits to survive. He has great warfighter instincts, and if he learns to put them to use, he’ll be a great asset to this ship.”

  “TyroCommander, I’m going to do this because you are ordering me to, and I respect you,” Taurus told him. “But if things get hot down there, do I protect Max Jordan, or treat him like any other Warfighter in my unit, even if it means putting him in danger.”

  “Treat him like anyone else,” Redfire told her. He almost added said “but,” but he knew he couldn’t do that.

  Pegasus – Mission Briefing Room – Hangar Bay Alpha An extra-large landing team of twenty explorers and twenty warfighters was assembled in the Mission Briefing Room.

  Lieutenant Morgan provided the Mission Briefing. Over his Science Core jacket, he wore a tactical landing pack, black body armor with enhanced sensors. He had not yet put on his landing gloves, and there was no sidearm on his wrists. In front of him were forty men and women, twenty of whom wore the dark grey and black camouflage uniforms of the Warfighters of Tactical Core. Behind him was a holographic representation of the planet, stripped of clouds, a mass of brown and tan rock, a third of it showed long empty black tracks where the probes had not yet scanned.

  “Our landing area will be here,” he zoomed in on the landing zone, a collection of streets and buildings built on a mesa overlooking a river plain in the southern hemisphere. “This appears to be the largest surviving settlement on the planet. It appears typical of a city with a population between 35,000 and 45,000, based on what we’ve seen on other populated worlds.

  “Our probes have made sixteen passes over this area, from high orbit down to 1,000

  meters. We have detected no signs of intelligent life in this area, or indeed, of any animal life.

  There is minimal plant life resembling desert scrub.”

  The hatch at the rear slid open and Warfighter Johnny Rook slipped into the room, and took an open seat next to Max Jordan. He was a tall, athletic youth with lady-killer looks; His chestnut hair fell into perfect waves, framing his mischievous eyes and devilish grin. Maybe his nose was slightly too large, but aside from that, 100% heartbreaker. He had made a name for himself as the ship’s most talented teenaged athlete before signing up with Tactical Core as a warfighter.

  Morgan continued, “Our mission is to secure the settlement and retrieve any data we can about this planet’s history. TyroCommander Redfire suspects that there may be a base on the planet, and that base may be where those ships that have been attacking us originated. We might be able to recover tactical data from this location.”

  “Excuse me,” Technician Gates, a Republicker, stood up in the back of the room. “Since we don’t know where the base is, isn’t it dangerous to be flying in there?” Everyone already knew it was dangerous to fly in there. Morgan simply answered,

  “TyroCommander Redfire will be leading a squadron of Aves and Accipiters to cover our approach. If our pilots encounter hostile fire, they are instructed to break off and return to Pegasus. ”

  “Is Redfire using us as decoys to draw out the enemy?” Gates persisted.

  Redfire answered. “Neg, if that were the plan, we’d send Diplomats. Technicians and Scientists are too hard to replace.”

  Pegasus — Hangar Bay Alpha

  An hour later, Redfire stood on the dock where he was supposed to embark on the Aves Susan Except that Susan wasn’t there. It had apparently left for Lexington Keeler while he had been briefing his landing team.

  “There was supposed to be a ship here!” Redfire raged at the hapless Flight Ops Specialist cowering before him in her blue and white jumpsuit and goggles.

  “You should have been told, sir,” she stammered helplessly. “You… the ship… reassigned…

  Flight Commandant Jordan.”

  “What about her?” Redfire shouted.

  “She’s standing right behind you,” said Halo Jordan from right behind him.

  “TyroCommander Redfire, I ordered a change in flight logistics. Flight Lieutenant Dallas was reassigned to transport search and rescue teams to Keeler. I’ll be flying Basil as the escort ship to the planet.”

  “Neg,” Redfire growled. “Neg, I forbid it. It’s too dangerous.” The Flight Ops Specialist took this opportunity to slip quietly down the catwalk. “Prime Commander Keeler has already approved the order,” Jordan said, her eyes ablaze with calm fire, the fire that let him know she was not going to yell, but she was not going to back down, either. “You need Basil to pull this off. It’s the only available Aves with all the tactical upgrades from Chapultepec.”

  “We may not come back from this mission,” Redfire seethed.

  “I don’t intend for this to be a suicide mission,” she answered calmly.

  “No one ever does. But if you’ve read the profile, you know we’re supposed to cover for the landing crew. If there’s any fire, well be taking it. ” She stood her ground. “I have to go on this mission.”

  He paused. “Why?”

  “Flight Lieutenant Ironhorse,” she answered. “He’s dead. His ship was destroyed in the first attack.”

  Redfire directed his eyes away from her. “I know.”

  “Did you know he was in love with me?” Jordan asked.

  “Half the ship knew he was in love with you.”

