by CJ Birch
And I want that, too.
“When I was younger, I used to dream about commanding my own ship. I had all these ideas about what it would be like—what I would be like as a captain…” She turns back to the window, her expression set in contemplation and her mind a million miles away. It’s times like this I wish we weren’t separated by rank. Because more than anything, I want to keep her safe.
“Sometimes the reality is harder than it looks, huh?”
After a moment, she clears her throat and pushes on as if the last conversation never happened. “How’s your hip?”
“I’ll have a bitchin’ scar.” I’m only half done with my meal, but I push it aside and reach for the chocolate pudding. I don’t want to fill up before I get to the good part.
“Be serious, Ash. I need to know if you’re okay to work, especially with the pace you keep.” I turn to see she’s taken a seat on my bed, legs crossed, leaning back on her arms like this is a casual chat between friends.
“It’s fine, nothing a little time and distraction won’t take care of.”
The captain pulls a small syringe from her pocket. “I’m going to insert a tracker. It’s just a precaution.”
I lean back, arms folded. All the excitement of resuming my duties dies. It must be all over my face, because she reiterates the precaution part.
“I trust you. I do. This is for…” She turns the syringe in her hand, staring at it, not me. It’s like she’s two different people. When she’s Jordan, she’s confident and sure enough to joke and, dare I think, flirt. But every now and then, out comes another version. The one who hides behind her rank. I don’t like this version of her so much. She’s closed off and uptight.
“For everyone else,” I say. They’re going to track me like a criminal, make sure I don’t go anywhere I’m not supposed to. And I can’t say no, or I’ll be stuck here.
When she does finally look at me, I can’t read her expression. Is she ashamed? Maybe embarrassed? “This is my first command, and I’m still getting used to everything that means. When you become captain, there are certain sacrifices you make.”
“That sounds like a tattoo the fleet commanders had you branded with.”
Her face brightens, like she’s going to laugh. It’s unguarded but brief; all too soon it darkens. “Cara said something similar once.”
“Who’s Cara?”
She doesn’t say anything. I can tell she’s debating whether to tell me. I know it’s inappropriate to be this familiar with my commanding officer. Maybe she feels the same crack in the barrier I do. It’s as if that one simple act of compassion, placing her hand on my chest to comfort me, has tethered us.
“She was…we were engaged. And when she decided she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life on a ship, we broke it off.”
“She didn’t want to come on the mission?”
She nods. “I keep thinking, how much did I actually love her if I wasn’t willing to stay?”
I sit down next to her on the bed. There’s a smudge of grease on the shoulder of her uniform. It looks new. It makes me wonder what she would be doing that involves grease. “How much did she love you if she wasn’t willing to go?”
There’s a pause where she stares at me and I stare at the grease.
I undo the first two buttons of my tunic and offer her my neck. There’s a quick bite as she inserts the syringe.
“Are you sure I can’t work two shifts? I’ll be up anyway.”
“Ash, why do you make everything so complicated?”
I shrug and smile. I’ve been asked this before. I don’t set out to be difficult, but asking me to change is almost like asking an apple not to be an apple.
Chapter Ten
“Don’t disconnect them! Guys, how many times have I told you, if you use a dampener, you can reset the sheets for matter dispersion without having to go through the stupid re-initialization sequence. My way is ten times faster than yours.”
I hear Hartley’s voice booming through the engine room before I’m even halfway down the ladder. I’m amazed all over again when I step through the door. The room is cavernous and oddly silent. In my imagination, there should be giant combines thrashing up and down, propelling us through space. Instead, there are banks of floor-to-ceiling computers, black and shiny, reflecting back at each other.
“Ash!” Hartley yells from the back of the room. It echoes faintly before reaching me. “I heard you were back on active duty. How’re you feeling?” He stands alone behind a workstation covered in what looks like little electronic pucks and various instruments in different stages of disassembly. His engine geeks must have scuttled off to find a dampener.
