No Man's Space 1: Starship Encounter (15 page)

My copilot, Banner, Flanagan, and several other men woke me up at the hangar and pulled me out of the fighter. Their hands were full of blood – I guess it was mine. I don’t know how or why I’d woken up again, but I wanted another nap. And if I didn’t get the chance to sleep, I needed to work on the defenses. We were completely defenseless if the enormous flying saucer decided to come back.

“Don’t we have any stretchers?” Damn, my voice sounded even worse than before, and moving the muscles in my neck only made it hurt more.

“Shut up, will ya, sir?” Flanagan said. “Doc’s told us to keep you quiet or knock you down if you try to speak.”

“He’s mentioned anesthesia,” Banner said, “but don’t worry about physical aggressions.”

“At least not for the time being,” Flanagan said.

I stumbled out of the ship and they tried to help me, but I tried to push them out of the way.

“He’s all yours, Doctor Hatfield,” Banner told the doctor.

“I’m fine,” I said. Shit. My neck hurt even more. But I was fine, and I didn’t have time to stand around idly and wait for the doctor to heal my wound. It wasn’t that awful, you know? And besides, going into sick bay means putting your life in the doctor’s hands. I’d rather not place my life in anyone’s hands but my own. Not that I distrust doctors… Actually, I do. And I wasn’t going to let anyone anesthetize me and make me lose control of my own body.

Hatfield had stayed aside while the men took me out of the ship. He looked at me, both arms crossed. Was he expecting me to beg for help? It wasn’t going to happen.

“I see you’ve been playing rough games,” Hatfield said. He stared straight at my wound and gave me a half smile. What was it supposed to mean? Was he happy that I’d ended up with a chunk of metal sticking out of my neck?

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just need some drink and I’ll be fine.”

“Planning to neutralize pain with alcohol?” Hatfield tut-tutted. “I’d have expected more from an officer.”

Hatfield called several of his nurses and told them to escort me to sick bay as if they were port security escorting a criminal to the brig. I was weakened and they had no compassion for my resistance. Hatfield followed after us, tut-tutting and telling me that resistance was useless. “If the captain’s physically impaired, the doctor can give him orders. You’ve lost too much blood, so you’re in my hands.”

Banner followed behind Hatfield. He looked more worried than usual, almost as if he feared that Hatfield messed up, forcing him to assume responsibility like he’d initially attempted to do. “I’ll keep the midshipmen out of your seat while you’re here,” he said. “Just relax, let the doctor do his job, and you’ll be back in a matter of hours.”

Hatfield tut-tutted. “Hours? Hours? I doubt that I can even sew him up within hours. And he needs rest since before the battle. You go back to the bridge and pray that he recovers safely, and I’ll do my job.”

No, wait. Why was everyone directing everything except for me? I was supposed to be in charge!

Hatfield led the way to sick bay and gestured at me to go in. “Lead the way, Captain. I’d rather keep my henchmen out of this.”

The following hours became more and more unbearable. Everyone decided that they had the right to come and visit the acting captain in sick bay and have a chat instead of letting me rest until Hatfield allowed me to leave.

Midshipman Gomez ran into sick bay, waving and shouting greetings at all the nurses. The kid was always overexcited since he’d become one of the seniormost officers on board, and nobody had managed to calm him down. He waved a tablet in the air and dropped it on my knees on the bed.

“Careful with my legs,” I complained.

“Uh?” Gomez stared at the blankets and realized that my legs were right there. “Oh. Sorry, sir. Didn’t see them. I’m not used to visiting anyone in hospital… or in sick bay, anyway.”

I could tell. I let out a long sigh and prepared to act polite with yet another visitor. “What do you want, Gomez?”

“Why are you talking, sir? Doctor Hatfield’s said that you can’t talk while you’re healing. You’re supposed to be quiet and let everyone come here, talk to you, and bear it silently. Like hemorrhoids, only that you’re sitting down and you wouldn’t be able to sit down if you had hemorrhoids. Do you know anything about their causes? I’ve been reading all about it on the Net, and it’s amazing. Some people end up with circulation problems around their―”

“I know what hemorrhoids are, Gomez,” I said. “And I don’t want to talk about it. Mind disappearing for a while and letting me rest?”

