Supernova (16 page)

Well,
that was a surprise. Lily wouldn’t have put her money on any of those countries
in the space race. Shortly after their successful expeditions, a joint
American-Chinese venture followed suit, setting up the first commercial
sectors. She couldn’t help but giggle at the idea of buying spare parts for the
family spaceship.

The
Earth-bound population had been reduced to less than three billion by the time
the new colonies formed the Commonwealth in 2220, and that number had been
halved when the Kurrans made contact in 2280. The Commonwealth had been keeping
an eye on the Kurran corner of the galaxy for several years. They had debated
whether or not to extend an olive branch, unsure if they were friendly or not.
Most of the colonies were unprepared for a war. She bookmarked articles on them
to read later.

She
closed the history file and opened the first text of for her pharmacy training.
It looked straightforward enough, something she could complete on her own in a
few weeks, with a few exams she would have to write before beginning practical
training in a pharmacy. She would have to ask someone about a couple of
machines mentioned in the outline; someone in the infirmary could help if they
weren’t too busy. The whole ship had been busy since leaving Rubidge, poking
around the new machinery and fine-tuning it to their specifications.

The
intercom beside the cabin door pinged, and Rian’s voice said, “All available
crew, conference hall in ten minutes.”

Was she
supposed to go, too? She tapped her comm badge hesitantly, still wary of it. “Captain
Marska?” Nothing happened, so she tried again. “Stewart to Captain Marska.”

That did
the trick. “Marska here. I’m expecting you in the conference hall, too,” he
said quietly.

“I’ll be
there.” She slipped the Fleet-issued med-assistant smock over her black blouse
and pants and left her cabin.

She
figured out how to get to the conference hall and paused in its doorway,
looking for some kind of order. She saw a sea of uniforms mingling with one
another, taking seats at random places, so she looked for a familiar face. She
spotted Taz waving at her and looking like hell. There was an odd odor in here,
coming off more than a few crew members who also looked like they had been out
carousing with Taz.

“Are you
okay?” she asked, looking up at his bloodshot eyes. She discreetly breathed
through her mouth.

“I will
be once I get a decent night’s sleep. I’ve been on the go since the last night
on station, and I haven’t had a chance to recover from the hangover. Where were
you, anyway?”

“Reading
in my cabin,” she lied.

“I was
looking for you,” he said. “We went to the White Dwarf. You should’ve been
there. Kostin destroyed himself and got on the stage with one of the dancers. It
was spectacular. We got it on vid before the club manager kicked us out. His
girlfriend is
so
pissed off.”

“I don’t
know Kostin, his girlfriend, or what the White Dwarf is.”

“First
officer, navigation second-in-command, and a strip joint.”

“While
seeing green alien space tits sounds interesting in theory, strip clubs aren’t
really my cup of tea.”

“You don’t
get green alien space tits on Rubidge,” Taz insisted. “Commons space is mostly
humanoid. Besides, the White Dwarf has guys, too.”

“Taz,
while I support everyone doing what makes them happy, do I seem like someone
goes to strip clubs? Really, tell me.” She crossed her arms and arched one
eyebrow at him dramatically.

“You
said you wanted to try new things!”

“I was
thinking along the lines of replicators and space shuttles and things I didn’t
have at home.”

Whatever
rejoinder Taz could have offered was cut off by Admiral Kentz calling the room
to order. Rian stood beside him. What was Kentz doing here?

The
admiral offered an insincere welcome to the science team aboard and detailed
the
Defiant
’s repairs and upgrades. It was officially on par with other
patrol ships, eliciting snickers among the crew and a tight-lipped smile from
the captain. A lab had been set up to allow the science team to set up shop temporarily
before their mission, where they could grow crystals of some kind, Lily
deduced, in peace. Some kind of secretive weaponry in the making. Her mind
drifted back to her datatab. She should have brought it with her.

“Our
other security issue is the custody of our time traveler,” Kentz said, and her
ears perked up.

“You all
know by now that an unnamed Fleet ship ended up with a Nym kidnapping victim
from ancient times,” he continued, as though there could possibly be anyone
aboard who didn’t know Lily by now. “Battleships are attempting to infiltrate
Nym space and investigate, and we’ve managed to keep the details of the victim
out of the media.”

Several
dozen pairs of eyes swiveled in Lily’s direction. She shifted in her seat but
met them. “Howdy,” she said. A ripple of laughter spread through the conference
hall. Kentz glowered in her direction.

“You all
know she’s here, and Fleet is pleased to see that everyone has remembered our
policies on intel containment and confidentiality. None of the other ships are
aware of her presence.” Lily wondered what he meant by their policies. She had
skimmed over that part in the Fleet history module in her texts. He continued. “She’ll
remain here for the time being and will eventually settle in a Fleet-controlled
environment.”

“As a
pharm tech,” Lily piped up.

“Yes,
Captain Marska suggested that occupation.” He turned to the rest of the crew. “Obviously,
her returning to the twenty-first century is out of the question due to the
Commons’ long-standing positions on time travel and the possibility of altering
history.”

Lily
shivered. She had never thought her return in those terms before. But how could
she alter the course of history? She had been a receptionist.

She
looked at the faces trained on her and caught Rian’s gaze. His azure eyes were
full of want, the same look he had outside her barracks door on station. Heat
coursed through her, and she forced herself to look away, hoping no one
noticed.

Kentz
cleared his throat, bringing the attention back to him. “Miss Stewart is
cooperating fully with Fleet,” he said. “And we’re going to find out exactly
what the Nym are up to. No other time travelers have shown up, but if the Nym
have been going back and forth between centuries, they must be stopped. The
time continuum as it has already occurred must not be changed.”

