Here Be Dragons

by Alan, Craig

  Elena soon got the hang of following Rivkah from one step to the next, of which there appeared to be fifteen. Rivkah would first recite from the haggadah, always in Hebrew. Elena didn’t mind this—she hadn’t understood the Latin spoken at Catholic mass either. Occasionally, the doctor would ask one of the others to read aloud in English. Then they would eat one of the courses she had prepared. The first, a green sauce, appeared to be celery paste.

  Rivkah took a single piece of bread from the bag, and broke it in two. One piece went back to the bag, and one was given to Hassoun, who accepted it bemusedly. He stared down at the food in his hand as if he had never seen such a thing before. It was dense and hard, like a cracker.

  “As slaves, we had no yeast with which to bake, and ate only unleavened bread,” she explained. “You keep that one. Don’t let me see it.”

  They drank the second cup, and Rivkah turned back to Hassoun.

  “Ask the question, Mr. Masri.”

  “Why is this night different from all others?” Hassoun read.

  Rivkah answered. She told of them how the Israelites had labored in Egypt as the slaves of Pharaoh, and how Moses had gone to him as a brother and asked for his people’s freedom. Pharaoh refused, again and again, and each time God sent a new plague to wrack his kingdom. But it was not until the angel of death had gone through the land and taken each firstborn son of Egypt that Pharaoh had relented. And when he changed his mind and pursued the fleeing Israelites to the Sea of Reeds, God had made the waters rise around him and had drowned him and his army, and left the Israelites safe in the desert on the other side.

  It was on this night, four thousand years ago, that the angel of death had passed the Israelites by.

  “Amen,” Rivkah said.

  They drank thrice more, and ate the remaining courses, one by one. Elena tasted pureed meat, horseradish, almond paste, and egg whites. Rivkah explained them all.

  Near the end, she turned to Hassoun one last time.

  “If you still have the afikomen, you may eat it if you wish.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you may sell it back to me. Name your price.”

  “Anything?” Hassoun asked.

  “Within reason.”

  “If we are serving together a year from now,” Hassoun said, “invite me to your seder again.”

  Rivkah laughed. Elena had wondered what that would sound like, and found it to be sweetly musical. She must have had a wonderful singing voice.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” she said.

  “And bring someone who’s younger than me next time.”

  “Done.”

  Rivkah took the fragment of bread from him and passed the other pieces around to the others. They ate it, chewing slowly. It was dry, like the communion wafer of Elena’s childhood, and she struggled to swallow it. She felt the urge to take another sip to wet her mouth.

  Rivkah bowed her head to say the benediction in English.

  “The Lord shall bless and keep you, he shall make his face to shine upon you, and he shall look upon you and give you peace. Amen.”

  Elena realized that she had closed her eyes, and opened them. Rivkah spoke once more.

  “Next year, in Jerusalem.”

  No one seemed quite sure what to say to that.

  “I will not be offended if any of you are still hungry. It’s difficult to prepare this meal in freefall, and the courses are not so appetizing, I admit. Feel free to eat more if you wish.”

  “Your food and your blessing are more than enough for me, Doctor,” Ikenna said. “You have my sincere thanks for allowing me to participate.”

  “It is a mitzvah, Officer,” Rivkah said. “But you are welcome nonetheless.”

  “Captain, all. If I may be excused, my next shift will begin in a few hours.”

  They nodded, and Ikenna left the room. He had never been one for social occasions, and Elena couldn’t imagine what Rivkah had said to get him to attend at all.

  “Well,” Hassoun said, distinctly aware that he was once again alone with two captain-rank officers. “Do you need any help cleaning up?”

  “I think I’ll manage, Mr. Masri. Thank you for coming. I greatly appreciate that you would come here today.”

  “Hey, everyone has family they’re not proud of,” Hassoun said.

  He smiled to the doctor, and nodded his goodbye to Elena before heading for the door.

  Elena waited a moment, then dove for the galley. She found what she was looking for quickly—the cabinets were all neatly labeled, doubtless Tehrani’s work—and headed for the door. She waved apologetically to the startled Rivkah.

  “Be right back.”

  In the compartment outside, Hassoun was just leaning through the far hatchway.

  “Mr. Masri.”

  He froze, then turned and braced.

  “You can close that door.” Hassoun twisted to shut the hatch, and she spoke to his back. “And at ease while you’re at it.”

  Hassoun relaxed slightly as he faced her.

  “I just wanted to give you this,” Elena said. She pressed a tin of falafel into his hands. He looked down at the food, then up at her, without understanding.

  “I’m not quite sure what we just ate. I thought you might like this better,” Elena said.

  Hassoun grinned.

  “I think one was lamb.”

  “What do you mean, you think one was lamb? How do you not know?”

  “It all tastes the same when it comes out like toothpaste, Cap’n. But like she said, she did her best.”

  “She did,” Elena said. “And I’m glad she invited me. It was beautiful. Anyway, enjoy your dessert. I’ll sign for it, don’t worry. It won’t come out of your ration budget.”

  “Thanks, Cap’n. Do you think you could grab me some baklava while you’re at it?”

