Mercurial: Ace Evans Book 5 (Ace Evans Series), page 17
It didn’t help that Loman was in a strange ship, without any backup. Maybe if the Ahzco armada had been in the Askerria Sector as they should have, he could have sold the idea that the Montabon ship merely had system malfunctions. But everything Finton pointed out was glaringly obvious. Loman had overplayed his hand. He should have recognized that the moment he discovered his ships were no longer in the sector.
Anger began to build. He wanted to blame someone but there was no one but himself. Yes, Colonel Chastain had disobeyed a direct order, but she was a colonel and in charge of the Ahzco armada. She wouldn’t have left the sector without a good reason, which was exactly what she was paid to do. And while his missing ships were a surprise to Loman, he had decided to plead his case to the other military groups even without them. If he was honest, he was relying too heavily on Alex’s abilities, which had put them front and center for every CDF in the sector. He wasn’t sure why he had done it. Perhaps he just wanted to prove Lynn Faulk’s treachery so badly that it clouded his judgment.
That thought was like a dagger in the back. Had he really lost perspective? Did he need for Lynn Faulk to fail completely? Hadn’t he already bested her by releasing the videos and foiling her plans to manipulate the FTA into creating a centralized government? Loman prided himself in being a person who saw the big picture, but he couldn’t deny that he had become single minded in his pursuit of Lynn Faulk. She had been a thorn in his side for a long time, always questioning him in board meetings, forcing him to give an account of every decision he made for the company. All he had wanted was to do his job, and yet somewhere along the way he had made Lynn Faulk into a villain of unparalleled evil. He wasn’t sure why, but perhaps he had been too long at his post.
His mind wandered back to his conversation with Alex. The poor boy was struggling with power he wielded, and who in his position wouldn’t? It was one thing to go into battle with your friends at your side, fighting foes on equal footing. It was another thing to destroy entire starships all by yourself. The guilt was probably eating him alive. Loman decided to ensure that Alex had a long break, at least a month. He needed time with friends and family, to deal with his stress and realign his priorities. Loman could walk away from Ahzco at any time, but as long as Alex controlled so much power, Loman wasn’t sure he would ever be free. For that reason alone, Loman knew he couldn’t resign. He had gotten Alex into the CDF and he would stay with him, in one capacity or another, as long as the boy needed him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The armadas were moving. Alex could sense it. He was still in the makeshift waiting area outside the med bay. It wasn’t like a hospital. The Drachma was a warship, and visitors to the ailing and wounded simply weren’t a consideration. The molded plastic chairs in the hallway were the only place to await word of a fallen comrade, but Alex knew they were lucky to have the time and freedom to wait. In battle, Sly would have to recover on his own.
The ships were moving, not just a few, but all of them, well over a hundred. Battleships, light cruisers, carriers, heavily armored hulks that were essentially giant gun clusters with engines. They were too far away for his INC to make contact, but in the vast emptiness of space, he could hear their EM songs. It was like hearing a march and knowing that the army was on the move. The sounds the ships made as they communicated with one another and engaged their drive systems spoke volumes to Alex. Even as he dozed, he could see the ships in his mind. They were mobilizing for war, and the Drachma was stuck in the middle of the battlefield.
“Hey!” Nyx said suddenly, her hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Alex, wake up!”
“What?” Alex said, his eyes fluttering open.
“You’re having a nightmare,” she said, her voice full of compassion.
“Oh, sorry,” Alex said.
His tongue felt thick and his eyes were dry. It felt like his eyelids were coated with sand. He stood up and felt lightheaded for a moment. The sensation passed.
“Any word on Sly?”
“He’s still unconscious,” Ash said from across the narrow hallway.
“But his vitals are good,” Nyx said. “The scans showed brain activity.”
“That’s good,” Alex said.
“But it isn’t definitive,” Ash said. “It doesn’t mean he’ll be okay. He may never wake up again. Or he may wake up and have no memories. They really have no idea.”
