The Crypt: Shakedown: (A Military Sci-Fi Novel), page 48
And just like that, everyone got it. The laughter died down. All eyes turned to the XO.
“That’s beautiful, Combat Cook,” Ellis said, and anyone could see he meant it. “That’s us. A bunch of ugly warthogs.”
Henry sniffed. “That’s what I was getting at, anyway. Because of what you said.”
“I said it, and I meant it.” The XO raised his beer high. “A toast to the crew of the James Keeling. We will make the Mud our own.”
As the cheers rang out, John pulled the pin box closer.
He was a corporal now.
And to think… he could have retired.
EPILOGUE
Marchenko turned the utility cart’s steering wheel, angling toward topside. Tank treads made of fakegrav plates kept the vehicle firmly attached to Keeling’s hull. Inside the pressurized hangar, they didn’t have to wear vacsuits. That offered Sascha a rare and intimate examination of her ship.
“I mean, I volunteered for this, in a way,” Marchenko said. “But if they’d told me what this ship was like? Forget about it.”
He still didn’t remember a thing about making the copper shivs. That didn’t stop him from being torn up inside that his action resulted in two dead crewmates.
“Why did they do this to us, Eng? Why don’t they give two shits about their own sailors?”
No matter how many times Sascha asked herself the same question, the same answer always came up—because the brass doesn’t care about us grunts, because our lives and sanity mean nothing to them.
“I don’t know, Corporal. Drive over there, that’s where it penetrated.”
Keeling had taken more damage than they’d thought. Two enemy rounds had hit but not penetrated, their glancing blows marked by meters-long streaks of bright copper that contrasted with the hull’s darker, gnarled surface.
The hangar was built specifically to house Keeling, which was narrower than any warship Sascha had ever seen. Two overhead cranes spaced along the hangar’s length would soon be put to work repairing damage to the superstructure and the ravaged port-side gunhouse. One bottomside crane, on rails that ran from prow horns to tailspikes, would be used to load new torpedoes.
She was doing an initial survey of needed repairs. The actual work would begin the following day. Who would do that work? She hadn’t yet been told. She hoped she and her people would handle the bulk of it.
“Stop here,” she said.
The utility vehicle slowed to a stop beside a ragged, oblong patch of copper some five meters in length. The metal was smooth, as if it had just been poured then polished to an eye-squinting sheen.
“RIP, Salvatore,” Marchenko said.
The gouge marked the spot where the Purist penetrator round ripped through the ship, punching a hole in the hull at the machining bay and killing Breslav Salvatore.
“It’s like a scar,” Marchenko said. “All the fresh marks are.”
It wasn’t like a scar, it was a scar. The ship healed itself. Sascha had watched it happen. Smart materials could do any number of amazing things, but to see the hull repair itself in a matter of minutes? There was no tech like that anywhere in the galaxy, as far as she knew. Even the nanotech Prawatt ships couldn’t repair damage that quickly.
“We gotta go, Lieutenant,” Marchenko said. “Almost eleven hundred.”
Sascha nodded. “Drive us back.”
Marchenko drove the utility toward the ramp connecting the hangar’s side-decks with the hull. Lincoln had ordered Sascha to finish up by eleven hundred, with the idea that Sascha would report to the officer’s club overlooking the hangar, and finally get some off-ship time. She would leave soon, but only after she walked a couple laps around the ship, evaluating the impressive amount of work that needed to be done.
Susannah awoke to someone gently shaking her shoulder.
“Ensign, get up.”
Her eyes fluttered open. Hasik looked down at her, his face awash in the heartstone’s golden glow.
She sat up. Clean skivvies, clean sheets on her cot—the rest had been heavenly.
“Colonel, are we coming out of punch-space?”
“We’re already out,” Hasik said. “You slept right through it. We’re dry docked at Gateway Station.”
She’d never slept through a punch-out or punch-in before.
“Why didn’t you wake me, sir? I should have been alert in case there were problems.”
