by Adam Moon
“Well, now I completely agree with you.”
A deep voice from behind them said, “What are you guys looking at?”
Jack whipped around quickly and raised his fists at Michael. Sarah pulled her pocket knife out. The gun was out of bullets, so it was useless.
Michael went wild-eyed when he saw the knife and Sarah thought, Oh shit. Now he thinks I’m a threat.
Michael took a step backwards and said, “What the hell?”
Sarah barked, “I ordered you back into stasis.”
Michael’s brow furrowed. “I’m not going back in ahead of schedule. Are you crazy?”
She hadn’t considered that. “How long before you can safely go back?”
“I was just coming up here to say goodnight.”
Now she felt like an asshole.
Jack said, “You’ll have to forgive us. You make us nervous is all.”
“I apologize for that. I hope you understand that when I killed my crew mate, I thought I had no choice. I’m not a sociopath. I was trying to save the mission.”
Sarah said, “Maybe. But you’re a liar. When I asked you if your report was correct, you told me it wasn’t. You told me you didn’t kill anyone and you denied taking my gun.”
“I probably saved lives taking that gun.”
“There was no need to lie about it then.”
His demeanor changed. “Well, I’m about to be locked up tight in stasis, so you won’t have anything to worry about.”
Jack said, “That might be for the best.”
Sarah added, “Agreed.”
He had a hangdog look as he left the command station. “Well, goodnight then, folks.”
Reset
Jane got the old woman situated in her stasis pod and then said goodnight to Jack and Sarah. She was still a little shaky from earlier, but that was to be expected; she’d just woken up to a gun pointed at her face.
As she left she said, “Don’t let Michael out of stasis anymore. If a pod needs to be tinkered with, wake me up. I’m pretty handy too.”
Jack added, “Same goes for me,” and then he followed Jane below deck.
Sarah mulled over the trip so far. The nuclear attack had been unexpected but they’d managed to avoid the missile at the last moment. Michael worried her far more than the attack from China had. She still didn’t know what to make of him. His evaluation suggested he was a morally conscious person, and yet he had committed a mercy killing followed by outright murder. He’d stolen her gun and lied about it. Then she became suspicious about the pods constantly malfunctioning. Was Michael responsible for all the damaged pods? That would give him an excuse to wake up alone. He had been tasked with repairing the pods; the computer would wake him up and no one else.
It didn’t matter now that he was locked in stasis for the rest of the trip, but she made a mental note to keep an eye on him after they touched down on the seed planet.
The thought of the seed planet sent her imagination twirling upwards. She couldn’t wait to see it, to breathe in the clean air.
She said, “Computer, Michael Stevens is not to be woken when a pod needs to be repaired. Wake me up instead.”
“Understood, Captain.”
Then she got undressed and went to sleep.
Siren
Sirens were wailing when she opened her eyes. Her heart started to beat more rapidly. The tests she’d gone through had conditioned her to expect the worst, and when sirens were blaring, the situation was sure to be a bitch.
She tried her best to ignore the painful aftereffects as she dressed.
The computer said, “There was smoke detected in the pod bay and seventeen pods malfunctioned shortly thereafter.”
“Shit.”
I’ve already evacuated the smoke, but you should check for the source.”
“Thank you.” She immediately felt foolish for thanking a computer. “Wake up Jack Mayberry to assist me.”
“Yes, Captain. He will be waking by the time you get below deck.”
Awakening
Jack was rolling out of his pod as she approached. He quickly dressed. “What’s going on? What’s with the sirens?”
She said to the computer, “Turn off the sirens.” Then she said to Jack, “Sorry about that. I got caught up and forgot to turn them off.”
The sirens stopped wailing, but contrary to what she assumed would happen, her headache worsened.
“Don’t worry about it. What happened?”
The ship detected smoke, and then seventeen pods all went down.”
Just as she finished saying it, the first of the seventeen woken colonists emerged.
Jack pointed at the colonists and said, “We’d better wake up Jane and Michael. We’ll need to keep this lot occupied, and the more help we get he quicker this’ll go.”
She hated to wake Michael, but she knew Jack was right.
Jack debriefed the confused colonists as Sarah woke up the others.
Michael smiled as he woke up. “What does it look like?”
“What?”
“Our new home planet.”
“We’re not there yet. I’m waking you to help me fix some pods.” She’d suspected him of sabotaging the pods, but his eagerness was so genuine. He truly believed they’d made it to the seed planet already.
“How many went down?”
“Seventeen.”
“Holy shit. Do you think the Chinese had something to do with it?”
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
“We might need to do a thorough sweep of this ship before we go back to sleep. God knows what traps they set for us.”
Sabotage
Jack and Jane split the group up. Jane was in the command station with her group and Jack had taken his to the kitchen.
Funnily enough, every woken colonist was male. Jane whispered that they had woken from their freeze because they were so damn hot. Jack shrugged, but he had to agree. These guys were young, fit, and he supposed handsome too.