Gomez didn’t leave. Instead, he sat down on one of the doctor’s stools, but he was too small for it and his feet didn’t reach the ground. “I’ve brought one of my tablets with me in case you’re bored. I wouldn’t be able to stay in sick bay if I’m bored.”

A tablet? Not a bad idea. Hatfield had forbidden everyone from entering my office to bring me any of my stuff, but he hadn’t said anything about not borrowing the kids’ tablets. Gomez handed it to me and started pointing at the glass and dragging his finger across the screen. Modern tablets were designed for distance sensors and nobody needed to touch them, but kids always got their greasy fingers on them.

“I’ve installed several special programs, sir,” he said with large and excited eyes. “You can read forbidden books, or even books from enemy countries. Censorship hasn’t blocked them from the Net, and I have them in my tablet. And you also have games. I know officers can’t install rubbish in Navy material, so you have to press this other button if someone wants to inspect the tablet.” He gestured at a side button that turned the tablet into an empty carcass for a while.

The kid had the soul of a smuggler.

And he was also owning up before an officer that he was breaking the law.

“Are you telling me ways to bypass the Navy’s regulations?” I asked.

“No.” He grabbed the tablet and moved back. “Definitely not. I can hide it again and you won’t ever see it if you don’t want to, but I need the extra games to avoid being bored on watch. Have you ever spent the whole night in front of a bunch of screens with nothing to do?”

That’s exactly the point of being on watch: not doing anything else so that the port or the ship aren’t boarded in the middle of the night.

I got rid of Gomez because keeping him there would tempt me too much to send him off to the brig to get rid of yet another annoying midshipman.

Soon after I was finally alone, Kozinski and York started complaining outside sick bay.

“You aren’t pulling it properly!” York complained. They were dragging something heavy along the floor. As always, he blamed Kozinski.

“I’m doing my best, I am,” Kozinski said.

“And you’re a careless brute,” York said. “You keep dragging the crate like that and you’ll scratch the floor. Can’t expect to get anywhere if everyone sees us like clowns. We’ve lost more than half of the crew, it’s our chance to take initiative and prove that we’re valuable members of the crew, nice and easy. But you always keep complicating things.”

“Get someone’s help, then,” Kozinski said.

Ugh. I
knew
they were headed to sick bay. Don’t ask me why, but I knew. Everyone always ended up in sick bay when I was there.

They dragged a large chest full of…
lightbulbs
? Where had they taken those lightbulbs from?

“We’ve managed to get more lightbulbs, sir,” York told me.

Kozinski was staring around sick bay, and York slapped his stomach to get him to focus. Kozinski quickly focused back on me and nodded.

It turned out that the pair had gone to every single room and
borrowed
the lightbulbs following a silly comment I’d made about not having any weapons left to fight the enemy, so we could only throw lightbulbs at them. Now that I’d assumed that nobody listened to me, they
had
listened to the silliest thing I’d ever said.

“But you wanted to throw lightbulbs at the enemy,” York said. He reflected for a few seconds and his face showed understanding that they’d messed up again.

Kozinski didn’t follow.

“And we’ve brought all the best lightbulbs,” Kozinski added. “We’ve picked them from everywhere, even from your office.”

York was starting to get nervous about having messed up, and he glared at Kozinski as if trying to blame someone else. “We… we didn’t plan to break anything, sir.”

“Just put them back,” I said. “Put them back and talk to Banner before doing anything else: moving, taking lightbulbs, touching computers, or even breathing.”

“How are we goin’ to live if we can’t breathe, sir?” Kozinski asked.

“Shut up,” York whispered at him.

I dismissed them and they ran off. Hatfield soon walked into sick bay wearing one of his expensive suits. He carried a similar suit in one hand and a tie hanging from his arm. “I’ve had to bribe the local tailor,” he said, “but I’ve managed to get him to make this for you.” He placed the suit on the bed and started comparing the tie with the color of my eyes.

I pushed his hands away. “I’m sick, Doctor. I’m not here to try on new clothes. And besides, I’m supposed to wear my uniform.”

