He lifted his fist. It was slightly swollen on one side, and bright red.
“A hand that they tied behind us, I might add,” Preemas said. “I’ll be happy to say that when we return. With the right emphasis, of course. I’ll sound as positive as I can. But they’ll know. Gāo will know. I will show them that I’m a much better captain than they ever were, and that this ship filled with misfits and fools can do better than the most elaborately built and beautifully staffed DV-Class ship.”
He sounded completely confident, convinced he could do all of this. His optimism was breathtaking, compelling—and a little frightening.
That Preemas believed he could not only succeed at this mission, but also turn it into a personal triumph when he returned, was both inspiring and delusional.
And yet, Crowe was standing on the edge of that delusion. If he stayed with Preemas, he had other choices. He could watch from the sidelines, participating ever so slightly. Or he could join Preemas in his quest to complete the mission and have a triumphal return.
Crowe wasn’t sure there was any other way to be. He was convinced he had an either-or here.
Preemas tilted his head at Crowe, then let the fist drop.
“Do you disagree, First Officer Crowe?”
Crowe swallowed. “Disagree with what, Captain Preemas?”
Apparently, Preemas heard the slight mimicry in Crowe’s tone, that slight sarcasm on Preemas’s title.
“With my plan for success, First Officer.” Preemas made it sound like a challenge.
This time, Crowe shrugged the other shoulder. “We have no idea what we’re going to face. I would prefer that we go into it with the best crew possible. If that means ignoring some of the vice admiral’s strictures, then I would like to do so.”
“Noted,” Preemas said. “But I’m not going to ignore. I’m going to bend the regulations as far as I can, but I’m going to follow them.”
Then he leaned back a little and looked at Crowe.
“I had thought,” Preemas said, “that you would be the one to force me to follow regulations.”
And if someone had asked Crowe weeks ago if he was going to be the one who enforced regulations as opposed to Preemas, Crowe would have agreed. He would have thought he was that man.
But this mission had made him cautious in a way he hadn’t expected. He had thought he would be rules bound. Instead, he wanted the best possible people beside him. People he could predict, people who knew how to handle themselves on a Fleet vessel.
“I want this mission to succeed,” Crowe said. “I am not certain if we can do so with some of the crew that remains.”
“There aren’t enough of those people now,” Preemas said. “If need be, I’ll confine them to quarters if they get in the way.”
“We’re short, because the vice admiral has cut some people from our list,” Crowe said.
“Ah, perhaps,” Preemas said. “You see, regulations, First Officer Crowe. They work for us and they work against us. In this instance, they work for us. Because I don’t have to submit the names of people who are no longer registered with the Fleet. Nor can I submit the names of people who walk on board and get hired on the spot, as I’m sure a few people will do, especially those who refused to go through the on-base recruitment.”
Crowe nodded. “So we have a full crew compliment?”
“If we count people like your friend Kabac, yes,” Preemas said.
Crowe wanted to say that Kabac wasn’t his friend, but he didn’t. Because Preemas had only wanted to irritate him, anyway, and Crowe had decided to remain unflappable.
“Then, I guess we’re ready to leave,” Crowe said.
“We need a few more supplies,” Preemas said. “I thought we’d be here one more day, so I delayed on a few things. You might want to use that time to convince some names on your list that life on a section base is a lot better than life on an SC-Class vessel traveling backwards.”
“I am not the persuasive type,” Crowe said. “You can be, sir.”
“Sir.” Preemas grinned. “Yes, I suppose I can be persuasive. I persuaded you, didn’t I, First Officer Crowe?”
The answer Preemas wanted was a resounding yes. And the fact that Crowe knew that made him want to deny Preemas his yes.
But Crowe couldn’t help it. Sometimes Preemas was appealing. That was probably how he had gotten so many promotions as a younger man.
“I am not persuadable, Captain,” Crowe said. “I am swayed by certain types of logic.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Preemas said, and slapped him on the shoulder, then winced. “I, on the other hand, have some people to scare off. You can come with me if you like.”
Crowe shook his head. He wanted to walk around the sector base, see if it made him change his mind. He doubted he would.
He was about to embark on the grandest adventure of his life.
He would be a fool if he walked away from it now.
Part Nine
The Rescue
Now
The Aizsargs Rescue One
Mackay Adeon had the Fleet checklist open in front of him, a floating red screen of lists and to-do items, and he had his own personal checklist open beside it.
No one else could see the checklists. Some of the crew on Rescue One actually believed Adeon did all of his work from memory.
If he had done that, he would be doing a severe disservice to anyone he was supposed to rescue.
He was in the life raft deployment area, a small alcove off the larger life raft bay. The alcove had a door that could close automatically if he wanted it to.
