Black Box (18 page)

For that, Boone was also sore at
himself.

What pissed him off the most right now was
that he had certainly not screwed up the scheduling of his
department. It was more likely that someone had altered the
scheduling. Only the captain and crew chief had the authority to do
so and they still had to run it by him as a formality. Hardy was
impossible to find on a good day so he needed to seek out Beckett.
And he didn’t think that either one of them had overridden him on
this. For sure it was Rodrigo. That bitch was constantly dropping
anvils onto his head.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t find her either.
You’d think with combat in space and combat on the ground, the
officer in charge of infantry would be able to find some god damned
infantry.

As a last resort, Boone knew to check the
hangar bay. There was always a soldier on duty in the hangar and,
by his recollection, it was due to be Burbank. She was a little
skittish but at least she’d tell him if anyone had come her
way.

In the hangar bay, he did not find Burbank.
But he did not find an empty room either.

Rodrigo was there, of course. So was
MacDonald, Knudson, Alraune, Irvin, Icknor, Yamata, Goldfarb, and
Rafferty. It was almost his entire staff. Only Bonamo, Burbank, and
Massey were missing. And, of course, poor Cummings.

Lieutenant Tedesco was there, too, which
cast a strange light on the whole gathering. She didn’t outrank him
and she wasn’t on an Infantry track. She was Navigation and that
meant she had no business gathering his department. And what were
they gathering for? Knudson and Icknor were prepping the rumbler
while Goldfarb and Irvin were each revving up an air bike. Everyone
was armed.

All activity ceased as Boone entered the
room and this oppressive fear settled onto him at once. He knew
instantly that he’d stumbled across something he was never supposed
to see. He knew instantly that it was serious and that Beckett’s
“paranoid outburst” didn’t seem quite so paranoid anymore.

Who are you working for, Boone?

The captain’s accusation, pieced together
with this gathering, slid some pieces into place. Was there really
a conspiracy against Beckett? If there was, then Boone’s
inconsistent behavior made him a suspect. But if there was a
conspiracy against the captain, what was Rodrigo doing there?

“Is there something we can do for you, Mr.
Boone?” the lieutenant asked.

He swallowed hard, fighting the urge to
retreat. He could tell that she was attempting to take charge of
the situation. It infuriated him because she was nothing but a
coddled daddy’s girl and this was
his staff
.

“Did the captain order an expedition?” he
asked with a dry mouth.

“As a matter of fact…” she began but Rodrigo
cut her off.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you,
Boone. We’ve got it covered.”

Boone hated Rodrigo. No big revelation
there. He was free to admit that to himself if to no one else. He
hated the majority of the officers on the
Valor
, old and
new, but he hated Rodrigo the most. She was a first class
nutcracker and he would have liked nothing better than to slam her
in the jaw with a rifle butt. Unfortunately, she’d kick his ass up
and down the ship if he even so much as hinted at it so he kept it
to himself.

“Sergeant,” he said, reminding himself of
the hard work he’d done and the better person he promised himself
he’d be. “You haven’t got the authority to ‘cover’ anything without
my say-so. And, before you speak up, Lieutenant, you have no
business being here at all.”

He was buoyed by his increased confidence.
His better self, though, kept note of the fact that no one had gone
back to work and Alraune had moved out of sight. What concerned him
most about that was that Alraune was not proficient in hand to hand
combat. They would not send her to subdue someone. She was,
however, an excellent shot.

But they couldn’t mean to kill him?

Tedesco seemed to have lost her edge, but
Rodrigo approached him directly. Boone tensed, his instincts
beginning to take over. He could feel the door at his back. The
unseen presence of Alraune floated like a wraith just within reach
of his psyche. He wanted to flee.

“We’re conducting outdoor exercises, Boone,”
Rodrigo whispered, now close enough to touch him. “In case we have
to move into combat.”