“Your
dress
uniform?” Hatfield asked.

What was he talking about? I didn’t have a dress uniform.

“Exactly,” he said. “And how do you plan to attend Lady Elizabeth’s ball in your work clothes? You’ll meet the local aristocracy, and you need something that doesn’t broadcast that you were born on Earth or that you’ve spent most of your life amongst pests.”

A ball? Lady Elizabeth? The local aristocracy?

“I don’t always pay attention,” I said, “but I would’ve remembered this. I haven’t been invited anywhere. Not that I’d planned to go anyway.”

“Ah, but you must,” he said. “You’re the acting captain of a visiting ship of the line. It’s one of your responsibilities. Everyone who dislikes you will use your absence to spread rumors about you if you aren’t there to deny them. Trust me, you can’t recover easily from rumors that affect your integrity or your sexually transmitted diseases.”

I tried to get rid of him, but he insisted to teach me everything about manners, behavior, and not messing up before a pack of hungry aristocrats. The idea was that I’d mess up even if I tried not to. And I couldn’t dodge the reunion; I had to sell them on working on more defense systems and on getting all the help they could offer.

I’m no diplomat, and the locals weren’t going to like me.

Anyway, the sooner I got everything out of the way, the better. I got out of bed and attempted to stand up, but Hatfield pushed me back down. He placed his hand only inches away from my newly sewn wound.

“Don’t even think of it,” Hatfield said. “You’ve lacked sleep for days, and it’s affecting your mind. In your sleep, you’ve talked about space debris flying towards your fighter, disappearing, shrinking, and hitting your neck. Do you think that I’m going to let you take command of anything in your present state?”

Shit. Did I talk in my sleep? If I kept doing that, I was going to get myself locked up in an asylum.

I spent a couple of days bored to death in sick bay. At least nobody attacked the port, started a rebellion, or destroyed us. Life was much easier whenever I wasn’t in charge. Was I a Jonah?

Lady Elizabeth sent me an invitation to her famous ball and Hatfield coerced me to attend. Banner was also invited, and I wasn’t going to leave him alone with Lady Elizabeth. She was ready to use all means at her disposal to seize control of the port and the North Star. If she tried something with Banner, I wanted to be nearby to stop her.

The room had high ceilings and expensive paintings decorating the walls. Gentlemen and ladies had come with their finest clothes, all of them seeking to show off before their equals and to prove that they weren’t poorer than the last time they met. I looked poorer than most, but at least the suit Hatfield had lent me didn’t make me look too bad.

As for the service, Lady Elizabeth had brought legions of servants to man the walls in case someone needed them. Most of them were idle and would remain idle for the entire ball. She’d spared no expense despite the blockade. Though her family’s imported food and money wouldn’t last forever unless they broke the siege.

“Wasn’t Lady Elizabeth bankrupt?” a tall gentleman asked. He was in a group of three other gentlemen. They hadn’t noticed my presence.

A short and stout man let out a low laugh. “Her pockets are as empty as the servants’, but they’ve requested extensions to their loans. A friend of mine lent her some money, and she’s never paying on time. He’s about to write off the debt as a bad one.”

The tall man nodded. “We’re forc
e
d to stand here while she wastes our money and squeezes the workers with so many taxes that they can’t even breathe unless they pay first.”

“She’ll declare her family bankrupt in a couple of years,” the fat man said. “She’ll spend a few months in a low profile, and then someone’ll give her family a decent position again. They have many more friends than us.”

The third man, much older than the other two, ran his fingers through his white hair. “I’d send her to a magistrate and hang her publicly if she doesn’t pay her debts. These kinds of people didn’t prosper back in the day.”

“And what was she thinking by inviting that engineer officer anywhere?” the taller man said. “He’s a slum roach, isn’t he?”

“I’ve heard that he went to college,” the old man said with a sneer. “He didn’t even go to the Academy. How can anyone promote a man whose parents have no money and no connections? What kind of trust can we place on him? And is he supposed to protect us from the enemy?”

Wow. Talk about making friends. At least they disliked Lady Elizabeth more than me.