“At least there’s hope,” Alex said. “I need to get cleaned up, Ash. I’ll be back soon. You need anything?”
“No,” she said. “Thanks, but I’m fine.”
Nyx stood up and walked with Alex.
“Where are you going?”
“To take a shower,” Alex said. “What’s going on out there?”
“I don’t know,” Nyx said. “You fell asleep and I didn’t want to leave you.”
Alex looked at her. She was lovely, and something deep inside him wanted to take her in his arms. But there was something else inside him, a part of him that said she would never understand him. He felt cold and distant, like he had grown somehow and the people around him had not. The hot throb in his head was still there, but it was getting used to it.
“You better go check,” Alex said. “Something’s going on.”
Nyx looked at him with surprise. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“I can hear them,” Alex said.
“You can hear what? We’re in space, Alex. Sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum.”
“It’s not sound,” he said, trying not to feel resentment at having to explain. “My INC picks up their EM waves, you know? I can tell there’s a lot of movement.”
“Okay, I’ll go check it out,” Nyx said.
“How long did I sleep?”
“Half an hour, maybe,” she said.
Alex nodded. He didn’t feel rested, but he did feel better. They parted ways on the next level. Alex went to his berth, while Nyx continued up to the command level to check on their situation. In his cabin, Alex took a quick shower and brushed his teeth. After getting dressed in a fresh set of compression fatigues, he felt better, more human again. He could still hear the activity, almost see it in his mind, but he pushed it aside and went looking for food.
Breakfast options were limited. Alex settled for a breakfast sandwich made from powdered eggs that had been reconstituted with water, making them moist. The sandwich had sausage-flavored protein bits, onion and garlic seasoning, and cheese made from soy. The bread was toasted, but had no real flavor to it. Meals on a warship were simply fuel, and Alex thought of it that way. He ate the sandwich as he walked back down to the lower deck where the MBS hangar and med bay were located. He picked up a bottle of water and one of orange juice, which helped wash down the mostly tasteless sandwich. Outside the med bay, Sansabar was sitting by the doors.
“Where’s Ash?” Alex asked as he approached.
“Inside,” Sand replied. “Sly’s coming around.”
“That’s great news,” Alex said, wondering why he didn’t feel more relieved for his friend.
“Yeah, he was disoriented and the doctor thought that Ash might help.”
“I’m sure she will,” Alex said.
He sat down across from Sansabar and thought about the ships mobilizing. They were spread out hundreds of kilometers apart, and yet it felt to Alex as if he were in the middle of a fighting ring, surrounded by warriors all ready to attack him at any moment. The very thought of it made the hot place behind his eyes throb. Normally he hated the feeling. Growing up he had feared that he wouldn’t be strong enough. Weakness, like fear, was something he loathed about himself. But as he sat outside the med bay, looking at Sansabar but thinking about the approaching warships. The painful, throbbing heat inside his head felt almost welcome.
“What was it like out there?” Sand asked. “When Sly got hurt?”
Alex shrugged his shoulders. “It was all unexpected. We were just flying out to our station and the Montabon ship fired its lasers. For a split second, the light flared and then nothing. No sound, no blast wave, you could almost believe you had imagined the whole thing.”
“Sly was hit?”
“No,” Alex said. “The blast was just close to him and the energy surge killed his MBS. Sort of like an EM pulse.”
Sansabar nodded. There was almost nothing as frightening as being trapped in a derelict vessel, lost in space. She didn’t need Alex to expound on what happened. She could imagine how horrible it must have been for Sly.
“It’s a good thing you were there,” she said, as her PIL vibrated. She pulled the device from a cargo pocket on the thigh of her fatigues and looked at the screen.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “Tell Ash I’ll be back when I can.”
“Sure,” Alex said, barely conscious of what he was agreeing to.
