A3 - Chapter 81 – Informal Inquiries (Patreon)

USD: 53 days after the battle of Dedia IV

Location: Gamma Virginis, IND Iron Horse, en route to 63 Hydrae

Alex followed Commander Talbot, feeling a mix of confusion and anxiety as to why the XO had come to fetch her. He led her to the officer’s berthing section and to the boardroom where a small meeting was being held. She spotted Lieutenant Ferguson first, and then the marine that had accosted her on the observation deck.

Another high-ranking officer was at the table; she didn’t recognize him but did recognize the golden bars on his collar and uniform as belonging to the ship’s Head Engineer.

She really wished she had access to her main HUD and could have displayed the crew roster and ranking hierarchy. She knew the Captain was at the top of course, followed by the XO, and then things branched out, but she couldn’t remember how senior the Head Engineer was. Pretty high, she thought.

She almost expected to see Thraker, but he was missing, which added to her confusion.

Commander Talbot sat at the table and gestured for her to follow suit, which she did without hesitating.

“What’s going on?” She asked.

Talbot looked angered by her speaking out of turn, but cleared his throat. “Ms. Myers, this is an informal hearing about a serious matter, accusations of sabotage have been leveled against you. Depending on our findings here, you might be punished, remanded to the brig pending formal charges.”

Alex looked towards the marine quietly, suppressing her first surge of things she wanted to say as she went along with it.

“Okay, what am I accused of exactly?”

Talbot looked at the marine. “Sergeant Sinclair, will you please repeat the story you relayed to me?”

“Sir. I noticed crewman Myers creeping about on the day in question. She was acting suspicious and checking the corridors when she enters the port engineering washroom. I followed her in, but she seemed to just be taking a shower, so I left.”

Alex’s brow furrowed and the skin behind her ears tightened. She didn’t remember hearing anyone follow her that day, and felt a mild discomfort that anyone would have been following her like that.

“I didn’t think much of it, but when she finished the shower, I checked the space. That’s when I found the sabotage.”

Alex couldn’t help herself. “Sabotage?”

Commander Talbot looked at her harshly. “Ms. Myers, please remain quiet.”

Sinclair continued, “The space had been polished, Sir. At first, I didn’t understand, but then I realized that the space was next to the aft reactor cooling line. Polishing the rust off might have weakened the lines, and when I investigated, I found multiple coolant leaks. I reported them immediately to the H-E and then to you.”

Talbot nodded, then looked to Alex, “Ms. Myers, would you like to respond? Note that while this is an informal hearing, anything you say will be on the record.”

Alex shook her head. “I did clean the washroom, but I didn’t cause any sabotage or create any leaks.”

Sinclair scoffed, “Liar, that polish is so clean you obviously had to reduce a lot of material to get that kind of shine. Obviously you weren’t careful and created holes in the coolant line then hid the fact!”

Talbot thumped the table, clearly pissed off, “Mr. Sinclair, if you don’t remain silent, I will have you up for insubordination. You are not to speak unless permitted.”

Alex felt slightly confused. She’d felt that Talbot had been on Sinclair’s side the entire time, and she didn’t understand why he’d silence the man.

The XO turned back to look at her. “Ms. Myers, please continue.”

“I didn’t damage anything. The rust is a specific reaction that isn’t actually iron oxide, it’s a result from the ship’s time submerged in an ocean. I don’t exactly know anything about that, but I do know what the result on the metal was and reversed the process with nanites. The process wasn’t reductive, it’s restorative. It couldn’t have caused any leaks because the metal wasn’t weakened in the process, or I wouldn’t have… cleaned up so much.”

Sinclair’s face was beet red, and the man looked like he was going to burst, but he remained silent.

There were a few moments of silence before Talbot looked over at the Chief Engineer and Lieutenant Ferguson.

“Chief, can you please report your findings? How serious was the coolant leak and was it sabotage?”

“Sir, the coolant leaks would not have placed the ship in any serious danger. The levels are monitored constantly and the loss would have shown up, eventually. However, we lost quite a bit of the stuff and it’s not simply replaceable with standard H20. As for the sabotage, Mr. Ferguson?”

“After a through investigation, I can report that Ms. Myer’s statement is mostly correct. The restoration of the metal did not weaken it at all and it appears to be a perfectly serviceable FedTech alloy with no degradation. However, we did find evidence that the seams of the metal where it joins the old are slightly weakened because of the change in state.”

A wicked grin appeared on Sinclair’s face and Alex felt her brow furrow, suddenly unsure of herself. She didn’t actually remember cleaning any coolant lines specifically.

“But I can confirm that there was no effect whatsoever on the coolant lines themselves. Instead, the failure seems to indeed be deliberate sabotage, as the leaks were caused by an intentional stabbing at multiple points. We are still searching for the item used to cause the damage. Furthermore, this occurred today, several days after Ms. Myers… modified the washroom. That is all.”

The grin on the sergeant’s face died.

Commander Talbot looked at Sinclair. “Sergeant, did you see Ms. Myers cause the sabotage?”

He shook his head, “No Sir. I didn’t see her do that directly, just what I reported.”

“Then why did you wait until today to report it, if it occurred several days ago?”

Alex leaned forward, clasping her hands together. “Sir?”

Talbot looked back at her and nodded, “Go ahead, Ms. Myers.”