He didn’t want it to. He was working quickly, double-checking the lists, and using his own identification to access all of the life raft controls.
Essentially, he had to guess at what the rescued passengers would need immediately, before they even arrived on Rescue One. A quick diagnosis of their condition was something that every rescued person needed, and he set that up automatically.
But other things took more thought. He needed to decide things like which languages would greet the passengers, and whether or not the holographic medical units should perform some traumatic injury repair while the life raft was traveling.
He also had to decide if only living, breathing human beings were allowed on the life raft or if creatures, plants, and things like food supplies could be brought as well. He tried to leave that open, because more than once a life raft had tried to prevent newborns from entering in their parents’ arms.
He tried to base his decisions on what he knew about the ship that was failing—the Renegat, in this instance—and not on what had happened before. He doubted anyone had serious impact injuries, for instance, so he didn’t set up emergency wound repair.
But power and life support were failing, so he had to have some available medical treatment for those who entered with breathing issues and frostbite and other complications.
He only trusted himself to do this, although he had trained assistants over the years. They were manually setting up the rafts right now, working as fast as possible.
If his assistants screwed up, they would hear from him.
If they screwed up badly, not only would they be demoted, they might even be court-martialed, for letting vulnerable people die.
The court-martials, some argued, weren’t fair, noting that the life rafts were 100% automated, after all, and whatever happened on them couldn’t be predicted.
But Adeon couldn’t do his job with that attitude. He believed he could predict enough of the rescue to save as many lives as possible.
He counted any death on a life raft as a personal affront. He also counted anyone who was unable to board the life raft and later died as another personal affront.
He went through both checklists again, then stepped out of the alcove. The life rafts were lined up in their bay, ready to deploy. Their back ends were open, revealing the interior.
The rafts were little more than gigantic padded rooms, wit
h life support and handholds. No one was supposed to be on a life raft for more than thirty minutes.
The Fleet had learned long ago that no one should pilot a life raft. Sometimes the people being rescued rebelled—in one incident that he knew of, actually killing the pilot and attempting to steal the life raft, not that it would have done them any good. The life raft wasn’t built for long distances, just for the short trip between a disabled ship and Rescue One.
He double-checked the interior controls, made sure the interiors were as sterile as they could be, and everything was in its place.
They looked fine.
His stomach knotted. He hated sending the life rafts off on their own, even though they were only transports. He wanted everything about them to be perfect, so that the rescued felt like they had finally reached a place of safety.
He wanted the life raft to give the rescued comfort, rather than make them feel as if they were on a fragile little vessel that barely protected them from the dangers of the space around them.
He patted the side of the nearest raft. The nanobits were solid outside, rubbery and soft on the inside. His hand left a faint sweaty palm print on the exterior.
“Good luck,” he whispered to the raft, like he did every single time he sent one of these off.
Then he closed the doors on all of the rafts, and gave the command to have his team leave the bay.
The team left, and he stepped into the little alcove, sealing it closed behind him. He activated the life rafts, sending them to the Renegat, at the coordinates Zarges had specified.
One bay to another. The life rafts would arrive, remove passengers, and return to yet a different bay, where Turris had placed his best medical and organizational personnel.
They would get the passengers off as fast as possible, then send the raft along the automated passageway between that bay and this one. The raft would leave again from this bay, even though Adeon wouldn’t check it the second time (much as he wanted to), and the procedure would continue with the next raft, and the next, and the next, until everyone was off the ship.
Or until it became impossible to get them off the ship.
His mouth was dry. He faced the rafts, and watched through the clear alcove door as the first raft departed through the open bay exit.
He wanted to program it to move faster, but he couldn’t. The life rafts’ maximum speed was slow because of its construction.
It would take as long as it would take.
The rafts would rescue everyone they could.
And all he could do now was watch.
The Aizsargs
The Aizsargs had moved farther away from the Renegat than Dauber wanted to be. She had watched the Renegat get smaller and smaller on her various screens, and finally tapped away from them, preferring to concentrate on the details of the rescue.
Her bridge crew had become a bit sparse. She had sent Vilma Lauritz, her chief of security, to the lower decks to make certain the correct precautions were in place.
Lauritz was going to reinforce the security barriers to those lower levels in case the 200+ people that the Aizsargs rescued required incarceration rather than protection.
Dauber would give them protection, of course, as she ferried them to the nearest starbase, one that could take over in whatever ways she needed—whether that meant taking the 200+ into custody or whether that meant figuring out where they actually belonged.
Now that the Aizsargs had reached its new destination, Dauber had moved Brett Ullman back to researching the Renegat. He had brought up a dozen more screens, so he was completely encircled in them. Most of them were clear rather than opaque, so from Dauber’s perspective, it looked like files were scrolling across his skin.
