by Tony Daniel
“Got you on track, XO.” Hoppo kept an ear cocked to his piplink, listening to Mull almost absent-mindedly. “Proceed forward from your location, there’ll be a fairly large access secured with a roll shutter. Take the lift up, probably level five, if Skipjack follows its specs.” Past that, crew laundry, and shift rooms. But he wasn’t going to say so.
“Through,” Hoppo said, so that Mull could match their progress to his scans and follow along. “This must be a main access corridor? I hear singing.” Right. Sleeping quarters for the crew assigned to each of the ship’s watches. He could see open doorways, and as they passed—he wanted to find the command center—he could see people, ship’s crew.
In one room, three people at the common table, drinking, laughing, toasting Hoppo’s party as they passed without any apparent interest in their sudden appearance. In another, two crew seated opposite each other over soup bowls or cereal bowls, one of them with her face flat to the table, asleep.
Mull came back to him. “Continuing on. There’ll be kitchen facilities, common mess. Forward by another half a ship length, command bridge, five people, we think.” Hoppo glanced back over his shoulder, quickly; there was a line of litters and people to steer them, turning into the crew rooms as they came to them. Efficiency. They’d wait until the corridors were clear of litters to start taking people out, to Infirmary.
The sound of Mull’s voice had caught someone’s attention, because someone called out from a room up ahead. “Hey!” Someone sitting on the floor at the open door, leaning out into the corridor; Hoppo hoped he wouldn’t fall over. “Glad we made it. We did it. It worked. Can hardly believe it.” The crewman hadn’t fallen over yet, but it was a near thing, as the man waved drunkenly. “Come in. Have a drink. There’s—ah—something to drink.”
“Maybe later,” Hoppo said, nodding. “Welcome. We’ve got to get on.” People with happy-gas poisoning weren’t expected to make sense, and he was anxious to identify himself to Skipjack’s captain. Eighteen people, Mull had said. Hoppo had counted eleven, so far; but when they found the command center and Hoppo did a quick survey he came up one soul short. There were only six people there, and none of them appeared to be paying attention.
He stopped on the threshold, taking it all in. Bridge littered with snack packets, meal trays stacked on the floor by the entrance. Crew members on station, but nobody in proper uniform, and several of the stations had gone silent. That could easily be because Skipjack was safe in bunker and operating on station systems, of course.
“Excuse me.” He had to raise his voice, because there was someone’s music playing rather loudly. Somebody should at least take an interest in his appearance, shouldn’t they? This was the command center, not crew quarters. “Excuse me,” he repeated, more loudly yet. “Which one of you is the captain, please?”
Lacquin had found someone to talk to not long ago, a woman; there were two here, one of them at a comm station. Hoppo wondered if they’d lost their last remaining voice of reason to the happy gas, but surely it wouldn’t have gone from half-here to gone in so short a time?
The man sitting at the observation station didn’t turn around; he just sat there, giggling. The one at the weapons station at the left appeared to be unconscious. There was no one on ship’s onboard systems. One of Hoppo’s party sat down and made a few experimental gestures to see whether the board would respond. Mull’s analyses had verified that the ship was cold and quiet—no active weapons systems primed to blow up, no self-destruct sequence on countdown—but cross-checks were always nice.
“The captain?” The woman at the comm station had no boots on at all, and only one sock. Her jacket was open, her cuffs were undone, and her shirt was unbuttoned down to her waistband, but her undershirt was clean enough. “Oh, him. We had a little trouble.” He didn’t think she was the person Lacquin had been talking to; for one, she sounded a little more coherent. “So we locked him up. Maintenance space, somewhere. Should probably get him out, whoever you are, he’ll be annoyed.”
She was maybe more coherent, yes, but she didn’t make any better sense, not really. What she seemed to be saying was ugly: it sounded like mutiny, and there’d never been a mutiny on board a Vreeslander commerce raider, not that Hoppo had ever heard. They’d been known for their esprit and their close-knit unit cohesion. Mutiny would be startling enough in any crew, but on a ship like Skipjack? “Tell me what happened, executive officer,” Hoppo suggested, hoping he’d guessed right about her position on board.