“After what you went through, I felt you needed sleep more than I needed your assistance. How are you feeling?”
A question not about her physical well-being, but rather her mental state.
“I don’t know, sir,” she said. “I honestly don’t know.”
“I understand. If you think this was some failing on your part, you’re wrong. No matter the mental state of an assailant, you always have the right to protect yourself.”
Trouble was, Susannah wasn’t entirely sure who the “assailant” had been—Hathorn or her. She couldn’t remember. The cuts on her arm and leg, though, were undeniable evidence she’d been attacked.
Self-defense or not, though, Susannah had killed a person. Again.
“Thank you, sir,” she said. “It’s… it’s a lot to deal with.”
She glanced at the heartstone. It pulsed softly in a normal shade of corn yellow. Had it glowed orange before the last jump into transdim? She couldn’t remember.
“You’ll get a medal for what you did,” Hasik said. “You fought off a crewmate who’d lost her mind, and then—somehow—got the coupler powered up enough to get us into transdim. I wish it could have gone differently, Bethany, but you did what had to be done to save the ship.”
Flashes of memory. The dark place. The color snakes. Hathorn, dead. Anne Lafferty, rushing in, telling Susannah everything would be okay. Gillick, helping Susannah to the mess for medical attention while Lafferty stayed behind.
“We need to know what you did, Ensign,” Hasik said. “How did you bring the power levels up so fast? Do you remember?”
He asked with the desperation of a junkie begging for a fix, but she couldn’t help him.
“I still don’t remember, sir. To be honest, it might have been Hathorn’s doing. I… I have no idea what happened.”
Hasik didn’t hide his disappointment.
“Hopefully you’ll remember soon,” he said. “I doubt it was Hathorn. So much of what we do in here is… well, it’s by feel more than science. Hathorn didn’t have a knack for it. You do. I think you’ll soon be able to run the department as well as I can.”
Not exactly a high bar to meet. Hasik was drunk most of the time. He’d been on Keeling for years, but had he really learned all he could? He spent more time at his workstation than he did experimenting, or doing anything else at all, really.
“I’m getting off the ship for a little while,” Hasik said. “I have to report to Admiral Epperson.”
“He’s here? Gateway is in the middle of nowhere.”
“Which is why it’s our home port. Not much of a home, really, but still home. You’ll stand watch for the next eight hours. The ship isn’t going anywhere. When I relieve you, you’ll have eight hours of off-ship leave.”
Susannah had left the ship only once since she’d arrived; that trip had been a blood-drenched nightmare.
“What is there to do on Gateway, sir?”
Hasik laughed. “A whole lot of nothing. But you might enjoy it after what you and Lafferty went through on that hauler.”
The mere mention of that name sent a fresh wave of fear and repulsion coursing through Susannah. A killer. A torturer. A monster.
“Is Major Lafferty off the ship?”
“She was in the first group out, along with Colonel Cooley, the XO, and the captain,” Hasik said. “Lafferty and Cooley had to report to some BII higher-up.”
Not surprising, considering the entire mission—and all the people who died on it—was to retrieve that intel.
“I understand,” Susannah said. “I’ll keep an eye on things, sir.”
Of course she would stay. Stay here, in the atrium. In the Keeling, where she belonged. Where Anne Lafferty was not.
Hasik walked to his station. He pulled out the key kept on his neck lanyard. This time, he didn’t use it to activate the computer; instead, he opened a pair of drive bays. He grabbed the handles inside and pulled free two thick data drives, each the size of a toaster.
“Don’t do anything too strenuous, Ensign. Remember, you’re still recovering. If you’re up to it, start scraping foil. Until we get Hathorn’s replacement, the two of us will have to manage all duties. Oh, and Watson left you some pain meds. They’re on your station.”
Hasik left the atrium.
Susannah got up. Her leg and arm hurt.
She walked to the sphincter, made sure it was fully closed. Lafferty might come back. If she did, Susannah didn’t want to be surprised.
