Chapter Eighteen
WHEN brICE REACHED THE brIDGE, the usual number of guards were working the gates. The corridor to the Captain’s suite was empty as usual. He wondered if the sensation of hollowness was just his imagination at work. It was late for business.
The main area of the office was also empty, adding to the impression of a deserted Bridge. Brice paused there and called out. “Hello?”
A door opened. Captain Tokyo Travers beckoned. “Step in, Falcon.”
He made his way over to the door and she stepped aside and waved him in. “Sit. Sit.”
Brice had been expecting to step into a tastefully decorated office, only this was a kitchen. Three food printers were mounted on the wall opposite the door, and a long table with prosaic metal chairs on either side sat in the middle of the room.
Half of a meal that looked to be chicken and salad sat in front of one of the chairs, with a glass behind it. The fork was propped on the edge of the bowl.
“I’m aware of how late it is,” Travers said.
She was a short woman, with carefully arranged strawberry blonde hair, and a distinct belly.
Brice had never met her before and hadn’t realized how short she was.
Despite her homely appearance, he didn’t underestimate her political acumen.
She had been captain for nearly twenty-five years.
She waved toward the printers. “Eat, if you’re hungry. You’ll need the calories. I’ll wait. Go ahead.” She settled on the chair and picked up the fork.
Brice found one of his favorites, a red curry, and dialed it in. Then, because his back was to the Captain, he moved back around the table, so he was standing in front of her once more. “You wanted to see me? Urgently?”
“Yes, and now, when the entire office doesn’t see you arrive.” Travers went back to her salad.
Brice realized he wouldn’t get her to talk.
He would have to wait. He went back to the printer, which was nearly done.
The smell of hot curry made him aware of how hungry he was.
It had been a while since he had felt genuine hunger.
He hadn’t cooked a meal since the last time Luciana had been in the house.
When he remembered to eat, lately, he printed something and gobbled it down.
He couldn’t remember eating lunch.
He took the curry back to the table. It seemed sensible to take the chair opposite Travers. He sat, rested his cane against the table, and pulled the fork off the bowl.
With the first mouthful, which was too hot as usual, he realized that he wasn’t just hungry. He was starving. He ate enormous forkfuls, enjoying the play of spices on his tongue.
“A man with an appetite,” Travers said, with an approving tone. “Or are you one of those people who forgets to eat until food is put in front of them?”
He grimaced. “I didn’t think I was like that, but lately…”
“Since Devar Todd was arrested, I’m guessing,” Travers said.
Brice’s middle jumped. He looked at her.
How much about his life did she know, exactly?
Had that been a stab in the dark? Travers was a politician.
She played to the audience. So maybe she had glanced at his profile on the Forum before calling him over?
And had she known that he was at the Association offices, which were a short walk from the Collinas Gate?
His hunger slightly mollified, Brice sat back and ate at a more social pace. “I suspect that I’m not the only one eating when they’re reminded to, these days.”
Travers took her bowl over to the recycle maw and dropped it in, then set up one of the food printers to print coffee. Two cups, he saw.
She sat and put the cup with the milk and sweetener pots attached to it in front of him.
She took hers black, he saw. She sipped and sat back. Crossed her arms. “That’s the reason I wanted to speak to you. Then you’ve noticed the mood of the ship?”
“The anger?” Brice asked. When she nodded, he said, “Oh, yes, I’ve noticed.”
“As your name is on the bottom of the fraud charge against Devar, I imagine some of that anger is directed at you.”
He frowned. “No. These days I’m invisible.” He thought of the way he got short nods from most people.
“And that’s unusual for you.” It wasn’t a question. “I’ve seen the videos, especially those from your tankball days. Even after that, you were the visible head of the Tankball Association. And now…nothing?”
“Yes,” Brice admitted.
Travers considered that. “It’s worse than the analyses suggest.”
“Captain?” Brice said, puzzled.
She shifted, bringing her attention back to him. “I’ve had the AIs build a comprehensive demographical and anthropological analysis of around one hundred social factors on the ship.”
“That’s pretty normal, isn’t it? Surveys and analysis? You have to know how people feel about things.”
“We run so many analyses, I have a whole department of people building the queries and analyzing the analyses the AIs produce. Politicians must keep tabs on what the majority opinion is, so they know what they believe in.” She smiled.
