Second Earth Read online

  SECOND

  EARTH

  Kestrel Saga: Book III

  A novel by

  Stephen A. Fender

  Edited by

  Lynda Dietz

  Published by

  JRP ©

  Jolly Rogers Productions

  Second Earth

  Copyright © 2013 Stephen A. Fender

  www.StephenFender.com

  First Edition: 2013

  Published through Jolly Rogers Productions (JRP) ©, a subsidiary division of StephenFender.com

  All rights reserved.

  Ordering information: [email protected]

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN: 1494232480

  ISBN13: 978-1494232481

  Cover art layout and rendering by Stephen Fender ©.

  I’d like to thank to my family, friends and fans that have been there through this process. I’m grateful for all of you, and each of you has a special place in my heart.

  I’d also like to thank my editor, Lynda. She spent countless hours going over this text, and it was time well spent. This novel is the culmination of a lot of hard work, and I’m exceedingly grateful for her assistance.

  I want to extend a very special thanks to my wife. Your support has been nothing short of amazing.

  All characters, settings, and events depicted in this novel are the sole intellectual property of Stephen Fender. Characters in this novel are not intended, nor should they be inferred by anyone, to represent actual living beings—either now or in the 24th century. That being said, I think we’d all like to hope that there will always be a Shawn Kestrel somewhere in the universe.

  “To see a World in a Grain of Sand

  And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

  Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

  And Eternity in an hour.

  A truth that’s told with bad intent

  Beats all the Lies you can invent.

  It is right it should be so;

  Man was made for Joy and Woe;

  And when this we rightly know

  Thro’ the World we safely go.

  Every Night and every Morn

  Some to Misery are Born.

  Every Morn and every Night

  Some are Born to sweet delight.

  …and Some are Born to Endless Night.”

  —William Blake

  Chapter 1

  To Shawn Kestrel, infinity had never looked so beautiful. Outside the cockpit of the Maelstrom fighter, the brilliant red and violet Carina Nebula stretched for ten parsecs in every direction. Even though the outer fringes of the diffuse nebulae were almost a thousand light-years away, Lieutenant Commander Shawn Kestrel still had the impression he could reach out and gather a handful of the charged space dust in his hands. The twin suns of Eta Carinae—hundreds of times more massive and over a million times the brilliance of the sun of Old Earth—were thankfully at the fighter’s stern as Shawn brought his craft level after a series of successful evasion maneuvers.

  Everything looks so beautiful out here, he mused. It’s hard to imagine that lying out there amongst the twinkling blue, green, and yellow stars could be an enemy force lying in wait, hell-bent on ending humanity’s reach for the heavens. It had been two weeks since the Unified Sector Command carrier Rhea had left the protection of Unified space for the quarantined planet Second Earth; two weeks of not knowing if or when another fleet of Sector Command starships would again vanish as the Valley Forge and her escorts had; two weeks of simulator training, shipboard drills, classroom studies, and actual patrol flying. While the former was still whispered about in the corridors and wardrooms of the supercarrier Rhea, Shawn Kestrel was nonetheless content with how well he was progressing toward the latter.

  A vid-call from Drake broke him free of his wistful stargazing. “Commander, you’re looking good. Prepare to execute an alpha-three turn on my mark.”

  Shawn placed a firm hand on the control stick of his fighter and got ready to perform the desired maneuver. Lieutenant I’rondus, call sign ‘Drake,’ was flying a parallel course behind him, watching and waiting for his commanding officer to begin his turn.

  Also with them was the fresh-faced Lieutenant Jerry ‘Nova’ Santorum. Playing the part of the aggressor, he had been trying his hardest to shoot his CO out of space with no positive results. In fact, his commander had, time and again, gotten the better of the younger pilot, blasting him from the stars in four different scenarios. Drake’s suggestion for Kestrel to perform the alpha-three maneuver was a sign to Nova that he likewise needed to put his own fighter into the proper position.

