The last person in the line needed no introduction. It took all his will to move the next step. Aaron could recall promising himself to shoot her on sight—if he ever saw her again. That was a little extreme, since when he last saw her, he believed she’d betrayed him and the Fleet.
Now he knew otherwise.
She wasn’t a traitor. Far from. Still, she’d been willing to sacrifice him to maintain her cover and complete her mission to expose the rest of Ben James’ accomplices. Maybe he was taking it a little too personal.
She swallowed when he stepped in front her. “Lieutenant Rachael Delaine. United Star Systems Bureau of Intelligence.”
“Oh? No longer a civilian spy?” He hadn’t forgotten the lengthy lecture she’d given him on the difference between Fleet Intelligence officers, and their civilian counterparts.
“I accepted a transfer to Fleet Intelligence. It was the only way Shepherd would allow me to take a permanent posting aboard a starship. I—”
“Very well then, Lieutenant. Welcome aboard. I and the rest of the crew await your mission briefing at eighteen hundred. Briefing room.”
She bit her lip. “Of course, Commander.”
Aaron walked back to stand a few feet in front the line. He used his handheld and took a two-second recording of them.
“Take a good look at the person next to you, and the others down the line. Many of you are already familiar with each other. Some, more so than others. I’ve been off exploring my own final frontier inside my head these past few months, while you no doubt, hopefully, have become more than strangers. You’re a family. This ship is your home. Care for it, and it will care for you. Deep space assignments can be lengthy. The bulkheads and overhead can sometimes seem to shrink. It can get lonely. A crew of less than twenty is your only contact for hundreds of light years. But I’ve come to realize all a captain needs is a good ship, and a good crew. And all they need is a good captain and faith in each other. Together there’s no challenge we can’t overcome. The Fleet is a beacon of stability in this chaotic space age. We serve the Fleet and the Fleet serves the hope of all our people. Hope for peace—among all the enclaves. Let’s get to it.”
A chorus of acknowledgements filled the hangar deck. Max strolled over with his anti-grav tray of equipment in tow.
“Great speech, Aaron. One for the books. Not too over the top, little of drama in some parts. But altogether not really your style.”
Obviously, the doctor was trying to determine if any behavioral differences might be a side effect of Aaron’s comatose state these past few months, and his painful recollection of memories. He didn’t know the answer himself. Max was right, speeches . . . ceremonies and everything that went with it wasn’t his style. But Aaron felt this was the beginning of something special.
After all, he’d practically been dead the past few months. Surely no one would mind him indulging in some melodrama.
“I promise you, Max, when I find out, you’ll be the first to know. Now let’s get you settled in shall we?” Max appeared to study him for a long moment, then moved silently along. A rush filled Aaron’s chest as he walked with his friend.
He felt truly alive again.
Chapter 9 – Shame
“Seek and ye shall find, my young friend” – Doctor Max Tanner
Phoenix
Ten light-years to wormhole
Aaron stretched and put down the book he’d been reading. He had a modest collection of old paper books. When he entered his ready-room for the first time since taking official command of Phoenix, emotion threatened to overwhelm his composure. His palms were still sore from where he’d dug his nails into them.
The source of his anxiety was the neatly placed book at his workstation, his favorite reading materiaclass="underline" “Twenty-First Century Earth: A Comprehensive History”. It told him that Vee knew he was coming back. And his former XO knew how sentimental he was about that book.
He’d spent the previous two days reading and touring the ship. Only two days left until they reached the anomaly. Everyone was a little anxious about what they’d find beyond the wormhole, but they all remained in good spirits. There was nothing more to be done, the ship was functioning at peak efficiency. Apart from Ayres and the marines, the others had undertaken three covert missions under Vee’s command while Aaron languished in a hospital bed. Before that, four of them, Lee, Delaine, Miroslav and Max had journeyed together for a month on the long trip to the Border Worlds.
A covert operations crew functioned somewhat different compared to those assigned to deep space. While on deep-space assignment, a covert ops ship could find itself well outside the logistical reach of the Fleet. This made crew redundancy a concern. What happened if a critical crew member was somehow incapacitated—the engineer or the primary helm officer? Phoenix was designed for a specific mission set and only had the personnel required for that mission. Get in, get the job done, get out, and get debriefed. It’s true you couldn’t plan for every eventuality. But if you crewed and operated a covert operations vessel the same as a regular Fleet vessel, what was the point? The concept was similar to the reasons for covert vessels operating singular. You didn’t dispatch a taskforce to conduct a meticulous and discreet operation. Similar to infantry Special Forces unit, whose members had advanced training in a plethora of disciplines, each crew member aboard Phoenix had been exposed to the same with regard to shipboard operations.
Covert operations crew personnel also received advanced cross-training in different disciplines. When it came to ship repairs and maintenance, many contemporary ship operations were automated, including damage control, unlike previous generations of starships.
In case of rare equipment failure though, engineers still received advanced training in ship systems, to mitigate repair system failures. They understood the principles of the technology and how it worked. The work was still very technical, and it wasn’t such that a layperson could read basic instructions and have the computer do all the work.
Everyone aboard could fly the ship, but Miroslav was the best among them. Flaps, had a natural and well-trained ability, harnessed by his instructors at the Academy. Similarly, they all received advanced marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat training. But Aaron didn’t intend to put those skills to the test anytime soon in any serious match against his recon marines.
When it came to security, the United Fleet vetted covert operations personnel at the highest ethical standards. It wouldn’t do to have serious breaches of information or operational security from within your own elite group. The intelligence missions undertaken by similar Special Forces throughout history proved critical in many conflicts or wars, many of these conflicts occurred well outside the knowledge of the general populace.
Aaron stretched and looked at the enlarged USSF emblem on the bulkhead—an image of an old starship breaching Earth’s atmosphere. Captain Tyler Quinn had only commanded Earth’s first warp-capable starship for six minutes. His sacrifice saved millions of lives.
Aaron’s thoughts came around full circle until he remembered the datachip Max gave him. For your eyes only, Max had said. Not even the doctor knows what it is. He pulled it out and downloaded the contents onto his handheld. There was a letter from his mother.
My son: