An Officer’s Duty (37 page)

“If you choose to send them,”
Ia bartered,
“your two volunteers will be treated as noncombatants for as long as they remain neutral and render nothing but observation and sentientarian aid. Furthermore, I will personally guarantee that, if this illness is discerned as curable for your species and they are given quarantine clearance, they will be returned to either your vessels, to Sallha, or to one of its outlying colonies unharmed, whichever is nearest, in strict accordance with the conventions of the code. However, until this illness is resolved and cured, they will be locked into this ship under Quarantine Extreme, the same as the rest of my crew.”

Seconds stretched into minutes as they considered her offer. However, none of the Salik vessels fired on the
da Gama
, though they did spread out and turn to follow her backwards-sailing course. The bridge door slid open and a cadet in the grey-striped blues of an infirmary medic hurried inside, a bottle of pills in his hand. Ia accepted two from the man, tucking them into her shirt pocket. As he left, the Salik pinged them again.

“The lengthhh of Quarantine Extreme is unknown. Will hhyew provide sssssussstenance for our volunnnteers?”

The query was followed by the
pop-pop-pop
of the speaker smacking his lips. The insult, Salik-style, was one delivered to their enemies just before the amphibious race tried to eat their sentient prey. The few cadets remaining on the bridge shuddered, save for their acting captain.

Ia smiled. If they had been communicating via the
vidscreens instead of merely via audio, she would have bared her teeth, too.
“Most cheerfully, I am required to inform you that feeding potentially contaminated food sources to sentientarian aid-givers is
against
the rules. Whoever you send will have to bring sufficient supplies of
non-
sentient foods from their own stores, or chew on the standard Terran ration packets like everyone else…and I’ll remind you that this disease is hopping between
species,
so even your
non-
sentient live food sources will be at risk for contamination.”

Behind her, the door opened, admitting the duly assigned third-watch bridge crew. Most of them had bleary eyes from lack of sleep. A few swallowed quickly, grimacing at the smells left by the missing cadets. With quiet murmurs coordinating everything, they swapped places one at a time with the remaining bridge crew, or left to grab cleaning equipment to sterilize the hastily emptied stations.

“Captain,” T’siel warned her, not yet giving up his seat. “The Salik are pinging us again.”

Nodding, Ia let him put it on bridgewide broadcast once more.
“This is Captain Ia. You have something to say?”

“Bring your ssship to a sstop, Hhewmans,”
the Salik speaker ordered.
“We will sssend over two obserhhvers.”

“Lieutenant Shinowa—
ah
, sorry, Lieutenant Pushnatta, what’s the status of the ion storms?” Ia asked, adjusting to the change in bridge crew.

“Still going strong, Captain,” he replied, checking his screens.

Shinowa patted him on one restraint-strapped shoulder and picked her way out of the bridge. She, too, had eaten the food from the galley. “I’ll report to the infirmary to get my digestive tract pumped, Captain—I’m sure that sounds much more pleasant than it actually will be, but I was the last one to eat and get back, so I’m bound to be contaminated.”

“Good idea. Dismissed, Lieutenant.” Flicking open the channel once more, Ia addressed the aliens.
“Negative, Salik vessels. The ion storm is still too strong to launch a boarding pod at this time. Accompany us to system’s edge, on our current heading
and speed. When we’re…four hours lightspeed ahead of the solar storm front, we’ll come to a stop, effect repairs from the asteroid we hit, and board your volunteers.”

“Negative, Hhhumans. Hhyew will sstop now and outwait the sstorms,”
her counterpart argued.

“Negative, Salik,”
she replied.
“If we really did pick up this bug from the ice rings in the Ceti Ceti Delta System, we have to proceed there with all speed. There is a risk that other ships might pass through that system, and a risk that they might stop by the rings of the fifth planet to refuel like we did, rather than pick up hydrofuel somewhere in the Oort zone. Sentientarian Spacefaring laws require that we track down the source of the biological contaminant as quickly as possible and either eradicate it, develop and distribute a counteragent, or place Quarantine buoys around the materials in question.

