Devereux headed toward the starboard section of the cargo bay, trying for now to stay parallel with the interior bulkhead. It was not much as a landmark, but it would keep them from getting too disoriented. Although, unlike the others, she was unarmed, she took the lead. Bayer and Choy remained close. She trusted that they would fire first should their potentially renegade Tactical Officer come after her first.
She heard the other team move off in the opposite direction. The available illumination in the area dimmed as the Bayer and Chou moved away. The three beams of light projected by her team each suddenly seemed more intensely bright. Without consultation, each selected a different area ahead to inspect. Bayer swept his beam across the vertical surfaces of the massive cargo containers, while Choy played hers along the deck, mapping out a path ahead. Devereux surveyed the bulkheads and adjacent deck, looking for signs of Hawkes’ passage or presence. She found nothing definitively worth further attention, at least not without closer inspection.
There’s no doubt he can hear us coming, she thought.
Neither of the teams was attempting to be very quiet during their passage across the cargo bay. With five of them moving around, Devereux doubted that they could manage much stealth with that many boots against the deck. Unfortunately, it also meant that they might mask any sounds that Hawkes might make. That was to his advantage, but she deeply doubted that he was likely to permit himself any noise that might reveal his location.
The three of them said little, and then only in hushed whispers, as they moved deeper into the darkness of the cargo bay. Devereux was surprised at how much larger the space felt in the dark—and how many places it provided where a person could conceal themselves.
Without light, possibly for days . . .
Bayer paused, gesturing for the others to stop. He swept the beam of his wrist light across the stacks of cargo to their left. Devereux’s eyes moved with the beam.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Before answering, Bayer played the light beam across the area again. His hand rested ready on his weapon.
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “I thought I saw something.”
Devereux aimed her beam in the same direction, echoing Bayer’s actions. She saw nothing unusual. At least, she was certain, nothing that moved.
Choy agreed that she also had seen nothing move. She did however, Devereux noticed, appear to be examining their surroundings with an even higher state of nervousness than before. Devereux could not blame her, although she wondered what it was—if anything—that Bayer thought he had seen.
“Okay,” she said, raising her voice just enough in volume to be clearly heard. “Let’s keep going,” she told them. “Stay sharp.”
She started ahead once more, glancing more frequently now at the irregular stacks of cargo.
#
Elizabeth stared at the blank gray area of the main bridge display. The image did not change and she wished that she could be down there with the others in cargo bay. The few snippets of communications that they had received were not enough for her to be able to fully imagine what was going on in there.
“Nothing like a good snipe hunt, eh Lizzie?”
Elizabeth nearly dropped her tablet in surprise. Willing her heart to begin beating again, she turned her head and fixed the Chief Engineer with a fierce glare. She had not heard him approach.
When her pulse rate had slowed back to its normal pace, she glanced toward the command deck, and then back at the Chief Engineer. He did not bother to meet her gaze.
“I’ve got nothing,” he told her. “I’ve got no more tricks up my sleeve on how to get the damned computer to let us in.” He took a slow, thoughtful breath. “If it’d been before . . .”
Elizabeth knew what he meant. Although the extensive refit that the Emerald Flight had undergone after its encounter with the Brenndari had improved every system on board the ship—weapons, life support, power distribution, to name just a few—its previous incarnation, even with all of its quirks, would almost certainly have allowed them to override what Hawkes had done.
In some ways, Elizabeth mused, progress isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.
She nodded her understanding to the Chief Engineer and then looked again at the uninformative gray rectangle on the main bridge display.
“Nothing from the Cap’n?”
Elizabeth shook her head slowly, finally looking away. “Just that they’d entered the cargo hold. Security systems are still offline.”
Rusty grunted a response. There might have been an intelligible word or two in there, but Elizabeth could not be sure.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Rusty murmured quietly, but loud enough that Elizabeth was able to understand him.
“No,” she agreed grimly. “It doesn’t.”
“If it’d been anyone else . . .”
Elizabeth’s mouth formed a tight line. Of all the members of the crew, Lieutenant Hawkes was the last one she would have ever expected to suddenly go rogue.
Maybe Hope, she amended silently. But then it might some kind of alien thing instead.
There was much that Elizabeth did not understand about Aerians. In fact, she knew, there was a lot that most people did not know about them. The Captain, she suspected, knew more than most of the experts—probably a lot more—but she had never let on with anything more than the smallest hint.
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