The Empty Warrior (22 page)

“Calese”, she said carefully, “we cannot simply stop somewhere and trust to luck. We have had enough dealings with the Vazileks to know that they will not allow a wounded ship to slip from their grasp without pursuit. They are almost certainly following behind us. They are back there, checking every centimeter of space along our path, hoping that we will go sub-light or pause for repairs, just as you have suggested. If we do, they will detect us, and they
will
destroy us. Thus our options are extremely limited. You will have to hold the ship together until we put some distance between ourselves and the Vazileks, enough distance to enable us to change our course without detection. We are going to have to use the deep drive, and we are going to have to use it more than once. If we are to survive, this must be done. I understand that you are upset, but you are not alone. The fate of this ship and the lives of all her crew depend on you and your staff. Can
Vigilant
rely on you?”

It was hardly fair, Valessanna thought, invoking the name of the ship. Arkhus might have been able to gainsay her captain or heedlessly risk everyone’s life to make repairs, but the one thing she would not do was forsake her responsibilities to her beloved ship. The engineer had been left with only one possible answer.

She continued to glare at Valessanna for a moment before finally bowing to the inevitable. “Of course
Vigilant
can rely on
me
,” she said, putting special emphasis on the word me in a clear indication that in her opinion the same could not be said of the captain. “My people will hold her together. I don’t know how, but we’ll do it.” She paused to raise a forefinger and shake it at Valessanna before continuing. “But I must have at least twenty-four hours, perhaps more, before we attempt this course change. Some repairs
must
be made or the ship will not survive reengaging the deep drive. Not only must we make structural repairs, we will have to shut down each reactor in turn and make what repairs as we are able to the drive before even braking maneuvers can commence. If we attempt to go sub-light before these repairs are made, you will have no drive at all as I will shut it down entirely and keep it off-line until it can, in my estimation as chief engineer, be used without blowing us all to space dust.” With that she averted her gaze, again staring past Busht as if he did not exist.

“All right,” Valessanna said slowly, “twenty-four hours it is, but no longer.” She quickly resigned herself to the new time frame, inwardly heaved a sigh of relief that the confrontation with Arkhus was over, and turned her attention to Beccassit. “Do you have a casualty report, doctor?” she asked.

“Yes I do,” he replied, leafing through the print-outs he had placed on the table before him. “The crew fared rather well, considering. There’s a great deal of work to do, but nothing we can’t handle, nothing life threatening, just lots of burns, cuts, lacerations, contusions, broken bones, internal injuries, things of that nature. We should have most everyone back up to speed in fairly short order, and the rest in at most a couple of weeks.

“Then there are the missing. When I left sick bay, there were seventy-eight people unaccounted for, not including those lost on the barge. They are all almost certainly deceased, barring some miraculous discovery. There are, as I’m sure you’re aware, only a few whose remains are left for us to care for.”

The spirits of everyone in the room plummeted a bit further as Beccassit announced the news they had all already been contemplating. It was too much for Arkhus. “Wonderful,” she said sarcastically, still staring at the opposite bulkhead. “To save four members of the crew, we lost seventyeight, and very nearly the whole ship. That’s competent leadership.”

Valessanna had no answer to the accusation, but the barb opened an emotional wound that oozed fury into her breast—fury at Arkhus, fury at the Vazileks, and fury at herself. But before the anger could swell to a level that would have spilled over her inner containment and turned the meeting into a cursing catfight between herself and the chief engineer, the doctor spoke up softly.

“It was, uh, actually three,” he said, his voice barely audible at the far end of the table.

“Excuse me?” Valessanna asked loudly, vehemently.

“I said we saved three crew members, not four,” Beccassit said in a slightly louder voice.

“There were three on the cutter,” Valessanna stated as her anger ebbed away in the face of morbid curiosity. “What happened to the survivor from the barge?”

“The survivor… wasn’t actually from the barge.” The doctor looked down at the table, clearly not wanting to meet his captain’s gaze.

