“You’ll want privacy,” Gossin said. “We can clear out—”
“No—just wait here, please. I’ll use Commander Bentik’s quarters.”
She opened the door to Jen’s room; she had checked it only briefly after Jen’s death, looking for names she would need to contact later, to explain. The room had the faint stale odor of disuse; Jen’s few personal belongings were neatly laid out on the desk, including her comunit. Ky sat in the desk chair, unwound the cable from her neck, and plugged it into the wall socket, then stared at the connection in her hand, the baleful red light glowing there. But surely Marek would not have killed an ally.
She pulled the plug from the socket and sat a moment, thoughts swirling. Marek would have killed Jen. He would have killed Jen intentionally, in the same way he had tried to kill her, if Jen had used her own external power cord. Once she was dead, Jen would have been next. And how many others?
She sat until she was certain she had her face back under control, and then returned to the group now assembled in the mess. “Commander Bentik’s room outlets were also compromised. Staff Sergeant Gossin, we need a check of all outlets here, even those that seem to be functioning normally with kitchen equipment and the like.”
“Yes, sir; immediately. There’s a set of tools in Maintenance—” She looked around the table. “Hazarika, you’re with me.” She stood and turned to leave.
“I could help,” Riyahn said. “I could undo what Marek told me to do—”
“Nobody would trust you,” Cosper said.
“Sergeant,” Ky said. He subsided, glaring at her. Riyahn looked near tears again. “Corporal, you do realize that you are under suspicion. Why didn’t you volunteer to help us earlier?”
“Yes, sir—Admiral—I’m sorry, I just—I was scared—”
“Rabbit,” muttered Cosper. Ky gave him a look that stopped whatever else he was about to say. “Sorry, Admiral.”
“You could have been responsible for multiple deaths,” Ky said to Riyahn. “No credit to you that you weren’t. I can think of a half dozen charges that should be filed against you once we’re back in contact with Spaceforce. If you think undoing the sabotage will make all that go away, I can tell you it will not.” Riyahn stared, eyes brimming. “But,” she said, holding up a finger, “if you are willing to work with Staff Sergeant Gossin, identify all the sockets you sabotaged, and repair them—and if she reports that you worked well—I will include that in my report on your performance since the shuttle crash. Sergeant Cosper”—she gave him a brief glance—“will accompany the work party, and should you be tempted to do anyone mischief—” That phrase taken directly from the Military Code, archaic as it was. “He will deal with you summarily. Is that clear?”
“Y-yes, Admiral. I want to help, really I do.”
“Well, then.” Ky stood. “The rest of you, wait here—I’ll only be a few moments, and I have several ideas to put forward.”
Out in the passage, she pulled Cosper aside. “Corporal Riyahn will be very useful to both me and Spaceforce if he switches his allegiance all the way. He’s not particularly brave—”
“That’s obvious,” Cosper said, with a sidelong glare at Riyahn, standing close to Gossin like a chick cowering near a mother hen.
“So you don’t need to try to scare him; he’s already scared. I want—and Spaceforce will want—his cooperation to uncover more about whatever group uses this place. We cannot trust him, certainly, but if he is treated fairly, he may attach to us. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Grudging, that was.
“I know you’d like to pound him into mush, Sergeant, but that’s not going to get me or Spaceforce what’s needed. Lay off unless he actually does something wrong. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir.” He turned toward the others, then back to her. “Do you really think he knows anything useful?”
“He might. My guess is there’s a seventy percent chance he does.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“Go on, then.”
Ky turned back to the mess as the little work party started down the passage. “Well, now. I don’t know how many outlets Riyahn and Marek sabotaged, but I’m glad no one found out the hard way. I’m especially glad the mess hall appliances all work.” That brought a chuckle. “For now, we’re fairly secure, or think we are. We’re warm enough, we have water and food and power. But we also know we have enemies. Until I found out about the sabotage, I thought it was reasonable to stay here, on this level, as Master Sergeant Marek had advised. But knowing he was part of whatever conspiracy’s going on here, we need to know what’s behind those doors we haven’t opened yet. Yes, it might be a dangerous defense… but it might equally be something that explains what’s going on, something that gives us an edge over whoever shows up to kill us.”
A hand went up, Staff Sergeant Kurin. Ky nodded to her. “Admiral, are you sure they would kill us?”
“After what Marek did, yes. Someone spent a lot of money over a lot of years setting up this scam, and I’m certain they do not want it discovered now. You’ve seen the animals on the surface. We don’t even have a name for those huge hairy things, but they’re here, along with the ones we do have names for, which means they’re Old Earth–based life-forms.”
“Or from somewhere else that’s where Old Earth got its biota,” said Droshinski. “What if—”
“For now, we’re sticking to the what-ifs of the present,” Ky said before Droshinski had a chance to make a dramatic story out of her idea. “I’m willing to entertain ideas aimed at increasing our chances of surviving past the arrival of either the conspirators or a rescue party. You can come to me privately, or bring something up in one of our open meetings. To start with, how many of you are curious about what’s behind those locked doors?”
All the hands went up.
“Good. We’ll start with the door Marek showed the most concern about. We’re not all going at once, just in case, though I frankly think Marek was lying about the danger. Staff Sergeant Kurin, Spec Gurton, Spec Kamat, you’re with me on this one. I’m hoping we find a control room for the power system, maybe a communications center, and information about the technical specifications that will give us a clue who’s responsible.”
Out in the passage, they met the first working party coming back; Staff Sergeant Gossin had a grim expression, and Riyahn looked even more scared than before.
“What is it, Staff?” Ky asked.
“Compromised outlets anywhere you or Commander Bentik might have gone to plug something in privately,” Gossin said. “Riyahn told us about them—they’re all marked now, and some are fixed. I thought we should come tell you before fixing the rest, as there are three in the women’s bathing area and one in the watch office.”
“I didn’t know,” Riyahn said. “He said it was to make them not work with any communications devices—”
“Really? And since no one’s coms or skullphones worked anyway, why did he think that was necessary?”
“He said this was all very secret and we’d all get in a lot of trouble if anything leaked out about it and all it would do was fry the device—”
“Like someone’s skullphone? And you didn’t think what that could do to the person?”
“I didn’t—I asked him—he said—he said it had to be done. And—and he was a master sergeant. He said it was an order—”
“You knew perfectly well it would kill,” Sergeant Cosper said. The threat in his tone was clear. “You knew that; don’t lie anymore!”
“Corporal Riyahn,” Ky said, in a quieter voice. “You are in hot water up to your nose. This is not the time for excuses. Did you or did you not know that the higher current could kill someone?”