“Admirable.”
She winced and looked down at her feet. “It was.”
“Was? You got them moved up North in exchange for service to your country. That’s doubly self-sacrificing. Downright noble.”
When McAdams looked up from her feet, there were tears in her eyes. “I killed them, Captain.”
Alexander shook his head. “They’re not dead, Lieutenant. Ever heard of Schroedinger’s cat?”
She shook her head.
“Ask Davorian sometime. The point is, you don’t know that they’re dead.”
“I don’t know that they’re alive, either.”
“But both are possibilities as far as we know, so which would you rather believe—the negative outcome or the positive one? Let me rephrase that: which outcome would you rather be true?”
“The positive one, of course.”
“Then focus on that.”
McAdams frowned and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Call me Alex. You have a first name, McAdams?”
“Viviana,” she said, flashing a brief smile and brushing a stray lock of blond hair out of her face.
“Nice to meet you, Viviana.”
“Likewise, sir—Alex.”
“Sir Alex. Has a nice ring to it.”
She smiled wryly at that and turned to leave the bar.
He watched her walk away, sipping her martini as she went.
“I thought I was supposed to be the ship’s counselor,” Korbin said. “Or was that just your way of being friendly to the new boot.”
“She’s not technically a boot, but you’re welcome.”
“For?”
“When I send out those briefs, you’re going to have the entire crew come filing through your office, each of them looking for some shred of hope and chipping away at your own reserves with all their doubts. The more hope they have to start with, the easier it’ll be for you.”
Korbin’s brow beetled, dropping a shadow over her eyes. “What haven’t they told us, Alex?”
He fixed her with a grim look. “Everything.”
CHAPTER 5
Two hours later Alexander sat in the office attached to his quarters, nursing the after effects of about twenty fingers of Scotch. He tore open a sachet of hydrating vitamins and stirred them into a cup of water. After letting the solution settle for a moment, he used it to wash down an over-the-counter alcohol metabolizer, courtesy of the ship’s doctor. Doctor Crespin had been passing them around like candy before people had started pairing off to leave the lounge.
Fraternization wasn’t technically against fleet regulations, and Alexander didn’t believe in playing chaperone for his crew. They were grown-ups, and all was fair in love and war—unless it interfered with the crew’s performance or shipboard duties.
Alexander laid his head back against his chair and closed his eyes for a minute. His head throbbed and spun, and his throat felt cut with grief. Nothing to do about his throat, but his head soon stopped spinning thanks to the metabolizer.
Sobriety made an unwelcome entrance, but she was a necessary muse. It was time to put together the mission brief. Thankfully, someone had thought to leave a locked archive on his computer with all the details of the mission. He used his clearance code to unlock it and then made judicious use of copy-paste to assemble his brief.
Once he was satisfied with his plagiarism, he wrote the summary himself: We’re going to be gone a long time due to time dilation and wormhole geometry. The G-tanks will make our seventy days travel time go by in a blink, but once we get to Wonderland, we’ll be stuck waiting a year or more for a rescue. In a nutshell…
Relativity’s a bitch.
He scratched that last line, but then he imagined the look on Max Carter’s face as he read the brief, and he wrote it back.
We’ll be sending a comm probe to re-establish contact with Earth at 1930 hours, so take a break from whatever you’re doing and record a message for your loved ones back home. Don’t mention any mission specifics unless you want your message censored. Soon as you’re done, forward your messages to Lieutenant Hayes, and he’ll have them loaded onto the probe.
When he was finished, Alexander punched the send key on his keyboard, and the brief went out to all of the crew simultaneously. Soon they’d be reading it on their comm bands, assuming they weren’t all too busy fraternizing.
Next order of business was to record a message for his wife.
He turned on the holocomm at his desk and stared into the lens of the camera, wondering what to say. How did he look? Pale? Disheveled? Drunk?
He stopped the recording and ran a hand through his hair to straighten it out. No sense giving his wife the idea that he’d been doing some fraternizing of his own. She knew better, but he’d rather not sow any doubt—especially now that he knew more about Operation Alice. Caty would have to suffer a lot of silence over the next few years, so this message had to be good if he expected her to wait for him.
Satisfied that his hair probably looked combed, he started recording again.
“Caty…”
That was as far as he got. What could he possibly say? Desperate for inspiration, he looked around his office. Nothing but gray walls, exposed conduits overhead, and the holoscreen viewport behind him showing a warped version of space.
Then he remembered the pocket watch she’d given him. He felt for it through the thick material of his combat suit. He’d zipped it up in one of the suit’s outer pockets. Now he unzipped the pocket and withdrew the watch to read the inscriptions once more. Time is an illusion. Love is the only truth. Let mine be yours.
Nodding to himself, Alexander looked up once more and started the recording.