  Nova grunted into the intercom, dejected over the fact that he was probably about to die again. “Really, Drake? Don’t you think I’ve been killed enough for one day?”

  A three-dimensional image of Drake’s face appeared above Nova’s main display. “Lieutenant Commander Brunel wants to make sure the Skipper is fully versed in basic combat tactics out here. That means you’ll die as many times as is necessary to make sure that happens.”

  Nova rolled his eyes and slumped his shoulders. “Yeah, well…Raven isn’t the one out here getting her butt kicked.”

  Drake, the Rippers’ tactical officer, shook his head slowly. “Take it like a man, Lieutenant. We’ll be laughing at this later over drinks.”

  “Only as long as you’re buying, Drake,” Nova chortled back. “You still owe me from that little mishap in the Gorgon Sector three months ago.”

  Shawn watched on his own screen as Drake offered Nova a grandiose salute. “You got it, buddy. Commander Kestrel, are you ready?”

  Shawn nodded approvingly. “Ready, Drake. Executing.”

  With a slip of his wrist, Shawn sent the fighter into a hair-raising maneuver that would have caused even the staunchest of pilots in normal Earth atmosphere to lose his lunch. His sleek space interceptor dipped down, did a half-axial rotation to starboard and then abruptly did another half rotation, this time to port, as he engaged the twin thrusters at full power. The concept behind the maneuver was to ‘fake out’ a pursuing aggressor into believing that Shawn was heading off in one direction when in fact he was going toward another.

  Despite Nova’s best efforts at evasion, the alpha-three maneuver worked beautifully. Shawn was quickly behind the junior officer and in a perfect firing position on his tail. With a flick of the trigger on the control stick, Nova’s Maelstrom was strafed with simulated plasma bolts, and Shawn watched with morbid satisfaction as the fighter was deemed ‘totally destroyed’ by his ship’s onboard computer.

  “Well done, Commander,” Drake said over the communications channel. “You’ve really taken to these new fighters.”

  “I’ll say,” Nova replied dryly.

  “Old habits die hard, I guess,” Shawn replied to the three-dimensional image of Drake that was projected onto his cockpit monitor.

  Drake smiled. “You know, they try to make the simulators as close to the real thing as possible. I think they’ve missed a few of the nuances myself. There’s really nothing that can simulate what you can do with a real fighter out here in the void.”

  Shawn agreed completely. “That’s for sure. I’m just glad Raven talked Captain Krif into allowing me more flight time to learn some of the new tactics.” He brought his fighter into a perfect barrel roll, then pulled back up and aligned himself with Drake’s fighter. Nova wasn’t far behind, and soon the three fighters were in a V formation with Drake in the lead.

  “I think we’re done for the day, gentleman,” Drake offered. “Time to head for home. The Rhea will be arriving at jump gate one-five-nine in less than an hour.”

  The wonder of jumping still captivated Shawn. A hundred years ago, the
stable wormhole had finally been perfected. Using sub-light propulsion, the gates were sent out from every planet in the once-fledgling Unified Collaboration of Systems, a prelude to what would become known as the Golden Era of space exploration. Now stationed at various points across the charted galaxy, all one had to do was input the proper codes for one gate to communicate with another, lock it into the navigational computer, and let the ship’s jump drive initiate the tunnel. There were limitations of course, the main one being that a gate could only transmit to another that was in a pre-defined range, but that was only limited by the jump gate’s onboard transmitter, and someday soon even that barrier would be overcome. For now, it was a sub-light ‘crawl’ between gates. Thankfully, the gate closest to Second Earth was set as absolutely near to the planet as could be afforded, given the exotic nature of the artificial tunnel. The Rhea’s journey would still take another day or so, and Shawn was looking forward to the downtime.

  Realizing he still hadn’t acknowledged Lieutenant I’rondus’ transmission, Shawn tapped at his intercom. “Roger, Drake.”