Sarah and Michael remained below, taking care of the pods.
It didn’t take long for them to discover that there was more to the malfunctions than they’d guessed. Each pod was damaged in the exact same way. The glass face-plate was cracked.
Michael asked, “Isn’t this shit supposed to be pressure proof? I heard it was damn near indestructible.”
“That’s what I thought. Maybe we lost pressure in here and these units had unknown hairline defects that gave out.”
“I don’t know about that. If you look at the glass, it’s streaked with green char marks. It could be that they were fitted with charges by the Chinese.”
“But if the glass had charges attached, you guys would’ve seen them when you put the colonists on ice. And why would they only attach them to men’s pods?”
“You’re right. Whoever did this had an agenda, and they did it after we took off on the mission.”
“Jack might know what caused these char marks. He saw combat.”
“It’s worth a shot. I’ll go get him.”
Sarah watched Michael head upstairs. She felt like a fool for judging him so harshly. He was smart and it seemed like he was trying to help. But she knew what he was capable of; she could never lose sight of the fact that when he was put under immense pressure, he killed people. She just hoped this wasn’t such a situation.
The Usual Suspect
Jack took one look at the glass, his eyes went wide, and then he spun around, hit Michael in the jaw and put him in a choke hold. Michael looked bewildered and frightened, and Jack was out of breath from the exertion.
Sarah barked, “What the hell is going on? Knock that shit off right now.”
Jack wheezed through gritted teeth, “Green char comes from Chinese exploding shells.”
Michael tried to shake his head, but he was held fast by Jack’s hold.
Jack continued, “He told us he got rid of the powder in those sabotaged bullets. But that glass was broken by high powered Chinese
powder; of that I’m certain.”
Michael tried to speak but all that came out was a strangled hiss. He bent forward and then in one quick motion, head-butted Jack in the face. Jack struggled to hold on as his eyes teared up, but by now Michael’s will to escape the hold was stronger than Jack’s will to keep him in it. He wrenched on Jack’s fingers until he was free. He took several defensive steps backwards and said, “I emptied those shells and put the powder in a satchel, then put that in a steel crate. The crate was blast-proof because it had our backup air handler in it. Check it out. It’s still there.”
Jack yelled, “You idiot. Why the hell would you put explosives in with our most important piece of equipment?”
“I got it out of the shells. That was victory enough for me.”
Jack pointed at Sarah and said, “Would you mind checking into this liar’s story?”
Michael said, “It’s the top crate as soon as you come through the door.”
Sarah hated to take direction from Jack, but this was the only way to make sure Michael didn’t wriggle free.
She rushed from the pod bay and checked the top crate in the cargo bay. Not only was there no Satchel of highly explosive powder, but the air handler was missing too.
She ran back and said, “The crate is empty.”
Michael was shaking his head. “I put the powder in it. I swear.”
Sarah added, “The entire crate’s empty. The air handler’s missing too.”
Jack snarled, “What the hell did you do with it?”
“I have no use for a God damned air handler. I also have no need to blow holes in pods. I admit that I’ve tampered with a few pods so the computer would wake me up and I could roam around and scope things out, but I’d never damage a pod beyond repair.”
“So you admit you sabotaged pods in the past? And now we’re supposed to trust you?”
“I didn’t trust a single one of you bastards. After the tests, all I could think about were ways my fellow crew members might turn on me. I saw it happen in the simulation and it scared the shit out of me. But all the threats ended up being external. I was starting to feel pretty comfortable with you guys. What I’m saying is: I have no reason to destroy pods. I only tampered with them when I didn’t trust you.”
Sarah said, “Once a liar, always a liar.”
Jack deftly got behind Michael, grabbed his wrists and zip-tied them together.
Michael said sadly, “When you find out the real culprit, I expect an apology from you both.”
“Shut up.”
“The real question is this: How are you going to tell the seven colonists that they don’t have a pod anymore?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we have no replacement face-plates and only ten replacement pods. That leaves seven men who will be forced to live their lives out on this ship in the middle of deep space.”
Jack said, “They’ll die of starvation. There’s hardly any food left.”
“And what do you think they’ll do when they see us safe and sound in our pods while they starve to death?”
Sarah snorted. “Not everyone’s like you. You think they’ll kill us and steal our pods, but I beg to differ.”
Jack said to her, “Surely you don’t believe that?”
Sarah stared at him for a second and then sighed. She shook her head. “No. He’s right. This situation needs to be carefully thought out. But first, let’s make sure we can’t salvage some of these pods.”
And Then There were Four
They found enough sheet metal to cover three pods. Jack was welding them into place, but it was taking longer than expected because the welds had to seal the plate air-tight. The sirens went off once because of the smoke, and they all nearly choked to death when the ship evacuated the air to clear it.
Now they had to figure out which four colonists wouldn’t get a pod.
Michael said jokingly, “I’ll give up mine if you two give up yours. If Jane gives hers up, then all the colonists will be able to go back to sleep.”
