Red Sky Dawning Page 18

  “Copy that. Scorpion out.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 22: M.I.A.

  “CS-Mattingly, you are cleared for docking in starboard bay twelve,” the Praetorian comm officer said through Lee’s earpiece once the Newbern-class freighter had emerged from hyperspace.

  “Copy that, Praetorian.” Lee wheeled the ship around. “Mattingly is inbound and headin’ your way. Admiral Katahl around?”

  “Affirmative, Daredevil. Admiral Katahl and Colonel Ryan are standing by to meet you in flight briefing alpha as soon as you’re aboard.”

  Lee traded looks with Mac at the nav station beside him. “That’s good, ’cause we got plenty of questions. Mattingly is on approach. Bay 12 ETA in five mikes and closin’.”

  Once the hatch had sealed to pressurize the bay, Lee lowered the Mattingly’s boarding ramp and descended into the oddly busy hanger below.

  “Think this is all for Danny and Madisyn?” Mac asked upon seeing the crowd of deckhands and grunts around her.

  Lee shook his head. “As much as I’d like to think so, no. Whatever this is, it’s for somethin’ a whole lot bigger than a search and rescue op. We’ll find out later. Come on. They’re expectin’ us.”

  After four decks, two corridors, and a slew of ship’s personnel, the couple found themselves back in the familiar confines of the Praetorian’s primary briefing room on Deck 5.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Link called from the bottom row of stadium seats. Layla, Hamish, and Wyatt sat with him—and Katie, who rushed up the stairs to hug her brother.

  “What are you doin’ up here?” Lee asked once she’d pulled away. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Madisyn’s place on the surface?”

  Katie shook her head. “Hamish got the call while we were out to dinner, and I caught a shuttle back up with him. I wanted to be here, Lee.”

  Lee nodded reluctantly and descended the steps to the rest of the group.

  “So how was the honeymoon?” Link rose from his seat and hugged his friend.

  “The one day of it we got was fantastic.” Lee grunted.

  “Feel ya there,” Link said.

  Lee turned to Hamish. “Hey, big man, I figured you long gone for the Mardolla School by now. Weren’t you supposed to ship out first thing this mornin’?”

  Hamish dismissed the notion. “No way, lad. Not ’til I know what’s happening with Danny and Madisyn.”

  “School holdin’ your spot?” Lee asked.

  “Don’t know, don’t care. Family is family, and that’s that.”

  Lee rested a grateful hand on Hamish’s shoulder then turned back to the group. “All right, what do we know?”

  “Same as you, which isn’t much,” Link said. “Danny and Madisyn left on the AS Larrin yesterday afternoon for her conference on Kellen 3. Less than two hours later, their ship went dark and nobody knows why. That’s it.”

  Wyatt stepped forward. “The admiral and Col. Ryan are briefing President Wylon now. Last I heard, scans of the system where they went missing were ongoing, but that was well over two hours ago. With any luck, they’ll have some of the initial data when they meet with us.”

  “Oh man, poor Wylon,” Mac said. “It’s bad enough he’s gotta answer questions about a missing ship full of civilians, but to know that one of them is his own daughter?” She shuddered. “Dude, that sucks.”

  “He’ll be okay,” Layla said. “President Wylon is ex-ASC, and a fighter jock to boot. He knows how this works, and he’ll handle it.”

  “Layla’s right,” Colonel Vince Ryan said, entering the room ahead of Fleet Admiral Markus Katahl.

  The group snapped to attention.

  “As you were,” said the towering Katahl, regal as ever with his short-cropped silver hair, neatly pressed uniform, and dark-skinned face which never missed a shave.

  “Good to see you again, Lee.” Ryan extended a hand. “Congrats on the wedding.”

  “Appreciate that, sir.” Lee inspected the new patch on Ryan’s sleeve. “From the looks of things, though, I ain’t the only one due congrats today. The Harkens, I take it?”

  Ryan nodded then ran a palm through his jet-black hair. “They made it official first thing this morning.”

  “That’s awesome, sir,” Lee said. “You’ve been due your own command for a long time now.” He turned to Katahl. “Admiral.”

