Inwardly, she winced at her own words. He'd offered nothing but solace for her distress, hadn't made any suggestive remarks, hadn't tried to grope her or take advantage of the situation in any other way, and she'd desperately needed comforting. She knew her words were like a slap in the face, and she felt remorse for it. At the same time, she felt she couldn't afford to do anything else.
Caleb was too inclined already to overstep the line that separated them, a line she knew she dared not allow him to cross even in peace, let alone in a potential battle situation. He didn't need encouragement.
And she didn't need the distraction, couldn't afford to allow anything that might weaken her defenses. Everyone on board was her responsibility. Their lives were in her hands.
It had only been a moment of weakness anyway. The best soldier experienced them from time to time. It was sweet of him to feel so protective, but completely unnecessary. She didn't need a protector. That was her job.
To her surprise, instead of looking put out, or angry, Caleb's eyes lit with amusement, his lips curling with a faint smile—as if she were a clever child whose antics both pleased him and amused him. “Yes ma'am, Captain Delaney. What do you propose we do now, ma'am?” he asked, coming to attention.
She gave him a look. “I suggest we all get very serious about the situation we're in, soldier. We've got to find a way off this ship somehow. The escape pods are an option, but not something I want to consider at this point. They can only sustain life for a short period of time, maybe long enough to do some good, and maybe not ... unless we can figure out some way to get a message out for help. But, if we can, we'd probably be better off to sit tight on the Mayflower than to attempt the pods....” She paused, regretting the impulse to speculate out loud, not that Caleb looked like her indecision particularly disturbed him, but it certainly wasn't something she could make a habit of. It might well be critical to their survival that she convince the squad they could depend on her for a solution. “I'll think of something,” she muttered, then spun on her heel and headed back to the communications room.
Caleb watched her go, feeling the sense of warmth and easiness go with her. She was going to have to do more than that, he thought grimly as he moved back along the airlock, studying the prints in the dust covered floor. The IO had been firmly moored. It was possible, of course, that there'd been some sort of equipment failure that had caused depressurization and the uncoupling, but he didn't believe it. There was no sign that there had been any sort of natural occurrence that might have caused it—any meteor big enough to knock the IO loose would've caused the ship to implode and there would've been debris floating around outside.
They hadn't found any bodies on the Mayflower, but regardless of the remark Breanna had made in that moment of shock, he knew it was only a matter of time.
Unless they discovered that an unauthorized vehicle had docked with the Mayflower, they were the only group on the ship. “It's one of us,” he muttered.
* * *
Chapter Five
The rapidly warming air of the corridor outside the communications room crackled with energy as the twelve member squad anxiously waited to hear from their commanding officer.
Nearby, Breanna leaned against the wall, trying to tune out their arguments and probing questions and to ignore the hazel eyed, watchful gaze of Caleb Sylvaine.
As glad as she was, she thought dryly, that he could find something to amuse him in their current situation—and she had to admit it was far better than the behavior of the others—Caleb was becoming a serious distraction.
Refusing to meet his gaze, she turned and surveyed the rest of the group as the noise level jumped up a notch. They bicker like children, she thought as she watched their growing frustration in disdain, wondering just how reliable they were going to prove to be if the situation worsened, which it might well do.
Tuning them out once more, she focused inwardly on the plan slowly forming in her head.
Their situation wasn't desperate—yet, but it could get that way very quickly. The company wasn't likely to send out reinforcements immediately, even though they'd lost contact, and it would take some time for reinforcements to reach them anyway.
Simply waiting for help to arrive would not only be extremely unpleasant, but it could be potentially disastrous.
All things considered, worrying about being embarrassed when the company learned how badly she'd failed them shouldn't have ranked high in her thoughts, but she couldn't deny it did. It wasn't a total waste of emotion, however, since it was a highly motivating factor in coming up with a solution to their problem as quickly as possible.
Even if there hadn't been the potential for danger, and she wasn't the sort to be embarrassed about her shortcomings, she didn't think she could stand being stranded on the Mayflower until rescue arrived. The tales she'd heard at her father's knee, and had never more than half believed, had still seemed deliciously scary when she was a child, and safe, and far away from the ghost ship. The memories of her father's words didn't evoke excited little shivers now. They threatened to totally creep her out each time they struggled to rise to the surface of her consciousness, and she found herself fighting a running battle trying to keep them at bay so that she could concentrate on the matters at hand.
It wasn't merely a matter of finding a way off the ship, however. She couldn't dismiss the fact that the only tracks that marred the dust covered floor seemed to be of their own making—the prints their company issue boots left were fairly unmistakable. She would've preferred to believe it had been nothing more than some sort of freak accident that had resulted in the loss of the IO. Or, failing that, that the threat was outside her group, an enemy that they could target fairly easily and eliminate.
That seemed improbable. It was a possibility that they needed to eliminate as quickly as they could, but there'd been no indication of any other ship in the vicinity when they'd docked—the IO's defense system would've picked up on it if there had been—and, that being the case, she didn't see how it was possible that one could have arrived, docked and sabotaged their ship in the short space of time between leaving it and discovering it had completely vanished from sight.
