The Captain told us to check everything. "Permission granted."
Sharpe yanked a round spool of material out of his suit's belt. He carefully unwound the cord making up the spool, revealing it to be about the thickness of a little finger, and pressed the cord against the outline of the door. When his work was complete, Sharpe brought out an object the size of his thumb, inserted it in one end of the cord, then twisted the end of the object. "I'd look away if I was you, sir."
Paul hastily averted his gaze. The bulkhead where he was looking danced with jagged reflections as the cord flared to life at the point where the fuse had been inserted. When the reflections stopped, Paul looked back, seeing a gap edged by white-hot metal where the outline of the door had been. Sharpe waited while the metal rapidly cooled, then pulled the door free.
Inside, a small compartment about a meter on each side and less than a half meter deep held a half-dozen hand weapons. Boxes of ammunition were fastened near each weapon. Sharpe moved one suited hand carefully around inside the compartment, checking for other objects, then moved back. "Just the guns, sir."
"Why would a scientific research ship have pistols on board?"
"Oh, lots of reasons, sir. But I'd bet the main reason was discipline. I don't know enough about crews on civilian ships to be sure, but it's not a wonderful life out here, sir. If somebody in the crew went off the deep end, you might need one of these to take him down. Or maybe suppress a mutiny."
"Yeah. That makes sense. There's also those recurring rumors of pirates. I guess this would a cheap form of insurance against that, too."
"That it would, sir, though I think space pirates are a threat confined to the average bad movie."
"I agree. Do we need to take these?"
Sharpe moved his hand as if trying to scratch his head through the suit. "Well, sir, they are weapons. But the only way you could use one of these against us would be by suiting up and firing out an opened airlock. Even then, I can't see them penetrating our hull."
"Okay. Leave them for now. I'll ask the Chief Engineer later if we need to pick one up." Paul hesitated, steeling himself. "Let's get to the bridge."
He managed to handle it by pretending he was moving through a particularly detailed horror scene manufactured for Halloween. Close to a dozen bodies in various states of damage were either strapped into chairs or hooked onto nearby tie-downs. Despite himself, Paul's gaze swept across one face, which despite the stresses of decompression still bore a visible expression of shock literally frozen into place. I guess we surprised them. "I'm not finding anything, Sheriff." Not surprising, really, that there was nothing loose to be found, since no one in their right mind wanted data discs or papers flying around a bridge when a ship maneuvered.
"Me neither, sir. Should I try tapping the central data system?"
"No. The chief engineer has some people with him who are responsible for that. Can you tell which one's the captain?"
Sharpe spread his hands. "I'm sure he or she's in here. But these guys aren't wearing any rank that I can see."
Paul tried to focus closely on the collars and sleeves of the corpses and avoid noticing any other details. "No. I don't see any, either. There's four chairs here, but they've got identical control consoles in front of them." He moved past the still-occupied chairs, nerving himself for brushing against the bodies, and peered closely at the consoles.
"Looking for something in particular, sir?"
"Yeah. Firing controls."
"See any?"
"No. Not any dedicated ones. But that doesn't mean anything. These displays could have held virtual weapons control panels. There's no way to tell that, now, though." Paul triggered a different communications circuit to talk to the chief engineer. "Sir, this is Ensign Sinclair. We've finished going over the Captain's quarters and the bridge."
"Did you find any weapons?"
"Yes, si-"
" You did?"
"Uh, yes, sir. A half-dozen hand weapons."
"Hand weapons?" The chief engineer's elation of a moment before vanished. "You mean pistols?"
"Yes, sir. In the captain's quarters."
"That's all?"
"Yes, sir."
"What about the bridge? Any sign of weapons controls?"
"No, sir. No dedicated ones." The Chief Engineer's insistence had driven Paul's dread of his surroundings away, replacing it with a growing sense of another kind of unease.
"Damn."
"Sir?"
"We haven't found any, either."
"But…" The information couldn't seem to settle in, as if it were too unreal to be true. "You didn't find any weapons, sir?"
