The Last Flagship (The Science Officer Book 6)

by Blaze Ward

  “There is a break room behind that door,” she said, pointing through the transparent wall to a space down a little ways, right next to the first power generator on the starboard side. “It should have bunks. I’ll sleep here so I can be ready if the system sounds any alerts.”

  Javier didn’t look too thrilled with that option, but he couldn’t argue with her.

  Kinda like how he had boxed the others in.

  And, while she was thinking about it, Afia reached into the console in the break room and locked out certain functions.

  If Javier was up to something, she might need to help. Or she might also have to shoot him.

  PART SIX

  JAVIER WAS FIRST into the big area Afia had classified as a break room. Twenty meters long, by about half that wide, it looked like a wardroom, with all the tables and chairs around the open space and locked down for loss of gravity. Ugly gray walls and ceiling. Moss green carpet in the kind of mottled pattern that would hide stains and spills.

  There was a wall of vending machines on the far wall from him, plus a couple of coffee robots. Every single one was dark and empty.

  Trust people who thought like Sykora to clean out the machines of all the chips and candy. They had probably drained the water lines on the coffee makers as well.

  He would appreciate that in a few days, after someone like Ilan Yu had spent a great deal of time cleaning it all down and replacing parts, but right now a little caffeine could be nice. Sleep was the last thing on his mind.

  The right end of the room was a bunch of cubicle doors. Every ship he had ever served on had something similar in their engineering bays. People might be on duty for long stretches, but they got frequent breaks, and needed to study for certifications and such.

  Much better if all your engineers were immediately available in any emergency down here.

  “Probe. Access Command Mode,” he called, loud enough for the three women coming through the door behind him. Suvi was already listening. “Secure this room for engineering emergencies and remain on watch here.”

  “Confirmed,” Suvi replied in her bored computer voice.

  Javier took one last look and turned to face Sykora. He was exhausted, but was going to push right through. He let the exhaustion color his voice, though.

  “You should take something, or meditate yourself to sleep,” he said before looking at the two other women. “I plan to be asleep in about five minutes. Set your alarms for eight hours and be prepared to go like hell for sixteen hours tomorrow.”

  He didn’t bother waiting for them to answer. Instead, he went into the closest cubicle and closed the door.

  Locked it, too, just in case either Hajna or Sascha decided that they needed his help to be knocked off-line for a while.

  Any other day than this…

  The space beyond the door was cozy. Two meters wide by four deep. Single bunk with a thin blanket. Writing desk surface with a chair. Softer paint on the walls, here a soothing rose color.

  He pulled the control remote for the probe from his pack and settled himself on the bed. A switch and the voice channel was active.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  The walls were also going to be totally sound-proof, because someone napping or studying didn’t need to listen to someone else snoring.

  “All set here,” Suvi replied in her usual bright voice. “How long?”

  Javier considered his options.

  “Let’s give them an hour to settle and get into deep sleep,” Javier said. “Wake me then. Afia will need time, as well.”

  “Got it, boss,” his sidekick chirped.

  Javier laid down and closed his eyes.

  PART SEVEN

  AFIA WATCHED them on a security camera in the break room and let go a deep breath. She listened in as Javier went off to bed first, the other three taking only a few moments to decide to do the same, the general consensus that the probe would be enough watch for now.

  And it had been a long day. Up for hours before the long flight over here. All the stress of deep space with a hostile warship looming. Breaking and entering into a tomb.

  Afia was as exhausted as Javier sounded.

  Still, something just wasn’t right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  Given her supreme control of the engineering boards, Afia temporized. She could nap, after setting alarms that would go off in her control room if anyone opened the door to the break area. It could even be loud, since this room was sealed up tight right now.

  Anyone who came out in less than seven hours would be up to no good, anyway, so she needed to be able to block them from doing something stupid.

  That done, Afia locked every door around her, stretched out on the floor, and let the strain of the day draw her down into darkness.

  BEEP.

  Afia came awake instantly, lost for a second as an unfamiliar gray ceiling loomed overhead.

  Engineering Primary Control. Door alarm. Hammerfield.

  Afia was on her side on the deck, facing the control station. The screen was on, set to beep every three seconds until she disabled it. She studied movement on the camera’s view.

  Beep.

  Javier had opened the door to the break room and come out into the main engineering space next to Auxiliary Power Unit number 1.

  The probe, that armed eyeball with all the good sensors, was with him, so Afia lay still. If he went anywhere else, she would have to track him, and that might be hard.

  Necessary, but hard.

  What the hell would he need to be up to on this ship by himself?

  She remained like a cold stone, just in case, but Javier quickly crossed to the main hatch outside her office, only glancing over once to make sure she was still asleep.

  Afia had planned this, with enough of her back to the window to look like she was asleep, but she could see a screen he couldn’t, not from outside.

  And then he was out in the hallway.

  She gave him a two count as the board continued to beep.

  Afia was about to get up and move when the door alarm went off a second time, out of sequence.

  On the screen, Sascha had also just opened the door and emerged.

