Black Box (10 page)

“Something on your mind, Mr. Boone?” Captain
Beckett asked, preoccupied with the situation at hand and in no
mood for whatever it was Boone was bringing to the table. They were
alone now.

“Regarding the earlier incident on the
bridge, sir.”

“Incident?”

Infuriated, Boone said, “Yes, sir. You and
Mr. Tunsley humiliated me.”

This was unexpected. Boone was not one to
rock the boat. In order for him to confront his captain like this
took an awful lot of constitution.

“You need to know your ship inside and out,
Mr. Boone.”

“If you made modifications to the
generators, sir, it was your obligation to inform me as well as
your other officers.”

Beckett now looked up at him, studied him
with the careful eye of an experienced captain. He did
not
like being reprimanded. He certainly didn’t like it coming from a
subordinate. It was time to take a new measure of William Boone.
Much to his surprise, Beckett found that the man was trembling.
There was a line of sweat along his upper lip and his cheeks were
flushed. Good God, he could practically
see
his heart
beating a heated rhythm in his chest.

Beckett stood.

Despite the fact that there was a table and
a whole room separating the two of them, Boone took a step
back.

“Who are you working for, Boone?”

“Wh...what?”

“You heard me. Who’s pulling your
strings?”

There was a knife edge to Beckett’s voice
that was only partially intentional. He wanted to intimidate Boone,
wanted the spineless son of a bitch to wet his pants and tell him
what was going on.

“Sir, I don’t understand,” Boone managed to
say with some small degree of dignity. “I only thought...”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Beckett said in a
raised voice. “You don’t
think
. You don’t ever goddamned
think
. You’ve been on this ship three fucking years and
you’ve never been more than a body in a uniform. Now, all of a
sudden you
think
?”

Boone gritted his teeth, fought his fear
with rage. “That’s an unfair judgment, captain.”

“The hell it is,” Beckett said. At some
point he’d come around the table and was now nose to nose with his
Infantry Officer. “You tell me when you’ve ever reported for a
mission early. You were late for your
first
mission. And
since when do you conduct inspections? What were you doing in the
engine room?”

Boone didn’t answer. What could he say?

“So you tell me, you fucking weasel. You
tell me who you’re working for.”

Boone had his back against the door. With
little subtlety and even less grace, he managed to shove one hand
behind his back and find the door handle. With a tug, he disengage
the latch, spun and slid the door open. Then he hauled himself into
the corridor leaving Beckett alone to simmer, feeling very much as
if he were surrounded completely by strangers.

Besides Sam Ukpere himself, the science
department consisted of three other people, all with less than a
year’s experience. Applegate’s department was a little better with
only two people and the experienced Chester Zephyr. But Zephyr was
getting old and had a tendency to be careless in his record
keeping. He was a picture perfect wash-out.

Since neither of them commanded Control
crew, they did not have to do any schedule shuffling. It gave them
time to grab something to eat while the other officers worked to
get their departments in line for the next twenty four hours.

Ukpere had met Applegate nine years earlier
and they had become fast friends. At the time, Applegate had been a
lieutenant, pushing himself in directions he wasn’t supposed to go.
Ukpere remembered that his friend had been half the size he was
now, much healthier and quicker. As a lieutenant, Applegate had
tried to master almost every department. He’d been one of those
fiery young go-getters that administrators loved. But he could be
somewhat abrasive and had angered a few people along the way. Their
meeting had taken place at a conference on New Africa, a small
planet well out of Earth’s solar system. Ukpere couldn’t even
remember the subject of the conference. He and Applegate had been
seated together during the opening address and found that they had
a number of things in common. Both were extremely devoted to the
Earth and what
mattered.
For Applegate it was history in all
of its forms. Human events, animal records, anthropology,
archaeology, and whatever else could tell him about the past. For
Ukpere it was the hard cold world of scientific fact. His specialty
was chemistry but he also held a doctorate in physics and dabbled a
bit into biology. Though Applegate lived in the past and Ukpere
lived in the present, they both understood that their work led the
human race forward. This common thread was enough to bind them as
friends for good and all. When the
Admiralty
had approached
Ukpere with the details of this mission, he knew that it was also a
stunning opportunity for Applegate.

