Hope's Folly (41 page)

“One of the things I'll need to find out, sir. If you want to check back—”

“Is Dina Adney up to receiving visitors?” Philip had spoken briefly with her yesterday, but she'd still been sedated. He knew Jodey would be worried about her;
he
was worried about her. There had been no indication that she couldn't handle stress, other than, yes, she was known to be a stickler for rules. But rules were yet another thing a rebel fleet had in short supply.

“She did two hours of cogno-therapy on the med unit earlier. If she seems tired, I suggest keeping the visit short. Stressing her right now could set us back a bit.”

“Understood. She's still in Three?”

“Yes, sir.”

Philip angled around, careful of his hip and its persistent twinges, and headed for the small room that was now Dina Adney's existence. A glass panel showed she was sitting in the reclining chair next to the narrow bed, the screen of a reader glowing dimly on the armrest. He knocked twice. She looked up quickly, seeing his face through the panel.

She nodded, then moved as if to rise when he entered. He waved her down. Her eyes were clearer, livelier than yesterday. But her fingers still trembled. She tucked them under her thighs as he leaned against the end of her bed.

“Dugan says you're feeling better,” Philip said.

“I am feeling very ashamed, sir. I should never have accepted this posting. I realize that now. I regret that my actions endangered people.”

“This hasn't been an easy time for anyone, Dina.”

“And I made it worse. I don't think … I'm sorry, sir, but I don't think I belong in a combat situation. I have excellent organizational skills. I know I can be useful. But this … ” And she looked away from him and toward the viewport, artificially darkened now in jumpspace, her voice trailing off.

“We'll talk again when we get to Ferrin's,” he told her.

She turned back to him. “You will get us to Ferrin's, won't you?”

“I'll do everything in my power to get this ship to Ferrin's. That's a promise.”

She held his gaze for a long moment, then returned her attention to the reader, humming softly.

Only as he stepped into sick bay's corridor did he recognize the tune—a hymn from his childhood.
The stars protect those who have faith and hope
was the only line he could remember.

Hope he had. But he doubted any of the verses also mentioned a subbie called Rebel and a cat named Folly.

Philip fully expected to find Rya waiting for him when he came out of sick bay, almost two hours later.

But the short wide corridor was empty, and none of the faces he saw at the various working—working!— consoles in divisionals was topped by a dark-blue beret or glared daggers at him.

Although, with Rya, plasma stars might be more appropriate. He touched the small of his back. Still there, a hand's width from the Norlack.

With any other woman, he'd interpret her absence as sulking. But this was Rya Bennton. She wasn't sulking. She was scheming. He knew it. He could feel it.

He was just going to have to outscheme her.

He stopped in the XO's office on his way out of divisionals and leaned against the doorjamb. The office was small, utilitarian, with its gray bulkheads and a gray metal desk that looked as if it'd had an unhappy encounter with a freightloader at some point, with a large dent in the left side panel and a few smaller ones in front.

Not unlike its occupant, whose bent nose and scars were his trademark. Con looked up, his fingers still curled around a mug of coffee. Philip sniffed. Not coffee. Tea.

“Anything new from Mather's data?”

“He was a lot smarter than we gave him credit for.”

“Not that smart. He's dead.”

“He had more technical abilities than we realized.”

“I assumed that. He handled disty-boom like a pro.”

“But he was linear. Sabotaging the
Folly
was his job. When the Farosians came into play with their Star-Ripper, he was at a loss.” Con tapped one finger on his screen. “He had to help save the very ship he was ordered to hinder. It put him in an uncomfortable position. He was betting the fire on board would make us return to Seth. Then you gave the order to continue on for the C-Six—”

“I guess he never served under a lunatic skipper before.”

“—which forced him to try to take control through the aux bridge. When that failed, it appears he alerted the Empire to pick us up on the other side, with the assurance he'd have this ship in his control by then.”

“Cocky bastard.”

“What if he has a time-delay bomb in this ship somewhere? Something keyed to the jumpdrives? He had time to plant one, once we hit jump. It detonates upon arrival into realspace, and all the Empire has to do is lock tows on us and drag our smoking carcass to Tage.”

“An intelligent, cocky bastard, then, with a very devious mind. Good thing you're just as devious.”

“It's not my mind that works that way, Admiral. It's Bennton's, word for word. I'm surprised you didn't recognize her phrasing. She and Dillon are looking for that bomb now.”

That explained the lack of her presence. It still didn't mean she wasn't scheming something. Only now she could enlist Dillon's help.

“You can't turn yourself over to the Imperials, if it comes to that,” Con said.

Sounded like she had Con's help too.

Philip grunted. “Think they'll find out something from me they didn't already learn from Mather? He was on the
Nowicki.”

“It's more than that.”

“I'm tired of running, Constantine. Maybe it's time Tage and I had a face to face.” He'd thought about that, long and hard. That's when his trigger finger itched the worse.

“That's Falkner's job. You're a soldier, not a diplomat. Besides, the only face to face you'll get is with one of his assassins.”

“Better me than my family. Or those I care about.” Philip's voice rose harshly. “He killed Thad Bergren to get at Chaz. Do you think for one minute he won't come after my brothers, their wives, their children? My seventy-six-year-old mother? They're in Aldan, right in the heart of the Empire. Right within Tage's grasp. They have better-than-average security at the estate, at their offices, but even better-than-average isn't going to stop Tage.”

“He'll come after them anyway,” Rya's voice said softly behind him.

He spun around. He hadn't heard her approach, but then he realized he rarely did unless she wanted him to.

