Captain Navarre, page 10
“Probe. Access Command Mode,” Stacia repeated.
Suvi beeped once, mostly for effect.
“Command Mode activated,” Suvi replied in a dull, mechanical voice she’d stolen from one of her favorite historical dramas. Then she switched back to herself. “I will speak like that, just to confuse folks. Most of Javier’s people have worked with such a device, as Javier had a smaller survey probe when he was originally captured by the pirates. He poured me into it as a way of hiding me. Later, he was able to build and modify the combat drone. It wasn’t until I took control of Excalibur that most of the crew knew the truth.”
“The truth?” Stacia asked.
“Zakhar and the others were pirates in those days,” Suvi explained. “They captured my original probe-cutter Mielikki, with the intent of selling both Javier and I into slavery. Javier was able to hide my personality chips in a bucket of chicken feed, telling Zakhar that he’d smashed them, when he’d smashed blank copies he’d kept for exactly that purpose.”
“How did the two of you survive?” Stacia asked.
Suvi could detect the woman’s mind engaging and diving into the story by the way her bio-signs shifted.
“That’s a much longer story,” Suvi began, hesitating for a moment. Even at her speeds.
“So tell me,” Stacia laughed. “At some point, obviously somebody is going to need to tell your story. And Javier’s. Separate from the one about Navarre. How did Javier escape pirate slavers, and how did you end up in command of a battleship?”
Suvi considered it. Reviewed Zakhar’s conversation with Djamila last night, as well as dinner with Javier and Djamila and Bethany previously.
Javier trusted this woman to tell the right story, the right way. Including letting her in on the con job he was going to be pulling as Navarre.
Maybe the truth did need to be recorded clear over at this end of the galaxy. Javier had already written a few books on botanical research in space, but those were only currently available in the Altai region. Nobody in this direction would know him.
Remember him.
Idolize him like they should.
So she started telling this woman her own story first, starting with her first commander: Ayumu Ulfsson.
Part 4
Bethany wasn’t prepared for Zakhar to visit her library. Javier or Afia, yes, but Zakhar hardly did. She wasn’t in his chain of command, as it were, reporting directly to Javier. Still, she rated as a Centurion with the crew, and he was Captain.
She rose when he entered. It was automatic, though she noted that he wasn’t wearing a shade of green for the first time since she’d known him. Blue today. Muted and verging onto gray. And not cut like his former uniforms, which were absolutely cut to the same lines as a Concord officer’s.
“Sir?” she asked.
“Sit,” he said. “This is not formal. You are not in trouble. I am not here as an officer, Bethany.”
“Oh,” she replied.
And sat.
He took a spot close by.
“I had a question,” he began. “You don’t need to answer it today. Instead, I need you thinking about it over a longer arc.”
“Okay,” Bethany said, feeling her librarian instincts and training engage.
“Last night, I asked Suvi to contact Stacia,” he said in a meaningful voice.
Last night, she and Stacia had been…
Bethany felt the blush seem to cover her entire body. She nearly folded in on herself.
“Consenting adults,” Zakhar said with a wave of his hand. “Suvi would have said something to somebody had it been necessary.”
“Okay?” Bethany managed.
“You’ve not been with us as long as much of the crew, Bethany,” he continued. “I’ve known some of these folks for more than a decade at this point, rather than you and a few who signed on from Altai. However, as the Captain, I do monitor well-being of the crew. You’ve been a bit socially remote, which is fine, because you are a librarian and an introvert. Got lots of those on this ship, regardless of what they might say. However, I wanted to make sure you were doing okay.”
“Sir?” she asked.
Now, she was lost. His smile, however, was warm and comforting. Was this what it was supposed to be like, when you had a good commanding officer? She’d had mostly indifferent ones. A few actively hostile, mostly because budget cuts meant crew reductions, and at that point it was a balancing act of budget costs versus loss of expertise and institutional knowledge.
Plus, Bethany knew even then that she was smarter than a lot of her bosses, so she could add some level of professional jealousy to the equation.
“Are you happy?” he asked simply.
It took her a moment to process that. Was she?
Challenged, certainly. Nothing at all like the job she’d been doing before. At the same time, it was everything she’d been trained for. It helped that the Khatum had given them a significant budget. The Concord had cut the navy routinely, hollowing it out while not really walking away from some of their commitments.
Readiness and personnel had taken the hit, instead of construction budgets. No contractor allowed to starve.
Then it hit her. She’d spent the evening being personal and physical with an outsider. That had raised a flag in Zakhar’s mind, because she hadn’t really been that close with any of the other crew. There had been invitations, but they’d been politely declined for the most part.
Why had Stacia gotten through the brittle shell she’d kept around herself?
Outsider.
As Zakhar had noted, much of this crew had been together for many, many years. The staff of Le Bistro Parisian were family. The Doctors St. Kitts had been married for more than a decade.
Only Bethany had come aboard without a social network in place.
