Captain Navarre: the Science Officer, #12, page 1
CAPTAIN NAVARRE
THE SCIENCE OFFICER
VOLUME 12
BLAZE WARD
KNOTTED ROAD PRESS
CONTENTS
Ninovskaya
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Valadris
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Valadris Port
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Outbound
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Syntha
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Kovalev’s Palace
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Surayya
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Captain Navarre
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
Part X
Epilogue
Read More
About the Author
Also by Blaze Ward
About Knotted Road Press
NINOVSKAYA
PART 1
Zakhar knew that he’d keep a lower profile if he didn’t wear his Bryce Academy ring in public, but that was the one thing he refused to give up. It might be the past, but it was his past.
Djamila had even talked him into wearing mufti tonight, which just felt wrong. But for her, he would.
Corduroy slacks in a shade that split the difference between maroon and indigo. Dress tunic in a salmon that shouldn’t have worked, but did. He’d have never made that decision, certainly, but Adrian Ahmad, one of the stevedores who handled cargo, was also something of a fashion expert, and had assured him that he could pull it off.
So he’d let Djamila take him out on a date. Onto the station, even. In public. Dressed like this.
He felt like a rooster strutting onto a stage.
Didn’t help that Adrian had apparently also done a number for Djamila. On Djamila.
Zakhar’s jaw had dropped, the first time he saw it. She’d blushed to the tips of her ears and down as low as the front of what that dress showed, which was far more than usual for his dragoon.
Dove gray. Silk looking, but that didn’t mean anything with the fabric printers that they had aboard Excalibur. From the strings tying things, you started on one hip, wrapping around her muscular bottom to the other hip, then across her belly and up at an angle that captured one breast but not the other. Under the arm, then up and across her shoulders, leaving a slash of flesh across her shoulder blades. Down across the front of her left shoulder and back to the starting point, tied in front with just enough knot that it wouldn’t accidentally come undone over dinner, or if they went dancing later.
Still, it would be like peeling an orange to get her out of it. Probably even more fun, too.
Her eyes held that promise as the waiter removed plates and deposited dessert menus before refilling coffee.
Zakhar was off duty, but the pirate he’d been for so long was never far from the surface.
Couple across the room were eyeing him in ways that didn’t rise to the level of unleashing the Ballerina of Death, as Javier still teasingly called Djamila occasionally.
Not yet.
Man and woman. Late twenties from the feel. Dressed modestly and boring, in dark gray for him and darker blue for her. Looked like Anglos, but Zakhar wouldn’t hold that against them.
He’d rapped his ring on the table top at one point. Old habit. The woman’s head had come around sharply and she’d said something to the man. Both had leaned in and whispered.
Nothing more. No sudden comm calls that might bring gendarmes or bounty hunters running. Heavens knew Zakhar had both chasing him for various things accumulated over the decades of being a small-scale pirate warlord.
The old days.
At the same time, those two kept watch like hawks. And it felt to him like it was that damnable ring that had gotten them excited in the first place.
Bryce Academy. Class of 549. Shit, was he really going to be celebrating forty years soon? Twenty years active duty with the Concord Navy. Nineteen as a…call it a civilian. Close enough for government work. Pirate. Retired pirate. Explorer today, commanding a First-Rate Galleon while that dangerous goofball known as The Science Officer worked his impossible charm and magic on people across the galaxy.
Good thing Javier was back on the ship tonight. You never knew when you might need stupid amounts of firepower and crazy people to break you out of jail.
Not that he had any experience with that sort of thing, Your Honor. Lucky bystander and all that.
But those two were in his head. Under his fingernail like a splinter.
“Should I have kept the steak knife when they took our plates?” Djamila asked quietly.
Her eyes were locked on his, but that was her way of tracking the entire room behind her, because she knew where he was staring. And if he reacted, she’d uncoil like a venomous snake.
Two hundred and ten centimeters of deadly. Brown hair buzzed short on the sides for a spacesuit helmet and spiked on top. It was starting to come in gray now, elegant silver threads.
He was bald enough to keep everything but a gray Van Dyke shaved so he didn’t have to admit he wasn’t thirty anymore.
