Warpath (28 page)

“Wow, awkward!”
Remmy said far too loudly for Finn’s taste. “Hey, don’t tell
him who it is, I want to see if your nose science is on the money.”

“On the money?”
Agameg asked.

“Accurate,” Finn
said, “he means accurate. I think he’s kidding, but it can be
hard to tell.”

“This is no laughing
matter, and it goes well past my nose. In fact, if I were out of my
vacsuit my entire body would be sensing whatever passes through the
air, you cannot imagine how much I can learn from simply standing in
an atmosphere,” Agameg protested.

“I know, I’m sorry,
Lieutenant Commander,” Remmy said.

“I think he has the
right idea though,” Finn said. “Don’t point her out, because
then I’ll have all kinds of expectations, and pressure.”

“Humans let this
stuff happen naturally,” Remmy said. “Sometimes it seems random,
but we find our way through.”

“You don’t realize
how hard it was to find a match for Finn at all,” Agameg said.
“I’ve been secretly keeping my senses keen to finding one since
he and Ashley failed to connect.”

“You and Ashley?
Pretty pilot, favourite instructor Ashley?” Remmy asked Finn.

“For a minute,”
Finn replied. “We’re just friends now.”

“Breeding is
important for humanity now,” Agameg pressed.

“Whoa there!” Remmy
said, laughing. “We don’t breed well under pressure, or when we
know we’re being smelled.”

“This is funny?”
Agameg said as he started leading them down the main corridor to the
hold at the rear of the ship.

“Not really,” Finn
said.

“Oh, it’s all
funny,” Remmy countered.

“But, seriously,”
Finn said to Agameg. “Thank you for looking for me, it’s good to
know there’s someone out there, at least chemically. Wait. She
doesn’t know, does she?”

“No, that would be a
strange thing to do. Everyone is in here,” Agameg reminded quietly,
a glimmer of excitement in his eyes.

“Okay,” Finn said,
more nervous than he could remember ever being. “But really don’t
tell me who it is. I just want to be myself, that way if anything
happens, it’ll come naturally.”

“I’m going to step
in if it looks like things are about to fail,” Agameg said.

“Oh my God,” Remmy
said, “everyone should have a wingman like you!”

“I’m a terrible
pilot,” Agameg said. “I don’t know what this one’s talking
about half the time,” he said to Finn.

“I’ll explain
later,” Finn replied. “Just, no matchmaking today, okay?”

“If you say so. It is
good to be on a mission with you,” Agameg said. “That’s enough
for today.”

The double doors slid
open to reveal a modestly sized hangar with a temporary rack of seats
and a heavy set of airlock doors at the rear. They were all temporary
modifications.

The forty-nine seats
were crammed into the space, and there were only a few left closest
to the temporary airlock. Finn tried not to pay attention to how many
women were in the crowd – it was about half, so at least twenty-two
by his estimation – or if he’d met them before – most of them
were wearing new Triton vacsuits of every colour from every
department, and he could only recognize three – and he failed at
ignoring them completely.

Lieutenant Commander
Stephanie Vega came through the airlock, barely giving it enough time
to finish opening, and looked around. “Okay, this is more than we
need.” She pointed to a random Ensign from the Triton crew wearing
a blue Engineering Department vacsuit. “You, why are you here?”

“I’m here for the
mission,” she replied, not looking up from her slender command and
control unit.

“What mission?”
Stephanie asked, all business.

“I heard that if we
went on this mission we would be able to transfer to the new crew,”
she replied.

“You know, like the
end of a ladder match in sims?” added another crewmember in a white
vacsuit, marking him as a general maintenance crewman. “Finish a
mission, get an opportunity for a better one?”

Stephanie’s mouth
twitched into a lopsided smile, it wasn’t a happy one. “So, there
was a rumour out there that said that if you signed up for this
mission, you got to do what, exactly?”

“Join the new crew
under Captain Valent,” said a woman in a black and gold vacsuit
with the rank insignia of Lieutenant Commander on her wrists. She
toyed with a hair-tie, sitting back in her seat without showing a
hint of nervousness. “I’m here because this ship needs me more
than the Triton, there are plenty of people in communications there,
a few waiting for my job. I’m the only analyst who signed up, but I
think most of the other people here came because someone put a list
of available engineering positions up. Oh, and there are four more
commuter shuttles coming. All from Haven Shore.”

