Enigma: A Far From Home Novel (11 page)

“But,” Gentry said, one finger upheld in front of him like an exclamation point. “Examining them could answer a lot of questions for us, and provide a unique insight into the Namar themselves.”

Jessica weighed the options, then gave her consent. “I take full responsibility for this. Do it. But try and get it onto the
Defiant
alive.”

“We’ll do our best, Captain,” Chang said.

36.

Back on Earth, centuries before, it had been called a lasso. And the knot Lieutenant Jackson tied was not much different to what the cowboys of humanity’s childhood would have used. However he’d been taught how to tie it on one of the frontier worlds, back on the dusty colony he’d come from.

A lot of the Union’s finest came from the hind end of space. Young men and women eager to make their mark. Serve a greater good.

Captain Jessica King thought about the way she’d been taken as a simple orphan and moulded into command material. Little had she known at the time that the very man doing the moulding was in fact her real Father.

She watched Jackson approach one of the scorpions, turning the cord hoop over his head like a helicopter blade.

“Who taught you, Lieutenant?” Jessica asked him.

Jackson kept his attention focused on the scorpion, gradually creeping closer and closer, all the while getting ready to throw the cord and snare it. “My Dad,” he said over his shoulder.

Makes sense,
she thought to herself.
I learned a lot from mine.

Her thoughts briefly skipped to her Mother. The woman who’d brought her into the world, whom she’d never met. After watching the video her alternate had recorded for her, informing her about the fact Captain Singh had in fact been her biological Father. And telling her about Hawk/Dollar, the steadily developing psychosis of Swogger . . . after all that, she sat back and contemplated all she’d been told. It occurred to her that not even her other self had known anything about their Mother. Alt-Jessica hadn’t so much as mentioned her.

According to her birth certificate, kept on the Union database, her Mother had died in childbirth.

It seemed strange to her that she’d always thought herself an orphan, but that hadn’t been the case. She’d been in the company of her Father the whole time and didn’t know it. How might she have acted if she’d known the truth? Would it have changed her relationship with Andrew Singh?

Probably.

Now, she truly was an orphan. The offspring of dead parents. One she’d known, and called friend. As for Mother… she didn’t even know her name.

This is my family,
she thought.
Always has been. And now I’m the parent.

Jackson made his move on the unsuspecting scorpion. The lasso slipped free, landed neatly over the tail of the creature, then the Lieutenant gave the cord a swift yank. The knot tightened, the cord caught against the scorpion’s tail, and it slid along the floor. It’s eyes swivelled about to get a look at its captor.

“Careful, Lieutenant,” Chang said. She stood close by, visibly tense at what was taking place. Jessica got the impression the Commander didn’t fully agree with it.

That was fine. Not all of her orders were part of some democratic process of agreement and rejection. It was actually quite liberating, being the Captain.

She didn’t have to answer for herself. They had to trust that she would make the right, informed call. And she usually did.

“Now what?” Jackson asked. He was reeling the scorpion in towards him. Its legs scraped along the stone-like floor as it tried to escape. Its claws attempted to grip the cord. “It’ll get loose!”

“Bag it,” Jessica told Chang. The Commander got close, a sack from their survival pack open and at the ready. Jackson steered the creature close to the waiting sack, and Chang bagged the animal.

The scorpion struggled for several seconds, thrashing within the sack. Chang closed it up, and stepped back. The scorpion continued to fight, the sack jittering about on the floor.

“This isn’t going to work,” King said.

Dr. Gentry stepped forward. “Commander, open the bag, would you?”

Chang looked from Gentry to Jessica. The Captain nodded her consent.

Chang opened the sack, and the scorpion scuttled backwards out of it.

Dr. Gentry swiftly pulled Chang’s sidearm from her holster and before any of them could stop him from doing so, he aimed the gun at the scorpion’s head and fired.

* * *

“My God!” Dana shouted in surprise as the shot echoed in C-1.

Lieutenant Jackson had Dr. Gentry on the floor in seconds. It took Jessica to yell at Jackson for him to ease up and get off of the Doctor.

“Lieutenant! Back off! Come on,” she ordered. “Calm down!”

