by Sean Danker
The three graduates weren’t speaking. They didn’t know one another. They had never met before; they just happened to be assigned to the same ship. This was even less comfortable for them than it was for me. Nils didn’t even know how to deal with Lieutenant Deilani, much less an admiral. Even Salmagard’s natural grace couldn’t smooth it out for the three of them.
Deilani hadn’t taken her eyes off me. I wasn’t naive enough to think that I could ignore her forever, but I hoped she wouldn’t become a serious problem, at least not until we’d gotten out of this mess.
Salmagard gazed at the swirling green mist outside. I watched her, trying to read her, but not getting anywhere.
She looked a little familiar, but I knew we’d never met.
She could be thinking anything, but I remembered the way she’d looked at me when I’d just come out of my sleeper. If she had recognized me, she was determined to keep quiet.
I felt queasy. I needed her to give me something.
Nils was grim, but not too grim. He knew how bad off we were, but he was playing it cool. Maybe he was too proud to look dejected in front of Salmagard. From what I’d heard about the Imperial Service academies, I was surprised they hadn’t managed to stamp the impulse to impress a pretty girl out of him. Maybe the rumors were exaggerated.
Time to take charge. I was an admiral now.
“Admiral,” Deilani said, still watching me.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Which fleet do you command?”
“I don’t command any,” I replied. “It’s an honorary title. Obviously.”
Her eyes narrowed. Deilani wasn’t stupid. To have gotten into bio with a commission and overachieved to the point that she was assigned to the Julian, Deilani had to have drive and intelligence off the charts. It didn’t take a genius to see that I didn’t add up.
But I needed her to stop worrying about me, and focus on more pressing issues.
I cleared my throat. “If Captain Tremma’s on this ship, he’s either dead or locked up. And I don’t think he’s locked up. We need to find out what happened to him and his pilot officer.”
“Isn’t two a small crew for a ship this size?” Deilani continued to scrutinize me. She’d latched on. She wasn’t going to let go until she got what she wanted. She must have been a terror in the classroom.
It was a good question, but it probably wasn’t in my best interests to answer it. “It’s a Ganraen ship,” I pointed out instead.
“Right.” Nils nodded. Deilani looked puzzled.
“Androids,” he told her. “Or maybe just AI and automated systems. They use that stuff a lot more than we do. But none of it’s functioning because the system’s down.”
Not exactly true, but it would do for now.
They were more or less finished eating. “They’re expecting us at Payne Station. The Julian won’t wait forever. Let’s find Tremma and get out of here,” I said, waving at the viewports, and the mist beyond. “I’ve got places to be. And this place gives me the creeps.”
“Where do we look, sir?” Deilani arched an eyebrow at me.
I returned her look, praying for patience. It was a fair question. The ship was enormous. A big Ganraen freighter like this was shaped roughly like an oblong box. The sheer amount of space inside it was staggering. We didn’t have the time or supplies to just look around and hope for the best. And my patience with Deilani wouldn’t last that long.
“I’m still thinking about that, Lieutenant. Would you be able to pull a log off an airlock console?” I asked Nils.
“I think so, sir.”
“Let’s see if any of the personnel loaders have cycled,” I suggested. If Tremma wasn’t on the ship, I was curious to know what might’ve made him feel the need to leave.
“I may be able to do that from here once the system’s reset, sir.”
“What we really need is a map.”
“I’ll see about that too, sir.”
“Nils, I’m glad you’re here.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Admiral,” Deilani said, hands on hips.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Which academy did you graduate from?”
I felt my temper begin to rise, and stifled it. She wasn’t taking the hint.
Salmagard was taking care of the plastic wrappers from the field rations, and our empty water bottles, packing them back into the survival kit. She was listening to every word, but she didn’t so much as look in my direction.
“Rothschild,” I lied, giving Deilani a tired look.
“So did I, sir.”
She was baiting me. Salmagard continued to ignore us. Nils didn’t care; he just wanted to get through the day. Why couldn’t I have gotten three of him?
I felt a sudden contraction behind my eyes.
“Oh, dear.” I looked down to find my hands trembling.
There were three pairs of eyes on me.
“Are you all right, sir?” Nils asked, cocking his head.
“We’re in trouble. Get on there,” I said, pointing at the console. “Find me a map. Playtime’s over.”
“Yes, sir.”
I got up and stepped away. If I dealt with this now, it was going to be pretty obvious. And slipping away would be just as bad. I had to wait. I took some shaky breaths.
“Admiral?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“What’s the trouble, sir?” She knew. She was a doctor, after all. And she had spent our entire time together staring at me. She’d probably noticed before I had. Maybe that was why she was so pissed off.
“We don’t know where we are, and our ship isn’t working,” I replied, keeping my tone even. “Things are not ideal. And I’m not having a good wake-up,” I added. That was true, at least.
She gave me a pitying look. “Do better,” she said.
“All right,” I said, putting up my hands. “All right.”
Salmagard and Nils turned to look at me. Deilani folded her arms. Was that smugness?
