Apparent Brightness (The Sector Fleet, Book 2)

by Nicola Claire

“What is it, Camille?” Vaughan asked.

  “I’m not sure if we can catch them.” Catch the Sector Two Fleet, I meant. The captain, of course, understood me without the need of a translation.

  “They’ll stop. I know John Jameson; he’s a decent guy. He won’t abandon us.”

  “Has he replied to your message?”

  “You know there’s not been enough time yet.”

  “They’ll reach the jump point in less than three days.”

  “Only if they don’t stop.”

  “And if they don’t, sir?”

  Vaughan leaned forward, resting his forearms on his desk. His uniform shirt sleeves had been rolled up, displaying his strong muscles. His skin had the barest hint of a suntan; even the English got sunburned toward the end. He gripped his large hands together before him and looked at me intently.

  “What’s the worst that can happen?” he asked.

  I arched my brow at him. “You really need me to answer that, sir?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve told you before, Camille, when it’s just us, you can use my Christian name.”

  “That’s hardly…cricket, sir,” I said with a smile.

  His eyes lit up in the way they had when I cracked a joke. When I teased him. The blue became an azure I could get lost in.

  “It’s just us, Cam,” he said, in the annoying habit he had of shortening my name. How he could go from attractive to irritating in such a short period of time was anyone’s guess.

  “You English,” I said, “always using nicknames.”

  “Go on! The French love their nicknames, too. What nickname would you give me, Chief?”

  “I hope you’re not expecting ‘mon chéri’,” I said with a scoff.

  “As long as it’s not ‘mon chou’.” He shuddered. My sweet bun. Once again, Noah Vaughan proved his superior intellect. He may have despised French being spoken around him on board an ESA ship, but he understood it. The English were a contrary lot of people in my experience; Noah Vaughan was no different.

  “‘Mon choupinet’ it is, then,” I said with as much French flourish as I could manage.

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “Non? Then perhaps you would prefer ‘mon chouchou’?”

  “Camille.”

  I smiled simperingly at him.

  “Go back to engineering,” he grumbled. “You’re beginning to annoy me.”

  “A pleasure as always, mon Capitaine.” I couldn’t help but lay it on a little thick.

  A pillow hit me in the back of the head on my way out. When I glanced over my shoulder at it on the floor, I noticed it sported the Union Jack. I looked up at the captain questioningly.

  He winked and then picked up my datapad.

  I slipped through the ready room doors and stood on the other side of them for several long seconds. Captain Noah Vaughan was a British officer through and through. On the flight deck, or anywhere else outside of his private quarters and ready room, he was a stalwart of English mannerisms and correct behaviour.

  And then he went and behaved like this.

  How was I supposed to protect myself against that?

  How was I supposed to maintain my distance when he kept finding ways to surreptitiously break down my walls?

  And then I realised, I hadn’t thought of Daniels in the past few minutes. Hadn’t thought about my main boost thrust engines or the message in the Chariot’s computer system, either.

  And hadn’t thought about those dead and dying left behind on Earth.

  Captain Noah Vaughan didn’t just break down my barriers; he obliterated them. Because to him, it wasn’t flirting; it was finding a way to give your chief of engineering a break from her worries. Of lightening her mood so she could function nominally again.

  To him, he was just being a good captain.

  Whereas to me, he was being a good man.

  Four

  No Way

  Noah

  The officer’s mess and bar on Deck B was never as raucous as its civilian counterpart on Deck F, but a captain should not be seen drinking with the pay-for-passages. I wasn’t sure I should be seen drinking with the officers, either. But we’d just lost one of our own, and not showing my face here would have been tantamount to dismissing Lieutenant Daniels’ life and service as beneath me.

  I had no intention of making a scene or a speech for that matter, but my presence alone, having a quiet drink in the corner with the ship’s doctor, did send the correct tone of unity to the masses.

  Of course, I hadn’t counted on the fact that the room would be so sober.

  I twisted my glass of beer around in my hand, letting the condensation make a ring on the table’s surface. Jerry gave me a pertinent look above his half-rim glasses, then took a sip of his whiskey. Several nearby officers stared morosely into their shots saying nothing. Music played softly in the background as stars streaked by on the large wall screen at the far end.

  We’d known we’d been fleeing for our lives. That leaving Earth had meant our survival. But losing a member of the crew so soon after departure, and after losing an entire ship to boot, was clearly too much for crew morale to handle. I tapped my fingers on the table’s surface trying to decide how best to handle this.

  Those officers here were off duty. I couldn’t give everyone time off at the same time to mourn our dead. But I could offer them some solace when they were off shift should they like it.

  I pushed up from my seat and walked toward the bar.

  Sanjay, the barkeep, nodded his head in greeting.

  “Captain,” he said. “Your beer need a refill?” He looked entirely too hopeful; clearly, he was feeling bored with the lack of beer pulling going on around here.

  “Not yet,” I said, holding my half-full glass up for him to see. “Just want a moment of everyone’s time.”

  I turned to face the sad looking crowd before me. It seemed like I was going to make a speech, after all.