  “Welcome home, Lieutenant Commander Summerston,” Katahl said. “My apologies that the colonel and I had to miss the wedding.”

  “That’s all right, sir,” Lee said. “Word around the fleet is that you fellas have been pretty busy cookin’ somethin’ up lately, so Mac and I figured you had your reasons.”

  “Yes, we’ll get to that,” Katahl said. “For now, though, take a seat, and I’ll bring you all up to speed on the Larrin situation.”

  The admiral’s expression sank as he stepped to the podium and cued up the viewscreen behind him. It showed a standard gridded star chart containing an empty system surrounding a class-three orange star.

  “What exactly are we lookin’ at here, sir?” Lee asked, taking a seat next to Mac and seeing nothing out of the ordinary.

  Katahl didn’t respond right away. Instead, he zoomed in on the thirty-fourth zone then waited as the picture refocused.

  A dark silence filled the room.

  “Holy shite, is that a ship?” Hamish leaned forward in his seat.

  Spanning the entire frame with an indicated two hundred kilometer diameter was a scattered debris field that Lee could only surmise had once been a starship. He couldn’t be sure, however, because even at the image’s current magnification rate, there were no fragments of any real size to be seen—just a thick haze of dust.

  What the hell? Lee hoped like crazy that his initial instincts were wrong.

  “Okay everybody, let’s just slow our roll and jump back a sec,” Link said. “This could be anything. A probe, maybe, or some backwater prospector that strayed off course and got itself Mike Tyson-ed by an asteroid. Nothing says it’s the Larrin.”

  Ryan stepped forward. “No probe, Auran or Alystierian, has the mass to leave a spread that big. It’s definitely a ship. Maybe not the Larrin, but it’s a vessel of some kind.”

  “And you’re basing that assumption off what, exactly?” Mac asked. “Because I’m not seeing anything here that would even come close to giving us an ID.”

  Katahl’s eyes flicked to the podium then back to the image. “We think it’s the Larrin. We can’t be sure yet, of course, but we’re almost certain of it.”

  “How?” Lee asked. “Like Mac said, there’s nothing here to go on. So how can you be sure?”

  Katahl faced the screen. “Based on the spread of the field alone, we can deduce that this is most likely the remains of three ships. It could be two, but we think three. Dr. Reynolds’s presence on board mandated a two-ship escort. Secondly, if they were attacked—and as of now, we still don’t know if that’s the case—protocol would’ve dictated that both escorts execute a standard, Essex-pattern defensive formation between the Larrin and her aggressor.” He pointed to two noticeably larger blots within the overall cloud, which were side by side in zone 34.7, ahead of a third in zone 34.8. “Again, it fits. Then finally the most glaring factor, which is that all of this was found near the edge of the Telleron System, a part of space that falls perfectly in line with the Larrin’s last known flight plan to Kellen 3.”

  “Our survey teams took particulate samples as soon as they arrived on scene,” Ryan said. “They’re running a chemical analysis now, and if it comes back positive for faucelate we’ll know one or all of these are ours.”

  “Faucelate?” Katie leaned in to ask Wyatt.

  “It’s one of the elements we use to reinforce ordinary steel,” Wyatt said. “It creates a signature of sorts in the hulls of our ships.”

  Hamish raised a hand. “Admiral, you mentioned the possibility of this being an attack, earlier. For one, what’s the likelihood of that, and for
two, who could’ve done this?”

  “If this is in fact the Larrin and her escorts, then I’d say it’s a near certainty that this was a deliberate act,” Katahl said, his tone somber. “Were we talking about a one-ship incident, then I wouldn’t be so quick to rule out an accidental cause. But not all three. As for who could’ve done this?” Katahl stared at the podium, perplexed. “I honestly have no idea, son. Not since Dulaston five years ago have the Alystierians dared attack us this deep in our own territory. And they don’t have anything even remotely capable of inflicting this kind of destruction, much less in the amount of time we think it happened.”

  “Why do you say that, sir?” Link asked.

  This time Layla answered. “Like the admiral said, first protocol for the escorts would’ve been to intercept the threat while the Larrin jumped away to safety, a process that, even in a bind, can be done in fifteen seconds…eleven, if you’ve got a helmsman who knows what he’s doing. That didn’t happen here, which means that whatever did this sliced through those escorts like paper and then disabled the Larrin before she could escape. That’s a lot of juice.”

