The Contingency

by G J Ogden

  “Okay then, Casey, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Night, night, Blakey!” Casey called out, waving a hand above her head as he left, but not taking her eyes off the blackness of space outside the viewport.

  Casey listened to Blake’s heavy boots clump away and waited for the bridge door to hiss open and then slide shut again, before relaxing back in the chair and swinging her feet up and onto the console again. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a heavily worn packet of candies, taking out and unwrapping a single, bullet-shaped red mint and popping it into her mouth, before closing the pack and placing it back in her pocket again. Her primary status console chimed softly and flashed up a message. She leant forward to read it, sucking gently on the mint.

  “What have we here?” she said out loud, reading the data on the screen.

  Signal detected

  Source: [Calculating, ETA 4:23:18]

  Origin: Hedalt - probability 18.4% [calculating]

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Casey, letting out a long, low whistle. Returning her sequined sneakers to the deck, she tapped a command into the keypad on her chair, and then calmly waited for the response, savoring the flavor of the candy, which was part of her night-time ritual.

  Advise protocol. Should I alert Captain?

  ...

  …

  Negative: Await source calculation

  Origin probability should exceed 50%

  “You’re the boss,” said Casey, entering a command to activate the crew alarm if the origin probability reached fifty per cent. “I bet it’s just another false reading, anyway,” she commented to herself, while maneuvering the mint under her tongue. She finished executing the command and slumped back down in the chair, lifting her sequined sneakers back onto the console. Then she closed her eyes and flicked the mint back into the center of her tongue, before pressing it gently to the roof of her mouth. Unseen to her, the status console updated again.

  Signal detected

  Source: [Calculating, ETA 4:20:23]

  Origin: Hedalt - probability 19.7% [rising]

  TWO

  Captain Taylor Ray awoke with a start to the sound of the mission alert siren ringing in his ears. He shielded his eyes against the pulsating warning lights in his cabin, which flashed in a vibrant red, causing his head to throb in time. He groaned and pushed himself into a sitting position, which only made his head feel worse. While he had been perfectly fine before going to bed, he now felt terrible, as if he’d drunk half a bottle of bourbon the night before, after three rounds of sparring with Blake. Touching the control panel next to the bed he croaked, “Cancel alert.”

  The piercing sound ceased and the cabin lights switched to a bright daylight-white, which did nothing to alleviate the thumping in his head. He touched the control panel again and added, “And lower the light level by thirty percent.” The lights responded, and mercifully Taylor felt some of the discomfort ease off too.

  He glanced over at the clock, which read 04:38, and groaned again. There was a knock at the door, thud, thud, thud. The knock wasn’t especially hard, but it still felt like the visitor was rapping their knuckles directly on his brain.

  “Come in...”

  The door slid open to reveal Technical Specialist Satomi Rose, softly silhouetted by the brighter strip lights in the corridor behind her.

  “Hell, you look like how I feel,” Taylor said, noting Satomi’s pained expression.

  “What? I’m just a little disoriented, that’s all,” replied Satomi, who immediately went to straighten her hair, despite it being tied in a ponytail. “I was in a deep sleep when the alert...”

  “Relax, Satomi, I’m joking,” said Taylor, realizing that he’d offended her and attempting to dig himself out of the hole he had dug. “Well, at least about how you look, anyway. My head feels worse than it did the morning after my academy graduation ball. I didn’t think that was possible.”

  The apology, though heavily disguised, was good enough for Satomi, and she felt less self-conscious. “Do you want me to get you some pain killers? Or, perhaps, hair of the dog?”

  Taylor stood up and had to steady himself against the cabin wall to keep from falling over again. It was like an inner-ear imbalance combined with a furious hangover, and he had to stand perfectly still and breathe slowly and deliberately to stop from throwing up.

  “I wish I could say that this was the result of drinking too much,” said Taylor, between deep breaths, “but getting a hangover without actually having been drunk is like being told, ‘we’re not compatible’ before you’ve even been on a date.”

