Nothing Henricksen could do about it but try to keep his crews calm. Stand at the edges and watch the investigators comb through the station, interviewing anyone and everyone who had anything to do with the RV-N project. Including the crew. Sikuuku and himself.
“Relax,” Henricksen told them when the first of the summons came. “Tell them what you know and only what you know. Don’t guess. Don’t assume. Don’t make accusations. Don’t lie to them either.” That for Baldini, who could be severely stupid when the notion took him. “Just answer their questions the best you can.”
“Say ‘sir’ a lot,” Sikuuku added. “Investigators like that.”
That earned a few smiles. A nervous laugh from Taggert. Most of the crew just nodded, though. Angry, the lot of them. Hurting from their losses. Anxious about those investigators showing up here, poking into everyone’s business.
“Just tell them truth.” Quiet voice from Henricksen, looking each and every one of them in the face. “Simple answers. Don’t embellish, don’t hold back. This is an investigation, not a witch hunt. You tell them what you know and everything’ll be alright.”
Hoped that was true. Hard to know for sure since every investigation was different. Some were witch hunts—he’d seen it a time or two in his years with the Fleet—but this one…even if this did go that route, the crew had nothing to fear.
Witch hunts went after Command. After senior officers in charge. Sometimes civilians—rare, but it did happen. And this project—run by civilians, with an entire troop of civilian engineers…
No one was safe. Not Kinsey. Not Karansky. Not Henricksen himself. He knew it. Sikuuku knew it. And from the looks on their faces, the crew knew it as well. That’s why Henricksen volunteered to go first. Suffering through hours of the investigators’ endless questions. Enduring three interrogation sessions in total over the course of that week. Going over everything—every last detail. Offering the same mostly useless information again, and again, and again because that’s all he had: answers that amounted to pretty much nothing. That’s all anyone had, because no one, not even Kinsey, seemed to know what happened to RV-N-183 and her crew.
A week passed, crew inching numbly through their work day, operating mostly on remote. Running missions in the sims because that’s what Henricksen ordered, and they honestly didn’t know what else to do. Sat in silence in the mess hall after, staring at the walls, the ceiling, the blank spaces where Fisker and Adaeze, Grunewald and Abboud used to fit.
That was the worst part. Four crew gone in the blink of an eye, and yet traces of them remained. Reminders scattered about the berthing areas, the common rooms where crew gathered. Quarters still contained all their personals—Kinsey’s orders, wanting nothing removed until the investigation wrapped up. Sim room lockers still held their flight suits, helmets sitting on a shelf above. No one touched them. Crew tried not to even look at them. Did their best to pretend those left behind items didn’t even exist, because denial was easier than remembering. Than coming to terms with four senseless, meaningless deaths.
Hard week, that one. Hard on everyone, dealing with all that loss. And the investigators’ interrogations made it all the more difficult. Didn’t mean to, but there it was. Crew died and the Brass wanted to why. How. Brought those investigators into question everyone they could get their hands on. Pour through the data Karansky and his engineers collected, trying to figure out where, and when, and why things went wrong.
What to blame. Who was at fault.
Fleet was good at that. Laying blame. Finding fault. The truth was never simple, though. Complex problems had complex causes and a lost crew, a destroyed AI...take more than a week’s worth of interviews and interrogations to sort all that out.
Brass didn’t want to hear it, though. Brass wanted this unpleasantness put to bed. Everything wrapped up nice and neat and decorated with a little bow so they could move on. Get the project back on track.
To their credit, the investigators tried—bet your life they did, with the Brass riding their collective asses. But three rounds of interviews later, Henricksen started tiring of their repeated questions. Crew grew frustrated giving them the same useless answers.
Played the game, though, the lot of them. Answered the Fleet investigators’ questions, suffered through the apologies and wooden commiserations marking each session’s beginning and end.
Stressed the crew out, dealing with it day after day. Led to short tempers and snappish communications. But Henricksen…Henricksen just felt numb. Utterly, completely numb having to lock up the pain and anger, push it deep, deep down so he could do his job. Look the crew in their faces. Deal with the investigators and that insufferable prick Kinsey without exploding. Raging like some kind of goddamn lunatic.
