Emerald Flight: “Human Factors” (continued)

She tugged at the tunic of her hospital tunic, momentarily conscious of how it did not quite hang quite low enough. Not that accidentally displaying her navel was all that revealing, but it still bothered her how her breasts snagged it upward.

“I can go back to duty?” she asked, turning back to Hope.

Hope’s head turned up from Owens to look at her.

“Yes.”

“No restrictions?”

Hope studied her for a moment.

“Return if there is pain.”

Devereux flashed Hope a quick smile. “I will,” she said. “I promise.”

Like hell.

She knew, though, that she would return if it grew bad enough. Concussions, however mild, were not something to be trifled with. She had seen more than one of her teammates suddenly drop many minutes after receiving a blow to the head, even if they claimed that they were all right. One of them, she remembered, had died. Another had suffered permanent damage, prone to sudden public outbursts of emotion that only powerful medications could control.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” Devereux told Hope. “I want to know what you’ve found out about Lieutenant Hawkes.”

“Yes.”

Hope did not appear surprised at her request.

But then, Devereux mused, Hope rarely looked surprised.

Gathering the tablet that she had borrowed from Ramsey, Devereux gathered the small container that contained her uniform and other belongings and headed for the main hatch. Before she exited, she turned and looked back once more at Bayer and Owens, reminding herself to add special commendations to their service records.

Feeling relieved, yet also more somber, she headed for her quarters.

#

Elizabeth glanced down at her tablet when an update to the active duty roster was posted. She smiled. The Captain had been released from the Infirmary. Although it meant that she was longer in command, Elizabeth felt elated by this. Daydreams aside, she was more than willing, for now at least, to let the Captain make the big decisions.

Not that I really had to make any . . .

Looking toward the command deck, she saw the command console still disassembled and in pieces strewn across the deck. Even if it still was not working, she did not want the Captain to return to the bridge with it looking like that. Instead of using her comm unit, she accessed the function on her tablet, instructing it to contact Main Engineering.

Aruna’s face was framed in the small window. If she seemed startled, she managed to hide it well.

“Commander.”

Elizabeth’s eyes surveyed the background behind the assistant Engineer. “Where’s the Chief?”

Aruna’s head turned from side to side as she looked around her. “I don’t know, Commander,” she said, clearly embarrassed. “He was here a few minutes ago.”

Elizabeth frowned. She saw concern flicker in Aruna’s eyes and realized that the assistant Engineer was reacting to change in demeanor from a higher-ranking officer.

Need to remember that.

Elizabeth softened her expression. A subtle, but immediate, change was reflected in Aruna’s face.

“I really didn’t need to speak to him,” she said, hoping that it did not come out sounding as bad as it did to her ears. She took a quick breath to steady herself. “Someone left the command console in pieces up here,” she explained, knowing that both she and Aruna understood who “someone” was. “Can you send someone up here to put it back together before the Captain shows up?”

“Right away, Commander,” Aruna replied, sounding much more like the confident engineer now.

Elizabeth gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Aruna,” she said. “Bridge out.” She tapped the window and it disappeared, closing the communications channel.

She quickly surveyed the bridge. Everything else appeared to be in order. She resisted the urge to ask Pyrafox, once again, what their flight status was. If anything had gone wrong, he would have immediately called it to her attention.

Her eyes came to a stop at the Tactical station. One of the members of the Security team, Sykes, sat there. He was capable, Elizabeth knew, but lacked the calm sense of confidence and control that Hawkes always conveyed. Sykes, she remembered, had a tendency to shout.

I didn’t realize how much I’d miss him.

“No, stupid,” she whispered to herself. “He’s not gone.”

Glancing around guiltily, she wondered if anyone had overheard her. If any of the crew members present on the bridge had, they showed no signs of it.

She was saved from further introspection by the arrival of the Engineering team that Aruna had promised. They paused just inside the hatchway, looking toward Elizabeth for direction. She motioned them toward the command deck.

“See if you can at least put it back together,” she told them. “Back together and working would be even better.”

The trio exchanged uncertain glances. Elizabeth was tempted to scale back her expectations, but then decided to let them give it their best effort.

Who knows? she told herself. They might find something that the Chief missed.

That was unlikely, she knew, but from her own experience she knew that sometimes junior engineers, with only the most basic notion of what they were doing, sometimes stumbled on techniques that the original designers never envisioned. They results were not always positive. Fortunately, they were also frequently not fatal either.

The team pushed their equipment cart toward the command deck and then up its ramp. It took Elizabeth considerable effort not to join them and supervise the repairs herself. Even while it gnawed at her to not do so, she knew that the Captain would not approve. She winced when one of the first things that one of engineers did was to knock one of the heavier tools off the cart. It collided with several of the discarded pieces of the console, scattering them across the deck. The lead team member looked apologetically at Elizabeth; the rest conspicuously did not look up from their work.