I snort because I have no idea how to answer. “I should be asking you that.”
He waves me off. “I didn’t have a diagnostic cube jammed in me while I was still conscious. Those things are brutal. Look!” He lifts his shirt as he’s talking and points to a spot on his lower back. There’s a red welt about ten centimeters long. “We have matching scars now.” He says it like we’ve been marked for some secret club, as if seeing this identifying mark will prompt a highly evolved handshake or tell the other that we like pillow fights and sheet forts.
I walk over to get a closer look. “God, Hartley, is that what I did to you?” It’s even worse up close. “I’m so sorry.”
He flips his shirt back down and turns. He’s got a look on his face as if I’m crazy. “Why are you sorry? It’s not like you meant to stab me.”
“I stabbed you?” Where the hell did I get a knife?
“Yeah, with a knife from the mess. It wasn’t very deep, but the doc wanted to stitch it up anyway, just in case. I was in and out, so don’t even worry about it. I think you got it worse. You look like grade A shit, Ash.” He grins so big, you’d think that was a compliment.
“Thanks.” I thought I’d ditched the hangover look. I run my hands down the front of my uniform. It’s clean and pressed. I’ve showered about a million times. I tried to go for a run, but my hip still hurts too much, so I’m only 86 percent back to normal.
I don’t even have to prompt Hartley. He’s yammering as soon as he catches his breath. “You jumped me from behind. I felt this pinch, and when I turned, you’d already taken off down the hall. Security tried to take you down outside the airlock. You knocked ’em around pretty good, I heard.” I wonder if he ever learned to breathe while talking, or if he always saves it all up for when he’s done.
I reach for one of the small discs. They’re a smooth cobalt on one side, tapered at the edges, and a dark metal on the other. Hartley screeches at me to leave those alone. My hand freezes a centimeter from one.
“What are they?”
“I call them Jackies.” He grins wide, showing rows of white teeth. I know he wants me to ask him why, so I do. “Because they’ll give you a coronary if you touch them in the wrong spot. Just like my ex, Jacki.”
“You had a girlfriend?” I can’t help the incredulous tone that creeps into my voice.
He ignores me and slips on a glove and picks one up and shows me the sides. With a soft hiss, the disc opens, revealing a bluish-white stream of light undulating around the circumference. “There’s a current that will shoot one hundred amps into your body if it connects with flesh.”
Jesus. “What possible use could you have for these?”
“These? Nothing. I adapted them from a failsafe we use on the engine bots. Sometimes the bots stop responding to our commands, which can be dangerous if they start wandering where they shouldn’t. So, we have a smaller version of these”—he wiggles the disc—“attached to their motherboard. It uses a different frequency so we can overload the bot and stop them from damaging the engine.”
I must have the look of death on my face because he grins wider and says: “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. I only work on them during my own time, when I’m not sweating my balls off to get your projects done.”
“Lieutenant Ash!” Two security guards and Corporal
Vasa stand at the door. The guards even have weapons drawn. Hartley and I exchange a confused look, and then I remember the tracker.
“Oh. I guess you must be off-limits.” I point to my neck, even though the tracker has now spread throughout my bloodstream, and explain, “I have a tracker.”
He laughs. It’s thunderous, and echoes throughout the spacious room. “If they frisk you, can I watch?”
“Are you all right, Hartley?” I’m not sure why Vasa’s here, but I’m glad. I know he’s less likely to let it get out of control.
“Guys, I’m fine. The lieutenant here just came by to ask if I wanted to go for lunch. She was just about to offer me her dessert as an apology for stabbing me.” He wiggles his eyebrows at me. I roll my eyes in response.
“Was the armed escort necessary?” I ask.
“Sorry, Lieutenant.” Vasa shifts back and forth on the balls of his feet. His wavy brown hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat. Every few seconds he runs his hands down his tunic, either to wipe the moisture from his hands or to make sure the front of his uniform is smooth. I notice he does this a lot. “The captain asked that I keep an eye on your whereabouts. She gave me a list.” He points to Hartley. “He was on it. I may have overreacted.” He turns to the guards and dismisses them.
