The Renegat

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  He wasn’t going to go into the bridge angry or panicked. He needed to be calm in case something was seriously wrong.

  He needed to go in with no preconceptions at all.

  It only took him a few steps to get to the bridge doors. They parted as he arrived—a very good sign. He stepped inside, and was surprised to see the screens on, showing yet another unfamiliar starscape. The entire bridge crew was in place, except for Crowe.

  Even Atwater was here. He turned and smiled when he saw Crowe.

  Stephanos was near the anacapa drive, standing near Ibori, who seemed to be doing Crowe’s old job.

  Preemas was in the middle of a circle of screens, and he was studying two more, comparing them back and forth. Breaux was standing near Atwater. She had a tablet in her hand and was studying it as well. She hadn’t noticed that Crowe was on the bridge.

  A few of the other crew members had. Yulia Colvin nodded at him. Crowe nodded back.

  “Well,” Preemas said, still looking down. “It appears that we’re where we need to be. Right, Justine?”

  Breaux nodded. “From everything I see, Captain. But the information I have is—”

  “Exceptionally old, I know.” Preemas said that as if he had heard it a million times and it didn’t concern him at all. “Still. I might have expected a different outcome, given—”

  “That you had gone in a day early?” Crowe asked. “From the wrong coordinates?”

  Preemas looked up. He hadn’t realized that Crowe was on the bridge. Neither had Breaux. She looked surprised.

  Stephanos’s cheeks colored and she, at least, had the grace to look a little guilty.

  “Good morning, First Officer Crowe,” Preemas said. “I figured—”

  “You want to have this discussion here?” Crowe asked. Because that anger he had suppressed was rearing back up. It was obvious to everyone. And he realized he wouldn’t be able to contain it.

  The crew’s eyes were wide. Stephanos had moved away from the anacapa ever so slightly, as if standing near it condemned her.

  Preemas gave Crowe an evaluating look, and apparently did not like what he saw.

  “Well, I have an empty ready room,” Preemas said. “Natalia, you have the comm. I think we’re in the clear. If not, I’m sure First Officer Crowe will tell me.”

  Preemas set the tablets down, and headed outside that circle of screens. Crowe walked across the bridge to the ready room. He didn’t wait for Preemas to open the door inside. Crowe let himself in.

  Preemas followed.

  Crowe stopped in front of the desk. He had almost gone around it as if he were captain, not Preemas.

  Preemas stepped through the door, and as the door slid shut, Crowe snapped, “Half the ship had no idea you were taking us into foldspace.”

  “Half the ship never knows we’re going into foldspace,” Preemas said. “You know that. It’s procedure, First Officer Crowe.”

  Again with the sarcasm. Crowe clenched his right fist, felt an ache in his sore knuckles and then unclenched it.

  Preemas didn’t seem to notice the movement. He continued.

  “So, it was a bumpy ride this time,” Preemas said. “We didn’t expect that.”

  “I didn’t expect it,” Crowe said, “and I’m your first officer.”

  Maybe Preemas had found out that Crowe had reported him to Gāo. Maybe Crowe had read the entire situation all wrong from the start. Maybe that was why Preemas hadn’t notified him that they were going into foldspace.

  Preemas’s eyes narrowed. He seemed to finally understand that Crowe was not hurt that he wasn’t brought into the loop. Crowe was angry.

  Preemas shrugged. The movement seemed calculated, not natural.

  “You haven’t been on the bridge for the last few trips into foldspace,” he said. “You’re not needed up here anymore. That became clear. So, I figured there was no reason to contact you.”

  “No reason?” Crowe’s voice rose on the last syllable. He was perilously close to losing control. “During the last four foldspace journeys I was monitoring the communications anacapa drive, as I’ve reported to you. We have a problem there, one you denied me the chance to monitor this time. Obviously Natalia wasn’t monitoring it, because she was on the bridge. Did you just decide that something that might endanger the ship was of no concern and you didn’t need anyone to monitor it?”

