communications station because the computer kept kicking out an error code in the daily reports. I found out that someone had loaded a worm into the communications computer. It was designed to take advantage of the disorientation we’ve been feeling every time we go through the wormholes. Immediately after each transition, it’s been sending out an automatic broadband signal, basically advertising our location and identity. Then it erases itself from the log so it never gets picked up by the main Comm station.”
Minishimi hissed out a breath, feeling as if she’d just been punched in the gut. “We have a traitor on board,” she said, putting the unthinkable into words. “Is it Lt. Rojas?” Rojas was the junior Communications officer, the one who would have been assigned to that station in the auxiliary bridge.
“I don’t think so,” Duncan told her, shaking his head, his long, horsey face seeming to get even longer. “She’d have to be pretty damned stupid to input the worm on her own station, ma’am. But it has to be one of the auxiliary bridge crew, and I think I have an idea who. Look at this, ma’am.” He waved at the readout on the Communications desk’s holographic display and Minishimi stepped over to the station. Duncan took a step back to let her get closer.
“What am I looking at, Commander?” She asked, peering at the diagnostic report.
“Right there, ma’am,” he leaned in, jabbing a finger at one of the lines. “I can’t be sure, but to me, that looks like a subroutine that shuts down the fusion reactor.”
“Christ!” She exclaimed, squinting more closely at the display.
So intent was she on the readout that she didn’t notice Duncan’s arm snake up around her neck until it was locked around her throat and the knife in his other hand was already darting in towards her left eye…
Joyce Minishimi responded with reflexes honed by long years as an athlete and grabbed the descending hand before the blade reached her face. Instinctively, she knew she couldn’t match Duncan’s raw strength, so rather than pushing the arm away, she redirected it and pulled it down, plunging the dark, ceramic blade into the First Officer’s forearm that was across her throat.
Duncan roared an incoherent mixture of pain and fury and slammed his knee into the small of Minishimi’s back, sending her plowing face-first into the Communications console as he staggered backwards.
“Fucking bitch!” He screeched, gritting his teeth and pulling the blade out of his arm, moaning as he heard and felt it scrape on bone.
Minishimi tasted blood as she sprawled across the station, her form half-hidden by holographic projections, but her brain screamed at her to ignore the agony in her back and the dull ache of her broken nose. She half-turned, ignoring the pain it caused in the spasming muscles of her lower back, and saw Duncan lurching towards her, knife raised in his left hand. She lashed out with her right heel, catching the man in his forward plant leg, feeling his kneecap dislocate with the impact.
Duncan screamed, but kept lunging forward, the knife descending. Minishimi desperately tried to move but she was half-turned and only managed to shift slightly to the side, taking the blade in the right side of her chest. Shock draped over Joyce Minishimi like a fog bank and she barely registered it as Duncan let go of the knife to collapse back to the deck, clutching his horribly out of place knee. Slowly, dully, she felt herself sliding off the console and landing hard on her back, trying desperately to breathe and tasting blood in her throat as she did.
Distantly, some clinical and detached part of her realized that the knife had gone into her lung and it had collapsed… she was about to drown in her own blood. She knew she should move, that she had to try to save herself, but everything seemed fuzzy and far away, as if she wasn’t really there.
Then she saw Duncan lever himself off the ground with his one good leg and one good arm. For a moment, she thought he was intent on finishing her, but then she saw him clawing at the Communications console, and she realized he was trying to finish the job: he was going to execute that subroutine he’d so arrogantly showed her and shut down the ship’s reactor, leaving them helpless.
Drawing on the deepest reserves she had, deeper than the ones that let her sprint the last hundred meters of the Hokkaido Marathon, she reached her left hand up to her chest and grasped the hilt of the knife that protruded from her flesh, then jerked it free with a strain that hurt worse than the blade sliding out of her lung.
She wanted to gasp out a scream, but she swallowed it instead, swallowed blood as she fought the cough that was struggling its way out of her throat, and managed to roll over, getting one knee beneath her.
Duncan was leaning against the terminal, trying to work the controls one-handed, nearly blinded with pain and oblivious to her as she rose up from the ground, the knife gripped point-down in her right hand. With the last bit of energy left in her, she raised the knife over her head and slammed the point into the base of Duncan’s neck, neatly severing his spinal cord.
Duncan went limp, falling like a marionette with its strings cut and then she was falling too, collapsing almost on top of him as the blood filled her throat and everything was suddenly dark…
Commander Gianeto’s head snapped around at the sound of the sensor alert, and his eyes went wide as he pulled the holographic readout forward, enlarging it so he could get a better look at the bogie.
“Captain Minishimi,” he called over the ship’s intercom, “please return to the bridge, we have a bogie exiting the jumpgate! Captain Minishimi please return to the bridge.”
“Damn,” Witten muttered, irritation in his usually stoic face. “Almost home, too…”
Gianeto patched into Minishimi’s ‘link and called her again. “Captain, this is Gianeto, we have a Protectorate ship through the gate… it’s accelerating on us at two g’s.” Silence. “Captain? Are you there? Can you hear me?” He turned to Lt. Higgs at the Communications console. “Lieutenant, get me a fix on Captain Minishimi’s ‘link, please.”
Higgs checked her board, pulling up the ping location for the communications link. “She’s in the auxiliary control room still,” she said.
“Security,” Gianeto called over his ‘link. “This is Gianeto… the Captain is on the auxiliary bridge and I can’t raise her on the intercom or her ‘link. Do you have a visual feed from the cameras in there?”
“Negative, sir,” Lieutenant Marvez, the head Security officer, responded. “The cameras have been disabled via command override. Either the Captain or Commander Duncan did it, sir.”
“Well, get someone over to the auxiliary bridge and get the Captain up here now… we have an enemy ship insystem!”
“Aye, sir,” Marvez acknowledged. “I’ll go myself.”
“Commander Duncan,” Gianeto called over the First Officer’s ‘link. “Commander Duncan, do you read?” Again, nothing. “Dammit!” Gianeto turned to the Helm officer. “Witten, is their ship going to be in weapons’ range before we reach the gate?”
Witten checked his instruments before answering. “It’s going to be close, but we should be able to get through before he’s in laser or kinetic energy weapon range. Shipbusters are a different story.”
“We have countermeasures for missiles,” Gianeto reasoned. “But just in case, prepare to take us to emergency high-g acceleration as soon as the Captain’s back on the bridge.”
“Aye, Commander, will do.”
Remembering what Captain Minishimi had told him, Gianeto punched the control to launch a Shipbuster missile at the bogie. The ship lurched noticeably as what was basically an unmanned intersystem spaceship separated from the weapons bay with a boost from the electromagnetic launcher. Once it was far enough away, the fusion drive ignited and it headed for the bogie at ten gravities acceleration. “One Shipbuster away,” Gianeto announced, mostly from habit. “Let’s see if it’ll do any good.” He switched the intercom to Security. “Lt. Marvez, what’s the word?”
“Just getting there, sir,” Marvez panted, the quiver in his voice telling Gianeto that he was sprinting. “At the door… vacuum hatch is sealed, using my Security override.” Gianeto could hear the door hiss open. “Holy Christ!” Marvez exclaimed. “Oh my God! Sir, it’s Commander Duncan and Captain Minishimi! They’ve been stabbed… I think they’re both dead!”
“What the
“Will do, Commander!”
Gianeto took a deep breath and turned to Witten and Higgs. “I need you two to witness that I am officially assuming command.”
