A long pause. Almost long enough to make him think they were done before she snarled, “I don’t care how you try to justify it… just don’t bother… you’re wrong.”
The door jerked open, and he jumped back as Kaycee barreled out into the hall. Slamming the door behind her, she almost ran him over.
“What’s the problem?” he asked, swallowing some of his guilty reaction at being caught eavesdropping.
“You were listening?” she hissed, turning down the hall but not walking away.
“I only heard the last bit. And mostly just you.” He knew he didn’t want to dig at it, but she was shaking, and he could tell it was something important. At least in her universe.
“How long until we are ready to leave?” she asked.
“Less than an hour.”
“That’s enough time.” She swung back to face him. “I want to transfer to the Elysium Sun.”
“Why?”
“You don’t need me here, and it would be better for me to be on the other ship.” Her expression wasn’t asking. It was demanding. The fact that she was from a wealthy family showed in her face when she was upset and wanting something. She expected him to comply.
His impulse was to say no, but he asked again, “Why?” He hoped his calm tone would help dial her down.
“I don’t want to be here.” Her eyes shifted slightly toward pleading.
He shook his head. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s just better for me to fly with Nuko. I have personal reasons.” Now the rest of her face slid into sync with her eyes. “Please?”
“You need to explain that to me,” he said. “Obviously, something’s got you upset.”
She looked down at the floor. “I just can’t do this. Ethan, please I can’t work with her.”
“What the hell did she do to piss you off like this?”
Kaycee looked back up at him, the expression of begging replaced again with anger.
“Put me on the other ship.” There was no doubt she thought she was giving an order.
“You’re staying aboard,” he snapped. “We will talk about this when you calm down, but for now you need to remember you work for me, and not the other way around. I need you here and that’s how this swings.”
Her eyes went wide like she was about to unload on him, but he wasn’t about to have it. Apparently, she read that in his expression because she nodded.
“As you wish, Captain.” She flung her response at him with a tone that left no room for doubt that she would not let this go without more of a fight. She spun back toward her quarters and disappeared without another word.
Turning toward Ammo’s door he raised his hand to knock but hesitated letting out a slow growling sigh.
Let it cool off. Whatever it is can wait. We’ve got plenty of cruise time for this one to blow over.
Chapter Seventeen
Spaceflight was usually nothing more than trying to find ways to pass the time. Ethan’s favorite method involved sitting with his feet up on the edge of the middeck observation windows and staring out at the distorted ring of visible stars. Often, he kept a book in his lap, but sometimes he just stared at the collar. Rene shared his passion and often they sat in silence for hours, staring and lost in their own thoughts together.
Ethan ran out of things to keep him busy on the ConDeck most days and got to the window first. Today was no exception.
Rene had finished his routine maintenance checks by the middle of firstshift and wandered onto the middeck looking to occupy his usual space. Most days, he was the only person with a real purpose on the ship. Marti, who never succumbed to boredom, really flew the Olympus Dawn across the vast distances of interstellar space, and everyone else was there only to do things when something unusual happened.
“The collar looks a lot different,” Ethan said as Rene took his usual seat beside him.
“We’re running twenty percent slower than normal,” he said. “It gives us a wider ring because of less angular Doppler distortion.”
The Captain nodded. He already knew why. It was just a pointless comment to acknowledge the engineer’s arrival.
After several minutes without a word, Rene pulled his feet down from the sill and leaned over onto an elbow on the edge of the table. “I haven’t seen Kaycee come out of her room in three days.”
Ethan glanced out of the side of his eye toward the engineer. “I’m really tired of her snits. She pitches a bitch at the drop of a biscuit.”
“She’s done this before. How long did it take her to forgive you after you let Jetaar go? Weeks?”
He nodded. “Months. She does run to the tight edge, but eventually she coasts down.”
“What set her off this time?”
Ethan drummed his fingers on the table between them. “She had a fight with Ammo before we pulled out and decided she wanted to ride with Nuko. When I told her no, she swung her guns at me.”
“Can I be blunt?” Rene was the one person Ethan could count on to speak his mind.
He twisted in his seat and stared at the engineer. “That was rhetorical?”
“Are you sure she’s worth the headache? We’ve made enough money to buy her out clean.”
“I promised her I’d help her get some answers about what happened on Starlight,” he said. He’d reminded himself of that at least a dozen times since she’d gone into hiding.
“I know. But are we even looking?”
They’d been hauling cargo between systems for most of a year since the Starlight colony had vanished, and he had to admit they hadn’t heard much. Nothing in fact. They hadn’t even been within a hundred light years of Kepler 186 since FleetCom had quarantined the system.
“If we’re not looking for the answers she needs, then maybe…”
Quinn walked up and set an urn and three cups on the table. “Would some fresh coffee pay my membership into the stargazer club?”
Rene shrugged but Ethan nodded.
“You were talking about the doc, weren’t you?”
