This time, India seemed almost angry.
“This doesn’t feel like the right choice,” Serpell said.
“For you maybe,” India said, and then she waited.
Serpell got the sense that India was testing her, was trying to see if Serpell would get off the ship on her own volition.
And if she did, and the ship never came back, how would she feel? Vindicated? Lost? As if it was her fault that India had not come back? And what if Serpell never knew if India lived or died or died horribly? Could Serpell live with not knowing? Could she handle it?
If Serpell left without India, their relationship, their marriage, was over. They both knew it. That’s why India didn’t push that last little bit. Because India wanted the relationship to last too.
“Staying means that much to you?” Serpell asked.
“It’s the choice between a future with a career and hope and possibilities, and a future where I’m a drag on you and everyone around us,” India said. “So yeah, it means that much to me.”
Serpell let out a small breath. One of the other groups was disbanding, everyone going in different directions. Former First Officer Newark’s group was still together, and Newark was laughing.
Newark seemed comfortable, even though she had been demoted. After all, how else could you describe the loss of the first officer position as anything but a demotion? She had no reason to stay on board the Renegat, and yet she was doing so.
She had to know how scary this trip was going to be. She had to know what dangers they were facing. And she seemed happy.
That had to mean something, right?
Serpell ran a hand along her upper thigh, a nervous gesture she hadn’t made in months. She recognized it, and couldn’t stop it. It was part of her.
Just like the nerves.
Just like India.
“Okay,” Serpell said, even though she was shaking, even though her stomach ached, even though a little voice in the back of her head was telling her that she was making a mistake. “We’ll stay.”
India hugged her.
Serpell leaned her head on India’s shoulder, felt the warmth of the person she loved the most in the entire universe, and hugged back.
They had each other. They always had each other, no matter what.
And this time, that had to be enough.
The Renegat
The Renegat was a ship in turmoil.
Crowe had known that would happen after Preemas made his announcements, but hadn’t realized exactly how that turmoil would manifest.
The entire ship lurched forward as if it hadn’t already been traveling across the sector. Some people took to their new jobs with great joy. Newark was one. Crowe had thought Preemas had played her, and maybe he had, but she loved working in the kitchens. Crowe had always thought Newark was bad with people, but she wasn’t when she was cooking.
For the first time since he boarded the Renegat, the meals were good, fresh, and timely.
Dozens of others were just like her—thriving already, and it had only been a few days.
But, it seemed, even more people hated being moved, or demoted (no matter what Preemas said about rank), or just hated the unpredictability of their new world.
All of those people found their way to Crowe. Most of them came to engineering, which was starting to irritated him.
Engineering had always been the safest place on the ship, at least as far as he was concerned. He loved the hum of equipment, the way that it talked back to him, on the panels, through the sounds, with familiar smells and sights all around.
He liked conversing with every nonhuman thing in engineering. He understood all of it. He even understood the equipment that wasn’t in engineering, but fell into his purview, like the anacapa drive on the bridge, which gave off a sharp odor reminiscent of hot dust when he ran diagnostics.
He could fit everything in engineering into its place. He knew what the problem was by the manifestation of the problem, and he usually knew the solution. If he couldn’t find the problem immediately, he enjoyed the search for the problem. And if the problem didn’t have an obvious easy solution, he liked looking for the hard one.
People weren’t like that. He tried to convince himself that they were, but it wasn’t working. They weren’t tidy. Even if the problem was the same (and it seemed to be, dammit, Captain Preemas), the solution never was.
Some people just wanted to vent at Crowe. Others wanted him to reassign them. Still others wanted a new captain, a new mission, a new something.
Crowe was going out of his mind.
He had spent the last day hiding in engineering. None of the crew shifts had occurred in engineering. When Preemas wanted to switch some of the people in engineering to other parts of the ship, Crowe had blocked him. Crowe demanded that he remain in charge of engineering or said he would quit.
This time, Preemas backed down without a fight.
He probably had known just how difficult the transition would be, and the last thing he needed was his first officer fighting him as well.
Engineering was a good place to hide, not just because of the staff, but because of the design. This section of the ship was huge, with equipment everywhere, most of it impossible for visitors to understand at a glance. This particular engineering section had been built with alcoves for various control panels, almost like mini-cockpits, so that anyone working in engineering could have privacy.
Other engineering sections on other ships he’d worked in were one large room, with a few designated workstations. This one was designed so that you couldn’t see all of its parts as you stood in the door.
He liked that. He even knew the reason for the unusual design.
SC-Class vessels were security ships, and often transported dangerous and difficult people from one place to another. In the Fleet’s long history, sometimes those people escaped or lied their way into engineering. In a few cases, they had tampered with the equipment in the few minutes they were alone, before they got caught.
So, the SC-Class vessels (and the prison transports), had a non-intuitive design, particularly for critical systems. It meant that no one could run into engineering, find what they were looking for, and sabotage it within minutes of arrival.
It meant that Crowe could find privacy to work.
Or so he thought.
