They found the first body floating not far from their entry point. The wound on it caused from being nicked by one of the
Michaelson
's powerful energy weapons was absurdly clean and smooth, instantly cauterized even as it was inflicted. The rest of the body, however, had nothing clean about it. "Oh, God." Paul looked away hastily.
I've never actually seen a human body subjected to explosive decompression before. Now I know what the Sheriff meant when he said not to look too close
. He couldn't throw up, not in a suit, so he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, fighting down nausea.
"Sir?" Sheriff Sharpe had one hand on Paul's arm. "You're better off occupying your mind with something else, sir."
"Meaning exploring for records."
"That'd do, sir."
"Remind me to listen to you next time."
"Hey, sir, with that kind of learning curve you may make lieutenant junior grade, yet."
Even though he was grateful for the distraction posed by Sharpe's banter, Paul still glowered at him. "Let's head on down this way. The diagrams from our merchant shipping data base say the captain's quarters and the bridge should be over there." Finding a hatch with a name embossed on it just off the bridge, Paul looked inside. The stateroom was empty, making it all the more likely this space belonged to the ship's captain, who must have been on the bridge while the SASAL ship was making its run on the
Michaelson
. "I'll check the desk area."
Paul had to pound on the desk and use one of his suit tools before he could yank open drawers that had already been frozen into place, hastily pocketing the data discs he found inside. Much of their content might have been damaged by vacuum and cold, but something might be recoverable. A picture fastened to the desk showed several people, doubtless the dead captain's relatives or family. Paul tried not to look at the picture as he rummaged for anything else that might constitute evidence. He added a few pages of printout in a foreign language, then turned to see Sharpe going through an open safe on another bulkhead. "That was lucky."
"What was lucky, sir?"
"That they left the safe open."
"They didn't leave the safe open, sir." Sharpe grinned conspiratorially. "Certain talents come in handy in my line of work."
"Good thing you're on our side, Sheriff. Anything good?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. Data discs, some foreign currency, and maybe a diary or personal log."
"Take it all." Paul swung slowly around, his light illuminating the bulkheads around him. "What's that?"
Sharpe moved close to the locked panel, examined the lock for a moment, then Paul could see his head nod. "Retinal-scan lock. Too hard to crack this one, sir. Request permission to pop it."
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.
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 personally 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."