“Tell me about that second,” Wells said. “You’ve mentioned it twice now.”
“Because I can’t stop seeing it. He was ahead of me in the hall, looking for the stairs, and when he found them he just…opened the door.” She held her forefinger and thumb apart. “I was this close. Literally this close to catching his shoulder and pulling him back, but his head—”
She stopped. That was not something she would say out loud. In her report she had used clinical terms, but there was no clinical way to speak of what she had seen. Or felt.
“What would have happened if you had been one second faster? Would you both have died?”
“No, I—” Again she stopped, her mind going over the possibilities. One second faster and yes, she might have been beside Bellows as the door cracked open, exposing her instead of him. Two seconds faster and she could have kept the door shut, and what then?
She would have spotted the thermal signals and made an action plan. They could have retreated, or they could have opened the door and tossed in the stun beads—no, they wouldn’t have done that preemptively. The stairwell would have carried the sound through the entire building and alerted every soldier in the place.
She imagined the retreat and only then, while thinking it through more logically, did she realize those soldiers had likely been waiting in ambush. They hadn’t been there when Ekatya scanned the corridor before taking her team down it. Which meant they had arrived afterward and probably heard them moving down the hall. Had they heard their prey retreating, they might have attacked. They had Protectorate weaponry she hadn’t known about and no compunction about shooting without warning. Ekatya’s team had nonlethal weapons plus four leadslingers, one of which was carried by an ensign who had no idea how to use it.
It could have been a bloodbath, avoidable only if one of her team had seen the danger in time and thrown stun beads. The fact was, Ensign Bellows had blocked the door and kept her and the others safe. His death had bought their lives, and she would never know if it could have happened differently.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Until now, I never got past that second.”
Wells nodded. “May I tell you a story?”
“Please do. I’d appreciate thinking about something else.”
Wells tipped her glass to her mouth, then held it out and looked at it as if it had offended her. “Thought I had some left.” She set the glass on the table and made herself more comfortable. “I was an apprentice, my first time out in space, full of the confidence that only comes with holding a medical degree, being first in my class, and having no idea how little that really meant.”
Ekatya smiled. “Sounds familiar so far.”
“We all go through it, don’t we? Anyway, our ship was hit by the Voloth. They got through our shields and breached the hull in four places. We managed to escape, but the injuries that poured into our tiny little medbay…” She paused. “That medbay would have fit into my lobby. One deck’s worth of it. We had stretchers lined up head to toe in the corridor, and in my memory that line went on forever. The real doctors were up to their elbows in blood—one was doing the initial triage and the other the most demanding surgeries. I led a team that received the patients sent to us by the triage officer and ended up with two patients I couldn’t prioritize. One had a terrible wound, but the surgery to repair it would be short. The other had a less critical wound that needed a longer surgery, but he was in slightly worse condition. I thought, I don’t have to choose; I can do them both. I’ll save the trooper with the quick surgery and still have time to save the other before he goes over the line.”
“I’m guessing that didn’t work out.”
“The second one seized on my operating table, and I couldn’t bring him back. I ran out of time. I kept telling myself that if I’d had one more minute, just one more minute, I could have saved them both.”
“Or one more second,” Ekatya said. “How long did that haunt you?”
“A while. It did wonders to puncture my ego.” Wells ran a hand through her hair, looking somewhere into the middle distance as she said, “We had a team meeting afterward, and individual debriefs. My supervisor assured me that I did everything according to my training. But that didn’t help. I lost my edge, was second-guessing everything…until he finally pulled me into his office and said he wanted his star apprentice back. He said we could go over the situation again, but we wouldn’t find a procedural mistake, because my real mistake was in thinking I had the power to choose both of those patients. That was what set me up for failure.” She turned her head and caught Ekatya’s gaze. “You didn’t have the power to choose, Captain. You can’t do it all.”
“Power and choice,” Ekatya mused. “It always comes down to that, doesn’t it? We want the power so we can make the choices. And then we get it and realize we still can’t make them.”
“Yes, we can. And we have. You and I have both made choices, big ones. We just can’t make all of them.” She leaned forward, took Ekatya’s forgotten glass out of her hand, and set it on the table next to her own.
“I thought we were slowing down?” Ekatya asked as she watched her shake the bottle.
“Fuck slow. I have an injector of kastrophenol.” Wells filled the glasses.
“I can respect a doctor who’s prepared. What’s the toast?”
“To the psychological services you’ll never ask for.”
Ekatya raised her eyebrows as she accepted her glass. “The ones you’re here to provide?”
“Oh, I can’t do that. Wrong degree. But I can dispense medication.” Wells tapped the bottle.
“In that case, I propose a different toast. To the last excellent choice I made: bringing you on board.”
Wells almost fumbled her glass, but her smile was brilliant. “And my choice to accept.”
