Rusty strode onto the bridge, humming tunelessly. Ahead of him, he guided a cart laden with a portable toolkit and several containers of neatly sorted spare parts. Someone had reported intermittent outages of the bridge's primary life support controls. While they did not seem to be interfering with the normal functioning of those systems, it would make it difficult to adjust the environmental controls, should the need arise.
It was hardly an immediately critical repair. Nor, he suspected, as it likely to be a particularly difficult one. He could have assigned any of a half dozen of the engineering techs familiar with those systems to diagnose the problem and make the necessary repairs. In fact, he already had a pretty good idea what the trouble was. If he was right, then almost anyone on the Engineering staff would have been capable to doing the job.
Still, he had decided to tackle it himself. There were only two places on the ship where he could find out what was going on: the bridge and Cargo One. And he had had enough of the latter for a while. It was not as though he needed a reason to visit the bridge, but having a legitimate task to perform did tend to eliminate (or at least reduce) suspicions that he might be there to eavesdrop on the ship's operations.
As he passed behind the helm station, Pyrafox turned in his chair to look at him. Rusty paused, giving the cart a light tug to stop its forward motion.
“It is tea time, Guv'ner?”
The shape of the vulpine lieutenant's jaw gave the phrase an even coarser, almost incomprehensible, Cockney accent. Rusty still managed to parse it, though. He opened his mouth, prepared with a snappy retort, and then stopped. He now recognized at a conscious level why something had seemed bit off when he had entered the bridge.
“Where is everyone?”
He surveyed the bridge stations again, seeing Owens at the Tactical station instead of Hawkes, and the command deck locked down and vacant. Elizabeth, also, was nowhere to be seen. He performed a quick mental check, and then flipped his wrist around so that he could see his chronometer. It was, as he had thought, not even mid-shift. Everyone should have been at their posts.
Rusty checked his memory again, but certain that he was not missing some kind of briefing he should be attending.
Lizzie would have blipped me . . .
Pyrafox nodded toward the main hatch. “Main Security,” he told the Chief Engineer. “The Lieutenant is 'interviewing' the alien.”
Although there were more than enough lieutenant-grade officers to go around, Rusty knew precisely who the navigator referred to. Almost without exception, only the Tactical Officer was generally referred to by the ship's crew, with the clearly audible initial capital letter, by his rank alone.
“That Old Fossil is putting the screws to her, is he?” he mused, not really expecting an answer. Nor did he anticipate the sudden tight knot in his gut at the thought of magnificent winged creature being subjected to the Tactical Officer's none-too-subtle interrogations.
He turned toward the main hatch, wondering whether he should wander down through the corridors in that direction. The repair of the life support controls could wait, or he could call someone else up here to repair them.
Rusty considered this for a moment.
The Captain'd probably be none too pleased if I showed up. Certainly the Fossil won't be.
Leaving the cart behind, he ambled over toward the Tactical station.
“Hey, Manuel,” he called out with deliberate casualness, his eyes were on the main bridge displays. “Is there a live feed into Main Security?”
Owens checked the console. “They're recording,” he reported. “But the Lieutenant has the external feed locked down.”
Rusty's mouth moved with mild annoyance.
“Aren't you sure you can't override it? Just for a minute?” he asked sweetly, giving Owens his best charming smile. “I just want to a quick peek.”
The young officer met his gaze for only a moment before looking away awkwardly, turning his eyes back down toward the console.
“I really shouldn't, sir.”
Rusty almost smiled as he heard the faint tremor of uncertainty in the young officer's tone.
“Just for a second, Manuel,” Rusty pleaded. “I just want to see what they're doing to her in there.”
He paused, surprised at how he voice seemed to catch slightly near the end there.
“Sir,” Owens replied, almost pleading himself. “I really can't.” He glanced around the bridge and his voice dropped to almost a whisper. “If the Lieutenant found out . . .”
Rusty's eyes briefly studied the young officer's rank insignia, but then decided to let it go. Although the young man also wore lieutenant's bars, Hawkes was still more senior, even if of the same rank.
What is it about that, anyway? Rusty wondered, not for the first time. The man's got at least as many hours in space as I do. Although once again intrigued by the apparent mystery, he dismissed it from his thoughts as irrelevant for now.
He frowned, staring at the Tactical console, then at the main bridge displays. None of them showed him what he wanted to see. What he really wanted, he knew, was to be down there in the interrogation room making sure that Hawkes did not—
“Chief?” Owens' urgent tone penetrated his thoughts.
Rusty looked toward the young officer. Owens answered Rusty's look before he could speak.
“You're needed at the junction panel on Deck Four Section Eighteen Beta,” he reported. “There's been some kind of overload.”
Rusty nodded his acknowledgment, frowning.
I should have seen that coming . . .
“Tell them I'm on my way,” he said, already moving toward the hatch.
As he stepped into the corridor, he wondered if there were any routes to Section Eighteen Beta that might take him past the Main Security deck.
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