Vira Episode One

by Odette C. Bell

  “Though you have yet to come up with a plan, loosely, you have ordered me to figure out why Commander Jameson permanently has psychic defenses in place. This will give me that opportunity.”

  Park’s eyebrows descended. “I don’t see how.”

  “It is my belief that Commander Jameson will come to the mess hall to observe his new recruits. He will also come to observe me,” she added easily. “And it will give me ample opportunity to observe him.”

  Park shifted his jaw from side to side, considering what she’d just said.

  “It will also give you an opportunity to offer him a drink,” she continued. “Though I doubt it, considering the particular quality of mental defenses he has in place, perhaps if you—”

  “Draw him into the party,” Park said as an explosive grin spread across his face, “Jameson will drop his defenses, and you will be able to pry around his mind.”

  Vira arched an eyebrow. “We have discussed this; I do not pry. I simply experience.”

  Park kept the grin locked on his face. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is you’re right. That being said—”

  She brought up a hand and spread her fingers wide. “You do not want me to make a scene or otherwise do anything to garner the suspicions of the crew. I assure you I won’t. Ever since you pointed out… that I have been awkward, I have been attempting to mimic the natural reactions of the crew around me. I believe it is working.”

  Park let out another laugh. It was slow, it was short, but it released a lot of the tension that had been riding his back since this mission had begun. “You’re right on that one. You did good… again,” he added, realizing too late how awkward he sounded. He shrugged it off, literally. Then he arched his head toward the left. “You sure no one else will be able to pick up that this lift is slow?”

  “Yes,” she said flatly.

  If it were anyone else – hell, even if it were himself – Park would put that tone down to arrogance. With Vira? Heck, even though he was only starting to appreciate this, he was starting to trust her.

  The important question was, was she starting to trust him?

  They’d find out in the mess hall.

  Chapter 7

  Vira

  Perhaps Park could be salvaged, after all. Though it was clear that he wasn’t the perfect man for this job, maybe it was starting to dawn on him how serious this was. Perhaps it was also starting to dawn on him that Vira wasn’t some useless child who’d been accidentally let out by the Admirals.

  She sped the lifts back up, and several seconds later, they found themselves striding toward the mess hall.

  Vira’s senses were peeled, as usual, for there was no physical way to turn them off.

  Unlike a human, she could not close her eyes and eliminate visual data. It came in anyway.

  Having open eyes was simply for appearances’ sake. It was the same with her hearing, her sense of touch, and the thousands of other senses that soft, biological races couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

  That being said, right now, she paid more attention.

  Because she’d read the notes on the duty shift log, and she didn’t like them. True, she’d never been aboard a Coalition ship before, and yet, she could appreciate that there were always likely to be skirmishes amongst the crew. But what she’d read on the notes was different.

  There were rumors of weapons going missing, of people being assaulted and the victims being unwilling or incapable of pointing out the culprits.

  This went way beyond skirmishes.

  This felt planned.

  And as soon as the duty shift was over, Vira was going to look into it. Discreetly, of course. And she may or may not tell Park.

  For there was a fact that both he and Admiral Forest hadn’t fully appreciated. Though they assumed that getting to the Expanse would be predicated on controlling Vira and ensuring no one else found out about her secret on the Apollo, weren’t they forgetting that incidents could occur on the Apollo itself?

  It didn’t sound impossible. Perhaps several years ago before all of the incursions by the Force had occurred, you would have assumed it was impossible. Back then, Coalition ships had been tightknit communities, all those soldiers under the one roof, sharing the same objective.

  Now?

  The Coalition was still healing. First, it had been the Axira incident on the Academy campus, then the Circle Trader debacle. Both had involved large-scale deep incursions into the Coalition higher ups.

  And those incursions?

  They hadn’t been stopped, and they hadn’t been flushed out. And current intelligence suggested that more incidents would happen.

  Hell, there could be one happening right now.

  Credible information suggested that some kind of security breach was looming on the horizon. Though this technically wasn’t part of Vira’s remit, if it affected the Apollo, then it affected her ride to the Expanse.

  … All of this information flashed through her mind as they made it to the mess hall, and briefly, briefly she thought of pulling Park aside and sharing her suspicions with him.

  She sliced her eyes toward him, and though he’d been looking somewhere else, his heart rate and blood pressure increasing no doubt in preparation for the party ahead, suddenly he darted his gaze toward her.

  Though she was sure she had a completely controlled expression, obviously he could see through that.

  His eyebrows flattened slightly. “What is it? I don’t like it when you get that look in your eyes,” he thought at her.

  Look in her eyes? Vira knew exactly how to keep her expression completely neutral, so how the hell could Arrogant Park see all the way through to her tumultuous thoughts within?

  He kept looking at her, obviously assessing her, and though he was shielding his thoughts, she could tell that he was rapidly coming to the decision to back away from the mess hall and find somewhere to talk.

  They didn’t get that opportunity. As he opened his mouth, several of the ensigns and lieutenants from the transport spied him.

