The Devil You Know: Book 1, page 17
So, the big question, what was a wish from Mr. Thin worth? Did it just get me past the door, or was he able to give me access to the ship’s weaponry? I was pretty sure I knew the answer, and it wasn't the one where he gift-wrapped a warship.
I needed a reason not to put my thumb on that pad. I reached out absently, then snatched my hand away and pointed at the derelict ship in the display. "How sure are we that no one is still alive on that vessel?"
"Captain." Durgin sounded like he was about to berate me. "There's no way anyone is still alive on that vessel. The engines, when they blew, almost broke it in half." He gestured at the image Eaton’s pad was displaying.
He wasn’t wrong. There were exposed internal sections, and not even a flick or spark of power.
"None of our scans have indicated any sign of life," Eaton continued. “Any atmosphere at all.”
“Then it must be about the position of the ship.” I stated thoughtfully, thinking aloud.
After an awkward beat, Durgin turned back to me. "I appreciate your position, sir," he said in the least appreciative tone possible, "but I believe it’s time to follow procedure and make sure the station is protected. Station command has already sent several messages requesting an explanation of why we have not left our mooring."
I tapped my lips with the butt of the flimsy tube. "Of course, that's the final piece. Where is the cargo bay closest to—" I struggled for what I was actually asking. "If you wanted to disable the engines, where would you place an explosive?"
Durgin just wasn’t having it. But the fun part? I was Captain, so I guess he would have it.
Love being captain, love it.
I gestured at the small projection of the Valkyrie. "Enlarge."
Eaton did as I asked.
"It would have to be small, or our scanners would detect it," Ar6Harkem voice was total dead pan.
"What would have to be small?" Eaton asked.
"The explosive," Ar6Harkem said, not like he thought I was insane, more like he was a step ahead of Eaton. "For something like that, it would be placed here, one of the cargo bays. But even if there was some sort of explosive, it couldn't disable the ship. Not for long."
"What's in that cargo pod?" I asked.
This time, Ar6Harkem fiercely tapped on his pad. "Neurothene. They received 2,000 liters of Neurothene by mistake," he said, the word "by mistake" slow and deliberate. “Logistics was organizing its return to the station when the derelict ship was detected.”
Neurothene. I wasn’t an expert, but I knew it was one of the chemicals needed in material printing. On the Queen, we went through about a liter a year. A ship like this might need as much as 10 or 15 liters. But what it was, was flammable as all the suns.
“I’m sending sabotage detection and disposal there now.” If I hadn't had the opportunity to bond so well with Ar6Harkem, I may have thought he wasn't panicked, but I could see through his bland. Looks like I had one believer on the team.
"Make sure they examine the chromium ink," I told him.
He nodded and then looked up at me. "How did you know chromium ink was stored there?"
The gelatinous metal used in 3D printing was a favorite for smugglers. I'd used it myself a number of times. But the fact that the chromium was indeed stored alongside “accidental” delivery of Neurothene took my wild supposition and at leat make it a domesticated supposition.
"What are you talking about?" Durgin did not know about the stealth capabilities of chromium ink, and he seemed disappointed and annoyed that Ar6Harkem was joining in on my little conspiracy theory. "We have a major navigation hazard and threat to a Consolidation outpost station, and you're running around concocting some sort of—" He floundered, grasping for a word.
"Conspiracy theory?" I offered. I wanted to order the jettisoning of all the material in that particular cargo bay, but this close to the station, it would create an even larger navigation hazard than atomized parts of the MunKayakin vessel. We were too close to the station.
An enlisted soldier stepped up to Eaton. "Sir," she said in a little whisper. "Station command is requesting an update." I could tell she was papering over the demanding and possible shouting she had received on her end.
"Enough of this," Durgin snapped. "I don't know what you're gaming at, but technically, you haven't even assumed command yet."
I hadn't? Leave it to the Consolidation to make something simple complicated.
"Helm, bring us out, align us to the trajectory, and move us at forty-four speed."