  “I don’t really go on dates, Captain,” said Satomi, missing the point entirely.

  Taylor frowned, but this only made his head hurt more and he squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Are you sure you’re alright, Taylor?” said Satomi. Taylor couldn’t help but notice that she’d switched from ‘Captain’ to ‘Taylor’, which she always did when she was genuinely concerned about him. Even though he was her Captain, four years cooped up on a ship with only four people had meant that even his normally robust standards about protocol had slipped. He and Satomi had been a strong match in the personality profiling tests, and despite their efforts to retain a professional detachment, it was almost inevitable that they had become close. But it was a closeness in a guarded and awkward kind of way, like a couple of introverted teenagers.

  Strangely, a few seconds after Satomi had asked if Taylor was okay, the nausea subsided as quickly as it had come on, and Taylor felt considerably better. Even his headache had eased substantially. He slipped on his shoes, smoothed the creases from his uniform, and stepped over to the door.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” said Taylor. “It’s like you said; just a bit of a rude awakening from a deep sleep, that’s all. I feel okay now.”

  Satomi stroked his arm and smiled at him. “Good, you had me worried there for a minute. We can’t have the Captain getting sick when we’re over twenty thousand light years away from Earth.”

  The figure startled Taylor; he had only been counting jump distances from their previous locations, rather than their total distance from home. “Hell, are we really that far out? When you say it out loud it sounds unbelievable.”

  “Yes sir, and we’re about to head out even further,” said Satomi, ominously. “Though not that much further, relatively speaking.”

  “You found something?”

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure yet, but I think so.”

  Taylor massaged his stubbled chin and then ran his hand through his hair. Though his headache and nausea had subsided, he still felt a little strange, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. It was like he’d walked into a door a few hours earlier and was still mildly concussed.

  “It would be just our luck to find something with only two weeks left to run,” said Taylor. He wasn’t normally a pessimist, but the weariness of his current condition added to four years in deep space had dented his usual optimistic outlook.

  “I think I’ve been lucky to have you as my Captain,” said Satomi, holding her hands in front of her and gently rubbing her knuckles. “I just wanted to say that, before this is all over.”

  Taylor’s eyes widened. Was this just professional admiration, he wondered, or Satomi’s back-to-front way of trying to tell him something? He never was any good at reading the signals, and this occasion was no different.

  “Well, thanks, Satomi,” said Taylor, allowing the confusion fogging his mind to color his words, making them sound artificial and bordering on insincere. Thanks, Satomi? Damn it, Taylor, is that really the best you can do?

  Satomi smiled awkwardly and then stepped further out into the corridor, looking anywhere but at Taylor. “Anyway, the others will be assembling on the bridge now, so we can run through the detailed analysis together.”

  And, just like that, the moment is gone. Well played, Captain… Taylor admonished himself, and then cursed the fact he’d woken up feeling so g
roggy. Perhaps if his mind had been sharper, his response would have been keener too. He smiled at Satomi and almost considered apologizing, but thought better of it; he’d likely just end up digging himself into another hole. Instead, he said, “Okay, Satomi, lead the way…” He gestured for her to move out ahead, which she did, still careful not to meet his eyes.

  They walked together in silence along the wide central corridor of their Nimrod-class deep space recon cruiser towards the bridge, passing the dining hall and other living quarters of the mid-sized vessel. For near-Earth duties, a ship of its size would have been crewed by at least a dozen, but for deep space recon missions, or DSRs for short, Earth Fleet had deemed it prudent to afford the extra space of the Nimrod-class to a four-person crew in order to prevent cabin fever. Early DSR missions that had used smaller ships had been fraught with problems, mainly due to the crew simply driving each other crazy. Taylor had initially thought the size of the Nimrod-class to be excessive, but after just a few months in space, he’d come to understand the logic behind the decision. He also welcomed the ability to get away from the others, if only for a short time. It was known as ‘getting some air’ in Earth Fleet lingo.

