Rebels and Lovers (39 page)

It was a good bit of code. In any other circumstance, he’d have absolute faith that it would do what he wanted it to. But this wasn’t any other circumstance. And he was up against Imperial and ImpSec techs who had no qualms about triggering the destruction of a ship because one of their programs malfunctioned.

It wasn’t the back door he wanted, but it was the one he would use: put the communications system in a ten-second emergency shutdown. When it came back up and the ship’s main computer segued with it, the ship should think it was the
Veil of Relief
.

He found his palms—annoyingly—sweaty as he took the seat at the comm console on the bridge, then slotted in the small archiver. Trip was still at nav, Barty in the seat behind Devin.

“Blast doors closing, fifteen seconds,” Makaiden announced as she tapped commands into the screen angled out of her armrest. It was a security precaution—if the ship’s primaries failed, there was a limited
backup enviro for the bridge and the captain’s quarters. But that was all. No sick bay. No galley.

As the doors clanged shut, Devin noticed that Trip had his bookpad on the decking by his boots. His nephew’s younger sister knew him well. Trip went nowhere without that pad.

Devin touched a series of icons on the screen on his right. “Initiating comm failure.”

The lights on his console blinked. A warning siren bleated softly.

“Ten seconds, Devin,” Barty said. “Nine …”

Devin launched the program from the archiver, the display on his Rada—linked to the
Rider’s
main system—alive with data.

“Seven, six …”

It had to find that back door, that security hole. Numbers, symbols flashed by. Everything looked right, but he’d thrown this together so quickly. But, yes, okay, the communications program shifted over to a seek-and-repair mode. Just as he thought it would. His back door should be …

There! Yes. His fingers flew over the Rada’s suspended display, forcing the communications program to recognize his altered code as what it sought.

The program stuttered, his Rada’s display wavering. His heart thumped in his chest in the same erratic movement.
Damn it, damn it, no!
It was running a bypass, sequestering his codes as if for later reference. He must have missed—

But, no, it wasn’t sequestering. It was authenticating. Hell’s fat ass, it was authenticating, accepting the false data as its—

The bridge plunged into darkness just as the rumble of the sublight engines beneath his boots died.

Kaidee
hated
when her ship didn’t work. Dead in space was not a place she liked to be. Especially with an unknown bogey on her tail, closing at a disturbingly fast rate of speed that made her heart pound in her chest and her throat go dry.

“Devvvinn?” She drew out his name in a long question as she flipped open the small panel cover on the pilot’s console that housed the bridge’s backup enviro. The resulting whoosh of air through the overhead ducts was encouraging—but it would be encouraging for only five hours. The silence and stillness beneath her boots was not encouraging at all.

“On it!”

He was—or at least his super-expensive microcomputer was—still working, its holo display pulsing with data. She glanced over her shoulder, catching the odd reflection of the display in the lenses of Devin’s eyeglasses. It was almost as if she could see into his brain, as if the green-tinged images were coming from his eyes.

Other screens glowed around her. Not her ship’s—those were dead. But Barty’s military DRECU and Trip’s bookpad provided small sources of light.

The silence and stillness around her screamed louder.

Deep breath, Kaid. Long, deep breath
. This wasn’t the first time she’d gone dead in the lanes. It had happened once on the
Prosperity
and twice when she’d flown for Starways. All three times it was simply a
matter of correcting a power-overload problem:
when the power goes out, seek first the source of the power
. That was from the official Starways manual, chapter and verse.

That wouldn’t help her. Some unknown fart in her ship’s power source wasn’t the problem. This was known, and she’d helped to cause it.

Hell of an epitaph.

She forced her gaze away from the Rada’s bright glow and stared out the darkened viewport, letting her eyes adjust. This time when she glanced down at the decking, she could just discern the small emergency lights set at the base of her chair and—she swiveled around away from where Devin was—at the hatchlock to the corridor. There would be more guide lights there. Those would all fade eventually if they didn’t get the damned ship up and running.

“Here’s one good thought.” Barty’s low voice broke into her thoughts. “We probably disappeared off their long-range scanners.”

“That would work only if we could go stealth and still have maneuverability,” Trip replied. “Since we’re drifting on the trajectory of the last known coordinates their scanners have on us, all they need to do—”

“Trip, you might want to shut down your bookpad,” Devin said, without turning around. “Conserve power. We may need it later.”

Devin didn’t have to interrupt Trip’s comment. Kaidee knew the answer anyway. Yes, they’d gone cold. But if their pursuer stayed on course, it wouldn’t be long before short-range scanners and sensors defined that there was an object in their path that matched the specs and configurations for a medium-size jump-rated freighter like a Blackfire 225.

She pushed herself out of her chair—her console was useless—and headed for Devin as the dim glow of Trip’s bookpad winked out. Devin’s glasses still reflected the Rada’s display and highlighted his frown and the tightness around his mouth. He didn’t like whatever he was looking at.

“Reinstall the primaries,” she said. “We’ll take our chances, try to outrun them.”
Try
being the operative word. She doubted they could. But maybe there was another smugglers’ gate—someplace they could play duck-and-hide until she could get Devin, Trip, and Barty to the safety of the
Prosperity
. Something that was starting to look less and less likely.

“I just tried a reinstall.” Devin’s voice was too calm, too emotionless, and he didn’t move his gaze from the Rada’s display. “It’s not taking.”

Her gut clenched. “Backups—”

“I made two copies. Working with the second now.” He moved another section of code on the display.

Two copies. Good idea, in case the first backup was somehow corrupted or viewed as an illegal program and attacked by the security system. She remembered her father and her uncle talking about that. She searched her memory for more, for anything that might help.

