It took him a moment to realize the woman was Vice Admiral Gāo. In person she looked so much larger. She had a forceful personality, one she usually kept carefully restrained, and only unleashed when she seemed to believe that emotion was necessary.
She had reprimanded him years ago and then had given him a second chance (or was it a third chance? Or fourth? He had stopped counting his supposed comebacks years ago). She looked older. Her hair was still black, but it was slightly tousled, as if Crowe had disturbed her while she was doing something important, and she hadn’t had time to check her face in a mirror.
There were lines under her dark eyes, and around the edges of her mouth. But those eyes—they were still formidable. Even at this distance.
Crowe glanced at the clock he had set up. Six minutes had passed.
Her image shimmered and grew, as if it was trying to become a holographic image, but couldn’t quite achieve it. He pressed the side of the communications array, bringing down the resolution just a tad, and the woman’s image became clear.
It was definitely Gāo. Her expression was wary.
“Where’s the captain?” she asked, letting Crowe know from the very start that she found this communication unorthodox.
“He does not know that I have contacted you,” Crowe said.
Gāo did not move. Her image was definitely in some kind of stasis. The resolution grew and faded. Edges of the image leached away and then returned.
Crowe wasn’t quite sure what he was waiting for. He had initially thought he would spew the information at Gāo. But as he stood here, watching the holographic image try to recreate itself, he wondered if that was the best approach. The image wasn’t really static, and he was afraid some of what he had to say would get lost in the long-range communications.
After six minutes, Gāo said, “This is irregular, First Officer Crowe. Technically, all communications up the chain need to go through the captain. Is he incapable of communicating with me?”
“No, sir,” Crowe said. “I’m going to tell you something in one big long lump of words, since conversations are hard through this interface. When I’m done, please ask for clarification if you need it. I’m afraid my words might cut out and you’ll miss something important.”
Still he waited for her response, which probably wasn’t the most practical thing to do. He hoped that, on the bridge, Stephanos was keeping Preemas occupied.
Or better yet, Crowe hoped that Preemas hadn’t noticed at all.
Then, less than five minutes later, Gāo seemed to nod. Crowe had no idea if that was a trick of the data stream or if she actually had, but he took it as a go-ahead.
“I don’t know if you know,” he said, “I started as the Chief Engineer of this vessel, and continue to act in that capacity. Captain Preemas alerted me to the time lag in your communications, and asked me to investigate…”
Crowe told her everything, from the time lag research that Atwater had done to the conclusions he had made. Then he told her about the opening of the separate foldspace bubble inside the communications anacapa, and said he had no idea if that was normal.
He would have paused at that point if they were having a regular conversation and asked for questions, but he didn’t feel like he could. Especially since, in the middle of his speech, Gāo’s head moved just a little more, and she said, “Proceed,” as if he hadn’t spoken at all.
They were talking over each other, in lag-time anyway, but he had a hunch she didn’t mind any more than he did.
He told her about his fears, that the two anacapa drives interacted badly on some ships. He said he did not have enough information to know if the problems stemmed from the communications anacapa or if something else was going on. He also said he didn’t know if the communications anacapa was part of a slice from a larger anacapa that routinely malfunctioned.
“I have sent you all of the information we have,” he said. “I told Captain Preemas I believe this is a life-saving discovery and we needed to return to the Fleet to work on this technology. I think we’re courting disaster if we continue to the Scrapheap. If Atwater’s research is correct, we will either get lost in foldspace or lose years as we travel through it.”
He swallowed, wishing he could see her reaction. He also wished that he had thought enough ahead to have a bottle of water nearby. He wasn’t used to talking this much all at once, and he was growing parched.
“Captain Preemas does not think this discovery is important. He would like to continue to the Scrapheap, no matter what the consequences are.” Crowe hoped he didn’t sound too dramatic. He was going for matter-of-fact. “At this rate, I am not sure if we’re going to make it to the Scrapheap. If I had to lay a bet on it, I would say that we are not going to make it there. This trip will have been for nothing.”
He stopped, then thought the better of it. He needed to add one more thing before he found out if Vice Admiral Gāo was angry at him for going around Preemas.
“Vice Admiral,” Crowe said, “I think we should return. I have argued repeatedly with the captain about this, and he has done everything except demote me. I would hope that you would take my opinion under advisement and cancel this mission. I truly believe there is no hope of completing it and no hope of the crew surviving it.”
There. He wasn’t going to add any more. Not yet. He would see what she had to say.
He glanced at the clock. The lag down here wasn’t as long as the lag that Preemas had experienced in his quarters. Either Preemas hadn’t timed the lag well or equipment interfered.
Then the door to engineering rattled as someone tried to come it. Crowe had sealed it with his command code. No one was coming it without getting Stephanos or the captain to open it.
Still, the sound caught him off guard.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gāo move. He had no idea how long she had actually been reacting to his words.
