Who the hell did this Maiga think she was anyway?

Bara sat in her command chair and watched the viewscreen. The stars in the dark. Until now, she had almost forgotten about Maiga. The woman had intrigued her at first. Clearly command trained, she would have been a useful addition to the Trebuchet's crew. But she'd turned down clear offers and Bara had her dignity. She wouldn't beg. If Maiga had just been playing hard to get she'd have accepted the third offer. But she hadn't, so no sense in asking again.

So Bara had forgotten her. If Maiga wanted to be a small time trader, a nobody, then Bara didn't care. Until now. Now suddenly here she was sticking her nose into Bara's business. Smashing up the bar, declaring the newspaper under her protection. The arrogance of the woman! Who was she? Did she have a ship full of soldiers under her command? A private police force? A loyal following?

No, she'd defied Bara with a rag tag squad of maintenance workers and out of condition lifers. Did she want to get the same treatment as her precious newspaper man?

Bara rose from her chair and began to pace, hands behind her back. She wished her footfalls made more noise, to block out that sound. It had to be coming from the systems somewhere. Engineering swore there was no sound. Well they were wrong. She knew her own ship. She knew when something sounded wrong. The scratching was real.

She sighed as she walked. Beating up the journalist may have been a mistake. Yes, she could admit that even she made mistakes sometimes. Now her spies on the station told her that the next time she set foot on the place, Chief Neex would take her in for questioning. And if Chervaz was willing to swear she ordered the beating, well, open and shut case.

Assuming he had the nerve to testify, of course. Assuming nothing bad happened to him to stop him testifying. She grinned, but then scowled as she passed Sev at the engineering station. He had his damn hair in a ponytail down his back. Oh, for a pair of scissors right now. One snip and it would be gone. Blade flash in the light. And how easily it was done. How quickly. Couldn't take it back.

Shut that damn sound up.

Not being able to go to Hollow Jimmy would be annoying. She had to get off the ship sometimes, where she could have some peace and quiet. Oh, certainly, she could still influence events from afar, but she liked to make personal appearances. Getting in there and speaking direct to people was powerful. The Prophet had known that.

Damn, it's getting louder. Where the hell is it coming from?

You know.

No. It's the vents, or the cooling systems, or...

She strode across to Sev, and pulled his chair around to make him face her. He stared up, grey eyes wide in his pale face.

"I can hear it again. Find it!"

"We've run diagnostics on every system on the bridge, Captain."

"Then run them again! Run them on every system on the ship. As many times as it takes."

"Yes, ma'am."

She shoved his chair back around and he grabbed at the panel to keep from falling. That damn hair. She had her knife, of course. Always carried it. Grab that tail of hair, slice with the knife. Gone. Never see it again. So quick. Can't be undone.

Her hand was almost touching his hair when the navigator called out.

"Coming up on the planet, Captain."

Bara snatched her hand back and looked around. They were looking at her. Well of course they were. She was the captain. Her bridge crew awaited her orders.

"Take us into orbit and prep a shuttle."

Taking her seat again, she watched as the ship took up orbit around a small dark planet, which in turn orbited a dim brown dwarf sun. No atmosphere. No native life. But, according to their information, a base lay under the barren surface. A human base, abandoned after the recall order.

"Scans show power still on," Sev reported. "Running at low levels. Most areas of the base are without life support, but in standby."

"Contact the computer," Bara ordered. "Our codes should allow us remote access. Warm the place up; get it ready to receive visitors."

Who knew what they might find down there? According the records it was an intelligence gathering post. If its databases hadn't been purged before it was abandoned, then there could be useful information in there. There could be plenty of abandoned supplies in storage too. Bara smirked. I am a registered trader in salvage after all. Might as well make it easy sometimes.

The door slid open and she glanced around to see Alex come onto the bridge. He went to Sev first and they exchanged some quiet words. Oh yes, go and kiss him hello before you come and report to your captain.

