The Crucible: Leap of Faith (7 page)

I kept walking along the hallway,
staring as a massive imperial battle-cruiser locked the tumbling
ship in a traction beam.

That’s when I heard someone moving
behind me. Initially I thought it was a first response team. Then I
heard ragged breath and heavy footfall.

I turned to see somebody
gasp.

Lieutenant Commander
Shepherd.

…
I’d forgotten all about him.
He’d been behind me in the corridor.

“Oh my god, you’re alive,” he said
as he took a staggering step forward and then crumpled. His legs
jerked out from underneath him, and he fell to one knee, a painful
jolt passing through his body.

I punched a hand out towards
him.

A groan tore from his lips and he
fell down onto one hand, his back buckling. “You’re alive,” he
repeated. “Christ, I thought for sure you’d be dead.”

I reached him and pushed down to
both knees, grabbing his shoulder to stabilize him.

Instantly he winced.

That’s when I saw the blood
trickling quickly from the back of his head.

He’d clearly injured his back,
too, as he couldn’t hold himself steady.

Carefully I supported his
shoulders and guided him down to the floor.

“I’m fine,” he protested. “I need
to… I need to go and check on my ship.”

Briefly I tore my
gaze from him and angled my head towards the windows. I realized
that the ship now locked in the Alliance battle-cruiser
Ra’xon’s
traction beam
was the
Godspeed.

“I have to check on my crew,” he
gasped as he tried to push past me.

I wouldn’t let him
move.

It wasn’t hard. I didn’t have to
call on my ability to lock him in place – he barely had the
strength to fight against my hand as I pressed it into his
shoulder. “You’re injured, and you will injure yourself further if
you continue to move. A first response team will be on their
way.”

As if to confirm that, the
intercom crackled. “Emergency personnel to converge on deck 46
A.”

The Lieutenant Commander twitched
again, grabbing a hand onto my arm as he tried to push it off. “My
crew—”

I twisted my head
towards the window. I could see that the
Ra’xon
was already sending support
ships out towards the embattled
Godspeed
.

“The
Ra’xon
is attending to
it.”

The Lieutenant Commander still
held my arm as he attempted to push it off one last
time.

He failed, but his fingers stayed
in place. With a bleary languid gaze he looked up at me as I knelt
beside him.

He didn’t say anything; he just
held my gaze.

…
It was one of the most
confronting experiences of my life.

Then Lieutenant Commander Nathan
Shepherd lapsed into unconsciousness.

Not too long afterwards, a first
response unit arrived. Medical personnel attended to the Lieutenant
Commander, and we were then both taken away.

I don’t know why, but despite my
best efforts, my gaze kept slipping towards Lieutenant Commander
Nathan Shepherd.

…

Corridor 46 A

The cleanup started straight away.
The hull had to be reinforced before the emergency structural
shielding sapped the engines.

A team of technicians were sent to
reinforce the hull plating.

Junior Engineer J’lax floated
outside of the station in a mech suit. He was part of a contingent
of 10 engineers sent to repair the hole on the exterior of the
station.

As the thrusters of his suit
maneuvered him towards his destination, confusion crumpled his
brow.

His three eyes slid from left to
right, taking in the extent of the damage.

It was massive. Most of the hull
plating along a 100-meter section had been torn clean
off.

…
Except for one four-meter
subsection.

He blinked all three of his eyes
simultaneously.

In the name of the goddess, he
just didn’t understand.

His gaze flicked from left to
right again, picking up the trail of destruction that stopped
abruptly for four meters, then continued for another 50 meters
after that.

He hunched over the controls in
his mech suit, running a quick structural scan and comparing it
with the blueprints of the station.

…
There was no special structural
support in the small section that was completely undamaged. No
extra shielding, no reinforced plating.

“Hey, Frazon,” he initiated his
comms, “you see what I’m seeing?”

“I’m seeing a lot of work,” Frazon
said, voice shaking. “That ship did a heck of a lot of damage when
it tore free from its moorings.”

“No. That four-meter section just
above there.” He sent Frazon the coordinates.

“What about it? It’s probably
reinforced.”

“It isn’t. There’s nothing about
it on the blueprints.”

“We need to fix this damage,”
Frazon snapped, the stress obvious in his tone, “and you can’t rely
on the blueprints. They’re not always accurate.”

Not always accurate? On a station
as complex as this one, they had to be. As an engineer, you needed
to know exactly where everything was at all times, lest you cut
into some innocent looking piece of plating only to find it housed
part of the life-support system.

“Get to work,” Frazon said
tersely.

J’lax shook his head and did what
he was told.

…

Lieutenant Commander Nathan
Shepherd

I woke screaming, demanding to
know what happened to my ship.

Everyone tried to assure me it had
just been an accident. None of my crew had been killed, though a
few were seriously injured.

As soon as they’d stabilized me
sufficiently and hooked me up to a self-moving back-brace, they
discharged me.

I’d shattered four vertebrae and
fractured my skull in three places.

The only reason they were
discharging me was because I’d been called to an emergency meeting
with senior Star Forces members who were on the station.

My injuries would heal quickly.
They’d already fused together my bones, and the mechanical
back-brace was just there for additional support.

