Firmament: Machiavellian

by J. Grace Pennington

  Pearson could have stolen the serum and injected him, to frame him—but I couldn’t believe that. Even if he’d sedated Lee so that he wouldn’t feel the injection, he couldn’t possibly know how to manage all the other drugs needed for the procedure in the proper ways and proper order without medical knowledge. And even if he’d enlisted Mr. Dubois’s help, wouldn’t Lee realize he’d slept an unusually long time?

  With a sigh I scraped up the last dregs of my food. I absentmindedly used my fork to shape the last bite of my mashed potatoes into a perfectly rounded little lump before picking it up and putting it into my mouth. I savored the creamy, buttery goodness for a moment before swallowing.

  I stopped, frowned, and stared at the temp regulator across from me, trying to think. Swallowing. Swallowing. What was it about swallowing?

  Potatoes in my stomach.

  With a little gasp, I hopped off my stool and hurried to find the Doctor.

  Chapter XVIII

  He was in his office, making out reports, and turned to me as I stepped through the doorway. “You took so long I monitored August myself…” he began, but I interrupted him, something I rarely did.

  “Dad, can the pre-warp serum be taken orally as well as intravenously?”

  He just looked at me for a moment. Then he said, “Have a seat,” and turned to touch his computer screen to activate it.

  Speaking in low tones as he worked, he said, “I don’t remember for sure, but I think I might have heard about some oral experiments. If I recall correctly it produced unpleasant side effects, but sped up the results. I think some smugglers started the habit… yes, when desperate to make warp quickly, to evade authorities or make deadlines, things of that nature. I think I read an article about how they were working to find a way to reduce the side effects…” his voice trailed off as he stared at the screen.

  After a moment, he said, “I’m not sure… you’re thinking it could have been slipped to Lee that way, I assume?”

  “Yes sir,” I nodded.

  “I would say it was possible, except for the extreme symptoms it causes… fever, aching, coughing, even vomiting… chills and fatigue…”

  “I had a touch of the flu a few days ago, but nothing serious. Thank you for your concern, though.”

  My eyes widened as I looked at the Doctor. “Flu,” I murmured.

  “Yes, it does sound like a case of the flu, almost…”

  “Lee told me he’d had ‘a touch of the flu’ a few days ago.”

  He stared at me for a moment. “When?”

  “When I was getting his blood sample. He said that nothing was wrong with him, he had just had a touch of the flu a few days ago.” My heart beat a bit faster.

  “What do you think happened?” he asked, folding his hands on his desktop.

  I swallowed. “I… I think it’s Doctor Pearson.”

  He leaned back in his chair then, and ran his long fingers through his gray hair. “I’m listening,” was all he said.

  I told him about what had happened with Pearson in the computer lab a few nights before; how he was the one who had discovered the element, how he would be smart enough to pull off the various sabotage, and to use Captain Holloway’s compassionate nature to further his own schemes.

  The Doctor listened in silence, only nodding, until I was finished. He waited a moment before speaking slowly. “Andi… I know you’re fond of Captain Holloway. He’s a very charismatic person. But you have to remember we don’t really know him.”

  I bit my lip. “You don’t think I could be right?”

  “It’s possible. But I think it more likely that Captain Holloway knows exactly what he’s doing.”

  “But…” I began.

  “I just don’t think that Doctor Pearson has the mind it would take to pull all of this off himself. Oh, he’s a brilliant scientist, I’m sure. But unless I’m very much mistaken, his brilliance is all science and mathematics and physics and astronomy… I highly doubt he could manipulate people any better than I could.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he went on.

  “Most people are not good with both people and science. I think it would take a team to pull off something like this, if things happened as you said.”

  I ignored his respectful reference to my theory. “But Dad, do you really think Captain Holloway would do something like that?”

  “Really?” His gray eyes bored into me steadily and searchingly. “He’d encourage Trent to go against the law and his own honor. Is this a man to be trusted?”

  “But… it’s for a good reason. It’s not wrong to go into the galactic center. Not morally.”

  He sighed a bit, but smiled with his lips, his eyes remaining serious. “We’ve been through all this. You’re an adult, Andi, you don’t have to agree with me. But my opinion of Captain Holloway hasn’t changed.”

  Remembering Napoleon’s compassion for Lee, I struggled to keep my tone matter-of-fact as hot irritation rose in my chest. “Either way, we can work to clear Lee’s name, right?”

  He nodded approvingly. “The flu-like symptoms are good evidence, but it’s not enough.”

  “If any sabotage happens while Lee’s in the brig…”

  “It won’t. Whoever did all this is too smart for that.”

  I nodded my agreement. “So what now?”

  He leaned forward and laid his hand over mine. “Keep your eyes open. Keep thinking. If you find out anything, tell me right away.”

  “And… should I tell the Captain about all this?”

  He paused for a moment, then he sat back. “I’ll let you be the judge of that. On the one hand, as an officer of this ship, you have a duty not to withhold relevant information from our authority. On the other hand, it’s also your duty to discern when he’s too busy to be bothered with uncertain suspicions. Too much information at the wrong time can overwhelm a leader.”