  “There hasn’t been a problem for some time,” Preemas said, as if Crowe was overreacting. “I figured you could get your sleep. You’ve been looking haggard, First Officer Crowe. People have noticed.”

  As if his lack of sleep was the problem, not Preemas himself.

  “Hasn’t been a problem?” This time, Crowe managed to keep control of his voice. “How would you know? You haven’t contacted the Fleet for weeks.”

  “I’ve been sending messages,” Preemas lied. “They’ve been responding. We haven’t gone back and forth in real time, because there’s no point. We knew it would become a problem the farther away from the Fleet we got. It became a problem, and we coped. Now we’re moving on. You should too, First Officer Crowe.”

  The lie sounded so convincing. Or the lies, rather. The lies sounded so convincing, that Crowe would have believed Preemas if Crowe hadn’t seen the evidence otherwise.

  And now Crowe had a choice. Did he let Preemas know that Crowe had checked the logs? Or did he let Preemas think he was fooling Crowe?

  “First Officer Crowe?” Preemas said. “Do we have a problem here?”

  Clearly they did. But how Crowe should handle that problem was Crowe’s current concern.

  He decided avoidance, just for the moment anyway.

  “Do you want me to step down?” Crowe asked, letting some of the anger back into his voice. “Because you have clearly deemed me unimportant to the command of this ship.”

  Preemas half-smiled. Crowe had seen that particular expression on Preemas’s face a number of times these past few weeks. It was the expression Preemas used when he was trying to calm down an out-of-control crew member, one who had no real complaint.

  That thought infuriated Crowe as well.

  “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive, First Officer Crowe.” Preemas’s tone didn’t sound patronizing, even though his words were. “Perhaps your exhaustion or the unusual nature of this mission made you forget something.”

  Oh, there it was. The understanding that Preemas used many times with his crew. The fake understanding.

  Preemas had paused here, so that Crowe could ask, What did I forget?

  It was a little game, one that always ceded power from the crew member, even if the crew member was in the right.

  Crowe kept himself completely still. He wasn’t going to move, he wasn’t going to take the bait, and he wasn’t going to get visibly more angry than he had already been.

  “You forgot,” Preemas said into Crowe’s silence, “that I am the captain.”

  Here was the space where Preemas expected Crowe to deny that. Any other crew member would have sounded defensive, upset, angry.

  Crowe waited a half beat, so that Preemas would understand that Crowe had firmly considered his response.

  “I didn’t forget,” Crowe said quietly. “It seems you forgot procedure. Again. I’m the first officer. I need to be informed about anything important. A course change, which this is, is important.”

  “We haven’t changed course,” Preemas said. “We’re still heading to the Scrapheap.”

  “Oh, Captain,” Crowe said, using that same sarcasm that Preemas usually used on rank. “You told the bridge crew while I was there that we entered foldspace from different coordinates than our planned route suggested. That’s a major change in course.”

  “It made no difference,” Preemas said. “We’re where we’re supposed to be.”

  “According to Justine’s maps,” Crowe said. “I heard that too. And that makes you lucky, not right.”

  “Me?” Preemas said.

  Crowe nodded. “The dec
ision was clearly yours, Captain, not ours. And if we had gotten stuck in foldspace, which was a possibility, then that would have been your mistake.”

  Preemas opened his mouth as if to argue with Crowe.

  “And if we ended up in the wrong sector,” Crowe said, not letting Preemas get a word in edgewise, “that would have been your mistake as well.”

  “We didn’t,” Preemas said.

  “We were lucky,” Crowe said. “Especially considering that momentary loss of attitude control.”

  He held out his right hand. The knuckles were turning black and blue. The scrapes were raw and red. It looked like he had beaten someone to a bloody pulp.

  “I wonder how many other crew members got injured because of that little lapse,” Crowe said.

  “It’s an engineering problem,” Preemas said.

  “And I am your Chief Engineer,” Crowe snapped. “I should have been in Engineering, monitoring this trip. Instead, I was unaware of what you were going to do.”

  He crossed his arms and leaned on that desk as if it was his.

  “Did you neglect to tell me because you thought I would fight you over the proposed change?” Crowe asked, his tone vicious. He wasn’t trying to hold back the anger now.

  “You wanted to run back to the Fleet,” Preemas said.

  “I did,” Crowe said. “We have some problems on this vessel. They have to do with anacapa drives and travel into foldspace. You’re ignoring those problems. I can’t tell you if they’re getting worse—”

  “They aren’t,” Preemas said. “I told you that.”

  “Oh, but you don’t know that, Captain,” Crowe said. “You—.”

  He almost said that Preemas hadn’t contacted Gāo in a month, but Crowe refrained. He finally made a decision, doing it on the fly, of course.

  He wasn’t going to let Preemas know at all that Crowe was on to him, at least not in this way.

  “I do know it,” Preemas said into the silence. “We’re fine.”

  “Then tell me what happened with the attitude control,” Crowe said.

  “That’s a different system from the anacapa drive,” Preemas said. “It probably got jostled, that’s all.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” Crowe said.

  “I don’t appreciate the sarcasm, First Officer Crowe,” Preemas said.

  “And I don’t appreciate the way you’re playing with my very existence,” Crowe said. “I’m assuming you’re in denial here, not that you’re being intentionally reckless.”

  Preemas’s face flushed a deep red.

  “Because, Captain, you know—you had the damn training—that every system gets affected when the anacapa activates. And whatever happens when the anacapa drive is active, then that’s most likely related to the drive.” Crowe crossed his arms. “Or did you conveniently forget that?”

  “There’s no proof that it—”

  “There’s no proof because no one in engineering was monitoring anything.” Crowe finally raised his voice to a yell. “And the only way we can test it is to recreate the conditions, which I recommend we do not do.”

  “You would have us stay in this sector?” Preemas asked. “Forever?”

  “I think this ship needs a top-to-bottom deep inspection,” Crowe said. “I think we need to examine every single system. We’ve been taxing the ship too much, and you’ve been neglectful, sir. You’re putting us all at risk.”

  “We’re on a suicide mission,” Preemas said, his anger matching Crowe’s. “Of course, I’m putting us at risk.”

  Crowe took one step closer to Preemas, then Crowe deliberately leaned in, so that he was encroaching on Preemas’s personal space.

  “You want this mission to succeed,” Crowe said very quietly. “If it’s going to succeed, we need to survive. You and I have had this discussion before—”

  “When you wanted to turn tail and run back to the Fleet,” Preemas said. He didn’t seem at all intimidated by Crowe’s nearness.

  “When I saw that this mission will fail given the information that we already have.”

  “They expect us to fail, if you consider failure not returning,” Preemas said.

  “I consider failure not being able to even get to that Scrapheap,” Crowe said, leaning even closer.

  This time Preemas did take a step back. The red in his cheeks had grown darker, almost purple, and his eyes flashed with fury.

  “If we go back to the Fleet, First Officer Crowe,” Preemas said, “we don’t get to the Scrapheap. We fail.”

  “So you say,” Crowe said. “But I always figured we could try again. We could fix whatever needed to be fixed, and then they would send us right back out again.”

  “Or laud us as heroes as you initially pitched to me, and keep us with the Fleet. Only the heroics would have nothing to do with anyone outside of Engineering. Your ego is getting too big for this ship, First Officer Crowe.”

  “I could say the same thing about you, Captain Preemas.”

  They stared at each other, their faces so close that Crowe could smell the coffee on Preemas’s breath.

  And then, to Crowe’s surprise, Preemas took a step to the side. He couldn’t back up or he would have hit the door.

  “All right,” Preemas said, his tone completely different. He was now going to try conciliation, when anger clearly hadn’t worked. Crowe had seen this game in Preemas’s bag of tricks as well. “We’ll pretend this little incident didn’t happen. I was wrong not to include you in this trip through foldspace. From now on, you will be notified in both of your capacities.”

  Notified, not consulted. Crowe heard the difference, and knew that Preemas had intended it.

  He probably expected Crowe to thank him for recognizing that Crowe needed to be notified. Other crew members, when they challenged Preemas and thought they had won, thanked him.

  Crowe wasn’t going to. Preemas was still in the wrong, and they both knew it.

  “You will, of course, check on what went wrong with the attitude controls,” Preemas said.

  “If it’s possible to do so, now that we’re out of foldspace,” Crowe said. “I will find whatever the problem was, and I will see if it hasn’t moved to other systems.”

  “However,” Preemas said, “I don’t think a general inspection is necessary at this time. The ship is doing just fine. These small glitches were expected—at least, I expected them. Didn’t you, Chief Engineer Crowe?”

  Crowe wasn’t going to answer that. That was one of those on-the-record trick questions that would remove all liability from Preemas and put it on both of them. Or maybe even on Crowe himself.

  “I think the ship is in distress, sir,” Crowe said, “and I think we need to take that into account before we go any farther toward that Scrapheap.”

  “We’re going to have to go into and out of foldspace several times no matter where we go, Chief Engineer Crowe. We’re going to continue on the mission. We’re over halfway there now. You can do your inspection at the site of the Scrapheap itself.”

  If they ever arrived. What Preemas had just said was a worthless plan, and they both knew it.

  Crowe could keep fighting him here, in this room, or he could move forward, like members of the Fleet always did. And forward, this time, meant something else entirely.

  It meant taking a chance that he hadn’t planned on when he signed on to this mission.

  “Do you understand me, First Officer Crowe?” Preemas asked.

  Crowe moved his lips in a smile. He knew the smile did not reach his eyes, and he didn’t care if Preemas knew it as well.

  “I do, Captain,” Crowe said, staying as level as he could. “I take this to mean you still want me as First Officer.”

  “If you remember who is in charge,” Preemas said.

  “Oh, believe me,” Crowe said. “I’m not about to forget that.”

  “Good.” Preemas eyed him, as if he was trying to see if Crowe meant something else. When it seemed like Preemas was satisfied, he said, �
��I promise. I will notify you of any small course correction or trip into foldspace. You will let me know if you’re going to be on the bridge for those trips.”

  “Yes, sir,” Crowe said. “I will.”

  “Good.” Preemas looked over his shoulder, through the clear ready room door. Neither of them had opaqued it closed, so the entire bridge crew had seen the fight.

  Not that it mattered to Crowe. Preemas probably hated the fact that the crew had seen Crowe’s anger, but Crowe didn’t. They had to understand that what Preemas was doing was not normal, and that Crowe did not sanction it.

  “I take it you’re returning to Engineering?” Preemas asked, swiveling his head back toward Crowe.

  “Yes.” Crowe wanted to see what had happened with the attitude control. He also had to do a few other things.

  “Good,” Preemas said, again. “We’re staying in the sector for that minimum two days Natalia recommends. Just so you know.”

  He put a bite on the last four words, as if he resented even telling Crowe that. Then he let himself out of the ready room. Through the clear door, Crowe watched Preemas make his way back to his chair and that circle of screens. He beckoned Breaux as he did so.

  Stephanos looked at Crowe from across the bridge. His gaze met hers, but he didn’t smile or acknowledge her in any way.

  He would deal with her later.

  Right now, he had to investigate that attitude control. After he contacted Vice Admiral Gāo. His message would be urgent. Because what had happened today hadn’t just been reckless, it had been dangerous.

  Crowe rubbed his sore right arm, and then stopped, and cursed silently as he realized something. Preemas had distracted him, after all.

  The reason Preemas hadn’t wanted the deep inspection had nothing to do with the fight over the Fleet or the location of the Renegat. Preemas still had no idea that Crowe knew about the disabled foldspace communications channel. As far as Preemas knew, Crowe had believed those lies Preemas had told about Gāo.

  Preemas didn’t want the inspection, because Preemas believed that Crowe would discover that Preemas had been lying.

  Lying cleanly and easily. As if it was something that he did as often as breathing.

  Which he probably did.