Black Box (7 page)

Everyone’s very excited.

I wish I could convey the electricity on
this ship right now. This is the very first log entry after an
interstellar jump. We have truly gone where no man has gone before
(boos and catcalls from the background). Sorry. We’ve gone where
no
one
has gone before. My crew thinks I should be more
considerate seeing as half of them are women. They’re probably
right. I’d hate to incite the first ever mutiny on an interstellar
voyage because of my own narrow-mindedness.

(someone shouting something garbled in the
background, followed by Walker’s genuine and natural laughter)

I’m going to have to edit the heck out of
this log. Then again, maybe not.

We’ve mapped out the current solar system
and the fourth planet from the sun is actually the habitable one,
so we’ll make for that. Alice says it’ll be eleven days before we
can reach it at normal speed. Geoff (Markakis) concurs. It would be
nice if it were as simple as that but Gil (Mendez) thinks that a
full inspection of the ship is in order before we start limping
across the void (more boos and catcalls followed by a chuckle from
Walker himself). I concur with Gil's assessment. We'll sit tight
for a couple of days until he can complete a thorough check-up of
the ship and its systems inside and out. Two weeks is just enough
time for us to prepare to land and explore the new world. It’s a
very exciting time to be a pioneer.

Colonel Nicholas Walker

March 14
^th
,
2056

Beckett paused the audio clip after
finishing the first entry of Colonel Walker's log. He’d already
listened to the whole thing, what there was of it, several times.
There was nothing to be gained from the words. However this
assignment presented itself, there was more under the surface. They
could call it a “fact-finding” mission or a mission of “historic
importance” or even a “training mission”. They could simply call it
Ted Beckett’s punishment for being Ted Beckett. But none of that
really explained why they had chosen the
Valor
for this
mission. None of it explained why they had shuffled the crew so
that Beckett wasn’t commanding his usual ship load of bastards and
rookies. None of it explained why John Poulle been just a shade of
John Poulle when detailing the whole expedition. None of these
events had been random. There was a reason for each of them. But
would Beckett find those reasons before their ultimate purpose
found him?

The captain’s cabin was a shoe box of a
room. Of course, the
Valor
was more akin to a submarine than
a cruiser. The hallways were low and narrow and the large part of
the crew bunked in communal rooms and shared communal toilets. Even
the captain shared a bathroom with his officers (who bunked two
together). But she was a strong ship, faster than anything else in
the fleet, and armed well enough to take on a pirate dreadnaught,
should the need arise. The stateroom itself had just enough space
for a small desk and chair. He kept few items on the desk. There
was a keyboard screen built into it so that he could access the
ship’s computer directly. Other than that, the picture of a bright
baby boy smiling his toothless smile looked out at him every minute
that he spent inside. Right across from the desk was a bunk that
folded out from the wall. As he did at this moment, Beckett often
chose the bunk over the desk chair. He sat with his back to the
wall and his legs crossed, the wireless earpiece through which the
words of Walker’s journal had come barely visible in his left ear.
His reader sat on the bunk next to him.

There was a knock on the door.

Regaining his air of command, Beckett stood
and took his time folding up the bunk. It would be necessary if two
people were to fit in the room. Over the years, he had seen many
people transfer off of the
Valor
strictly because of its
size, but he liked the claustrophobic atmosphere. Commanding the
Valor
was like wearing an expensive suit. He was clothed in
his ship the way corporate administrators brandished their
style.

The door slid open with a latch and a push
to reveal Lieutenant Lara Tedesco. No big surprise.

"Something I can help you with,
Lieutenant?"

She held in her hand her own reader and
Beckett could see that there was a report on the screen. Tedesco
had no reports due so there was only one thing that could be on
that reader. Something about which she desperately wanted to
question the captain.

"We'll be in approach range in eighteen
minutes, sir," she reported unnecessarily. The computer on his desk
gave him up to the minute information on the workings of the
ship.

Lara Tedesco was a short kid with floppy
brown hair that skirted the boundaries of regulation. Her uniform
was wrinkled, as if she never found the time to put her damned
clothing away. Forgetting the fact that female officers were
usually the most tidy, it seemed as if she went out of her way to
look unkempt. It was as if she felt this would generate respect
from her underlings, if not her superiors. And she exuded an
attitude of superiority that Ted Beckett just couldn’t swallow. He
could argue that he resented her because she’d coasted on her
father’s reputation, that professor after professor had passed her
through her schooling based on her last name. But, while it was all
true, it was also all bullshit. The bottom line was that he just
didn’t like her. For officers, objectivity was stressed as one of
the primary qualifications for success but Beckett thought that was
a lot of bullshit, too. Objectivity got people killed.
Go with
your gut
, was his motto. If he didn't like someone, there was a
damned good reason why. He wasn't about to second guess his own
instincts because of some self righteous, by-the-book ideal that
had no business being in application.

"I'll be in Control at that time, then,
Lieutenant," he said sourly. When Tedesco held her position,
Beckett concluded with, "Dismissed."

"Can I ask you something?"

Here it comes.
"Go ahead."

"Can you maybe explain this?"

It did not escape Beckett's notice that, in
the last two statements, Lieutenant Tedesco had failed to address
him as
sir.
He decided to make the kid sweat, make her drag
it out of him.

"What's that, Lieutenant?"

"This report," Tedesco said breathily.

"That report is on a reader in your hand. I
can't see it so I can't very well explain it."

Tedesco angrily put the reader in the
captain's hand. "Here. You know what it is. You wrote it."

Beckett didn't even bother to look at the
reader. "What do you want to know?"

"What do I want to know?!" Tedesco cried,
flustered. "I want to know why. Why would you file a formal protest
against having
me
as part of your crew?"

