Grayson Sontang in Space - Chapter 3 - Part 2

Grayson was on her third glass of brandy. The two human Siriuns - Goldstone and another security person named Hackner - had long since given up trying to keep pace with her. They'd had closer to one and a half and were definitely showing the effects, though they probably didn't realize it. The Confeds did though and were quietly nursing their beers as they collected chips. Evans, who probably was assigned to bridge duty for the night, had settled for water. Grayson felt sorry for him. Sip, the true Siriun was just finishing his second glass of brandy. Apparently, Alliance Officers didn't have the same restrictions that the Confeds had. However, Grayson had no idea if it was affecting him. For all she knew, he(?) could have been drinking water. Fortunately, he didn't seem able to read the humans any better than they could read him.

She was pleased to see that Bogart was attempting to employ her advice from last night, though he seemed to avoid any eye contact with her. For her part, she was letting the others think the brandy was beginning to affect her. Her 'tells' became more pronounced as the evening wore on and she saw Hendon raise an eyebrow at her a couple of times. Bogart was ignoring almost everything she did, though she caught him smiling to himself once when she scratched the back of her neck several times over, then collected a big pot on an even bigger bluff. As she had suspected, Hendon was a supreme bluffer. The only time she was relatively sure that he wasn't bluffing was when he grinned as he collected his pot. Like she'd told Bogart, if he was grinning, it was consciously, purposefully; not from pleasure or humor.

She was chaffing at resisting the urge to run the table. She didn't dare attract extra attention to herself, but she knew Hendon would be suspicious if she didn't end up with the most chips. She felt like she was walking a tightrope and it was actually way harder than just winning, especially because she wanted to take Goldstone and Hackner's money. Well, and maybe Hendon's, except he was probably her greatest challenge at the table so she wasn't holding out too much hope there. By midnight, Sip, Evans and Bogart were down, but not by too much. Hendon was comfortably ahead, and she was pleased as she managed to meet her reputation without being so far ahead as to raise thoughts of cheating. Unfortunately, Goldstone and Hackner were now throwing real cash into the pots, betting carelessly as she had predicted, counting on that one big win. She rolled her eyes at the Siriun currency. Lot of good that would do her anywhere else in the galaxy. When they finally finished their second glass of brandy and asked for a third, Grayson actually tried to dissuade them, even though she was on her fourth. When they got insistent, she looked to Hendon for support, but he only shrugged, so she handed over the bottle.

Their play went even further downhill and she was pleased to see that the others on Hendon's team were hovering around break even by the end of another hour. She suggested calling it quits then, but was resoundingly outvoted, and they played on for another hour, until Goldstone and Hackner had run out of walking-around cash as well as chips. The Tantalean brandy went a long way to taking the edge off their losses and they were quite jovial as the party finally broke up. She didn't know if they would feel the same way in the morning, but Hendon's team was well-pleased with themselves. She had no idea if Sip was. She did notice, though, that she had gotten use to the smell and to the gravelly voice of the hairy humanoid. Even Bogart finally acknowledged her presence, thanking her for all her tips. But it was Hendon that took her arm as she left the rec room to head for her quarters.

"So why would an expert poker player throw away four tens," he asked quietly as the others faded away to their various sleeping areas.

"Must have been drinking brandy or something," she said, annoyed that she hadn't seen him peeking at her cards when he gathered them for the next deal.

"How does someone with your ego throw away a chance to flip off a whole room full of men that piss her off? You could have ended that game hours ago. Right?"

She stopped dead and turned to him. "What do you care? Seriously, why the hell do you care?"

"Because there is a reason for everything you do. And I want to know what the reason for losing was."

"I didn't lose. Weren't you there?"

"Bullshit! Evans and Bogart were totally outclassed. Sip barely knew how to play. They all should have been out in the first hour. The SecTeam should have been out of chips and money by the second."

"Is that what you intended?" she demanded. "Take them for everything just so you could have a play-off with me? Hell of a way to treat your team."

"No. But it should have been what you intended. And were perfectly capable of accomplishing."

Grayson threw her hands in the air. "Hard as it is for you to believe, I actually like Evans and Bogart. And I have nothing against Sip. He or she hasn't broken anything on my ship yet and that makes him or her all right in my book. Why did you invite me if you expected me to beat them to a pulp?"

"To see if you would."

She stared at him, then shook her head in confusion. "What? Weren't you just accusing me of cheating by not wiping them out?"

"I told you. It's the reason I'm interested in. Your ego would have demanded that you win. Something more important than your ego was at play. You controlled that whole game from start to finish. You determined how much each person ended up with. You wasted some of your precious Tantalean brandy, supposedly to make sure the SecTeam would lose. I figure that was for my benefit, because you certainly didn't need it. Bogart told me you described their tells for him. Or maybe it was so they wouldn't mind losing?" he guessed. "So back to the original question. Why?"

"Maybe I just decided you were right. Sometimes it's not a good idea to antagonize people who have the power to hurt you." She tried to retrieve her arm from his grip, but he wasn't in a mood to let go and she wasn't wild about testing her fighting skills against him, especially given their unequal alcohol imbibement.

He just laughed. "Lady, you live to antagonize people. I bet you can count on one hand the number of bars you've been in where you didn't start a fight."

"I don't always start them," she protested petulantly.

"No. Sometimes you manipulate others into starting them. Like you manipulated Bogart. You figured he was the weakest player, so you took him aside and schooled him."

"In more ways than one," she countered, then mentally smacked herself. Hendon was right about one thing, she loved antagonizing him.

"You know," he said thoughtfully. "I've been giving it a lot of consideration. I figure that any 'trader' who was offered the kind of money that you were, let alone jacking it up to triple, and who was running empty, and who had nothing to hide, would jump at the chance to make such a short, easy run, even in Siriun Sector. That's not even considering what can be picked up real cheap to run out of the sector with. Yet we had to drag you kicking and screaming. So that leads me to just one conclusion. You have something to hide. Not too surprising. The only question left, is, what. At first, I figured it was contraband. A couple of bottles of brandy certainly do not rise to that threshold. Maybe a hidden hold I haven't found yet.

"But at the game tonight, I think I finally figured it out. See, I'm not as smart or clever as you. I get to things in a slow, plodding way. But I like to think that I still get there eventually. And what I got to, is that there is some connection between you and the Siriuns, specifically, the Siriuns on this ship. You've been avoiding them like the plague. Then you run headlong into that confrontation this morning, on impulse, and go all freaky on me afterward."

