Martoni’s eyes widened, but Rya, Philip noted, was nodding. Con and Sparks showed no reaction. They knew emergency procedures as well as he did.
“The main bridge and engineering will be the most heavily guarded. Until we hit Ferrin’s, command and bridge staff will eat, live, and sleep here on Deck Two Forward or the bridge. Same for engineering. All other personnel will be either in their cabins or at their stations. No one—I repeat, no one—works any station alone.
“Martoni, Sparks’s people are going to need bedding and food. Take who you can trust to get supplies down there. You have ten minutes to do so. Then report back up here, because I’m sure Lieutenant Welford will have a long list of things he wants done.”
“Sir,” Martoni said, rising.
Philip waved him away with one hand, a movement that had the cat opening one eye in annoyance. “Dismissed. You and Sparks get going.”
When his office door slid closed behind the two men, Philip focused on Con. “This isn’t going to be pretty, Constantine.”
“I’ll trade pretty for functional any day.”
“I’m not even sure we’re functional. Get back to the bridge, light a fire—sorry, bad choice of words.” Philip wiped one hand over his mouth, aware now of the faint whiff of oranges mixing in with the bitter odor of burnt plastics. “Get those repair crews moving. Double-check everything they do. We don’t know where that enemy agent is, but he or she will be less likely to muck up the computer systems if you’re watching.”
“I can set trip alarms on key functions. If someone tries, we’ll know,” Con promised.
“Excellent. Do it. We also need command staff personnel armed at all times.” Philip switched his gaze from Welford to Rya as she edged away from the bulkhead.
“We’ll need an assessment of personal weapons brought on board,” she said. “With your permission, I want to confiscate everything except those carried by bridge, command, and engineering staff.”
“Do it.”
“I have a personal Mag-Five in my quarters,” Welford said. “I believe Commander Adney has one too.”
“Her quarters will open to your palm code.” Philip pointed to the door. “Use her Mag-Five for now. Then get yours and transfer your stuff into her quarters, once we have the bridge under control.”
Nodding, Con pushed himself out of his seat.
“Bennton,” Philip said, rising as well, “we’re going to need more than a few Mag-Fives and donated L7s. Come with me. It’s time to break out the rest of the arsenal.”
And maybe find a spare five-point- two seconds to try to explain the unexplainable to Rya the Rebel. In private. If the cat would let him.
The clock was ticking; it was an outdated analogy of time running away. Philip Guthrie had never actually seen a mechanical ticking clock outside of history vids, but he felt the relentless pressure all the same as Rya and the cat trailed him through the main salon of his quarters and into his small bedroom. His closets held more than his personal arsenal. Jodey had sent a small stash from the Nowicki on Adney’s shuttle. Time and continuing crises had prevented Philip from distributing the weapons until now.
His carpets were soaked, his bed looked soggy. If someone from damage control didn’t get in here soon with a quadra-flash evaporator, it would be a long, miserable night. If he ever got to sleep. But at least his closets were dry.
He tapped in his security code, very aware that Rya stood inches behind him. Very aware that at some point—likely much later—he was going to want to drag her into his arms again. A low voice in the back of his mind told the Old Man to get a grip. Another low voice told him it was about goddamned time. It had been over three years since he and Chaz split. More than that since the romance between them died. He ignored both voices and yanked out a square black duro-case, dragging it onto the floor. Water squished up around the edges in small foamy bubbles.
Captain Folly pranced by, shaking water from his paws, then leapt up to the less-damp location of Philip’s nightstand.
“Four Carver-Tens for distribution to command staff,” Philip told Rya, tossing the cases onto the corner of his bed, near where she stood. They landed with a muted thump on the waterlogged mattress. He checked the next pair of sealed cases. “Six Stingers. Security.” He tossed those too, one after the other. Rya already had one Carver case open, checking the power pack on the weapon.
