The Crucible- The Complete Series Page 8

  My gaze kept flicking towards him, even though I should have been paying attention to what I was doing.

  “… How have you been going?” he asked suddenly.

  I wasn’t expecting his question. He seemed so pulled in by his own troubles, it was a surprise he remembered I was in the room with him.

  “I’m fine, sir.” I didn’t turn back to my scanner. For the briefest of seconds, I got the urge to enquire how he was.

  The answer was obvious. He wasn’t okay. You didn’t need to be a counsellor to see how much pressure he was under from his posture as he sat there, and how much obvious stress crumpled his brow and haunted his gaze.

  “How are you adjusting to the ship?” he asked, finally tearing his gaze off his hands.

  I’d been staring at his hands too, and quickly looked away. “It has only been a day and a half.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted in a soft tone, “it feels like longer.”

  “… How is the Godspeed?” I asked. I shouldn’t have engaged him in conversation. I kept telling myself that I wanted nothing more than to get away from this man and his incessant questions. And yet I still asked.

  He let his gaze drift over the view until it slowly returned to me. “She’s salvageable. The crew are fine, or at least they’ll heal. No deaths,” his voice appeared to crumple on the word deaths.

  “… That’s good,” I managed. I’d stopped scanning without even realizing it, and my device suddenly gave a beep encouraging me to take another step forward.

  I complied. I paid attention to the scanner for almost five seconds before letting my gaze slide towards him once more.

  He was staring at his thumbs again.

  I tried to think of a question to ask. Again, I had no idea why I was willingly engaging this man in conversation.

  Or maybe I did know.

  It was because of how sad he looked. Yes, he was a lieutenant commander and I was nothing but an ensign, and yes, he was a member of the Star Forces and a champion of the Alliance.

  But I couldn’t ignore his sorrow, no matter how hard I tried.

  “Lieutenant Commander,” I began.

  He looked up. “Yeah?”

  I opened my mouth.

  I didn’t get the chance to ask my question.

  A lieutenant walked in. Annabelle Williams. She’d served aboard the Fargo with me.

  I’d barely had any interaction with her, and she didn’t even glance my way as she walked in. Instead she locked all of her attention on the Lieutenant Commander. “Nathan, I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she said, concern crumpling her brow.

  Though I’d never had much to do with Lieutenant Williams, I knew from experience she was a woman who rarely showed emotion. She was known as a very strict officer.

  She always strictly followed regulations too, and regulations would have her refer to the Lieutenant Commander by his title, not his first name.

  “Why did you need to see me?” the Lieutenant Commander asked, not pulling her up on the use of his first name.

  Clearly they knew each other.

  I watched their interaction out of the corner of my eye.

  Annabelle suddenly swiveled her gaze towards me. “Do you mind?”

  “She’s doing a sensor calibration scan. She’s doing her job,” he added, as if that wasn’t clear.

  Lieutenant Williams didn’t react. Instead she sat down next to the Lieutenant Commander.

  At first I automatically assumed that they were a couple. Though it was frowned upon for the crew of the same vessel to become romantically attached, you couldn’t stamp it out completely. As long as it didn’t affect your work, most officers wouldn’t pull the crew up on it.

  The Lieutenant Commander didn’t react well to Williams sitting so closely, though. He shifted back, shooting me an uncomfortable look.

  “We need to talk about the mission,” Williams said.

  “Not in a public place, we don’t,” he chided quickly.

  Williams slid her gaze towards me again, and was clearly dismissive. “How long until you’re finished?”

  “Approximately five minutes and 46 seconds. In this room, at least,” I answered.

  “Great,” Williams nodded. “Is there somewhere else we can talk?” She returned her attention to the Lieutenant Commander.

  “I was kind of busy actually,” he said.

  The Lieutenant’s delicate brow crumpled. “Doing what? Staring at the view? I’d hazard a guess there’s a better one in your quarters.”

  The Lieutenant Commander cleared his throat immediately.

  “Not like that,” Williams blushed. “Can we just go somewhere and talk?”

  “Like I said, I’m busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Chatting to the Ensign here,” he answered.

  I drove my teeth into my bottom lip. Why would he say something like that? Was he trying to blow Williams off? But why would he use me as an excuse?

  Lieutenant Williams slowly looked from me to the Lieutenant Commander, her confusion obvious. She quickly returned her attention to the Lieutenant Commander. “Fine. I get it, you don’t want to talk now. But please,” her voice dipped low, shaking for some reason, “come and see me when you get the chance.” With that she rose, shot me one last confused look, and walked out.

  The Lieutenant Commander waited for her to leave before he leaned back, closed his eyes, and let out a relieved breath. “Thanks for that,” he managed.

  “For what?”

  “For buying me some time,” he answered as he pressed forward and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Time?”

  “Lieutenant Williams can be kind of intense sometimes. I don’t need intense right now,” his voice dropped low, that sad quality returning to his gaze. Then he blinked hard. “Which I should not have told you. That was unprofessional. Please don’t share that with anyone else on the ship.”

