by Cameron, TR
“I did.”
“Did he seem to you like the sort of person to fire upon another ship without provocation? He did not do so last time.”
Cross’s face betrayed his discomfort, as he answered his captain with a touch of a scowl. “Not a single thing has happened how I thought it would, Captain. I’m not sure I can judge the intentions of the Alliance commander.”
Okoye acknowledged this with a nod. “Fair enough. Take the XO station, please.”
As Cross limped to the chair, the captain issued a stream of orders. “Helm, chart a tunnel out of here toward the nearest base. Start moving us slowly in that direction, in as nonthreatening a way as you can. Weapons, all arms at ready status, but do not fire unless fired upon. Tactical, keep our defenses attuned. Sensors, anything?”
Kate answered when her position was called, “No signs that the Beijing has fired at us, Captain. But, of course,” she glanced at Cross, “it’s possible he did and we’re just not picking up the evidence.”
The medical and damage control teams arrived on the same lift and dispersed to attend to their tasks. As the communication officer returned to his position, the captain called for a channel to the Beijing. Moments later, the image of Dima Petryaev appeared on half of the main display.
“Captain Petryaev. I am Captain James Okoye, in command of the Washington, DC. I believe you have spoken with my executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Cross. I am assured that both sides were to blame for the foolishness that ensued between my ship and the Gagarin. After we were in the tunnel, I assumed command, and your man attacked after we exited. Although we fired at him, it was an alien vessel that destroyed the Gagarin. There were no signs of survivors, not that we could have stopped to help them had there been. You have my condolences on the loss of your ship.”
Dima nodded in response to this diplomatic gesture. “Mikhail was a big man, big in all ways. His sense of personal honor got him into trouble more than once, and it appears to have been his undoing. If I may briefly address the Lieutenant Commander?” Dima’s eyes focused on a different spot, “There may be a lesson in Mikhail’s fate for you.” Dima focused back on Captain Okoye. “You have suffered damage, Captain. Do you require assistance?”
There was a limit to the amount of diplomacy Okoye was willing to engage in, and he appeared to have reached it. “No thank you, Captain Petryaev, although I appreciate your generous offer. Our damage control teams have the situation well in hand, and we will tunnel to our nearest base as soon as our drive is ready.”
Dima nodded. “Then I guess there is not much left for us to say to each other, Captain. The circumstances are unfortunate, but it is always heartening to meet people on your side who are willing to converse before launching into combat.”
Captain Okoye nodded in reply. “I was just thinking the same about you, Captain Petryaev. Safe travels. Washington out.”
Okoye pointed at his tactical officer after the connection dropped. “You keep a close eye on that ship, Martin. The moment he does anything unexpected, max our shields, fire countermeasures, go evasive, and get us to the tunnel.”
Cross saw him look over at the medical team attending to the XO. The ship’s doctor had come himself, and he stood, peeled off his gloves, and shook his head. “Bloody hell,” the captain swore.
Softly, so that his voice wouldn’t carry beyond its target, Okoye had only one command to give. “Lieutenant Commander, you are dismissed. We will talk later. For now, get off my bridge.”
Cross departed with as much dignity he could manage. After the door closed with a hydraulic hiss and the lift glided into motion, he bloodied his knuckles on a wall, stifling the scream that wanted to erupt from his chest. He headed to engineering to kill time before the captain summoned him for the inevitable conversation. Okoye could flay the skin from a statue with the sharpness of his tongue. He was not looking forward to enduring it yet again.
Chapter Ten
The doors of the lift closed and Kate cringed in sympathy. Okoye had always held Cross at arm’s length, not out of any malicious intent that she could see, but just because their personalities didn’t match particularly well. A captain wanted an executive team that thought differently than he did, but perhaps not as differently as Cross. It had caused friction before, and she figured he was in for another intense verbal expression of that friction in short order.
She manipulated the sensor array, gathering as much data as she could on the Beijing while they were in proximity to him. She also shared Lieutenant Martin’s coordination of damage repair teams, taking the lower half of the ship as her responsibility. It was an engrossing task, and she lost track of time while submerged in it. Erin Smythe jolted her out of her efforts with the announcement, “The tunnel drive should be ready to go.”
The captain responded by contacting engineering and found that Jannik agreed with Smythe’s assessment.
Okoye addressed Martin. “Are we stable enough to last through transition in and transition out?” Kate linked the status of her damage control teams to the tactical officer’s display.
“Yes, Captain, we should have no problem making it to the base with the repairs we’ve already completed. Some of the structural damage will require a starbase to fix, but we are stabilized.”
“Excellent, thank you, Lieutenant. Helm, take us home with all speed.”
“Aye, sir. Engaging tunnel drive.”
Transition was a sight she never tired of, the way the blackness of space split into an array of colors, some of which seemed to exist only in the moment of transport from known reality into the unreality of tunnel space. Once in the tunnel, there was not much to see other than a smear of speed that was incredibly hard on the eyes. Rare were the people who wanted to experience that more than once, as it very much emphasized they had left their own universe far, far behind.