That left one of her own squad members as the likely culprit. Unfortunately, she couldn't rule out that more than one had been involved. They'd split up. She knew none of those who'd been with her had left her sight long enough to do anything, but, without questioning them, she couldn't be sure about any of the other groups. She couldn't be absolutely sure even if she did question them.
All of them were company people. She hadn't worked with any of them before and didn't know them well enough to judge their trustworthiness. They seemed as unnerved by the situation as she was, but one of them, at least, knew damn well what was going on and they were staging a damn convincing show.
The question was why? What hidden agenda had the company had that she hadn't been made aware of?
She thought it must have something to do with the disappearance of the crew itself, possibly some fear that evidence would be found making the company responsible? That didn't make sense, though, not at this juncture. They hadn't found anything at all.
She hardly thought the company capable of convincing anyone to take on a suicide mission anyway and everyone was still present and accounted for. So, whoever had done it, expected to sabotage any effort to actually find out what happened, then get off?
Maybe she was looking at it the wrong way. Maybe the company had sent them to the Mayflower on Recon because they actually wanted to know what had happened and to recover their loss with the disappearance of the Mayflower, but someone within the company already knew what had happened and wanted to cover their ass?
Her head throbbed with the possibilities. There was no way she'd figure this out, she decided, unless she weeded out the suspects—and no way to eliminate further problems either. Before she announced a solution to their situation, she had to be as certain as she possibly could that there wasn't
someone among them that would immediately set out to nix the plan.
If she went with the theory that someone within the company was working against the company, and them, then it seemed probable that she was looking at one man.
She believed she could trust Caleb and Hunter. She'd been with them. At that thought, she glanced at Caleb's tall form speculatively and discovered he was regarding her intently, almost as if he'd been following the train of her thoughts and had been waiting for her to arrive at the conclusion that he was virtually her only certain ally.
Something flickered in his hazel eyes and she knew from the warmth that filled his gaze that his mind had shifted to the incident at the airlock. She couldn't tell whether he was simply enjoying the memory, or if he enjoyed reminding her of it just to watch her squirm. Either way, as was so often the case with Caleb, she felt a mixture of irritation and a burgeoning of warmth inside her that she was determined to ignore.
Resolutely thrusting the distracting thoughts off, she studied each of the squad members, trying to come to grips with the fact that one of her hand picked squad members had risked the lives of everyone in the room.
The company had selected those they'd wanted her to consider, but she'd made the final decision. How plausible was it that she'd managed to pick one who's soul purpose in the group was to sabotage the whole mission?
Or had they simply waited for her to choose and then approached the most likely one to turn?
They would've had to.
She would've liked to have simplified her life by accepting that it had to have been Zane, or Osborne, or both. They'd been the ones to make the discovery. Unfortunately, their behavior had been a little too convincing for her to put it down to an act. It could've been, but she wasn't buying it.
Their stupidity could also be an act, but she wasn't buying that either, and nobody in their right mind would chose such a pair of bumbling stooges to do their handy work for them.
So that meant she could, with reasonable certainty, eliminate almost half her squad from the group of suspects. Unfortunately, that still left seven she was going to have to figure out.
Abruptly, Breanna's headset let out a metallic screech, whirred, then hissed to silence. Breanna jumped, scanning the group to see who'd been messing with their radio, but it was clear from the looks on everyone's face that they'd been at least as startled as she was. Irritated by the distraction that had nearly made her jump out of her skin, Breanna switched her headset off. She supposed she could attribute the temporary malfunction to the closeness of the other headsets, but it was damned odd that it hadn't done that before. They'd checked the radios out before they'd left the IO and they'd seemed to be working fine. It seemed odd that equipment had gone screwy almost from the moment they had boarded the Mayflower.
Some kind of interference?
“Captain!” Angus’ booming voice echoed, jerking Breanna from her abstraction. She looked up at the blonde, blue-eyed giant towering over her, noting his strained expression and his clenched fists. Obviously, he was extremely perturbed.
When she didn't immediately respond, but merely stood studying him coolly, Angus cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Captain, can't we use the escape pods to leave the ship?” It was a statement rather than a question.
Ahmad and Mason seconded his demand.
“No, we can't. I already considered it, Angus and it isn't something I'm willing to risk until and unless we run out of other options. They're escape pods—not designed for long range piloting, and not designed to sustain life outside the freezers. The colonists were going so far out they only had two real chances of survival in the event of ship failure, either to find a planet capable of supporting life very quickly or be picked up by someone close enough to hear a distress call. Otherwise, they could climb into the freezers, point the pod in the direction of the nearest space station and hope they would get picked up. We wouldn't make it halfway there before we ran out of oxygen or fuel or both ... And that's assuming they're still functional. They might not look any better than the communications room."
“But they we could use the hyber-sleep, couldn't we?” Angus demanded.
Breanna's lips thinned in irritation. “That was twenty-five years ago. Not only am I not the least bit interested in trying out hyber pods that haven't seen any sort of service since the ship disappeared—since the ship suffered multiple failures in life systems, I might add—But even if the things worked we couldn't trust the navigation equipment and could end up floating forever. I don't see bailing out of a ship that's working reasonably well at sustaining us, at least at this point, and taking those kinds of risks. Our only realistic choice at this point is to sit tight and see what we can come up with here,” she finished, ignoring the grumbles that arose from her last statement.