“They’re rebuilts off the Nowicki,” he told her. A few he’d worked on himself while Doc Galan had him locked down in the therapy room, poking, prodding, and in general doing nasty things to his damaged hip and leg. “Unless they were tampered with on the shuttle on the way here, they’re fine.” It was one thing to get the Folly’s primaries. It was another to get his personal lock codes.
“You willing to rule that out?” she asked, opening the next case. “Sir?” she added.
Sir. But then, he’d called her Subbie right after kissing her. Signal understood and accepted.
“I rule out nothing. Check them all.”
The last case held a trio of L7s. He checked those and the Stingers she hadn’t checked yet.
He watched her handle the weapons and saw clear echoes of Captain Cory Bennton in her movements, in her scrutiny. He wondered what Cory would think of his daughter’s situation now. He wondered what Cory would do if he knew Philip had kissed her.
“Rya—”
“I’m a grown woman, Philip.” She hefted the Carver-10 in her hand and faced him, chin lifting almost in defiance. “The fat little girl you taught to shoot a Carver has been through a lot in the past twenty years. Enough that she—that I—have very few illusions about myself. I know what I am. I know what I have to give. And I know what I want. And when you’re ready to discuss that in a mature fashion—without guilt or excuses—you know where to find me.”
He choked back a laugh. God, she was priceless. If she was ten years older—or he ten years younger—he wouldn’t have one qualm about a relationship with her. But she wasn’t and he wasn’t, and that still made him stop and think, play it more carefully—though he was honestly surprised to find himself “playing” at all. “Rya—”
“In the meantime, as your chief of security, I think this should be mine.” She held up the Carver-10.
He studied her. Headstrong? Impulsive? Her former COs didn’t know the half of it. “No,” he said. He plucked the Carver-10 from her fingers.
Her eyes widened slightly. Her mouth thinned more than slightly. It was all he could do to keep a grin off his own face.
“No,” he repeated. “As my chief of security, this should be yours.” He pulled the spare Carver-12 from his closet and placed it in her outstretched hand.
Then, grinning, he limped back past her and toward his office before the expression of sheer joy on her face made him give in to his desire to kiss her again. Guilt, excuses, and all.
The clock still ticked. Forty minutes out from the C-6. Damage control was blasting his quarters dry and, if not answers, at least theories were coming in to his office. The ship was on full alert, all crew stationed at general quarters or in their cabins. Rya and her teams were roving, watching. Con came and went several times with weapons status, crew assignments, and more theories. Which was why Philip was in his office and not on the bridge, where, by SOP—Fleet or Alliance—he should be.
His office door was closed. That alone was an indicator of the seriousness of the situation.
Crew and weapons—what little he had of both— were set to engage the enemy. The fighters from Umoran Defense flanking the ship confirmed a go status. He needed those fighters; the Folly was still essentially a civilian ship with only lasers as defense. Lasers, two hefty tow fields, and a slightly insane plan from a more than slightly insane admiral. It had required some dogged haranguing from both him and Sparks to convince Con of the plan’s viability. That and a bet that revolved around a bottle of very expensive Lashto brandy.
He didn’t need Con’s approval, but he wanted it. The Great Gut
hrie and the Tin Man went back more than a few years.
Philip tapped open a blinking databox on his deskscreen and studied the latest inconclusive information: the analysis of the fire in the forward lifts; the analysis of the minor systems malfunction that created the small diversion that sent Martoni to Deck 4; the analysis of the attempt to take over the auxiliary bridge. It amazed him how much his skeleton crew had been able to accomplish. It worried him that his crew was skeleton.
It worried him more that his ship had been infiltrated. That made his gut clench, his trigger finger itch. It was something neither Rya, Con, nor Martoni could provide answers to. Yet. Dina Adney—his former XO—was also a puzzle. He’d told Jodey as much, along with instructions to update Consul Falkner not only on the Folly’s status but the situation with the hospital ship and the C-6. He was waiting to hear back from the Nowicki’s captain.
In the meantime, he had traps to lay. And enemies to catch: one here and one out there. The latter was easier. He knew, relatively, what the Farosian ship wanted, what it would do. And he’d put his money on the fact that the Farosians wanted him alive.
