The Crucible- The Complete Series Page 10

  My whole back stiffened as fear raced through my system, my hand clutching around the scanner so tightly I had to concentrate hard not to pulverize it. My grip wasn’t that strong, but my mind was far, far stronger.

  “You okay?” someone asked from behind me.

  I turned quickly to see the Lieutenant Commander.

  He looked… shattered. Absolutely shattered.

  It was so obvious and so compelling that I forgot my own troubles for just a moment. “Are you alright?”

  “I look that bad, huh? Rough night. You know… that thing we talked about yesterday?” He looked up at me from underneath his brow. “How I mentioned that my friend died,” his voice dipped so low it couldn’t carry.

  I nodded.

  “Sorry to do this, but I really need your word that you won’t spread that information. To anyone. It is extremely sensitive. I know it’s asking a lot, but can you do that for me? Can you keep a secret?”

  I’d heard stories about Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd before I’d met him. Brave, bold, the kind of soldier the Star Forces loved. One who was happy to sacrifice himself for any cause.

  The man who stood before me looked like someone else completely.

  He looked real, for one thing, not just a legend.

  I suddenly realized he needed an answer. I nodded. “I mean it, I have no one to tell. And even if I did, I wouldn’t.”

  It took a moment, but a stiff smile spread across his face. It showed no mirth whatsoever. “That’s good to hear. One thing’s going right today.”

  He turned on his foot to leave.

  “Commander.”

  He turned over his shoulder. “Yes?”

  “I… hope… you’re okay,” I pushed the words out. I fumbled over them, but finally I pushed them out.

  One side of his mouth ticked into the smallest smile. “Thanks for your concern, Ensign. And thanks for the sentiment. I hope you’re okay too.” With that, he turned.

  I watched him go.

  I shook my head and returned to my task.

  It had been a long, long time since I’d been drawn into somebody else’s troubles.

  Back when I’d joined the Star Forces that had been my impetus – to help. I’d been foolish, naïve, and gullible. But at the heart of all of that had been a sincere desire to assist others. If I’d known then what I knew now, I would have realized that was impossible. At least under the banner of the Alliance Star Forces.

  But maybe that was the challenge. Though my mind told me there was no one to help in this ship or in this tortured fleet, perhaps there was.

  My thoughts drifted back to Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd. He had lost his friend, and clearly it was causing him troubles.

  For a fleeting moment, I wondered if I could help.

  …

  Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd

  Subbing in for the requisitions officer should have been an easy job. But that eight-hour shift was one of the longest of my life. In between supervising the other crew in the various cargo bays of the Ra’xon, I took fleeting glimpses at the complete fleet manifest.

  It didn’t take too long to find the Armadale. Though her current position didn’t put her in the Mari Sector, it put her close. Close enough for a quick sortie to the dig site.

  As for the Pluto, it had been removed from the manifest. There was no information on it – no news that it had been destroyed – it had just disappeared. Perhaps the Joint Committee hoped that no one would notice.

  My gut kept churning, a distinct disquiet gathering through my body until a fine patina of sweat soaked my brow.

  What should have been an easy shift was turning into a nightmare. As every second passed, I grew more and more nervous.

  I expected the Enforcement Unit to jump out of the shadows and take me away.

  Still, I did my job. Better than I should, considering my circumstances.

  I was nothing if not thorough. The man I'd replaced, however, didn't seem to be nearly as thorough as me. There were whole sections of the cargo that hadn't been catalogued yet. Indeed, certain components of the cargo bay appeared to have been taken off the blueprints.

  I threw myself into the task of properly itemizing the ship’s stores. It was the only thing that could take my mind from my downward spiraling thoughts.

  I grabbed a series of blueprints from deep in the ship’s databases. They would have been uploaded when the ship had first set sail.

  They'd be the most accurate, as the ones the Lieutenant had seemed to have been changed so often, they were now a jumbled mess.

  I took a handheld scanner, latched it onto the magnetic holster around my hip, and accessed a service panel. Due to the size of this ship, there were several maintenance sections you couldn't access through the lifts or the hallways. You had to get down on your hands and knees and crawl through access tunnels.

  It was the perfect task for a man who was being haunted by his own thoughts. I wouldn’t have to maintain polite conversation with anyone, and I could swear and grimace all I liked.

  I gave the respective crew under my command tasks to do, and set about crawling through the interconnected shafts of the Ra’xon.

  Every time my thoughts twisted back to Max or the Enforcement Unit, I sunk my teeth deep into my bottom lip and let myself experience the pain instead.

  The access shafts of this ship were far more generous than on the Godspeed. This vessel really was megalithic. It had to be. It wasn't just one of the flagships of the fleet, it also housed experimental weaponry too.

  It seemed that every year the Alliance developed far more astounding weaponry. According to rumors, the Ra’xon would soon be outfitted with experimental triphasic rays that could theoretically allow it to destroy a ship even whilst it was in beyond light mode.

