Savage Horizons

by CJ Birch

  “So I’m your third choice?”

  For once, Hartley picks up on the social etiquette of the matter. He shoves a clump of potatoes into his mouth and mumbles, “Something like that.”

  As far as disasters go, being asked out by Hartley doesn’t even rank.

  Tekada jumps out from behind one of the gel vats used to store excess energy from the solar panels. His face is covered in sweat and grime. His uniform, which is a little on the small side, bulges where it buttons at the front. His brown doe-eyes blink rapidly. For some reason he always looks like he’s startled. Perhaps it’s because his eyebrows start halfway up his forehead.

  “Oh good, Captain.” He steps through some yellow sludge oozing out one of the vents in the wall.

  “What’s the situation?”

  He points down a shaft opening in the wall. It’s at hip height and about the size of a basket ball. “The filter cover is stuck again. There’s a lid that filters the gel through the vats, keeping it active by moving it around the system. If the lid doesn’t shut properly, for safety reasons, it shuts down the whole system.” The warm orange glow from the canisters illuminates his face. The vats look like giant containers of honey, lit from the bottom. Ambient light bathes the whole room.

  “Safety reasons?”

  He flutters his hands around, indicating the floor. “We’d be knee-deep in gelatin if it didn’t.”

  I nod and wait, not sure what he needs me for. We stand for a few seconds, me trying hard not to yawn, him rubbing the tips of his fingers together. The dried crud flakes off onto the floor.

  “And?”

  “It’s happened a couple of times now. We don’t know what’s wrong or why it keeps happening. The only thing to do is crawl through the shaft and unstick the door manually.”

  Who the hell would be stupid enough to squeeze down there head first? “What’s your normal procedure?”

  “Umm, Ash usually takes care of it. I mean, I would.” He holds his hands to his pudgy chest, his fingers dig into the flesh around his rubbery pecks. “If I could. You know?” He waves at the small opening. “And since Ash is still on medical leave, we don’t have anyone brave enough to go down there.”

  Brave? I have a different word for the person who would squeeze into a hazardous hole in the side of the wall.

  “When is she coming back? Usually I call her up and she’s like, ‘no problem, be right there.’” He shuffles his feet in the flecks that have fallen from his hands.

  “I’m not sure. It depends on Dr. Prashad.”

  “He said it was up to you.” His face flattens and his eyebrows, if possible, climb higher. “I didn’t want to bother you with this, Captain. And no one but Ash will do it.”

  “So you’re calling me to do what?”

  “Give permission to call in Ash.”

  I’m unsure if I’m relieved he didn’t call me here to dig around a dark hole, or angry he asked me to reverse a punishment. To be fair to Tekada, he doesn’t know I relieved Ash of duty. As far as the crew know, she’s still not well enough to resume her post. So my options are to do it myself, or to call Ash in to help. Neither of those sound good.

  “How far down is the flap?”

  “Six or seven feet? We usually tie off one of Ash’s legs and lower her in.”

  Christ.

  He pushes a button next to the opening and the hatch hisses open. All I see is a deep, dark hole. “It might have gotten out of line after the explosion and we didn’t notice it with all the other repairs.”

  Defeated, I turn toward the door. “All right, see if Ash’ll do it.” I’ll let Dr. Prashad know she’s not cleared for duty yet. This is a one time event.

  Before I leave him, I turn back and ask, “What did you guys do before Ash signed on?”

  He shrugs. “It never happened before.”

  “Never?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s only happened, like, twice.”

  “Have you tried changing the flap out? Do we have a spare on board?”

  “I don’t know, but I can check. If we don’t, I’ll see if we can make one.”

  “Good. I don’t like the idea of having to rely so heavily on one crew member to fix a part of this ship.”

  “Does this mean Ash is coming back for good?” There’s a hopeful note in his voice and not for the first time this week, I’m surprised at how engrained Ash has become.

  “I don’t want to get your hopes up, Tekada.” Has everyone forgotten she was in the middle of the explosion that caused so much damage to the ship?

