Savage Horizons

by CJ Birch

  Yakovich frowns, marring what is usually smooth and flawless. She’s dedicated and far more serious than the other officers her age. The week before we launched from Alpha I watched her break up a bar fight with nothing more than words. At six foot two she’s as tall as most men. Her broad shoulders and calf muscles strain against her uniform. She’s got a natural confidence, not something forced. She has this way of leaning in, like she’s telling you something important. The first time I had her in my office I asked her what she’d said to the guy to calm him down. She told him he had two choices, a punch in the face and a night in the brig or another pint on her. She gets what most people don’t, if given a choice to avoid a fight and still save face, most people will take it. I like that she understands that.

  “It depends on the shift, Captain. When I’m on watch, I do. I can give you a list of the other guards.”

  I nod toward Fossick. He crosses his arms behind his back as if he’s standing at ease, but I can see the tablet he’s trying to hide. I keep my voice low. “I thought I asked you to keep Fossick out of rotation.”

  For the first time, Yakovich appears worried. “I’m sorry, Captain. We’re short crew. This is his first shift since you asked me to reassign him. I didn’t want to bother you with this. I’ve kept him here so I can keep an eye on him. He’s had no interaction with the Burr.”

  I hold up my hand. “It’s fine. When I leave, I’d like you to move Sarka back to the brig. And from now on, I want you to be the only one he interacts with. If that means he has to wait on meals, that’s fine.”

  “Yes, Captain. Do you want to keep the secondary posts?”

  “No, it takes too many crew. We’ll have more control with him in the brig. In here, we have no record of what goes on once we shut those doors.” Yakovich opens her mouth and I stop her. “I trust you. But you’re not the only one guarding him.”

  When I enter Sarka’s room, he’s leaning against the headboard with his feet crossed at the ankles. “How nice. A visitor.” He has that same smug grin on his face. And as quick as that, my ire is up. It doesn’t matter how many days I take to calm down, it only takes a second for him to stir it all up.

  “I’m not here to visit.”

  He throws his hands in the air, like it doesn’t matter. “I’m not expecting a tea party, but any company is welcome.” He’s taken his jacket off and folded it and placed it on the edge of the bed. His room is exactly as it was when I left him. Bed’s made, desk is spotless. There isn’t anything for him to do except sit and think. And plan. At least in the brig we’ll have a camera in the room so we can keep a better eye on him.

  “I’ll keep this brief. I want to know who you’ve been talking to in here.”

  He sits up, eager. “Why, did something happen?” His eyes brighten and the skin along his forehead tightens. It’s like stretching fabric between two poles.

  I won’t give him the satisfaction of telling him about Ash. Who else would think to tie Ash up in the mess hall? It’s such a humiliating punishment. A punishment he himself has employed plenty of times. Somehow, he implanted that idea where it seeded and grew.

  “You’ve been influencing my crew—”

  “Now be reasonable, how—”

  “Reasonable? Reasonable?” I kick the bed. “I’ve got you set up in this cushy room after you tried to kill us all with your crazy plan. I could’ve left you in the brig, or worse.”

  “I wish you’d calm down, Jordan.”

  “I wish you’d never boarded this ship. I wish you’d left well enough alone. But no, you had to stick your goddamned nose in where it didn’t belong. Who asked you to wield your sword of—”

  “Obviously something’s happened to make you angry. I’m not sure what it is, but I can hazard a guess. This has to do with Alison, right?” When he says her name, I flinch. He pounces on me. “Is she seeing someone else? That butch outside, right?” He threads his hands behind his back with glee. “Aww, I’m touched. You came to me for advice on women.”

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Is this a fist bump moment?”

  I turn to leave and he jumps off the bed. “Okay, okay. You win. We won’t talk about Alison.” He sits on the edge with his hands on his knees. “I haven’t been talking to anyone. I’ve been minding my Ps and Qs right here in this mildly-more-

  comfortable-than-the-brig-jail-cell.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why are you so against me? I could help you know. I do happen to know a thing or two about running a ship. Done it for a bit of time now.”