  Their faces all shone with joy as they shooed him into the mess hall.

  Instantly, Park became the life of the party, going through all the right movements, making all the right smiles. And yet, at the same time, he thought to her seriously, “If there’s an issue, you need to tell me. I can’t read your mind, Vira, but for some reason I get the impression you’re holding something back. For the love of God, just don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  She briefly made eye contact with him, and though she didn’t want to, she found herself nodding.

  This seemed to relax him, but only a little. And somehow, despite the fact no one else would notice as Park quickly became the center of attention, he still kept most of his attention locked on her.

  Vira took up position.

  She didn’t need Park to tell her what to do. She’d since accessed the full duty shift manual for lieutenants in security detachments, and she kept the information front and center in her mind as she took up position on the far end of the mess hall. With her back to the wall and facing the rows of neatly aligned tables, packed with celebrating staff, she watched. She listened. She used every single sense she could.

  If there were psychic races on board that hadn’t been vetted by the Coalition and were communicating with their minds, she would know. If there was someone with a secret communication device using shielded networks, she would know. She would not, however, be able to access the communication without finding the device, but she would still be able to sense it.

  As Vira stood there, she went into full detection mode. She had to remind herself to blink, and rather than do it precisely every 10 seconds as Park had told her, she mimicked the people around her.

  And she waited.

  For she could tell something was coming.

  Chapter 8

  Park

  He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Which was damn hard, because everywhere he looked there was someone offering him
a drink. People were partying, and they had every right to do so. Because this would be the last proper party they would have until they went off ship for recreation in four weeks. Though the Captain of a Coalition vessel never allowed frivolities on board, that restriction was lifted when a new contingent of crew came. It was seen as a necessary bonding exercise.

  And hey, on any other day, Park would’ve been happy to do that necessary bonding. Now he found it seriously difficult to navigate through all the excited ensigns and lieutenants while at the same time keeping a watchful eye on Vira.

  As for Vira? She looked like a damn hawk. She’d set herself up at the back of the room with a complete view of everything going on. Her hands were clasped behind her back, her stance was even, and, fortunately, she blinked naturally.

  … What was she picking up? Was she somehow simultaneously tracking the biosignatures of every single entity in the room? Just how much data could she hold in her head at once? These questions and more assaulted him from every angle. Though once upon a time the only thing that would intrigue Park about Vira was how the hell the Admirals could have allowed her to become such a child, now his curiosity burned him up from the inside.

  And yet, it was a curiosity he would never be able to quench. He’d been told by Admiral Forest as much as he needed to know of Vira’s abilities, and he was not allowed to ask for more information. Though it was his responsibility to shepherd her to the Expanse and through the second moon, he did not need to know the intricacies of the Vira Project. Because after this mission was over, that would be it. He would likely never see Vira again.

  That thought… distracted him. Long enough that as a Lieutenant leaned over and offered him another drink, Park simply stared right over the top of it.

  The guy cleared his throat. “Kind of distracted, sir?”

  Park doubled back, smiled, grabbed the drink, and wolfed down a gulp.

  The party was in full swing, with old and new crew of the Apollo getting to know one another.

  Vira had been wrong, though – Jameson wasn’t here.

  Or at least, he stayed away for the first half hour. Then the shadow of the Commander loomed in the doorway.

  Most of the other partying staff didn’t even notice. Park did, because as he watched Vira, her eyes sliced toward the door.

  Sure enough, there was Jameson.

  Park stiffened, but should he relax? The truth was, he just had no idea who Jameson was. One thing was for sure – he was a competent security officer. Judging by how inefficient the other new security detachment personnel were in combat training, they damn well needed a shakeup.

  But Park couldn’t help feeling that there was much more to the Commander’s story.

  Jameson spent several seconds in the doorway, surveying everyone, keeping a good chunk of his attention for Vira. Though she made eye contact briefly, she went back to watching the rest of the crew.

  And the crew, in part, watched Vira. Park didn’t think it was because of the unusual novelty of having a security officer on duty in the mess hall. Nope, Park definitely couldn’t read minds, but he could sure as hell pick up mutters, and he heard easily as several of the new lieutenants talked about her. Some of them mentioned her pinpoint accuracy in predicting the exact arrival time of the transport, but most of them gossiped about the fact she was the stuff up. Park could’ve intervened, but he didn’t need to. Several of the people who’d been in the combat training session with him pointed out she was a hell of a combat officer.

  Park understood gossip. It was a necessary part of most crews. You shove enough people of different sizes, different races, different beliefs, and different ranks in a tin can and send it through space at unbelievable speeds, and you get gossip. It’s a natural reaction to the stress of being cooped up. As long as it didn’t get out of hand, it didn’t bother him. And yet, as people talked freely of Vira, fully within earshot of the super weapon, and within thought shot, too, his back stiffened. His jaw clenched, and he left his drink completely unattended.

  He wanted to turn around, grab the ensigns who were gossiping about her, and stick them in the damn brig.

