Dark Vengeance (12 page)

They are a hearty race. Green lizard faces with a lot of scales and ridges. This one’s eyes began to blink as he quickly recovered from the stun. I stood over him with the weapon ready to fire again. Without taking my eyes off him I called out. “R.J., get the restraints.”

It was surprising how quickly he was able to move even still partially stunned. One three fingered hand jerked up to the mouth dropping a small tablet into it. I bent over and slapped the hand away, but the damage was done. He gave me a lizard smile.

I knelt by his head, weapon ready. “Why? Why kill yourself? Maybe you’d have escaped later?” I asked.

“Only way I have left to kill you, Tarn. Contract must be fulfilled.”

“All of this as revenge for your people? All of this?”

“Not my people, Tarn. XiTau. The owners on XiTau …very angry. You disrupted their servant trade.”

It bothered me that he was willing to reveal his sponsors. “You mean slave trade, don’t you?”

“One man’s crime is another man’s glory, Tarn.”

“You killed innocents. Was it worth it?”

“Ha, ha…” Cough. “Ha.” Cough, cough. “Ha…rrh…” Blood appeared at the corner of the mouth. “I’m not done, Tarn.”

“I think you are.”

“I would rather be dead than where you are, Tarn.”

“Why?”

“The Gaglion. The Gaglion will be coming. Better to be dead.”

His eyes dilated. His breathing ceased. His skinny, green lizard arms fell limp. I put my weapon away and looked for R.J. He had seen it all and gone to the figure of the Ancient still waving her arms, to search for a shut off. A moment later the Ancient disappeared and her empty carriage settled down to the floor and shut down.

The Captain stood looking down beside me. “Thank God. Thank God it’s over.”

I stood and faced him. “You do realize how sorry I am about all this?” I said.

“I think I understand, Captain Tarn. I heard enough of what he said. There are some things you are not aware of yet. But in any case, this kind of revenge goes with any title of authority. Whether you’re a security officer or a Captain, it’s the same.”

In that silent shared moment, a ship’s alarm suddenly went off. The Captain laughed. “Well, nothing can bother me after this. It’s just a contamination alarm. But, I’d better go check it. Would you stay until my security people take this garbage away, Captain? He is dead, isn’t he?”

I nodded and watched him walk wearily toward the lift.

R.J. came up beside me. “Can you believe that carriage? A holomatter generator so perfect even the doctor thought he was working on a real person.”

“Yes, the perfect alibi machine. Lizard man could send her anywhere he needed to for an alibi.”

Security arrived in force around us and began collecting the body and the carriage. We had to step back out of the way.

“We’d better go with them and explain to the doctor, don’t you think?” I said.

“The last time I saw him he was so exasperated I’m afraid this might put him over the edge.”

We brought up the end of the relieved funeral procession as the security people entered medical. Inside, a great deal of confusion broke out as people with too little understanding tried to explain it all to those in charge. At one point the frustrated arguing paused and the medical staff finally looked at R.J. and me.

We addressed Doctor Lae and did our best to explain it all in believable terms but he kept shaking his head and waving off everything we said. At the end of it, he declared, “Absolutely not possible! I took the woman’s blood pressure, for god’s sake!”

I held my hand out to the body of lizard man spread out on the exam table. The doctor stopped abruptly and stared at it as though it was impossible. He gestured in frustration. “Yes, and what’s this? Is this an assassin who has a heart condition?” he asked sarcastically.

At first, we did not understand what he was talking about. He went to the body and tore something off that was wrapped around one of lizard man’s upper arms. He shook it at us. “An end of life monitor? On a murderer? This is for someone who might need emergency resuscitation or onsite care! Not for a monster!”

One of the other doctors came up to Lae and pointed to the Ancient’s carriage. It had been turned back on and the Ancient lived again, flailing her arms around erratically. The two doctors exchanged some unfamiliar form of obscenity. An argument broke out. It did not involve us.

I leaned over to R.J. “I think that might be our cue to leave.”

“Yes, now that we’ve created complete chaos here, we may be needed elsewhere.”

As discreetly as possible we wove our way through the group and escaped the med center. In the gallery, signs of morning life were continuing to develop with staff making their way to their assigned destinations. There did not seem to be any alarm yet over the capture of the impostor Ancient. For once, the gossip mill was slow to start.

“Well, at least it’s behind us,” said R.J.

“That’s about the only good thing you could say about it,”

“You having guilt because you believe you’re the cause of it all?”

Before I could respond, both our wrist communicators chimed. They both had the same text message:

Please come to the flight deck immediately. –Mars.

“This just can’t be good,” said R.J.

“Then we both have a bad feeling about this.”

We reversed course and went to the flight deck lift. The ride up began.

“You know, that was a very interesting conversation you had with lizard man just before he died,” said R.J.

“I was hoping he was referring to me having to live with my conscience.”

“He made a reference I did not recognize. Gaglion was it?”

“That sounds like what he said.”

“Ever heard that expression?”

“Never.”

At the top of the lift we found the entrance to the briefing room open. Captain Mars was huddled over display screens across the room with several engineers surrounding him. I‘d hoped to see an annoyed expression caused by some simple nuisance problem on his face, but when he turned there was a solemn look of death about him. He waved us over.

“We have a contamination problem of the worse kind,” he said. “Some type of gas has been released into the flight deck. It doesn’t look good.”

He moved aside and motioned for us to look at a center monitor. On it, we could make out a gray gas that was fogging an image of Star Seven’s flight controls. Worst of all, the bodies of the two pilots on duty were slumped over in their control seats. There was no sign of life.

