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02:40
“They’re coming aboard, Muki. What are we going to do?”
Imari shifted her gaze between her parents, their fear contributing to her own. “Mommy?”
Mommy didn’t even look down at her, which was unusual. Imari was used to receiving her mother’s undivided attention when requested. Annoyed, she tugged on the hem of her mother’s shirt. “Mommy?”
Her mother scooped her up, though her attention still remained on her husband. “Muki? What about the baby?”
Imari snuggled into her mother’s shoulder, still afraid, but comforted by her touch. “What about me, Daddy?” she asked with a small giggle.
Daddy usually smiled when she laughed, but his face remained solemn. “We’ll put her in the storage cache, under the engine room, Irina.”
Imari listened as they spoke, soothed by their voices even though the tones weren’t calming.
“No. If the pirates ki...do something to us, she could be there for days before anyone finds her.”
Daddy nodded. “I know, hon, but she’ll be safer there than she will be around those men. She’s four years old, half-Asian, and definitely a commodity to people like that.”
When Mommy began to sob, Imari lifted her head to touch her cheek. “Don’t cry, Mommy. It will be okay. Somewhere, the sun is shining, and I love you.” That’s what her mother always said when she was sad, but it didn’t seem to make Mommy feel better.
Daddy and Mommy started rushing through the ship. Imari clung to her mother as they moved. “What’s wrong, Mommy?”
“I love you, baby,” was all Mommy said.
Imari laid her head against her mother’s shoulder again, letting the jostling of her mother’s quick pace rock her into a light doze. When she awoke, they were in a space she didn’t recognize. “Where are we, Daddy?”
He cradled the back of her head with his hand, but didn’t answer the question. “Imari, we need you to be brave, okay?”
She nodded, her stomach tightening in a way it usually did only when she was about to throw up. With wide eyes, she watched Daddy slide a piece of equipment across the floor and lift a small panel in the floor.
“I think there’s enough space for her to squeeze in.” Daddy knelt to look into the space revealed by the lifted panel. “Hand her to me, Irina.”
Imari yelped when her mother hugged her so tightly that she couldn’t breathe. “Mommy, that hurts.”
“I’m sorry, baby,” whispered Mommy against her hair, and Imari sensed she was apologizing for more than the tight hug, though she didn’t understand anything beyond that.
“It’s okay.” She hugged her mother. “I love you, Mommy.”
“Love you, too, baby.” Tears streamed down her mother’s face when she handed Imari to her father.
To her surprise, Daddy was also crying. She had never seen tears on his cheeks, and she touched one with her small index finger. “Why are you and Mommy sad, Daddy?”
“I love you, Imari.”
“I love you too, Daddy.” She hugged him, and he squeezed her tightly, holding her against him for a long second. He only let go when a loud bang reverberated through the ship. “I’m scared.”
“I know. Me too,” said Daddy. “I need you to be quiet now, Imari. Not a peep, okay?”
She nodded, but couldn’t help whimpering and clinging to him when she realized Daddy was trying to put her into the small, dark space beneath the panel. “No, please. I’m sorry. Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”
“God, Imari,” said Daddy, his voice thick with emotion. He coughed and sounded more like himself when he spoke again. “You aren’t being punished. There are bad people trying to get onto the ship, and we need you to stay here until it is safe.”
Reluctantly, Imari stood in the space, taking the blanket and pillow Daddy handed to her. She dropped them onto the floor to take the flashlight Mommy knelt down to give her. A click of the button illuminated the dark shadows of the cache.
“Don’t turn it on yet, Imari. Wait until we’ve closed the door. You don’t want to waste the energy.”
She nodded to show she’d heard Daddy and shut off the flashlight.
“That will last you a couple of days, baby,” said Mommy.
Daddy leaned in to put a box in the corner. “There are water pouches and ration bars in there, Imari.”
She grimaced. “I hate those things.”
He ignored her interruption. “You have two weeks’ worth.”
Imari didn’t really understand the passing of time yet, but she nodded to show she was listening. “You’ll be back soon, won’t you?”
Daddy smiled, but he seemed sad. “We’ll be back to you as soon as we can, Imari.”
Mommy started sobbing, and Imari reached for her mother as Daddy closed the panel. She had no choice but to sit down so the panel could close. With a click, the panel closed, enshrouding her in darkness. Recently, Imari had given up her nightlight, but the total absence of light was terrifying, and she started to cry. “Mommy, I want out.”
“Hush, Imari,” said Daddy sternly.
She called out to him, but the scraping of metal above her drowned out her words, and she knew he had returned the piece of equipment to its original position. The space was small and dark, but she could still hear the explosions that racked the ship a few moments later. Curled into a ball, she huddled in the blanket and buried her head under the pillow to drown out the sounds of shouting and screaming. When her mother’s cries carried to her, Imari sucked her thumb to keep from calling out to her. Be brave, she repeated to herself, over and over, as the screams finally faded, and silence returned to the tomblike space where she huddled, alone and afraid.