Elizabeth read over the security reports again, something she had already done at least three times before. She wanted to look busy when the Captain arrived, and be prepared with her own report on the ship’s status, should be Captain request it. After several minutes, though, she realized that the Captain would probably not come directly to the bridge from the Infirmary.

Unless there was some kind of emergency, I probably wouldn’t either. She remembered her own last stay in the Infirmary. No probably about it.

She looked toward the command deck, checking on the progress of the Engineering team. There appeared to be fewer pieces on the deck, although Elizabeth wondered whether that was just because they had gathered them up into fewer piles. Looking away before she was further tempted to say something to them, she contented herself with consulting the bridge duty roster for the upcoming three shifts.

It was a long time before Devereux stepped through the hatchway and onto the bridge. Nearly an hour had passed since Elizabeth had received the notification that the Captain had been released back to active duty. She had nearly run out of useful things to do. It was not, she knew, that there was nothing else that she needed to do—for there was always something that needed to be monitored, fixed, or reported on aboard a starship—but most of the items remaining where of the tedious and bureaucratic type.

Whoever said that a fleet travels on its paperwork knew what they were saying.

Devereux strode over to Elizabeth, giving her a warm, if slightly weak, smile.

“Are we still in one piece, Commander?”

Elizabeth’s eyes darted in the direction of the command deck. She struggled not to react.

“Nearly, Captain,” she admitted. She quickly eyed the Captain and added, “And apparently you are too?”

Devereux chuckled. “I think Hope just ran out of tests to run.”

Elizabeth smiled and laughed softly herself. “Glad to have you back, Captain.”

Devereux nodded, looking away from Elizabeth and across the interior of the bridge. “The burden of command getting a little heavy?”

Elizabeth had trouble answering. She fumbled through several responses in her mind, none of which seemed right. Some of them, she decided, were far too flippant, sounding like had come from the Chief.

Devereux turned back to her with a gentle smile. “Don’t worry,” she told Elizabeth. “It doesn’t get any easier.”

#

Rusty checked the shift’s planned work log against the duty roster and made a few adjustments.

Gogorsky’s better at sensor maintenance . . . Ortiz can handle the junction at Fourteen-Beta-Fifteen . . . the starboard thrusters can wait until Sanderson comes on at second shift . . .

Aruna had tried her best to fill the gaps left by Choy and Owens. With the latter off the list entirely for the next few weeks, it was going to be an ongoing challenging to keep some of the heavier jobs staffed.

Maybe the Ol’ Fossil can . . .

He trailed off, suddenly remembering. His mouth formed a grim line.

“Not a word . . .” he murmured.

He had received full reports on each of the injured crew members, either directly or through less official channels of communication. But he had heard nothing about the Tactical Officer, except from whatever he already knew first-hand.

He’s in isolation in the Infirmary. They’re running tests.

It sounded more like he had contracted some exotic virus rather than that he had brutally attacked several crew members and then tried to take the Captain apart.

On the latter part he had received some good news. Other than for a collection of bruises, she had suffered a small concussion, but Hope had released her back to duty after keeping her in the Infirmary overnight for observation. That, for him, was a sign of just how over the edge Hawkes had gone. He had not been there to witness it, but Rusty had seen the Captain fight for her life before. That Hawkes had managed to almost take her down said a lot.

“Chief?”

Aruna’s voice broke him out of his reverie. He turned to look at her.

“Is everything all right, Chief?”

Except that our Tactical Officer tried to take out half the crew? Just peachy.

He worked up a smile, but knew that it did not convince her. “Sure,” he told her, holding out the tablet. “You did work on the duty roster. I made just a few changes.”

Aruna accepted the tablet and looked down at it.

“Thank you.”

Her voice was soft and quiet. He could tell that neither of them was handling this moment well.

“Look,” he said. “I want an inspection of the starboard core while we’re in orbit. Can you handle that? Take whatever crew you need.”

Aruna brightened immediately, although with some hesitation at first.

“Just me?”

“Sure,” he agreed. His smile was more genuinely warm now. “You don’t need me watching your move.”

She said nothing, but he could see that she was pleased.

“If you don’t want to,” he went on, taking on a lighter tone. “There are lots of recycling conduits that need flushed and scrubbed.”

Aruna’s dark features wrinkled into a wince. “I’d rather not, Chief.”

“Then I guess you’re stuck with the starboard core.”

“I guess so, sir . . . Chief.”

“Now get back to it,” he told her, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the main Engineering Deck.

“Yes, Chief.” She smiled happily before turning and heading away.