Anything to keep from thinking about the ship coming toward them as they drifted, helpless. “Are you coming in on the maintenance or command authorization?”

“Maintenance. It’s usually allocated as a residual power draw for systems-failure situations. I found its back door. A legitimate one. But it refuses to accept the initialization command.”

Barty pushed his microcomp closer to Devin’s Rada as he scooted toward the edge of his seat. “Let me look.”

Kaidee rested her hand on the back of Devin’s chair and watched Barty copy data, searching for answers. She suspected with fair certainty he had several files of Imperial code hacks at his disposal.

Devin was glancing back and forth between the suspended display and the DRECU. “That’s a possibility,” he said, pointing to the DRECU’s screen. Then his fingers were moving blocks of data on his display, and his conversation with Barty was reduced to snippets of jargon that made only the barest sense to her.

She checked the time stamp in the lower left corner of the Rada. Eleven minutes had passed since her ship went dead in the lanes. The ship pursuing them was now eleven minutes closer, or more if it had continued to gain speed. And if it had, it could be a mere two or three hours before they felt the impact of a tow field or the hard jolt of grappling clamps.

She took a quick mental tally of the weapons on board—L7s and Carvers. It was a pitiful list if they were to defend themselves against pirates. Futile if the ship behind them was Imperial, with ImpSec assassins. But then, she’d never considered she’d have to do either. She was a legit hauler who worked legit contracts. Even Kiler had agreed to that and, after his death, she’d been doubly cautious.

Until she saw Trip Guthrie—alone and definitely out of place—on Dock Five. She stared at the sealed hatchlock at the far end of the bridge and fought the urge to throw herself at the thick metal doors and pound her head against them. How could doing the right thing—
the morally right thing
—bring her so
much damned trouble?
No good deed goes unpunished
echoed annoyingly in her mind.

Barty, on her right, coughed twice. The third time his cough was more strained, drier.

“You okay?” She didn’t like the sound of that. In the dim lighting, he was a slightly paler shade of green than Devin.

He nodded. “Just a little dryness.”

“Would water help?” Enviro should be on in the corridor and her quarters, and she had a few bottles of water in her galley cabinet. She stepped back toward her chair.

“If you don’t mind.”

He did sound raspy. Kaidee checked the small enviro emergency panel. Deck 1 was secure. She was reaching for the blast door release when she caught herself and shook her head.
Idiot
. The rest of the ship was on manual. “Give me a minute to get the doors open. Trip, can you help?”

“Sure, Captain Makaiden.”

The emergency-access panel was to the right of the hatchway. She slid the cover up, then showed Trip where the handle and crank were. Behind her, Barty coughed again.

Definitely not good. But then, emergency enviro usually did a piss-poor job of filtering.

Trip put his weight on the crank and, as the doors creaked slowly open, she could hear Devin talking softly to Barty but couldn’t make out the content of their conversation. More computer tech talk? Or was Devin as worried as she was about the older man?

“There’s one more blast door mid-corridor and then the door to my quarters,” she told Trip as he rose, a tall shape in the dimness. He followed her, their boot steps sounding eerily hollow in the silent ship. “Same
thing,” she said, guiding his hand to the crank behind the open access panel.

“If Barty needs sick bay, can we get him there?” he asked as he worked the crank.

“Not unless your uncle can get ship’s power back on.” She caught his worried tone clearly. “I have a small med-kit in my lav, though.” She shoved the blast door into the bulkhead slot as Trip grunted, somewhere down by her knees. She reached down blindly and found his shoulder. “Halfway’s enough. Come on.”

They repeated the procedure at her doorway. “Wait here,” she told Trip. “I know my way around. I don’t want you falling over a chair.”

She slipped quickly past the chair and low table and headed for the dining alcove along her main room’s outer bulkhead. She kept one hand out before her and felt the edge of one of the dining chairs. The slurp-and-snack—useless right now—was on her left. A small cabinet with mugs, a few dishes, and assorted condiments and nonperishables was below it. Her fingers found its recessed outlines. She slid the door open, then groped the interior, past the cardboard box of sweetener packets and another that held sealed packages of a dried-fruit-and-nut snack. The latter she often stuffed in her pockets when she knew she’d be waiting in line at some dockmaster’s or customs official’s office. It could take two hours to get a five-second signature of approval on a manifest. Those little snack packages not only helped pass the time but often helped her make friends with other captains in line.

If Devin couldn’t get ship’s power back up, those snack packets and the bottles of water—she finally
found them—might be all they had to live on. Until the air ran out.

Ever the optimist, Kaid
.

She moved through the darkness back to the open doorway and Trip, catching the dim pinpoints of the emergency lights on her right leading to her lav and her bedroom. “Take this back to Barty,” she said, handing him a bottle. “I have a handbeam in my nightstand. I’ll meet you back on the bridge. Unless you want to wait—”

“I’ll get this to Barty.”

“Don’t forget those blast doors are only halfway open,” she called as his boot steps thumped quickly away.

“Not to worry, Captain!”

If only …
Shaking her head at her own dismal thoughts, she headed back into her cabin, one arm out, fingertips skimming the walls, eyes straining to see the small dots of light on the decking.

Her bedroom was small, the edge of the bed easy to find. She sat on it, then rolled on one hip toward her nightstand, trying unsuccessfully not to think about how it felt to be rolling around on this same bed in Devin’s arms. That wasn’t going to happen again. She wasn’t going to let that happen again. And not just because of the lovely Tavia waiting for him back home. But because he was going back home, to Garno or Sylvadae, and she didn’t belong in either place.

She pulled out the handbeam and—after scraping her knuckles against the inside of the drawer—the spare power pack and was swinging around to stand when the hard thudding of boots against the decking sounded from the corridor.