Chapter Fourteen
“What do you mean she’s missing?” I asked groggily as I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. It seemed like I had only laid down a moment ago, although the clock showed that I had been asleep for nearly three hours.
“Just that,” Morgana said. “I stopped by her cabin to check on her and she wasn’t there. I’ve got people searching the ship for her now. It shouldn’t take us too long to find her. There are only so many places she could be.”
I swung my legs over the side of the bunk and fumbled for my boots. “But how could she get out of her cabin? I thought she was locked in.”
“She was, but the door was unlocked when I got there,” Morgana said, sounding frustrated. “And before you ask, there were no signs of it being forced. So, either someone let her out or she has a way to override our locks.”
She paused and seemed to be listening to something. That was when I noticed the comm-link earpiece she was wearing.
A moment later she tapped her earpiece. “Keep her there. We’re on our way.” She cut the connection and looked back at me. “They just found her outside the infirmary.”
I finished pulling on my second boot and stood up. Morgana held out a comm-link to me and I immediately put it on.
“How long was she out by herself?” I asked as we headed for the door.
“We don’t know exactly, but when I checked her cabin an hour earlier and the door was secure.”
One hour. Damn. She could have been all over the ship in that much time.
We hurried down to B deck. Angela was backed up against the bulkhead next to the infirmary door under the watchful eye of our tactical team leader, Clive Mayweather. Although he was armed, his pistol was holstered as he stood watch over her. From his expression he seemed to be struggling with himself to maintain a professional detachment as he stared at our wayward guest. Standing off to one side was Doc Jacobs. Unlike Clive, Doc seemed deep in thought as he stood watching the two of them.
“Oh, there you are, Captain,” Angela said, turning toward me as we approached. “For some reason your crewman seems to think I’m up to something.” She paused and pressed a hand to the side of her head. “Like I tried to explain to him, all I want is something for my headache. The doctor’s first treatment is wearing off.” Just like the last time I had seen her, her complexion was pale and waxy. She really did seem to be sick.
“How did you get out of your cabin?” Morgana asked.
Angela seemed puzzled by the question. “I opened the door. There was no one around so I just came here. I know you said your infirmary wasn’t in working order, Captain, but I hoped I would find the doctor nearby.” She narrowed her eyes at Morgana. “Or aren’t people allowed to get sick on your ship?”
“Your cabin was locked,” Morgana said, refusing to rise to the bait.
“Well, it opened for me with no trouble,” Angela insisted. The two of them stood glaring at each other for several moments.
“You say you came directly here after you left your cabin,” I said, interrupting their standoff.
As Angela turned to look at me I was suddenly struck by how beautiful her eyes were.
“I wasn’t sure where the infirmary was exactly,” she said, “so I spent a few minutes looking for it, but yes, I came here more or less directly. Why? You do believe me, don’t you, Captain?” As she looked at me I felt myself being drawn into the depths of those eyes. At that moment I found it hard to believe that she was being anything but completely truthful with me. In fact I found it difficult to focus on anything except—
“Captain!” Morgana’s voice pulled me back to the moment. “I said, what do you want to do with her?”
It took me a beat to organize my thinking.
“Right. Um, take her back to her cabin and I’ll have Doc bring her something.”
Morgana took Angela firmly by the elbow and led her away. I followed them with my eyes as they walked away, enjoying the sensual sway of two sets of very attractive hips.
“How are you feeling, Jason?” I heard Doc ask me once the women were out of sight.
“Great!” I said. That was an odd thing for Doc to ask me. Then I realized that I did feel surprisingly good. Those three hours of sleep must have been just what I needed. I turned to Doc and found him looking me as if I were a specimen under a microscope.
“What?” I asked.
Doc looked from me to Clive then folded his arms in concentration.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“By the way, what are you doing up at this hour?” I asked.
“I was working in my lab when I heard someone knocking on the infirmary door,” Doc said. “When I answered it I found our passenger standing there.”