"Durgin," Eaton warned, "you're overstepping—"
"This clown is putting people's lives at risk." Durgin stepped over and placed his thumbprint on the pad held by the Optio.
Well, that worked. I suppose I could get all jurisdictional on them and try to countermand the order and whatnot, but I was going to tell them to start moving anyway.
"I have something to check on." I took a step away and then a step back.
Poor Arn1Fei almost bumped into me, trying to keep his position relative to my body.
"We'll circle back on this technically-being-Captain thing in a second. Don't go anywhere," I said with a smile.
Durgin snarled and turned his back on me.
I gave Ar6Harkem a check. He seemed glued to whatever information was coming to him through his pad.
I walked out of the circular part of the bridge down the hall to the door where I had noticed the—commotion is probably too much, but certainly disturbance—before.
A male enlisted sat next to a female officer in a tight workspace. I had no idea what they actually did there, but they seemed very engrossed in their activity. Their pads did chirp that the Captain had entered their room.
They both looked up from their workstations and sat a little taller.
I pointed at the female officer. I would guess she was probably from a Second Sphere world, maybe a First.
"Fowler, you found something that didn't agree with the derelict ship narrative, didn't you?" Did I know that? No. But if the disturbance I witnessed was about something else, I didn't care.
Her eyes got large, like saucers. "Captain, I was told I had made a mistake," she said quickly. "It won't happen again."
So much to unpack there, and if I was more than one security check from ending up in the brig, I'd want to address that. "Give a report of what you found, quickly and succinctly."
She sat up a little straighter, just like the weapons officer falling back on her Consolidation University training. "I found marks on the hull that were consistent with BDS."
I guess I pushed too hard on the succinct button. She fell into the Consolidation University training.
"What's a BDS?" Arn1Fei asked, then realized that he'd spoken and slammed his mouth shut. I heard it click.
But the female officer took pity on him. "Boarding Delivery System."
"A wedge," I used the more colloquial term. Occasionally, I just do things that are more brilliant than I realize, such as forcing Novicius Arn1Fei standing here to ask the questions that it would look silly for me to ask. If I had time, I would bask in my sublime brilliance.
"But your supervisor disagreed?" I challenged.
She nodded. "The markings would also be consistent with damage sustained in the explosion, at least at the resolution we currently have."
A wedge impact and an explosion would be obvious if you were standing next to it, but at the ranges we were talking about, it might be more difficult to pin it down. "All right, give me a more definitive answer," I ordered, "The ship's getting closer. We're getting closer to the ship. That should make the resolution issue less of a challenge in minutes."
I saw a question go over her face, probably something similar to "This order should come through my direct supervisor."
Who has that kind of time? I flicked my direct link to her pad. “Use that if you have anything worth sharing.”
Her eyes got almost as big as Arn1Fei’s. But she nodded and turned with a renewed sense of purpose to her workstation, rattling off some order to the enlisted soldier sitting next to her.
"Captain!" Ar6Harkem yelled from the circular portion of the main bridge. "Ant Sab has found an explosive!"
So I was right. I spun the tube of Snap in the air and snatched it. I looked at the Novicius at my side. "Well, this got even more exciting."
twenty-three
SYNJYN ROURKE
I didn't run back onto the bridge, but it was all I could do to stop my feet from sprinting. I didn't think about it, but my hands spun the Snap tube in the air, and because I wasn't thinking about it, I almost fumbled the catch—but I didn't. I was still so used to my scepter on an ingrained level, but if I didn't think about it, I wasn't compensating.
"Everybody!" I really pushed into the Captain Thrace-in-charge energy. "We’re in a trap." I let that sink in for a second.
A lot of junior officers were looking at each other in confusion.
It wasn’t sinking in, and I didn’t have all day. “Very soon we may be in a fight for our lives and the lives of those we have sworn to protect.”
Bigger eyes, still not much sinking.