That return trip on the hauler. The things Lafferty threatened. The lies she’d made Susannah memorize. Susannah never again wanted to be alone with that woman.
And yet, while in transdim, when Susannah desperately needed help, who’d been there for her? Anne Lafferty had. Susannah couldn’t remember much, but she remembered Lafferty saying everything will be taken care of. She remembered Lafferty saying this will hurt a little. She remembered Lafferty smiling down and saying: after all, Beth—what are friends for?
Still, no amount of kindness could block out what Susannah had seen on the hauler.
She had eight hours to herself. Good. Admiral Bock might have someone in Gateway waiting to contact her. Susannah didn’t want to deal with that right now. Couldn’t deal with it.
Where was Hasik taking those drives? What was on those drives?
Throbbing in her leg and arm urged her to her station and the plastic pill bottle she found there. A note under it:
These are non-addictive. If you need the good stuff, let me know. Thank you for saving our asses.
— Watson
Susannah dry swallowed two pills.
For the very first time, she had the atrium all to herself.
She’d longed to run some experiments. Now she could. She’d start small, not do anything that might draw Hasik’s attention. The self-repairing material was of the most interest. Susannah had a feeling the hull material made the membrane hopping possible, even though it was the heartstone that appeared to do the real work.
If Hasik wouldn’t tell her how things worked—or he simply didn’t know—she would figure it out.
So much to learn. What was this ship? Where had it come from? Why was its technology so far above that of Humans and other known species that it might as well be magic?
She’d start small—with a bit of foil.
Susannah took the scraper hanging from her station. Foil had creeped onto her locker, onto the lockers of Hasik and Hathorn as well.
She felt a vibration in the deck.
Keeling was dry docked. Perhaps someone was loading something big, or repair techs were working on the damaged superstructure armor.
Another vibration. Stronger this time.
On the protuberance platform, the 18MC chime sounded.
“Xeno, Conn.”
Susannah didn’t recognize the voice. She hurried onto the platform and grabbed the handset.
“Conn, Xeno, go ahead.”
“We felt a vibration up here.” Ah, now she recognized the voice—Nav Chief Erickson. “Anything unusual going on in your area that might explain it?”
“No sir. I felt it, too. Could someone be loading something?”
“Nothing being loaded right now,” Erickson said. “Repair work hasn’t begun, and there’s no activity in the flight bay. Can you—”
Another rumble. Still minor, but the strongest of the three.
“The damage to the superstructure might be settling in Gateway’s gravity,” Erickson said. “I’ll have someone take a look. You double-check that nothing in your department could be causing it.”
“I’ll check my department for source of vibration, aye-aye.”
Susannah hung up the handset.
The ship could be settling, that made sense. In space, there was no gravity exerted on the hull. Gateway Station was orbital, but there was still a small amount of steady pull from the planet below, enough to possibly cause broken bits to grind against each other.
There was yet another vibration, smaller than before. And a ping, like that made when something hit a long piece of metal, like a pipe or aluminum bleachers.
The heartstone… was that the same shade of golden yellow? No, it had changed… now it was closer to peach.
Susannah walked to her station and started running diagnostics.
“Did you have any incidents?”
Anne knew exactly what he was asking. He’d starting using that word when she’d been seven years old. She’d found a wounded bird in their back yard. All she’d wanted to do was see how birds worked. That’s what she’d told herself at the time, but even then, she thought there might be a reason she hid the bird from her parents, why she glued its little beak shut so it wouldn’t make as much noise.
“No, General Lafferty,” she said. “No incidents.”
That wasn’t a lie. Not really. More like a half-truth—if Shamdi had cooperated, Anne wouldn’t have had to use advanced interrogation techniques.
And besides… there would be no further incidents. The tapping was gone forever. She knew it. Her willpower had slipped, but never would again. Defeating her urge hadn’t been easy, not at all, but she was stronger than most. The hardest steel is forged in the hottest fires, Daddy had always told her. Anne had been through the crucible and come out as the sharpest edge in Fleet’s arsenal.
