The Goodall (Books 1-3)

THE GOODALL MUTINY

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my sister Roxanne, who told me to write a science fiction book next. Thanks also go to Mike McGregor for his editing, and to Billie Rix and Dianne Stevenson for their proofreading. Thank you Tammy Francis, Phil McBride, Janet Christian, Wayne Walther, and Lynn McBride for your critiques.

1

Lieutenant Joan Chikage let the horned rhinoceros beetles she’d just recaptured jump free of her hands, perversely glad to get their tickly tiny legs off her bare skin.

Even though she’d just have to round them up again.

She watched the green-jeweled insects bounce harmlessly off the white wash basin and drop to her feet as she paused at her task. With irritation she brushed her too-long brown bangs out of her eyes. Her own body odor rose up to make her wrinkle her nose. But that wasn’t what had disturbed her.

All the normal sounds usually reaching the lower decks of the USS Goodall during routine subspace flight had just been cut off.

As if someone at the controls suddenly wanted her and her crew isolated.

No loudly arguing male voices, no deliberately mishandled supplies tumbling down the corridor, no nothing.

She felt all the blood leave her head in sudden fear, but decided to finish the job, even if it was a mistake. Her record of stubbornly continuing to work in the face of catastrophe had once cost her the promotion she wanted. But she needed the time to think.

There was a lot more at stake than officer rank with this. The ship had never been so quiet. She could hear her heart beating.

She batted at her bangs one last time before steadying herself on the cabinet.

One of the beetles crawled from the basin and walked across her hand as if she was part of the terrain. Chikage flicked it off. She should have worn gloves, but was tired to death of gloves by now.

Worried, she pushed herself away, still expecting the lab furniture to budge and skid with her weight. On the Goodall, all the cabinets, shelving, and cages were bolted to the floor or to the walls or to something else that was bolted down.

The USS Goodall wasn’t a new interstellar ship. Sometimes the artificial gravity went bonkers. The previous crew had evidently done everything they could to minimize damage if that happened. She’d only experienced it once so far. Every night when she prayed, she expressed her gratitude to those who’d served the Goodall before her and had secured all the equipment.

She wasn’t so pleased with them about the paint job.

Uniform swaths of gunmetal gray paint covered her department’s walls, which still galled her. But it was better than the putrid olive green of the original décor. Gray had been the best she could do.

Chikage had taken a lot of ribbing from her crew, some of them accusing her of an overly naïve nostalgia for twentieth century Old Earth submarine lore. After looking it up on the entertainment computer, she pretended to agree with them. However, she’d never heard of submarines before.

Her heart pounded much too fast for this to be nothing, her body recognizing danger before her head did. But Chikage went back to work.

She soon scooped the last of the escaped rhinoceros beetles into the terrarium she’d just cleaned and replanted with alien ferns. The ferns cut into her hands, drawing blood.

The beetles hissed, the males clicking their horns at the females. Chikage hoped the insects appreciated the miniscule blood spatter, because now she couldn’t take the time to clean it up. She sucked the blood off the back of her hands.

Chikage was the only crew member in this section close enough to the door panel to be able to hear anything. Though she was also the youngest at age twenty-two, she outranked everyone else. It was up to her to investigate.

She surveyed the isolation room for more of the beetles before deciding she had them all. She wasn’t going to drop down on hands and knees again, searching the shadows. Not with something unnerving going on outside in the corridor.

The terrarium habitat section had the only muted lighting in this part of the ship. Everywhere else the LED lamps exposed everyone and everything to intense scrutiny.

Chikage had gotten to the point where the shadows in here gave her the creeps. She liked the bright light. But if you needed somewhere to hide, this was the place. Desks to crawl under, storage closets to hole up in, shelving to screen you from sight. And low lighting.

Chikage dropped the containment shield in place over the top of the terrarium and turned her good ear towards the hallway. It was time she acted.

Fingering the communications palm-set at her belt, she itched to rub the transmit button and find out what was going on.

Some premonition stopped her.

She rubbed her hands on her uniform slacks, unmindful of the stains she left. Her cuts had started bleeding again.

Ever since she’d been assigned down here and away from her superior officers, she’d expected something. Now that she had the beetles in check, she stopped pretending to be in control.

Was this the mutiny all the officers had been dreading?

Chikage began trembling so violently that she stuck both hands under her armpits so no one would suspect her fear. It left bloodstains on her uniform shirt and a stink on her palms.

Grimly, she looked all around her. There was no one to see, and no one to complain about her bathing habits either.

