Polaris by Todd Tucker Page B

yelled. “You shared those orders with the ship’s doctor, for Christ’s sake, but not with me, your XO!”
    â€œExactly,” he said. “I made you my XO. I trusted you.”
    â€œThe Alliance made me XO,” she said. “But I made myself the captain. So now the Alliance is really running this ship, the way it should have been from the beginning. Guys like you and Ramirez—you’re mechanics . Drivers.”
    â€œBased on the atmosphere on this boat,” he said, sniffing the air, “you’re going to need a good mechanic soon. How’s the oxygen level, Moody? And by my calculations, we’re about out of water, too, right?”
    â€œYou have no loyalty to the Alliance—”
    â€œAnd your life depends on machinery that you don’t understand.”
    â€œYou have no sense of mission—”
    â€œNo sense of mission?” He laughed loudly at that, the sound amplified and sharpened by the steel walls that surrounded him. “Moody, in my career I have targeted Trident missiles at Russian cities. I have launched cruise missiles at Tripoli and Tallil. On my first patrol, I had to fight a scram in maneuvering when the only light I had to read the procedure by came from a fire that burned in a main seawater pump breaker behind me. You think you’re the expert on the mission of this submarine? I’ve got more time eating ice cream at test depth than you’ve got under way.”
    He stopped, out of breath from his rant. Moody reached in her pocket and McCallister flinched, certain she was reaching for her Taser. Instead, she handed him two granola bars through the grate.
    â€œHere,” she said. “I’m sure you’re hungry.”
    â€œYou brought me food?” he said.
    â€œOf course,” she said. “We’re not barbarians.”

 
    CHAPTER TWELVE
    Pete walked briskly out of the engine room, through the tunnel, and into the missile compartment. He was greeted immediately by Haggerty.
    â€œPete! I’ve been looking all over for you.”
    â€œI was … walking … touring.”
    Haggerty gave him a quizzical look. “Clearing your head, too, I’m sure. Completely understandable. The engine room is one of the few places you can find some peace around here. Nobody goes back there unless they have to.” He looked around. “Are you starting to remember anything?”
    Pete shook his head. “Bits and pieces,” he said. “Not really.”
    â€œWhat else do you want to know?” said Haggerty. “Maybe I can help.”
    Pete looked him in the eye. He had a million questions, wanted to know more about his mission, what was happening onboard Polaris before the mutiny. But one question overwhelmed him more than all that.
    â€œI’d like to know more about my wife.”
    The doctor shook his head sadly. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s do this in my stateroom.”
    *   *   *
    The doctor had done what he could to make his stateroom comfortable. There was an antique medical diagram of a skeleton on the wall, next to a calendar with nature scenes. The calendar, Pete noticed, was three years out of date. A stethoscope hung on a hook, next to an old-fashioned black doctor’s bag. He had a quilt covering his rack, and a shelf of well-worn novels.
    An object on the second shelf caught his eye: a Lucite block with bees trapped inside.
    â€œHoneybees,” said Haggerty, watching Pete closely as he picked it up. “At each stage of its life cycle.”
    It was fascinating to look at: some tiny relic of the natural world entombed in perfectly clear plastic, each stage numbered, one through ten. Tiny white eggs, almost too small to see. A slightly larger larva, then the pupa, which was starting to look like a bee, with tiny legs and wings. A mature worker bee, and a queen. A perfect cube of honeycomb. The queen’s cell,