“You’re absolutely sure the strut didn’t shift on its own due to the stress of previous jumps?”
“Sir I’ve reviewed the recordings from the previous engine inspections. You can clearly see that the strut was properly placed following our second jump.”
“Could it have just broken... on its own? Metal fatigue?”
Guttmann shook his head to the commander’s question, but it was Peritts who answered. “There’s not a chance, ma’am. The strut is physically sound without any indication of decay or poor design.” The petty officer looked at his boss before continuing. “We can play the video feed for you. The whole bottom side is loose and has moved five millimeters from its original position.”
The captain cleared his throat. “Who else knows about this?”
The two engineers exchanged glances. The junior man shrugged. Swede answered, “Just the two of us as far as I can determine. If anyone else noticed the malfunction during the starboard inspection they didn’t speak up, and they would have.” He paused and hung his head. “Should have. Sir, whoever did this has to have fairly extensive knowledge of the engines. It was meant to break the engines and stop us in our tracks—but not to cause a hull breach or any permanent damage.”
Captain Hill’s expression turned even sterner. “I’d say the saboteur had less than precise knowledge of what would happen, given that it was only the superb flying of O’Connell that kept us from losing the whole engine.”
Maggie noted the praise for later contemplation. Her thoughts were still in a constant re-play loop of the engine shutdown sequence. Only a mad man or a complete idiot would cause an engine mount vibration in the middle of a jump sequence. She felt like vomiting just thinking of what could have happened.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. When your medical stand-down is complete the two of you—and only the two of you—will go back in that engine and replace the strut. I assume we have a spare, or can fashion one?” He waited for Guttmann’s nod in the affirmative. “Once that is done, you will recheck every single nanometer of the engines to make sure we don’t have any more surprises waiting for us. Your official finding will be metal fatigue in the strut mount. Fix the report so it can withstand scrutiny. The four of us in this room, and Price, are the only ones who will know the truth.
“If we’re going to find the bastard who did this, we need to act exactly how he expects us to: oblivious. He expected the engine venting to burn up the evidence, right?”
“That’s my assumption, sir. Until I can examine the parts in the lab I cannot confirm the exact method used to move the strut. But, if the engine had vented properly the strut, out of position as it was, should have been charred. For whatever reason, the secondary vent chamber took the brunt of the heat exchange.”
“Then we let him, or her, think that the evidence is gone. We tell everyone it looks like metal fatigue caused a part failure, and that we were damned lucky.” He took pity on the engineers, then. “You both look beat. Go get your rest. I’m afraid you have a lot more work ahead of you, and a lot of added responsibility.”
Despite their exhaustion, both men executed smart about faces before leaving the room. The door slipped shut behind them. Silence reigned.
Captain Hill stared at the top of his desk. He clenched his hands until they hurt. He counted his own heartbeats. His pulse throbbed in his temple.
“Son of a BITCH!” O’Connell’s outburst, oddly, seemed to release some of his own tension. Hands fisted, she turned, and for a brief moment the captain was sure she was going to punch the wall of his office.
“Precisely.” His tone was dry and calm. He didn’t feel calm. He felt like punching the wall, too. “Kindly refrain from breaking your hand in some idiotic gesture of frustration, Commander. You have more important things to be doing.”
“Like?” She snapped at him, not caring that her tone was an egregious breech of conduct.
When he spoke, the captain’s words were as coldly brittle as his expression. “Like piloting us out of this mess and finding a saboteur.” He paused, waiting for her to take a few deep breaths. “And, keeping me from killing him with my bare hands once you do find him.”
Chapter 10
Commander O’Connell stood at rigid attention while the captain read through Lieutenant Guttmann’s latest update from engineering. The engine strut was replaced. Two stress tests, one at high rates of speed, had been successfully completed. Microscopic examination of the damaged strut showed traces of explosive residue, and wiring for what they surmised was a remote detonation device.
“The lieutenant reports that the “chatter” in engineering indicates the crew accepts the story of metal fatigue causing the failure.”
