An Officer’s Duty (36 page)

“My stomach thanks you from the bottom of its random number generator, Captain,” the man at the engineering console quipped. “Transferring engineering command to your station, Captain.”

“Transfer received, thank you,” Ia murmured a few seconds later. “You are free to leave the bridge, Lieutenant Chen. Don’t eat so fast that you choke, but don’t dawdle, either. Commander Vizzini will be next.”

Unbuckling himself from his seat, he hurried to leave. She envied him; she hadn’t eaten a lot at their last meal, for fear some of the scenario options selected would be too rough a ride to keep the food down. But the job of being the ship’s captain—of being an officer, period—meant asking nothing of her crew that she wouldn’t ask of herself. That meant waiting until last.

“Commander Vizzini…I am having the engineering department reverse the directional pulse pattern of the insystem thrusters. Upon my command, you will put this ship in reverse, quarter speed,” Ia commanded. “Lieutenant Shinowa, alter course of the sensor drones. Keep them in the cube, but match course and pace to our own. Heading is one eighty-three by one seventy-two. Maintain portside to sunward at all times.”

“Uhh…
reverse
, sir?” Vizzini asked. “You want me to back up the ship?”

“We
cannot
go forward into a solar storm as dense as this one, Commander,” Ia said. “The holes in our bow would act like a scoop, gathering up far too many ionized particles for our safety. We will therefore, as you put it so succinctly, back up the ship. We cannot afford to waste time sitting out a storm this bad. It’s either move to get out of the storm and stay on course, or move to find a planet to hide behind, and we’re in the wrong quadrant for that this year.”

“Aye, sir,” he agreed, shrugging and returning to his controls.
“Ahe…er, reverse engines, one-quarter speed, heading one eighty-three by one seventy-two.”

Satisfied he would comply, Ia relaxed a little. Her screen flashed again, this time a request for a private commlink. Ia linked into it.
“Captain Ia here.”

“Captain, this is Lieutenant Commander Jinja-Marsuu, down here in lifesupport,”
the other woman spoke, voice projecting solely into Ia’s left ear.
“I trust this is a private channel? It’s not something that needs be broadcast to the crew.”

“Go ahead, Commander,”
Ia replied, adjusting her headset a little more comfortably in her ear.
“You’re in the clear.”

“Captain, your,
ah,
replacement, Lieutenant Wong, has taken his sweet time getting down here to lifesupport. In fact, I was told by Lieutenant Harper that he swung by the officer’s galley and chatted up some of the crew, cadging a snack before making his way down here. And when he did finally show up, he broke one of the drinking water pipelines, and made a mess of repairing it. I would like to request permission to replace him…and to ask if you think I should write him up for a Fatality Four, Dereliction of Duty.”

That was a fairly serious charge for a cadet to accrue during Hell Week. It was something that would go on his permanent record, in fact. For a moment, Ia wondered why Wong—who had looked reasonably alert when she had reached the bridge and was relatively competent in his lifesupport classes—would have been so tardy. Curious, she dipped into the timestreams, looking into the past, not the future, for a glimpse of what had delayed him.

What she saw widened her eyes. Blinking as she came back
to herself, Ia quickly smoothed out her expression and silently weighed the best options based on the variables she could foresee.
“Replace him, but order him confined to his quarters for the next eight hours. Make a note of the incident, but do not
put any charges into his record at this time. We’re all exhausted by now, Commander. Hopefully with a bit of sleep, he won’t be so slow to report next time.”

“Understood, sir. Jinja-Marsuu out.”

The first wave of vomiting swept through the crew roughly an hour later, while they were still trying to out-crawl the ion storm. The first one on the bridge to succumb, naturally, was the first one to have eaten. Lieutenant Commander Chen cast up the contents of his stomach on his workstation console. Thankfully, the keys were sealed against all manner of spills, but the sound and the mess were disturbing.

Ia quickly transferred the engineering controls back to her own station, adding them to the gunnery controls. Excusing himself, Chen rose and wobbled out of the bridge, heading for the cleaning supplies. They heard him retching again just beyond the door, before he managed to slap the controls, shutting the panel.

Shinowa let out a soft whistle. “
That
was unpleasant.”

“Please,” Vizzini muttered. “I’m trying not to think about the sound or the smell…and I don’t feel so good myself.”

Ia’s right secondary screen lit up. She opened the commlink to the whole bridge.
“Lieutenant Harper, I was just about to
call you. Commander Chen just cast up his stomach all over my bridge.”

“Uhhh…
sorry, Captain. I don’t know how, but…”
He sounded horrible.
“Captain, I think some sort of contaminant got into the cadre galley. I’ve just sent five crewmembers to the infirmary, and I need to report in, myself. I’m taking samples of food, drink, and water down there for
…uhhh,
god…”

“Get everything examined, Lieutenant,”
she said. Then had to wait as he retched. She thumbed down the volume while she waited, then dialed it back up again.
“Report to the infirmary with samples of everything, Lieutenant Harper. Make sure the unaffected members of your crew suit up before they assist, to ensure nothing is cross-contaminated.”
Ending the connection, she addressed her bridge crew. “Lieutenant Abbendris, wake up the first watch officers and have them report to the bridge on the double. Make absolutely sure they have eaten and drunk nothing in the last three hours before you permit them to come onto this bridge.”

“Aye, sir.” The other woman bent to her task…and flinched as Vizzini groaned and struggled out of his restraints.

He managed to lurch halfway to the bridge door before retching right next to Ia. Nose wrinkling, she struggled not to breathe too deeply. She hadn’t consumed anything beyond the bottled water available to the bridge crew in the last few hours, but the smell was enough to make her feel nauseated, too.

