"After dinner," she said, heading back to the control room. "All that work made me hungry."
T'Mar followed her, draping his lifesuit over the back of the copilot's chair.
"All what work? You sat on your butt in the control room while I slaved in open space to get supplies to desperate, starving refugees."
"Oh! My hero! Desperate? Maybe. Starving? Nobody ever said they were starving. According to the manifest, they had enough rations for a month."
"Well, it sounded better than 'happy, nonstarving refugees' didn't it?"
She shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so. Whatever kind of refugees they are, they're just neighbors, now, and we have this boat all to ourselves."
"One more thing, L'Tan. The new passcode for the airlock and ship's systems."
"Why do we need a new one?"
"So I'll feel all safe and snug in your bed, of course. We don't really know who all those people are and they can't be vetted right away. If Alliance thinks extra security is reasonable, why shouldn't we?"
"Good enough. You know the Alliance can override any locks you can put on this thing, don't you?"
"Yup, but they aren't the people I'm thinking about."
She nodded and tapped up the control codes menu on the pilot's console.
"Do you know the current code?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, tapping in 'V00-L5J-1C1A'.
The menu changed to another menu that offered blocks for changes and additional codes. T'Mar tapped in 'D7A46N3L91'.
"Mind telling me how you happen to know a ship's general purpose code?"
"Observation. They unlocked the flitter and another vehicle with it."
"You memorized a ten-digit code while you watched someone type it? Why don't I believe that?"
"Because you don't want to?"
"That's one reason. What did you just enter in the additional code box?"
T'mar grinned at her and said, "My nickname. Check the code against the alphanumeric keypad and tell me what you get."
L'Tan did so, then said, "Dragonfly One?"
"You got it."
The comm beeped and Tac asked, "What are you doing and how did you know the ship's code?"
T'Mar said, "Just adding a level of security for the same reasons you did. I picked up the ship's code in the launch bay. Did you pick up my new code, too?"
"Yes. Alliance out."
L'Tan said, "He didn't seem too happy about your knowing that code."
T'Mar shrugged at her statement and put his lifesuit in a locker, then stood next to the copilot's chair.
"About that dinner," he said. "And that box from L'Sil. Let's see what she sent us and dig out some food. You must be about done for the day."
Chapter Eighteen
"You're right," said L'Tan. "I can't remember ever being this tired in my life, not even in training." She patted her pocket and added, "I took another pill before we came over here, so I'm not quite in agony, but..."
He nodded as he fished a couple of ration packs out of one of the containers.
"Yeah. But. Why don't we just feed you and put you to bed? Stay there while I do the cooking."
He tore a pack tab off and set it down, then tore the tab off the other one. The self-heating packs were soon steaming. T'Mar carefully opened the packs from end to end and removed the eating utensils, handing a set to L'Tan, then placed both ration packs on the console.
"These ratpacks beat the ones we had when I was in service."
L'Tan laughed. "Ours, too. Flight packs had green, brown, yellow, and white muck in squeeze tubes."
"Ours weren't that bad. Sometimes we'd even find solid food in them, although we didn't really know why the stuff had turned solid, and it remained kind of brick-like unless you could soften it up by boiling it."
He went to get the container from L'Sil and brought it into the control room. Inside it they found four bottles of wine and some soft drink mix in packets.
"Will this stuff go with rations?"
"Sure," said T'Mar. "With rations, it doesn't matter what you drink."
When they finished eating, T'Mar readied a couple of bunks in the cabin behind the control room. L'Tan stretched out on hers, said, "Goodnight," and fell asleep almost instantly.
T'Mar went back to the control room and sat for some time in the command chair, wondering what was nagging at him as he sipped another glass of wine.
He keyed the comm pad for ship-to-ship tight beam and said, "T'Lek, come in."
T'Lek's face appeared on the screen. "Yes, T'Mar?"
"Thought you might be up, still. How are things over there?"
"Fine, as far as I can tell. The ladies have organized everything, of course. Right now a number of the smaller children are undergoing routine maintenance in the back bathroom and sleeping arrangements are being assigned."
