Command Decision Page 4

  She felt glued to the certainty—this unwelcome certainty—that they were wrong, pinned to that knowledge of imminent disruption, unable to think or move. She knew—she told herself repeatedly—that this FTL flight gave her respite in which to think, in which to prove that the bold boast she’d made a few days before came from some hidden core of ability, of moral strength. Her crew kept looking at her, giving her little grins and nods.

  But for now she was paralyzed, mentally and almost physically, going through the motions of being the bold brave captain she knew they needed.

  She had come on the bridge as usual, to take the first-shift report, and now she frowned at the data scrolling past on the screen as if she could do more than stare at the words and numbers. What did it all mean, anyway? This ship, the two others, even the pirates in their hordes, were just grains of dust in a vast universe that didn’t care…

  She glanced up as someone moved suddenly and saw Lee, her senior pilot, turn to Hugh Pritang, her executive officer. Lee’s voice was strained, completely unlike his usual casual drawl. “Please—I have to go now—”

  “What’s the problem?” Hugh asked. He was facing away from Lee, entering something in the log. Ky glanced at Lee, whose face was a strange shade of gray-green.

  Lee doubled over and spewed onto the deck, noisily. Hugh looked over, stiffened, and then caught sight of Ky. “Captain—” Then, “Mr. Quidlen—what’s wrong?”

  “He’s sick,” Ky said. She realized how unnecessary that was. She pulled a towel out of the dispenser by the hatch and stepped forward. “Lee? Can you talk?”

  He shook his head and heaved again; the sour stench almost turned Ky’s stomach. Hugh took the towel from her and bent down.

  “I—I feel sick, too,” her weapons officer, Theo Dannon, said.

  “Leave the bridge,” Ky said. It was probably just the smell, she thought, but Dannon also had an unhealthy greenish look around the mouth. She bent down to look more closely at Lee; his eyes were closed and his breathing was harsh. “We’ve been isolated on this ship too long for it to be any communicable illness,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s got to be food poisoning or something.” She felt a stab of guilt; she hadn’t inspected the galley the day before.

  “I—feel really bad,” Lee muttered, eyes still closed.

  “Help me get him to a medbox,” Ky said. Did medboxes deal with food poisoning? She had no idea. She felt stupid suddenly; she was planning to fight a war and she hadn’t hired any medical personnel…it would take more than medboxes. She remembered the vast medical bay on the Mackensee ship that had treated her. Her mind seemed to wake suddenly from the daze of the past shifts. Later she could think how to increase their medical capability. Now…

  “I can do that,” Hugh said. He looked around the bridge. “One of us needs to be here.”

  Ky nodded. In FTL flight, nothing ever happened, but still a senior officer should be on the bridge. Especially if this was more than some random virus.

  “And I’ll send one of the techs up to clean up, in case it’s infectious. Don’t get contaminated. Captain.” Ky nodded as Hugh hauled Lee up and got a shoulder under his arm. Lee was just able to shamble along as Hugh moved aft.

  Ky turned up the bridge ventilation and queried the food storage units. All the readouts were in range—coolers and freezers all at the correct temperature. She had come through the galley already, without formally inspecting it; it had looked clean and tidy, as usual. Surely no one had cooked for the others without washing hands; everyone had that much sense. In minutes one of the environmental techs—not Twigg, but Bannin—showed up in protective gear with a wet vac. “There’s another two sick, Captain,” he said to Ky. “That’s four so far. We don’t know what it is yet, but we’ll run it through the analyzers and see.”

  Four down within a half hour…not just some isolated bug Lee’d been harboring since their last time on a station. Possibilities sprang up like weeds: something they’d missed when clearing the ship of Osman’s traps, something planted by the agent who’d joined the ship as a cargo handler and then died, sabotage by someone now in the crew. “Anything odd in the environmental cultures?”

  “No, ma’am. At least, all the readouts are nominal, though we’ll run a check of them. And we’re not consuming anything ship-made anyway.”