I gave her a disgusted look, and reached into my bag.
“Let’s keep the judgment to a minimum,” I said, taking out a hypo and injecting myself.
Deilani turned to the others, jerking her chin at me.
“Our honorary admiral,” she said.
“Hey, come on,” I said. I was feeling better already. “Even admirals can have vices, right? I’m on vacation.”
“What did you just take?” Deilani asked, cutting me off.
“That’s kind of personal,” I replied, glancing at Salmagard. She was completely expressionless.
Deilani twitched an eyebrow. “From the withdrawal, I’m going to say synthetic opiates.”
“You cheated,” I said. “Who told you?”
Deilani just looked at me. I sighed.
“All right, you got me. I’m dependent. You can report me when we get to Payne Station. I’m sure that’ll be great. They’ll probably demote me and garnish some wages or something.”
She gave me another one of those pitying looks. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but you aren’t getting off that easy.”
“What? For this?” I held up my empty hypo.
“For impersonating an officer. You’re going to prison.”
“I wish,” I said.
Deilani blinked, and Salmagard cut in.
“Sir, can we activate a beacon?” she asked.
It was a sensible suggestion, and a good rescue. We needed to get on task. “Worry about me later, Lieutenant. I’m the least of your problems.”
I turned to Salmagard. “No. I don’t think so.” I shook my head. “Maybe we could if this was still a Ganraen ship, but it’s full of Evagardian systems, and if the computer’s down, there is no beacon. I would love to know what’s wrong with the systems,”
I added to Nils.
“Yes, sir.”
“Is it sabotage? Because if it looks like sabotage, then we’re getting somewhere.”
“I don’t know, sir.”
At first I hadn’t been sure, but it couldn’t be coincidence. Even a ship as old as this wouldn’t just happen to fall apart at the same time my sleeper did. What had been done to my sleeper had also been done to this computer.
“Do you have a reason to suspect sabotage?” Deilani asked. She’d deflated a little, but she wouldn’t let go. Not while there was still breath in her body. I respected that, but I wasn’t at my best.
I spread my arms. “I think this is all pretty damn weird,” I told her.
“But where are the androids?” Deilani pressed.
“Never deployed,” I said. “Or we’d see them all over.” There are no androids, kid. Ganraen ship, Evagardian crew. Evagardian systems. Androids didn’t fit into that picture. I didn’t have long before she worked that out.
“Admiral!” Nils said, looking up.
That sounded promising. I rubbed my wrist where I’d injected and turned my attention to the ensign.
“What is it?”
“The forward, starboard loader cycled once since the last reset,” he reported. “I can’t go back any farther.”
I took that in. “I guess it’s something. It’s one more cycle than I’d expect. But just once? So he went outside, but he didn’t come back in?”
“Yes, sir.” He drummed his fingers on the panel, looking puzzled. “I don’t get it, but it’s right here. One cycle.”
“All right. We have to assume that Tremma had some idea what this rock is— So why would he go outside?”
“A repair, sir?” Salmagard theorized.
I nodded. “That sounds right. We’re broken down, after all. We should take a look. I hope he didn’t run into trouble out there.”
I looked at Deilani, who was considering the same notion. Dangerous indigenous life-forms were rare; only a few dozen had been discovered in known systems. Deilani would know at least a little about xenobiology, and she would know that this world was not one of those she had studied.
The gravity drive was shut down, but we were still on the floor. This was a planet, but not much of one. The gravity was too light. And you don’t need life-forms to get you into trouble on an alien world. Anything could’ve happened to them out there.
Nils was the only one who looked alarmed. Salmagard was perfectly calm. Her face never seemed to change.
* * *
With our combined knowledge of spacecraft, Nils and I navigated the four of us in the direction of the airlock in question. There were a lot of corridors and a lot of ladders. We passed a long, dirty window overlooking one of the cargo bays. I glanced down at the massive stacks of crates inside. The white imperial containers were a stark contrast to the dark, grimy bay.
I wondered what Tremma was carrying. With the cease-fire in place, he should’ve been out of a job. Was that why he was ferrying graduates to their first assignment? Then what was in these crates? Leftovers?
Yet again, Deilani was monitoring me.
“Step it out,” I said. “We don’t have time for sightseeing.”
“Can you teach me to walk like that?”
“Like what?” I asked, brushing past her.
“Like a model,” she said, giving a little twitch of her hips.
“You don’t have the figure,” I told her. She rolled her eyes and kept walking. Maybe she’d give up if I kept refusing to bite.
Nils looked smug as we approached the airlock’s pressure door. His navigation had been perfect, no easy task in a dark, foreign vessel. The airlock was sealed. That took me off guard; our side of it should have been open. I went to the small window in the blast door and peered into the cramped chamber. What I saw made me forget all about Deilani’s persistent scrutiny.
“Suits,” I said, looking at the rack by the doors. It was a Ganraen ship, but it had an Evagardian crew, so the suits were Evagardian as well. “EVs, I guess. Quick.”
