Pledge Allegiance by Rider England Page B

anymore but we would tip off whoever had put this here that we’d found it. Even if we took this device out of action, there could be others hidden elsewhere on the ship.
    “We should leave it for now,” I said. “There could be others, so disarming this one won’t achieve anything.”
    Tegan looked around us at the massive engine with its pipes and cables, and the dark corners of the huge room. There must be a thousand places to hide tracking devices down here. “So what do we do, Captain?”
    “What do you know about the people on board the Finch ?” I asked her. “Who do you trust?”
    “My crew,” she said. “I trust them totally.”
    “Anyone else?”
    Her green eyes gazed into the darkness as she thought about that. Finally, she shook her head. “I don’t know anyone else on board the ship.” Then she added, “I trust you.”
    She didn’t need to add that last part; after all, she had shown the device to me and she wouldn’t have done that if she thought I was involved in planting it there somehow. But I liked that she had told me plainly about her trust in me.
    “Don’t tell anyone else about this,” I said. “Not even your crew.” I needed time to think about the implications of the tracker’s presence on the Finch . I didn’t need anyone to start panicking. I was sure I could trust Tegan to remain calm; she seemed level-headed enough.
    “What about you?” she asked. “Are you going to tell anyone? Are you going to tell Vess?”
    “Not right now, no.”
    “But he owns the ship.”
    “And I’m the ship’s captain. If I tell Vess about this, he might tell others. He might unknowingly tell the person who planted the device. Then they’d know we were on to them.”
    “But we’re not on to them,” she said. “We don’t know anything about who they are or why they put this here. We don’t even know if they’re still on the Finch . They could be long gone by now.”
    “I realize that but until we know for sure, we need to keep this to ourselves. At least for now, okay?”
    She nodded but looked uncertain.
    “You said you trusted me,” I said.
    “I do.”
    “So trust me to handle this.”
    She nodded again, this time looking more confident. “I will, Captain.”
    “I’m going back to my quarters,” I said. “If you discover anything else out of the ordinary, report it to me, no matter how trivial it might seem.”
    “Of course.”
    I went back to the ladder but then stopped. “Just one more question, Ms. Prime.”
    “Yes, Captain?” Her green eyes shone in the blue aura emitted by the turbine.
    “If I ask you to disarm that device, do you think you’ll be able to do it?”
    “Yes, I think so. It’s an unfamiliar design but most of these things work the same way once you pull them apart.”
    “Good.” At least I knew that if we had to disarm it we could. I climbed up the ladder, feeling a little less sick than I had on the way down. Tegan followed me up to the next level but said she was going to continue her diagnostic checks when I began to ascend the stairs to the transporter.
    I knew what she really meant; she was going to hunt for more devices.
    I gave her an understanding nod and rode the transporter back to my room.
    After punching in the new passcode, I went to the bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling for a while, supported by the mattress that made me feel like I was floating. Beyond the window, the stars shone in their unchanging patterns.
    I pondered the problem of the tracking device until I eventually drifted into a deep sleep.

Chapter 7
    L ater , a low-pitched chirping sound woke me. I sat up in bed, the mattress adjusting itself beneath my moving form. The chirping sound came from speakers somewhere in the room. I wasn’t familiar with this particular call sound but I was aware that it was the ship’s comms system calling me. Someone wanted to speak with me. The ship’s computer knew where I was and was directing the call to my