Forged in Darkness Read online

  Reyes quickly stepped toward the control panel and switched surveillance feeds to show Finch and Harts in the corridor.

  The two stood next to each other, unmoving. Jack and Reyes watched, hypnotized by the strange behavior. Then the two began to tip their heads backward in a jerking motion. Their mouths opened as if to catch falling rain. They moved in perfect coordination.

  Reyes turned to Jack with an ashen face and open mouth. “What are they doing?” Her voice crackled, upset and angry.

  Jack had seen a lot since he’d been drafted into the Fleet Marines, but there was something truly disturbing about the bizarre behavior from Finch and Harts.

  “What’s that?” Reyes asked, moving closer to the image.

  Jack didn’t see anything unusual, at least nothing more unusual than their behavior.

  Reyes pointed. A fine black mist rose from their mouths.

  The double-doors opened and a nurse stepped out. Finch and Harts closed their mouths, dropped their heads, and began walking forward.

  “What the krav are they doing?” Jack leaned in and looked more closely. Finch and Harts walked perfectly in step, their arms swinging perfectly in sync.

  “He should be dead,” Reyes shouted at the image. “You should be dead. I killed you.”

  Jack tapped the controls and canceled the surveillance image. He put his arm around Reyes. “There’s something not right with those two. I’m going to Visser right now. If this isn’t a case for Fleet Intelligence, I don’t know what is.”

  “What are you going to tell her? That we killed Finch? They’ll hang us both.”

  Slim wandered over and put a hand on Reyes’s shoulder. “Don’t shout about it, Rey,” he said softly. Slim looked at Jack. “What will you say?”

  “I think this weird behavior is enough. And what is that black kravin mess in their mouths? I’m going to Visser now.”

  Picking up his coffee, Jack realized he was shaking. The coffee was cold and it spilled over his hands. He noticed that Reyes was quiet. Slim gave Reyes a pat on the shoulder and went back to work.

  “Don’t worry, Sarah,” Jack said, taking his arm from around Reyes. “I’m an officer now. I can fix this.”

  The captain’s voice burst over the ship-wide address system, echoing in the huge maintenance hangar.

  “All hands. The Scorpio will be moving to high velocity. We are heading to the outer system on a mission to smash the Chitins. We will be running silent. From this moment on, there will be no EM communications. No off-ship communications of any kind. No internal EM communications after this address. The engines will be powered down. We are heading into the dark alone, but we will have all the people behind us. They are counting on us and I know I can count on you. Pretorius out.”

  5

  Agent Visser watched the surveillance footage on her desktop holostage while Jack paced. She had watched and re-watched the feed several times. Jack wondered what she could be looking for, and then she looked up at Jack.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at here, Jack.” She sat back in her chair.

  “What are they doing?” Jack stepped up to Visser’s deck. “Look at them.”

  Visser swiped her hand across the holoimage and ran through the hologram recording at double-speed. Finch and Harts were tipping their heads backward and opening their mouths. “They are just stretching and yawning. It’s nothing.”

  His mouth fell open in surprise and incredulity, and he stared at her. It took him a moment to recover his voice. “Stretching?”

  “They are both exhausted. They were left on that moon for weeks.”

  “But look.” Jack flicked the image back and showed them tipping their heads backward again. “They are doing it together, perfectly in time. Does that not look strange to you?”

  “They spent a lot of time together. Relying on each other. Working as a team to keep going. I’m not surprised they are responsive to each other’s emotional and physical states.”

  Looking at Visser, Jack tried to determine if she was playing with him. Could she not see the obviously strange behavior? “But what about that mess in their mouths?” Jack flicked the image forward to the point where Finch and Harts were standing in the corridor. He pointed at the mist of fine threads writhing in their open mouths.

  “Shadows,” Visser said without hesitation.

  Jack was stunned. “Shadows? They’re not shadows. There’s something in there.”