"Such fun," said T'Mar. "Tell me something, T'Lek; what kind of weapon were you working on for the Eiranians?"
T'Lek stiffened. "I didn't work on a weapon."
"You said..."
"I said they had one. I didn't say that I worked on it."
"Okay, you didn't work on the weapon. So, how do you know anything about it?"
"I just do. Let's leave it at that."
T'Mar smiled as if T'Lek had cracked a joke.
"Oh, yeah. I could leave it at that, but I don't think Admiral T'Bar will. He isn't noted for having much patience, and these aren't normal times. If you pull your ransom act on him, you'll wind up under arrest, talking to an interrogator."
T'Lek drew himself up and stated, "I'm a Confederation citizen, not a prisoner of war. Nothing better happen to me that can't be explained to the public."
That made T'Mar laugh out loud.
"You don't seem to understand yet, T'Lek. There's considerably less 'public' out there since the Eiranian virus attack, and you shouldn't count on much sympathy from the survivors. Most of them were aboard ships when the virus was released on their homeworlds, which makes them mostly military people whose families are gone. If I were you, I'd be very candid about anything you happen to know."
T'Lek simply looked back at him in silence for some moments. When something in his eyes changed, T'Mar spoke quickly.
"Don't turn off the screen yet, T'Lek. I may not be telling you what you want to hear, but I'm telling you how it is. The usual rules have been suspended, if not necessarily officially. Talk now, freely, or talk later to people who won't stop until someone pulls them off you. You know it's true."
T'Lek's gaze hardened and he made a show of aiming a finger at the 'off' button as he said, "I'll take your advice into consideration."
"One more thing, T'Lek. I was a medic. During the wars, I kept pirates awake - and sometimes had to keep them alive - during 'informal interviews'. Before you decide not to cooperate, maybe you'd like to hear a little about them."
"No. I would not like to hear about them. Out."
T'Lek's finger hit the 'off' button. T'Mar flicked off the comm and stretched out on his bunk.
'Physics. Research. Saxet,' he thought.
T'Mar had almost dozed off when it hit him and snapped him awake. Saxet was mostly a desert world, but it hadn't always been that way. He was sure of it.
About the time that he'd gone into service and been sent to war, something had happened on Saxet, but at the time, he'd been too busy keeping his skin intact to worry about much else.
A quick check showed that the ship's computer didn't have much more about Saxet than a mark on a star chart and a brief note about available facilities.
"Tac, come in."
"I'm here, T'Mar."
"Would it be reasonable to assume that you're monitoring all communications and that you overheard my conversation with T'Lek?"
"As you said, these aren't normal times. Yes, I heard."
"Any comments?"
"Not at this time."
'Interesting,' thought T'Mar. 'He didn't ask, "about what?", as most people probably would have.'
"Do you have any info about Saxet that isn't in this ship's computer?"
"What do you want to know, T'Mar?"
T'Mar added up the time since his early military days and said, "I want to know what happened to Saxet around twenty-one years ago. It was something big enough that we heard about it out in the middle of the pirate wars."
"I can tell you that. Saxet's smallest moon exploded and fried half the planet."
"What makes a moon explode, Tac?"
"They said it had an unstable core or something, I think. There were rumors about government experiments, but... Well, they were proven to be rumors."
T'Mar grinned and said, "That often happens to rumors about government stuff, doesn't it? Especially when things don't go as well as they should. T'Lek said Eirania had a new weapon, Tac. Add it up; T'Lek plus research plus physics plus Saxet plus one exploding moon. He told me that he didn't actually work on a weapon, but if that were true, how would he know about one at all?"
"Because maybe he worked on the power source, instead, and now he's just splitting hairs because he'd rather not let himself believe that he had any part of it? That's pretty classic denial behavior, isn't it?"
"I thought it might be worth some digging, Tac."
"My digging started before you called. T'Lek did seem anxious to get away from the planet, didn't he? But, then, so would anyone who was trying to escape, I suppose. Can't really hold that against him."