“As we’re the only ship currently infected, we’re the only one worth risking a second wave of contaminants. I repeat, this contaminant is jumping species; your own race is potentially at risk. Those ice rings must be examined for the source-point as soon as possible.”
She paused a beat, waiting for a reply. When none came, Ia added,
“At most, you waste nothing but a
day or two: a few hours to get to system edge, a few hours for repairs, a few more hours to get to Ceti Ceti Delta 175 once we have full FTL capacity, and hopefully just a few hours past that to find where we picked up the fuel and discern the extent of the contaminant. You can accompany us all the way to the fifth planet, if you like.”

“Hhhyew do not
sssound
like you are in disstress, Captain,”
the Salik speaker pointed out.

“That’s because I myself haven’t eaten anything since before we processed part of the ice into our drinking water. I only drink bottled water while on duty, and don’t snack. Naturally, this means I’m rather hungry, but Terran ration packets aren’t exactly known for their appetizing qualities. Of course, if you’d like to volunteer, I’d be happy to have one of
you
for lunch, for once.
”

The wheezing-whistling and
smack-smack-smack
of the alien’s lips that came over the ship-to-ship channel let her know that her rather morbid, disgusting joke had struck the equivalent of the Salik funny bone.

“Prosssceed to system’s edge on your heading, Hhewman. We will accompany hyew, all of our ships. If you lhhied to usss, I will personally eat your sssoft meats.”

“My spleen quivers in anticipation,”
Ia drawled.
“Captain
Ia out.”
Shutting off the link, Ia sighed and sagged into her seat cushions. “Well. Now we head for system’s edge, and hunt down the
real
source of the contaminant. Lieutenant Commander Zagrieve, pass the word through the ship for crew and cadre to rely only on bottled water and ration packs for sustenance until further notice.”

“Aye, sir,” the cadet now in charge of ship systems agreed.

The relief watch cadets finished cleaning up the mess left by Chen, Vizzini, and the rest, and took their posts. Ia’s right secondary screen lit up again, indicating another direct comm call. Once again, it came from lifesupport.

“This is the Captain, go,”
she ordered.

“This is Lieutenant Jinja-Marsuu again, Captain. After reviewing the security logs of Lieutenant Wong’s actions, both here when he was ‘repairing’ the water pipe, and back up in the cadre galley…the evidence points very strongly to sabotage, sir. You can review it if you want, Captain.”
Jinja-Marsuu added,
“But the evidence is there. He deliberately poisoned this crew.”

“Lieutenant Broxt, call up your security teams,” Ia ordered, covering her headset pickups with one hand as she addressed the new gunnery officer, who doubled as the
da Gama
’s security officer. “Find Lieutenant Wong and throw him in the brig. He was supposed to go to his quarters, but he could be anywhere. The charge is Fatality Thirty-Five, Sabotage.”

“Sabotage, sir?” Broxt asked, eyes widening.

“Lieutenant Jinja-Marsuu in lifesupport says she has evidence.
Find
him,” Ia stressed, “strip and zip him, and throw him in the brig bare-asteroid naked. If he resists or fights back, tell him that should a trial of his superior officers find him guilty, I will
personally
feed him to the Salik medical observers that are coming on board if he doesn’t surrender immediately. And do remind him, in case he has forgotten my Service record, that Marines
don’t
bluff. I see no reason why I shouldn’t continue that tradition, now that I’m a member of the TUPSF-Navy. Let’s hope he doesn’t resist, however.”

“Understood, sir,” her new gunnery officer stated. He readjusted the headset tucked around his ear, moving to comply with her orders.

Lieutenant Commander Zagrieve, scenario-senior-most of
the third-watch cadets, finished relaying orders and checking over his system controls. Turning to face her, he asked, “Captain, are we really going to board Salik
observers
onto this ship?”

“Yes, Commander, we really are,” she told him. Not that Ia thought the testers would actually go that far, but she knew they were listening and wanted them to hear the confident determination in her voice. “We are also going to do our damnedest to get the
da Gama
’s starboard bow warp panels repaired, repowered, and the section secured for FTL speeds. Once we do, we are going to head straight for the fifth planet of the Ceti Ceti Delta 175 star system…which is more or less in the very same direction we’re headed right now.

