“But you can switch communications, ship systems, propulsion, all that, over to the reactor, right?”
That was the plan: dive into Adarean space, do one circuit around the sun running on the nukes while recording everything they could on the military and political communications channels, then head home again.
“We’ve already done all that,” answered Chevrier, “but we can’t power up the Casmir drive with it. It’s strictly inner system, no diving.” He suddenly noticed the pool of sweat on his chest, went to flick it away, then stopped. “The Adareans won’t scan us if we’re running on nuclears, but they wouldn’t scan canvas sails either, so we might as well have used them instead. We’ve got to fix the main battery at some point.”
“Can you bring the grav back online?”
“Not safely, no, and not with the reactor. It’s a power hog. Too many things to go wrong.”
“Lasers?”
Chevrier ground his teeth. “You could talk to the captain, you know. He sends down here every damned hour for another report, asking the same exact damn questions.”
“Lasers?” repeated Max firmly.
“I recommended other options to the captain, but if you want to turn some Outback ship into space slag, I’ll give you enough power to do it. As long as you let me comb through the debris for spare parts once you’re done. Might be one way to get some decent equipment.”
“Fair enough. How are your men holding up?”
“They’re soldiers.” He pronounced the word very differently than Max had. “They do exactly what they’re told. Except for that worthless snot of a mate who apparently can’t even guard a fucking sealed hatch properly.”
Max didn’t like the sound of that. Chevrier couldn’t keep pushing his men as hard as he pushed himself, or they’d start to break. “Your men are not machines-”
“Hell they aren’t! A ship’s crew is one big machine and you’re a piece of grit in the silicone, a short in the wire. With you issuing orders outside the chain of command, the command splits. You either need to fit in or get the hell out of the machine!”
Chevrier jabbed his finger at Max’s chest again to punctuate his statement. This time, he made contact with enough force to send the two men in opposite directions.
It was clear that he didn’t mean to touch Max, and just as clear that he didn’t mean to back down. He glared at Max, daring him to make something of it. Aggressiveness was the main side effect of Nova. It built up until the men went supernova and burned out. On top of that, Chevrier also had that look some men got when things went very wrong. He couldn’t fix things so he wanted to smash them instead.
Max could bring him up on charges, but the ship needed its chief engineer right now. And if Mallove had promised his friends in government that he would protect Chevrier…
Max decided to ignore the incident. For the time being. “I’ll be sure to make a record of your comments.”
Chevrier snorted, as if he’d won a game of chicken. “If you have problems with any of the big words, come back and I’ll spell them out for you.” He flapped his hand near his head again, turned and went back to the clean hood.
The other men scowled at Max.
That was the problem with anger-it was an infectious disease. Frustration only made it spread faster. He continued his tour, looking into the main engine room and then at the nuclear reactors. Nobody was in the former because there was nothing to be done there, and nobody was in the latter because radiation spooked them. One man sat in the control room, reading the monitors. Max hovered near the ceiling a moment looking over the crewman’s shoulder, comparing the pictures on the vids to the layout of the rooms. The crewman stared at the monitors intently, pretending not to see Max. Yes, thought Max, anger was very infectious. You never knew who might catch it next.
The hapless mate DePuy still guarded the hatch, whipping the vid behind his back as he snapped to attention. Max ignored him. Accidents happened. Some idiots would just slab themselves.
He went back through the Black Forest, acknowledging salutes from a pair of shooters, the tactics officer’s mates. He swam through the air to the top level, and down the main corridor, past the open door of the exercise room. He turned back. If grav was going to be offline much longer, he needed to sign up for exercise time. Physically, he needed to stay sharp right now.
Max pushed the door open. The room was dark. It surprised him briefly that no one was there, but then, with the six-and-sixes, and all the drills, the men were probably too busy. He hit the light switch. Nothing came on. He moved farther into the room to hit the second switch. Something hard smashed on the back of the head, knocking his cap off. He twisted, trying to get a hold of his assailant, but there was no one behind him. He realized that the other man was above him, on the ceiling, too late, and as he twisted in the dark room, he suddenly became very dizzy, losing any sense of direction, any orientation to the walls and floors. A thick arm snaked around his throat, choking off his nausea along with his breath. Max got hold of a thumb and managed to pull it halfway loose, but he had no leverage at all.
He swung his elbows forcefully and futilely as black dots swam before his eyes like collapsing stars in the darkened room.
Then the darkness became absolute.
He experienced a floating, disconnected sensation, like being in the sensory deprivation tanks they’d used for some of his conditioning experiments. Max had hated the feeling then, of being lost, detached, and he hated it now. Then light knifed down into one of his eyes and all his pains awoke at once.
“Do you hear me, Lieutenant Nikomedes?”
“Yes,” croaked Max. His throat felt raw. The light flicked off, then stabbed into the other eye. “That hurts.”
“I should imagine that it’s the least of your hurts. Has the painkiller worn off completely then?”
“I hope so, because if it hasn’t you should just kill me now.” His throat felt crushed and his kidneys ached like hell. The light went off and Max’s eyes adjusted to the setting. He was in the sickbay with the Doc hovering over him. His name was Noyes, and he was only a medtech, but the crew still called him Doc. The service was short of surgeons. Command didn’t want to spare one for this voyage.
“Your pupils look good,” Noyes continued. “There’s a ruptured blood vessel in the right eye. It’s not pretty, but the damage is superficial. We had some concern about how long you’d been without oxygen when you came in.”
Yeah, thought Max. He was concerned too. “So how long was it?”
“Not long. Seconds, maybe. A couple of the shooters found you unconscious in the gym.”
“And so they brought the Corpse to sickbay?”
“You know that nickname?” Noyes administered an injection and Max’s pain lessened. “Whoever attacked you knew what he was doing. He cut off your air supply without crushing your windpipe or leaving any fingerprint type bruises on your throat. You’re lucky-the shooters did chest compressions as soon as they found you and got you breathing again.”
So this wasn’t just a warning. Someone had tried to kill him, and failed. Unless the shooters were in on it. But who would do it and why? His hand shot up to his breast pocket. Gordet’s note with the secret codes was still there.
“What’s that?” asked Noyes, noticing the gesture.
“A list of suspects,” replied Max. He wondered if someone had followed him from Engineering. “Did you hear the one about the political officer who was killed during wargame exercises?”
Suspicion flickered across the Doc’s face. “No,” he said slowly.
“They couldn’t call it friendly fire because he had no friends.”
Noyes didn’t laugh. He was young, barely thirty, if that. But his face was worn, and he had a deep crease between his eyes. “Can I ask you a direct question?”
“If it’s about who did this-”
“No. It’s about the ship’s mission.”
“I may not be able to answer.”
“It’s just the crew, you know what they’re saying, that this is a suicide mission. We’re supposed to sneak into Adarean space, nuke their capital, and then blow ourselves up, vaporize the evidence.”