It was so small, you couldn’t even
tell I was wearing it.

Modern medical technology was
incredible, but there was one thing they still couldn’t do – tear
the shock from your body when you’d undergone what I
had.

Though they’d fixed my eardrums, I
swear they still rang, and there was a dense nauseous feeling
settling in my gut.

I walked quickly to the designated
meeting room.

I wanted to get this over with so
I could inspect my ship.

Everyone had been
calling it an accident. There’d been some kind of mistake during
the resupply of the
Godspeed
, one critical enough that it
had initiated an explosion that had torn a hole 20 meters wide in
its hull and ripped it from its dock.

I arrived at the room to see
Annabelle Williams outside. She’d been leaning with her back
against the wall, staring at her hands, but as soon as she saw me
approach, she lurched forward. “Nathan, oh my God, are you alright?
I heard you were caught up in the explosion? I was so
worried.”

“I’m fine, Annabelle,” I said
quietly. “But I want to know what the hell happened to my ship.” I
brushed past her into the room.

Waiting for me
was the controller of the station, Captain H’agovan from the
Ra’xon
, and Admiral
Phelps.

As I entered the room, the
atmosphere was grim.

“What the hell—“

Admiral Phelps cleared his throat.
“It wasn’t an accident, to answer your question, Lieutenant
Commander.”

I stopped.
Floored.
“What?”
my voice trembled.

“It was a terrorist attack,”
Phelps said flatly. In his 80s, he was relatively young for an
Admiral. With the long lifespans of humans these days, you could be
expected to serve the Star Forces for a good century or
more.

“Terrorist attack?” I repeated in
a hollow tone.

“It was the resistance,” Phelps
added.

“The resistance?”

“This is the first time they’ve
attacked a high-value target like this,” Phelps’ calm cracked, and
his voice bottomed low as he brought a hand up and ran it through
his still black beard.

“Sit down, Lieutenant Commander.”
Avral, the Commander of the station motion towards a chair. “You
are still injured.”

I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t sit at
a time like this.

I stared at the Admiral, incapable
of controlling my expression. “Why did they target us?”

“It seems their
goal was twofold – not only did they want to destroy the
Godspeed
, but they
intended to use her to damage the
Ra’xon
as well. They would have
managed to, but this station’s structural integrity held long
enough that the
Ra’xon
had time to pull away and initiate their shields,” Phelps
explained.

“In other words,
we were lucky,” Captain H’agovan grumbled. She was from a massive
race. She stood at least 2 feet over me, and I was 6’1. A truly
powerful build, you wouldn’t want to take her on in an arm wrestle.
“If deck 46 hadn’t held, we’d be looking at a completely different
situation here. The
Ra’xon
could have spiraled out of control and taken the
whole station with it. We should be extremely thankful no one was
killed.”

I shook my head. “I can’t believe
this. I thought this station was one of the most protected places
in the Milky Way? How the hell did the resistance get aboard my
ship?”

Nobody answered. The silence felt
as if it swelled around me.

I swallowed hard, gaze darting
between the Captain and the Admiral. “What aren’t you telling
me?”

“You want to know how the
resistance got aboard your ship? It’s the same way they’ve been
carrying out the rest of their terrorist attacks against Star
Forces’ assets.”

“How?” I felt my cheeks pale and
slacken.

“They’ve spread throughout our
ranks, Shepherd,” Phelps answered in a controlled tone. We were in
the station controller’s own office, and Phelps was standing next
to the large table that was her desk. He leaned forward, made a
fist, and pressed it hard into the smooth metal. “You had spies
aboard your ship,” he stated bluntly.

I took a step
back.
“What?”

“One of your crew did this,”
Phelps said as he raised a finger and pointed it towards the
massive window behind the station controller’s desk.

I shook my head again, the move
jerky, a cold tension spreading down my neck. “That’s impossible. I
know my crew. I can vouch for them.…”

“And how about
the
Fargo
?” the
Captain interrupted. She stood ramrod straight in the middle of the
room, her arms crossed, her powerful muscles pushing hard against
the fabric of her black uniform.

“…
The
Fargo
?”

“We have credible
evidence to suggest that the
Fargo
’s engines did not go critical
on their own. Someone attacked that ship, too – someone from
within. And it stands to reason that once they boarded your ship,
they took the opportunity to attack it also,” Phelps’s words were
harsh and quick.

I planted a sweaty hand against my
forehead, locking my fingers firmly into my flesh.

My ship was attacked by the
resistance….

“She’s
salvageable,” Phelps suddenly added. “It’ll take a while, but we
can rebuild her. It seems our terrorist didn’t want to scuttle your
ship completely – just use it as a battering ram to knock the
docking
Ra’xon
off
course.”

I stood there and swallowed. Then
the anger flooded in. It rammed into me like a tidal wave. I
clutched my hands into fists, driving the fingers as hard as I
could into my palms. With a slow smooth movement I looked up at the
Admiral. “How do we catch the bastards who did this?”

“You continue your mission to the
Hari System. It’s time we blow the resistance apart,” the Admiral
answered.

“How do I get there without my
ship?”

“We’ll take you.” Captain H’agovan
nodded towards me, the massive muscles of her neck pushing against
her collar.

“…
And what about my
crew?”