"That's right. No weapons. No extra energy capability to power weapons. No combat systems of any kind. No wiring for combat systems. Nothing. Just a lot of dead civilians on a ship that is apparently only outfitted to conduct scientific research."
"But… that means…"
"That means you'd better break out your legal books, Mr. Sinclair. We've got one hell of a problem to deal with."
Paul looked over at Petty Officer Sharpe, who was shaking his head. We blew away a bunch of helpless civilians? Oh my God. Paul was abruptly aware again of the dead bodies around him, but now their faces seemed to reflect not shock, but accusation.
Chapter Seven
Kris Denaldo entered the wardroom where the second shift was eating lunch, ran her eyes along the table, then pulled herself near Lieutenant Bristol. "Looks like you're senior officer present. Request permission to join the mess."
"Knock it off, Kris. Sit down."
"Hey, I'm just trying to maintain wardroom etiquette."
"Like you have to do that among junior officers." Bristol cocked an eyebrow at her. "You look pretty beat."
"I just came off watch." Kris looked around at the others, who were also watching her, then sighed. "Okay. I hate standing watches right now."
Carl Meadows tossed a meal pack to her. "Lunch is beefy green bean stew. Just like mom used to make. Why do you hate standing watch now in particular?"
"Why now? Are you kidding? We're still holding formation on that thing. The wreck." She shivered. "I swear, sometimes I almost think I can see them, looking out at us, planning some way to get even."
"Kris, I've been over there. So has Paul. It's a dead ship."
"I know that."
"Do you happen to know why all the department heads got called to the captain's cabin a few minutes ago and left us unsupervised by older and allegedly wiser heads?"
"Oh, yeah." She gestured in the general direction of Earth. "We got a message in from fleet staff, ordering Wakeman to immediately transmit all available evidence of armament on the SASAL ship. Emphasis on immediately."
"There's no evidence to transmit. They've already sent us other messages asking for it."
"Right. Three others. And we've sent back replies that promise the evidence but doesn't provide any. Fleet staff's gotten more and more insistent, and I guess fourth time's the charm. This one ordered that the evidence be forwarded to fleet staff within one-half hour of transmission of the message."
Meadows laughed briefly. "Fleet staff is sort of pushing the light-speed limit, aren't they?"
"They never take the real world into account when planning stuff. Why start now? Anyhow, not long after that message came in, we got ordered to pass the word for the department heads to meet with the Captain. I figure it's cause-and-effect."
"Good bet. Wakeman's spent a lot of time in his cabin. Does anybody know how he's doing?"
Lieutenant Bristol looked around the wardroom carefully, as if wanting to be certain of his audience, before answering Carl Meadows' question. "Sykes tells me Wakeman is in major denial. He's still insisting that SASAL ship was making a firing run on us."
"Major denial is right. We've already sent over two more search teams looking for evidence of weaponry, and both found nothing more than the first team did."
"And," Jen Shen added, "Cap'n Pete himself insisted on p
ersonally commanding the last search team. He's been there. He's seen there's nothing on that wreck."
Kris looked at Paul. "He wouldn't be the first to want to see something that wasn't there. Remember those weapon-charging transients that CIC reported? I heard a rumor there's no trace of any such detections in the combat system records."
Paul nodded reluctantly. "The rumor's right. The Operations Specialists swear they saw them, but the system records say the sensors never detected them and never displayed them."
Carl Meadows shook his head. "Funny what stress can do."
"Not so funny when you think about that dead ship out there."
"You know what I meant." Meadows fiddled with his drink for a moment. "There's going to be hell to pay for this. The intelligence summaries say the SASALs are screaming to everyone who'll listen, claiming we murdered the crew of that ship on purpose and demanding 'justice,' whatever that means in this case."
"How'd they find out what happened? That ship sure didn't send any messages out."
