Angela Stein was on one of her few breaks from attending to the Admiral’s needs, and was using it to stretch her legs and walk the corridors of Titan’s Whisper.

  Since the admiral had come aboard, she had been a difficult task master, and Angela had been on the go every waking minute of her day. When she’d been tapped to fill the role of the admiral’s aide during this operation, she’d understood that it was going to be a very demanding job, and was no stranger to hard work, but did like some down time.

  Like now, she’d taken a moment to freshen up and let down her shoulder length scarlet hair in hopes she’d cross paths with a certain person from the engineering staff she’d gotten on friendly terms with before the Admiral came aboard. Maybe they could find a quiet corner of engineering for a brief…intimate…discussion.

  Oh sure, there was some risk involved in that, but they were on their way to a pretty risky confrontation, getting caught in a compromising position could end up with one or both of them transferred to other postings, and Titan’s Whisper was generally a pretty cushy, well sought after assignment. But they were heading into what could be a pretty dangerous confrontation; Not just going after a xenophobic madman known for having the same lack of ethics as a black hole. No, they could be confronting this new alien threat and the contagion that would turn anyone it infected into one of them.

  Sometimes you just had to live in the moment, especially when the next moment you could find yourself sucking void - or turned into some kind of alien monstrosity.

  She’d just rounded a corner into the main engineering corridor when she spotted her friend Lieutenant Jose Jorge, ducking into a secure service alcove, one of the places on the ship that allowed access into the crawlspaces between the bulkheads. She smiled to herself as the thought struck her that such a place was the perfect place for a surprise clandestine rendezvous if she ever saw one. She could just use her clearance as the Admiral’s aide to sneak in behind him and…

  Just as she keyed open the door, she was shoved violently from behind causing her head to impact with the doorframe. Stars exploded in her vision.

  “What the hell Jorge?” came the harsh whisper behind her, “What the fuck is the admiral’s bitch doing here?”

  “How the fuck should I know?” the voice of her friend swore back “I thought she was supposed to be on duty for another couple hours. She wanted to get together for drinks in the mess, but I was gonna blow her off.”

  Next thing she knew, she was roughly spun around and shoved face first into a bulkhead - her nose contacting the duranium alloy with a crack, lighting up her vision all over again. Something sharp was pressed into the side of her neck. “Well, lieutenant?” the secondary voice said. She tried to place it through the throbbing that had now taken up behind her eyes, but despite her knowledge of the entire crew, came up blank. “What brings the Admiral’s aide to the lower decks?”

  You didn’t get put in to be the aide for the chief of the fleet’s intelligence arm by being completely useless in situations like this, however, and despite the pain, she knew something big was happening here. “Admiral sent me down here to check up on things.” she replied through clenched teeth, fighting the painful throbbing coming from where her head had connected with the bulkhead. It didn’t take a genius to see her best bet was to try bluffing her way out, “she was afraid there might be a mole on the ship working for Fisch and was worried they’d try to work some sabotage. I guess she was right.”

  “Fuck,” Jorge swore, “the admiral’s been after Fisch for years. If she finds out we’re…”

  “Shut up, damned idiot.” She was pulled away from the bulkhead for a moment before being slammed into it again. “She’s bluffing. The admiral doesn’t know a damned thing about her being down here. Right Stein? You just came down here to get your leg over on your sweetheart here.”

  Her nose was definitely broken at that point, and she might even have a concussion from how hard that last impact had been. It was getting hard to think, but she knew if they were working for Fisch, and knew nobody was down here for recreational purposes, there was a fair chance they’d try to silence her permanently. “Sorry Jorge, LeBeau had you pegged as a mole for a while now. Been trying to get close to you in order to confirm.” damn but her head ached, not to mention her heart. She hated that she hadn’t actually seen that Jorge was a turncoat, “Get this fuckhead to let me go, and maybe I can convince the admiral to arrange a deal for you. Or hell, maybe dump you in some backwater with no hypercomm access to live the rest of your days, keep you out of trouble.”

  “Anderson, maybe we should…”

  “Damnit, for an engineer with your promising record,” the second man said, “you sure are stupid! Now she knows my name! We’ll have to dispose of her.”