  “Indeed,” Katahl said. “Let me be clear, people. Whatever did this leapt in from hyperspace totally unannounced, ambushed the escorts and took out the Larrin, and did it in less than fifteen seconds. It was clean, it was concise, and it was fast—surgical. Again, though, this is all conjecture at best until our survey teams get back to us with the initial data.”

  Wyatt raised a hand. “Lifeboats?”

  “None that we can find,” Ryan said, his face grim.

  Lee felt his fists clench in his lap. This couldn’t be happening. “With all due deference, Admiral, I ain’t buyin’ it…not yet. Even if all of this is true, there woulda still been a lag time between the fall of the first two ships and the assault on the Larrin. Was it a small lag? Sure. But trust me…give Danny Tucker a window, even a cracked one, and he’ll find a way out.”

  “Particularly with Madisyn aboard,” Mac said. “He’d have gone down with the ship himself if it meant getting her off alive, much as any of us hate to think about it.”

  Katahl’s look remained unconvinced.

  “They’re right, Admiral,” a voice said from the back, and Lee craned his neck to see Command Sergeant Major Keith Noll enter the room. “If there was a way off that ship before it blew, Sergeant Tucker would’ve found it.”

  Lee shot a grateful look at Noll then returned his eyes to the front of the room. “Admiral, sir, I get it that the evidence looks bad because it does. But this is Danny and Madisyn we’re talkin’ about. They’re out there somewhere, I know it, and time is of the essence if we hope to find ’em.”

  “I’m well aware of that, Summerston, but there are bigger things in play right now than our search for the Larrin.”

  Lee rocketed from his chair. “Like what?”

  “Take a seat, Commander,” Katahl said.

  Grudgingly, but knowing full well he’d overstepped his bounds, Lee did as ordered.

  Returning to the podium, Katahl hesitated for a moment at the projector controls while regarding Katie, the room’s lone civilian. She shouldn’t have been there, Lee knew, and he was a bit surprised when the admiral opted to shelve the protocol and press on with the briefing anyway. Seconds later, the viewscreen image refreshed with that of a new star chart…this time, of a system in Alystierian space.

  “I want you to listen to me very carefully,” Katahl said. “All of you.”

  * * *

  Once the admiral had finished, Lee leaned forward in his seat, put his elbows on his knees, and ran his fingers across his forehead.

  “Holy shit,” Link murmured, eyes wide. “Talk about throwing your scrote on the table in shock and frickin’ awe!”

  “Now you see why the Larrin’s disappearance couldn’t have come at a worse time.” Katahl deactivated the screen and leaned against the podium. “Lee, you have my word that for the next twenty-four hours, we’ll devote everything we can to finding Danny and Madisyn. By this time tomorrow, though, we’ll have no choice but to pack up our tents and redeploy. We’ll leave a skeleton crew, but there’s just too much at stake with Kyma to not give it the lion’s share of our resources. At least for now.”

  Lee cupped his face in his palms. “I take your meaning, sir, about the bigger picture here. Even so, where we’re from, the first forty-eight hours of any missing persons situation are always the most critical. As such, I’d like to request temporary reassignment to the skeleton crew for me and Mac so we can help out with the search.”

  “Ditto for me and Layla,” Link said next to Hamish, who also raised a hand to volunteer. “No way in hell we’re not there when Danny and Madisyn come home.”

  Katahl’s lips formed a line. “Lee, I learned a long time ago to never underestimate the lengths to which you and your friends will go for each other. It’s one of the things that I’ve always admired most about you. But, having said that, this is not five years ago, and you’re not civilians anymore. You’re enlisted ASC personnel with all the duties, expectations, and responsibilities thereof. And while I completely empathize with your concern for Sergeant Tucker’s whereabouts, the fact still remains, Lieutenant Commander Summerston, that you are now the lead pilot of the AS Kennox, one of several ships set for deployment on the biggest offensive this fleet has ever launched.”

  “But sir,” Lee said, “I wasn’t even scheduled to be here for this. I was supposed to be on my honeymoon right now, which means Captain Mann is already set to lead the Kennox’s flight crew on this mission. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that free me up to go lookin’ for Danny?”

