Second Earth (18 page)

  
Lieutenant Stephen
Franklin, the Black Lions’ tactical officer, came back over the loudspeakers of
the
Rhea
’s control center. “Negative,
ma’am. No defensive action taken by the intruder.”

  
“Any sign of
offensive or defensive batteries?” Krif asked.

  
“Negative,
Rhea
. No defensive batteries that I can
make out, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t hidden somewhere inside the hull.”

  
Krif leaned toward
Sergeant Fredericks at the sensor controls. “What’s their position now?”

  
Fredericks shook
his head in frustration. “We’re getting some mild distortion on the long-range
sensors, probably from the same source as the communications echo.”

  
“Do we have enough
information to extrapolate a holo-image of what the ELINT is seeing out there?”

  
“I’m only receiving
about seventy percent of the data they’re sending back, sir. The rest of it is
being reflected out of the system. I’ll try and add their data to what our own
sensors have already collected to come up with something.”

  
Krif put a steady
hand on Fredrick’s shoulder and lowered his voice. “Make it fast, son. I don’t
want to get caught with our pants down out here.”

  
“Yes, sir.” When
Krif walked away, Fredericks was as at a loss as to how to get that much
information put together in a timely manner. There were simply too many
variables to take into account, and he didn’t have the training he needed to
get the computer to respond the way he needed it to. He removed his ball cap,
then wiped a hand across the bead of sweat that had formed on his brow as he
contemplated what he should do first.

  
Behind Krif, the
control center doors opened and Lieutenant Vincent Garcia, with the large and
imposing Commander Wamata behind him, strode confidently onto the command deck,
his hands bound behind his back. Krif turned and locked eyes with Garcia, who
was standing on the deck nearly two feet above him. Krif walked up one of the
two staircases that flanked the space, moving up to the Lieutenant’s level,
then nodded to Wamata, who removed the Lieutenant’s manacles.

  
Garcia had shaved
since the last time Krif had seen him. Even though he’d been in the brig under
suspicion of being a spy, Garcia was still afforded the privilege of wearing
his uniform. It was neatly pressed, and he looked ready for duty.

  
“You were the
junior sensor officer on the
Icarus
?”
Krif asked sharply. He knew the answer to be true, having discovered the
information in both the lieutenant’s files and what he’d gleaned from Garcia
during their initial debriefing.

  
“Yes, sir,” Vincent
Garcia said with a stunned expression. “I was.”

  
“And you said
before that you saw what attacked you?”

  
Garcia nodded
slowly as he recalled the image. “I…I caught a glimpse of…of something,
Captain. I can’t be sure—”

  
Krif stepped closer
to the man, close enough to feel his breath against his face. “We don’t have
time to be unsure about things, Lieutenant. Did you or did you
not
see something?”

  
“I…I did, sir. I
know I did.”

  
“Would you
recognize it if you saw it again?”

  
This time, Garcia’s
answer was more resolute. “Yes, sir. Absolutely.”

  
“Good. Now get down
to the sensor console and work with Sergeant Fredericks. But remember
Lieutenant, he’s the specialist in charge on my orders, and his word is gospel,
so your rank doesn’t mean squat right now. Understood?”

  
Garcia stood at
attention. “Yes, sir. Perfectly understood.”

  
“Then snap to it,”
Krif said, letting the young lieutenant get to his new duties. The captain
looked to Wamata, who gave the commanding officer a disapproving look.

  
“Are you sure this
is a good idea, Skipper?” the burly security chief asked. “He
could
be the spy we’ve been looking for
over the past couple of weeks.”

  
Krif’s voice was
low. “I’m aware of that, Lieutenant Commander. But right now he’s the only
person who may have seen what we’re dealing with. We need what he knows.” Krif
looked to Wamata’s sidearm slung tightly against his side. “Keep an eye on him,
just in case.”

  
When Wamata noticed
what the captain was looking at, he gave the commanding officer a curt nod.
“Yes, sir.” He left the captain’s side, stepping to an inconspicuous corner of
CIC where he could keep a watchful eye on Garcia.