"Ma'am." He approached her in his own sweet time. "I've prepared several units of portable memory to take to the surface. We should be able to download the entire database."

"Good. I'll take command of the landing party myself."

He looked taken aback. "Captain, I would advise you to allow the marines to secure the area before you go down."

"Secure it against what? The place is dead."

"Yes, but, some abandoned bases have been booby trapped."

True. But she'd take a chance of running into something explosive down there, because she needed off the ship. Just for a few hours. How could she feel this way? Her ship, her home, her weapon. She loved it. But it had become so small, so choking. She could smell every odour on board, taste the metal of the decks floating in the very air, hear every sound. That sound.

She nodded to Alex. Like he cared if she tripped a mine. But she had to stick to form. For appearances sake. He was her first officer. She had to treat him with respect for his rank and position at least.

"Your advice is noted, Lieutenant. And rejected."

~o~

By the time the shuttle reached the surface and hanger doors closed over their heads, the base's computer had restored life support to all areas. The landing party walked into corridors filled with air, light and heat. The base welcomed them, Bara thought. Its masters returning home.

No nasty surprises awaited the squad. In fact, of all the abandoned base's they'd explored, she rated this one as the neatest. The humans may have left quickly, but they tidied up before they did. In the galley area, a fine layer of dust covered everything, but they found no abandoned dirty plates and cups.

"My compliments to the commander here," Bara said, running a finger through the fine dust. "Good discipline. Right. You have your assignments, spread out."

The squad split up. Some went to salvage supplies, and weapons, and anything else useful they found in the stores. Bara herself went to the control centre, with Sev and an engineering team bringing along the portable memory to store the database. This base gathered intelligence, collated it, but the intel part of the database was isolated for security. They couldn't have downloaded the data remotely; it simply had no contact with the outside. Sev set up a hard connection with the memory units and began to download.

Alex had pulled a face when Bara assigned Sev. But the freak had a gift with computers, even she would admit that. She left him to it and sat at the command workstation. She could access anything from here and her security clearance was still active. What she saw made her gasp.

"This isn't just intel," Bara said. "This is a backup station."

Backup stations were scattered through the galaxy. Dumps of records, backing up Earth's systems, safe because they were spread out. If one outpost fell, another held the same data. Once this database had received regular updates, but now it was frozen in time. The computer knew nothing of events outside. It merely waited for the humans to come back and man the station again, restart their operations.

It would wait a long time. Or perhaps it wouldn't. Perhaps they should destroy the installation once they had taken what they needed. As Bara paged through menus of information, she hated to think of the aliens getting hold of any of this data.

Incredible, a full personnel database. Full. Every living Earth soldier. At least, all those alive when this base closed down. Billions of service records. Billions of men and women dead now.

Personnel. Bara frowned and sat forward. Now that could be interesting. One of the frustrating things about Hollow Jimmy was not knowing exactly who she was working with. She trusted her judgement about people, of course. But to have service records and know exactly who people were, now that gave her one hell of an advantage.

She grinned. Oh, what had she been thinking earlier? Who the hell did Maiga think she was? Well perhaps now Bara could find out. Still smiling she beckoned over one of her ever-present bodyguards.

"Would you fetch me some coffee, please? I have some work to do."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Thank you. Do bring some for everyone else and yourselves of course."

"Yes ma'am." He saluted and left.

Bara settled herself in front of the console and considered. Most of what she had was assumptions. She couldn't be certain about some of them, like Maiga being a Marine, or even if she used her real name. But she had to narrow things down, so she'd make the assumptions and if that got her the information all well and good. If not she'd drop them one by one.

She entered the parameters. Marine. Officer. Female. Name, age, height, eye colour, all the usual identifying stuff.

Nothing. Well a few, but the pictures she ran through on screen were not the Maiga of Hollow Jimmy. The Maiga who'd decided to make herself a thorn in Bara's side. Okay, no active personnel. Try medically discharged. No. Nothing there matched at all.

