Traitor, Page 2

  Her mother laughed. "It's good to see you taking the situation so well," she said. "I wish I had your sense of humor."

  "If not for a sense of humor," Auden said, "then I would drive myself mad."

  Tara cut her eyes at her sister and smiled. "It wouldn't be that far of a drive."

  Auden chuckled and returned to her reading. She isn’t wrong, she thought as she let a smirk spread across her face.

  Kevin slumped back into a seat across from his family, exhaustion painted across his face. He had spent the last several hours contemplating the appropriate trajectory to enter Karnack's atmosphere and prevent crashing to the planet's surface. In the best of circumstances, it was going to be difficult.

  Worst case; he needed a miracle.

  "How's the study session going?"

  Tara glanced up from the operating manual and shrugged her shoulders. "Based on the diagnostics depicting degradation of the second and third stage of the drive, it appears that we experienced a significant mechanical failure. On a positive note, those modules can be replaced without dropping the engine from the ship. But I found a note stating that mechanical damage in that section of the drive will prevent reverse thrust from engaging. You have to use other means to slow down or else you'll rip the drive apart."

  Kevin chortled; Tara’s dry, matter-of-fact reply struck him as humorous despite how much worse the situation was based on her newfound knowledge.

  "What’s so funny, dear?" Sarah asked.

  "Nothing at all. I just spent all that time making calculations for how to land safely and never once did the idea cross my mind that I would not be able to use reverse thrust. Is there anything in the manual suggesting what to do with that particular form of degradation?"

  Tara thumbed through a few pages, shifting from the theory of operations section to the emergency procedures depicted on highlighted, yellow sheets. She ran her fingers along the columns of alphabetically listed failures until she found what she was looking for. "Without using the drive’s reverse thrust capability, the only means of slowing down is to use the flight control surfaces to create excessive drag and then to turn off the engine before landing to prevent any thrust from propelling us forward into a skid."

  Kevin’s jaw went slack. Even with twenty years of experience piloting scout ships, he had never run into a situation that required him to disengage the engine while in control of a spacecraft. "Is that the only option? Surely there's another alternative? I’ve never practiced anything like this during my training." He tried not to whine about the situation, but the bleaker things looked, the harder it was to fathom getting his family to safety.

  Hold it together, he thought. This isn’t over yet.

  Tara sighed. "Read for yourself," she suggested as she handed the manual to her father.

  He took it and thumbed through several pages before closing it and dropping it onto the seat next to him. "This is going to be very complicated," he said with a sigh. "We need to prepare the ship for entry and tie down anything that isn’t secure. Once we enter the atmosphere, these things could become projectiles and I’d rather go into this comforted by the fact that we prepared for entry, rather than be concerned that one of you might get hurt from a hazard that we could control."

  Sarah rose from her seat and gestured to her daughters. "Go and take care of that while I talk to your father."

  Auden and Tara rose from their seats and walked together to the aft section of the ship. The scout craft was a redesign of a cruiser and had enough space to accommodate a small crew. It also had a spacious cargo compartment, but in their rush to escape, not a lot of care was given to organizing the space. Thankfully, most of the larger items were strapped down, but many smaller articles were loose about the compartment.

  The sisters disappeared behind the steel hatch and Kevin watched his wife step towards him.

  "I've seen that look before," Kevin said as Sarah sat down next to him. "We don't have much choice. We’re vulnerable out here without a fully functioning drive."

  Sarah took his hand in hers and he watched as she swallowed a knot in her throat. "I'm well aware," she replied. "I just wanted to tell you how much I love you and that if this gets us killed, I'm going to be so mad at you."

  Kevin smirked at her attempt at a lighthearted joke and squeezed her hand. "I would never do such a thing." He admired how well she was holding it together, but the look in her eyes revealed that she was holding back. He understood that well. He used humor to mask his fear, she simply painted over hers with a different brush. “We’re going to get through this,” he said after a pause.

  "Promise?"

  "I promise."

  Chapter Three

  "I don’t know what to tell you, sir, the Interceptor just vanished,” Lieutenant Harrison said as he scrolled through the console screens on the bridge of the Destroyer. “I know the ship was not equipped with a cloaking device, but there's no other explanation for how they fell out of view,"

  Captain Will Dickson frowned as he peered over the lieutenant’s shoulder. He knew Kevin Hoyt was an exceptional pilot, with skills that would've made him a valuable asset to the fighter community, but his unwillingness to leave his family for months on end resulted in his cushioned job as a scout pilot. Dickson hadn't had that luxury, and instead spent the better part of the last decade deploying on various ships in pursuit of smugglers, both foreign and domestic. Yet, it appeared that Hoyt had a few tricks up his sleeve that even the captain of a personnel carrier hadn’t experienced.

  "Keep scanning for their drive signature," he ordered as concern for the fugitive’s location clawed at his nerves. The truth was, Kevin had skills superior to what the scout craft was capable of. Dickson remembered the campaigns to convert Hoyt to a fighter pilot years ago. Not even the Bureau of Naval Personnel could entice the younger scout pilot to cross platforms.

  Still, the best pilots could fall victim to the machine at their fingertips.