Neither of the slipstream cores was due for any kind of maintenance for some time yet. It would not harm anything, he knew, to do it a little early. The light bounce in Aruna’s step told him that he had done the right thing. It did not, though, help him shake off the strange sense of, well, not quite foreboding that had plagued him since the scuffle in the cargo bay.

That just doesn’t seem like our calm, cool, and collected TO . . . at all.

In his mind, Rusty played back what he knew. Hawkes had locked out everyone else’s command codes, wandered off the bridge without a word to anyone, and then had taken refuge in the cargo bay after trying to make sure that no one else could get. None of it made sense.

Rusty wondered why the Captain had not called her officers together to discuss the situation. Then he remembered that Hope had probably refused to let her hold it in the Infirmary.

Now that the Cap’n’s out though . . .

He looked around, trying to find someone who did not look busy. The Main Engineering Deck was mostly deserted, though, as almost all of the engineers and technicians had gone off on their various assignments throughout the ship. Those remaining were either monitoring core systems or providing remote assistance to other engineers.

Guess I’ll have to do it myself.

He missed that about having Elizabeth working in his department. She was a whiz at putting together the reports that he needed for the Captain.

And so where that go her . . . First Officer.

Rusty still felt a small glow of pride at that. The young woman had deserved the promotion. Had Devereux not decided to return to the Fleet, though, he wondered what might have become of young lieutenant. She had shared some of her experiences on the Washington. Had she remained there, she might either have resigned her commission or been forced out.

Freidlin’d better hope he never runs into me in a dark alley. Dresden either.

Dresden, he knew, got mixed reviews from others who had served under him in the Fleet. If you wanted by-the-book regulations and strict discipline—of the Captain Bligh variety, Rusty mused sourly—then that was the place to be. Freidlin, though, was a bully—of the sneaky, back-stabbing kind. Rusty had run into his kind many times, but just not typically among members of the Fleet. It was probably only on the Washington that he could get away that kind of thuggery. On almost any other ship, he would been invited into an airlock without an EVA suit.

He’d not last a day here, Rusty decided. Two at the most.

So far, their paths had not crossed.

Lucky for him.

Rusty grabbed an abandoned tablet from a nearby station and wiped it. Taking one last look around, he began compiling his report.

#

Hope stood before the panel that provided a view into the isolation bay. Readouts flowed across its transparent surface. They would incomprehensible to anyone else, not solely due to their highly specialized nature, but also because she had told the computer to translate them into Aerian symbols and measurements. Not that it mattered, she decided, for they revealed little more to her in own language than they had in the common language of the Humans.

“Hope.”

Lieutenant Ramsey approached from behind her. Hope did not turn. Lieutenant stopped to stand beside her.

“Anything new?”

Hope paused a moment before answering.

“No.”

Lieutenant Ramsey stared through the window next to Hope. “He seems stable.”

“Yes. That is an accurate assessment.”

Lieutenant Ramsey’s expression and posture revealed that she was pleased by the praise. Hope continued to stare at Hawkes’ still form.

The Tactical Officer’s physical injuries were healing as expected. Compared to the Crew and Captain, he had not suffered many of them. All of his biochemical readings fell within Human norms. While they differed slightly from previous readings she had stored for the Tactical Officer, none of them deviated from them sufficiently enough to provide her with conclusive data that they might be cause of his sudden change in behavior.

His brain functions were unusually active for a Human under the level of sedation to which he was currently being maintained. He had nearly become aware and conscious twice. She had already adjusted the dosage twice, but his resistance to it did not appear to be biochemical. Those readings remained consistent with what she would normally expect from a Human undergoing such treatment.

The atypically high brain activity was perhaps the most promising area of research for her to pursue into his condition, she had decided. She had located reports of Humans being unusually resistant to sedation and anesthesia, but those findings proved to be of little use to her, for they were all the result of biochemical factors.

“What do you think it is?” Lieutenant Ramsey asked her.

“His mind.”

Hope spoke without meaning to. Lieutenant Ramsey turned toward her with a puzzled expression.

“What do you mean?”

Hope was saved from explaining by a chime from her comm unit. She checked her tablet and saw that the Captain had requested a meeting of her senior officers in twenty-two minutes.

“The Captain?” Lieutenant Ramsey asked her.

“Yes.”

Lieutenant Ramsey nodded and, without waiting for Hope’s explanation to her previous question, returned to the main recovery bay.

Hope began assembling all of the information that she might need should the Captain request it. In addition to the data on the Tactical Officer’s current condition, she also included all of the information regarding the injuries, surgeries, and recovery of the others who had been injured when attacked by the Tactical Officer. She quickly transferred the latest set of data from the systems monitoring the Tactical Officer and returned to the Infirmary’s main compartment.