They lingered in silence, Mila’s gaze drifting over a room she’d absorbed in detail on a previous visit.
The captain broke the silence. “I’m sorry if I’ve treated you unfairly.”
“Sir?” He’s apologizing? Wouldn’t have thought him capable.
“I’m sorry.” He rubbed his forehead. “Things have been… challenging, stressful, since this tour began. And, frankly, you’re a conundrum. You don’t quite act military, which would make me think you would have demerits in your file, but you don’t. Your file says you barely qualified for spaceflight and yet you’ve exhibited some of the best piloting I’ve ever seen. I just don’t get you.”
Mila paused, her mind running in circles. “I’m not usually like this, sir. I love flying. It’s the only time I feel a semblance of control.
“And my file says I barely qualified because I did barely qualify.” Mila looked down, trying to pull off embarrassed. “I bombed that test and have been relegated to missions that wouldn’t require a great deal of skill. I don’t believe I would have been picked for this mission, sir, except no one expected you’d need a decent pilot.”
“I suppose that’s true.” He sat back and stared at Mila, taking her in, maybe trying to piece the puzzle together. Fat chance. That would be like dumping two puzzles into the same box, then assembling them without a picture. “Who was your friend?”
“Friend?”
“Yeah, the one who died. In the mugging.”
Mila paused, not knowing what to say. She was getting into dangerous waters. Could they verify her story? Or try to? Nobody would find a report of a mugging, but then they didn’t know where she’d been when it happened.
“Mila Dragomirov. We were friends as kids. We told each other we would become pilots together. We joined the pilot program but then she disappeared. She left a note. It didn’t make any sense. It had contact information. At first, I kept contacting her, hounding her, asking her why. She never answered. I never understood.”
It felt good to tell somebody about herself, her story. Even if only a little. Even if she wasn’t quite telling the truth.
“Maybe she was a shifter.”
She laughed and shook her head. He’d guessed it in one. “Maybe.”
Knock, knock.
“Yes?”
“IT, sir. Your display?”
“Come in.” He nodded and smiled at her. “Time to get to work.”
Mila turned on the display. “What’s the directory for TAT message archives?”
The captain got up from his desk and stood behind her, indicating where to go with his finger.
“Thanks.” A warm feeling suffused her chest as she gazed up at him, but she ignored it, returning her focus to the screen. “This doesn’t… this can’t be right. This isn’t showing anything further back than a few days ago.”
The captain hovered over her shoulder again, his arm reaching out as if to touch the screen, then dropping. “Come on,” he said, grabbing her arm. “We’re going to IT.”
IT was the only place on board with no magnetic floor plates. Because of the computers and servers, it was designated strictly Zero GRAV. Which meant, as soon as you walked in, your feet lifted off and you started to drift.
The room was huge, yet felt tiny. Servers and computer towers were set up in rows, each with grab bars to orient yourself and push off. She grabbed onto the nearest bar, her computer display in the other hand as the captain pushed off in search of a geek.
Though it was usually obvious, this room served as a stark reminder that this ship had no gravity, produced no gravity. Everything, from the foods they ate to the showers and toilets, was designed around that lack. But, when walking down the hall, she found it easy to forget.
Mila smiled. She’d trained to be a pilot, but never been in zero gravity before. She laughed. “This is amazing.”
“Trace! Over here.”
“Coming!” She pushed off from her grab bar, aiming for the next row, using each one to push her farther. After a half dozen rows, she found the captain holding onto a chair behind a guy plugging away at a computer. “What have we got?”
“It was wiped,” IT guy said.
“Can it be retrieved?” the captain asked, breathing down his neck.
“Er, Captain? Maybe give him some room?”
He turned and gave Mila a raised eyebrow, but backed off, giving the man space to work.
Fingers flew across the keys, actual keys, and a few minutes later, he said, “Yeah, maybe. If I…” Another few minutes of key clicking. “Yeah. Yes! Okay. It’s not perfect, but we’ve got some of it.”
“Not all?” Mila leaned away from her hold, trying to look the guy in the face.
He turned to her. “Sorry. This person knew to wipe it, but not enough to do a good job. Some data’s corrupted, but not everything. It’s not perfect, but it’s what we got.”
“Back it up. External drive,” Mila said, paranoia seeming the better part of valor today.
“Yes, go ahead,” the captain said. “If they had access to wipe it, they could see the data is back. They could try again and succeed.”
The IT guy nodded and went back to his keyboard. He pulled a small drive on a wrist strap off the wall and plugged it in, then they watched as the progress bar filled up.
“Okay, now we can get to work.” The captain smiled at her. She should have known that wouldn’t bode well.
“What the hell was I thinking when I agreed to help you with this stuff?!” She flinched, forgetting who she was talking to.
“You were thinking it was an order from a superior officer,” he said, a smirk on his face.
Mila wanted to break that smirk off, maybe flip him the bird for good measure. She resisted… barely. “How can there possibly be this many messages in the system? We’ve only been gone a few days.”