None of the rest of her crew had come forward. To Chikage that meant something gone horribly wrong.

Ten men and women worked back here in the isolation spaces with her, though none enjoyed the live specimens as much as she did. They mostly left the cleaning duties to her, if she let them. Which was why she was alone up here in the front.

Where were they?

Chikage tasted bile coming up her throat and panicked. She upchucked sour blobs of what had recently been a meal. She probably looked exactly like that hacking, hairball-vomiting cat that the captain kept on the bridge.

Her throat burned, she burped, and both sensations distracted her from smelling the smoke from the fire. Her eyes flew open. Fire!

On a spaceship!

She whipped her head around, sniffing for the source.

It seemed too minor to be a fire.

The pungent, acrid taste of one of Ensign Van der Ryn’s artificial cigarettes filled her memory. This smelled much like it.

But together they’d smoked the last of his stash right down to the butts. A month ago. Chikage narrowed her eyes when she located the thin stream of smoke snaking up from the medical waste receptacle she’d just emptied.

Come on out, she said, paradoxically glad to be caught up in one of the crew’s practical jokes. It was a hell of a lot less scary than what she’d been imagining out there.

Half the ship blown away. Dead bodies littering the corridor. The void of space pouring into the Goodall while she chased beetles around the floor.

Chikage’s booming voice contrasted with the secretive silence from out in the corridor. She cringed, immediately reverting to paranoia. Something was wrong.

Someone had to be hiding behind the equipment up here near the front of the department with her. Why didn’t they answer? And why were no crew members on duty outside the door?

She had monitoring capability from the inset security screens dotting the walls at eye level. Chikage could call for help. Find out what happened.

But what if the smoldering fire wasn’t a joke?

Using one of the communication stations would pinpoint her to anyone left on the outside.

The screens all showed turquoise blue for inactive status, looking like a chain of abstract artworks flashing in and out of sync with the energy pulses of the ship.

Van der Ryn had laughed himself silly when she’d first described the technology as art. His blue eyes had shone with amusement, his perfect teeth flashing his trademark grin.

It had to be him skulking around in her territory, making trouble. He might even have let the rhinoceros beetles loose while she’d been distracted cleaning the terrariums.

Chikage put her finger lightly on the monitor screen and scraped it down the center. The screen flared from blue to green, throwing an unhealthy pallor onto her worried face.

Mayday. Mayday, she called at the monitor, then stopped, totally shocked at what she’d said.

She felt her throat constrict with fear. She’d unconsciously used the Old Earth naval term for distress. Unless something horrible had really happened on the ship, the captain would kill her. He abhorred false alarms.

As far as she knew, neither she nor her staff was in any danger. She just had a gut feeling she now tried to ignore.

And Mayday was such a strange term to use. For a moment she wondered how she’d even picked up the term. Ah, the submarine research.

Chikage waited, her legs jittery, her hands trembling. Nothing happened. Nothing.

She looked quickly around at all of the monitors. None showed any reciprocal activity. If anyone had heard her distress call, they weren’t answering.

Another uncontrollable jolt of fear raced down her spine. Someone should have answered. More than two hundred souls crewed this vessel. She could account for only one, herself.

Mayday. Mayday, she repeated, her voice less alarmed, but still edged with misgivings.

What in the world would she do if some strange voice answered her calls?

Had the impossible happened? Was this the Goodall mutiny everyone expected?

The rhinoceros beetles hissed, secure in their confined spaces. Chikage wished she had other company than the beetles up here near the exit.

But maybe not whoever it was who hid from her in the shadows nearby.

2

Again, the smell of her own body reached Chikage’s nostrils. This time she stank with the fear she’d experienced, beaten back, and then let conquer her several times already. In only fifteen minutes.

This must be the mutiny.

She couldn’t think of anything else that made any sort of sense.

And they’d had the threat of mutiny hanging over their heads almost from the beginning of the voyage.

When the captain had introduced that damned cat to the crew.

Dizziness drove her back from the monitor and down to her workstation chair. She couldn’t afford to faint. Unless her crew had left the area while she was cleaning up after the beetles, they were still here and probably working at their stations.

She would find them. She would find them safe. She would find them now.

Chikage put her head between her knees and tried to calm her racing heart. It was a mistake. What had begun as lightheadedness changed to acute vertigo.

With great effort she righted herself and stood up, grabbing the back of the chair at the last minute. Then she straightened her uniform, patting at the visible blood stains as if they’d magically go away.

