Captain Valance entered the lock code on the shielded security panel and the cell door popped open with a loud click. He let Burke lead the way to the bridge, walking just a couple steps beside him. His patience was completely frayed, and he couldn't wait to get Burke off his ship one way or another.
“Sir, Frost is here and we have a problem.” Stephanie said through his communicator.
“Go ahead.”
“His vacsuit wasn't sealed when he got here. I guess the smell hit him. He tossed his dinner across the deck and passed out.”
“Now who's going soft?” Valance whispered to himself.
“Sorry sir? I didn't catch that.”
“Nothing, just seal his vacsuit up, roll him out of the way and make sure he's all right. He'll be on his feet soon..”
“My pleasure sir,” Stephanie replied, he could hear her smiling through the comm.
They arrived at the bridge and Burke sat down at the communications station. Christie was helping with the efforts in the cargo train and Silver was covering communications from the navigation station.
Captain Valance sat down beside him, took his vacsuit head piece off and stared at him. It was a calm, expectant, steady gaze.
“You're going to watch me work this?” Burke said peevishly.
“The only reason why this would make you nervous is if you're about to do something wrong or have already screwed me on something, so work the problem.”
He put the data chip on the console and started checking the encryption. After a minute he nodded to himself. “Should take about five minutes to crack. This file comes from a system I'm familiar with.”
Captain Valance nodded slowly.
Silver was rubbing his shaved head with his hand slowly, from front to back, looking worried in a way only he could. Ashley started to turn in her seat to face the communications station behind her but he stopped her, whispering some warning that no one else caught. Finn was working nearby checking hull stress and quietly minding his own business. The communications station to his left was the last place he wanted to look, in fact he went out of his way to avoid it.
“Okay, the software is working through it.”
“Good,” was all the Captain said, still staring at Burke, who was slowly turning red as he tried to focus on the comm station.
Finn watched the chronometer at his engineering station as the Captain stared at the communications officer. He couldn't help but glance over for a few seconds. The Captain didn't move a millimetre, when he blinked it was a leisurely act. He stared at the communications officer like he was his property to treat however he liked.
Burke at one time stretched, then tried to look at the Captain but turned back to his station. He even said; “Wow, you can cut the tension with a knife,” chuckling nervously.
Nothing broke the Captain's focus. Burke settled and just stared for another full minute before he spun towards Jake. “What? What do you want! I'm doing what you told me!”
“I don't trust you Burke. I can't leave you alone with my ships computer for a second, not one second,” Captain Valance said quietly.
“So you just stare at me like some robot? Some God damned simple machine?” Burke yelled in his face.
“How are you going to betray me Burke?”
“What?”
“When you leave this ship and walk into that big port what are you going to do? What will you take with you? What will you steal from me if I just let you go?”
Burke just sat there, looking back at the Captain on the verge of panic.
“Are you hiding something from me?”
“What the hell are you talking about? You've lost it!”
“That's it, you're hiding something. Tell me.”
“What would I hide? There's nothing!” He blubbered.
“Step away from the console Burke,” Captain Valance said with no inflection in his tone. “We're going to the brig, we'll finish this conversation there, where there's no one looking on.”
Burke stared at him, his face turning a new shade of red, eyes starting to tear up. “No,” he croaked.
“What is it Burke? There's something you're not telling me. Something I need that you have.”
His nose was running, chin quivering. “There's nothing-”
Jake Valance twitched his sidearm out of its holster and punched Burke out of his chair. He fell to the deck and scrambled back up to his knees. Before he could catch his balance the barrel of the Captain's gun was against his forehead and the sound of the safety turning off was the loudest thing in the room.
“What is it Burke? What are you hiding?” He was so quiet you could barely hear him. “Tell me.”
“I'm s-sorry, I'm s-so so s-sorry. We got a t-transmission, just o-over a year ago, it was a w-woman, v-voice m-m-matched your earliest s-security f-footage.” Burke blubbered.
“Go on.”
“S-she said she n-needed help, w-was t-trapped on V–Van P-Purius.”
“Why didn't I get the message?”
“Y-you w-were hunting s-someone down. Thought it could w-wait. By the time y-you got back s-someone b-b-backtracked it and deleted it in our s-system.”
“And you thought I'd kill you for it!” Valance shouted. Everyone on the bridge jumped. Most of the ship could hear it. He kicked Burke in the side and pressed him down onto the deck with his boot on his shoulder.
Captain Valance leaned down and pressed the barrel to Burke's temple. The communications console beeped and Jake smiled, seeing the decryption was complete. “I don't need you anymore Burke.”
The man let out a small cry, shaking on the floor. Quaking with fear, he wet himself.
“If I let you live today will I regret it?”
Burke's eyes went wide. “N-no!”
“You know I can hunt you down. You've seen me do it a hundred times.”
“M-more, m-more than a h-hundred!” He yelled. Quieting to a whisper he continued. “I know, you can trust m-me.”
Captain Valance put his sidearm back into its holster and took his foot off Burke's back. “You're confined to quarters. Go clean yourself up and pack your things.”
Burke scurried off the bridge, and Captain Valance sat down in his command chair slowly. He just stared out of the small transparesteel slit for several minutes. Everyone else was dead quiet, trying their best to seem like they had something to do at their station. The silence went on for a very long time.
Ashley eventually looked over her shoulder at him expecting to see the furious man of moments ago. He looked bone tired, just staring off towards the front of the bridge.
“How did you know sir?” Asked Silver, who didn't turn around.
“In the first few seconds of staring at him, I knew. I didn't know what it was, but he was hiding something.”
He brought the decrypted information up on a small holoprojector in his command chair and looked it over. It was the manifest. After examining it for a few minutes he ran his hand down his face and sighed. “In the five years I've been taking bounties, hunting down what people lost or had stolen no one has asked me why I do it,” he said to no one in particular.
“I thought it was just what you did,” Ashley said. “you're so good at it.”
“I don't remember anything before then. I woke up on this ship. It was registered to my name, this command unit and most of the other things you see with me were in a pack. The security footage of me being pulled out of a stasis tube just like the ones in the cargo train told me I had a daughter named Alice. She has a friend named Bernice. For a while I thought she might be her mother. They had to leave me because they were on the run from something.”
Everyone on the bridge had turned towards him. Stephanie, who had been standing in the doorway and listening, came in and sat down at the weapons station. She looked as tired as the Captain felt.
He went on. “I do this because I needed to gather credits, improve the ship so when I found out where she was, or picked up a trail somehow I could pay my crew to stay aboard and help me find her. I thought if I built a reputation big enough she wouldn't have trouble tracking me down. In the meantime I kept moving, looking while I picked up one job after another. My freighter Captains look for her as they move along the trade lines.”