  I shrugged. It was an oddly easy move considering my usually tense body. “I don’t know anyone aboard this ship, sir, so there is no one for me to tell.”

  He managed a small smile. He looked away, then back as he said, “you know me, don’t you?”

  “We have met,” I conceded as I pretended to return my attention to the scanner.

  He snorted. It was a brief moment of levity considering his current somber mood. “What’s your story, Ensign Jenks?”

  I stiffened. Somehow his conversation had lulled me, but the man who asked too many questions was back.

  His gaze flicked over my body, and his brow compressed. “You get edgy when anyone asks you that, don’t you?” He sat forward, dropping his hands between his knees. “It’s okay. You’ve got a history, don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I may not be the best commander,” his voice dropped, “but I do care for my crew. I understand that not everybody who joins the Star Forces comes from a place of privilege like me.” He shot the window a bitter look before softening his expression as he glanced at me once more. “Not everybody grows up in the lap of luxury. Some people have to fight to live. I understand that, Ensign. But know this – the Star Forces protect its own. We’re here for you.”

  He spoke with a genuine soft smile, as if he truly believed his words.

  The Star Forces were not here for their own. They were here for themselves.

  He was right. I did have to fight to live. But the one force he assumed could protect me was the one that hunted me.

  “You don’t have to tell me what’s going on with your life. But you can, if you want to. Or I can arrange for a counsellor—“ he began.

  “I don’t need to speak to a counsellor,” I said so quickly my words ran together, “I don’t have a problem.”

  “We all need to speak to somebody once in a while. Unload your burdens. It’s only human.” He brought his hands up and his gaze locked on his thumbs once more. “If those around us don’t know of our burdens, they can’t share them. And some burdens are
too large to carry on our own.”

  “Then what are your burdens, sir?” I asked before I could think of what I was doing. The question just pushed itself from my mouth. It was a reaction to the palpable sense of sadness radiating off him. A sadness that was enough to push away my own fear, if only for a moment.

  He slowly lifted his head. “A few hours ago I found out my best friend died,” he answered as he stared distractedly past me.

  I felt the hair along the back of my neck stand on end. “… I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, so am I.”

  Silence spread between us. I hadn’t glanced at my scanner for at least a minute.

  For the briefest, craziest moment I got the urge to tell him I was on the run from the Star Forces itself. In a few short breaths I could dump my whole sorry story.

  But if I did that, I’d see another side to the Lieutenant Commander.

  He might have appeared pitiable now. His interactions today may have made it seem as if he was a good man with a good heart.

  But he was still Star Forces through and through. If I admitted what I was and who I had run from, he would drag me back to Professor Axis.

  So I turned away.

  I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck. “Do us a favor. Don’t tell anyone what I just told you. My friend… his family don’t know yet.”

  “I won’t tell anyone. Like I said, I have no one to tell.”

  “Yeah. Well, see you around, Ensign Jenks. If you change your mind, and you decide you do need someone to tell, you can make it me.” With that I heard him stand and walk out.

  I glanced around and saw a flash of his face before he retreated into the corridor beyond.

  Though his features were marked with sorrow, his brow was dented with determination.

  My scanner suddenly beeped, commanding me to continue my sensor sweeps.

  I did so, but my mind drifted back immediately to the man and his offer.

  It seemed impossible that in a galaxy as cruel as this there could be someone to confide in.

  …

  Dig site, Mari Sector

  The first indication of a problem was a slight shudder that ran through the cavern floor and up into the scaffolding around Amy Lee.

  At first she thought it was nothing more than a tremor. Moons like this were usually geologically unstable.

  She ignored it and got back to work. Considering the rest of her crew were too agitated to do their jobs, she had taken it upon herself to study the circle of language, as she’d named it. Those three strange concentric circles – the only decoration on this massive wall.

  She was currently standing on the top of her scaffolding. It really was a mess. Due to her low-budget, she hadn’t been able to afford smart scaffolding, and had to make do with what she’d been able to afford. The result was a higgledy-piggledy mess that scrawled across the wall, different kinds of scaffolding Jerry-rigged together.

  Still, it was stable.

  As soon as the tremor passed, she pressed herself closer towards the wall. With one hand of her black and gray mech suit pressed up against the smooth metal, she brought her eyes as close to those three concentric circles as she could.

  The light reacted strangely around them. Though her mech suit came with its own light source, one she shone directly into the center of the circles, the light was diverted by something, shooting off in shafts and illuminating different sections of the wall around her.

  Pressing her teeth into her lip, she got a flurry of excitement.

  This really would be the biggest discovery of her career, wouldn’t it?

  She’d done a brief literature search, and there wasn’t anything like this anywhere else.

  She simply couldn’t wait to find out what was on the other side of this wall.

  People had accused her of being too driven by her job before. To her naysayers, she lacked the empathy to deal with people, and rather preferred the dead civilizations of the past.

  They were wrong.