  With that, the trio turned their formation one hundred eighty degrees and headed back to the Rhea, each pilot pulling down his face shield to protect himself from the brilliance of the Eta Carinae stars now squarely on their bows.

  * * *

  The gaping maw of the Rhea’s landing bay opened wide, like the mouth of a great space-born whale preparing to devour a swarm of plankton. Shawn brought his fighter in first, slowing to a near halt just before the ship’s guiding and landing beam, known as “the GLiB” by veterans, lightly snagged his fighter from space. The carrier’s onboard computer then took control of the fighter’s flight computer, guiding the sleek Maelstrom gently into a preprogrammed landing spot on one of the upper loading elevators. When the fighter’s magnetic landing pads were made fast to the deck, the elevator upon which the fighter was now positioned moved down on repulser beams, the opening above sealing itself with the closure of two large doors sliding into place. As the lift came to a halt on the main hangar deck, the interior atmosphere of the fighter began to equalize as Shawn removed his helmet.

  Shawn watched the bustle of activity outside his canopy with marked fascination. A small antigravity truck was fast approaching his position, ready to retrieve his fighter from the elevator in an instant. The fighter would then be tucked away inside a maintenance bay, reequipped and repaired if necessary, and then be positioned to prelaunch from one of the ten magnetically driven launch tubes that lined the port and starboard sides of the supercarrier. The entire evolution from landing to prelaunch, taking an average of ten minutes, was almost entirely automated by mechanized maintenance equipment—with the exception of any repairs that would need to be performed. Shawn was amazed at the crews’ level of efficiency, noting with satisfaction that it would have taken the same team of technicians twice as long to do the same job only a few years before.

  As the angular, bright yellow tow tractor neared the fighter, Shawn’s bubble-like canopy completed its opening sequence, and he hopped out onto a metal staircase that had locked itself into the starboard side of the fighter’s fuselage. He exchanged a friendly wave with the tractor’s multi-limbed Areelian driver and then made his way to the pilots’ briefing room for a post-mission review.

  Lieutenant Commander Brunel was there waiting when he arrived. Not long after, Nova and Drake appeared and the debriefing commenced. Thankfully, everything during the training mission had gone smoothly, so there was very little to talk about. Much to Shawn’s surprise, even Raven was full of praise, making very few recommendations about her new commanding officer’s performance.

  From there, Shawn had retired to his cabin to shower and change into off-duty attire, only to be confronted with his computer terminal notifying him that someone had left a message for him in his absence. When the computer asked in its perfunctory female voice if he’d like to have the message read aloud, he declined the offer with the push of a small button. With the computers still not working at one hundred percent, the last thing Shawn wanted was for the amatory voice of the ship’s computer to read aloud a verbal lashing from Krif.

  As he read the name of the originator, a large smile crept across his tired face. Melissa Graves wanted to meet him for dinner in the observation deck. The two had hardly seen each other in the last week; unfortunately, Shawn had been too busy flying, and when he did have a chance to see her, she was neck-deep in mission preparation, planning for their pending investigation of Second Earth. Shawn had to admit to himself that he was tired, both physically and mentally, from the last few flights he had been on. However, the simple fact remained that he cared for Melissa—even if he’d never fully admitted those words to himself, much less to her. To do so would have been too dangerous, he often told himself, although he never really defined in his mind what ‘dangerous’ meant. After hastily crafting a reply, he showered and changed, and then headed up to the observation deck, one of the few compartments on the Rhea that was blessedly un-military in both form and function.

  Twenty minutes later he found himself in a familiar corridor just beyond the lounge. Before he entered the space, he passed near a computer terminal on the bulkhead, and it seemed second nature to him that he should scowl at it. He remembered with disdain the last time he’d encountered this particular hunk of mechanized debris. Unconsciously, he moved to the opposite side of the corridor from the terminal to avoid any unwanted attention. Nonetheless, the terminal seemed to sense his presence, and the synthesized voice sprang from the speaker.

  “Good afternoon, Lieutenant Commander Kestrel. Can I be of any assistance to you? Ready for query.”