She laughed quietly. All she needed now was for one of those episodes where the artificial gravity went out.

Slowly she breathed in, slowly she breathed out. Except for her own respiration, all was silent.

She could go out into the corridor and find out what had happened.

Or she could march back into the bowels of the common rooms and find the rest of her crew.

Calling it caution and not cowardice, Chikage walked out of the observation room, at the last moment turning her back on the corridor door just yards away on her right, and heading for the crew quarters.

She’d find out what was going on soon enough. Eleven seasoned crew members standing united against whatever it was out there made a hell of a lot more sense than one junior officer facing it down.

And more than likely it was the mutiny.

The one that had begun over the captain’s horrible cat. That tall, long-bodied and grey-striped, tail-swishing bundle of nerves they had started calling Tiberius.

Five men already languished in the brig because of that damned cat. How many more since she’d been confined down here?

Chikage put the cat out of her mind and took in her surroundings instead. She couldn’t do anything about the mutiny just this minute. If it was the mutiny. Working in the same environment day by day had made everything invisible to her. She needed to start paying attention.

She moved completely away from the door and out into the common areas.

The walls remained the same dismal gunmetal gray throughout the rest of this section of the ship, but Chikage noticed some of her crew had decorated the areas where they spent most of their time with personal photos.

She crossed the empty space to study them.

The biggest and brightest of these was of a woman and a lion both growling at the moon. The woman looked exotic and exciting in her flimsy silks, the exact opposite of Chikage’s own bland and by-the-book persona. That photo was surrounded by a red aura that overpowered all the other photos nearby.

Chikage would never ask Ensign Van der Ryn if the woman and lion were family of his, or just a bright and colorful piece of artwork he’d liked. She hoped it was the latter, but mostly tried not to let his love life distract her.

The only sign her crew was back here somewhere was a second plume of smoke coming from a storage can. Again, it stank like one of Van der Ryn’s contraband cigarettes. Chikage snuffed it out.

Fire was one of the most dangerous hazards of crewing a spaceship. No one she knew would leave something smoldering like that.

So, who had?

The cigarette’s distinctive stench rose up to fill her nostrils. She took a deep breath and held it. No, it didn’t leave her feeling all wavy and blissful like Van der Ryn’s contraband did.

When she next inhaled she thought she smelled cat, and there was only one cat on the ship. The captain’s cat.

Known to the captain as Cat, and as Come Here, and as Stop That!, the tall gray-striped tomcat with the constantly twitching extra-long tail and the abnormally loud and strident voice actually answered to the name Tiberius.

The cat even had its own spacesuit in case of emergencies. The captain had made sure the crew knew exactly where it was stored and how to put the cat in it. Chikage and several others on her team had the scars to prove it.

Someone had gotten rid of Tiberius shortly after the episode with the hairball that had sparked Chikage’s earlier comparison to her own retching.

Or else he’d just run away and was hiding somewhere.

No one had seen him for several weeks. Chikage said nightly prayers for his safety, right after she thanked the previous crew members of the Goodall. Every once in a while she thought she smelled the cat’s pungent and distinctive urine markings. Like right now.

Chikage fingered the wall at the level of her calf, but felt nothing on her fingers, smelled nothing on her skin. Must have been her imagination.

Muttering a litany of protective prayers intended to ensure her own safety, Chikage next slowly walked her lonely way deep into the inner warrens of the badly designed ward. In search of her missing crew, she put the mystery of the missing cat at the back of her thoughts for later.

And then she burped. She turned and ran back into the commons, stopping in the middle of the room when her panic subsided.

Quickly swallowing down the acid taste that had just risen through her throat up to her tongue, Chikage swore. Her last meal had been scrumptious enough that she’d overindulged. Now she was paying the price.

And sick bay wasn’t on this level. She’d have to leave the safety of the observation decks if she wanted any medication. She turned around to face the corridor exit, suddenly feeling trapped.

Lieutenant!

She jumped, unconsciously placing one hand over her heart.

Finally. One of her crew coming forward.

She saw Petty Officer Running Wolf approaching from her left. He must have been in his bunk, but that didn’t explain how he was acting.

Naturally brown-skinned and unnaturally tanned even darker, he blended into the patterns on the floor until he got closer and began to rise from his crouch. Petty Officer Running Wolf’s arrival on the scene made her breathe a sigh of relief. But only for a second.

Why did he scuttle across the floor like one of her beetles?

Chikage stood as tall as she could, hoping to untangle her guts. To get rid of the sharp gassy pain threatening to send her to the head.

