Lost Harvest: Book One of the Harvest Trilogy (27 page)

Pearce’s musings were interrupted by a chirp on his arm console.

“Go ahead.”

“Captain.” Szakonyi. “You’d best meet me in your quarters.”

“Doctor?” Before a response could come, Pearce stood, and tapped Hall on the shoulder. “Your ship, Mister Hall. Steady as she goes.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pearce rode the lift down the Harvest’s command fin, wondering what the doctor could possibly want. He made his way swiftly to the upper deck and the officers’ quarters, and there he found Szakonyi waiting in the corridor, alongside a door that had clearly been forced open.

“What’s all this?” he asked the waiting surgeon.

“What it looks like, I believe,” came the reply. “Someone’s been in your cabin, Captain.”

Pearce brushed aside his mounting feelings of violation and studied the door mechanism.

“How could someone have done this without setting off the alarm?” Szakonyi shrugged.

“I’m a doctor, not a burglar. I merely noticed this on my way from the Surgery to the Quarterdeck and thought I should report it.”

“Of course.” Pearce ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Quite right. Is anything missing?”

“I did not search,” Szakonyi replied. “I thought it best to leave that to you.”

Pearce entered his chambers, trailed by the doctor. He didn’t see anything amiss at first glance, no drawers left open or items out of place. Then, with sudden apprehension, he checked under his bed and found nothing.

“The berries,” he said. “They’re missing.” He stood up, feeling the familiar building of anger in his throat. He let it build. “Thank you, Doctor.” Tapping his wall unit, he sounded an all-ship communication. He coughed once, gathered himself, and then spoke.

“All personnel report to the shuttle bay,” he snarled. With the cargo holds full of plants, it was the only area of the ship large enough to accommodate the entire crew. “Five minutes, please.”

“Captain, is it worth it?” asked Szakonyi, his hands spread in a conciliatory pose. “They are only berries.”

“The berries are the least of it!” Pearce roared. “Someone broke into my cabin, damn them! You think this is about berries? This is about my authority! Proper shipboard behavior! No, we’ll get to the bottom of this.” And he stormed out, the doctor trailing behind. They reached the shuttle bay quickly, and there Pearce waited, pacing, while the crew assembled. They were minus Hall, a few others responsible for piloting the ship, and of course Fletcher, still ensconced in her cabin. When they had arrived, he stared at them for long minutes, glowering, silent. Then he spoke.

“I do not doubt the lot of you are fine starmen,” he began, a tremor in his voice the only hint that his control was wavering. “I have seen your conduct on board ship and ashore, in crisis and quiet, and most of you do the service proud.” He looked at each of them in turn as he talked, looking for furtiveness, for guilt, for shifting eyes or shuffling feet. “We have had our troubles, our mistakes, but in the best traditions of the Fleet, once fair punishment is given and received, we are back on square footing and no grudges are held.” Still, no telltale signs. Frustrated, his emotions getting the best of him, Pearce exploded.

“We have a liar and a thief among us,” he bellowed. “Those of you who have served long know there is no Jonah aboard worse than a scoundrel who would steal a shipmate’s property.” He drove one fist into an open palm as he spoke, punctuating his words with the slapping of knuckles on flesh. Waiting, breathing heavily, he forced himself into a smile he meant to be reassuring. In reality, it was anything but. “If the perpetrator comes forward to me, if the stolen property is returned, I am prepared to be lenient. Indeed, if any of you knows anything…” he broke off that line unspoken, knowing none of these ables would rat on their mate. And he was fairly sure it was an able.
What officer would conduct himself so abysmally
?

“I see,” the captain said after a lengthy, gravid pause. “Whomever the thief may be is also a coward. Very well. Sergeant Crutchfield?” The towering officer stepped forward crisply. “The rum ration is hereby stopped.” A wave of whispered remarks swept the room, but Pearce rose his voice above it. “Until further notice! If the guilty party comes forward and the property is returned, I will consider reinstituting the privilege.” He glowered at them all, savage justice on his face. “If, by this time tomorrow, we are no closer to a conclusion to this sorry business, I will order a random crew member subjected to the Cat every twelve hours.” At this there was a chorus of gasps.

