Price was being an ass, not an unusual state of being for the junior pilot. Now, though, his temper and sarcasm strained at the leash and tested the patience of his normally unflappable roommate. The lieutenants sat with Dwax and Ensign Chi playing cards. The three humans in the room were trying very hard to forget their worries and enjoy a moment’s peace. They were failing at that as miserably as Dwax was failing at bluffing.
Shortly into the fourth hand the door squeaked open.
“Commander?” Swede looked up, shock written all over his face. Maggie, standing in the doorway, took note of his expression and his three-day-growth of beard. Price eyed her sourly. Ensign Chi shot to his feet the moment she stepped into the small closet.
“Tight fit in here. Have room for one more?”
Swede stared harder at her, trying his best to discern her intentions. He tried to catch her eye and failed because she was pointedly avoiding direct eye contact with any of them. With a curt nod to Chi, she grabbed the chair he offered and sat down. Dwax noted her presence but said nothing.
“Deal me in?”
“Uh, you can have my spot ma’am. I need to go check on that... thing... in the main storage bay!” Chi was out the door before any of them could snicker at his obvious lie.
“Guess you get his cards. He’s losing.”
Maggie chewed on her lip and frowned at the cards she picked up. “No wonder.”
They played in tense silence for several minutes before the hand ended with Price winning, again. While he dealt the next round, O’Connell reached into the pocket of her utility pants. She pulled a large flask out and smacked in on the table with a flourish. Comprehension dawned on Price, but he kept his mouth shut. Swede, still confused and growing ever more concerned, reached over and tried to move the flask under the table.
With a green eyed glared, O’Connell said, “None for you until you learn to ask nicely, Swede. Price?”
The co-pilot snickered and snatched the flask from her proffering hand. He tilted it back and swallowed twice before handing it back. Her eyes glittered with emotion. Swede was sure he heard her whisper “Bravo”, but before he could react, she picked up her cards and laughed. “Things are looking up, boys.”
“The only boy in the room left already, Commander. Your bet.”
His nerves fraying more with each passing, loaded, remark between the two pilots, Swede absently reached for his glass and took a large gulp. He immediately coughed and gasped as the liquid went the wrong way down his throat. O’Connell smacked him hard between the shoulders.
“You should wager higher, Commander. I have no skill at this game. I cannot fathom the purpose of it.” Dwax was, predictably, thrown by the emotional under-currents in the room.
“That’s your problem Dwax. There’s no
purpose
beyond killing time. Here, drink more.” She poured him a drink from the nearly empty flask.
Dwax lost the next hand so badly that even Tony felt sorry for him. “I do not believe your beverage is improving my game play, Commander.” He stared at his new hand and shook his head with exasperation. “I now wonder why Lieutenant Price always wishes to have such beverages at our games.”
“Not supposed t’ improve your game, Dwax. Just supposed to make you stop caring about losin’.” Maggie tilted the flask back to empty it.
Swede knew for a fact that she never slurred her words when drinking. If anything, her diction became irritatingly precise. He was concentrating so hard on his cards, while trying to figure out what she was up to, that he missed the captain walking into the room.
Captain Hill snatched the flask out of the air above Maggie’s head as he softly called “Attention on deck.” Price and Guttmann jumped to their feet. Even Dwax stood—a newborn infant would have picked up on the ire evidenced by the captain’s tone. O’Connell couldn’t have stood if she tried, since the captain’s thighs were pressed to the back of her chair. She tilted her head further back to grin at him.
“Evenin’, Cap’n. Fancy a game?”
“Lieutenants! Quarters! Now! Honored One, please excuse my officers, they have duties.” He gripped Maggie below her elbow and physically hauled her to her feet. “With me, Commander.”
O’Connell winked at Guttmann as she followed the captain out the door. He stared at her back and groaned.
Oh hell
, he thought. He ducked out of the room and muttered, “She is so screwed.”
Beside him, Price grunted then belched. “Bullshit. All an act. She did it on purpose to piss him off.”
