3: Illusions can be Deceiving

"Have you figured it out yet?"

Nera started.

Kaidara lowered herself onto the nose of Nera's pod, seating herself next to the pilot.

Nera shook her tired head. "Nope." She chewed her lip some more, her brow furrowing in thought. "I've done every sim ever created and I've found nothing. Nothing, that could explain how they got all the way out here, anyway. We're less than a day away now, and I still don't know."

Kaidara was silent, waiting.

"There's . . Something," Nera continued with a frustrated sigh. "Something we've never come across before."

"New technology?"

"Could be," Nera admitted, "but I just don't know what." She rubbed her face, wishing her headache would go pound on someone else. "And I'm so tired," she said softly, "that I can't think, except about those sims."

"Come on," said Kaidara cheerily, "let's go do something to take your mind off it."

Nera frowned. "But we're so close . . ."

"What better reason for you and I to fly recce? You know, get a look around, keep our skills sharp. Don't make me order you, Captain."

Despite her fatigue, Nera grinned. "No, Ma'am, wouldn't dream of it."

Kaidara hopped down. "Come on, then, I'll bet I'll be in space first!"

"Hey, no fair!"

Both pilots breezed through the procedures with the ease of experience and even though Kaidara met space first, there were no hard feelings between the two and they flew in companionable silence for several minutes.

"Awfully quiet this close to the Zone," Kaidara commented.

Nera yanked her concentration back to the present. After taking a quick look around with her scanners, she had to agree. "Yeah," she said, "I don't like this at all."

"I've got a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach."

"Roger that," Nera said. "Have any of the other patrols seen anything?"

Kaidara tapped in a query to the main computer aboard the Papillion. "No," she told Nera, "not a thing's been reported by anyone."

Something began to gnaw at the back of Nera's mind. "It's wrong," she murmured, "all wrong."

"What?" Kaidara demanded. "What's wrong?"

Nera threw her ship in a sweeping turn, trying to look everywhere at once. Kaidara's questions went unheeded as she tried to figure out what was bothering her so.

"I don't know," she finally said, halting her crazy antics. "There's something about this that's just . . odd. Out of place, or --" She gasped. "Or hidden! Look!" Nera pointed, forgetting that Kaidara couldn't see. "Over there! Those asteroids! We have to get back! We have to get back right now! Come on!"

"What? Have you lost your mind?" Kaidara frowned worriedly at her vice, wondering if perhaps all the stress had finally made her snap.

"No, no, this is for real! Quick! They'll be here soon!"

"Who?"

Nera didn't answer. She jerked her pod around in a gut-wrenching turn, facing Kaidara and the Papillion in the distance.

"What are you doing?" Kaidara demanded through clenched teeth, spinning away and down to avoid a collision.

"We have to get back to the ship!" Nera winced inwardly at the slightly hysterical edge to her voice.

"We're not even out to full recce distance."

"Kaidara! Listen to me! GET BACK TO THE SHIP!" She threw the switches for an emergency override, slamming the ship into overdrive and streaking back toward the Papillion. She ignored Kaidara's outraged holler, but continued on, her face taut with concern and concentration for the skill she would need to halt her pod before slamming right into the hull of her ship. The metal screamed around her, red lights coming on everywhere, as Nera fought her small craft, spinning slightly as she regained control.

"Mayday, mayday," she radioed the ship, "I need emergency clearance to land. I'm coming in now!"

The techs raced to cover, the emergency personnel scrambling to cushion Nera's landing. Even before the pod actually stopped, Nera leaped out of the cockpit and grabbed a comm unit from out of the startled techie's hand. "Whoever this is," she gasped, breathing hard from her exertions, "get me Colonel Veek! Now!" she added, as Kaidara's pod touched down gently to the deck.

Throwing the hand unit back to the technician, Nera sprinted for the exit. She ran through the decontam procedures, ignoring the alarms ringing as she bypassed the security measures. She pounded through the corridors, knowing exactly where to go, and knowing quite well what the possible outcome of this could be.

She darted past the security at the door. "Hey! What do you think you're doing!" the guard yelled, but she didn't care, lengthening her stride until she thundered to a stop, panting for breath before a very startled Colonel and the Captain of the Papillion, Commodore Wong.

The commodore's dark eyes lit with fury as she regarded Nera coldly. "You have one minute before you're dragged to the brig, Captain."

"We've got--to stop, Ma'am," Nera gasped fighting for breath. "There's -- ambush." She pointed toward the asteroids and the dead planet, gasping too hard for words.