  There would have been a time when such a thought would have filled me with pride. It would have been further evidence that the Alliance was the greatest civilization that had ever lived. Now it left nothing more than a hollow feeling sinking deep through my gut.

  My fingers were tight around my scanner as I crawled uncomfortably through the access shafts.

  There was minimal lighting down here, and I had to squint to see ahead.

  "These blueprints are a mess," I mumbled to myself as I checked the scanner once more. Something had to be interfering with my small handheld scanner, because it kept giving jumbled readings. As I came to a T-junction in the tunnel, the scanner failed to recognize the shaft continuing down to my left.

  "What the hell?" My brow dug deep down against my eyes as I positioned myself right in the center of the T-junction and swept the scanner back and forth, jamming my fingers against the buttons in a fruitless effort to make the scanner work.

  "This damn thing must be broken," I muttered to myself as I snapped the lid closed in frustration.

  A tide of guilt and anger threatened to sweep over me.

  I clenched my jaw so tightly, it was a surprise I didn't shatter my teeth and spit shards onto the grated metal below me.

  I shook my head from side to side, a few beads of sweat trickling down my brow and streaking across my cheek.

  Finally I pushed that bitter torrent of emotion back.

  I would just have to wait and see what would happen next. If the Enforcement Unit came after me I would know that they knew of my treachery.

  Even if they never tracked me down, would I be able to live with myself?

  My entire identity was predicated on my service to the Alliance Star Forces Fleet. I thought about myself as a lieutenant commander, and every memory I cherished was one that had taken me along the path of serving my people.

  Now my entire identity was threatening to crumble from beneath me.

  A heavy sinking feeling kept pushing through my stomach, and if I concentrated on it for too long, I swore it would see me sink right through the toughened metal grating of the tunnel floor and right out of the bottom of the ship itself.

  I
f my father could see me now – if he ever found out what I'd done – he wouldn't just disown me, he'd probably push for my execution.

  He simply could not abide fools, but more than that, he hated traitors. He despised them.

  One of his own commanders had once betrayed him, and my father had made it a personal vendetta to make her pay. He’d pushed for the death sentence, and she’d been executed.

  The more I thought about him, the more sweat played across my brow until I groaned with frustration and took a swipe at it with the back of my hand.

  Even though I should have continued further up the tunnel, I decided to stray off to the left. I opened the scanner once more, punching new commands into the screen, my fingers stiff, my movements angry. Fortunately the little handheld scanner was built for endurance, and I wouldn’t be able to shatter it, no matter how violent I became.

  Some part of my mind was aware of the fact I should be concentrating on my next mission. But what was the point? The rest of me doubted I would ever make it that far.

  The Star Forces did not react well to traitors. Once upon a time I had understood that as necessary. We had the majority of the Milky Way to protect. Every citizen of the Alliance deserved our best and bravest efforts, and they would only get those if we stopped the free flow of secrets.

  If someone was stupid and arrogant enough to betray the Star Forces, they deserved everything they got.

  … I hadn’t been stupid, and I hadn’t been arrogant; I’d just been stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  If Lieutenant Hargrove had never called me, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.

  … And I wouldn’t know about the mystery, either.

  Max had been killed. Regardless of everything else that was going on, I couldn’t forget that fact.

  I owed it to him to find out what had happened. Even if it meant my career.

  I shook my head and continued forward, knees and hands starting to fatigue from all my crawling.

  But maybe pain was what I needed to feel right now.

  I crawled along faster and faster, muttering at my scanner as it still refused to believe there was a tunnel in front of me.

  I had to keep manually accessing the original blueprints of this ship to chart my path.

  When the requisitions officer was back, I was going to have to have a good chat to him about maintaining accurate scans.

  Though I was new to this ship, I was good at navigating, and I was fairly sure I was currently somewhere under one of the main engine cores. The business of pushing a ship as large as this beyond the speed of light was a complex one. The Ra’xon didn’t have only one engineering core, but 20. They were spread around the ship at even intervals. There was a central drive system right in the absolute center of the ship that coordinated the power from each drive.

  I kept crawling along the tunnel until I reached another T-section.

  I thumbed the scanner, flicking back to the original blueprints.

  And I frowned.

  I twitched my head to the right.

  The tunnel before me wasn’t even on the blueprints, let alone my scanners.

  “… What the hell?”

  Of all the mysteries I was currently facing, this appeared to be the most innocent, but still captured my attention as I pushed myself down the tunnel.

  By now the base of my palms were red and raw, but I ignored them as I shifted further down the access shaft.

  Slowly but surely the curiosity of what lay before me started to push away my spiraling negativity.

  No matter how far I travelled along this tunnel, both my scanner and the blueprints were sure it didn’t exist. Just as I opened my mouth to exclaim what the hell, my command PIP chimed.

  I jolted backwards, shoulder slamming into the wall beside me. Muttering to myself as I palpated my arm, I extended a hand to support myself. These tunnels were too cramped to sit or kneel comfortably.

  Eventually I cleared my throat. “Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd here.”

