Operation Chimera (10 page)

Nicholas Driscoll took the conn as the most senior officer aboard, and ordered the
Resolute’s
evacuation. The life pods were capable of speeding away while they broadcast a wide-ranging emergency beacon. David Macintosh was one of the officers who opposed Driscoll’s order. They told him it was suicide to leave the ship.

“We’ve got a better chance than if we stay,” Driscoll had shot back.

Driscoll repeated the order to abandon ship. He set the auto-pilot to direct the
Resolute
toward the Draxx dreadnought at full speed in the hope it would destroy the enemy—or at least slow them down enough to give them a chance at survival.

Driscoll dragged Macintosh into one of the life pods, and together they fled the battered Union starship, watching through the pod’s tiny viewport as the
Resolute
grew smaller.

But it didn’t mean they were blind to what happened―before the
Resolute
could turn, before its engines could fire, before his plan could be executed by the on-board computer―the Draxx delivered several crippling strikes and the
Resolute
exploded. A series of rippling flashes of yellow, orange, and white filled in the space behind a racing ring of faint energy.

From the hurtling escape pod, Driscoll and Macintosh were helpless to do anything but gaze on in horror as the dreadnought picked the life pods off one by one. Every hand aboard the
Resolute
, lost.

“You killed them all,” Macintosh said over and over again. “You killed them…”

Driscoll didn’t know how they were ever going to work together, given their history. He had made a call, and it hadn’t paid off. In the process, everyone aboard the
Resolute
had died. His heart ached just at the memory of that time―his greatest failure. He’d sworn never to allow people to die like that again, never to abandon a ship and put their lives in the hands of fate. He understood why Macintosh felt the way he did.

But it was imperative the two of them got along.

There was no choice. Somehow, they
had
to make it work.

An hour later, the
Manhattan
penetrated the outer edge of the Chimera Cluster. It stood before them, a wall of dense peach nebula marbled with violet clouds of disruptive materials. In many ways, its mysterious beauty belied the inherent danger―only a fraction of its interior had been mapped and catalogued by the Terran Union. Space was full of such dangerous areas, the most notorious of which, the Mobius Formation, was a turbulent stretch of nebulous gases, driven by a hurricane of stormy pulsar winds. The gravitational pull of several surrounding pulsars kept it from drifting.

Then there was the Rishi Drift. Pilots often said it was like riding shotgun on a thunderbolt to fly through the Drift… you were lucky if you got to the other side intact.

The Cluster’s danger came not so much from her disruptive properties, but that so little was known about it. And to head into uncharted territory, into the unknown, was the greatest danger a starship could ever face.

Lieutenant Hardy handled the helm with resolve, slowing from Jump at just the right moment. The
Manhattan
crossed the perimeter of the Cluster at near-Jump speed and Hardy let her coast through on thrusters as she decelerated to galactic standard. The ship jittered as it cut through the nebulous material at the fringe of the Cluster, the volatile elements that comprised the Cluster struck against the hull plating. In many ways, the
Manhattan
was like a cruise liner plowing through a dense fog on a rough sea.

Already, the bizarre effects of the Chimera Cluster were causing the ship to shudder and shake. The dampeners worked to lessen its effects and stabilize her.

Captain Driscoll grabbed a bar overhead. “Well handled, Lieutenant. Okay everyone, let’s get to work. This’ll be rough.”

The
Manhattan
passed through hammerhead mountains of volatile cumulus, and in its wake the nebulous gases interacted with the drive plasma, creating rivers of electrical discharge behind them.

“Rear view,” Driscoll ordered.

The viewscreen changed to show a panorama of space, as if looking from the aft; the entire bridge flashed shades of blue-violet and white from the storm of space lightning that signaled their passage through the skin of the Cluster. Driscoll imagined a huge balloon, with the
Manhattan
a pin piercing the rubber membrane. And within the balloon? Peachy colored layers of dense nebula, marbled violet, illuminated here and there by explosions of light. But at its centre was darkness, deep and foreboding.