  Katahl shook his head. “Lee, you booked that leave over a year ago, and I didn’t have the heart to cancel it when all of this came down. But you’re here, and I need you. These are your men now, remember? Mann passed to the torch to you when he made captain, but in the interest of not interfering with your wedding plans, he agreed to stay on while you two were offworld. Now that you’re back, I need his experience on the Gordon. I’m sorry, son, but welcome to being a leader.” Katahl turned to the others. “The same goes for all of you. I know this situation is far from ideal, and you don’t have to like it. But that’s the job sometimes.”

  Lee slumped down into his seat and allowed his head to fall back against his chair. As much as he hated it, he knew Katahl was right. Coincidentally, Lee also guessed from the admiral’s near-flawless recital that this probably hadn’t been the first time today he’d been forced into giving the “remember the mission” speech. He’d no doubt done so earlier with President Wylon, and that couldn’t have been easy, given the history between the two.

  Bad day all around, Lee thought. “All right sir, I get it. I’ll touch base with Captain Mann when I get outta here and let him know I’ll be assumin’ the LP stick early.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Katahl said, “I do share your belief with regard to Sergeant Tucker. If anyone could’ve found a way off that ship before it blew, it would’ve been him, and rest assured we’ll continue the search for him and Dr. Reynolds as long as we can. Ruah?”

  “Ruah, sir,” Lee said with what little enthusiasm he could muster. “You’ll keep us posted though, right?”

  “On that, son, you have my word,” Katahl stated with no shortage of conviction.

  “Admiral Katahl?” Mac asked. “If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather not be stuck on the sidelines while all of this is going on. So if it’s not too much to ask, I’d like to formally request an early reinstatement of my flight status, and temporary assignment to the Kennox under Lee’s command.”

  “I thought you might make such a request, Mrs. Summerston, which is why I already pulled your file. I’ll have Corporal Forest process the request at once, along with your name change. I’m also promoting you to first lieutenant, which puts you second in line behind your husband on the flight crew.”

  “I appreciate that, sir, but wouldn’t one of Lee�
�s other—”

  “It’s done,” Katahl said. “I know he’s been stationed on that ship for a while now, and a lot of those guys know him. But none of them know his style, both in and out of the cockpit, like you do. He’ll need that insight in the days ahead.”

  “Copy that, Admiral,” she said. “Oh, and FYI on the name thing—Mac is still just fine.”

  Katahl actually chuckled at that. “Understood. All of you are dismissed.”

  Once outside in the hall, Lee felt a hand catch his arm.

  “You got a minute?” Katie asked.

  Lee looked past her shoulder to Mac, Hamish, Wyatt, and the Baxters. “I’ll meet you guys back on the flight deck.”

  They nodded and headed out.

  “Listen,” Katie said. “I want to help.”

  “Katie, I really don’t—”

  She cut him off with a look. “I get it that I’ve only been around for a few days, so I probably don’t have a clue what it is that I’m asking. But Lee, this is Danny we’re talking about. I know he and I have had our issues over the years, but I want to be a part of finding him and Madisyn if I can.”

  Lee patted her arm. “I appreciate that, sis. Really, I do. I can talk to Colonel Ryan about gettin’ your clearance expanded so you can stay up on current events, but I’ll only do that on one condition.”

  Katie studied him. “Which is?”

  “That you’ll do so from Madisyn’s apartment in Retaun.”

  “Oh, come on, Lee, don’t be ridic—”

  “Katie, this ain’t up for debate. You don’t get to play big sister here, okay? Not this time. Both the Kennox and the Praetorian are headed straight into combat in less than two days’ time, and I’ve got no clue what’s gonna happen beyond that. Now me, Mac, and the others? We’ve all trained for this, but you haven’t. Add to that the stone-cold fact that Mom and Dad would absolutely kill me if they knew I’d brought you out here, and there’s no way in hell I’m puttin’ you in the crosshairs on this.” His expression softened. “This is war, Katie, and people are gonna get hurt. I can’t control that. But what I can control is makin’ damn sure that you’re not one of ’em.”