And realized that Running Wolf had finally stood and was ominously staggering toward her holding his own stomach. As if he’d eaten the same pastrami sandwich as she had.

What is it? What’s wrong?

Running Wolf shook his head. Then he righted himself, lowered his head and vomited all over the floor.

Immediately Chikage’s dicey stomach tried to join in, but she managed to control it. Just barely.

She had to. Someone had to clean up the mess. And since there weren’t any of the maintenance crew at this level either, Chikage bet she’d catch that particular task.

She’d never been one to make a lesser rank do something she wasn’t willing to do herself. She wouldn’t start now.

Chikage waited until Running Wolf had fully emptied his stomach contents. It took several purges and when finished, he tottered in place almost right at her side.

Go over there, Wolf, she said. No! Don’t step in it! She almost lost her stomach contents at the thought.

Then she recognized from the little blip bothering her bad ear that the pressure had just changed.

Oh, no. Oh, no!

But she was right.

The artificial gravity went out. Up came her feet right out from under her as she floated helplessly high in the air, rising slowly.

The vomit globules from Running Wolf’s accident broke apart and spread all through the room.

Minutes later she fell with a hard plop straight down to the floor as the artificial gravity reasserted itself.

The vomit dropped.

Running Wolf slid through some of it when his feet met the deck, skating several yards with his arms windmilling and his long black hair obscuring his scarred face. Chikage couldn’t help but laugh.

Where is everybody else? she asked around a big grin.

It wasn’t really funny. But like laughing at someone falling down, it seemed to be a human reflex. One she shouldn’t indulge in. Especially with the volatile Running Wolf.

She needed to control herself and act like the officer she was.

After sobering, she looked at the distasteful mess and said, You’re going to clean this up, you know. All by yourself if you don’t tell me where the rest of the crew is. So talk.

It came out wrong. She’d only meant to tell him someone else on the crew would help him.

She stepped back a pace at the look on his face.

Which of the crew do you want, Lieutenant? he said, almost snarling in some sort of rage.

He waved his arms and began gesturing violently. The twins are guarding the refrigeration units, as you ordered. Mr. Van der Ryn is asleep, or he was, as you ordered. One of the new guys sent me up here to tell you they’ve found a problem, as you ordered.

That’s enough, she said, holding out her hand to stop his recitation of names and places and jobs. She knew what everyone was supposed to be doing, just not what they were really doing.

You get me some help, he said, his face looking taut with disgust at the mess he’d made. His request sounding more like a threat or an order than a request.

No, she said.

What the hell was wrong with Running Wolf? What kind of problem had one of the new crew members found?

She didn’t consider her petty officer a threat, no matter the tone of his voice. Until she looked up. Running Wolf’s hair no longer hid his intent.

Before she could prepare herself, Running Wolf suddenly towered over her with fists raised to strike her down.

Chikage barely moved out of his range in time.

With eyes gone huge, she tried talking him down.

Stop! she said, fumbling her weapon into her hands and aiming straight at her subordinate’s belly.

What the hell had just happened?

Suddenly Chikage realized this could be part of the mutiny. Again she ordered him to stop.

But he didn’t stop.

Instead, Running Wolf lowered himself back into a crouch and bared his teeth.

She stepped away from him.

What had gotten into the man? He was acting like he was on drugs.

3

Chikage kept tight control over her jumping nerves, over her roiling stomach, and over the steadily aimed weapon in her hand. No one was going to help her here. It was just her and Running Wolf.

The man who crouched like a wild beast just out of her reach was a trusted member of her crew. He’d been a friend before they were stationed on the same spaceship, the damned Goodall. Six months of their tour had passed with the both of them complaining of monotony, boredom, and regret.

Some capricious god had apparently just answered their prayers.

As Running Wolf continued to growl and snarl, but not attack, Chikage found her gaze wandering past his shoulder to the floor behind him. His vomit had spread out from the glops she’d seen in the air near her face when they both floated in zero G. It coated the floor in a thin paste flecked with what she suspected was undigested food.

Anyone crossing that way would slip.

Anyone crossing that way would retch in sympathy. And the smell of Van der Ryn’s contraband cigarettes only added to the mess.

What smelled down here wasn’t really his cigarettes, though, but the stink from the smoldering fires she’d twice put out this morning. They’d made her feel strange, too. Had Running Wolf gotten more than a whiff of the smoke when he walked past the trash container just now?

Was that why he’d abruptly gone berserk?

Chikage had inhaled the same substance. She hadn’t gone insane.

