by James Wilks
“Imagine, Captain, that these nanites could be activated remotely or placed on a timer.”
Understanding dawned on her. “Oh my God. Victor can inject anyone with them, and if they don’t do as they’re told, these things kick in and they die. The equivalent of slipping a man poison and then holding the antidote for ransom.”
“Yes, except that unlike poison, the infected person is completely healthy and unaffected so as to be better able to complete their task. It’s a diabolical method of coercion, and since no one knows it exists, there is no vaccine.”
She was stricken. “And that means that the people who tried to kill us-”
He nodded grimly. “Were quite possibly only trying to save their own lives. Let me remind you, Captain, that it’s just a theory, but it does explain the ‘desperate’ motivation.”
Bethany had slipped into sleep, but Staples’ eyes were wide and frightened. “Even if you went to the authorities and tried to explain, they’d never believe you. It’s almost like using magic to control people.”
“The existence of magic made possible by sufficiently advanced technology and all that,” Jabir said airily.
She looked at him dubiously. “Arthur C. Clark? I didn’t know you read science fiction, Doctor.”
He sighed and gestured around them at the lab results on the surface, the Medical bay, the ship, and Titan Prime beyond. “Look around you, Captain. It’s just science now.”
Chapter 8
The next day Staples and her chief of security crossed the shuttle bay to the access door that led to Titan Prime’s boarding tube. About fifteen minutes earlier she had contacted Sheriff Glover and informed him of her intention to visit her first mate in the moon’s only hospital. She didn’t know if they’d let her in, but she was determined to try. At the very least, she hoped that they would be more likely to admit her when she was already there than if she called ahead and tried to set up an appointment. Glover had asked her to wait for an escort, and she had agreed.
“Just to discourage any more trouble in my town,” he had explained. Despite the fact that he had scared her with his theatrics back in the police station, she found that she liked the aging lawman. Dinah had once explained to Staples that she chose to serve on Gringolet because money didn’t really matter to her captain. She trusted Glover for the same reason. He was someone who couldn’t be bought. She only hoped the same held true of his deputies.
Jang had been quite insistent that he accompany her, and she had finally agreed to allow him to come along. Though she knew that Jang was completely committed to her safety, she also suspected that he was glad of the opportunity to get off the ship. The entire crew had been looking forward to some downtime in Titan Prime, but now it was clear that it wasn’t safe. Crew members were still making short trips to go shopping or sightseeing with Jang in tow, but it was difficult without the added security crew positions that Quinn and Parsells had left vacant. Dinah was still incommunicado, and despite several suggestions by the crew, Staples had not yet tried to contact her, though she knew others had. It was becoming a point of pride with her. She had insisted to Templeton that Dinah could take care of herself, and after everything that had happened, she needed that to be true. Overton had offered to act as security on a few outings, and Staples had gratefully allowed him to do so, but he had been out of the military for several years, and his primary training was in communications, not combat.
Upon reaching the exit airlock door, Staples keyed the sequence and the door slid open. She and Jang entered the small chamber, and the airlock quickly cycled. When the hull door opened, Staples stepped out into the tube and then abruptly stopped. She heard the rustle as Jang quickly drew his weapon behind her. At the end of the tube lay two unconscious bodies, both dressed in dark blue: the deputies. Their weapons were still holstered, and a few onlookers were gathering around them.
“They tried to stop me, sir.” The voice came from beside Staples, and she and Jang whirled to look; the large man trained his weapon as he did so. Propped against the hull of the ship, less than a meter from them, sat Dinah. She looked terrible. Her hair was longer than Staples had ever seen it; it hadn’t been shaved in over a week. The cargo pants and black tank she favored were torn and stained. The black combat boots were badly scuffed. Her nose and knuckles were bloody, though the latter looked far worse than the former. A dark bruise marked her right eye, and a broken ocular blood vessel stained a portion of the white to red. Staples had never seen Dinah take a punch, and she could only imagine how bad the other guys looked.
