The False Admiral (5 page)

“I don't know, maybe a Rothschild Mark for apprehending a Ganraen spy,” Deilani said, annoyed.

“You don't get the Mark for that kind of kid stuff,” I said, and it was true. The Rothschild Mark was the highest imperial honor, and only about a dozen had been awarded over the last century or so.

“Kid stuff?” Nils raised an eyebrow.

I shrugged. “Spies aren't anything to get excited about.”

“You know, another Rothschild Mark just got awarded, too,” Nils said, perhaps hoping to ease the tension. “Didn't say to who or for what, though.”

“They usually don't,” Deilani said darkly. “You know though, don't you?” This she directed at Salmagard, who did not reply. Deilani was right. An aristocrat might have inside intel about something like that.

The Rothschild Mark wasn't exactly my favorite subject; I hoped they wouldn't linger on it.

“Don't get excited about awards from the Service,” I told them.

“Why not?” Nils asked.

“Because when they give you that stuff,” I told him, “you aren't the one they're patting on the back.”

It was time to find the shuttle, and that meant locating the flight bay. I'd seen and dealt with some large vessels in my time, but I'd rarely had to navigate them without lifts or guide paths. I'd gotten too used to being part of an entourage. Navigating solo wasn't coming back to me easily.

Thankfully Nils had no difficulty getting us there, but we were both taken aback to find that the shuttle launch floor shared space with the main hold; there were only fixtures for a force screen to separate the shuttle from the cargo. You could have fit a full wing of the Ganraen royal residence in this chamber.

Stacks of white service-standard deep space transport containers dominated the space, laid out in an impeccable grid, six high, nearly reaching the thirty-meter ceiling. Each crate bore an imperial crest in black on its side. Not very subtle, but for this run the freighter hadn't been going anywhere it was likely to be boarded and searched. Clear Evagardian markings meant there was only a handful of cons Tremma could have been planning with this cargo.

I caught a glimpse of my face in the glossy white plastic of the nearest crate, and looked away, swallowing.

“What is all of this?” Deilani asked. “And why isn't it on an imperial transport?”

“It is.”

“Why isn't it on a normal one?” she pressed.

I said nothing.

“The fighting's over,” Nils said. “Maybe they're dispersing some of the surplus ordnance.”

“These are not weapons containers,” Salmagard observed softly, and I glanced back at her. She looked thoughtful. Her eyes flicked to me, but only for a moment.

So she didn't know everything. I wanted to educate her, but this wasn't the time. We made our way through the stacks of crates to the shuttle in front of the launch doors. It was an Evagardian craft, dragonfly-class. Neither cutting edge nor out-of-date, it was a fast shuttle mostly intended for ferrying officers and ambassadors from ship to station in style.

Obviously the freighter needed a shuttle, but this was an unusual choice. Tremma's ship would be expected to have something a little less flashy, and a little more utilitarian. The trainees probably wouldn't notice. No—Nils had. He was looking at the shuttle with obvious confusion.

“Why a dragonfly, though?” he asked. “It doesn't make sense, not in this ship.”

“Come on,” I said, startling him. “Let's get out of here.”

“Nothing makes sense on this ship,” Nils said, his eyes still on the shuttle. Damn it all, now he was thinking too; Deilani was enough to deal with. I jogged up the ramp and into the cabin, going straight to the cockpit.

“You're a pilot?” Deilani asked.

“No,” I replied cheerily. “But how hard can it be?” She scowled at me. “Nils, take the chair.” He sat down beside me.

“You're joking, right, sir?” It was starting to catch up with him. I hoped he'd keep his cool.

“Relax. I can fly it.”

He looked relieved. I spotted Salmagard with her hand on the ramp control. “That might be premature,” I told her.

Deilani leaned against the cockpit doorway, arms folded, looking expectant. I ignored her and began to power up the shuttle. The computer came online. I knew at once that something was wrong.

“What is it?” Nils asked, sensing my sudden tension.