He swallowed hard. Caught between his duty
to take charge of the situation and his innate understanding that
he would be unable to do so, he stood locked in place. His eyes
never left Rodrigo’s but they were not equals. Hers were stolid and
hard, his sullen and fearful. For a heartbeat, she dropped that
contact, looked to her left, his right, away and behind him. Then
he knew where Alraune was. It was not a mistake. Rodrigo didn’t
make such mistakes. She was telling him where Alraune was. She was
intimidating him with a warning.

“Exercises,” he repeated with a scratchy
throat. Then he straightened up, looked at his life and his duty
with a clarity that had never before presented itself to him.

“Look, Boone,” Rodrigo said to him when it
was clear that no one was going to take charge of the situation.
“Our orders don’t come from the captain. You know that.”

“Then where do they come from?” He wasn’t
sure he wanted to know but at this point all he could think to do
was to keep the conversation going. Maybe he would stumble on a way
out of this mess.

“Higher up.”

“Really.”

She nodded. “If you’re thinking this is a
mutiny, then guess again. We’ve got an Admiral’s daughter working
with us.”

They did have that. The way Admiral Tedesco
had pushed his daughter through the ranks, she wouldn’t dare do
anything as stupid as mutiny.

Rodrigo continued. “If you’re smart, you’ll
play this just the right way and maybe come out of it with a…”

His eyes widened.

“…transfer?”

She’d played him well. She knew exactly what
he wanted and she put it right on the plate for him to snatch.

“What do you need me to do?”

She smiled and to him it was the ugliest
thing he had ever seen. “Nothing.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you just do nothing. We’re going
off ship to complete the assignment. You’ll stay on board and never
say that you saw us. That’s your part.”

Right. That was always his part. No one ever
trusted him to do anything useful. He wondered if she was even
being level with him. If she was telling the truth and their orders
had come from the
Admiralty
, then there should still be
order to their behavior. He still outranked her. Should he try to
exercise that power?

Then he caught a glimpse of Alraune standing
close to the door. She had come around and trapped him. It didn’t
matter. There wasn’t much that he could do against them, trapped or
not.

“And the captain? What if he questions
me?”

She shook her head. “The captain’s off the
ship, or didn’t you know?”

He shook his head.

"It’s simple, Boone. You never saw us. We
never saw you. You were never here.”

So he nodded. “A transfer,” he said.
“This’ll get me off the
Valor
.”

“I guarantee it,” Rodrigo promised.

“It had better,” he said, changing his
expression and his tone, putting his figurative nose against
hers.

To her credit, she kept her cool. It
wouldn’t do to have a brawl in the middle of the hangar bay. Sound
had a tendency to travel through the bulkheads.

As Boone turned and left, he caught the grin
on Alraune’s face as she leaned up against a few boxes. She was the
cat and he was the mouse that had been protected at the last minute
from a serious beating and eating.

It was just dumb luck that had put Jack
Tunsley outside the hangar bay when he’d seen Boone go in.
Normally, he tried not to take notice of what the other members of
the crew were doing. At least, not when it didn’t concern him. But
Boone had this determined look on his face that was so out of the
ordinary that it just couldn’t slip by. The corridors of the
Valor
were short and narrow. Each deck boasted a railroad
design that had a person walking the same passage to reach every
room. But the hangar bay had three approaches. Since it pushed down
to the outside, a large ramp forming the exit for each of the
vehicles and crew, it was situated centrally. There was only one
interior entrance but the room still formed a peninsula on the
bottom deck, corridors surrounding it. Like the others on board,
those corridors were short but their bends gave Tunsley just enough
cover from Boone that he went unnoticed. Based on Boone’s
expression, he probably would have missed the engineer at two
paces.

Curious, Tunsley approached the hangar bay
entrance once Boone had entered. Listening at the door, he could
hear murmured voices, then Rodrigo’s raised but not in anger. Jack
Tunsley’s often dormant curiosity had been aroused. He whipped a
screwdriver out of his belt and began to furiously poke at the
intercom. The plate came off easily and he had enough sense to know
exactly which two wires to cross to change the flow. Pressing the
talk
button now gave him the ability to
listen.
He
finished just in time to hear Boone say, “…transfer?”

