Black Box (2 page)

"Right.”
Jesus
, thought Beckett,
I
learned this stuff in grade school.
"Didn't they put Coddit's
statue up next to it?"

Colonel Tyler Coddit was the second
commander to take a crew into space on a faster than light
ship.

Poulle nodded. "After we defeated the
eXchengue."

"Wait a minute." Beckett leaned forward.
"Walker commanded the first ship ever to have an interstellar
drive. When he went missing, Coddit went after him. Then the
eXchengue invaded and took over. Coddit returned, what, eight years
later…"

"Eighteen."

"Right. Eighteen years later and started the
revolution."

It’s amazing how the return of school time
facts can be almost inspiring. Even Beckett didn’t notice how much
he was enjoying his trip down history lane.

Poulle flashed him an uncharacteristic, yet
still sad smile. "There was always a theory that Walker's
expedition was lost because it was intercepted by the eXchengue.
The timing was right."

"But Coddit never encountered them before
returning to Earth."

"Right. And his trail of Walker went cold
early on."

"Then what took him eighteen years to come
back?"

Poulle shook his head. "There was a
misapplication of the faster than light theory, but it was never
corrected because the wormhole equation was solved and proved much
more efficient for interstellar travel. But no one knows if that’s
what caused Walker’s disappearance and Coddit’s delay. No one ever
got the chance to ask."

“A mystery,” Beckett mused, now
understanding the reason for the lecture. “Solved now?”

Poulle nodded again. "Walker's
black
box
landed in some lady's backyard a month ago. She had no idea
what it was, but the local bureaus have Ancient Technology experts
on hand so they were able to identify it. The information was
stored on digital disc so they had a devil of a time extracting
it."

Beckett laughed at the idea of Space Force
tech geeks getting hard-ons over the opportunity to decrypt a
digital disc. DD technology was so out of date that most people,
Beckett included, had never even seen one. Still, he knew a couple
of hackers on one of the outer planets that could crack that
technology as easily as cracking an egg. The
Admiralty
would
never look to those people, though. Hell, they barely acknowledged
the existence of
criminals
like that.

“You’ll listen to Walker’s voice log
yourself, but, to make a long story short, they made planetfall and
were ambushed and wiped out by some unidentified enemy.”

“Not the eXchengue?”

Poulle shrugged. “It could be.”

“He never got a look at them?”

The admiral pulled a strange face. “Not that
he recorded.”

“And no mention of Coddit?”

Shaking his head, Poulle pulled out a palm
sized reader from a pocket in his uniform. In a moment, there was a
tiny vibration from Beckett’s belt, where his own reader was
clipped. He reached for it and woke up the screen. For almost five
minutes, he read over the Mission Briefing while the admiral waited
quietly.

“This is it?” Beckett asked finally. “You’re
sending me to investigate the site of a two hundred year old
event?”

“It’s a historic event.”

Beckett shrugged. “Who cares? Send the
Courage
. Landon Palmer’s the first officer and he’d love
this.”

“We’re sending you.”

Beckett was not happy. But it could be
worse.

It was worse.

“There’ve been some promotions and
reassignments, also, Ted.”

This couldn’t be good. The United Earth
Space Force (UESF) had a way of sticking it to Ted Beckett when it
came to crew. At least they thought so. Part of the reason they did
this was because he was so good at handling the bastards. The other
reason was that they liked to keep all of their misfits in one
basket. It was why Beckett had inherited command of the
Valor
in the first place.

Beckett used a finger to scroll down the
file list. “You didn’t send the manifest.”

Poulle didn’t move.

“I’m entitled to see the manifest.”

Poulle didn’t say anything.

“Hey, John. Are you trying to tell me that I
don’t have a right to know who’s on my own fucking crew?”

Poulle went back to his reader and in a
moment, Beckett’s was buzzing again.

