“Welcome back to Earth space, Marco Polo! Due to a glitch with one of our field generators, we must request that you take all weapons offline at a distance of ten kilometers from the station. Your supplies have arrived and are waiting for you on Deck M. We will begin transferring cargo into your holds as soon as your ship has passed a routine customs inspection. Please dock at module 5 and prepare to be boarded.”
“Well! That was friendly,” Eberhart remarked to no one in particular.
“Commander, Daisy Hub is transmitting our saved messages,” called the communications officer from her console. “There are a lot of them, five commbursts so far.”
“Are any of them for Commander Dedrick?”
After a pause, she responded, “Just one that I can see, marked ‘personal’.”
“Move it onto a datawafer. I’ll give it to him myself at shift’s end. And forward anything marked ‘urgent’ or ‘immediate action’ to the captain right away.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
Dedrick was sitting at his desk when Eberhart entered his quarters, three hours later. “This arrived for you from Earth,” she told him, handing over the wafer. Then she looked around and added, “Where is Lania?”
“As soon as we docked, she ran out the door, all excited. She’s probably peppering the customs inspectors with questions right now about what it’s like to live aboard a space station. Sometimes I envy her.”
“Oh?”
“She’s seeing so many things for the first time. Makes me wonder—” Shaking off the rest of that thought, he plugged the wafer into the slot in his desktop and brought Novak’s “routine communication” up on the screen.
Leslie waited politely on the other side of his desk while he read the text in silence. When he’d finished and glanced up at her, she prompted him, “Well?”
“It’s just the usual. Weather’s fine. Food is plentiful.” He paused. “Aliens are unpopular.”
She made an impatient sound. “That’s nice, but it’s hardly ‘eyes only’. What’s the actual message?”
For a moment, Dedrick debated with himself. Let her in or don’t let her in — which one would he end up regretting?
Eventually, he replied, “It’s encrypted.”
“Then decrypt it. I’ll wait.”
“Leslie, I — I have to do this in private. Trust me, if you’re here, you’ll have no choice but to report me.”
She pressed her lips together. “Fine. But you will tell me what your old family friend says. Right?”
“I’ll tell you as much as I can without jeopardizing your career.”
“Dammit, Gael!” Eberhart launched both her hands into the air in exasperation. Then, leaning in with stormy eyes, she said in a low, intense voice, “Stop trying to be such a hero. I’m not some kid you need to protect, and there are more important things to me than my career. The Fleet is my job. The Marco Polo is my workplace. There will be other jobs and other workplaces, but family is precious. That’s why you stand by your loved ones. You fight for them. I know you feel that way about Lania. You’ve already risked your commission for her. Why is it so hard for you to accept that I can feel the same way about you?”
Stunned, he stammered, “Leslie, I’m just—”
“Shut up, mister, I’m not finished. You are the stubbornest, most infuriating man I’ve ever met, next to my father. Every time I try to help you, you push me away. I’ve been watching you learn how to be a family for that girl, all by yourself, and I know it hasn’t been easy. Well, I’m giving you one, ready-made. I’m adopting you both into my family. Like it or not, you’re Eberharts now. And there are dozens more of us. We’re everywhere. You don’t have to do this alone anymore.”
“But—”
“Don’t argue with me, Gael Dedrick! And stop trying to protect my career! Do you think for one standard second that I would stay behind if you messed up and got yourself discharged from the Fleet? Honestly, if I didn’t love you so damn much, I would have killed you several times by now.”
Her cheeks unnaturally flushed, she charged around the side of his desk and stood over him. Her fists were clenched, and for a moment he thought she was going to slug him. Instead, she bent down, cradled his face in both her hands, and planted a kiss on his lips that tasted like honey, stopped time in its tracks, and warmed him all the way to his toes.
At last she pulled away, breathing hard. “There!” she declared. “Have I made my position clear, Commander?”
His brain was alphabet soup. All he could do was nod his head.
“Good!” She took an unsteady step backward. “Let me know when you’ve decrypted that message.” And she turned and walked out the door.
Almost a minute passed before Dedrick trusted his legs to carry him from his chair to the sleeping area where he’d concealed the playback device. The last time he’d felt this weak and disoriented, he’d been seven years old and had needed help to disembark after four go-rounds on a level five thrill park ride. That was what his relationship with Leslie had been like over the years — fast-moving, heart-pumping, and utterly unpredictable. So, was it pleasure or panic that had struck him dumb and set the room spinning? He wasn’t sure. Maybe that was for the best.
Still feeling a little light-headed, he pulled the piece of rogue technology out of its hiding place and slipped the datawafer into the slot in its side. A moment later he was able to read the text Novak had sent him:
The problem has been dealt with. Not cleanly, I’m afraid. No details, just a word of advice. Stand fast. You have total deniability. The other matter is under investigation. More later.
