Chapter 30
“Pain is the finest teacher. Thus, the obsessive avoidance of pain is the most certain path to folly and destruction. To embrace pain is to receive wisdom.”
Devlin Sinclair-Maru, Integrity Mirror
The hatch to Saef’s quarters slid shut as Che Ramos departed, and Saef turned his focus onto Inga Maru, his thoughts swirling into channels of misgiving. The internal tension rose until Saef found the Deep Man, his pulse slowing back to normal. He took a slow breath.
“Okay, Maru, we only have minutes to transition. What are we facing?”
Inga paced a slow circle and then sat, her cloak settling around her. “The micro is a weapon.”
“No surprise there,” Saef said.
“It contained deep layers of coding, and something like a Meerschaum encryption.”
Saef stared at Inga. “I thought Meerschaum encryption was too resource intensive to crack.”
Inga seemed to hesitate, displaying indecision for the first in Saef’s experience with her. “So did I.”
“More of your Family tech sorcery?”
Inga shook her head. “No. Loki seems to have a…particular facility for code breaking.”
“Indeed,” Saef said, wondering why Inga seemed so hesitant. “Cracking a Meerschaum encryption in seconds? Fleet will like to know about that ‘particular facility,’ I daresay.”
“No!” Inga said sharply, then turned her steady gaze into Saef’s eyes. “No.”
Saef stared at her, wanting answers, but seeing the clock ticking down to transition he said, “And what did you find under the encryption?”
“Complex instruction sets for the micro and for its payload,” Inga said. “The micro activates during transition, seeks its target, and injects coded nanotech…all during transition.”
“Nanotech,” Saef repeated, leaning back, shocked. “The Shapers? Gods.”
“That was my first thought, but perhaps not. Loki is running models of the program. The nano payload targets implants, but it could be something like Hawksgaard’s tricks. Human tech married to Shaper tech.”
“To what end?” Saef said.
“We can’t be certain,” Inga said. “A thousand micros activate during transition, inject a nano payload optimized for N-space.… Who can say? There would be enough material to physically alter an implant in significant ways.”
Saef slowly shook his head, thinking through the ramifications. “Unlikely it’s intended to kill me outright, then. But since we don’t know what it’s supposed to do to me, we can’t very well fake it, can we?”
Inga seemed to ponder the question, but her eyes flickered over data streaming in from some source, her hand fishing out a food concentrate bar. “That is why we need the XO,” she said. “I see a way, I think. A dangerous way.” She paused. “Roush is here,” she said, and the door chimed a moment later.
The hatch opened to reveal Susan Roush, her expression as severe as ever. “Captain, Chief,” she said in greeting, stepping into the cabin, the hatch sealing shut behind her. “Transition time, eh?” Her eyes passed over Saef and Inga, falling upon the flat gray rectangle resting nearby. “What the hell is that?”
Inga took a bite from her food bar, her eyes still flickering. Saef smiled despite the fear that hammered at his control of the Deep Man.
“That, Roush, seems to be your stepping-stone back to command.”
Lieutenant Tilly Pennysmith clambered through the bowels of Tanager’s archaic Weapons section, a smear of grease serving as a battle stripe across her face. Both of her hands probed each link of the loading tray rails as she wormed through the trays. A white-faced Chief Sandi Patel accompanied her progress, at first firing nonstop streams of haughty invective, despite the raking Deckchief Church had already bestowed upon her.
Pennysmith ignored everything Sandi Patel said: the veiled insults, the veiled threats, the outright fabrications. She grimly continued, physically touching every joint, bearing, and link of each loading apparatus, her number three uniform permanently marred by grease stains.
After clearing the glasscaster trays, finding every span exactly to spec and freshly greased, Pennysmith began to think that she may have overreacted. Had she compounded her initial leadership failures first by failing to properly manage her section, then by offending and alienating her section chief?
But then she began clambering over the loading track for the larger 32-gauge missiles, and Sandi Patel’s voice became strident.
“Young officers always pushing, puffing themselves off!” Sandi Patel declared, sliding down the load tray behind Pennysmith. “Never can let a crew learn their ship without interfering, thinking that rank somehow makes ’em an expert!”