"Freaky?" she demanded. "You haven't begun to see freaky."

"That's my concern," he pointed out. "You... were not you, at that game tonight."

"You've never played poker with me. You have no idea..."

"I know you win. Handily. I know you lack patience. Dragging out a game like that is not your style. Giving away tells is not your style. I strongly suspect that giving away Tantalean brandy unnecessarily is not your style. Throwing away a winning hand is not your style. Letting Confeds walk away from the table with money left is not your style. That leads me to the loose end. The Siriuns.

"Your records indicate you've never been in Siriun Sector. Siriuns aren't big on travel outside the sector. So, it begs the question. How did it come about that you have a problematic relationship with Siriuns? Given that you've all but admitted to being a spacer, although that, too, is not in your records, it stands to reason that your acquaintance with Siriun Sector occurred during those years, under a different name. Perhaps a different face."

"I'll tell you what," she snapped. "When you figure it all out, you let me know. In the meantime, I'm going to get some sleep because I have a jump to make tomorrow." She tugged again, hoping to free her arm.

He studied her in a detached way that was more eerie than anger would have been, before finally releasing her. She backed away a couple of steps before turning and following the bridgework around to her quarters. Once in her bedroom, she doublechecked the manual lock before sprawling on her bed and staring at the ceiling. Despite the fact that she had to be up early in the morning, she was determined to have a plan for dealing with Hendon before she slept that night. She had misjudged him, thinking it would be easy to distract him. In reality, he was proving to be almost as tenacious as she was, and that was a problem. They were too much alike. She wasn't used to dealing with people that were like her. That was why Fogg set her teeth on edge.

Something in her mind began to click. She had been able to con Fogg because his ego made him believe he couldn't be conned. And she had conned him by feeding his ego, letting him believe he had seduced her. Hendon had mentioned her ego after the game. He saw her the same way she had seen Fogg. If Hendon was so much like her, wouldn't he have an ego that refused to believe she could con him? Wasn't that exactly the point he was trying to get across to her after the game. That she wasn't fooling him? Why else would he go to the trouble of explaining his thought processes to her if not to show her how smart he was? He was trying to get her to fold, bluffing her by hinting at his hand. But Grayson had her own secret ploy. If you're losing the game, change games. She smiled as she finally allowed herself to drift off to sleep.

---

Grayson was rubbing her eyes as she entered the bridge. Evans was ensconced in the control chair, studying the simulation that Hal was displaying on the main screen. The wormhole appeared as a swirling vortex, looking more like a whirlpool to be avoided than something to be aimed for. "Hey, good game," he called to her, though obviously distracted by the task at hand.

She grunted in response. "Hal, coffee and some plastic something or other for breakfast." She glanced at the monitors on the command console. Hal was getting good at guessing which information she would want prior to a jump. "There's a couple of freighters out there," she told Evans, unnecessarily. "Can you pull info from the Feds on them."

"Already done," he assured her, tapping a key to shoot the information to her screen.

"Oh, damn," she moaned. "One of them is carrying coffee from Earth. What I wouldn't give to have a teleporter like in the sci-fi movies."

He laughed sympathetically. "I've heard nothing else is the same. Aren't you from there?"

"Yeah," she lied. "It's been way too long."

"Why?" he asked, actually curious. "I mean, you can go pretty much wherever you want as a trader."

"Not that easy," she said, retrieving her tray from the dumbwaiter. "Hal, what is this on my plate?"

"Eggs," the computer replied. "The refrige was stocked with a supply of liquid eggs."

"Not that frozen, reconstituted, dehydrated, synthetic shit?"

"Liquified, but otherwise the product of domesticated, Earth-originated fowl."

"Oh, my stars!" she exclaimed, taking a bite before she even got back to her console. "Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, trading. If you're going to make it as a trader, you need to work the systems that are in the market for pretty much anything ya got. That means the ones farthest from Earth and most widespread. That means either the outer arm of the forespiral or the aftspiral. It's a long, unprofitable way to Earth from either of those."

"But think of the demand for Earth items!"

Grayson snorted. "Number one, how much do you think I could carry on this bucket? I can't begin to compete with the freighters. Number two, the outer arms are the poorest systems in the galaxy. Nobody would be able to afford what I brought."

"I guess there's a lot to take into consideration if you're a trader," he conceded.

"Oh, Honey, I haven't even started on the cost of hydrogen for the engines, oxygen backups, non-perishable food. Do you have any idea what it's like to eat the same green stuff day after day because it's what your ship's plants can produce? I invest big bucks in food coloring just so I don't have to eat something green day in and day out."

"Don't you get homesick?" he asked.

She paused thoughtfully. "I miss certain things. But there are a lot of things I don't miss." She was talking both about Earth and her real home planet, but he didn't need to know that.

"Yeah, I get that. I miss family most, my wife and kids. You have family back home?"

Grayson opened her mouth to give her pat answer, but then paused. "No," she said quietly, thinking of Earth. As much as she loved the planet, there was no one there she thought of as family. And on her home planet, there was no one she wanted to acknowledge as family. "I guess I'm creating family as I go from planet to planet. People I care about, want to return to, spend time with. I suppose that's why I tend to run pretty much the same circuit. Those worlds have become my home."

"Nice," he said, nodding.

"So, any info on the hole? No glitches?"

"Nope. Clean jumps."

"It can't be that easy. Not where Sirius Sector is involved. Are those freighters coming or going?"

"They are headed into the sector. Like you were saying, this is the straightest jump into Sirius itself, so it makes sense."

Grayson stared at the screen. She shook her head. "Something feels wrong. I'm going to slow down a notch, wait for a report back from those freighters after they've jumped."

"I don't understand. What feels wrong?"

She took a sip of her coffee, and the caffeine went straight to her brain, like a light being turned on. "For one thing, coffee from Earth going in to Sirius. Coffee grows on Sirius Prime. Not as good, but close enough that a freighter isn't going to haul tons in. Plus, we're on the opposite side from Earth. Shit, shit, shit. Hal, vertical flip, hit the brakes at ten gees. Now, now, now!" She grabbed the arm of her chair and clutched at her cup of coffee, sucking on the opening as she stared at the sim.

"Should I alert someone?" Evans asked.

"Who's going to listen? We're in Fed space. They don't give a damn what you have to say and they give way less than a damn what I have to say. Add to that the fact that we'd have to say we're suspicious about a coffee shipment? They'd be shitting themselves laughing so hard."

"We need to alert someone," he said, nothing if not by the book.

"Then contact your Confed people and tell them to watch that freighter coming through. But not get too close," she added. "Put him through, Hal."

He had just completed the code-like message when Hendon came on the bridge. "Are we decelerating?" he asked.

"Thank you for the eggs," Grayson said.

"Answer my question!" he demanded.

"Yes. Thank you for the eggs."

"What the hell is going on?" he asked, directing the question to Evans.

"There is a suspicious freighter. I accepted Sontang's recommendation to slow until the freighter cleared the jump. I relayed our concerns to Confed."

"Our concerns?" Hendon asked, incredulous.

"Yes, Sir. The freighter reports that it is carrying coffee. That is not a usual product for Sirius Prime."

"And you know this how?" Hendon asked, his voice low.

"Because I told him," Grayson interjected. "And you know damn well that it's true, mister customs man. Sirius Prime exports coffee. Crappy coffee, but nonetheless. Either that freighter is lying about what it is carrying, or it's lying about what it's carrying. Pick one."

"So you think it's smuggling something?" he asked, with more than a hint of sarcasm.

"No. I think it's going to blow..." On the main screen simulation, the wormhole suddenly blinked out of existence. Grayson gestured at the screen. "... up the wormhole. Hal, evasive maneuver Epsilon thirty-five gees. Go, go, go. Ship comm. Alert, brace for impact!" She appeared to be counting, then said, "Five, four, three, two, one, impact." And the ship shook from stem to stern as the engines and maneuvering exhausts fired, and an energy field blasted out in all directions from what used to be a wormhole shoving the ship away from the vicinity at nearly the speed of light.

Curiously, the blast of hydrogen exhaust from the ship's engine split the energy flow around the ship, protecting it from the force and actually slowing the velocity below the speed of the blast rather than adding to an unfathomable, and unsurvivable light speed.

"Hal, I need a sim," Grayson called out through gritted teeth.

"Parameters?" the computer asked.

"Five hundred AU, ship centered. Sim the blast field." She stared at the screen. On the two-dimensional display, the blast field displayed as a purplish halo, the densest center of which had just passed beyond the Breathless Dragon. She knew in three dimensions it would be more like a hollow sphere. "Send recording, past twenty minutes, on Fed Emergency channel."

"Understood, sent."

"Will it get through?" she asked.

"Indeterminant. Supralight transmissions appear to be experiencing interference."

"So, some of that energy is supralight. Damn. Try every ten minutes till you receive confirmation. At some point it should disperse enough to let the message through."

"Grayson?" Evans said. She glanced at him. He was staring at the screen. "That other freighter. It's just gone."

"They wouldn't have known what hit them," she said softly. "New sim, Hal. I want to see every star system within one thousand AU." A sphere appeared on the screen and slowly rotated. "Any intelligent life on those?" There were only a couple of systems displayed.

"Nearest system with intelligent life is four thousand six hundred and forty-three AU."

"So about twenty-five, twenty-six days. Can you calculate if solar winds will deflect the blast field?"

"Incomplete data suggests eighty-seven percent probability of ninety-three percent deflection for that system. Supralight energy will get through but should only interfere with transmissions."

"Okay, give me the sim with the blast display again. Are we out of the worst of it?" She squinted at the screen. The ship appeared to be at the inner edge of the halo now.

"Some sublight energy is trailing the blast zone."

"What about particles, dust, anything like that?"

"There is no matter in a wormhole," the computer answered patiently.

"There was a freighter," Evans muttered.

"The mass of the freighter was converted to energy," Hal replied to the unspoken question.

"Cut engines to one gee. I want as much data as you can gather, Hal."

There was a groan behind her as the gee force and grav field adjusted to one another. Grayson spun her chair around and almost flew out of it before the vying forces settled. Hendon was laying with his back against the wall under the dumbwaiter. She had forgotten all about him. She leapt across the intervening space as soon as the grav field allowed. He was groggily pushing himself up and she pushed him back down. "Lay still. Let me see if you broke anything. Didn't they teach you what 'brace for impact' means?"

"Your count was off," he muttered.

"Evans, can you check on the others. Hal, I'm going to need nav calculations stat. At this speed we're going to run into something sooner rather than later." She looked back at Hendon. "I don't see any blood. Were you knocked out?"

"Just for a few seconds, I think," he rolled cautiously onto his back. "Some aspirin and I'll be fine."

She shaded his eyes from the overhead light, watching his pupils. "Good thing you're so hard headed. Arms and legs all move? Toes wiggle?"

"Fancy yourself a doctor?" he asked, sitting up with a groan.

"If we were on a freighter I'd tell you to either die or get your ass back to work."

"I should go help Evans," he said, struggling to his feet.

"You should go sit down. I'll get you some of Hal's coffee. That'll cure anything." He obeyed, which surprised the hell out of Grayson. But then he was requesting Hal open a comm to Evans before she could order coffee for him. Hal, though, bless his core processor, had been eavesdropping and delivered cups for both of them as Hendon listened to Evans report. It seemed that Bogart, Het and Sip had been on their assigned cargo floors and had reasonable control over the human cargo because of the upcoming jump. They immediately got everyone down on the floor when they heard her warning, and as a result, although there were a large number of bumps and bruises, there were very few serious injuries. Grayson breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled a bottle of pain killers from a drawer in her console and delivered them, along with the coffee, to Hendon. She was feeling a little worse for wear herself as she returned to her own seat.

"Okay, Hal, let's shut the engines down and I'll need a damage report. Then we can flip so we can start breaking. We'll want to put the worst injured in gee chairs and figure out how fast we can decelerate after we get a more complete report. In the meantime, what's in our path and how far out? Give me a thirty degree arc. And it would be really nice if we could end up at speed near a wormhole to find our way back. Have you heard anything from the Feds?"

"Incoming supralight is still garbled, but indications are that the Fed is aware of an occurrence."

Hendon had put headphones on so that he could talk to Evans while Grayson was talking to Hal. He took them off and turned to her. "We have a problem. The kid is missing."

"What kid? And so help me, if you say the prince..."

"Sorry," he shrugged. "I'll go look for him," he said, standing stiffly.

"Sit!" she commanded and once again was amazed that he obeyed. She was going to have to check him again for a concussion. "Hal. Search ship for humans not in cargo holds."

Human in storage room Z. FaceRec positive for Pilot Evans. He appears to be acquiring a first aid kit. Human in your quarters."

