Little knowing, she continued as she spliced a datafeed cable, that two years later that source of frustration would become a source of freedom.
It was easier this time to create a bypass around the station controls. She could now unlock the docking clamps with a signal from her ship.
She tabbed her helmet mic, set for short-range private channel. “Reel me in, Dez.”
She stripped off her EVA suit and grabbed her service jacket. Her skin felt clammy and cold from working outside. She thrust her arms through the sleeves as she trotted up the ladderway to the bridge.
She slid into her seat, clicked her safety strap over her chest, and looked at Dezi. “We’re back in control of our lives again.” She tapped her touchpads, brought her course on screen. “Priming sublight engines.”
She brought up her codes, entered them, then started the auxiliary thruster sequence. “We’ll be halfway into next septi by the time they figure—”
“Engines are not responding, Captain.”
Her hands froze over the controls. “Impossible.” She dumped her sequence string, started over. “Gods, I knew I should’ve replaced that thruster board before we worked on the communications system.”
She tapped the pads.
Nothing.
“Damnation!” She reached over, ran a quick diagnostic on the thruster boards. All lights showed green.
She unsnapped her safety harness. “I’m going down to the engine room to see if something’s rotted out. Again.”
She pounded down the stairs. Twenty minutes later, she was back. She almost threw the datalyzer across the bridge.
“Everything is optimal, I take it?” Dezi asked.
“Too damned optimal. Let’s try again.” And again. And again. After the third again, Trilby swiveled around, yanked her harness off, and thrust herself from her chair. She stopped just short of the open hatchway, braced her hands on either side of the door frame. “Damn him, damn him, damn him!”
She kicked the bulkhead. Hard. Her foot throbbed.
“Ships are usually referred to as ‘she,’ ” Dezi said.
She spun around. “I’m not talking about the Venture.” Her words were clipped, terse. “I’m talking about that ungrateful, arrogant, motherless son of a Pillorian bitch.”
“Oh. Lieutenant Vanur.”
“Recently reincarnated as the Captain Tivahr. Master manipulator. Boy genius. Gods damned hacker!”
“I was under the impression you were rather fond of him.”
“Fond?” Trilby gasped. “Of that Ligorian slime weasel?”
“He appears rather fond of you.”
“That’s the operative word, Dez. Appears. He’s a pro at appearances. Especially false ones.” She crossed her arms across the back of her chair and leaned her forehead against them. “Damn. Damn. Double damn.”
She closed her eyes, listened to the quiet click and hum of her ship, the slight squeak of Dezi’s joints. And to the small voice in the back of her head that chanted, Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She raised her head. “Dezi.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“He had you run a program. The one that changed the Venture’s ID codes.”
“That’s correct.”
“You still have it?”
“He retrieved his original, but I did make a copy that I believe he was not aware of.”
She turned her head. “Have I told you lately how much I love you, Dez? You are the joy of my life. The song in my heart.”
“I am not programmed to respond to human emotions, but I do appreciate the sentiments. I take it you would like to view the copy of the program?”
“You’re a veritable mind reader as well.” She slid into her seat, swiveled the screen up from the armrest. “Let’s see just how good this son of a bitch really is.”
He was good. Beyond impressive. She looked at what he’d done, how he’d circumvented certain code requirements and fooled others, and thought of Shadow.
Shadow could’ve done this. Would be doing this, if he’d lived. He’d been gutsy enough, and crazy enough, to use some of these same tactics.
She felt a twinge of regret. Damn him for lying to her! For being Tivahr and not Rhis Vanur. A man who could be this creative, this downright devious, could hold the key to her heart. Just as Shadow had, but they’d been children then. She’d never told him, and he would’ve laughed if she’d made mizzet-moon-eyes at him anyway.
She exhaled a long sigh of frustration. She had no doubt he’d hacked into her primary system codes and either deleted hers or amended his own. And she had no doubt that that program was as beautifully convoluted as this ID-altering one before her.
