Black Box (6 page)

“Please…” he choked before MacDonald opened
fire on him. The shot wasn’t meant to kill. The pirate was hit in
his good shoulder and spun away from the computers. Rodrigo did
nothing. Though MacDonald’s shot hadn’t been at all necessary, it
wasn’t completely unwarranted. Only when he fired again, this time
blowing apart the pirate’s kneecap, did Rodrigo bark a cease fire
order at him.

“What the hell are you doing?” she said.

He didn’t answer. He leveled his weapon
again and this time Rodrigo knocked him aside. The weeping pirate
didn’t even notice.

“What the fuck?” MacDonald spat at her.
“These bastards killed Bell.”

Rodrigo felt her blood boiling. There'd been
a lot of killing in the last few minutes, but all of it necessary.
As her team had become more battered and wounded, she had decided
that any encumbrance, such as prisoners, would be a liability.
This, though, was the last pirate. MacDonald was trying to exact
revenge.

“You stand down,” she told him quietly,
menacingly.

“Fuck you, sarge.” With that, he turned his
weapon on the pirate one more time and finished the job.

Shocked, Rodrigo stood by and did nothing as
he walked out.

Seconds later, Beckett came in. “What
happened?” he asked, then stopped up short. He saw the dead pirate
on the floor and no weapon. He saw the multiple wounds. He looked
up at Rodrigo. “Is that it?”

She didn’t answer at first, didn’t even
realize how it appeared to the young soldier.

“Sergeant?”

“Did you find the way out?”

He nodded.

“Is the place secure?”

“Ghost town.”

“Get to the surface and signal the captain.
There won’t be any arrests.”

As she drank her silent beer, Rodrigo
wondered about the days that were ahead of her more than the days
behind. She had never been a pensive person but her status in life
was beginning to take its toll on her emotional state. Cummings
could be goofy forever. MacDonald could be a shit. What was deep
inside Rodrigo was dying and she was trying desperately to save it.
But those bastards in the
Admiralty
wanted a different kind
of Space Force. This new era would have no place for an old soldier
like Anabelle Rodrigo. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t have any room for
a space cowboy like Ted Beckett, either.

To Ted Beckett
, she toasted silently.
The finest captain the fleet has ever known. I’ll miss
you.

When Doctor Samantha Cabrera received the
news of her promotion she got weak in the knees. The idea of a
promotion was exhilarating and it had come about a year earlier
than she had expected. She had only been a lieutenant for eight
months. In that time, she had served aboard the
Valor
under
the immediate guidance of Dr. Paul Royce and the command of Ted
Beckett. She had never understood why the
Admiralty
had put
her on the
Valor
. It was a ship where they sent rookies to
have a trial by fire or wash-outs to torture the rookies. She was,
at that point, neither a rookie nor a wash-out.

Cabrera was thirty four years old. She’d
enlisted in the service a bit later than most, choosing to change
her life and her career at the age of twenty six. After her
schooling, she had come into the world almost completely burned
out. She had hoped that practicing in a hospital would have
rejuvenated her, given her back that zest for being a doctor, but
it hadn’t. Instead, the long hours and sad cases had only served to
beat her down even further. Being on call at the hospital for two
or three days at a time was awful. Even when she slept, it was on
an uncomfortable cot or on a gurney. She had the sense of never
being at home and at peace. It may seem that enlisting in the
service would only exacerbate the problem, but Cabrera’s logic was
different. If she was assigned as a doctor aboard a space ship then
she would be at work and at home at the same time. When she’d
enlisted, she hadn’t been thinking of family. Her roots had
dissolved while she’d been in med school. Her father had died and
her mother had lost her mind. She had an older sister somewhere but
hadn’t heard from her since her teen years.