  He darted his gaze up and stared at Vira, knowing she would be crushed by what she was hearing, both with her ears and with her mind. But Vira was stiff, and she certainly wasn’t darting her gaze toward the gossiping ensigns.

  Instead, her had was at an angle, her gaze locked straight past the primary tables to one at the far end of the room.

  There was such a fixed look of concentration on her face that an electric charge of fear jolted up Park’s spine.

  He tried to shift around in his chair to see where she was staring, but there were too many people in the way.

  He could have ignored it and tried to get back to the party, but there was no damn way he would do that.

  “Vira? What’s the matter? What are you looking at?” he thought at her, even though he knew she wouldn’t be able to reply. Heck, considering all of the rest of the mental chatter in this room, she may not even be able to discern him.

  She took a step forward, for the first time pulling her back from the wall.

  “Hey, you can’t be leaving already?” Edwards said as he handed Park yet another drink.

  Park could barely manage a smile. “Just heading to the bathroom,” he commented.

  Park deftly shifted to the side, his back still crawling with nerves.

  He glanced toward the doorway, too, and Jameson was still there. He was stiff, his arms crossed, a watchful look on his face as he darted his gaze between Vira and whoever the hell was seated at the far end of the room.

  Park finally darted his head to the side and realized what they were both looking at. A nervous looking Ensign who was fiddling with his wrist device.

  The guy was a full Creyole, a massive warrior race. Park hadn’t seen him in the security division, and with a brief look at the guy’s collar, it was clear that was because he wasn’t from security. He was part of the scientific detachment that would be dropped off in the Expanse. Which was damn strange, considering Creyoles to a T were warriors.

  Though Park would have dismissed the guy, he couldn’t. Because this was Vira. She was a lot of things, but if she thought someone was suspicious, that wouldn’t be because of some wild assumption based on inaccurate instincts. It would be because she was a bloody Spacer with access to so much incoming data, it would make a ship’s long-range scanners blush.

  Park tried to put on a burst of speed, hoping to reach the Ensign just before Vira did, but Vira was competent and quick, and though the mess hall was packed and many people got in her way, she simply gracefully twisted around them, never letting her attention deviate from the Ensign.

  She strode right up to his side.

  She looked down at him.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, tone neutral.

  “Vira, what’s going on? What’s that guy doing?” Park thought desperately. Though he’d been happy that she’d been incapable of replying to his thoughts previously, now that fact goaded him. Park was never usually a man to feel fear, but tell that to his racing heart and shaking stomach as he finally reached her side.

  The Ensign looked up, and for the briefest second, a flash of anger crumpled his brow. But it really was for the briefest second, and unless you’d had the specialized type of combat training that Park had gone through, you wouldn’t have noticed it.

  “I repeat, what are you doing?” Vira asked.

  Park had no idea what to do. Clearly this guy was up to something, or Vira wouldn’t be bothering him, but Vira was starting to make a scene, and that was the very last thing Park could let her do.

  People seated at the closest tables around the Ensign started to turn around, frowning. The guy hadn’t done anything, after all. He’d just been sitting there silently playing with his wrist device.

  “Hand over your wrist device. Security Ordinance 29 A,” she stated as an afterthought.

  Park didn’t need to rack
his brains to figure out what Security Ordinance 29 A was – it gave security officers powers to search and detain objects of suspicion anywhere on the ship. It was what you used when you suspected someone was a murderer or a traitor – not what you used on a guy who was just seated in the mess hall messing around with his wrist device.

  Shit.

  Everyone was looking at them now – Park could feel it.

  And as for Jameson? He’d been leaning against the door, but now he straightened up.

  Park cleared his throat. He was torn, completely torn in two. Vira wouldn’t be doing this for no reason, and yet at the same time he simply couldn’t allow her to make a scene. “Ah, Lieutenant, what’s going on?” he tried easily.

  Vira held out her hand. She looked right at the Ensign. “Hand over your wrist device,” she said slowly.

  The party had stopped. Completely. Everyone was staring.

  Jesus Christ.

  To them, it would look as if Vira had gone off the reservation. She had no evidence against this man.

  Park cleared his throat again. “Vira,” he tried.

  She kept her hand held out, and from the look in her eyes, it seemed as if she were willing to blast through the hull of the ship to get that man’s wrist device.

  For the first time ever, Park became aware of the kill switch embedded in his right wrist.

  Just a flick. That’s all the Admiral had said. Just a flick, and Vira would lose consciousness. She would stay unconscious until he flicked it again.

  But to do that, the Admiral warned, would likely cost him Vira’s trust. It was a last-ditch failsafe, never a first port of call.

  And yet, it was one Park kept thinking of as people started to mutter behind them, asking what the hell she was doing.

  The Ensign looked from Park to Vira. “I haven’t done anything,” the man said.

  “And yet I still have the power to seize that wrist device. Hand it over, now. And you will accompany me to the security station, and that wrist device will undergo a full forensic communication scan,” she said.