  
Down at the sensor
control station, Garcia had pulled up a chair next to Fredericks. Fredericks
looked at Garcia with a worried expression, having heard the rumors of the lone
survivor of the
Icarus
over the last
few weeks. He’d never thought he’d ever get the chance to see him, let alone be
sitting next to him at a console while under alert conditions.

  
“What are you
working on, Sergeant?” Garcia asked with a nervous smile.

  
“I’m…I’m trying to
correlate all the data from our patrol wing with our established long-range
sensor data. I need to construct a holo-image of what’s going on out there, but
we’re getting these weird sensor distortions.”

  
“Distortions,”
Garcia asked, rubbing his chin with his hand. “Distortions. I remember
something about those. Check the infrared band.”

  
Fredericks waved a
hand at the screen and a line graph appeared showing the infrared spectrum of
the sensors. “Everything looks good there, sir.”

  
Garcia pondered the
readings on the screen. “What about EM?”

  
Fredericks entered
in the requested information into the computer. The readout came back
instantly. “No, sir. There’s nothing on the electromagnetic frequency at all.
In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any electrical activity coming from the
intruder at all. Well, other than—”

  
“Other than a
communications echo bouncing off their hull.” Garcia said as he went wide-eyed.

  
Fredericks looked
at him skeptically. “Yeah, that’s right. How’d you know about that?”

  
“Because I’ve seen
it once before. It happened right before…” Garcia’s words trailed off.

  
Fredericks allowed
for a moment of silence to fall between the two before he prodded the
lieutenant for more information. “Right before what, sir?”

  
“Right before we
were attacked. Try and create a temporary link to the secondary computer core’s
main coprocessor, then feed the sensor data from the ELINT through there.”

  
“Why the secondary
core?”

  
“Because all the
secondary cores have active double-speed wave analysis enhancers installed in
them. They only come into play when the main core gets shuts down or becomes
incapacitated. But if we can create a secondary link from this terminal, then
feed all the data into the secondary core—”

  
“The computer will
be able to sort out all the relevant data through the coprocessors, using the
built-in enhancers to filter out non-relevant data,” Fredericks said
triumphantly.

  
Garcia nodded
sharply. “Then we send the compiled data stream back to the main core for final
conversion into the holo-matrix buffer.”

  
Krif walked up to
the two conferring crewman. “Anything yet, Mister Fredericks?”

  
“Yes, sir. It’ll
just take a minute. The Lieutenant and I have a plan that should get you what
you need to know.”

  
Krif’s eyes bounced
quickly between the two men. He gave Garcia a look of consternation, then
turned his gaze fully to Fredericks. “Then stop talking and get it done.”

  
“Sir,” Caitlin
called out from across the room. “Our patrol wing is awaiting their next
orders.”

  
“Has the intruder
made any hostile actions toward them at all?”

  
“No, sir. None.”

  
Richard sighed
heavily, looking around at the various monitors and personnel that surrounded
him. He turned to the central image screen, a large viewer that dominated the
forward bulkhead. The intruder vessel was still too far away to be seen, and
the near-empty field of stars did nothing to alleviate his concerns. “I don’t
like it,” he said quietly to himself as he gazed at the apparent nothingness
ahead of the
Rhea
. “Fredericks, is
the contact still closing?”

  
“Yes, sir. Slowly.”

  
“Course?”

  
“Three-three-two
mark four. Acceleration curve is indeterminate, but she can’t be moving faster
than one-half our present speed.”

  
“Commander Hayes,
where is the
Agincourt
?”

  
“She’s on our
starboard side, aft, and below at two thousands yards distance.”

  
“And the
Breckenridge
?”

  
“Port beam, at
three thousand yards, sir.”

  
Krif nodded
sharply, then stood for a moment in silence as he contemplated his next move.
“Communications officer?” he finally said.

  
“Yes, sir?” Clifton
called out.

  
“Send out a coded
communication to the destroyer
Agincourt
for immediate action. Tell them to change course and intercept the intruder at
full speed. I’m not going to wait around to see what our unidentifiable friend
wants. Then send a message out to the destroyer
Breckenridge
and advise them to stand by, but also to maintain
their position until further notice.”