“It's what we do, how we operate,” she continued. “Get the main target, create a confession that incriminates a wider base, then go after them. He'll take your family's funds, property, everything. Until there's nothing left.” She shrugged. “He took my parents’ apartment. Locked down their accounts. Voided my father's will. I never even got a chance to go back there, get my things. It's all evidence, you know.”

Her words struck him. But her dispassionate tone struck him more. “Rya, I'm sorry. I didn't—”

“If you let the Imperials get you, Guthrie, you're just making it easy for him. As long as you're out there, he'll be focused more on you and less on them. Which is why I'll be in that pod, not you. My parents are dead. Our property's gone. I'm all that's left of the Benntons. I have nothing to lose. He can't hurt us anymore.”

She angled around him and nodded at Con. “Ship swept clean, sir. I'm going to meet Dillon back on the bridge. We're going to try to get that security console operational.”

She disappeared down the stairwell as quietly as she'd appeared.

He felt the urge to go after her, but Con was watching. He turned back to his XO.

“I don't agree with her reasoning,” Con said, “but she's right. We need you alive and kicking. Not being paraded around by Tage as a warning.”

“I don't see we have a lot of choices. It's either they get me or they get this entire ship, crew
and
me.”

“You're assuming they'll be waiting at the gate.”

“I've spent my adult life with the Imperial Fleet, so, yes, they will be. They have nothing to fear from a decommissioned Stryker with close-range lasers as her only defense. Reverse the situation, Constantine. We're in the
Loviti
with orders to pick up or take down, if need be, a freighter. Where would I put us? Right outside the reach of the freighter's lasers but well within the zone of attack for our cannons, our torpedoes. One shot, maybe two if the freighter's shields are strong. Take out her sublights, lock a tow on her, and, yes, drag her smoking carcass to Tage.”

“They still have to get us off the ship. We could fight—”

“They'll cut enviro. You know how we handle that. Or flood the ship with gas, because Fleet doesn't have a real Admirals’ Council to act as its conscience anymore.”

“And ImpSec's not kind to traitors from its own ranks,” Con added, his voice low now. “That's also what's behind this, isn't it?”

“I told you before. Don't start on me, Constantine.” Philip pushed away from the door and headed for his office. He had things to do, private, personal. And final.

The security console kicked on far too quickly and too easily for Rya's liking. Well, those components in place did. A crew-locator module was still missing. But the six security cams that one of Martoni's tech teams had hooked up earlier winked on without a flicker. The data-integration module signaled ready.

Too quick. Too easy. She needed something—
problems
to keep her busy. She didn't want to think about what would happen when they came out of jump. She didn't want to think about Philip. She couldn't stop thinking about either.

And she really needed that Norlack back.

“Looks good, eh?” Dillon asked her. He was on the other side of the square console, elbows on its edge.

Rya realized she was staring at one of the screens filled with orange and yellow data yet seeing nothing. “A work of beauty,” she said, forcing a smile. “You're totally apex, Dillon.”

He grinned back. “I'll run a check through the XO's console, then the ready room.”

Alek Dillon had a nice smile—and an even nicer ass, Rya noted as he crossed behind the empty command chair. But it wasn't Philip's smile. And it wasn't Philip's ass. Dillon smiled too much at her. Philip smiled but he also scowled, and she loved that, because she knew she made him think.

He made her scowl too. But he also left her breathless.

Damn him.

This was not the time to think about that. She tapped in her acknowledgment of Dillon's query on her screen.

“Ready room,” he called.

She waved him on, noting Corvang was at helm, Jasli at engineering, and two other crew whose names she couldn't come up with right now were synching a datapad to the scanner console.

The darker woman was Kagdan, one of Sparks's people. The name came to her as Dillon's query popped on her screen. The ready room and the security console were linking nicely.

Amazing. This ship gets up and running just in time for the Imperials to blow her out of the space lanes.

Don't think about that. Think about the fact that this ship up and running can run fast enough to keep Philip alive.

She really needed that Norlack.

Her security-console screen pinged. She glanced down, expecting a message from Dillon. But the ident was sick bay's, and the message was signed by Dugan:
Saw your station just come online. Thought I'd remind you it's time for a patch change.

Her fingers halted over the screen. She was about to tell him she was too busy, but something Philip said came into mind.
Polite, professional, and prepared to puncture.

Sick bay could hold an answer to her problem. She'd make time for Dugan.

Several hours later, when she arrived at the ready room for the 1530 meeting, not only did her shoulder feel better but she'd helped get another security camera online, synched another station, and felt significantly more confident in her plans to thwart Philip's plans. She followed Martoni in. They were the last to arrive, or rather, it appeared that Sparks, Welford, and Philip—a trio in gray uniform shirts—had arrived early. A change of schedule and she wasn't informed?

Not surprising. And it didn't matter. He could play all the games he wanted behind her back. She had
her
plans.

“Update us, Mr. Welford,” Philip said as soon as she took a seat beside Martoni.

“Burnaby Mather's position as part of the advance team allowed him unquestioned access to this ship's systems and the time, before Admiral Guthrie and the rest of the crew arrived, to reroute or subroute just about anything he wanted. We all worked alone and unquestioned for hours on end those first few ship-days. We were also working under time constraints. If someone offered to help—and Mather did, a lot—no one turned down the offer. Whenever something went wrong, Mather was right there, helping. Learning what we all did and also making sure his sabotage wasn't uncovered or fixed.”

Rya nodded, remembering the first time the lights went out on board. Mather was over Welford's shoulders. Helping.

And when a reset was needed through the aux bridge, it was Mather who went down there. Helping.