He was still processing the meaning of these words when a voice erupted from his deskcomm. “Commander Dedrick, please report to the captain’s strategy room immediately.”
Hastily pocketing the datawafer and shoving the playback device into its cubbyhole in the bulkhead, he responded, “On my way.”
Officers’ quarters were located at the north end of the community sector, seconds away by tube car from the command sector of the ship. As Dedrick came through the strategy room door, he found Captain Takamura sitting at the head of the conference table, looking official. Deneuve was in a chair to his left, looking weary. And two Security officers stood at ease behind the captain, one to either side of him, simply looking.
Deneuve threw Dedrick a sympathetic glance, then returned her gaze to the tabletop.
“Commander, please take a seat,” Takamura began. “I have been going through the messages recently forwarded to us by Daisy Hub. Imagine my surprise at finding among them an order from Fleet Control to place you under arrest.”
Stunned, Dedrick sank onto the chair opposite Deneuve. He knew he’d heard correctly when the guards immediately moved to stand at attention behind him. “I’m under arrest?” he echoed. “On what charge, sir?”
“There are three, all related to data tampering. I’m sure you understand how serious this is. Five intervals ago a virus was introduced into Earth’s population database. By the time Data Management became aware of it, it had migrated into the Fleet Control database as well, corrupting so many files that both entire systems had to be purged and then restored from backups.”
Gael’s jaw dropped. This was Novak’s solution? “What?” he sputtered. “Why would I want to—?”
“That was my reaction as well, Commander, until I read further and learned that after the databases were restored, all mention of your cousin Lania had disappeared. Apparently, the backups had already been tampered with at the time the virus was activated. Earth High Council is treating both events as part of the same crime.”
The taste of bile was rising at the back of Dedrick’s throat. Not cleanly? That was putting it mildly!
“Captain, I assure you, this was not my doing.”
“Oh, I believe you. Everyone on this ship has an ironclad alibi for the time the virus was activated. However, you are from a powerful family on Earth, one that still has influential friends, and you took a leave of absence shortly before we left Earth space. Fleet Control did some digging and discovered that you met twice on Riviera Hub with a man named Mark Reznick, of Reznick and Ohr, an off-Earth accounting firm.”
Dedrick recognized the name. And the cover story.
Total deniability. Okay, Novak, here goes.
“Reznick was my uncle’s financial advisor, and mine as well after Uncle Dennis died and left me a portion of his wealth.”
“So this meeting was not a coincidence?”
“No. It was pre-arranged. That’s the reason I chose Riviera Hub for my R and R. It’s the closest resort to the Terran star system. Captain, I don’t see how—”
“Is it possible you might have remarked to him, in passing perhaps, how convenient it would be if all the records regarding your cousin were simply to vanish?”
“I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it, sir, but no, I didn’t mention anything like that to him. I’ll tell you what I did talk about, though, loudly and bitterly. It was the fact that two men I’d never heard of got my cousin Abner toxed on his birthday and then took him to Thrygg so he could become a plague dog. My Uncle Dennis had determined enemies. The whole time he was in power, they kept trying to bring him down. This was the scandal that finally did it, destroying my family in the bargain. And right after I begin investigating the two men who instigated it, I find myself accused of capital crimes? Now that’s what I would call convenient, Captain.”
“Under normal circumstances, I would have to agree,” Takamura told him. “However, things are not normal right now, or simple. A process was set in motion while we were in alien space, and that process will have to run its course. Charges have been laid by both Earth’s High Council and Fleet Control. There will be a combined hearing to determine whether a full tribunal should be convened. That is where you and Doctor Deneuve will get a chance to explain your side of things.”
“Doctor Deneuve is being charged as well?”
“Yes, as an accessory. Her report to Earth regarding Lania was submitted shortly before you went on leave. The virus could have lain dormant in that file for some period of time before it attacked the databases. A forensic computer analyst has been dispatched from Space Installation Security to identify any irregularities in our InfoComm system. This individual should be arriving within the next few days. In the meanwhile, I regret that I must impose restrictions on both of you.”
Dedrick pulled himself to attention in his chair. “Understood, sir.”
Deneuve just breathed a disgusted syllable.
In the end, the “restrictions” amounted to little more than being constantly shadowed by Security as they went about their customary routine, and being forbidden to speak privately with each other, in person or via the ship’s intranet. Takamura clearly believed they were both innocent. Nonetheless, it galled Dedrick that Deneuve — whose reputation he had taken such pains to protect — had been dragged into what should have been a battle between himself and the Relocation Authority. He was going to have a few choice words for Barry Novak the next time they met.