He nodded. “And there are several hundred crew members on this ship. And shift reports, which each department sends out individually. Even if each person only sent one message so far this voyage that would be hundreds to wade through. With the TAT system, sending messages home is no more complicated than sending an email. And it takes about as much energy to send one message as two hundred.”
She faked a smile. “Great. We’ve been at this for hours. My back feels like a pretzel.” She stretched in her seat, her back popping in protest.
He laughed, and Mila wanted to hurt him even more. He stretched as well and she heard his bones and joints popping from across the room.
“I know the feeling,” he said as he settled back in his seat. “How bout we take a break, grab a snack, walk around a little?”
“Yes, sir.” She was at the door before he’d even stood.
“Eager, are we?”
She turned back to him, and tried not to let it show on her face, tried to remember some of her military training. She shook her head. “I don’t know how we’ll ever find this message. I mean, what if it’s in code, sir? What then?”
He walked up to her and grasped her shoulder. “Even in code, some information still needs to come through. Coordinates, for example, or speed and trajectory. Numbers. No matter how it’s encrypted, we know what they were sending.”
She nodded. “Right, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“It’s okay. This is long and tedious work. You have every right to be short tempered.”
“When are we quitting for the night?” she asked as they passed through the doors. “I have to fly in the morning.”
“Don’t worry about it. There’s an officer in engineering with pilot qualifications. He can take your shift.”
“Sir? Wouldn’t I be better served flying the ship, especially since you’ve already said I’m one of the best pilots you’ve ever seen? We might get attacked again.”
“And if we do, my office is only a minute’s run from the bridge. I need someone I can trust to sort this out. Otherwise, it won’t matter how good your piloting skills are.”
She nodded, a little of
the tension leaving her body. The captain trusted her. “Right, sir. Okay.” She rubbed her hands together. “Short break, then back to work.”
“Thank you, Trace.”
“It’s my job, sir.”
“Tristan.” He gave her a crooked smile and led the way to the deserted mess hall.
“Ugh, I can barely keep my eyes open.” Mila closed out a message and opened the next one. She expected them to blur together soon. Or maybe she would miss something. It didn’t help that the messages were a mess. The data was corrupted, all right. Some messages had half the text gone, a bunch of symbols and gobbledygook taking its place.
“Do you want to call it a night?”
Yes. “No. I think I might be to a halfway point soon.” And I really want to catch the sons of bitches trying to kill me.
“Okay. A bit longer.”
She scrolled through the message, closed it out and opened the next one. Most of the messages were boring. Things like, “Hi. How are the kids?” “How’s school?” Occasionally, she came across hot stuff, stuff that equated to phone sex. She was just glad home base restricted messages to text.
She exited a message of someone talking to his girlfriend, making plans for when he got back. Opening yet another message, she read, froze, and read it again. “Um, sir?”
“Yeah, May?”
“I think I’ve got it.”
Chapter Fifteen
Tristan did his hovering thing while she read the message a third time. It listed current position, speed, trajectory, and her name, May’s name, May’s shift. It said the pilot couldn’t evade the attack. “They couldn’t send this through home base, could they, sir? And how did they get my file? They had to have gotten my file, right?” But those files were restricted, weren’t they?
“Here. Let me.” He reached over her shoulder and started tapping the screen. It pulled up an information panel, detailing destination, sender, etc.
The name in the sender category blared out at her. “No.” She stood up, knocking into Tristan. She shook her head. “No, he didn’t do it. It couldn’t be him.” The display read, “Sender: Luke Hall.”
“I agree. Look again.”
Mila looked at the screen in Tristan’s hand, then at all the details, trying to see what he’d seen. “The sent period. He wouldn’t have been on shift.”
He nodded. “And you can’t send TAT messages from anywhere but the bridge.”
She couldn’t help but play devil’s advocate. “But what if he posted the message on another console?”
He shook his head. “Those messages are all sent directly to home base.”
“Then who was on shift?”
He looked down, checking the time again. “It’s around shift change. Could have been any of four people.”
“Two, actually.”
“Huh?”
“Think about it. The person wiped the directory, but didn’t do a good enough job to keep it wiped. So the comp sci people are out. It has to be a mathematician.”
“Good thinking.”
She smiled. “Anytime, sir.”
One of the communications officers sat in a small room on the opposite side of the glass Mila and Tristan stood in front of. He fidgeted and twitched his way along, his gaze bobbing back and forth across the surfaces like a bobble head doll. Avery walked in before them.
“I didn’t even know we had interrogation rooms on this ship.” Mila looked to the captain.
“Of course we do. This is first and foremost a military vessel. In the past, these rooms have been used for interrogating prisoners of war and enemy combatants.”
Mila turned to the smug man sitting in the interrogation room behind them. Each observation room connected to two interrogation rooms. Efficient. Mr. Fidget looked suspicious, but she would put money on the guy behind her. She didn’t think anyone could sit that cool while waiting to be interrogated by the likes of Avery.
In the opposite room, Avery had started the interrogation. She’d heard his voice rising and falling, but hadn’t been listening. The captain was formidable, unnerving. Avery was terrifying. All he needed was a scar running down his face.
