Rogue Galaxy, Episode 1: The Captain and the Werewolf (6 page)

Now that she was out of the Tubes, with its weird communications-stifling fields, she held her wrist communicator to her mouth and said, “Bridge.” The connection opened immediately, and a tinny voice said, “Bridge, Beach here.”

“This is Blaine. You in charge up there, Beach?”

“Yes, ma'am.” He sounded like he didn't much mind the fact, either.

“Well, keep it that way a while. I'm....” She stopped herself before she could say,
going to see the captain.
Maybe it would be better if she were a little vaguer about where she was going. So she said, “I'll be up there soon.”

“Aye-aye, ma'am.”

Blaine signed off and headed at a brisk pace to the lift, on her way to Conference Room Five.

F
arraday had called ahead to have Ensign Dobbler transferred from the brig to Conference Room Five while he finished going over damage reports—after all, there was only so much that should be left to an officer as low on the totem pole as Lieutenant Beach.

The reason Farraday didn't just have Dobbler yanked when he was ready to see him was that he had an idea it would be good to let the kid stew a bit, let him sit in the conference room wondering what was in store for him. But he didn't have the patience to actually delay seeing him any longer than necessary. Moreover, Jennifer couldn't afford for him to waste time ... and neither could the ship.

Conference Room Five had a guard at the door, but Dobbler had been left alone inside, as Farraday had instructed. Before going in, Farraday did tap his clearance into the monitor beside the door, and spend a few seconds watching Dobbler. The kid was fidgeting, but not sweating—he looked relatively calm. Farraday remembered how Blaine had disliked Dobbler, how she'd seemed to think he was such a smart-ass. Rather than being a smart-ass, Farraday wondered if maybe he was just a person who wasn't automatically cowed by his superior officers.

Fine. Farraday didn't need to cow anybody. He held all the power here—the kid knew that, and if he could give what Farraday needed, he would.

Farraday clicked the control pad to slide the doors open, and walked into the room. The walls were dark gray, the table a shining black, and the space had an imposing air. Dobbler tried to hide his nervousness behind a poker face as he stood to attention. The security ensign started to step in after Farraday, but at the captain's gesture he reluctantly stepped back again and let the doors close on him.

Farraday waved the kid to sit down, and sat across the table from him—not next to him; he didn't want to seem too friendly, nor too intimidating. With someone like Dobbler, bullying might backfire. He flashed the kid that grin he'd used his whole life, the one that always inspired liking and affection, if not necessarily die-hard loyalty. Dobbler smiled back, genuinely, albeit uncertainly.

“Well, Ensign,” began Farraday. It was a struggle to find the right tone; he wanted to put the kid at his ease, but without giving the impression he was entirely off the hook. Drug-dealing aboard the ship was a big deal, after all. “How are you holding up in the brig?” he asked, as if Dobbler's status were something he sympathized with but could do nothing to change, like the death of a family member.

“Um. I think I'm holding up okay, sir. All things considered.” After a hesitation, he added, “I guess I get a little lonely, sir.”

“Yes. I know that you've spent most of your time in solitary confinement. It's not the way I would have chosen to treat you—but you understand, we can't spare personnel just to keep you company, and no one else has yet done anything to rate being placed in the brig.”

Farraday watched Dobbler stifle his indignation. It wasn't exactly true that no one else had done anything to rate incarceration—there were all those who'd partaken of the Weed of Wonder with him. But their offenses in simply partaking hadn't been quite as grievous as Dobbler's in bringing it aboard from Kimball in the first place, and besides, they'd all been more essential personnel. Dobbler, the ship could afford to lock up. Farraday had only made the comment to see if Dobbler would protest, or if his week in the brig had made him a little more docile.

They had, but not as much as Farraday had expected. He felt a surprised pleasure at the kid's spirit, which he tried not to show.

Dobbler was fidgeting, looking down at his clasped hands, pulling at them so that it looked like he was trying to yank off his own fingers. He raised his eyes to Farraday, and the captain's grudging admiration made him all the more moved by the plea he saw there. “Sir,” said Dobbler. “I am sorry about the Weed. I should have brought it straight to you and let you take it to Dr. Carlson and Witch Walsh, instead of getting carried away with my own theories. I never meant any harm. And all that stuff I said to Commander Blaine—all those insubordinate things—I'm really sorry, sir.” Farraday simply watched and listened without comment, which further discombobulated the kid. “I guess I was a little, um, intoxicated, sir.”

