Excelsior (36 page)

Alexander’s throat still felt raw from the tracheal tube. Maybe he’d inserted it incorrectly? He might have scratched himself, but after this long, that should have healed. He hoped there wasn’t a raging infection in his throat, but even if there was, by now his implants should have detected that and deployed nanobodies to fight whatever bacteria had taken hold. He’d have to go see Crespin later to see what was up.

Alexander hurried to don his uniform and then his pressure suit and boots. Next he strapped on his comm band. There were twelve message alerts flashing on the comm band’s small screen.

Alexander frowned and made a note to check on that ASAP. Finally, he withdrew his pocket watch. Curious, he depressed the clasp to check the date and time. Still ticking. He smiled at the photo of him and Caty. Then he checked the time. The big hand pointed to the one, and the small hand to the five. 1:25. PM or AM? He wondered. Not that it mattered much on a starship. Then he noticed the date.

JUN|7|90

Alexander frowned. The seventh of June? They’d entered the tanks on the sixth. Exactly one day had passed—not the seventy days that should have.

“Davorian!” Alexander called out, already consulting his comm band to see what the alerts were about, and to double check the date.

“Sir?” Davorian asked, sounding out of breath.

Alexander turned to him and his eyes grew wide, shocked to see the other man’s curly black beard and the bushy mop of hair on his head. Apparently Alexander wasn’t the only one who’d forgotten to get depilatory treatments. Hair growth had raged out of control this time through the tanks.

“We’ve been awoken early,” Alexander said. “Something’s gone wrong. We need to get to the bridge now.”

Davorian shook his head, looking confused. “Sir, it’s been seventy days…”

“No it hasn’t. Look at my watch!” Alexander turned his palm so that Davorian could see the pocket watch. The other man peered at it for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s wrong. Check your comm band.”

Alexander did. The date was August 15th 2790. He blinked and narrowed his eyes. “My watch stopped?”

“It’s mechanical. Ten Gs must have been too much for all the moving parts.”

“It worked fine the first time,” Alexander said through a frown, watching the second hand move around the clock with perfect regularity. “And it’s still ticking.”

“Regardless, the correct amount of time has passed. My comm band shows the same date as yours. Besides, if only a day had passed, how would we have grown such long hair and beards?”

Davorian had a point there. “Then what are all these alerts about?” he asked, more of himself than the ship’s helmsman. Alexander mentally summoned a screen from his comm band and made selections in the air to check the latest message.

It was a comm recording from Fleet Admiral Wilson of the Alliance, routed to Alexander’s comm band via the Lincoln’s comms. The admiral’s face appeared hovering in the air above Alexander’s wrist. Short-cropped white hair emphasized his seniority and rank, but also reminded Alexander of the alien version of McAdams from his dream. Bumpy green skin. Long, slithering tongue… He shivered again and pushed the image from his head.

Wilson’s blue eyes flashed and the fine lines around his mouth and eyes looked pinched with fury. “What in the hell is going on aboard your ship, Captain? You want to explain to me why we received a message with Confederate encryption? We have the best analysts working to crack that code, but so far we’ve confirmed that the message was sent via the Lincoln’s comm system. Best case, you have a spy on board and you need to find that person—fast. Worst case, you and your entire ship has gone rogue. I’ll be waiting to hear from you as soon as you wake up. Wilson out.”

Alexander stood there, swaying on his feet, stunned speechless.

“I don’t understand…” Davorian said, shaking his head. “We were all in the tanks. The last message we sent before we locked the bridge was the mission data, but that was sent with Alliance encryption.”

Alexander frowned. “Obviously not. Williams must have been telling the truth about not sabotaging the engine code. We’ve had a spy in our midsts all this time.”

“What if this was Williams, too? What if there was a deeper motive behind his sabotage?”

Alexander gave Davorian a hard look. “He’s been in the brig ever since we entered the G-tanks for the first time. How the hell would he gain access to the Lincoln’s comms?”

“Maybe we should ask him that, sir.”

Alexander nodded and they stalked over to where Williams was being manually awoken from his tank. The door to his G-tank was still shut. Doctor Crespin stood at the control panel, configuring the wake cycle. Lieutenants Stone and Fernandez stood waiting to escort Williams to the brig once he emerged. Alexander walked by them all, straight up to Williams’ locker. He waved it open and looked inside. Not seeing anything, he began tossing items out onto the deck—uniform (stripped of rank insignia), pressure suit, boots…

The boots thunked on the deck and then something clattered out along the metal floor grating.

“Hello there,” Davorian said, bending to retrieve a comm band that Williams shouldn’t have had in his possession. “I think we have our spy.”

“Spy?” Stone asked, taking sudden interest in what they were doing. “Who’s a spy?”

Alexander took the comm band from Davorian and checked through the message logs. Nothing there. Then he checked the unit’s deleted logs, and there it was—one very large data burst sent on an open channel with an unknown encryption. “Williams is a spy,” Alexander said, nodding to himself and turning to shake the comm band in Stone’s face. “How did he get a comm unit?”

Stone paled and shook his head. “I swear we checked him, Captain. He didn’t have that on him.”

“Did you check his boots?”

“Everything! We scanned him thoroughly when he left the brig and again before he entered the tank. He was clean.”

