Emerald Flight: “Human Factors” (continued)

He had to make a choice, for they would eventually find him.

Together, he could not defeat all of them at once. While he was confident of his skills, they were too many of them. He would be able to defend himself, but eventually they would prevail.

Now. While they are separate.

He considered the two groups. The one that approached from his left consisted of two members; the one that came from the right had three. There was something, he could remember what, about one of the members of the second group. She was adept, possessing nearly the warrior skills that he possessed. It was possible that she might defeat him, particularly with the aid of the others in her group. He would have to face her, he was certain, but he wanted to do so on terms that might assure his victory. That made the decision simple.

The other one, he decided, and slowly turned in the direction from which they approached. Their torches will reveal them.

He crouched, waiting for them to approach. They would pass his hiding place, he knew, for he secreted himself well. Then he could confront them from behind, without warning.

And so he waited, counting their footsteps, prepared to leap upon them at precisely the right moment. They would fall before him. They would not take him.

- 4 -

Devereux moved through the darkness of the Cargo Bay One, wishing again that she had brought a weapon. Still, the two crew members with her were armed. She hoped it would be enough.

They kept within about five meters of the outer bulkhead as they completed their inner circuit of the cargo bay’s interior. Their wrist lights, she knew, gave their position away, but she doubted that served much to their disadvantage. It was difficult to mask their footfalls, so she we was certain that Hawkes, wherever he had secreted himself, was aware of their every moment.

She briefly considered that they should have used night-vision projectors and then discarded the idea. While they might provide a broader view than their wrist lamps could provide, they could not penetrate as deeply into the darkness. Coupled with an infrared sensor, they might have proven useful, but then the teams would have been burdened with additional equipment and less capable of defending themselves if suddenly attacked.

Would he? She wondered. Was that his goal? Or was he simply in hiding? If so, why? And from what?

During her years of service in the Fleet, she had witnessed several ways in which officers and crew might lose their hold on sanity. The persistent stress of knowing that only a few layers of titanium alloy kept one from a harsh, if relatively quick, death was documented as the primary cause. Combat fatigue was the another top one. Each person had their breaking point, she knew. She just never could have imagined what Hawkes’ might have been.

And why now?

Their mission was a simple one: deliver and transfer supplies between a colony world and a scientific outpost. Neither of them was located even close to disputed regions of space, so the chance of engaging in combat was low. It was rarely non-existent, but in this case it was unlikely.

So what then?

She had reviewed the Tactical Officer’s personnel file. As far as she could tell, he had never even passed through this area during any of his previous assignments. That their passage through it might be serving as some kind of trigger seemed remote.

But the mind is a strange and wonderful thing, she mused. Sometimes it makes its own connections.

“Captain?” Choy whispered. Something in the pitch of her tone told Devereux that it was not the first time that the petite engineer had tried to get her attention.

“Yes, Ensign?”

“We are getting close.”

At first, Devereux thought she meant that they might be getting close to locating Hawkes. Then she realized that, while she had been following her own thoughts, the three of them was approaching the point where they should meet up with the other team.

“Yes,” Devereux agreed, sweeping her beam around the area.

Other than for their view of the cargo containers, nothing else seemed to have changed in their surroundings.

Still . . .

“Hold up,” she called to the others in a rough whisper, raising a hand as a signal for them to stop.

She did not turn around, but heard the movement of their boots on the deck cease behind her. Slowly, she turned, passing the beam of her wrist lamp across the cargo bay at about waist height. It caused deep shadows to form in the structure above them, but illuminated nearly everything else in their surroundings. She focused on the narrow shadows between the cargo pods, knowing that they were much wider than they appeared from that distance.

Plenty of room for someone to hide.

Frowning, she finished her sweep. She had seen nothing unusual, nothing that might give her a clue as to Hawkes’ location. Everything appeared to be undisturbed, although she knew that moving one of the cargo pods when a few millimeters required equipment. A closer examination might reveal where dust had been disturbed. Even in the tightly controlled environment of a starship, it was impossible to filter out all of the possible contaminants—and the cargo bay was the most likely place to find them.

She thought back over the manifest, trying again to determine if there had been anything listed there that might have attracted the Tactical Officer’s attention.

What about something that wasn’t listed?

Smuggling cargo aboard a Fleet starship was extremely difficult, but not wholly impossible. Her Chief Engineer had managed it on more than one occasion.

Was that it? she wondered. Was he hoping to catch someone in the act?

That did not make sense, she decided. While Hawkes might indeed attempt to catch a perpetrator while they were in the direct act of violating regulations or committing a crime, the rest of it did not add up. Unless he suspected her involvement—had he?—he would have alerted her in some way, even if she were off-duty. And the command lockdown, that would make sense if he suspected that she was involved, but the way the whole thing had played out so far did not satisfy her that that was the explanation.

Then what was?

“Did you find something, Captain?” Owens asked. He sounded impatient to be on their way.

“No,” she replied. “I—”

Although the noise came from some distance ahead, it was clearly the sound of something sliding across the deck. Voices, although their words were indistinct, followed, shouting with alarm.

Devereux broke into a run automatically.

“Weapons!” she called to Owens and Choy, noting that Owens had already drawn his.

Although Owens’ had a longer stride, Devereux had practiced speed. Choy tried to keep up, following them by a few paces.

Their wrist beams danced crazily across the interior of the cargo bay as they ran. Devereux pushed away a sharp wave of vertigo, focusing instead on the space ahead. As they came around the edge of the stack of cargo pods, her mind presented her with a frozen tableau.

Nang lay sprawled across the deck. Her weapon rested on the deck, more than a meter away, far beyond her grasp. Bayer struggled with another figure, his muscles bulging against the fabric of his uniform tunic. His assailant could only have been Hawkes, for Devereux recognized the whipcord silhouette of his body instantly. With an inarticulate grunt that might have been a curse, she charged at the two men.

#

Rusty entered the bridge and headed directly toward the Tactical console.

“What do ya got?” he asked.

Elizabeth arrived just as Karr brought up the access log on one of the console’s displays.

“Chief . . .”

Rusty waved her to be quiet. He sensed her annoyance without seeing it, and waited impatiently for Karr to finishing accessing the information.

“Here’s the data from the past twenty hours,” Karr told him. “It looks pretty routine.”

Rusty skimmed it quickly. Nothing leapt out at him as unusual.

But then it wouldn’t, would it?

“Transfer it to a pad,” he told Karr.

She obeyed quickly, even while appearing slightly puzzled. While the data was transferred to the tablet, she kept flashing quick glances up at Elizabeth. A few moments later, she offered him the tablet.

“Good girl,” he said, flashing her a quick smile. Despite her uneasiness, her cheeks did redden ever so slightly.

Clutching the small tablet, he headed for the command deck. Elizabeth followed him about a half-step behind, although trying match his pace.

“Chief.” She told it almost breathlessly, diminishing its impact.

Rusty was already removing the newly reprogrammed command panel from the command console. He tossed it aside, somewhat carelessly, and carefully searched through the other ones scattered there, looking for the one that had originally been in the console.

When the first one that he picked up was not the correct one, he tried to remember if he had sent it down to Engineering for more detailed testing. His concern proved unwarranted when the third one he retrieved turned out to be the one that he wanted. He slid it into place, but, before powering on the console, switched it into diagnostic mode. That would, he hoped, place the console into a diagnostic state before executing any instructions that might have been stored on the panel.