Page 49 of Mongrels United
Unless…was it personal, somehow? Nothing had shown up in the woman’s background check. There had been not the slightest connection to Grady and her father, or Captain Carpenter.
Let’s see what her flag is, Grady thought to herself.
The whole catalogue of possibilities passed through her mind in the few seconds it took to take a stance on the other side of the table.
“I won’t sit down with you and pretend we’re simply talking,” Grady told Vasanta. “Not if you had anything to do with my father’s assault. If we’re wrong about that, I will apologize, later. But for now, I will not put myself on your level.”
Vasanta’s smile was small. “You’re not anywhere close to my level, Read.”
Grady blinked.
“She’s been spouting that superior-than-thou stuff since we put her in the chair,” Jackalyn added.
“What has she to do with my father’s assault?” Grady asked the lieutenant.
Jack didn’t take her eyes of Vasanta as she answered. It was protocol, but Grady knew Jack was being cautious, anyway. This woman sitting on the other side of the table wasn’t the pleasant, cooperative and sometimes funny woman who had sat at the big table in the Captain’s suite for nearly a year.
How well did anyone really know anyone? Grady thought.
“Vasanta paid six kids…teenagers, most of them, although their leader was in his twenties.”
“Paid them to beat up my father?” The words tasted ashy and thick in her mouth. Someone could cold-bloodedly request such a monstrous act?
This Vasanta could. Grady could see it in her eyes. “Why?” Grady demanded. “What did Avan Tesarik ever do to you? You’ve never met, you don’t know him.”
“Oh, please.” Vasanta actually rolled her eyes.
Grady caught her breath, astonishment warring with a growing anger.Listen, she counselled herself. Whatever the woman said next, it would be revealing.
“Avan Tesarik had to be silenced,” Vasanta added. “He’s the evangelist of the manifest destiny tripe that everyone on this ship believes without question, because they’ve all been brainwashed into thinking that’s our only choice.”
Grady could feel her balance shift. She slid her foot a little to one side to compensate, as her mind reeled. “You think we should stop the ship…” she breathed. She had been so utterly wrong in every guess. Vasanta wasn’t a Must-Have or an Enough believer. Well, she might be either of those things. But neither of them had pushed her into this.
She was of the small and apparently still active faction on the ship who thought theEnduranceshould forget about Destination and find a suitable planet in the area of space they were already in, and set up there. Screw Earth’s mandate for the ship.
Grady’s anger was edging out her bewildered scramble to orient herself. She dug her fingernails into her palms as she studied the woman. “TheEnduranceis meant to reach Destination. There’s good reasons to not change the plan.”
Vasanta dropped her foot to the ground, her face working. “Of course you’d say that! You’re hisdaughter! But we’re passing gold-zone planets all the time—the Skinwalkers told us that, and we can look at the external viewscreens whenever we want and see blue, nitrogen-oxygen planets sail past us, every month!”
“It’s not everymonth,” Jack muttered.
“How would you know?” Vasanta snapped back. “When was the last time you took any interest in what’s out there?” She leaned forward again, speaking directly to Grady. “This ship is falling apart. The Skinwalkers saved our asses, but what’s to say that something else major doesn’t have a melt down in the next few years? We’ll never make it to Destination at this rate! You’ll kill us all because you have some high-minded notion that we have a mission to complete and anything less is failure!”
“You should get your facts straight before you spout political heresy, Vasanta,” Grady said. It was easier to keep her tone neutral, now she had got over the first shock of having guessed wrong about Vasanta’s motives. “TheEnduranceis back to being a closed system and is completely rebalanced and working just fine, after the Skinwalkers closed it up for the last time. And you’ve overlooked the Institutes, which were set up to feed and house those who worked for them—long before money was invented. Do you even know why?”
Vasanta just looked at Grady, her jaw firm.
“They were set up so that survival skills would be preserved,” Grady told her. “This ship is in a thousand-year prep for colonization. And we have engineers—somanyof them—and they’re lauded now, more than ever before, which is exactly what they should be, for they’re the ones who keep theEnduranceoperational and they’ll keep doing that until we arrive at Destination.”
Vasanta didn’t react. But Grady thought she could see a vein throbbing in the woman’s temple.
“Your father taught you well.” Vasanta’s tone was colder than vacuum.
Grady relaxed her hands. Her anger had gone. In its place was a tired resignation. “I said you should get your facts straight. My father didn’t teach me, Vasanta. It’s the other way around. He says what he says, becauseIbelieve it, and work every day to see theEnduranceis fit to reach Destination.”
She headed for the door. “Process her, Lieutenant. Maximum sentence.”
“Got it,” Jack said complacently.
