by Eric Warren
“I’ve had a thought,” Zenfor said. “These electromagnetic strands holding the ship may have a lower range limit. They might not hold on to something small,” Zenfor said.
“Like the spacewing fighters,” Cas replied.
“If we could reverse the electromagnetic signature of each strand holding the ship at the same time—”
“—she could break free. You’re right!”
The doors to sickbay opened to reveal Evie. Cas recoiled, wishing Xax had put him under. He also thought he heard a noise like a snicker from Box but he couldn’t be sure.
“Commander,” she said, approaching them. “Feeling better?”
Cas had a difficult time meeting her eye. She’d been right about the spacewings all along and because of him she’d been underprepared on the bridge. He should have stayed and helped finish what he’d been ordered to do. But they still had more modifications to make, if Zenfor was correct. And wasn’t she the one who’d come up with the idea of using the ships to deflect the electromagnetic strands produced by the Kryon Radiation? A type of radiation the Coalition wasn’t even aware of without Zenfor’s scanning technology. Evie may have been on the right track, but she hadn’t been able to get all the way there on her own.
“Better, yeah.” He hopped down from the table. He thought he felt the vertigo again and would be on his ass in seconds, but then it stabilized, and he was fine.
“Glad to hear it. I want an update on when the spacewings will be ready.”
Cas turned to Zenfor. “The consul has proposed a solution that might make them more effective out there. But it’s going to require some further modification. All the additional power to the anti-grav generators has been completed.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you file the report?”
“Not yet. I was on my way as soon as I was done here,” he lied.
Evie pulled her lips between her teeth. “I see.”
“Give us twelve more hours for the rest,” Cas blurted out, having no idea how long it would take. He just needed to tell her something to get her to leave him alone. Zenfor shot him a glance but he ignored it.
“Twelve hours.” She seemed to consider it a moment but her gaze was impossible to meet. “I’ll tell the captain.” She left without another word.
Box shuffled over and whispered, “What’s the term? You play with fire so stay out of the kitchen? No wait, you can’t make an omelet without—no, hang on. Fire burns hottest when its stoked. That’s it. Isn’t it?”
Cas brushed him away. “I know what I’m doing. And she’s not making this any easier. It’s fine.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Box returned to the far side of the room and his duties.
Cas flagged down Xax who had retreated to her office at some point after Evie had come in. “Free to go?” he mouthed.
She stuck her head around the edge of her door. “You should both be fine. If you feel any other symptoms, come back immediately.”
“Thanks,” Cas said, then turned and said the same to Menkel. Menkel only nodded and returned to his own duties.
Outside sickbay, he and Zenfor made their way down the corridor. “Should we head to the Bays to make the modifications?” he asked.
“You go. I need to return to the lab to discern the electromagnetic signature of these strands holding on to the ship. I’ll have to compare the data from all three time periods. Once I’ve determined each signature, I’ll send it to you so you can set up an opposite signature in each spacewing. You may want to call the commander back and tell her twelve hours is a conservative estimate.”
“I’ll…let her know,” Cas said, unsure whether he would or not. He didn’t want to go back on his word but he also didn’t want to miss another deadline. Especially after everything that had happened so far.
Zenfor stopped him. “Why did you do that? And why do you insist on continuing to antagonize Commander Diazal? She has been nothing but helpful.”
He screwed up his face. How could he explain this? “I know it probably looks strange.”
“It doesn’t make sense. For either of you.”
Cas shrugged. “This is just something humans do sometimes. She’s upset with me. I’m upset with her. But we both have to keep working together. So things can get…tense.”
“And how long do you expect to be upset with each other? I don’t want to encounter this alien force and your minds be somewhere else. Especially if she’s in command at the time.”
“It isn’t that big of a deal,” Cas said. “I’m sure she’s not even thinking about it that much.”
Zenfor turned and resumed her path down the hall. “You seem to be.”
