The Army Of Light (Kestrel Saga) (27 page)

    
“
Rhea
 has guidance control of your ship, Captain Kestrel. Sit back
and enjoy the ride,” the female controller said a moment later.

    
The expression on Melissa’s face told Shawn she wasn’t enjoying their current
situation at all. The captain took his hands gingerly off the control stick as
he acknowledged the carrier. “Roger,
Rhea
. You have control.”

    
Sylvia’s Delight
’s main engines—or what was left of them—began to shut
down, and her maneuvering thrusters came online with a soft hum and a slight
shudder in the ship’s deck plating. The Mark-IV banked slowly to starboard
under the control of the 
Rhea
’s landing computer, and the side
profile of the carrier disappeared from the forward window, allowing the
vastness of space to once again filled Shawn and Melissa’s view. Melissa took
the moment to steal a look over her shoulder, watching as Trent fiddled with
the computer behind her chair.

    
“Are we still losing oxygen?” she asked.

    
Trent inputted a series of commands into the diagnostic terminal,
then
flipped a series of switches under one of the two
monitors. “I think I’ve got it stopped for now, but the oxygen scrubbers are
down, meaning we’re breathing on borrowed time until we repair it,” he turned
his eyes from Melissa to the back of Shawn’s head. “It’s a real mess back
there, Captain.”

    
Shawn didn’t take his eyes from the panorama of stars before them. “It’s that bad?”

    
Trent nodded solemnly. “Yeah, it’s really that bad. Maybe even permanent.
Those Temkorian plasma bolts did a lot of damage to some very critical systems,
not to mention the fact that both of the drive engines need balancing… again.”
He forlornly cast his eyes to the deck and then turned to leave the cockpit.
Before exiting, however, he turned back to Shawn and managed a faint smile.
“I’m just glad I brought my tools with us. I don’t know what I’d do without
them.”

    
Shawn coughed nervously,
then
straightened in his
seat.
“Yeah, well… about your tools.”

    
Trent’s eyes narrowed. He recalled the last time Shawn’s voice had held that
tone—the last time the captain had broken the ship and had vehemently denied
it. “What about them?”

    
Melissa likewise turned to face Shawn.
“Captain?”

    
Sylvia’s Delight
 was now pointed directly at the cavernous opening
at the bow of the carrier. The rectangular aperture was about a hundred and
fifty feet high and over three hundred feet wide. The enormous launch bay door
had been rolled up, and the interior lights of the compartment were a soft red,
flooding the entire space as far back as Shawn could see from their current
position—which was a considerable distance.

    
The proximity alarm sounded, breaking the silence on the control deck and
saving Shawn for the moment. “Both of you hold that thought for a minute. We’re
going to be touching down shortly.”

    
“No, you wait a minute! What about my tools?”

*          
*           *

    
The sleek fighter escorts that had shepherded the Mark-IV slowed on their
course, allowing 
Sylvia’s Delight
 to pull slightly ahead of
them as they took up flanking positions just behind the ship. The 
Rhea
’s
landing computer expertly guided the Mark-IV slowly through the large hangar
doors. As the ship passed inside, the cockpit of 
Sylvia’s Delight
 was
bathed in the warm red glows of the interior lights of the hangar bay.

    
“Whoa,” Trent let out in slow pronunciation as he looked around the insides of
the carrier. “This thing’s enormous. It looks even bigger on the inside.”

    
Along the bulkheads of the hangar deck, spaced roughly twenty feet apart, were
angular rib-like structures extending from the deck to the overhead. Each had a
series of lights built into them running the length of their surface. However,
the white illumination was nowhere near powerful enough to overcome the red
lights cascading down from the overhead. In the end, Melissa felt as if she
were traveling inside the ribcage of some monstrous prehistoric beast. “It
feels like we just got swallowed by a whale.”

    
“If that’s the case,” Shawn replied cautiously, “then I hope we get spit out
soon.”

    
She looked at him skeptically. “You were in the military. You should be used to
this.”