“Caty, by now you know more about what’s happened than I do. I hope to God you’re somewhere safe. As for me, I’m okay. The Lincoln is well on her way to her destination, but there’s a lot they didn’t tell us about this mission. I don’t think I can say much without this message getting edited all to hell before it reaches you, but due to reasons I can’t discuss, I’m not going to be able to keep contact with you. I’ll still record messages every day that I can, but you probably won’t get them for a long time. It’s going to be years before we see each other, Caty—at best. I’ll wait for you, just as I promised, but if you can’t…” Alexander swallowed and managed to smile for the camera. “Above all, I want you to be happy. Whatever that means, I won’t hold it against you, okay? Keep yourself safe. I love you, Caty. Te amo,” he added, repeating himself in their native tongue for emphasis.
Alexander stopped the recording and played it back to watch, trying to imagine how Caty would react when she saw it. She’d cry when she saw how sad he looked and sounded. She’d also probably throw something at her holoscreen when she got to the part about him giving her permission to move on. That part made him wince, but it had to be said. Maybe she wouldn’t like to hear it now, but in five years or ten… it might just ease her conscience.
He meant what he’d said about waiting for her, though. If he hadn’t cheated in the last ten years that he’d spent in OCS and guarding Earth from orbit, then he wasn’t about to give into temptation now. Besides, if their love was meant to last, it would, but not if he preemptively sabotaged it.
Alexander sighed and sent his recording to Hayes. As he did so, he heard the door chime. Probably Korbin, he thought.
“Come in!” he said.
The door slid open, and McAdams appeared standing there. She took a few steps forward, crossing the threshold. “Hello, Captain,” she said, smiling brokenly at him and swaying on her feet.
Alexander took one look at her and hurried to assist. She looked terrible. She may as well have written damsel in distress on her forehead.
“What’s wrong, Lieutenant?” He could smell the liquor on her breath as he drew near. I should have set a two-drink limit, he thought. “Come, sit down,” he said, taking her by the arm to guide her through his office to the attached sitting room in his quarters.
/> She stumbled and fell against him. Before he realized what was happening, her lips smacked straight into his, wet and cold, and tasting like martini. He pushed her away a second later.
“Lieutenant! What do you think you’re doing?”
McAdams had a dreamy look on her face, but it vanished promptly with his rebuke. “I—I thought—” she shook her head. “Never mind. I’m sorry, sir!” she replied, saluting awkwardly and turning to leave. Alexander watched her stumble toward the door, his eyes wide with shock.
“Hold on, McAdams. Not so fast.”
She stopped, and reluctantly turned back to face him. “Sir?”
“What is it exactly that you thought?”
“That you were flirting, sir.”
Was I? He wondered as a frown hardened his lips. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression, Lieutenant. I was just being friendly.”
“Yes, sir. I apologize, sir,” McAdams replied, hiding behind a blank expression. “May I go, sir?”
“Where’s your metabolizer?”
“I… lost it.”
“Go get another one from storage on Blue Deck and get some sleep. Also, I want you to schedule a meeting with Commander Korbin. We’re all struggling to cope, but there are some things you can do to make that easier. Above all, stay positive, and don’t forget to send a message to your family via Lieutenant Hayes. You read the mission brief?”
McAdams nodded.
That depressing news was probably what had brought her to his office in the first place. Maybe she’d thought he would be equally depressed from writing the brief. “Dismissed, Lieutenant,” Alexander said.
“Yes, sir,” McAdams replied, saluting once more.
Alexander watched her go. He chided himself for noticing the provocative way her hips swayed as she left. His manhood rebuked him for turning her away, but his heart and mind gave a silent cheer.
With a sigh, he made a swiping gesture to shut the door, and then headed back through his office to his quarters. It was time to get cleaned up and hit the rack for a few hours’ sleep.
He needed to be back on the bridge soon to see if Earth had responded to their probe, and then it would be off to the G-tanks and seventy days of forced rest.
Come to think of it, that was probably what had pushed McAdams over the edge of proper conduct and into his arms. There was a sizable risk that some of them either wouldn’t wake from the coma, or that something would happen to them and their ship while they were traveling through the wormhole. That was enough to make anyone behave recklessly, let alone a born gener like her, who’d grown up knowing that the only way she could die was by some unforeseen accident.
Alexander breezed through his sitting room and sleeping area to the attached wash station. He was just about to peel out of his combat suit (finally!) when his comm band vibrated against his wrist and trilled at him. He raised the band to eye level and accepted the call.
Lieutenant Davorian’s face appeared projected above the band. His lean features, pale, baby-smooth skin and unnaturally bright, silver eyes gave him an erudite, almost alien appearance. Some of those features—like the eyes and skin tone—were elective, things he’d decided to change about himself after moving up North and accepting gener treatments. Alexander had refused to waste his money on cosmetic treatments, but each to their own.
“Sir,” Davorian said.
Alexander nodded to him. “Is something wrong, Lieutenant?”
“I’ve been reviewing the mission logs, sir. There’s something you need to see.” Davorian had taken over from Williams as the Officer of the Deck (OOD) so that Williams could join the latter half of the memorial in the lounge.
“I’ll be right there,” Alexander replied, already heading for the exit.