  She’d known that. She’d spent the money to purchase high-quality rations, and they still had some of Osman’s left as well. Osman’s. Had he sabotaged random packs of his own rations for some reason? “Take samples of all the surfaces in the galley, any opened ration containers, everything in the cooler—”

  “Yes, Captain. Mr. Pritang’s told us that; Mr. Gulandar has people on it, and Mr. Pritang is asking everyone what they ate or drank in the last two days.”

  Bannin finished sucking up the mess, then sprayed with cleanser and vacuumed again, finally applying a decontaminating spray. “Just let that dry, Captain. It’ll stay there twelve hours or more, and then we’ll come give it another spray and vacuum. After that, it’ll be safe for normal cleaning.”

  “Thanks,” Ky said. “You will let me know what it is…”

  “Of course, ma’am. As soon as we know.”

  Four so far. If it was something in the food, was it something in Osman’s food supply? In what she’d bought? And was it intentional or accidental? And why weren’t they all sick? They were all eating out of the same food supply; they rotated cooking duties, but—she called up the roster for galley work. If it was unclean pots or dishes, she would have someone’s guts for garters.

  Within a few hours, as Ky paced the bridge deck and thought of more and more items to test—from shampoo to cough lozenges—another five had come down with whatever it was: vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, weakness that might be from the symptoms or from the cause. The cooking utensils and dishes showed nothing; there was nothing harmful in the water supply.

  “Nothing shows up on the chem scan,” Environmental Tech Twigg told her. “It’s not any contact or residual poison in our database. It’s got to be contaminated food—if it were the water, everyone would be down with it.”

  Ky went herself, when Hugh took over the bridge again, to inspect the latrines, the showers, the galley, the cutlery and dishes. She remembered that she had brought aboard dishes touched—if only briefly—by someone who wanted to send a coded message, a microdot, to someone on her ship. Both men had died…had they also left a persistent toxin on the dishes? She and her crew had eaten dozens of meals off those dishes since, with no harmful effects, and the dishes had been washed repeatedly. Why now?

  Nine sick…but as hours passed and no one else came down with the mysterious disease, Ky concentrated on finding out what those nine had eaten or drunk that no one else had consumed. She had no qualified epidemiologist in the crew, not even a medic, but the environmental department, none of whom had gotten sick, dug through the trash that hadn’t yet gone to the recycler, testing everything.

  Meanwhile, Hugh and Gordon went through the crew list asking questions: who ate what at which meal, between meals, who had seen someone else eating, and so on. Even though no more crew came down with the mysterious illness, Ky pressed them to keep asking, keep searching for a cause.

  Finally, Lee came out of a medbox able to answer questions. Ky went down immediately to find out what he knew.

  “We had a little celebration the other night,” Lee said. “Nothing big…just a box of sweet-snacks from stores, and some—” He paused.

  “What?” Ky said.

  “I’m trying to remember. Oh, yes…there was this jar somebody had in his personals. Stuff his grandmother made, he said. It had gotten knocked around somehow, and leaked a bit, so he offered it to the party; he didn’t want to let it sit around unsealed in case it spoiled—” He frowned. “You don’t suppose that could have been what did it? How could it spoil in just a few days?”

  “What was it?” Ky asked, trying for patience. “Animal, vegetable, mineral? Li
quid, solid?”

  “I don’t really know,” Lee said. “I guess it did…sort of have a kind of…well…it smelled a bit alcoholic, but it also had a strong smell of fruit, and then kind of a fishy smell, too. But it was really good spread on those crackers. I can’t believe that’s what made us sick, though. He said they stored it in crocks back home.”

  “Who?” Ky said, suppressing an urge to shake the answer out of him.

  “Uh…Jemison, starboard aft battery.”

  Jemison was still in a medbox; the readout said he would be out in another four hours.

  “Not everyone in starboard aft is sick,” Ky said. “Who else was at this party? Did everybody eat some?”

