As they reached the elevator doors, Korbin glanced around to make sure they were alone together, and then she sent Max a private comms—text only, which she composed mentally via her cerebral implant.
The captain sent the mission data through the wormhole ahead of us in case something happens to the ship on the way home. Should we do the same?
Max glanced her way before replying. I’ll make it happen.
How?
I have a way to stay awake and get out of the G-tanks while everyone else is asleep.
Korbin blinked, shocked. How? she asked again.
Too complicated to get into right now. Just trust me. I can do it.
You’ll be crushed like a bug.
There’s a half an hour window between entering the G-tanks and accelerating up to speed. That’s long enough. How do you think I got the nav data?
She had to admit that did answer a nagging question. Okay, but this is different than simply stealing data. Even if you find a way to use the Lincoln’s comms to send the data, the Alliance will pick up any transmission you send.
I’ll use Confederacy encryption algorithms.
Then they’ll know there’s a traitor on board.
Max shook his head. But they won’t know who, and we already have Williams to pin it on.
He’s in the brig.
I’ll plant a hacked comm band with a backdoor into the Lincoln’s systems in his personal effects. People will wonder how he smuggled that into the brig, but most will just take it at face value.
And if they don’t?
Then one of us needs to take the fall. I’m too valuable to compromise myself, so it will have to be you.
Korbin considered that with a frown. Her reconditioning told her to leave self-interest out of her decision-making, and when relying on unbiased logic, comparing her value to the value of a spy who was the president’s direct representative, there was no contest.
Agreed, she texted back. I’ll take the fall if it comes to it.
You have the perfect excuse. You were captured and reconditioned.
Yes.
Korbin hit the call button for the elevator. They waited a few moments for it to arrive. When it did, the doors parted to reveal Captain de Leon.
“Korbin—I thought you would be waiting at the G-tanks by now.”
She shook her head. “I came to check on Max first.”
Alexander appeared to notice Max for the first time. “Oh, so did I,” he said. “I guess we can go up together, then.”
Korbin smiled. “I guess so, sir.”
Alexander held the doors open for them as they walked in, and Max traded a look with her behind Alexander’s back.
Leave everything to me, he texted.
She gave no reply, afraid that Alexander would somehow overhear their very thoughts, but of course that was impossible.
“Something on your mind, Korbin?” Alexander asked, turning to her with eyebrows raised.
She jumped, afraid that he somehow had read her mind.
“No, sir, why do you ask?”
“You’re unusually quiet.”
She shook her head and smiled. “Just thinking about my kids back home.”
“I’m sure they’re fine. We need to be positive, Commander.”
She nodded. “Yes, sir.”
* * *
Alexander stood in front of G-tank number 23 once more, stripping out of his pressure suit and uniform to stow them in the locker beside the tank. As he rolled up his uniform, he noticed the heavy weight in the inside pocket of the jacket. That had to be the pocket watch his wife had given him.
He unrolled the uniform and withdrew the watch. He studied the engravings, running his thumb over them as he read. He smiled and depressed the clasp at the top of the watch, popping it open. Inside he saw the photograph of him and Caty. Then his eyes drifted down to study the time. The hands pointed to eleven and one—11:05, and the date read JUN|6|90.
Less than three weeks had passed since they’d emerged from the G-tanks. Not bad considering they’d been afraid they might end up stuck in the Wonderland system for years.
“See you on the other side, Captain,” McAdams said from the tank beside his as Doctor Crespin opened the hatch for her.
He nodded to his engineer, pretending not to notice her nakedness, and making sure to keep his eyes on her face. “See you in seventy days, Lieutenant.” She walked inside, giving him a nice view of her rear. He looked away with a frown, chastising himself for allowing his gaze to linger. You’re a married man.
“All ready over here, Captain?” Doctor Crespin asked.
Alexander nodded and noticed the doctor’s gaze sliding down to the pocket watch in his hand. “I didn’t have you pegged for an antique collector,” Crespin said.