“We will now put all our energies into escaping that trap,” I continued. “Who put us in this trap, what they want, and why are tomorrow's questions.” I swiped my right hand with the Snap tube as if swiping a table clear of dirty dishes. “How we survive and what they wanted to achieve by our destruction are NOW questions.” As I was saying it I realized “what they wanted” and “what they wanted to achieve” are really similar, but it had a lot of theatrical production value and I think I sold it, so no regrets.
I was aware that Arn1Fei had followed me back to the bridge and was rushing to catch up, but Eaton took his position at my side as I strode to where Durgin was still at the helm. Durgin looked at me as if I'd just performed some macabre magic trick. However, not like I was an idiot child anymore. He made room for me at the head of the ship.
“Whatever our adversary is trying to achieve isn't just the destruction of the Valkyrie, or they'd have blown the charges as soon as the neurothene was loaded.” I spun on the ball of my left foot until I spotted Ar6Harkem.
He was over the shoulder of a junior officer at a workstation at ten o'clock on the bridge. "Ar6Harkem, where are we with disposing of the device?" Just in case I was supposed to give some kind of order. Best not to take anything for granted when dealing with the Consolidation.
He stood straight and faced me like he was giving a report to a superior officer instead of someone he suspected of conning people. It's a subtle difference, one I wouldn't have registered if I hadn't been able to compare both versions side-by-side. "The anti-sabotage unit is dealing with the first device, and we’re searching for a second."
I would have to leave it in his capable hands. I spun back to the front of the ship.
Durgin, however, was not done with Ar6Harkem. "Are we able to examine the device? If we knew how it would be activated, that could tell us a lot."
Ar6Harkem opened his mouth to be diplomatic.
But on so many wonderful levels, I didn't have to be. "If it was hidden in chromium,” I said quickly, “it has a timer. No signal will get through. That's the whole point of sticking it in chromium. And no, there's no way of getting the device out of chromium, taking it apart, and figuring out when it was timed to explode."
I didn’t think it would help the situation to detail my experience with chromium as a smuggling tool. But trust me, one mistake and the entire canister will crystallize, and the exothermic reaction will fry what’s being smuggled.
It wasn't a good place to hide stuff. Sometimes it was just the only place. Such is life.
I turned my attention back to problem at hand. "Helm, call up the image of where should be, according to standard operating procedure?" I quickly added.
It only took a couple of keystrokes, and an image of the Valkyrie appeared relative to the space station and our current location. The same Eaton had generated. The bomb handn’t gone off yet, so they didn’t want us stuck there. "Extraplate out to the location where we would fire on the Arcadia.” In theory that would be the farthest we would travel from Eros.
A differently colored Valkyrie appeared a little farther from the SOP Valkyrie, and either the helm or the ship’s computer jumped to my next question and put a line of twelve minutes between SOP Valkyrie and shooting Valkyrie.
"Why there?" I asked the weapons officer.
She tapped a few buttons, and a cone appeared from the firing Valkyrie image. "This is the earliest the Lark cannon could destroy the ship to minimize its navigation hazard."
Nice way of saying "vaporize."
With my two Praefectus Castrorum at each shoulder and Arn1Fei at my back, I was feeling a little hemmed in. I wanted to pace, but instead, I just squeezed my Snap tube.
"But I don't understand." Eaton shook her head. "Who would do something like this?"
I snapped my fingers and pointed over my shoulder at Arn1Fei.
"Sir?" Arn1Fei’s voice came out a little high-pitched.
"From now on, if anyone," I put a hand to my chest, "including myself, brings up anything I've already designated as a tomorrow problem, or we're retreading information we've already discussed, I'm going to need you to make an electronic beeping noise."
"Thin rocks and ash." Arn1Fei was really disappointed, but realized what he said and straightened. “Yes, sir.”
"Go ahead and test," I told him.
He looked at his control pad as if he'd never seen it before, but pressed something and a little electronic quack-chime sounded.
"Good enough." I addressed the room. "Let's move onto the next thing. We don't have time to run over already discussed material."