  As I head back to my cabin and bed, I get a summons from Vasa.

  “Captain, when you have a moment I’d like to go over some of the data we collected from the probes. There are a few curious anomalies that we should give our attention to.” I debate putting him off. I’m scheduled to have a briefing with security staff later this morning, which will push the rest of my day back.

  I sigh.

  The bridge is silent when I enter. Only Vasa is there. He’s taken hell shift—midnight to eight to oversee repairs.

  I take my seat at the back and rest my head against the back rest. You’d think with the amount of time we spend in these things, they’d have the decency to design them with comfort in mind. But they’re more like something you’d install in a public space as a loitering deterrent.

  Vasa is off to the side at his console. He has several screens up, which he throws to the holo screen at the front. It activates and the whole bridge dims by a quarter.

  It’s a lot of data, charts, star trajectories, and some things I don’t understand.

  “So what am I looking at?”

  He brushes his hair off to the side. It looks lank and a little greasy after having worked the night shift. I notice he doesn’t do well on this shift, even though he requested it. For some reason he always looks like a zombie after a few days. I don’t think he sleeps during the day. By the fifth day of hell shift, he starts to get jittery, jumping at odd noises and talking too fast.

  By the look of him, he’s been on this shift for two days. He’s only halfway zombified.

  “I sent out a second probe after we departed the Posterus. There are some strange gravitational waves in this quadrant.” He zooms in on a map of the system and points to an area that doesn’t seem to have anything in it.

  “What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s definitely something unusual there, and I recommend we investigate. It’s on the way. We’d only have to adjust our course a little. We would only miss a few days.” His talking has sped up and he’s started to blink a lot. I wonder if I’ve misjudged how many days he’s been on the hell shift.

  He shrugs. It’s up to me to decide. Vasa doesn’t usually give much. He keeps to himself. I know he comes from Delta and that his parents work a farm near the capital. But that’s about all I know about him. Other than his love of arguing against the possibility of universal cooperation.

  I give him the go ahead to inform helm to make the corrections.

  Later that day I enter the officer’s mess—we’re still all jammed into it—and spot Ash sitting with Vasa. I’m about to approach when I see her laugh at something he’s said. She throws her head back, eyes alight, and I’m slammed with jealousy. It bites into my heart so fast I forget what I’m doing. In a daze, I place my tray back on the rack and leave the mess, ashamed I can’t even function like a normal human being. Or, I’m embarrassed I’m being too human at the moment.

  I spend the rest of the day distracting myself with mundane tasks. It isn’t like me to evade a problem, and that’s what I’m doing.

  I’ve started avoiding Ash.

  I climbed up two extra decks and circled half the ship to keep from bumping into her.

  I go back to my cabin and spend a whole ten minutes with my forehead pressed against the wall, mad I’m such a coward. It was only in that moment that I understood what Ash meant about my position being isolating. I’m not an extro
vert like Ash. I have to force myself to be social. I much prefer my own company after a long day. And rarely do I need someone to confide in. The only person on the ship I’m comfortable with, besides Ash, is Len Prashad. But I would never go to him with something like this. This is too much.

  When I was younger, I used to hide out for hours on the farm, avoiding everyone, even Kate. I’d grab a tablet filled with books, a couple boxes of rations, and hike into the fields.

  We grew corn on our farm. It was easy to get lost and stay lost in the giant stalks. They would stretch up high, holding me in like a cocoon. No sound from the roads or transports could penetrate.

  When I first arrived on Delta, everything was so different. On the station growing up, they tacked additions on when needed. It was a maze in there, closed in and claustrophobic, noisy too. There were always dozens of voices within hearing, yelling, laughing, fighting. It was constant.

  That first moment I stepped between the boundary stalks was a balm. I’d never known such calm before and it soon became addictive. Whenever I’d had a bad day or got into a fight at school, I’d hide in the corn with my books.

