Endeavor
Page 10
Sky Vaughn was serving a life sentence for hiring a hitman to kill her neighbor who had raped her back in high school. Her horrible assailant had somehow beaten the rap and was still often seen hosting teenage girls in his home. She had trouble coping with the concept that he was free to continually hurt others. Her gentle soul could never kill a man, but when an undercover FBI agent offered to do her dirty work for five hundred dollars, she accepted. The media portrayed her as a heinous killer who shouldn’t be roaming the streets. The jury agreed with the prosecutor’s suggestion that she be sentenced to ten years.
Only a month into her sentence, a prison guard attempted to rape her. She fought him off with everything her hundred-pound body could throw at him, ultimately sending him down the very stairwell he had cornered her in. He broke his neck and died instantly. Ever the one to get stuck with a bad defense lawyer, she was now a two-time assailant who should never join the outside world again.
But Naia Petaline? She was world famous for murdering her husband of five years. He had been cheating on her and she knew about it for over a year. She admitted to that fact in court, however she still claimed innocence even after she’d been sentenced. Her husband had been found in the bath tub, stabbed over twenty times. His penis was missing as well, never to be found again. The only prints in the apartment or on the bloody knife were hers. She even denied the murder to me when we were training together.
There were several others aboard, all of whom were listed as Rehabs. All of us had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that we no longer posed a danger to society or even belonged in prison. We had shown in various psych tests as well as prison evaluations that we could truly function as proper members of a civilized society. And since we would never see the world beyond our prison walls ever again, and since we didn’t have any loved ones who cared about us anymore, why not transform us into the sort of astronauts who could be called upon to investigate the two biggest mysteries of our time.
Those mysteries: What ever happened to the USS Ptolemy that had left for Eta Cassiopeia over three hundred years ago? And was it true that Eta Cassiopeia A had an earthlike planet in the habitable zone as had been determined multiple times in the past via remote methods?
I put on my uniform as I watched Caleb Sturm guide our naked navigator Karela Lange to one of the other shower stalls. With only a crew of eight, I was beginning to wonder if this ship was truly as small as the trainer we’d practiced in at the prison. Just the fact that he so casually escorted a naked lady in front of me concerned me about how much privacy would be available.
I zipped up the front of the coveralls, then knelt and grabbed my socks and shoes from the floor. When I stood up, I discovered Caleb standing there before me. He wore the uniform of a Petty Officer First Class. Three chevrons. This was when I remembered that we truly had been testing continuously throughout our training to try to achieve the highest ranks possible before the mission. While we weren’t really military, we did indeed work for these false ranks. The curly-haired man with the cursive “Donna” neck tattoo seemed to be examining me.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, “It’s quite a process coming back to the world of the living.”
“I think I’m alright now,” I said, “Though I’m sort of confused about what to do next.”
“Yeah, we’re all new to this ship. They shouldn’t have knocked us out on the prison transport before we got a chance to get familiar with our new home,” he grumbled, handing me a small bottle of pills, “Keep these on you and take one every four hours. It will help to ease the pain of your slightly atrophied muscles.”
“Thanks,” I said, pocketing the bottle and then looking up at him, “I guess it makes sense though. They weren’t going to allow us to be awake aboard this ship until we were far beyond the reaches of our solar system. I suppose they had to knock us out before we ever boarded. Now, even if we decided to head straight back, everyone we ever knew on Earth would be long dead. Heck, even though it took us fifty-nine years relative to get to Eta Cass A, ninety-six years would have already passed on Earth.”
“I guess they didn’t fully trust in us even after giving us control of a billion-dollar ship,” he said.
“Not quite,” I agreed.
Just then, I saw Sky approaching from behind him. She took my hand and gestured for me to follow her toward a door near the open cryo-chambers.
“Everyone was woken without incident, so it looks like we’re not going to have to figure out that whole cloned embryo thing,” she said as she led me into the corridor.
Once the door closed behind her, she turned to me. I examined her uniform just then and realized she was an officer just like I was. She wore a single gold bar on her lapel, identifying her an Ensign.
“Listen, I don’t want to go over to the Ptolemy,” she whispered to me, almost pleading.
“What? This is all stuff we covered back on Earth,” I argued.
“And I had reason to believe we were seeking out an abandoned ship or at least a ship filled with a bunch of dead carcasses,” she said, “AI said the ship is doing things like powering down and powering up. The ship magically appeared where it shouldn’t have been? No, I don’t think I should be part of the boarding party.”
“Stop it, Sky! You’ve been the Chief Medical Officer for all of a single day, at least as far as I’m concerned. I won’t have you second guessing stuff already. It was decided years ago that the initial boarding party would be the XO, the Chief Engineer, and the Chief Medical Officer. Three people who can ascertain what happened and to see if we could even somehow recover the ship. And personally, I expect it will take us all of two or three hours to make our assessment and send our full report twenty light years back to Earth. Then we’ll go check out this planet we might be able to live on in peace.”
“I didn’t sign up to die,” she argued.
“Do you think I intend to die? They supplied us with weapons which I’m sure we won’t even need,” I insisted, “Listen, you’re the only person on this boarding party that I’ve gotten to know on a personal level so far. I’d really be more comfortable if you were over there with me. Please?”
She looked down at my chest, then after a moment of hesitation she lifted her eyes to mine again. Finally she nodded. I placed my hand on her cheek and smiled at her.
“Thank you,” I said, “Now where can I find Naia?”
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Book One of The Ani Maxima Files
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