Swede stopped walking and stared at his roommate, shock evident on his face. “Damn it, Tony! How many times do I have to tell you, she doesn’t work that way…”
“Spare me. That flask was filled with water and a touch of rum flavoring—probably from the bakery supplies. She’s up to something. Anyway, I’m going to hit the head.”
Guttmann was left snarling at thin air and running his hand over his itching chin.
The captain made it back to his ready room without having to drag O’Connell with him. He sat behind his desk, squared his shoulders, and fixed the commander with the sternest expression he could manage. She stood at what might nominally be called attention, but there was an air of slouching disrespect that pervaded her posture. He waited, allowing the silence to heighten her discomfort—if she could still feel any. Having never seen his second in command drunk, the captain was unable to tell just how intoxicated she might be. He had to assume she’d consumed a decent amount of alcohol to be so blatantly rude to him in front of junior officers.
“Aren’t you curious how I found you?”
She shrugged indifferently, all the while staring relentlessly over his head. “Probably forgot to turn off my locator. Been drinking.” She grinned toothily.
Her flippancy had the desired effect. The captain’s hands, folded on the desk, clenched in white-knuckled rage. “So I see. What-the-hell-were-you-thinking?” He fired off the question in staccato bursts, each word gaining in volume.
“I was thinking I would join the lads in a card game. I sure as hell didn’t have anything better to do.”
“What?” He whispered the question, too shocked to yell.
“You heard me.” She stopped staring over his head. Her green eyes locked with his and didn’t blink even when his face contorted with shock and greater anger.
“You are dangerously close to being confined to the brig, Commander.”
She snorted.
He stared. Then, he stopped himself and worked to control his breathing.
She will not respond to bluster
, he thought. “Commander, I can understand the need for companionship during this stressful period, but we, as senior officers, must strive to maintain shipboard decorum and policy. If we allow the rules to slip in an effort to improve morale, we only invite chaos and discontent among our people.”
Maggie very slowly tilted her head to the side.
She pursed her lips.
“Tell me sir, did it hurt?”
“Excuse me? Did what hurt?”
“Did it hurt—when they cut off your balls?”
He didn’t blink. He couldn’t.
She’s gone mad
was the only conscious thought that burned through the white hot anger. He surged up from his seat and was around the corner of the desk before he even realized what he was doing. Maggie stood her ground. She looked him up and down with such contempt that he was tempted to slap her just to erase the look from her face.
“Have you lost your god-damned mind?” He shouted the question inches from her face
“Have you lost your nerve?” She shouted right back. “You want to know what the hell is wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with
you?
Sweet Jesus, Captain, since when did you becoming a sniveling political lackey waiting for the scraps from those puking bastard’s table?” He tried to shout her down, and she just talked right over him. “Excuse the hell out of me if I decide to improve
my
morale by having a drink with the only
men
left in the officer corps. One of us has to have the balls to stop obeying dumb-ass rules made for political reasons and face the reality of the situation!”
“Make one more inference regarding my manhood, O’Connell, and you won’t live to see the inside of the brig.”
“Good! It’s about time you did something without asking permission or consulting a damn manual first. We’re at the ends of the damn universe, on our own, with no hope of relief or rescue. We’ve been lied to, conned, and thoroughly played, and you’re waiting to see what your idiot brother and that fat slug boss of his think up? They will get us all killed! Pardon me if I decide I don’t want to sit idly by and watch!”
“So I should disregard all protocol and bury my head in a card game? I should get drunk off my ass and verbally assault another officer? I should just hope that my Daddy will swoop in and save my precious little ass one more time?”
“The only one thinking about how my father will react is you! How long do you think your brother is going to keep us twisting in the wind? Let me take a trip down there and see exactly what we’re facing. We don’t have any facts to work with. We have
nothing
to work with! Doesn’t that bother you?!”
His breath whooshed out and across the top of her head, as he was still standing far too close. “There’s a great deal bothering me right now Commander, and your behavior is at the head of the list.”
What the hell does she expect me to do? Should I defy ISA command, civilian authorities, and the Dremikians just to land on that piece-of-shit rock?