“This man… threatened me earlier. I’m not sure what he was after, but the altercation left me feeling uneasy. I didn’t report it because I wanted to put it behind me, but I think I should now.”

Sinclair bristled. “She’s lying. I didn’t do anything or say anything to her.”

Alex frowned, then looked over and spotted a free datapad. Reaching over to it. “Listen, I’m pretty fucking broken. I’ve lost two people I considered friends over Dedia, and two more are in comas right now, and half the things I took from granted are impossible and on a good day I feel lobotomized. The best I can manage is a small little cloud of repair mites and a little alarm clock on my HUD.”

As she spoke, she felt a growing ball of anger. All she wanted to do was slap Sinclair across the room.

“But everything I see and hear is still on record, asshole.” She poked her finger into the port on the datapad and closed her eyes and focused. The screen lit up, and she dumped the memory into the screen.

“Planning to disarm the failsafe and kill us all?”

“We know what you’ve been doing. Not all of us are fooled by your little act.”

“We’re watching you.”

The video ended with Alex hurrying away.

Alex tapped the end record button on the screen and slid the pad over to the Commander. He looked at it with a frown.

Sergeant Sinclair looked apocalyptic, “It’s fabricated! She’s an NAI!”

“Sergeant Sinclair, you will be silent. You will be not speak out again. You will be remanded to the brig pending an investigation as to the origination of the sabotage today.”

Commander Talbot nodded to a guard that Alex hadn’t realized had been standing behind her. The marine coming forward to take Sinclair away. The man looked like he was about to explode.

Talbot looked back at her. “Ms. Myers, thank you for bringing this to our attention. I will have to review the footage and an inquiry will be held to determine the appropriate course of action. In the meantime, you are dismissed and may continue with your duties.”

Alex nodded and stood just as the marine reached Sinclair. The Seargant moved suddenly, grabbing the guard’s belt and slipping his sidearm out in one smooth motion, the firearm blasting the man in the chest as Sinclair pulled it away.

The Sergeant turned and pointed the gun toward Talbot, but Alex acted immediately, raising her leg up and slamming her boot into the metal table. Steel groaned as the force of her kick bent the metal and the table slammed into all the men with enough force to knock them all over.

Sinclair and the marine flew several feet and slammed into the floor from the impact, but it had less effect on the Sergeant. He recovered, turning to aim at her.

She grabbed the nearest heavy metal thing, her chair, and threw it at him. More gunshots rang out; heavy thuds slammed into the seat and the bullets ricocheted dangerously through the room. Alarms began to wail across the ship.

Alex jumped on the table and started forward, but she realized it was over and paused. Blood painted a huge swath of the wall behind where Sinclair had been, and a growing pool was soaking the floor, filling the grated floor with small rivers of blood.

Her aim had been dead on; the chair had hit Sinclair with enough force to decapitate the man.

Marines flooded into the room with firearms raised and pointed at her.

“Freeze!”

“Hands up!”

“Don’t move!”

Alex raised her hands above her head slowly, unsure what to do about the conflicting orders.

Coughing, Commander Talbot was the first to pull himself up and raised a hand, “Stand down! Not her! Threat neutralized! Get a fucking medic!”

Ferguson pushed himself free of the heap, moving toward the marine that was shot. “He’s still alive, trauma kit!”

Guns no longer pointed at her, Alex felt like she was in a daze at the sight of all the blood, the memory of her time in the escape pod coming back to her. Fear washed over her as she relived those horrifying moments with Elis bleeding out on her.

She pushed it away, realizing she could help the man. She pushed her way forward, jumping down off the table and coming over to Ferguson, who was pressing down on the wells of blood pouring out of the man’s chest.

The lieutenant looked at her grimly. “Man needs a medic, not an angel.”

A kit flew through the air and Ferguson unzipped it with one hand, grabbing a pack of clotting powder. Alex held up a hand.

“No, this will be easier without it. Let me do it.” She said calmly.

He looked at her, confused, then pulled back as she reached forward to put her hands over the two bullet holes.

It wasn’t exactly the same as the damage that Elis had received. Elis had been hit in a much less important place and had bled out slowly. Alex had stopped it but hadn’t been able to rebuild her blood supply quickly. Being in shock for too long and lack of blood to the brain had caused the coma.

The marine had the opposite problem, he still had his blood supply, he was just losing it rapidly and instead of going to the right places it was pouring out as fast as his heart could pump.

Alex forced her nanites to emerge and soak into the bloody wounds, the machines immediately beginning to clot the injury and dig deeper. The little machines had her signature blue glow to them, but she closed her eyes and focused.

She quickly found the debris, the bullets had been hollow points and mushroomed as they punctured tissue. The robots quickly went to work fetching the metal that didn’t belong and pulled it out while forming a net to repair the damaged tissue.

The most disastrous was damage to the man’s aorta, which was also the main reason he’d already lost a quarter of his blood supply. Alex guided the nanites to reform the vessel and then sealed the injury, the small bots having to fight hard against the massive pressure as the man’s heart pounded in an attempt to restore blood flow.

Flesh gave way to the force of billions of microscopic machines working in unison. Alex let out a breath of relief. The hemorrhaging ceased and slowed and there was enough of a repair that she began to draw the machines out so they wouldn’t end up embedded in the injury.

Opening her eyes, everyone was staring at her.

“What? He still needs to go to medbay and get a doctor! It’s just he’s not going to bleed out in the next thirty seconds!”