And then she’d not accepted the one available to her. Most of this crew qualified, at least in their own minds, as a found family. All of them were outsiders. Criminals somewhere. Misfits to the last individual.
And her.
Bethany realized that she’d fallen silent. Zakhar watched, but looked like a man that might sit there all day. Waiting.
And she and Stacia had…
Yeah.
Not since just after she’d been commissioned had she gotten involved with someone like that. Bethany found that she still had a bounce in her step this afternoon.
“I needed something, sir,” she finally said.
“Noted, Centurion,” Zakhar replied, falling into the structure of a commanding officer, since she’d treated him like one.
Instead of a friend, which was really what he was trying to be. Not a threat to ask her out. He had Djamila, though the two of them had a third they left back at Altai, something Bethany hadn’t really understood. Except that it made them happy.
She didn’t know what happy looked like. Was that it?
Too many years wrapped up in the uniform and the job, and she’d never taken time for herself until last night?
Weird.
“I have a second question for you now,” he said. “This is the one you will need to think about long and hard for reasons that will be obvious.”
Bethany nodded.
“When we’re done at Syntha and Valadris, we’ll be leaving,” Zakhar continued. “The current course of this ship and this mission does not take us directly back to Altai, but we will be departing this region of space entirely, making our way around the inner edge of the Concord into places they might have explored, but never claimed or expanded into.”
“Okay?” Bethany offered when he paused.
“Stacia will be remaining behind,” Zakhar said. “Javier has made it clear that she has to complete her mission on Valadris. She’s welcome to come to Altai later. However, that will be much later. Are you thinking about remaining behind with her when Excalibur leaves?”
Bethany started to respond angrily, then caught herself.
They didn’t know her. Didn’t understand her commitment to this mission.
Because she’d kept them all at arm’s length for more than half a year. Now, she’d opened herself up, but to a stranger. An outsider.
Captain Sokolov was concerned that she would wish to terminate her employment. Except that she didn’t work for him. She worked for Javier.
Bethany studied the older man’s face.
Shaved head, showing a ring of gray hair around the rim. Salt and pepper Van Dyke on his chin. Average looks marked by intense, brown eyes. Exceptional command presence, but he hadn’t brought that into her library today.
He was here as a friend.
If she’d let him.
Why hadn’t she?
Why hadn’t she?
Bethany found that she didn’t know. And found that both irritating and disconcerting.
She blinked with sudden awareness.
Zakhar had asked a question. And she hadn’t answered.
“I don’t think I want to remain behind, Zakhar,” she replied quietly. Finally. “I think I got so wound up in myself that I didn’t realize where I was, at least emotionally.”
He nodded, but remained silent. She took it as a prompt, hoping it was.
“My last year in uniform was spent waiting for the axe to finally fall that left me unemployed and unable to re-enlist for another stretch,” Bethany explained, falling back into those memories. “Wondering where I’d go, when nobody needed trained librarians. Then Professor Hetzel contacted Javier. Did you know Hetzel?”
“He joined the faculty after my time,” Zakhar said. “Javier might have been his first set of students, when they were both much younger.”
She nodded. That felt right, but she’d suppressed that information, if she’d known it. Time to dig it out and refresh herself, since both of those men, and Zakhar in front of her, were likely to be key to her next decade. Or longer. If she let them.
“So I found my way to Altai and then here,” Bethany said, listening to herself speak the words like a stranger inside her own head. “But I was still in shock. Still dealing with the social and emotional trauma of losing that thing that had defined me for so long. Does that make sense?”
“Most civilians have no idea how hard it is for ex-sailors to adapt to a life where nobody is trying to kill them,” Zakhar nodded. “Where there are no orders arriving. No expectations or duty assignments. When they have to figure it out themselves, after a career where that was pounded out of them.”
“How did you do it, Zakhar?” she asked.
Bethany almost called him sir, but needed to break herself of that habit. They would be her friends, if she would allow it.
“Mostly, I didn’t,” he chuckled. “They hired me when I retired, and I more or less stepped over into commanding Storm Gauntlet like I had previous vessels. It was only later that I had to change. Make hard decisions, because we weren’t a cargo vessel. Oh, sure, we could, but it ended up being loot most of the time. Or crap I was instructed to smuggle somewhere, meeting other smugglers where my guns meant that nobody else bothered us during the handover.”
“When did it change?” she asked.
“When I met this fast-talking punk almost seven years ago,” he said, laughing outright as he spoke. “Talked his way onto the crew. Then as a Centurion, because we didn’t have a Science Officer in those days. Didn’t do sciences, but he was better at sensors and such than anybody I’d ever met. ’Mina was when the changes became obvious.”
“Teague?” Bethany asked.
She’d gotten parts of the story from most of the players, including Zakhar, but felt as though she’d gotten the narrative, rather than the meaning.
