The False Admiral (9 page)

“It's weird,” Deilani said, narrowing her eyes.

“What is?”

“You. You don't come off that way.”

“What way?”

She gazed at me levelly. “Like someone who'd be acting like this.”

I took her meaning. “How rude,” I said. “Just because I don't conform to your narrow view of conventional masculinity, I'm still a red-blooded Evagardian admiral.”

She snorted. “Even if you were, she's a negotiator.”

“By choice, I'm sure. What if I told you that only added to her charm?”

“It's definitely the drugs. I want to shoot you so bad right now.”

“If I was a spy, bringing me in dead would still get you a little career boost. But if I'm not, you'll be executed.”

“You think you have some card to play.”

I sighed. “Lieutenant,” I said. “You are going to make some commander a very fine executive officer someday. But not today. So it looks like that marble crate that Tremma accessed wasn't vaporized by the shuttle—it's on the other side of the bay. Want to go see what's really in it?”

THE crate was standing open.

“By the Founder,” Deilani breathed as we approached it. We could clearly see what was inside.

I was at a loss for words. I'd suspected this, but it still took my breath away.

We were standing in the vast cargo bay, surrounded by tall stacks of white crates. My head was spinning, and what I was seeing didn't help.

“This much juice could put a hole in the hull the size of a . . .”

“That's not marble, Admiral!”

“I can see that, Lieutenant!”

It was interesting to see Deilani flustered about something other than me.

The crates contained military ordnance: one of Evagard's more
potent explosives, 14-14. It was packed into man-size charges, probably intended for leveling buildings, or putting holes in space stations. As I looked closer, I saw they were intended for ship-to-ship missiles. There was enough 14-14 here to decommission a dreadnaught.

Normally you would see weapons like this behind a lot of security. Guards, systems, heavy doors. There hadn't been anything keeping this crate shut but a palm lock.

I licked my lips. “Ensign, how we doing?”

“I think I can rig a recycler, sir,” Nils replied over the com.

“Private?”

“I've broken into an O
2
reserve on the fourth deck, Admiral. I'm going to start moving them to Medical. I've also found some pressure jugs that we can use for water.”

“You're the best. Carry on.”

Deilani was looking at me, but I wasn't sure what she expected me to say. I cleared my throat. “So, Lieutenant—what did Captain Tremma want with this, ah, marble? Why would he want to take explosives outside? What is there here to blow up?”

“I was hoping you could tell me, Admiral.”

We gazed at each other.

“I don't even have a guess.” I was being truthful, and she could tell.

“Is that what all of this is? Weapons?” She turned around to look out at the bay, at the stacks of crates.

“I prefer not to comment.”

She gave me a flat look. “It's a little late for you to play innocent.”

“It's not my ship.” I shrugged. “But yeah, probably. There was just a war on, after all. But that's not our problem right now.”

We looked around the container. “The airlock cycles only once, and they die burning. It doesn't make sense,” Deilani said.

“Why were they going outside in the first place? Well—now that we know about that damage, that's probably why. There may be more damage we don't know about. Something they had to address.”

“With 14-14
?
”

“That's where it catches, isn't it?” I rubbed at the stubble on my chin, as if that could help me make peace with it.

“You really don't know what this is about?” The look she gave me was almost pleading.

“You're just now getting that?”

“I guess so.” She looked down at her gloved hands, perhaps wishing she could bite her nails. She was scared. So was I.

“Private, anything on the scanner?”

“No, Admiral.”

“I don't think there will be. We've confirmed there were only supposed to be six people aboard, and the computers weren't
always
down—particularly the security—so you can ease up if you like. I think we're dealing with faulty equipment.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“Nils?”

“Sir?”

“You think it's possible the bay loaders might be on a different log than the personnel airlocks?”

A slight pause. “It wouldn't surprise me, sir. This ship has been extensively repurposed at enormous cost. If someone was going to cut corners, it would be with nonessential systems.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” I folded my arms and looked at Deilani. “Suppose Tremma and his PO weren't leaving.”

She frowned, considering it. “What? You think they were coming back in?”

I shrugged. “It's possible. Look.” I pointed at an empty rack inside the crate. “There's a charge missing. They opened this cargo; they must have done something with it.”