The answer sprang to Beckett's tongue like a
jackal and he held it, a task akin to holding back that very same
jackal with a shoestring leash. He took a subtle breath and handed
the reader back to the young lieutenant without ever even having
glanced at the miniature screen. It was all true. He'd told John
Poulle that he wanted Tedesco removed from the manifest. When
Poulle had thwarted him, he'd filed a formal protest with the
Admiralty
. His protest was well worded and thought out,
without ever mentioning the girl’s father or favored existence in
the Force. It was also a tremendous waste of time.

Beckett looked down at her. He stood a head
taller than she, which didn't intimidate her one bit. That was
fine. The longer Tedesco maintained the attitude, the longer
Beckett would be able to justify his position.

"Lieutenant?"

"What?" Still frustrated. Good.

"Didn't they ever teach you how to address a
superior officer?"

"A
superior
officer, yes."

Beckett clamped down hard against the
retort. Technically, he could already have her chained up but that
would just create a whole new set of problems. No, it was better to
keep this between the two of them.

"Maybe when you learn your place, you'll get
your answers." Beckett stepped around her. A crewman, Barnes, was
walking by the open door and, startled out of a private reverie,
gave the captain a half salute.

"Permission to speak freely?" Tedesco asked
and then added, "
Sir
."

Against his better judgment, Beckett closed
the door.

The lieutenant continued. "I know why you
wrote this report. You're jealous."

This time, the jackal let out a bark before
being restrained but it was a just simple bark of laughter. There
was only a little venom in it.

"Don't laugh at me. You're jealous because
I'll outrank you before you know it and you'll never be anything
but what you are now. How long have you been a captain?"

And this time, the jackal broke free
entirely. Beckett turned on Tedesco with such ferocity that the
smaller girl shrank away from his anger. "You listen to me, Lara.
I'm still here because I'm the best damned captain the UESF has
ever seen. If you really want to know why I wrote that report it
has everything to do with the fact that I think you're incompetent.
In fact, every instructor you've ever had has labeled you
incompetent behind your back."

"Then how did I get all the way up to
lieutenant?"

"Don't insult my intelligence, kid. You're
riding on your dad's coat tails but that doesn't fly here. Your
attitude is shit and your skill set is a
bucket
of shit.
Don't think for one second that I'm going to play along with the
game that got you onto my ship. Believe me, you'll wish you'd never
been assigned to me."

"My father will bust you…"

"Don't threaten me. Part of having nothing
to gain in this career is also having nothing to lose."

Tedesco relaxed her shoulders a bit, thought
for a minute. "So you're going to shut me out of everything, treat
me like a rookie?"

And now Beckett flashed an unsettling grin
in the other's direction. The prospect seemed to cow her more than
anything else. For the first time, he saw a glimmer of a person who
was
trapped
in the shadow of her father rather than someone
who was desperately trying to hide in its shade. Beckett had no
sympathy. "No way. You wanted to be an officer, and now you are. I
fully intend to run you as hard as regulations allow. I want to
give you every opportunity to fuck up and when you do, I'm going to
crucify you.
My
seal of approval doesn't come with daddy's
initials. Now get your ass out of my stateroom and the next time I
see you, you’d better attach
sir
to the end of every
sentence or I'm going to bust you for insubordination.

"Dismissed."

"But…"

"
Dismissed!"

The control room of the
Valor
,
commonly referred to as Control, was as proportionately small, as
compared to other ships, as the rest of it. It was situated toward
the bottom of the ship and the only normal approach was from an
access ladder that led down from above. In an emergency, there was
a tube that ran the length of the bottom of the ship and up through
the hull. The tube itself was part of a whole system of emergency
accessways, commonly referred to as the Habitrail. The Habitrail
connected the entire ship through its outer shell and underbelly.
It was a less than convenient way of navigating around the ship in
case of an enemy boarding or depressurization.

In Control, the captain stood. There was no
specific station for him as he was technically master of all
stations. Ted Beckett had risen through the ranks as a foot
soldier, eventually making Lieutenant, and then the command crew at
various stages. Someone in the
Admiralty
, the
old
Admiralty
, had recognized his skill and his intuition
because it was very rare for an infantry man to reach captain.

For no reason, the pilot’s station was
toward the front of the ship. There were port holes circling the
Control Room in easy view and, though the pilot could see outside
the ship through these and several cameras, piloting was done based
on data and a graphical readout. Of all the stations, the pilot’s
was the most advanced technologically. It was equipped with two
touch screens, one on either side of the seat. The controls were
customizable for a left or right handed pilot. In addition, there
were two control sticks designed for maneuvering in a three
dimensional environment. Finally, the pilot had a keyboard screen,
just like everyone else. Pilots often had exceptional programming
skills and United Earth Space Force Navigational Systems were
designed to accept macros (mini computer programs) for complex
maneuvers. The better pilots wrote the better macros. The pilot’s
chair could recline into any position and the entire station
rotated and swiveled.

The walls on either side of the pilot were
slightly recessed in order to make room for two small consoles.
Each had a touch screen, keyboard screen, and chair only, although
the chair was a simple plastic job. It was nothing compared to the
pilot’s chair. One station was the radar and weapons station. This
station was commonly manned by another pilot or a foot soldier.
Foot soldiers would often seek other skills while in service of the
infantry. It was how they advanced. A large number of UESF foot
soldiers had opted for ships weapons or engineering. And so the
other station, used to monitor and control engine power, was either
occupied by an engineer or, infrequently, also by a foot
soldier.

At all times, there was at least one officer
in Control. Sometimes he or she would occupy one of the three
stations. Other times, the officer would take up the position in
which the captain stood at the moment. The Crew Chief also took
irregular shifts in Control and could serve as the Chief of the
Watch if no other officers were present. Right now, in fact, the
Crew Chief was present.