“The only thing is, that same course will take us right over the top of Battle Platform
Freeman
, which is due to arrive at the rendezvous point around the
ninth
planet at Ceti Ceti Delta, which is on the
near
side of its system relative to us…and they will arrive about five hours before we’re due to hit the system’s edge,” she stated. Her mouth quirked up on one side. “We’ll drop out early without warning our friendly little escort, and ping the Battle Platform to scramble all ships and fighters. Even if it’s undermanned due to an abrupt relocation, the defensive and offensive capabilities of a Battle Platform is easily a match for
twenty
warships, never mind twelve.

“Lieutenant Bruer thought the latest of our problems was a
Kobayashi Maru
,” Ia told her fellow cadets. “Under normal circumstances, I’d have to agree with him. Had we been at full health, our choices would have been to fight and die, or be boarded, eaten, and die. But in a strange way, we owe Lieutenant Wong our lives. Unless of course, I’d been quick-witted enough to think of faking an Extreme Quarantine lockdown, and ordered the infirmary to distribute medicines capable of faking a suitable level of illness among the crew.” Smirking, she patted her shirt pocket, with its two capsules of emetic medicine. “As it stands, I believe we should all remember this little maneuver for the future.”

“Captain…you said Marines don’t bluff,” Broxt stated warily. “Yet isn’t
this
a big bluff, what you’re having us do? Pretending to be sick from some sort of spaceborne contaminant?”

“It isn’t a bluff. If any of this were true, Lieutenant, I’d carry it out in a heartbeat,” Ia promised him. “Marines don’t bluff. We
make promises, and we keep them. We
do
, however, lie to our enemies…but only when it’s absolutely necessary. Now, eyes back to your boards, gentlemeioas. We have a long way to go to finish pulling this off, and hours of constant vigilance to ensure we
do
pull it off—and not a word about any of this to our ‘observers’ once they’re on board.”

He nodded and returned his attention to his workstation. The ventilation system was finally getting the stench of sickness out of the air. Ia debated getting up to fetch a ration packet. Dabbling a mental toe into the nearest timestreams, she decided to refrain.

Four minutes later, the white overhead lights flashed yellow and turned green, and they heard the Eastern European Province accent of their chief tester once more.

“All hands, stand down,”
Captain Rzhikly announced, voice echoing through the mock starship.
“Congratulazhuns, Class 1252, you heff successfully survived your Hell Veek. Howeffer, you vill clean op each of your messes before you vill be allowed to disembark de ship.”

Ia opened the shipwide comms.
“Acknowledged, Captain Rzhikly. All hands, this is Acting Captain Ia. You are under orders to scrub-and-shine from stem to stern. Consider this your last task of the simulation. Captain Rzhikly, for the sake of quelling false rumors among those who were on the bridge or in the infirmary, I respectfully request that you please explain to everyone on board exactly how we ended up sick, and why.”

“Reqvest granted. All hands, Cadet Wong vas asked to join de testers for a moment vhen he left de bridge at de end of de last scenario. He vas instructed by us to simulate sabotage via biological contamination. De illness you are suffering is nothing more dan a time-released liqvid emetic, very much similar to de version Acting Captain Ia ordered distributed in order to fake further illnezzes. You vill, of course, be reqvired to hand back in each and every distributed emetic pill before you vill be allowed to leave de ship,”
he finished.
“Now attend to your cleanup detail. Captain Rzhikly out.”

“You heard the Captain,” Ia sighed, unbuckling her safety harness. “Let’s grab some gloves, buckets, and cleaner bottles, meioas. Don’t think for a moment the enlisted sailors will do it all for us.”

“Let me guess: The best leaders lead by example, and all that rot,” one of the other cadets muttered. “I just thank god we weren’t slipped a diarrhetic on top of the emetic.”

Disgust warred with amusement across the bridge, finally settling into a collection of wry chuckles from most of them, Ia included. She lost her humor as she exited the bridge, erased by a stray thought.

A pity this was only a simulation. I can warn, and warn, and warn…but to some beings in this galaxy, I’m nothing more than an ancient Cassandra, whose prophetic warnings went utterly unheeded, however true they turned out to be. But I will be believed by everyone else before all of this is through. Everything depends on it.

At least the rest of my time here will be easy to endure. We don’t have that much longer before Class 1252 graduates…and then…Right. Don’t think about any elephants just yet, Ia,
she ordered herself, taking a pair of gloves from the box being passed back to her by two cadets who had gotten into the supply closet ahead of her.
You have other problems to pursue.