Fourth and final interview with the investigators ended like all the others. A few blandly polite words thanking him for his cooperation, and the Fleet investigators released him. Detailed a petty officer—not Hollings this time, some stiff, young woman with a shave-sided haircut—to escort Henricksen back to the RV-N project’s section of the station.
Didn’t think to ask her name. Not until he entered his security code at the pressure door. Didn’t think to thank her either, until she turned around and walked away.
Thought about calling her back to make amends, but a flash of blue and Petty Officer Whatever-Her-Name-Was disappeared around a corner, returning to whatever section of the station she belonged to.
Awkward, calling her back now. Making her retrace her steps for a half-hearted, decidedly too late show of gratitude he wasn’t even sure he could convincingly muster. Good at it most days—bad at names at the best of times, but Henricksen prided himself on acknowledging people and giving them their due. But after all those hours answering questions, the week he’d been through…
“Damn,” Henricksen sighed, scrubbing fingers through his short, dark hair. “God damn.”
He punched the panel, forcing the door open. Stepped through and found Shaw waiting for him in the hallway separating the hangar deck from the RV-N crew’s berthing area. Shaw and Sikuuku, Taggert and Ogawa—all of them acting casual, like they just happened to be there at the exact moment Henricksen showed up.
Didn’t believe it for a second. Recognized an ambush when he saw one.
“Problem?” he asked, folding his arms, bracing his legs wide.
Everyone looked at each other, and at Shaw at their center, electing her to be their spokesperson. “Something to show you.” She flicked her eyes to a camera in the corner, nodded to the hangar deck to one side. “Something I think you’ll want to see.”
Henricksen frowned, considering her, the crew standing with her. Trusted Sikuuku—knew he wouldn’t be here unless this was important—but the secrecy worried him. Made him wonder what they were up to.
He half-turned, considering that watching camera. “Alright,” he said, facing around. “I’ll bite.” He nodded to the airlock behind her, just down the hall. Followed Shaw and the others to it and stepped inside, letting the door cycle closed. “So, what’s this—”
Shaw grabbed his arm, cutting him off with a sharp shake of her head. “Not here,” she said, pitching her voice low. A nod to the comms panel in the airlock—camera there, cameras everywhere, watching everything on this station—and she grabbed an enviro suit from the rack, stuffed herself inside it and slid a helmet over her head.
Taggert and Ogawa dressed in silence, throwing nervous glances Henricksen’s way. Sikuuku snagged a suit and shoved it at him, seemed about to say something, but just shrugged apologetically as he cursed and grunted, wrestling his own suit into place.
Henricksen watched him a moment, worried all over again. Wondering what all this was about. Stepped into his own suit and sealed it up tight. Grabbed a helmet from the rack and slipped it into place, holding his breath as the suit hissed and puffed out, excess material ballooning comically around his lean frame.
Shaw checked each of them, consulting the monitoring pane
l glowing on the breast of each suit, nodded and flashed a thumbs up as she cycled the airlock door on the hangar side and stepped into the vast darkness beyond. A touch at her helmet and a light appeared, glowing silver-white at the front of her head. Henricksen copied her, expanding the circle of brightness surrounding Shaw—an island of illumination that swelled, spreading outward as, one by one, Sikuuku, Taggert and Ogawa added the light from their helmet lamps to that bright spot in the vast darkness.
Cold light, issuing from their helmets. Colder still the empty, echoing hangar deck around them. The entire thing a vacuum—no gravity, no heat or atmosphere, just dark and cold, the sharp-sided shapes of the stealth ships lurking around the vast room’s edges. No stars here—not with the hangar deck doors closed—which made the darkness all the more sinister. An inky, cloying black that surrounded them. Threatening to gobble them all up.
Henricksen shivered, feeling a sudden trepidation. Glanced around and saw the lot of them twitch and jitter, bunching up close, all of them feeling it now. That undercurrent of instinctive, almost primal fear as the darkness hemmed them close about.