"Mine? Show me."

"Camera is off at your request."

"Don't be snippy. Turn the camera back on and show me." She watched the screen. "Shit. It's the little rug rat. Hal, how did he get in there? Everything is supposed to be locked."

"Damage report indicates portal controls may have been bypassed."

"Little shithead!" she swore, jumping up from her chair.

"I'll get him," Hendon said.

"You sit here and drink your coffee," she snapped, but this time he just glowered at her.

"I'd rather not have to explain to the king that his son was thrown out an airlock. You and Hal work on the damage reports." Once he was up and moving, he seemed to be more functional, so she sat back down and began pouring through Hal's readouts on damage.

"Okay, Hal, we've got redundancy on the maneuvering exhausts but you'll need to calculate compensation for the busted ones until we can get them fixed."

She glanced up at the main screen that was showing their trajectory. "Hal, that wormhole at neg nine degrees arc and ten degrees declination? Can we get down to speed in time to use it? Where does it go?"

"Not given current condition of hydrogen engines."

"What!" She scanned the damage report scrolling down till she came to the main engines. "Hal, this should have been at the top of the list!"

"List is arranged by degree of damage. Incapacitated systems are listed first. Hydrogen engines are functional but thrust capacity is limited by valve damage incurred before full capacity provided protection from energy blast field."

"So, what, twenty percent? We'll never get this beast slowed down enough."

"May I also point out limited damage to gravitron field," Hal offered. She scanned further then moaned.

"Oh, Hal. If we survive we are so going to have to prioritize this listing."

"May I also suggest you review damage to supplemental systems for passengers?"

"Okay, I get it. I will read the whole damage report. Get me Evans on comm." She started back up at the top of the list and began speed-reading.

"Evans here."

"Can you spare Het and Sip to work on the oxygen systems, then water? It looks like everything tore loose."

"Sip is on it already. Het is helping Bogart triage injuries. I'll release her as soon as possible."

"Thank you. Can you take over the bridge as soon as you can be spared?"

"Sure. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, but the ship isn't. I need to make some repairs."

"You want Sip to help?"

"No, he needs to get that oxygen back on line. That's his priority."

"K."

"Hendon is fetching your wayward prince."

"Is Hendon okay?"

"He says he is. I have to go off-line for a while. Hal, close comm. Encapsulate the hydrogen and vent the engine room."

"May I point out..."

"I already know. That's where the gravitron field went down. Engines first. And Hal, nobody but me gets in the engine room. Nobody! Understood?"

"Understood."

"I'm going on ears," she said, pulling the gadgets from her drawer and hooking them around her ears. "All of your comm with me is by ears only. I want to hear all other comm on the ship, with yours on override. Got it?"

"Understood."

"Let me know when fuel is encapsulated and engine room air has been recycled."

"Engine temp is at twelve sixteen k and falling fifty k per minute."

"K. Should be cool enough by the time I get my tools. Throw up any information I will need on the big monitor down there."

Grayson ran for her quarters to get warmer gear and magnetic boots, listening to the drone of comm between the Confed officers. She was relieved to find that Hendon and the bratty prince were gone from her quarters. She also gave the control bypass a brief moment of admiration. Hers would have been neater, but the concept was solid. That prince was going to give Sirius Prime a run for its money before he grew into the monarchy. She grabbed what she needed and headed the long way around to the other side of the outer ring and the room where tools and spare parts were kept. The last thing she wanted was to run into any of her cargo. When she emerged from supply room X completely laden with gear and tools, she was no longer running.

"Hal, what's the situation now in the engine room? I'm going in on second level."

"Temperature is at three hundred K, cycling air now. Fuel is encapsulated."

Okay, open the door as soon as air equalizes. Is the entire grav field out in there?"

"Aft half of room."

"Doors locked?"

"Of course."

She glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention to her or the engine room. "As soon as I'm inside, open the vault. Hal, if anyone asks, I'm off comm until I tell you different. Got it?"

"Understood."

The portal slid open just as she reached it and snapped shut behind her. Grayson dropped most of what she was carrying over the railing to the lower level, more than a little pleased to hear it land with a gravity-induced clunk. She donned her mag boots and climbed down the access ladder, then picked her way gingerly toward the engine shell that was splitting and opening to greet her. Inside were her shiny, new, super-charged, malfunctioning engines. Gravity gave out on her before she was close enough to read all the meters and dials on the back side of the engine. She tapped her heels to activate the boots and crossed the last couple of meters with a peculiar sliding walk.

Grayson studied the dials, then stared forlornly up at the area where the valves were refusing to open fully. There was simply no easy way to get up there and work on them, magnetic boots or not, when gravity wasn't playing its part. The only good news was that if she slipped, it wouldn't hurt. Unless of course she drifted over to where the field was working, in which case she'd fall like a brick. She went back over to where she had left her equipment, donning a warm jacket and lugging the rest of the tools over to where the grav field stopped working. She donned a magnetic belt and began loading hand tools around her waist, then slung a large multipurpose electronic gadget pack over her shoulder. She clicked her heels again to activate the boots, then repeated her deep space manta.

"In space, it's not the weight, it's the mass. In space, there is no up or down. In space, throwing up is a really bad idea."

Then she began her sliding walk toward the aft part of the engine where stuck valves awaited her. She rounded the bulk of the starboard engine and gripped a rung of the access ladder. She took a deep breath and clicked her boots off, letting her body drift at will as she pulled herself 'up' rung by rung. She knew spacers who would have jumped to the top of the engine. She wasn't one of them. When she reached the vicinity of the valve, she rested her cheek against the cool metal and repeated the third part of the mantra a couple more times.

The top of the engine was a horizontal, cylindrical section leading to the external thruster. The valve was situated almost all the way to the wall of the ship. Grayson clutched at the broad rounded top and kicked her boots on again, swearing as the magnets yanked her feet against the metal of the engine. She wiggled around until she was straddling the cylinder and inched her way toward the valve, where she was finally able to slide her hand along the bulge that signified the valve section and find one of the handholds. With her other hand, she reached back to her belt and found the biggest wrench she had. Using boots, handhold and knees to cling to the engine, she gave the valve section a hard whack with the wrench. The noise echoed through the room, hurting her ears.

"Hal, did that do it?"

"Did what do what?" he asked. Grayson glanced at the monitor across the room. It showed no change. She sighed. Of course it couldn't be that easy.