  “Just a few shadows, Jack. These hologram recordings are not perfect. I’ve watched hundreds of hours of surveillance footage and sometimes, the data throws up strange images. There’s nothing to worry about here.”

  Pushing himself back off Visser’s desk, Jack thought he saw a mischievous twinkle in Visser’s eye.

  “Unless you know something else, Jack.” Visser leaned forward. “Unless you know something that would convince me that Finch is somehow not himself. Jack, you got anything to tell me? Anything you’ve been keeping from me?” Visser stood up, her voice rising. “Anything you may have failed to mention earlier that you now wish to divulge? Any evidence about what happened to Finch on that moon?”

  Jack staggered back under the sudden onslaught. He knew she still suspected something had happened on that moon during the Battle of Kratos Fuel Station. Visser was clever, suspicious, and devious. Even now she wanted the truth from Jack about what had happened, but Jack knew the truth would condemn him and Reyes.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Jack said meekly. “He went missing.”

  “And now he’s back.” Visser lowered her voice and sat back in her chair. “Have you ever tested a meat suit’s survival system? The meat suit can keep a Marine alive for days in open space. Weeks on an asteroid if the surface material can be processed to prolong the effectiveness of the nutrient delivery system. The suit can maintain life for months on a planet with a gaseous atmosphere and some basic fauna. It can manufacture enough calories and liquid water to sustain a Marine physically, even through the longest period of isolation. It’s a brilliant piece of technology. But do you know what it can’t maintain? It can’t maintain your mind.” Visser tapped the side of her head. “Isolation drives even the toughest Marines to despair. We need water, Jack, and we need food, but we also need each other. Even with training, an iron will, and a fully functioning meat suit, an isolated Marine will get a few asteroids floating loose in the brain. Frankly, Jack, I’m surprised Finch and Harts are in as good of shape as they are.”

  Jack took a step back toward the door of Visser’s little office. He knew it was a sign of guilt that he wanted to leave, and he saw that register in Visser’s eye. Jack felt as if she was hunting down the truth and Jack’s unease was a sign to her that she was on the trail of her prey.

  If there was one thing that Jack had learned during his time in the fleet Marines, it was that attack can often be the best form of defense. He stepped up to Visser’s desk. It was a gamble, but Jack thought it was worth it.

  “Where are Finch and Harts now?”

  Visser smiled up at Jack. She appeared cool and unnerved by this challenge. Jack guessed Visser was clever and a great student of human behavior. She might well have anticipated this move. He realized now that she could easily dismiss this gambit and refuse to locate and observe them now. Her hand moved toward the holostage control panel. It was only a slight movement, but Jack saw it. Jack had also learned to detect the slightest movement and discern quickly if it was a threat.

  Visser shrugged and tapped a few keys. The holoimage showed Finch standing in a corridor. He was facing an internal communication control console.

  “Finch is in the aft section, near the main fusion reactor access corridor.”

  Jack moved the image of Finch to one side of the holostage. “And Harts,” he asked.

  Visser looked at Jack with a hint of annoyance and then tapped the panel to call up a holoimage of Harts.

  Harts was standing in front of a control panel in another co
rridor.

  “Near the Marine deck. Probably grabbing some sack time in his bunk.” Visser looked up at Jack as if to accuse him of being overly suspicious.

  Jack had spent a long time with Harts during their training. He had been deceived by Harts, it was true, but he had come to know him too. The slump to Harts’ shoulders was not characteristic. Harts was confident and brazen. The Marine on the holoimage was hunched, slumped, a little bit broken.

  Then, both Finch and Harts reached out and touched the control panel in front of them. Their hands rose and their fingers pressed against the smooth console cover. They did it slowly and in perfect synchronization. Harts’ head slumped forward as he pressed his fingers to the console. Finch stood upright, rigid. Then, in a perfectly coordinated movement, both tipped their heads back in a jerky motion.

  Jack looked on, horrified. He saw Visser slowly lean forward, her eyes wide.

  Jack looked at Visser.