Colonel Veek frowned. "Are you sure?"

"It's -- the only way!" Nera panted. "There's no other -- explanation. Those -- aren't supposed to be there!"

"What?"

Nera nodded, straightening as she regained her breath and composure. "Ma'am," she said, "I came through here on the Red Baron not two months ago, AND THAT WASN'T THERE. That's why they haven't been attacking this area lately, why this section has been quiet for so long. That's how they got so far without being noticed. Those other ships were just a diversion! And now they're leading us into a trap!"

Commodore Wong looked at Nera for a long moment. Then, she looked up at the colonel. "Scramble the group," she said. Striding forward across the bridge, she began to give commands. "Ensign, bring us around to face that asteroid cluster. Simmle, get me a recent starchart of this area. I want to talk to the Pearle immediately. Lieutenant, put us on Red Alert."

"Yes, Ma'am!"

As the red lights and sirens started, Colonel Veek led Nera from the bridge. Over the intercomm came the voice of the Commodore's second in command, Lieutenant Commander Devaney, "All hands to battle stations. Repeat, all hands to battle stations. This is a red alert, get to a secured location. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. All hands to battle stations, we are under Red Alert."

Colonel Veek ran down the corridors to his office, telling his Group Vice Commander to assemble the pilots. "No, there isn't time for a mission briefing, just do it!" he snapped, switching off the comm. Shoving the unit back in his pocket, he grinned at Nera. "Good work, Captain!"

Even as Spectre Group organized itself, the other groups began assembling as the other ships lined up with the Papillion to approach the asteroid cluster.

The voice of the Wing Commander over everyone's headset: "Their surprise has failed, so let's just see what kind of a surprise we can give them!"

Shoved into an extra pod, Nera whipped her squadron into order, waiting for Kaidara to relay their instructions.

"Spectre-one-two, this is Spectre-one, do you copy?"

"Roger, Spectre-one, I copy."

"Fall out of formation to these coordinates."

"Roger, Spectre-one, leaving formation." Nera's headset clicked over then to the instructions Kaidara relayed to her squadron. She realized with a start that her comm system now read, instead of "Spectre-one-two, 7GHz," it read, "Spectre-zulu, 9GHz, 7GHz." Wow, she thought, I can hear everything! Obediantly, and seething with curiosity and excitement, Nera swung her craft to her assigned coordinates, startled again to see Colonel Veek's pod there waiting for her.

"Spectre-zulu, this is Spectre-one, do you copy?"

Nera twisted her dial to the new frequency, 9GHz, replying, "Copy, Spectre-one."

"Good. Now listen up. The Pearle detected a mass approaching from within that cluster. The wing is being ordered to attack. You and I are going to have a look-see. Got that?"

"Roger, sir. What are we looking for?"

"We can't have our ships fighting blind," Colonel Veek told her. "We've got to get in there and find out what we're up against."

"You don't think they'll come out?"

"Think. Do you think they would leave such a defensible position?"

Nera followed him as he turned his pod along the new vector. "No," she said after a moment. "Not if they know we know they're there. And they sure know that now."

"Good. I don't think they will either. They're pretty darned sure of themselves to be this deep in our territory and without backup. Now, maintain radio silence until I say otherwise."

"Roger, Spectre-one."

They flew their ships with an accuracy that had both pilots on the edges of their seats. Nera kept having to remind herself to breathe as she stayed on course. Her hands were light on the controls as they dipped and swerved, turned and climbed around the rocky debris. Nera didn't let her eyes rest too long on the dials. She knew that as soon as she did, alarms would start ringing in her head. No, now of all times, she had to concentrate. Any mistake would have her plastered on one of those creepy rocks, with only the char of the explosion to ever say she was there.

Then all of a sudden the asteroids cleared. Immediately, Nera threw her pod into a dive, ducking back into the shadow of one of the larger asteroids. Right in front of her was the entire mass of the enemy force: thousands of small fighters of the new design only recently spotted on the other side of Alliance Space. Strategically placed in formation were a half-dozen of the V-shaped battleships, bristling with armaments.

"Spectre-zulu, do you copy?" Colonel Veek's voice was appropriately hushed.

"I do," Nera whispered, adding a belated, "sir."

"Follow these coordinates and reandeavous in ten."

"Roger, Spectre-one." Nera eased her pod away on her assigned vector, relieved beyond words that their presence had not yet been detected.