  “He never told me,” Jordan said, her voice steady.

  “What if he had?” Redfire asked.

  He had hoped to read a response in her face, but she did not reveal a thing. “Basil is standing ready at Dock 01.” She hitched up her pack and walked away from him.

  “How will this mission even the score?” Redfire asked.

  “This isn’t about vengeance,” she turned, and her face glowed with anger. “Ironhorse wouldn’t have wanted that. This is something I need to do. This is a mission I have to finish.

  For Ironhorse …”

  “His mission was to transport a repair crew to Lexington Keeler, ” Redfire told her. “Do that
.” She stared him down. “You just don’t understand, do you?”

  “Apparently not,” he admitted.

  She paused long enough to think of a way to explain it to him. “You don’t need to understand why. You just need to understand that I’m flying the cover ship, and you don’t have a choice. She pushed a tactical flight helmet into his gut. “Now, suit up.” Truth to tell, Redfire did understand… or came as close as he ever would to grasping Halo-logic. She wouldn’t articulate it for fear of sounding egotistical, but the truth was she couldn’t let any other pilot lead this kind of mission because she couldn’t live with herself if the pilot who went in her place didn’t come back. It was the same imperative that had gotten her stranded on Bodicea and nearly killed on Meridian.

  He fitted the helmet to his head, and followed her toward Basil.

  Chapter Eight

  Lexington Keeler – UnderDecks

  “I think we’re lost,” said Matthew Driver.

  “How is that possible?” Trajan Lear demanded. “We only descended two decks.” The systems to Hangar Bay Beta appeared to be intact with the exception of a single malfunctioning Q-wave junction. They had gone two decks below and several sections back to find the junction, and were proud that they had brought it on-line with a simple reset.

  However, they were now quite unable to find their way back.

  “I think we’ve actually descended three decks,” Driver said. He tapped the Locator Function built into the cuff of his flight jacket, but only got a message telling him he was not on board Pegasus. “The Guides must have been damaged in the attack.” Trajan closed his eyes. Stormclouds of panic were massing on the horizon of his mind. He simply loathed the UnderDecks, for what he thought were very solid reasons. Just prior to his thirteenth birthday, he had set off to explore Pegasus’s UnderDecks and had very nearly died…

  repeatedly.

  “This doesn’t look right,” Driver said. He had accessed a display panel on one wall of the lower deck and was examining it. “I admit I don’t know a lot about Pegasus’s UnderDecks, but Eliza and I used to spend a lot of time down there…”

  “Please don’t talk about her,” Trajan interrupted. Driver tended to get mushy when discussing Eliza Change, even though he had professed to have given up on her.

  “This diagram looks different from what I remember though,” Driver went on. “It’s as though they reconfigured the decks underneath the hangar bay.” He tapped the display and zoomed in. The Words “Assembly Area Alpha (A3)”

  “That’s the area under the Hangar Bay where new Aves are assembled from the kits we keep in the cargo deck,” said Trajan Lear.

  “Aye, but theirs is at least four or five times larger than the one on Pegasus,”

  “Maybe it was redesigned before Keeler launched,” Trajan Lear suggested.

  “That’s possible.” Driver ordered the display, “End Schematic Display, show visual, Assembly Area Alpha.”

  The display became a dark shadow. “Activate lighting, Assembly Area Alpha.” A circuit diagram showed why this was not possible. “They took some damage there,” Driver observed. He tapped a part of the display that read, “Manual Lighting Systems –

  Nominal. Remote Enabling Disabled.”

  “We can turn on the lights when we get there,” Trajan translated.

  “Aye,” Driver checked to make sure the safety was off his pulse weapon. “Let’s check it out.”

  A few turnarounds and a dead-end later, Driver and Lear reached Assembly Area Beta. The lighting system was inactive, but responded to a hard whack. Auxiliary lighting activated. Not the universal ambient light they were accustomed to, but fixed lighting rods stationed in the walls that gave a faint yellow tint to the light and cast shadows behind them as they entered the vast empty space. In this assembly area, a large number of assembly drones stood on the deck, tools and equipment were scattered about where the ship’s crazy ride had left them.

  “They built a ship here,” Driver realized, “a large one.” He soon found another wall display and activated it. It displayed a diagram, the outline of a ship that looked like the command deck of an Aves mated to a long assembly of cargo containers, with a triple set of reactor domes on the tail.

  “Why?” Driver wondered out loud. He looked upwards. The ship would never have fit in the Hangar Bay. However, Aves were lowered downward toward the launch rails. This ship could be lifted up to meet them. But, there would be no way for it to land again, short of backing into the launching system all the way back here. Theoretically possible, Matthew thought, but it would like kind of silly. Most likely, whatever was built here was designed for a one-way trip.

