Supernova (22 page)

Unstable
planets...that was something. Lily’s fingers scrolled through her datatab and
came up with a short list of planets known for instability, whether it was
changing air quality or rotation or a whole list of five-dollar words she
couldn’t make out. Vu’saar, Taz’s home planet, was on the list. Irregular
changes to the atmosphere caused mutations in its inhabitants, often resulting
in telepathy. She remembered his story in the mess. Vu’saarns considered
non-telepathic offspring to be second-class citizens, even when they were born
into their nobility, like he and his ex-wife were. His home planet and his lack
of telepathy were clearly a touchy subject for Taz, so she wouldn’t ask him
about it. Rian would probably know more about the planets in the Fringes,
anyway.

Rian
. She had stayed behind in his
cabin in the morning, waiting for the shift change to take place before she
darted back to her own room without anyone seeing her. Rian had been
apologetic, but Lily had understood. Right now wouldn’t be a good time to make
their relationship public, if that’s what they had. Thank God she had forgotten
her comm badge in her cabin. The crew would never let Rian live that down if
someone looked up their locations.

She
closed the files on the datatab and reviewed her notes for her upcoming test,
again to be proctored by Dr. Ashford, but she couldn’t concentrate. She finally
set aside her datatabs and turned on the TV. She had two episodes of
Lightning’s
Luck
to get through before the new season started. She had taken a coffee
break with Mora and a couple of her counterparts in engineering late in the
morning, who told her about the speculations and hype surrounding the season
premiere.

The show
was a nice diversion from her current situation, despite Mora’s friends, who
scoffed at the impossible storylines and technology. “You mean warp drive doesn’t
exist?” Lily had asked.

One of
them had gone into a long, detailed technical speech detailing the need to get
a ship into hyperspace to achieve the level of speed the show’s namesake
reached. Lily took his word for it and joined Mora in mocking them for watching
it, too.

Ten
minutes into the episode, as the shirtless captain of
Lightning’s Luck
fought what looked like a giant Gila monster using a couple of twigs, her comm
badge beeped from its spot on the coffee table. “Captain to Stewart.”

She
paused the TV and picked it up. “Stewart here.” He sounded crisp and
professional, so she tried to as well. Still, her heart leapt a little at the
sound of voice. “What can I do for you, Captain?”

He gave
a low, throaty laugh that made her shiver. “I can think of a few things,” he
murmured. “But coffee right now would be good. I have to talk to you.”

She had
come back from a break with Mora not two hours ago, but this was Rian. She was
going to take seeing him wherever she could. “Five minutes,” she said,
breathiness creeping into her voice.

“I’ll
see you there.”

She
turned off the TV and clipped her comm badge to the collar of her blouse. She
checked her hair in the mirror and gathered her datatabs before leaving her
cabin.

He was
waiting for her, sitting at their usual table. There were a couple of crew
members milling about, and they raised eyebrows at the sight of them together
again. Lily ignored them and took her seat. Rian kept his hands firmly around
his coffee cup, and Lily’s gaze flicked between him and the starfield out the
window.

“It’s
good to see you,” he said softly. He looked up, and the look on his face made
Lily’s breath catch. “But I have some bad news. Unrelated to
that
,” he
added quickly.

“What is
it?” Lily asked, alarmed.

“We
received word of Nym activity just outside the Commons borders. One of their
ships was spotted, and a patrol ship followed it.”

“And?”
Lily leaned forward.

“It disappeared.”

“Maybe
it’s just faster than the patrol ships. Everyone says that Nym technology is
eons ahead of yours.”

“No,
Bishop’s
Pride
caught up to it, and it just evaporated,” he said tersely. “The
captain and her crew saw it happen, and then their sensors confirmed it. It
shimmered, she said, and then it was gone. There are no hypergates there, or
vortex activity. It’s just empty space, not even any habitable planets.”

“I don’t
know what a hypergate is.”