She flew in fearful silence until her terror subsided to the back of her mind. Forcing her hands to relax, she dared herself to look. With part of her concentration locked on her course, Nera stared at the enemy. She counted more than a hundred wings, pressed so tightly together that she wondered how they moved at all.

We'll all be slaughtered, she thought grimly. They're so well positioned they can shoot us down one by one.

Nera flipped her pod around an asteroid, hauling her craft into a nauseating clockwise spin as she found herself staring down the nose of an enemy fighter! Too scared to speak more than a muffled oath, Nera drove her pod in the only direction she knew the enemy wouldn't expect: directly into their armada.

The little engine screamed as Nera pushed the speed as far as it could go. Her own ears rang with the high keen of the powerful turbos. One blast from the enemy shot past her, just barely missing, and then nothing. Nera dared a quick glance behind.

The new enemy craft, bold and deadly, was hard on her heels, much more maneuverable than she. Her lips pressed into a firm, thin line, Nera looked ahead, screaming at herself to find a way out of this mess.

Nera sliced through the first rank of enemy fighters before they knew she was there. Then abruptly, the space around her was alive with spinning pieces of metal, sparks as ships barely avoided colliding, and the reflections of thousands more.

"WHAT -[static]- THIN -- OU'RE -- !!"

Nera didn't have the time, nor the inclination to reply. Hundreds of thousands of enemy voices talked and yelled over the communications system, overwhelming the simple design of Nera's borrowed pod. With sparks that made her want to blink or flinch, the comm board blew a short, forcing Nera to cough as her cockpit filled with smoke. Diving through the confusion, Nera knew all she could do was wait. Wait and pray.

As the emergency systems cleared away the smoke, Nera found herself in the calm of a mass hurricane of chaos. Taking a second to wipe away the sweat that ran down her face, Nera tried the scanners, but those, too, were inoperable. Most of the controls were lit red for danger and Nera felt a sudden desire just to laugh.

The next instant Nera spun her pod aside and out of the way of two ships, one in pursuit of the other. She lined up her pod with one of the big enemy battleships, stunned to see the big prow of the Pearle over the edge of the asteroid field.

I wish I could hear! she thought as several more Alliance twin-pods streaked past. "A picture is worth a thousand words," she murmured a moment later as she finally deciphered the battle strategy. At once she threw her pod full forward, dodging dog-fights and errant missiles with an ease that would later come back to haunt her nightmares.

The attack was centered on one of the enemy battleships, in the center of the spherical formation. Nera raced in the opposite direction, back to the reandeavous coordinates. There, hovering in the shadow of an enormous, pocked asteroid, Nera dug her arms into her controlboard, searching for enough good wire to reconnect her comm system. Every few minutes she looked up, scanning the nearby space for signs of the Colonel's pod.

One such glance made Nera pull her attention back to the battlefield. She jumped as the two wires she held touched, giving her a shock. Hastily, she spliced the wires together.

"--Treat. Pull back! Them's the orders!"

The loud audio made Nera want to cover her ears and she gave a silent thank-you to the stars that space didn't conduct sound.

"Now, Lieutenant!"

Heavens! Nera thought, I've found Deb's frequency! She cocked her head as the strained voice crackled through the static again.

"Get back to the ship! That's an order, Tubbs!"

"Deb?" Nera whispered. Her eyes searched the battlefield frantically, but in all that mass, one little battle pod was indistinguishable from the rest. The sound of Deb's voice faded back into static and Nera forced herself into motion.

She pulled on the sluggish controls, her hands and body shivering with cold. The pod didn't want to obey, lurching sideways to barely scrape by another asteroid. Muttering oaths through clenched teeth, Nera fought her pod, plunging recklessly out away from her dangerous cover. The pod made strange noises around her and Nera pressed the accelerator as far forward as it would go, aiming for the one clear area of space directly above.

The turbos slammed into action abruptly, throwing Nera backward and pounding her head on the back of the seat. Odd sparks from detached wires made her muscles spasm unexpectedly and her window of view began to narrow as her breath caused condensation to form on the tough, clear material.

Then, just as she thought she would make it, the turbos cut off with an earsplitting whine and a rumbling boom. The pod took a sudden downward tack, beginning to spin out of control as the one remaining engine struggled to regain equilibrium. Interestingly enough, the comm system began to emit a strange noise that somehow seemed to resemble . . . Was that . . Jazz?


Continue on with "4: The Enemy Within"