“Wake up.”
Adam’s imperious voice cut through the dream, finally drawing Imari from the memory that haunted her dreams, even twenty-seven years later. “What?” she asked, slightly disoriented as she often was upon waking from a nightmare of the past.
“You were thrashing and moaning. Again.”
She sat up in time to see his expression change from annoyance to one of utter blankness. “Sorry,” she said tersely, feeling anything but. She was raw, exposed, and in need of comfort, not his display of irritation.
What was she doing sleeping with this man? Imari asked herself that question for the hundredth time since starting her affair with Adam Ford. For some reason, she couldn’t resist him, despite her internal cautions to not do it again, whenever he came calling. He was mysterious and secretive, which should have been a turn-off, but only enhanced the attraction. It was the bad-boy syndrome, she told herself, while knowing the real reason. He had mastered the villain persona well enough, but that wasn’t what drew her to him. Ford was a warm body, someone with whom to share the loneliness of space, even for just a little while. Any man would do when she was on a mission; this one just happened to be available this time.
He didn’t meet her eyes as he got out of bed and padded across the room. His gaze remained focused on the lone window in her quarters, his irises as dark as the expanse of space he studied.
She sighed, biting back the urge to instigate conversation. She knew he preferred not to talk or cuddle after sex. In fact, now that they were awake, Adam would dress and slip back to his quarters in another ninety seconds. She could set her watch by it. He didn’t engage in idle chatter, and he refused to talk about anything personal, especially his family life. She didn’t even know if there was a Mrs. Lt. Ford waiting for him back on Earth.
As uncomfortable as the lack of knowledge made her, she continued to sleep with him. Long missions were part of her career, but she hated the solitude of space, the feeling that no one else was in the void with her. At the same time, space was where she best remembered her parents and felt closest to them. Space both repelled and drew her, but she needed a warm body to connect with in order to endure the isolation. Her body reacted predictably to Adam’s proximity with a series of chemical reactions, the outcome being they always ended up sprawled across her narrow bunk, tangling the sheets, and sweating with the exertion of purely physical sex. For a few minutes, it confirmed that she wasn’t floating alone in space.
He reached for his clothes precisely when she had predicted, slipping on black pants and a turtleneck with efficient movements. Twenty-two seconds for the shoes. She looked at the digital clock on the wall, counting the seconds. Yes, twenty-two. How entertaining this game was. It certainly beat moping in bed, whining about how her lover didn’t meet her needs.
Not that she had any other needs than physical with Adam. Imari was practical about relationships and knew only a fool fell in love with someone like him.
A long beep from the screen on the wall interrupted her silent reverie. It gave another short beep, warning someone would appear in three seconds. She tucked the sheet over her breasts while Adam disappeared from the line of sight of the screen.
Lt. Douglass appeared on the screen. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Chief.”
She shrugged a slender shoulder, knowing Joe wouldn’t bother her unless it was important. “It doesn’t matter. What’s wrong?”
“There’s something wrong with the navigational system. Could you come to Engineering?”
“I’ll be right down.”
Adam slipped out without his customary terse goodbye. Imari didn’t spare much time thinking about his change in routine as she slid from the bed and padded into the bathroom, deciding she had to take two minutes for a chemical shower to wash away the scent of him before going down to Engineering.
02:51
Imari had expected to make a quick adjustment to the boards and return to her quarters, where she could squeeze in four hours of sleep before rising to report for duty. Instead, she found a complicated situation she was having problems comprehending. It just couldn’t be the way it seemed. “Tell me again, Joe.”
“Corporal Meadows called me about an hour ago in the cargo bay, where I was hitting golf balls, to report we were off-course. Claimed a star cluster should be coming into sight, but wasn’t there.” Joe shook his head. “I didn’t believe it. All the equipment shows we’re precisely where we should be. I thought I’d pacify him by running a diagnostic, but the main computer locked me out. I came in to do it manually, and that’s when I found this.”
Her gaze hadn’t wavered from the small disk attached to the board with three slim wires, so she had no need to question to what “this” referred. “I’d better call Commander Daniels.”
“Yes, Chief.”
Imari moved to the nearest screen and dialed in the code to connect her to the commander’s quarters. A series of beeps alerted Kate to her presence, and the commander appeared on her vidscreen, looking as though she was just about to go on-duty. Did the commander sleep with her hair in that immaculate braid and wear her uniform to bed?
“Yes, Imari?”
“Commander, can you come to Engineering?”
Daniels arched a dark brow, but didn’t waste time asking questions right then. “Of course.”