  “I don’t need your help. My ship runs fine without you.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “To ask who you’ve been talking to.”

  “Oh, come on.” He flops back on the bed plumping his pillow behind his head. “You might as well ask me what you really want to know.”

  I turn to leave. I’m not playing any more of his games.

  As I raise my hand to knock and signal I’m ready to leave, he says, “You want to know what to expect on the planet.”

  I spin back around. “How do you know about the planet?”

  He points at the door. “Your security man out there has a loud voice. He was yammering on about how he was going to be one of the crew chosen to explore this planet you’ve found. Quite talky, that one. I’d watch out for the talkers. They usually stir up trouble.”

  I make a mental note to put Fossick on waste detail.

  “Are you prepared for what’s down there? Because most of the dangers, you won’t even see,” he says.

  “I’ve got a good team working on it. It’s not like we’re ignorant about what we’d find on a planet.”

  He scoffs. “Did you know, that on Earth, insects outnumber humans two hundred million to one? Imagine that. And yet we considered ourselves the superior species. Have you ever seen an insect, Jordan? In real life, I mean. Not some picture book. Did you know that the funnel spider of Australia can kill a person my size in under thirty minutes. They’re only a centimeter in length. Fleas, tiny bugs the size of sand, have been responsible for millions of deaths over the centuries. They would bite rats, pick up the infection, and carry it to humans. Pus bulbs the size of your hand would break out all over the body.”

  I suppress an eye roll. “Is this supposed to scare me? We don’t even know if the planet supports life.”

  “If it supports plants, it supports bugs. How do you think plants mate? They pick up root and walk over to the plant next door and say, ‘Hey, baby, can I buy you a drink?’ No. Insects feed on the plants, pick up the pollen, and carry it to the next plant.” He sits up, moving to the edge of the bed, eager now that he has my attention. “Do you know how the Aztecs were actually conquered? A virus. Spanish sailors traded blankets with smallpox in them. Fifteen million died without any defense. Trust me when I say this, you are in way over your head and the worst part is, you don’t even know it. You think you can outwit what’s down there because you have a bunch of geeks crunching the odds on a bunch of scenarios? Those simulations will fail because they’re not using the right variables. Your team will be dead in a matter of minutes without me.”

  I choke back a laugh. “You want me to bring you along? Not in a million years.” The only thing worse than setting loose a bunch of armed nerds in that jungle would be to let my father loose.

  “All right, but think of it this way. While you’re off playing wild safari, I’ll be back here making plans.”

  “You’d be making plans even if I brought you along. That’s what you do.”

  “At least that way you could watch me. Who are you going to leave in charge? Loose lips out there? I’d have him contemplating mutiny before the cargo doors closed on this heap.”

  I’m at a serious loss. There’s no way I want to bring him along, but the thought of leaving him here would gnaw at me.

  “You think on it, Jordan. Out there, even if I were scheming, I’d be an asset. Here, I�
��m a liability.”

  Not for the first time I wish I had the balls to shoot him out in an escape pod and wait for the oxygen to run out.

  Before I leave I say, “I told you once before if you didn’t behave, you’d be back in the brig. That includes lying about who you’ve been speaking with. Yakovich will be in to escort you back.”

  The look on his face as I leave is worth it.

  * * *

  After visiting Sarka, this next visit should be a walk in the park, so why am I more on edge?

  From the moment I met Ash, there was something that intrigued me. She wasn’t what I expected. Colonel Shrives painted her to be an over-opinionated hothead. And while she is that, she’s so much more. I watched her excitement that first meeting. It rolled off her in waves and washed over me, almost drowning me in their wake. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to keep afloat.

  Not since that first regression with the doctor has she been so low. And who can blame her. It’s still happening. She’s still the target of someone’s hate. I would have thought the events on the Posterus would’ve put an end to this, but it runs deeper. Every effort to further the investigation has brought me nowhere. I’m running out of clues. And time. The longer we wait, the likelier it is this could happen again and she could end up much worse. The only straw I have left to grasp is that Ash remembers something about the attack.