“Well you obviously missed something,” Alexander growled. “I don’t know what he sent, but it was one hell of a big message, so it could be anything—or everything. We have to assume that our mission has been compromised. Everything we know about the Looking Glass and Wonderland, the Confederates now know, too. I only hope that this doesn’t result in another war.” Doctor Crespin stared open-mouthed at the offending comm band, distracted from configuring the G-tank. “Wake Williams up.”

Crepsin nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Alexander handed the illegal comm band to Lieutenant Stone. “Make sure he doesn’t have any other restricted items in his possession. Check his cell on the brig. Do a cavity search. The works. Then get to work interrogating him. We need to know what he sent in that message. Do whatever it takes.”

“Understood, sir.”

Alexander felt the weight of those words pressing on his conscience—do whatever it takes. That was a vague order, but at the same time perfectly clear. Williams’ comfort, well-being, privacy, and even his sanity were all forfeit. Under the circumstances, if it came to it, even killing him would be a legal means to an end. There were too many other lives at stake, and this was war.

Alexander pushed through the crowd of assembled crew. He heard urgent whispers rustling through the room as he went. “Everyone to your stations! We are now on a yellow alert.”

The crowd dispersed and flowed in a steady stream toward the elevators. On his way there, Alexander bumped into his XO.

“How did he get his hands on that comm unit?” Korbin asked.

Alexander shook his head. “I have no idea, but at the moment I’m more concerned about what he said than how he said it.”

Korbin nodded. “Right.”

Alexander turned to her with a frown. “Maybe we need to be interrogating Max, too.”

“Why Max?”

Alexander shrugged. “Maybe Williams had outside help. You said yourself that Max was hiding something.”

“He saved my life.”

“Exactly. Maybe he did that to put our suspicions to rest.”

Korbin appeared to consider that. “He’s been under quarantine since Wonderland. When would he have had a chance to visit the brig? He was confined to Blue Deck, with more than fifty decks between him and Williams.”

Alexander pursed his lips. “Where is Max now?” He turned to search for the diplomat and found him only now emerging from his tank, already dressed and wearing a helmet. Quarantine protocols dictated that he had to take his pressure suit and helmet with him into the tank and put them on before he left. As a further measure of security, Max’s tank had been configured to flash cook the outside of his suit before he emerged from the tank. Alexander watched him being escorted away by Doctor Crespin and a pair of nurses.

“Looks like he’s going back into quarantine,” Korbin said.

The elevators came back down after taking the first half of the crew to their various stations. Alexander felt the press of the crowd shuffling toward the elevators and he crowded into one of them with the rest of his bridge crew. Someone selected the bridge from the control panel, and the doors slid shut to carry them up to the deck directly above the tanks.

Alexander hated to admit it, but Max wasn’t a good fit for a Confederate spy. He didn’t like the man, but Max simply wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do anything without someone noticing that he’d broken quarantine. Still, it was worth looking into.

“We’ll the check surveillance tapes,” Alexander said, more to himself than Korbin. “If Williams had outside help, we’ll catch that person visiting him, or possibly even planting the comm unit in his belongings before we entered the tanks.”

Korbin nodded. “That’s a good idea, sir.”

 

Chapter 33

It was anything but a good idea for Alexander to check the surveillance tapes, Korbin realized as she sat down beside him on the bridge, waiting for all hell to break loose. The ship’s surveillance tapes would reveal Max waking up from the tanks after everyone else had passed into a comatose state. Alexander would likely also see Max planting the hacked comm band in Williams’ things. And what about the data drives she’d stolen? Would Alexander follow Max’s every move and somehow uncover those, too? At that point she would be implicated as well. Only she could have recovered those drives from the hab complex before it got trashed and burned to a crisp.

Peripherally, Korbin noted Alexander scowling and taking angry stabs at the holographic keys projected from his control station.

“Something wrong, Captain?”

He shook his head. “The surveillance data is missing. The last recordings are all dated to before we entered the G-tanks for the first time. We don’t have a single recording since then—Stone!”

“Sir?” Stone asked, half turning from his station.

“Are you, or are you not in charge of security on this ship?”

“I am, sir…”

“Then can you please explain to me why we don’t have a single frame of surveillance for the past one hundred and fifty nine days?”

“That’s impossible. I checked and backed up the logs before we entered the tanks.”

“Well check again, because there’s nothing there.”

Silence reigned for a long, breathless moment while Lieutenant Stone double-checked things from his control station. “Shit, they’re gone,” he said. “Backups, too.”

“Then someone deleted them, and there’s no way that could have been Williams.”

“Only a few people have that kind of access,” Stone replied. “We’re talking about one of the bridge crew, or someone else with stolen access—though I don’t know when they would have ever had a chance to get down here, or even to CIC, without one of us noticing. Both the Bridge and CIC are under constant watch by at least two officers. Realistically, it would have to be someone who’s authorized to be there and who wouldn’t have to explain what they’re doing in a restricted area.”

Alexander let out a growl. “All right, Davorian you are above suspicion, and I’ll be sure to explain why I think so when the time comes. As for the rest of us, I’m going to submit us all into custody, including myself, as soon as we come into docking range of the nearest Alliance vessel. I’m sure the interrogations won’t be pleasant, but we’re out of options at this point. We might be granted a measure of mercy if we go willingly. Hayes—get me Admiral Wilson on the comms. It’s time to reply to his accusations with what we know on our end.”