Farthest Space: The Wrath of Jan (2 page)

“Some sort of mixup, Fred,” he said soothingly.
 
“It happens all the time.”
 

“No one informed me of a mixup,” Fred grumbled.

“Hence the term
mixup
, Fred.
 
It’s not the kind of thing people usually organize in advance.”
 
Steven smiled reassuringly at S’ansi, who’d been listening to their conversation, a charmingly anxious expression on her face.
 
“You are certain your papers showed you aboard the
Arisia
, Lieutenant?”

“Oh, absolutely,” she said earnestly.
 
“But I don’t have my papers on my person.”
 

Steven had already figured that out.
 
“I imagine they’re in your luggage?”

She nodded.

“Well, that should be in your quarters.
 
Let’s take a look.”

He followed her into her quarters, the small, stark sort of room allotted to most members of the crew.
 
Despite their starkness, the quarters were almost painfully clean, right down to the spotless white carpet.
 
Fred’s drones kept every centimeter of the big vessel utterly free of dust and dirt.

Sure enough, her luggage was already on the narrow bed, brought down by the shuttle operator who’d transported her on board.
 
She reached into her large duffel bag and began to rummage.
 
“I know they’re in here somewhere.”

Steven wondered exactly why she had so much luggage, considering her people never wore clothes, but he guessed it was better not to ask.
 
Who knew what women kept in their bags?
 
He suspected most of them didn’t really know either.
 

While he waited, he amused himself by watching the way her breasts swung gently as she bent over and dug through her belongings.

“Ah-ha!” she said triumphantly.
 
“Here it is!”

Absorbed as he was in the fascinating sight of her breasts jiggling, Steven never saw the particle weapon she shot him with.
 

Steven awakened slowly, aware of very little besides a massive headache.
 
He groaned and clutched at his skull, wondering exactly what he’d done to deserve this sort of pain.
 
He hadn’t felt anything like this since the time he’d engaged in social drinking with the Klaxons.
 
Unfortunately, they were all eight-foot warriors, and their favored drink was something that tasted like a combination of kerosene and gin, and which had the power of a nuclear explosion.

He was pretty certain he hadn’t been drinking Klaxon ale again, but he couldn’t quite remember what he’d been up to this time.
 
Nothing good, judging from the size of his headache.
 
With a moan of pain, he forced his eyes open.

Vaish was sitting near him, staring at him with her yellow eyes.

Fabulous
, he thought.
 
Of all the people to deal with when he had a monster hangover, Vaish wouldn’t be his first choice.
 
Or his hundredth, for that matter.
 
Besides, he couldn’t imagine what Vaish could be doing here, watching him wake up from a bender.
 
He surely hadn’t gone to sleep with her in his quarters.
 
Had he?

A horrifying notion swam into the recesses of his foggy brain.
 
Could he have been drinking with Vaish?
 
Could that have possibly led to…

He veered away from that thought, deciding it was too ridiculous to be considered.
 
Vaish was as far from a party girl as it was possible for a woman to be.
 
She was the most serious person he’d ever met, and he’d never seen her touch alcohol.
 
He’d never noticed her having any fun at all, for that matter.
 

The irony was that her people, the Canvul, were noted for having fun.
 
Their planet was the top vacation spot in this sector.
 
The Canvul made the best drinks, threw the best parties, and had the best sex of any species in the galaxy.
 
It was whispered that Vaish had left Canvulia because she couldn’t fit in, and he belived it.
 
If he’d been drinking, or otherwise…
partying
… he was damned certain it hadn’t been with Vaish.

But Vaish was glaring at him with such cold disapproval that he was fairly certain he’d been doing something he shouldn’t have.
 
He tried to sit up, then groaned again.

At last Vaish spoke.
 
“Nice going,” she said.

Her voice was so chilly that Pluto would have seemed quite balmy by comparison.
 
With a violent effort of will, Steven managed to make his bleary eyes focus on her.
 
He realized with surprise that they were in a small, enclosed space.
 
Too small to be his quarters on the
Arisia
.
 
Too small even to be one of the enlisted quarters.

“What the hell happened?” he croaked, then wished he hadn’t.
 
His voice sounded rusty, and throbbing pain shot through his skull in agonizing waves.

“You let yourself be shot by a terrorist,” Vaish informed him tautly.

“Impossible,” Steven retorted.
 
If there was one thing he prided himself on, it was his proficiency with a blaster.
  
“No one outdraws me.”

Her voice was sharp with disapproval, slicing into his aching head like a laser.
 
“You never drew your weapon.
 
I imagine you were too busy observing the scenery.”

Abruptly the memory of pale blue breasts bouncing and swaying flashed through his mind, and he swallowed against the nausea that rose in his throat.
 