The galley was a small room toward the top
of the ship. Since there were only forty five crew on the
Valor
, there wasn’t really any need for a large eating area.
Crew were assigned time for duty, for sleep, for meals, and for
recreation. Though Applegate and Ukpere were not scheduled to eat
at the moment, officers could play fast and loose with the
schedule. Besides, most of the crew were busy in the light of
recent events and they needed to talk. They took seats toward the
rear of the room, well away from where food was made available.
Ukpere picked at a salad, some freeze dried vegetables and a
handful of natural ingredients that could stand the time and stress
of space travel. Applegate’s meal was much bigger and much less
healthy. He detested the freeze dried stuff, but needed it for
basic protein and vitamins. Still and all, he filled up his ample
belly with junk that could make the trip. Like pre-packaged boxed
cakes.

“This ghost ship is a damned nuisance,” he
muttered over his food.

Ukpere nodded.

“They should never have put us on the
Valor
. Talk about the wrong man for the job. Beckett will
abandon it the first chance he gets.”

“He won’t” Ukpere disagreed. “He’s already
had his chance, but he’s still a creature of duty no matter what
his reputation is.”

“I have to tell you, Sam, I don’t like all
of this sneaking around. Love him or hate him, he’s the captain.
Being on a mission where your captain only knows a fraction of the
details is dangerous.”

“I don’t disagree with you,” Ukpere
said.

“Then why the hell did they send us out with
Beckett? They could have picked any other ship.”

Ukpere nodded but remained silent. He had
gone over it in his head a million times himself. He knew the
mission; he knew the score. There was a lot to be done and a lot of
it was a bitter pill in his mouth. But there was more to it than he
had been told and the choice of ship and captain was only a small
part of that.

Applegate had drawn many of the same
conclusions and continually voiced them. “They’re trying to kill
two birds with one stone, you know. Save the universe and all that
for sure but sweep the ingrate out of the way in the process.”

Ukpere nodded again, adjusting his glasses
with his left forefinger. He didn’t like to question the
Admiralty
, but he was wary. Like Applegate said, the captain
was the captain no matter what you thought of him. If he was
uninformed then there would be a breakdown of order. That
threatened the mission. The Admirals knew that. They knew it well.
So why had they chosen this course of action?

“Captains are a rare breed,” he said
finally. “Maybe they just felt there wasn’t one in the fleet who
would accept the mission.”

“There’s more to it even than that,”
Applegate said finally. “You and I are expendable, just like
everyone else on this ship. This is a shitpile, Sam. We may be on
top of it but it’s still a shitpile.”

For one last time, Ukpere nodded. He might
not have put it in those exact words, but he agreed with the
sentiment one hundred percent.

When Beckett’s first promotion to officer
came through, he didn’t know what to do. He had been summoned by
the captain and told that he was being jumped to lieutenant,
effective the moment they made port. Beckett listened with half his
brain absorbing the details and the other half working through his
immediate future. He thought of Anabelle. He had been working under
her since leaving the academy. She had taught him so much. More
than that, she had protected him, saved his life on more than one
occasion. That they had become fast friends was never a secret, but
their closeness had transcended simple friendship. The mother hen
had picked not only her favorite chick, but her favorite of all
time. The others told him so. What she had done for Beckett, she
had never done for anyone else. Ever.

Beckett was pretty certain that MacDonald
held it against him. It wasn’t so much that MacDonald wanted to be
the favorite. Anabelle had had little to do with his training and
experience. In fact, Anabelle was really just an obstacle to him.
Not only did she stand in his way of becoming sergeant himself, her
affection for Beckett was an inexcusable weakness. MacDonald did
not like answering to someone with a weakness.