“He’s inhuman, he is,” called a voice from behind him. Pearce spun around, but not in time to identify the speaker.

“Who said that?” No one moved. “Do not blame me,” he said, his voice calm again, his control returning. “Blame the criminal in your midst. Perhaps in light of these measures, some of you will be motivated to uncover the thief. That is all. Dismissed.”

The crew melted away like spring snow, many shaking their heads in disbelief and exasperation, with the exception of John Pott.

“Sir,” he said, low and submissive, “I am not questioning your orders or your authority. However…”

“However what, Lieutenant?” Pearce snapped. “You have some gentler means of addressing the matter? Something more effective? I am happy to hear it!”

“The Cat, sir. You know it works best when used sparingly.”

“And I have used it sparingly! Good God, I have been nothing but indulgent with this rabble!” Pearce pressed his knuckles to his temples. “We’ll talk no more about it. You have duties, Mister Pott. I suggest you be about them.”

****

Pearce was not surprised when Eustace Green appeared at the doorway of his star cabin not long after his accusatory, and probably futile, speech. With a sigh of fatigue and resignation, he turned his attention away from the report he was working on to the elderly gardener.

“Yes, Sir Green? Come to criticize shipboard discipline?”

Green stepped into the office, the door sliding shut behind him.

“Tell them,” he said. He glanced around the cabin, anywhere but at Pearce’s eyes as he spoke, but his voice was level and firm.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Pearce replied, and it was true, he didn’t. “Tell who what?”

“The crew.” Green crossed the small room in two steps and sat in the chair before the desk. Pearce ignored this breach of protocol, as he had when Green had entered uninvited. The usual courtesies extended to the captain of a naval vessel were clearly not observed by knights and friends of the King. “Tell them our true purpose.”

“I will not.” Pearce responded stonily. “I was ordered not to do so in the strongest language by Lords Banks and Exeter. I believe you and Dr. Reyes are under similar constraints, though somewhat more voluntarily, but I am an officer of the King, and my orders carry the force of law.” Green nodded at this.

“Nevertheless, Captain, I am afraid that if you do not impress upon the crew the absolutely vital nature of our errand, we may be courting disaster.”

“How so?” Green had said “we”, but Pearce had heard the distinctly implied “you”.

“They are unhappy. Yes, your floggings are part of it, to be sure. They understood when offenders like Lamb and Briggs were punished, but to subject random crewmen to the lash…”

“I am not interested in your opinions of my management of my crew,” responded Pearce icily. “We have had this conversation before. If there is nothing else?”

“There is,” Green said, ignoring Pearce’s hint that the discussion was at an end. “Think about it from their perspective. You have shown them paradise and taken it away. And for what? So that I can bring a prize back for the King to coo over for an hour and then forget forever after? Are we on a greengrocer’s mission, a florist’s?” He shook his head. “They need a larger reason, a more compelling mission. They need to understand. Or I fear the grumbling will only get worse.”

“Sailors grumble,” said Pearce dismissively, though in the back of his head he could hear one of Captain Baker’s famous adages – “when crews grumble, officers crumble”. She had always had a special relationship with the belowdecks, something Pearce had hoped to achieve with Fletcher as an intermediary.
And look how that turned out
. “In the end, they will obey, Sir Green.”

“Will they?” he asked, and there was a certain timbre to his words. For the first time, Pearce began to feel a hint of resolve in this man whom the King had knighted and befriended, something deeper and more resolute than the elderly gentleman among his flowers. “Two of your crew tried to desert on Cygnus. Another, your first officer, disobeyed you as well.”

“Regulations,” Pearce grunted, trying to get back to comfortable ground, “are clear on these matters. I am bound by Admiralty Law.”

“Ah.” Green held up one long finger. “Laws and regulations you violated by leaving that machrine behind.”

“Necessary to accomplish our mission.”

“I am telling you that this might be necessary, too, Captain.”

“Sailors will grumble,” Pearce repeated, though somewhat lamely. Green stood.

“John Banks and the Star Lord felt you were the best man for this job,” the noble gardener said. “I believe they were correct to think so. We are very close to success, and all the rewards that come with it, for the Kingdom as well as ourselves. If you allow your pride and your stubbornness to ruin our chances, our failure will be on your head alone.”