“So she did get a look at the infirmary after all,” I said out loud. That realization hit me like a dash of cold water in the face. Suddenly my thinking wasn’t so fuzzy.
“I don’t think so,” Doc said. “I turned off all the lights before I opened the door and none of the equipment was running. At best all she saw was the inside of a darkened compartment for a few seconds before I stepped into the passage. That was just before Mr. Mayweather here arrived on the scene.” Doc turned and looked at Clive.
“And how are you feeling?” Doc asked him.
“Just fine, Doctor,” Clive answered somewhat dreamily. He was staring off in the direction the women had disappeared in. After a moment he shook his head and seemed to pull himself together.
“Um, that is, if you will excuse me, Sir, I’d like to get back to my men. We’re still working on that armor we took from the pirates.”
I was having Clive’s people rehab the suits we had captured in the hope that we could use them. I wasn’t sure what we could do with them, but something was telling me that having a few of their suits of battle armor in working order could come in handy. So far they had found that two of the suits were beyond repair. The one that had been subjected to near absolute zero temperatures was a total loss as was one of the suits we had blasted with the EM pulse. The remaining four seemed salvageable. Unlike normal environment suits however, which were flexible and would fit people within a range of sizes, battle armor was composed of rigid segments and had to be adjusted to fit each person individually. Three were being adjusted for Clive and his team with the fourth being kept in reserve.
“How is that going?” I asked.
“They’re older model suits than we’re used to, but the four that we’re working on are in good condition apart from some minor repairs we had to make. We’re also adding a few upgrades while we’re at it. After that we’ll only need to refill the air tanks and swap out the battery packs and they’ll be good to go.”
“Excellent. I don’t know if we’re even going to need them but I’d like them ready by the time we get to wherever we’re going, just in case.”
“They will be, Sir,” Clive assured me before turning and walking off.
Once he was gone I turned back to Doc who still seemed to be lost in thought. “Okay, Doc, so what’s got you up in the middle of the night?”
“I’m still going over the test results on our passenger. I found something that—”
At that moment Morgana called me on my earpiece.
“Just a second,” I tapped my comm-link. “Go ahead.”
“I wanted to let you know that I’m posting a guard on our little guest’s door,” Morgana said. “She won’t be taking any more unescorted jaunts in the middle of the night.”
For a moment I was torn. Angela seemed like nothing more than a harmless victim of the pirates herself. It seemed pointless to have someone assigned to keep an eye on her around the clock. Then I decided that until we knew more about her, having a guard on her wouldn’t hurt anything. Besides, I knew I’d get an argument from Morgana if I didn’t let her post a guard.
“If you think it’s necessary I don’t have any objections,??
? I said.
“I do,” was her terse reply before she cut the connection.
I turned back to Doc.
“You were telling me that you found something wrong with Angela’s tests,” I said.
“Not wrong actually,” he said
“Okay, so what’s the problem?”
“I’m not sure,” Doc said, frowning.
“You’re not really giving me a lot to go on here, Doc. Why don’t you start with something simple. For example, I assume you could confirm that she is a woman at least.”
“Oh, she is very much that alright.”
“Okay, so does she actually have a migraine?”
“According to my scans, yes. Migraines aren’t something I can test for directly, but she displays all of the classic physiological symptoms.”
“So then what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Doc was sounding frustrated. “Everything about her tests seems perfectly normal, but there’s still something different about her that I can’t put my finger on.”
“Well, when you figure out what it is let me know. In the meantime why don’t you go see what you can do about her headache. She was looking pretty sick a minute ago.”
Looking slightly befuddled, Doc started off. One thing I had learned about Doc was that he was persistent. Like a terrier working at a bone, he would keep at a problem until he had it solved. Whatever was bothering him, I was sure he would figure it out eventually.
Since I was awake now, I decided to go back to my cabin and work on a couple of ideas I had come up with for when we arrived at the pirate base. We would reach their stronghold in just over five days and I wanted to have some type of plan in place by then.