"Paul, you can't hide weapon discharges from deep space sensors. The SASALs, and anybody else looking this way, would have seen both ships close on each other, then the weaponry discharging, and then their ship goes silent. Even an idiot could draw an accurate conclusion from those observations."
Jen slammed her hand onto the table. "Speaking of idiots, those idiots caused this as much as Wakeman did! What were they doing? Teasing and taunting us, refusing to communicate, then making a near-collision run at us? Did any of them stop to think the Merry Mike is a heavily-armed warship? Stupid. They were stupid!"
"I'm not disagreeing with that. But how much of the rest of the human race is going to agree with what we did?"
" We did?" Jen questioned. "I don't remember Cap'n Pete asking for my input when he was leading us into this mess."
"Scapegoats don't necessarily have to be guilty. Paul, could they nail anyone besides Wakeman if they wanted to do it?"
Paul glanced around at all the faces watching him. "If they wanted to, sure. They could court-martial all of us, if they wanted to. Would it stick? That's a different question. Even what happens to Wakeman is going to depend upon what they want to do."
Jen frowned at him. "Surely they'll court-martial him."
"Maybe. Maybe not. This is an international incident. Our own national prestige is at stake. Do we care what the SASALs think? Do we need to accommodate them, or do we just thumb our nose at them? That's the difference between Wakeman getting a court-martial, or a slap on the wrist or less."
"I don't-"
Jen's next sentence was cut-off by the shrill of the bosun's pipe over the all-hands circuit. "This is the executive officer. The Michaelson has just received orders to immediately terminate our patrol mission and return to Franklin Naval Station at best speed. We are currently calculating the necessary maneuver, which will require a sustained main-drive firing. All personnel should begin preparations. That is all."
The junior officers exchanged glances. Carl shook his head. "Hell to pay, and the bill just came in the mail. I never thought I'd be unhappy to hear we were going home early."
"Yeah," Bristol agreed. "Paul, you remember what you and Sykes said? Anything that got us sent home early might be real bad. You were right."
Paul nodded back mutely. Sometimes being right didn't feel very good at all.
Paul was swinging hastily toward the ensign locker so he could strap in prior to the main drive burn when he saw Ensign Jen Shen coming from the other direction. Jen gestured urgently to Paul, speaking in a low voice as soon as he drew near. "Hey. Don't ask me about my source, but I got some solid information on what happened during the department head meeting with the Captain."
"Really? I thought there wasn't anyone in the cabin but the Captain and the department heads."
"I told you not to ask me about my source."
"So what happened?"
"Wakeman showed the department heads a message that basically blamed them for the whole mess and asked them all to sign off on it."
Paul stared at her in disbelief. "You're kidding. Did they?"
"Are you nuts? Of course not. There was, apparently, much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the department heads all refused to fall on their swords in order to save the career of Cap'n Pete."
"Boy, that must have been ugly. What did Herdez do?"
Jen shrugged. "She wasn't there."
"That's interesting."
"Yeah. I can't imagine the XO agreeing with Wakeman on that message. I don't like Herdez as a human being, but she's professional. She's surely not undermining the captain right now, but she wouldn't go along with trying to leave the department heads holding the bag, either."
"Then Wakeman is stuck with having to accept responsibility."
"Hah! Paul, you are so naive it hurts sometimes. He can still try to blame the department heads, and both Wakeman and the department heads can still try to lay the blame on us dumb, incompetent junior officers and the dumb, incompetent enlisted."
"That'd never fly."
"You think? Want to make a little wager on them trying? As for it not working, I did a little quick research myself. There's been plenty of cases where senior officers screwed up, and then dumped the blame for it all in the laps of the most junior personnel they could pin it on."
Paul was still searching for a reply when the all-hands circuit came to life with the five-minutes-to-burn warning. "I guess we'll have to see what happens."
"I'm not going to be waiting to see what someone else does, and I don't recommend that you do, either. Get your story down, Paul. If you don't define what you did, someone else with more rank than you is going to do it for you."
"You're right. I'll do that. Right after the burn."