Beckett hardly ever felt anxious anymore,
especially when it came to crew changes. He was used to getting the
wash outs. Still, at that moment, there was a knot in his stomach.
Something was different. He looked at the manifest. Three of his
officers had been changed, including Science, Records, and Medical.
The strange thing was that his new officers weren’t the usual
rejects. They were respected members of the Space Force. His new
Medical Officer had been promoted from the Lieutenant’s position.
By all rights, she should have been the one transferred off ship.
In all truth, he would have preferred it. The Admiralty liked new
lieutenants to cut their teeth under Captain Beckett, but quickly
got them better assignments. For some reason, though, they had
chosen to move his old doctor, a surly guy by the name of Paul
Royce who’d been on the
Valor
for two years. Then there was
the new Lieutenant. She was a rookie, sure, just like all of the
others. But she wasn’t just any rookie. She was an admiral’s
daughter.

Beckett waited two beats before lodging his
complaint. Those two beats helped him calm his anger and filter all
of the profanity out of the complaint. Poulle listened patiently,
impressed with the formal wording. Then he promptly told Beckett
that those were his orders.

Beckett forgot to wait two beats this time.
He tossed his reader onto the table and slammed a fist down.

“Ted...”

“Shut up, John. Don’t say another fucking
word. You tell me what this is all about, right now.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Poulle said
through a liar’s face.

“Don’t insult me,” Beckett said through
gritted teeth. “I expect better from you.”

Now it was Poulle’s turn to growl. “You
don’t get to expect anything from me, Captain Beckett. I’ve given
you orders. Your only job, now is to say,
yes, sir,
and
march your ass out the door.”

Leaning forward, Beckett lowered his voice.
“I’m not some dumb ass new officer, John. I know how you and your
gang of crotchety dipshits work. Don’t tell me that you’ve stacked
my crew and called me back four days early
just
to
investigate something that’s already two hundred years old.”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,
Ted.”

Beckett drummed his fingers on the table.
He’d already lost this battle, he knew. He could huff and puff, but
his only two recourses were to accept the job or quit. Quitting was
as much out of the question for him as was throwing him off the
Force for them. The last ten years had been a standoff between
Beckett and the Admiralty. They did their very best to make his
life miserable and he did his very best to take it.

“Can we at least get
her
off the
list?”

Knowing exactly who he meant, Poulle shook
his head.

“Whatever happened to the captain having the
final say on his crew?”

“Father knows best,” Poulle said, indicating
a certain Admiral Tedesco.

"I don't want some snot-nosed brat who got
where she is by the brass on her father's shirt as my
lieutenant."

"
I know.
” Poulle’s tone of voice went
uncommonly compassionate. “Believe me when I tell you, Ted, she
doesn't want to be with you either. But we're sticking you both
together and neither one of you gets a say. Let's not kid ourselves
here, Ted. Shit rolls downhill and you’re as downhill as it gets.
If you look at the manifest, all you've got are rookies and vets
who can't get along with anyone else. Take Jack Tunsley there for
instance…"

"Jack's a good officer."

"He’s a lousy officer, but he's a good
engineer. And a son of a bitch. He was chief on four ships before
they finally stuck him with you."

"And I’m glad to have him."

"Because you like a son of a bitch.
Rodrigo's fifty eight years old and she's been a sergeant since
before you signed up."

Beckett slammed his fist down on the table
again, this time so hard that Poulle jumped up out of his seat.
They could insult him and give him the crappy missions, but when it
came to his crew, Beckett knew what was best and
no one
was
going to contest that. Using Rodrigo against him was a dirty trick
and Poulle knew it.

"I've trusted Rodrigo with my life a dozen
times over and she's never let me down. She was
my
sergeant
when I was a grunt, and she’s still a sergeant because there’s no
one who will ever be better at it. Tunsley can build a spaceship
with bamboo shoots and cardboard. These are the best people in the
UESF and if the
Admiralty
is too fucking stupid to realize
it then the hell with them!"

Regaining his composure, Poulle straightened
his uniform shirt. The conversation was over. “You leave in twenty
four hours.”

William Boone was widely regarded as one of
the worst officers in the fleet. If you asked anyone around how he
had gotten to be an officer in the first place, let alone fifth in
the chain of command aboard the
Valor
, no one would have an
answer for you. The truth was that Boone wasn’t a stupid man. He
was less than competent, which didn’t make him
in
competent.
He was a bit on the casual side without actually being lazy. He’d
had infantry chosen for him as a specialty rather than having
chosen it himself. All appeared to be strikes against him, but he
didn’t present too terribly on paper. That, with a bit of good
fortune, had allowed him to climb up the ladder to a position that
should have held some relative prestige but didn’t necessarily do
so. Instead, it had landed him on the
Valor
with superiors
that didn’t regard him and subordinates that didn’t respect
him.