Tilly Pennysmith said nothing in reply, pressing on, sliding each of her filthy hands over, under, and through each link and rail.
“Listen, listen!” Sandi Patel said, almost shouting. “Okay? Okay.” Tilly peered over her shoulder at Sandi Patel’s suffused face. “You want me to take the blame? I’ll take the blame. It was all on me, you hear?”
Tilly wiped a sweating brow with the back of one hand, leaving a new smear of grease, then turned back to her examination.
“Officer? Fleet officer?” Sandi Patel said in an ugly tone. “Damned cultist. Not even a rational person. Shoulda been wiped out, the lot of you!”
Pennysmith froze in place for a moment, stunned by the hateful words. She began to turn, to look into those eyes, but stopped herself; she would not be deflected from her purpose. Only a short time remained before transition, and the Weapons section would be perfect by Tilly’s own hand and eye. She pressed on, worming down the 32-gauge load tray. A hand seized her shoulder.
Tilly spun. “Do not touch me!” Sandi Patel stared, shocked at the wrath flaring toward her. “By your dishonor, Patel, my honor is taken. I may be of the Faith. I may be an officer over you. But I wear a sword, and when we’re planetside, I will meet you.”
Sandi Patel stared in stunned silence, and Tilly rolled back to her inspection. A moment later she discovered the source of Chief Patel’s panic, finding the satchel of pilfered components secreted between the underside links of the 32-gauge rails.
“A little shopping, Chief?” Pennysmith said. “Let’s go discuss this with Deckchief Church, shall we?”
An hour later, with minutes to spare, Lieutenant Tilly Pennysmith settled into her place on the cramped bridge. Everyone sat ready in their place, except the captain, with Lieutenant Ruprecht acting as officer of the watch.
Tilly took a breath to calm herself, glancing at her hands on the console before her. Grease still lined each fingernail, but her hands did not shake. She looked up, checking to her left and right. Che Ramos ran the sensors. He looked harried and nervous to her eyes, but he always did. Phillipa Baker ran Ops now that Ruprecht worked first watch, and she appeared as unmoved as ever. Farley sat at comm, idly flipping through screens on his console. Yeager—beautiful Julie Yeager—occupied her throne, regally unaware of anyone else on the bridge. Tilly looked at the statuesque profile of the navigation and astrogation officer, and struggled to quell the envy that arose yet again. Ensign Yeager, the ideal young officer; no bizarre religious trappings for her, no stupid HUD lenses like a bloody demi-cit, no infamous family…and smart and beautiful on top of it all.
The bridge hatch popped, and Captain Sinclair-Maru stalked in, his face set in its usual forbidding lines. The captain’s slender blond cox’n strolled in behind him, a food bar in hand, her dark cloak shrouding her form. Not for the first time, Pennysmith wondered about a possible romantic connection between the captain and his cox’n. She knew they were distant relatives—quite distant—and she never saw a hint of any real romance between them, so perhaps the peculiar bond between them was nothing more than shared ancestors.
“Ruprecht, I have the bridge,” the captain said, taking over the command seat from that micromanaging twit.
“The bridge is yours, Captain,” Ruprecht rumbled back and moved to the bridge hatchway.
As the bridge hatch closed, Inga Maru settled into the deckchief’s empty seat, and the captain said, “Nav, calculation for our transition ready?”
“Calculations for transition complete, Captain,” Julie Yeager affirmed.
“Weps?”
“Shields generators, all green,” Pennysmith said, scanning her instrument checklist, “point defenses charged, glasscaster and missiles, green.”
“Ops?”
“Engineering shows green,” Phillipa Baker said, “Ready for transition power. Heat sinks, all green. All sections report ready for transition. Marine quarterdeck reports ready. Fabs ready for transition programs.”
“Very good.” The captain nodded, seeming calm to Pennysmith’s eye, despite his first combat transition. “Comm, signal Fleet with our transition code.”
“Signaling our transition code to Fleet, Captain,” Farley said.
The captain seemed to scan through his UI for a moment before saying, “Nav, transition power, now.”
Pennysmith did not see Julie Yeager actuate the N-drive, but she felt the unmistakable effect of shifting through transition space. The darkened bridge seemed to glow, each instrument light seeming to expand, the air itself seeming to exude a faint radiance. Back in Engineering, she knew, the fabs burst into activity, feverishly constructing components humanity could only obtain in the fleeting moments within N-space.