  Besides, after the war with the Hedalt had ended, there was no shortage of Nimrod-class cruisers in circulation, and it made sense to use them instead of mothballing them or tearing them down for parts and scrap. To Taylor that would have been a tragedy; these stalwart ships had played just as much of a part in saving the fate of humanity as their crews had, and they deserved respect too.

  However, despite occasionally needing to ‘get some air’ the reality was that his four-person crew spent almost all their time together, usually happily. This was down to careful and detailed personality matching, which was introduced as a compulsory element of DSR crew selection shortly after the failures of early DSR missions had highlighted interpersonal issues as a major factor. In one case study, which was compulsory viewing for DSR volunteers to hammer home the importance of taking the test seriously, a ship’s TacSpec crew member had actually killed the Captain. But, thanks to the careful matching process, Taylor was confident that his own TacSpec officer would not resort to similarly homicidal ways. Sure, Blake would sometimes shoot him murderous glances, but the reality was he would never harm one of the crew, which Taylor was very glad of indeed, given Blake’s proficiency for violence. In fact, Blake was like everyone’s tough bigger brother; he’d not hesitate to step in and fight for them all, no holds barred.

  The same was true of the others too. Because of the personality matching, it was rare for serious disagreements to occur amongst his crew. They were in essence like one family.

  Four years was still a long time to spend in each other’s pockets, though, and it was only natural that tempers could become frayed from time to time, even amongst the most well-matched crews. It was during these times that the ability to just get lost in some disused part of the ship was welcome. DSR regulations permitted, and even encouraged, crew members to give themselves this head space, for as long as they needed it. After all, with only four crew, each relying on the other, a serious relationship issue – or the murder of a crew member – could jeopardize not only the mission, but all of their lives.

  Satomi led them through the door, which swished open automatically, and onto the bridge, where Casey and Blake were already waiting. Casey was propped up against the back of her pilot’s chair shielding her eyes against the lights, while Blake was slumped in his seat at the tactical station, massaging his temples.

  “You guys too?” said Taylor, recognizing their symptoms as being remarkably like his own only a few minutes earlier. “Don’t tell me; headache, nausea, disorientation, sensitivity to light?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?” said Blake. “I feel like I’ve had my ass kicked by a bottle of Tequila.”

  “You always were a lightweight,” quipped Casey. “But, if I’m honest, I feel kinda the same way. I don’t even remember getting into my bed last night.”

  “That’s ‘cause you tried to get into mine,” Blake teased, “but, don’t worry, I was a gentleman and kicked your sorry ass out again.”

  “You should be so lucky!”

  Taylor raised a hand. “Okay you two, that’s enough.” How they could still manage to tease each other while both feeling as rough as he’d felt moments earlier was beyond him, but he was in no mood for it. “Don’t worry about the headache, it will pass.” He spoke confidently, seeking to offer reassurance, though the fact that all four of them had woken up with the same symptoms was now weighing heavily on his mind. “But, just to be sure, I want each of you to run a personal medical and feed the results into the computer by zero eight hundred, is that understood?”

  Satomi and Blake nodded and acknowledged the order dutifully with a ‘yes sir’, while Casey replied in her customary manner.

  “That includes me too,” added Taylor, who was as eager to set his own mind at rest as he was to ensure his crew was fit and healthy. Sickness was one of the biggest dangers facing DSR missions. “Also, Satomi, please run a check on the air filtration systems and do a scan for anything that might be harmful; you know, alien bugs and that sort of thing.”

  “Yes Captain, scanning for ‘alien bugs and that sort of thing’ is one of my specialties...” she replied, smirking. She loved how awkward and clumsy-sounding the Captain got when talking about anything even remotely scientific. Then she noticed he was scowling at her, and decided to add an addendum, in a more professional tone, “I’ll get on it directly after the briefing, Captain.”