“Settle down, Bull,” Luis said, patting the giant on the back soothingly.
“Good idea,” Breanna said tightly. “I want all of you to settle down and shut up and hear me out.” She fixed each of them with an unyielding look and waited until they subsided. “As I've said before, the pods are useless to us ... at least, as is."
“What do you expect us to do, Captain?” drawled Corbett, rubbing the small rebel flag tattooed on his forearm and eyeing her speculatively as he stepped adjacent to her in the corridor.
She studied him coldly until he glanced down at his feet. “Our only other choice is to scour this place from one end to the other for another way off ... or, failing that option, to refit one of the pods.” Breanna paused. This crew was in need of some training in respecting their officers and following orders, she thought irritably as she studied their expressions. “Angus, Luis, Clayborne—I want you three to head down the main corridor through the center of the ship and try to find a holding dock. They had to have had some kind of equipment with which to get supplies on and off the ship. Not that a freight carrier would have that much longer a range, but it would be a damn sight sturdier than those flimsy pods no one ever really expected to use. The rest of you can split into pairs and check out the living quarters for possible tools and collect any supplies you think will be useful. Also, I want all of you to radio-in any suspicious findings and meet back here in one hour unless I notify you otherwise."
To her relief, when she'd finished, the squad members bustled about preparing themselves to leave. After checking their weapons, they separated into groups of two, hurrying in eager, almost adolescent anticipation, of some form of positive action, whatever their opinion was of her assessment of the situation.
It wasn't until they'd disappeared that she realized she and Caleb were the only two left. She gave him a cool, unwelcoming stare as he sauntered toward her. “I guess we're going to be partners, Captain,” he said, a smile threatening to lift the corners of his mouth.
The complacent smile irritated the hell out of her, not the least because she'd been too distracted to prevent his little chess match by choosing a partner for herself and realized she'd fallen right into the palm of his hand without so much as a whimper of protest.
The only thing that could possibly be worse was if his colossal ego convinced him she'd deliberately sent everyone else off so the two of them could get cozy.
She wouldn't have put it past him
“So we are,” Breanna replied coolly, watching the departing crew to make certain of the direction each group took.
“Well, Captain Delaney, where are we headed?” Caleb asked as she turned down the corridor towards the bow of the ship.
She didn't answer, but since he was following her it was hard to tell whether she was so deep in thought that she hadn't heard him, or if she was deliberately ignoring his attempt to draw her into conversation. Shrugging, he focused on the view, allowing his gaze to drop from the back of her head, down her strong back, to the firm buttocks above her shapely thighs.
He liked the shape of her ass. It was roughly heart shaped and not only pleasingly curved, but it had a nice, wide cleavage that made it much more acc
essible. He figured it was just about the width of his palm, as if it had been built for his grip.
She threw a glance back at him over her shoulder and hesitated her next step. The slight misstep caught his attention and he dragged his gaze from his contemplation of her ass to her frowning, tight lipped expression. “We're going to the bridge to see if we have any chance of piloting the ship. I didn't say anything to the others about it because I don't know who to trust. It seems to me that someone in the squad released the ship. For the life of me, I can't figure out why, but I don't want anyone rushing ahead of us to destroy the controls."
She picked up her pace at that, either because his thorough examination made her nervous or she thought someone might still try to circle around and beat them to the control room.
He kept pace with her without effort. “I'd thought of that myself. Neither Angus, Luis, nor Clayborne would ever do anything that stupid, for whatever reason. I've known them since I started this hellacious job. I can't speak for the rest of them. Except for Corbett and Ahmad, I met the others for the first time during this operation. I've only done a few missions with those two, though, so I'm not completely sure of them either,” he said, falling silent as they neared their destination. He bumped into her when she stopped suddenly as they reached the bridge of the ship.
“Would you mind getting the barrel of your gun out of my back!” she snapped.
“Who said that was my gun?” He chuckled, unable to hide the teasing tone in his voice. She stiffened her back ram-rod straight and whirled to face him angrily.
It was at that moment that the first of the screams came ringing through their headsets.
* * * *
Lance Osborne walked slowly through the cluttered rooms the settlers had once occupied, scanning the area from floor to ceiling and wall to wall with his gaze as he moved. It really disturbed him that they hadn't found any sign of the people. When he'd finished his walk through, he looked over his shoulder at his partner, Greg Zane, to gauge his reaction. Zane stood gaping at a pair of red silky panties which lay crumpled on the floor beside an overturned chest-of-drawers. Osborne frowned at the balding man with a trace of contempt. The man was an idiot. The government claimed they'd eliminated undesirable recessive genes in the human gene pool, but he supposed nothing was a hundred percent accurate. What he really didn't understand, though, was how Zane had ever made it as far as he had. He supposed it was just dumb luck. The thought struck him as funny and he laughed at his own corny joke.
Endless Night Page 6
