Hope's Folly (28 page)

“Who else is authorized to reset the codes?”

“I am. But getting down there with this leg and no working lifts will take me a good ten minutes. Another ten to reset.” He didn't have Con's skill; his own specialty was always more with weapons and military strategy. And he and Jodey had agreed not to trust anyone other than Con Welford with something as critical as the
Folly's
primaries until they reached Ferrin's and the requisite fail-safes could be installed.

That included Dina Adney and Burnaby Mather, but he had no choice now. He glanced through the haze and frenzied movement on the bridge. He couldn't spot Mather's burly form at communications. But Adney was at the XO's console as if glued there.

He called her name twice before she turned, and when she did, he didn't like at all what he saw in her eyes. Panic. Wild panic.

Hell's fat ass, don't freeze up on me now, Dina.
He motioned her over with a short jerk of his hand.

“Systems aren't responding.” Her voice shook even through the breather mask. “I can't raise Creston at Aldan HQ.”

He stared at her, hard. Aldan HQ was the Imperial Fleet's central command. And Creston—Admiral Maura Creston—was dead, a casualty of another of Tage's purges. He knew Dina knew that. Or had. “We don't need Aldan,” he said carefully. “We need to bring the auxiliary bridge online.”

“Online? Isn't it—”

“Welford took it off line on my orders.”

“But that's a violation—”

“Damn it, listen to me. Get down there, now, with Dillon.” He grabbed a small datapad from Dillon's outstretched hand and typed as he talked. “These are the ship's primaries. You need to do a manual reset, you understand? We need to evacuate the bridge, run the ship from down there until the fire is contained. You need to get those systems online.”

“But systems aren't responding! Creston won't answer me. Aldan HQ isn't responding!”

He stared at her for one, two seconds, the hard, ugly reality that his executive officer was in the midst of a mental and emotional collapse hitting him like the back-thrust from a hidden Gritter-10 cannon. And just as much of a surprise. He had no time to deal with this.

And now he had one less officer he could rely on.

“Return to your post, Commander.” He didn't want her there; he didn't want her anywhere near ship's systems. But he had neither time nor the means to get her to sick bay, where the two med-techs on his roster could sedate her. He needed everyone with damage-control experience at a post now. Except—Mather. He could spare the commo long enough to get Adney, his former crewmate, to sick bay. Mather—

Philip glanced quickly around. The communications console was vacant. That would have puzzled him more except for the amount of movement on the bridge. Everyone was trying to help. Then a familiar face flashed in his peripheral vision, somewhat skewed by the edges of the mask. “Holton!” He knew Rya trusted her.

Sachi Holton turned, her own mask glinting under the bridge lights, made harsher by the smoky haze. “Sir?”

“Commander Adney … must be relieved of duty, due to medical issues. I don't think she'll try to do anything. Get her to sick bay. She's convinced she needs to contact Admiral Creston—the
late
Admiral Creston.” Hell's fat ass, he couldn't believe he was issuing this order. Not here. Not now. And where in hell was Rya?

Holton's dark eyes widened slightly, then she nodded. “Understand, sir. I'll do everything I can to keep her and this ship safe.” She hurried over to Adney.

One down, a thousand crises to go.

Where in hell was Rya?

Another bit of movement snagged his attention amid all the bodies coursing about the bridge. A large bit of movement. “Corvang!” he called out. If he had to trust someone, the Takan navigator wasn't a bad candidate. Sparks trusted Dillon, but Corvang carried Jodey's seal of approval. Philip pushed away the thought that Jodey had approved Adney as well. Cor-vang had delivered Philip's arsenal unscathed and had been exemplary in all other areas since coming on board.

“Sir!”

He thrust the datapad into Corvang's large furred hands. “The auxiliary bridge needs a manual reset. I can't get down there to input ship's primaries. You understand the importance of the data you now hold?”

A quick nod of a long face partly covered by a breather mask. “I will forfeit my life first, sir.”

Corvang would. Philip knew that. “Go with Dillon. I need that bridge operational in five minutes. Make it in four and I'll buy you a pot of honeylace at the next port. My treat.”

That bribe was answered with a toothy grin. Corvang knew the cost of honeylace as well as he did. “Yes, sir!”