He had no idea what motivated his onboard enemy. He didn’t even know if the agent was Farosian or Imperial.
His office door chimed, the security code Rya and Sparks had instituted flashing on his deskscreen, confirming that one of his command staff waited on the other side. He keyed the lock off the door and pulled his Carver from where it rested against his hip, just in case. The safety was already off.
Rya stepped in. Fifteen minutes ago she’d shown up with Con. That had been with the last update on the Deck 4 diversion. Now she was alone and with dark smudges on her left cheekbone. He could lie to himself that with all else that was going on, her appearance affected him not in the least—didn’t get his heart beating a little faster, didn’t make his senses tune that much more finely.
But it would be a lie.
She eyed him, sighing disapproval. “You’re too big of a target, Guthrie. I told you—”
“To move out of the direct line of fire when opening the door, yes, I know.” He raised his gun. “You were in my direct line. This desk wouldn’t stop a Carver.”
Pursed lips were his only answer. She slid into the chair on his left as his office door closed and locked. She swiveled so that her back was to the wall and she could keep an eye not only on his office door but on the closed door to his quarters.
Textbook ImpSec SPS.
“I think I have something on the fire,” she said.
No “sir.” No preliminaries. Pure Rya. He’d learned that in, what, three days with her now? She’d defined herself as his bodyguard without his permission. She’d tranked him without his permission. She’d initiated investigations without his permission.
And she’d invaded his heart without his permission.
Pure Rya the Rebel. If she started flinging forkfuls of peas at him again, it wouldn’t surprise him.
And now one of her investigations—authorized or otherwise—had panned out. That explained the smudges. “Tell me it’s good news.”
“It is if you know where to buy disatone tylethelene. And how to handle it once you’ve got it.”
Disatone ty—
“Disty?” he asked, using the old ammo-head’s term for the highly unstable accelerant. “Someone has disty-boom on board?”
“We didn’t catch it the first time, because who looks for disty-boom anymore? The Empire ceased production of it thirty or so years ago. But Commander Dennvil, who taught my explosives class at the academy, was a real ammo-head. She’d been around since before disty-boom was banned.”
He almost admitted knowing Galacia Dennvil, but that would remind Rya that he, too, had been around since before disty-boom was banned.
“Something about the burn pattern struck me. I showed it to Sparks—”
“Concentric spalling with indistinct demarcation lines,” Philip intoned.
Another sigh, but this one was accompanied by the smallest of smiles. “I should have guessed you’d know.”
“Us ammo-heads tend to stick together. Sparks confirmed it?”
“He and a couple of techs from science are doing that now. They’re going to try to identify source or manufacturer from the residue in the lift. There were only two main chemical firms in the Empire—”
“ Regmont-Allen and Synthachem.”
“Right. Evidently their formulas were slightly different. Knowing which lab it came from might help pinpoint who our mole is. Or where he came from.”
“If we even have time to act on the information.” Philip shifted in his seat and checked ship’s position on his deskcomp. “We’re going to be very busy once we hit the C-Six.” Long-range scanners already sought any configuration that could be a Farosian Star-Ripper.
“Will someone try to stop us—again—before then?”
He wondered for a moment if her question signaled the first sign of fear—something he hadn’t seen from Rya Bennton to this point. But her tone, her posture, told him otherwise. She was reminding him that the Star-Ripper was but one of many problems.
“Depends which side that someone is on. A Farosian would. An Imperial would hope that Farosians would do the job for him. Or her,” he added.
Rya sucked in a hard breath. “I didn’t want to mention this, but I have to. Could Commander Adney be behind this? Could her breakdown be a ploy to cover what she’s done?”
“I’ve thought at that.” He had, and it troubled him deeply. Because if Adney was a mole, that meant security on the Nowicki was compromised. And God only knew where else in the Alliance Fleet.
“She’s tranked now, comfortable,” he continued. “Locked in sick bay. If that was her best attempt, she failed.”