She could undo what he’d done. It wasn’t impossible. But it would take time. A long time. A trike, maybe a septi. He had traps, fail-safes. Tweak something wrong and ten other key functions would scatter, attach themselves to alternate functions, and there’d be a worse mess.
It would be like plucking hairs off a felinar, one silky strand at a time.
She didn’t think there was enough gin on her ship to get her through it.
She leaned her head back, stared at the ceiling of her bridge, at the toy felinar dangling from its red ribbon. He had to know she’d find this wog-and-weemly. He surely didn’t think she was going to abandon the Venture, spend the rest of her life on Degvar. Therefore, he must have put this program in place while he was still pretending to be Rhis Vanur, still pretending he cared about her.
She couldn’t think why he would’ve done it, then. Except as a silent but incredibly well-crafted parting gesture to show how little she meant to him.
If she weren’t so busy hating him, she could have admired his handiwork more.
Rhis made five copies of Gurdan’s report, one for each member of the Razalka’s tactical team. He highlighted certain sections, based on what he knew each officer’s analytical strengths and weaknesses to be. Then he bundled them and sent them to his personal file, to be uploaded when his ship arrived.
In four hours.
He’d feel about four hundred years old when they got here.
He rose, wincing as pains shot through his back. Make that five hundred years old, he thought, and reached for his empty coffee mug.
He ran into Gurdan in the corridor, datapad under his arm.
“The debriefing with Captain Elliot is completed. Report filed.”
Debriefing? It came back to him. Gurdan’s team needed Trilby’s impressions for their files. Plus information on Neadi Danzanour. And Bella’s Dream. He’d okayed the interview when they first arrived on station. Then forgotten it was scheduled.
That meant she was awake. He glanced at his time cuff. Of course she was. It was damned near their lunchtime.
“Will you be needing a copy of my report, Captain?”
“Yes, I will. Code it to my transit file on the Razalka.” Which should be arriving. Soon. He hoped soon. He hadn’t slept in his own bed in a month. He hadn’t slept in any bed for more than an hour in a trike.
“… and she did request permission to depart. However, I told her to speak with you first.”
“She …” Gods. Trilby was leaving. No. She couldn’t. But she wanted to. She might try.
But ops hadn’t called him.
“When did she request this?” He tried to marshal his scattered thoughts, put some firmness back in his voice, which was starting to sound distinctly hoarse.
“I left the Careless Venture two hours ago.”
Two hours. Ops hadn’t called him.
Bloody hell.
He shoved his empty coffee mug into Gurdan’s hand and strode purposefully down the corridor to the lifts.
He arrived just as one opened. Three dock techs exited. He stepped inside. “Dock Level!” The doors closed. He leaned on the safety rail and tapped his comm badge. “Tivahr to ops.”
“Ops. Lieutenant Gramm,” a female voice replied.
“Has the Venture requested permission to depart?�
��
There was a moment of silence. “No, sir.”
He slapped the badge again. “Tivahr to security.”
“Security. Mitkanos.”
“Any unexplained explosions on Dock Level? Unusual activity?”
“None reported, sir. Monitors show nothing unusual.”
The doors opened. He ran halfway around the ring, only slowing as he came to the Venture’s rampway. Her round, pitted bow was still clearly visible through the viewport.
Her bridge was dark. Empty. But the ship was still there.
He keyed in his access codes, slid back the cover on the rampside docking controls. Everything looked normal. He tapped in a status verification request. Dock clamps were secure.
Then something flickered across the screen and disappeared. If he hadn’t been so tired, if he hadn’t been leaning against the control podium, his chin almost in his chest, he never would’ve seen it. The small flicker was gone now. But he’d created enough of them to know what they looked like.
A hidden bypass.
Someone had altered the clamp-release codes. And not from this terminal.
Out of everyone on Degvar, he knew of only two people who could’ve done that.