And that’s where we’re going. Straight for the mouth of hell. I wonder what Dante
would’ve said had he lived to see it.

He thought of the Joseph Conrad novel
Heart of Darkness
―hadn’t the narrator of that book similarly headed straight for the dark core of a mysterious land? Down the river, into the jungle, into madness…

The
Manhattan
pushed through the last of the Cluster’s outer edge, and burst into the less compacted interior.

Details of the Conrad novel drifted through Driscoll’s mind at random, offering greater detail though it had been years since he read it. For a time he’d tackled all of the classics. Most he finished, some he didn’t. He remembered the title of that novel, in particular, referred as much to the mission as the narrator himself. True, he had journeyed into darkness, to find a man possessed by shadow. But along the way? Driscoll had come to realize that the narrator had been consumed as much with darkness as his quarry.

Am I?
The incident, other missions I’ve led over the years… am I a ‘Man O’ War’ as the saying goes? Do
I
have a heart of darkness? Is that why they really wanted me for this? Because they know I’ll cross the line if it comes to it.

Up ahead the viewscreen changed to show the bow.

They’re right. I’ll break every rule in the book if it means I can stop something like the
Resolute
happening again. The Chief doesn’t know…

“Lieutenant,” Commander Teague addressed Hardy. “Prepare to execute the next Jump.”

There was simply no way the
Manhattan
would have been able to make it through the outer edges of the Cluster at Jump speed. At such velocity, her field emitters would have been overcome by the density of what they were travelling through. For the same reason, a starship travelling at Jump speed could not leap through the heart of a sun. Gravity wells and black holes also played hell with navigation. Courses had to be plotted with the utmost precision to take all of that into account. There were occasional accidents, it was true, but on the whole, Jumping was safe. It was the only feasible way to travel among the various star systems. Without it, only generation ships could cover the distance, and one cannot fight and win wars six families later than when one takes off.

A whine filtered in from below decks as the Jump Drive re-spooled.

“Ready.”

“Jump,” Driscoll ordered, his mouth suddenly dry.

Lieutenant Hardy keyed the controls. The
Manhattan
leapt at his touch. Once more, the space on the viewscreen rippled, a black pond disturbed by a stone before it surged forth to devour them.

Down the river, into the jungle
…

he shuttle doors opened, blinding Michael with long-absent sunlight for a moment. He lingered off to the side of the aisle as other pilots and crew filed past him, out to the adoration of waiting people. Reporters, family, and the curious, showered the arriving heroes with love and adulation. When the last of them had disembarked, he made his way down the ramp, skirting the crowd. He offered a pleasant smile at the one reporter to notice him, but did not linger to speak as he traversed the tarmac at a brisk walk and took a seat in the terminal monorail.

Michael glanced through the window at the cheering faces, glad to be home, but thinking too much of the ones who did not make it to feel joy, or even true relief. It was just as well, his mother would feel enough happiness for both of them. The tram jostled him as it got underway, drawing his attention to the box of medals in his lap. Metal trinkets from some unknown number of fallen that he had to deliver to their loved ones. A part of him wanted to open it and count them, but he could not find the will to do it.

The Draxx threat had abated, for now. He tilted the case, listening to the trinkets clatter inside. Would anyone even remember the names of the people these insignias once represented? Even now, the saviors of the Terran Alliance endured the accusation of being warmongers. Fringe groups plastered cartoon-cute images of the reptilian Draxx, as if all humans did were melt down baby lizards in their cribs. They couldn’t know what really happened out there; they never saw the gleaming teeth of a murderous Draxx so close their breath fogged a human’s visor. They never heard the last breath of a brother spent on a helmet-shaking scream, never stared at an expanding debris cloud in the heart-rending silence thereafter.

Idealists, university students, socialites―what did they know.

The tram stopped. Michael rose to his feet, tucking the case of mourning under his left arm. Brilliant white light flooded in from the doors as they slid open with a pneumatic hiss; a row of silhouettes in black funeral garb waited. Their number indistinct, parents, siblings, and children of the fallen waited. A dozen unreadable faces turned to look at him all at once.