Davies walked Jackson away from the situation so he could calm down as Jessica dealt with Dr. Gentry. As the older man got to his feet, dusting himself off, Captain King grabbed him and got in his face.

“If you EVER try something like that again, I will have you locked in the brig till we return to Starbase 6. Do you hear me?”

Gentry nodded. “It had to be done, Captain. I saw no other course of action.”

She let him go, turned to Commander Chang. “Get it in the bag, and call through for someone to come collect it from the airlock.”

“Aye,” Chang said.

“As for you, Doctor,” Jessica said, facing Gentry again. “Consider yourself warned. Next time I won’t get Jackson to back off.”

“I — I — understand. I’m sorry,” Gentry said, back to the stammering misfit he’d been before. As much as they’d been shocked by his action, the Doctor himself looked shaken by the way he’d been pinned to the ground.

Jessica turned and left for C-2 along with Lieutenant Jackson and Dana Oriz, eager not to have to look at him any longer – at least until she’d calmed down a bit herself.

* * *

Selena Walker answered her comm. to be met with a familiar Texan drawl on the other end.

“Guess who, sweetheart?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. Who could it be? Who else aboard the
Defiant
sounds like a mock cattle rustler?”

“Ouch, darlin’. You really know how to kick a guy where it hurts.”

Selena smiled. “One of my specialities. Nut cracking.”

“Maybe you can demonstrate some time . . .”
Dollar said.

“Get off the air!” she said and broke into laughter. “Anyway, what’re you after?”

She walked away from the others so she could get some privacy. Though they couldn’t hear Dollar on the other end, they could hear her responses. Already, there’d been a few raised eyebrows at her mention of cracking nuts.

“Do I have to be after somethin’ just to hear yuh angelic voice?”

“You old smoothie,” she said.

“Thanks,”
Dollar said.
“Just thought I’d check, see if yer okay.”

“Yes. I’m all right. We had a bit of drama over here a couple of minutes ago, but nothing too interesting. The Captain dealt with it,” Selena told him.

“Whoever it was, I feel sorry for ‘em if the Cap got involved,”
Dollar said, followed by a high pitched whistle that made her ears ring.
“I was on my way down to the hangar…”

“To work on your baby,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Her name’s
Dragonfly,” Dollar corrected her.
“And I’ve nearly got her done.”

“Good. I hope you’ll take me on a ride when I get back,” Selena said.

Dollar sighed on the other end.
“I hate bein’ apart.”

“We’re not. Don’t go soppy on me. I’ll be back soon. In the meantime, you’ll just have to . . . play with your spanner,” she quipped.

Dollar laughed.
“That’s what I love about yuh, darlin’, you got
sass.”

“If I keep eating your southern food, I’ll end up with a whole lotta
ass
. Now I’m ending this before it goes too far,” Selena said, mid-laughter. “I love you.”

“Love yuh too.”

* * *

“Understood, Captain,” Commander Greene said from the captain’s chair. “We’re monitoring Team Two. I’ll let you know if Gentry shows any sign of acting out again.”

“Good. How’s the
Defiant
?”

“Same as before,” Greene said. He turned at the sound of someone walking onto the bridge. It was the Chief, carrying two cups of coffee. “She’s in good shape.”

Now he wasn’t so sure he was only talking about the ship…

“Okay. I’m sure she’s in capable hands. Captain out.”

Chief Meryl Gunn handed the Commander his coffee. “There you are. Thought you could use this.”

“It’s been a long shift,” he admitted.

“Yeah and you should have had a rest hours ago. But you’re not to be argued with. So the only option is caffeine.”

Commander Greene threw a sly grin. “You trying to make me hyper?”

The Chief gave him a pat on the shoulder as she left the bridge. “Honey, you’re always hyper. The coffee’s to calm you down.”

He watched her go, his eyes taking in the wiggle of her bottom in her overalls. Greene sipped his coffee. The woman was a temptress . . . that was for sure.

“Okay people, let’s try simulating a coolant leak this time. See how you all fare,” he ordered. They’d already completely twenty simulated scenarios. Anything to break the monotony.