“Little trouble with vents, yeah,” she said. Over his piplink Hoppo could hear medical reporting to Tarleton, whom he’d left in charge in top ops: Pretty far gone. Some of these crew in very serious condition. Don’t understand it, not usual happy gas, but we’ll update soonest. “Don’t know what got into our Finnie. Couldn’t handle the Skipjack. Went a little spare, but he should be all right, he was okay when he went in.”
“And where is the captain now?” By-name identification would clearly have to wait. The woman laughed.
“We forgot to write it down. Should have painted the wall. He’s around here somewhere.” She’d gone off into a singsong sort of a clearly improvised tune, and the phrases were breaking up in the middle. “Okay now. No hard feelings. War’s over. Surprise, Skanda Republic. Shoes. Other foot.”
Hoppo touched his piplink. “XO here. Need a biometric trace for single person, possibly isolated situation, all we have to go on is quote ‘maintenance area somewhere’ end quote. Hurry.” One of the other crew had taken her feet off the middle of the status boards to spin back and forth slowly in the workstation’s chair, her arms windmilling at full length as though she were doing her dyechee warm-ups.
The possible executive officer was chanting, now, like a schoolchild doing count outs at a pash game. “Here in an instant! There yesterday! Skipjack! Skipjack! Saved the day!”
Hoppo’s piplink bipped at him. “Tarleton, XO. Carstairs hears someone pounding on the wall, from the inside. Halfway between mess area and command center. Extraction in process.” And the litter teams had caught up with Hoppo, moving onto the bridge to evaluate and evacuate the crew.
“Good,” Hoppo confirmed. “On our way.” He was glad of an excuse to get away from the singing executive officer of a crew that might have mutinied against its captain; and eager to hear what its captain—if that’s who they found in the wall—was going have to say about it all.
The wall panel had been fastened on the outside, a detail that was expressive of horror. When Hoppo and Carstairs wrenched it open, the imprisoned man within tumbled out in an ungraceful heap, saved from colliding headfirst with the decking only by quick action on Carstairs’s part. For a moment Hoppo wondered if they were too late; but then the man twitched feebly, his movements strengthening as he got his arms and legs straightened out. Hoppo didn’t envy him the muscle cramps he’d be having.
The rescue air mask that Carstairs held to the man’s face did its usual magic. When Carstairs propped the man up against the corridor wall, he didn’t fall over. “Who,” the man said, and coughed. “Who are you, and what are you doing on my ship?”
He didn’t sound like he had happy gas. He didn’t sound happy at all. Shining a light into the cramped dead space behind the rivet plate in the corridor wall, Hoppo pulled out a canned-atmosphere bottle with its stopcock open, nearly depleted; he could see others there, too, some still full. That would explain why the man wasn’t incoherent from happy-gas poisoning.
He could see an open emergency survival package, as well, which also explained why the man wasn’t half-dead from dehydration. On the other hand, Hoppo didn’t know how long the man had been in the wall.
“My name is Jens Hoppo,” he said. This man was Skipjack’s captain, according to what the admittedly mildly incoherent XO had told them. Circumstantial evidence, howsoever preliminary, confirmed; that made Hoppo the commander of a boarding party, and Skipjack the spoils of war. Lying to Skipjack’s Captain about the truth of the situati
on was not on the books. “XO, Skanda Republic base Aika Lynn. You and your crew are my prisoners, sir. May I have your name?”
Leaning up against the wall, the man received this news in silence till the last, when he made a very convincing attempt to take Hoppo by the throat. It was a surprise: an impressive one. “My name, hell, what about my crew? Status, Hoppo.”
Said crew had apparently tossed their captain around a bit before they’d put him away. He was a little bruised and doughy around the face, and parts of his jacket were torn and smeared with a brown stain that certainly looked like dried blood to Hoppo. Could have done that part himself, though, maybe, Hoppo thought, trying to get out.
“We’ve taken seventeen crew into custody, Captain, all suffering from happy gas. Fairly well advanced. One or two may be past help. Under care in Infirmary, where we’ll be taking you next, sir.”