“I think that's kind of the point, Ensign.” Farraday had softened the kid up with his preliminary friendliness, getting the kid to open up in the hope of absolution. Now that he had, Farraday withdrew, growing more distant and aloof, making the kid hungrier for his forgiveness.

“Yes, sir,” said Dobbler. “I know, sir. I'm sorry, sir.”

Enough
, Farraday thought, and suddenly relaxed as he decided to end the charade. He was sure enough now of Dobbler's loyalty—of his personal loyalty to him, at least, at least for as long as it would be needed. Farraday felt that he'd managed to hold back one valuable piece of information, which was that actually, if Dobbler were able to perform the feat Farraday wanted, he could name his own price. Mustn't let him know how completely he had the captain in the palm of his hand.

“All right,” began Farraday, “listen, Dobbler....”

They were interrupted by the doors swishing open and Blaine stepping through. As they closed again Farraday was trying not to grimace and wishing he'd ordered the guard not to let anyone in.

Blaine glared from the captain to Dobbler and back again, clearly struggling to control herself.

“Commander,” said Farraday. “I thought you were going to take over for me on the bridge.”

“I left Beach in charge, sir. It seemed like something important must be going on, sir, for you to call me out of our work in the Tubes.” Of course, if she'd needed clarification she could have contacted him via communicator.

Dobbler spoke up: “Commander Blaine, I was just telling Captain Farraday that—”

“No one's spoken to you, Dobbler,” she snapped.

“Actually, I was speaking to him,” said Farraday. He felt his rage bubbling, goaded almost into a quiet frenzy by his fear for Jennifer, his fear of what he'd be forced to do to her if they didn't get her out of those Tubes. “Wait for me on the bridge, Commander.”

“Sir, are you sure I can't help you here? Maybe in an advisory capacity?...”

“I don't have time for this,” Farraday snapped, and turned back to Dobbler. Seeing the startled, calculating way the ensign was studying him, Farraday felt he'd screwed up—the kid now had a glimmer of how important to the captain whatever he was about to ask was.

“I've read your file,” said Farraday. His manner now was brisk, without the chatty friendliness of before. “You're from Bone World. Right?”

“Born and bred, sir.”

“And you used to wrangle para-apes. Correct?”

“Both in the wild and on the rodeo circuit, sir. We start young on Bone World. Would've gone into it professionally if I hadn't chosen the Fleet, sir.”

“What a loss for the rodeo,” said Blaine wryly.

Farraday ignored her. “I understand a para-ape isn't all that different from a werewolf. And the psychic link you use to lasso yourself to the para-ape from afar and track it—that should also work with a werewolf?”

Dobbler had already seen where this was headed, and he seemed very game. “That's what they say, sir, though I've never had a chance to try it out.”

“Well, you're going to get it now. Head to Requisitions, get what you need, and meet me at the Thompson entry on Deck Three in fifteen minutes.”

Blaine started to speak: “Captain, if I may—”

Farraday cut her off: “You help me bring Lieutenant Summers in safely, Ensign Dobbler, and I'll forget all about your little misadventure on Kimball.”

Blaine tried again: “Captain!”

Farraday kept ignoring her. “And if you fail, no deal. Understood, Ensign?”

The kid was grinning and bouncing in his seat, barely able to wait for Farraday's dismissal. “You don't have to worry about that, sir! I'm not going to let you down.”

“All right. Get going, I'll meet you at the Tubes.”

Dobbler sprang up, snapped a salute at the two offices, and bolted out of the conference room. The security guard shouted after him, and Farraday called, “It's all right! Let him go!”

He stood. Avoiding Blaine's eyes, he moved toward the door, saying, “All right, Commander, I'll be indisposed, so you'd better get to the bridge....”

“A moment, sir,” said Blaine, and placed herself in front of him.

When he looked at her she was startled by the danger in his eyes. “Out of my way, Commander.”

“I'm sorry, sir, but I need to talk to you. You can throw me in the brig if you like. Not that I'd have to stay in there very long, it looks like.”

