Second Earth (14 page)

  
“On the heels of their failure was a piece
of news that was quickly hailed by all Sector Command leaders and R&D
researches involved as the most monumental discovery in the history of warfare;
a triumph only equaled by the utter savagery of the thing. The scientists had
developed a prototype weapon that had the potential to destroy all life on the
surface of planet in a matter of minutes. It used a specialized form of a
substance that was coined Epsilon-6. I won’t go into the exact specifications,
as they are encoded on this data drive for your review. What I will tell you is
that Sector Command now had a seemingly viable weapon that could turn the tide
of the war in our favor.

  
“The first application of the weapon met
with no success. Sector Command had launched a preemptive strike against the
Kafaran shipyards at K’Tal. My squadron was there with the rest of the
Fahrenwald
battle group. Of course, back
then, I wasn’t privy to the information I am now, and we had no idea that this
was going to be the test of a secret new weapon system. At the time, it was
just one more battle to fight. In the months leading up to the first
deployment, the scientist at Unified R&D had managed to shrink the warhead
down to a manageable size. Working very closely with Sector Command and the
OSI, they managed to get the first prototype on board the
Fahrenwald
.”

  
At the second mention of Shawn’s old ship,
Melissa turned to the lieutenant commander, who was silently watching the video
as William continued to speak.

  
“The upper chain of command had decided that
the weapon would be loaded onto a random ship, thus saving the pilot the added
stress of knowing that he carried a weapon capable of obliterating all life on
the surface of the planet below. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered
that the pilot in question was a young and impetuous Lieutenant Shawn Kestrel.”
Graves looked away from the camera and smiled, as if a distant memory bubbled
to the surface. After a moment he looked back into the device.

  
“When we arrived at the shipyard above
K’Tal, the place was brimming with Kafarans. They had two fleet carriers on
alert, with another one in the dry docks that could have been launched within
twenty-four hours. There were three destroyers, a handful of cruisers, and
enough gunboats to fill an ocean. Nevertheless, we were pretty evenly matched.
Our two carrier groups brought more than enough firepower to handle them, but
that’s not what Sector Command wanted. They wanted total destruction of all
life in the K’Tal system.” Graves shook his head in disdain and then leaned in
closer to the camera, as if to make his next words more poignant. “All I can
say is, thank God we pilots didn’t know what we were truly being asked to do. Combat
flying is one thing, but genocide is…is another matter altogether. That was
never what the founding members of the Unified Council envisioned when Sector
Command was first established. Had we known our true mission’s intentions, I’m
quite sure Sector Command would have had a mutiny on their hands.”

  
William straightened in his chair, resuming
his tone and his story line. “As I was saying, we went out to attack the yards
at K’Tal. One of the other squadrons from the carrier was spearheading the first
wave, and my squadron was leading the second. It was a fierce battle; we lost a
lot of good pilots, and some of my dearest friends. An hour into it, we were
finally close enough to the planet to deploy the experimental weapon. Kestrel
was ordered to fire his entire arsenal directly at the planet.”

  
Melissa turned to Shawn. “Do you…do remember
that?”

  
Shawn nodded slowly. “Yeah, I do. I recall
saying something about it being a stupid idea.”

  
As if the recording was overhearing their
conversation, William chuckled to himself before continuing. “Shawn told me
over the tac-net that it was a stupid idea, but in the end he did what he was
ordered to do. Fortunately, the weapon only skidded harmlessly across the
atmosphere of the planet for a few seconds before burning up on entry.
Apparently, the equally experimental casing of the weapon wasn’t as perfect as
the engineers had envisioned. After the failure during the battle, they went
back to their proverbial drawing boards to design something more effective. The
breakthrough they sought in this effort very nearly succeeded, and it was the
match that lit the flame we are witness to today. It’s also the one that will
burn us for a long time to come.