"Never mind," she said, returning the wrench to its place on her belt. She managed to get the multitool pulled over her head and clipped to the handy utility hook on the engine without the pack or her body floating off to bang against wall or ceiling or floor. Gingerly, she sat up and wrapped her legs around the cylinder, wishing she exercised, or at least stretched, a little more often. Barfights didn't seem to contribute much to limberness. Eventually she got the appropriate probe inserted into the appropriate orifice and the valve rotated out of the cylinder. Grayson examined it gloomily. The valve was actually a series of six disks, all of which were scorched and each of which needed the scorching polished off so that they could once more slide against each other to function properly.

She pulled a grinder out of the multitool pack and settled goggles on her nose. As soon as she set to work on the worst of the carbon on the first disk, she realized she hadn't thought to bring a face mask, and, with no gravity, the dust floated everywhere, even getting inside her goggles. She paused long enough to pull the neck of her tee shirt up over her nose, and went back to work. Each disk required coarse grinding, then fine grinding, then polishing. Since the disks were closely placed, she had to do one side of each disk, rotate it back into its compartment, do one side of the next disk, and on till she did the last, then climb over the bulge of the valve compartment and start the whole process again from the other side, except now with the added irritation of being hard up against the wall of the ship, which limited movement. She was only on the second disk from the back side when she looked down and saw Hendon, standing at the edge of the grav field, watching her.

"What the fuck, Hal! I said no one in here."

"Portal controls were bypassed," the computer answered.

"Get out," she hissed at Hendon. "Get the fuck out of here!"

He spread his arms. "You think I'll suddenly develop amnesia? Forget I saw this? How many crates can you fit in here?"

"Can we please have this discussion later, because I'm this close to throwing up and trust me, it will not be pretty. If you want to survive this rocket-man ride, you'll get the fuck out of here."

He shrugged and disappeared behind the bulk of the machine. Grayson slumped - which isn't easy to do without gravity - and rested her head on her arm, trying to calm her breathing. 'Survival first,' she told herself, rolling her head to the side to look at the valve disks still requiring her attention. She straightened and fired up the grinder, setting to work on the next disk.

A moment later, she jumped and almost shot up off the of the cylinder. Hendon had appeared atop the cylinder of the other engine, moving much more gracefully in zero-gee than she could. He straddled the other cylinder, taking advantage of his longer legs and held out a hand for the probe that would rotate the valve to where it could be accessed. When Grayson only stared at him with the grinder whirring noisily in her hand, he pulled the multitool pack around and found it himself. Once he had the disks exposed, he found the coarse grinder and went to work. Grayson shook herself and went back to her efforts with the fine grinder.

Somehow, perhaps because he seemed perfectly comfortable in zero-gee whereas she fought it every moment, he finished his engine only moments after she had her valve back together and tested to Hal's satisfaction. She pulled herself head first down the access ladder, letting her boots slide along the metal of the engine casing, then all but crawled to where the grav field was working, laying on her back on the floor, waiting for her stomach to settle. Her eyes and nose and mouth were filled with the grit from the valves, and she was wondering if perhaps it smelled even worse that the hairy Siriun twins, when she realized Hendon was standing over her. He reached out a hand to help her up, but there was no way she was ready to make that concession. She rolled onto her hands and knees, but then his arm was about her waist and he was lifting her as easily as if she was still in the zero-gee field. Grayson didn't have the energy left to fight, but she could still swear.

"Let go of me, you fucking asshole!" She flailed with her tired arms, but her feet were stuck to the floor.

"Turn off your boots," Hendon said calmly. "If you want to kick me, you have to turn off your boots."

"I'm going to kick your ass," she threatened, but her legs still wouldn't cooperate, and he finally used his toe to tap her heels and turn them off. He released the belt from her waist and let it drop to the floor, then pulled her from the room. A moment later, she was on the floor just outside the engine room, and Bogart was kneeling over her, squirting a solution in her eyes, nose and mouth until she was sure he was trying to drown her. She coughed and spat and swore until he stopped. But then he had a mask over her face and was forcing something into her lungs that burned. She coughed even harder and spat out black gunk until she was sure her lungs would turn inside out. Her stomach certainly did, spewing what little she'd had to eat all over the floor. A distant, detached part of her mind was chortling, thinking that the bots would finally have something to do. By that point, all she could think was that the Confeds had decided to torture her, never mind that Hendon appeared to be going through the same torture. The shipboard emergency was a distant nagging at the back of her mind, struggling to get her attention through a fog of physical fatigue.

She didn't exactly remember how she got there, but reality began to slowly reimpose itself as she stood in her own shower, washing grit and vomit down the drain for the recycler to handle. Somebody - Bogart? - pulled her out a few minutes later and wrapped a towel around her. Even as she mechanically began to dry off, her mind started functioning again and she realized they were under significant deceleration. She rushed out of the bathroom, grabbing the first clothes she came to and running - as best one could against the vying forces of thrust and grav field - for the bridge.

"Hal, status report," she yelled as she ran. She was just beginning to pull her clothes on as she burst through the portal. Evans looked up, then quickly away as she finished dressing, staring at the main screen.

"Decelerating at thirty gees," Hal reported. "Deflecting nine degrees starboard, negative ten degrees declination to nearest wormhole. Secondary wormhole targeted at negative five degrees port, negative six degrees declination. Approximately two days additional travel time..."

"What? Why? Coffee."

"Nearest wormhole requires additional deceleration. One valve disk is cracked. Estimated risk of failure at additional thrust is thirty percent, increasing five percent per gee force. Human risk factors must be ascertained. I am not equipped with sufficient data to calculate risk."

"Huh?"

"He means the cargo," Evans explained. "He doesn't know how to calculate the risk/benefit of human cargo."

"Oh. Hal, do we have a replacement disk for the valve?"

"No. It was the defective valve that was replaced prior to leaving Harmony."

"Remind me to have words with the vendors. Do you have a complete injury report for the cargo?" she asked.

"No."

She retrieved a coffee from the dumbwaiter and sat, grateful for the physical comfort of the command chair. "Let's see the damage report again. Anything new?"

The readout scrolled on screen, but Hal added commentary, noting that most of the jury-rigged systems to accommodate the passengers were back on line. Hal had also been able to fix a few of the maneuvering exhaust thrusts, employing backup circuits. Grayson slowly began to feel better for having survived a wormhole destruct, being thrown parsecs off course, even for having Hendon discover her secret hold. Survival, she told herself. The first step is always survival.