His mind was outside the ship. It was like being in a holo-theater, almost impossible not to be captivated by the vivid story playing out. Alex was drawn to the waves and signals being picked up by his INC. He could see it, at least a shadowy reflection of what was taking place in the Askerria Sector. He didn’t know one ship from another. All he knew was that they were all enemies.
Suddenly he realized that he could do something. He didn’t have to sit trapped on the Drachma, hoping the crew could find a way to get them moving and escape the trap that was slowly closing in around them. He was far from helpless. And the urge to get out of the ship was overwhelming. He stood up, cast one glance into the med bay through the door’s tiny windows, and then walked away. His friend was hurt, maybe permanently, but Alex couldn’t help him. Perhaps Ash needed his support, but being a shoulder to cry on wouldn’t be of much use if the Drachma was attacked. His place was outside the ship, in the fray, where the action was.
His head throbbed with heat and Alex smiled. It wasn’t as painful as before, more like stepping close to a heat generator on a cold night. The warmth seemed to spread through him, starting behind his eyes, but drifting down. He felt relaxed, but also strong. It was as if he could feel himself growing stronger by the minute. The very idea of sitting and waiting for orders was laughable.
He went into the MBS hangar. His suit was still charging, but a glance at the controls showed eighty-five percent power and ninety percent capacity on the suit’s air supply. It was plenty, he thought, as he pushed one of the rolling ladders toward the suit.
“What are you doing there, Sergeant?” asked a technician, who came out of a small workroom at the side of the hangar.
“Suiting up?” Alex said.
“The Titans aren’t quite charged yet. Another hour and they’ll be ready.”
“There’s no time,” Alex said, bounding up the ladder and climbing into his battle suit.
“I’ll have to check my orders, Sergeant,” the technician said. “I didn’t know you’d been called up.”
“So check,” Alex said.
He let his INC sync, but not just with his Titan, but to the Drachma’s systems as well. It was simple to find the internal communication memos. At the speed of thought, he sent orders from Loman Haley to the MBS hangar bay to have Sergeant Alex Evans prepped and ready to launch. When the tech came back, he looked sheepish.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” he said. “I must have missed the orders. Let me get you disconnected from the charging station.”
Alex didn’t reply. His mind was outside the ship, watching their enemies slink through space. Couldn’t Loman see that they were vulnerable, that every group in the sector was attempting to move within striking distance? Yet there was no urgency. The ship was on orange alert, which was a heightened state of readiness but far from the urgency that was needed. Alex had to do something or they were all doomed.
“Alright, Sergeant,” the tech said. “You’re clear. Good luck.”
Alex waved at the tech and hit the button that engaged his suit’s systems. It closed around him, blocking all external sights and sounds. His INC fed information to his brain, the heat behind his eyes pulsed, and Alex felt powerful.
He disengaged the suit’s clamps and began walking toward the hangar doors. It was a simple matter to open them. The entire vessel was his to command. Alex wondered briefly, as the ship’s electronic field activated outside the hangar doors to protect the hangar from the vacuum of space, if Loman Haley had ever felt as powerful as Alex did in that moment. He could give orders to the crew, who would carry them out, but Alex didn’t need to say a word. The ship, like the Titan MBS, obeyed his every desire.
From a hidden speaker built into the ceiling of the hangar, a voice sounded.
“Hangar crew, we read the bay doors opening. Please respond.”
Alex could have lied or caused a distraction, but they would all know what he was doing soon enough. As his head pulsed with heat again, he realized that he didn’t need to tell those below him, the lesser beings, what he was doing. He would tell them what they needed to know, when they needed to know it.
With a small hop, Alex jumped through the open hangar doors and out into the freedom of space.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Commander, someone has opened the bay doors,” the chief engineer announced.
“What?” Loman asked.
“The bay doors, in the MBS hangar,” the engineer explained. “They’re opening.”
“Who’s doing it?” Loman asked. “Find out what’s going on.”