  Sometimes, instead of reading, I would lie back on the ground with my hands behind my head and look up at the stars. They looked like tiny specks of dust from underneath the metallic glass. I remember thinking one day I would take a closer look.

  That isolation and comfort is a hard habit to break.

  My first night at the Academy was the second worst night of my life. That first night spent on Delta at Kate’s farm after my mom died was the worst. Being at the Academy was like being back on the space station again with its noise and chaos. I worried I’d made a mistake. But the truth is, if I’d stayed on Delta, I’d have been miserable. Being trapped on a farm for the rest of my life and missing out on the adventure was no way for me to live.

  Now I have the benefit of both. If I need calm, I can come up to my cabin, turn off all the lights and stare out at the stars. Sometimes, running on the track gives me that peace. But I don’t have to give up my adventures to have that. For the first time Ash has me questioning my need for isolation. She has me questioning everything.

  Chapter Seven

  The night before we start our second week out, I spend an hour on the track getting my mind in order. Olczyk says we’re six or seven days away from our target asteroid. That’s another week to get the ship back up to one hundred percent.

  The kitchens are almost repaired. Another day or two, according to Hartley, and we’ll have our matter sails working again. I put Candace Ito in charge. Next to Ash, she has the most space time logged.

  “How’s Ash doing? I heard she’s still on medical leave. We’d get this done in half the time if she were back.” Ito, who works with Tekada in operations, runs a hand through her rail straight hair. She looks up at me, her dark eyes filled with adoration. “I wish I could glide around the hull of the ship as fast as she does. She says it takes practice, but…I mean, I’m pretty decent, so please don’t mistake me, Captain. We’ll get the job done.” She shrugs. “Ash is all about efficiency. I once saw her leap from one side of the docking hatch to the other.”

  I shut my eyes at the thought. I’m going to have nightmares because of that image.

  “Oh, don’t worry. She ties off. Everything’s by the book.” Ito bites her lip, worried she’s gotten Ash in trouble.

  “I’m not sure when Ash will be back. Please promise me, no acrobatics.”

  Ito nods and bounces out of my cabin. She’s not the first or the last crew member to enquire about Ash. Whatever animosity the crew had for Ash when she first signed on has slowly evaporated. I’m not sure if that’s because of her work ethic or because they respect all this badass daredevil shit.

  Just when I’m beginning to suspect this whole Ash debacle is behind us, I get a call in the middle of the night. It’s Yakovich. I throw on my uniform and make my way down to the officer’s mess.

  When I enter, I stagger to a halt. I’m in shock, but only at first. It gives way to rage in an instant. Ash is bound to one of the support beams, her toes barely scrapping the ground. She’s naked except for the rigging tape securing her to the pole. It snakes around her ankles, waist, breasts, and mouth. And I can see by the red welt on her right cheek that Yakovich tried to pry some of the tape off and removed skin with it. There’s even tiny specks of beaded blood. We use rigging tape to repair the matter sails, solar panels, and various equipment on the ship. It’s made to withstand radiation and all sorts of disasters. You’re not meant to apply it to skin. Ever.

  I take a step forward, then stop. Ash’s focus is on the ground near her feet. She hasn’t looked at anything else since I entered. Her skin is flushed from the tip of her hair line to above the swell of her breasts.

  This is all very familiar. It takes me a moment before it hits me. One of my father’s crew was strung up in the mess like this. I was only eleven, but I’ll never forget the stench. He’d died in the middle of the night and his bowels had opened, dribbling down his pant leg and pooling at his feet.

  His crime? He’d tried to claim treasure that wasn’t his. That’s what they called it. Treasure. It didn’t matter if it was a shipment of soap or an engine from a cargo ship, it was all the same.

  He’d tried to lay claim to a woman he’d found aboard a freighter heading toward Alpha. I don’t remember her. I wasn’t ever allowed to watch the parade of goods as they arrived back on the station. I wouldn’t have even remembered the man if it hadn’t been for this incident. He was a warning to the others. What came on that station belonged to my father first. Only after he decided he didn’t want it could others claim it.

