Catalyst

  “I am not going to—”

  “Dr. Wells!” Ekatya snapped. “I am giving you a direct order. Explain. What order did I sign that you circumvented?”

  Wells glared across the desk. “The one directing my research into an antidote for sartasin fever.”

  Ekatya waited, and when nothing else was forthcoming, she gestured for more. “Keep going.”

  “How can you—”

  Ekatya stood up, resting her knuckles on the edge of the desk. “Just tell me!”

  Dr. Wells stood as well, matching Ekatya’s stance and leaning forward. “I poured my heart and soul into that research,” she said furiously. “It was everything I love about medicine. And then I found out that sartasin fever was not what I’d been told. It was not an illness that had been devastating the most populated continent of Elonisus Prime. It was not threatening to break out into a sector-wide epidemic.” She lifted a hand, then slapped it back down. “It was a manufactured atrocity that existed nowhere but in the dark vaults of Fleet military ops. It was a weapon. One that couldn’t be released until Fleet could guarantee its own people’s safety from it. And don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

  Shocked, Ekatya pushed off from the desk. “I didn’t. I had nothing to do with—”

  “You signed the order!” Wells shouted. “You used me. I was just some faceless doctor to you, with a knack for putting together antidotes. Did it ever occur to you that some of us take our oaths seriously? That some of us might be sickened by the realization—” She stopped, making an odd choking noise, and dropped back into the chair.

  Ekatya sat with little more grace. “Sartasin fever,” she whispered to herself. There was something familiar about it. “Sartasin…no, it wasn’t a fever.”

  Wells scowled. “You’re damned right it wasn’t.”

  “No…I remember now. That was back when I first started working for Sholokhov. He didn’t call it a fever. He said it was a Voloth bioweapon under development. He had a team working on an antidote, but they weren’t getting anywhere.” Ekatya looked up, meeting a still-furious glare. “I signed an order directing the formation of a new team, four doctors from four different ships who had experience with infectious diseases.”

  “Yes, thank you very much for including me on your Death Team.”

  Ekatya ignored the dig, her mind going over the past year and a half. “But I never heard about it again. I forgot about it with everything else that was going on.”

  “You forgot?” Wells sputtered. “You nearly destroyed my career and you forgot?”

  “It wasn’t real,” Ekatya said slowly, the horror crawling up the back of her throat. “It couldn’t have been. There would have been follow-up. There was never any follow-up; that’s why I didn’t remember.”

  Wells was frowning. “Now you’re the one not making sense.”

  “He used both of us. I was told it was a Voloth bioweapon; you were told it was an epidemic. We were both lied to. And his fingerprints didn’t appear anywhere on it because I’m the one who signed the order.” She dropped her head into her hands. How many other orders had she signed on his behalf, not realizing what they were really for? She could barely contemplate it.

  Several seconds passed before she could bring herself to straighten and look Wells in the eye. “Dr. Wells, I am so sorry.”

  Wells watched her in silence, her gaze flicking from Ekatya’s face to her throat and back again. At last she said, “You really didn’t know.”

  “No, I didn’t. I swear it.”

  “You don’t have to.” Wells pointed to the side of her own throat. “Your heart is beating so hard that the carotid pulse is visible. Your face is flushed and your breathing is too shallow. I know the signs of stress.”

  “Oh, I’m stressed all right.” She had thought she was done with this. Damn that man and his long reach. Would she ever be free of him?

  “Protectorate Security? That’s who did this?”

  “Director Sholokhov, yes.”

  “It’s good to know the right name at last, so I can kill him when I get the chance.”

  Ekatya smiled in spite of the tension. “You didn’t kill me.”

  “I hadn’t had the chance yet.” Wells gave no answering smile, but her eyes were slightly crinkled and far more friendly. “I think I might owe you an apology, Captain.”

  “I owe you a far bigger one.” She should have suspected. She should have looked into it. A Voloth bioweapon that no one ever spoke of again; how could she not have realized? Sholokhov would never have let something like that go.

  And yet Sholokhov was the reason Dr. Wells was on this ship. He had all the morals of a slave trafficker, but he knew how to find and use talent. Dr. Wells had been on the top of his list for that research team. Ekatya hadn’t remembered how she knew of Wells’s reputation, but her name had been the first she had thought of when she was short-listing candidates for her chief surgeon.

  At least this time, she had given the doctor a choice.

  “Actually,” she said ruefully, “knowing now what I did to you, I have to commend you for your restraint. And your discretion—you could have spread that story far and wide.”

  “That wasn’t discretion,” Wells said. “That was a court order.”

  “The court-martial you avoided,” Ekatya said with a groan. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this. “What happened? How did you circumvent the order?”

  Wells sighed, her posture finally relaxing. “When I found out what sartasin really was, I organized the rest of my team. We all stopped work at the same time, citing a violation of our oath. I was hauled in as the team leader and ordered to finish the job.”

  “I’m guessing that didn’t go well.”

  “I refused. There may have been colorful language.”

  Ekatya could easily envision it.