“Yes sir.” She watched as the captain pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Similar conversations overheard in the mess facilities and weight-room indicate the civilians also buy the story.”
He raised his head and glared at her. He thought, distracted momentarily, that he had been doing a great deal of glaring at his second-in-command. As a way to bleed off stress, it wasn’t entirely without pitfalls. She fairly quivered with ill-contained ire. If anger at him kept her focused and sharp, he would just have to accept that she might hate him for the rest of her days. He needed her fighting mad at the moment.
“I tasked
you
with finding the saboteur, Commander. I can listen to crew gossip and whispers on my own time. Guttmann needs to be focused on the engines, not worried about what his staff thinks. He has performed admirably. What have
you
been doing?”
“Sir, it was a remotely activated device. Anyone could have triggered it. Reading through three months of engineering access logs isn’t going to tell me who decided to detonate the device. He didn’t have to be
in
engineering to do it.”
“Yes, thank you, Commander. I believe I’m up to speed on the nature of
remote
detonation. Why are you here with excuses? If the engineering access logs aren’t providing clues, you’ll have to turn elsewhere for answers. Someone on this ship caused that malfunction, and I want to know who.
Now
.”
You stupid, arrogant, ass
, she thought.
Do you expect the guy to be walking around with a great big scarlet S for saboteur on his forehead?
“Maybe I did it, sir.”
She winced.
Ahh shit, I just said that out-loud. Smooth.
He rolled his eyes. “The stupidity of that remark is astounding and obviously born of your frustration with your inability to complete this task. I
know
that neither you nor Price had anything to do with this. No pilot who has survived basic flight training would willingly cause a vibration in an engine mount. Likewise, I know that Guttmann and Peritts love the ship like their own mothers and wouldn’t conceive of harming her. You need to find someone with just enough engineering knowledge to make him, or her, dangerous, but without an ounce of piloting skills or sense.”
He could tell the instant a new thought occurred to her. She blinked several times and briefly chewed her lower lip. Her green eyes snapped back into focus. “Or someone gullible enough to believe what an engineer told him. If that device was planted inside the strut mounting during installation or our shake-down cruise, perhaps it wasn’t anyone currently on board who thought up the idea.”
“A mastermind who enlisted a willing patsy to push the button at a pre-determined time?” The captain sounded skeptical.
She rushed her words in her effort to convince him. “It would make sense, sir. The saboteur would have to know that planting a device inside the engine coils once the ship was underway would be damn near impossible. During construction, though, he could plant it and walk away, leaving the dirty work to anyone on board he chose to enlist in his scheme.”
Hill held up a hand to forestall her from expounding further. “I get the drift, Commander. I’m just not sure I like the idea that we’ve gone from one incredibly daft saboteur to an entire conspiracy meant to control, or damage, the ship.” He pinched his nose again. His headache was back. If he was prone to petulance, he would blame O’Connell for his near constant headaches. Fortunately for her, he was more self-aware.
Captains of naval vessels since time immemorial had been the penultimate power while a ship was at sea. Their word was law. It should have been that way now. He was separated from superior officers, planning commissions, civilian authorities, and political squabbles by several galaxies. He should have been the Lord God Almighty of this tiny encapsulated universe that was the
Hudson
.
Except, there was at least one person aboard, perhaps even a handful of people, working to thwart his intentions. They didn’t recognize his authority and were determined to stop him from completing his mission.
O’Connell didn’t know what was going through the captain’s mind. The look on his face terrified her. Whatever he was thinking of had him in a cold, deep-burning, rage. She sincerely hoped she was not, and never would be, the target of that rage.
When he looked back up at her face, Captain Hill realized that he hadn’t concealed his inner turmoil. He worked to slip his composed, orderly, veneer back in place. “Think about a motive, Commander. That might be your best bet for finding this person, or persons. Why would they decide to slow, or stop, the
Hudson
here? Why this jump? Figure that out and you might find a clue to their identity.”