“Infirmary big enough?” the captain asked. He spoke a clear strong dialect of Skansa, with just a hint of a Vrees accent. “Skipjack docked?—False colors.” Yes. That was exactly it. Aika Lynn’s mission was to lure enemy ships into captivity for weapons research and resource harvesting. If the mysterious people in need-to-know residence had a mission redirect they had yet to share that, or any other, information. “Help me up, Hoppo. My name is Fenroth, Captain, Vreeslander Skipjack. Is the war over?”
“Sorry, sir.” Captain Fenroth would know how to take that. Hoppo had questions of his own, lots of them, but they were going to have to wait because a man couldn’t answer fully and frankly in the condition Fenroth was in. “We’re sending you to Infirmary for clinical evaluation, Captain. We’ll talk again later.”
He could guess that Fenroth had a nasty headache, with the knock on the head he’d clearly sustained. Blood dried and bruising gone sick yellow, so he’d been in the wall for a few days. Hoppo nodded at Carstairs, making a sweeping gesture of his hand that went all the way up his arm. “Transport.”
Then he clicked his tongue against his upper palate to get his piplink’s attention. “Hoppo back to top ops,” he said. He didn’t wait for a response; he had too much to think about. There was a consistent theme to the crew’s babbling: the war being over. There had to be a reason for that to be in the forefront of peoples’ minds.
Was there enough happy gas in the world to make them think this old hulk was some sort of a secret weapon? Why had they locked their captain up in the wall? He’d had plenty of superior officers he’d have liked to jettison in a small box, but nobody went for mutiny. Nobody at all.
Head lowered, brain full of thoughts, Hoppo came barreling through the curtain slats into top ops at full speed. “Flaxon, forensic trace, I want to know exactly where that came from. Mull, status of atmosphere? And can we match any weapons signatures to archive—” Then he stopped, because two of his own Security were suddenly standing right in front of him with uncomfortable expressions on their faces.
“Good man.” That was Captain Wircale, Aika Lynn, commanding. Hoppo knew the voice immediately, even before he saw her. This was a problem, because CO and XO were almost never supposed to be in the same place at the same time, and especially not on the operational bridge where a mishap could take out the ship’s entire command structure in one go. “These are all good questions. Needing answers.”
Security stepped aside. They still looked unhappy to Hoppo. Maybe it was the civilian on the bridge; tallish officer, research and development weapons branch. She looked calm and matter-of-fact, but her eyes had a snap to them that looked like excitement to Hoppo. “This person?” she asked Captain Wircale, who nodded. Well, Hoppo thought. R&D. So that was what those secretive people in “infrastructure analysis” were doing.
Now that Hoppo had had a moment to consider it, he thought Wircale looked a little uncomfortable herself, and Wircale, for all her professional competence and well-earned reputation as an effective leader, was a woman who generally preferred her comforts over the alternative. As who wouldn’t? “My XO, Director. Hoppo, this is—”
“Nobody of importance.” Director Nobody cut the captain off smoothly, and without hesitation. “Less said the better. Why am I here, XO? Curiosity, nothing more. I’ll wait for those chromos in your office, Captain. Hoppo, there’s nothing here requires your attention, I believe? I need a tactical analysis, all new reports, past six days, and cross-check it against the archive. Thank you.”
Of all the things he could say about civilians showing up in top ops, interrupting the captain, issuing orders, one was safest. “Very well.” The captain wasn’t objecting, so it wasn’t up to him to object. Captain Wircale was as capable of objecting as any officer Hoppo had served under. “Target of inquiry, Director?”
She frowned. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to call her “Director.” Maybe he should stick with plain unadorned Nobody. “You’ll know it when you see it, Hoppo, or your reputation overstates your intelligence. I’ll leave you to it.” Get on with your work. She wasn’t being rude, Hoppo decided. She was just used to saying what she wanted and getting it soonest.
So long as that was the way it was going to be—
Hoppo knew Beeler’s station was empty this shift, because stores and logistics only updated four or five times a day and they didn’t have a current metrology mission. Spinning the vacant clamshell toward him Hoppo sat down and got to work.
It had been a day since Hoppo and his people had captured the Vreeslander Skipjack. Now he stood in the captain’s office, Director Nobody in Captain Wircale’s seat and everybody else standing—the better to admire all the chart plots on the wall, Hoppo supposed. Captain Fenroth was here as well: patched up, cleaned up, beard and moustache neatly trimmed and you couldn’t find him by smell in the dark any more. Hoppo envied him. Fenroth had probably even had a refreshing night’s sleep, and a good breakfast. What Hoppo wouldn’t do for a change of socks.