"Hal, how far to that next wormhole?" she asked, sipping at her coffee.

"Estimated ten days."

Grayson was silent for a long moment. "Ten days? And where does it take us?"

"The vicinity of Hadir," Hal answered.

"Excuse me? Hadir?"

"Yes."

"As in Puppis Sector?"

"Yes."

"Plot a course from that wormhole back to Sirius, please."

A moment later a very convoluted course of six jumps was laid out on the main screen. "Plot a course from the next wormhole out, please." Another convoluted course of six jumps appeared on the screen. Grayson's skilled eyes traced and calculated the timeline for each plot. "Hal?"

"Yes, Grayson?"

"Twenty days? Once we reach either jump point? So, thirty, thirty-two days?"

"Approximately."

"And we have food and oxygen enough for?"

"Estimated fifteen to eighteen days, depending on rationing."

Hendon walked onto the bridge just then. He glared at Grayson. "You were supposed to be resting."

She glared back. "Injury report," she demanded.

He sighed and sank to the floor with his back against the wall, much easier than fighting the gee forces. "One critical but stable in what passes for a medical unit on this bucket. Hal reprogramed a bot to monitor his vitals. Four more in serious but stable condition, in gee chairs. Two more, elderly but with minor injuries in the remaining gee chairs."

"Where you should be," she snapped.

He waved a hand. "It's just bruising."

"With edema, under gee force."

"As long as I keep moving, it'll be fine. I instructed Evans to do a thirty gee burn for two hours. We can assess tolerance at that point, figure out how long and hard we can burn."

"We'll never slow enough to make that first wormhole."

He shrugged and winced. "I'd rather take two extra days and make for the second one anyway. Hadir Prime isn't exactly a vacation spot to stop for supplies." He peered at her. "Have you been there."

She wrinkled her nose. "Once. Not the easiest 'people' to deal with even when you're carrying something they want."

"Then we can agree on the next jump out?"

She glanced back at the main screen. "El Relha is the end point. It's puny but should have the basics." She scratched her head. "Maybe I could call in a favor, get someone to run a replacement disk out there. It'll cost an arm and a leg," she said, glancing back at Hendon with a raised eyebrow. "Unless you want to have your king meet us there and pick up this motley crew."

"You're not dumping these people on a planet to wait for a rescue that will take more than twice as long to get there and back as for us to get home."

Grayson knew he wanted to say it more forcefully, but pain and fatigue were etching his features. "Go take a nap on my bed. You can set it for low gee." When he scowled at her, she quickly added, "Please," though perhaps a little more sugary than was necessary, especially given she was batting her eyelashes at him.

Evans turned in his chair. "We can hold down the fort, chief."

Hendon sighed and pushed stiffly to his feet. "Are you going to change course?"

"Yes, after the burn. With some of the exhausts out, it will be easier to do it nice and slow, correct along the way. Now go."

"One hour. Wake me."

He headed out the portal and Grayson turned back to the screen. "Evans, forget to set that timer, will you? Hal, what's in the vicinity of El Relha that might have the part we need?"

Evans was watching as Hal zoomed out on the star field and began highlighting potential systems. "I don't understand," he said. "Those old valves were standardized years ago. You should be able to find reconstructs if not new manufacture almost anywhere."

Grayson studied the back of his head. Apparently, Hendon hadn't told him what he'd found in the engine room. Interesting. "I did some customization and retrofitting. I'm a hopeless tweaker."

Evans laughed. "I would be, too, but Confed frowns on you tweaking their equipment."

"I can imagine. Want a cup of real coffee?"

"Earth coffee? After today, I may never drink coffee again."

"You will once you taste the real thing." She ordered from Hal.

When she started to get up to retrieve the cups, Evans jumped up and beat her to it. He shook his head as he handed her the coffee. "You two are peas in a pod. You're hurting as bad as he is, aren't you? Tell the truth."

"I wasn't thrown around inside a metal box."

"You look like you were."

"Gee, thanks." She gave him a half-hearted scowl and he smirked as he went back to the control console. "Hal, what's the status with the supralight?"

"I have mapped regions where the disruption is the worst. The blast pattern was unequal. Relay stations are being reprogrammed to take advantage of clearer lines of sight."

"Good, so they've figured that out, too." She glanced at the main screen again. "Throw me up a list of the parts we need and I'll see if I can find someone who has them and someone willing to carry them to El Relha." She began tapping away on her keyboard, watching Evans surreptitiously as he appeared to be polling Hal for possible alternative routes back to Sirius from El Relha. On one of her monitors, she threw up an image of the bridge right before the wormhole exploded. It was eating at her how a highly experienced spacer like Hendon had failed to protect himself, despite her warning that the blast was coming. She watched the video, then went back and replayed it in slow motion. Instead of backing up against the wall, or diving for the floor, he appeared to be moving toward her, even leaping, at the moment of impact. Any spacer knew that midair was the worst possible place to be when there was a sudden speed change. What had he been thinking? Was he trying to prevent her from doing something? All her commands had been verbal, and it was too late to stop any of her actions. So why? She killed the monitor as Evans turned toward her, even though he could only see the back of it.

"This coffee is good. I can feel it all the way to my toes."

"Gotta keep those toes awake," she agreed and went back to her search for parts and pliable traders.

---

A couple hours later, Hendon still hadn't reappeared. Evans had shut down thrust and they coasted as Grayson walked him through the course adjustment, amazed at his gentle touch on the controls. She had seen some of his flying ability, but that had been on a shuttle. Despite the unusual configuration of her maneuvering thrusts and some of them being out of commission, he did a wonderful job in short order. She tried to get him to take a break, but he was hot on the trail of some navigational puzzle, so she had left him to it and went to gather her own status report on the cargo.

Her first stop, though, was the engine room. If Hendon hadn't told anybody what he'd seen, she would at least make sure no one else had a chance to see it. She got everything cleaned up and lugged the tools back to the storage room, then went in search of Het and Sip, to check on what they had repaired and listen to what else they wanted to do. Although they seemed somewhat surprised to see her, they were eager to show her what they'd done and respectfully asked if they could do more to divert power from other systems. Grayson had to grudgingly admit that the Confeds, for all their impositions, had given her a good team. It turned out that Bogart had initially begun training as a medical officer so he had the injured well in hand for the most part, and had jury-rigged splints for some broken limbs with Het's help. Also, one of the passengers turned out to be a pediatrician and was assisting with the critically wounded individual. Grayson checked on him last, in her miniscule med-unit.