“Lindy captured a Vazilek?” Valessanna asked incredulously. The Vazileks were well known to universally prefer suicide to arrest. None had ever been taken alive. It seemed impossible that the cutter crew had somehow collared one of them.

“Well no, the survivor is, um,” Beccassit paused and looked directly at Valessanna before continuing, “one of the indigenous population of Sol Three.” The doctor’s whisker-bordered lips curled into an ever so slight and ironic smile, while he shrugged with both his eyebrows.

Valessanna was dumbstruck. Her mouth fell open and she stared down the table at Beccassit. “Willet Lindy has brought an aberrant on board my ship?” she asked deliberately, addressing the question more to herself than any of the officers in attendance. Momentarily she slammed a fist down on the tabletop and stood, glaring at the doctor. “On whose authority?” she thundered.

“His own, I would imagine,” Beccassit said meekly.

“I take it this was the
problem
that made you late for the meeting?”

The doctor fiddled with his whiskered chin while nodding in agreement, gazing over his spectacles rather than through them.

“All right, meeting adjourned,” Valessanna ordered. “Colvan, get Lindy up here. Calese, get back to work. Pender, go make your calculations and then get some rest. I’ll need you in top form later. Doctor, you stay here. And not a word of this leaves this room, understood?”

“I’m afraid it may be a little late for that,” Beccassit said in the mildest of tones. “Everyone in the docking bay knows, and all the staff in sick bay. Plus the cutter crew. I’m afraid news of the most recent addition to our complement has spread through the entirety of our crew by now.”

“You’re telling me I’m the last to know?” Valessanna’s posture drooped, her eyes widening with disbelief. “Well, what’s done is done,” she said resignedly. “Out you two,” she continued, motioning to Arkhus and Abblehoff. Both of them readily obliged, hurrying out of the compartment. Even a personality as curmudgeonly as Arkhus’ was clearly reluctant to further goad the captain now that her blood was up. Busht, up from his chair, stood facing into a corner, mumbling into his com link, while Beccassit still sat placidly at the conference table, seemingly unconcerned by the whole affair.

Valessanna was pacing again, four steps one way and four steps back, across the narrow width of the compartment, speaking loudly to both the doctor and herself. “I don’t believe it. I didn’t think that it was possible for us to bungle this mission any more than we already have, but I was wrong. The one overriding, absolute, and unshakeable order we were given was that no person outside the mission crew was to break the statutes against contact with the aberrants, and Willet Lindy not only has done that, he has brought one back with him. He has brought an aberrant aboard my ship. What am I to do with him? I can’t take him back.” She stopped her marching pace for a moment and turned to the doctor. “I’m assuming it’s a he, is it?” Beccassit nodded assent, and Valessanna resumed her rant and her tread. “I can’t even hide him since the whole crew already knows he’s here. How could this happen? Before two minutes ago I would not have believed that even Lindy could show such arrogant disregard for regulations.”

“Mrs. Nelkris,” the Doctor interjected gently and sincerely, “this episode occurred under unforeseen and very difficult circumstances. The aberrant was near death.”

Valessanna turned to face Beccassit, placing her palms flat on the table and leaning forward toward him on rigid arms. “I don’t care,” she hissed deliberately through clenched teeth. “Those people kill each other every day. The man he brought aboard may be a mass murderer for all you know. I trust that at the very least you have him restrained?”

“Mrs. Nelsik,” the Doctor continued in his patronizing tone, “try not to overreact. The man is much too badly injured to be any threat whatsoever. He is not even conscious; he is not going to hurt anyone.”

“But he is going to wake up, doctor,” Valessanna said as if explaining the obvious to a small child. “For the love of the Rock, the man is an aberrant. Just having him on the ship, conscious or not, is a criminal act. We’ll all spend a hundred years in a rehabilitation clinic for this.”

