"Cerberus?" Cameron went pale.
"Oh, do pull yourself together, man," Rogers sneered. "I have this under control."
"No, you don't." Cameron produced a pistol of his own, clearly that frightened by the emergency alert. "I'm retaking control. You're relieved of duty, Commander Rogers."
Rogers rolled her eyes, leveled her pistol and pulled the trigger. "Cerberus thanks you for your service, Captain, but it is no longer required."
Rogers holstered her pistol, rather glad to be free of Cameron's spineless whining and the endless posturing and placation it took to keep him happy, quiet, and out of her way. "VI: in accordance with the Systems Alliance Code of Military Justice, I am assuming command of this vessel, having found Capt. Cameron to be unfit for duty." Sato had tweaked the VI's programming to allow such a change in leadership. Technically the VI should require a little more than this (since it was still part of an Alliance program, it still had Alliance failsafes).
"Accepted. Congratulations, acting-Captain Rogers."
'Congratulations'? That was Sato's style, all right. "Give me the all call."
"All call enabled."
"To the crew of the Queen Victoria, this is Captain Rogers." She liked the sound of the title. "Former Captain Cameron has been relieved of duty, I am assuming command. Prepared for FTL jump to the Omega relay on my mark." She wasn't sure she could talk her way out of trouble this time, not with two dead bodies and a raging fugitive who shouldn't be out of incarceration anyway.
The CIC was full of chatter, more unrestrained than when everyone pretended Cameron was in charge. This was the proper way of things, Rogers thought. Her crew could finally be comfortable without fear of that comfort being discovered. It wouldn't do for Cameron to think there was any laxity in command when Rogers had so many odd picks.
Now it didn't matter. Let them banter as they worked.
She met Morgan outside the communications array. "I've got two dead bodies," she said quietly, "one of the crew deck, one in Jack's hole. I want them out of here. Load them into the airlock. Jettison them when we make the jump."
"Who?" Morgan asked, his eyes lightning up at the thought of the ship finally consecrated by violence. It was one of the sorrows of his life that the Queen Victoria had never seen it on her own decks.
Then again, Morgan was two steps short of being a complete barbarian. "Cameron and Browne."
"Splendid. I shall see to them at once." Clearly, he felt this should have been done long ago. Morgan had no use for the figurehead captain or the overly idealistic Browne. Morgan spoke one language and one language only: he spoke violence, the more unregulated the better.
Rogers stepped into the briefing room. "VI: has Arcturus intercepted our missing escape pod?"
"Affirmative."
"Patch me through to Arcturus security, use the encrypted emergency band." Rogers took a steadying breath. This was it.
"Arcturus Station: what's your emergency, Victoria?"
"Arcturus Station, this is acting-Captain Eva Rogers. We've had a mission go sideways. A prisoner being transported as part of a covert operation has escaped and crashed her escape pod into your station. Be warned: she is extremely dangerous."
"Security is already trying to contain the situation."
"Good, they'll want to be very careful. The subject is an extremely powerful, very unstable biotic. Her sedative dosages were miscalculated. I recommend immediate sedation or neutralization. Don't risk your men's safeties."
"The situation is being handled. We require a full report of what happened. You are authorized to give it verbally."
Rogers was halfway through her account of events—a simple account that those who needed to could corroborate with easily enough—when the transmission yielded static and a new voice broke in.
"Eva Rogers," the voice was terse, repressing powerful emotion, "you are hereby relieved of command under suspicion of involvement with a terrorist organization. Stand down immediately or you will be fired upon."
"Who's authorizing this detention?" she demanded, equally sharply. "I am in the middle of a civilian incident report—" That was what it was technically classified as.
"Capt. John Sheffler, Cerberus Investigation Unit. I won't tell you again: you will stand down."
He would shoot her. He would definitely shoot her, and now it all made sense. What perverse chance put him here, now, when things were out of control? Rogers considered her options for a moment, but only a moment. She swiped her hand over the console to mute her end of the conversation. "Morgan, dump the trash."
It was burning a bridge, but incarceration with that anti-Cerberus zealot was risky. Too risky.
Riskier than jumping around in the relay queue.
"Garbage away, Captain!" the ever-efficient Morgan announced. He'd probably watched the jettison at the window, enjoyed the sendoff.
"VI: release the orders for mass relay access. Cut to the head of the line."
Speaking of garbage…hm. She supposed Trey's corpse was still on board. She'd need to rectify that…and figure out what to do with his now irreparably damaged sister. She needed a cigarette, this time for steadying her nerves and not the need for something to fiddle with.
"All hands, brace for emergency relay access. Repeat: all hands, brace for emergency relay access," the navigator announced.
Rogers toyed with some witty comment directed towards Sheffler—who was probably ordering Arcturus' varied defenses to target her ship, taking her silence for an answer and not a stalling tactic—but did not. She simply severed the connection.
"Alert: evacuation pod released. Manual override enacted."
The Victoria lurched as it hit the relay, causing Rogers to stumble and swear. "Are we hit?" she demanded of the VI, wanting some kind of surety of her situation now that everything had changed.
"Negative, Captain."
"Who or what was in that pod?" she asked slowly.
"The override code belonged to Sato, Ayame."
Sato? Rogers' expression set into the very epitome of enraged confusion. How had d'Angelo subverted Sato, too?