by J. Boyett
“Um. I think I'm holding up okay, sir. All things considered.” After a hesitation, he added, “I guess I get a little lonely, sir.”
“Yes. I know that you've spent most of your time in solitary confinement. It's not the way I would have chosen to treat you—but you understand, we can't spare personnel just to keep you company, and no one else has yet done anything to rate being placed in the brig.”
Farraday watched Dobbler stifle his indignation. It wasn't exactly true that no one else had done anything to rate incarceration—there were all those who'd partaken of the Weed of Wonder with him. But their offenses in simply partaking hadn't been quite as grievous as Dobbler's in bringing it aboard from Kimball in the first place, and besides, they'd all been more essential personnel. Dobbler, the ship could afford to lock up. Farraday had only made the comment to see if Dobbler would protest, or if his week in the brig had made him a little more docile.
They had, but not as much as Farraday had expected. He felt a surprised pleasure at the kid's spirit, which he tried not to show.
Dobbler was fidgeting, looking down at his clasped hands, pulling at them so that it looked like he was trying to yank off his own fingers. He raised his eyes to Farraday, and the captain's grudging admiration made him all the more moved by the plea he saw there. “Sir,” said Dobbler. “I am sorry about the Weed. I should have brought it straight to you and let you take it to Dr. Carlson and Witch Walsh, instead of getting carried away with my own theories. I never meant any harm. And all that stuff I said to Commander Blaine—all those insubordinate things—I'm really sorry, sir.” Farraday simply watched and listened without comment, which further discombobulated the kid. “I guess I was a little, um, intoxicated, sir.”
“I think that's kind of the point, Ensign.” Farraday had softened the kid up with his preliminary friendliness, getting the kid to open up in the hope of absolution. Now that he had, Farraday withdrew, growing more distant and aloof, making the kid hungrier for his forgiveness.
“Yes, sir,” said Dobbler. “I know, sir. I'm sorry, sir.”
Enough, Farraday thought, and suddenly relaxed as he decided to end the charade. He was sure enough now of Dobbler's loyalty—of his personal loyalty to him, at least, at least for as long as it would be needed. Farraday felt that he'd managed to hold back one valuable piece of information, which was that actually, if Dobbler were able to perform the feat Farraday wanted, he could name his own price. Mustn't let him know how completely he had the captain in the palm of his hand.
“All right,” began Farraday, “listen, Dobbler....”
They were interrupted by the doors swishing open and Blaine stepping through. As they closed again Farraday was trying not to grimace and wishing he'd ordered the guard not to let anyone in.
Blaine glared from the captain to Dobbler and back again, clearly struggling to control herself.
“Commander,” said Farraday. “I thought you were going to take over for me on the bridge.”
“I left Beach in charge, sir. It seemed like something important must be going on, sir, for you to call me out of our work in the Tubes.” Of course, if she'd needed clarification she could have contacted him via communicator.
Dobbler spoke up: “Commander Blaine, I was just telling Captain Farraday that—”
“No one's spoken to you, Dobbler,” she snapped.
“Actually, I was speaking to him,” said Farraday. He felt his rage bubbling, goaded almost into a quiet frenzy by his fear for Jennifer, his fear of what he'd be forced to do to her if they didn't get her out of those Tubes. “Wait for me on the bridge, Commander.”
“Sir, are you sure I can't help you here? Maybe in an advisory capacity?...”
“I don't have time for this,” Farraday snapped, and turned back to Dobbler. Seeing the startled, calculating way the ensign was studying him, Farraday felt he'd screwed up—the kid now had a glimmer of how important to the captain whatever he was about to ask was.
“I've read your file,” said Farraday. His manner now was brisk, without the chatty friendliness of before. “You're from Bone World. Right?”
“Born and bred, sir.”
“And you used to wrangle para-apes. Correct?”
“Both in the wild and on the rodeo circuit, sir. We start young on Bone World. Would've gone into it professionally if I hadn't chosen the Fleet, sir.”
“What a loss for the rodeo,” said Blaine wryly.