She didn’t take her aim off Petty Officer Running Wolf, however.

He continued to growl under his breath. His eyes, now narrowed and flinty in a show reminiscent of species hatred, hadn’t moved from hers for a single second.

This clearly wasn’t the Running Wolf she’d come up the ranks with, but she couldn’t let that stop her from shooting him dead to save herself. Or to save the ship. Lieutenant Chikage surveyed the room behind Running Wolf.

The loss of gravity had overturned lounging pillows, scattered documents onto the floor, and spread Running Wolf’s vomit haphazardly over most of the surfaces. Chikage hated the acidic smell of puke, and despite her little speech to herself about doing the scut work alongside her subordinates, she really resented having to clean up after Running Wolf.

Still keeping her weapon steady on him, Chikage patted her uniform smooth and shook her head to clear the brain fog the smoke had caused her. She’d regained her equilibrium, but still wasn’t hearing any of the normal ship noises from out in the hall, and still didn’t have her team around her.

One crew member out of the ten assigned to her had finally appeared in this suddenly deserted portion of the spaceship, and he’d immediately gone mad.

Movement. She looked up just in time to see it.

Running Wolf was inching away from her using his knuckles, his knees, and it looked like he’d raised himself on his toes.

Chikage shuddered. His otherworldly aspect frightened her. It was like he had tried his best to turn himself into a wolf. She wouldn’t be totally surprised to see rabid drool dripping from his open mouth.

Chikage jumped when Running Wolf knocked into one of the chairs obstructing his path. He’d given her the noise she desperately listened for, but this had nothing to do with the space outside the door.

Equipment lying on the chair skittered through the air, hitting the floor with a screeching sound much like fingernails on a marking board.

She shut her eyes, just for a second, and found Running Wolf all the way on the other side of the room when she opened them. It was impossible, but there he was.

Still keeping low to the floor, his gaze spoke of murder, dismemberment, and maybe of the tasty meal he’d make of her when he finally had her in his arms.

Running Wolf had got himself all the way to the exit door by moving backwards.

Oh, come on! This was Running Wolf she was hyperventilating about. They’d come through training together.

Smoke coming from one of the pots strewn on the floor distracted her.

She made a beeline toward it, all the time keeping Running Wolf in her sights. She didn’t need a fire complicating everything.

As she closed in on the burning stench, Running Wolf snarled.

Chikage stumbled, and as she reached for a tabletop to steady herself she stuck her hand into some of Running Wolf’s former breakfast.

Of course she could shoot Running Wolf and stop his frightening metamorphosis real quick. It was her job.

If Running Wolf endangered her crew or the ship, she had to shoot him, and shoot to kill, but still she held her fire.

Chikage was painfully aware that she probably should have shot her crewmate the minute he started snarling.

But again, like with her fear about what was happening in the corridor right outside their station, she wanted time to think.

Vomit coated everything, even her hands. She tried flicking some of it off her fingers, and that’s when Running Wolf made his move.

The young man’s attempt to mimic the body structure of a four-legged creature sent him careening into one of the cabinets that had been securely bolted to the floor, and then he fell into the wall.

Looking at the wall as he bounced off it gave Chikage an idea. She hesitated, then grabbed and tossed a hand-sized storage container across the space and away from her, hoping Running Wolf would react like a dog with a ball. And go after it.

He did.

She ran to guard the automatic door that led to the outside corridor where he’d been. She wanted him inside, not out in the hall. Safe, with her.

As Running Wolf began to reorient himself, Chikage backed into the wall. By accident, she stuck her hand into a very pungent souvenir the captain’s cat had squirted there to mark his territory.

She grimaced. Cat musk! This wasn’t something she could just flick off her fingers, she needed to wash it off. She took her eyes off Running Wolf.

Running Wolf took advantage then, rushing at her from low to the ground.

He wasn’t going to give her any choice but to shoot, she thought, frantic that she might just miss, betrayed by the cruel choice she’d have to take to save herself.

She only had seconds to act, so she aimed quickly and shot her weapon.

At the last moment she aimed away, but someone came at her from the closed door of the terrarium station behind and knocked her arm high.

She fell to the floor underneath someone bigger and heavier than she, who then put his knee into her back to keep her down.

Lieutenant! Stop wiggling! Just stop and listen to me!

Chikage recognized her ensign’s voice. He’d yelled into her good ear, making her head ring like it had been struck. It made her forget all about Running Wolf as she tried to get the ringing in her ear to stop. Then it was too late to do anything about him.

