Scent of Treachery

by Smith, T. L.

  “It was a lot to deal with, especially if you’re not trained to deal with these types of accidents.”

  Jayda slid away from him. “I’m sorry I freaked out.” She had the galley counter between them now.

  “You did enough, as well as giving us safe refuge. It appears the few minutes we had our shields down the particle storm hit. Any other time it would have just glanced off our shields, and yours. Did you sustain much damage?” Dolan kept his distance, though distractingly shirtless.

  Jayda tried not to look, but a man his size was hard to ignore. She did her best, moving over to her chair and taking a moment to pull up damage reports. “Minor damage, mostly the one cargo bay. Your ship probably blocked most of the particles from hitting the station. Your status?”

  “It’s not good, which is why I’m here. We need to talk.” He took one of the other chairs. “The danger is past now, if you want to get rid of the suit.”

  “Oh, yeah… um… I will, later.”

  “Okay.” Dolan frowned. It had the opposite draw on his lips than when he smiled, just crinkles forming between his eyebrows.

  “Well, my ship is disabled and we have seriously injured people. I’ve contacted the nearest transit base, but it’ll be two weeks before they can get a medevac here.”

  “So you’re stuck here?”

  “Not all of us. Our shuttle can handle a small crew and the most critical patients, if we put them into stasis. The rest of us have to wait.”

  He looked past her, out through the portal into open space. “With some repairs we can route additional life support into undamaged areas of the ship, as long as we leave the wounded in your medical lab.”

  Jayda clenched her hands tight. “I do most my work in zero-g. If your people can tolerate a lower gravity, maybe a half-g, they can quarter here.”

  “I appreciate the offer. We’ll try to stay out of your way. You won’t even know we’re here.” He winked. “We’ll be quiet as mice.”

  “Computer, give Capt. Dolan and his crew access to station facilities.” Jayda remained seated as he stood.

  Dolan bowed and left, Jayda took advantage of the moment and made it to her quarters.

  She struggled out of her suit and crept into her bed. Her whole body hurt from the stress, not helped by Dolan’s presence stirring up pain she thought was long buried.

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight, telling herself she wouldn’t think of that day, of that moment, even though she couldn’t help it.

  

  After a restless sleep, she slipped out of her cabin.

  The station was quiet, but not the quiet she knew down into her bones. Under the still was the thrum of energy that didn’t belong here.

  She shook it off. She had work to do, but first she needed to check on her unwanted guests.

  Walking in this gravity fatigued her. She stopped outside the medical lab to catch her breath. The last thing she wanted was Dolan focused in on her for any reason.

  Able to breathe normally again, she slipped around the corner. Jayda counted the beds lining the walls. The critical patients were gone. Those who remained were asleep.

  Taylor sat on a stool in the corner, hunched over the lab table. Jayda watched her for a moment, then slipped across the room quietly, so as to not disturb the patients.

  “It’s okay. I have them under sedation. It will help them heal better.” She stretched her back. “We shipped out the worst of the crew.” She let out a tired sigh. “Gives me time to work out some problems.”

  “What problems?” Jayda saw medications lined up across the table, way more than inventory from the lab.

  “This is everything we have between the two of us. We lost some of our supplies along with our…” Taylor choked on the rest of the sentence. “I have to make this stretch until the evac ship arrives. If not for your supplies, we’d already be screwed.”

  “Still are, from the sound of things.” Jayda pulled up another stool. “I’m not a doctor, but I know chemicals. What are the immediate problems?”

  “Burns…” Taylor looked over her shoulder. “…then smoke and toxic fume inhalation injuries. There aren’t enough bronchials for the patients I have, and certainly not for any new ones. Sometimes it takes a few days before symptoms set in. I have everyone on oxygen treatments, just in case, but I’m… scared.”

  “Don’t be. They’ll see it in your eyes.” Jayda reached across the table to take the computer tablet the woman was studying. “Are these the medications you need?”

  Taylor nodded. “A list of the principle ingredients. I was trying to cross reference them with these other medications to see if I can substitute them for the less critical patients. Not hitting anything useful.”

  Jayda felt a knot in her stomach looking at the amount of burn ointments between their two supplies, and how much Taylor needed over the next two weeks. The bronchials were even worse. “Download this list to my computer. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Taylor perked up. “You have another stash?”

  “No, but I’m a chemist, remember?” She handed the computer tablet back.

  “You’re a perfumist.”

  Jayda couldn’t help but cringe at the accusation, standing up hard enough to knock her stool loose of the magnetic footers. “I’m a chemist! My ‘perfumes’ fund my real work.”

  She looked down at the table, seeing a recognizable vial and picking it up. “Do a little more research!” She slammed it down in front of Taylor, stomping away from the table. “Send me the list!”

  Stomping hurt, but Jayda was too pissed off to stop herself. It was going to be a long two weeks. Two steps into the galley she drew up short with a dozen eyes on her, including Dolan’s.

  They gathered around the table studying a holographic image of their ship. Dolan stepped away from the group. “Is there something wrong, Ms. Maldonado?”

  She looked around the room, filled with crates. “What’s going on here?”