Farraday ignored her. “I understand a para-ape isn't all that different from a werewolf. And the psychic link you use to lasso yourself to the para-ape from afar and track it—that should also work with a werewolf?”
Dobbler had already seen where this was headed, and he seemed very game. “That's what they say, sir, though I've never had a chance to try it out.”
“Well, you're going to get it now. Head to Requisitions, get what you need, and meet me at the Thompson entry on Deck Three in fifteen minutes.”
Blaine started to speak: “Captain, if I may—”
Farraday cut her off: “You help me bring Lieutenant Summers in safely, Ensign Dobbler, and I'll forget all about your little misadventure on Kimball.”
Blaine tried again: “Captain!”
Farraday kept ignoring her. “And if you fail, no deal. Understood, Ensign?”
The kid was grinning and bouncing in his seat, barely able to wait for Farraday's dismissal. “You don't have to worry about that, sir! I'm not going to let you down.”
“All right. Get going, I'll meet you at the Tubes.”
Dobbler sprang up, snapped a salute at the two offices, and bolted out of the conference room. The security guard shouted after him, and Farraday called, “It's all right! Let him go!”
He stood. Avoiding Blaine's eyes, he moved toward the door, saying, “All right, Commander, I'll be indisposed, so you'd better get to the bridge....”
“A moment, sir,” said Blaine, and placed herself in front of him.
When he looked at her she was startled by the danger in his eyes. “Out of my way, Commander.”
“I'm sorry, sir, but I need to talk to you. You can throw me in the brig if you like. Not that I'd have to stay in there very long, it looks like.”
Farraday sighed, then expelled a quick, unhappy laugh. “All right, Commander. I have a few minutes before I have to be at the Tubes.”
“Sir, even if the werewolf doesn't directly damage anything in there—which would be extraordinary luck—then her enchantment aura is screwing with the thaumaturgical balance in ways I can't understand or repair. Soon she'll knock out the ftl capacity, just by being there.”
“Sounds like I should have told Dobbler ten minutes, instead of fifteen.”
“Sir. All due respect, your place is not the Tubes, it's the bridge. My place is the Tubes, repairing that damage. Except it's too dangerous, for me and my team.”
“Well. It's a dangerous job sometimes.”
“Sir, I know you love Lieutenant Summers. And I'll mourn her, too. But we've got to blow the Tubes.”
“Blaine, we can end this discussion now. This ship does not leave crew members behind, and it does not kill its crew members either, not even for the greater good. Unless you're prepared to mutiny over it?”
She surprised herself, with the length of her pause. Finally, she said, “Sir, I'm trying to stop you from creating a situation where others might make that choice.”
Farraday blinked a few times, but otherwise his face betrayed nothing. “We all do what we have to, Commander Blaine.”
“Sir, you are my captain that I've sworn to obey. Sworn by the Fleet, which means more to me than anything. With all due respect, and within the privacy of this room, your endangerment of this ship and its mission, for personal reasons, risks making you unworthy of that oath.”
Farraday's face grew even stiller. Only an incipient curl to his lip, and a mysterious vibrating charge in the air between them, gave evidence how angry he was. “Is that your place to say, Commander?”
“It shouldn't be, sir. But there's no more Fleet Command to take grievances and concerns to. So I think we need to all be careful what we do, because the whole crew is working without a net, ethically speaking.”
“Well, we've all managed to rebel once, so you know you're capable if you decide that's what you must do. Shooting Summers out the airlock is the Provisional's standing order, after all, so I guess you can choose between obeying a government you don't approve of or a captain you don't like.” At last he began to move past her to the door, saying as he went, “Maybe you'll get lucky and I'll be killed in the Tubes, and then you can be captain....”
“Don't you say that to me, sir,” she snarled. The material of his uniform sleeve was bunched in her fist. “Don't you say that to me.”
He stared at her. She stared down at her own hand like it was a foreign object, shocked. She dropped it, hung her head, and stepped back. “I apologize, sir,” she murmured. “That's the kind of behavior I'd recommend a court-martial for.”