Mila glanced at the man behind her again. A small smirk crossed his face. Chills ran down her body. She tugged on the captain’s sleeve.
“Yeah?” He turned to her.
“I think Avery’s wasting his time. That’s the guy.” She pointed to the opposite pane of glass. “He’s a psycho.”
He shook his head. “Psycho doesn’t always equate to the right guy for the crime. Where’s your display?”
She handed him the flat panel still clutched in her fist.
“Thanks. Let’s see this guy’s record, eh?” He typed on the screen some, swiped his finger across, then settled on something. “Psycho is probably a good description. The man has more demerits than I thought possible. Why hasn’t he been booted yet?”
Mila stretched to see. “There.” She pointed. “He might be a psycho, but he’s the best mathematician we’ve got.” She pulled her finger across the display. “Good God. Look at all the awards. What’s this about a Fields Medal?”
“That’s the foremost award for mathematicians. I only know because I’ve had to screen enough of them as a captain.”
“What about the other guy?”
“Hold on.” Tristan exited the personnel file and went about finding the other guy’s file. “There’s not much here. No demerits. No commendations. Nothing. Just ships he’s served on, classifications, training.”
“Like maybe he didn’t want to get noticed.”
Chapter Sixteen
Mila yawned, her eyes tearing up as she swayed in place.
“Oh, I’m sorry, May. Head back to your bunk. Get some rest. I’ve kept you up too long.”
She looked at him critically. “Shouldn’t you be doing the same, sir? You’ve been awake as long as I have. Why aren’t you yawning?”
“Just lucky, I guess.”
“Well, how about I’ll call it quits when you do, sir?” She might fall asleep on her feet, but she didn’t think a captain with sleep deprivation would be much help to anyone.
“Fine, come on. We’ll walk you to your bunk.”
“Oh, joy,” she said, wincing at saying that out loud. She really needed some sleep. “You and my shadows.” She slapped her hands together and stretched a worn smile on her face.
“Knock it off, wiseass.”
She winked and dashed for the door. “But it’s a fine ass, too.” And where the hell did that come from? Sleep deprivation was making her lose her damn mind.
“Sadly, yes,” she imagined the captain mutter under his breath.
Yep, definitely her imagination.
When she slipped into her bunk, her roommate slept soundly, just a gently moving lump on the bottom bed. She groaned looking at the ladder to get to hers. Why couldn’t she have gotten the lower one?
She contemplated sleeping on the floor, but nixed it as she kicked her shoes into the wardrobe, pulled off her belt, and removed her uniform shirt. In just her pants and undershirt, she slinked to the ladder, collapsing into its rungs and groaning again. The bed seemed so far away.
But she climbed, each rung feeling like a marathon. Three more. Two more. One more. Collapse. She didn’t have the energy to tuck herself in. The next morning, she woke with her head propped on her arms and her legs still dangling off the bottom a good two to three feet.
She got up late. Santos was long gone. “Ow.” She rolled over and rubbed her shins where they’d pressed against the metal frame all night. She stretched and her back protested with an audible pop. A yawn escaped against her will and she fell back to the bed. I do not want to get up.
She slipped down and contemplated a shower. She skipped yesterday, didn’t she? Felt like ages ago. She sniffed a pit. Yep, I stink.
Damn.
After a shower that tormented her with visions of the assassin slipping in and killing her, she grabbed a bagel and headed to Tri
stan’s quarters, knocking on the door.
“Come in.”
She peeked in, holding up her breakfast. “Probably should have gotten you one too, huh?”
“Oh, that’s okay, May.”
“So, what’s on the agenda today, sir?”
“Avery’s still working on those two suspects, which leaves Comms seriously shorthanded. Hall’s the only mathematician trained on the TAT.”
“Gotcha. Well, until we figure out who’s innocent and who’s guilty, there’s not much we can do there. How’s Luke doing? I kind of didn’t check in on him since, well, the USB key thing.” She looked at the floor, embarrassed that she’d forgotten about him so easily.
“He’s fine. He’s working. He’s probably wondering where you are right now.”
She sucked in a breath. “Oh no! He probably thinks something happened to me. I’ve gotta go.”
“Hey, hey!” He jumped from his seat. “Relax. Don’t bother him while he’s working, ’kay?”
Mila rolled her eyes. “Like he’s working that hard.”
He smiled. “Some preliminary background checks came in. Care to help go through them?”
She pulled in a breath and thought of Luke. He would be fine, right? “Okay.”
Mila yawned. “This would be a whole lot easier in paper. We could just dump them into no and maybe piles.”
Tristan looked up from his screen. “You can still do that. Just make folders in the directory.”
“It’s not the same. This display is a pain in the ass.”
He smirked at her. “Get to work, Trace.”
“Oh, now we’re back to Trace, are we?”
“Well, yeah, when you’re slacking.”
“I’m not slacking!” But she smiled anyway. Even poring over boring as hell background checks proved entertaining with the captain, which was scary, come to think of it. She didn’t want to become attached to anyone, especially him. Not with her problems. How could she get close to someone when there would always be a lie between them?
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