“Nature’s
way of letting a ship into hyperspace,” he clarified. “Energy currents. We can
force our way into it on a patrol ship with hyperspace engines, but smaller
crafts, like freighters and passenger transports, use them if they don’t have
that kind of equipment. It lets a vessel move faster through space.”

Lily
nodded. “Could the Nym ship have imploded? Or maybe a hull breach?” She had
read up on the dangers of space travel and couldn’t help but notice the lack of
oxygen masks available in an emergency. Not that they would do much good in the
event of a hull breach.

Rian’s
upraised eyebrow told her he noticed her research, then he shook his head. “Ships
don’t simply implode without warning. The
Pride
’s sensors would have
picked that up. A ship blown to pieces would leave debris behind, anyway.”

“Cloaking
device? Even the
Defiant
has one of those…”

“The
Defiant
’s
cloaking device is rudimentary at best, and I’ll be first to admit that. This
isn’t a battleship. The
Pride
fired on the exact coordinates of the Nym
ship. A cloaked one could still be fired upon. But the torpedo just sailed
through the space where it was.”

Lily
racked her brain, trying to recall her father’s books and what she understood
about modern space travel.

“Fleet
intel can’t explain it,” Rian said finally. “The Nym know something that we don’t,
and we can’t figure it out.”

Fear
sliced through Lily. “Could they actually be in the Commons and you don’t know
about it?”

The look
on Rian’s face made her hands shake around her cup. “That’s a possibility,” he
said. “Fleet wanted to take you into protective custody. I’ve spent the last
hour and a half in vidconference with a few admirals, including Kentz. Half
want you in custody, half want you here. The Nym activity aside, we don’t know
if they know you’ve even been found. They’re very reclusive.” He held up a
finger, halting her next question. “We have excellent safeguards in place,
Lily, I promise. If we didn’t, they would have invaded and annexed the Commons
years ago. Our security is as good as theirs. They’ve never broken into our
classified information, which includes you, nor have they invaded a station.”

“But
everyone on this ship knows who I am!”

“And
only this ship. That was inevitable. But everyone in Fleet is held to high
degrees of confidentiality. When someone is posted to a ship or station, they
aren’t at liberty to discuss secrets about their previous missions. That rule
is strictly enforced.”

“You
sound so sure no one breaks them,” she argued. “Taz told me about killing
zombies once.”
Damn
. She hadn’t intended to let that slip out.

Rian
shrugged. “Lethal autoimmune toxin on Corlon. It’s common knowledge. I was
there, too. Half of Fleet was. But I guarantee no one on this ship has ever
talked about classified missions, to you or with each other. Fleet has a
mind-wipe protocol in place to discourage that.”

“What?”
Lily dropped her cup. It smacked against the tabletop, and a few drops of
coffee sloshed out the sides.

“You
haven’t gotten that far in your course, then. It’s well-known. That kind of
insubordination results in a mind-wipe. Memories of whatever shouldn’t be
talked about are erased,” he explained patiently.

“That’s
barbaric!”

“Possibly,
but it’s an effective deterrent, one that hasn’t needed to be utilized in
years. People respect the Fleet, Lily. And it’s the most drastic punishment we
have. Commonwealth space doesn’t sanction the death penalty.”

“Then
how did the media know I was on the
Defiant
?” she countered.

“Well,
technically, they didn’t, although that mystery’s been mostly solved. All the
media could make out was a rumor that someone on an unnamed ship was found
buried alive in a pile of museum artifacts. That bit of information made it to
Rubidge Station and was spread—we’re still unsure as to who let it leak. The
newshounds picked it up and embellished on it. Unfortunately, they got it
right. None of the legitimate news sources ran that story. We checked the
tabloid vids, and Fleet’s been keeping an eye on the stories. One of Rubidge’s
broadcasters made up an interview with the time traveler that was an obvious
fake, and it died down.”