“Do I? Well, I’m not. But I do have a lot on my mind,” he called after her.
She didn’t say anything else, only led them back toward the closest hypervator. But before they reached it Cas stopped her. “I’ve been thinking. What if we temporarily install your sensors on Tempest? It might give us an edge over this alien threat.”
She glared at him. “I thought I made myself clear about the use of our technology.”
“Yes, but you also said it was permissible if we were in mortal danger. Don’t you think that’s what that is out there?”
She pulled away from him. “I don’t know what that is. Which is the entire reason I’m on this ship. But I will not allow you to install our technology on this ship. Nothing leaves my control, do you understand?”
“Yeah, I just thought it might be useful. Then you could delete everything after we’d sent the reports to Coalition.”
“No.” Her face was as if she was made of stone. She wasn’t even blinking.
He tried to play it off. “It was just a thought.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she said, stepping into the open hypervator and placing her hand out so the doors wouldn’t close again. “It was you trying to manipulate the situation for your own benefit. Something I expressly asked you not to do. I now see that uniform suits you, because you are becoming more like the rest of them all the time. Lying and scheming to get what you want. But you won’t get it from me. From here on out you are forbidden to view any of my work.” She let go of the partition and the hypervator doors slid closed.
22
Cas couldn’t seem to clear his head the entire way down to Bay Two. If thoughts of an argument with Evie didn’t keep popping up, Zenfor’s words would come back and play on repeat instead. What in the hell was going on? He was trying to do his job, dammit. If he didn’t know better he’d have thought he’d been treated better when he was a criminal.
He searched for Chief Rafnkell. She’d have to recall the pilots if they weren’t already down here so they could get to work on their ships. Cas wasn’t even sure how many they’d need to modify, but he wasn’t about to leave until the job was done this time. Another thought had managed to creep its way into the recesses of his mind, waiting until the fog of his complex relationships with the crew cleared: what if this creature at the center of this thing was intelligent? What if this was its way of trying to communicate and it didn’t understand what it was doing to them? He hadn’t wanted to consider it, but as a Coalition officer he had no choice. The possibility existed that these electromagnetic bands holding the ship were an attempt at saying hello. A survey ship should be doing this job, not a stealth vessel. Every hour they wasted trying to get away from this thing the Andromeda swarm grew closer. And Tempest was the only hope for giving the Coalition any preliminary information about them. Which Cas hoped included their intent. As soon as he knew what they wanted, he’d feel a lot better.
Rafnkell stood in the corner of the bay at one of the mechanic’s stations, speaking with a crewman as Cas approached. As soon as she saw him her face fell. “Not you again.” She put her hands on her hips. “I thought I made it clear to command I didn’t want someone down here who couldn’t finish the job.”
“The job got done, didn’t it?” Cas countered.
“That’s not�
�”
“Chief, I know you don’t want me here. But this is how it’s going to be. We have a second round of modifications we need to make to the fighters, so I need you to recall the pilots so we can get to work.”
“I don’t take orders from you or Coalition Central, Mr. Robeaux,” she replied. “So you can go shove your order up your ass.” The crewman glanced between them; her eyes wide.
“You’re on a Coalition Central ship, so you’re subject to the rank just like everyone else. I know you know how this works. Recall your pilots, Chief.”
She gave him a hard stare, massaging the area around her lips with one hand, as if to consider if she should beat the crap out of him right here or comply with the order. Rafnkell stepped forward. “Yeah, I know how it works on this ship, little man,” she said. She wasn’t much taller than Cas, but it was enough so he had to glance up slightly to meet her eyeline. “And I told you. I don’t work with officers who can’t be trusted to do the job.”
“In this situation you don’t have a choice. Go ahead and file a formal complaint with my commanding officer. The work still has to get done. And I’m the only one who can do it. So either report me or do your job.”
Her eyes flashed but she didn’t move. “Zorres,” she said. “Get Grippen, Ryant, and Jann on the horn. Tell them to report to Bay Two.”
