The Furthest Planet

by James Ross Wilks

  Jabir set the surface aside and leaned against a neighboring table. “We have a preliminary theory that Victor has the ability to inject people with nanites. How, we do not know precisely. It is possible that they simply need to be ingested. Once in the victim’s bloodstream, they lie dormant until activated. The theory is that these nanites, once they receive their activating signal, begin producing massive quantities of sodium chloride, which in turn…” the doctor trailed off in response to Amit’s reaction.

  Their prisoner began moaning. He tried to bring his hands to cover his face, but the restraints held him. Failing that, he began rocking back and forth, still moaning lowly, clearly in great distress.

  “Are you all right?” the doctor asked, mostly because it was awkward to just stand there and watch. The man was clearly not all right.

  “Heart attacks?” he muttered. “It can cause heart attacks?”

  ‘Yes, that’s right,” Jabir answered, still nonplussed.

  “The divine wrath of God,” Amit said so quietly that both Jabir and Staples had to lean in to hear him. “I thought I was dispensing the wrath of God…” The rocking continued. “And I was nothing more than a murderer and a fool besides.”

  Staples found herself feeling something that she had promised herself she would not allow herself: sympathy for this man. Faith, she reflected, is a double-edged sword. The crew’s faith in each other had been part of what had kept the ship together through their recent series of crises. She didn’t know how many of her crew believed in God or gods, but she knew that Templeton had leaned on his faith at times. And yet, this man’s blind faith had ruined his life and made him a murderer.

  Staples did her best to keep her internal debate from her face. “You are a murderer, but we didn’t go to all the trouble of stealing you away from the Martian Separatists, and pissing them off in the process I’m sure, just to kill you.”

  Amit looked at her, and his pained expression told her that he might well accept death willingly at the moment. “I was sure- I wouldn’t blame you.”

  “I would. Blame me, I mean. No, we don’t do that,” she answered. “We’re not executioners, though in your case it might be a mercy.”

  “Then why?” he asked, still looking at her.

  “Because we need your help.”

  Chapter 3

  “Isn’t it about time you headed over to see Captain Clea?” John Park asked his daughter. The two of them were in the main room of their quarters. John was standing as he folded laundry, and Gwen was tucked in a corner and playing a game on a surface that was dubiously labeled as educational.

  Gwen flicked over a screen on the surface to check the time, and said in surprise and delight, “Oh yeah!”

  The man smiled at the girl. He was continually grateful to have a daughter who was so interested in schooling and lessons. From time to time he wondered why that was. He had done well in school when he was young, and certainly had more fond memories than bitter ones, but he had celebrated a snow day or on the first day of summer with all of the other students. Gwen, on the other hand, was genuinely disappointed if she missed a lesson or one had to be postponed. Perhaps, he thought, it had to do with the solitary nature of her education. There was a culture in conventional school that cast school as an unavoidable slog, teachers as implacable forces of nature if not outright enemies, and homework as slow torture. Even if students began with a love of school, they quickly learned from their classmates that this was not how they were supposed to feel.

  Gwen had spent little time with other students, or even with other children. Most of the time John found this mildly concerning, but her unflaggingly positive attitude towards her studies was an apparent and unexpected benefit of her schooling on the ship. Her parents taught her math and physics, Jabir covered some chemistry and biology with her, John handled history, and the Captain read literature with her. She was advanced in most subjects, and there was no doubt that she loved the ship, but John wasn’t entirely sure what the endgame was.

  Gwen would turn nine soon. What would happen when she turned eleven or twelve? All of her friends were adults. How would she date? There were so many trappings of average school life that she was denied by being on the ship. Sleepovers and camping he thought she could live without for the time being, but there were teenage rituals that he strongly felt his daughter would need. They couldn’t stay on this ship forever.