“You think they blew the ship open?” Her eyes widened.

“No—no, I'm sure they didn't. That damage wasn't caused by explosives.”

Deilani grimaced. “So they took it somewhere.”

“They must've.”

“But what did they want to do with it?”

“I don't know, but I'm dying to find out. Private, Ensign—take whatever you're lining up to Medical, then get down here to the cargo bay. We're taking a walk.”

“Belay that,” Deilani cut in. For a moment I thought I had another fight on my hands. “We can't open the hangar doors or cycle the airlocks without power. That hull breach is the only way out. We'll have to meet up there,” she said.

I let out a covert sigh of relief. “She's right. Shall we?”

“Let's go.”

We left the cargo bay, but it was a long walk. I looked at the containers that were intact and still stacked after the blast and swallowed hard. If that crate of explosive charges had been a little closer to the shuttle, we'd all be part of a small, but very smooth glass crater right now.

The wreckage of the shuttle was ugly. I'd seen an overloaded spacecraft go up before. It never really looked like an accident, but with no explosives used, you could never be sure. We'd been lucky. Deilani had to ease up a little now; she knew I couldn't possibly be responsible for all of it.

Salmagard was waiting for us on the observation deck in engineering, gazing down through the viewport at the dark, lifeless reactor. She had her arms folded across her abdomen, not exactly hugging herself, but it was a quiet reminder that the ship wasn't getting any warmer.

Nils showed up about five minutes later. I filled them both in.

We needed to have a look for ourselves. Getting out of the ship and onto the planet's surface wouldn't be easy. We'd have to climb down the side of the freighter, then make our way a considerable distance to the aft lander, where we'd see what we could find out. What had Tremma done with those explosives? The only way to find out would be to pick up his trail.

The deck shuddered. It was subtle, but I felt a distinct vibration in the metal underfoot.

“Did anyone feel that just now?” I asked, looking down. I felt a twinge of queasiness, and swallowed.

“Feel what?” Deilani asked.

“That shake.”

“Yes, Admiral. There was a tremor.”

“Thank you, Private.”

Deilani muffled a snort.

“Add seismic activity to our list of circumstances beyond our control,” I said, ignoring her. It had been only a mild tremor, but it was still enough to stir my memory.

We engaged our helmets and dragged the door open. The cling currents in our gloves were intended to hold us to bulkheads in zero-g, but they'd work well enough for this. I swung out onto the side of the freighter, mindful of the limited visibility. I kept one hand on the metal,
raising and lowering the current through my glove to give me a controlled slide down. I'd have gone faster, but I couldn't see anything. The green mist was thick, and there could be anything below. Whatever was down there, I didn't want to hit it too fast.

Travel the galaxy enough, and you see some strange weather. But this mist, this cloying green mist was wrong. There was something off about it.

The dark ground came up out of nowhere, and I slowed my descent as the hull abruptly ended. There were still five meters to the ground. I jumped to the landing strut, and slid down that.

When I touched down it was immediately clear that I was standing on the same stuff Deilani had found in the tear in the hull. It looked black under my suit light. The green mist swirled in a way that made it difficult not to see movement everywhere.

The silent surface of the planet was decidedly eerie. At first the isolation offered by our predicament had been calming, even a comfort to me. Not anymore.

We were all a long way from home.

I backed away from the side of the ship as the mist swirled around me. The green tendrils seemed to creep over my body, and irrationally I wanted to brush them away.

Beyond the mist above, the sky was dark. There were large, hard points of light among the stars, but they did little to illuminate the planet's black surface. We had at least a couple of suns on our hands, but depending on what time of day this was, it seemed as though they weren't very motivated.

I could see the graduates' lights in the mist as they climbed down the side of the freighter. Salmagard was the first to reach the
bottom. She landed with grace that was amplified by her form-fitting white EV suit, and the way the mist seemed to soften everything. Deilani touched down next, then Nils. What Deilani lacked in experience, she made up for in determination. Unlike the lieutenant, Nils had nothing to prove, and he did not hurry down.