He had been working deep in the room, working on a problem with the foldspace travel plan to get the Renegat to that Scrapheap when Yusef Kabac found him.
Of course Kabac had been able to find Crowe relatively easily, because he had worked in engineering all over the Fleet before his demotion.
Kabac had always been an untidy man. His clothing always looked like he had picked it off the floor rather than from his closet. His hair rose around his head as if he were hanging upside down in zero-G. But when he had served with Crowe, Kabac had been clean-shaven.
Now he sported a beard that looked as bristly as the rest of his hair. Only his dark eyes and large nose rose above the beard. He smelled like he hadn’t showered in days, and his clothes looked like he had lived in them.
In the close quarters of the communications alcove, Kabac’s stench was eye-watering.
“It was your idea, wasn’t it?” Kabac said without any introduction at all. No hello, no sorry-to-bother-you. Just that aggressive, blaming question, preceded by the stink.
Crowe was actually trapped against the wall. He would have to slide sideways to get away from Kabac.
“If you’re referring to the crew changes,” Crowe said in his most level voice, “then no, they weren’t my idea at all. I didn’t find out about them until the day before the announcement.”
“Then you could have stopped it,” Kabac said.
“I tried.” Crowe wasn’t lying. He knew that the changes would strain the relationships on the Renegat, and he thought that was a bad idea.
But Preemas had argued that the relationships were already strained by incompetence and inefficiency, and he actually
had a point.
“I am not captain,” Crowe said. “And as Captain Preemas likes to remind me, his word is law on this vessel.”
“You could have at least moved me back to engineering,” Kabac said, eyes glittering.
Kabac’s audacity made Crowe’s breath catch. Crowe knew Kabac hadn’t forgotten the demotion. Apparently, Kabac thought that demotion meant nothing. Or perhaps, he thought he had more skills than anyone currently in engineering.
The level of delusion in this man was unbelievably high.
So, this time, Crowe decided to lie. “Again, Yusef. I had no say in the crew changes, no matter how hard I argued.”
Kabac clenched his left fist and started to swing it toward the wall. Crowe caught Kabac’s fist with his right hand.
“Engineering, remember?” Crowe said lightly, as if he didn’t want to take Kabac’s hand and twist it off his stupid arm. Didn’t Kabac realize he had been about to slam his fist into a critical system?
Kabac pulled his fist out of Crowe’s grasp. “I think you told him about me,” Kabac said. “I think you told him that you didn’t like me.”
Kabac had gone off some kind of mental deep end.
“I didn’t,” Crowe said, and that was true. Preemas had moved Kabac to systems maintenance, which generally meant that he would run diagnostics and make sure the robotic equipment—what little there was on the Renegat—remained in working order.
The assignment was a real downfall for someone who had as much engineering training as Kabac did. If Crowe had been given that assignment, he would have been angry too.
“I’ll admit,” Kabac said, as if he hadn’t heard Crowe at all, “that navigation wasn’t my strong suit. It was where they moved me after retraining. Math skills, computers, systems, you’d think I’d be able to do that even without a computer backup, but I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be. I am admitting that.”
Maybe the repetition was coming from the fact that he looked like he hadn’t slept since the announcements.
“But I was good in engineering. I was the best guy you had, and you know it.” Kabac leaned into Crowe and pointed a finger at him. “You only demoted me because the others were jealous.”
Was that how Kabac dealt with the demotion? By lying to himself? That seemed like a terrible strategy, but then, Kabac was all about terrible strategies. That might even have been the name of his engineering career.
Crowe decided diplomacy was the best route for him, not confronting Kabac with the truth. The stench of the man was making Crowe’s eyes water, and the faster he cleared Kabac from the alcove, the better.
“Unfortunately,” Crowe said, “I had no say in any of the staffing changes, not even in engineering.”
“You argued for me, though, right?” Kabac asked.
It took all of Crowe’s strength to keep from letting his surprise show. “I argued a lot with the captain,” Crowe said, leaving off the fact that he hadn’t argued for Kabac at all. Crowe hadn’t even mentioned the man’s name. “It did no good.”
“Then I’ll argue with him,” Kabac said. “You can’t protect him forever.”
Crowe almost said, I’m not protecting him, but decided that sounded too defensive.
“May I give you some advice on how to handle the captain?” Crowe said.
Kabac blinked at him, clearly derailed by that sentence. Apparently, Kabac had thought Crowe would try to convince him not to talk to the captain.
“Sure.” Kabac sounded a little surprised. “Yeah. Of course. What?”
“Wear your uniform,” Crowe said. “Look your best. Maybe shave. Look like you belong in the officer corps.”
That last might have gone too far. Kabac’s eyes narrowed, and then he nodded.
“I thought Captain Preemas was a radical. I thought he didn’t like uniforms and order like that,” Kabac said.
That was actually an accurate assessment, at least as far as Crowe was concerned. But he didn’t say that.
Instead, Crowe said, “Captain Preemas is a radical when it comes to staffing and running a ship. But he appreciates the little gestures of respect as much as the rest of us.”