And he hadn’t.
He activated his comm badge. “Tivahr to ops. Patch me through to the Venture.”
He waited, wondering how many requests it would take this time to bring her to the air lock.
“This is the DZ-Nine ’droid.”
Hearing Dezi’s voice so quickly startled him. He began to reply in Zafharish. “Yaschjon Tivahr—this is Rhis. Let me talk to Trilby. Captain Elliot.”
“I regret Captain Elliot is not available at the moment.”
“Where is she, in the galley? Put me through, Dezi.”
“I’m sorry. She’s not on board.”
Maybe she left right after talking to Gurdan. Or maybe …
He sprinted to the viewport, scanned the perimeters of the ship for a small figure in an EVA suit. That’s how he would have accessed the clamp controls. He saw nothing.
“Where is she, Dezi?” His tone was insistent.
“I do not know, Captain.”
“I have to talk to her. There were some programs I installed on the Venture. She might not understand—”
“If you are referring to the one that invalidates her primary command codes, she is already aware of that.”
He closed his eyes briefly, leaned his forehead against the viewport’s thick glass. “She is.”
“Yes. And she’s not very happy, Captain Tivahr.”
He didn’t think she would be. “You have a penchant for understatement,” he told the ’droid.
“Sir?”
“Where is she?”
“I do not know.”
“Dezi!”
“She did not relay her destination to me.”
And he’d given her full clearance on the station. No required escort. No checkin. And no trackable badge.
Damn! He pushed himself away from the viewport. “If you should hear from her, I need you to give her a message from me.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Tell her, tell her I said yav chera.”
“Yav … ?”
“Yav chera. Tell her I said yav chera.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tivahr out.”
Trilby swiveled the chair away from the console and looked with surprise, and gratitude, at the burly man seated behind the desk. It had been a risk coming here. But she realized she had two problems to solve when, overwhelmed with frustration, she’d stalked down the Venture’s ramp. The first was that her tinkerings with the dock clamps had probably been caught on security cameras. She needed to provide a reasonable explanation for her actions before someone stumbled on the truth.
The second was that she needed an ally.
She took a chance that Mitkanos was the answer to both.
He was Chief of Security on station. And her earlier conversations with him hinted that he was not a fan of the Captain Tivahr.
The conversation she’d just overheard had been in Zafharish, but some of the words Leonid had taught her had come back to her. Plus she knew his voice.
“You didn’t have to do that, but thank you. It was uncommonly kind toward someone you don’t know.”
Yavo Mitkanos shrugged. “I did nothing extraordinary. I was asked a question about explosions on Dock Level. Had there been any, I would have reported them.”
“But unusual activity?”
“I saw, on my monitors, a captain conducting an exterior inspection of her ship’s hull. I do not find that to be an unusual activity. Do you?”
She’d done it dozens of times. But only once before for that very reason.
“You also,” she continued, “didn’t tell Tivahr I was here.”
Another shrug of his broad shoulders. A comically innocent expression played across his gruff features. “He did not ask me.”
“You know,” she said softly, “I think you’re the first security grunt I’ve ever liked.”
He grinned broadly.
“Thank you,” she said again. She glanced at the screen behind her. Save for herself and Mitkanos, the security office was empty. Whether this was the usual state of operations on Degvar, she didn’t know. But it had been damned convenient, and damned lucky, for her.
“I gather the Razalka’s within shouting range.” She motioned to the data on the screen.
“Five hours, though she’ll make it in four. Her crew knows well their captain does not like to be kept waiting.”
“Then he’ll leave?”
“That is what I have been led to believe.”
“Gurdan said I have to talk to the team on the Razalka now. If that’s all he wants, he should’ve told me.” She was annoyed, embarrassed, and angry over her current situation. But she still held on to the small hope that something she knew might help find Carina. For that she was willing to tolerate annoyance, embarrassment, and anger. And the Captain Tivahr, although in limited doses. “He didn’t have to disable my ship for that.”