“A memento from my wife,” Alexander explained.
“So you can count the seconds you’re apart,” he said, nodding. “Sounds like an appropriate gift from a loving wife.”
“It was. I just hope it still is.”
Crespin nodded absently as he checked the tank, as if he understood what Alexander meant by that. “All set.” The tank doors slid open, and lights snapped on inside the small chamber. “If there are no unforeseen emergencies, you’ll be waking up in seventy days—from our frame of reference that will be August 15th, 2790. Of course, from Earth’s frame of reference it will be about two years later than that. You know—even if we don’t end up colonizing Wonderland, I bet we could use the Looking Glass to sell one-way tickets to the future.”
Alexander smiled. “But who would buy them?”
Crespin shrugged, and Seth Ryder chimed in from the tank beside Alexander’s. “If we’re lucky, the entire Confederacy will. Maybe we can work a deal where we take turns ruling Earth. Their government schedules a trip to the future, and when they come back it’s their turn.”
Alexander sent Ryder a bland smile. “I doubt that will fly. More likely we’ll end up nuking each other until everyone is lining up to buy tickets to a future where Earth might be habitable again.”
“Yeah…” Ryder said, and looked away.
Alexander grimaced. Not the best comment to make under the circumstances. He was going to have to get his implants adjusted for impulsivity.
“Captain,” Crespin gestured for him to enter the tank. “By your leave, sir.”
Alexander finished stowing his belongings in the locker and nodded to the doctor before entering the tank. He walked straight up to the harness and life support in the center of the chamber and began separating his life support lines. The door of the tank slid shut with an echoing boom. Alexander glanced at the now-shut door and shivered. He looked up at the glaring overhead lights inside the tank, then all around at the gleaming walls, and he felt trapped. The tank could easily double for a coffin if something happened in transit.
Best not to think about that.
Alexander went to the harness in the middle of the tank and quickly strapped himself in. He began attaching umbilicals. He connected the nutrient line to the implant in his wrist, slid the tracheal tube down his throat—gagging as it went down—strapped on his urinal cup, and finally, inserted the rectal tube.
Now trailing no less than four different tubes, Alexander hurried to strap himself into the harness. Soon after that, the tank detected he was ready, and warm water began streaming in around his feet. Alexander felt himself growing drowsy. His nutrient line must already be delivering the coma-inducing drugs.
The tank filled up quickly, and Alexander began to float. Then a tone sounded, and a green light went on beside the valve in his tracheal tube. It opened up and the ventilator began pumping an oxygen-rich perfluorocarbon into his lungs, replacing all of the air. Now he stopped floating and the water began rising over him. He listened to the ventilator whooshing and swishing as it pumped the perfluorocarbon in and out of his lungs, the rhythmic sound was lulling him to sleep.
The lights inside the tank grew gradually dimmer, and Alexander’
s head lolled. He felt his eyes closing, and the warmth consumed him.
He dreamed he was suntanning beside a pool with Caty.
Hello, Darling, she whispered in his ear.
He turned lazily to look. She looked like Caty—her hair like luminous strands of gold in the sun, her blue eyes bright and shimmering like the Caribbean Sea… but her face was too narrow, nose too long, and cheekbones too high for this woman to be his wife. Her breasts didn’t fit either. This was McAdams, not Caty.
An objection bubbled up inside his throat, but no words came out. She leaned down and kissed him. He was paralyzed, unable to resist, and a guilty part of him accepted that excuse. Her tongue slid past his lips and into his mouth, then all the way down his throat, gagging him with its alien presence. He opened his eyes to see that she was a hideous alien with lumpy blue-green skin, bleached white hair, and reptilian eyes. He recoiled from her and his eyes snapped open.
He was back inside the tank, dim lights slowly rising in brightness. The water was gone, his skin itchy but dry. He could still feel that tongue inside his throat, and it hurt, as if the dream had been real.