  And to prove they were wrong, she broke away from the wall and twisted around to check on the main camp again.

  She’d tried to give her staff a pep talk, but it hadn’t worked. So she’d let them rest.

  With two fingers pressing into the wall she turned around, and she scanned across the room until she locked onto the camp.

  That’s when she saw something odd.

  Her mech suit had once belonged to a mining operation. It was one of the most expensive pieces of equipment she owned. Still, like everything else she’d managed to source, it was always breaking down.

  The once perfect targeting sensors were now shot to pieces.

  Still, there was just enough computational power to pick up something strange.

  She stared out across that massive cavern to the opposite wall. All on their own, the hover lifts were ascending to the surface.

  Nobody was on them.

  They were simply being called back to their various stations.

  “Shit, it’s a glitch,” she realized, getting ready to call her engineer.

  The last thing you wanted was for all of your hover lifts to be stuck on the surface. She would have to call Hargrove and get his men to fix them, otherwise her entire crew would be stuck down here in this cavern. And Hargrove would hate being called out for a simple engineering task.

  She fumbled inside her suit, thumbing on the controls that would contact her chief engineer.

  Then she stopped.

  She saw black shapes rapidly descending the walls of the cavern.

  No larger than people, they were unsupported by any hover lifts, and simply sailed down to the bottom of the cavern.

  Her heart leaped into her throat and she threw herself forward until the hands of her mech suit locked on the railing of the scaffolding. “What the hell?”

  The shapes landed. They weren’t crushed against the bottom of the cavern – instead she saw them slowly pull up and land gently.

  That’s when she realized they weren’t objects, but people. Dressed in jet black armor.

  Her heart beat louder and louder, harder and harder, her hands wrapping so tightly around the railings she dented the cheap reinforced metal.

  She watched as a few of her staff popped their heads around from the main camp to see what was going on.

  And that’s when the firing began.

  The black shapes brought out guns, and began to kill her crew.

  Amy Lee screamed. She pushed herself backwards, her mech suit slamming against the smooth wall, the sound echoing all around the cavern.

  The black shapes kept shooting. She could hear her crew screaming, hear they’re terrified shouts cut out as one by one they were mowed down.

  Nobody had a chance.

  Nobody had a goddamn chance.

  She fell to her knees, shivering and shaking inside her suit. Sweat poured off her brow, blanketing her face until it was hard to blink.

  But with a shaking hand she acted.

  She punched in the coordinates to put out a distress call. “This is research manager Amy Lee, we are under attack—“ she began.

  Then she stared in horror at the inside of her visor as it told her her message could not be sent.

  There was a dampening field in place.

  Whoever those black shapes were, they had made short work of her team.

  At first her crazed mind thought it must be Hargrove. Maybe he’d snapped and sought revenge.

  But she saw those black figures mow down several Star Forces personnel who’d been at the camp. Though they tried to fight back, the black figures were simply too powerful.

  Hargrove wouldn’t sacrifice his own people.

  She shook so badly that her fingers kept inadvertently pressing against the controls of her suit.

  Once the black figures had murdered everybody in the camp, she saw them turn towards her. Or maybe they didn’t lock on her – maybe they all stared as one at the massive alien wall.

  She stared at
them.

  Soon, she would die. She realized this.

  But she was determined not to die in vain.

  During her years as a student of the Alliance Archaeology Society, she’d forayed into signal studies.

  She’d once come across an old civilization who’d found a unique way to propagate messages through space.

  She’d written a paper on it, or at least she’d tried to. It had never been published. It had been suppressed by the Star Forces. Apparently they were worried that such a method could be used by the rebellion to hide messages and avoid signal jammers.

  She tore her eyes off those black figures, even though she saw one break off from the group and head towards the scaffolding.

  She extended her fingers and started to type on the controls housed within her gloves. She moved feverishly, not caring that her knuckles burnt from her efforts. She didn’t have to worry about injuries – she would die soon.

  This mech suit wouldn’t be able to protect her from those black figures, but it did have enough on-board equipment to propagate her signal. All she had to do was access certain sub-space frequencies. Then she could send her message, and though it would be dampened by the jamming field, the jamming field wouldn’t be on forever.

  The old civilization she’d written her paper on had found a way to propagate messages using naturally amplifying spatial phenomenon. Your message bounced back and forth between these phenomena until it could spread further and further.

  It was her only hope.

  She worked as quickly as she could.

  She did not put any personal information in that message. She had a husband and a nine-year-old child, but none of that mattered.

  She took rudimentary scans of the area with her suit, and waited.

  She could feel somebody climbing the scaffolding.

  She ground her teeth together, locking them so hard the tension referred right down her neck and deep into her chest.

  Their heavy steps shuddered over the metal until finally she saw somebody pull themselves up onto her section.

  They were human, or humanoid.

  Amy didn’t know much about the Star Forces. She was an academic, not a soldier.

  There were a few things, however, she did know. As her gaze flicked jerkily over the figure before her, she recognized the design of the armor.