    
“For one thing, the carrier I was on wasn’t nearly this big,” he said, then
caught site of another one of the sleek interceptors, trimmed in red and black
and sporting a skull and crossbones insignia on its twin vertical stabilizers.
Several of the fighter’s inspection and maintenance panels were removed,
revealing bundles of glowing cables that Shawn had never seen embedded in any
fighter before. “And it wasn’t nearly as sophisticated.”

    
A small, six-wheeled tractor carrying some large diagnostic equipment rolled
alongside the Mark-IV for a brief moment,
then
neatly
darted under her on its way to another portion of the hangar. 
Sylvia’s
Delight
 began to slow in her approach, but not before another
fighter—an older orange and yellow tipped design called a Seminole—drifted past
her bow, carried aloft by an unseen gantry.

    
“Seems like a busy place,” said Melissa as she looked to the dozens of
personnel scurrying about the hangar deck.

    
Shawn had to agree. He got the distinct impression that the carrier’s crew was
on high alert, at least from what he could see from his vantage point. There
were ordnance personnel moving heavy missiles from one bay into another, and
twelve man personnel carriers overloaded and moving about under high speed. He
took note of the multitude of fighters, scouts, and bombers—either moving into
launch position or being transferred into their respective bays for maintenance
or weapon loading. To Shawn, this didn’t seem at all like a ship sailing under
a flag of peace.

    
“Do you think all this was for us?” Trent asked as he nodded his head in the
direction of the view port.

    
A thin smile crossed Shawn’s face. “You’re asking if they went to all of this
trouble to save our
skins?
No, I doubt it. Those two
fighters they sent out were more than enough to handle the Temkorian’s. This
is…” he let his words trail off as he watched a fully loaded bomber move from
her bay and into a side launch tube, the bright blue bands of its squadron
insignia adorning the vertical tail briefly visible before it was obscured.
“This is something else entirely.”

    
“The Army of Light?”
Melissa asked in a near whisper.

    
“
The who
of what?” Trent asked.

    
Shawn didn’t reply as he continued to study the cacophony of movement outside
the ship.

    
Sylvia’s Delight
 shuffled slowly to port, now hovering only inches
above the deck. On the ground before them was a large painted square, easily
big enough to encompass the ship, outlined by broken yellow and orange lines
denoting that it was a landing bay. High on the wall directly above the bay was
a large, luminous number five. The retro thrusters ignited under the ship,
indicating that the craft was seconds from touching down. A moment later the
ship’s landing pads met the non-skid surface of the 
Rhea
’s hangar
deck, and 
Sylvia’s Delight
 stopped her descent. The Mark-IV’s
computer—at the request of the carrier’s flight control officer—disengaged its
systems one by one until only minimal power was provided to the most vital
systems. Melissa watched from her seat as two men, outfitted in bright purple
environmental suits, appeared from a nearby alcove and hooked large, tubular
umbilical lines into the bottom of the ship.

    
“What are those for?”

    
Trent was watching the same men. “They’re replenishing our fresh water
supply, taking out any waste in our tanks, and recharging the internal
batteries. It’s standard procedure.”

    
Shawn reached up, flicking the switch that would open the rear cargo hatch,
then
remembered that the hatch itself wasn’t there anymore.

    
“Are we getting out?” Melissa asked nervously.

    
Out of the forward view port, Shawn spied a pair of fully armed marines
approaching the vessel from a nearby alcove. “I don’t think staying here is an
option for any of us. Besides, with the ship at minimal power, there isn’t much
in the way of hot showers or warm food. At least not until we get back in to
space, that is.” He bent over at the waist, searching around his feet,
then
ran his hands above one of the overhead consoles.

    
“What are you looking for?”

    
“My hat.”

    
She rolled her eyes before she too began searching,
then
noticed something on the floor behind the captain’s chair. It was his favorite
hat alright, but half of the brim had been seared to a crisp. She handed it to
him delicately, but it crumbled as he took hold of it.

    
“This was my favorite hat,” he said sorrowfully.

    
Trent kneeled down and looked under the captain’s seat. “Hum. Looks like the
secondary auxiliary control linkage overheated. Your hat must have been sitting
right on top of it.”

    
Melissa watched as the captain fumbled with the useless, burnt accoutrement.
“It looks like it’ll never come out on top again,” she said, snickering at her
own joke.

    
“I have a lot of fond memories with this hat.” He continued to fondle the hat
for another moment,
then
tossed it on top of the
instrument panel. As Trent stepped out of the command deck, Shawn unbuckled his
safety harness and headed for the door. It wasn’t until he was through the
opening that he realized Melissa wasn’t following him. He turned, noticing she
was still firmly secured in her chair. “Let’s get a move on.”

    
“I’d rather not, if I have a choice in the matter.”

    
“You don’t, so get your butt out of that seat and follow me. There’s no way I’m
leaving you here by yourself.”

    
“Why? It’s not like I can break anything else.”

    
“That’s for sure,” Trent’s voice rang out from beyond the open hatch.

    
Shawn didn’t turn his eyes from her.

    
“Besides,” she continued defiantly. “Who’s going to make me?”

    
Shawn stepped back into the control deck and leaned close to Melissa. “If you
don’t get up, I’ll make you.”

    
“And
you’ll
get a fat lip for it.”

    
“And
you’ll
get a sore ass when I boot it out of this ship. Now, if you
don’t mind, will you kindly get out?” He made a sweeping gesture towards the
door.

    
Under protest Melissa unbuckled her belts in frustration and stormed out of the
control area.

    
The trio made their way past the crew quarters to the airlock. Shawn entered in
the airlock codes and they exited into the cargo hold. The entire area was in
shambles. Bundles of cabling were dangling from a half dozen locations, and
nearly every overhead light was out. The metallic smell of charred metal mixed
with a wafting of melted plastic gave the captain a brief bout of nausea. Shawn
watched as Trent moved to inspect the five foot wide hole the Temkorian fighter
had blown between the cargo hold and the starboard engine room.

    
“I always wanted a window there,” he said, trying to make light of the
situation. 

    
With the cargo ramp now floating somewhere in space, there was no graceful way
to walk out of the ship. The aft end of the Mark-IV was now three feet above
the deck of the 
Rhea
, and Shawn didn’t give it a second thought as
he jumped down and began to walk away. It wasn’t until he heard Melissa cough
from behind him that he turned around.

    
“Well, let’s go.” He said impatiently to the woman brooding at the end of the
cargo hold as if she were a disobedient pet.

    
“Do you think you could help me down?”

    
Shawn muttered something under his breath,
then
began
to walk back the few paces to the ship. Melissa leaned down as Shawn put his
hands around her waist. She slid off of the ramp in a motion that was too quick
for Shawn to compensate for and she landed on the deck, with Shawn’s hands
firmly around her waist and their faces inches apart.

    
She felt her cheeks flush as she tried to gently pull away from his grasp. “You
can unhand me now, Mister Kestrel.”

    
If she was trying to get away, she wasn’t working very hard at it, and he
briefly wondered why. He looked into her eyes, smiled sheepishly,
then
released his grip on her.

    
“Say… what happened to my tools?” Trent asked, still looking at the gaping hole
in the engine room. “I could have sworn that I locked them up right here.”

    
The captain looked up into the cargo hold at his old friend. “Stay here
with 
D
. I’m going to go find out what’s going on.”

    
“Why does he get to stay here and not me?” Melissa asked disdainfully.

    
“Because I said so, that’s why.” He then turned to Trent. “Sorry, pal. The…
the, ah, Temkorian must have gotten them with that blast.”

    
“You jettisoned my tools, didn’t you?” Trent, seeing right through Shawn’s lie,
screamed helplessly. “Why the hell did you do that?”

    
“It was either that or be dead.”

    
“I don’t take kindly to having my stuff thrown out into space,” Trent
exclaimed, his hands balled into fists and jammed into his sides.

    
“Well, I thought you’d take less kindly to being dead.”