But Djamila would be forty this year. They were all getting older, even that silly Peter Pan, Javier.
“No,” he said, after weighing the odds.
Unless the pair over there had guns and were trained killers, Djamila could take them. By herself. That wrap was hung in such a way that she had freedom to move if she wanted, even with it asymmetrically hanging past one knee.
“Which table?” she asked.
“First right past the front desk,” Zakhar said.
“Younger couple,” Djamila nodded. “Here when we came in. Lingering over dinner still?”
“Watching us,” he nodded. “Me. And I have the impression they’re watching my ring more than us.”
“Interesting,” she replied.
Like a light switch had been flipped, the Dragoon replaced his date. Stunning and beautiful still, but the slinkiness she’d been practicing earlier was gone, replaced with a hardness that would hold a razor tip even as you chipped marble with it.
“Are they doing anything?” Djamila inquired.
“Watching,” Zakhar said. “Nothing more.”
“Ring marks you,” she said with a sly grin. “Concord Naval Officer and all that noise.”
“We are a long ways from the Concord,” Zakhar reminded her. “No idea why someone might want to bother me. Maybe they recognized Excalibur and put two and two together?”
She shrugged in a way that caused his heart to skip a beat, stretching and pulling her shoulders back. Not much chest on the woman, but lots of muscles. She still did handstand pushups against a wall every morning. If she spent the night in his cabin, she’d even do them nude so he could watch and ogle.
Lots to ogle. All of it wonderful.
“Should we skip dessert and force the situation now, or drag it out and see if they have the patience?” she asked.
Tactical. Combat-oriented killer. One of the best he’d ever known at it.
And an amazing woman on top of all that.
“Tempted to walk right over and sit down with them,” Zakhar said. “Can’t think of a culture where staring at someone so openly over dinner isn’t rude bordering on insulting. Also thinking about getting them into a station corridor for the confrontation. Thoughts?”
“Outside,” she said. “Easier to control things, and I’d hate to get blacklisted from this restaurant. We might never make it back this way, but we might, and that ribeye was amazing.”
“Agreed,” Zakhar nodded. It had been.
He turned down the offer of dessert and settled up the bill. Plus, they had a French bistro on the ship that loved to experiment with pastries and sweets, buying random cookbooks on every planet the ship had traveled to in order to find more things to try.
He could get something later.
Zakhar rose at the same time Djamila did, and made his way to the door behind her, walking right past the couple who’d been watching him.
PART 2
Djamila had been hard-pressed to wear such an outfit in public, but Adrian had convinced her that it would work. Having watched so many people stare at her thighs and chest tonight, she believed. And felt three meters tall.
She had almost as much mobility as if she were nude, the way he’d designed and sewn it. Not that she’d do that short of a mission.
An important mission.
But she’d grown more comfortable with herself, just as she and Zakhar had with each other. Javier’s fault, though she’d never tell him that. Afia Burak
The crew was more of a family these days than any place she’d ever lived, including home in Neu Berne before she’d joined the fleet.
All of that, however, was another layer of cloth that would slip off as easily as this dress Adrian had made for her.
She stared at the two who had gotten Zakhar’s attention, pacing slowly in his wake to the door in order to see what they did. Anglo pale skin with fine brown hair on both of them. Younger than her by at least a decade. Neither had the shape or structure of someone who had undergone military service. That got into the spine and never left.
Even today, Djamila had to work at not looking like a soldier.
Dressing like a beautiful woman helped. Or had.
She walked like a killing machine right now, measuring strides towards that table and placing things like empty chairs and bottles that could turn into weapons in an eye-blink.
Zakhar surprised her some by slowing as he approached the table. Didn’t speak. Didn’t stop. Merely turned his head sufficient that he was also staring at them, then he continued before either of them got the courage to speak.
Djamila had also slowed. Lagged a full stride behind in case one of them did something stupid. Then Zakhar was out the hatch and out of sight. She went after him, though she only made it two steps to where he’d turned and slipped his back to the bulkhead, nearly invisible behind a fern at first glance.
He caught her hand and pulled her next to him. In any other scenario, it might be for a quick smooch. IN PUBLIC EVEN. But not tonight.