She felt the familiar metallic-tasting air from the corridor rush into the room.

Running Wolf had opened the door and gotten out.

The door then whished closed. She turned her good ear that way expecting to hear the sound of the petty officer running away, or crawling, depending on how injured he was. Maybe she’d shot him after all.

But there was nothing. It was like Running Wolf didn’t exist out there. Or anything else.

Chikage opened her mouth to object, but Van der Ryn clamped his hand over her mouth. Be quiet! he demanded.

4

Chikage had had her fill of quiet this day, but Van der Ryn acting frightened made her reconsider her response. If her normally unflappable ensign was scared, she should be terrified.

She thrashed underneath him, unwilling to accept that knee in her back, until they finally lay face to face. Sweat stood out on his brow. Fear shone in his eyes.

Guilt rose up to choke her. On her watch, Running Wolf had bolted from the protection of the common rooms and into the middle of whatever was going on out there.

She alone was responsible for that. She should have been able to stop him.

If she hadn’t spent so much time scrambling around on the floor trying to catch all those smelly beetles in the isolation area, she’d have been more alert to Running Wolf’s plight.

She could have used the stun gun she kept stored in the back of her desk drawer rather than pulling her personal weapon on him. Instead she’d wasted time remembering Van der Ryn, his artificial cigarettes and their oily aftertaste.

Chikage struggled to get Van der Ryn’s hand off her mouth. She knocked her head into him as hard as she could, but it only gave her the headache she deserved and he simply tightened his hold on her.

Finally she had to bite him, and the sour taste of his fingers made her want to retch all over again. From behind them came the sound of someone sneaking up. She barely heard the whisper they made. All her earlier misgivings about the silent hallway returned.

Chikage thought she recognized two of her people.

Crewman Patricia Leichter’s uniform pants always swished with the friction of her thighs rubbing together when she walked. It had to be Leichter who’d come forward to their left.

Chikage smelled Bono Micklewaithe’s unique scent when he squatted down at her level on the right. It invaded her nostrils like ammonia.

No amount of demerits had kept the cocky yeoman from copiously applying that nauseating glop to his scalp. He seemed to believe it regrew hair. Chikage had always wondered what stopped him from taking a short leave and having his DNA swapped.

Three of her missing crew had now joined her.

Four if you counted the now-AWOL petty officer, Running Wolf.

That left six unaccounted for.

As if thinking about them conjured them up, Chikage heard an out-of-place clicking noise from the far right and managed to swivel her head to look. Her ensign Van der Ryn pushed himself off her at the same time.

She sat up, seeing an optical disturbance along the far wall. Clicking now came from the far left as well.

Chikage didn’t get the time to figure it out for herself. Van der Ryn pulled her up from the floor.

He took her chin in his hand and aimed her face to Cloud Eater who had been flattened against the gray wall but who now moved away from it and turned so she could distinguish him. She recognized the blond giant, gave him a nod.

When she could breathe, she moved farther away from the ensign.

How many? she asked Van der Ryn, trying to reassert control.

He understood her.

All six, he replied. We were practicing melting into the walls when everything went silent. We got up here as soon as we could.

Chikage realized she hadn’t quite been able to suppress the dismay she felt. She patted Van der Ryn on the shoulder to reassure him. She was responsible, not him.

She’d certainly killed Petty Officer Running Wolf while the others had been playing soldier in the back rooms. Following her orders. This was one more mistake she’d made. Running Wolf’s fate was laid squarely at her feet.

She should have had at least two of her crew up with her near that door.

They could go after him now, she was thinking.

Or someone could go out there after him.

But she continued to picture the space right outside the door as some sort of void Running Wolf had dropped into.

Indeed, in her mind, the whole rest of the ship had disappeared.

She realized this was as close to madness as she wanted to get, and willfully slowed her breathing. Soon she noticed the tension in the crew gradually dissipating with her own growing calm.

Nothing proved that more surely than Tiberius the cat. He sauntered out through the automatic door to the containment section. Where Chikage had been working the first part of her shift.

Chikage smelled him before she saw him. He must have been hiding among the chemicals and storage containers somewhere. But it was Van der Ryn who commented.

Good lord! I thought someone had killed the brute. What in the world is that stink? And you! he ordered Micklewaithe. Clean up the floor.

Officer Chikage pushed herself farther away from her ensign. Still disoriented from her time with his knee in her back and his hand over her mouth, she barely realized he’d said something important. It concerned the cat she saw stretching its belly to the floor to sniff at the puke.