After just a few minutes, Alexander was clinging to the ladder beside the helm, some twenty feet above the bridge deck. Davorian pointed up to a system diagnostic report that he had brought up on the ship’s main holo display. Alexander craned his neck to study it.
“What am I looking at, Davorian?”
“You remember the faulty controls that made us leave Orbital One at greater than regulation thrust?”
Alexander nodded.
“I’ve isolated the cause. Someone altered the ship’s engine code.”
“What? How did they do that?”
“They included it as part of a firmware update. You see those two lines? They’re not supposed to be there. Based on the code, I’d say the intention wasn’t to destroy the ship, just cripple it with competing thrust vectors. That didn’t happen because I caught the problem early and reset the entire navigation system to the last known safe settings.”
“So someone tried to sabotage the Lincoln.”
“That, or it was a serious oversight.”
“Who’s in charge of firmware updates for the nav systems?”
“The chief engineer.”
“McAdams,” Alexander said, his eyes widening suddenly.
CHAPTER 6
“So my new chief engineer is a spy. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Not necessarily. She isn’t supposed to write the code, but she does have to give it a final check. She might have missed seeing the problem.”
“What are the odds of that?”
“With an experienced chief, it’s not likely, but she’s new and she’s a junior lieutenant, so it’s a definite possibility. Someone might have simply taken advantage of her inexperience.”
“So if we have a saboteur on board, it could be any one of the ship’s engineers.”
“Or someone else with the security clearance to make ad-hoc changes to the ship’s code.”
“Like who?”
“You. Commander Korbin. Me. Anyone else on the bridge.”
“No one else had the necessary clearance?”
“Not that I know of.”
“When was that firmware update initiated?”
“About an hour before launch.”
“And who was on board at the time?”
“Everyone but you, sir.”
Alexander blew out a breath. “Great.”
“What do we do?”
“Well, we don’t want the saboteur to know we’re on to him.”
“Or her,” Davorian replied.
McAdams. It was tempting to blame the gener, but statistically she was a lot less likely to be involved in deviant behavior. Unless she was a Confederate spy, in which case it made plenty of sense. Confederates were all geners to begin with, so it would explain why one of them was hanging out on his ship.
“Right—or her,” Alexander agreed. “We’re going to have to lay a trap.”
“How’s that, sir?”
“Opportunity. Give the saboteur the perfect chance to do something else, but this time make sure we’re watching for it.”
“What makes you think they’ll try again?”
“Now that the whole crew knows we’re going to spend the trip in G-tanks, the only way to stop us from reaching our destination is to try something again before the good doctor turns us into sleeping goldfish.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Have McAdams join Lieutenant Hayes on the bridge for the next watch. That’s in…” Alexander checked the time on his comm band. “Fifteen minutes. Have her get the entire engineering staff on that shift with her. Tell her I want her to check over all the Lincoln’s critical systems before we hop in the tanks. Meanwhile, you’re going to set up the Lincoln to block and sandbox any further software or firmware updates until we’ve both had a chance to look at them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep me posted.”
“I will, sir.”
As Alexander descended the access ladder back to the bridge deck, he thought about the possibility that Davorian was the saboteur. If so, leaving him alone at the helm was a very bad idea. Then again, if he were the saboteur, he hardly needed to feed bad code to the engines in order to cripple the ship. He could have done that lon
g ago just by misfiring the engines.
That meant he could scratch two off the suspect list—himself (obviously), and Davorian. No, three, he decided. Williams had the first watch after setting condition green. Left all alone on the bridge for a couple hours, he could have destroyed the ship by now, too. That left the remaining five members of the bridge crew and a dozen engineers as suspects.
Alexander frowned. It was hard to suspect any of them when he knew them all so well, but there were a bunch of recent transfers—McAdams being one of them, and no doubt some of the enlisted engineers, too. He gestured for the bridge doors to open and then walked back down to his quarters.
Once there, he headed back to his wash station, sighing as he went. As if they didn’t have enough concerns, what with traveling through a wormhole to another galaxy, open war back on Earth, and the survival of the human race resting on a successful outcome of their mission.
Alexander thought about all of that as he stripped out of his combat suit, shaved, and showered. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Why would the Confederacy even want to sabotage their mission? Not like their survival wasn’t equally at stake. It would make a whole lot more sense for them to simply steal information from the mission and use it for their own purposes.
Who else might have had a motive to stop the Lincoln from reaching Wonderland?
Assuming the purpose of that code wasn’t to destroy the ship, but just to damage it, then any one of the crew would have had a good motive. They’d all been chosen to make sure they had strong ties to Earth, so none of them really wanted to go. Hell, even he had a good motive for that kind of sabotage.
Hopefully whoever it was would fall into the trap he’d laid, but if they weren’t trying to destroy the Lincoln, then sabotaging the engines wasn’t a good idea now that they were so far from Earth and flying down a wormhole with who-knew-what kinds of navigational hazards.
A part of him couldn’t help but hope whoever it was would find some way to turn the ship around, but the duty-bound captain in him won out and forced him to think about alternative forms of sabotage.
New Frontiers- The Complete Series Page 7