They watched like hawks. A few moments later, the couple emerged, looking around almost panicky, until they saw her eyes over the fern plant and a hint of fear came into the man’s eyes.
Gotcha.
She only smiled, though. Zakhar wanted to get them out in the main station corridor. It was geo-synched to the planet Ninovskaya, with the planetary capital more or less straight down. Late in the planetary day, but stations ran around the clock, just like warships.
Still, traffic was thin currently. Station security would be meandering around, mostly to be seen, rather than as a threat. Nobody caused trouble on stations.
At least not in places like Ninovskaya.
Still, Djamila was prepared to cause trouble. Not looking forward to it, heavens forbid.
Prepared. That was all.
The two Anglos paled under her gaze. She nodded them closer. Might as well have this out now.
They approached, looking more like kittens than tigers. She fought to keep her smile friendly enough.
Any sudden movements for a weapon and they’d be on their backs. Dead or unconscious would be a split-second decision when they forced her.
“Your pardon,” the male said hesitantly. “Are you Captain Sokolov?”
Zakhar was on her far side, where they had to talk past her. Get past her, if they wanted to get stupid. Djamila preferred it that way.
“I am,” he said simply. “Did you have business with Excalibur? My on-station agent is handling both cargo and passengers. You can reach her in the morning.”
He stood still, so Djamila did as well. They didn’t look like travelers interested in booking passage on a ship like Excalibur. And weren’t dressed nearly well enough to be shippers.
“It is not that, Captain,” the man said, taking another tentative half step closer.
Probably didn’t realize that he was already close enough that she could get to him with a single step. Djamila watched and listened.
Predator.
“What he is trying to say, Captain,” the woman spoke now, “is that we would like to inquire about hiring your ship.”
“Hiring?”
Zakhar packed an amazing amount of disdain into such a small word. He was good with language that way.
“We have a problem, Captain Sokolov,” the woman nodded. “Pirates. Nobody else will help us, so we have come to Ninovskaya seeking assistance.”
“Pirates?” he inquired.
She could tell by the tone of his voice that the Concord officer she’d first fallen in love with had suddenly awakened from the calm man who had been her date tonight.
“Locusts, Captain,” the male said. “They descend on us and strip our farms and villages bare, leaving us barely enough food and livestock to survive so they can come back again the following year.”
Djamila glanced back, but already knew what she’d see. He was standing taller, not that he’d been slumped at any point.
Harder.
The Concord saw itself as the good guys across a wide swath of the galaxy. After Neu Berne had lost the Great War to the Union of Man and Balustrade, they’d largely inherited hegemony, having as big a fleet as everyone else put together at that point.
Djamila still remembered the lean years in her youth, after reparations had stripped things bare in a manner one might also describe as locusts.
At the same time, Neu Berne had started it, so the others had been intent on crushing her homeland’s ability and willingness to fight future wars.
Even after so long, Zakhar wore his class ring from the Bryce Academy in public, the sort of thing that other Bryce graduates saw and recognized.
Javier had been another one like Zakhar. Once they’d taken that man prisoner, he’d worked his magic on the crew, and turned them from poor pirates into…something.
It was too much to suggest heroes, but Djamila wondered how history might regard the man, if the truth ever got out. Already, there were whispers of The Science Officer out there. If she was only a cast member in his legend, that was still more than she’d deserved or expected out of her career or life.
“Pirates,” Zakhar repeated, but this time it wasn’t a question.
Excalibur was a warship. A First-Rate Galleon refurbished bow to stern by the Khatum of Altai for this voyage. As good as anything up to and including a Class II Warmaster. They were starting to build things categorized as Class III now, but only a few. And only places like the Concord.
Suvi and Excalibur were more than capable of handling pirates.
And Djamila could tell Zakhar was intrigued. Javier probably would be as well.
If she was ambivalent, that was an understanding that trouble always found those two men, and she’d be there to shoot it dead.
She was good at that.
“This is not the place to have such a discussion,” Zakhar said after a moment. “Give me your card and we will make arrangements to bring you aboard our ship tomorrow.”
The woman ended up having that information. Djamila took it from her, then watched them scurry quickly away.
She studied Zakhar’s face once they were alone again.
“Smells like a trap,” he said simply.