Get the cat, she ordered suddenly, trying to act calm and failing.

Everyone stared.

I’m not kidding, she said when she noticed no one had jumped to attention. Get that cat.

Chikage was highest ranking officer stationed in this section of the ship. But maybe she was too young for them to take her seriously.

Maybe she’d gotten too chummy with her crew.

Maybe she cared too much that they like her.

Chikage ground her teeth so hard she felt bits of enamel dissolve into tiny flakes. And while she did, the cat dashed back into the containment sector.

Never before had any of her people refused an order. As they now did.

Get. The. Cat.

Each word came out of her mouth clipped, angry, and loud. Then she snapped her jaws together and prepared to make the crew obey. At least one of them.

More clicking distracted her, from both the right and left near the walls.

She stared intently, looking for the cause.

Unlike the gray-painted wall Cloud Eater had sinuously peeled himself away from a few moments ago, the opposite wall was painted in variations of gray reaching all the way into the blue spectrum. She hadn’t noticed it before. She’d only seen gray.

The remaining members of her crew materialized in front of her from their hidden position beside the blue-to-gray wall.

She was totally impressed and slightly scared of them at the same time.

Two of the crew members were new to her. Van der Ryn had vouched for them and taken responsibility for their training.

Nestor. Praetor.

Those were their names. Twins. She couldn’t tell them apart.

Chikage figured now was as good a time as any to see where she stood.

Her blood ran cold, her mouth dry.

Strange that she hated conflict so much, considering the career she’d chosen. Seemed like isolating herself up in the front of the compartment to clean out the cages may have been a mistake. She’d been separated from her crew for too many shifts. Maybe they saw Van der Ryn as their leader when instead it was Chikage who ranked highest.

She decided to sign at them instead of raising her voice again.

She pointed to the two, pointed back the way she wanted them to go, then jerked her head at them with a nod.

They’d better move or there’d be hell to pay.

And she hadn’t a clue who might be coming out on the losing side. Her or them. What would it be?

Tiberius the cat crashed back out the door, breaking her concentration at just the wrong moment, jumping out of nowhere and onto her leg and then right off again before she could grab him.

Her hands flew up and her mouth opened in a wide Oh of surprise. And the smell! Did all cats reek like this?

Van der Ryn laughed.

The two new crewmen Chikage had her doubts about suddenly scrambled toward her, broke around her like a river meeting a tree in its path, and lunged for the cat as it dashed and zigzagged back through the door.

Everyone followed Tiberius. Except Micklewaithe. He rigorously scoured the floor of Running Wolf’s vomit as ordered by her ensign.

Once through the containment area door, Chikage saw the creature frolicking in the middle of the room among some of the overturned lab furniture. It seemed more like play than escape.

Trusting in her ensign, Chikage decided to trust the two he’d trained to catch Tiberius. Once decided on that, she turned her efforts to finding the cat’s hidey-hole. It was important.

Had he made his way in here on his own, or had someone stashed him here? The state of his nest would tell her that. The captain would want to know.

Ensign Van der Ryn understood at once what she needed.

You, he ordered, pointing at Cloud Eater who stood at ease against the far wall. Find the cat’s sleeping place. Take the high spots. This cat likes to climb.

He was right. Chikage had seen Tiberius leap on many a hapless control room officer from the top instrument panels before the captain had banned him from the bridge. The cat had even scratched her cheek once in a jump gone slightly wrong.

And you, Van der Ryn called to Leichter who had just holstered her weapon and was looking towards Chikage for instructions. You search the low spots. Especially back against the far wall.

5

Chikage exchanged glances with the only female crewman under her command, gratefully nodding her assent and touching Leichter lightly on the upper arm as she passed.

Van der Ryn had made the decision, she had agreed with it.

She watched the lithe figure go about her duty in the gray confines of the containment area.

Chikage didn’t understand how the cat could have remained hidden in the place she’d been working in, and she not know it. But if it was in there under the terrariums or in a pile of clothes abandoned in a shadowed corner, Leichter would find it.

Leichter was one of the crew she trusted absolutely. They’d had each other’s backs during more altercations than Chikage liked to admit to. With her hair shorn to barely an inch long, Leichter blended in well with the men.

They accepted Leichter. They hadn’t accepted Chikage.

To her surprise, Leichter seemed to have already finished the first scan. Chikage followed her return from the back wall until it was clear something had caught her attention.

Leichter stopped and tilted her head. From her body language, Chikage figured she’d heard something.

Had that been the suggestion of a growl she was hearing as well?