For another moment Farraday only stared at her from behind the cold, inscrutable mask of his face. Then its features thawed; he dropped his eyes, and when he brought them back up again to hers she could see how weary they were. “Val,” he said. “I understand that you're trying to do what's best for the crew. So am I. For all of them, each individual—including Jennifer Summers.”
“Sir. Again, with all due respect. It's hard to believe that you'd react this way if it were any other member of the crew, sir.”
“That's where you're wrong, Val. Dead wrong. Hopefully we'll never have a chance for me to prove it to you, so for now you'll have to just trust me.” He raised his wrist to check his chronometer, grimaced, sighed, looked back at her. “Listen. How long do you and your tech-mage think we have, before Summers's bio-thaumaturgy critically distorts the normal thaumaturgical waves in the Tubes?”
“It could happen at any moment, sir....”
“Right, and Earth's sun could blow up at any moment, but we think it'll be a few billion years. How long do you think we have, Commander?”
Honestly, she thought they'd be pretty safe for the next two hours. “Maybe an hour,” she said.
At the look he gave her, like he knew she was lying, she almost recanted and said, Or, no, two. But she held firm.
“All right,” he said. “Give me and Dobbler forty minutes. And if I can't bring Jennifer in, then....”
He trailed off, unable to finish. Blaine waited silently, suddenly feeling very cold.
Farraday took a deep breath, and finished the sentence: “... then we'll flush the Tubes.”
Now that she'd won, Blaine felt deflated. Softly, she said, “Better hurry, then, sir.”
Farraday nodded. They were about to walk through the doors together when both their communicators rang with the emergency break-in signal, and then Miller's voice came squawking over both mini-speakers at once, already in mid-sentence: “... damn werewolf got my man!...”
EIGHT
In Sickbay, while Lieutenant Eban writhed furiously under the care of Dr. Carlson and Witch Walsh, Miller finally found a moment after the first few hectic minutes to draw Blaine aside into a corner and hiss, “What is he talking to that goddam drug-dealer for right now?!”
“Calm down, Roy,” she murmured. Truth was, she was wondering the same thing; even if the captain was crazy enough to still plan on going into the Tubes to wrangle with that werewolf, she didn't see why he needed to consult with Dobbler this very second. But there they were, whispering in the far corner.
Then again, when Blaine looked back at the captain, she saw that Dobbler was gone and that Tracy Fiquet had taken his place. That made more sense—Carlson and Walsh were too busy to field any medical or magical questions he might have. Still, there seemed to be something surreptitious about their interaction, too.
Miller stalked back over to the bed where Eban lay red-faced, sweating, struggling against his restraints. They couldn't give him any tranquilizers, because they would be lethal to a werewolf, if indeed Eban had been fully transformed.
“He's infected,” said Miller to Carlson and Walsh. “Isn't he? It's the were-rabies.” Miller spoke with such bitterness and grief for his team-member that Blaine not only grieved for her friend, but also worried what might happen if he spoke to the captain before he got that anger under control.
“Well, he's definitely infected,” said Carlson, too busy ministering to her patient to look directly at Miller or Blaine. “As for whether it's a full-blown case and he's going to transition all the way to werewolf, we're just not sure yet.”
“Lieutenant-Commander Miller,” said Blaine. “I understand the werewolf did not bite Lieutenant Eban, but only scratched him?”
“Correct, Commander. He was 'only' scratched. We came to the Manito Buffering Panel, and your engineering people were about to check behind it to make sure the werewolf wasn't hiding back there. Well, it was. As we approached we heard a loud growling, like it was warning us off. We had to roust it out, and carefully, both because of the captain's orders about the werewolf's well-being, but also because of the sensitive nature of the equipment behind the Manito. That equipment meant we couldn't even point our net guns at the thing—basically we just had to walk toward it and wait for the animal to run at us. Which is exactly what it did.”
Blaine felt a chill at the thought of the werewolf lurking behind one of the Manito Panels. Miller was certainly right, there was no way he could have risked using force, even aside from the captain's orders.