Stephanie glanced at
her command and control unit then looked over the crew. “Okay,
looks like there was a mix up. The list of the engineering positions
and this mission got combined in the system and everyone except for
the people on
my
list
are getting off this ship and going to work on the Blessed Mission
starting today. That means training, hauling skid loads of parts that
were burned out in the fighting to shuttles headed to a recycling
barge, and it means a solid twelve hour day,” Stephanie said so her
voice could be heard clearly across the compartment. She raised it
even more when a few crewmembers started groaning. “Hey, it’s all
good news. You get to sign up for the Captain’s new crew, and
you’ll have a small part in repairing his ship for him. I have
three people on my list, their names are Lieutenant Commander Billy
Finn, Sargent Remmy Sands from the Rangers, and Lieutenant Commander
Liara Erron. Everyone else, get off my mission craft!” She stepped
aside and directed everyone towards the airlock with a sweep of her
arm.

“I’m not on the
list?” Agameg asked, alarmed. He squeezed between the seats and the
crewmembers to speak to Lieutenant Commander Stephanie Vega, who
greeted him with a smile. “I’m not on the mission list?” he
asked her, touching her command and control unit.

“You’re not on any
list, Commander,” Stephanie said. “You’ve been bumped up in
rank past me, couldn’t have happened to a better crewman. Only
thing is, you’re not assigned to a ship or any missions right now.”

Agameg looked at his
command and control unit, then at Finn, who was moving towards the
pair at a slower pace through the departing crewmembers. “I’m a
Commander in Triton Fleet but not on Triton? Not on this ship? Not on
any ship?” Agameg asked no one in particular. “Why? Why has this
happened? I transferred to Captain Valent staff last night.”

“It’s okay, Aggie,”
Stephanie said, comforting him with a hand on his arm.

“Why?” Agameg
whispered to himself, then he flinched at something he saw on his
command unit screen. “Ayan is Engineering Chief? Rank of Captain
now? She was Commodore, how can she be a Captain now? And Engineering
Chief?”

“Hey,” Stephanie
said. “Tell me what’s going on,” she said.

“Is he all right? It
looks like his head is about to explode,” Remmy asked Finn in a
whisper.

“I’ve seen him like
this once before, the night after Ramirez died,” Finn said,
stepping in beside Agameg. “What’s going on, just start at the
beginning, okay?”

Agameg squeezed his
eyes shut for a moment then slowly opened them, the green tint was
slowly being replaced with red. “I saw there was an open slot for
an Engineering Chief on Captain’s crew last night. You would be one
Chief, and I would be the other Chief. Different shifts, different
Chiefs. Split responsibility, very efficient.”

“Okay, so you signed
up for that,” Stephanie said.

“Yes, I contacted
Hausgiest, and he said that was all right, there was someone to
replace me on Triton permanently because five people were almost
finished training with me. He would finish training them. He made
sure my name went to the top and this,” he tapped his command and
control unit, “said I was the new Chief, the second Chief. I would
have a security watch too, day after tomorrow. It told me to come
here. Now it says Captain Ayan is the new Chief. Finn and I are now
missing from all lists.” He held his command unit up to show Finn
and Stephanie. “We are not assigned.” He took a breath, his
large, oval eyes reddening. “We have no jobs.”

“Okay, we’re going
to get moving on this mission,” Stephanie said. “You’re coming
with us if you can calm down, and I’ll sort this out.”

“You’ll sort it
out,” Agameg said anxiously.

“Yes, I’m sure it’s
a simple error,” she reassured. Finn could already see she was
calling up Captain Valent’s ident on her command and control unit.

“We’re ready to
go,” Lieutenant Commander Erron said into the ship intercom at the
rear of the cargo bay as the airlock closed. She held her hair tie
between her teeth as she started bundling her hair into a ponytail.

“Just confirming
destination, because things got confusing for a bit there,”
Lieutenant Garrison replied over the intercom. “We’re going to be
docking with the Fallen Star?”