“Thank you for coming, Captain Fenroth,” Director Nobody said. “Or for bringing your ship here, at least.” She beckoned to one of the Security to come forward with a comfortably padded chair, and set it down at Fenroth’s side. “Please. Sit down.”
Wircale didn’t have a Security post in his office; Hoppo knew that, because he chopped off on the duty rosters periodically. So the Security was here on Nobody’s account. Captain Fenroth looked at the chair, then back at Nobody, saying nothing. Hoppo wouldn’t have minded sitting down himself, if Fenroth wasn’t going to be using the chair; but it was a nice point of military courtesy, one Hoppo appreciated. Captain Wircale was station commander, who outranked Fenroth by definition. As long as Wircale was on her feet, Fenroth would stand, never mind who Nobody might be.
“I’d like to see my crew, please,” Fenroth said. “A medical report, at least.” Seemed reasonable enough to Hoppo, but Nobody shook her head.
“A few things to discuss first, Captain Fenroth. Your ship. Don’t tell me. I’ll tell you.” She stood up, brushing by Captain Wircale on her way to a chart on the wall. Hoppo knew that one. He’d built the data. “Now first. Vrees ambush of a civilian refugee convoy. Tarris, eight days’ transit time ago, of course the report came in two or three days ago.”
Fenroth nodded his head, once. “Munitions transport, as I heard it,” he said. Director Nobody brushed off the correction.
“Our intel says there was a particular ship of interest there, that’s you, Fenroth. Old, clumsy, slow moving, but managed to destroy a food transport anyway, months ago at Nurrs. We’ve been watching.”
“Weapons-critical raw materials, actually,” Fenroth corrected politely. Hoppo could see Captain Wircale not-smiling, just a little.
“Semantics,” Nobody said, dismissively. “We had identity match between the C9 ship at Nurrs and the one at Tarris, same subclass, and there were only twenty-one of them in service at the commencement of hostilities.” Or of declared hostilities. War, Hoppo thought, for Fenroth; Fenroth didn’t say it. “And twenty ships of that class have been destroyed during the course of the present conflict. Yours is th
e twenty-first.”
Skipjack was number twelve in the production run, actually; Hoppo had looked it up, when he was running the forensics, because there was the obvious confusion. Somewhere. Also the part about—
Director Nobody nodded at one of the charts on the wall. “Chemical trace on the impact weapons that destroyed our humanitarian refugee transport. It matches your empty projectile tubes, Captain. Interesting. Wouldn’t you say.” She didn’t wait, which was perceptive of her, because Hoppo didn’t think Fenroth was going to answer that one. Fenroth was still watching her patiently: as though he was waiting for her to get to the point.
“And then there’s you, of course. Captain Belknap Fenroth. Finnie,” Nobody said.
“To my friends,” Fenroth noted, but Nobody ignored the interruption. She was good at that because she’d had so much practice, Hoppo supposed, and clearly knew the importance of keeping her edge. She just kept talking.
“Egret Plume, Gowire raid, good one that, I’m told. Wheat-Ear Clasp after Cotton. Twenty-nine kills, eighteen of them our fighters, Captain, but that bit about you rescuing passengers after Natalise—propaganda, and clod-handed propaganda, at that. You people made it up.”
Her analysis, maybe. Now that the director mentioned it, Hoppo finally connected the man with the mission. If that was “Finnie” Fenroth—and his XO had called him “Finnie,” hadn’t she?—he was one of the more successful of Hamstead Vrees’ raiders, if a bit of a romantic, by reputation. What he’d done at Natalise had been failure to close with the enemy, perhaps, but it was a great story. Several of Skanda’s line officers had been disciplined for failures of their own, failure to intervene.
“And there’s more. Your ship’s presence at Tarris. Your armament. You.” She nodded emphatically in the face of Fenroth’s polite disbelief. “Voice analysis confirms your presence. What’s the saying? Of all explanations once the impossible are excluded the remainder howsoever improbable, and so forth?”