  “Unless the ship imploded on itself, there should be some evidence of its whereabouts. I want to find him, sooner rather than later," Dickson grumbled.

  The lieutenant nodded, "Yes sir." He fell back into his seat and his fingers danced across the screen. The map data illuminated on a large monitor mounted to the bulkhead while he and the captain eyed it warily. Preliminary evidence showed that Kevin had left their homeworld, Valara, with his wife and children in tow. The recklessness he demonstrated while initiating his escape put all of them in more danger than Will thought would be worth it if the shoe was on the other foot. Still, he had to wonder why the commander would go to such extremes to escape if he was as innocent as the note he left behind suggested that he was.

  Something wasn’t right.

  What made his escape more remarkable was how he evaded two high-speed gunners before initiating FTL and departing the Valara sector.

  That took more stones than many pilots in the Consulate Navy could account for—Dickson included.

  "Wait a minute, what would happen if he suddenly pulled out of FTL?"

  Lieutenant Harrison canted his head towards his captain with puzzlement on his face. "If you dropped out of FTL, the drive signature would diminish because it would not burn as hot," the man answered. It was a textbook response, but sometimes the simple things needed to be said out loud to put the situation into proper focus.

  "Adjust the parameters of your search, Lieutenant. I don't think he's burning as hard as he was. Maybe a catastrophic failure yanked him out of FTL and our sensors missed it?"

  "Yes, sir. It will take a few minutes to adjust the search criteria, but I'll maximize our sensor array’s sensitivity as it scans for the drive signature."

  “Excellent," Dickson said as he stepped over to his chair and fell into the seat. He rested his head on his fist lazily. More than fourteen hours of continuous pursuit had taken a lot of the bark out of the dog, but he was content that he was onto something with their search.

  The benefit of putting the Destroyer on
the chase was the speedy response and tactical advantage. It might not be as limber of a ship as the Interceptor, but it made up for it in the ways that mattered. Firepower.

  At least it would pay off when he finally caught up to the runaway commander.

  The Destroyer had a crew of eight personnel on their mission to pursue the alleged traitor. That put them in a position to outnumber the fugitives two-to-one if a confrontation went into play, but those odds put a bad taste in his mouth. It was overkill for what he knew was a non-threatening target.

  The only person on that ship that posed a threat to the Consulate did so at his own family’s expense. It was out of character, to say the least, and Will was convinced that there was more to the story than meets the eye.

  Of course, convincing the higher-ups that there had to be a mistake was barking up the wrong tree.

  Will knew Kevin personally. For that matter, he had met the wife and children years ago. They were good people and he wasn't happy being ordered to pursue them. To add insult to injury, Will was far from convinced of Kevin's guilt. Though running from the Consulate didn’t scream innocence either.

  The initial report was filed with several redactions where the full list of charges was meant to be. Over the course of the week, the redactions were removed, and new data was populated in more detail within the report. Even with the amendments, the new information steered far and away from a reasonable explanation for the charges.

  It was the bureaucratic equivalent of he said, she said.

  Will wasn’t as surprised as he would have been years prior, though. Operating with less than half of the facts was common nowadays which made obeying lawful orders more subjective than objective truth.

  He kept it to himself for the most part, though. The more things changed in the Consulate, the harder it was to speak out against those that you did not agree with. It seemed like a cheap thing to do, but Will thought it best to keep his mouth shut and his eyes open before drawing undue attention to himself.

  It wasn’t clear just how well that was going for him given his current predicament.

  He glared at the monitor with his jaw clenched. There was nothing good about this mission and it gnawed at him with each passing moment. Sure, he had an opportunity to blast the Interceptor before it got away, but what kind of monster would willingly execute innocent children?

  The standing order from Admiral Hardak was just that, though, and he risked everything his career had been built from by taking actions that the Chief of Naval Affairs would likely see as a moment of weakness.

  Will didn’t see it that way at all, but the Heshians viewed the universe differently than humans. They were warriors, bred to fight, to die. This was more in their wheelhouse than Captain Dickson’s willful chivalry was.

  Still, he hoped that he wasn’t wrong in making the decision.

  "If you're out there, Kevin, you better hope that I find you before someone else does. Otherwise, there will be no hope for you or your family," he whispered.

  “What’s that, sir?” Harrison asked as he turned his attention to the skipper.

  “I hope we find them soon,” Dickson replied after clearing his throat and shaking the cobwebs out of his head.

  His view on the mission might be naïve, but he could not hide the truth.

  Something was wrong about the mission and he could not fire on that ship without knowing the truth.

  Whatever it was.

  Chapter Four

  Kevin squeezed the controls, his knuckles going white as he tried to hold the ship on its current trajectory and enter the planet's atmosphere at the appropriate angle. With the damage to the drive, he did not know if he would be able to exit the atmosphere if an emergency arose. So instead he resolved himself to see it through, clenched his teeth, and prepared for the harshest landing of his life.

  "Entering planetary atmosphere and forty-five seconds," the ships AI said over his headset. The distinctly feminine voice was turned up too high, making him wince each time it spoke. "Entering planetary atmosphere in thirty seconds."