"But maybe destroying the Valkyrie is the goal," Durgin began.
I made an impatient snap-point at Arn1Fei.
A second chime squawk happened. Arn1Fei's eyes were huge, like he couldn't believe what he had just done to the Praefectus Castrorum.
Arn1Fei was bringing me so much joy. I know what it says about me as a person, but so much joy. I gave him a thumbs-up.
"Whatever it is, they want us here and stuck here." I pointed at the third ship with the firing cone. "What would be our range, or more accurately, what would be out of our range?"
The Optio at the weapons console turned the cone into a sphere. "Assuming we could at least reorient the Valkyrie quickly, even with the main propulsion grid down," she said.
We'd probably be able to spin the Valkyrie around with a little ingenuity. “The combat-effective range covers about a quarter of the station and the area around it. Whatever they’re trying to do will happen in this range.” I used my Snap tube to circle the portion out of our range.
"Not necessarily," Durgin said. "Add the station's weapons range," he ordered the Optio.
A deformed oval appeared around the image of Eros station. It went out farther on the void side than the planet side.
"Assuming they haven't figured out how to sabotage the station's weapons," Durgin said grudgingly, as if slowly consenting to my premise.
"So, if I'm right," I stabbed at a section of the display where the gravity well would be too intense for a warp bubble to cross and would be out of range of the station and a hobbled Valkyrie, "whatever is going to happen is going to happen here. Helm, inform the station we’re unmooring and get us to that location."
"If you're right," Eaton said, "it doesn't change the fact that the derelict is still heading toward the station."
It was annoyingly true. "If we shoot at it from here, what would be our combat effectiveness?" I asked the Optio seated at fire control.
"Six trajans." She didn't have a whole lot of faith in that six trajans. "Best case, sir."
Basically, if the derelict ship had a civilian level of ablative it wouldn’t even blacken the hull. If they had no ablative then it would shoot up the ship and create ten or twelve navigation hazards. In combat-effective range a ship like the Valkyrie would kick out over seven hundred. The Queen could do two-hundred fifty trajans and would have had difficulty pulverizing the derelict vessel.
"Captain." Still hard for Durgin to call me that. "If we’re to destroy the vessel then get back to the other side of the station, we will need to put our generator at one hundred percent. We will need your order."
They needed a captain’s order to use their generators at one hundred percent? I assume because it isn’t as safe as whatever their normal output is. That’s the overly complicated bureaucratic Consolidation I have come to know.
"Yes to maxing out the generators." Again, that needs an order? So weird. "I like your thinking there, but a hard no to destroying the derelict."
Durgin’s eyes got large and he sputtered. He actually sputtered. Arn1Fei is still winning in the small little joy race, but ignore Durgin at your own peril. We could have an upset.
I did a quarter spin so I was eye to eye with Eaton. "Inform Station Eros they will need to deal with the derelict vessel after all."
"What?" Eaton’s mouth dropped open. "They can’t... that’s why they asked us to do it."
"No, they asked us to do it so the debris wouldn’t affect their shipping lanes." I pointed with my tube at the fire solution cone still on display. "They’ll be fine." Eventually… with some work. But more importantly, "I won’t be showing up to a fight in a well with a drained coil."
"You don’t know there will be a well fight," Durgin countered, although I got the feeling he hoped I was wrong, but was coming to believe I wasn’t.
"I’ll update Eros." Eaton's eyes were wide, maybe because she was starting to believe me or maybe because she knew how the station would react.
Either way, Godspeed.
I turned around and almost collided with Arn1Fei.
"Sorry, sir." He had tried to take up his ordered position now that Eaton had left it.
"Good man," I said, absently tapping Arn1Fei on the shoulder. To the Helm officer, "Get us there." I stabbed with my Snap tube at the display, just in the gravity well outside the range of the station. If enemy ships were going to pop, I wanted them dropping from warp in front of me not behind. Only way to make sure of that was to stay in the gravity well where they couldn’t go in a warp bubble.