Nyx felt a strange sensation. It was like an itch that she couldn’t reach. She had no idea why she felt that way or what was causing it, but she felt certain that it had something to do with what was happening in the hangar.
She had been on the bridge, monitoring the situation around the ship. Alex was right; the other corporate military groups were mobilizing. Down in the engineering space, the maintenance crews were scrambling to get the main drive operating again. The port side had been damaged by a power surge from the laser attack at the hands of the Montabon vessel. And the Drachma couldn’t leave the system or even escape an attack until they finished.
“Sir,” the communications officer said. “The technician on duty says that Sergeant Evans is suited up and preparing to launch in his Titan MBS.”
“What?” Loman shouted, echoing Nyx’s thought.
She was running out of the bridge with only one thought, to get to her station in the operations center and find out what Alex was doing. When she’d left him, he had said he was getting a shower. Why he would suddenly suit up and leave the ship without orders was mystifying to her. She was outside the bridge doors when she heard Loman shout after her.
“Find him, and bring him back here!”
Fear rose inside her, as if she’d just stepped into an icy river. It made no sense. Why would Alex leave? His suit probably wasn’t even charged. She thought of the way he’d seemed since coming back on board the Drachma. She didn’t think he was being himself, but he had just saved all the lives on the ship single handedly, and he was struggling with the guilt of having killed another the crew of another ship to do it. Not to mention one of his best friends was lying in a coma. It was a stressful time, but that didn’t explain his actions. He’d seemed cold to her as they went up to his berth, but she had chalked that up to fatigue. She knew he could work a long time in the Titan suit, and he hadn’t been completely without rest, but he had recently returned from a battle. Still, nothing made sense to her.
She dropped into her chair and picked up her headset, slipping it over her short hair and onto her ears. On the screen, she could see that Alex was moving through space. She had a trio of monitors. Once showed the various video feeds from the Titan’s external cameras. The primary camera feed was the largest in the center of her display. The monitor to her right showed the Drachma’s radar. The monitor on her right showed the plot, with every ship in the sector identified. They were tiny blips, as was the Drachma. But the plot also showed Alex in his Titan battle suit. The plot identified his little dot as Cronus 1.
“Alex,” Nyx said. “What are you doing?”
“Saving us,” he said, his voice clear though her headset, but not really sounding like the man she knew and respected so much.
“What do you mean, Alex? Saving us from whom?”
“Didn’t you see what was happening?”
“I saw the groups mobilizing,” she admitted. “But they haven’t attacked us.”
“Yet,” he said. “They’re getting ready to fight for control of the sector and we’re right in the middle of it.”
“For now, but as soon as we get the ship working, we’ll leave,” Nyx said.
“That wouldn’t stop them,” Alex said. “Besides, the Drachma is dead in the water. Her port engine is cooked. The engineers don’t have the parts they need to repair her.”
“What are you talking about?” Nyx said.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll save you.”
Her fear was borderline panic when her headset beeped to signal that Commander Haley wanted her attention. She tapped a button that muted her microphone so that Alex wouldn’t hear what she said.
“Go ahead, bridge,” Nyx said with a shaky voice.
“What’s our boy doing?” Loman asked.
“I’m not sure, sir,” Nyx replied. “I think he’s going to attack the other ships in the sector.”
“What? He can’t do that.”
“I know, sir, but he doesn’t seem to,” Nyx said.
“Stop him, get him back here.”
“I can try, but I don’t think it will work.”
“Don’t you have an emergency kill switch that severs his connection to the suit?”
“Yes, sir, and I used it in the Carthage system. He found a way to override the system. And if I use it, I might lose all connection with him.”
“Then you better talk him into coming back,” Loman said. “Or we’re all dead.”
“Yes, sir,” Nyx said.
Despair was settling over her. She didn’t know whether she could talk Alex down. He didn’t seem like himself. But she had to try. She unmuted the com-link and looked at the plot. Alex was several hundred kilometers from the nearest group of ships.