“Secure all stations,” Philip called out as Corvang moved away in a blur, with Dillon on his heels. The smoke was thicker, and the crew from damage control didn't seem to be making significant headway. There were lives at risk, more than just Rya's and Con Welford's. He didn't like it, but he had to consider that fact. “Prepare to evacuate the bridge.”

There was a moment of tense silence, then a surge of action. Console lights blinked as they accepted commands, then went dark in shutdown.

Corvang earned his honeylace. It was a little over four but less than five minutes when the auxiliary bridge came back online, databoxes winking the connection hot on the two bridge screens still operational: Welford's and Philip's.

One of the last remaining bridge crew came up to Philip as he stood by the command chair.

“Sir, do you need assistance?” The smoke was so thick Philip couldn't read the man's makeshift name tag.

“Get down to Deck Five. You have work to do.”

“Sir?”

“That is an order.”

Where in hell was Rya?

Where in hell's that shutoff valve?
Rya played her handbeam over the tangle of pipes and conduit secured to the walls of the narrow maintenance tunnel. It was fifteen minutes since she'd dashed off the bridge, and Con Welford had helped her remove a large section of the ready-room bulkhead. Welford was now a dozen feet if not more behind her. He couldn't fit in this tunnel, his broad shoulders threatening to rip the conduit and feed lines from the walls. She barely could and, crawling on all fours, had snagged her pants and belt on more things than she cared to count as she'd scooched, wiggled, and shoved her way toward her goal.

The heat from the fire in the lift shafts had her sweating, rivulets running into her eyes, making them sting. She blinked rapidly—all she could do with the mask over her face. Her shirt lay against her skin like a hot, damp blanket.

She had to find the override valves. That thought made her push on past the pain, past the fear. It wasn't just saving lives. It wasn't just the mission. It was everything. Philip was right when he'd cautioned her on the shuttle about knowing her priorities. Anything that hampered the
Folly
hampered the Alliance. And only the Alliance could take on the Empire and take down Tage.

If not for Tage, her father would still be alive.

Light flashed dimly in front of her. Two bursts of light from a handbeam. A prearranged signal to get her attention. Then, Welford's voice: “You okay, Bennton?”

She lifted her mask quickly. “Delightful,” she shouted back. “Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.” She pulled the mask down, the taste of the smoke acrid against her tongue, and shoved away the thought that Welford couldn't get in here if she needed help. She had to find that—

There. Had to be. A clear box of what was probably durocrylic covered a series of flip-tab valves. She'd seen similar configurations in the maintenance shafts of Calth 9. She pulled on the cover. It was stuck.

Shit. She angled her mask up. “Think I found it!”

Mask in place again, she propped her handbeam against a wide pipe, then fished in her utility belt for her small tool kit. She needed something to dig under the edge of the cover.

She opted for a manual screwdriver, not a sonic one. She couldn't chance what the vibrations would do to the valves. She lay on her side in the tunnel's narrow confines and shoved the screwdriver against one edge. Her hands were slick with sweat. Twice she lost her grip, the screwdriver spinning out of her fingers. She groped for it against the rapidly heating decking beneath her.

And she swore, volubly, with every expression she'd ever heard in her almost thirty years.

“Rya!”

A man's voice—Welford's? It sounded different now, probably because of his mask—interrupted her litany of maledictions. She nearly had the box pried off. She gritted her teeth, closing her eyes for a moment. What did he want? She was doing all she could, and it was so slagging hot in here, hell would seem downright frigid after this.

“Almost there!” she shouted back, not bothering to lift her mask. She didn't want to let go of the pressure she had on the screwdriver.

“Rya, get out. Now! Bridge is evacuated!”

Fuck.
That meant the fire had spread, bad. Something she could have guessed from the blistering heat around her. She yanked on the screwdriver. “Few more seconds!”

She had no idea if he heard her through the mask. It didn't matter. She could feel the cover giving way, cracking, splintering—

The lower half sheared off with a hard snap. Her screwdriver flew from her fingers, disappearing somewhere in the tunnel. She didn't know, she didn't care. She shoved her hand under the broken cover, scraping her knuckles raw, and shoved the valve tabs down, one by one. That had to release the fire-suppression system. That had to flood the lifts with chemical foam from one system and possibly—she couldn't remember—water or some other nontoxic suppressant from the other.