“If her attempt was to reduce the functionality of an already limited crew, she succeeded.” She paused, her voice softening. “I wish to hell I’d let my father teach me starship navigation, helm. He tried. I just kept heading for the firing range.”
He heard her frustration. He didn’t do helpless well either. But she was far from helpless. “I need you exactly where you are, Rya.” He let his tone soften to match hers. There was a double meaning to his words, which were all, at the moment, he had to offer her.
His deskscreen pinged, halting whatever she was about to say. He turned away from her, seeing the data he knew was coming. Long-range scanners had picked up something, something big. They weren’t close enough yet to make a positive identification.
They didn’t need to.
Philip Guthrie knew.
Rya Bennton had two of the three things she most wanted in life: a Carver-12 on her hip and the rank of security chief on a heavy cruiser looking to take down the Empire. The third … She angled around and caught Philip’s profile as he sat— straight-backed and fully alert—in the command chair in the center of the Folly’s bridge. He probably knew she was looking at him. She couldn’t for long. There was a Farosian warship out there. And an enemy agent in here, somewhere. The first she could do nothing about. The second had her arming Corvang, Sachi Holton, and Will Tramer with Stingers. Sachi escorted an emergency repair team, tackling a short list of problems that Philip and Sparks deemed couldn’t wait until they hit the safety of jumpspace. Will worked access points on Deck 3.
Welford, Martoni, Mather, and Dillon had Carver-10s. The Mag-5s and L7s—some of which were personal weapons she and Corvang had confiscated earlier—were distributed to Sparks’s people and the team in weapons.
On admiral’s orders, it was shoot first and ask questions second. And everyone on board knew that.
There was tense chatter on the bridge about the Farosian ship’s position—thirty minutes out—and confirmation of orders coming in from Seth’s P-33s and a trio of Ratch fighters sent from Umoran. Rya caught that much in the exchanges between Philip, Burnaby Mather at the comm, and Welford, who went from staring over Dillon’s shoulder at second helm to standing rigidly at the XO’s console on Philip’
s left.
“We must have just flashed on their screens,” Welford said, looking quickly from his console to the forward datascreen and back to his console again. “The Star-Ripper’s changing course to intercept.”
“Got a reading on her armaments?” Philip asked.
“Working on it, sir.”
Rya dragged her gaze away from the large datascreen on the bridge’s forward bulkhead. It would be too easy to be distracted by the ship images, green-tinged against the black of the grid, by the flashing yellow icons showing potential targeting points, and by the cascading red, yellow, and green numbers relating distance, speed, and God and Philip Guthrie only knew what else.
The closer they got to the Star-Ripper, the greater the danger that the agent on board would act. Again.
She turned for the corridor and let her fingers close around the grip of the Carver-12 on her hip. It was Philip’s. Now it was hers. Like his passionate kisses in the midst of the sprinkler deluge and his veiled references to needing her in his office, the gift of the pistol was something she understood—but didn’t. She was his chief of security. She was also his self-indulgence. Both, she knew, could be very temporary positions. He had an empty space to fill. She was available. Replacement crew at Ferrin’s could well provide more-experienced, more-appropriate prospects for Admiral Philip Guthrie.
She’d been too forward, too available, and she knew it. Shyness had never been one of her attributes. She wasn’t pretty enough to be shy. If she wanted a man, she had to be bold about it. So she knew how to stand and she knew how to stare.
Because it was always JFFS: Just For Fun Sex.
Except it never occurred to her that Philip Guthrie, her long-lost always-forever dream hero, would know how to play the same game. And that the game would no longer be what she wanted to play once she met him.
A loud clang on her left had her swinging around, Carver out. Then another clang, a thunk, and Sachi’s voice floated up the stairwell. “Holton with repairs.”
She holstered the weapon with a glance at her watch. Right on schedule. “Bennton. Acknowledge!” From the clanks and banging it sounded as if they were accessing the damaged lifts from Deck 2 below.
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