  The party, it turned out, had involved much of the crew, who dropped in and out as they had time. Lee wasn’t sure who had been there, or not, before he came and after he left. Jemison’s contribution was only that single small jar of the stuff—whatever it had been—and only a few of the crew had had a chance at it.

  Unfortunately, the jar and any remnants of its contents had gone into the recycler, and Environmental had no way to tell which of the stomach contents vacuumed up were responsible.

  “The only bacterial and viral signatures we have on file relate to our own cultures,” Bannin told Ky. “I’m sorry, Captain…”

  “Not your fault,” Ky said. “We need to get a medical database that goes beyond the medboxes.” Whatever its cause and despite the guilt she felt over having insufficient medical resources aboard, her earlier lassitude had vanished. She put those needs on her list for the next station. How much did it cost to maintain a medical team? No matter—they needed one, and she’d have to fund it somehow.

  At the start of the next shift, most of the sick were out of the medboxes and clearly recovering. Her spirits rose further; when Hugh came up to her on the bridge, she felt capable of dealing with whatever was coming next.

  “Captain, could I speak to you privately?” Hugh looked more serious than usual.

  “Of course,” Ky said. She led the way off the bridge to her quarters.

  “I’m concerned about some of the crew,” Hugh said. “I know they’ve been with you a long time…”

  “You’re talking about the crew from my old ship?”

  “Yes. Although there’s also a potential problem with some of the crew you hired later. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but you’ve created a situation in which the ship crew is entirely civilian in background and attitude—except for me as your exec—and the fighting crew is entirely military.”

  Ky scowled. “I’m not sure I follow—why is this a problem?”

  “Attitude, mostly. This latest incident is an example of what can go wrong.”

  “The probable cause came in with one of the fighting crew,” Ky said. “And he wasn’t immune to it.”

  “True. The problem spreads…look, just let me explain.” Ky nodded, and he went on. “Take your pilots, for instance. Lee, your senior pilot, is a highly skilled technician in his field, and you have used him as one of your personal guards at times. I know he has adequate weapons skills, and he takes pride in that assignment.”

  “So? He and the others performed well in that fight with Osman—”

  “Yes. But in fact it required nothing of him but acting the part of a traitor, if I understood you rightly. He has never had military training. He is an amateur, at both security functions and at combat. He follows your orders—you are the captain and he’s known you for some time—but I sense a certain resentment to orders I’ve given. Not disobedience—he’s too good a man for that—but he always wants an explanation, or even just to discuss what should get simple obedience.”

  Ky thought back to her experiences aboard Spaceforce training ships. Of course everyone had been military, and military discipline had prevailed. Only the cadets asked questions, for the most part, and they were expected to obey orders without such questions at the time. But was that necessary here, for people without military training?

  “My concern,” Hugh went on, “is that when we’re in combat again, your civilian crewmembers may be slow to respond to orders they don’t understand, or—for those with more initiative—may do something unexpected, and either of these could put themselves or the ship in peril.”

  “You’re really worried about this?” Ky said. “After we’ve been in combat and nothing like that has happened?”

  “Captain, the last post-battle analysis, from the most recent engagement, shows that twenty percent of the crew with civilian background either questioned orders, delayed response, or engaged in unordered activity. Now, as it happens, none of those things was critical in the event—but that’s not something we can depend on. And this latest incident—bringing aboard uninspected food items, failing to enter them on the ship’s stores list, distributing them at a party neither you nor I knew about—shows that a casual attitude toward standard rules has spread even to some of the military crew. You’re going to have to decide what to do about it.”

  Ky frowned. She had not made any connection between the crew’s performance during combat and the food poisoning incident, and for that matter she hadn’t thought of the crew’s behavior as below standard. If Hugh was right…“You have a recommendation?”

  “You’re not going to like it.” Hugh rubbed his nose. “We would be better off with an all-military crew. Retraining this one is going to be difficult, partly because the original crewmembers are in some way associated with your family—with your civilian identity—and partly because you have two distinct groups: the old crew, who have one kind of loyalty to you and your family, and the new crew, who haven’t.”