“The system's stuttering,” I replied, distracted. “Get a starscape while I check it out. I want to know where we are . . .” My subconscious shouted something at me, and I listened. I stopped in the act of reaching for my straps. “Run,” I said.

“What?”

I grabbed Nils and dragged him out of the cockpit, pushing Deilani and Salmagard ahead of us. Fresh out of training, they knew how to go from stationary to full speed, even if they didn't understand why. We stumbled down the ramp, and I kept them in front of me, pushing on. I tried to put as many stacks of crates between us and the shuttle as I could.

The shuttle went up only seconds after we cleared the ramp. We were all deafened by the blast, which vaporized the nearest stacks, and broke many more free of their gravity restraints. I shoved Deilani out of the path of a falling crate, and kicked Nils' legs from beneath him to get his head down. Salmagard had the good sense to duck on her own. Containers were toppling all over, and the smell of burning plastic washed over the bay.

Coughing, I rolled over, visions of shattering carbon shield flashing through my mind. Screams, and the wailing of twisting, malforming metal. I felt a wave of nausea. That would've been a good time to lie back and go to sleep, but Salmagard was reaching down to help me to my feet. Grimacing, I took her hand and let her pull me up.

Deilani was on her hands and knees, groaning. It looked as if some debris had struck her, but it hadn't compromised her suit.
Nils was sprawled out; the fall to the floor had done him more harm than the explosion had, but it beat the alternative. Everyone was whole, but the bay wasn't.

Cracked and broken crates were everywhere. Pieces were still clattering to the deck, and I could see bits of the shuttle lodged in the bulkheads. It was hot, and the smell of melted polymer was strong in the air.

I leaned against the nearest stack, which felt warm through my suit, and slid down to sit. I could feel sharp pain in my back; I'd taken some shrapnel too. My EV chirped medical pings at me, like I needed it to tell me that I was bleeding.

My sleeper being tampered with was one thing. My sleeper and the ship. My sleeper, the ship,
and
the shuttle. And the ship's computer systems. I couldn't forget those.

Subtle.

“What just happened?” Nils choked out, getting to his feet. “The cells spiked. The levels just popped for no reason.”

I wished he hadn't seen that. The power cells in the shuttle had been fixed to overload on start-up, probably helped along with . . . I wasn't going to think about it. There wasn't any money in it. I shook my head like that might help my ears stop ringing.

Salmagard appeared in front of me, which I took to mean Deilani was back on her feet and acting threatening. I figured I'd better say something before she did.

“I don't know about you guys,” I said loudly enough that they'd all hear me over the buzzing in their ears. “But this is starting to feel a little like sabotage.”

“And what the
hell
do you know about that?” Deilani's hands were opening and closing; those fingers wanted to be around my
throat so badly that I truly sympathized. I pictured her shaking me by the neck the way she so obviously wanted to.

“Just save it,” I said, drained.

“I won't take this from a chemical dependent,” she spat. The emotion in her voice was telling. I was starting to get a feel for Deilani.

I looked at Salmagard, but once again she was making a point of ignoring me. She'd maintain her neutrality until Deilani physically assaulted me. I didn't blame her.

I watched her work her wrist experimentally.

“You
know
what's going on,” Deilani pressed.

“Actually,” I said, feeling detached. “I'm kind of baffled.” It was true. At first I'd had some ideas, but now? This had gotten out of hand.

There must have been something about what I said, or how I said it, because Deilani backed down. Even she couldn't believe that I'd sabotage my own sleeper, the ship,
and
the only way off the ship. I hadn't done any of it. I really hadn't.

And the shuttle
had
been the only way. The escape craft wouldn't do us any good unless we could somehow get into orbit, and with no reactor and no ship's computer, that wasn't going to happen.

Crates and debris were still falling apart, and the sounds echoed through the vast bay.

Nils had staggered into the aisle to gaze back at the wreckage. Deilani put her hands against the crate opposite me and appeared to be getting herself under control.

Ten minutes ago I'd been impressed that these three weren't panicking. It wasn't that they were brave or well trained, though it was possible that they were both. They hadn't panicked because they were fresh out of training, and had no concept of exactly how
large the galaxy was, and the true implications of being lost in it. Imperial training had no doubt confronted them with danger, but there had always been a safety net.

