Chapter 5

Kat slept until hunger woke her. According to her fingernail chrono, it was 2100 hours local. The time didn't mean much to her since she had no idea how much time had passed since she was abducted, nor how long she had slept. Her stomach was telling her she hadn't had anything to eat in quite a while.

"Computer, increase lights 15%." Kat sat up and was unsurprised, but still annoyed, to find that she was naked under the covers. Of course a person had to go into Cryo sleep naked, and she didn't have any real taboos about nudity, but it annoyed her that someone was handling her body while she lay drugged and unable to consent or to defend herself.

The lights slowly brightened and, though there was still a dull ache behind her eyes, she could open them without real discomfort. She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bunk, feeling lethargic, but wanting to be on her feet and mobile. Standing took her a minute, her limbs feeling weak and her head spun for a moment when she gained her feet.

The feeling soon passed and she made a slow circuit of the cabin, not touching anything, just looking and soaking it in. It all seemed so damned normal, like any of a million cabins aboard a thousand generic passenger liners. Considering the circumstances, she should be seeing manacles, medical scanners and, if you wanted to be really macabre, torture devices.

She opened the closet, true to Minerva's word, her pack was there and, hanging from a bar, inside one of those clever anti-static fields and obviously freshly laundered, was the dress she had worn to dinner. Taking her pack from the closet and dumping it on her bed, she inventoried the contents. Outwardly, everything was present, but it remained to be seen if everything was unmolested. It would wait, however, until she was able to get some calories inside of her.

She stepped into the fresher and dialed the water as hot as she could stand it. The steam and heat felt wonderful and helped to wash away the last of the fog that had been hovering around her mind. Drying off and running a hand through her short hair in lieu of a brush, she grabbed a worn and comfortable shipsuit from the pile on the bunk and added a pair of slippers.

Kat paused at the door. Something was nagging at her, something she had missed. She turned in place and let her eyes scan the cabin. Not focusing on anything, just absorbing it all, it was not until she was facing the door again that it registered. There was no safety placard.

Every ship in space, from the Super Carriers of the Union Security Fleet to the smallest inner-system flitter, was required to meet specific safety standards. One of the more esoteric regulations, but one that was religiously enforced, was the placement and upkeep of safety placard in every ship's space designed for human habitation or passage. That meant that a placard, attached to the bulkhead at every exit to the space. The placard had to list the location of the space in relation to the rest of the ship; the route to the assigned escape pod and the emergency procedures for various events. There was no placard.

It was a small thing, one most people would not even notice. Kat was not most people. She was obsessed with diagrams and maps. Her personal collection rivaled that of the Union's largest technical libraries and she was constantly on the lookout for more. This meant that things like the map of the ship displayed on a cabin's Safety Placard were absorbed as naturally as she breathed. A safety inspection would levy a hefty fine the ship's owner and the ship's captain which made it unlikely that the placard had simply fallen off or been forgotten. Someone had deliberately removed the placard.

Thumbing the activator for the door, she peered into the hallway, scanning for threats. It was deserted and looked identical to any other passenger ship. "Computer, access ships schematics. Provide most direct route to the mess."

"Accessing," the ship's computer had a soft, female voice set with a vaguely Betan accent. "The main dining room is no longer serving the evening meal, but the open mess is available for your use during every shift. To reach the open mess, please proceed forward from the cabin portal. Travel 200 meters and turn to starboard. Travel 42.3 meters. The open mess is on the port side, space S3-204."

Kat smiled to herself. Port and starboard? Milspec compartment numbering? Bingo! This was not a civilian passenger liner. More likely, considering the civilian styling of the cabins and passageway, it was a VIP transport of some kind. Minerva was part of some military or governmental organization. The next question was, which one?

Exiting the cabin and strolling down the passageway, she kept her eyes open for other signs that would confirm her hypothesis. Everything looked perfectly natural, for a civilian ship, until she was able to get a glimpse in a storage room next to the open mess hatch. The door for the closet had been prevented from closing by a fallen can of cleanser. Sloppy housekeeping like that could indicate other weaknesses she may be able to leverage if she kept her eyes open. The inside of the closet, when she stopped to peer in, was painted in an industrial gray color and the exposed piped and wiring conduit were all labeled in military script. Pressure, contents, direction of flow, compartment number and even voltage. This was pure military and not the marking system used on civilian ships.

The door to the mess was clearly marked and decorated in a cleverly painted climbing ivy design. It slid open as she approached and the piquant tang of something being cooked in a tomato sauce made her mouth water and her stomach growl. The interior was decorated in a kitschy old-Earth Italian theme, one that Kat suspected had not withstood the test of time.

She made a bee-line directly for the cafeteria-style food line and grabbed a tray. Selecting an appetizing-looking pasta dish, a green salad and a carbonated beverage from the menu, she moved down to the dispensing slot and waited for the indicator light to notify her that the food was ready. Kat chose a table and seat that allowed her to put her back to a wall and have a clean line of sight to both portals that gave access to the mess.

Kat had just started eating when the far door opened and in walked Bowtie. She tensed, her fork halfway to her mouth, and her eyes followed him across the room to the dispenser. He had almost reached the end of the line when he slowed, his shoulders hunched and he spun, his eyes sweeping the room. When Bowtie's eyes met Kat's, he froze in place and visibly relaxed, a slight grin on his face. He gave her a small nod, and then turned to place his order.

Bringing his food over to her table, he stood for a moment, looking at Kat, and then nodded to one of the open chairs. Kat indicated assent and he sat down across from her, placing his food, an order identical to her own, on the table in front of him.

"You are looking well, considering the last time I saw you, you were laid out, unconscious, on a slab in the med bay." The corner of his mouth lifted in a slight grin and he extended his hand across the table towards Kat. "Helios. I normally work in Beta Sector but I was heading to the home office for some training anyway and Minerva needed someone to give her a hand with, well, a little project." He waggled his eyebrows at her. "You, until I get word otherwise, are still Alice Dunstan." It wasn't a question. Dunstan was the name she had been travelling under aboard the CSF Outbound.

Kat looked at the outstretched hand, then back at the man seated across from her. His hair was fashionably long, almost to his collar, and he was dressed in a comfortable shipsuit of metallic gray. The form-fitting shipsuit did little to disguise his well-toned physique and the way he moved across the room had been at odds with the mousy looking man in the garish bowtie she had met. He had broad shoulders and strong hands with long, thin fingers and well-trimmed nails. He was clean shaven, had a strong jawline; a wide, sensuous mouth filled with blindingly white teeth and eyes that were a deep, dark emerald green.

A nice package, if you liked sneaky, back-stabbing toadies.

Kat ignored the hand, and the man behind it, returning to her meal. Helios' smile got wider and he chuckled with obvious humor. Shrugging, he turned to his pasta and the two spent the rest of the meal in silence.

Pushing back from the table, Kat crossed one leg over the other and cradled her glass in her hands, her eyes watching Helios finished eating. When he was done, he mirrored her action in pushing back from the table and regarded her with a warm expression.