“Captain Tivahr has not shared his objectives with me.”
“Then you have no impound order on the Venture?”
“Nav.”
“So this is strictly Tivahr’s doing?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
She didn’t miss his choice of words. “And you don’t know if he’ll let me go after I talk to his team?”
“As I said, he has not shared his objectives with me. But I am aware, of course, that you have recently found your ship’s engines to be inoperative. Perhaps you took damage from the ’Sko attack you were not aware of. Should I hear of something that would assist you in better allocating your repair time, I would be obliged to inform you.”
She stopped in front of his desk as she headed for the door. “Major Mitkanos,” she said, holding out her hand. “I have no idea what your pay grade is here. But whatever it is, the Stegzarda don’t pay you enough.”
He shook her hand firmly. “It is a good thing, then, that I love my work, vad?” He glanced at the monitors on his desk. “Go get a cup of hot tea. You need it, and he is back on Barracks Level now. No one will bother you.”
12
He awoke with a jolt. He didn’t know if it was the sharp trill of the cubicle intercom in his ear or his own internal sense of impending urgency. The two things happened almost simultaneously. He sat up, snagging his boot heel on the blanket. He’d fallen asleep fully clothed.
“Tivahr here!” His voice rasped. But his body, and his mind, felt marginally better than before his—he glanced at the time panel—one-and-a-half hour nap.
One and a half hours. The Razalka was due in a half hour from now.
“Captain, we’ve received confirmation that the Razalka has cleared the outer beacon.”
Make that fifteen minutes.
“Acknowledged. On my way.”
Not even time for a cup of tea. He snatched
his jacket off the wall hook, slipped it on, then fumbled with his collar. He ducked his head, caught his reflection in the mirror. He still wore the white shirt Trilby had given him. No wonder the collar seemed wrong.
Trilby. More than his collar was wrong.
He sealed his jacket, ran his hand through his hair. His uniform betrayed the fact that he’d worn, slept in, and, thanks to Trilby, washed the same one for a month. His white shirt was nonregulation. His jacket held no ship’s insignia, no bars signifying rank. His comm badge bore Degvar’s emblem, not the Razalka’s.
And he was way overdue for a haircut.
Hell. It was just his crew. They’d seen him come ragged off missions before.
Eleven minutes.
The door, sensing his presence, opened. Light from the corridor glared in his face. Gray uniforms hurried past him, blending in with the gray bulkhead.
There was a queue at the lift. But when the doors parted, the gray line waited. He stepped inside first.
“Ops,” he said.
Two of the Stegzarda crew were going there as well. The remaining four gave other destinations.
He clenched his fist by his side as the lift sped up the levels. He fought the urge to tap his comm badge, to see if Trilby was back on the Careless Venture. Not that he could make time to talk to her right now. Probably wouldn’t be able to for at least two hours after his ship arrived. But he wanted to know. Needed to know.
But not in a lift full of Stegzarda.
There were more black Fleet uniforms on the Operations-Center Level. The Stegzarda worked the station. But Fleet personnel ran it. He returned several salutes and strode through the wide doors as they irised open.
Ops was fully staffed, even though it was the station’s red-eye shift. The approach of the Empire’s premier huntership required nothing less.
The room was a large half circle that encompassed two levels, with a viewport spanning its height and breadth. He entered on the upper level, which was half the width of the lower. Degvar Approach Control was immediately in front of him.
“Status?” he asked the young woman who turned upon his arrival.
“The Razalka’s just locked onto our escort tugs.”
He nodded, took the ladderway to the lower level. There was a small landing at the halfway point, where the stairs angled to the left. The landing overlooked communications and the large viewscreen bordering the far edge of the viewport. He didn’t stop there, as he could already see the Razalka’s upper bridge on the screen—his bridge. And, standing at perfect attention, his executive officer.
Finders Keepers Page 15