Comms clicked open, Shaw’s voice coming through. “This way,” she said, helmet lamp turning, hand lifting, pointing to the stealth ships ahead and to the left.
Second click as the channel closed. Shaw turned her head, looking at them. Nodded and set off, checking once to make sure Henricksen and the others followed.
Long way across that hangar deck, with that looming darkness on every side. Henricksen strode along, shambling and awkward in that oversized, ill-fitting enviro suit. Each step a heavy, leaden movement. Magnetized boot soles sucking at the metal decking to keep him from floating away. The suit’s circulation system hissing in his ears, pumping dry as death environmentals around his body, filling his nose with that rancid butter and vomit stink he’d come to associate with this hangar bay on Dragoon.
Hated that suit, but he’d be dead without it. Dead as a doornail within seconds of stepping through the airlock’s door. One step and another brought him across the hangar bay—no lights at all in here now, excepting those Henricksen and the others brought with them—never even noticing the shimmer shield until their tiny group was right on top of it, helmet lights reflecting off the surface.
A ripple and it wrapped around them. Second ripple and they passed through, stepping into a pocket of heat and atmosphere, with the stealth ships ringing it round.
Just five of them here now, with One-Eight-Three gone. Five ships arranged in a wide circle, noses pointed at the hangar’s walls, back ends bordering the edge of that circle with two dozen others just like them sitting in the shadows of the hangar’s fringes.
Lined up in neat rows, patiently awaiting their turn at the big dance.
No crew for them yet. No funding for the billets needed to crew them with the RV-N project stalled. And the five here, sitting in a circle around them…Felt bad for those ships, being trapped here, grounded and waiting because humans couldn’t quite get them to work.
Henricksen scanned that circle as he stepped away from the shimmer shield, pulling the helmet from his head. Dropped it to the decking when he reached the center of the shimmer shield’s pocket and peeled himself out of the enviro suit.
Glanced down as Shaw appeared beside him, hands pressed to either side of her helmet, twisting to remove it before setting it by her feet. “Mech gang’s been crawling through their systems all week, trying to figure out what happened to One-Eight-Three.” She picked at her suit, working her way through the dozen or so fasteners. “Engineers have all sorts of theories, but so far nothing’s panned out.” She tugged hard at a last fastener, sighing in relief as the heavy suit collapsed around her. Stepped out of it and kicked it to one side, watching Sikuuku and the others strip, adding their own suits to the pile. “Buncha idiots, if you ask me. The engineers,” she explained, at Henricksen’s quizzical look.
“Yeah, well. I’m sure Kinsey’s all over their asses because of that accident.”
That look again—that sharp look of warning from Shaw. “Kinsey’s not the problem.”
Henricksen looked at her, eyebrow lifting in question, but Shaw just shook her head. Flicked her fingers as she headed for nearest stealth ship, gesturing for Henricksen to follow.
Sikuuku nudged him in the ribs, nodded after Shaw. “C’mon.”
Henricksen grabbed his arm, holding him still. “What’s this about?” he demanded. “What’s going on? What aren’t you—”
“Not here,” Sikuuku told him, dropping his voice. “Too many ears.” He waved at the hangar bay around them, nodded to the ship to one side. Shaw standing at the airlock, palming the door open.
Henricksen nodded tightly, letting Sikuuku go. Walked along at his shoulder, following the gunner and Shaw into the cargo bay of one of the stealth ships, lights coming on as they entered, outer door sealing as Taggert and Ogawa stepped through behind them.
“Good evening,” Two-Six greeted them, camera swiveling, pointing Henricksen’s way. “It’s good to see you again, Captain.”
Soft voice from the AI this time. A distinctly female voice, not genderless like before.
Henricksen tilted his head, looking a question Shaw’s way.
Shaw shrugged her shoulders. “Been spending a lot of time together.”
As if that explained anything.
Henricksen frowned at her, waiting for a better answer, but Shaw just shrugged again and set off across the cargo bay, gesturing impatiently for him to follow.
Cameras tracked them as they exited the cargo bay—Shaw and Henricksen, Sikuuku just a step behind. Taggert and Ogawa bringing up the rear, stolidly maintaining their silence.