“Keep an eye on me, yes, not come at me with guns.” I want to know who else is on this list. If I have to worry about armed guards popping up every five minutes, I want fair warning. “You can run down the list over lunch. I apparently owe Hartley my chocolate pudding.”
When we enter the mess, there are only a scattering of people, most of them too busy stuffing their faces to notice us. I recognize the glazed eyes and blank stares of the night shift. No outward signs of hostility yet. I admit, I’m using Hartley as a shield. I’m working on the theory that if Hartley can forgive me, and the crew sees, then they will be more likely to as well.
Once seated with our trays, I get Vasa to go over the captain’s mandate again. It’s hard to work up an appetite sitting across from him. He smells as if he showers with used socks and disinfectant. Part of it is his natural smell, which he’s been written up for twice, and the other, his attempt at correcting that innateness.
“It’s not as draconian as it sounds. The captain just gave me a list of places you wouldn’t normally have cause to visit in the course of your duty. She’s hoping if you are taken over by the mind knot, then we can catch it sooner. The list of places isn’t that long, actually,” says Vasa over a plate of tofu shaped to look like a pork chop without the chop or the pork. “It’s mostly areas of the ship. The engine room, airlocks, the docking bay, other crew members’ cabins—”
“Wait, I’m not allowed in other people’s cabins?” What if there’s a poker game? Half the fun of working on a ship is the after-hours games. And if you’re good at them, they’re a great way to augment your salary.
He shrugs and spears a tofu chop. “It’s what’s on the list. Ask the captain.” The mess is filling up. A few people stop when they spot me, but most continue on.
“Anywhere else?”
“Yeah. Escape pods, you can’t go near those, and for obvious reasons, weapons locker.” A few people are openly gaping now, although it’s not with the hostility I was expecting. Then I remember something Hartley said before, and I get a little worried.
“Hartley, how did you know I was awake when they inserted the diagnostic cube?”
His fork pauses halfway to his mouth, and I can see his brain working through the chain of people who told him. I eye my chocolate pudding. It will be warm by the time he gets to it, such a waste. Finally, he says, “I don’t remember.”
“It was probably Chloe. I heard she was pretty freaked out about the whole thing,” says Vasa, reaching for his own chocolate pudding. “She kept telling everyone you were sent by the Burrs to blow up the ship.” He shovels a huge spoonful in his mouth, and I turn away to stop from salivating and catch the table next to us listening to everything we say.
“Grab it to go, Vasa,” I say as I pick up my tray. “Sorry, Hartley. I’ve got to get back to work, and, Vasa, you’re coming with me.”
I steer Vasa toward the bridge. I want to find out just how broad his mandate is. My guess is it involves more than babysitting.
The corridors are dead. Almost everyone is either on shift, sleeping, or in the mess. Our boots click on the floors, like halting Morse code. “So, what else?” I ask when we get to the first chute to the next deck. “What other stuff does she have you working on?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Why shouldn’t you? Did she ask you not to?”
He shakes his head.
I give him my best hard-ass stare, perfected from hours of standing in front of a mirror, preparing for confrontations with my father. We stand like that for two minutes while he debates his options. I’m still his superior officer, and if the captain didn’t give a direct order for me not to know, he doesn’t have a good reason not to tell me. Even though, in all honesty, he knows he shouldn’t. He’s not stupid.
The smell wafting off his body is causing my sinuses to clog in self-defense. I hope he decides soon.
“Okay, fine,” he says. Finally. I motion him up the ladder. I don’t really want to go behind, but I have a thing about letting people climb up after me.
As he climbs, he talks. “She had me hack into the Europa SS database and check the timestamp of the security cameras during the attack with the reported arrival of the first ship.”
“Why’d she do that? The first ship only took half a day.” That’s what they told me when I woke up on Alpha.