  Kevin couldn't focus with the high-pitched voice stabbing at his ears like an ice pick. He ripped the headset off his head and tossed it behind him negligently. He knew it was reckless, but with his increased heart rate and his adrenaline pumping, there was too much happening to allow himself to be distracted by the nuisance.

  "Come on. Come on. Come on." He muttered as his grip tightened with anticipation. His heart pounded like a drum in his chest to the point he wouldn't be surprised if he was on the verge of having a heart attack.

  The sudden and inevitable entry into the planetary atmosphere felt like a punch in the face as the ship immediately decelerated and went into a dive. He heard his family screaming in the back of the ship as it accelerated downward. Hell, the voice inside his head screamed along with them, but he could not focus on that right now.

  If there was any hope of surviving, he had to act using his training and muscle memory.

  Not his emotions.

  He pulled up on the yoke with everything he had and used his feet against the bulkhead of the ship to brace himself for more leverage. The sudden dive caused an increase in acceleration and the thrust from the drive sent the Interceptor far beyond terminal velocity for its weight class. Kevin continued pulling, but there was binding in the flight controls fighting against him, and he couldn’t tell which side was affected. There was one thing he knew for sure as the control yoke shuddered in his hands violently. He was coming in too fast.

  Kevin blinked away the visions of the crater they would become from his mind and focused on increasing drag and decelerating as quickly as possible.

  "Don't fail me now," he muttered through the chattering of his teeth. The control yoke jostled in his hand like a wild animal, unwieldy and fighting against everything he tried to force the beast into submission. He yanked back on the throttle, causing the momentary loss of thrust to allow the aft section of the ship to fall faster than the nose. It was far from level, but at least it wasn't falling from the sky like a dart.

  "Come on. Level out!"

  The ship hit turbulence. The gas pockets in the atmosphere exploded from the heat of the exhaust blasting concussive blows against the hull as it gracelessly fell from the sky.

  Kevin's arms screamed, his muscles on the verge of tearing as he continued to put everything he had to pull back on the yoke. He felt his grip loosening, the involuntary response of his body as he struggled to maintain the load he placed on it. Never mind the slipperiness of his palms as he sweated profusely under the strain.

  "God save us."

  A loud crash followed with the sound of metal scraping against metal as something tore away from the ship. Whatever it was it worked on Kevin's behalf.

  The ship immediately pitched upward, even without thrust propelling it forward. Kevin regained his grip on the throttle and slammed it forward to the first detent, using it as a guide to keeping his speed under control for Terra-based flight.

  "That's more like it, buddy," he said as he clapped one hand onto the console before reclaiming the control yoke. "You've been a faithful ship. I can't deny that."

  Kevin banked the ship hard to port in an attempt to reclaim his fight trajectory and land in an area just outside the major city limits. Ten-thousand feet below them the sandy terrain sparkled under the sunlight casting down on it. Pockmarks covered the planet and each clear area looked like an oasis in the desert.

  He knew Karnack was a victim of conflicts. Thousands of bombs dropped onto the sandy surface of the densely desert world. The fires raged, turning the sand into a glassy residue, a reminder for future generations that opposition would be met with swift, decisive violence.

  The most dangerous part of landing here was having shards of the material sucked into the intake and further destroying the engine. There was a way to keep that from happening, but that meant landing the craft with the drive secured and hoping that the hydraulics wouldn't fail in the pro
cess.

  He had to do it anyway given the fact that reverse thrust was compromised, but that didn’t set his mind at ease.

  Kevin began the deceleration process, pulling the throttles back towards him slowly as he maneuvered the ship forward. The nose dropped as his altitude waned. He cycled his rudders as he tried to slow his descent. The ship groaned under the strain of staying aloft at the appropriate angle without having the full force of the engine providing the power to do so.

  There was no doubt in his mind that this was going to be a crash landing. His only hope for salvation was to minimize the damage. He needed to save the ship to save his family and to give them a way off this rock before the Consulate arrived. He was running out of time, but he couldn't focus on that now. His focus was on the ship.

  Everything else was secondary.

  "Everyone, hold on to something," he shouted from the cabin. "This is going to be a rough landing."

  No one responded and he could only hope that they heard him and followed his order because he was less than thirty seconds from slamming onto the deck in the middle of the Karnack desert.

  He cycled the engine off and watched the altitude drop three-hundred feet per second. He had enough accumulator pressure left in his thrusters to punch it before it hit the deck. That was the only way to cushion the fall and he had to time it just right.

  The ship fell rapidly below one-thousand feet and he forced himself not to blink as he focused on the altimeter until he was below two-hundred feet.

  At that precise moment, he initiated all eight thrusters below the craft to activate simultaneously. With the punch of a button, the craft jolted and bucked as thrust fought to keep it aloft. But gravity quickly overtook the craft and a split second later it slammed to the deck and everything went black.

  Auden woke up to find dust particles wafting around in the air around her. She reached down and unclasped the restraint from her seat before pulling herself up. She gasped, noticing the sharp pain in her side. She braced herself against the bulkhead and glanced down at her sister as she was coming to.