“I’m loving these drills…” Banks said.

“Insubordination will result in a visit to engineering, Mister Banks,” Greene warned him. “And believe you me, that woman does
not
take prisoners.”

A couple of the bridge hands stifled a chuckle, but a cautionary glare from the Commander stopped the laughter dead in its tracks.

“Let’s begin…”

37.

“So, what surface area are we looking at in here?” King asked.

Belcher looked at his surroundings in C-2. “It’s exactly the same as the other two, by the looks of things. And I’m sure the readings from the probes made it that way too.”

She nodded. “They did.”

“Well,” Belcher mumbled as he did some quick calculations on his tablet. “Roughly 7,500 square kilometres, give or take.”

“Jeez,” King gasped. “I never thought it’d be so much.”

Gary Belcher smiled. “If you look at it from space, it’s sixty kilometres long. That’s goddamn huge. But it’s not a flat piece of metal. It’s a massive tube, if you will. And everything’s lined along the inside wall. Twenty kilometres wide, sixty kilometres long . . . it makes for one big tin can.”

Jessica shook her head as she took it all in. It was getting warmer in there now that they had light. 7,500 square kilometres of floor space in C-2, most of it crammed with ships and huge crates no doubt containing every kind of weapon the Namar had ever conceived.

There were four gigantic ships, at least a kilometre long each. And fleets of what looked like fighters.

“This truly boggles the brain,” Jessica said. “And it makes it perfectly clear to me that this is not simply a ship intended for passengers. But a carrier for an entire war fleet. Now that’s a worry.”

38.

They looked again at the immense axles that seemed to run through the
Enigma
like a spine, with C-1 and C-3 on either end.

“So how do you suppose the fleet gets out of here?” Rayne asked.

Belcher shrugged. “Dunno. But if I were to design this thing, I’d have C-1 and C-3 come away from C-2 on this axle.”

“So basically, you’re saying you’d have the
Enigma
open up on either end, separating where the joins are,” Jessica said.

“Exactly. And that’s more than likely how it works. Think about it. All three cylinders are more or less self contained, with full airlocks and seals,” Belcher explained. He opened his arms to indicate the entirety of C-2. “This is basically one big hangar deck.”

“I’m with you. Do you think you can get inside one of these bigger ships?” Jessica asked.

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have thought so. And I’m not even sure it’d be worth trying. How would you decipher the controls? Let alone get the
Enigma
to split apart so you could fly one out of here.”

“Understood,” she said. “Anyway, have a closer look and see what you can learn about them. The fighters too. It might help in some way.”

“Aye,” Belcher said.

39.

Jessica watched Gary Belcher walk over to one of the fighter craft, and felt her legs begin to sag under her. She grabbed the closest thing to her, to keep from falling on her behind – and it just so happened to be the arm of Dana Oriz.

“Are you okay, Captain?”

She nodded, tried to brush it off. “Fine. Just a little… tired.”

“Here. Sit. Have a ration.”

“No, no, no, don’t worry. It’s nothing,” she said.

But Dana insisted. She made the Captain sit on the floor and rest while she dug rations out of her own pack. She handed Jessica a dehydrated protein bar, some chocolate, and an energy drink. “Eat the chocolate first, Captain.”

“You always have the best first and the worst last, Dana?” Jessica asked a little groggily as she tore the chocolate bar open and proceeded to eat.

“Only way to have it,” Dana said.

“Oh, that is good though,” Jessica said. She took a few swallows of the energy drink.

Dana crouched in front of her. “I know you have your . . . condition. But I think this is more like fatigue than anything else. Obviously it affects you differently than others.”

“I thought I left the quack on the ship . . .” King said with a laugh.

“I’m just saying,” Dana said, laughing herself. “As long as you’re all right.”

“I will be, Dana. I will be. Like you say, I’m just tired,” she admitted. “Doctor Clayton has me on new medication.”

“He does?” Dana asked. “How’s that working?”

“Fine so far. I think this is some kind of side effect of it,” King told her. “But it’s the only one I’ve had.”

“Good. It must be working, though. I mean, we’ve done a lot of walking today,” Dana said.