  
“Yes, sir. Encoding
and transmitting now.”

  
Krif slowly walked
back up to the command deck and stood silently next to Melissa. His arms
folded, he looked back to the main viewer in time to watch the USCS
Agincourt
break out of formation with
the carrier and head off toward the contact. The destroyer, one of the numerous
and inexpensive-to-build
Sheridan
class, was considerably smaller and far more maneuverable than the
Rhea
. The rounded bow, with large
particle cannon at its tip, slid across the side of the
Rhea
’s view port; her two power engines, placed one over the other,
burned a bright blue-white against the blackness of space.

  
Melissa fought the
urge to ask Krif what he was planning. While his strategy seemed overly
aggressive, she had to admit that, in this area, he had more training than she
did. She only hoped that it was more capable that what her common sense was
screaming.

  
“Flight officer,”
Richard called out to Caitlin. “Who else is on deck and ready to launch?”

  
“The Red Skulls and
the Rapiers, sir.”

  
“Perfect. Get them
spaceborne to provide a protective cover for the
Agincourt
.”

  
“Yes, sir,” she
nodded sharply, the bobbing action causing a lock of her hair to become
tousled. She paid it no mind as she spoke into her headset to the squadron
leaders. “Red Skull One, prepare to launch on my signal. Take vector Angel-Ten
upon departure. Rapier One, prepare to launch on my signal. Take Beta-Three
vector upon departure.”

  
“What about
Rippers, sir?” Melissa tried to ask casually from his side.

  
Krif snorted as the
fighters began to launch from the port and starboard launch tubes. “You mean,
‘What about Kestrel’?”

  
She nodded without
looking at him, instead watching the holographic fighters as they sped away
from the simulated carrier.

  
“His squadron is in
Ready-Five status. That means, in the event of an emergency, the Rippers will
be launch-ready in less than five minutes.”

  
“I know what it
means, Captain.”

  
“Oh,” he added
sarcastically. “I had no idea you were so well-versed in flight procedures.
Would you care to relieve Commander Hayes over there? I’m sure she could use a
cup of coffee.”

  
“At this point, I’m
just here as a bystander, Captain.”

  
“Then I suggest you
observe with your lips shut and stay out of the way. People could die today,
Agent Graves, and I don’t think you’d want that on your conscience.”

  
She sighed heavily,
knowing she could do very little other than watch and wait.

  
“Sir,” Fredericks
called out from the sensor station. “I think we’ve got something.”

  
“Good. It’s about
time. Channel it to the table now. I want to see it.”

  
Melissa watched as
Fredericks and Garcia shared a look of concern. Evidently, the two seemed
unconvinced as to what their combined efforts were about to reveal.

  
“Stand by, sir,”
Garcia called out. “Transmitting the image matrix now, but it may take a moment
or two for the emitters to come online.”

  
Krif and Melissa
turned in opposite directions to face the table to their rear. The surface,
once a solid white glow, rippled like a pond of milk that had just been
disturbed by the arrival of a small pebble. Suddenly, shards of blue-green
photons from the holo-matrix sprang to life from inside the display top, as if
something were being raised from the depths of the sea. It took several passes
through the computer for the now hovering image to stabilize into a
recognizable shape—and it was a shape that no one on the bridge had ever
ascribed to a spacecraft before.
 

  
The intruder looked
every bit as perplexing as Lieutenant Mitchell had described. It had an overall
wedge shape, ribbed along a central spine, with proboscis-like protrusions
jutting out of the sides at regular intervals that grew larger the further
stern they went. Along the ventral side, there was a large finlike structure
near the stern, with more needle-like projections coming out at
forty-five-degree angles to the hull. It looked like the head of some large,
carnivorous beast that had long ago shed every ounce of skin, leaving only the
horrid bones in the wake of its decay. It was larger than the
Rhea
, but only slightly, and it easily
dwarfed the eight-hundred-foot
Agincourt
that was quickly advancing on its location.