Damn
.
 
Vaish was right.
 
He’d let himself be distracted by S’ansi and hadn’t adequately investigated the odd circumstances of her presence on board the
Arisia,
even when Fred had sounded a note of warning.
 
And then he’d been so interested in her breasts he hadn’t noticed her pulling a blaster on him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.
 
He’d forgotten his own personal motto:
Never lower your shields.
 
The Noo’dis’t woman had caught him with his mental shields down.

“I ought to be busted to ensign,” he said under his breath.

“And made to scrub heads for the rest of your life,” Vaish agreed pleasantly.
 
“Fortunately for you, your recent actions are unlikely to cause you demotion.”

Steven rubbed his forehead.
 
“Why’s that?”

“Because in case you haven’t noticed,” Vaish drawled, “we’re in a life pod.
 
We’ve been ejected from the ship.”

*****

Vaish watched as the seriousness of the situation finally sank into McNeill’s thick skull.
 
Really, she thought with mingled contempt and fury, the man’s head was obviously only good for growing hair.
 
Or perhaps, like most men, he kept his brains further south.

McNeill looked around at the small, confined space.
 
“We’re alone?”

“Apparently the terrorists felt that removing the senior crew members was sufficient,” Vaish said.

“Okay, let’s assume for now the Noo’dis’t woman shot me—“

“It is not an assumption.
 
It is a matter of record.”

She could hear his teeth grinding together, but he kept his tone even.
 
“Fine. How did she get the particle weapon past the scanners?”

“I don’t know for certain.
 
My guess is that it was concealed in shielding and disguised as something else, something innocuous, so that the computer scan didn’t pick it up.”

“And how did one woman manage to take over the entire ship?”

“She apparently had a ship full of accomplices stationed nearby.
 
A small
Alliance
ship of Canvulian origin, interestingly enough.
 
Once she was on board the
Arisia
and neutralized you, she hacked into the computer and dropped the shields
.
 
Her people used a rematerializer to beam on board and flooded the ship’s ventilation system with prezidene gas, taking us by surprise.”

“Why didn’t Fred stop her?”

“I believe she used some sort of device to deactivate him just a second or two before she shot you.
 
He didn’t come back online.”

“Uh…”
 
Fascinated, she watched the muscles of his throat work as he swallowed, then yanked her gaze away.
 
Really, she thought, annoyed with herself, they were probably going to die soon, either by drowning in vacuum when their oxygen supply ran out, or by crashing into a celestial body of some sort, yet she was still watching his every motion like a
g’ala
in heat.
 
“So did these terrorists aim us at a planet, or are we just going to float in space until we die?”

There was no viewscreen in the life pod, since steering was ordinarily done by computer, and little enough way to tell where they were going.
 
“The only way I can think of to answer that question would be to open the hatch and stick your head out,” she snapped, a little more tartly than usual.
 
“You’re quite welcome to try it.”

His square jaw hardened at her tone, but his voice remained even.
 
“The instruments?” he inquired.

“Aren’t working for some reason.
 
I can’t determine why.”

“Marvelous.
 
So we’re hurtling headlong through space without any way of telling where we’re going.”

“An insightful analysis of the situation, demonstrating your usual brilliant command of strategy,” Vaish said between her teeth.

Steven’s eyes, green-gold like the eyes of a wildcat, narrowed dangerously.
 
“There’s no need to get sarcastic, Vaish.
 
At least no more sarcastic than usual.
 
It’s not my fault we’re here.”

She lifted an eyebrow, and he sighed.
 
“Fine.
 
It’s entirely my fault we’re here.”

“Not entirely,” Vaish admitted.
 
“Had the crew been more alert, we might have been able to defend the ship.”

“From prezidene gas?
 
Probably not.”
 
He shrugged.
 
“But don’t worry, Vaish.
 
We’ve gotten out of worse predicaments than this one.”

“How wonderfully reassuring.”

Still pressing his hand to the side of his head, Steven got to his feet with a groan.
 
“Let me take a look at the computer system.
 
Maybe I can figure out the problem.”

Vaish stood up and stepped aside.
 
Despite her annoyance with him, she had to admit Steven was something of an expert on computers, more so than she was.
 
He collapsed into one of the two chairs, ran his fingers over the keyboard, and worked busily for a few minutes.
 
“Ah-ha!” he said at last.

She felt a stab of hope.
 
“What have you discovered?”

Steven looked up at her with a crooked smile.
 
“I’ve discovered that it’s broken.”
 

Vaish gritted her teeth, annoyed that he could smile so freely in the face of death.
 
It was a talent she’d never acquired, unlike most Canvul, who would happily throw a party to celebrate their impending doom.
  
The average Canvul would celebrate just about anything.