Lily
sighed. “You have an answer for everything.”

“Not the
Nym dilemma yet.” He gave her a small smile that was probably meant to be
reassuring, but it seemed strained and forced.

Lily was
still thinking about what the media knew. “But the newsvids guessed things a
little too accurately for it to be just a coincidence,” she pressed. “Are you
sure no onboard has blabbed?” Catching Rian’s sharp intake of breath, she
added, “Don’t lie to me.”

He
closed his eyes briefly. “You’re right. We
have
noticed that the
original story is a little too close to the truth. But you don’t know the
tabloids and what they come up with.”

“You
didn’t invent tabloids. Ours were making up stories about Bat Boy and Elvis
sightings in truck stops long before I woke up in a coffin.” Rian raised an
eyebrow in confusion, and she sighed again. “Never mind. The point is,
newspapers have been making stuff up to sell more copies for thousands of
years. Someone snitched, Rian.”

“It’s a
possibility.”

“And it
wasn’t Taz,” Lily added.

“Ensign
Shraft didn’t do it. Neither did your friend Mora Kharn. We checked their
transmits and comp activity already. They were the first suspects, and neither
of them fit the profile of a traitor to begin with. Shraft has the Fleet, and
only the Fleet, in his life.”

Lily
nodded. Taz had too much to lose.

“Nurse
Kharn’s father is an admiral,” he continued. “A mind-wipe would be the least of
her worries if she betrayed us.”

“What
about Ashford?” she asked. Her gut recoiled at the thought, and she instantly
regretted the suggestion. The doctor was one of the kindest people she had ever
met, and fiercely loyal to Fleet.

“He has
too much to lose, too. This is his last posting before he retires on a full
pension, and he doesn’t fit the psych profile, either.”

“Steg?”
The security chief was not a fan of Lily or Rian.

Rian
shook his head. “Grigha Steg has seen everything in his career, and you’re one
more unusual occurrence.” He leaned back in his chair. “Believe me, Lily, Fleet
has looked at the profiles of everyone on this ship and examined every piece of
communication, including mine. Nothing fits with the Nym.”

“You’re
missing something,” Lily said sharply. “Who’s to say that someone here doesn’t
have, I don’t know, a two-way radio that acts independently from your ship? One
that links directly to the Nym?”

“We
already considered that.”

“Of
course you have.” Lily knew she sounded petulant, but she
knew
she was
right. They were missing something. She stewed in silence for a couple of
minutes, sipping at lukewarm coffee.

“We did
a check of energy emissions,” he explained. “All devices leave a detectable
trail, I guess you would call it, after they’ve been used. If you use a
computer to send a transmit to a friend on Rubidge Station, for instance, and
you turn off the computer, its use can be verified by an emissions detector.
Devices emit them, like an odor.”

Lily
nodded, remembering the hype over Wi-Fi hotspots back at home.

“And
nothing out of the ordinary has been detected,” she finished for him.

“No.”
Frustration crossed his face as he ran a hand through his hair. “The odds aren’t
great, but right now the only reliable hypothesis is the media guessed too
closely.”

“Fleet’s
questioned reporters?”

“Of
course not. This thing is finally dying down. That ridiculous vid serial is
starting a new series soon, and they’re all over that.”

Lily was
grateful for the change in topic, a subject that kept going in circles. “You
mean
Lightning’s Luck
? You watch it then?” She tried to keep her tone
light.

“Don’t
tell me the crew has you drooling over that excuse for a captain, too,” he
muttered. “In real life, getting stuck in hyperspace can kill you.”

“I only
drool over one captain,” she said. At his bemused expression, she added, “Well,
not drool. But you get the point.”

“Noted
and appreciated.”

“Wait a
minute,” Lily said. “You mentioned the episode where Captain Trid and the ship
got stuck in hyperspace. It was when the engines failed and he ended up having
end-of-the-world sex with the navigator in his office.”