It turned out to be Goldstone. Of course. He had apparently been searching for the wayward prince and fallen from bridgework to the lower level probably bouncing off a wall or two on the way down. They had used the limited medical supplies to pack an internal bleeder as a temporary fix and keep him unconscious to give him time to recover from a head injury. Their attempts to get a clear supralight line to medical advice had been unsuccessful, but were looking more promising as the reprogrammed relays came on line. Both the pediatrician and Bogart seemed optimistic that they could make better internal repairs, though Grayson was skeptical as she looked at the man's pale features and her scant supply of equipment. It was clear to her he would have to be dropped as soon as possible for real medical attention. That meant more thirty-gee burns. A lot more. Because, in the bizarre non-world of space, they had to slow way down to get somewhere fast. And the stress of the gees was probably the least concern. Back out on the mid-level bridgework, Grayson looked every which way before striding to a nearby comm. She tapped the button.

"Hal, inside voice." That was code for only use the speaker right next to her. Grayson tended to be on the move whenever she wasn't in her bed or her command chair, and Hal was used to using numerous speakers to insure she heard him as she rushed here and there.

"Understood," he responded.

"How much hydrogen fuel do we have left?"

"Fifty-six units."

Grayson groaned, leaning her head against the cool metal wall. "And how long will that last at thirty-gee burn?"

"Three hundred and sixty-six hours." It was within four hours of her estimate. She swore under her breath.

"And how many hours of thrust at thirty-gees to make the rated speed for the wormhole?"

"Four hundred and twelve." Also within four hours of her estimate.

Grayson sighed heavily. "You know that stupid hydrogen net thingy, Hal? I think I'm going to need the instructions on how to use it. In my quarters. I'm gonna kick Hendon out of my bed if he isn't up yet."

She stomped around the curving walkway toward her quarters. When the portal slid open and she rounded the corner, she came to a dead stop in the opening. "What the fuck!" she screamed.

Hendon ran out of the bathroom wrapping a towel around his waist, but not before Grayson got a good look at his armaments. "What is it?" he asked.

"What happened to my quarters?" she demanded.

"It's called being cleaned."

Where is everything? What did you do with it?"

"Your laundry is cleaned and put away. Your books are on your bookshelf..."

"I'll never find my place in them."

He only looked at her. "Ever hear of bookmarks? And your sheets are clean. You're welcome."

"How am I going to find things?" she moaned. She looked over at his smooth, water be-spattered chest. "Turn around," she ordered.

"Why?"

"Let's say I want to see if your back is bruised."

"Sontang," he said darkly.

"What? You won't let me play with Bogart!" she protested. "I've got cards. We could have that mano a mano poker match, except, you know, strip."

He crossed the space between them, grabbed her arm and pulled her into the room so the portal could close. Then he looked down at her from his significant height advantage. "I have no intention of fueling your own personal rumor mill," he said sternly. "Besides, I like my women meek and submissive." He said in a huskily mocking voice.

"You don't know what you're missing until you try all the flavors," she said, licking her lips and hooking her fingers into the top of his towel before pulling him toward her. He pried her fingers loose then clutched at the towel as it started to fall. She glanced down, then back up. "At least part of you is willing to take it for a spin," she said with a grin.

He tightened the towel, then picked her up bodily and tossed her onto the bed. "Get some rest."

She chortled as he turned back toward the bathroom. "Hey," she called. "Maybe I could get used to this meek and submissive thing." When he shut the door, she yelled out, "I'll let you spank me." When it was obvious he was through letting her bait him, she sighed and sat back on the bed. "Okay, Hal, let's try reading the directions for a change."

When Hendon reemerged from the bathroom, fully dressed this time, she was sitting cross-legged on the bed, squinting at the monitor across the room. He glanced at it. "What are you reading?"

"An instruction manual. I think it was translated from the Yeti, though Hal keeps insisting they didn't have a written language."

"Or even exist," the computer added.

"Instructions for what?"

"A hydrogen net." She glanced over at him. "Ever use one?"

"Not even sure what it is," he replied.

"Me neither. I just thought it would be cool to say I had one."

"Why the sudden interest?"

"Because we're going to run out of fuel before we run out of space."

He went very still for a long a moment. "Have you talked to Evans?"

"Not yet, but I'm sure he's figured it out. He's been frantically working on nav options for hours."

"What if we go for the next wormhole out? Conserve fuel?"

She shook her head. "Already checked. The next reasonable one is too far. The fuel would last, but not the food, oxygen and water. My plants and your recyclers can only do so much."

"So this thing collects hydrogen? Does it add to drag?"

She shook her head. "Not out here. It was really designed to be used in-system, like a sail deployed against cosmic wind, with the added benefit of gathering hydrogen for fuel to use once you're beyond the system. Frankly, I'm not even sure if it will deploy properly."

Now he was peering at the screen, as if squinting could make the words more comprehensible. "Let's take this to the bridge, get Evans, Het and Sip on it, too."

She shrugged, patting the bed beside her. "Or we could just make the best possible use of the time we have left." She tried the batting eyelashes again, with no more success. In fact, he was pulling her across the bed and onto her feet. "Ewhhh, you are the domineering type, aren't you, big fella," she said, swooning against his chest. He forcibly turned her toward the portal, and pushed.

"Give it a rest, Sontang. It's not going to work."

"I just loves me a challenge," she said over her shoulder, then scrambled away as he aimed a swat at her ass that was obviously not intended to be gently delivered. She hurried to stay ahead of him on the way to the bridge, as he asked Hal to invite Het and Sip up to meet them.

---

A couple hours later, they had begun another burn, for three hours this time. As the supralight transmissions began to clear, Hal had been able to find substantially more information on hydrogen nets in general and better instructions for their net, in particular. Het and Sip had no experience with the device but were highly optimistic, one might even say, as enthusiastic as kids on Christmas morning, to try out the toy. Evans hadn't used one either, but had substantial theoretical knowledge, and even as she watched, Grayson could see the tension easing around his eyes. He obviously had known there was a problem, and had been trying to solve it before it fell on her shoulders. She wondered what Hendon would think if she decided to play with Evans, but then she remembered the pilot mentioning family, as in a wife, back home. There were some lines even she drew.

When everyone had been dispersed to their individual tasks, mostly more research before the next break between burns, Grayson was ordering coffee from Hal when her chair suddenly swiveled. "Cancel that, Hal," Hendon ordered. He leaned down close to Grayson's face. "You. Rest period. Now."