Farraday sighed, then expelled a quick, unhappy laugh. “All right, Commander. I have a few minutes before I have to be at the Tubes.”

“Sir, even if the werewolf doesn't directly damage anything in there—which would be extraordinary luck—then her enchantment aura is screwing with the thaumaturgical balance in ways I can't understand or repair. Soon she'll knock out the ftl capacity, just by being there.”

“Sounds like I should have told Dobbler ten minutes, instead of fifteen.”

“Sir. All due respect, your place is not the Tubes, it's the bridge. My place is the Tubes, repairing that damage. Except it's too dangerous, for me and my team.”

“Well. It's a dangerous job sometimes.”

“Sir, I know you love Lieutenant Summers. And I'll mourn her, too. But we've got to blow the Tubes.”

“Blaine, we can end this discussion now. This ship does not leave crew members behind, and it does not kill its crew members either, not even for the greater good. Unless you're prepared to mutiny over it?”

She surprised herself, with the length of her pause. Finally, she said, “Sir, I'm trying to stop you from creating a situation where others might make that choice.”

Farraday blinked a few times, but otherwise his face betrayed nothing. “We all do what we have to, Commander Blaine.”

“Sir, you are my captain that I've sworn to obey. Sworn by the Fleet, which means more to me than anything. With all due respect, and within the privacy of this room, your endangerment of this ship and its mission, for personal reasons, risks making you unworthy of that oath.”

Farraday's face grew even stiller. Only an incipient curl to his lip, and a mysterious vibrating charge in the air between them, gave evidence how angry he was. “Is that your place to say, Commander?”

“It shouldn't be, sir. But there's no more Fleet Command to take grievances and concerns to. So I think we need to all be careful what we do, because the whole crew is working without a net, ethically speaking.”

“Well, we've all managed to rebel once, so you know you're capable if you decide that's what you must do. Shooting Summers out the airlock is the Provisional's standing order, after all, so I guess you can choose between obeying a government you don't approve of or a captain you don't like.” At last he began to move past her to the door, saying as he went, “Maybe you'll get lucky and I'll be killed in the Tubes, and then
you
can be captain....”

“Don't you say that to me, sir,” she snarled. The material of his uniform sleeve was bunched in her fist. “Don't you say that to me.”

He stared at her. She stared down at her own hand like it was a foreign object, shocked. She dropped it, hung her head, and stepped back. “I apologize, sir,” she murmured. “That's the kind of behavior I'd recommend a court-martial for.”

For another moment Farraday only stared at her from behind the cold, inscrutable mask of his face. Then its features thawed; he dropped his eyes, and when he brought them back up again to hers she could see how weary they were. “Val,” he said. “I understand that you're trying to do what's best for the crew. So am I. For all of them, each individual—including Jennifer Summers.”

“Sir. Again, with all due respect. It's hard to believe that you'd react this way if it were any other member of the crew, sir.”

“That's where you're wrong, Val. Dead wrong. Hopefully we'll never have a chance for me to prove it to you, so for now you'll have to just trust me.” He raised his wrist to check his chronometer, grimaced, sighed, looked back at her. “Listen. How long do you and your tech-mage think we have, before Summers's bio-thaumaturgy critically distorts the normal thaumaturgical waves in the Tubes?”

“It could happen at any moment, sir....”

“Right, and Earth's sun could blow up at any moment, but we think it'll be a few billion years. How long do you
think
we have, Commander?”

Honestly, she thought they'd be pretty safe for the next two hours. “Maybe an hour,” she said.

At the look he gave her, like he knew she was lying, she almost recanted and said,
Or, no, two.
But she held firm.

“All right,” he said. “Give me and Dobbler forty minutes. And if I can't bring Jennifer in, then....”

He trailed off, unable to finish. Blaine waited silently, suddenly feeling very cold.

Farraday took a deep breath, and finished the sentence: “... then we'll flush the Tubes.”

Now that she'd won, Blaine felt deflated. Softly, she said, “Better hurry, then, sir.”

Farraday nodded. They were about to walk through the doors together when both their communicators rang with the emergency break-in signal, and then Miller's voice came squawking over both mini-speakers at once, already in mid-sentence: “... damn werewolf got my man!...”