“What happened?” I asked.
“Power’s out,” she said as she passed me. “We skipped and then the power went bye-bye.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“Hey, man, I’m just a cargo monkey,” she said. “You’re bridge crew. You tell me.” And then she was gone.
She had a point. I started on my way to the bridge.
Along the way I saw Secretary Ocampo, who looked mussed and like he hadn’t gotten much sleep. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Power’s out.”
“How’d that happen?”
I just had this conversation, on the other side. “I’m heading to the bridge to find out.”
Ocampo nodded. “I’ll come with you.” I didn’t think this was a particularly great idea, but I just nodded and kept going, assuming that Ocampo was following me.
The bridge was busy but controlled. The first-shift bridge crew were at their stations, offering up status reports to Thao, who took them in and asked questions. I nodded to Ocampo, who had indeed followed me in, and then went over to Han.
“You’re not on duty,” he said to me as I came up.
“Thought you might want some help.”
“We already have a pilot.” Han nodded to Bolduc.
“Available for other things.”
“Fine,” Han said. “See if Womack needs help with the sensors.” I headed over to Sherita Womack, handling the sensors. Han then turned his attention to Ocampo. “You’re not part of this crew, Secretary Ocampo. You’re officially in the way.”
“Thought I might be useful,” Ocampo said.
“You’re not,” Han said. “Go back to your stateroom.”
“Belay that,” Thao said, turning to the conversation. “I want him here. I’ve got questions for him, and he damn well better have answers for me. Don’t you move, Secretary.”
“I’m at your service, Captain,” Ocampo said.
Thao said nothing to this, and switched her attention to Womack. “Sensors. Report. Tell me if we hit anything coming out of skip.”
“Doesn’t appear so, ma’am,” Womack said. “If we hit anything, we’d probably be dead.”
“Depends on the size of what we hit,” I said. “We get peppered with tiny bits of dust all the time.”
“Those aren’t going to knock out our power,” Womack said. “They’re not going to shift us off course, either.”
“How far have we shifted?” Thao asked.
Womack shrugged. “Can’t give you a precise reading because our inertial sensors are screwed up. So are our outside sensors. I can’t tell you what’s out there, ma’am.”
“Anything before the sensors went out?”
“Nothing pinged,” Womack said. “One second there’s nothing but vacuum and the next we’re jolted and our power is screwed.” Womack stopped talking and frowned at something in her diagnostics screen. I craned my head in to look.
“What is it?” Thao asked.
“The diagnostics say the outside sensors should be working fine,” I said, going off the readings on the screen.
“But we’re not getting anything from them,” Womack said. “Communications should also be working but I’m getting nothing.”
“We’re being jammed, maybe,” I said.
“I think so,” Womack said, and looked over to Thao.
The bridge went silent at this. Thao nodded at the report and then turned her attention back to Ocampo. “You want to explain this?” she said.
“I can’t,” Ocampo said.
“You said that you were meeting diplomats from Earth.”
“Earth and the Conclave both, yes,” Ocampo said. This was slightly different than what he told me, but then he said he wasn’t actually telling me anything, so.
“Why would diplomats want to jam our sensors?” Thao asked.
“They wouldn’t,” Ocampo said. “This is where we’re supposed to meet. They knew I was coming and they knew I was coming on this ship. They know we’re not a threat.”
“And yet our sensors are jammed and we’re sitting here blind,” Thao said.
“It could be pirates,” Han said.
“No,” Thao said. “Pirates follow trade routes. This isn’t a trade route. We followed a route to a secret location only Secretary Ocampo’s diplomat friends would know we’d be at. Isn’t that right, Ocampo? Isn’t this trip supposed to be top secret?” The sarcasm of those last two words coming out of the captain’s mouth was unmistakable.
Ocampo looked uncomfortable with this line of questioning. “Information about the Colonial Union’s diplomatic missions has been leaky in the last year,” he said, finally.
“What does that mean?” asked Thao.
“It means that the State Department might have a problem with spies,” Ocampo said. “I made every precaution so this information would be secure. Apparently it wasn’t enough.”
“You have spies?” Thao said. “Spies for whom? The Conclave? Earth?”
“Either,” Ocampo said. “Or spies for someone else.”
“Who else?”