“Chief!” The captain’s face appeared on the main engineering viewscreen. “Tell me this is something minor.”

“Air filtration, Captain. Hardly minor.”

“Damn it.”

“We’re on it, now. Give me a minute.”

“I’m keeping this communication open,” he snapped. I ignored him.

“Rat, intercept that command line before it hits the recycler!” I yelled.

“It’s squirrelly, Chief. Damn thing keeps jumping all over the place.”

“Try a handheld,” I suggested.

“What’s a handheld gonna do that I can’t on the main terminal interface?”

“Stop arguing with me and do as I say!”

“Yes, Chief.” Indistinct muttering came from his side of the room.

“Mason, have you found where it originated from yet?” I asked in a more level tone of voice.

“None of the pathways from outside of life support show any sign of being tampered with, Chief.”

I sucked in an aggravated breath of air.

“Shit! It worked!” Rat shouted. “Intercepted the little bugger before it got to recycling. Just like you suggested, Chief.” He sounded a damn sight more respectful all of a sudden.

“Good work,” I managed, chasing down an ever-changing line of code as it ricocheted around the air filtration subroutines.

I reached for my own handheld and worked quickly, attaching the device and entering a command to block and contain the corrupted code. Within seconds, the Chariot’s computer programming took over, and I sighed as I watched it write magic in swirls of elegant code.

Muttering to myself in French, I tried to screengrab what was happening, but the computer had learned from its last interaction with MacBride and circumnavigated my attempts.

“Why won’t you let me copy you?” I growled.

“Chief?” the captain said in his steady and low voice. “Update?”

“The corrupted code has been eliminated and new code written to correct the damage. Air filtration is operational again.”

“How did it get in there?” he asked.

I offered him a scowl. He arched his brow at me. As if I had any idea how it damn well got in there.

“Uncertain at this stage, Captain,” I said.

“Chief,” Mason called. “Found something.”

I left my station and strode across the room. “What have you got, Crewman?”

“This.” He nodded toward his screen.

so wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds

“What the hell?” I muttered.

“What does it say, Chief?” the captain asked from my station’s screen across the room. The camera angle would have allowed him a view of me standing beside Crewman Mason, but not what had appeared on the crewman’s screen.

“Another message, Captain,” I said. “‘so wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds’.”

“Hold on,” he called turning his attention to something off screen. I looked back at the crewman’s console, but the message had gone. I shook my head.

“Temperamental,” Mason muttered.

“Covering his tracks,” I corrected. “Probably has an automatic scrubber following him around the system doing it for him. There’ll be a command he enters to prevent it from correcting his corrupted code, but these little gems of wisdom don’t require that sort of protection, at a guess.”

“Chief!” the captain called.

“Yes, sir?”

“Type in this, word for word: ‘Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I am ignorant, and it troubles me - just a little.’”

I arched a brow but did as the captain said.

Mason and I stared intently at the station’s screen. Truthfully, I didn’t expect an answer. But the captain never did anything without forethought. There’d be a reason why he’d said those exact words. Damned if I could see it, though.

And then the bloody thing replied.

it is a far, far better thing that i do, than i have ever done

Well, that certainly cleared things up, didn’t it?

“What does it say, Chief?” the captain asked, sounding resigned.

I read the message out to him, word for word.

“Damn. We’ve got a crusader on our hands,” he muttered.

“A crusader, sir?” I queried, crossing the room to stand before my station. Air filtration was back online and no permanent damage to the recyclers seemed to have happened. It was as if the saboteur hadn’t even been inside the life support system.

That thought did not make me feel any calmer.

“Whatever motivation this saboteur has,” Vaughan said from the screen, “he believes it his duty. His responsibility. Messing with this ship, with the possible intention of preventing us from reaching our goal, is his sole purpose in life. We have to find him, Chief. And soon.”

I scowled at the virtual keyboard floating in the air before me.

“Why fix the corrupt code, then, sir?” I finally asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Captain Vaughan stared off into the distance on the screen. No doubt looking at his field of flowers. I’d always liked that gel wall image. But I’d not liked the sadness it evoked in my captain’s eyes.

“I don’t know, Camille. I just don’t know.”

And I certainly did not like seeing my captain so uncertain.

“Shall I bring you my report, sir?” I asked.

He started to raise his hand as if to wave the suggestion off; we both knew a written report would suffice, but then a written report could be lost in the system.

But then the captain said, “Do you have anything else to report, Chief?” Than what he’d just witnessed now.

“No, sir. I think you got the gist of it all.”

We were chasing a ghost in the system. The closer we got to him, the more transparent and invisible he appeared.

“Any chance you’ve brushed up on your English literature?” he asked.

“I have not, sir. Should I familiarise myself with Dickens?”

“I’ve been rereading a few passages,” Vaughan said. I had the impression he wasn’t quite ready to cut our communication yet. I shifted into a more comfortable position and waited him out. “It really is an extraordinary piece of work. I’m not sure Dickens liked the nobility.”

“No, sir,” I said, because he’d paused.

“Do you think that’s why he’s chosen that particular book?”

“Possibly. If he’s on a crusade, as you suggest, perhaps he is anti-establishment. Anti-ESA.”

“But then…” he paused, looked into the camera, as if to peer around me. “How about we pick this up later, Chief? Dinner?”

“Certainly, Captain.”

“Good,” he said. “It’s a date.”

I stilled. He stilled. And then he winked at me through the camera lens and disconnected the comm.

I felt flushed and entirely too breathless. I cleared my throat, repositioned a few items of import on my station console, and then chanced a quick glance over my shoulder at my team.

Every single one of them had their heads down and their mouths shut. But they were twitching.

I sighed and started going over the past few minutes in the logs. Or, at least, what I could find of them. The Chariot had been doing some cleaning. The saboteur’s scrubber had been hard at work.

But I was determined not to turn up at the captain’s door this evening with nothing to report.

And then, of course, I started thinking about that wink.

And dinner.

With the captain.

In his quarters.