Now I was out of luck. I
knew
how bad it was.

Salmagard looked at me, troubled.
She
knew how serious this was even before things started blowing up. It wasn't surprise on her face. She was troubled because this was the confirmation of her suspicions. Maybe she'd been hoping to be wrong.

As for the shuttle, that had been the oldest trick in the book. Rig the power cells to overload. No real explosives, so it looks like an accident.

Much harder to do with newer shuttles.

“You're bleeding,” Salmagard said.

“Medical's as good a place to go as any,” I sighed. “Because we aren't going anywhere else.”

TREMMA'S infirmary was outfitted to imperial specifications, with which Lieutenant Deilani was extremely familiar. Before she could learn to be a leader, she'd been forced to learn to be both scientist and doctor. Bio was a prestigious and demanding field, and the imperial academies were notoriously ruthless. It was the broad nature of her expertise and her lengthy training that allowed her to graduate as a second lieutenant, one rung up the ladder from most of the other freshly commissioned officers.

For all the good it was doing her.

The medical bay itself was a mixture of Ganraen and Evagardian stylings. New white fixtures stood out jarringly against the gray of the original Ganraen engineering. The room was cold, but at least the examination table was padded. I didn't care for the harsh lights, but my eyes were drawn to the lockers filled with chems and medicine.

Deilani didn't hide her lack of enthusiasm for treating me. She dabbed at me with soothing antiseptic before spraying on an icy bandage that applied a mild anesthetic. It wasn't a large cut, but it was over my eye, so we couldn't just let it bleed. I could feel my suit beginning to mend itself, repairing the tears where I'd been struck in the back by shrapnel.

“Give me your supply,” she said, putting out her hand, and wearing the expression of someone only acting under the direst duress.

I decided to show a little trust in the hopes that maybe she'd send a little back my way. I handed over my hypos. She plugged one into a hand scanner, and her eyes narrowed. “This is high quality,” she said, giving me another look. “Very pure.” She frowned. “You'd almost have to be an admiral to afford this,” she mused, giving me another funny look.

“It was a gift,” I said. “You know how it is. Someone gives you something, it's ungrateful not to use it. I'm not into that stuff.” I glanced at Salmagard. “Honest. I'm all about clean living. True story.”

Deilani's curiosity had vanished, replaced by familiar contempt.

“I didn't know what it was,” I went on. “I thought it was for my allergies. That's how they get you.”

I'd given myself only half a dose earlier. It wouldn't hold me long. My eyes would start to look bloodshot. I'd probably be developing a little nervous tic soon. It would get worse fast, though.

It's true what they say: drugs and sleepers don't mix. My body chemistry was a disaster. We were in serious trouble and I needed to be at my best. I needed Deilani's help. It looked as though it was a good thing we had a doctor along after all.

She made a noise of frustration and closed her eyes. “We're going to have to shut this down here and now. A few more hits of
this and you'll probably go into shock this soon after coming out of a sleeper.”

“Sounds good.”

She blinked at me. “That's it?”

“You think I use it for my health? No. Lieutenant, chem me off, by all means. The sooner, the better.”

She looked me up and down.

“Yeah,” she said. “All right.”

She wanted me to have a miserable detox; what she didn't grasp was that I didn't care. My need for drugs had ended when the party did. I could handle any amount of suffering if it meant being free of my dependency. “Just don't kill me until you don't need me anymore.”

“Then I'll give you a stim too.”

“Now you're speaking my language.”

Nils was still gaping at the shards of plastic that Deilani had pulled from my back. He looked impressed.

“I've had worse,” I told him. My suit had almost finished repairing the tears.

“You look a little familiar. Sir,” he added, squinting at me.

“Is it my lips? I've been told I have very common lips,” I replied.

He kept staring. I sighed.

“Do I?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stop treating him like an officer,” Deilani groaned, but her heart wasn't in it. “Why was the shuttle sabotaged?”