Then he saw the ventilator and remembered where he was. Alexander hurried to withdraw the ventilator, gagging and wincing as it came back up his throat. The damn thing had hurt him somehow. As life sparked back into his nerves, he felt the unwelcome pressure of the urinal cup and the invading presence of the rectal tube.
Feeling violated, he hurried to disconnect himself from life support. His face began to itch, and he reached up to scratch his cheek. He was immediately shocked to feel a thick, bushy beard growing there—the hair still damp and clinging to his skin. He recalled that he’d forgotten to get an extra round of depilatory treatments from Doctor Crespin. Too many months had passed since receiving those treatments back on Earth.
Alexander unhooked his harness and shambled up to the door on stiff and shaking legs. He waved the door open and stumbled out into the circular room beyond.
The lights were too bright, making his eyes burn and water after spending so long in darkness. The air felt much colder outside the heated tank. Soon his teeth were chattering, and his entire body trembling.
Fumbling with the control panel beside his locker, Alexander opened it and withdrew his belongings. All around him he heard tanks swishing open and people stumbling out, making exclamations about the cold and their various states of confusion and physical discomfort.
Alexander’s throat still felt raw from the tracheal tube. Maybe he’d inserted it incorrectly? He might have scratched himself, but after this long, that should have healed. He hoped there wasn’t a raging infection in his throat—though by now his implants should have detected that and deployed nanobodies to fight whatever bacteria had taken hold. Hopefully the pain didn’t speak to a failure in his immunological implant. He’d have to go see Crespin later to see what was up.
Alexander hurried to don his uniform and then his pressure suit and boots. As he strapped on his comm band, he noticed that there were twelve new message alerts flashing on the comm band’s small screen.
Alexander made a note to check on that ASAP. Finally, he withdrew his pocket watch. Curious, he depressed the clasp to check the date and time. Still ticking. He smiled at the photo of him and Caty. Then he checked the time. The big hand pointed to the one, and the small hand to the five. 1:25. PM or AM? He wondered. Not that it mattered much on a starship. Then he noticed the date.
JUN|7|90
Alexander frowned. The seventh of June? They’d entered the tanks on the sixth. Exactly one day had passed—not the seventy days that should have.
“Davorian!” Alexander called out, already consulting his comm band to see what the alerts were about, and to double check the date.
“Sir?” Davorian asked, sounding out of breath.
Alexander turned to him and his eyes grew wide, shocked to see the other man’s curly black beard and the bushy mop of hair on his head. Apparently Alexander wasn’t the only one who’d forgotten to get depilatory treatments.
“We’ve been awoken early,” Alexander said. “Something’s gone wrong. We need to get to the bridge now.”
Davorian shook his head, looking confused. “Sir, it’s been seventy days…”
“No it hasn’t. Look at my watch!” Alexander angled his palm so that Davorian could see the pocket watch.
The other man peered at it for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s wrong. Check your comm band.”
Alexander did. The date was August 15th 2790. He blinked and narrowed his eyes. “My watch stopped?”
“It’s mechanical. Ten Gs must have been too much for all the moving parts.”
“It worked fine the first time,” Alexander said through a frown, watching the second hand move around the clock with perfect regularity. “And it’s still ticking.”
“Regardless, the correct amount of time has passed. My comm band shows the same date as yours. Besides, if only a day had passed, how would we have grown such long hair and beards?”
Davorian had a point there. “Then what are all these alerts about?” he asked, more of himself than the ship’s helmsman. Alexander mentally summoned a screen from his comm band and made selections in the air to check the latest message.
It was a comm recording from Fleet Admiral Wilson of the Alliance, routed to Alexander’s comm band via the Lincoln’s comms. The admiral’s face appeared hovering in the air above Alexander’s wrist. Short-cropped white hair emphasized his seniority and rank, but also reminded Alexander of the alien version of McAdams from his dream. Bumpy green skin. Long, slithering tongue… He shivered again and pushed the image from his head.