"Yeah, but maybe he wasn't worried about getting caught. Maybe he was more worried about being within range of something. He settled down when we were a little more than halfway up here."
"Still, that could simply be because he'd escaped."
"Yeah, maybe. Would you let me know what you find out about Saxet?"
"Will do, if it's within your security clearance. Anything else?"
"Nope. L'Tan's asleep and I guess I'll turn in for the evening, too. Hey, Tac, if it isn't within my clearance, see if it's within L'Tan's. Failing that, see if T'Var will authorize it anyway. I think we're on to something."
"Okay. Check your inbox in the morning. Out."
Without more to go on, there was no point in speculating further, so T'Mar went back to bed. Fifteen sleepless minutes later, he realized that the odd feel of one-third gravity was keeping him awake. He rose and turned it up to one-half, then went back to bed.
T'Mar woke thinking that he'd only dozed off until he saw the ship's clock on the way back from the bathroom; it read 1017 hours.
'Can't tell day from night aboard a damned ship,' he thought, looking out the forward screens at the starfield beyond the Alliance's hull and realizing that he'd had the same thought many times before aboard other ships.
He checked L'Tan's bunk and found it empty, then looked in the control room. L'Tan was sitting in the pilot's seat with her feet on the console.
"You have a message from Tac," she said. "Sleep well?"
"Guess so. How are you? Any back pain?"
"Not really. I checked the comm logs for messages and found a record of your call to T'Lek last night."
T'Mar sat in the copilot's chair and tapped up Tac's message. Referenced sections were missing, replaced by the words 'authorization required'.
"Is your clearance any higher than mine, L'Tan? I'm class Q because some of my previous work involved tracking down some antique nuclear fuels."
"Sorry. Same here, and only because the Eiranians have a nuke arsenal."
"Guess we'll have to talk to T'Var about it. There's too much missing from this message to pull a reasonable extrapolation."
"It'll be there after breakfast," said L'Tan. "My turn to cook."
She found a couple of appropriate ration packs and popped their tabs, then opened a couple of drink boxes and arranged everything neatly on the console.
"There are only five types of ration packs," she said. "What happens when the meals get monotonous?"
"Well, I guess we'll just have to turn on each other like starving animals."
"Uhm-hmm," she mumbled around her drinking straw. Finishing her sip, she smiled and said, "Yeah. At that point there's just nothing else to do, is there?"
"At least I already know how you taste," said T'Mar. "Pretty good, really."
"So complimentary, first thing in the morning. I like that."
As L'Tan looked his direction with a smile, something outside the windows caught her attention. When T'Mar looked, he saw what appeared to be a moving star and he looked a bit harder. Not one moving star. Several.
"The fleet's here," said L'Tan. "Some of it, anyway."
The reflection of the sun from the hull of the Alliance suddenly ceased. Craning to see beyond the curve of the forward window, they could see that a ship more than twice the size of Alliance was moving to a position beside her.
The console comm screen lit up to a basic menu and Tac's voice said, "Shuttlecraft, we have company."
T'Mar tapped the video on and Tac's face appeared. He glanced from T'Mar to L'Tan and said, "I see you slept in this morning. Must be nice to have time off. Someday I'll put in for some, I think."
"Yeah," said L'Tan. "You should try it some time. Tell T'Bar that I may be infected. That should keep him away from me even when our quarantine ends."
Tac laughed and said, "You haven't forgiven him, I see."
"No. I haven't."
"What did he do to you?" asked T'Mar.
"He promoted me off the Alliance and into a damned desk job that I didn't want. Six months later, the job vanished with a political decision. He was in a bad mood the day I asked to be returned to the Alliance. I wound up being reassigned to a Council panel for two years, then the Consulate job came up."
T'Mar gave her a quizzical look.
"Sorry for asking, of course, but aren't you a little old to be a fighter pilot?"
L'Tan glared at him and Tac laughed sharply.