“Ask Tremma,” I told her. “I'm less worried about the why than the who at the moment.”

“But what do we
do
?” Nils was close to panic. He was holding it together, but after that brush with death, we were all starting to
feel it. Deilani didn't like me giving orders, but she was conspicuously quiet when it came to proposing solutions.

I straightened up a little, gently touching the cut over my eye. She'd done a nice job on it.

“We're out of options. You're good, but you're not good enough to get this whole ship moving, Nils. It's like you said. We'll have to wait for rescue.”

“No power means no beacon,” Deilani pointed out. “And if someone wanted us gone badly enough for this level of sabotage, then we probably are off course. We could be anywhere. Surely whoever sent us out here covered their tracks.”

I was glad she was thinking clearly. “Probably,” I admitted. “But there's something you're forgetting.” I pointed at Salmagard. “She can't go missing forever. They'd come looking for you, but they might come looking for her even sooner. There
are
ways for them to find us. We're lucky. We're stationary. If we'd just been pointed out past the frontier and sent off still asleep, no one would ever find us. And I think that was our saboteur's plan. But that didn't happen, and that means we've got a chance.”

“Provided we haven't been asleep for, say, a couple of years,” Deilani said, massaging her temples.

Nils shook his head. “We haven't, ma'am. The sleeper records showed we were two weeks out from the courier. So that's longer than the trip was supposed to be, but it's not really a long time. Not long enough to send us too far.” He was fidgeting. Nervous energy filled the room, hanging in the air like static electricity. “So we're already overdue.”

“It's out of our hands now. We'll have to wait.” I rubbed my chin, wondering if there was anything in Medical that I could use
to shave. There were lasers that could remove body hair for surgery. I wondered where they were kept.

No. The stubble was good. It was helping me. It felt weird, but I was better off keeping it.

“Shuttle's gone,” Nils said. “Emergency power won't last.”

“We'll have to get creative,” I said, focusing.

“Excuse me?”

“Lieutenant, you've just spent a substantial portion of your life training to become a leader.” I looked at her expectantly. “Surely you know what to do.”

It was the chemicals talking. Deilani just scowled at me. I went on. “We have to buy ourselves as much time as we can, and stay alive until they get here. That's it. That would be pretty simple if we didn't have two dead men in the airlock. They didn't kill
themselves
.”

“Yes, they did,” Deilani said. “We saw it was their own incinerators. But what made them do it? If it wasn't you. That wasn't one of them murdering the other, or a suicide thing.”

“That's what I'd like to know. I wasn't going to worry about it as long as I thought we were just going to get out of here. Now that we're staying it's an issue again.”

“Are we in danger? Apart from this?” Nils motioned at the ship in general.

“I don't know,” I told him honestly. “I don't see how we could be. But they're dead, and ending up that way was not their goal—so something happened here. I can't explain it. We're missing something.”

“How do we wait for rescue without life support?” Deilani was doing her best to stay on task, but she was afraid. I couldn't blame her. We could have died in that shuttle, and that wasn't something any of them would forget.

“Two ways.” I got off the examination table and started to pace. Salmagard had been standing by the door with her hands behind her back and head bowed, but now she looked up to watch me. “First, the sleepers. We rig up some kind of power supply and just go back to sleep. The problem with that is that mine's no good, and even though your suspicions are
completely
unfounded, I'm sure you wouldn't be comfortable going under with me still up and about. And repairing my unit is probably beyond even the ensign's abilities. Likewise putting me in one of your sleepers would let the other two rest easy, but the third would be awake and alone on a dead ship on what looks to me like a dead planet. No power, no life support. Survivable, but not ideal.”

I looked them over as they digested that.

“I think that at the end of the day, this is something we're better off facing together.”

If I had three Salmagards, this would be easy. But Deilani wouldn't be willing to take her eyes off me, and there was enough doubt in Nils that neither would he. None of them were keen to get back in their sleepers—especially after seeing what had almost happened with mine. How could they trust anything when it seemed as if literally everything on this ship had been sabotaged? The sleepers were off the table.