“A’Nacia,” he nodded. “The Haunted Star from that epic, pyrrhic victory that ended the Unification Wars. They build minefields to keep it all safe, but nobody understood in those days just how deadly or complete it was. We’d have been blown up almost instantly, but for Javier. Then he found a way for Djamila to disable enough of the controllers for us to slip in, then slip out, rescuing Miss Teague along the way. That was when we started to turn the corner. Maybe fall under his spell. You know how charismatic the man can be when he sets his mind to it. From there, the adventures got weirder and bigger, but at the same time, we stopped being the bad guys and started making things better.”
“So the key is just moving forward?” Bethany asked. “Trusting that Javier had a plan?”
“Last night, I realized that I always wore green,” he said. “Have for forty years or more. Habit then. Something I needed to change today, so I asked Adrian to do me a new wardrobe with nothing green in it. The old stuff will go to the back of the closet for a year, then maybe get recycled. And Javier has a plan, even when he stops in the middle to riff on something or pull a con job like this. After this long, I trust his luck.”
She considered that. Thought back to that train platform in the middle of nowhere, and a guy waiting for her to appear. With a job offer.
A new life for the unbloomed rose.
Was she finally blooming? Relaxing? Growing up?
Felt like it. Maybe, at least, moving past demobilization and all that it implied.
Turning into an adult, finally.
“Thank you,” she said.
Zakhar nodded and rose from the chair with a warm smile for her. Older than her dad, but she could see why some of the crew still thought he was hot and sexy. It wasn’t the body. Average, though most men his age were squishy.
It was the mind. That hadn’t lost anything, same as Javier. Both had seen her as a person, but also as a woman.
She hadn’t been ready to admit that to herself, though, and nobody had pushed. Had given her space, instead. Stacia had been the one to slip in, because they were both about taking data from a variety of random sources and turning it into information.
Telling stories with it.
What kind of stories would they be able to tell, with a crew like this?
She stood as he did, then surprised him with a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. Felt good, because this was what family was.
She hadn’t missed it, because she’d never had one like this before.
Bethany had one now.
Syntha
Part 1
Javier was on the bridge when they came out of the first jump into the Syntha system. Still well out from the planet itself, because he’d asked Suvi and Piet to fly this beast like a manual freighter, rather than a Sentient warship in combat service.
No clue if anyone would fall for it, but any mistakes the bad guys made now would be compounded later if Suvi had to get involved.
He’d have fucked up big time in that case. Probably dead on the surface somewhere, if she had to take on the pirate hordes of yahoos around here.
She could. Of that he had no doubt.
It was how close to Storm Gauntlet’s final stand it would take her if she did.
If they didn’t do stupid shit, Suvi as a person could be around for an awful long time. Or she could go out in a blaze of glory with the rest of them.
Best not.
Tobias Gibney, Gunner’s Mate and backup Science Officer, was in the next station around the ring, between him and Piet, but they’d had a brief conversation earlier which had included Javier pulling rank.
He didn’t do it often. Zakhar and others liked to remind him that he was management now, and needed to act like it.
Today, he had refused to sit patiently off to one side like he was supposed to. Instead, he was manning the sensors and refining things as Suvi started pinging the environment. That and gyro-locking optical telescopes on Syntha itself, even from way out here, to start isolating orbital structures and potential issues.
When robbing a bank, the smart thief takes the time to case the joint. The wise thief finds a safer line of work, but Javier had chosen this job out of need.
A commitment to making the galaxy a better place, knowing that trouble was coming.
Mary-Elizabeth Suzuki was manning guns, like normal, though Suvi did the firing. Just as Piet was the Pilot, but he mostly used his expertise and touch to refine how Suvi flew. And she’d told him how much better she’d gotten at her job after listening to the two of them.
Javier wasn’t insulted. She’d been the whole rest of his crew when it was just him and the chickens. He’d been more than willing to let her handle things, because he was composed entirely of the sorts of patience that let you sit on the edge of a system like this for days or even weeks at a time while scanning and watching. That, and jagged edges from shit prior that had ruined his naval career.
Excalibur was in Survey Contract mode today. Suvi knew what that meant. The others were here today because they were the Centurions and senior Yeomen of this crew. Even if none of them were in military service.
Across the way, Djamila was knitting, as always, while Bethany and Stacia shared whispers and giggles.
Both seemed to be relaxing. That was good. Zakhar had mentioned his conversation with Bethany, so Javier wasn’t as worried about having to find a replacement for the woman.
If that was even possible.
“I should probably be professionally insulted,” Mary-Elizabeth announced as the data started to get refined at the hands of several experts. “No orbital defenses of any kind?”
“They live on the ground,” Javier reminded her. “Giant junkyard of old ships and parts that get scavenged and stripped. If you want to join them, either you bring your own vessel, like we’re doing, or show up on the surface with a welding laser and a dream. Lots of that going on down there. Not surprised that there are no bases in orbit. Things like that are expensive to build and maintain, and the pirates are not into law and order, or even infrastructure maintenance.”