  Dolan turned back to the table, jerking his head. The men around him gathered their helmets and walked past Jayda, giving slight bows.

  “I apologize for the inconvenience.” Dolan looked towards the piles of supplies. “This is temporary, I’ll have it cleared out by the end of the day.”

  “I hope so. I work here.”

  “Absolutely!” Dolan approached her. “But you were already angry when you came in. Did we do something else to disturb you?”

  He stood over her and she could feel his breath on her skin. Instinct said to back away, but training said it would show weakness. “Nothing. I’m just not used to having people around.”

  She moved past him. “You can use the galley, but…” Stepping around her chair, she stopped short again, gritting her teeth.

  A storage crate occupied her space. “I’m not trying to be a bitch about this, but I have everything set up so I can do some of my work from here.” She pointed to the crate. “I work here and not just making god-damned perfume.”

  “Oh, sorry.” Dolan jumped to remove the crate, stacking it with the others. He turned around as she settled into her chair.

  “Are you all right, Ms. Maldonado? You said you work in zero-g. Is this gravity too much?” He knelt down in front of her. “I can see you’re in pain. The last thing I want…”

  Jayda covered her ears, squeezing her eyes closed. “Stop it!” She gasped it out. Even his voice stirred up dead memories. Frustration made breathing harder. “Just leave. Let me work.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jayda sat in her chair, her hands clamped over her ears. Voices not really there echoed in her head. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”

  She whispered her commands to herself, over and over, until things were quiet again.

  After a few more breaths she activated her system. She needed to work, to distract herself, but first she had to report the accident. She’d been too busy, then too tired to let it cross her mind before now.

&nb
sp; Links took a while, so she used the time to pull up Dr. Taylor’s list. Despite the young woman’s doubt, Jayda had components to construct an effective bronchial treatment, a problem she could solve in a matter of hours.

  She set the robots to collecting the inventory from their storage bins and transferring them into the lab.

  Her comm chimed a connection as she finished. Her contact popped up with a concerned scowl on his face. “What’s this about an accident? Is it the inventory? How much did we lose?”

  “Is it the inventory?” Jayda growled at his corporate narrow-minded focus. “Foster, we’ve got dead people, wounded, no rescue and the first words out of your mouth are about the damned perfume? You’ve always been a dick, but really?”

  The man on the other end of her rant held up his hands. “I’m sorry, you’re right, that was stupid and insensitive. What’s the situation? What can I do?”

  “First, get a ship here faster than two weeks.”

  Foster started tapping something into a computer on his end. “I’ll get on that, see if anyone is closer to you. Next… what happened? Details!”

  “I don’t know, Fos. A freak particle storm hit just as the ship was departing, so both our shields were down. Ripped their ship up pretty bad. Threw it into the station. Killed two, probably a third, fifteen more incapacitated. Those still able-bodied are working on getting the ship stabilized. One of the dead was their ship’s doctor, so all we have is his intern. They used their shuttle to transport the six worst cases out to the sub-station, and of course the station’s evac ship is off somewhere.”

  Jayda gasped. Her tirade was more words than she’d spoken at one time, in years.

  Foster’s eyebrows scrunched together. “A particle storm caused all this? Why didn’t the perimeter net alert you?”

  “I don’t know, but it didn’t. I was so busy I forgot to follow up.”

  Jayda pulled up the safety net program, designed to protect the expensive station from little flying dust storms capable of shredding metal. The program came up with an error message.

  She jabbed at the reset and got another error message. “Something’s wrong! I can’t get anything. Can’t tell it’s even there anymore.”

  “So we don’t know how long it’s been down?” Foster was showing his bottom teeth now in his scowl.

  “They were out here about a week before the last shipment, ran through all the programs and recalibrated the net. They replaced one quadrant.”

  She thought back to her own scheduled reviews of the station’s systems. “I remember hearing several alerts since they left, but I always have the shields engaged, so I didn’t pay attention.”

  “How are your shields now?”

  “Reinitiated them as soon as we were hit. But back up protocols should have alerted me to any shutdown of the net, for just this reason.”

  She jabbed at the control panel. Nothing came up. “What the hell…” Her stomach rolled over again. “Dual failure? Now I have no shields either.”

  Foster’s upper teeth were showing now. “Data’s on a separate system. Back-up everything and go into lockdown. Run full diagnostics.”

  “Great, you’re seriously thinking this is some kind of perfume espionage? It’s perfume!” Now she was spitting the word out like it was poison.

  Foster scowled again. “One shipment is worth millions of credits so what do you think the formulas would go for?”

  Jayda bit back a retort. She’d grown up on a freighter. Some ship captains dabbled in the black market, some up to their necks. Raiders might think a run on her was worth it.

  “I’ll get on it, but that makes me leery of anyone who just happens to be in the area.”

  “Yeah, me too. I’ll be careful what gets out, but we might have to wait for that official rescue.” Foster tried to put on a positive face. “This ship captain, I doubt he’d try to kill his crew. You think you can trust him?”

  Trust wasn’t her issue. “He’s former military, probably just retired. He still breathes it so I’d say he can likely be trusted.”

