Hope's Folly (19 page)

“And last night. Adney says it comes and goes.”

She rolled on her side, finding the series of buttons. “No oranges. Some dust. A broken lightpen. Okay.” She raised her voice. “Welford, got the buttons. Holding in the reset now!” She pushed.

“Got the reset button,” she heard Philip call out. She grinned. He really was trying to be useful. It had to grate on him, being injured and unable to help. He hadn't struck her as a man who was afraid to get his hands dirty. Or his knuckles skinned. She remembered that was her first impression of him.

“Few more seconds,” she heard Welford say. “Okay. Release.”

She released.

“Get those greenpoints going, Bennton!”

She wriggled out from under the table, ass first. God. Nothing like showing Philip her worst feature. She angled sideways, dropping down on her left hip, bringing her feet under her.

Philip leaned toward her, hand out. “Need help?”

Oh, please don't.
Grasping her hand would mean nothing to him. But it would get her galactic-size crush going universal, just like when he'd leaned on her on the shuttle. She did not want to feel his warm, rough skin against her own right now.

She passed him the handbeam instead, pulled herself onto her knees, then grabbed the table's edge and levered up.

Philip was eyeing her. “More than a little dust.”

She looked down, saw the long smudges on her thigh. She brushed at that, then brushed at another smudge on her arm. “Oh, hell.” She sat, pulling the datapad to her, and tapped the recessed release for the deskscreen. It slid up … slowly. Too slowly. Something else likely clogged with dust.

Philip sighed as if he knew her thoughts.

She brought up the sniffer program, waited a few seconds, then a few more while it searched and logged compatible units. Numbers appeared, finally. She saw the hand-held's ID, linked them. “Got one,” she called out.

“Got it,” Welford answered. “Next!”

Philip—being useful—had the screen already up in front of him. She leaned over him, tapping the icon on the screen.

The ship shuddered, hard. She stumbled, adrenaline spiking as she braced herself against the table. Philip's hands grabbed her waist, his cane thudding to the decking. Then the room plunged into darkness. Again. And she heard the
screech-thud, screech-thud
of the blast doors slamming shut as the emergency lights trickled on.

“What the hell?” She straightened, drawing her Stinger, aware of Philip's hand on the small of her back. Aware of everything else too, her senses all but prickling. Two power failures?

“Don't know, but I don't like it.” He flicked on the handbeam, playing it quickly across the bulkheads, left and right.

“Stay there,” she told him, moving behind his chair. But he ignored her command and rose, moving with her. Admirals didn't have to follow orders, evidently.

“This one first,” he said, aiming the beam at the double doors to the corridor.

The palm-pad lights were out. She hit the pad with her left hand anyway, expecting no response and getting none. And not seeing any manual override. But there had to be one.

She sprinted to the single door to the bridge, the small circle of light pacing her. Those, too, were locked.

She faced Philip in the dimness. “Where are the manual releases?”

He came up next to her, holding the beam of light on the panel, frowning. “I honestly have no idea. These aren't the original door pads. Hopefully Welford or Sparks—”

“Admiral?” Welford's muffled voice came through the door.

Philip leaned against the door. “You break my ship again, Constantine?”

“It's not my doing, sir. I swear!”

“Can you reach Sparks or Adney?”

“We're locked in. Everything's out again. Datapads too.”

Rya knew that. It was one of the first things she looked at after Philip grabbed her. “Whatever went
thump
triggered the blast doors,” Rya guessed out loud.

Philip said something bitter under his breath in frustration. “Get back to that one console that's hardwired in. If you need us to do something with the units in here, tell us. And get Tramer or Dillon working on the corridor doors. I do not like being held hostage on my own ship,
by
my own ship.”

“Yes, sir,” Welford said, his voice fading, but not before Rya heard, “Goddamned Stryker-class bucket.”

“Let's pray that's all this is,” Philip said, his voice hard. He turned the handbeam around, held it toward her. “See what you can find in here that will help us take these palm pads apart.”

She found several things, including the broken light-pen, which Philip used to pry the faceplates off the palm pads. But no manual door overrides lurked beneath. And their fingers could find no release mechanisms on the doors or doorjambs or decking.

Small thumps and grunts from the bridge told her Tramer and Dillon weren't having any better luck.

“Serious design flaw,” Philip grumbled.

Rya folded herself down on the decking, her back against the door to the bridge. “This is incredibly annoying.” She didn't do useless or helpless any better than Philip did.

He slid down next to her with a grunt, which, seconds later, was followed by a self-derisive snort. “You know, if I was ten years younger and this mission wasn't so damned critical … ”

She glanced at him as his voice trailed off. His face was inches from hers, and she was seconds from blurting out that ten years didn't matter one bit to her. But she knew she might be reading what she wanted into his words. And his face.

And it would be just her luck that if she gave in to what her body was screaming for her to do—kiss him, right here, right now—the damned blast doors would open, sending them both flat on their backs and embarrassingly so in front of Welford, Tramer, and Mr. Nice Ass.

Get over it, Rya.

But he's not married.

He's an admiral. Your commanding officer. Want to be accused of sleeping your way to the top?

No, she didn't. But God damn if it might not be well worth the risk.

He was still watching her. Her arm ached from fighting the desire to reach up and touch his face. But that would give everything away and, if she was misreading him, would also give him just cause for booting her back to Calth 9.
Unwanted and inappropriate sexual advances,
or however the regulation read. Usually she could quote them word for word. But not now.

Because something else slithered into her mind. Something she'd heard before and would hear again:
Of all the women a man like Philip Guthrie could get, why in hell would he want you?