  
“In their relentless endeavor, driven hard
by the OSI Director, the scientists reengineered the casing using a new alloy
discovered on Tireir. The compound was completely resilient to the heat
generated when an object entered a planet’s atmosphere. Used for benign
purposes, it could have revolutionized colonial operations. But everything the
upper chain of command saw in the immediate future was war and death. Without
the prior authorization of the Unified Council, the OSI ordered all the weapon
research and prototypes moved off Tireir and closer to the front lines, where
it was felt the weapon would soon be needed. They chose the only place that had
a pre-established military presence, and which would also be far enough away
from the inner sphere to avoid raising any questions during the weapons test
phase: Second Earth. Under a cloak of total secrecy, the entire evolution took
nearly six months to complete.

  
“It wasn’t long after operations were in
full swing at Second Earth that the Kafarans began their advance into Unified
Space. Within a month, they arrived at Second Earth. The scientists had been
quick to develop their superweapon, but not quick enough.”

  
Shawn watched William clench his fists as he
recalled the memories.

  
“The Kafaran armada, having split into two
fleets, initiated their orbital bombardment of Second Earth at approximately
1035, local space time. The first city to be hit was New Aberdeen. Ten minutes
later, the main body opened fire on Crystal City. The first few blasts
destroyed some of the low-lying buildings in the city, but that wasn’t the
worst of it. Once the enemy ships targeted Delta Base it was all over. As fate
or destiny would have it, the Kafarans’ first salvo struck the storage room
where the scientists had been keeping the new Epsilon-6 weapon.” William began
shaking his head slowly. “I guess the geniuses at R&D didn’t take into
account the effect of Kafaran weapons on the Tireirim in the storage facility.
That, mixed with the rather large supply of Epsilon-6 in an adjacent storage
depot, blew open a crater nearly eight hundred feet wide. That’s when the
Epsilon-6 vaporized and became airborne. When it dispersed into the atmosphere,
it killed everyone on the surface of the planet in less than twenty minutes.”
William looked away from the camera for a moment as he contemplated his next
words.

  
“After the war, a few years after I was
recruited into Unified Special Services, I was given a recorded video of what
happens to someone when they are exposed to even the smallest amount of E-6.
It’s a highly potent, exceedingly localized form of radiation. It destroys
simple organic material at the molecular level. Since Kafarans were known to
have extremely tough exoskeletal structures, the weapon was designed to
permeate their joints and destroy their bodies from the inside out, leaving
only their hard outer shell. When the material was released on Second Earth, it
immediately went on to attack the humanoid population, destroying them from the
outside in. When it was all over, all that was left of the inhabitants of the
planet was a pile of slowly decaying bones.

  
“The demoralizing effect on the Kafarans in
orbit was immediate and profound. It has been widely speculated that they’d
never seen a weapon of such destructive power before. In other words, the
Kafarans had no defense against this kind of device. Within ten minutes of the
detonation, they completely ceased their attack on the planet and departed,
heading back into uncharted space at flank speed. They probably feared that all
Unified warships were already armed with this new biological weapon. Had they
only known the truth—that every version of those superweapons had just been
destroyed on the surface of the planet—I’m quite certain the attack would have
resumed.

  
“Before the Kafarans made it out of the
system, they were intercepted by a fleet of Sector Command starships. I’ve seen
the sensor records and the flight recorder data; the Kafarans wanted nothing to
do with the Unified forces. They were trying to leave the system under full
power, but the Unified ships were ordered to pursue and eradicate them. I can’t
fault the USC crews for that. For all they knew, the Kafarans had just
willfully wiped out the entire population of a planet.

  
“The rest—as they say—is history. Or was, up
until six months ago. That’s when the intelligence reports started coming in
that the Kafarans were rearming. It was decided that Second Earth was too close
to Kafaran territory, and that they may suddenly decide to invade the
defenseless planet and look for the same research. If the weapon fell into
their hands, the destruction they could unleash would be catastrophic. I was
ordered to Second Earth to try and recover anything from the Epsilon-6 program
I could find. My mission was twofold: to find remnants of the research for the
weapons system, and to locate a way to subvert its effects. I was only
completely successful in one of those endeavors.

