Back in her quarters, she pulled the cable loose from around her neck, plugged it into the outlet on the desk in her bedroom, and lifted the tip that would plug into her implant’s external socket. As she moved the tip closer to her head, her implant flashed a warning. DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!
She dropped the cable end; her implant warning disappeared, and she saw a red light on the attached transformer that she hadn’t noticed before. That made no sense. They had successfully recharged the four remaining handcoms from outlets in the mess that looked just like this one. High-voltage outlets there, for some of the appliances, had clear warning labels. This was just an ordinary desk outlet; it should carry the normal voltage.
Gingerly, she unplugged the cable and padded across the room to try the outlet on the far wall. This time she watched the telltale on the transformer: red. All the outlets should have been the same, standard voltage for the standard items an officer might carry and use, including a cable to recharge implant batteries if necessary.
For an outlet to provide a dangerous over-current—enough to defeat the built-in transformer—could mean only one thing. It had been sabotaged with intent to injure or kill anyone who plugged an implant power cable into that outlet. And she was the only one who should use these outlets.
Her skin prickled; she felt the same hyperalertness as before a battle. Who had done this? When? Was she the only intended victim? How many outlets were compromised? She would have to find out without getting killed in the process. First, test other outlets that were supposed to supply normal voltage. She unplugged her cable again and made her way back up the passage. Marek still wasn’t back from his rounds, but he’d probably gone up to check the outside door. No one was in the kitchen; the breakfast crew wouldn’t be up for another several hours. The long steel tables and counters, the racks of utensils, the pots overturned in the drying rack gleamed under dim nightlights. The room smelled of soap and disinfectant.
She could see well enough without turning on the bright work lights, and walked to the far end, where a row of electrical outlets backed the work counter and smaller machines stood ready for the breakfast crew. Mixers, one with a dough hook and one with beaters, a bread slicer, toasters… she unplugged a mixer and plugged her cable into the same socket. Green light. So whoever had sabotaged her outlet hadn’t intended harm to everyone. Just her. She had an enemy.
She unplugged the cable, coiled it around her neck under her uniform again, and plugged the mixer back into the wall outlet. She didn’t want to contact Rafe now—not in this exposed place. First she had to find out when and how the sockets in her quarters had been altered. She had recharged her pin-light battery using the outlet near the bedside table herself, only a few days before. It would have burned out, if the current had been too high. So it had been all right then. Someone must have altered it since. Easy enough, as she was out of her quarters most of the time.
“Somebody in here?” Marek’s voice, a sudden flare of light as he turned the kitchen lights on full, startled her.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Ky said. Her heart was racing; she made an effort to keep her voice steady. “I was about to rummage around and make a cup of tea. Would you like one?” Even as she lied, she wondered why. She would have to tell him about the outlets; someone else might be hurt by plugging anything into one.
“Admiral.” His voice had an edge to it. “You’re the last person I expected to find sneaking around in a dark kitchen.” In her heightened alertness, she felt his words as a threat.
“That’s reassuring,” she said, putting a touch of humor in her voice. “I should have turned the lights on, but I thought the dims were bright enough. Since I haven’t found the tea tins, and ended up over here with the mixing machines—”
“A sergeant never forgets where the hot drinks and the kettle are,” he said. His voice seemed completely relaxed now, without the edge of suspicion she’d heard at first. But why suspicion? She was duty officer that night, with a perfect right to be anywhere. He walked over to one of the cabinets, opened it, and pulled out a square tin. “Here. And I’ll put the kettle on. And bring mugs.”
Ky took the tin and opened it. It held single-serving packets of several different tea varieties, including tik in packets carrying the Vatta brand logo. She hadn’t seen one of those for years; her gaze blurred for a moment and she almost plucked one out. Then she chose instead the green-marked packet of a competing brand. Two of those? Three? He might like his stouter than she did. She carried the open tin over to the counter beside the stove.
The kettle hissed as it heated. Marek came back with two mugs. “You don’t drink your own family’s tea?”
“I grew up on it,” Ky said. “By the time I went to the Academy, I was sneaking cups of other kinds, just for variety.”
“I can understand that,” he said. He rummaged in the tin, extracting a red packet with a yellow triangle on it. “Since you’re up, I can give you the latest report: nominal readings on all the gauges for power, water, ventilation. Nobody awake but you and me and Corporal Riyahn who’s on the outer door. I went up and looked out—it’s blowing a gale and I couldn’t see two meters, so nobody’s going to sneak up on us tonight. I told Riyahn he could barricade the door and move down to the first turn below, where it’s warmer. I checked the rooms again on my way down to this end, then heard an unexpected noise in the kitchen—”
“And came to check, as of course you should. Finding an admiral lurking in the dimness, wishing she didn’t have to fumble her way back to the main light switches to find tea.”
“You may be closer to sleep than you think. Unless tea keeps you awake.”
“Not me,” Ky said. “I grew up next to a tik plantation. Another reason to drink another kind. Tik tea can keep me awake; nothing else does.”
“And yet you couldn’t sleep. Want to talk about it?”
His voice was warm, calm, the voice of someone who could be trusted. Similar in tone to that of the many good senior NCOs who had been so important in her career. Or… the voice of someone who could seem trustworthy, the voice of a betrayer. Ky thought about the implications of the brand of tea he’d chosen. Did he know she knew that San Kreslan was a Miznarii corporation? She certainly knew Marek had no implant, though given the scars on his head that might be a medical issue. She’d assumed from the scars that was the reason Marek didn’t have one, but… maybe not.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Just a headache. It could be the weather; I used to get headaches at home when a storm was coming in. One reason to prefer life in a spaceship.” Her mind began throwing up scraps of memory, of Marek’s interactions from the shuttle crash on. Was he what he had seemed? Or something else? She couldn’t be sure. Precisely because he was the senior NCO, she had relied on him to act independently; he saw more of Jen Bentik than he did of her.
“You don’t use your implant to regulate your sleep?”
“Only before combat,” she said. “Then I set it to wake me up an hour and a half before we come out of FTL, and it makes sure I’ve had the sleep I need.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know as I’d trust something like that. All those electrics inside your head. But—you haven’t had any problems with it? Or could the headache be caused by it?”
“No,” Ky said. “As far as I know, implants can’t cause a headache. As for sleep, I need that function rarely. Most of the time, natural sleep works well enough. I don’t want to be overly dependent on it, after all.”