“You know, O’Connell, while you were busy being a petulant
bitch
, I
was
actually thinking about how to get out of this damn mess. I came looking for you to discuss it. Too damned bad you’ll be in the brig and unable to do anything to
help
the situation.”
They both stood panting, at a loss for anything else to say. She wondered if she’d managed to goad him into action—the correct action. He wondered if an alien disease had attacked the logic center of her brain.
O’Connell snapped to a proper pose of attention. “Pardon me, sir. I’ll remove myself to the brig to await Captain’s Mast.”
Hill rolled his eyes and perfectly mimicked her indignant snort of a few minutes before. “The hell you will. I don’t have the time or energy to explain your presence in the brig to Trell or anyone else. You’re going to your quarters and you’ll stay there until your duty rotation. Tomorrow, we’ll see if it is even possible to send a lander to the surface.”
“It is, sir.” She could barely contain the enthusiasm in her voice. “I’ve calculated the entry angles on the simulator over a dozen times. Just let us go take a look, sir. Maybe we can discover what the Dremikians are so afraid of us finding out.”
“I said we’ll discuss it tomorrow, Commander. One last thing.” He tilted his head down and forward until his nose nearly touched her forehead. “If I
ever
catch you at a card game with junior officers,
or
if I ever catch you drinking anything stronger that coffee on this ship, I will personally wring your stubborn neck and then throw you out an escape hatch. Is- that-clear?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
“Dismissed.” He watched her go. When she was gone he finally allowed the full force of his temper to surface. Shouting a curse, the captain turned and kicked the corner leg of his desk. He very much wanted to punch something or someone. Three steps from the door, and a visit to his brother to do just that, Hill stopped. He stalked back to his desk and literally flung his body into his chair.
When had he started letting O’Connell’s attitude matter? Since when had O’Connell
had
an attitude? For seven months she had done her best to act the very opposite of her reputation. Just when he needed her help—when he most needed an ally who shared his goals—she flaked-out on him. He leaned forward to rest his suddenly pounding head on the cool metal surface of the desk. A gleaming reflection off the confiscated flask caught his attention. He jerked open a desk drawer and dropped the flask inside. The ringing tone of metal meeting metal didn’t help his headache one bit.
***
At 0900 the next morning, Captain Hill arrived on the bridge nursing an incipient headache that threatened to settle behind his eyes. He glanced up to see Ensign Robertson standing watch. Hill felt a moment’s sympathy for the young man. Robertson, as the son of a sitting senator, would have it hard now. Many of the crew and colonists harbored resentment against government officials, human or Dremikian. The logical assertion that the senator certainly couldn’t have known about any impending difficulties wouldn’t occur to those looking for someone to blame.
The captain asked the young officer standing before him, “I thought Guttmann had the next watch?”
“Yes, sir, that is to say, sir, he did.” Nate swallowed audibly. “He’s with Commander O’Connell, sir, fixing the lander.”
“The… lander?” Even to his own ears, the captain’s question sounded a bit stupid. “Well, yes, of course. Ensign, the bridge is yours. Keep us in a stationary orbit for now.” Hill turned and strode to the vacuum tube.
A short ride and walk later, the captain was staring dumbfounded at the chaos in the bay. Dr. Fortunas’ science staff carried crate-like scanners and sample cases into the lander while other crew members removed seats and gear from the craft. The small ship was shaped very much like a bulbous arrowhead with a large rear engine casing that tapered to a fine point at the nose of the craft. It was, according to anyone who had ever flown one, a dream to handle. Unlike previous intra-orbital transports, the new ISA landers were built for speed and maneuverability.
It took the captain another searching look before he located Commander O’Connell. She was flat on her back underneath one of the lander wings.
“Yeah, Swede, but will it survive the atmospheric friction? Sensor readings won’t do a bit of good if the sensor, or worse, the wing, burns up.” Maggie turned her head and noticed a pair of shiny black boots standing a foot away. She slid out from under the wing and grinned up at her captain. “Morning, sir.”