  “Um, no thank you,” he stammered cautiously as he attempted to slip past the computer. “I’m just on my way to see someone.” He had no idea why he was talking to the computer as if it were any other crewmen—albeit one he didn’t care to interact with.

  “Well, if you require anything, please let me be of service to you. I’ve been programmed with a plethora of information, and can assist with any query you might have. I hope your meeting with ‘someone’ goes well.”

  He regarded the computer dubiously for a moment, then laughed to himself, wondering if computers these days took things personally. For some reason, the idea of apologizing to the computer about the last time they’d met crossed his mind, but then he realized the thought of doing so might qualify him as insane. Apologize to a computer, he pondered as he shook his head in disbelief. What’s wrong with me? Next thing you know I’ll be singing bedtime lullabies to Sylvia’s Delight. Then, my friend, it’s only a quick off-ramp to the funny farm.

  Rounding the final corner, he made his way into the observation deck, noting from the expansive view that the Rhea had traversed the final jump gate at some point after he had landed. A small blue-white sphere, a precious sapphire against the blackness of space, was hanging almost parallel with the front of the Rhea. Second Earth, he thought. We’ll be there within the next day or so at this rate. Suddenly feeling a great sorrow, he tried to dash it away with a deep sigh.

  Turning from the view, he scanned the compartment and found Melissa on the top deck of the lounge, having seated herself in the center of the horseshoe-shaped balcony that lined the entire room. Taking a small, two-man lift to the top level, Shawn could see from her expression that she was deep in thought as she gazed out at the distant planet. As he neared the table, he reached for a chair and pulled it back slowly. Even though her eyes were focused elsewhere, Shawn watched as she grinned happily at his arrival.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  Shawn quickly glanced at his watch. “By less than five minutes.”

  “Sometimes it takes less time than that to make all the difference in the universe.”

  “Can I talk my way out of the court-martial?”

  She turned her sparkling emerald eyes to him and nodded softly. “Take a seat and we’ll discuss it.”

  Shawn, trying first to hide his e
xcitement over seeing her by presenting a calm façade, quickly failed in that regard as he beamed like a love-struck schoolboy at the auburn-haired beauty before him. He sat in the plush chair and got comfortable, noticing a tall glass of ice water before him. Sure that he was smiling like an idiot, he turned his attention to the expanse of space outside the large view ports. “What’s on your mind, Miss Graves?”

  “You haven’t seen me for a week and that’s all you have to ask?” she replied in mock anger.

  Entirely unable to stop smiling, he shrugged evasively without glancing back at her.

  “What?” she asked defensively. “Can’t I just ask a friend to get together for a drink?”

  Still not looking at her, Shawn reached for his glass of water and took a slow sip. “There. I had a drink.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of her shoulders slumping in resignation. “Oh, fine. I—”

  “Yes?” he asked as he turned sharply toward her.

  The quick maneuver seemed to catch her off guard. She smiled shyly, then cast her eyes down to the glass in front of her. “I was…I was just wondering how you were doing. Is that a crime?”

  “Not the last time I checked,” he conceded with a smirk. “But, speaking of crimes, thanks for getting Trent out of the brig a few days ago.”

  She dismissed his gratitude with a wave of her hand. “It was nothing, really.”

  Shawn turned fully, leaning over the table and fastening his eyes to hers. “No. It was something. It really was, to both of us.”

  Melissa sipped at her drink. “He’s still under supervision. Captain Krif hasn’t let him completely off the hook just yet.”

  It had been less than two weeks ago that Krif, convinced that Trent Maddox posed a threat to ship’s security, had thrown the mechanic into the brig along with Lieutenant Garcia—the lone survivor of the doomed cruiser Icarus. The memory of that altercation still burned fiercely in Shawn’s mind, and he knew he wouldn’t forget it until he had a chance to return the favor to Dick Krif. “I’m sure we’ll clear his name soon enough.”