“Then we're agreed,” I said, sweeping my hand at the medbay. “This is our new home. We're lucky. We've got lots of resources on this tub. There's plenty of air and water—we just have to get at it, and use it intelligently. We have everything, or at least most of what we need. We're going to turn Medical into our own little tree house.”

“Our what?” Deilani glared at me.

“Get some culture. Don't you know Old Earth history? I don't
know how long the air's going to last. If we seal off a room like this, rig up a recycler and bleed in oxygen, we can last a while.” Trainees or not, they understood the concept of an air pocket. “But we also need heat.”

“EV suits will keep us warm,” Deilani pointed out. Evagardians and their blind faith in Evagardian technology. I envied them.

“Until they run out of power, which will be sooner than you realize once the temperature equalizes. Which it will,” I promised. “It'll get cold, and the suits will have to work harder to keep us warm. The EV charges won't last. We need to conserve them, and think about O
2
in case we have to leave the room once the air's gone out there. For water, for example. We can't go breaking open pipes in here. We'll have to bring in water by hand.”

“We can just use a grav lift.”

“We still have to open the door, and we'll lose air every time we do.” I sat down on the examination table again, and they gathered around me.

I hoped my facade of confidence wasn't the only thing holding them together. It was a good thing I was used to being the center of attention.

“We were in deep space travel,” I went on. “Most of the ship was sealed off and depressurized. There's not as much air as we think. We have to get to work. We don't have to rush. We don't need to panic, but we do need to get started. If we've overlooked something, the sooner we find out, the better. And things are far enough out of hand that I don't think we should be making irresponsible assumptions about how much time we've got.”

“We're with you,” Nils said. Deilani grimaced, but didn't protest. She probably had the highest test scores in the room, but Nils
was the one making rational choices. He understood that we were all in this together.

“With four of us we can make this work.” I pointed at Nils, making sure the gesture was all business. “You get the big job. Find a grav lift. Rip the recycler out of an escape craft, bring it here, get it running.” Escape craft designed for use in open space weren't any good to us on the surface, except for whatever we might be able to scavenge from them.

“It's not going to be at full efficiency.”

“Bring two if you have to. I'm not grading you. There aren't any points for Evagardian elegance here. There should be at least a dozen ECs on a ship this size. Do what you have to. And don't worry about being neat. Break what you have to break. They can bill me.”

“Yes, sir.” Nils took a deep breath and nodded.

“Private, I want you to collect survival packs. There'll be some by every airlock and loader, more by the ECs, and even more
in
the ECs. One's supposed to be enough for one person for a week—four of us, you do the math. If we end up with too much stuff in here, we can put some of it across the corridor so we won't have to go too far for it. Speaking of suit time, Lieutenant, find out if there's an EV charger. If there isn't, collect power packs and O
2
cartridges. I'll see about finding us a heat source.”

“No.”

“If it would help, you can think of these as orders.”

“I don't acknowledge you as my superior, and I am not letting you have the run of this ship alone.
And
,” she added, “you shouldn't move around until that booster thins.”

Touching. Venomous distrust mingled with concern for my well-
being. She was convinced I was a spy, and determined to hand me over alive. To her I was nothing but a big, juicy medal with her name on it.

Yet that didn't fully explain her animosity. She believed I was an enemy combatant, but she was treating it awfully personally.

Well, if this went well, we'd be stuck together for what could turn into a matter of weeks—so we'd have plenty of time to talk it over. I wasn't really looking forward to that. Maybe I could go into medical stasis or something.

For now, we had to build trust. It might reduce our productivity, but not as much as it would if things came to a head right here.

“All right,” I said, trying to sound conciliatory. “Secure me. We'll do business over the com. How's that?”

She glowered at me for an uncomfortably long period of time. “All right.”

“Less work for me,” I said, as Nils and Salmagard trooped out.

“Get used to how this feels,” Deilani said, strapping my wrist to the examination table. She engaged the patient safety catch. Even with one hand still loose, I wouldn't be able to get free unless I could grow another thumb.

“Give it a rest.” I shook my head. “By order . . .”