Bara sat and bit her thumbnail. Her bodyguard put down her coffee in an insulated mug and she smiled her thanks at him.

Okay, not active, not medical discharge. Then let's look at the whole Marine database. And there were always clerical errors, so she even included deceased. People got accidentally marked down as KIA all the time. If your pay suddenly stopped showing up, back in the old days, that usually turned out to be the problem. So they kept the recently deceased names on there for around six months before archiving them. Most people tended to notice by then.

So Bara set the search running on the frozen in time database and sat back to wait while it processed millions of records. If this didn't get it, then she'd drop the name. But she felt certain as day followed night that Maiga was a Marine. She just had that look. She'd stick with that until certain she had to be wrong.

She was on to her second cup when it brought up the results. Several dozen. Could she be lucky? She tapped the panel, bringing them up one by one. The faces of dead women, most of them. Well, hell probably all of them now. All but one, if she got lucky.

She did.

She almost passed it, but then stopped. An old picture, probably aged no more than thirty, hair longer. But her. Maiga. Bara glanced at the file. Yes, deceased, apparently. Looked lively for dead woman last time Bara saw her. She frowned then. The record was flagged, cross-referenced against another table. Another parameter.

Deserter.

What the hell? A deserter? Maiga was a deserter. And more records were attached, classified security records. Bara had to enter her command codes again to access them. She read them and she stared.

Impossible. This had to be impossible. Captain in the Marines. Deserter. And dead, according to the records. Killed on Chia Majan, along with Ilyan and his other followers. Lover. The word screamed out of the screen at her. Ilyan's lover.

"Ma'am?" Sev said, "Are you okay?"

Her mouth was hanging open, Bara realised. Gaping at the screens. She closed it and glared at Sev.

"Get back to work!"

He shrank back and she realised she'd almost spat the words. Rage towered inside her. The Prophet's woman. And she'd sat there and claimed no more than that she'd "heard him speak."

Liar. Denier. Why deny him? She should be proud she once stood at his side, and shared his bed. She should carry on his legacy. No-one could have known him better than her. She had a duty to carry on his work. And what did she do? Courier around small cargoes and quibble over deals with aliens that the Prophet had implored them to fight against.

Deserter. A deserter from the service, yes, but she'd deserted him too. How the hell had she survived? Perhaps she was even the one who had betrayed him. Bought her own life in exchange for his.

Bara's coffee cup hurtled across the room to smash against the wall and she screamed a word after it.

"Bitch!"

Then she was sitting again, her head whirling, vision tunnelled. Oh, she saw the future now, so clear. Defy me? I don't think so.

"Captain?" Sev's voice. Leaning over her, with concern written all over his face. "Captain, you really don't look well. Let me take you back to the ship, please."

She reached up, to touch his long hair; the ponytail had fallen forward over his shoulder. So shiny and black and beautiful. Her fingers closed over a strand and she pulled until he winced.

"Knowledge is power, Sev, isn't it?"

"Ah, yes, ma'am."

"And I have that power now." She kept pulling. The only way he could keep from being nose to nose with her was to pull back and let her drag on his hair. Were the others looking? Whispering?

"Yes, ma'am."

"I will not be defied by a deserter. A fucking deserter, Sev. A deserter. She's no better than me." She smiled, patted his chest with her other hand. "Than us." That last was a whisper. He knew what she meant; she saw the understanding in his eyes. The guilt. Well they had their sins, but they were not the only guilty ones.

She let Sev go and he took some rapid steps back, as she stood up.

"Let's go."

"Captain, we haven't finished the download," Sev said.

"Forget it." She waved a hand and looked at the picture in the screen. Young. Before she met him, probably. "Copy that record," she ordered. "Leave the rest. We have to get back to Hollow Jimmy right away."

She strode from the room, back towards the shuttle. She didn't need that whole database now. She had all the information, all the power she needed in that one record. A laugh broke from her.

She found something explosive down here after all.