  The door burst open and a crewman stepped in. “The captain,” he said breathlessly. “All active officers to the command deck immediately.” The man disappeared after communicating the summons.

  Jack hesitated for a fraction of a second. He knew that he was being summoned but it took a moment to register.

  Visser was up and out of her chair in an instant. She looked at Jack sternly.

  “That means you too, Commander,” she said.

  Jack looked at the holoimage of Finch and Harts. They had stepped away from the control panels and were walking along the corridors. Jack noticed they were in step and moving at the same pace.

  Visser canceled the surveillance feed. The holoimage flickered and disappeared.

  “Commander. Move.” Visser stepped around her desk and toward Jack.

  Jack moved to the office door and out into the corridor beyond, but still his eyes and his mind were on the holostage and the behavior he’d seen from Finch and Harts.

  “There’s something wrong with those two,” Jack insisted, almost mumbling to himself.

  Visser gave him a shove. “Not now, Commander. One thing at a time. We need to get to the command deck.”

  6

  The command deck was alive with activity. The captain was standing at the holostage with Commander Chou. Commanders Griff and Matavesi were already present but looked as if they had just arrived. Both were red-faced and covered in a slight sheen of sweat. It was a long run from the Marine quarters.

  The holostage showed the Scorpio on one side. It was small, the size of a candy bar, on the large holostage. No planets were in the image. Jack spotted the pointers at the edge of the display showing the directions and distances to the Monarch Carrier Group, as well as to the human home planet of Eros and the system’s star. As Jack stepped up and took his position at the holostage, he saw the mass of signals on the far side, opposite the small image of the Scorpio. Jack recognized the shapes. He’d seen these before. He had never seen this many. This had to be a composite image, Jack thought. The signals ahead were Chitin craft.

  “We are running silent and we are running dark.” The captain’s voice was calm. “Our passive scans revealed a large signal on our flight path. We were able to access a nearby micro buoy sensor swarm and were able to partially resolve the image.”

  Captain Pretorius nodded to Commander Chou, who tapped the display and zoomed in on the mass of Chitin craft.

  Jack immediately recognized the largest craft. He counted four of the Chitin Leviathans. The fleet had only ever taken down one Leviathan. That had been during the Battle of Kratos Fuel Station, where Jack and 6th squad had turned the Chitin technology against their own craft, causing a massive feedback surge that had destroyed the large ship. Fleet Command back on Eros was no doubt using that information to discover some method of destroying Leviathans in open space, but Jack doubted the Scorpio was equipped with such a system. He doubted any one destroyer could take on a Leviathan and survive. Jack was certain that even with a super weapon, the Scorpio would not last long against four of them.

  The commanders let out an audible gasp of surprise. Only Jack and Visser remained cool as they assimilated the new information.

  The four Leviathans sat at the center of the vessel swarm. Surrounding them were dozens of the smaller Chitin craft, the Hydra-class combat vessels. These were tough ships. Only a few could overwhelm a destroyer’s defenses. It was the Hydra craft that often attached themselves to the hull of a fleet craft, cut their way in, and infiltrated the ships. The Scorpio had been boarded twice already, losing many Marines in combat and several crew members that had been abducted by Chitin boarding parties.

  The Hydra-class craft swarmed around the much larger Leviathans. Further out, the image was indistinct. There were small blotches where the passive scan had failed to resolve the image further. Jack guessed these were the Krakens, the small infiltration fighters. These craft were possibly unpiloted craft that swarmed ahead of the Hydras and soaked up the defensive fire from the fleet ships. The blobs on the holoimage seemed to show dozens of squadrons of Kraken fighter craft holding formation around the larger ships. There must have been several hundred.

  Jack leaned on the holostage. His head dropped.

  “What we have here,” the captain began, “is a Chitin armada. There are more craft here than the fleet can muster, probably twice as many. This is quite a force.” The captain sounded almost impressed.

  “We’ve not seen this many Chitin craft in all the engagements combined.” Visser sounded calm.