  I scanned all the faces, trying to put names to those I recognised. Berating myself for not recognising all of those here. Sanjay rang the bell behind me; calling everyone’s attention. Not that they weren’t watching my every move already. They knew why I was here. We all did. I wished it were different, but it wasn’t. We’d lost a good man today.

  “Some of you must be wondering,” I said, speaking slow and clear, “just what we’re going to face next. I can’t give you an answer. The universe is very big. But I can tell you this; we will face it with courage and honour. With strength and conviction. We will draw on our training and use our expertise, and we will help one another to get through this. Lieutenant Evan Daniels was an expert in his field. Highly trained and experienced. He was good at what he did. He will be missed, and he won’t be forgotten. And, I am sure, he would want us to continue on as best we can. To face what the universe has to offer with our heads high and our eyes open.”

  I looked down at my drink.

  “We’re the lucky ones,” I said quietly. “It may not seem like it right now, but it’s true. We will get through this. We will keep moving forward. And we will do our very best to honour our dead.”

  I held my glass up and waited. It took a second or two, but those in the bar with me did the same with their drinks; held up in salute.

  “To Evan Daniels,” I said.

  “Evan Daniels,” the officers present repeated.

  I downed the last of my beer and slammed it on the bar top.

  “A round for everyone, Sanjay,” I said. “Top shelf. My tab. And for those on the other shifts, too.”

  “Aye-aye, Captain.”

  I took one last look at my officers and walked from the room. They needed to be able to assimilate the situation without their commander-in-chief looking over their shoulders. I felt their eyes on my back the entire way to the exit. Several nodded their heads to me. Some lifted their drinks in another toast; this time to their captain. A couple saluted, even though they were out of uniform.

  I acknowledged t
hem all and made my escape; walking with a heavy heart towards my private quarters. I’d had things to discuss with Jerry regarding the engineering crewmen who’d been hurt in the blast, I realised as I stepped off the lift on Deck A. I felt like an idiot that I’d now have to follow up via text comm. I shook my head and pressed my wrist comm to the access panel at my door. Stepping inside, I let out a beleaguered breath of air.

  It was even quieter in here than the bar. I walked over to my desk and pressed play on my playlist; classical music softly began to emerge from the speakers in the gel ceiling. Sitting myself down, I rested my head in my hands, and just listened; letting the music take me away, if only for a few seconds.

  Once I’d satisfied my need for self-indulgence, I opened up the first in a long line of communications from various heads of departments. A report from Camille stood out as though lit from within. I huffed out a breath and opened it. Main boost thrust was operating at 115%. Engineering was back at full capacity. A redesigned staff roster was attached. She suggested promoting Second Lieutenant James MacBride to the position of 2IC in engineering. Ongoing investigations were underway to determine the nature of the malfunction and what had caused the explosion at Lieutenant Daniels’ station. Repairs had already been made.

  I stared at the report, knowing it hid more than it explained. It masked Camille’s hurt and pain. Her anger. I tried to push the chief aside and work on various other communiqués, but in the end, I kept reopening the report and just staring at the words as if they would somehow help me to see inside the woman’s mind.

  My fingers hovered over the virtual keyboard; I even started typing my reply. But at the last moment, I pressed my wrist comm, activating a direct channel to the chief; wrist comm to wrist comm.

  Camille’s face lit up the small screen; sweat-soaked blonde hair matted her forehead; soulful brown eyes stared back at me. She looked tired, and it had nothing to do with the workout I’d just interrupted.

  “Captain,” she said, a little breathlessly.

  “Bad time?” I enquired.

  “Of course not, sir.” She’d say that no matter what. Of course, it was a bad time.

  “I’ll make this short,” I said. “MacBride will do well in the role. Go ahead and promote him to First Lieutenant. You don’t need my permission for the rest.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “You could have text commed all of that.”

  “I wanted to let you know; there’s a tab in the officers’ bar. For Daniels.”

  She blinked. “Thank you, sir,” she managed.

  “It’s not much, but…”

  “I understand, sir. It’s a kind gesture.”

  This wasn’t going at all how I had planned.

  “Well, enjoy your workout,” I said.

  “I’m done, I think.”

  “The treadmill wore out?” I asked, smiling. It felt wrong to smile, but we needed to get back on normal footing. Death or no death, this ship would sail on.

  “The punching bag,” Camille corrected. “It might need repairs.”

  My turn to blink as Camille stretched her right hand, cracking a few knuckles.

  “You are a dangerous woman, Commander Rey.” I shook my head.

  She smiled. It took everything in me not to show my relief at such a small softening to her taut features.

  “Get some rest, Chief,” I said, signing off.

  I turned my attention to my communiqués, trying to locate the report from Camille, so I could update it.

  It was gone.

  Twenty minutes later, I sat back in my office chair and scratched my whiskered jaw. The report existed. I hadn’t dreamt it up. I’d spoken to Camille about it. It existed. But now it wasn’t even there.

  I started checking other files and communiqués. Three hours later, I had a rough list of six that had disappeared. I couldn’t be certain, I was relying on memory alone, but at least six communiqués had gone missing. And from the look of the chatter on a public ship-wide forum, others had noticed the discrepancies, also.