Lily got
the message. A receptionist probably couldn’t do much damage on her own, but a
receptionist with evil alien scientists and a space army on her tail could. The
ramifications boggled her mind.

Kentz re-emphasized
the importance of security and secrecy, and urged the crew not to pester her.
They hadn’t in the first place—the questions she had received had been curious
and respectful, with more than a few awed looks when she described cars and
airplanes—but Kentz’s instruction made her feel a little lonelier. Taz and Mora
still had jobs to do, after all, and she wasn’t sure where she stood with Rian.

When
they were finally dismissed, Lily kept her head down and headed for her cabin.
She toyed with the idea of going to the mess, but she wasn’t hungry. She
resigned herself to a quiet evening tackling the first module of the pharmacy
program and watching a couple of episodes of
Lightning’s Luck
, a TV show
Mora recommended.

Taz
caught up to her, reeking of that alcoholic odor she had noticed earlier. She
must have made a face because he asked, “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

Realization
dawned on his face. “Oh, you’re noticing the smell. We were drinking tambith
whiskey at the White Dwarf. I took a shower this morning, just so you know.” He
raised his arm and sniffed. “Damn. No wonder communications smells like death.
You have to sweat it out. At least I’m not the only one who stinks.”

“I
noticed.”

He
changed the subject. “So, where are you going?” he asked.

“My
cabin; where else?”

“I’m off
shift at 1900 hours today. I was thinking I could teach you to shoot. I’m as
good at handling a laser weapon as I am at coding and hacking.”

“Taz,
the idea of you handling a gun scares the hell out of me.” They stepped in a
line waiting for the lift.

“I didn’t
shoot you when you woke up in the cargo hold, remember?” he pressed. “And you
were making sudden movements.”

Lily
rolled her eyes. “What sudden movements? I was drugged and could barely move.”

“A dead
body crawling out of a coffin, no matter how slowly, qualifies as a huge
fucking sudden movement.”

The
surrounding crew was listening to their exchange and responded with a wave of
laughter. A throat cleared behind Lily and Taz, who whirled around to face Rian
and Admiral Kentz. The admiral peered at Taz’s insignia.

“Watch
your language, Ensign...” He paused.

“Shraft,”
Rian finished. But he was looking at Lily, his face set in rigid, professional
lines but his eyes sending her a look of naked need that made her blush.

“Apologies,
sir,” said Taz. The lift doors opened, and he followed a bunch of
communications officers into it. “So, Lily, 1900 hours? Meet me in security.”

* * *

Rian
breathed a sigh of relief when Admiral Kentz’s shuttle left the
Defiant
.
The admiral would return to Rubidge Station before transferring to a ship that
would take him to Fleet headquarters on Commons Prime, far away from where he
could waste the time of Rian and his crew.

He
returned to his office off the bridge and was pleased that the replicator spit
out a cup of tea instead of something sludgy and green. He brought up all the
classified files Kentz had transferred to his office computer and took a moment
to stew before delving into them. There really had been no need for the admiral
to gather half the crew to tell them something they already knew and remind
them of policies that had been drilled into them on their first day of basic
training. Idly he wondered how someone like Kentz had ended up in his position.
During his walk-through of the ship, he had taken control of a navigation
console from Lieutenant Asmo and nearly changed the ship’s course. Rian and
Asmo had readjusted the direction under Kentz’s irritated look.

He
turned to the classified files, detailing Fleet intel on Nym activity over the
last decade. Aside from a few skirmishes between battleships and Nym battle
cruisers and Lily Stewart’s appearance, there wasn’t anything that explained
their ability to time travel. They rarely even left their corner of the galaxy
since the Fleet’s adoption of a “Shoot first, ask questions later” policy when
it came to their cruisers in Commons or Fringes space.

Obviously
that didn’t mean anything. Everyone knew the rumors of the Nym’s technological
capabilities, but there wasn’t much in the way of hard evidence. They would
have to develop better transporter and ship cloaking mechanisms for time travel
to work based on the accepted theories outlined in Rian’s files.

One
popular theory involved the use of a vortex. Essentially, find the right kind
of vortex, engage the hyperspace engines to a specific rate of distance, then
abort the hyperdrive and allow the vortex to carry the ship into another time.
It was unproven; the reality of space travel was that if a ship found herself
in a vortex, she was coming out in pieces. That was what happened a couple
centuries back to a few science ships dumb enough to test out that theory
before the ban on time travel took effect. There really was no such thing as
the “right” kind of vortex in space. Besides, even if that were possible, there
hadn’t been a recorded vortex anywhere near the Nym world in years.

Another,
more plausible but untested theory hypothesized the use of wormhole-like energy
currents that could transport matter through a space-time rift, treating the
energy waves like doors into different eras. Wormholes occurred naturally and
far more often than vortexes, but a ship was likely to meet her demise in the
same manner. Assuming the Nym had manipulated space rifts naturally, this
theory was likeliest.

But
what if they had actually developed a device that could propel them back and
forth through time?
Rian made a fist at the idea.

His
computer shrilled to signal an incoming message, interrupting his train of
thought. He checked the sender’s ID: N. Marska. His sister. He considered
dismissing it, but knew she would keep calling until he authorized her message.
He tabbed the “receive” icon on the screen, and his twin’s face appeared, blue
eyes sparkling. She had changed her hair again, and bright red streaks ran
through her shoulder-length black curls.

“Hi,
little brother,” she said.

She was
ten minutes older than him and never let him forget it. They were closing in on
their mid-thirties now. It was well past time to let it go. He forced himself
to smile. “Hi, Nalia.”

She
propped her elbows on her desk and rested her head on her hands. “You know damn
well why I’m calling and why I’m calling you in your office instead of your
apartment.”