  Mostly I remember his face, forever frozen in death. It’s the same look on Ash’s, the look of abject mortification.

  “Has anyone else been in here?” I don’t want anyone seeing Ash like this, like she’s broken.

  Yakovich shakes her head. “The doctor’s on his way.” She stuffs her hands in her pockets, keeping her gaze on me. “I came in after shift to grab one of the dinner packs and found her like this.”

  “Stand guard outside and make sure no one but the doctor enters.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  I wait until Yakovich is out before I approach.

  “Who did this?” It takes her a moment before she finally shakes her head as much as the tape will allow. “You’re not saying that because you want to go after them yourself, are you?” Her eyes, when she finally looks up at me, are two green flames, fierce with fury.

  I hold up both hands in surrender. “Okay, but it was a valid question.” There isn’t a spot on her body that looks safe to touch right now, so instead of comforting her physically, I make her a promise. “We’ll find who did this. Whatever it takes.”

  I begin to ask if they did anything besides tape her to the beam, but if her answer is yes, it will need more than a nod. I realize most of my questions will need more then a yes or no response. The silence that fills the mess is absolute.

  There’s only one crew member I know who doesn’t like Ash. Fossick, and he wouldn’t have the balls to do this. Then there’s Chloe. But she’s more afraid of stupid folk tales than anything that’s real. And she wouldn’t do this. Fear is a great motivation, but I don’t believe she’s capable of this, even if she were strong enough to lift Ash onto the beam.

  I’m about to go after the doctor myself when Prashad finally enters, carrying his medical case and a stretcher. He stops as soon as he catches sight of her, and I have the sensation of seeing her again for the first time. The initial shock passes and the professional veneer slides over his face.

  A few years ago we were on a mission to rescue a crew of miners who got stranded on a stray. Some of them were still stuck in one of the shafts they’d created and couldn’t get out. He insisted on getting suited up and joining the team that went down. Even after two tremors threatened to collapse the tunnel, he refused to leave. He could’ve waited on the ship for casu
alties to arrive. But because he didn’t, we were able to triage on site and saved more lives. He’s a small quiet man, but I learned a long time ago not to underestimate him.

  “Can you remove the tape without taking skin with it?” I ask as soon as he enters.

  He steps closer and places a soft hand on Ash’s waist. He tests the bond between her skin and the tape and shakes his head. I don’t miss it, but neither does Ash. Her eyes fill and she averts her gaze, steeling herself against the oncoming pain.

  “You’re going to sedate her before you remove the tape.”

  “I had planned on it.” He removes a syringe from his case.

  I put up my hand before Ash can even begin to protest. “I’m pulling rank. There’s no way I’m going to let you endure that kind of pain because you’re stubborn.” I step close, placing a calming hand on her arm. “I’ll be here the whole time. The mind knot has no control over you anymore.” At least I hope that’s true. The doctor said it was dormant, but he also said it could, at anytime, become active again.

  It only takes a moment for the sedative to take effect. Ash’s eyes and head droop at the same time and as they do, it’s as if a veil lifts. My calm and control leave. I sink onto one of the benches and rest my head in my hands, hoping for the calm to return. I have this rage building deep inside, ready to strike out at anything or anyone that comes near Ash. My breathing becomes ragged and as I gulp in air, I grip the bench. My knuckles go white.

  “Am I going to have to sedate you as well?”

  After a moment of mindful breathing, I shake my head and stand. “Let’s get this done before we have a corridor full of hungry crew.”

  He hands me a vial and cloth. “The acetone should help weaken the adhesive. But it may not be enough, especially around the grafts on her arm. Work slowly. Roll or peel, don’t pull.”

  We work in silence. We cut her from the beam first and lower her onto the stretcher. We cover her and transport her to the med center to finish the procedure. It’s a long process of soaking, rubbing, and peeling. Every time I pull skin back, another spark ignites.