Lights came on as they stepped into the hallway, illuminating the path ahead. They climbed the ladderway to the second level and headed for the bridge, but Henricksen slowed halfway there, glancing mistrustfully at the cameras. “Kinsey finds out we’re in here—”
“He won’t.” Shaw tipped a wink at the nearest camera. “Two-Six has got us covered. Dontcha, sweetheart?”
“Communications are contained,” Two-Six told her. “It’s just us girls here,” she added, surprising a laugh out of Shaw.
“Just how much time have you two been spending together?” Henricksen asked her.
Shaw winked again, tapped a finger to her nose. Walked the length of the hallway, looking back at Henricksen when she reached the bridge’s door. “You mentioned Kinsey.” She paused, chewing her lip, thoughtful look on her face. “He never blamed me for the accident. Or Adaeze. Or even Karansky for that matter.”
“Really.” Henricksen grunted, honestly surprised. Kinsey seemed the blaming type, and those three the easiest targets. “And just how do you happen to know all this?”
“Chief.” Shaw smiled crookedly, tapping the insignia on her collar. “Got all sorts of connections.”
“I bet.” Henricksen matched her smile, lips giving it a bitter twist. “’Spose he’s blaming me then. Couldn’t possibly blame himself after all.”
“Oh, c’mon.” Sikuuku rolled his eyes. “He’s not that bad.”
“Jury’s still out on that,” Henricksen growled.
“Kinsey hasn’t blamed anyone as far as I know.” Shaw folded her arms, leaning against the door.
“Told you he wasn’t all bad,” Sikuuku muttered, giving Henricksen a look.
“So what’s he telling the investigators?”
Shaw shrugged and turned around, opening the door. “Putting it all down to an “unfortunate accident”, from what I hear.” She stepped onto the bridge, squeezing between stations to get at Scan. “’Course he’s promising the Brass he’ll fix everything. Get the project back on track and all that.”
“Of course,” Henricksen snorted. “Gotta get these babies flying after all.” He followed Shaw onto the bridge, claiming the Pilot’s seat as his own. Saw Sikuuku settle his bulk at Engineering, leaving Ogawa and Taggert standing by the door.
Not a word
out of either of them, not in all this time. Suspicious, that. Especially in Taggert’s case. Bit of a motor mouth, that one. Holding his tongue wasn’t really one of his strong points.
“Might explain what Karansky was up to.” Shaw looked at him, and at the windows, leaned over Scan and worked away at the panel.
“What do you mean?” Henricksen grabbed Shaw’s arm, pulling her around. “What’s going on?”
Shaw blinked at him, glanced down at the hand gripping her arm. “Bastard’s always been squirrely, but since the accident…” She trailed off, shaking her head. Rubbed at her bicep when Henricksen finally let go. A tap at the panel brought a video feed onto Scan’s panel, second tap pushed it to the front windows of the bridge.
Hangar deck footage. Nothing of note showing at first—just the shimmer shield area with its toolkits and equipment, the back ends of ship showing at the edges. But a few seconds in, and a creeping figure appeared, lumbering along in a bulky enviro suit. A figure that stopped by one of the RV-Ns and started messing around with its engines.
Henricksen frowned, studying those images, watching the figure a while. “Could be anyone in that suit. What makes you think that’s Karansky?”
A few strokes of the keys and Shaw added a data window next to the video feed. Highlighted the security credentials entered to gain access to the RV-N’s propulsion system.
Karansky’s credentials. The Chief Engineer’s name captured in the system’s data stream.
“Son of a bitch.”
“That he is.” Shaw nodded. “Been all over my ass since the accident. Caught him messing with Nine-Eight a couple of nights ago after hours.” A second enviro-suited figure appeared on the video, gesticulating at the tinkerer.
Henricksen’s frown deepened. Engineers stayed in the control room, mostly. Stuck to the science and theory, leaving the grunt work to Shaw and her mech gang. “What was he doing down here?”
“God only knows.” Shaw flipped a hand, glowering in disgust. “Screwing things up—that’s for sure. Had to run his ass out of the hangar bay.”
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