As part of her faith, Tilly Pennysmith carried no Shaper tech within her body, so she alone did not feel the heating effects of transition upon an implant, but this prompted no great curiosity in her as the seconds stretched out.
“Sensors, you ready there?” the captain asked of Che Ramos after a long span of silence.
Che jumped. “R-ready, Captain.”
That’s right, Pennysmith thought, probably Che’s first transition.
Then the universe subsided, stars appearing, one star much brighter than all the rest.
“Weps?”
“Shields up and green, Captain,” Pennysmith said.
“Nav? Confirm transition.”
“One second, Captain,” Julie Yeager said as Loki rapidly obtained fixes with optical scopes, comparing them to astrogation charts. “Yes, Captain, transition confirmed.” The main holo lit up with Tanager’s position relative to the Delta Three planets and stations.
“Sensors, passive only,” the captain said.
“Yes, Captain,” Che said, sweating, “passive only.”
Pennysmith heard the sound, like a surprised grunt, issue from the captain, just before Farley said, “Captain, receiving a steady Fleet beacon from the Delta Three orbital station.”
“Comm, double-check that beacon, please,” the captain said. “It’s using the correct Fleet signature?”
Farley eyed his panel and nodded. “Double-checked, Captain. Signature confirmed.”
Pennysmith heard the soft words from the captain’s cox’n, “How is that possible?” but she couldn’t see what caused the consternation. The captain stared at the holo, frowning, as seconds passed in the semidarkness of the bridge. Tanager coasted, dark and silent, into the outer fringes of the Delta Three system.
“Loki,” the captain said, at last, “where is the Delta Three defense platform?”
Pennysmith shot a startled look back at the holo. From the murmurs around the bridge she realized she wasn’t the only one who failed to notice the absence of the small platform.
“According to optical scope composites I am forming,” Loki replied, “the defense platform was recently destroyed. Fragments of wreckage expand outward from its predicted position.”
That explained the captain’s consternation, Pennysmith realized. The enemy swooped in, destroyed the pathetic defense platform, then left the orbital dock and station unmolested? That hardly seemed possible, and yet the Fleet signature continued to broadcast from the orbital station as if all was well.
“Nav,” the captain said, “begin transition calculations.”
“Yes, Captain,” Julie Yeager said. “For Core System?”
The captain shared a look with Chief Maru, his eyes flickering from a line-of-sight. He turned back and continued frowning at the holo. “No. Intrasystem.”
Julie Yeager stared at the captain, uncomprehending. “Intrasystem?”
Everyone shared her confusion. The astronomical expense of Shaper fuel meant intrasystem transitions simply did not occur. In one single step, the captain would eliminate any chance of efficiency bonuses for the entire crew, not to mention calling down the eventual ire of the Admiralty for such wastefulness.
The captain’s inimical gaze turned toward Julie Yeager and she blushed, visible even in the dim lighting. “Yes, Captain. Intrasystem calculations.”
“As deep on Delta Three station as we can,” the captain said before turning to Tilly Pennysmith. “The bridge is yours, Weps.”
“I have the bridge,” Pennysmith affirmed.
The captain stood. “Run dark. Run silent.”
“Silent and dark, Captain,” she said.
With his cox’n close beside, the captain moved to the bridge hatchway. “Ops, have the XO meet me on the Marine quarterdeck.”
As Phillipa Baker affirmed and messaged Susan Roush, the bridge hatch slid shut, and Lieutenant Tilly Pennysmith assumed the command seat. She ran through all the vital systems once, before she noticed Che Ramos looking toward the bridge hatch, staring after the captain with the most peculiar expression on his face.
“Sensors?” she said.
Che Ramos jerked and turned back to his console. “Y-yes, Lieutenant?”
“Keep sharp watch for any change, any trace.”
“Y-yes, Lieutenant,” Ramos said.
Tilly Pennysmith turned back to the holo.
The IMS Tanager continued its progress, a bubble of light and warmth on the cold, dark edge of the Delta Three system.
Lieutenant Pennysmith sensed it would not last.