  “We can’t fight them. We wouldn’t last a moment,” Pretorius said. “And they are close. Only an hour away at their top speed.”

  Jack felt a shudder run down his spine. He’d fought the Chits on asteroids and moons across the system. He had always fought them face to shiny, tooth-filled face. Now he was trapped in the composite belly of the Scorpio. He wouldn’t have a chance to even fire a shot.

  “We need to let the fleet know,” Griff said. “If this armada gets to the inner system…” he trailed off.

  “We can’t contact the fleet and maintain silent and dark running. We would light up like a small sun and they would be on us.”

  Pretorius tapped the holostage and shrank the image down so the Scorpio was at the center of the image, the size of a peanut. The armada sat at the outer edge of the image. Jack was transfixed by it. The Chitin armada was now represented by a larger, single blob. On this scale, the armada looked to be the size and shape of a large yam. It flickered away and looked innocuous enough, but Jack knew the deadly threat that lay there.

  “So we turn and head back in system.” Matavesi looked around the holostage for support.

  “Same problem, Commander,” Pretorius said in a soft, calm voice. “Our engines will give away our position the moment we prime the fusion reactor. It’ll take us longer to turn the Scorpio and initiate a main burn than it will for their Krakens to swarm us. We won’t even make it to half-speed before they engage us. And even with the best ship, in the best condition, that engagement would be cruelly brief.”

  “So, if we are cursed if we do and cursed if we don’t, we must do the best we can.” Visser’s voice cracked slightly as she ran out of breath. “Alert Fleet Command of this armada and prepare for combat. We’ll make a stand and give the fleet a chance to prepare for this Chitin armada.”

  “Brave, Agent Visser,” Captain Pretorius said. “But we do have orders and a mission. For all we know, the Chitins already know where the fleet is and is tracking it using the outer system surveillance network we are going to destroy. If we can knock out that network, we will blind the Chits and I think that will give us the best chance of defeating them. Once we’ve completed our mission, we can alert the fleet and wait bravely for the attack to make our heroic last stand.”

  Jack nodded. He didn’t want to shy away from a fight, but he didn’t want to throw himself to certain destruction. The rest of the officers were in agreement.

  “There’s just one problem.” The captain placed his h
ands behind his back. “We are heading directly toward them.”

  The commanders all looked at Pretorius. The captain spoke so matter-of-factly, it was as if he had just told them the mess hall had run out of lettuce. The fact that the Scorpio was flying headlong into the greatest concentration of Chitin craft ever observed seemed to Jack to be the most important fact ever in the history of the fleet.

  “We can’t run,” Pretorius said, “but we can hide.”

  Commander Chou expanded the image of the Chitin armada so it filled the holostage. The image was blurry. The various craft on the image moved as the data collected from the passive scans was fed into the image in real time.

  “The fleet doesn’t know for sure what detection system the Chitins are using, but we suspect it has something to do with our energy signature. Our engines and weapons seem to attract attention pretty quickly. This is why we are running on momentum alone.”

  The flickering image started to give Jack a headache. He looked more closely at the armada to see if he could find any weakness in their formation.

  Pretorius went on, “The Monarch and the Overlord Carrier Groups are scheduled to begin two massive attacks on Chitin positions that should create a massive signal that will cover our advance to the outer system.”

  Jack looked up to the captain. The man was calm while Jack detected signs of nervousness on everyone else, signs he recognized in himself.

  Pretorius tugged his cuffs. “If we stay quiet, we could drift right through them.”

  Jack felt his breath catch in his chest. His heart beat hard. He looked at the image of the armada. Hundreds of ships. It was impossible. It was suicide.

  “How…” Visser began, then stopped. Jack watched her as she studied the armada again. “How…” she failed to finish her sentence again.

  Pretorius tapped the control panel. The armada shrank to the side of the stage until it was on the scale that showed the Scorpio. A line that projected the course of the Scorpio appeared on the holostage, leading from the Scorpio to the heart of the Chitin armada.