The Turret: Starclan Foundation Read online

  “Wait, that makes sense, but we need to apply it this way; from focused on the initial wave application, then change the focus this way,” Jock hit several controls, changing the graphics on the screen to illustrate his point, “Then move it out. The problem becomes releasing the wave and applying it again to the next point in space. We can’t do it fast enough. They say that is why my father died. Hmm…”

  “What are you thinking, Little Brother?”

  “We don’t need to move the wave! What is the theoretical limit on the length of the gravity wave?”

  “Theoretically, there is none.”

  “Right. So, using your “unfocused” approach…”

  “Cute.”

  “…we set the wave to grab the space in front of the ship, ALL the space in front of the ship, and focus it all at once, like this.” Jock confidently hit a control, and the simulation ran perfectly.

  “Jock, that is what your father was doing! Look at these readouts!” Shannon shouldered Jock away from the screen controls and quickly entered in her inputs. The video of the lab Jock’s father died in came up, frozen at the point in time of the gravitic wave activation.

  “See, those figures on the screen. Here,” Shannon magnified the display, “see it?”

  “Yes! YES! THAT’S IT!” Jock threw his arms in the air, and then jumped up. When he came down, he turned towards Shannon, “You found it!” Jock grabbed Shannon’s head and planted a big kiss hard on her lips, then immediately froze. “I, God, Shannon, I, I’m sorry, so sorry!”

  “Hey, um, eh, it, it’s Okay, Little Brother! We’re family, remember?”

  Jock sat down quickly, heart suddenly beating wildly. Clear your head, Lieutenant. “Shannon, am I wrong, or is this a relatively simple software adjustment?” Jock felt as if he’d just finished a wrestling match.

  “Well, that and about a hundredfold increase in power output.” She glanced down at Jock. “Jock, did Sharon ever tell you who our father was?”

  “Mr. Malone, I assumed. She never spoke of her family, she always changed the subject. She did mention once, our sophomore year, that he wanted me to come work for him after my first term.”

  “And, she knew who your father was, and how he died?” Shannon took a small object out of her pocket, flicked a switch on it, and set it on the table.

  “Yes, she was there when Pat dragged it out of me one night in our freshmen year. Why the jammer?” Jock pointed to the object on the table.

  “Jock, look at the screen, the logos on the lab coats, on the stationary, the computer screens. Jock, what company was your father leading in the gravitic research?”

  “General Aerospace Developments. I knew that.”

  “Who is the CEO, Chairman Of The Board, and majority stockholder in General Aerospace?”

  “That’s easy, he’s in the newscasts all the time, heavy into politics; Howard Ma…Malone? He’s…you’re…” Oh, shit!

  “Yeah, Howard Malone was almost your daddy-in-law.” Shannon sat down. “He is pure evil, Jock. Stay away from him. Drop the investigation into your father’s death, and never mention it again.”

  “But, Shannon, I…”

  “Drop it, Jock.” Shannon’s voice had become hard and dark, determined and fearful together. Her brow furrowed as she continued, “I’ll prove what happened to Sharon and your friends. I have some, eh, contacts, resources. But you should know that he’s had people killed. And worse. Many times. I’ve heard the orders he’s given, just like he was trading stock or buying a bottle of wine. We argued about it, and now I’m here. Yes, there was a girl, I did love her, but she didn’t get pregnant. She just…” Shannon gulped hard trying to swallow that lump in her throat, “…died. Training accident they said,” Shannon tried to swallow the lump again, “Sharon argued too, but she handled him a lot better than I did.”

  “Shannon, do you mean, your father tried to have me killed? Had my father killed?”

  “Yes, Jock, that is exactly what I mean. If you drop this, he’ll forget about it. Please, please!” Shannon took each of Jock’s hands in one of hers, and looked into his eyes. “Please?”

  “I wish you would stop looking at me that way. It makes it hard, em, er, a, to concentrate…”

  Shannon kissed Jock hard on the lips. She held the kiss for a long time. When she let Jock back off, she sensed that something had changed in him. This should make it even harder!