Leichter bent low and then settled down on her heels to put her head level with the recessed spaces in the desks. Chikage decided to allow her to handle the investigation, letting her own thoughts wander.

Not for the first time Chikage wondered why she’d been given command down here and not Leichter. It would only have taken a tiny deletion in her own computer files and an equally small addition to Leichter’s.

The captain had been known to promote and demote the Goodall crew this way. It was one of the reasons he was both admired and hated by those serving with him.

Everyone loved the way he cut right through all the red tape, unless they were the one’s feeling the blade across their throats.

Chikage stepped back outside the door to see if Running Wolf had miraculously reappeared.

He hadn’t.

And now she wasn’t willing to get anywhere near the automatic door leading out into the corridor. Not since it had taken her petty officer.

It was as if the barred passageway gave off sinister emanations. Like a putrid stench she wanted to avoid. And hadn’t her crew been just as spooked by the silence as she was? She thought so, but maybe it was her imagination.

Hey, Lieutenant! Got him!

Chikage turned away from staring at the door and returned to the containment chamber.

There Leichter walked confidently toward her with Tiberius the cat slung over her shoulders like some sort of fur collar that squalled shrilly at the indignity of it all.

Chikage opened her mouth to object. She’d wanted the cat captured unharmed. But when she saw his tail twitching back and forth the way it did just before he’d jump, she figured the cat was okay.

She’d need some way to constrain him.

Without knowing why, she patted her pockets as if a collar and leash were somehow hidden on her person.

Chikage bit her lip. When she’d been young, she’d often carried a leash and a collar around in her pockets. It had been for what served as a dog on her far-away planet.

Suddenly feeling a rush of nostalgia, Chikage hoped the tears in her eyes came from the pungent scent of the captain’s cat coming her way and wasn’t the beginning of a good cry.

She’d loved that dog-thing.

She tasted salt as the tears ran over her lips.

Leichter stopped short of hauling Tiberius off her neck and draping him onto Chikage, but Chikage could see the thought of it in her eyes.

Here, Leichter said, and Chikage opened her arms to take the cat.

She’d put him in one of the boxes until they could find something better.

She had him now. For a moment the long, warm body relaxed against her. Tiberius even butted his head on her chest, making her feel liked for the first time in ages. Then he began to squirm.

To her surprise, Leichter jumped to attention. Then she began mimicking Chikage’s earlier movements by patting at her pockets, but she really did pull out a collar and a well-worn leash.

Found it in the bedding, she said. Had food and water in there, too. Of course, it’s all over the place now. Soft blankets. Some sort of waste station for the little hellion. Oh, she said, pausing. There was a pallet tossed to the side, too. Could have been tossed by the gravity mishap. I think someone’s been sleeping down here with the cat.

The cat struggled to escape Chikage’s embrace, but just before she lost all control over him, Leichter snapped the choke collar around Tiberius’s neck and quickly attached the lead.

Let him drop, sir, she said.

Chikage let the cat go.

He jumped clear of Chikage, propelling himself off her stomach with his powerful back legs. And just as she was grunting a response to his kick, the cat found himself caught by the collar and leash.

He rolled onto his back in what looked like a frenzy of frustration. Then just as suddenly he stopped to clean the fur at the tip of his tail, all the while glaring at Chikage with his yellow-green eyes.

The lieutenant glared right back, and then began dragging him across the room. Van der Ryn stood watching at the exit, a smirk on his lips.

Tiberius fought Chikage’s every step. Leaping into the air. Doing somersaults. Screaming his lungs out.

She turned her bad ear his way and dragged him some more.

This being the captain’s cat, Chikage felt they needed to find a safe place to quarter him. And what safer than Ensign Van der Ryn’s room.

By the time she’d finally pulled the cat up to Van der Ryn’s polished shoes, her primary ensign had already guessed her intentions. The smirk vanished.

Chikage could read his face. He clearly struggled between wanting to object, probably with a lot of cussing thrown into the mix, and his duty to follow his superior officer’s orders.

Put him somewhere comfortable, ensign. Then get back here. And take care with him. I need some samples later.

In the end she found herself addressing Van der Ryn’s rapidly retreating back as he followed her orders and took the cat away to safety. The door slowly closed behind him. Chikage had a little time before he’d return. There were even more puzzles for her to solve.

Who had sequestered the cat down here? And why?

Chikage found herself being scrutinized by more than one of the crew while she waited.

Cloud Eater materialized from his camouflaged position along the port wall when he noticed she’d caught him