  Javier had looked ever so slightly furtive, walking almost hunched over and hurried. Sascha looked pissed. Like she had the same idea about Javier as Afia had, but wasn’t necessarily planning to be as friendly. Certainly, the two of them weren’t going off to fool around somewhere, since they could have done that in the break cubicles.

  No, she was trailing him, and doing it secretly.

  Which made sense. Sascha and Hajna were Sykora’s people. Her hand-picked ground experts.

  Apparently, Sascha had picked up on something and waited, just as Afia had.

  Afia waited for the pathfinder to disappear out the door as well. Sascha didn’t even bother to glance in at Afia, and then she was out in the corridor.

  Afia counted to five, but she remained alone.

  She climbed to her feet and disabled all the alarms. If those two were off to cause trouble, she needed to be after them quickly. If Sykora or Hajna came out, hopefully they would stay put for everyone else to come back here.

  Assuming everyone was still alive.

  Afia checked the pistol on her hip and made sure it was set to stun.

  Always better to shoot first if things got ugly, but even better if you could make a mistake and correct it later.

  THE HALLWAY JAVIER and Sascha had taken was rather dim.

  Afia had programmed the thermostat to bring things shipwide up to eighteen degrees, but that would take about twelve hours to complete. In the meantime, she had left all the lighting down at the default levels. There was no reason to drop a sudden load on generators she hadn’t personally inspected and certified.

  The door was silent to open, letting Afia slip out and peek around the corner. This corridor ran transverse, starboard to port.

  Nobody starboard.

  She turned and looked po
rt, trying to keep as silent as possible.

  Movement of a shadow caught her eye. Afia leaned out a little farther with the patience of spring thaw.

  Sascha, headed away from her. Peeking around another corner down the way, kinda like Afia was, so hopefully the other woman was tracking Javier and he was apparently headed aft.

  Afia looked down and realized that she was going to make noise, walking in her boots on a metal floorway, no matter how stealthy she tried. Sascha was trained for these sorts of things. Probably Javier as well.

  For a moment, she considered her options.

  She was naked under the suit except for a t-shirt.

  That was standard in an EVA. You had things to plug in to handle all your bio functions in space.

  Sascha was still wearing her suit. Javier had been as well.

  Most people would probably consider even eighteen degrees too damned cold to be out without a jacket on, to say nothing of pants or shoes. Right now, the ship was mostly five or maybe seven degrees above freezing.

  Growing up in the Yukon Protectorate had taught her to be tough, walking without shoes as soon as it was warm enough. She’d never tried it sans pants.

  Sascha disappeared around the corner, a gray ghost chasing another ghost.

  Oh, well.

  Afia holstered her pistol and ran her hands down the central seam in front to split the suit open. It was a soft suit inside the ship, without pressure. It was designed to turn more rigid in space when a tear on a sharp corner could be lethal.

  Pop the crown upwards. Disconnect the neck collar. Grab the right glove and pull. Slip the arm free. Get the left arm loose. Get your shoulders clear of the suit. Drop on your butt and use the slack to reach inside and disconnect the plumbing. Must suck for boys. Girls just had a cup with a vacuum seal. Wriggle out of the boots and leggings.

  Afia stood up in nothing but an old blue t-shirt she had gotten from the purser so long ago that she forgot where he had bought it.

  The air circulation felt good on her legs. Goose pimples.

  Almost like home.

  She bent down, grabbed the pistol out of the holster, and padded after the pathfinder like she was stalking a deer.

  Down to the corner. Kneel on stubby legs to get very, very low. Peek slowly, since motion drew the eye.

  There.

  Sascha was just approaching the hatch to the primary aft stairwell. Afia leaned back until just an eye, and ear, and some hair were visible, and froze.

  Sure enough, Sascha drew her pistol and opened the hatch. She turned once and looked back, but it was cursory. She wasn’t expecting anyone behind her, just covering her bases in case Javier had doubled back or something.

  The short brunette slipped through the hatch and let it close behind her.

  Afia waited a three-count, and then was out in the hall, jogging down to where the other woman has disappeared. These doors were pretty quiet. Hopefully, Sascha had gone far enough up or down that she wouldn’t hear it open behind her.

  Afia cycled the hatch, pistol mostly out of sight behind her, in case someone was standing there.

  Nothing.

  Afia remembered to breathe. She stepped in and let the door close.

  Something clomped from above her.

  Afia walked right to the edge and looked up. There was a gap there, a vertical column of air no bigger than a sparrow, but enough that she could see a silent shadow just a deck above her, and a noisy one only two decks above that, both headed upwards.

  Javier and the probe. Being stalked by the pathfinder with the angry face.

  With a curious engineer at the tail of the chain. Or, at least she hoped she was the end of the sneaking line.

  Afia wondered how silly it would look if all five of them ended up chasing after each other. She refused, however, to look behind her.

  The clunking paused before it suddenly faded, and then disappeared.

  If she was counting correctly, Javier had just exited on Deck Eight.

  Afia felt an icicle run down her spine. The only thing remotely interesting on Deck Eight was the primary access chamber for the computer cores, most of the hardware and redundant systems residing there and on Deck Nine.