  Gwen hopped up and stowed her surface in its charging cradle. Putting things away safely was a primary rule on a spaceship, and John and Charis had inculcated the habit in her at a young age. She disappeared into her room beyond the restroom to fish her backpack out of its drawer. John was relieved that she had finally begun to sleep in her room again. There had been a two-week period after she and John had nearly died in their rooms when Gwen crept into her parents’ bed every night. It was the porthole that frightened her.

  Ironically, John and Charis had wanted their daughter to have a view of the stars every night as she fell asleep, and for a time that had been ideal. After one of the slugs from a Nightshade drone had punched a hole in the polycarbonate and the vacuum of space had nearly asphyxiated them, Gwen’s opinion of the window had been shattered. They had covered it for her, even placed a seal over it that would protect against vacuum, but their preventative measures had only done so much. The girl now understood that cold death waited only a few feet from where she slept, and John didn’t think she was likely to forget that. He hoped that someday she would be able to relax and look at the stars again in wonder, but for now, he was just happy that she was not crowding her parents in their bed every night.

  Gwen, smiling and eager, reappeared with her bag slung across her back.

  “What are you reading right now?” John asked.

  “The Phantom Tollbooth,” Gwen replied.

  “Huh,” John replied. “I haven’t read that one.”

  “’Cause Korea, dad?” Gwen asked gravely.

  John laughed. “Yes, because I grew up in Korea, little one. I didn’t read a lot of the same books that the captain and your mother did when they were in school.”

  “Well, it’s not too late,” she admonished. “If you’re too busy, I can read it to you.”

  “I appreciate that, pumpkin. Now get going; don’t be late.” He picked a pair of his wife’s slacks out of the laundry basket and began folding them.

  “Roger, Daddio!” she said, and then she was gone.

  John laid the slacks down on the bed and dug in the basket for more of the same. Gwen had always liked reading, but she seemed to be throwing herself into it with particular gusto of late. He was a better engineer than child psychologist, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she was keeping busy to avoid confronting her feelings. In that, she was much like her mother. The loss of Don Templeton, the ship’s first mate, had shocked them all deeply. It had been a month, enough time for most to adapt to the reality of the man’s absence, but Templeton had been especially well liked. He had also been the buffer between the crew and their sometimes icy and hard-nosed captain. As a result, the crew still felt his absence keenly. Children tended to bounce back quickly, but then, Templeton had been in Gwen’s life every day for the past two years. It would take some time.

  As John began to match socks by color, the sound of an opening door roused him from his reverie. He looked up to see his wife, Charis MacDonnell, enter their chambers. His face showed a combination of delight and surprise.

  “Welcome home?” he said hopefully. The fact that she had showed up just after Gwen was due to leave for her evening reading lesson was, John assumed, not a coincidence.

  She smiled warmly, limped into the room, and closed the door behind her. Jabir’s surgery had set the bones in her right thigh, and they were healing well, but there was still a brace nestled around it.

  “I thought you were on shift until twenty-two,” he said. “Not that I’m not thrilled to you see you, o lover of mine.”

  “I am, or I
was, but…” there was a slight tremor in her voice.

  “Hey,” he dropped the socks, came forward, and took her hands in his. He was getting used to the feel of her glove-encased prosthetic left hand. “Hey, is everything all right? Is this…” he lowered his voice conspiratorially and, he hoped, seductively. “A social visit?”

  She laughed and shook her head, then looked at him directly. “Speaking of which: you know that thing we’ve been doing a lot of lately?” she asked awkwardly.

  He raised an eyebrow, feigning ignorance. “Flying?”

  She rolled her eyes briefly at his feigned obtuseness, then said, “Yes, flying. We’ve been flying a lot lately.”

  “Mm hm,” he sighed. “Good thing you’re a navigator.”

  “Well,” she said, evidently tiring of the game, “I’m pregnant.”

  He stared at her in silence for several seconds. “I may not understand the nature of your job as well as I thought I did.”