The captain spoke again, quiet reverence in his tone. “Lieutenant Casco, please record the death of Commander Felix Olivas on this date. He died in the line of duty, and should receive full military honors when we return to base. Please update the ship’s log and list Lieutenant Commander Anderson Cross as the DC’s executive officer. Lieutenant Commander Kate Flynn is now third in command.”
Her heart pounded at the announcement. He gave her a confident look and a nod. She hadn’t imagined the sound of those words would be so pleasant on her ears, and found a sense of pride in her accomplishment, even though she wished that the cost of it had not been so high.
“Tunnel time expected to be twenty-eight hours to the UAL forward base,” Smythe announced.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Kate wrapped up her oversight of the damage control parties and sent the final information to the tactical officer. “Permission to leave the bridge to confer with Jannik, Captain?”
He looked at her questioningly.
She hastened to explain, “The computer is having a difficult time translating the recording we received. We want to put our heads together and see if we can speed up the process. It would be useful to understand what that alien was saying. I’m not sure about you, but I’ve got a bad feeling about it.”
Okoye gave a short laugh. “There’s not much right now worth having a good feeling about, Lieutenant Commander Flynn. But your idea is excellent, and you should absolutely confer with Chief Jannik about it. Your initiative is appreciated. I will update the duty rotations and copy them to you. When you’re done with Jannik, go off-shift and get some sleep. As long as nothing unexpected happens, we’re safe in the tunnel. And, frankly, if something does happen, we probably won’t even have a chance to notice it.”
Kate nodded. Problems that occurred in tunnel space tended to be fatal to ship and crew alike. “Thank you, Captain. I hope we can make some progress before we get home.” She grabbed her computer pad and headed for the lift.
When she arrived in engineering, the ensign monitoring the engine readouts gestured toward Jannik’s office. The door was open, allowing the chi
ef engineer to listen to the engines. He claimed he could hear a problem coming before the instruments would show it, and long experience had given her no reason to doubt him. She was rather surprised to see Cross in the room. The short glasses of dusky liquid in front of each man were less of a surprise.
As she sat, Jannik poured a glass for her and slid it across the table and into her grip with expert precision. The two men raised their drinks in a toast and Kate followed suit.
Cross spoke, “To Commander Felix Olivas, who served with honor, and has reached the final port of call.”
Kate and Jannik finished the ritual in unison, his deep baritone a melodic counterpoint to her own higher tones. “May he find home, hearth, and happiness there; here, he will be remembered and honored.”
Cross tossed his drink back, then stood and stretched, stopping the movement halfway with a wince. “If I know you Kate, and I like to think that I do, you’re here to work. I have no interest in working right now. I’m going to stop by medical and then go to my quarters and crash for a while. I need to build up my strength before the conversation.”
Jannik grimaced, while Kate barely kept her own face neutral. For a moment, she considered mentioning his appointment as XO, but realized that the captain probably had a plan and that she was best kept out of it. She rose and gave Cross a careful hug. He sank into it for a second, allowing her to comfort him. Then, with a crooked smile, he took his leave.
Jannik shook his head at Cross’s retreating back. “Not the best of days for that boy, is it?”
“Definitely not. Although, I’m not positive he did anything that could strictly be called wrong.”
“Sometimes things just go sideways, and there’s not a damn thing you can do except hold on for the ride. I’m sure the captain knows this. After all, he was an engineer before he was the captain.”
Kate laughed. “Everyone knows that engineers are on top of the heap.”
Jannik toasted her in reply, finishing off his drink. “Okay, down to business…”
* * *
An hour later, they were deep into rewriting computer code to better attack the problem of the alien’s foreign speech. They had been compelled to listen to the mostly familiar sounds arranged in seemingly random ways until both were exhausted from the aural assault.
Jannik, who had been cursing steadily but with no force behind it, finally said, “There’s only so much we can do here, my girl. I think we’ve optimized it as well as we can, and we’ve devoted as much computer power to it as is available on the ship.”
“I still think wiring the entertainment computers into the server farm was a bit excessive.”
“Every processor counts, Kate, you know that. Still, it will probably take days and days to get through it at this rate, if it’s even possible with our limited resources. What we really need to do is to set up a call that goes out when we leave the tunnel. We can request all the linguistics databases from all the Union ships and installations in the area. That additional data ought to speed up the process some.”
Having resigned herself to leaving the translation issue for the time being, she looked up at Jannik. She recognized the look on his face, and Kate tilted her head. “You’ve got a secret, don’t you? Spill.”
Jannik’s scraggly face split into a wide grin. “You know me too well, Kate. It just so happens, that I know the Union maintains a duplicate copy of its entire linguistics database at every starbase. If there is anything like this in all of human history and experience, it’ll be in there.” He leaned back with a self-satisfied smirk.
“You make everything you do appear to be magic, when really it’s just that you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a thing that he shared with you over drinks in some seedy base bar.”
“Pretty much.”
“Well played, Chief.”