  “Well, Ensign, thank you.”

  “Sir!”

  “Thank you for making me realize you are not Sharon.”

  “Hmm. Mission accomplished then, Sir.”

  “You know I can’t drop it.”

  “I also know I’m leaving here tomorrow, and I’ve got eighteen months to handle it so you won’t have to.” Shannon’s eyes still held Jock’s. “Sir.”

  “Shannon, don’t do anything foolish.”

  “I promise you, Little Brother, Sir, that every move I make will be carefully and very thoroughly planned and thought out.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a minute. Shannon, you aren’t Sharon, but you are my friend. Please, be careful.” Jock placed his hand on Shannon’s arm.

  “Come with me, and bring the jammer.” Shannon grabbed Jock’s arm and led him down the hall to her quarters. “Did you really make that up about her eyes, and all? Tell me again!”

  "Your eyes reflect my soul like shimmering pools, and your hair outshines the morning sun, at your smile wise men are but fools, all my senses, your beauty stuns!”

  “That’s what I thought. C’mon, hurry up!”

  A few hours later, smiling, damp, and sweaty, as she traced the tattoo on his shoulder with her finger, she asked him what “FORTITER” meant.

  ***

  Asteroid Defense Station 1437

  Combat Information Center

  Standard Earth Date May 2 3446

  “PERIMETER ALERT!”

  “PERIMETER ALERT!”

  “PERIMETER ALERT!”

  The station’s computer used a voice expressly designed to be annoying for this alarm. In this case it was effective, as Jock MacAlister burst into the room fresh from his shower. Ensign Emerson Bird was leaning back in his chair at the sensors station, hands behind his head and feet up on the control console. Jock slid into the weapons station, carefully adjusting his towel.

  “He-ha! We’ve gotta boogie, JG!”

  I think this guy is cracked. Something’s wrong with him. “What is it, Emerson?”

  “Some kind of mass moving in a nonconventional orbit, SIR!”

  Jock’s screens activated as he sat down, and he checked to see that no external lights or emitters were active. There was the boogie; two hundred meters long, white and red paint, crew compartment, heavy reactor shield, and three-iron fusion/plasma drive units.

  “It’s a Randall Class Space Tug. Looks like…number…Thistle. Huh. Damn computer cut my shower short for a faulty IFF transponder? Emerson?” Where the hell did he go? Nutcase!

  “Ha-ha-ha!” came over the comm.

  Great, he’s in the showers!

  “Computer, get me tight beam transmission to that tug.”

  “Um, hello!”

  “Thistle, this is Lieutenant MacAlister, commanding officer ADS 1437. Are you aware your IFF transponder is not transmitting?”

  “What? Oh, hell, dammit! Hold on a second…” Jock heard what sounded like someone kicking a metal box, followed by several industrial strength curses.

  “There, it should be on now, JG.”

  “Affirmative, Captain…what is your name, sir?”

  “Captain Trap, Dennis Trap. Hell, I’ll answer ta Gunny.”

  “OK, Gunny. How did you know about the JG?”

  “Your voice ain’t dense enough to hold that second bar yet, Sir.”

  “Well, your IFF works now, Gunny. Just make sure you keep it on. We’re always looking for targets to practice on.”

  “Understood, Lieutenant. You take care out here, Sir.”

  �
��You too, Gunny. Keep warm.” Jock closed the connection, and hit the files for Gunnery Sergeant Dennis Trap. Hmm. Long record, good service. Thistle, eh? Pretty but prickly. Hmm.

  ***

  ADS Debriefing Center

  Tsiolkovskiy Crater

  Standard Earth Date May 2 3446

  “So, Lieutenant Commander, what do your five months’ worth of testing say? Is my marbles bag full, or am I a nutcase?” Ensign Shannon Malone sat in the small gray room nearly filled with one grey metal table and two sparsely padded grey metal chairs, looking intensely at Lieutenant Commander Bucktooth.

  “Your tests tell us two things. First, you are perfectly sane, notwithstanding your request to be discharged with a new identity. Second, you are, eh-hem,” the LC pointed to Shannon’s swollen belly, “very pregnant.”