“Why do you say that?” He turned and faced the handler. Maybe Quinn had superhuman hearing too. It was another thought that bothered him, but he hadn’t articulated to anyone.
“It’s about the right timeframe for you to be worried about her. Well more like worried about what to do to fix her.” He poured them all cups of coffee.
“I don’t think she wants to be fixed. Especially not by me.”
“She’s not upset at you, Cap’n. She’s burnt with Ammo.”
“They had a fight the day we boosted,” the captain said.
Quinn nodded. “Yah, I scan that, but she’s not talking about it. Even with me. Normally she vents on everybody but the one she’s hot at. This isn’t like normal for her.”
“I know you like to let things sort themselves out but maybe it’s time for you to push,” Rene suggested.
Ethan shot him dead with a look. “Kaycee’s meaner than me.”
“So, talk to Ammo first.” Quinn suggested.
He sat back and thought about it for several seconds. Ammo had been so casual about going ahead with her daily routines that he hadn’t even thought to ask her. She wasn’t upset enough to attract attention, and he’d only focused on Kaycee’s rage.
The engineer let out a slow breath. “Out of the mouth of—”
“Our giant security handler who fears no mere mortal,” Ethan finished for him. But he was right. Ammo would be square with him about what was going on.
“Marti is Ammo still on the ConDeck?”
“She is.”
“Where’s Kaycee?”
“In her quarters.”
“Alright I will see what I can find out.” He stood up and nodded toward his chair. “Keep my seat warm. Hopefully, I’ll be back.”
When he got to the ConDeck, he found Ammo reclined at the pilot’s station with their new sensor readouts superimposed over the whole front viewscreen. To keep herself busy, she and Marti had been working on ways to make
the enhanced data more usable. It wasn’t a view Ethan was used to, but it did make it easy to keep track of the thousand lines projected across the display.
“Anything interesting?” He asked as he settled into the command seat next to her.
“A dozen freighters, two multi cruisers, a cruise liner, and a few private long run yachts.” She pointed to each in turn. “Oh, and there’s a colony ship and a boatload of science vessels out close to the edge.”
“And all this is in sensor range?” He didn’t realize the new sensors had that kind of power. The area they were scanning had to be almost eighty light years across.
She shook her head. “Not really. We’re superimposing cartography data and linking real time transponder signals to it. With that, we can focus a tight beam scan and pick up ultra-low-level readings. It’s a matter of being able to confirm there is something where we already know it is.”
“That’s still pretty impressive,” he said.
“It’ll only work when we know where things are. Outside of charted space we’re limited to broad sweeps out to a few light years. That’s still a massive improvement over what we had, but nowhere near this pretty.”
“What’s this dark spot back here?” he pointed at a place where all the lines faded out.
“A sensor shadow.”
“It is likely caused by phase interference between the coil fields of our two ships,” Marti explained. “The new sensors are sensitive enough to gravitational waves that the proximity of the Elysium Sun is amplifying the distortion in the image behind the ships.”
“Like a gravitational wake?”
“Yes, Captain.”
He nodded. It’s still spectacular resolution.
“What brings you back to the deck?” Ammo asked, stretching in her seat like a cat. “I figured you’d be off until thirdshift at least.”
“I would have, but I can’t until I get something worked out.”
She raised an eyebrow and tilted her head in his direction.
“What the hell is going on between you and Kaycee?” he asked, jumping right to the point and startling her with his bluntness.
She pulled her seat back to its normal position and swiveled to face him. Her expression showed she had expected to have this conversation before now. Letting out a slow sigh she shrugged. “She doesn’t like that we’re hauling plussers.”
“I assumed you already knew, but how does Kaycee know?”
“The pheromone fog is pretty obvious.” She grinned.
“Pheromone fog?”
She wrinkled her nose.
“Of course! That explains why every time I get near one of them my second brain gets all the blood supply.” It also settled the question of whether Kai was a plusser. “Why would they engineer them with that? Is it a defense mechanism or something?”
“It was an accident. It just happens, but all augments have that problem to one degree or another.”
“She doesn’t like the way they smell?” He frowned. Bad personal hygiene could almost be an airlockable offense in a spaceship, but most people had a fairly high bar.
She shook her head. “She’s worried that some of them might be unregistered.”
“What does that mean?”
“The Shan Takhu Institute keeps a database of plussers. Because she’s a Fellow of the Institute, she thinks unregistered augments are loose cannons if you know the term.”
He nodded. “Is being unregistered illegal?
“Not at all,” she said. “Since registration is technically voluntary, most plussers aren’t.”
“Technically voluntary?” Registering people with differences went against his very core belief system. They’d done that many times in history and it always got twisted into something evil.
“There are certain kinds of augmentation that the STI is concerned with,” she explained. She paused, apparently trying to choose how best to explain it to him.
Finally, she sighed. “There are a couple different ways that augments are created. The STI has its own program for doing it, and then there are some that are done through conventional gene editing.”