Brice laughed. He realized he liked Travers.
“This report that we ran this week, which landed on my desk late today…” Travers shook her head. “Given what you’ve just told me, about being invisible…it’s not good. The anger you’ve noticed… The ship is hovering at a breaking point.”
Brice broke the cream and sugar off the coffee mug and sat back with the cup in his hand. He thought that Travers had put her finger neatly on the nebulous mood he had been trying to bring into focus with all the reading he had been doing on the Forum.
“They’re ignoring you,” Travers continued, “because the whole ship is focused upon the mutiny charges against Devar Todd. And for those, they blame the Bridge. Me.”
Brice considered that. “Yes,” he agreed. “I can see that now. Not everyone is against the capital charges. Some are still arguing in favor.”
“Then you’ve been keeping up with the Forum avalanche, too. Good. That will make this conversation a lot easier.” She rested her hand on the table. It was a small hand, with thick fingers. “I have a dilemma before me, Brice Falcon.”
“Brice is fine. The dilemma… You want to drop the mutiny charges?”
“Even a captain in their first year sitting in the chair would know that listening to the majority opinion and acting accordingly is the way to keep that chair. Yet there are other factors at play here that make it not so easy to just drop the charges.”
“Thirty-five deaths,” Brice said softly.
“That’s one of the bigger factors, certainly,” Travers said. “I also have to pay attention to who wants the mutiny charges upheld.”
Political pressure. Brice smiled grimly. “Is one of those people Zana Magro?”
Travers just smiled.
“Magro can be persuasive,” Brice said. “I speak from experience.”
“She’s never learned how to deal with people,” Travers said. “She means well. Tankball is everything to her. I can see exactly where she is coming from.”
“Tankball and the revenue it provides her,” Brice said, with a touch of bitterness that surprised even him.
“So you see my dilemma now?” Travers said.
“I need to find a way to avoid executing a man, and at the same time, I must appease the ship. They want someone to pay for the thirty-five people that are no longer with us. Just keeping him in a cell at the back end of the bridge won’t cut it.
That’s what we do with the drunks and the petty criminals. ”
Brice said, “I’m curious. If the mood of the ship had been ‘we want Devar Todd dead,’ would you execute him?”
Travers remained silent for a long minute.
Then she sighed. “Honestly, Brice? I would still have worked to find a way out of it. Killing a man because he killed others…it is insanity itself. And Todd didn’t set out to kill people.
” She shook her head. “I don’t know where the bloodlust originally came from.
No one seems to know. The ship has fewer than five thousand people now…
we should be able to track down the source of an idea that extreme.
And no, it wasn’t Magro’s idea. She was responding to what she thought people wanted. What would save tankball.”
“It won’t save tankball,” Brice said sharply. “The president of the Tankball Association is the one pushing the original fraud charges. If Devar Todd is executed, that will be the end of tankball. It will forever be tainted.”
Travers pointed at him. “Because the mood of the ship shifted abruptly, almost overnight, in the other direction.” She frowned.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that a political player was out there, pulling the strings, driving the change in mood.
Only, I know exactly who all the players are, and they’re all hiding away at the moment, because it’s unstable out there. It’s incendiary.”
Luciana. Brice sat still, wondering if it was possible that Luciana was somehow behind the change of mood on the ship. She wasn’t a political player the way Travers meant it, yet she stood to lose the most out of everyone on the ship except for Caelen.
Only, she had been silent on the Forum, even though nearly every comment and message cross-referenced her Forum profile. Unless she was doing something behind the scenes? Private messages. Talking to people. She was good at talking to people….
Was it possible?
“Have you been getting lots of private, direct messages, asking you to drop the mutiny charge?” Brice asked.
“Hundreds,” Travers said. “It’s a significant enough number we included it in today’s model.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Political speak for now.” She grimaced.
“We played for time. ‘Thank you for your opinion, which we’ll include in our deliberations.’ Although we’re behind on responses right now because my assistant, who was building all the responses, was assigned a child and quit to take care of the baby.
Although I don’t mind all that much. The non-committal neutral answer just doesn’t sit right with me… are you alright?”
Brice pressed his fingers to his head. He sat forward, staring at the ring of drying coffee on the table in front of him. “Wait…” His voice came out croaky. His mind whirled faster and faster.
When he looked up, Travers raised her brows.
“I have an idea,” he told her.