“That’s what they thought. But the original timestamp was erased and replaced.” He steps on the first deck and waits for me to join him on the landing.
“So if it was erased, how did you find it?”
“I know where to look?” He shrugs like it’s no big deal, and I worry that there’s a more significant revelation coming.
I stare pointedly at him.
“How long did it take?” I ask.
“Two weeks.”
Two weeks! And she was going to keep this from me? “Wait. So what happened to those two weeks?” My stomach knots. Two weeks, and yet somehow I still had a fresh wound in my back. The fact that they hacked the amount of time tells me the Burrs have something to hide. But worse, that’s a lot of time spent on our space station with access to our people, our databases, and our technology.
I stare at Vasa’s boots, which are shiny only on the very tip and dull everywhere else. The Burrs were on board the science station for those two weeks. Two weeks doing what?
Chapter Eleven
Maybe I should be grateful that I don’t remember those two weeks. It’s not like I sat and had tea every afternoon, and joined them for cocktails and after-dinner toddies or anything. I try and fail to think of what they would need all that time for. The mind knot wouldn’t be all that difficult to install. The Burrs would have inserted it through my wound, and it would’ve propelled itself to my brainstem, then latched itself there like a parasite. If the Burrs actually were hiding on Europa station for two solid weeks, it could only be to steal crucial information from it, and its crew.
I think about it all through my duty shift and all through my hard-won second shift.
By dinner, I’m standing in the med center.
Dr. Prashad scolds one of the cooks while he stitches the cook’s index finger on. It’s been sliced between the first joint and the knuckle. Clearly, it’s not the first time this has happened to him. I stand and observe, my hip thrumming with each prick and tug of the needle.
He glances up at me. “Be with you in a minute, Lieutenant,” he says, without pausing his work.
I take a seat on one of the benches in the corner. The display above me is a looped video of the inside of someone’s esophagus swallowing food that looks very much like what I had for lunch—after I’ve chewed it. We travel with the food down the esophagus, into
the stomach, where the food sits and sinks for what feels like a few seconds, but because the video’s been sped up, is probably more like an hour. We continue our journey into the small intestines, and then the large. I stop watching after that.
Jesus. Who picks this stuff as waiting room entertainment? I have an idea it’s the doctor. One of those folks who is very appreciative of medicine as art. Like those people who have photographs of microscopic cells on their walls behind their desk, picked because they’re colorful and pretty, yet really are some deadly virus.
At last, my wait is over. We finally get around to the exam and why I’m there, and Dr. Prashad’s face lights up as if I’ve just become his weekend fix-it project.
“I don’t know how much I can help you, but I’ll try.” His hand lingers on my arm for a moment, in comfort from my earlier experience, or excitement at a new challenge, I’m not sure.
He pulls up an image of my brain on the monitor beside us and points to a region of my brain. “See right here, that part shaped like a seahorse? That’s your hippocampus. It’s where you store your long-term memories.” He swipes his hand, and a new image comes up.
At first, I can’t tell what it is, then I notice the tentacles and realize it’s my new housemate, the mind knot the Burrs left as their calling card. They’re wafting, and as they undulate, tiny particles fall away or are secreted and drift upward.
“The mind knot is releasing a chemical, this stuff right here, and it’s getting sucked up into your bloodstream. As far as I can tell, it’s inhibiting parts of your hippocampus.”
“Can you reverse it?”
“Not yet. But there might be another way in.” He opens a drawer and takes out a few vials and sets them on the counter in front of him. “The chemical the mind knot is releasing into your bloodstream hasn’t erased your memories, just suppressed them. If I can find the right mix, I may be able to help you get past the blockage.” He takes the vials over to a white box with holes in top, inserts an empty vial, and slips each glass tube into a slot on top. “I’m going to try to suppress whatever is stopping you from accessing those memories. It’s like temporarily raising a gate so you can enter a blocked area.”