Imari shut down her link and returned to the board Joe had removed from the computer console. She leaned closer to examine the component piggybacking on the board’s circuitry, shaking her head without realizing it. The conclusion was inescapable, and it fell to her to tell the commander.
Kate arrived quickly, tall and composed as always. She stopped beside Imari, spared a brief nod to Joe as he took another step back, and looked down at the board. “What’s the problem?”
Imari took a pair of needle nose pliers from the toolbox on the console and used the tip to point to the small device. “This.”
Kate leaned closer, her brow furrowed. “What is it?”
“If I’m correct, it’s a microcomputer, used to transmit coordinates to the navigational system, while simultaneously overriding commands the navigations officer inputs.”
A short gasp escaped the commander. “Who would do this?”
“Someone who wanted to control our course without us being aware of it. If it hadn’t been for Ian Meadows’s alertness, who knows how long we would have continued on the wrong course? It could have been months, when we were due to reach Primos and didn’t, before we realized.”
Commander Daniels was quiet for a long moment. “What is our new destination?”
“I don’t know, but we’re heading almost the direct opposite of Primos’s coordinates.”
“How far off-course are we?”
Imari shrugged. “That I don’t know. I won’t until I recalibrate the navigational boards and get a true reading of our exact coordinates. At a guess, I’d say we’re at least two weeks out in the wrong direction.”
Kate cursed. “Who did this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who has access to the navigational console?”
“Lt. Douglass and I are the only ones rated for maintenance of the boards. Conceivably, Preston and Carlyn, although the pilots wouldn’t have much of a reason to access the hardware. Same with the navigation officers. Meadows and Pope would have a better idea of how the system worked than the pilots, but wouldn’t need to adjust it.” She shook her head. “No one but Lt. Douglass and I would have any legitimate reason to access the Nav boards.”
“Computer, identify all parties who have accessed the navigational console during the past month,” Kate said.
A crisp, impersonal male voice said, “Lt. Carrie Stevens, June Seventh, 2253, for routine diagnostics; unrecognized, June Nineteenth, 2253, for unknown purposes; Lt. Joseph Douglass, July First, 2253, for routine diagnostics; Chief Engineer Imari Beshiio, July First, 2253, for maintenance.”
Imari traded a look with Joe as the commander’s teeth gnashed with a grinding sound before she spoke again. “Be more specific about the unrecognized person.”
“Request denied.”
“Authorization Daniels, two-two-one.”
“Request denied,” the voice said again, unemotional, as it was designed to be.
It was clear Kate’s patience was fading. “Why is my request denied?”
“You do not have access to that data.”
“Who does?”
“Request denied.”
“Fucking piece of scrap metal.” Kate stabbed a finger in the direction of the panel. “Fix that fucker and get me concrete data by oh-four-hundred.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She watched the commander stride away, hoping she and Joe could meet the imposed deadline. Kate Daniels wasn’t a woman who accepted excuses and disappointing her was up there on the top of Imari’s list of things she didn’t want to do.
04:00
Imari arrived on the bridge at the appointed meeting time. She stood off to the side, holding a datapad, and waited until Commander Daniels acknowledged her. When she rose from her chair to walk toward the commander’s alcove adjacent to the bridge, Imari followed, hoping she was reading her leader’s subtle gesture correctly.
Kate stepped in first, but waited until Imari entered before closing the door. The small space seemed cramped, with the commander overwhelming the area with her presence. “What do you have for me, Imari?”
Imari handed her the datapad. “I’ve corrected our coordinates and regained control of the navigation systems. Lt. Douglass wrote a program that should make it practically impossible for unauthorized personnel to access the boards.”
With a cursory glance at the pad, Kate said, “How much time did we lose?”
“Almost two weeks, as I suspected.”
She tossed the datapad onto the desk as she began pacing. “Tell me you know who did this?”
Swallowing her trepidation, Imari shook her head. “No, ma’am. We were unable to access that data. The saboteur covered their tracks efficiently. It would take weeks of searching before we could find the command used to isolate the information. I don’t think anyone on board is qualified. Only someone in Programming Intelligence could unravel that coding, and we’re weeks out from the nearest base with that capability.”
Kate waved her hand. “We’re already off course. I won’t add even more time to this mission.” She turned to Imari, her lips pursed tightly. “Besides, when the rat realizes it didn’t work, he’ll strike again.” Her dark eyes narrowed. “This time, we’ll be ready for him. I want security tightened in Engineering, along with any other vulnerable systems.”
Imari nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” Sensing dismissal, she turned to leave.
“And, Imari?”
She turned her head back in the commander’s direction. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Not too tight, you understand? I want to catch the bastard in the act.”
“Yes, ma’am.”