  “Get out of here.”

  Hassoun smiled, and turned to pull himself through the hatchway. Elena leaned over and spoke to him through the open door.

  “One more thing?”

  “Cap’n?”

  “I want your analysis of that plasma bolt ready for me at 0600 tomorrow.”

  Hassoun grinned. He raised his falafel in acknowledgment.

  “Thanks, Cap’n.”

  The bulkhead closed between them.

  Rivkah was cleaning up as she returned.

  “How did Mr. Masri like the gift?”

  “How did you know I was talking to Hassoun?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  She must have seen that Elena had been carrying falafel—it wasn’t exactly a traditional dish where Ikenna came from.

  “You don’t need to do that,” Rivkah said as Elena began stacking the dishes.

  “Are you giving orders on my ship now? That’s mutiny, you know.”

  “Oh? And how do we deal with mutineers?”

  “In the old days, they were hanged,” Elena said, placing the dishes inside the washer and locking it. They’d be vacuum-blasted clean, and special filters would separate the detritus and send it to the recyclers. “I guess we’ll have to toss you out of an airlock.”

  She paused, glad that Rivkah couldn’t see her face in the galley.

  “You know, that sounded funny in my head for some reason.”

  Elena exited the galley and found that Rivkah had finished and seated herself at the table. The fifth pouch of wine was still tied in place.

  “I apologize, Doctor. Sometimes I speak a little too freely around you.”

  She sat down across from Rivkah. They had traded positions from the seder, and the captain was once more the leader. She looked Rivkah full in the eye, and for once the doctor met her gaze and didn’t look away.

  “Please don’t be embarrassed, Captain. I’ve lost patients before. I know how i
t feels.”

  Elena had always thought the word “handsome,” which was used to flatter men, was reserved as a condescension towards older women. But she began to see the merits of the word. The doctor’s face was mildly lined and still deeply tanned, though it hadn’t seen the desert sun for decades. Her coarse black curls were pulled back and braided so tightly that they looked like they would break. But her pale blue eyes against her burnished skin were like oases in the desert. Elena found herself swimming in them.

  “And who is that for?” She nodded to the pouch.

  “That is for the prophet Elijah.”

  “And does he ever come?”

  “No. And he will not, until it is time to prepare the way for the Messiah. When Elijah drinks from this cup, it will mean that our redemption is at hand.”

  Elena took it by the hand, and shook it gently to hear the juice slosh.

  “I was hoping it was empty.”

  Rivkah laughed, just as Elena had hoped she would.

  “Maybe next time,” the doctor said. “In Jerusalem.”

  “Elijah may not have shown, but I thought the guest list was quite distinguished.”

  “I thought so also.”

  “Eclectic, even.”

  Rivkah laughed again.

  “You can ask, Captain.”

  “Why did you invite me?”

  “At the service, for Mr. Arnaud. It was not from the Torah, but I recognized the passage you chose nonetheless. It was not at all what I had expected.”

  “Yes, well,” Elena said. “It seemed appropriate at the time.”

  “Can you imagine how lonely that man must have been, even with his disciples? He could walk among them, and he could love them, but he could never be one of them. He would always stand apart. That was the first price he paid.”

  Elena had always eaten alone in her cabin. She’d passed by the wardroom many times, but by tradition the captain never ate with her officers, even the senior staff. This was the first time in six months that she had broken bread with anyone, even Vijay. Rivkah knew that—everyone did. The doctor had not replied to her question, but she had an answer nonetheless. Rivkah had invited people like her, the downtrodden, the outcast, and the solitary.

  She watched the doctor’s Cross of David float above her breast. She had never asked why the doctor had left the desert and what remained of her people to join the Space Agency, where she would always be the Jew. Elena had been alone ever since she had lost Anne, over two years before. But Rivkah had chosen to be alone, and Elena wanted to know why, from her own lips.

  Elena looked down at the table to see that their hands were nearly touching. She stood up.

  “It’s getting late.” This was true. “And I still haven’t written my report.” This was not.

  “Of course.”

  “Thank you for having me, again. It was nice to share a meal for once.”

  “We should do it again sometime.”

  “Have a seder?”

  “No, Captain. Not a seder.”

  Rivkah was smiling.

  “How about six months from now?” Elena asked.

  “I’ll mark my calendar.”

  Elena left, wishing she hadn’t. She regretted not asking Rivkah the question. But more than that, Elena wished that she had touched that hand on the table.

  That night as she laid in her hammock, Gabriel was eclipsed by Jupiter and passed into its shadow. Under Ikenna’s supervision, the third shift communications officer transmitted one final report to Control, and then contact was lost, drowned in a sea of static. It was a long time before Elena finally managed to sing herself to sleep, and when she awoke the next morning, alone, she could still hear the music in her head.

  Collateral Damage

  Six months earlier

  Elena didn’t vote, but she had cast a ballot nonetheless. She awoke on Election Day as she always did, one hour before her shift began. The balloting had been underway for almost twelve hours, across half the world’s time zones. It had just begun in East Africa, Syriana, and the western reaches of Russia, and was already ending in the Pacific. The final polls would open in Cairo when the ship’s bell rang in the day watch, and they would close that evening with the election won and lost.