And he probably wouldn’t appreciate having his eyes water by being so close to another crew member. Crowe was breathing shallowly, and that wasn’t helping at all.
“Good thought.” Kabac slapped Crowe on the shoulder once, a gesture of camaraderie. “I knew you were on my side.”
And then Kabac left the alcove—or rather, his body did. His stench remained.
Crowe waited a few minutes, then peered around the alcove’s side. No sign of Kabac.
So Crowe set the environmental controls to scrub the air as quickly as they could.
What an idiot. And the Renegat was stuck with a number of people just like him. Sacrificeable, apparently. They should simply have been removed from ship duty altogether.
Crowe let out a breath, then headed for his own cabin. He would wash his face, maybe even change his clothes after that. And while he did so, he would think about other solutions.
Because his meeting with Kabac wasn’t the worst meeting he had had since the change. It was the most delusional, however.
Crowe needed to investigate how well the Renegat would run without the full crew compliment. Maybe they could shed some of the dissatisfied before the Renegat entered foldspace for the first time.
He would take a quick look at that, and if it looked possible, he would talk to Preemas.
Because some of these people shouldn’t be on a ship at all, and, Crowe suspected, the Renegat would be better off without them.
The Renegat
Preemas agreed to see Crowe that evening, in the captain’s quarters. Crowe had never seen captain’s quarters on an SC-Class vessel. These quarters weren’t as elaborate as the quarters on a DV-Class ship. Everything was smaller, including the living area. It wasn’t really built for meetings the way that the living area in the captain’s quarters on a DV-Class vessel was.
But there was a captain’s command closet here, just like there was on a DV-Class vessel.
Preemas had let Crowe in and then had gone to the small kitchen, setting mugs of coffee on a tray. Crowe waited near the door, just behind the small kitchen, looking at everything.
The quarters were smaller, yes, but they also felt more claustrophobic. The ceiling was several inches lower here than in most DV-Class captain’s quarters, and the living area seemed composed of the kitchen, a dining table pushed against the wall with screens that mimicked portals, and doors, everywhere.
The doors to the two bedrooms were on opposite sides of the room, and a door to the only bathroom in the entire apartment was near the kitchen. Not to mention a fourth door, barely outlined in the wall—almost impossible to see if you didn’t know where it was—which was pushed up against the kitchen.
That door had to be the one that went to the captain’s command closet. Crowe knew that because it was in the SC-Class vessel’s specs, although he hadn’t been requested to maintain the command closet.
On a DV-Class vessel, the closet wasn’t really a closet. It was another room with a command console. The captain could take over all of the bridge functions from his command area in his quarters.
It wasn’t an ideal setup, but it worked in an emergency, which was what it was designed for.
Given the specs of the captain’s quarters on this ship, that command closet had to be the size of a bathroom in an officer’s quarters, barely big enough for one person to move and do what he needed to do.
The entire captain’s suite was claustrophobic and badly designed. Not comfortable at all.
“You gonna stand there or join me?” Preemas asked as he moved the mugs from the tray to the small table. He set the tray on the third chair, then sat down with his back to the shut-down screens. At least they weren’t reflective in here.
Crowe came deeper into the room. It smelled of coffee and peppermint—Preemas’s drink. Crowe sat down. The chair wasn’t
even comfortable. It was hard, and curved oddly against his back.
The coffee didn’t seem like it had come from a pot, so Preemas had been using the dispenser, which was a good thing, since Crowe was particular about his coffee. And it looked like Preemas might have gotten the coffee right. It was the correct light tan color, indicating the proper mixture of cream and vanilla.
“We have a lot of disgruntled people,” Crowe said, deciding to start with the understatement.
“Oh, I’m aware of that,” Preemas said. “I expected it.”
“Many of them are really angry,” Crowe said.
“Yup.” Preemas didn’t even seem surprised. “You appear to be calming them, though.”
“Some,” Crowe said. “Some won’t calm no matter what.”
As he said that, he realized how very tired he was. He didn’t like dealing with people, particularly stressed and upset people. Especially when the problems they were having were not problems he had created, although the problems were ones he had to defend.
He shook his head a little. “The situation seems untenable to me. I have no real idea what we’ll do. I wish we could replace the whole crew and start again.”
Preemas picked up his mug and slurped the coffee. Crowe winced. Preemas grinned. Clearly the man liked baiting him.
“Technically, we can’t,” Preemas said. “But they can leave of their own accord.”
Crowe had been reaching for his mug, but he stopped mid-movement. “They can?”
Preemas nodded. “I was never told that the crew had to stay against their will.”
Crowe felt a quick surge of anger, followed by admiration, topped with annoyance. He was pretty sure there were other emotions involved as well, but he couldn’t identify them.
Damn Preemas. He had planned this all along.
“That’s why some people are still in the wrong jobs,” Crowe said softly.
Preemas shrugged. “You told them that there aren’t enough of the right jobs to go around. I thought that was a great cover story.”
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