“I assume the ones we’re carrying were not created by the STI?”
She nodded. “The Institute’s techniques for creating augmentation are very precise because all their modifications are for a narrow purpose. Most Shan Takhu technology requires a certain set of skills that are beyond normal human abilities. The STI modifications allow researchers to access the technology.”
“Alright, I don’t understand that, but I’ll ride along for now.”
“Plussers are edited through more conventional methods, and the institute thinks that makes them dangerous,” she said. “STI registration is a way to recruit and control conventionally created augments who might have the ability to use the technology.”
“You’re saying it’s an effort to eliminate the competition?”
She shook her head. “If it was only to control those who might be able to use the technologies that would be one thing, unfortunately they also index enhancements to things like strength, vision, hearing, or even cognitive abilities.”
“You’re saying these augments we’re carrying really are superhuman?”
“Maybe some of them.”
“And that’s what she’s worried about,” he said. He had to admit that if that was it, he shared her concern.
“It’s a little more complex than that,” she said. “The augmentations done by the STI are specifically to create the ability to interface mentally with Shan Takhu technology.”
“Interface mentally? Like with an implant?”
“It’s much more sophisticated than that. It is a direct mental connection that can happen when a human brain has enough synaptic pathways.”
“Like telepathy?” He shivered.
“The Institute takes the most exceptional graduates from their training program and offers them fellowships. Anyone who becomes a Fellow of the STI, is modified to give them this ability.” She paused to let that sink in.
Ethan struggled to wrap his brain around the whole concept. “Kaycee is an STI Fellow. She has this genetic upgrade?”
She nodded. “It’s not a genetic process in her case, but yes, she’s had it done.”
Suddenly the light came on. “You’re saying Kaycee is a telepath?”
“Not precisely,” she said. “Here’s where the problem comes in. Genetic augments, with enough cognitive enhancements may manifest that ability. Not all of them do, but since the most advanced Shan Takhu technologies only operate through telepathic linkage, the STI thinks any plussers are a potential threat to maintaining control of the Shan Takhu tech.”
“Does this mean we’re carrying a cargo container full of telepaths?”
She shook her head. “We’re carrying a cargo container with sleeping augments. Some of them may be telepathic, but nothing says any of them are for sure.”
“But that does tell me why they’d be a target. And not just to the Red Wall fanatics.”
Ammo leaned back again in her chair as Ethan stood up to leave. “The question is whether Kaycee is pissed over the risk to us, or the risk to the interests of the Institute.”
“You’ll have to take that up with her. She’s not talking to me.”
“I will do that without a doubt,” he said as he walked out into the corridor. He walked slowly toward the lift, struggling to fit this new reality into his understanding of how the universe worked. It wasn’t easy to accept that these things had been part of his world all along, and he had no clue.
He stood in the lift for almost a minute, before punching the button for the middeck. He wasn’t even sure he could formulate how to approach Kaycee at this point.
Fortunately, Rene and Quinn were both gone when he stepped out, and the only people on the deck were two of the new handlers. Neither of them was familiar enough to approach him, so he crashed down at the table nearest the front windows and stared into the infinite distance.
When Ammo said, ‘Not precisely,’ that left a lot of room for spin.
Maybe she wasn’t a mind reader, but he knew that possibility answered a lot of questions he’d had about her over the last year. It also left him with another problem. He wasn’t sure he could trust her to tell him square if he asked.
He tried to empty his mind, hoping that some clarity might help him clear the cacophony of his own thoughts.
After what might have been hours of sitting motionless, he realized he wasn’t alone. At first, it was the sense of a presence behind him, but he sniffed trying to pull the pheromones out of the air. He couldn’t consciously tell there was anything different, but his body reacted to it none-the-less. Unfortunately knowing the truth wasn’t enough to stop it from happening.
“May I help you?” he asked, without turning.
“Captain Walker, I understand there’s some friction between my people and your doctor,” Kai said. She sat down at the next table over.
I wonder if she keeps her distance as a kindness? He twisted in his seat to study her face. His butt was numb, and he groaned as he repositioned. “I assume you read my mind to know that?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Ah, so you know. Actually, I’m not a telepath. I’m more of an empath. I can read your micro-expressions well enough to get a good understanding of what you’re thinking. Right now, I can tell you’re troubled and that your doctor is extremely angry.”
“She is, and I now understand why. I’m not sure I don’t share that feeling.”
She didn’t move for almost a minute. Finally, she nodded. “If she’d remained aboard the Elysium Sun then she’d be none the wiser.”
“And neither would I,” he added. “Unfortunately, I can’t leave her there with Elias Pruitt as the ship’s engineer. They have a history with me, and I can’t have them together. Not when there might be trouble afoot.”
“They were the reason you almost lost your Shipmaster licenses, weren’t they?”
He didn’t answer.
“One of my people told me she’s thinking about asking you to leave her at Cygnus Deep Three before we leave Coalition space.”
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 72