  “Um.” Ky steepled her hands to give herself time to think. “I hadn’t realized there was this problem—”

  “You haven’t really had time,” Hugh said. “You’ve been dealing with other crises. But it’s something you need to consider.”

  “I don’t want to get rid of people who’ve served with me through the whole thing,” Ky said. “Loyalty cuts both ways.”

  “I thought you’d say that,” Hugh said. “That’s fine: that’s laudable. But you’re going to have to explain the reality of a warship to them. That’s what we are, now. I know you were thinking privateer at one time, but it’s clear your entire focus now is on fighting a hostile force. We cannot afford to have any gaps in discipline.”

  “I see that,” Ky said. “I suppose—the ones who can’t make the transition would still be useful to Stella, as civilian crew on other Vatta ships, if they’re willing.”

  “Quite so,” Hugh said, nodding. “You don’t have to throw anyone out in the cold; you can transfer them to jobs for which they’re more suited. I’d recommend acting on this as quickly as possible.”

  “But that means hiring new crew,” Ky said. “I’m not sure how easily we can find what you’re looking for. Or how quickly they’ll bond into a crew—”

  “The sooner we look, the sooner we can find,” Hugh said. “And if I may, I’m not at all sure Ciudad’s the best place to look, not with you—any woman, I mean—in command.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Ky said. “There’s no reason they’d join up with us just to avenge the loss of their ship; they’re more likely to blame us. But I can’t tell the other captains that until we come out of FTL.”

  “In the meantime,” Hugh said, “you could consider retraining those of your civilian crew who are willing. We have enough experienced veterans aboard to do that.”

  “I’ll talk to my—the old crew,” Ky said.

  The remaining crew from Gary Tobai filed into Ky’s office. She could not help but notice how casual they were compared to the ex-military personnel she’d hired. Respectful, but in their own individual ways.

  “We have a problem to solve,” she said, aware that this was not how she’d have started out with the Gannetts, or even Hugh or Martin. “You all know that Vanguard is now acting as a military ship—”

  “Yes, I just want to
know why we can’t at least carry some personal cargo for trading,” said Mehar. “Privateers still carry cargo, don’t they?”

  “Privateers do,” Ky said. “And yes, when you signed on, that’s what this ship was. But as things are now, operating as independent privateers will just get us killed when we run into a superior force of pirates. That’s why we’re teamed up with Sharra’s Gift and Bassoon. We’re forming as an interstellar defense force, a real space navy.” From their expressions, some of them found this very bad news.

  “I know some of you won’t like this,” Ky said. “And you’re not being shanghaied—you’ll be able to leave the ship at the next port, with pay due in your accounts, and a bonus for hazardous duty.” She paused a moment; some of them shifted their weight but no one said anything. “Or if you’d rather, I can transfer you to Vatta Transport—the real Vatta Transport—and send you to work on the civilian traders Vatta is once again operating.”

  “I’ll take that,” someone said from the back; others turned to look, and Ky saw the number two engineer, Foxeham. “I’m really—I’m not—”

  “That’s all right,” Ky said. “No need to explain. It’s not what you signed up for. My cousin Stella, who’s running Vatta Transport now, can always use more crewmembers as she acquires more ships. We’ll pay your passage to Cascadia, where she is now.”

  Foxeham nodded, looking shamefaced but relieved. Well, not everyone was cut out for the military life, and she could run the ship with a short crew of engineers if she had to.

  “The rest of you,” Ky said. “If you want out of your contracts, or to have them transferred to Vatta Transport, let me or the exec know. We’re due to drop out of FTL in another two days; I’ll want a list by then. Those who know you want to stay, please remain behind; the rest of you are excused.”

  Those leaving began to mutter among themselves even before they cleared the cabin; to Ky’s relief, the tone was more satisfied than worried. Facing her still were a half dozen, all those who had been on the Gary, including Lee.