  “That’s when they threatened court-martial. I told them to go right ahead, and I would blow their sordid little secret wide open. I already had a list of reporters. They eventually backed down and cleared my record, but slapped me with a suppression order, which I’m violating right now.”

  “No, you’re not. If my name is on the order forming that team, then I already know about this. In theory.”

  “Good point. So I’m still in compliance, not that I care.” Wells picked up a small metal rod from her desk and began twirling it between her fingers. “I went on a year-long deep space mission just to get myself back together. It turns out that being lied to and threatened with court-martial is a little stressful.”

  “I’m beginning to realize that you’re a master of understatement.”

  Her mouth quirked up in a quick half-smile. “Then I was recruited by the captain who also defied Fleet, who did what she thought was right instead of what she’d been ordered to do. I thought things were turning around. I was thrilled to be serving with you.” She dropped the rod back on the desk, the clang when it hit reverberating around the office. “Until one of my old teammates called me and said, ‘Do you know who your captain is?’ On fucking launch day. What a joke.” She looked up, pinning Ekatya with her stare. “I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t imagine that you could be the same person who signed that order. So he sent me a copy, and I compared the signature with my transfer order.”

  Her expression told Ekatya exactly how she had felt when the signatures matched. Betrayed, trapped, furious—all the things she herself had felt when Sholokhov gave her the arrest warrant for Lhyn.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry to say that I’m both of those captains. The one who signed that order and the one who defied Fleet at Alsea. But I only did one of those things knowingly.”

  Wells let her head fall back on her chair. “This has been a sewage sump of a week. And now I’m apparently a spy.” She gave a derisive laugh, then raised her head. “But at least I’m starting to believe you
won’t try to force me into bioweapons research.”

  “Never,” Ekatya said firmly. “Dr. Wells, I recruited you because your record is stellar and your reputation is even better. I wanted the best, and that is precisely what I got. I didn’t expect the attitude, but I’m hoping that might improve now.”

  “It depends.” Wells picked up the rod again, focusing on it as she asked, “How could you work for that man?”

  “Because he’s better at coercion than the people who tried to force you back to your research.”

  Wells looked up sharply. “You’re serious? What did he have on you? Wait, don’t answer that. You must have given him a whole platter of threats to choose from after what you did at Alsea.”

  “He didn’t need any of those. He has no problems destroying innocent lives to get what he wants.” She ignored Wells’s intake of breath and continued, “But that’s not relevant at the moment. Sholokhov is not a man to be crossed, and he has a long memory and an even longer reach. You crossed him. I haven’t made him entirely happy, either. He arranged his revenge on you by framing you as his spy, knowing it would tarnish you for as long as you served on this ship. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he arranged for your teammate to find out who signed those orders on launch day. He wanted us to hate each other.”

  “But why? What was the point?”

  “You said it yourself. You were thrilled to serve with me. He took that away from you. I was thrilled to think I was out of his reach, and he took that from me as well.”

  Wells shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. All of that for something so petty?”

  “You don’t know Sholokhov. Petty is not in his vocabulary. You cross him, you pay.”

  “I didn’t even know he was the one I was crossing. And it was more than a year ago!”

  “Long memory,” Ekatya reminded her.

  “Stars above,” Wells said quietly. “I’m grateful you saw through it, then.” She twirled the rod a few more times, then tossed it on the desk and held out her hand. “Captain Serrado? It’s nice to meet you. I know all about your actions at Alsea, and I’m happy to be serving with you.”

  Ekatya shook her hand. “Thank you. And I’ve learned quite a bit about how seriously you take your oath. I’m delighted to have you as my chief surgeon. People like you make Fleet what it’s meant to be.”

  Wells smiled at her for the first time since she had come aboard. It lit up her eyes and changed her entire demeanor. “Thank you.”

  “So you’re only happy to be serving with me? Not thrilled?”

  The smile dimmed. “It’s been a hard few days. I’m not sure I can get that back.”

  Ekatya nodded her understanding as she rose, but halfway to the door she stopped and turned. “Don’t let him take that away from you. At least one of us can still win.”

  She could feel Wells’s gaze on her back as she walked out.

  CHAPTER 26:

  Transition out

  “Full stop,” Ekatya said.

  “Full stop,” Lieutenant Scarp repeated, fingers dancing over his control panel.

  The deep throb of the surf engines slowed, the alteration in frequency only now bringing the sound out of the background. Ekatya was so accustomed to the faint rumble of surf engines at normal power levels that she didn’t hear it anymore—until it changed. Then she could hardly hear anything else.

  “Activating upper display.” She tapped the display control embedded in her armrest, then the ship’s all-call. “All personnel, prepare to exit base space.”

  Most of the bridge crew looked up as the ivory ceiling and walls seemed to vanish, replaced by the ghostly mists of base space crowding in on them. In this layer beneath normal space, where distances were compressed by a factor of ten thousand, the expansive openness of space was replaced by a suffocating, pressing murk that glowed in baleful reds and oranges.