  She let out a surprised laugh and swatted him on the shoulder. He instantly moved forward and put his arms around her. “I’m joking, of course. I totally understand your job.” Before the joke wore any thinner, he said, “And that is wonderful, delightful, fantastic, cosmic news!”

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  “Yeah, of course,” he replied without hesitation. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Well, we’re… this isn’t exactly the best time.”

  He glanced at his watch. “I think nineteen-o-seven is a fantastic time to be pregnant.” He shifted his hands on her hips and pulled her closer.

  “You know what I mean,” she said, smiling.

  “Hey, no one’s ever ready. Isn’t that what they say? You were still in navigator’s school when we got pregnant with Gwen. We toughed it out,” he said soothingly.

  “Yeah, that’s basically the same thing as being hunted by an AI bent on the subjugation of humanity.”

  “Eh,” he said as he moved away from her and began in on the socks again. “You did have that one professor…”

  She frowned. “Oh, yeah. Davis. That guy was bad.”

  He nodded. “Like subjugation-of-humanity bad,” he agreed.

  Charis sighed. “But seriously, this is a really big deal.”

  “Yes, it is,” John said, putting down a pair of tangled socks. “Victor or not, we can’t stay on this ship much longer.”

  As Staples entered the mess hall, she heard Overton ask, “Do you have any sevens?”

  Two people sat across from one another at one of the foldable tables. Overton was dressed in post-workout sweats, and Evelyn looked at ease in a pair of black slacks and a purple tank-top. Her copper hair was held back from her face in a ponytail, and she was squinting at Overton as though they were at the system-wide championship of poker.

  “Go fish, little man,” Evelyn responded in a gritty voice.

  “How am I a little man?” Overton asked. How indeed, Staples wondered. Overton was not quite as big as Jang, nor as imposing, but he was nearly two meters tall and she estimated him to be over ninety kilograms.

  “Any man who asks for sevens is, by definition, small,” Evelyn replied as if sharing some secret of the underworld.

  “You are so weird,” he said.

  “Thank you!” she beamed. “Now give to me your tender nines. All of your nines.”

  “I have no nines, tender or otherwise. Go fish.”

  “You lie!” Evelyn blustered. She turned to Staples. “Captain, fancy a game? This one’s a liar.” She pointed an accusatory finger at Overton, who just shook his head and sighed.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Staples said as she crossed to the table and took a seat. “Never been much of a card player.”

  “This game is more about reading the heart of your opponent,” Evelyn explained. “That’s how I know he has nines.”

  “I swear I don’t have any nines,” Overton objected.

  “All right, I’ll play along,” Evelyn smirked and drew a card.

  “Something we can help you with, Captain?” Overton asked.

  “I wanted to catch up with you about… some ship business. Do you have a minute?” she asked.

  “Ohhh,” Evelyn said as if in sudden understanding. “You are so brave, Clea. I mean, reckless, I’d say.”

  “What?” Staples asked. Overton looked at her in confusion as well.

  “No, it’s fine. You two talk,” she put air quotes around the last word with her fingers as she stood up. “But I’m telling Dinah.”

  Sure the woman was joking but unable to help herself, Staples objected, “No, Evelyn, it’s not like that. It’s ship business, really!”

  “Uh-huh, nope, I’m going to find Dinah right now,” she crowed and skipped out of the room.

  Staples looked at Overton. “She’s joking, right? Tell me she’s joking.”

  Overton nodded. “She’s joking.”

  “She sure is… sprightly.”

  “Actually, I think she’s hurting pretty bad.” Overton said, collecting the cards into a deck.

  Staples furrowed her brow in confusion. “She is?”

  “Yeah. Templeton’s death really shook her. She hasn’t really taken things seriously since we came onboard. She kept acting like she was in some movie or at a theme park. Then Templeton - Don got killed, and I think it all hit her that this is for keeps. It’s like she’s realized that we’re all mortal. I guess we had so many close scrapes that she thought that our luck would just hold out forever.” He shuffled the cards absently. “Now she’s taken it to eleven, but it can’t last. She doesn’t seem capable of taking anything seriously, except her job.”