"T'Var's got her old job, T'Mar. He tried to step down for her, but T'Bar couldn't allow it after making a scene and shipping L'Tan to a Council post. That would have been admitting an error, and T'Bar won't do that unless you can make him do it."
"Oh, wow," said T'Mar. "Captain Stardancer. I'm impressed, ma'am."
L'Tan gave him a droll look and said, "Well, good for you. Now eat your breakfast and give it a rest, or I'll bust you down to deck scrubber."
T'Mar grinned and asked, "Is 'mutiny' spelled with one 'n' or two?" then turned to the screen and asked, "Any new news, Tac?"
"No, not yet. After everyone arrives, there'll be a meeting on T'Bar's ship. I don't expect to hear anything about anything until then. By the way, I passed your request for higher clearance in the Saxet moon matter to T'Var."
T'Mar said, "Thanks, Tac. Tell L'Sil thanks for us, too, will you?"
"Will do. Will she know why?"
L'Tan laughed and said, "She'll know."
Chapter Nineteen
Two hours later, T'Mar was reading on the vid screen when some small motion outside the forward windows made him look up. For long moments he watched, seeing nothing but space and the hull of the Alliance, then the shadow of the transport on the Alliance's hull seemed to sprout a stubby appendage.
"L'Tan," he said, as he called up the exterior view on the screen that would show the transport. "Have a look. The transport's shadow."
She opened her eyes and looked where he was pointing as she rolled out of her bunk and onto her feet.
"What about it? Oh. I see. Someone's outside the transport?"
"Have a look at the screen. Two lifesuits outside the transport's lock."
T'Mar tapped the comm to contact Alliance and said, "Tac, come in. Two people are outside the transport. Did they get out or do they want in?"
"They've been sampling the transport for signs of virus and some of T'Bar's people wanted a private chat with T'Lek. They're meeting him in the airlock."
There was something odd about the transmission. T'Mar scanned the board to try to discover what was causing the oddness.
>
He said, "That sounds ominous enough. No witnesses. Well, we warned him this could happen. If T'Lek has a secret, he won't have it much longer."
Tac smiled. "The lack of witnesses occurred to me, too. By the way, your little vacation is almost over. We'll be taking you back aboard soon."
'Got it,' thought T'Mar. 'He's not using a tight beam. He wants the Eiranians to overhear this.'
L'Tan hurried over from the window and said, "But the quarantine..."
A heavyset older man in a Fleet uniform leaned over Tac's shoulder and said, "Hello, L'Tan. Glad to see you two are still fairly alert over there. I don't believe you're at risk and neither does the doctor."
L'Tan's eyes narrowed and she asked, "Is that any reason to bring us back aboard, Admiral T'Bar? The comm system seems to be functioning perfectly. Why risk it?"
"I have the logs from your trip dirtside and bioscans of the transport's control room there turned up nothing but the usual residue people leave wherever they go. No virus. Same for the rest of the transport and the people; no virus. Anyway, what I have to say may change your opinion of me."
"With all due respect, Admiral, that is rather unlikely."
T'Bar smiled. He shouldn't have; it made him look even less likeable.
"L'Tan, you and your 'aide' report to the bridge immediately upon arrival."
Having said that, T'Bar straightened and walked off-screen. Tac didn't say anything for a moment as his eyes followed T'Bar's progress around the bridge, then he spoke quietly.
"I just got word that we'll be bringing you aboard in a few minutes. See you when you get here. Out."
More of the fleet arrived as they waited. By the time their shuttle began to move, the sky had become dotted with ships of various sizes and types as they established a gridwork that almost wrapped around Eirania.
Once their shuttle was landed and anchored in bay two, a pair of ship's security people - an Ensign and an enlisted man - entered the shuttle to escort L'Tan and T'Mar directly to the bridge.
L'Tan locked eyes with the officer and said, "I know how to get to the bridge."
"My orders are to make sure you get there immediately, ma'am."
T'Mar put the wine bottles in a transport container, then picked it up and broke L'Tan's staring match with the Ensign by tapping L'Tan on the arm.
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