She took another long look at Eban, gnashing and thrashing. He'd always been a handsome guy: tall, black hair, olive skin. That skin was dark red now, and glistening with sweat. “I'll be back,” she said, and walked over to the captain.
He was alone; Fiquet and Dobbler were gone. Blaine gave him a serious look as she approached; he gave her a look like he knew what she was going to say and was resigned to it.
“Captain,” she murmured, then found it difficult to continue. She'd been prepared to fight, but now that she could see he was ready to give in anyway, it felt like she should try to be gentle. “The werewolf has attacked and infected a crewman,” she said, intentionally ignoring his orders to call the werewolf Lieutenant Summers. “And it's hiding out behind the Manito Panels after all. That absolutely cannot be allowed, sir.”
Farraday was gazing into space. Almost as though he were speaking to himself, he said, “She knew we wouldn't be able to attack her if she was behind the Panel....”
Now Blaine's anger flared up again. “All due respect, sir, there's not a Jennifer Summers there to 'know' any such thing. The werewolf is simply less susceptible than we'd thought to the manito waves.”
“She didn't bite Eban, did she? Or kill anyone? She utilized the minimum force necessary to free herself. It's still Jennifer, only too confused by the werewolf transformation to understand that she should turn herself in.”
“Sir, even if that were true, that very confusion would still render her an unacceptable threat.”
With horror, Blaine realized that this conversation was likely to end with her relieving Farraday of his command and taking over the ship. That wasn't something she'd ever imagined she would do, but the risk to the Galaxy had become far too great.
But, mercifully, Farraday turned so that he wouldn't have to meet her eyes, and he said, “Blow the Tubes.”
Blaine blinked. “Sir?” she said.
“Get everybody out. Then blow the Tubes. Expose them to outer space.”
“Aye, sir.” She took in his ashen face, his look of utter defeat. “I'm sorry, sir.”
“Yeah, well. Better hurry.”
“Aye, sir,” she said again, and walked away. Once she'd gone a discreet distance, she raised her wrist to her mouth, said “Blackmon” into the communicator, and, once she had the chief on, ordered her to send word into the Tubes that it was time to clear it of all personnel, in preparation for opening that section up to the vacuum.
Just as Blackmon was about to sign off, Blaine spontaneously said, “Wait.”
Blackmon obeyed. When Blaine didn't say anything else, Blackmon prodded her: “Commander?”
Blaine had been about to tell Blackmon to convey to Security her order that they spend a few more minutes doing one last sweep for Summers. But there really wasn't time—and after pushing the captain to be so hard, the least she could do was match him.
“Nothing,” she said. “Carry on.”
NINE
Ten minutes later, Blackmon and Blaine were standing outside the Tubes entrance on Deck Three, surrounded by the just-evacuated Engineering and Security personnel, ordering the Galaxy AI to seal off the Tubes—but to no avail.
Miller came walking up, having left Eban's bedside to make sure all his people got out. His presence wasn't necessary, but Blaine suspected that Walsh and Carlson had suggested the errand to shoo him out of their hair. Not that she could spare much energy worrying about it, busy as she was tapping the same commands onto her tablet again and again.
Miller came to a halt, looked at the way Blaine was glaring at her tablet, took stock of the particular quality of the waiting tension in the air. “What's going on?” he asked a huddle of his subordinates; it was clear by the tone of his weary voice that, whatever it was, he found the whole thing disgusting.
Blaine answered: “The seals don't want to work.”
“They 'don't want to work'?...” repeated Miller, raising an eyebrow.
“I don't get it,” said Blackmon, distressed, guilty-sounding. “I double-checked everything. The diagnostics didn't show anything wrong with the seals.”
“It could be a problem that wouldn't show up till you try to actually, physically institute the command,” said Blaine. She looked up at the innocuous-seeming Tubes entrance and began mentally tabulating all the vital things the werewolf might be chewing through at this very moment. “The laser damage must have knocked more out of whack than we thought,” she said, dubiously, trying to figure out how that could have happened. “Blackmon, you stay here and keep trying. I'll head back to Engineering and see what I can accomplish there.”