Hatfield quickly approached me with an annoyed expression. I’d messed up somewhere and he was going to tell me everything about it, but I had no idea what I’d done this time.

“Stop staring around as if you’d never left Earth before.” Hatfield gestured at me to follow him. He quickly headed for the group of gentlemen I’d been spying on. “Ah, gentlemen! Please allow me to make the introductions for you. I’m sure that you’ve heard of the North Star’s most famous engineer, James Wood.”

Engineer? Was it a way to introduce me as a social pariah?

The men exchanged knowing glances, but their expressions remained solemn and polite. They bowed at me, said that they’d heard of my feats and that they admired my career, and requested a tour of the North Star if I ever had the chance to show it to them. They’d been talking badly of me only minutes before, and they had no trouble lying to me. Isn’t modern politeness wonderful?

We talked about silly things. They bragged about their large homes, their vacation homes on other spaceports, their investments in business all over the galaxy and on Earth, and they ridiculed everyone who stayed on Earth to breathe contaminated air and eat poisoned food. As if anyone but the wealthiest had a choice.

Hatfield was enjoying the conversation and tried to make me talk, but I hate to act like a superficial idiot if we’re in the middle of a war against an unknown enemy. I’d heard of flagless ships before and I’d always assumed that captains who returned to the Admiralty with destroyed ships were only making things up. Now we were barely surviving the attacks and I wasn’t in the mood to talk to people I didn’t like.

I sneaked out of the group with the excuse of getting something to drink, when Lady Elizabeth stopped me with a tense smile on her face.

“Acting Captain Wood.” She sounded tense, resentful. She hadn’t forgiven me for kicking her out of the bridge. “I didn’t expect you to be out of sick bay so soon.”

“And I didn’t expect you to speak to me again.” Did I say that out loud?

Her smile tensed. “I didn’t mean to interfere with your… little mission. I was simply worried that your men would take matters into their own hands if no officers remained with them.”

I wasn’t naïve enough to believe her, but I wasn’t going to argue.

One of the local aristocrats, the old man who’d been criticizing Lady Elizabeth and me only minutes before, soon approached us and bowed at her. She curtsied back, performed the introductions, and excused herself quickly, leaving me to talk to one of her guests again. If everyone kept doing that, I was going to start charging for public relations duties.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to attend the governor’s mass,” he said. “I’ll go to the six-month anniversary next month, though. It almost seems like it happened yesterday. Poor old man, dying to a cold when he’d gone through terrible fevers just a month before.”

Wait, what? Governor McMurdoch had been dead for five months, and Lady Elizabeth hadn’t considered it necessary to tell us?

I asked the man, and he seemed shocked by our lack of news. Like all noblemen, he was eager to gossip about everything that had happened aboard the spaceport in the preceding months. The governor had died, and so had his only male heir.

Lady Elizabeth had had a very rebellious childhood, which in polite terms meant that she’d declined the idea of following social norms and marrying whomever her father had picked for her. She’d been sent off against her will to marry one of her father’s friends only a month before her father’s death, and she’d returned for the funeral. She’d been unlucky enough to lose her brother before leaving.

Now she was in charge of the port, which had been coincidentally under siege since the governor’s death. The Admiralty hadn’t had the chance to send a replacement for her father, and Lady Elizabeth was slowly turning into a port dictator. The locals considered themselves ungoverned, and that’s why they were always protesting. Some even claimed that she had murdered her own kin.

The tall man chuckled at the thought of being ruled by a woman and at the turns of fate that had placed her there, but he didn’t fear that the invading fleets would end up destroying the port.

I did. We were inches away from destruction.

Lady Elizabeth’s rise to power smelled of tricks used by powerful and ambitious families through history: the Borgias, the Roman Emperors, or even political dynasties from the late 21
st
Century.

And she might’ve even bribed enemy ships to hold the port at bay. Was it the reason for which they turned around and left whenever we were defenseless?

And Lady Elizabeth wasn’t in the party anymore. She’d disappeared from the room. This gave me a bad feeling. An awful feeling.

I excused myself, headed outside and tapped on the intercom in my ear. “This is Wood,” I said. “I need to find Lady Elizabeth immediately. Send everyone we have and fetch her.”