“Is it an accident?” I asked, knowing it could not have been.

He shook his head. “Unlikely,” he replied. “There is nothing aboard that could have affected the flight crew. We’re reading no life signs coming from that compartment now.”

“There’s no way in there, is there?” R.J. asked.

“Not until we purge the compartment. The doors have all sealed automatically.”

“And you must know exactly what chemical agent it is before you purge, I assume,” said R.J. “Let us hope it’s not biological.”

“So can you transfer ship’s control to aft engineering?” I asked.

“Yes. I’ve already given the order. We have a full station complement in our aft engineering control room. I’m waiting to hear back from them.”

“And you’re certain this was not an accident?” I said.

“The assassin must have secretly attached a small canister of poison to something going up to the flight deck. It could have been anything. There must have been some kind of timer to set it off,” said the Captain.

“It couldn’t have been a timer,” replied R.J. “He wouldn’t have done this while he was still aboard.”

“Then a manual remote control, perhaps,” suggested the Captain.

“Couldn’t be,” replied R.J. “This happened after he was dead.”

“What then?”

R.J. and I looked at each other. Reluctantly I replied, “According to the doctor, lizard man had an end of life monitor attached to him.”

“That’s it. It had to be,” answered R.J.

“Gentlemen, please explain,” said Captain Mars.

R.J. answered. “The doctor found an end of life monitor on the arm of the lizard man. It must have been there so that if he was killed he could still complete his mission. Somehow he planted a device on the flight deck set to go off in the event of his death.”

“Then we must hope this was the only device. There have been no other alarms,” said the Captain forebodingly.

R.J.’s eyes seem to glaze over. He looked back at us. “Lizard man must have done his homework. He had to have known about the control room in engineering.”

At that instant that our worst fears were realized. A new alarm sounded, causing R.J. to flinch. One of the engineers yelled to the Captain, “Sir, contamination alarm in aft engineering!”

The Captain broke away. He called to the engineer, “Video surveillance should be working back there. Select it!”

We followed him back to the console. An image of aft engineering appeared on an overhead monitor. To our relief there was no gray fog. A propulsion engineer with a perplexed expression on his face was looking back at us.

“What is your emergency?” asked Mars.

“We don’t know yet, Captain. The pressure doors have sealed themselves but nothing seems wrong here. It will take a while to check the area.”

“Please do so with haste,” ordered the Captain. He turned to his assistant. “Keep this camera up and their com open.”

Mars pulled us a few feet away. “It is a very interesting challenge, Gentlemen. We are at light speeds. We cannot get into the flight deck, and now we cannot get into aft engineering, but we do still have control of the ship. The dilemma is, do I give the engineers the order for an all-stop and station-keeping here in the middle of nowhere, or do we continue on at light speeds and hope we continue to have control?”

Before either of us could answer, the aft propulsion engineer came over the com again. “Captain, there is a new problem. We are off course. The command for course change came from the flight deck. We’re on one of the alternate preprogrammed courses for Enuro. It is longer and there will be heading changes needed.”

The Captain rubbed his forehead in thought. “One of the pilots must have fallen forward on the nav panel and affected the auto pilot.” He turned back to his officer. “Lieutenant, how long before the first course correction?”

“One hour, twenty minutes, sir.”

“Standby, Lieutenant.”

The Captain looked at me. “What would you do, Captain Tarn?”

I winced. “Our lizard friend planned on doing us harm, Captain. You must expect that at some point you are going to lose control in aft engineering. I don’t think there’s a choice. You must come out of light and stop the ship rather than take a chance on flying blind with no control.”

Captain Mars nodded agreement. “Lieutenant Azur, please initiate an all stop as quickly as possible and bring us to station keeping. Do you understand?”

The Lieutenant stared back on the monitor for a moment, seeming not to believe the Captain’s orders. Finally, he collected himself and shook his head. “Yes, sir. All stop and station keeping.”

“And have Lieutenant Mur continue to search for the source of the contamination alarm.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Captain quickly returned his attention to flight deck operations. His staff was grouped around a display with formulas scrolling down the screen. Their expressions were grave.

“Gentlemen, have you extracted a sample and analyzed it yet?”

“Yes, Captain. We’ve run the analysis twice. The preliminary results do show a biological component mixed in with an organophosphorous compound.”

The Captain took a deep breath and looked down at the floor for a moment.

R.J. leaned over to me. “The worst possible combination.”

Mars looked up and nodded, “Yes, it means even after the compartment is purged we cannot enter without biohazard isolation and protection. I’m not even certain the failsafe systems will allow us to go in. Any detection of a biochemical agent and the flight deck remains locked. Our saboteur was very thorough.”

Mars turned his attention back to aft engineering. Lieutenant Mur stepped into view on the monitor and spoke. “Captain, the aft alarm is for a biochemical agent. I’ve only found one possible source. It’s this canister.” He held up a knee high, barrel-shaped silver canister with some type of black rubber top. “The top of this thing seems to be deteriorating. It’s the only thing I’ve found out of the ordinary.”

“What is that, Lieutenant?”

“The label says it is thermal insulation sealer. It has a ‘safe’ rating. It was brought aboard just before stopping at Earth. There is no acquisition record for it. The supply clerk must have thought it was a special order or something and allowed it through the receiving inspection. Anyway, it may be nothing. It’s just a small quantity and the cover is only slightly deteriorated. But, it’s the only thing I’ve found.”

“Keep looking, Lieutenant. How are you doing with aft helm control?”