  “It’s got to be in the Mission Logs,” Trajan Lear said. “Let’s get back to the Hangar Bay…

  now that we know where it is, we can take the lift.”

  As he spoke, a loud clanging and grinding noise erupted from across the bay. Driver and Lear swung their weapons and illuminators toward it, prepared to fire. Two large metal cylinders were rising from below the deck, fronted with frosted glass. Thick billows of cold fog accompanied them.

  “Cryostasis chambers,” said Driver.

  “I know,” Trajan Lear told him. “You don’t have to identify every object we come across.” Driver directed his Spex at the chambers. “They’re occupied.”

  “That explains the frost,” Trajan Lear said. It took them some seconds to cross the expansive bay, and by the time they reached the cryostasis chambers, they were already cycling through their reanimation cycles.

  Trajan Lear raised his pulse weapon. “What are you doing?” Driver asked.

  “I am thinking about the last time a cryostasis chamber cycled down and opened in front of us,” Trajan answered. “You know, on Chronos. ”

  “The thing with the four jaws, right,” Driver nodded and raised his own weapon, as they both took a few steps backwards.

  It took a few minutes for the process to finish, during which time, it never occurred to Matthew or Trajan to communicate for back-up. Two years on a gigantic space station where excitement and danger had been a way of life had left them pretty used to fighting battles on their own… even though they could only barely remember about half of what they had experienced. The only question now was how long they would give whatever emerged from cryostasis a chance to prove it was benign before shooting at it.

  The chamber doors hissed open, revealing a very tall, intensely sculpted figure wearing a strange, almost form-fitting uniform. The thought flashed simultaneously in their two brains.

  “Aurelian!” Driver and Lear crouched and pointed their weapons at his head.

  They held that position for several seconds, but the man did not move. Matthew cocked his head and squinted.

  “I think he’s dead,” said Trajan Lear, noting the flat line on the Medical Readout next to the door of the chamber.

  Driver cautiously moved closer. “A dead Aurelian in Cryostasis?” He got close enough to examine the uniform. Its material was unfamiliar to him, but there was a patch on the sleeve.

  Beneath the frost, he could faintly make out the Odyssey Project logo. His eyes moved to the upright collar of the uniform, where three slash marks were banded together, the rank of lieutenant. He amended his remarks. “A dead Aurelian in cryostasis wearing a uniform with Odyssey Project patch and rank insignia.”

  “The trim is red,” Trajan Lear said. “Tactical Core.”

  “A dead Aurelian Tactical Lieutenant in a cryostasis chamber…”

  “You’re stating the obvious again.”

  “With a pulse-weapon on his wrist,” Driver added, and reached out cautiously to take the weapon.

  At that moment, the dead man’s eyes opened.

  Trajan almost shot him then, but a pity stayed his hand. “It’s a pity Flight Captain Driver is blocking my shot.” Instead the two backed off, keeping their weapons trained on him.

  The man seemed to take a few seconds to orient himself, which was typical after a
stay in cryostasis, although it usually took hours or even days to become fully alert. When he spoke, his voice was monotonic, with an odd quality of echo neither Driver nor Lear could place.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Flight Captain Matthew Driver, Flight Group Gamma, Pathfinder Ship Pegasus.”

  “And the other one of us holding a pulse weapon on you is Flight Lieutenant Trajan Lear,” Trajan Lear added. “Identify yourself?”

  “I was Tactical Lieutenant Synch Christmas,” he told them. Christmas began slowly stretching and restretching each of his arms, as warmth and mobility returned to them. “How long was I in stasis?”

  “Only a few days,” Trajan told him. “Where is the rest of the crew?” At which point he turned so that they could see the right rear quarter of his head running up past the ear to the temple was not flesh and skin, but a thin membrane of transparent material covering an array of connectors and fibrous, light-conveying material.

  “What happened to your face?” Trajan asked.

  “The same thing that happened to my arm,” Christmas lifted his right arm, which was also formed of the same translucent, plastic-like material. And showed patterns of circuitry, metal, and artificial sinews beneath.

  “What are you?” Driver asked.

  “A cyborg,” Christmas told them. “What is left of my flesh and bone is animated by cybernetic devices. Otherwise, I am dead.”

  Driver and Lear chewed on this for a moment, then Lear said, “You seem… all right for a dead guy.”

  “This…” began Christmas, making a gesture with his arm. “This is mere pantomime…

  dead soulless flesh animated by nanotechnology. I died on a world far from here, but my reanimated flesh continues in a horrible parody of life.” He sighed, “I am dead.” Nothing was said for a moment, then Trajan Lear put in, “So, the only crew on the ship who survived the battle is a dead guy?”

  This triggered Driver to ask, “The battle, what can you tell us about the battle.” Christmas’s face lit up– the side with the cyberware, anyway, as processing increased.