Chapter 25: In our family portrait
Operation: Guillotine
Day 3
The Darrex ran a tight ship. When they talked, they moved their hands so quickly I could barely keep up my analysis of their gestures. If they had anything to complain about, it didn't show in their behavior. They did their jobs quickly and efficiently. No wonder the Koraxians kept them as slaves.
Arcturus had us deep behind in enemy territory. We were about a dozen FVs beyond Darrex. I wouldn't say we'd passed a point of no return, but we were getting there. If we ran into some hellacious fighting this far out, the odds of making it back dropped dramatically.
Jeremiah kept busy monitoring Koraxian communications. The Darrex had a very rudimentary translation system at their disposal, nothing nearly as fancy as Unilang. Half the messages he picked up were garbled into unintelligible nonsense. I got the feeling he was getting discouraged, started to feel useless when he couldn't act as our eyes and ears. The Darrex had their own navigator, after all. Finally, some communiques came in from Darrex, and he had something to do again. They were specs on some engine enhancements the engineers back at base came up with. I gave them a quick glance. "Interesting. You want me to run these down to Byron?" I asked.
"Go for it," Jeremiah said, as a small cartridge ejected from the console. I snapped it up and began my trek to the other end of the ship.
Yeah, this Darrex rustbucket didn't a very reliable internal network. Links would go down abruptly. Each ship system had its own computer, so it wasn't a huge deal, unless you needed to feed a bunch of information from one system into another. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. We'd learned this a couple days ago. Suddenly, it didn't seem like the Darrex really parted with that much--a destroyer riddled with problems, a corvette on the verge of retirement. I didn't even want to think about what might be wrong with the fighter complement they gave us. Felt like we were a mobile junkyard. If only Absolution had been fixed in time, that even seemed like a better option.
But, you do what you can with what you've got. I walked up to Byron in one of the corners of the engine room, and handed her the cart. "The boys back on Darrex sent us some engine enhancement data. We might be able to squeeze some more performance out of this puppy."
Crouched, busy with a book, a pencil, and a notepad, she appeared annoyed that I'd interrupted her. She snatched it out of my hand and gave me a "go to hell" look. "We'll see about that."
I knelt next to her. "What's your deal? You're always so icy."
She didn't even look up at me. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Well, fine. I got up and looked around the engine room. Lots of status indicators on the walls--lights, displays, meters, the whole deal. A set of consoles allowed manual tuning of engine parameters. A special system off to the port side controlled the FV drive, which had its own requirements and settings. I gave everything a once over, made sure there were no warning lights or anything like that. I hovered my fingers over each control on the FV console, checking the statuses one by one.
"Excuse me," Byron rasped. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Just checking things over. No big deal."
She took a threatening tone, now. "I already kicked the Darrex engineers out of here. Do I need to have you removed, too?"
"You need to relax. I'm not here to mess up your engines. I'm just here to help."
Honestly, I just had to know what her problem was. Was it me? Or was she just a bitch? Inquiring minds demanded answers. Sadly, she wasn't interested in giving them.
"If you want to help, get out. That's the most helpful thing you could possibly do."
"Is it because you spend all your time by yourself? Mom and Dad don't pay any attention to you, the genius who toils in darkness?"
"Shut up," she ordered. "I've had enough of this." She stood up, drew her sidearm from its holster, and pointed it at me. "If this fucking ship had a fucking intercom I'd get my father to order you out of here. Since it doesn't, I hope this makes my point clear enough. Get. Out."
Christ. I put up my hands and backed out of the engine room. I knew I'd struck a nerve, but it wasn't worth getting shot. Not that I really thought she'd do it, but really, sometimes it's a bad idea to test a woman. I went back up to the command deck and checked up on Jeremiah. "Things okay here?"
He nodded. "Not much to do, but yeah. I haven't seen anything to indicate the Koraxians know about us, so we're clear for now."
Next was Lana. "How about the weapons?" I asked. "Everything in working order?"
"What weapons? This pile of junk is marginally better than throwing rocks. They loaded us up with bombs, but the ship-to-ship weapons are pathetic. The fighters are going to have to provide all our defense. I can't even be sure the flak cannons work. I'm worried that if I activate them they'll rupture something."
Well, that was quite a rant I hadn't really asked for. A little patronizing would have been nice. Everyone was just so on edge, not knowing what was going to happen. I approached Arc, hoping he wouldn't bite my head off or give me a grim assessment of our situation. "How's that route coming?"
He eyeballed the starmap on the screen in front of him. "It's coming. I'm afraid we've reached the limits of my knowledge with regard to Koraxian space. From this point on, we're piecing together the trail. I'm waiting to see a few more ships come in and go out and try to plot our way to the homeworld. I know that it's roughly right here." He pointed to a spot on the map that looked quite a distance from our current location--at least twenty stars were between us and it. "As long as we keep getting closer to that spot, we should be narrowing down the fold vectors that can take us there."
"Sounds good to me. Any idea what's up with your daughter?"
"I take it you tried to talk to her." He cracked a knowing smile.
"Yeah, seems that wasn't a great idea."
"She's not very personable. Not comfortable around people. It's nothing against you. Well, it might be, but she'd treat you the same way regardless."
"Any idea how that got started?"
He shrugged. "She basically grew up in the engine compartment of my ship. She never expressed much interest in anything else. I got her some physics and engineering manuals and she just ate it up. I didn't think much of it, I suppose. I got a free, highly-skilled engineer out of the deal."
"Take it from me, Arc," I said, trying to sound serious, but probably failing. "She may be an adult, but she needs her parents. Between my brother and I, he got all the attention and I got ignored. It stings like hell. She may not say so, but I have a pretty good idea that's part of her problem, right there."
"Hm," he murmured with a little smirk. "Maybe I'll have a talk with her. But, as you said, she's grown up. I'm not sure what more I can do for her now."
"You could try being her father, for a start. She's not just your engineer, you know?"
"You have a point. But all this analysis may have to wait until after our little excursion."
"You're that confident we'll make it back?"
"Captain Maxwell, you and I may sit on opposite sides of the law, but we've both made a profession out of beating the odds. With our forces combined, how can we lose?"
"You know, it's that kind of cocky attitude that gets people killed."
Chapter 25
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