Once dismissed, Beckett headed straight to
the barracks. He knew that Anabelle was off duty. They mostly had
their shifts together. Though Mr. Lowell, the infantry officer on
board, made the schedules, he often took Anabelle’s advice on who
should be where and when. She knew the squad better than he did. As
long as she showed him the proper respect, she got to have her
say.

When Beckett arrived, she was cleaning her
sidearm. A lot of career infantry found a weapon or two throughout
the courses of their careers that they loved and cherished as their
own. It was good for a soldier to know his or her own weapon rather
than using something simply issued at the start of a mission.
Anabelle had found this sidearm during her own training. It was an
old piece, nothing that any of the up and comers would even
consider carrying, but she had nurtured it from the moment she’d
found it and made herself expert with it. Nowadays, though, Beckett
rarely saw it when they were in the field. He wondered if he and
Anabelle would ever be in the field together again.

“What’s up?” she asked him as he sat himself
on the bunk beside her.

“I got my promotion,” he said.
“Lieutenant.”

She didn’t respond, didn’t even look at him.
They’d both known it was coming. Anabelle had been watching
soldiers leap frog her for her entire career. Beckett had always
been a lock to move up, so why did she feel so betrayed?

“I guess I’ll be answering to you then,
now,” she said, still sliding the oiled brush in and out of the
barrel of the old gun.

He shook his head. “I’m being transferred.
Captain says Monroe isn’t ready to move up yet.”

Monroe was the current lieutenant. She was
an engineer and would probably top out around 5
^th
or
maybe 4
^th
on a ship’s chain of command. Anabelle thought
she was an idiot. Of course, Anabelle had two thoughts about
people. You were either a respectable member of the human race or
you were a complete idiot. She wasn’t too keen on the captain,
either.

“We make port in two days,” she said.

He nodded. Why did he feel guilty? “I’m
heading over to the
Courage
.”

Anabelle started to laugh. Every once in a
while, she would release an innocent little laugh that betrayed the
existence of the girl she’d once been. Beckett loved those moments.
They revealed her humanity. This, however, wasn’t one of those
times. This laugh was sardonic and without mirth. She was telling
him that the ploy of the
Admiralty
was not lost on her.

“Jepsen’s got infantry over there,” she
said. “He’s fourth in the chain.”

“He’ll be my boss.”

“Not for long,” she said. “He’s old and he’s
out of favor. He’ll retire after one or two more tours and you’ll
take his place.”

“I doubt they’ll kick me up another four
spots after one or two tours.”

Anabelle finally put the gun down. The
pieces were laid out on a cloth on the floor, each one now cleaned,
oiled, and ready for reassembly. Turning to face Beckett, she
looked at him with sad and terrible eyes.

“Ted, those fuckers on the
Admiralty
engineer everything down to the last detail. For you now,
everything is a test.”

“Anabelle...”

“It’s okay, Ted. They like you. They want to
give you your own ship. If you do well as a lieutenant, they’ll
bump you up to fourth. I give it one tour as fourth before they
bump you up to XO. After that, it’ll be just a few more months in
the cooker before you’re captain.”

She made it sound so quick and easy. To him
it sounded like two or three years, not that that was a long time
between lieutenant and captain. Hell, most people had to struggle
up that ladder rung by rung. He should feel flattered.

“Why do I feel so dirty?”

“Because they’re testing your
integrity.”

He knew it was true. Anabelle had taught him
many things about how to behave on a battlefield. Even more so, she
had taught him that all of the Space Force was a battlefield. You
had to fight for every scrap of recognition and if you didn’t, it
was because there were expectations. The
Admiralty
was
buying Beckett the shoes and the coats and the jewels. When the
time came, he’d damned well better put out.

He wondered what they’d do with him if he
didn’t.

“MacDonald says you’re my weakness,” she
said, echoing his thoughts from earlier.