  “Then he’s like you. Eight years hasn’t taken it out of you either. The two of you need to look at this issue from the espionage angle.” Foster leaned forward. “And don’t assume this is all about perfume. You’re a valuable asset too.”

  “Valuable enough to kill?”

  He didn’t answer, signing off.

  Jayda ran another diagnostic on her security systems, trying to reset them, but only got error codes. She’d driven Dolan from the galley, so it took an effort to call him back, but she did.

  “Dolan here!” Despite their last encounter, he sounded unaffected.

  “Capt. Dolan. There is an important matter I need to discuss with you. Can you return to the galley, no… come to my quarters?”

  Telling him they were defenseless had to be done in private.

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  Before pulling herself out of the chair, she set the computer to readjust the gravity down another degree, hoping no one would notice.

  She was barely in her room before the computer announced Dolan.

  He entered, looking around her quarters before settling on her. “Taylor is horrified, Dr. Maldonado.”

  She hadn’t meant to reveal herself, but she’d been mad about Taylor’s comment. “I’m not a doctor!”

  “Maybe not, but your background is impressive. Military to medical research, at least a dozen patents under JCM research. In my book healing is healing.”

  “And killing is killing!” She didn’t pull back the snarky tone.

  Dolan shook his head at her cryptic words.

  “This might not be an accident. My EWS perimeter net may have been tampered with, preventing me from knowing about that particle storm.”

  Dolan stared at her. “You can’t order a particle storm.” His disbelief showed in the crooked smile, less playful, more sarcastic. “I think you’ve been out here too long.”

  “Yeah, that’s a given, but the station has a redundant system and that didn’t work either. Now my shields are down too. Both were serviced only four months ago. I think my system was tampered with.”

  “For perfume? You need to lighten up and stop taking yourself so seriously.” Dolan turned to leave. “I don’t have time for fairytales.”

  “Jack, stop!” Jayda immediately covered her mouth. “Dolan… I meant Dolan. I’m not crazy!”

  Dolan was looking at her again, “Lady, you’ve been acting crazy from the second I set foot on your station. As if I was going to jump you.” He squinted his eyes. “Is that what Jack did? Do I remind you of him?”

  “You’re nothing like him!”

  “Clearly a lie.” Dolan leaned on the door. “You want me to take you seriously, come clean. Who’s Jack and why do I scare the crap out of you?”

  “I’m not scared, or delusional. We might really be in danger here.” Jayda glared at Dolan. “Jack was my husband and he’s dead. I… I killed him!”

  She turned away from the rise of Dolan’s eyebrow and opened a small drawer in her cabinet. She removed a framed picture. She didn’t look at it, but held it behind her.

  It left her fingers and she heard a soft groan. “I can see now why I might be freaking you out. Sorry I called you crazy. Is that why you put yourself out here, all alone? Hiding? Penitence?”

  “I came here for other reasons… medical reasons.”

  “That’s the real reason for the lower gravity?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  “Okay, so that clears up some of the odd behavior. Now let’s talk sabotage theories.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dolan’s team confirmed the EWS was down, but it would take more digging to see if it was tampered with.

  Using the robots they examined the perimeter net. It wasn’t just the one quadrant, but portions into the next quadrants, as if spreading like a disease.

  Using the station’s maintenance bots, a tech rode out a distance from the station and fir
ed a laser stream at the damaged cargo bay. The shields, designed to radiate around the station like a planet’s magnetic field, failed to deflect it.

  Dolan agreed this was no coincidence and put his crew on getting the EWS working again. Another small team returned to the ship to make sure their weapons were operational.

  Whoever set this plan into motion would implement the next phase, sooner than later. His initial mayday signals probably signaled them that the station was defenseless.

  With his military experience, Jayda let Dolan take over, while she escaped to her labs to develop a bronchial for Taylor. By the end of the day she had a batch halfway finished, but there was another medical dilemma.

  The combined supplies couldn’t handle the number of external burns and Taylor would run out in another day. Jayda had the necessary ingredients to make a less effective formula, but that would take too long.

  Not feeling she had a choice, Jayda removed a box of medical samples from storage, carrying the box to the medical lab.

  Dr. Taylor jumped up from her workstation when Jayda walked in. She hurried to take the box. When she turned around again, she dropped her eyes. “I hope the captain extended my apologies. I never meant any disrespect. If I had a clue…”

  Jayda silenced her with a wave of her hand. “It’s not information I broadcast.” She took a breath and went to the box, removing an unmarked tube. “This should… will… work with the external injuries.”

  The young woman took the tube, turning it in her fingers, frowning. “What is it?

  “A healing cream.” Jayda took another deep breath. Even with lower gravity, the day was wearing on her. “It’s a project I’ve been working on for years, about to enter final testing, but…” Her hand swung out to the people sedated in their beds. “…your needs are immediate.”

  “One of your experiments?”

  She started to twist off the cap, but Jayda grabbed her hand. “Don’t open it unless you intend to use it, all of it at once. This isn’t a simple topical, but nanobot enhanced to get down into the damaged tissues. It also has an anesthetic, so don’t get it on your own skin if you can help it.