  
“I’ve been covertly shuttling between Second
Earth and the planet Corvan under the guise of a free trader for the last year,
but I’ve spent the better half of the last three months here on Second Earth.
It’s a lonely, desolate place, but I think I’ve finally found the information I
was ordered to find. However, it leads me to believe there is one piece of the
puzzle still left unsolved. Everything I’ve found points to the planet Corvan
having the answers I need—the answers we
all
need. I just can’t believe, after all the time I spent there, that it was right
under my nose the entire time.

  
“Every single bit of research I’ve done,
including copies of everything I’ve discovered so far, is encoded onto this
disk. It’s encrypted, but I know you’ll know how to access it. In the event
something happens to me before I can complete the puzzle…you will
have
to finish it for me. I’m sorry to
lay this burden on you, sweetheart. But, if anyone can do this, I know it will
be you. You are my one joy in this universe, and I hope to see you again very
soon.”

  
William quickly looked away from the screen,
giving Shawn and Melissa the impression that something had startled him. He
then fixed his eyes back to the camera and his voice became more hurried.
“Shawn, if you’re there with her—and I pray to God that you are—
please
take care of her for me. She’s
going to need you on this one, the same way I needed you during the war. Come
through for her the way you did for me, the way I’ve always known you could. I
was always proud of you…proud of both of you. We must see this through to its
conclusion or we will all be doomed. I’m sure of it.”

  
There was definitely a noise outside the
view of the camera this time. It was a loud, banging noise, as if someone were
trying to force his way into the admiral’s office. In the background, Shawn
caught the faintest glimpse of something hanging just beyond the Admiral’s
window.

  
William stood from his chair, then withdrew
a sidearm from some unseen location. A picture frame on the desktop toppled
over as he quickly closed a drawer. “I have to go, but I’ll get this message to
you somehow. I love you. Don’t forget that I will—” There was a final crashing
noise, followed by a howling screech as the video turned to static before Shawn
and Melissa’s eyes.

   
S
hawn
and Melissa sat in marked silence, each staring at the blank monitor before
them. Melissa watched as
S
hawn
slowly stood up from his chair and walked over to the large view port that
dominated the starboard wall of her quarters. The
Rhea
’s current orientation put Second Earth right below the ship’s
starboard side, affording most of the crew an unobstructed view of the spinning
blue-white world below.

  
From his vantage
point, Shawn could see a weather system moving in from the far east, and it
gave him a moment’s concern because it looked as if it might turn into a
full-fledged hurricane. He almost chuckled to himself at the thought, because
there was no one left on the planet below to care about such things.

  
His thoughts
shifted to William Graves’ words from the video. He tried to process the
information as best he could, but it seemed all too incredible for him to take
in one swallow. He sighed heavily, then looked from the window to Melissa,
sitting silently with her hands buried in her lap, and he knew her
contemplations were no less muddled than his own. He turned his head back to
the planet below for a fraction of an instant before he heard soft crying
emanating from the other side of the room.

  
He stepped quickly
to Melissa’s side, kneeling down beside her chair and taking her hands in his.
He had no idea where to begin to console her, and truth be told, he needed a
little comfort himself. Luckily, Melissa was the first to speak.

  
She looked into his
eyes and brushed the side of his rough face with her hand. “All those
people…down there…” Her words trailed off as the water in her eyes began to
cascade down her pale cheeks.

  
Still holding her
hands, Shawn effortlessly guided her to her feet, and then wrapped his arms
around her yielding body. He held her tightly, experiencing his own sense of
anger and frustration at the deaths of so many on the planet below.

  
Melissa pulled her
head back and Shawn searched her eyes, seeing that her makeup had streaked down
her cheeks, creating paths like dry riverbeds in the summer heat.

  
“Do you think…if
the Kafarans hadn’t detonated the weapon, they would still have annihilated the
population?” she asked, her voice wavering.

  
It was a valid
question; he’d already asked himself the same thing and had come up with the
only answer he was currently equipped to give her. “I’m sure they would have,
although there probably would have been survivors.”

  
A fresh stream of
tears began welling in her eyes, and she clutched her arms around him tightly.
“Oh, my God, Shawn. We did this. Those people…those people are dead because of
us.”

  
In one way, she was
very right. Yet, in another, he knew the big picture was even larger than the
small glimpse they had been afforded. “No. We didn’t do this. The Kafarans
did.”