She wasn’t even certain he knew where he was at the moment, because he was so intent on everything he was doing.
Nazira Almadi was moving around the bridge, checking the work of the remaining bridge crew—not because she didn’t believe they would do a good job, but because she was as uncomfortable as Dauber.
Almadi stopped beside Massai Ribisi, looking down at his screens, a strand of her dark black hair escaping the bun she had piled on top of her head. Ribisi pointed out something on the screen before him, and Almadi shook her head.
“Captain,” he said as if he had known she was watching him. “Did you know the Renegat has a communications anacapa?”
Dauber blinked in surprise. Communications anacapa drives used to be a normal feature of ships that traveled through foldspace, but that practice ended about fifty years ago. Usually the communications anacapa drives were in DV-Class vessels only.
The communications anacapa drives were small, tiny slivers of a normal anacapa drive, and that had caused a lot of problems over the years. Sometimes the communications anacapa’s energy blended with the main anacapa creating a whole new set of problems. And sometimes the communications anacapa created its own little opening into foldspace without being directed to.
“Is that what’s causing the problems?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Ribisi said. “It doesn’t seem to be tied into the main systems. Should I tell the team on the Renegat about it?”
“If you think it’ll help and not distract them,” she said.
“As if I know.” He hadn’t moved his head through that entire conversation. His fingers had continued to poke and prod at the screens as if he could punch through them into the Renegat.
He had reached the limits of her anacapa knowledge as well. The situation was so fluid she had no idea what would help the team on the Renegat and what wouldn’t.
“More information is always better,” she said to Ribisi.
“Yeah,” he said. “I agree. I’ll let them know.”
She hoped the new information wouldn’t slow them down.
“Captain, I found something.” Ullman sounded like he was speaking to her through comms. He wasn’t, but he wasn’t looking at her either. Instead, he was frowning as he stared at those clear screens, his eyes reflecting the backlight.
Dauber wound her way through holoscreens and consoles, past her very intent bridge crew. She stopped at the edge of Ullman’s protective screen barriers, and almost asked for permission to enter.
He beckoned her to his side. It surprised her to realize he was braced against the stool he sometimes used to rest his legs. Even when he was sitting, he was nearly as tall as she was.
“Files,” he said, pointing at one of the clear screens.
She leaned so that she could see what he was seeing. The files were displayed against the backdrop of the bridge, the blinking of the equipment and the movement of the other members of the crew distracting her.
That was why Dauber usually kept her screens opaque.
“Where?” she asked.
“Here,” Ullman said, expanding the screen he was working on and opaqued it without waiting for her to request it. Now, she could see the information scrolling by.
Not that it mattered: Ullman processed data faster than she did.
“Summarize for me,” she said, knowing she wouldn’t be able to see half of what he had already absorbed.
“The Renegat is, like we thought, an SC-Class vessel. It has an undistinguished service record.” He pointed a finger at another one of his clear screens. On it was a three-dimensional image of the ship, spinning in its little informational cocoon.
She couldn’t help herself. She looked through his screen at the screen where Almadi was working. The structure of the ship was exactly the same—at least from here.
“So,” she said, “what’s the story?”
Because there had to be one. An SC-Class vessel didn’t just disappear. Fighters sometimes did. Runabouts got stolen. Smaller ships always had troubles. But an SC-Class ship usually had a crew of 400-500, and an important mission.
“About a hundred years ago,” Ullman said, “the Renegat went on some kind of secret mission, and never returned.”
“What kind of secre
t mission?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s still blocked off. I need higher clearance than I have to find out what the Renegat was working on.”
That made her frown. Missions over 100 years old shouldn’t have that level of classification.
“Let me try,” she said, and called up her own screen. She opaqued it, put in all of her identification, and looked up the Renegat.
She found a bit more about the ship—it had apparently reported in for the first half of its assignment. But once it arrived on-site, information slowed, and then vanished.
“Huh,” she said, studying the information in front of her, wondering if she could let Ullman look at the file. A peek would be a small breach of protocol, but her superiors might overlook that in this situation.
He would certainly be able to make sense of the information quicker than she could.
“What did you find?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said, and she wasn’t. The file was filled with information, some of which seemed odd to her. She couldn’t tell if the oddities came from the age of the information and the protocols in use at that time, or if the oddities came from something else.
She frowned, still thinking about letting Ullman handle this. While she worked on that problem with one corner of her mind, she could discuss some of the things she saw.
“From what I can tell,” she said, “the Renegat vanished on a mission 100 years ago.”
They already had that information, but not in quite the same way.
The Renegat Page 29