Rambaud nodded, but he stood outside the cracked door peering in.
Reedy panted, caught herself, controlled it. A thousand questions formed and died on her lips. Max had taken the leap, and now he had to see how far that leap would take him.
“Ensign,” he whispered.
“Yes, sir?”
“From this moment forth,” his lips barely moved, “you will consider me your sole superior officer.”
Her eyes jumped to the door. “Sir? But-”
“That is a direct order.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You will not tell anyone-”
But he did not get the chance to tell Reedy what she should and shouldn’t say. The door swung open and Lukinov entered, followed by Captain Petoskey. Lukinov grinned like a party girl full of booze. “Wait until you hear this,” he said. He put his headphones on, and handed one to Petoskey as Reedy slid quickly back into her place.
They listened for a moment. Petoskey squinted his eyes, and rounded his shoulders even more than usual. “Sounds like they’re bringing the shuttles in, getting ready to leave. Radioing a safe voyage message to their other ship. What was I supposed to hear?”
“They’re testing a new deflector for wormhole defense. If we attack their ship and kill them, we can take it. Their other ship will be stuck in-system and we can nuke them.”
“Captain,” said Max.
“Yes?”
“I didn’t hear any evidence of this deflector. I can’t recommend an attack.”
Lukinov frantically punched commands into his keypad. “Let me back up to an hour ago.” His face went as blank as the records he was trying to access. “I can’t seem to find it. Reedy, what’s going on here?”
“Sir,” she muttered, with a pleading glance at Max, “uh, I don’t know, sir.”
“She’s covering up,” said Max.
Three faces stared at him with variations of disbelief.
“Look at the battery, it’s not properly grounded.” It was an awful explanation, but the best that Max could come up with on the spot. “Reedy was moving some equipment around, hit it with something. I didn’t see what. Sparks flew and the screens all went dead. She got them back up right away, but she probably wiped the memories.”
“Ensign,” Lukinov said coldly. “Explain yourself.”
Reedy’s mouth hung open. She didn’t know what to say. Betrayal was written all over her face.
Petoskey took off his headset. “Lukinov, I trust you to take care of this. Nikomedes…”
“Yes, sir?”
Petoskey couldn’t seem to think of any orders to give him. “I have to go talk to Chevrier. We have our mission. With the second ship out of the way, we have to prepare to dive.”
Max followed Petoskey out into the corridor, but returned to his room to stash the stolen memory. Only two things mattered now: getting the information to his superior, and keeping Lukinov from getting it to his. It needed to be used as a defensive weapon, not as an excuse to start a war. Lukinov had access to the radio and official channels. Max didn’t. That stacked the cards in Lukinov’s favor.
He had to do something with it soon, before they jumped to Adarean space. And he had to hope that a baby- faced ensign just out of the Academy didn’t fold under pressure and give him away. It was like a game of Blind Man’s Draw. Max had already put everything he had into the pot.
There was nothing else he could do at this point except play the card that he was dealt.
Meal time. Max sat by himself, as usual, at his own narrow table in the galley. Even the trooper guarding him sat with some of the other crewmen.
Lukinov entered, saw Max, and came straight over to him. “Reedy won’t say that you were lying, but you were,” the intelligence officer said. “Not that it matters. The machines are buggered, the data’s all gone. Even Burdick can’t find it.’
Max had a blank sheet in his pocket. He pulled it out, and a stylus, and passed it over to Lukinov. This was the way duels were proposed at the Academy. According to the Academy’s cover story, it was the way Reedy had arranged to meet with Vance.
Lukinov looked at the sheet, then scratched “observation room” and a time two hours distant on it. He pushed it back over to Max, who shook his head, and wrote “reactor room.”
“Why there?” asked the intelligence officer.
“They’ve got cameras there, but no mikes. It’s off limits to Simco’s troopers, but not to us. We won’t be there long.”
“So this is just to be a private conversation? I should leave my weapons behind?”
“I wish you would.”
“More’s the pity,” said Lukinov, and stormed out.
Max was putting his tray away, trying to resolve his other problem, when Simco came in. “Lukinov won’t let us throw the ensign in the brig, not yet. But he thought it was best if I stuck with you personally in the meantime.”
Perfect, thought Max, just perfect.
Two hours had never stretched out to such an eternity before in all Max’s life. Simco escorted him to his quarters and joined him inside.
“Do you want to follow me into the head and shake it dry for me?” asked Max on his way into the bathroom.
Simco laughed, but remained in the other room. Max retrieved a bottle of pills and an old pair of nail clippers from the medicine cabinet, putting them in his pocket. Then he led Simco on a long, roundabout trip through the corridors that ended up on the floor of the Black Forest. He stopped when he got there and snapped his fingers.
“I forgot something,” Max said. “You don’t mind if I borrow that multi-tool in your pocket, do you?”
Simco stuffed his hand automatically into his pants, wrapped it around the bulge there, and froze. “Sorry, sir, I don’t have one with me,” he said, grinning. “Got one in my locker. Or do you want to hit Engineering to borrow one?”
“No, it’s nothing I need that badly.” He jumped. “Meet you up top, in the exercise room.” He grabbed hold of the service ladder outside one of the missile shafts, and pulled himself up. He used his momentum to spin, kicking off from the side of the shaft, and shot like a rocket toward the ceiling.
“Hold up there,” called Simco, halfway up the stairs.
Max ducked into the upper corridor. He dove through the hall as fast as he could, past the exercise room, down the access shaft, and back out the corridor below, returning to the missile room. He watched Simco’s feet disappear above him into the top corridor, and then he flew straight across the cavern to the section over Engineering, opened a portside hatch, and closed it again after himself.
A long time ago Max had modified his nail clippers to function as a makeshift tool. Bracing himself against the wall, he used it now to remove the grille from the ceiling vent-it was the supply duct for the HEPA filters in the clean hood corner of the battery room directly below. He squeezed inside, feet first, pulling the grille after him. There was no way to reattach it, but with no gravity he didn’t need to. He simply pulled it into place and it stayed there.
It was an eighteen-inch duct and he was a small man. Even so, he felt like toothpaste being forced back into the tube. He had to twist sideways and flip over to get past the L-curve, but after that it was a straight trip down to the reactor room. With his arms pinned above his head, and no gravity to help him, he writhed downward like a rat caught in a drainpipe. He reached bottom, unable to go any further. His kicks had no effect at all and his heart began to race as he wondered if he’d be trapped inside the duct. Finally, by pressing his elbows out into the corners, and hooking one foot on the lip where the vent teed out horizontally, he was able to push the other foot downward until the duct tore open.