  
She shook her head,
sniffling and fighting back another wave of sadness. In her mind it was easy to
brush it aside and replace it with anger. “No. That’s a dodge, Shawn, and you
know it! We built the weapon.”

  
“
They
built the weapon, Melissa. The UCS
did. The OSI did. Not us. We were just soldiers.” He knew his words were empty,
and Melissa’s response only solidified his unbelief in them.

  
She tightened her
lips and swallowed hard. “It’s all the same…when it comes down to it. We are
all cogs in the same machine.”

  
Shawn shook his
head derisively. “I don’t believe that.”

  
She laughed, but
not out of any humor she found in the commander’s statement; it was out of a
loss she felt for the dead below. “What matters is that when descendants and
family members of those poor souls on the planet come looking for answers,
we’ll have a new truth to tell them. We will tell them it was a weapon designed
by their own government that was responsible for the deaths of nearly four and
a half million people.”

  
Shawn instantly
felt the ramifications of just such a truth, and a cold chill took over his
body. “The UCS would never admit to something like that. Regardless of the
purpose for the weapon—if we can believe what your father said on the video—the
Epsilon-6 weapon system was never sanctioned by the Unified Council. This
corroborates the partial formula that Toyotomi showed us back on Persephone—an
illegal biospheric weapon. If word got out that all those deaths were because
of the detonation of unlawful munitions, the government could very well
fracture even worse than it did after the end of the Galactic War.”

  
Melissa nodded
slowly as she leveled her eyes at Shawn. “And they’ll likely use the best
people at their disposal to keep it a secret.”

  
As the answer to
that statement dawned on him, Shawn stiffened, then released Melissa from his
grasp. He stepped back a half pace and looked at her accusingly. “The OSI.”

  
Confused, Melissa
reached out for him, but he moved back an additional step. “Shawn, you have to
believe me. I…I didn’t know.”

  
“Didn’t know,” he
repeated with more anger than he intended. “You’re a command level agent. How
much didn’t you know?”

  
She sighed, knowing
it was time to reveal what she knew; it was time for her to put the cards on
the table. She moved toward the couch, sitting down and reclining comfortably.
“I knew…I’ve known for some time that there was a cover-up of some type going
on in the Unified Government. I stumbled across some evidence of it while I was
investigating a separate, unrelated case about two years ago. At first, I was
doing research in my off-duty time, but it quickly became all-consuming. I
started poking around, and found to my surprise that a great number of files in
the UCS database had been sealed tight. It was obvious that the Director had to
be involved, or he was, at the very least, more aware of the situation than he
let on. And, based on decoded communications traffic, I also knew my father was
involved, but not…not how deeply that involvement was.”

  
“You had your own
father under surveillance?”

  
She shook her head.
“No, nothing so official. I imbedded some flags into the Unified mainframe.
These markers would trigger each time certain keywords or phrases came up in
communications. I would then be notified via encrypted messages
electronically.”

  
“So no one else
knew of your monitoring?”

  
“Not that I’m aware
of.”

  
Shawn shook his
head slowly. “I don’t get it. During the Galactic War, was he with intelligence
then, too?”

  
Melissa likewise
shook her head. “No. That much I know for certain. He wasn’t approached by
Sector Command for this assignment until he had been working with the
government for some time after the war. He had some minor dealings with the OSI
while he was consulting, but nothing on a scale this large.”

  
“Then how was it
that he came to be so trustworthy with this information? I mean, if there is
some sort of superweapon, the last person you would want to know is someone you
don’t trust implicitly.”

  
“I agree.”

  
“Then why him? Why
put the fate of the Unified Government, Sector Command, the OSI, you,
me—everyone—in the hands of an unknown variable?”

  
She could only
shake her head in disbelief. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. It goes
against everything I’ve ever been taught or have seen as an agent.” She wiped
at her eyes, and then placed her hands squarely back in her lap. “And what my
father said about you launching the first prototype weapon against the planet?
Did you know anything about it?”

  
“No, I didn’t. I
had no idea that my ship was outfitted with some sort of experimental weapon.”

  
“Do you think it
would have changed your outlook on the battle?”