  Though the undulation of the layers and streamers was too slow to be detected in normal time, Ekatya had the eerie sense that she could see them moving out of the corner of her eye. On her first trip through base space, her captain had kept the display on for the duration of the trip. She had spent two days jumping at shadows, always trying to turn her head quickly enough to catch the movement that she felt sure was there. It was a common reaction, and they had all been warned ahead of time, but intellectual understanding could not overcome instinct. Eventually, her brain adapted and stopped wasting energy on a startle response, but the sense of something just out of sight remained.

  What unsettled newbies the most, however, was not the false movement but the light. Unlike normal space, where light had detectable sources and traveled in predictable ways, base space glowed in every direction. The staggering levels of radiation, ten thousand times higher than that of normal space, were most likely responsible due to their interaction with base space matter. But no one had ever been able to prove it. Base space matter defied all attempts at capture and containment, and too many lives had been lost in the effort. It could only be studied through passive observation, which yielded nominal results since most traditional physics did not apply outside of normal space.

  There were no stars in base space, no planets or asteroids or even gases that they could detect. There was no means of establishing navigational routes other than the network of relay stations with quantum locator beacons. The Phoenix was stopped in front of one now, a silver cylinder half a kilometer tall, narrowed at one end while the other sat at the center of a two-layer ring bristling with instruments and antennae. On the bridge display, its position at the bow of the ship translated to a location directly above the engineering stations.

  “Section chiefs, check in,” Ekatya said. She watched the virtual screen hovering above her chair as the data came in. Medical was ready, so was botanics, engineering, weapons… This would take a few minutes, she knew, and crew services would be last. The barber shops, recreation centers, bars, restaurants, tailors, cleaners, and other service establishments could not lock themselves down as quickly as the rest of the ship.

  She could easily imagine the scene outside the bridge right now, having experienced it many times before. It was controlled chaos out there as personnel shut down their equipment, dumped whatever meal they were eating, or ran to get into bed. Blue lights would be flashing in every room and corridor, a visual warning of what was about to occur. The exit from base space, just like the entrance into it, could be violent. And even when it went smoothly, it was still a physiological trauma.

  With a tap to the left armrest, she sent her chair in a counter-clockwise turn, checking the readiness of her bridge officers. Below her, in the inside ring of the central dais, Commander Lokomorra sat at the executive officer’s station. Lieutenant Scarp was beside him, his hand resting on the pilot control stick though the ship was not moving. Navigation was next, and the final station in the ring was main weapons control, currently staffed by Warrant Officer Roris.

  Two steps below, the exterior ring held eight more critical stations. All of the other bridge stations lined the walls, leaving the floor entirely bare other than the central dais. The layout was dictated by necessity, given the function of the deck as the lower bridge display, but Ekatya secretly appreciated the aesthetics of it.

  She completed her turn, satisfied that everyone on the dais had their harnesses attached. Another glance at her virtual screen showed that only crew services and operations had yet to check in. It was time, then. Nearly everyone else on the bridge had done it as soon as the navigation officer announced their arrival at the relay station.

  She pulled the vial from her chest pocket, shook a tiny green bead into her hand, and placed it under her tongue. The fizzing sensation confirmed that a dose of foramine was now entering her bloodstream; within one minute it would attain full potency and shield her from the worst effects of exit transition. She was not fond of the side effects—a slight fuzziness in
her thought processes, a small decrease in reaction time—so she always put it off until the last moment.

  Three minutes later she received confirmation from the last two sections. Tapping the all-call, she said, “All sections report ready. Brace for transition.” She closed the channel and spun her chair to look over the engineering station. “Commander Yst, initiate the pikamet beam.”

  “Initiating.”

  As in normal space, the pikamet beam was not visible. But its effect on base space matter certainly was. In a perfectly straight line reaching out from the bow of the Phoenix, the mists and streamers glowed a brilliant white. Soon they were so bright that the automatic display filter activated, preventing temporary blindness in the bridge crew.

  And there it was. After all the time of feeling that she could see movement if she just turned quickly enough, now it was happening for real. The base space matter was shifting, slowly at first, then more and more rapidly until it roiled, the currents carrying it in all directions away from the pikamet beam. Utter darkness now marked the path of the beam, an emptiness that expanded as she watched.

  “Interspace portal at twenty percent,” Yst reported.

  A fighter would have already gone through by now, but a ship the size of the Phoenix needed a much larger portal. Ekatya waited, listening to the updates and watching the emptiness grow. She had done this more times than she could count, but it still felt a little bit like magic.

  At ninety percent, she pulled the brace bars out of her armrests and snapped them into their vertical position.

  At one hundred percent, she wrapped her hands around the brace bars, rested her head against her seat, and said, “Take us in, Lieutenant Scarp.”

  Since her chair was facing the portal on the display, she had the experience of sliding feet first into the tunnel of emptiness. It was slightly masochistic on her part, but she could never resist.

  The compression started at the wall of the bridge, where the display wrinkled, then crumpled, then was sucked down a tiny hole. Ekatya watched her engineering staff crumple and vanish next. The distortion raced across the deck straight toward her, taking the bridge with it, until only the central dais remained intact.