  Evelyn had been taking some shifts at coms of late. With Brutus trapped in the ship’s mainframe, they had needed her. It wasn’t exactly her area of expertise, but the woman was good with computers and had helped to install part of the ship’s communications suite.

  Staples shook her head. “I had no idea.”

  “Well, she’s been hiding behind that super-happy irreverent face, but she’s close to snapping, I think.” He stopped shuffling for a moment and looked at the doorway through which Evelyn had exited. “There’s a catharsis coming. It’ll be ugly, but she’ll be better once it’s over.”

  “Huh,” Staples said, and thought for a second. “This is actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Evelyn’s impending breakdown?” Overton asked.

  “No, I…” she sighed and collected her thoughts. “I want you to step up and take first mate.”

  Overton actually laughed in her face for a second, then caught himself and apologized. “Sorry, I just… you’ve got to be joking.”

  Staples pursed her lips. “I’m really not.”

  “You’re serious?” He put the cards down and rubbed his temples, then massaged the bridge of his nose. “God, I thought you were going to fire me or something.”

  “Fire you? Why would I fire you?” She looked around the room as if the rest of the crew were there. “I don’t think I can fire anyone right now.”

  “Well, you never really hired me in the first place. I just got swept up in this and you’ve been nice enough to bring me along and find work for me with Kojo, but I’m not really trained to work on a ship, much less help run one.”

  “Believe it or not,” Staples said, “Don didn’t know much about it either. The ship I can handle. It’s people I sometimes struggle with. Engineering, coms, navigation, piloting, they’re all covered by people who know what to do. I just don’t always know how to relate to them. Don wasn’t great at his job because he knew how to run the ship; he was great because he knew how to relate to the people who did.”

  “Hum,” Overton said, and Staples thought that he was beginning to consider it seriously.

  “I realize that you don’t know everyone here all that well, but that can be an asset. The crew needs a buffer, someone between me and them. That was one of Don’s last lessons to me. I can’t be their friend and their captain at the sam
e time. We can be friend-ly,” she stressed the last syllable, “but it’s not the same thing. You can be their ear and their advocate, and you can help smooth things over or let me know when I mess up.” Several of her missteps came to mind when she said this, but none so much as the one that had driven Declan Burbank off the ship.

  “Okay, I can see why you need a first mate, but why me?” he asked as he picked up the cards and began to shuffle them again.

  “A few reasons. You’ve served in the military, which means you’re sensitive to chains of command and used to working with a small group of people in close quarters.”

  “Granted,” he said, his eyes on the cards.

  “You need a job other than back-up security, and you’re not trained for much else,” she added.

  He winced. “Pretty thin, but okay.”

  She hesitated for only a moment. “And this is going to sound worse than it is, but I can’t pick anyone else. I need everyone where they are, doing the job they’ve been doing for the past two years. The only other option besides you is Evelyn-”

  Overton shook his head and gave her a warning look.

  “And I knew that she wasn’t an option even before you told me what’s going on with her.”

  “So, I get the job because you’ve got no other options?” he asked.

  “You make it sound-” she began.

  “Relax, I appreciate your honesty. We’ll need that if we’re going to work together.” He put out his hand for her to shake, and she took it gratefully.

  “Glad to hear it. I’ll make the announcement soon.”

  He nodded, seemingly slightly dazed, and stared off into space. “Now all I need to do is figure out how this is going to affect my relationship with Dinah.”

  “Your first job,” she pointed a finger at him and smiled, “is to figure that one out on your own.”

  It was nearly a day later, early afternoon, when Staples climbed down to the rear observation room. As they were only a few hours out, she had come down for a clear look at Luna. She was surprised to find Dinah standing at parade rest and gazing down through the polycarbonate window towards Earth’s rapidly approaching moon.