At this point in his career, Boone was
satisfied with his rank. He was forty six years old and being fifth
in command was good enough for him. Even
he
knew that
command of a ship was very rightly out of his reach. Though he’d
never had to run a scenario with no one pulling the strings above,
he knew himself well enough to be sure that he was not cut out for
that kind of responsibility. Being fifth on the totem pole kind of
assured him of always having someone to lean on. But that knowledge
didn’t necessarily help him sleep at night. It was a frustrating
life for William Boone. In his youth he hadn’t understood the
consequences of his behavior and now it seemed too late to do
anything about it. His reputation followed him around like a black
cat. The collection of personalities on the
Valor
only made
it worse. And it all started with the captain.

Ask most people who’d served under Beckett
and they would tell you he was a strong captain with good
instincts. That didn’t necessarily make him a good skipper. He was
short tempered and generally surly. If you looked at him cross
eyed, he never forgot. Three years before, William Boone had
boarded the
Valor
wearing his service record like a fool's
costume. Beckett had sized him up in an instant. From then on it
had been a nightmare. It didn’t help that his immediate
subordinate, the sergeant on board, was Anabelle Rodrigo. Her
exploits were legendary. Her relationship with the captain was
infamous. Beckett relied on her as much as himself. She could do no
wrong. Though Boone outranked her, she was his superior in the
captain’s eyes. For three years he had been putting up with it.
Despite the fact that she wasn’t an officer, Rodrigo was included
in staff meetings. Her opinion always carried more weight than
Boone’s. It had gotten to the point that Beckett rarely even looked
to Boone. He was nothing more than a warm body to fill the gap.
And, in many ways, that suited the captain and the sergeant very
well. Because of her lack of skill with any technical equipment,
Rodrigo was unpromotable. She would be a sergeant for the remainder
of her career, never to move up and never to be displaced. For her
to have any additional authority, she needed both a captain who
respected her and an infantry officer who deferred. In Beckett and
Boone she had the ideal situation.

But Boone was tired of it. Maybe it was his
age or maybe it was the exercise in futility that was his life.
Maybe it was just that three years was a long time to be constantly
reminded just how much of a nobody he was. He was not fool enough
to think he could unseat the sergeant in the eyes of their captain.
He was not fool enough to think that he would ever make any headway
aboard the
Valor
. He needed to get off.

Transfer requests were easy to file. But
getting them granted was nigh impossible without a good reason. It
helped if there was someone out there who wanted you on his or her
ship. Boone’s reason wouldn’t wash and he knew that no one wanted
him. If he was going to get off the
Valor
it was going to
take time, patience, and skill. He was running out of the first two
and he had never been long on the last. So he had spent his last
three weeks of leave studying the
Valor
and the other ships
of the fleet. He had buried his nose in historical scenarios and
run simulation after simulation. He’d barely spent a moment with
his elderly parents. He hadn’t even seen his daughter, which
probably made her mother ecstatic.

Boone did not like to refer to his ex-wife
as a whoring bitch, which she most certainly was, but he
did
like to refer to her as his ex-wife, which she most certainly was
not. The truth was, though they had lived together during the nine
months of her pregnancy and the first two months of his daughter’s
life, he had never gotten around to marrying her. He had wanted to,
but it just hadn’t happened. Instead, while she’d been screwing
around on the side, he’d been working two jobs at two separate and
competing fast food restaurants. The jobs had been menial and his
bosses had been demeaning, but he had tolerated it because, though
he was an educated man, he didn’t know how to do better for
himself. He had been fired from one job two weeks after being fired
from the other. It had been a horrible time for him, a time when he
had learned his own value, or lack thereof. His ex-wife’s affairs,
which she had carried on throughout her pregnancy with men who were
into that sort of thing, became well known. He lost the deposit on
the cheap ring he’d planned on buying her. Worst of all, he
realized that he was unable to make anything of himself in the real
world. In his mind, that left him with two options. Suicide or the
military.