  Something sharp was pressed into the side of her neck. “The only question is, how to dispose of the body so it doesn’t draw any unwanted attention until it’s too late?”

  Struggling to push back against the bulkhead, she felt the metal of the knife draw a few drops of blood. “Now who’s being stupid Anderson.” she growled, “Even if you’re right, and that I’m bluffing, LeBeau is expecting me back in her office in an hour. If I don’t show, she’ll know something’s wrong, and send people to find me. She’ll turn the ship inside out.”

  “She’s right. Damnit And-”

  “Shut the fuck up with names idiot!”

  “What does it matter now? They’ll space us for what we’re doing. I didn’t agree to be part of killing anyone, especially not her.”

  “What’s the matter Jorge? You got feelings for her?” He sneered, “You don’t have a choice Jorge, or do you want your mother put out on the street? I hear the streets of Akton Prime are oh so gentle on frail old women in the winter. It brings out the blue in their complexion. Or maybe she’ll get lucky and one of those organ harvester gangs will find her in an alley and slice her up for parts. Make it quick for her while you’re in the stockade waiting for court martial. ” A brief chuckle, then he continued, “We’ll dump her down the waste reclamation vats.”

  Fear drove Angela’s struggles to break away from Anderson. Everyone serving in the Navy went through the safety training on the vats, since they were an exceedingly important part of a ship’s resources. Dead or Alive, she didn’t want to end up in the waste reclamation vats, but most of all, not alive. The idea of being digested by the artificial enzymes in the vats, broken down into base proteins to be recycled into nutrient bars, or fertilizer for the aeroponics bays while still living was horrific. And the likelihood anyone would hear her screams inside the vats was next to nil.

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  “Let go of me, traitor!” She screamed, “The admiral will see you spaced for your corroboration with Fisch.”

  “She’ll never get the chance bitch. This whole ship is never leaving hyperspace.” He growled out a menacing laugh, “I’ll be long gone before she realizes things have gone sideways on her.”

  “That wasn’t the plan!” Jorge yelled, “You said we were just going to delay our arrival!”

  “Shut it and help me get her to a chute!”

  “NO!”

  A moment later, Angela felt the pressure holding her against the bulkhead disappear and the mysterious Anderson let out a pain filled curse. A glance behind her showed her that a brutish man that must have been Anderson was focused intently on a scuffle with Jorge. Just at that moment, however, Jorge took a knife thrust into his upper arm and screamed in pain. He glanced desperately over at her and screamed “Run Angela, RUN!”

  The words caused Anderson to swear and whirl around to try and grab her, but Jorge, blood pouring from his wounded biceps, took the opportunity to leap onto the man’s back to delay him.

  Angela needed no further urging. She bolted out of the access room and ran up the corridor as fast as her legs could carry her.

  Within moments there was the sharp hiss-pop of a PPG firing off behind her, and the burning pain of it impacting her shoulder caused her to stagger and almost fall to the deck. Catching herself against a bulkhead, however, she was able to just barely keep her feet. The smell of her burning flesh hit her sinuses and threatened to overwhelm her with panic; She needed to either find an intercom or get outside the shielding of the engineering bubble so she could notify the Admiral of the saboteurs.

  Trying to break sight lines, she ducked around a corner, only to run headlong into a petty officer coming out of a junction control room. Thankfully the impact sent them both bouncing off a bulkhead instead of sprawling onto the deck. When she recovered, she grabbed him by the front of his uniform coveralls and pushed him as hard as she could back into the junction room. “Notify the bridge! Saboteurs on board! Batten the hatch behind you!” She yelled at him, then turned and took off running again.

  Another hiss-pop from the PPG behind her, but luck was with her and it missed her, instead lighting up a coolant pipe just as she passed it. The bastard must have had it set to high power because the pipe ruptured, spraying scalding liquid all over the corridor, just enough of it soaking through her uniform jacket to make her scream.

  Of course this all had to happen during the third watch in hyperspace, when the corridors of the ship were nearly dead. Why couldn’t the admiral have given her some personal time during the first watch, when the corridors were bustling with activity.