  “I already knew that, Jeri.” Shannon glanced down at the evidence. “I told you, I seduced him. What about the reassignment, the new identity?”

  “You can stow that nonsense with me, Malone. The psych tests all ADS crew candidates go through would have revealed that, and neither one of you were even close to the cutoff. But, you both did have a unique trauma shared in a unique way. Shannon, are you trying to hide from Lieutenant MacAlister? What happened out there?”

  ‘Look, LC, we’ve been over this a million times. You’ve put me through all the truth tests and psych evals in your book, and everyone else’s book. You know nothing happened on that station that I did not want to happen. Everything we did was within the regs. Don’t tell me I’m the first girl to come back with an extra passenger on board.”

  “Not the first, not by a long shot. But you are the first to come back and ask for a new identity. Shannon, there is no recording in this room. What is going on?”

  “If I leave the debriefing quarantine without a new identity, I will be dead within a week, and, the same thing will happen to Jock when he has to come back.” Shannon leaned over the cold metal table, as close to Jericho as she could get without leaving her chair. “Give me the identity, so Jock can survive.”

  Jeri held his place, leaning slightly over the table. He stared into Shannon’s eyes for several seconds, mentally reviewing her evals and psych tests.

  “Tell me what you know about Jock’s father.”

  “He was murdered. The records of the test he died in have been altered. He…”

  “Enough.” Jeri barked the command with such an unquestionable authority that Shannon’s irreverence was shattered and she fell back hard into her chair. Jeri pulled a pen and a single form from his pocket and slid them to Shannon without taking his eyes off of hers.

  “Ensign Shannon Malone, if you sign this paper, you will get your new identity. You will also pursue the issue that is eating at your soul. But you will do it following the orders of your superior, and within the regulations of USF Marine Corps Intelligence Service. Is that cle…”

  Shannon signed and pushed the paper back to the Lieutenant Commander.

  “I am now an official ‘McIce’ Captain. There is one thing I need before I leave here. Where can a girl get a decent tattoo around here?” Shannon smiled as she clasped her hands behind her head. Somehow, the chair didn’t feel so cold now.

  ***

  Asteroid Defense Station 1437

  CIC

  Standard Earth Date December 4 3446

  “Ensign Bird, you’re early! You have the comm.” Jock stated wearily. Between Bird’s oddball antics, missing Shannon’s intellectual companionship, and the stress of dealing with that frenzied last night before she left, Jock was exhausted.

  “Early Bird! Heh-he, good one, Louie-tenant! Ha-ha! Early Bird! Hey, where’s my worm? Heh-he!”

  Jock walked out of the CIC and walked down the short corridor to his quarters shaking his head. He passed through the door and through the small office/foyer, diving on the bed. As tired as he was, Jock couldn’t fall asleep; his mind kept replaying those haunting thoughts, like a computer stuck in a feedback loop. Shannon. His father’s death. Sharon. The last night with Shannon, he never dreamed it could be like that! Sandy. The gravity drive, FTL applications, power plant solutions, weapons. Shannon. Sharon. Pat. Angie. He even thought back to older friends, Don and Agnes, married now, and Sandy. Sandy. How could I, why did I lock Sandy out? Thinking of Sandy calmed him some, but he still couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned for a while, then reached under his pillow and looked at it again. The note.

  “Dear Jock. I’m not Sharon. And no, I’m not in love with you. I was always the mischievous one; Sharon was always the good girl. No matter how much trouble I got into, no matter how many awards Sharon won, I never wished I was Sharon. Until last night. I hate to, but I have to say goodbye this way:

  The silence of a falling star

  lights up a purple sky.

  And as I wonder where you are,

  I’m so lonesome, I could die.’”