Thumbing open the ship intercom, Ia announced,
“Attention all hands, this is the Captain. Attention. We are experiencing some sort of shipwide illness. It looks like it’s going to get at least half of the officers. Either this is biological, or it’s sabotage. I am therefore or—”

“
Holy
shakk!” Shinowa swore. “Captain! Ships emerging from FTL to our af…er, bow—behind us! Three…five…oh, holy ancestors—Captain, they’re
Salik
vessels!
Twelve
vessels, Captain!”

“Shakk,”
Bruer swore. “We can’t run with the front half of our warp panels powerless, and we can’t fight back against that many. And if they board us, they’ll
eat
us! They’ve given us a goddamn
Kobayashi Maru
, on top of everything else!”

“The
Kobayashi Maru
scenario should be
illegal
in these tests,” someone else muttered.

“Not to mention clichéd,” one of the other cadets agreed.

Ia jabbed her controls, bypassing T’siel’s communications station. Fingers stuttering as fast as she could go, she linked into the ship’s broadcast relays, and into all seven drones. Two final taps opened up a recording unit, and the broadband broadcast command. Her words echoed through space as well as through the ship, since the ship’s internal comm systems were still active at her station.

“This is Captain Ia of the TUPSF
Vasco da Gama
with a Quarantine Extreme warning. I transmit this in the broadband lightspeed; I transmit this on rotating hyperrelays. By the rules of Sentientarian Spacefaring Aid, this vessel is sealed under the rules of Quarantine Extreme. All ships, do not attempt contact with the TUPSF
Vasco da Gama.
All ships, do not attempt to load any water from the ice rings of the fifth planet in star system Ceti Ceti Delta 175 until further notice.

“We are under biological attack from an unknown contaminant traced to the hydrosupplies we collected from the ice rings of the fifth planet at Ceti Ceti Delta 175. This biological agent is jumping species. I repeat, it is jumping species. Any attempt to contact the atmosphere, fuel, or life-forms aboard the TUPSF
Vasco da Gama
will risk your own biological contamination. This is a Quarantine Extreme warning.”

Ending the recording and the external broadcast, she patched it into a loop, letting the ship’s automated systems repeat her message. Turning to the ship’s internal comms, she addressed the crew.

“Attention, all hands, this is the Captain. We have twelve Salik warships within three million kilometers of our position. We have
one
shot at getting out of this mess. Listen closely to the following orders: If you are sick, I want you to vomit on whatever nonvital surfaces are within range of the interior pickups. Do not hit anything sensitive,”
Ia stated dryly,
“but the floor and the furniture are all fair game. I want
evidence
that we are sick, and I want it all over this ship. Infirmary, grab a list of everyone who hasn’t eaten anything in the last six hours, and dispense oral emetics for the unaffected crew to carry at all times; bounce it on the triple time. Lifesupport, get ready to screw up the numbers three and four fish tanks in Bay 1, and kill at least a dozen hens. Do your best to make them all look
like a bacterial or viral death,
not
a physical one, and send some of the fish and hens to the infirmary for examination.”

“Captain, we’re getting pingback from the Salik vessels,” Lieutenant T’siel told her, craning his neck to look past the edge of his monitor banks.

“I repeat, this is Captain Ia,”
Ia stated, finishing her instructions to her own ship.
“If you are sick, retch it up for the shipboard cameras. Infirmary, dispense emetics to the off-duty crew, and get some up to the bridge. Lifesupport, make it look like whatever we’ve got is hitting the other species on board. These are your orders for now; more will be coming shortly.”
Cutting off the interior comms, Ia lifted her chin at T’siel. “Put them through on audio, Lieutenant, and make it bridgewide incoming, but only my headset outgoing.”

“Hhewman vessel
Vasco da Gammma,” the bridge comms relayed.
“Your desssception will not save hyew. We outnumber you. Open hhyour airlocksss or be destroyed.”

“This is Captain Ia of the
Vasco da Gama
to the Salik vessels. This is not a deception. We have dead V’Dan gamehens and dead Solarican carp on board. Whatever is in our water, it is jumping interplanetary species and killing the lesser life-forms. We are under Quarantine Extreme. Any attempt to board this…You know what?”
she asked, switching tone and topic abruptly.
“I would
love
to see you board this ship. I would love to open my airlocks to all of you, just to see if this whatever-it-is affects
your
biology, too.

“Unfortunately, by the conventions of Sentientarian Spacefaring Aid, I am obligated to warn you that my ship is under Quarantine Extreme. Of course, by those same rules of Quarantine Extreme, you
are
permitted to transfer a maximum of two duly informed medical personnel to this vessel, with the understanding that they will also potentially be at risk for lethal interspecies contamination,”
Ia stated.
“You think this is a bluff? Well, I’m calling that bluff. If you wish to board this ship, you will select two duly informed medical personnel and transport them, and only them, in a boarding pod to our midships sunward airlock at the end of this ion storm.”

“And hhavve hhyew kill them? Or try to essscape while we wait for the pod to connnehhct?”
The sibilant reply came from whoever was broadcasting on behalf of the twelve alien ships.

“Captain, they’re altering course, heading our way,” Shinowa warned her.

Bruer breathed hard, groaned, and unstrapped his restraints, lurching out of his seat. Unlike Vizzini, he made it to the door. They could hear him casting the contents of his stomach on the corridor floor outside, before the panel slid shut again.

“By the rules of Sentientarian Spacefaring Aid, any medical personnel who volunteer to go to the aid of other starships are to be considered inviolate and unattackable, so long as they conduct themselves in a manner befitting sentientarian aid, and do not engage in any acts of injury, damage, terrorism, espionage, or warfare. By my word of honor as a Captain of the Terran Space Force, I and my crew will abide by these rules of conduct so long as your observers abide by them.