Salmagard had probably trained extensively for this kind of unconventional maneuvering; for Nils and Deilani that training would've been more cursory. Both the ensign's and the lieutenant's EV suits were marred by smudges from the hull, but Salmagard's was still pristine.

“Is the channel good?”

“Minor interference,” Nils reported. “We can just boost it a little. It's not bad.”

“We should've brought surface gear,” Deilani said, looking up from the black ground. She knelt, running her gloved palm over the peculiar mineral. “It's irresponsible to just walk around out here like this. This stuff could eat through an EV for all we know. There's no sampling, no workup on this. What if this is acidic, or it reacts to synthetics?”

“Then we're in trouble. But we're not here to survey the place. Visibility's about three, maybe four meters. Watch your feet. Private, are you getting anything?”

“No, Admiral.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

Because of the limited visibility, it was difficult to see just how massive the freighter was, or even its true shape. I knew it was just a very long box, but being unable to see its form in the mist made it seem bigger. The vessel was half a kilometer long, far from the
largest ship out there—but still substantial enough to look impressive. It loomed over us like a mountain.

Not all Ganraen ships were this uninviting. The ones I was used to certainly weren't, though the Commonwealth had a long way to go if it wanted to catch up to Evagard.

I led the trainees underneath the landers, making for the main airlocks. The outside of the ship was no more attractive than the inside. When it was new, the freighter had probably been a light gray. That had been a long time ago. Now it was covered in burns and corrosion, its uneven surfaces reduced to a mottled brown and black.

If there were clues about Tremma's sojourn on the surface, this was where we'd find them. Overhead, the bottom of the freighter looked badly neglected. Where the battered and blackened metal wasn't openly burned, it was chipped, dented, and pitted. This ship had not had an easy life.

I could see the trainees looking up at the plasma burns, and other indications that Tremma's old tub had taken more eventful trails than the average cargo freighter. Deilani had already seen the weapons being stored in containers that were, by Salmagard's own word, not intended for ordnance. The damage was done. Not that it mattered. Captain Tremma was dead.

I doubted the old freighter would ever leave this world.

I occasionally lost sight of the trainees in the mist; it was particularly dark beneath the ship.

“Wait a minute,” Deilani said. I looked around but didn't see her.

“What is it?”

“Mineral formation. Have a look.”

I spotted someone's light and followed it. The formation was
nothing more than a thick spike of rock about a meter high. A short distance away was another, this one half as tall.

“You're right,” I said. “That is unusual.” It stood to reason that Deilani would find this interesting, but I didn't. We needed to find out what Tremma'd been up to with those explosives so we could get back inside, back to conserving our suit energy and oxygen. We didn't have time to be explorers.

“It's brittle,” she added.

“Don't break other people's planets.”

“Shut up.”

I'd have thought of a retort, but I'd almost fallen over an abandoned grav cart. “Guys, on me.”

Deilani hurried over and put her gloved hand on the cart's handle. “They left this out here?”

“They must have used it to move the 14-14.” I pointed. “That way.” The cart had left a clear trail in the thin shale covering the ground. We followed it until we hit a wall of crumbled stone scattered beneath the lip of the freighter's lower buffers, and even piled up against the hull—farther than we could see through the mist. It was as though there'd been an avalanche of the stuff.

Deilani was at a loss. So was I.

The trail led on, skirting a steep hill. I wanted to climb the hill, but the mist was all but opaque. The climb would be a foolish risk; a perforated suit at this point would put a real damper on things.

Instead we followed the trail around the hill. The black ground was cracked beneath our feet, and it sometimes felt unstable to me, though no one else seemed bothered.

The trail curved away from the hillside, and it was all we would
have to find our way back to the ship. We could home in on one another, but not on the freighter itself.

We found another formation, this one far larger. Like the first two we'd seen, it was round at its base. The diameter had to be nearly ten meters. The green mist was too heavy to see exactly how tall it was. Based on the proportions of the ones we'd seen earlier, I guessed it was about fifty meters high.

These weren't spikes—they were spires.

We marveled at it. Only the base of the spire was visible, but it was easy enough to imagine what it might look like if we could see it clearly. Something nagged at me. It seemed more like a structure than a formation, but there were no tool marks. Deilani seemed certain it was natural.