Honor Bound

Patel’s eyebrow rose but he shrugged assent. “All right, let’s go while we have the time.”

It wasn’t far from the Admiral’s cabin to the Security station, but to Jason McKay it seemed like kilometers as he feverishly worked possibilities out in his mind. Why the hell would Admiral Patel put a gun in Mironov’s room? It made absolutely no sense; if the Admiral was a traitor, why would he have worked so hard to save the ship after Mironov’s-he still found it uncomfortable and confusing to think of the man as Antonov-sabotage? But what other reason could there be for him helping the Russian?

The one thing that he couldn’t shake though, no matter how many scenarios played themselves out in his head, was the conviction that there was no way that his friend Arvid Patel was a traitor; there was no way that the man he’d fought beside six years ago was working for the Protectorate.

He hoped to God he was right, because if he was wrong, Patel could easily have him and whoever else saw the video put in confinement and then erase everything.

The door to Security was closed and sealed, but Patel’s palm on the door plate opened it and they entered to find Vinnie and Lt. James seated at the console. Both men jumped to their feet as the officers entered.

“Admiral,” Vinnie nodded, the expression on his face like a kid who’d walked in on his parents having sex.

“All right,” Patel waved a hand impatiently. “What did we need to see?”

“Well, umm, sir,” Vinnie said hesitantly, “Lt. James and I were going through video footage from Mironov’s room and we… we think we found who slipped him the weapon..”

“Excellent, let’s see it.”

Lt. James looked to Vinnie, face pale. Vinnie shrugged helplessly and hit the control to show the video. While Patel and McKay watched the playback, Vinnie watched Patel. He didn’t react at first as he saw himself enter the cabin, but then his eyes grew wide as he realized that Mironov wasn’t in the cabin.

“When was this taken?” He asked hoarsely.

“The day before Mironov took the hostages in Engineering,” Vinnie replied quietly, pointing to the date/time stamp projected in a corner of the picture.

For the first time since Vinnie had met the Admiral, Patel seemed speechless. “But that…” he finally stuttered, face slack. “That’s not possible!”

Then he saw himself reach into his belt under his uniform jacket, and pull something dark and metallic out, quickly hiding it between stacks of clothes in the wall locker. When he turned around in the video, his face was blankly intense, his mouth in a hard line but his eyes staring at something a thousand kilometers away. Then he left the cabin.

Patel looked around him at the other officers, mouth agape. “Gentlemen,” he said slowly and carefully, “I can’t explain this.”

“Vinnie,” McKay asked, “is there any other suspicious interaction between the Admiral and Mr. Mironov that was caught on the security cameras?”

“There was one thing we found,” Vinnie confirmed, “when we looked up every time they’d been together since Mironov came on board.” He nodded to Lt. James, who pulled up the footage.

“This is earlier that same day,” Vinnie supplied.

The video showed the Admiral walking into the cafeteria, stepping over to the dispenser and grabbing a cup of coffee. Mironov was sitting at a table nearby and rose when he saw the Admiral enter. He stepped close behind the officer and as he reached for a cup and paused.

“Lodka,” the Russian whispered. In the video, the Admiral’s eyes took on the same distant stare as they had in Mironov’s cabin. “Get me a handgun. Put it in my cabin.”

Then he turned and was gone. Admiral Patel left his coffee cup sitting on the counter and left the mess without his expression changing.

“You go straight from there to the armory,” Lt. James finally spoke. “You asked the guard on duty to run an errand, then removed the transponder and took the pistol. A few hours later, you left it in Mironov’s cabin. Sir.”

“Lodka,” McKay repeated, rubbing a hand over his chin. “That’s Russian for ‘boat.’ What the hell is the significance of that?”

Patel was still staring at the video display, his face a mixture of rage, disbelief and absolute horror. “Hypnoprobe me,” he snarled suddenly.

“Sir?” McKay looked up at him, startled.

“McKay, I don’t remember any of this! In fact, I actively remember not doing it!” He threw his hands up helplessly. “I can’t explain it and I am not going to just stick myself in a holding cell until I know how it happened. Take me to the medical bay and hypnoprobe me, McKay and find out what the hell happened to me!”

McKay looked his old friend in the eye, seeing the desperation and fear in the man’s face. “Aye, sir.” It might, he thought sadly, be the last order that Patel ever gave.

“I just don’t believe it,” Commander Estefan Nunez repeated, shaking his head.

McKay glanced at him sidelong as they both waited for the ship’s medical officer to finish setting up the hypnoprobe. Nunez was a short, broad-bodied man in his early forties, his face jowly, his dark hair cut short and tightly curled. Right now, watching the Admiral strapped into a seat in front of the machine, he looked as if he’d been sucker-punched, and McKay knew the feeling well.

“Pull it together, Steve,” Patel told him, staring at the memory probe with a bit of trepidation. “No matter what we find out, you’re going to be in charge till we get home. Who are you going to have as your acting XO? I know Pirelli is senior, but she’s a hell of a Tactical Officer, so you might want to keep her on the bridge in case we have to fight again.”

“Probably Sweeny then,” Nunez decided, swallowing hard and trying to steady himself. “I’ll bring Ghent up from the auxiliary bridge to run the Helm.”

“And make sure you listen to McKay,” Patel instructed him. “He’s not always right, but he’s always worth listening to.”

“We’re ready,” the medical officer announced, swinging the hypnoprobe’s visor into place over Patel’s eyes. She pulled an injector from a tray and applied it to his bared arm. “Once we activate the probe, you can ask your questions, but you need to speak into this microphone,” she pointed to a small mic that extended from the side of the machine, “and they need to be specific. If this is something he can’t access consciously, he’s not going to be able to help guide you in your line of inquiry.”

“I understand, Dr. Walters,” McKay said, smiling thinly. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”

Walters seemed to blush a bit as she remembered who she was talking to. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m activating the probe now.”

Patel was lolling slightly as the drugs took effect, but when the light patterns began to pulse in the hypnoprobe’s visor, he stiffened slightly.

“Admiral Patel,” McKay said quietly into the microphone, “why did you give Mironov the gun?”

“I don’t remember,” Patel responded, his voice steady and clear but with an automatic tone to it, as if he were reading from a script.

McKay frowned. “What does the word ‘lodka‘ mean to you?”

“You said it was ‘boat,’ in Russian.”

“When did you first hear the word?” McKay pressed him.

The Admiral paused, not speaking for a long moment. “I don’t remember.”

McKay glanced at the medical officer, who was frowning in confusion. “But you have heard the word before this week?”

“I don’t remember.” The answer came faster this time.

McKay reached down and turned off the microphone, leaning back against the wall, his face thoughtful.

“He’s suppressing the memory,” McKay mused.

“How is that possible?” Dr. Walters asked. “I’ve never heard of anyone being able to fight the hypnoprobe.”

“It’s possible,” he told her, “but it’s not easy. It takes deep conditioning by experts.”

“Wouldn’t that take some time to do?” Nunez asked him. “When would that have happened?”