  I knock on her door and wait. No one answers. I know she’s in here because, like the rest of the crew, the doctor inoculated her. I could override the lock controls, but that feels too much like an invasion. After everything she’s been through, I want to tread lightly.

  I knock again. “Ash, open up. I need to speak with you.” I hate standing out here like this on my own ship. The corridor is empty, what I can see of it anyway. It sweeps around in a circle, obscuring both ends.

  I wait a few more seconds, preparing to knock again, when the door slides open. Ash is standing there in sweats. Her hair is lank and dirty, hanging in strips around her shoulder. There are still marks on her skin from the healing skin grafts and where we removed the tape. My heart drops. She looks horrible. Worse than that. She looks like she’s given up.

  “Captain.”

  “Can I come in?”

  She waves me past. Her room isn’t much better. The bed is unmade and there are tablets and clothes strewn everywhere. It’s musty, like all her bad thoughts have sucked up the good air and left the atmosphere stale.

  “You haven’t been out much.”

  “As if you’re going to let me roam the ship by myself now. Everywhere I go, there’s someone waiting for me.” Her hands drop to her hips as her chin comes to rest on her chest. “It would be easier if next time they were successful.”

  “Where is all this coming from? It’s not like you to get so defeated.” I soften my voice. “Talk to me.”

  Ash plops down on the bed and gathers a pillow to her chest, hugging it for comfort. It’s in complete contrast to the first time I saw her when she knocked over a chair, so embarrassed she’d sat down without permission. “I don’t do well in situations like this. If I don’t have something to keep me occupied I—my thoughts take over and it isn’t always sunshine and rainbows.” The woman who walked aboard my ship almost two months ago is gone. Lethargy and sluggishness has replaced her energy and vibrance. The way her last few months have gone, she has every reason to be experiencing dark thoughts.

  “Tell me what I can do to help. Besides finding who’s behind the attacks.”

  She falls back on the bed and sighs. “It’s not that simple, Captain.” Silence stretches between us. I hear the air filter kick on. It hums for a few seconds, then shuts off.

  She sits up. “Why have you been so distant lately? I understand you’re busy. But besides relieving me of duty, you haven’t spoken to me since the night the Posterus exploded.” She stands up and faces me. “I could’ve been dead and you’d never know. I kept waiting for you to show up in the med center. Everyone else did.” There’s a slight spark in her eyes. An awakening as she lays down a new challenge.

  What do I tell her? That I’m a coward? I have no idea how to make this right. I should have visited her, not only as a friend, but as her captain.

  Honesty wins. “I did visit. But when I got there, you were already with someone, so I waited. I’m not proud of it, but I overheard what you said to Hartley. I thought it wise not to go in.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t remember. What did I say to him?”

  “That there was nothing between us.” In truth, it was the word dumb. That she wouldn’t be dumb enough to sleep with me. That’s what dug into me, that sleeping with me could be likened to a bad date you shouldn’t have gone on. “It made me so mad, the way you dismissed it, I felt dismissed, forgettable. It made me ashamed, the way I’d acted.”

  “So let me get this straight? You were mad that I didn’t gush like some love-struck school girl about something intimate between us? To the biggest gossip on the ship? I’m not going to talk about us to other people. What we shared was personal, not to mention against regulations. With everything else going on, I thought it best to be prudent.” She pauses and gives me a sly grin. “For once.”

  “It’s not like I was expecting you to tell Hartley, it was the way you handled it, like you were angry he’d even mention it,” I say.

  “I was angry. I thought Hartley would know better than to come to me with stupid gossip.”

  “Hartley? The king of social etiquette?”

  She laughs at that. It’s rich and deep, the sound more comforting than any of Ash’s platitudes. It makes me hope she might actually get through this. “Good point.”