  I nodded, and heaved a deep breath. “Okay.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make the right decision.” He smiled at me.

  I smiled back. “Thanks, Dad,” I said, purposefully injecting my voice with warmth. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I’ll probably go talk to Lee.”

  I nodded again, stood up, and asked, “Did you have any work for me?”

  “Check on August again, then I just want you to find out what you can until I call you.”

  Obediently, I stepped out of the office and into sickbay. August still lay on the cot in the corner, near the oxygen machine, even though he was no longer on oxygen. We hadn’t bothered to move him, since no one else needed it.

  His eyes were closed when I approached him, and I flashed back to the first time I’d seen him—or rather, the first time I remembered seeing him. It was just over six months ago now that the Doctor had ordered me to treat “the new lieutenant.” I’d thought nothing of him at the time, but our friendship had quickly developed. And it was only days later that we discovered our true relationship.

  He opened his eyes as I approached, and smiled. “Is everything okay?”

  “I don’t know.” Settling myself on the edge of his bed, I asked, “You’d never heard of Captain Holloway or Doctor Pearson before?”

  “No. I haven’t been working in space that long, though.”

  I nodded.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked after a moment.

  “I’m thinking that I don’t know what to do now.”

  “About Lee?”

  Yeah.

  A moment of silence, then he asked a bit timidly, “Do you have any theories, or…?”

  “Well, there are ways to explain his innocence, but I don’t know how to prove any of it. And besides, that doesn’t matter so much… not immediately, anyway.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  Another moment of silence, then, “Somebody either really wants us to get to the galactic center or really doesn’t. The weird thing is, I can’t tell which.”

  “That is stran
ge…” he mused. “Are you worried about what might happen at the galactic center?”

  “Or what might happen on the way there.”

  He was silent for a moment, then asked softly, “And what might happen when we get back?”

  “ISA will understand,” I insisted. “Our mission is to seek out, document, and inform. If we can find a new element that could help terraform uninhabitable planets and improve the conditions on those barely habitable—”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But what if we can’t find it? What if we damage the ship and hurt the crew for no reason?”

  “I’m sure the Captain has thought of all that.”

  He just looked at me, his brown eyes as steady as the Doctor’s had been. My cheeks flushed and I looked away. “What does that matter now? We have to find out what’s going on and stop it.”

  He raised himself slowly on one elbow. “I’m coming with you.”

  “The Doctor hasn’t released you yet.”

  “I’m feeling fine.”

  I didn’t remonstrate any further, but stood up and let him stand beside me.

  “Where do we start?” he asked.

  I thought hard. “The Doctor thinks nothing will be attempted with Lee in the brig, so that gives us a little time.” I started out of sickbay, but kept my steps slow, pausing at the door.

  “August?”

  “Yes?”

  I furrowed my brows. “Whoever did this would have had to get codes from Unkrich.”

  “Right.”

  “Is there a different code for each operation?”

  “Oh no,” he explained, his soft accent working over the words. “Each person has their own serial number, and the computer recognizes whether that crewmember has clearance for the operation. It’s the same as up here.”

  I always used the Doctor’s clearance code, since he trusted me with anything he had clearance for.

  “How many officers have clearance for both the tracking and the life support?”

  “I don’t know…”

  I touched his arm involuntarily. “Can you find out? And find out what else he had clearance for?”

  “Sure. What are you going to do?”

  I turned towards the computer room. “Research.”

  Chapter XIX

  I filled my lungs with a deep breath as I sat down at the same library computer I’d used the other night. There were two things I had to find out. First, I needed to know if there was any way to prove that the pre-warp serum had been taken orally. My searching in this area proved negative, much to my disappointment. There were some ways within the first forty-eight hours or so, but nothing after that.

  The result of my second task was also unsatisfactory. I looked in vain for any indication that Doctor Pearson or Napoleon—I forced myself to consider him, too—had ever been involved in any illegal activity. There wasn’t much information available about the little captain, other than his credentials. Doctor Pearson had written a few scientific articles, and there was one news story on his appointment to the Copernicus, but nothing that seemed relevant.

  I stared at the computer. If Doctor Pearson was as famous a scientist as all that, why wasn’t there more information on him? I flipped back through the articles, and noticed that they were all written within the past three years. Before that, I could find no record whatsoever of a Doctor Julian Pearson, or a Julian Pearson of any kind related to science.

  Had he changed his name? If so, why? And from what?

  My wristcom beeped then. “Andi?”

  It was August. I answered. “Yes?”

  “I did what you asked. Can you come to my cabin?”

  “Okay.” Shutting off the computer, I hurried out of the room and down to my brother’s room on D-Deck.

  When I arrived, a touch of a button beside the door opened it, and I looked into the bright, bare room. August sat on his bed with a paper in his hands, and he looked up and beckoned to me as I came in.

  “McMillan was very helpful,” he said quietly. “He opened the engineering clearance reports for me, and took another look at the life support system log.”