The iceflame was easier on her throat this time. As they set their glasses on the table, Wells said, “It was time for me to move on anyway. Captain Chmielek and I were always butting heads.”
Ekatya coughed, then let go of a full-throated laugh. “I’m so glad I could give you a different experience.”
CHAPTER 32:
Decryption
The memorial for Ensign Bellows was held in Deck Zero two days after his death. As Ekatya exited the lift, she remembered looking at the schematics for the Caphenon and how baffled she had been by the idea of a deck that had no number. The bridge was physically on the second deck of the ship, but it was designated as deck one. The top deck of Pulsar ships was entirely devoted to a park built around a hill in the center: a clever disguise of the domed ceiling and upper display of the bridge one deck below. But it was a sacrificial deck, outside the battle hull, and was given no deck number.
The transparent hull over the park was covered with retractable hullskin, which could be rolled back. It was usually kept retracted during travel in normal space, making the park by far the most airy and inviting place on the ship. With such a spectacular view, it would have felt that way had it been nothing more than a storage bay with a metal deck and crates stacked in rows. Instead, it was a beautifully landscaped garden, designed in such a way that a person walking through it could never see the whole thing at once. The paths meandered, changing sight lines constantly, offering a sense of space and privacy invaluable to a crew for whom both were precious resources. Though the deck it occupied was one of the smallest on the ship, the design made it seem much larger.
The official name for the park was the Pulsar Garden Module, but no one called it that. They called it Deck Zero.
As Ekatya had expected, the memorial was sparsely attended. Besides her section chiefs and the members of the landing team, only a dozen others came. Commander Kenji gave a touching eulogy, despite having known Bellows for three weeks, and every member of the landing team had something to say.
When Ekatya rose to give her own eulogy, she note
d that the group had increased in size. Crew members who were relaxing in the garden wandered over to see what was happening and stayed out of respect. By the time the five-piece band played “Another Star Falling,” the traditional lament for Fleet memorials, the crowd numbered around seventy. The sight of all those heads bowed in respect as the last notes faded brought Ekatya closer to tears than she had been since the day he died.
Lieutenant Kitt broke Frank’s decryption in five days. She seemed embarrassed to have beaten Ensign Bellows’s time and hastened to explain that he probably had not been able to work on it to the exclusion of all other duties the way she had.
“I’ve watched all of the messages,” she said, her mass of tight curls bobbing as she sat down in front of Ekatya’s desk. “Elin Frank is in most of them. He didn’t want the Great Leader to have real-time communication, but he did want him to be able to send messages faster than light. So he dumped a quantum com relay in high orbit and gave him a pad that routes messages to it. The relay stored the messages, and Frank checked them through the nearest base space relay.”
“So the Great Leader could call, but he might not get an answer right away,” Ekatya said.
“Exactly. We were right. He was stalling, waiting for his message to be received.”
“How often did Frank check those messages?”
“About every other day. Which means that if the Great Leader hadn’t talked to Frank the day before we arrived, he would have expected to hear from him that day or the next.”
“Which would have made his stalling a perfectly reasonable tactic.” Ekatya frowned. “But it also means that Frank has known about our arrival for five days.”
“Not necessarily. Once I realized how those messages were being sent, I asked engineering to scan for the relay in Halaama’s orbit. It’s old tech. I guess it makes sense that Frank wouldn’t use the expensive stuff for a disposable relay.” She looked disapproving at the idea of using anything less than the best.
“You jacked it, didn’t you?”
Kitt’s expression became smug. “This morning. It wasn’t hard. He spent a fortune on super-advanced encryption and cheaped out on a relay.”
“And?” Ekatya prompted.
“Sorry, I was thinking about—never mind. Frank hasn’t picked up the messages. Not since we arrived in the system.”
Sholokhov. It had to be Sholokhov. He had probably jammed all non-Fleet access to the base space relay the moment she reported to him. And of course he hadn’t told her.
She stifled a sigh. “I might be asking you to jam that orbital relay, depending on what I find out later today. In the meantime, give me the highlights of those messages.”
“I can do better than that.” Kitt slid a data wand across Ekatya’s desk. “These are the most important ones. The one you really need to see is at the top of the list. I’ve cued it to the relevant part. And, um…I should warn you that you’re about to be sick.”
Ekatya paused in the act of picking up the wand. “How sick?”
“This is bad, Captain. Really bad. I let the Great Leader touch my cheek during that greeting ceremony, and now I feel like I should scrape off my first layer of skin.”
Steeling herself, Ekatya inserted the end of the wand into her deskpad and tapped the first file that appeared.
Her monitor lit up with Elin Frank’s round face. “I’m pleased to hear that my samples have met your expectations,” he said. Though it was his voice, his mouth movements did not match the Halaaman words. She wondered how much he had paid to have a translator built with his own voice pattern. “Yes, we can handle your order, but at the moment we only have four thousand blasters in stock. We can manufacture the other six thousand in two of your tanaala.”