“Yes, Chief,” Crewman Zorres replied. Cas broke Rafnkell’s gaze to look at the crewman who had turned to her own monitor. So this was Zorres. He searched for a scar on her head where he had hit her with the shuttle but found nothing. It was like it never happened. He wondered if she knew who he was. “They’ll be here in a few minutes,” she said, glancing up. Her eyes briefly met Cas’s before she looked away.
“You know where the ships are,” Rafnkell said. “I assume you don’t need me to show you, sir.”
Cas considered responding but headed for the line of spacewings along the wall instead. That went well. Regardless of Rafnkell’s feelings toward him, this had to get done. At least the pilots themselves seemed to be less antagonistic. Though that had been before he’d left. No telling what things were going to be like after he’d left Box with them.
“Well, if it isn’t Captain Vomit himself!” Ryant’s booming voice announced as he entered the Bay with Grippen close on his heels. He had a wide grin on his face and gestured wildly with his hands. “Man, I didn’t know a person could throw up as much as you have in your life but I guess it’s possible!”
“What—?” Cas hadn’t thrown up at all as far as he could recall. The vertigo had been stabilized before anything had gone flying.
“Box, man! He told us all about it.” Ryant clapped Cas on the back. “Said you’d get shitfaced at least three times a week and there’d be days he’d have to drag your ass back to your ship as you left a trail of vomit in your wake.”
“Like an undercurrent trail!” Grippen said, sticking her head around Ryant, laughing.
“Yeah. He said he nicknamed you Captain Vomit. He never told you?”
Cas took a deep breath. “No. He never told me.”
“That is one crazy robot you’ve got there. He had stories on top of stories on top of stories.” Cas groaned. “Is it true you transported the Princess of Cloistria back to her homeworld? And then got stiffed on the bill?”
“Oh, I love her, she’s so glamorous,” Grippen added, flashing her large eyelashes. “It’s too bad she’s part of the Commonwealth. I’d love to meet her one day. Is she nice? Everyone says she’s a piece of work but I bet she’s nice in real life.”
“Um, she’s okay,” Cas replied, remembering how the Princess had tried on more than one occasion to get him to drop his guard. Which would have given her guards an excuse to dismember him one appendage at a time. “And she didn’t stiff me. Another courier got in the way, tried to steal my fare.”
“You shoot him?” Ryant asked, a big grin on his face.
“No. I don’t kill people in cold blood. Maddox was…misguided.”
“What was she wearing when you saw her?” Grippen asked. “Was it the Tal’shavas dress or was it something more conservative? Something by Proxima or Bargon?”
“Are we going to talk all day or get to work?” Cas turned to see Captain Jann standing directly behind him. Where had she come from?
Grippen leaned close to Cas, whispering. “You can tell me about the dress later.”
“What did you need us down here for again?” Ryant asked, staring up at his ship which sat directly in front of them.
“We have more modifications to make. Box told me you managed to finish the anti-grav enhancements.”
Ryant smiled. “Got mine up to two-hundred and twelve percent. Way better than these two.”
Grippen punched him on the arm. “Still over two-hundred. Like seven extra percent is going to make a difference anyway.” Jann stood beside them, staring at the line of ships along the wall.
“And what about the other fighters? Were you able to modify them all?”
“Except for the Chief’s. She said she would do it herself,” Grippen replied. “She’s not really one for going with the grain. But she gets the job done, just…in her own way.”
That was a relief to Cas. He didn’t want to interact with the woman again today if he could help it. “We discovered some new information about this thing we’re stuck inside. It’s generating a type of radiation we couldn’t detect before, producing these electromagnetic bands that have a hold on the ship.”
“So it isn’t actually a gravity well,” Jann said.
“No. But now that we understand it better, we know how to combat it.”
“You mean we did all that work for nothing?” Ryant whined. “Talk about a waste of time.”
