Page 14 of Radiant Exception
“Alright, listen up.” Vaughn’s commanding voice filled the room, and he immediately had the attention of his entire crew from where he stood at the back of the mess hall, Jordan stationed primly at hisright. “This is a standard cargo run. Two stops. Three legs. First leg to Port Vesta is scheduled to take just under twenty days, but we get a bonus if we cut below eighteen.”
I nearly choked on a sip of the stale champagne. I knew this was a newer ship, but from what I’d seen of the engineering capabilities, even twenty days seemed ludicrous, let alone eighteen.
“Vesta to Ganymede is another twenty-four days, with a bonus if we shave off three. You all know how I like our bonuses, and that they are distributed evenly when met.” Vaughn’s gaze landed on mine, as if he could see my incredulity at the pacing. “We’ve never missed a bonus in the fifteen months theRadianthas been running, and I don’t expect we’ll miss them this time.” His eyes narrowed, the message clearly meant for me and me alone.
“Final leg returning back to Phobos is estimated at thirty-one days. We need to hit our alignment optimized windows, or Starlane docks our commission. No excuses. No exceptions.”
“Except for yours, right, Cap?” O’Malley nudged Vaughn, drawing everyone’s attention to me.
Vaughn ignored him. “Takeoff is in one hour. Officer Reese has your duty schedules. Report to your departure stations.”
I was a ball of nerves during takeoff, as it had been a while since I’d run a ship this large. Thankfully, I was alone in the engineering bay, so none of the crew could see my nerves on full display. Once wewere cruising, with Phobos behind us, I finally felt like I could take a breath.
While takeoff went smoothly, the same couldn’t be said for Vaughn’s extremely aggressive delivery schedule. I’d been running the numbers for hours, and I couldn’t figure out how on earth he thought we could manage to get the bonus, let alone meet the minimum requirements.
What’s worse was that when I tried to ping him on the bridge, he hung up on me when I said it wasn’t an emergency. Repeated calls went unanswered.
“Natalie, what jackass was running engineering before me?” I asked through my comm.
“Oh, Sully? He was this ancient guy Vaughn met through the service. Refused to talk to anyone but Vaughn, but he sure did love Rion’s ship wine.” Her melodic giggle filtered through the device. She must have been referring to the moonshine that Ethan mentioned at the debrief.
“I don’t understand how he managed to keep up with the captain’s schedule,” I told her.
“Well, he was very unorthodox, from what I could tell. Sully was a Pisces sun and Sagittarius rising, if you can believe it, which is a particularly chaotic combination, so I did my best to leave him to his own devices. He never allowed anyone but Vaughn into the engineering bay, but I do have access to a lot of the ship systems, and I’d never seen anyone jerry-rig a code like he did. After he left, we were required to do a hard system reset, per Starlane protocols, to clear out any backdoors that might have been coded in,” she prattled.
“I’m barely able to sustain all systems functioning at minimum levels to maintain propulsion at a rate to keep us on track with the Starlane schedule.” What I didn’t tell her was that I also kept finding parts that were overly worn for the age of the ship, which likely meant they had been overtaxed, or perhaps, when being built, the ship hadn’t been assembled with new factory parts.
“I’m sure he turned some systems off.”
“But that’s against protocol, not to mention dangerous as hell.” I scrubbed my hands down my face. The engineering component should have been the easiest part of the gig, considering the age of the ship and all the autonomous functionality. How was I supposed to have time to investigate if I was stuck tinkering, coding, and repairing a ship that shouldn’t need work for another decade, if it had been run properly?
“Have you notified the captain?” Natalie’s voice was soft and tenuous.
“I tried, but he said he wasn’t interested if it wasn’t an emergency.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she offered. “And I’m sorry about the shift schedule.”
I hadn’t even had a moment to look at it. “I’m sure it’s fine,” I replied without thinking.
“Keep me updated on your progress, okay?” she asked.
“Sure thing.”
After ending the call, I switched over to the schedule and immediately saw why Natalie had apologized. Vaughn and I were scheduled for opposite shifts, meaning that we not only wouldn’t be seeing oneanother, but also that we wouldn’t even need to share a bed. “Clever devil.” I chuckled to myself as I leaned back in my chair.
What he’d failed to realize was that this schedule was short-sighted when put in context with our mission. Surely the crew would become suspicious if he continued to find every opportunity to avoid me. As a couple with a freshly granted exception, I would have expected any other captain to move heaven and earth to work the same shift as his partner, to ensure they’d have time alone together.
It was just one more thing to add to my growing list of problems to sort. I’d have to come up with a good excuse for why it made sense that we were on opposite schedules indefinitely, or perhaps manage to track him down and make out with him in front of the crew again to silence any doubt they might have.
I couldn’t tell what about the latter scenario I was looking forward to more: kissing him again or the anger he’d have to suppress while we had an audience. I smiled to myself at the thought of all the marvelous things I could do to take advantage of our situation and annoy the crap out of him as payback for his shitty attitude.
Needing a break from staring at lines of code and running through system diagnostics, I redirected my thoughts to the crew and who amongst them had the potential to be the Phoenix themselves, or at the very least, one of the top-ranking operatives in Meridian.
The Phoenix had a meteoric ascension over the last decade, although the earliest traces of their connection to Meridian went as far back as fifteen years, from what I could tell. Meridian had been your run-of-the-mill criminal syndicate for decades, mostly dealingin the sale of illegal goods: drugs, weapons, humans, you name it. But when the Phoenix came to them with Elysian, their operations expanded at a rate too rapid to quell.
After only a couple years, the drug was so widespread, Meridian’s influence began to infiltrate every industry, corporation, and money-making venture across the entire system. With their coffers full to the brim, thanks to the Phoenix, there wasn’t anything or anyone that could stop them, which my parents had learned the hard way.
There was a reason Darren had to make sure this mission was completely off-the-books. The Phoenix had become Meridian’s golden child and most valuable asset; they’d do anything to protect them. Meridian’s reach was deep in IA and Starlane, so even a whiff of what Vaughn and I were up to, and it would be over…we’dbe over. So black ops it was, my preferred mission type anyway—less interference from above.