Jack said, “None of the colonists can get this boat safely to the seed planet.”
Sarah thought to herself, They’d know how if they were taught, but she kept her mouth shut. She knew it was cowardly to not give up her pod, but she was okay with that. She wanted to live.
The Culprit
Michael said to Jack and Sarah, “Listen, we don’t know if there’s any more powder, and I’m nervous about going back into stasis without a guarantee of safety.”
Jack said, “What makes you think we’ll be giving your pod back to you?”
Michael smiled, but he had a faraway look in his eyes that was unreadable. “You don’t get to decide whether I live or die out here in the void. Only I can decide that.”
Jack said, “Alright tough guy, how do you suppose we root out who did this?”
“I don’t know.”
Sarah smirked. “Of course you don’t want to catch the perpetrator, because you did this.”
“I did not. I already explained myself.” Then he went silent for a couple seconds and said, “We could lie. We know whoever took the powder also took the air handler. We could tell the colonists that our air handler went down and we can’t find the replacement unit. Whoever did this isn’t dumb enough to let himself suffocate to death along with everyone else. He’ll come forward with the unit and then we’ll have our saboteur.
Jack nodded. “That’s not a bad plan. For the record, I still think you did this, but if you didn’t, I’d like to know who did, just to get the rest of the explosives out of their hands.”
Sarah added, “And if no one comes forward, we’ll know for certain that it was you.”
Michael started to say, “Not necessarily…”
But Sarah cut him off with, “Wake the rest of the colonists.”
The pod bay was pandemonium, but it was a necessary chaos. Jane brought down the other colonists who’d had their pods tampered with so all were now present.
The complaints were many, but they immediately quieted down when Sarah yelled, “Our air handler has malfunctioned. We have a spare around here somewhere, but we can’t find it. If we don’t find the spare we’ll all die up here.”
A smarmy male voice said, “We don’t need air while we’re in stasis.”
“No, but if a pod needs to be repaired, no one will be able to be revived to fix it. We’ve already had over two dozen pods malfunction and we’re only a couple hundred years into the mission. At that rate, every one of these pods will go down at some point, and no one will be able to fix them. As I said, we’ll all die.”
The man nodded, but to save face he added, “Well, I didn’t know about that.”
The crowd bustled as a diminutive man made his way to the front. He smiled and said, “I’ve found it.” In his hands was the replacement air handler.
Sarah said with exaggerated enthusiasm, “Oh great. Thank God for you, sir.”
Jack and Jane were already helping the colonists back into stasis as Sarah led the small man up to her command station. He had to be separated from the group.
Michael was waiting inside, wrists still tied together. Sarah walked right up to him and cut his restraints with her pocket knife.
“Sorry I blamed you.”
“If the roles were reversed, I would have blamed me too.”
Then Michael looked at the man with the air handler. He went up to him and took it out of his hands. The last thing they wanted was for him to figure out that he’d been set up and use their only spare air handler as some sort of leverage.
Michael said, “I remember this guy. I had to fix his pod pretty early on in the mission.”
Sarah nodded, knowing full well that Michael had probably been responsible for damaging the pod in the first place just so he’d be woken from stasis.
“He was awake when I took your gun. He must have seen me empty the shells and hide the powder.”
By the time the little guy figured out he’d be
en caught, Michael already had his wrists bound behind his back.
The man said, “You can’t prove I had anything to do with those pods.”
Sarah sighed. “No one said anything about any damaged pods. I think you basically just confessed.”
“Shit.”
Put out the Trash
It was over an hour later when Jack and Jane appeared, exhausted but expectant.
Jane said, “Jack and I wheeled out the ten replacement pods, so the four guys who don’t have a pod are hanging out in the kitchen until we figure out how to fix this situation.”
Sarah nodded when Jack looked at her. “It was him. The second we caught him he just spilled his guts about it.”
“But why?” asked Jane, as she turned to face the captive man.
Michael said, “You won’t believe the reason.”
“Yeah, it turns out he’s just a lowlife pervert,” Sarah added, with a hint of derision in her voice.
Jack grimaced. “What does that have to do with the pods he destroyed?”
“Did you notice that the only pods he messed with belonged to the most handsome colonists? And they were all men.”
Jack nodded, but he was only barely starting to wrap his head around what that meant.
Sarah said, “He just admitted that he tampered with men’s pods so that they wouldn’t make it to the seed planet. In his little twisted mind, he imagined that all the women would be his.”
Jack said, “That’s like an adolescent fantasy. That’s pathetic.”
The little man just sat in the corner and smiled, unashamed.
“I went down and found the satchel of powder tucked in the tubing of his pod. There was enough left to take out every pod on this ship, if delivered right.”
The man said, “I would have spared you lovely ladies, though.”
Jane said disgustedly, “Yeah, we get that. You wanted to be the new version of the last man on Earth. You’re a filthy miscreant.”