  
Shawn shrugged. “I
don’t know. Maybe. It’s hard to say. I don’t really remember what kind of
mindset I was in at the time.”

  
“I imagine the OSI
thinks you know something,” she said, standing and walking to the view port.
“That’s probably why they’re watching you.”

  
“You mean, why they
want me eliminated if I get out of line?” he asked, referring to the veiled
threat Melissa had relayed to him before he had accepted his reactivation
orders.

  
She smiled faintly
at him. “Probably.”

  
“That’s comforting.
What about the fact that the Kafarans retreated the area after they’d
accidentally detonated the device? Do you think there’s anything behind that?”

  
Melissa stood and
began pacing the room. “Are you asking me if I think my father was lying?”

  
“No, not at all.
I’m just wondering if your research into the Kafarans would help prove any of
that.”

  
She folded her arms
and began stepping around the room once more. “I’m afraid my knowledge of
Kafaran culture is extremely limited. I don’t think I’m qualified to give a
good answer.”

  
Shawn could see
that she had put her professional visage back up. “Come on, now. This is us,
being honest with one another, remember? Let’s agree to drop the special
investigator pretense and you offer me your best guess. What’s your unofficial
opinion?”

  
She sighed heavily
and stopped her pacing. “Well, if I had to wager a guess—which I’m completely
uncomfortable doing—I’d say that it’s entirely probable. Although Kafarans have
revealed themselves to be vicious killers, they have—on occasion—displayed
considerable evidence of higher intelligence and adaptability.”

  
Shawn nodded. “I’d
agree with that. You’d have to have both in order to pilot a star fighter, and
I’ve been up against my share of what I would consider Kafaran ace pilots in my
time.”

  
“But you made it
out alive. So you were able to beat them?”

  
Shawn smiled. “No,
not always. Sometimes it was more of a draw, like when opposing forces regroup
to redraw their battle lines. Other times I barely escaped by the skin of my
teeth, although I can say that they never retreated when they were outnumbered,
only when they were outmatched.”

  
Melissa gave him a
quizzical look. “What do you mean?”

  
“I mean that,
during the war, even when the numbers were clearly in our favor, they never
gave up and retreated. The only time I ever saw Kafarans tuck tail and run was
when we clearly had more firepower. I once saw a single Kafaran deck fighter
take on a whole wing of USC interceptors. Although the Kafaran was easily
outnumbered, his craft was no more or less powerful than the Sector Command
interceptors. Numbers didn’t seem to matter to him. On the other hand, I’ve
seen two Kafaran frigates flee a star system as soon as a pair of USC cruisers
entered their weapons range. Heck, they didn’t even offer a fight. They simply
turned and left.”

  
“Interesting.” She
contemplated the information, processing it in her mind before she sat back
down at his side. “So, if our theory is sound, it makes sense why the Kafarans
would flee the system after witnessing the destruction.”

  
“In what way?”

  
“Well, if they felt
we’d developed some sort of superweapon, one they had no defense against, they
would probably retreat—or at least, they’d regroup—while they weighed their
options.”

  
Shawn nodded in
understanding. “Brave, but not stupid.”

  
“Exactly. And
that’s when the Sector Command forces found them. The Kafarans probably didn’t
even put up a fight before our forces destroyed them. They may not even have
fought when they were being attacked.”

  
“If that’s true—if
our forces willingly attacked a retreating foe—then Sector Command would be
guilty of violating about a dozen statues of Unified law.”

  
Melissa held up a
finger, giving a devil’s advocate stance to Shawn’s line of reasoning. “Ah, but
Sector Command believed the Kafarans had destroyed the population of an entire
planet. In their eyes, the enemy
needed
to be eliminated.”

  
“It makes for a
convincing cover for their secret weapons program,” Shawn said. With a nod from
Melissa, he continued. “Sector Command can say anything they want to safeguard
the secrecy of the project, just as long as there’s a head to place on a pike
somewhere.”

  
“A disturbing
analogy, but I’d say it was essentially correct,” she agreed. “The OSI helps
them cook up a story, and the planet is sealed off from all outsiders.”