Instead of obeying, Deilani darted to the window to look for herself. It was amazing how fast her face turned as white as her uniform. She joined the rest of us without a word as we stripped down.
I’d only worn an imperial environment suit once before, but it went on easily enough. The EVs were skintight, the nanofabric adjusting to the wearer’s body, and they were the purest white. They were also the most technologically advanced garments in the galaxy, bar none. I deployed my helmet, which emerged from my collar instantly. There was a hum, and the force shield that was my faceplate materialized, sealing me in. I keyed my suit’s AI and checked that all my readouts were green.
The trainees slipped effortlessly into their suits. They’d obviously practiced this extensively; until recently there had been a war on, and they were bound for ship duty. They had to be ready to suit up quickly in a depressurization scenario.
To them, this technology was business as usual. Imperials take everything for granted.
I smashed the emergency carbon over the manual release with my elbow, and Nils yanked it down. The seal broke with a hiss, and a few centimeters of space appeared between the doors. Together, we pried them open. No power meant no decontamination, so we had to go in with our helmets activated.
I squeezed through and dropped to my knees beside the first body. I couldn’t tell which was Tremma; the upper half of this one was severely burned, and both bodies were in bulky tech suits intended to protect the wearers during heavy repairs and labor.
They hadn’t protected these two well enough. The second corpse was badly burned too, his whole body.
When I met him briefly, years ago, Tremma had seemed to take pride in his ability to prepare for problems before they arose. He hadn’t seen this coming.
He and his pilot officer were dead. Dead in the airlock, nothing but blackened remains.
Swallowing, I got back to my feet. I could see what had happened, even if I didn’t understand the how or the why. I herded the trainees back into the ship, deactivating my helmet once the seal was engaged again.
This changed things. I had to think this through.
Something heavy struck me across the back. It would’ve been my head if I hadn’t chosen that moment to move. I crashed to the ground, and Deilani’s boot slammed me in the gut. Nils shouted something, probably an expletive. Salmagard slipped between me and the lieutenant. She didn’t touch Deilani; she just blocked her with her body.
“Out of the way,” the taller girl snapped. Salmagard said nothing, but held her ground.
“What are you doing?” Nils demanded, still frozen in place.
“There are two dead men in there, and this is not an admiral,” Deilani said, making as though to move around Salmagard, who again managed to block her without touching her. I spat out a mouthful of blood. Good thing I’d deactivated my helmet, or that would’ve been all over my faceplate. “Listen to him talk—he’s not even an officer. Listen to his accent. Where’s his uniform? Look at him move. He’s not one of us.”
All very good points. I rolled over to probe my ribs. To have them cracked again so soon would be very upsetting. The deck was freezing, and the dim corridor blurred briefly. If I’d known this was coming, I’d have taken a larger dose when I injected a few minutes ago.
Strategically taking painkillers in advance. That was something a real admiral would do.
“LT, he was in an admiral’s sleeper,” Nils said, holding up his hands. “You can’t fake that.”
“Then what was wrong with it? Things don’t go wrong with admirals’ sleepers.”
“Something in the seal. I told you.”
“Which could have been caused if there was an unscheduled resuscitation,” Deilani snapped. She had me there. “He’s on chems. He probably screwed something up when
he went back in. He killed them, and we saved him. He can’t be an admiral. He’s not even Evagardian.”
“Am too,” I said, wincing.
“Shut up. They were the only people on the ship. None of us did it, and that leaves him.”
Deilani’s reasoning was far from airtight, but it was understandable under the circumstances. Salmagard continued to protect me. She was well aware of the penalty for laying one’s hands on an officer, which was why she could use only her person as a shield to protect me. She kept her hands clasped firmly behind her back.
Nils stared at me. He’d been suspicious too, but his suspicions hadn’t been running in this direction. And now Deilani was looking at Private Salmagard as if she was an enemy combatant.
“Who,” she bit out, her eyes burning, “in the Imperial Service does not travel with a uniform?”
“This man, clearly,” Salmagard replied evenly. Her soft musical voice actually lessened my physical pain.
“Ow,” I complained.
“Shut up!” Deilani snapped.
“You shut up,” I shot back from the floor. Behind Salmagard.
Nils didn’t know what to do. Salmagard obviously wasn’t backing down, and if Deilani’s blood pressure got any higher there would be a third corpse on this ship. I couldn’t blame her for having a problem with me, but she needed to start thinking about the greater good.
“I don’t know,” Nils said. “He kind of talks like an officer.”
“And you kind of talk like a man,” Deilani shot back.
Nils opened his mouth to retort, remembered she outranked him, and shut it. “Sir?” he said to me questioningly.
“What?” I groaned, and lay back, closing my eyes. Deilani had startled me with that blow, and that had gotten my heart going. Now my chem-laden blood was rushing around a bit more enthusiastically than was optimal. I was light-headed.
There was also some pain in my ribs.
“Who are you really? I haven’t been this confused since the Ganraens started the damn war.”
“My name wouldn’t mean anything to you,” I told him.
“Then you’re admitting you’re not Evagardian,” he said, looking stricken.