"I don't need..."

He leaned closer to her ear. "That's an order," he added, his voice very soft and deep. "Or you're going to find out just how domineering I can be." Grayson grinned as he continued. "You want to see my back? You can see it from the vantage point of being thrown over my shoulder. You want to be spanked, we'll be back to Sirius before you can sit again." Her grin began to fade. "You want to be fucked? Just how long do you think I can fuck you without letting you come. Hmmm? Care to make a guess?"

"I think I'll take a rest period now," Grayson said. She waited until he released her chair before she swiveled away from him and hurriedly circled around him to the portal. She wasn't all the way through the opening when she heard Hendon ordering Hal to turn off the monitor in her quarters. She decided not to test Hal's loyalty. She went to her bedroom, turned the bed to low-gee and slept.

---

Grayson was sitting in her command chair, chewing her fingernails, looking at the sim that Hal had created. It was basically a close-up looking down on her ship. With the simmed enhancement, her dragon was displayed in all its glorious coil about the top of the ship. The hydrogen thrust, technically invisible within the human sight range, was displayed as a glowing orange sort of smoke that puffed out from the exhausts, then flowed back over and around the ship. Hal had even fudged the star field to make it look like the ship was racing - ass backward - against the backdrop of stars. Which it was, it just wouldn't be all that noticeable against the distant stars. Evans was up at the front of the bridge, gesturing at the main screen like a lecturing professor.

"So the net deploys from the front, uhm, well, it's currently the back, edge of the ship here between these two exhaust ports. It's fragile, so Hal will turn those ports off while the net is deployed. They won't be available for maneuvering. The net flows out here like a thread trailing behind us, then as the exhaust from the engines flows back this way, the net will begin to fill and open, sort of like a parachute. When it's fully open, it will be immense, much larger than the ship."

"If it fully opens," Grayson muttered.

"But that's the beauty of it," Evan's exclaimed. "Our exhaust is shooting out converted hydrogen. The first thing those sub-atomic particles want to do is recombine into hydrogen. As they do, the net catches them. We're in such a relatively clean part of space, that it should be able to catch a lot of them before they can combine with other atoms to form water and whatnot. The subatomic particles flow through the net to the other side, the hydrogen gets caught within the net and flows through the energized arterial system back to the ship and into the fuel cells. Any larger particles flow over the inner surface of the net to the iris, which we open to release them. If we were trying to use it like a sail, we'd adjust the iris to control our speed." Hal was demonstrating all this as he talked, showing a stream of ice vapor flowing from the hole in the center of the net.

"It looks so fragile," Bogart commented.

"Well, it is and it isn't," Evans tried to explain. "If you were standing out there and you poked it with your finger, you'd put a hole in it for sure. But your finger is way more massive than most of what's floating around out there. And it's self-healing in a way. The energized field reroutes the hydrogen away from tears automatically, kind of like the capillaries in your blood system. It's just, if you get to many holes torn in it, or if one of the main arteries gets damaged, then you cut way down on its ability to function. And possibly, even probably, on your ability to pull it back in when you're done with it." He turned back to his audience with a big smile. "But that's a real slim possibility out here, right Hal?"

"Point zero six two three percent," Hal agreed.

"If these things are so wonderful, why aren't they being used more?" Hendon asked.

"Well, what we're discussing here works because we're decelerating. Frankly, that's not commonly done until a ship is entering a system at the end of a run. Most ships between systems speed up to the least common speed rate for the jumps they have to make and stay at that speed until they get where they're going. Unfortunately, on the initial leg out and last leg in, most systems are - relatively and bluntly speaking - full of crap that will in short order tear the shit out of the net. That's why the whole sail idea crashed and burned early on."

"So they're only practical for juggernauts like Sontang," Hendon concluded.

"I only fly like that in sectors full of pirates and rebels and Feds," she snapped.

"Confeds," he corrected, but she only shrugged.

"Het and Sip are inspecting the entire installation right now," Evans continued. "They'll be able to assure us it will deploy properly."

"Even though they've never seen one before," Grayson pointed out.

Hendon turned to her. "You don't seem very optimistic about this project. Why?"

"I live by one proverb. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong."

"That's not a proverb, it's a principle," he pointed out.

"Whatever. If we try this, and it doesn't work, we're screwed. We will have burned all our hydrogen and still be well short of the speed we need to be down to. We'll hit the wormhole at something like twice the speed it's rated for."

"What would happen then?" he asked, turning to Evans.

"We'd come out of the wormhole pointed at El Relha. With luck, and throwing everything burnable into the sub-engines, we'd be able to use the maneuvering thrusters to deflect from the system."

"If something can go wrong, it will go wrong," Grayson repeated. "Tell him what happens when it does."

"We can't make escape velocity and crash into El Relha," he said quietly.

"El Relha is a white giant - K0III, hard to miss. Or maybe we just hit a planet first," Grayson muttered, going back for another cup of coffee. She stood at the dumbwaiter, tapping her foot.

"What does Hal think?" Hendon asked.

"Hal is a computer. He deals in probability. He doesn't live by a principle or a proverb. He doesn't make life and death decisions." She suddenly turned on her heel and strode off of the bridge as Hendon and Evans and Bogart stared quizzically at each other.

Grayson stormed into her quarters and slapped the manual lock. She looked around, spotted the neatly shelved books and yanked the retaining bar away. Then she began throwing the books about the room, just barely missing Hendon as he walked into the room with her coffee.

"I locked that door," she snapped, throwing another book.

"It, uh, seems that the prince broke the manual lock when he rigged the bypass." Hendon snatched the next book from her hand and held out the coffee instead.

"Little shithead," she muttered.

"He has a name, you know."

"I don't want to hear it," she snarled in a rush, reaching for another book. He grabbed her wrist and fit the coffee cup in her hand instead.

"You need to make a decision," he reminded her gently, though he was watching closely to see which way she was going to explode next.

"You make it. You're the officer in charge," she sneered.

"You are far and away the most qualified and you know it. If it was just you on the ship, what would you do?"

"I would have deployed it a long time ago," she replied more calmly, tugging against his grip on her wrist.

"Then why is it so hard to make that decision now?" he reasoned, releasing her arm. She threw the cup against the wall so hard the plastic shattered.

"Because my son is down in that hold!"

Continued in Chapter 4 - Part 1...

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