“Thank you, Kate.”
She looked at the clock and decided she had time for a quick stop before bed. “I’m off to sleep, magic man. Try not to let the ship explode, okay?”
Kate walked out, leaving Jannik grumbling amiably about the lack of stamina among the new officers, who needed to sleep all the time, while he poured another finger of amber into his glass.
* * *
Cross’s cabin was not exactly on the way to her quarters, and yet somehow, she found herself there. During the short trip from engineering to the third deck where the officers’ cabins were located, Kate had debated whether talking to him was a good idea or not. On the one hand, he needed to internalize the events of the day at his own pace. She could see that he’d been cut, and she shared phantom pain from his wounds. On the other hand, she knew this could trigger a cascade of self-doubt and recrimination inappropriate to what had happened.
The decision was taken out of her hands as she stood outside his door. With a quiet hiss, it slid open, revealing a shirtless and bandaged Cross standing in the doorway.
“I knew you’d come.”
“You did not,” she said indignantly.
“I did. Even when we’re at our most distant, we are always friends. So of course, you would come.”
“Okay. You did know. Now move and let me in.”
Cross stepped back, and Kate entered his spartan quarters. Officers on rotation learned not to grow too attached to a certain cabin or even a certain ship. Even though his role as third—now second—commander on the DC was a longer-term posting, Cross had rid himself of most creature comforts along the way and seemed disinclined to add any back. An ornate wooden case held mementos of the successes he’d had, of the honors he’d won. Aside from that artful display, the room was bare, except for a photo frame showing a succession of people and places.
Kate sat in his desk chair and rotated it to face the bed, motioning Cross to sit down. He lay down instead, grabbing the pillow and putting it at the foot so his head would be closer to her. “Talk, Cross.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“There’s plenty to say. You need to vent some pressure before the captain calls you to a conversation or your brain will explode, making a mess of his lovely sitting room.”
Cross exhaled a long breath. “I’ve gone over it and over it, Kate. I’m not sure what I should’ve done differently. There are places where I might’ve made different choices, but all paths seem to lead to the same place. It’s our absolute mandate to hold the Alliance at bay. That ship was trespassing in our space. I did what any commander would do in that situation.”
Kate offered noises of agreement, refraining from pointing out that he had shied away from using the Alliance ship’s name. A depersonalizing signifier of a guilty conscience. “Say more.”
Cross clenched his hands into fists as he sought his next words, then forced himself to relax. “I gave him every chance to back down, every chance to end the conflict with no damage to either side.”
Kate was sure he had caught the look on her face when he corrected himself and said, “Okay, minimal damage to both sides.”
“Let’s be honest, Cross. You provoked him. You did it on purpose. It was a good psychological play, and it worked too well. There was no way for you to know that his particular personality would become irrational in response. You’re right, it’s what any of our commanders might do.” Kate was troubled, and she knew that he could hear it in her voice. “That’s what makes this whole situation so stupid. We provoke each other, we use gigantic ships to spar over useless prizes, as if they were only boxing gloves in a practice ring. And then we act surprised when something goes wrong and a catastrophe occurs.”
Cross set up to face her. “You know that’s not what I—.”
Kate cut him off with a wave of her hand. “I know, Cross. I know that you’re not a warmonger, not someone who delights in the sadistic joy of inflicting damage for its own sake. However, I know at the same time that you love the game, that seeing an Alliance commander crawl away with his tail between his legs is a win for you. And I think that’s probably true for most of the captains
on most of our ships.”
She stood, and walked toward the door, stopping and leaning against the wall beside it. “But that doesn’t make it right, Cross. We have to do better. I don’t know what better is, but I have faith that when we find it, you’ll be one of the good ones who takes the chance to change.”
Cross stood, walked to her, and put his hands on her arms. “And I have faith that you’ll be one of the good ones who figures it out for us, Kate.”
From another person that would sound patronizing. From him, with all that lay between them and behind them, she knew every single word was true for him. “Thanks, Cross. I hope you’re right. I should go get some sleep.”
He looked down at her, that familiar gleam in his eye. “Sleep’s overrated. I have a better idea. Stay.”
Kate grinned slowly, letting the stress of the day fall away in favor of embracing the moment at hand. “Only if you promise to make it worth my while.”
Cross answered with a kiss that was quite promising indeed.
Chapter Eleven
Kraada Tak’s knees ached where he knelt on the hard floor of the cathedral—where he had been kneeling for over a day. The implications of recent events were staggering. He replayed those critical events over in his mind.
He and Drovaa Jat were in the Defense Center when everything happened. They watched the battle play out in close to real-time courtesy of the Jade Breeze’s sensors. Even as the torpedoes chased the Washington into the tunnel, the two men were considering the implications of this transgression.
The marshal issued commands to bring the ship home, but only after conducting a thorough damage report on the reliquary. Kraada stared at him, then cut his eyes toward a secure area used for high-level discussions during times of conflict. Drovaa took the hint and announced they should only be disturbed with matters of great importance.