  Then why hadn’t Camille? It was unlike her to overlook such a blatant systems error. It had to be the stress of the last twenty-four hours.

  But I didn’t really believe that. There was no way the chief hadn’t seen this. No way.

  Damn it. Now I had to address her performance. At a time when she didn’t deserve to be hounded in that way.

  Sleep eluded me for the third day in a row: The night before we departed Earth; the day we lost Vela; and today.

  I got up and went to the gym. By the time I finished, there were two punching bags requiring repair. And I still couldn’t sleep worth a damn.

  Five

  God Help The Man If He Tried To Dissuade Me

  Camille

  I watched the recording of the captain’s speech and toast to Daniels on the viewscreen. I had the volume down low so as not to disturb the rest of engineering. But with the main boost thrust operating at 115%, the ambient noise was more than enough to cover it, despite the soundproofing.

  He looked ragged; worn out. This had affected him and everyone in the bar at the time could see it. He was a good man. He’d done more for crew morale than he realised. Taken the time to address them and then left with his shoulders stooped, and his head bowed.

  I lifted my gaze and stared across the room to Daniels’ station. It had been replaced with a new one and was working again. No one was using it. It would be forever tainted by what had happened, and as yet, I didn’t know what had happened to cause it to explode.

  I drummed my fingers on my workbench and stared at the figures from yesterday of the main boost thrust on the viewscreen before me. They showed a spike in power with a sudden drop-off afterwards. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect the computer of automatically adjusting control of the main boost thrust in reaction to the spike.

  But the Chariot, while cutting-edge space flight technology, did not have the ability to react in such a fashion. We had failsafes, and the failsafe for main boost thrust overload would have cut in had the spike reached a certain level. But the main boost thrust hadn’t even had time to reach that cut off before it had been spooled down.

  I looked back at Daniels’ station. His replacement station. Had he triggered something? Done something? Had he spooled the main boost thrust down as soon as he’d spotted the spike? If so, his reaction time was better than our failsafe. And our failsafe was pretty damn tight.

  My hand hovered over the terminal. My breaths picked up. I shook my head and hit the play button, replaying the video footage of engineering moments prior to the explosion. It was harder than I realised to watch those few seconds of time replay before me. I blinked back tears and fisted my hands. Daniels had found something. And then the station had exploded.

  But it didn’t look like he’d done anything to cause the main boost thrust to spool down.

  Who did it then? I checked all of the footage we had and determined none of those in engineering at the time had done anything to main boost thrust. It had to have been the computer.

  I sat back on my stool and stared at the screen. The image of Daniels, a split second before the explosion, was frozen before me. Alive, he’d been then. A heartbeat later he’d been dead.

  Had I missed something?

  I looked at the datapad sitting beside me. It was isolated from the ship’s computer and had a recording of everything I’d uncovered or observed so far. Isolating it had been a gut reaction to the missing communiqués that had been reported. Something was wrong with Chariot’s systems, and I needed to document everything and then present it to the captain.

  But, as yet, I didn’t even know what was wrong, so couldn’t even offer a solution to fix it.

  I never liked going to Captain Vaughan with problems and no answers. I always strived to provide him with options and best case scenarios whenever a problem occurred. But this problem was bigger than I had anticipated.

  I’d searched the system again last night before I’d is
olated the datapad, and not been able to find that unexplained line of code.

  the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

  I shook my head and pushed up off my seat. Main boost thrust thrummed away in the background, no tick or swish that I could hear. Everything looked to be in order. I crossed to the workroom attached to engineering, making my way between the benches cluttered with tools and half-formed equipment.

  Midshipman Riccardo “Rat” Russo peered into a magnifying glass, twisting a nob on the side as he muttered away to himself in Italian. The smell of grease and hydraulic fluid mixed in with the artificial air circulating the room. Lights flashed from various projects, a 3D image of the main boost thrust engine rotated up in the air before him. He ignored it and continued to play with his microscope.

  “Rat,” I said, making the man jump.

  “Chief?” He had goggles on top of his head; thick glassed and entirely non-regulation. His hair stuck out in little tufts behind his Dumbo-sized ears. He was as far from an ESAS crewman as you could get in looks and demeanour, but I’d personally selected him as part of my engineering team.

  There was nothing Rat couldn’t build, disassemble, analyse or reverse engineer. He was a genius at all things mechanical. And not so bad with computers, either.

  “What have you got for me?” I asked, coming alongside him and staring down at the small piece of tech he had lodged under the scope.

  “You’re not gonna like it,” he hedged.

  “There’s not much to like at the moment,” I pointed out.

  “This is worse.”

  “Hit me.”

  He blinked owlish eyes and then turned to the microscope again, pushing a few buttons and making an expanded image of what he’d been looking at appear up on a viewscreen.

  “See this here,” he said.

  “I’m not even sure of what I’m looking at,” I replied.

  “Part of the housing for the motherboard in Daniels’ terminal.”

  I nodded my head for him to go on.