He wished he could compare her reaction in real time. Maybe he would try to sync up his audio later with her movements, just as a guess.
“I see,” she said, sounding quite solemn.
That was how people became admirals. They didn’t let anyone see their full reactions to the things they were learning.
He had tried that with Preemas, and doubted it had worked at all.
“I will review what you have sent, speak to our anacapa experts here, and see what their reaction is.” Gāo had shifted slightly. It looked like she had taken a step to the side.
When it became clear she had not added anything, nor had she promised to get Captain Preemas to return, Crowe suppressed a sigh. Part of him had hoped she would do more than take matters under advisement, to use the usual parlance.
“Vice Admiral,” Crowe said, “I have one other request. Can you have your people send me all the information they have on the communications anacapa drives. I’d like to know where our drive came from, if that’s possible, and what ships share that small slice.”
He wasn’t sure if she could do that, especially since he had the secondary communications anacapa drive as well. They might end up giving him information on the wrong drive.
But that was a risk he was willing to take.
“I would also like to know if someone has already studied this or is studying it. One thing the captain did say was that he expected the Fleet already knew about this problem and we would be laughingstocks if we returned because of this. For the sake of my knowledge, and the future of this voyage, I would like to know if that assumption is true.” Crowe had caught himself midsentence, since he almost said, for the sake of my ego.
He wasn’t sure if he had meant that or not.
As he was speaking, he noted that Vice Admiral Gāo had shifted again. He wanted to finish before she spoke, although he wasn’t sure he could.
“And one last thing, Vice Admiral,” he said quickly, just like he would in a normal conversation if he was trying to prevent someone from speaking immediately. “We are heading back into foldspace in a
day or two. A decision before we travel even farther from the Fleet would be advisable.”
His breath caught. He wished he could take back that last word. He had learned long ago that superior officers didn’t like words like advisable. It made them feel like any decision that came from a discussion like this wasn’t theirs.
The edges of her holographic image faded in and out. She remained stable, however, but motionless.
No one moved in the area around her. The room where her assistant had been, on the split side of the image, slightly behind Gāo, remained empty. Crowe wondered if the assistant was still in the area near Gāo, listening to this conversation.
“Thank you for your concerns, First Officer Crowe,” Gāo said. “If we have the information you requested, I will send it directly to you, through the same channel you used to send information to me.”
She turned toward her right, as if letting someone know that it was now their responsibility to handle whatever was supposed to be sent to Crowe.
“Now,” she said, “I have one question for you. How long has your lag been in this conversation?”
“Six minutes exactly, sir,” he said.
Then he double-checked the clock as he waited for her to respond. The other times made him uncomfortable, but this one seemed interminable. He had no idea why.
“Have you any idea why the time shortened again?” she asked.
“I am contacting you from engineering,” he said. “Directly through our communications array. That’s the only difference on this end.”
Six more interminable minutes. Not one second more.
During that time, no one rattled the door to engineering, and no one else contacted him down here. The air felt colder than it had earlier, and he wasn’t sure why that was, but he decided not to let it bother him.
“Ours remains the same as the last contact,” she said. “Almost eleven minutes. I have no idea how that factors into our equations. I’ll leave that to the experts, with whom I will share your theories. I understand the time constraints you sent to me. I hope you understand mine. Information isn’t always readily available. We will do what we can here. Gāo out.”
And then her image disappeared entirely. The empty room grew to replace it, and then it vanished as well.
Crowe felt his shoulders relax. He had been too tense about this meeting, and it had gone as well as it possible could have.
He needed to save all of the information from the discussion, and he needed to do so in a way that only he could access it. If he chose to share that information with Stephanos or Atwater, he would. But he would choose.
So he still had some work here.
As he stepped into the array, he stopped for just a moment, wondering if he should check to see who rattled the door to engineering. Then he decided that was a problem for another time.
He had too much to do to chase problems that didn’t exist.
He turned to the array, and went back to work.
The Správa
Gāo paced her study. Information floated around her, some in holographic form, some as scrolling data. All of it masked the artwork on her walls.
Usually the artwork gave her perspective, but today it just annoyed her—particularly since she knew it was there, but buried in the data she had been studying.
She didn’t like what she saw. She had contacted a wide variety of experts after speaking with Nadim Crowe, and those experts hadn’t heard of double foldspace openings when a regular anacapa drive was activated. They didn’t dismiss the information, but they told her, as Crowe had, that they hadn’t looked before, so they had no idea if it was normal.
They also believed it might be important.
She had forwarded all of the information Crowe had sent to as many experts as she could, including the various engineering and research vessels that were part of the school contingent. Anacapa drives and engineering were not her specialties, so she had no idea who to send the information to at the sector bases or on the various starbases.
And even if she had known, she wouldn’t get any kind of confirmation from them soon enough to aid her with her decision.
That had to be her decision. And buried in the middle of it was that stupid order from Admiral Hallock, trying to find out more information about Scrapheaps.