  “Sir, this is Ensign Saxus. I’ve been instructed to contact you. The Captain’s requesting your presence in a meeting with Commander F’val.”

  “Sorry, what did you just say?” I locked a hand on the shaft beside me, brow compressing so hard over my eyes it was hard to see in the bare illumination around me.

  “We’ve just rendezvoused with the Warden, and Commander F’val has boarded.”

  “Commander F’val?” I repeated, tone twisting high in surprise. “Why wasn’t I told he was coming on board earlier?”

  “It was on the ship-wide update report this morning, sir. You must have missed it.”

  I pressed my hand harder into the shaft wall beside me, curling my fingers until they grated over the metal plating.

  Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

  It had nothing to do with the fact Commander F’val was supposedly an acquaintance.

  It had everything to do with the fact he’d been linked on multiple occasions with the Enforcement Unit.

  “Do you know when it was decided that the Commander would come on board?” I asked in a stuttering tone.

  It was an odd question, I just hoped the Ensign would know the answer.

  “Ah, I guess I’m not sure, sir. I’ll just have a look… the first mention of it on an update report was at 2100 last night.”

  2100… possibly an hour or so after Hargrove contacted me.

  Christ.

  The Commander was here for me, wasn’t he?

  I’d underestimated the Enforcement Unit. They must have known about Hargrove’s original communication with me. The fact I hadn’t mentioned that to them this morning meant I’d only solidified my guilt in their eyes.

  They were here to arrest me.

  “… Ah, sir, are you okay?”

  “… Of course. I’ll make my way out of the tunnels as quickly as I can. Tell the Captain I’ll be there in 20 minutes and relate to her the reason for my delay.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Commander out.” My elbowed jerked, no longer capable of holding my weight, and my back slammed up against the shaft wall. An echoing boom reached out through the access tunnel in both directions.

  “Shit,” I swore, “shit!”

  I brought a hand up and pressed it over my eyes, grinding the palm against them until I saw stars.

  This was it.

  The end.

  My entire career was now over. Everything I’d worked for….

  I swore again.

  Then, just as sickness and guilt threatened to take over me, my hand formed a fist all of its own accord.

  The anger flooded in.

  The anger at Max’s death. The anger that it could be this easy to sink my career. Technically, I hadn’t done much wrong. I’d lied about Hargrove’s communication, but I hadn’t sought out restricted information in the first place. I had no intention of sharing that information, either.

  So why should it cost me everything I’d ever worked for?

  I knew I couldn’t stay here slumped in this tunnel forever. I had to face my future.

  As hard as that was.

  So I continued forward. I brought my scanner up, trying to chart a path to the closest access panel back into the main hallways of the ship.

  The damn thing was still insisting that I wasn’t in an access tunnel at all. I referred back to the old blueprints, and they were still just as useless.

  According to all the information I could access, I was currently smack bang in the middle of a solid wall. The problem was, I clearly wasn’t.

  Feeling my rigid muscles lock with tension, I forced myself forward. If I continued straight, I should technically intersect with an access panel at some point.

  And what would it matter if I were late to my own execution?

  …

  Ensign Jenks

  Commander F’val was already on board.

  We’d docked with the Warden – his strike vessel – in one of the smoo
thest, quickest procedures I’d ever seen.

  It was clear that the Commander was here for somebody.

  Me.

  My thoughts were a spiraling mess.

  Clearly I’d been incapable of keeping my true identity hidden.

  The Enforcement Unit were here to take me back to Professor Axis.

  I was currently walking along one of the wide corridors that ran between engineering and one of the many med bays. I had my handheld scanner and was completing yet another shift doing sensor scans.

  I paid no attention whatsoever to what I was doing.

  I had to decide what to do.

  I would not come quietly.

  I would fight the Commander and whoever else tried to capture me.

  One good thing about having completed so many proximity scans was that I had a fairly good knowledge of this ship’s structure.

  If it came to a fight, I’d know how to compromise it.

  Not just one room, but the whole goddamn vessel.

  … Would I kill everybody on board? Was I that desperate to ensure my own freedom?

  No. But there’d be a middle ground. And I couldn’t… I just couldn’t go back to Professor Axis. The future he had laid out for me was torture itself. Not just for me, but for everybody else too.

  He would use me to ensure the Alliance’s continued strength. I would be forced to wipe out the resistance, and then he would turn to his next goal.

  Total loyalty, he’d called it. The House of Lords and Ladies, though under the ultimate rule of the Alliance Council, were unruly. They caused much division within the Alliance.

  Professor Axis had a plan to gain their unconditional loyalty. His plan would require the deaths of millions, if not billions.

  I couldn’t feel as I stood there, the scanner still tucked in my sweaty white palm.

  I couldn’t feel anything but a diffuse sense of despair.

  At times I realized that no matter what I did – no matter how hard I fought to stay free – I would ultimately lose.

  Though I was unimaginably powerful, I was still only one woman.

  The Alliance was greater than me.

  The Alliance was greater than all of us.

  …

  Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd