But Serpell was lying now, and doing so badly. Dauber didn’t entirely know why. She knew that something awful had happened at that Scrapheap they had traveled to, something that had left Serpell in charge.
The records Dauber had been able to go through hadn’t been clear on that, partly because most of them were kept by people who had not made it back to the Fleet. Combine that with the fact that Captain Preemas had changed rank and duty assignments, and Dauber wasn’t sure what records to look through when.
She had decided to hold the meeting sooner rather than later, because she needed to know where to take the Renegat survivors. And in the middle of this interview, she knew.
She would have to take them to Starbase Sigma, and leave them in the hands of the legal system there.
The attack on the captain alone suggested that, even though Captain Preemas had been a divisive figure. Had Preemas been the only death, however, Dauber might have taken the survivors to the nearest sector base, and let the authorities there decide what to do.
After all, it had been 100 years or more, and the mission clearly had been unorthodox. Dauber would have argued that the survivors never serve on a ship again, and the problem would be solved.
Not that they probably could serve anyway, given the 100 year time jump. Fleet technology changed slowly, but it changed enough—and norms changed enough—that foldspace rescues who had returned after 10 years missing had trouble enough assimilating. This group would find it almost impossible.
But the lying. It made Dauber even more uncomfortable than she expected.
Something had happened to half the crew, and Serpell had been involved in that.
Still, Dauber didn’t approach it directly. Not again. Serpell had to settle down.
Besides, Serpell’s answers on that seemed rehearsed. Dauber had a hunch she would hear the same answers from the others she spoke to.
But Serpell’s reaction to the question about how the Renegat’s exterior got damaged seemed authentic. The question itself terrified her.
Perhaps it was the memory of the battle itself, but Dauber had seen a lot of crew members who had bad reactions to difficult and stressful situations, and they had never reacted like Serpell had.
Serpell hadn’t answered Dauber’s question about the records. In fact, Serpell seemed stunned that there were records at all.
Dauber decided to throw her a fake lifeline. “We got as much of the Renegat’s records as we could,” Dauber said. “At first, we were looking for anacapa anomalies, but we’re finding a lot of other questions.”
Serpell swallowed visibly. Her eyes had widened, and Dauber hadn’t thought that was possible at all.
“We got a lot of material, but the bridge records disappear in the most crucial time,” Dauber said. “They stopped just as the Renegat was heading to that planet that your system identified as Amnthra. What happened?”
She had backed into asking the question again. And this time, she would wait for the answer.
Serpell shifted slightly in her chair. “Um, they were probably destroyed during the battle. We took a lot of hits.”
“Fleet ships are designed with a lot of redundant systems, particularly when it comes to keeping track of what happens to the ship herself. I’m sure we’ll find other information—
Serpell’s breath caught. It seemed involuntary.
“—but what we have at the moment suggests that someone went back and erased all of the information from that battle forward. Why would anyone do that?”
Serpell’s cheeks turned pink underneath that grayish pallor. Her eyes glittered, almost as if she was trying to hold back tears.
If Dauber had to guess, she would guess that Serpell herself had deleted the records. But she couldn’t figure out why.
Half of the crew was already gone. It was pretty clear that the survivors had no idea what they were doing, and that going to Amnthra was a poor decision, but one that the crew insisted on.
There seemed to be nothing to hide here, especially considering that the records from the part of the journey that saw the loss of half of the crew were still intact.
“What happened?” Dauber asked, making her voice gentle. Maybe that would work with this woman.
The glittery look left Serpell’s eyes, and the color faded from her cheeks. But her voice shook as she said, “It was just really hard. I…listened to the crew. They wanted more supplies, and we shouldn’t have done that. Once the weapons on that planet started firing on us, I hit every single control panel I could think of to defend us. None of us knew how the weapons’ system worked or what to do with the shields. So I poked around and got lucky. I probably deleted the records or did something wrong right then.”
Dauber was believing her until she added that last part about probably deleting the records. Battles could be confusing, and if the Renegat was fired upon for violating the space of a region that guarded the area around a planet vigorously, the battle might have been sudden.
But the weaponry controls and the defensive controls were completely separate from the recording systems. There was no way to hit one while working with the other.
So what Dauber was getting was a half-truth.
Dauber decided to stop pressing. She needed a lot of information from Serpell, but she wasn’t going to get it in this setting.
Besides, Dauber had made her decision when she realized that Serpell was lying. They were going to Starbase Sigma.
All of this would become someone else’s problem.
Even though Dauber still had one problem left.
She had to tell the Renegat survivors that they had returned 100 years in the future. And that discussion would not be pretty.
Dauber braced her hands on the tabletop and used the surface to help herself stand. Then she nodded at Serpell.
“Thank you for your time,” Dauber said.
“I thought we were going to—.” Serpell cut herself off. “I mean, I have questions.”
“I know,” Dauber said. “And we need to answer them all. Call your people together. We’ll tell you everything tomorrow at noon.”
“Tomorrow?” Serpell breathed. “Why not now?”
Because, Dauber wanted to say, I have to inform my staff that none of you are trustworthy. I have to contact Starbase Sigma. I have to get the plans ready to get rid of you people, so that you won’t be my problem anymore.
“Because,” Dauber said, “this is information that can’t slip out.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Serpell said, and Dauber believed her. Serpell might be a bad liar, but she was clearly tight-lipped.
“I see that,” Dauber said, trying very hard not to sound sarcastic. “But I don’t dare take any risk.”
“Is this ship in trouble?” Serpell asked.
“The Aizsargs?” Dauber asked, surprised.
Serpell nodded.
Dauber smiled before she could stop herself. “No,” she said. “But we have protocols to follow so that we stay out of trouble. I have to implement them now.”
She walked to the door, then stopped. Serpell was watching her every move, looking even more panicked—if that was possible.
“Thank you for your time,” Dauber said. “You’re free to go.”
Serpell nodded, but didn’t stand up. And Dauber wasn’t going to wait for her.
Dauber let herself out of the small room and into the corridor.
She hadn’t realized how tense she was until she got out of that room. She made herself walk slowly from the area, and then, when she thought Serpell couldn’t see her, Dauber rolled her shoulders to get out some of the tightness.
She hated being lied to, particularly by someone she had been trying to help.
There were still a lot of mysteries to the Renegat, and Dauber was beginning to believe she might never find out what all of the answers were.
Part Forty
Saving The Renegat
100 Years Ago
The Renegat
C
rowe ordered all of his engineers to the bridge. He understood how that looked. It looked like he was captain of the ship now. But he was acutely aware that he was no more captain now than he had been when he pretended to be captain of the Br2 Scout3. His position hadn’t been sanctioned by the Fleet, nor had the crew chosen him.
He was leading this ship by default.
The bridge was still a filthy smelly mess. He was loathe to clean up the floor near the anacapa drive, until he knew exactly what was going on. He was probably being overly cautious, or not cautious enough. But he did know that all of this evidence of bloodshed—both here and in front of engineering—would distract his people. And since they were going to be distracted, better to be distracted here than in engineering itself.
Unlike Preemas, Crowe had turned the screens on. He had a small holographic image of the Scrapheap floating to his left, away from the anacapa container and the mess on the floor. He would make the image larger when the rest of the engineering staff showed up.
He still had his environmental suit on, but the hood was down. He had found another pair of gloves, but he hadn’t put them on. The scanner remained in one of the pockets of the suit, although he would use the scanner again, if need be.
He had taken over the captain’s chair from Tosidis—aware yet again of the symbolism—and had used its easy command controls to find the engineers who had abandoned him when it became clear he was going to fight Preemas.
Now that Preemas was dead, Crowe had to decide what to do with those engineers. He had said he would be understanding—and he would—but if they so much as blinked wrong, he would send them to the brig as well.
He didn’t need more distractions. He needed experts—or what passed for experts on this ship.
Because he was scared and exhausted and worried that with all of his own distractions, he wasn’t making the right decisions.
He wouldn’t present that to any of the crew members who were starting to file onto the bridge. He was going to talk confidently to them, and then have them play around with his ideas. But he was going to present the ideas as something he was willing to change, given the right circumstance.
Tindo Ibori had reported to him from the med bay. Apparently, Orlena Seymont had commanded him to perform the autopsy on Stephanos—or, rather, observe the automated systems perform the autopsy. Ibori had looked green when he contacted Crowe. Ibori had sent images of Stephanos’s insides, coated with that same pink that Crowe had seen in the anacapa drive.
Ibori had clearly been shaken, but he had taken some initiative—he had checked with Seymont to see if any of the crew members she was treating had that pink stuff floating through their systems.
So far, none of them had.
But Crowe wasn’t satisfied. He remembered seeing the imagery of India Romano slamming the anacapa container closed, and then, surreptitiously, rubbing her hands together. Crowe wanted to know if she was infected as well.
It had taken a bit of discussion, but Crowe had convinced Ibori to bring Romano to the med bay. She needed treatment for minor injuries, according to the system, and that would allow Seymont to examine her for the pink stuff as well.
If Romano was afflicted, they would have to see if she had contaminated anyone else—if she even could contaminate anyone else.
He had asked Willoughby to barricade herself in engineering after everyone left, and he made her promise that she would run the ship if something happened to him and to the others.
She had wanted to join this meeting—and she would, virtually—but he needed someone he trusted in the only other part of the ship that could control the ship.
He threaded his hands together, mostly to stop himself from rubbing them against the knees of his environmental suit. He knew he hadn’t been compromised—yet, anyway—but he wasn’t sure if it was a matter of time or not.
Besides, he had more pressing problems to worry about.
He had Bakhr continue his analysis of that energy wave that had flooded the Renegat before Crowe had put up the shields. Tosidis was now helping with that, and they were using Colvin as their go-to person for any research questions they had.
M’Ghan had stopped working on the environmental system. Instead, Crowe was having him map where the entire crew was. Not everyone had participated in the fighting, and Crowe wanted to know where they had spent the last twenty-four hours.
When Crowe looked, he had found most of them in their cabins. But he wasn’t sure everyone had been there during the worst of the conflict.
Hadley Ellum had already arrived on the bridge. She walked to the captain’s chair with her back straight and her head held high. Crowe watched her approach through a small screen that opened directly in front of him. He didn’t have to turn around at all.
She was trying to show that she had no regrets about fleeing engineering when Crowe offered his people the chance to stay out of the fighting. Her posture, which was usually sloppy, made her nervousness obvious. She was pretending to be confident just so that he would think she was.
Instead, Crowe could see how scared she was.
James Rodriguez came in shortly after Ellum did. Rodriguez had his shoulders hunched forward, and his gaze was darting from person to person, as if he expected to be yelled at.
Crowe didn’t have the energy to yell at anyone. He needed as many people as possible here, and they all had a mutual interest: Survival.
Atwater came in last, all of his confidence gone as well. His pale skin turned even paler as the stench hit him, a sure sign that he hadn’t served on ships before. Occasionally smells overwhelmed the environmental system, and while the crew didn’t always like that, they got used to it.
Atwater had probably never experienced it before.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Crowe said. “I need you all over here, near the captain’s chair.”
Rodriguez glanced at Ellum who shrugged. Atwater came down an aisle separate from them. Tosidis had stepped to the left of the captain’s chair, M’Ghan beside him. Colvin remained next to Bakhr, standing by the science console. Crowe called up Willoughby, setting a holographic image of her next to him.
She glanced around, seemingly surprised that Rodriguez and Ellum were on the bridge.
“You really want me too?” Bakhr asked.
“Yes,” Crowe said. “Just for this short meeting.”
And it had better be short, because the more time they spent discussing was time away from trying to survive.
“You remember that wave of energy that hit us when we got here?” Crowe asked.
Everyone nodded.
“I’m pretty sure that something in it destroyed our anacapa drives. All of them, including the communications anacapa, are hollowed out and useless.” He had checked the backup drive before calling this meeting. It had been destroyed as well.
Ellum closed her eyes and raised her face to the ceiling, as if she were calling on a higher power. Or maybe she had just hit maximum overwhelm. Rodriguez looked at his shoes.
None of the four who had been on the bridge moved at all. Neither did Willoughby.
Crowe couldn’t see Atwater clearly, but he seemed motionless.
“To make matters worse,” Crowe said, “Natalia Stephanos tried to fix the anacapa drive here, and died while doing so. The same material that destroyed the anacapa drives is all over her system. I’m no doctor, and neither is the person who observed the autopsy in the med bay, but we both believe that the same material tried to hollow her out as well.”
“What does the system say she died of?” Atwater asked. The rules guy. The guy who hadn’t served on a ship.
“That’s the problem,” Crowe said. “Everything we have, from the smallest scanner to the largest piece of equipment, tells us that there’s nothing wrong with the anacapa drives. According to our equipment, the drives are in perfect working order.”
“I was asking about the autopsy,” Atwater said. Clearly he didn’t see Crowe as a captain, because Atwate
r was comfortable interrupting him.
“That system did not register the stuff either, although we were able to get images of it.” He enlarged the holograms that Ibori had sent him. Crowe used the one that included Stephanos’s damaged face, so no one could accuse him of substituting some other person or image.
Even though he had seen this before, it was still shocking. Stephanos barely looked like herself.
Tosidis made a gagging sound and turned away. Willoughby visibly bowed her head.
But Atwater actually took a step forward. “It’s pink. Like lace. I’ve never seen anything like it. What did the med bay autopsy say she died of?”
“Natural causes,” Crowe said flatly. “We ran the data again, and then we got old age as the cause.”
Rodriguez swore softly. Ellum placed her hand over her mouth.
“Is this happening to all of us?” Tosidis asked.
And that was the important question.
“I don’t know,” Crowe said. “Have you found any of this in our systems?”
He had been supposed to check.
“I’ve been doing an automated check,” Tosidis said. “Of course, nothing is showing up.”
Crowe hadn’t specified a physical check. He cursed himself for that.
“I opened the environmental system,” M’Ghan said. “It’s fine. There’s none of that stuff in it.”
“And I’ve been checking systems here in engineering ever since we saw the communications anacapa,” Willoughby said. “I’m not finding anything bad here either.”
Crowe let that information in, but he wasn’t going to let himself relax because of it.
“Natalia touched the anacapa drive while that energy was flowing through it,” Crowe said. “India Romano touched the container with her bare hands. She’s on her way to the med bay right now, and we’ll look at her as well.”
“I thought she was in the brig,” Willoughby said.
“Yes,” Crowe said. “But we need to know what this stuff is and how it spreads. I’ve collected quite a bit of it, and the team in the med bay are examining it right now as well.”
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