Ekatya drew in a breath, but Kitt made a keep going motion.
“As for the bio-force missiles,” Frank continued, “I’m sure you understand that an order of that size is not something we can produce in a few tanaala. It will take more time, but be assured that we will fill it. I’ll be sending a representative to finalize our agreement, and look forward to a long partnership with the Halaamans.”
Kitt sliced her hand through the air, and Ekatya paused the playback. They looked at each other in mutual horror.
“They’re going to bomb the Nylakians into extinction,” Ekatya said.
Kitt nodded soberly. “And that long partnership he mentioned? They agreed to mining rights once Nylak has no one left to claim them. The Halaamans will do all the work, and Frank will take thirty percent. The Great Leader called it a small price to pay for the assured security of his people.”
“Assured security,” Ekatya repeated. “What a lovely euphemism for planetary genocide. I wonder how much of this is really about security, and how much is about getting their hands on Nylak’s resources. They’re a Voloth race in the making.”
“Captain, we have to stop this.”
“I suspect it’s already being stopped. This is excellent work, Lieutenant. Thank you for making it happen so quickly. I’ll take it from here.”
She wasted no time calling Sholokhov.
CHAPTER 33:
Meetings and greetings
Six days later, a cargo ship emerged from base space at the relay nearest the Lexihari system and ran straight into a Protectorate warship already firing shield breakers. The cargo crew were likely still recovering from exit transition nausea when they lost their shields and found themselves facing a coldly angry Fleet captain, who told them to evacuate their ship or she would blow it up with them inside.
Ekatya had planned this in advance with Lokomorra and Roris. After the loss of Ensign Bellows, none of them wanted to take the slightest risk in this interception. They ruled out a boarding party even if the cargo crew stood down, given their own skeleton crew and lack of opportunity for proper training drills. Instead they made use of the two best weapons they had: surprise and intimidation.
The cargo crew were soon floating a safe distance from their ship, corralled in an orbital delivery vehicle guarded by four fighters. Ten more fighters swarmed the ship, taking readings and determining its weapons status and the likelihood of any additional crew hiding inside.
Before sending over a security team, Ekatya called the cargo crew and informed them that if even one person had stayed behind for sabotage, the charges against the rest would go from illegal weapons sales—which already had a long minimum sentence—to attacking a Fleet warship while committing illegal weapons sales. The latter would land them in a maximum security asteroid prison for life.
The jowly crew leader, who Ekatya did not think deserved the title of captain, assured her that she had their full cooperation. In fact, he offered, perhaps they could strike a deal? He had information on their employer that she might find useful.
Ekatya cut the call, looked down from her bridge chair to meet Lokomorra’s eyes, and smiled.
The Phoenix made quite a splash when it appeared at Quinton Shipyards with a captured ship at its side and a brig full of arms dealers. Ekatya’s crew spilled off the ship flush with victory and unspent wages and proceeded to make a different sort of impression as they lorded their experience over the crew members who had been stuck at the shipyards, waiting for their return.
“Some shakedown cruise,” Admiral Tsao said when Ekatya called her. “Sholokhov can’t be anything but happy with you after this.”
Ekatya held back her first reaction. “I won’t presume to know what Director Sholokhov thinks. But I truly hope you can expedite our conversion to active status.”
Tsao’s eyes glinted. “I’ll light their tailpipes on fire. But I’m afraid the inspections do take time.”
“I know. I just want to minimize the bureaucratic aspects.”
“Now that I can do.”
Ekatya had asked Lhyn to time her arrival for the day after the Phoenix returned, knowing that her first
day would be insanely busy. Between turning over the prisoners, meeting individually with her missing section chiefs, and going through the interminable bureaucratic shuffling necessary to get the inspectors on board and set up with the appropriate Phoenix crew members and stations, she hardly had two minutes to herself.
But when she stood in the shuttle bay the next morning and saw Lhyn for the first time in forty-two days, she nearly staggered with the sudden absence of the ache in her chest. In the doorway of the shuttle, Lhyn stopped and rubbed her own chest, her eyes wide as they stared at each other.
Then Lhyn dropped her bag and ran down the ramp, laughing as she thumped into Ekatya’s arms. Their kiss went on so long that someone in the bay whistled, which seemed to give the other crew members courage. A chorus of whistles, whoops, and applause made them break apart with breathless laughter.
“I like this new thing of not having to hide our relationship from your crew.” Lhyn’s green eyes were bright and joyful, and Ekatya could not tear her gaze away from them.
“I forgot how beautiful you are,” she said. “It’s not the same over a quantum com.”
“Shippers, no. Never the same.” Lhyn pulled her back into a fierce hug. “We’re not doing this again. Ever again, Ekatya, do you understand?”
“I do. That ache… I got so used to it that I feel strange now.”