  There was a password and a file. Jock had not had the guts to open the file before. But he needed to stop his mind rehashing….what? That he didn’t wait, and miss out this time, a second chance? He knew that it would have been different with Sharon. Or Sandy. That at least he had an amazing memory of a woman he would probably never see again? That, never once that night did he think about Sharon; he only thought of Shannon; her touch, her lips, her smell, her skin like velvet caressing him... Was that bad? Was he perversely unfaithful to Sharon? What happens when he gets back next month, between Shannon and him? Should he try to find her? Will she try to find him? GET OUT OF THIS LOOP!

  Jock sat up in his bed, grabbed his datatab, opened the file and entered the password.

  Jock gave a start when an ancient song began playing; a mournfully sorrow-soaked nasal whine. Yet, Jock just had to listen to the simple waltz as the sad voice of the heartbroken man cried out the song:

  D’ya hear that lonesome whip-poor-will

  he sounds too blue to fly.

  The midnight train is whining low.

  I’m so lonesome I could cry.

  I’ve never seen a night so long

  when time goes crawlin’ by.

  The moon just went behind the clouds

  to hide his face and cry.

  Did you ever see a robin weep

  when leaves begin to die?

  That means he’s lost the will to live,

  I’m so lonesome, I could cry.

  The silence of a falling star

  lights up a purple sky.

  And as I wonder where you are,

  I’m so lonesome, I could cry.

  Somehow, Jock’s quiet sobs melted from the sadness of never seeing Shannon again, to the joys of that night with her, then to an unexpected place, the joys of Sharon; meeting her that first day, how the beauty of her formed the poetic words as he spoke, how her easy smile muted the pain of his father’s death, how she spent every holiday break with him after his mother died, just seeming to show up, and the closeness of that last night they had together, closer than the last night with Shannon. Jock’s sobs warmed into memories of Sharon and his friends, the things they shared with him, blanketing him in a soft, quiet comfortable sleep, a good sleep that had eluded Jock for a long time now. Sleep that kept Jock from seeing the other file. A file named “FORTITER”.

  And then the station alarms woke him up.

  ***

  S.T. Thistle

  Far Ort Cloud

  Standard Earth Date December 4 3446

  “I understand you have a schedule! I’ll help you keep it, but I’m too far away, I can’t get to you until…but…I…wait a minute! I can’t tow you in unless I can dock and secure your load. I…Sure. Okay. I understand. Next time. Right.”

  Dennis Trap slammed his fist into the comm panel as the connection closed.

  “OW! DAMN IT!” His fist bent more than the metal of the comm did.

  Rubbing his hand, Dennis sat back and closed his eyes. Another job lost. I’m just a crappy salesman, I guess. He shut down almost all his systems
to conserve power. In space, energy was life, but energy was also money. Even the iron required to power his ships cost money. And Dennis Trap did not have much left.

  It had been a tough three years. Dennis had started out all right, undercutting his competition and securing some plum contracts. Then something went wrong, and a barge was lost. The penalties nearly bankrupt Dennis; he had to borrow against the Thistle to keep going. If he didn’t get a contract soon…

  The retired gunnery sergeant opened his eyes at the instant just before the alarm began, as if anticipating it. Passives showing an object moving fast, over one half light speed. Nothing he knew of could match that, unless it was on a suicide run. Some instinct told him to keep his head down, and think about lines of fire; twenty years in the Corps had taught him to trust that instinct. Where was that ADS?

  Dennis activated the Thistle’s ‘enhancements’, and then he sat, waited, and watched…

  CHAPTER THREE

  Asteroid Defense Station 1437

  Commander’s Quarters

  Standard Earth Date December 5 3446

  “PERIMETER ALERT!”

  “PERIMETER ALERT!”

  “PERIMETER ALERT!”

  The computer blasted the alarm into Jock’s dream, erasing his wedding reception kiss with the faceless blonde bride.

  Training had been intense at the Lunar Station, and Jock’s muscles knew exactly what to do, awake brain or not. He was out of bed and into his pants and tee shirt before the third ‘perimeter alert’ sounded. Exactly 6 seconds later he slid into his station in the CIC.

  “Report, Ensign Bird! What have we got?”

  “HA! Looks like a real, honest to Jupiter UFO, Sir! Ha-ha-ha!”