  What the hell was Javier doing that he wanted to get at the dead Sentience’s systems with nobody else around?

  Sascha sped up a moment later, thumping quickly up the stairs until she stopped, presumably at the hatch on Deck Eight.

  Afia followed, but she was in nowhere near as good a shape as the other woman. Jogging suggested itself in her future, rather than just using the elliptical machines and low weights to meet Captain Sokolov’s monthly fitness requirements for the crew.

  Hopefully, she wouldn’t come around a landing and run into the other woman.

  Last flight.

  Afia gasped as she drove her aching thighs down the home stretch, cold air competing with burning muscles to see who would win.

  She was going to need a long, hot bath tomorrow, preferably with a cute towel boy running to get her rum-based tiki-drinks at a regular basis.

  Top step.

  There was nobody there. And no other sounds above her.

  She doubled over and sucked air like a badly-tuned motor vehicle running on petroleum distillates instead of batteries. Sounded like one, too.

  Breath mostly caught, she keyed the hatch and hoped for the best, a ten-year-old chasing will-o’-th’-wisps again.

  Nothing in the hallway. That was good.

  She was on an aft, port corner of this deck as she emerged. One hallway went forward. One went sideways.

  She peeked around a corner from her knees again and saw Sascha ducked into a doorway well forward. Javier was a shadow, headed away with the probe by his side.

  For a moment, snippets of conversation echoed but the words were garbled. Javier talking, a woman answering.

  Huh.

  Afia waited until Sascha moved. The pathfinder was silent, but focused entirely forward.

  Afia dashed quietly across the hall into the corridor that ran across the ship. She had a good notion where Javier was headed, just not why.

  But if she crossed the hip bones of the ship, she could move quickly up the starboard hallway and hopefully get close to things when whatever it was happened.

  Afia could tell from the way Sascha moved that the woman was not going to be a pleasant person.

  Hopefully, Javier wasn’t doing anything so remotely stupid that she had to help Sascha kill him.

  PART EIGHT

  “ARE you sure this is a good idea?” Suvi asked him.

  Javier cocked on eye at his floating sidekick as he walked quietly forward down the long, gray hallway. The ship’s fans had kicked up a notch, adding a soft buzz, but the air circulating up here was only slowly heating up.

  The place had a feel like a desert. Midnight in the dead of winter, when things were bone dry and chilling cold that cut through you.

  It even smelled like dead sand.

  “This ship is mine under any interstellar law you want to research,” Javier replied. “Salvage has always applied on any derelict after twenty years abandoned.”

  “I meant sneaking away from everybody in the dead of night,” she said with a huff. “Rough way to start a business partnership.”

  “We aren’t partners yet,” he growled. “And Sykora’s so close to the edge that I’m not sure what is going to trigger her into a homicidal rage. From there, we’re one step to a killing spree and I’ll be the first victim.”

  “I’m faster than she is,” Suvi observed tartly.

  “I need her alive,” he said. “All of the pirates are going to have to die before I’m safe from them. That means Sykora watching my back. Doubly so after this.”

  “But you don’t really trust her,” Suvi said. “What about Sokolov?”

  “When I’m negotiating from strength, we’ll see,” Javier said. “Remember, that man made slaves of both of us. He might have upgraded me to a centurion, but t
hat was all fast talking on my part. You could be dead right now, or wiped clean and reprogrammed as a toaster.”

  She growled under her breath, which was what he had intended.

  Sokolov was one of them. And Javier hadn’t yet found the limits to the man’s honesty and honor, but he suspected they would be pushing the envelope on this one.

  “You just missed the hallway,” Suvi commented in that dry, arch tone of superiority he occasionally hated himself for teaching her.

  Javier stopped and turned back to his right. He had gotten so wrapped up talking to his friend that he had missed what he was doing.

  But that was why he kept her around. To keep him on the mostly-straight and not-particularly-narrow path.

  Yep. Walked right by it.

  Javier went back three paces and turned into the side hallway. The idiot who had designed this ship had a thing for doors on the exact centerline of the ship, rather than entering big spaces from either side. It would have made the spine stronger, with fewer hallways running side to side, but every culture had its quirks.

  Naval architecture just magnified the weirdness by several orders of magnitude and cast it permanently into steel and exotic alloys.

  “Which door?” he said.

  Suvi had already knocked his attention span a little sideways. Let her navigate for a bit.

  Her flashlight came on and speared a door on the forward side of the hall.

  Javier approached.

  It was another one of those over-wrought portals, like up on the bridge.

  These people couldn’t just make a hatch.

  No, access to the computer core’s primary space required a statement.

  Javier suspected that it was the sort of intellectual rigidity that had caused them to fail originally. The Concord was way looser about that sort of thing, relying on smart people without browbeating them into behaving.

  Javier reached over and keyed the panel.

  The door split down the middle and disappeared silently into the bulkheads on both sides.

  Inside, the space was unimpressive as he entered, until he looked down.

  Deck Eight was the mezzanine for a larger space down on Nine. The floor under his feet was an open grate, which let warm air rise and pool, making the atmosphere here pleasant.