Cabrera had been half right about military
service. She had been expecting order and discipline to the nth
degree. In basic training, you got it. Once you were assigned a
ship, you met and worked with real people. There was still military
protocol to be maintained, but you could call someone by his or her
first name when you weren’t on duty. There was plenty for her to
do. People got sick out in space all the time. Fuzzy heads and
runny noses. Pulsing brains and watery eyes. Nausea. Then there
were the missions. Whenever the infantry went out she steeled
herself for real wounds. In eight years she’d had to sew up all
kinds of cuts and set all kinds of breaks. On three occasions,
she’d been called on to perform emergency surgery. Two out of three
of those times she had saved a life. She didn’t like to think about
the third time. Her own personality seemed to mesh well with the
system. Superiors and subordinates alike seemed to get along with
her. On the
Valor
, she bunked with the first officer.
Promotion had come slowly but easily. She thought she might have
gone farther if she pushed for it, but rank was not her goal.
Satisfaction was. Now, though, it seemed that rank was going to
follow along.

She’d called Paul Royce right away. After
all, if she was being promoted that meant that he was being
transferred. He wouldn’t talk about it, convinced that the
Admiralty
had finally decided to force him out. No one got
transferred
off
the
Valor
. Well, not the wash-outs
anyway. He’d called her back a while later to tell her that he had
been assigned to the
Noble
and it was all very weird. Very
weird. That was all he’d had to say.

What she hadn’t told him was that
she
had requested a transfer. Despite the fact that she’d never felt
she belonged on the
Valor
, she found that the environment,
for a variety of reasons, was becoming very uncomfortable. All of
the officers had expressed their distaste at having a medical
person as their lieutenant. Only Captain Beckett had initially
shown indifference, but she could tell that it didn’t suit him
either. Ships needed a doctor as a Medical Officer. They needed a
competent medical staff. But captains liked to dump a lot of
responsibility onto their lieutenants and couldn’t do so when the
lieutenant was a doctor. Doctors had enough responsibility without
the hazing that comes before being promoted into the Officers’
Club.

But there was more to it than that.

Maybe it was because she was getting older,
but she was beginning to think about having a family. The emptiness
of being alone was finally beginning to creep into her soul and she
knew that she would have to make a conscious decision soon or do
something stupid. Something
else
stupid.

What had happened between her and the
captain had been random and inexplicable. It was random because the
two rarely had direct contact; they’d only worked closely together
a couple of times before. It was inexplicable because he was a
heartless and callous man whose best years were behind him. It was
stupid because he ran his ship the way he ran his life. He made
room for the darkness and regarded it with a lot more consideration
and respect than anything positive. He thrived on angst. Cabrera
was not one of those women who was hell bent on finding a lump of
clay of a man and shaping him into her perfect image. She did not
see Beckett as a challenge or even a feasible choice in a man. And
yet their stupid, random, inexplicable encounter had raised
feelings inside of her that were undeniable.

Damn her hormones!
Did Beckett even
care about her? Probably not. If she were a betting woman, she’d
lay down her money on him not having given it even a thought. After
all, it was just one kiss during an awkward moment. Who even knew
Beckett had it in him? She had spent three weeks praying for a
transfer and wondering how she would face him if she didn’t get it.
What was he wondering about?

Damned Royce!

They could just as easily have transferred
her
off of the
Valor
like she’d requested, but then
they wouldn’t have had room for the new officers. Royce’s rank was
too high and they’d have had to knock a man like Humphrey Applegate
down a peg. Wouldn’t that have been a shame?

It was all academic anyway. She was going
out on another tour aboard the
Valor
. Her contact with the
captain would likely be as limited as it had always been. When it
was over she would put in for another transfer. If it wasn’t
granted she would consider retiring from the service. She wouldn’t
get a full pension, but at thirty four that didn’t seem like such a
big deal. Just one more tour. All she had to do was keep herself
from doing something stupid.

Something
else
stupid.