“You’re sure,” her father said. “No incident, not even with the Purist spy?”
In that moment, Anne felt a rush of awareness—her father wanted to believe. For the first time in her life, she could read him. Had he let his guard down? Maybe. Or, perhaps, she was getting better and better at her chosen craft.
If she could read the Union’s master spy, even a little bit, she could read anyone.
“I’m sure, General. He murdered forty-four sailors. If I hadn’t put him down, he would have killed me and delivered Ensign Darkwater to the Cloister.”
Her story sounded true because it was true. Mostly. Anne had changed a few details, and she’d made sure Darkwater/Rossi memorized those details.
Turned out Beth wasn’t that bad after all. A very agreeable woman.
“Looks like we dodged a bullet.” General Lafferty picked up a printout, looking from it, to her, then it again. “Ensign Darkwater’s report validates yours. Colonel Cooley’s after-action interview with Darkwater was quite thorough. But that’s Cooley’s way, isn’t it? Thorough.”
A thorough pain in Anne’s ass was more like it. It didn’t matter. She was done with Cooley. He’d move up in the BII ranks. What would his next mission be? He couldn’t go back to the Purist Nation or try his luck in League of Planets space. Maybe he’d get a desk job. Maybe he’d creep closer to taking over from her father.
Anne would find a way to put a stop to that—she would be BII’s next director. She wouldn’t accept anything less.
Her father set the paper on his desk, leaned back, and looked up at her.
“You had a bit of luck when Shamdi relaxed and took off his helmet. That said, you signaling Darkwater to do that tail-flip—a brilliant move, Major. And fighting a Raider in TASH armor? Extraordinary bravery and skill.”
Anne saw his pride in her. His approval was everything.
“You stopped a spy from taking what he knew, and Ensign Darkwater, to the Purists,” her father said. “You personally led a rescue attempt that collected forty-four souls. You would have delivered them safely home if it weren’t for that same spy. Major, I’m putting you up for the Fleet Cross.”
Anne fought to keep her face impassive and professional. She wanted to jump up and down, wanted to run wild, screaming circles around the room.
“Thank you, General,” she said. “I did what had to be done.”
Then came the rarest of rarities—a smile from General Bart Lafferty. A short one, a small one, but a smile nonetheless.
“If you hadn’t been promoted to O4 just two months ago, I put you in for a bump to O5,” he said. “Keep executing your duties, Major, and you’ll make colonel before you know it.”
“Thank you, General. Is the intel Colonel Cooley recovered significant?”
Cooley had met with her father first while Anne sat in the passageway, waiting her turn like an enlisted nobody.
“Significant is an understatement,” her father said. “There is a lot of analysis yet to be done, but what he brought back could make all the difference.”
At that moment, Anne recognized the harsh truth—she would never catch up to Cooley. He’d found some holy grail of intel. She didn’t even get to know what it was. Cooley would likely be promoted from colonel to commodore—just one rank shy of general.
Unless something unexpected happened, Cooley would likely be the next director of BII.
Even now, even after all she’d done, Anne was still on the outside looking in.
“Shamdi thought Darkwater was also a Purist spy,” the general said. “That concerns me. What are your thoughts on her? Hasik won’t be on that ship forever. Do you think Darkwater is loyal enough to run the xeno department, if and when the time comes?”
Anne knew how to read people. She’d read Bethany/Susannah Darkwater/Rossi. That woman wasn’t going to say a word. Not to anyone. Not ever. Especially when she knew Anne would protect her secrets.
Beth murdered Jennifer Hathorn. Anne removed the body before anyone could see it, then cleaned up the mess, making things look just-so. Anne had given Beth a couple of expertly placed cuts to bolster a story of self-defense.
No one would delve deeper into Hathorn’s death. No one would question Anne’s explanation of what happened. Not with the crazy shit that went down on the Keeling—but Beth didn’t need to know that just yet.