***
Ensign Chi checked the corridor behind him, again. Assuring himself for the third time that he wasn’t followed, he entered the aft station room of the engineering bay. Flipping his wrist upward, he made sure his locator was turned off. With it off, only the captain or Commander O’Connell had the authorization to ascertain his whereabouts. With a grin that belied his nervousness, he nodded to the three other men in the room and sat.
“All quiet on the bridge, then?” Swede was shuffling the cards. His fingers were as adept at handling the cards as they were at manipulating the gears and mechanisms in the engines. He quickly dealt three cards to each player.
“O’Connell has the watch and everything is quiet. Engines are running just fine, now, and we’re ahead of schedule for arrival at that new node. No one should need us for at least three hours.” Chi, without looking at them first, laid his hand over the neat pile of cards. He watched Swede Guttmann, Tony Price, and Nate Robertson all repeat the gesture.
The four officers were playing spay-ya bushki, a popular card game in university dorms and military barracks all over Earth. The name was a bastardization of the Russian phrase “grandmother’s tears”. No one was entirely sure who had named it thusly, or where the original idea had come from. The rule set had evolved over the years, and, as was common with every game, each group of players added their own quirks. Played with one hundred four cards from two distinct decks, spay-ya was a bizarre combination of bridge and poker. Each player was initially dealt three cards. They had to bet before looking at those “hole” cards. The bets hovered a foot above the table to each player’s right side, projected by small keycards that recorded wagers and money won or lost.
Swede flipped two cards face up from the top of the deck. These cards became the high and low trumps. Because a spay-ya deck had eight suites, there were several possible designated trump suites and numbers. Casual players had a hard time keeping track of which hands won. A skilled player combined card counting, strategic thinking, and a great deal of luck in his game play. The reigning Grand Master of the game was a thirty-year-old autistic man from Austria.
Tony glanced at the trump cards. A nine of spades indicated that the greater suite trump would be spades. A queen on a card with a teardrop as its marker indicated that the water suite was the lesser trump. With that configuration, a straight flush of spades was the ultimate winning hand and any cards from the water suite could be used as substitutes for spades. Cards of the air, earth, and fire suites, the other three “lesser suites” in the game, were “throw-off” cards that did not help a player’s hand at all. Tony had a four of spades, a six of spades, and a jack of earth in his hand.
Swede dealt another card to each man, face up. A complete hand consisted of six cards and players had to make the best hand of five out of those six. Tony stared down at a jack of water. The card could be used as a wild card in his hand. He upped his bet, hoping to complete his straight flush of spades. Chi folded, but Nate had an ace of spades showing as his up card. He matched Tony’s bet. Swede glanced at them both, matched the bet, and dealt the next series of cards.
Ensign Chi leaned back in his chair to watch. He was not a poor player of the game, but he did not kid himself about his abilities. Swede and Tony had both been playing for many more years on many more long Orion station patrols and deployments to Mars station. Officers were forbidden to fraternize with enlisted personnel and that, as a general rule, included gambling. There were similar rules for officers of greater and lesser ranks associating with each other, but that rule was never enforced on so small a ship as the
Hudson
. No one, however, wanted to test the captain’s patience with gambling, so the game was kept a secret.
“Are you sure Commander O’Connell wouldn’t like to be invited occasionally?”
Swede checked his bet and then his cards before replying to Nate. “I am not sure, because I have not asked her. She’s the XO. Inviting her would put her in an uncomfortable situation of either having to reprimand us, but keep our secret, or report us to the captain and break up the game.” He upped his bet, sure that Tony was trying to draw an inside straight.
Tony
was
trying for the straight, and he was still on track to get it. While Nate bet, Price chuckled at the idea of O’Connell playing cards with them. “If I remember the rumors from the academy correctly, she was a devil at cards anyway. I prefer my cards without being bloody flogged by a mere woman.” He winked at Nate and grinned as the kid looked shocked.