cast disrespect on all that you have done for our people, you know that. No man has fought more bravely than you. You have been an inspiration to many for more than two decades. And you will not be soon forgotten.
Tobin nervously paced the hangar deck while Ensign Mendez and a few members of the Aurora’s crew finished unloading the molo from his ship. The ensign noticed Tobin’s anxiety and stopped to inquire. “Everything all right, Tobin?”
“Yes, yes, everything is fine. Why do you ask?”
“You seem a little anxious,” Mendez told him.
“I’m just in a hurry to retrieve your crew from the surface,” Tobin insisted.
“Yeah, you and the XO, both.” Tobin ignored the ensign’s words, returning to his ship, pretending to inspect one of his thrusters. Mendez watched Tobin as he returned to the ship to carry another load of molo.
A few minutes later, Tobin’s ship was unloaded. “That’s the last of it,” Mendez told Tobin.
“Excellent,” Tobin declared, as he strode back up the ramp to his ship.
“Do you need any fuel or anything?” Mendez asked.
“No thank you, ensign. I have quite enough,” he assured him as he headed for the cockpit.
Mendez headed down the ramp. No sooner had he stepped off the ramp than it began to fold back up into Tobin’s ship. A moment later, his ship began to back up slowly, pivoting to bring its nose facing aft before it began to roll forward toward the transfer airlocks. Ensign Mendez was forced to quicken his stride in order to get clear of Tobin’s ship. “Damn, that guy’s in a hurry,” Mendez exclaimed to the sergeant as he reached the edge of the bay.
Just offshore, a small, unmarked ship sped toward the coastline. Even though its body never touched the water, its turbulent wake of thrust still parted the waters below as it hurtled across the shoreline and continued inward. Within seconds it reached Haven City, decelerating quickly as it approached the space port. No one challenged its arrival, and no one questioned its purpose. All who noticed it also knew they were better served to look away.
The ship bypassed the usual approach paths, instead skimming over the rows of berths until it reached its destination. Upon reaching its target, it dropped quickly to the deck, its landing gear extruding to full deployment a fraction of a second before the ship touched down, her boarding ramp deploying before she had even landed.
The cargo shuttle from the Aurora’s harvesting crew had just finished off-loading the shipment when the strange ship swooped down and landed next to them in their berth. It had been quite unexpected, and the pilot of the cargo shuttle was more than irritated.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” he hollered as he strode arrogantly toward the unmarked ship’s boarding ramp. This is a private-”
A blast from a well-aimed energy weapon ended both his sentence and his life as it struck him square in the chest, hurtling him backwards at least two meters. He landed in a smoking heap directly in front of the indentured workers he had been ordering about only a few seconds earlier. The workers stared in disbelief at the sizzling chest wound on the body of their pilot.
Their disbelief quickly turned to horror as a dozen assault troops clad in black and gray armor poured out of the unmarked ship, their silenced energy weapons firing in almost inaudible clicks as they quickly dispatched their targets with pinpoint accuracy. The attackers quickly fanned out to either side, their weapons quietly clicking as they fired, the grunts and muffled cries of their victims, each one’s life ending with the sound of their own sizzling wounds. Within seconds, the assault was over and the workers lay smoking on the tarmac in much the same condition as their pilot.
“Clear!” the lead soldier called out.
A moment later, their commanding officer stepped out of the ship, surveying the scene from the top of the boarding ramp. “Get rid of the bodies and clean this place up,” he ordered as he descended the ramp. Another dozen troops deployed from the ship behind him. He turned around to see that the rest of his men had disembarked, then signaled to the pilot he was clear to depart. The ships engines, which had not been shutdown, spun back up quickly and the ship lifted off once more, heading off deeper into the countryside.
“Halo flight taking up control station inland,” the pilot announced over the commander’s comm-set.
“Copy that, Halo flight. Team two will contact you when they are ready for extraction.” The commander strode into the middle of the berth, watching as his men dragged the bodies of the workers into the nearby buildings. “We’ve got ten minutes until the next ship arrives, so let’s get to it!”
A few minutes later, the squad leader approached his commander. “All bodies are secure, sir,” he reported as he snapped a salute.
“And your assault team?”
“Positioned undercover in the service building, sir.”
“Very well,” the commander said, turning to head toward the captured cargo shuttle. “Mount up!” he ordered. The two rows of eight fully armored troops ran up the rear loading ramp of the bulky old cargo shuttle that had belonged to the harvesting team.
The commander touched the comm-band around his neck and began to speak. “Halo flight, Team One.”
“Go for Halo flight.”
“Halo flight, Team One. You may start the music.”
“Copy Team One, starting the music.”
The commander took one last glance around the berth as he turned and headed up the loading ramp into the cargo shuttle. Moments later, the old shuttle’s engines spun up and it began to taxi out of the berth.
“Sir?” Ensign Yosef called. “Tobin’s shuttle is not headed for the same coordinates as before.”
Cameron was standing behind the helm station, and turned toward Kaylah. “Where’s he headed then?”
“I’m not sure-”
“XO, Hangar Bay,” Cameron’s comm-set interrupted.
“Go ahead, Hangar Bay,” Cameron answered over her comm.
“Mendez, sir. I’m not sure it means anything, but Tobin was acting a little odd.”
“What do you mean, odd?”
“Sir,” Ensign Yosef interrupted. “I think Tobin’s headed for the spaceport.”
“He seemed anxious, like he was in a hurry,” Mendez reported.
“Standby one,” Cameron said over the comms before turning back to Kaylah. “Are you sure?”
“Well, the entry trajectory does suggest the port as his destination. But there isn’t much difference between heading for Haven or heading to the countryside outside of Haven.”
“There is if you’re a pilot, Kaylah,” Cameron insisted. “Maybe he’s going for fuel first?”
“Commander,” Mendez interrupted, having overhead their conversation through Cameron’s open mic. “I offered him a chance to fuel up before he left. He told me he had plenty.”
“That is odd,” Cameron mumbled, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Keep a close track on him, Kaylah.”
“Aye, sir.”
“So the emitters are not multi-purpose after all?” Vladimir asked, seeming somewhat confused.
“No, they are not,” Deliza explained. “Each emitter node can only generate a specific type of field, without variance. It’s only variation is the intensity of the field.”
“And by mixing the intensities of different combinations of emitters, different types of fields can be created.”
“Correct.”
Vladimir scratched his head. This teenage girl had been lecturing to him for nearly an hour, and he felt no closer to understanding the fighter’s shield system than he did in the beginning.
Deliza rolled her eyes, obviously losing patience with him. “That is how the system can not only change the type of shield being generated but can also alter the configuration of only certain portions of the overall field.”
“You mean between ablative and reflective, of course.”
“Of course. If you wish to accelerate to superluminal velocities, then the entire field must be configured for mass reduction only. To introduce any of the other nodes would destabilize the mass reduction field.”
“Bozhe Moi,” Vladimir exclaimed. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen, why do you ask?”