  Elena washed, dressed, and sat at her desk to find an interview request from the Office of Special Investigations waiting in her inbox. They’d already remotely debriefed her twice in the three days since the explosion, once while she was on the moon, and again when she had returned to Gabriel to prepare for the trial cruise. On both occasions she’d managed to managed to answer their questions truthfully, if less than candidly. As of yet, neither she nor Gabriel was officially a subject of interest to the inquiry—the working theory was that the ballista shot had triggered a dead man’s switch and detonated a nuke onboard a military satellite platform.

  Half the planet had watched the sky burn above them that day, and now every man, women, and child on Earth knew the name Overstar-12, the same way they knew Hiroshima and Tel Aviv. Someone would have to pay for that. The only reason she was in her stateroom and not a cell was that no one had yet thought to question Third Officer Pascal Arnaud, who was under strict orders not to lie about what he had seen.

  Elena agreed to OSI’s request, and moved on to the rest of her inbox. At precisely 0800 hours a message from Vijay appeared.

  The chief’s presence is requested in forward weapons control.

  When she arrived and peered down through the door Vijay was looking up, steel ball in hand.

  “Would you like to pitch in?”

  Elena drifted through the hatch and hung by one hand from a gunner’s chair.

  “What is all this?”

  “This, Chief, is a hunch.”

  He held the round aloft, then pressed his bracelet to it. Elena heard the slow ticking that had sounded from her own bracelet, in this very room. The Geiger counter identified the ball as nonradioactive. Satisfied, Vijay set it back onto the rack and took another.

  “You went cabin fevered quicker than I thought.”

  “Chief, I don’t think there was a bomb on Overstar-12 at all.”

  “I saw it explode myself, Vijay. All the way from the moon.”

  “I do not doubt that there was an explosion,” Vijay said. His bracelet chattered softly. The light from its surface shone on his jumpsuit and illuminated the stenciled name Nishtha on his breast. “In fact, I have already reviewed the records.”

  “Those records are classified.”

  “Ours are. But civilian telescopes have a charming habit of releasing their data to the public.”

  “And?”

  “I think the nuke was inside our round, Chief.”

  Elena let her mouth drop as she glanced at the shiny metal ball in his hand, as she knew he expected she would. When OSI hadn’t caught her on to her immediately, she’d allowed herself a measure of hope. That had been a mistake, and in that moment she killed it, for her own good. If Vijay had figured it out this quickly, someone else had as well—and if they hadn’t, they would. She couldn’t hide forever.

  “Nuclear artillery.” She kept her voice level.

  “A plutonium core of sufficient mass, traveling at ballista speeds, could easily achieve criticality,” Vijay said. “I have done the maths thoroughly, Chief.”

  He scanned the shell, and set it aside.

  “Vijay, has it ever occurred to that those balls are steel?”

  “That is what they would like you to believe.”

  “Uranium and plutonium tarnish in the open air,” Elena said. “If any of these rounds were nuclear, you’d know just by looking at it.”

  “Not if they were steel jacketed,” Vijay said. “As they would have to be, if the ballista were to fire them. Uranium and plutonium are not magnetic.”

  “And to
get onboard this ship, it would have had to pass through a dozen security checkpoints, maybe more, with radiological sensors at each one. Steel isn’t dense enough to shield radiation.”

  “No,” Vijay said. Another round finished, he returned it and launched himself back up into the air, to a storage locker along the wall. “But this is.”

  He opened the locker, and removed a small cargo crate. Elena didn’t have to check the shipping data to know which one it was. Vijay slid the lid open, and she saw that the bottom panel had been removed to reveal a sheet of dull gray metal beneath. He tapped it. Elena floated to him, and rubbed the plate with her finger. It was soft and dense.

  “Shit.”

  “No, Captain,” Vijay said. “Lead.”

  “That was an Agency nuke?”

  “We may have fired it.” Vijay replaced the lid and set the crate back in the locker. “But we did not create it.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “The Treaty of Jerusalem is more than our law, Chief. It is our foundation. It predates the Global Union, and to break it would be to break the Union itself. That was not our plutonium, I am sure of it.”

  “It could have been meant for the outsiders.”

  “If we would stoop so low to win, we would not deserve victory.”

  He sank back down to the ammunition rank.

  “Then whose?”

  “We went to war during the Nuclear Crisis because the independents built their own reactors. We thought we got them all. But those are big countries, Chief.”

  His bracelet chittered softly, slowly.

  “How many rounds does Gabriel carry?” Elena asked, though she knew the number of every component onboard, down to the unit.

  “Two hundred,” Vijay said. “Well, one hundred and ninety nine at the moment.”

  “And how many have you checked?”

  “Ten.”

  “Then you had better get back to work,” Elena said. She already knew exactly what he would learn. She and Arnaud had scanned each of them. “Let me know if you find something.”

  Vijay swam headfirst to the ammunition racks.

  “I rather hope that I do not.”