“Not for nothing. It might still be useful. But what we need to do now is turn each of the spacewings into electromagnetic mirrors. We use each ship to emit an opposing signal and hopefully disrupt the bands. That way Tempest can escape.”
“But won’t our ships be stuck then?” Grippen asked, pulling her loose hair back into a blue ponytail.
“Zenfor doesn’t think the bands will affect ships as small as the spacewings. They go for the larger prey.”
“Prey?” Jann asked. “You mean this thing is trying to kill us?”
“We don’t know yet. So far there’s nothing that would indicate that, but I’m not so sure. Greene seems to think it’s nothing other than the creature’s natural habitat. Like a whale in the ocean.”
Ryant shrugged off his flight jacket revealing muscular arms. “Let’s get started. I don’t want to be here all day.”
Cas tapped his comm. “Zenfor, status update. When will you have those first set of calculations for us?”
“I’m sending them through in a few moments. We’ll need nine ships total.”
Grippen groaned. “Looks like another day in the salt mines.” She walked over to where Crewman Zorres stood at her station and leaned over the desk, saying something Cas couldn’t hear. Though he noticed Rafnkell hadn’t moved, she’d been watching him interact with her pilots this entire time. When his eyes met hers, she didn’t turn away, only intensified the stare until Cas finally averted his gaze.
It was going to be a long day.
***
“That’s number five,” Ryant said, closing up one of the panels beneath the fighter. He wiped his brow and stored his calibrator back in his toolbox. “You know this would be a lot easier if they sent us some extra help.”
Cas brought up a manifest on the small pad he’d borrowed from Zorres. He was tired and dirty, but he wasn’t about to stop. “They wouldn’t be able to do much. Even if they could help make the modifications, I’d still have to go back behind them and check all their work. This way I know it’s being done right the first time. We can’t have any mistakes.”
“Man, it’s times like these when I wish the Chief wasn’t so strict about our upkeep on these things. She says a pilot is responsible for his own ship. I don’t see
Iavarone or Linkovich down here busting their asses to get their ships ready. Why is it just the three of us? This could go so much faster—”
“Because Iavarone and Linkovich didn’t screw up a pitch-full maneuver last season.” Rafnkell strolled across the bay toward them.
“Still, Chief?” Ryant said, disbelief on this face. “That was one training run.”
“Yeah!” Grippen called from two ships down. “It isn’t like we killed anyone.”
“The point is you could have,” Rafnkell replied. “Had we been in combat it would have been a fatal mistake.” Ryant groaned as the Chief turned to Cas. “Looks like you can do hard work after all. For a day at least.” She paused, looking him up and down. He knew he had to look a mess. They’d been in the guts of the ships all day and he was filthy. “Commander Diazal wants to see you when you’re done. In her office.”
“Better watch out Cap’n,” Grippen called. “She’s looking for an excuse to bust you.”
“She’s right,” Ryant said. “I wouldn’t go up there until I was damn sure all this was perfect.”
He couldn’t argue, his heart rate had already increased. Maybe it would be a chance for them to reset. Especially after he could report success with the second set of upgrades. No doubt she knew he was still here otherwise she wouldn’t have told Rafnkell to relay the message. “Thanks, Chief. I’ll head up there when we’re done here.”
She regarded him a moment then left him to the job. Ryant clapped him on the back. “Orders?”
Cas studied the line of ships. “Head down to number eight and get started. I’ll help Jann with six.”
“You’re the boss.” Ryant threw the case of tools over his shoulder.
23
Evie sat at the desk in her office, attempting to review the most recent reports from Zenfor. Interpreting the complex data was like trying to read a language the universal translator couldn’t understand. She set the reports aside, promising herself after a strong cup of coffee she’d come back to them again later. The last thing she wanted was to ask Zenfor to translate them for her, especially after her embarrassing behavior in the conference room. She chalked it up to pure exhaustion or maybe it was just idiocy. Either way, it was in the past and all she could do now was try to move forward.