“Exactement,” she
replied.

“That’s Old French
for ‘exactly,’” Lewis said over the intercom. “In case you
were wondering, Lieutenant.”

“I know,”
Lieutenant Garrison said with a sigh. “Thank you, Lewis. We’ll be
taking off as soon as we get the all-clear from the Solar Forge.
Should be about a minute.”

“Thank you,
Lieutenant,” Liara said.

“The Blessed Mission
is docking with the Solar Forge already?” Finn asked her, aware
that Agameg was practically attached to his side. Issyrians didn’t
do well without stability, and Agameg’s stability was his job. It
was a central part of his identity.

“I guess,” Liara
replied. “I don’t know what’s going on, to be honest, only that
my request for the communications position went through late last
night, and I’m already assigned to this mission. The brief hasn’t
been sent yet. Oh, and I’m getting a bunk and a welcome packet
later today. All us new crew are getting crammed into a little aft
berthing while the rest of the ship gets some work done. I think I
signed up prematurely, but there were only three communications
positions, and I qualified for just one.”

Finn could see Agameg’s
eyes turning green again, and he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt,
why his mood was turning so quickly. He could feel the butterflies
gathering in his stomach, so he stepped forward and offered his hand
before he lost his nerve. “I’m Billy,” he said. “Finn,
everyone calls me Finn, it’s a thing with last names from the
Samson, which you probably know as the Warlord. Whew, lots of names
changed in the last year, I guess. Well, but not my name, they pretty
much always called me Finn.”

Remmy, grinning from
ear to ear behind Liara mouthed the words; ‘Are you okay?’ then
rolled his eyes and turned away.

“I’m Liara,” she
said with an amused smile. She tapped her wrist to bare her hand then
tapped his to retract his suit from fingers to wrist. “We shake
hands like this where I come from.” She grasped his hand, and he
couldn’t help but notice how warm and soft hers was. “Shaking
hands with gloves on is like lying, you’re only pretending to touch
someone.”

“I’m Remmy Sands,”
he said, approaching from behind her with a big smile. His right hand
was bare and extended. “Just call me Remmy. I’ll be the security
for this trip,” he said to her as she tentatively shook his hand.

“No, you’re our
guide for this trip,” Stephanie said as she finished looking at her
command and control unit. “Agameg and I are security, Finn is our
tech, Liara is our communications and legal specialist. She’s also
a trained therapist with a medical degree.”

“Pardon me,
Lieutenant Commander, but that last part isn’t quite right,”
Liara said. “I’m a trained crisis worker, it was about three
months of training and a year experience. As for that medical degree,
I can read a detailed med scan, and do some emergency work, but I’m
not a physician. Oh, and I can deliver a baby in an emergency if
nothing goes wrong. I think the Triton’s Artificial Intelligence
processed my records wrong.”

“Your training still
fills more gaps than most, and you have a knack for data retrieval,”
Stephanie replied. “So seal up your suit and start reading the
mission brief so we can all figure out what we’ll be doing aboard
the Fallen Star this morning.”

“Yes, Ma’am,”
Liara said without a moment’s hesitation.

“We’ll be meeting a
medical technician when we get there. He was one of Messana’s team
and wasn’t aboard during the incident. The Captain may have
questions about him later, we’re screening medics more thoroughly
these days.”

The sound of the
landing struts retracting told Finn that they were taking off. He
opened the mission file on his command and control unit and tried to
concentrate.

“Did you find out
what’s going on?” Agameg asked as he looked at the file on his
comm unit.

“Jake is in a meeting
with the fleet commanders from this solar system, but he said it
really was a mix up and he’ll have news when he has a minute,”
Stephanie replied. “I think that’s the least of the news we can
expect when this meeting is over.”

Every muscle he knew he
had, some he suspected must exist, and many he didn’t know he had
were sore. Ayan’s first glance at him as she picked him up from his
small quarters sent her into a fit of laughter. “Oh, the look on
your face,” she said. “It’s as if you’re asking the universe
what you did to deserve this.”

“The auto-medic said
this is normal for someone in my condition after the kind of activity
I had yesterday. I told it that I was in great condition, then it
agreed and told me not to take so many stims.”