  Another hiss-pop, and she glanced behind her to see Anderson standing on the other side of the spray of scalding coolant he’d caused. He’d cut himself off from chasing her, he’d have to break line of sight to go another way around to try and catch her, giving her a chance to find a place to hide and contact the bridge. She flipped him off with a grin, but then ducked quickly and turned to resume running as he raised the PPG to fire at her again.

  Only to again collide with another shipmate.

  This time, however, it was a massive wall of muscle belonging to one of the Titan’s contingent of marines. “Where’s the traitor?” the stout woman asked, as two more marines jogged through the hatch behind her.

  “He’s right…” She turned to indicate where Anderson had been standing, only to find him gone. “Fuck!”

  “Did they find Jorge?” She asked.

  She was seated on a gurney in Medbay as one of the nurses tended to the PPG burn on her shoulder and the relatively minor scalding she took from the burst coolant pipe. Admiral LeBeau and Captain Handson sat against the wall, out of the way of glares from the nurse. For all that Jorge seemed to be neck deep in what was happening, it hadn’t seemed like he was looking to get anyone killed in the process.

  “They have.” the Captain said grimly, “He was in rough shape, several stab wounds, and a slice to his neck that narrowly missed his carotid. He’s over in Medbay Two under the watch of a couple of marines, being patched up so he can stand for his court martial. The marines just wanted to toss him out an airlock and be done with it. Or simply let him bleed to death, but one of the other engineers objected to the mess that’d make. They also pointed out he could tell us where the sabotage has been done so we can fix it before we have to transition back to conspace.”

  She nodded soberly, it was quite likely Jorge could end up sucking vacuum anyway after his court martial; The navy didn’t take too kindly to traitors and saboteurs, especially during an active operation of such a critical nature. “He did stop Anderson from killing me, and it sounded like maybe he wasn’t going along with the plan willingly. Anderson made some references to putting his mother in danger.”

  “You’re report to that effect is the whole reason he’s not already dead lieutenant.” The Admiral chimed in. “Unfortunately, he’s still unconscious, and might be so for a while. We need to counteract that sabotage before we hit our transition window, the Elegance and her crew are counting on us to back them up.”

  “No luck tracking down Anderson yet then?”

  Both of them shook their heads before the Captain said “we found a Warrant Officer on one of the hanger decks drugged and stuffed into a flight crew locker. There’s evidence of an unauthorized launch from that hangar bay but no missing fighters or shuttles, he could have snuck aboard using his own craft.”

  “He’s not crew then.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Again, the grim shaking of heads, and she swore under her breath. “My sentiments exactly Angela.” The Admiral said before sighing. “The Captain has put everyone in the battlegroup on alert. All three shifts on every ship will be working furiously to try and track the systems that might have been messed with. We cannot assume that only Titan’s Whisper has been affected. I don’t like that it’s going to result in people not being at their best if we enter combat, but better that then not making it out of hyperspace.

  “Unfortunately, with so little time left, it doesn’t look good, I’m going to have to contact Commander Jophixa and let her know what’s going on so she’s prepared for us not showing up. She might have to make the unfortunate decision to let Fisch have at least one of the targets. I don’t like even thinking about what that lowlife is going to do if he manages to get a viable sample of that contagion, but I have a feeling we’ll need that giobhioni commander one way or the other. Fisch is our problem, we can’t ask her to give up her or her crew’s lives to stop him.”

  “The Prime Minister isn’t going to be happy about him getting away again sir.” She said, hissing as the nurse applied the medi-skin over the burn wound. “Or that he might have to inform the other governments of a potential bio-terrorist on the loose.”

  “Prime Minister Mandela is altogether too used to getting what he wants, the disappointment might be good for him.” LeBeau said with a bit of edge to her voice, then sighed and ran her fingers through her steel gray hair before leaning her head back on the bulkhead behind her. “But yes, he’s going to be quite irate if the slippery eel gets away again. We’ve been trying to nail that man’s scaly hide to the wall for years now with no luck. I just hope our viscous looking new friend is able to tag the man’s ship with a tracker. It might at least satisfy the old political bastard until we can make with the nailing.”

  “Excuse me Admiral.” A familiar voice came over the Medbay intercom, “I may be able to help you somewhat with this situation. If you’d consent to a word in private?”

  The Salvager’s Plague

  Ko-Fi or on