And he left the captain there, alone with his thoughts.

****

When Dr. Zoltan Szakonyi showed up in her chambers, Christine Fletcher had no idea what the hell he wanted, but she doubted it was anything she cared about. What she wanted, no one could bring her.

“How are you, Lieutenant?” he asked, solicitous.

“Here to psychoanalyze me, Doctor?” Fletcher asked in scornful response. She was drunk and had been so for most of her imprisonment, even though it didn’t really help.

“Quite to the contrary,” Szakonyi said quietly. “I believe you to be one of this ship’s saner inhabitants. No, I am here to offer you a way out.” His smile, a thin curve on his wrinkled face, was a cryptic thing.

“Of this cabin?” She was puzzled, both by his words and his smile. If it hadn’t been for Peckover, the perpetually humorless boatswain, Szakonyi would have been the sourest creature aboard.
Then again
, thought Fletcher,
maybe
I
am
. Her world had descended into perpetual night, with no prospect of any morning. Surrounded by billions of suns, and yet dawn would never come for her again. “Or of this situation?”

“Both.”

“The only thing I want,” Fletcher said with a throaty growl, “is light-years behind us, and I will never have it again.”

“Don’t be so sure. Never is a long time, and the universe is full of possibilities.”

With a wry smile of her own, Fletcher got up from her chair and walked to the nutritional unit that was a perk of her rank, a perk she would hold onto until they could reach Earth and a court-martial would strip her of that, her freedom, and her dignity.
A perk that makes this a convenient enough prison
, she thought. She punched in the code for a serving of rum.

“Self-prescribed,” she said. “Sit down if you like, Doctor. My officer’s ration is more than enough for both of us.” She turned her attention back to the machine as it beeped at her, pleasantly but resolutely. Her cup, under the dispenser, was still empty. “What the hell? Have they cut me off?” She didn’t think she’d exceeded her ration, but with the use she’d been making of it lately, it was entirely possible.

“Not just you,” Szakonyi said, easing into the seat she had offered. “Everyone.”

“What? Even Bill’s not that crazy.”

“Oh, he might be. At least, once sufficiently provoked. You see, his cabin was broken into, and someone stole his tervis berries. He has stopped everyone’s rum. What’s more, he has ordered random whippings of the crew until the perpetrator is revealed.”

“You’re joking.”

“I wish I were.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Fletcher asked. “It’s awful, but someone will talk him out of it. Pott, or you. Maybe even himself, once he comes to his senses.”

“You know him better than anyone. Does he ever countermand his own orders, especially in matters of discipline?” She shook her head, and the doctor continued. “Lieutenant Pott may try, but he won’t be any more successful than I would be.”

“Who took them?”

“I have no idea. But I would be shocked if anyone were to own up to it now, given the captain’s current blood thirst. We are in for a rough time, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t tell me your troubles,” Fletcher retorted. “It won’t do any good. I’d have to care, and then I’d have to be able to help.”

“You are.” Szakonyi leaned across her tiny table, his eyes aglow behind his thick white beard. “It may be that our troubles have a common solution. I believe the crew is ready to follow someone else.”

Fletcher stared at this old man who she did not really know.
It’s a trap
, her gut told her. Pearce was setting her up for even bigger trouble. She rejected the thought. He might have become an enormous ass, but entrapment wasn’t the man’s style.

“You’re talking mutiny. You’re the damn doctor; why don’t you just declare him unfit?”

“Please. Crutchfield would never arrest the captain. And I’m fairly certain Pott would be even less supportive. No, a more radical surgery is needed.”

“You’re talking mutiny,” she repeated. It was crazy. There was no worse crime in the Fleet.
You’re already a criminal, Christine. What did it matter if the fires of Hell were a thousand degrees hot or a million
? She could think of no worse crime than what had been done to her. Everything she loved, her very life, taken away over a stupid robot. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“No one needs to be hurt. The crew will follow you, Christine Fletcher. And I’m sure many of them want to go back to Cygnus as much as you do.”

The word was a thunderclap in her ears. Cygnus. Jairo.

“The captain…the other officers…”