Gāo knew if she took all of this to Hallock, Hallock would agree with Preemas, that the trip should continue.
Gāo could even hear Hallock’s opinion, expressed in her crisp no-nonsense style.
If the captain in the middle of the mission believes it to be worthwhile continuing, then we shouldn’t second-guess him.
But Hallock hadn’t met Preemas, and Gāo had. She had also met Nadim Crowe, and as dicey as that man’s history was, it was filled with solid analysis about any situation he found himself in.
He didn’t say it. He would never have said it—but he was frightened. He saw each trip into foldspace as more risky than the last.
And he had contacted Gāo with over twenty foldspace trips still ahead of him.
Hallock wouldn’t have counted the return trips. Hallock didn’t care if the Renegat returned. Somehow, Hallock had made peace with her conscience on this.
Gāo hadn’t.
She waved her hand, commanding most of the data around her to disappear. She had seen enough. She needed to contact Preemas, and she had to do so in such a way as to avoid getting Crowe into any more trouble.
Fortunately, she already had a way to do that, without bringing Crowe’s name into the discussion at all.
“Baker,” she said on her comm, to her assistant. “I am heading into engineering. Tell them that I will be using their communications array to contact the Renegat. I will need the area cleared before I get there.”
“Consider it done,” Baker said.
Baker didn’t even have to ask why Gāo wanted to go to Engineering. Baker was helping Gāo organize all of the material she had received from Crowe, figuring out who could make the best use of it.
The one fact that had stuck in Gāo’s brain, the one she could use, without sending it to someone else, was that Crowe had contacted her from Engineering on the Renegat. Crowe’s time lag was shorter than hers.
She wasn’t sure if that was because of his location when he contacted her, but that was something she couldn’t ignore.
Gāo hesitated over her desk for one moment. She thought about bringing information with her, as a kind of show-and-tell for Preemas. But that wouldn’t work with the time lags.
She didn’t have to convince him of anything. She just had to tell him what to do.
She let herself out of the study, and walked to engineering. She had to go down five decks, to a part of the Správa she hadn’t been to in maybe a year or more. She went into engineering when she was summoned, which was rarely, since the captain of this vessel handled most everything about it.
As the elevator opened on the proper deck, some of the engineers were waiting, looking slightly annoyed. They stood at attention when they saw her. She waved a hand dismissively.
“No need for formality,” she said as she stepped into the corridor. “I’m only going to be using your area for a half an hour or so, and then you can return. They have a lovely apple crisp in the main mess today; have some and take a breather. By the time you’re done, I’ll be gone.”
She didn’t wait for a response, but headed toward engineering. The wide corridor was well lit and clean, the blue lights along the top making the light seem fresher than it was in other parts of the ship.
She knew that the engineering staff often played with ambience on this level, to see if anything they did raised spirits. The subtle things worked as well (and sometimes better) than the overt ones.
She would remember to remark on this to the captain; Gāo’s spirits had lifted just by walking under those lights.
The engineering doors stood open, contrary to the usual orders on any DV-Class vessel. Chief Engineer Sinead Molsheim waited for Gāo just in
side the door.
Molsheim was as petite as Gāo, but could lift three times her weight rapidly and without any problems whatsoever. Molsheim had been raised on ships, but she concentrated on strength, figuring she would need it inside of engineering as she reconfigured things.
That kind of thinking ahead had always served her well. She had been one of the most creative chief engineers in the Fleet, and had surprised everyone when she took the assignment to run engineering on the Správa. It meant fewer chances of adventure, fewer opportunities to work on the fly, fewer ways to broaden her horizons as an engineer.
She had disagreed with that, reminding everyone that the command ships were as important, if not more important, than a standard DV-vessel.
She was using her time on the Správa to improve systems, something Gāo appreciated.
“Vice Admiral,” Molsheim said as Gāo entered. “I know you ordered us all to leave, but I would like to stay. In light of the information you sent me from the Renegat, I think it would be a good idea for me to monitor the communications array in real time, as you’re speaking to the Renegat.”
She said all of this rapidly, as if she was afraid that Gāo would interrupt her.
Gāo was both surprised and pleased by the request. She had not thought to have anyone monitor what was going on with the Správa’s systems—not while she was talking to the Renegat. She had always thought they could examine the data after she had finished.
But this made sense, in light of Crowe’s suspicions. And Gāo wouldn’t be having a conversation that needed to remain private from another officer. Baker was going to be here, after all. One more person would make no difference.
“All right,” Gāo said. “But just you.”
Molsheim raised her eyebrows in surprise, but said nothing else.
“What do you need to do to set up?” Gāo said.
Molsheim moved aside. “I already set up, just in case you agreed. If you hadn’t, I would have had to change two things before I left.”
“Do you have a place for me, so that you will not be visible to Captain Preemas?” Gāo asked.
The Renegat Page 40