"Where you going to spend it?"
"Uh, in my bunk. That's a nice, secure place." Paul grinned as Jen smiled approvingly. "See. I am learning."
"So you are. Never pass up the chance for extra bunk time. Later, shipmate."
The only two bad things about the extended period confined to his bunk by the firing of the main drive were being tossed around by the maneuvering thrusters and the fact that the main drive burn ended while Paul was still trying to catch up on his sleep.
"Mister Sinclair, sir?" Sheriff Sharpe stuck his head into the ensign locker. "Just passing by to let you know Captain's Mast has been postponed."
Paul looked up from his work, then rubbed his eyes wearily. "When's it been rescheduled for?"
"To be determined, sir."
That's not good. Wakeman hardly leaves his cabin, and now he's putting off carrying out parts of his job. "Thanks, Sheriff. Say, mind having a seat while I ask you something?"
"No problem, sir." Sharpe pulled himself inside, then nodded toward Paul's desk. "Looks like you're working on a statement, sir."
"How'd you guess?"
"It seems to be a pretty popular hobby among the officers right now, sir, if you don't mind my saying so."
Paul smiled ruefully. "I can't very well object to you saying so when I want to ask you for some advice on it. I'm having a lot of trouble making it come out sounding right. No matter how I craft it, it sounds wrong."
"Ah." Sharpe nodded knowingly this time. "That's your problem, Mr. Sinclair."
"What is?"
"You're trying to craft your statement."
"I don't understand."
Sharpe folded his arms, looking upward as if dredging up memories. "I've been involved in a lot of criminal investigations in my time, sir, so I've seen and heard a lot of statements. Let me tell you, the worst ones are the statements that you can tell somebody crafted. They're so carefully phrased and they walk around important issues and they don't often say a helluva lot. You hear or read one of those, and it feels bad."
Paul rubbed his forehead this time. "Why?"
"Why? Look at it this way, sir. If all you're doing is writing down what happened and what you saw and what you heard, that's pretty strai
ghtforward, isn't it? No call for crafting anything, there. Just make sure the facts as you know them are laid out clear. But, if you're trying to craft something, what you're doing is one of two things. Either you're trying to make yourself look good, which makes you look bad, or you're trying to make somebody else look bad, which also makes you look bad."
Paul stared at Sharpe dubiously. "But how do I make sure I'm not, um, unfairly blamed for something?"
"You can't, sir. No matter what you write. Jesus Christ Himself could come down and dictate a statement and if he had anything in there nice about Himself somebody up the chain of command would say 'this guy's trying to make Himself look nice, so maybe He's guilty of something.' Sir, you're best off just laying out the facts. If you did okay, that'll be clear. If you screwed up, they'll find out anyway. Either way, you'll get credit for being up-front about what you did and for not trying to influence the opinions of the investigators."
Paul sat silent for a minute, thinking through Sharpe's advice. "You know, Sheriff, that's why I haven't been happy with anything I've written. Every time I expressed some sort of opinion, I thought it sounded like I was either covering my butt or trying to nail somebody else."
"Sir, with all due respect to your exalted status as an ensign, if they want your opinion on anything, they'll ask you for it."
Paul found himself laughing. "Sheriff, one of these days…"
Sam Yarrow edged into the ensign locker, eyeing Sharpe disdainfully. "Is there some sort of meeting underway or is this a social call?"
Sharpe, his face a professional mask, rendered a rigid salute to Ensign Yarrow. "Delivering a message to Mr. Sinclair, sir. I have completed that task and now request permission to continue with my other duties."
Yarrow glowered at Sharpe, but the master-at-arms had said nothing he could label insubordinate or improper. "Just go. I've got work to do."
"Yes, sir." Sharpe spun away, half-nodding at Paul as he turned, then was out the hatch.
Yarrow eyed the now-empty hatch entry sourly. "A word of advice, Paul. Don't get too familiar with any of the enlisted."
A Just Determination ps-1 Page 14