He listened with growing alarm as the hints
of conspiracy became clear. While there was no indication of what
it was they were going to do, it was clear that they were doing it
without the captain’s authority. Whatever one might say about Jack
Tunsley, he was a loyal officer and duty bound. What he couldn’t
believe, what had him so startled that he almost forgot to
disengage the intercom before slipping away from the door, was that
Rodrigo was a part of it. Boone came out of the room a moment later
but Tunsley didn’t look back. He was in full view but from Boone’s
perspective he could just have been walking down the corridor.
Either way, the Infantry Officer didn’t even acknowledge Tunsley.
His footsteps echoed down the passage and away from the engineer’s
position.

Frozen with indecision, heart racing with
adrenaline, Jack Tunsley leaned against the wall and tried to sort
out the pieces. He’d only heard Rodrigo’s and Boone’s voices but he
knew there were others in there. Rodrigo had used the word
us
. Who else would be with her? MacDonald, for sure.
Probably most of the other foot soldiers. At least the veterans. If
the fighting force of the
Valor
was going to mutiny that
left a pretty weak force on the side of the captain. Any one of the
soldiers could take any four of the rest of the crew.

What about the officers? Boone’s allegiance
was obviously to himself. Whether or not Rodrigo had been leading
him on, he’d decided that the quick route off the
Valor
was
the way to go for him. Why anyone would want to get
off
the
Valor
, Tunsley couldn’t figure. He loved working for
Beckett. Boone had such a hard time because he had the wrong
attitude. He needed to let himself go a bit more. Of the other
officers, he figured that Rollins and Dorian were probably okay.
Cabrera could go either way as long as she didn’t have to deal with
any violence. Ukpere and Applegate were new to the ship so Tunsley
didn’t know anything about them. Tedesco was also a wildcard but
there were hard feelings between her and the captain. Whether it
would spark into mutiny was tough to tell. He had too little
information. If there was anyone he could trust, though, he knew it
was Rumple Hardy. In many ways, Hardy was just like Tunsley
himself. He’d never been able to find a fit anywhere else. Then
he’d come to the
Valor
and discovered that her captain had
spot after spot for people just like him.

Boone headed straight for Computer Control.
Rodrigo could tell him to do nothing but that didn’t mean he was
going to listen. They could say what they wanted about him, but he
would not compromise his loyalty to the Space Force, no matter how
badly it had treated him. His duty was to his captain.

Odelle Feliciano was on duty in Compcon when
Boone arrived. He didn’t know her that well. She was a rookie,
quiet. When she’d first come on board, Boone had pegged her as a
washout. She looked much older than her twenty three years, with a
short haircut and all too many greys coming in. There were crow’s
feet at the corners of her eyes and her fingers were twisted from
too many hours at a keyboard. Still, she had a sweet smile and
silky voice. She seemed like a nice kid.

“Can I help you, Mr. Boone?” she asked as he
stepped through the door.

Shaking his head, he said nothing. He was
still rattled by his encounter in the hangar bay. Under no
circumstances did he feel that he had not barely escaped with his
life. Rodrigo hadn’t wanted to kill him. If she had, he’d be dead.
But the threat was there in the way Alraune had moved into position
to block his exit. It had been there in Tedesco’s eyes as well.
Whatever they were doing, she was afraid of discovery. Boone
represented a danger that worried her enough to want him dead.

Sitting at the second station, Boone began
calling up the first files to help him with his investigation.
Feliciano watched him curiously for a moment, then turned back to
her station. Glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, Boone
wondered if she was in on it. It would be foolish for him to
believe that the conspiracy ended with Rodrigo and her squad,
especially if Tedesco was involved. Feliciano wasn’t armed and she
would be no match for him in a fight, but he stayed aware of her
anyway. One of the first things a soldier learned was not to
underestimate the enemy. Feliciano didn’t have to overpower him.
All she had to do was send a signal to Tedesco and he would be
marked for death.