There was a sprinkler outlet just over her head. She cupped her hand around it, waiting for the burst of whatever would come out, praying it wouldn't peel the clothes off her body or the skin off her bones.

Nothing. Nothing happened.

Her heart pounded. Her teeth ached from clenching them. She wanted to scream. The
Folly
was going to lose the bridge, maybe Deck 2 Forward.

The Alliance would lose a ship. No one would stop the Farosians. And Tage—

“Rya, damn you, now!”

Fuck.

She shoved her handbeam back into her belt, then skittered backward, suddenly aware she could see barely inches in front of her face. Heat closed around her. It felt as if her skin glowed. She pushed and shoved like a sand crawler in full reverse, but pipe outcrop-pings and metal flanges snatched her pants and belt, gouged her shoulders and elbows.

Then strong hands closed around her ankles, and with an “oof!” she found herself flat on her stomach and being dragged, feetfirst, out the darkness of the narrow tunnel and into the equally dark but larger one.

“Damn it, Welford!”

She braced herself for a fall, but he grabbed the waistband of her pants. She was again dragged backward, pushing with the flat of her hands to keep up lest the damned man pull her pants right off.

Then they were out of the tunnel, the thick hazy light in the ready room making her blink and sway on her feet. She staggered against the edge of the open bulkhead panel, turned—

—and was met by a hissing deluge from above. Water, sheets of water, spraying forcefully through the round sprinkler heads, coating her mask, all but blinding her. It soaked her hair, drenched her shirt, slid with a welcome chill down her thighs.

She ripped off her mask, let out a whoop … and found herself crushed, hard, against Philip Guthrie's sopping-wet chest. One arm locked around her waist, the other across her shoulder, his fingers threading up into her hair. Blinking water out of her eyes, she looked up at him. His mask was shoved up over his hair, which was darker now, as wet as her own. She glimpsed a younger Lieutenant Philip Guthrie in the face of Admiral Philip Guthrie. Both looked intensely angry. And she wasn't even launching peas at him.

She released her grasp on her mask. It fell with a thump into the seat of a nearby chair. She curled her hands over his shoulders, just tight enough to let him know that if he let go, she wouldn't.

For three very long, wet seconds they stared at each other, the hissing of the sprinklers and the rapid staccato of the water hitting the table and the decking the only sounds. Then he kissed her. Not gently, not tentatively, not at all the kiss she'd expected in his quarters earlier. There was nothing tender or hesitant in the way his mouth covered hers, expertly parting her lips, which were already opening, already demanding a taste of him. This was a rough kiss, a desperate kiss, a kiss with an almost frenzied passion that made her heart pound, her knees go liquid, and pulsing sensations flare between her thighs.

His tongue stroked, teased hers as he held her tightly against him. She angled her face, bruising his lips as he bruised hers, and shoved her fingers into the short hair at the nape of his neck, wanting more of this exquisite punishment. Not letting him escape if he wanted to.

He broke the kiss, then nuzzled the side of her face. Cold water splattered against her neck, doing little to cool the heat in her body.

His lips touched her ear. “Subbie. We need to talk.” His voice went tight, serious.

She could feel the rapid rise and fall of his chest. He was breathing hard. So was she.

He stepped back slightly. She straightened, her wet hands sliding to his equally as wet shoulders.

Subbie. He was putting distance between them, and not just physically. But she wasn't yet ready to let him go.

“This is the damnably worst timing,” he said, beads of water dotting his eyebrows and dark lashes, streaking down his face. “I have no right to—”

“How bad is the damage?” She cut him off, heart pounding now for a different reason. She didn't want to hear about his rights. She definitely didn't want to hear his apologies.

“To my sanity? That's shredded.” He barked out a short, mirthless laugh and took another step back. Her hands fell from his shoulders.

“Damage to the bridge?” he continued, twisting slightly. He reached for his cane, which lay in a growing puddle on the ready-room table. “The fire was confined to Decks One and Two. For once, the damned layout of this bucket worked in our favor. I don't know if we've lost any main bridge systems, though. I probably should be checking that right now.” He ran one hand over his face, and for a moment she was sure he was going to turn for the corridor, head to the bridge. Instead, he studied her through the cascading water for a heartbeat. Two.