Wilson’s blue eyes flashed and the fine lines around his mouth and eyes looked pinched with fury. “What in the hell is going on aboard your ship, Captain? You want to explain to me why we received a message with Confederate encryption? We have the best analysts working to crack that code, but so far we’ve confirmed that the message was sent via the Lincoln’s comm system. Best case, you have a spy on board and you need to find that person—fast. Worst case, you and your entire ship has gone rogue. I’ll be waiting to hear from you as soon as you wake up. Wilson out.”
Alexander stood there, swaying on his feet, stunned speechless.
“I don’t understand…” Davorian said, shaking his head. “We were all in the tanks. The last message we sent before we locked the bridge was the mission data, but that was sent with Alliance encryption.”
Alexander shook his head. “Obviously that wasn’t the only message we sent. Williams must have been telling the truth about not sabotaging the engine code. We’ve had a spy in our midsts all this time.”
“What if this was Williams, too? What if there was a deeper motive behind his sabotage?”
Alexander gave Davorian a hard look. “He’s been in the brig ever since we entered the G-tanks for the first time. How the hell would he gain access to the Lincoln’s comms?”
“Maybe we should ask him that, sir.”
Alexander nodded and they stalked over to where Williams was being manually awoken from his tank. Doctor Crespin stood at the control panel, configuring the wake cycle. Lieutenants Stone and Fernandez stood waiting to escort Williams to the brig once he emerged. Alexander walked by them all, straight up to Williams’ locker. He waved it open and looked inside. Not seeing anything, he began tossing items out onto the deck—uniform, pressure suit, boots…
The boots thunked on the deck and then something clattered out along the metal floor grating.
“Hello there,” Davorian said, bending to retrieve a comm band that Williams shouldn’t have had in his possession. “I think we have our spy.”
“Spy?” Stone asked, taking sudden interest in what they were doing. “Who’s a spy?”
Alexander took the comm band from Davorian and checked through the message logs. Nothing there. Then he checked the unit’s deleted logs, and there it was—one very large data burst sent on an open channe
l with an unknown encryption. “Williams is a spy,” Alexander said, nodding to himself and turning to shake the comm band in Stone’s face. “How did he get a comm unit?”
Stone paled and shook his head. “I swear we checked him, Captain. He didn’t have that on him.”
“Did you check his boots?”
“Everything! We scanned him thoroughly when he left the brig and again before he entered the tank. He was clean.”
“Well you obviously missed something,” Alexander growled. “I don’t know what he sent, but it was one hell of a big message, so it could be anything—or everything. We have to assume that our mission has been compromised. Everything we know about the Looking Glass and Wonderland, the Confederates now know, too. I only hope that this doesn’t result in another war.” Doctor Crespin stared open-mouthed at the offending comm band, distracted from configuring the G-tank. “Wake Williams up,” Alexander snapped.
Crepsin nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Alexander handed the comm band to Lieutenant Stone. “Make sure he doesn’t have any other restricted items in his possession. Check his cell on the brig. Do a cavity search. The works. Then get to work interrogating him. We need to know what he sent in that message. Do whatever it takes.”
“Understood, sir.”
Alexander felt the weight of those words pressing on his conscience—do whatever it takes. That was a vague order, but at the same time perfectly clear. Williams’ comfort, well-being, privacy, and even his sanity were all forfeit now. Under the circumstances, if it came to it, even killing him would be a legal means to an end. There were too many other lives at stake, and this was war.
Alexander pushed through the crowd of assembled crew. He heard urgent whispers rustling through the room as he went. “Everyone to your stations! We are now at condition yellow.”
The crowd dispersed and flowed in a steady stream toward the elevators. On his way there, Alexander bumped into his XO.
New Frontiers- The Complete Series Page 25