  I step closer. “I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you.” I can’t even begin to explain why. It would feel like I was cracking myself open and letting her see everything inside. So I don’t. Instead, I take a deep breath because the next thing I’m about to ask is more than wishful thinking, it’s everything. “Can’t we go back to the way things were, before?”

  Her hand brushes mine, then she pulls it away. The domino effect of fluttering it causes makes me wish she hadn’t. “I want to, I do. It’s just that everything’s changed. I know I’ve been rude and insubordinate, and I try not to be. But I can’t help myself.” Her shoulders drop as she says this last bit. “It’s like I see what I’m doing, but the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.”

  “Can we at least call a truce?”

  “It’s not like we’re in this big war with each other.” There’s something so earnest in her eyes. “It’s hard to go backward. But I can try, if that’s what you want.”

  I almost laugh. It’s definitely not what I want, but more like something I need if I’m going to keep my sanity. I nod. And now I can’t put off the real reason I’m here any longer. “I know you already talked to the doctor, but I need to know if you’ve remembered anything from that night. Even the smallest detail will help.”

  Ash drops on her bed and pulls her feet under her. She looks down at her duvet, picking at the corner. “It feels like it’s happening all over again. The memory gaps. I don’t remember anything that night.” I expect more, but that’s all she says. When she finally does speak, her voice is full of gravel, like her throat has closed over a sob. “If you don’t mind, Captain, I’d like to be alone.”

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning, as I’m sitting down to breakfast, Hartley drops his tray next to mine. His scrambled eggs jump a foot. I jump two.

  “I’m glad I caught you, Captain.”

  “You’re not about to ask me out to dinner again, right? Because the answer is no.”

  He grins and picks up his fork. Instead of using it to eat, he waves it around, punctuating each thought. “No, Captain. I’ve postponed that area of distraction for now. No, the reason I’m here—besides breakfast,” he points his fork at his eggs, “is that Yakovich came to see me. She wanted to ask about the mission and something I said when we were
all meeting. Although now that I think of it, I can’t remember what it was. We started talking about something else. She’s really tall for a woman, isn’t she?” He points his fork at me. “How tall are you, Captain? I bet you’re about her height. Would you consider yourself above average?”

  I’m about to make an excuse to leave when he finally gets back to his original thought. And then you couldn’t budge me if you tried.

  “Anyway, I remembered thinking how tall she was, she’s almost as tall as me, and that’s when she asked if there was another way to find out who’s been in the messes after hours, besides the usual method. Said you’d be interested in the answer.”

  “And is there?”

  “Is there what?”

  Christ, it’s too early for this conversation. “Is there a way to find out who’s been in the messes at certain times?”

  “Sure.” He points his fork at the door. “Each door to the mess has a bioscanner. Everyone’s scanned as they enter. It’s actually pretty neat the way it works. It sucks in your breath molecules and analyzes them. Did you know, Captain, that every breath you exhale contains millions of bacteria?” His fork waves around in a circle.

  I shake my head. He hasn’t taken a bite of his food yet.

  “Well, it’s true. And the scanner can tell by that sample what sort of diseases or viruses you might be carrying. If you have something like Norwalk or Hep B—something that’s really contagious and transmitted by food—then it’ll sound an alarm and you’ll know not to enter. It cuts down on contamination and illness on board.”

  He stabs a piece of egg, then jabs it toward me. Part of it wobbles and slips off onto the table. It reminds me of Ash’s comment about the food when she first arrived. Most of our food is made to resemble real food but isn’t. Even the eggs are a liquid substitute. The resources it would take to keep live hens on board are not worth the hassle. I’ve never had any trouble with our food. It’s better by far than what I grew up with on the Burr station. Mostly we ate rations. Century old astronaut rations. If we had real food it was a good day. It meant the last raiding party was successful. At the time I didn’t have a clue what that meant. That someone else somewhere was going without. Lives were lost so we could eat. I only thought about how hungry I was. Even the daughter of the leader isn’t high on the pecking list of who gets to eat real food.