  “The life support log? Why?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. Look at this.” He pushed the paper into my hands as I sat beside him on the soft black coverlet he‘d chosen for his bed.

  I peered at it. It was a list of names and jobs. He pointed at each entry with his middle finger as he explained.

  “There were three officers with clearance for tracking and life support, besides of course McMillan himself. Lieutenant Commander Weise—the second engineer—and Lieutenant Murphy.” Moving his finger down the page, he let it rest under Unkrich’s name. “Unkrich was the third, and he also had clearance for attitude control, monitoring, airlock control, and engineering security systems.”

  I pondered the list. “Maybe we should keep an eye on those areas, to see if anything unusual happens with them.”

  “I agree, and so did McMillan. He’s watching for each of them, though he can’t do it all by himself, and I didn’t think we should trust too many people. But it’s something, at least.”

  I nodded. “So why did you have him look at the life support logs?”

  “That was his idea. He had looked to see if they were tampered with, but after going over this with me, he decided to go a bit deeper into the system to see who had been on duty at that time. That information doesn’t display immediately, and only he can see it.”

  He paused, and I waited for a moment, nervously pinching my thumbs with each of my fingernails one by one. “What did he find?” I asked at last.

  “What he was expecting—the computer indicated that Lieutenant Unkrich had been on duty for about ten minutes that evening in the middle of Lieutenant Murphy’s shift.”

  “But... Unkrich was already dead by then.”

  August smiled a little. “Exactly.”

  “Did you ask Murphy about it?”

  “Yes. She says she doesn’t know anything about it. She circulated between her duties during her shift, and didn’t see anyone unusual.”

  “But someone could have slipped in while she was at another station? There would have been plenty of time?”

  “Oh, yes. And the time that the life support was changed corresponds to the time that she was away working in attitude control. She had to stay there longer than usual, because of the tracking irregularities.”

  “So someone who knew just how long she’d been away, and what was going on down there. Someone who knew the schedule well.”

  He nodded, and as if reading my mind, said, “We asked the other officers on duty if they’d seen anything, and that includes the Copernicus officer, Doug Schmelling. He says he saw nothing, but that his boss asked him to come to the D-Deck lounge when he could be spared. And guess when that was?”

  My eyes widened, and I stopped fidgeting. “When Lieutenant Murphy was at the attitude control station?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Too bad the security cameras aren’t working…” I mused. Then I asked, “Wait, his boss? Does that mean—”

  “Pearson. And he says that when he reached the lounge, Pearson wasn’t there but arrived a few minutes later.”

  “Enough time to hurry down to engineering, adjust the life support in your room, then go up into the lounge again.”

  “Quite enough time.”

  I stood up. “Isn’t that proof enough?”

  He shook his head and remained seated. “It’s not proof, Andi. Only conjecture.”

  “But Pearson called him away!”

  “So he says. What if Lee told him to say that?”

  “He didn’t!”

  “I don’t think he did, but what will the Captain think?”

  I saw his point, and was silent.

  “Besides,” he went on, “he could just be lying. Or maybe Captain Holloway told him to say that. Or maybe Pearson legitimately did call him and happened to be late.”

  My wristcom beeped. “Andi, where are
you?”

  “In August’s quarters, Doctor.”

  “I’ll be right there,” was all he said, and the call terminated.

  I looked at August, who said, “I guess that means we had better stay here.”

  I couldn’t help a giggle that was a bit more pronounced than it should have been. August’s lips twitched, but he didn’t laugh.

  We waited in silence for the Doctor’s arrival, and my heart kept palpitating in time to the rhythmic humming of the engine. Before long, the door slid open and he strode in without ceremony, his long, thin legs making quick work of the distance to the bed.

  “I talked to Lee,” he announced in his gruff voice.

  “About what?”

  He stood with his arms crossed in front of where we sat together on the bed, making me feel either like a naughty child or a soldier receiving marching orders.

  “He admits that his wife is going to have their child within the next few weeks, and that he was worried about making it home, but he denies that he’d do anything to sabotage the mission. He thinks it’s wrong, but he also thinks it would be wrong to protest in that way.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but he went on.

  “I also asked him about his episode of the flu. Mostly I wanted to know whether anyone else on the Copernicus had gotten the flu at the same time. He denied it—in fact, in the entire time he’d been there he hadn’t encountered any cases other than his.”

  “Unlikely, if it was really flu?” I half-questioned, half-stated.

  “Precisely. I asked him about Captain Holloway and Doctor Pearson; his experience with them… unfortunately, he hasn’t been there long enough to get to know them very well. They don’t pay much attention to him, especially Doctor Pearson. He says Holloway has always been kind to him and kind to the other men, and stood up for him when others on the team complained about his presence.”

  “You still think Na—Captain Holloway is responsible for this?” I asked pointedly.

  He looked down at me, still with his arms crossed over his chest. “I think we can’t know anything for sure, Andi.”

  I wanted to retort that he had seemed quite sure about it earlier, but I kept my mouth shut and pinched my thumb again.