Her tirade was interrupted by the grinding sound of the damaged hatch opening. She looked toward it to see Willet Lindy standing in the corridor beyond. He stepped confidently into the room and stood at the far end of the table, his legs slightly spread, his hands clasped behind his back. His azure uniform was heavily soiled with blood and gore. His long hair, now loosed, fell carelessly from his scalp, framing his narrow face between blonde locks. His intense blue eyes held Valessanna steadily in their gaze.

“Are you injured?” she asked, her voice matter of fact and betraying no real concern.

“No,” he answered simply.

“He assisted in the rescue of the aberrant and later in sick bay,” Beccassit put in, addressing the unspoken question of the soiled uniform.

“Commendable,” Valessanna said, her eyes still locked with the pilot’s. There was a long pause that continued until she looked away and started her pacing anew. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of what you have done in bringing an aberrant aboard this ship, Willet. You have committed a horrendous crime. You have violated one of the strictest sanctions of our society. You have…”

“Captain,” Lindy said, interrupting. “I did not simply travel to the aberrant world of my own accord and kidnap an unsuspecting barbarian. I was ordered there on a mission. In the course of executing that mission, I came across a dying man, a fellow human being. I rendered aid, saving a life in the only way available to me. If the Union Police wish to charge me for this offense, they may do so at their discretion. That is, if they wish to explain in a public forum exactly why they chose to violate the laws against contact, and if they further wish to explain in a public forum why a human being should have been left to die of injuries that were inflicted upon him as a direct result of our presence on a world we are forbidden to visit. We both know that credible explanations for these events will be difficult if not impossible to construct and will inevitably demand accountability from people in high places, something that those same people will do everything in their power to forestall. I would also remind you that my wife is daughter to a High Councilor. In the light of these facts, is it still your opinion that I do not comprehend my situation?”

His oration stopped Valessanna’s pacing in mid-stride. The sheer impertinence of his interpretation was irritating beyond belief, but his analysis was above reproach. He would never be charged or even reprimanded for his actions. The realization left Valessanna speechless.

When he saw she had nothing more to say, Lindy spoke again. “May I go now?” he asked. “I must change my uniform.”

“Yes,” she said, flustered. “Yes, you may go.”

The pilot turned on his heel and exited the compartment. Valessanna took her seat at the head of the table and dropped her face into her hands. “You may go as well, doctor,” she said, her voice muffled. “I will be down to visit your sick bay as soon as I am able.” Beccassit rose and left the room without a word, while Busht remained standing to one side, apparently unwilling to speak but also too concerned for his captain to simply leave.

For the first time Valessanna realized that it was she who would be held accountable not only for the presence of the aberrant, but for everything that had gone so horribly wrong. The mission unaccomplished, the loss of so many lives, the near destruction of her ship; all the responsibility would be laid at her feet, and her feet alone. She would be the sacrificial lamb. And Calese Arkhus would be there to lend a helpful hand to the investigation. There would be no trial of course, for as Lindy had so kindly reminded her, none of what had happened in the Sol system would ever become a part of the public record. But her career in the Union Police Force was almost certainly over.

She pushed the thoughts aside, feeling guilty again. She had no right to worry about what might or might not happen to her with so many of her crew dead. She raised her head to address Busht. “Colvan, why don’t you get back to the bridge? Assemble the most proficient bridge crew that is healthy enough to man their stations and pull them off duty for the next twenty-four hours. We’ll need our best people rested for the course change. I’ll be down there later, after I visit sick bay. I need to get cleaned up and perhaps get a little sleep, if I can sleep, so it could be a while. You take the conn until I get there, and then you can get some rest yourself.”

“Yes, I’ll attend to what needs to be done,” the exec agreed, but still he made no move to leave. Instead he pulled out one of the chairs next to the captain and took a seat. “Valessanna, may I speak candidly?” he asked.

Valessanna massaged the back of her aching neck with one hand while slowly turning her head from right to left, trying in vain to stretch the soreness from the muscles there. “Why not?” she responded. “Everyone else does.”