The Crew Chief met Captain Beckett as he
checked in aboard the Valor. He was an older, grizzled, surly man
by the name of Rumple Hardy (no one believed that
Rumple
was
his given name, yet it appeared on every legal document anyone
could turn up). Hardy was another of those guys who just couldn’t
get along with anyone. Most crews with which he’d worked had been
composed of men and women who had learned to hate him. For a Crew
Chief, that wasn’t the best of practices. And yet, he was so good
at his job that even the members of the
Admiralty
couldn’t
find an excuse to remove him from duty. He and Beckett had found
each other six years earlier and formed an instant and mutual
respect.

It was amazing how Beckett had found himself
comfortable with his dependency on Hardy. Since becoming an
officer, he had worked very hard at making sure that his reliance
in all possible situations was totally on himself. Excessive
reliance on others led to mistakes for which he alone was
responsible. But Hardy was almost flawless. He was
almost
as
dependable as Anabelle Rodrigo. Beckett had found that he could
always count on the chief to gain important information or simply
provide valuable insight.

“Boone’s been on board for six hours,” he
said by way of greeting.

“No kidding,” Beckett answered. He didn’t
know whether to be impressed or worried. Boone wasn’t the type of
guy to push himself.

Hardy nodded. “He ran an inspection of the
vehicles and weapons right away, had something to eat and a shower,
and then inspected Control.”

That was very odd. The weapons and vehicles
were under Boone’s direct authority, but not the control room. As
an officer, he had a right to be anywhere on board and inspect any
equipment, but he seldom exercised that right.

“Where is he now?”

“Engine room.”

“Another inspection?”

Hardy nodded again.

“That’s damned peculiar.”

And again. “It’s a damned peculiar
tour.”

They made their way down the corridor to the
service ladder that led to the control deck. On that deck was a
conference room where they could be comfortable.

“What do you have on our new officers?”

Hardy pulled a face. “They’re not our
regular additions. Ukpere is a company man down to the bone. His
record is spotless and his promotions have come on schedule to the
minute. Applegate’s not as squeaky clean, but he’s not a Space
Force reject like the rest of us.”

“Ukpere, Applegate, and Tedesco.” Beckett
ticked off the names carefully.

“Don’t forget about Cabrera.”

The captain looked a question.

“She’s got as good a record as any of them
and she doesn’t fit too well on board the
Valor
.”

“She’s a good lieutenant.”

“She
was
a good lieutenant. Now she’s
an officer.”

“What’s your point?”

“My guess is that they’re trying to turn
this ship around. Too many rookies come off of the
Valor
only to find their way back on a few years down the road.”

Beckett suppressed a reaction borne of
frustration.

“It would do the
Admiralty
good to
have someone on board that could set a good example,” Hardy
surmised.

“And what do think they plan to do about its
captain?”

This time Hardy had no answer, but that
didn’t mean he didn’t think they wouldn’t do
something
.
Beckett had almost no friends left in the service. Certainly there
were none of any rank. Even his relationship with Admiral Poulle
was tenuous. Rumors of his end had been floating around for
years.

“It doesn’t matter. Cabrera wouldn’t be
involved in a plot to unseat me.”

“Just because she kissed you?”

Beckett reddened, biting back his
response.

“She requested a transfer, you know.”

This time Beckett couldn’t stop himself. He
let out an angry gasp, but managed to cut it off there.

Hardy said, “And they transferred Royce
instead. Why leave a promising young officer here and transfer out
the son of a bitch?”

And add two more good officers
besides
, Beckett was thinking. “There’s not a whole lot I can
do about it.”

“Not a damned thing,” Hardy agreed. “Just
watch your back.”

Captain’s log, star date…I don’t actually
know the star date. Who keeps track of a star date? (some staticky
laughter in the background) I’ve just always wanted to say
that.

We jumped back into normal space seventeen
minutes ago. That’s how long it took for me and my fine crew to
readjust to the lack of gravity and get our bearings. A gold star
goes to Alice Roberts, who was able to chart the stars and find our
position in just under nine minutes. (some background applause)