  Taylor’s concerns over the status of his crew’s health had distracted him from the real reason they had all assembled in the first place. “Right, of course, the briefing,” he said, clicking his fingers. “Well let’s see what’s so important that it meant waking us all up in the middle of the night.” He nodded to Satomi and she moved over to the mission ops console and transferred the data to the main viewport so that everyone could see it.

  “I know we’re all feeling a little worse for wear, so I’ll keep this brief and to the point,” Satomi began.

  “Great, then I can go back to bed...” Blake chimed in, but Satomi ignored him.

  “We have detected a possible Hedalt signal…”

  Satomi’s statement immediately silenced Blake, who straighten up in his seat and began to rub his knuckles eagerly.

  “My early analysis of the deep scan data puts the confidence level currently at fifty-three percent and still rising,” Satomi continued, aware that she now had Blake’s complete and undivided attention.

  “Aw, c’mon, Satomi, that’s borderline at best,” said Blake, now feeling even more like he’d been cheated out of sleep for no good reason.

  “True, but mission protocol states we have to investigate,” said Satomi, glancing over to Taylor, hoping he would back her up.

  He did. “Satomi is right.”

  Blake threw his hands up. “Can’t we at least check with Earth Fleet command first? We’re two weeks out from the end of our tour, for crying out loud!”

  “We already know the answer,” Taylor cut in, asserting control. “It doesn’t matter if there are two weeks left on our tour or two hours; DSR mission rules say we go, so we go.” Blake scowled, but remained silent. “They’re not going to cut us any slack just because we’re close to the end of our four years, and you know it,” he continued, addressing Blake directly. Then Taylor’s stiff stance and tight shoulders relaxed a little, as did the tone of his voice. “Besides, I thought you were eager to see some action before we head back?”

  Blake groaned. “What I’m eager for is a couple more hours of sleep. But, whatever, fine, one for the road, eh?”

  Taylor glanced back at Satomi and nodded, indicating for her to continue the briefing.

  “The signal origin is in a system that’s quite far from our current position, but just within our safe blind-jump range, so I’m sure Casey can make it.” Casey threw up a casual salute and winked a
t Satomi. “It’s a system in a cluster of stars in the Scutum-Crux arm, close to where the arm intersects with the galactic long bar,” continued Satomi, highlighting the system on a galactic map displayed on the viewport. “It’s uncharted and no other DSR has been to this region, so it’s worth checking out.”

  “The Scrotum-Crotch what-now?” said Blake, being deliberately facetious. “Though, I like the sound of a long bar; I could really do with finding one of those right now…”

  Casey laughed. “Don’t worry, Blakey, Casey’s driving and she knows the way!”

  Taylor stepped forward towards Blake, conscious that his playful protests were a prelude to a more deep-rooted resentment of the mission. Blake was the very definition of a ‘glass half-empty’ personality; if there was anything negative to highlight in any situation, Blake would be sure to point it out.

  “Look, it’s probably nothing, like it was nothing the last thirty-odd times we’ve done this,” Taylor said, addressing the room, but locking eyes on Blake specifically. “So let’s just jump out there, confirm it’s another ghost, and then we can all go home. Deal?”

  Blake scrunched his nose up and sniffed dismissively. “Okay, Cap, you’re the boss.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Taylor, stiffly, and then he turned to Casey. “Satomi has already computed the course and sent the co-ordinates and calculations to the nav computer, so how soon can you make the jump?”

  “Just give me one moment, Cap…” said Casey, almost singing the words, and then she pirouetted around into her pilot’s chair and began another intricate ballet of button tapping and switch flipping. A few moments later, she swiveled her chair back around to face Taylor, cheeks raised high and eyes smiling. “Co-ordinates and jump program locked in, Cap. And the jump engines are charged and ready; I took the liberty of cycling them up as soon as I heard the words, ‘Satomi is right’ come out of your mouth.” Her eyes twinkled over to Satomi, who was already waiting in position in her mission ops chair.