Why in hell, indeed? She couldn't think of one reason.

But Matt had wanted her, and before him there'd been Jason. In the past seven years, she'd not had trouble finding men for JFFS, as her friends put it. Just For Fun Sex. It was what a lot of her friends her age did, especially when careers were beginning to build and transfers could happen at any moment. Your JFFS buddy kept you from being lonely, gave you something to focus on other than the day's aggravations. You made each other feel good.

Then you moved on.

But Philip Guthrie wasn't like Matt or Jason.

She turned her face away with a restrained sigh.

Then a not so restrained one. Then a real deep breath.

“They're back,” she said, darting a glance his way.

He nodded. “I know. Goddamned oranges.” He angled himself up. “Let's try that other door again.”

It took fifteen minutes for the lights to come back on this time and for the blast doors to unlock. Fifteen minutes during which Philip Guthrie questioned his sanity, his morals, and his definitely skewed sense of priority, all the while trying to get the damned ready-room doors open.

He was worried about his ship and his crew. Images of people trapped in cabins and bays with no one knowing where they were—because there was no goddamned functional crew locator and no working central ship comm-link system yet—kept playing in his mind.

Whenever every inch of him wasn't aware of the presence of Rya Bennton.

He was certifiably insane. He was sure of it. These past few months, the physical damage his body had taken, the stresses of losing one command and gaining another, the deaths of friends and crew—it had all taken a toll. That was the only explanation he could come up with as to why he was so emotionally vulnerable to—and fixated on—Cory Bennton's twenty-nine-year-old daughter.

This had to stop. But when the lights had failed again and he'd almost found her in his lap, and then when all means to escape the ready room were exhausted and she was again those few tantalizing inches away from him, and he had the damned stupidity to make the flippant comment that if he'd been ten years younger …

Hell's fat ass. He was certifiably insane.

She was twenty-nine. She was Cory's daughter. She had some young buck named Matt hot for her back on Calth 9. She was not for Philip Guthrie, divorced, jaded, and limping around like some ancient—yeah, Welford had deemed him so—relic.

Plus, he had a ship to refit and a war to get under way.

But when he was around Rya … he just wanted to keep being around Rya.

This was not good.

So he'd sent her to check the perimeters and recesses of the blast door to the corridor once more for hidden release mechanisms, because he knew if he sat that close to her any longer he was going to do something stupid.

Like ask her if she ever dated older men.

Then the lights flickered on, the palm pads activated, and Rya let out a surprised whoop.

He was on the floor at that point, trying to pry up a section of the decking. He struggled to his feet, glad she was focused on getting the door open and a chair shoved in that same opening in case things went out again and not watching him do his best flailing-invalid imitation.

Definitely the way to catch the eye of a woman sixteen years your junior.

When she turned, he was standing, sweating, and swearing because the blast doors to the bridge had also opened. “Welford, get me status! I need to know what in hell's going on here.”

Deskscreens lit up, consoles flashed. The datapad on the ready-room desk pinged. Rya reached it before he did. “Commander Adney's on her way up.”

Adney arrived, then Sparks, then this team and that organized by Adney and Sparks. Philip sat at the head of the ready-room table, deskscreen up and active, datapad blinking and downloading, headache starting to kick in as his officers came and went with data, reports, small successes, and more problems.

All because of mechanical failure. Basic, unimaginative mechanical failure on a ship past its prime, cobbled together with low-cost ittle-doos that—for reasons known only to God and the Fates—all decided to reach critical mass today. Just for him.

Time to start fighting back.

“I want the locks disengaged on the bridge and ready-room corridor doors,” he told Sparks. “Also my quarters and my office corridor door.”

Sparks puffed his cheeks out in exasperation. “I don't recommend that, Skipper. Ready room, okay. The bridge, well, it's defensible. But your quarters, especially when you're off duty, sleeping—”

“Disengaged, Sparks.”

“I agree with Commander Sparks.” Rya appeared in the open ready-room doorway on his right. He shot her a narrow-eyed glance, because she'd left the bridge an hour ago with Sachi Holton, and Philip had just calmed his brain and body down where she was concerned.

She shot him a similar glance back. “I'm not one hundred percent sure this isn't sabotage utilizing already known mechanical flaws. You know there hasn't been sufficient time to do a thorough assessment.”

“Sir,” he prompted her.

“Sir,” she said, but he could tell by the way her hazel eyes flashed at him she hated his decision.

Sparks coughed.

Philip realized he and Rya were staring at each other. Or, rather, he was trapped by the intensity of her gaze, which held a distinct similarity to the way she'd looked at him just before she'd launched a forkful of peas at him from across her parents’ dining table twenty years ago.

“Disengage those locks,” he said, looking abruptly away from her and back at Sparks, perched on the edge of the table. “Discussion on this subject is now officially closed.”

“I'll get to it within the hour,” Sparks said.

Rya ducked back into the corridor. Sparks followed her.

Adney strode in.

“I know you wanted to head out for Ferrin's in two, three shipdays,” she said. “I'm just not confident, even with Sparks working on everything now, that we can do that.”

She handed him her datapad, and he spent the next ten minutes reading the various reports in grim silence while Adney went to the bridge and came back again. He could have blamed Jodey. He could have blamed Pavyer, the fruit exporter. But the reality was that a good portion of the ship had been inoperative for years because it had functioned strictly for cargo, even when the Farosians had it. Now it was full of live bodies, and those live bodies—living, breathing, eating, showering, and flushing—put stress on long-unused systems.