“I didn’t hurt them,” Dinah offered, staring at the unconscious deputies. Staples looked back and forth between the gathering crowd and her chief engineer. Jang holstered his weapon. “Or I tried not to,” she added.
“I certainly hope not,” Staples chastised. “They’re here to help us. Why didn’t you call up if they wouldn’t let you in?”
Dinah did not answer, but raised her left arm instead. It was devoid of the wrist communicator they all wore. She let it hover in the air for a moment before dropping it lightly to her lap. She looked at her captain for the first time, then rolled her eyes up to the door over her right shoulder.
“You change the code?”
“Every twenty-four hours,” Jang said. “I have increased our safety precautions since the attempt on the captain’s life.” Dinah looked back at the end of the tubeway and nodded slowly and for several seconds.
“Did you want to come in?” Staples leaned down and offered her a hand. When she bent closer to the other woman, she finally smelled her. She wasn’t filthy, but she smelled of sweat and alcohol, and her clothes were in need of a wash.
Dinah stared at the hand for several moments before accepting it. She pulled herself unsteadily to her feet. She put most of her weight, such as it was on Titan, on her right foot.
“A lot’s happened since you left,” Staples said as she released Dinah’s hand.
Dinah nodded again, her eyes half-lidded. Staples couldn’t tell if she was drunk or just badly hung over. In the nearly two years since she had hired her, she had never seen Dinah like this. She couldn’t actually recall ever seeing the woman take a drink before.
“Do you mean Evelyn being alive, Templeton being shot, or you being arrested, sir?” Her tone was as flat as ever, but she spoke slowly and deliberately, as if each word were an effort requiring her full concentration.
“How do you know about Templeton?” Jang asked.
Dinah’s eyes, one red and one white, flicked to him, then back to Staples. She didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “Permission to come aboard, Captain.” Without hesitation, Staples stepped away from the still opened door. Jang mirrored her, and Dinah walked into the belly of the ship, her limp more pronounced than Staples had ever seen it.
She looked at her security chief. “I’d better call Sheriff Glover and make an apology.” She gestured down the tubeway. “Let’s try to wake them up.”
Half an hour later Staples was admitted into Don Templeton’s room by a snarky and po-faced Doctor Huang. The room was an antiseptic white, similar to nearly every hospital room she had visited in her life. There were no windows in the walls, but there was a skylight that offered a glimpse of star-filled space. Titan’s rotation currently hid Saturn from view. Monitoring equipment droned in the background, and emitted a tiny medley of beeps and ticks. Templeton was the sole occupant.
He was awake and watching a surface mounted on the wall across from him. The volume was low, but the voices made it clear to Staples that it was the local news. When she stepped into the room, Templeton looked sluggishly over at her and made a real effort to smile. It only half worked, but it still lit up his face.
Her first thought was that he did not look well. His normally ruddy and lightly freckled complexion was pale, and his arms, exposed from the shoulder down, looked flaccid and rounded. His chest was sunken slightly, and his belly looked more pronounced. No one had shaved him today. He regarded her
with heavy-lidded eyes, and Staples thought she had seen a very similar look on the face of Dinah quite recently. Her crew was tired, and they didn’t seem to be able to get a break. She wondered how long they could keep up at this pace, constantly worrying about whatever threat was coming next. She felt like they were always reacting, and she knew that she had to put them on the offensive somehow or they would eventually splinter to pieces.
“Hello Clea,” Templeton rasped.
She put on a warm smile that she hoped covered her dismay at seeing him in such bad shape and crossed to the bed. “Hello yourself. How are you feeling?” She sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to put pressure on his legs.
“Wonderful, next stupid question,” he smiled, and his voice was a little stronger this time.
She offered an apologetic grimace and said, “Sorry.”
He waved her apology away.
“I want to thank you for-” she began.
“Oh for Christ’s sake stop,” he interrupted her. “You’re here to thank me, it’s such a noble deed. Yeah, I know. But I have to confess-” His voice became too scratchy for him to continue for a moment. He swallowed hard, then reached for a cup of water next to him with a straw protruding from it. After several swallows, he set the cup down. “I have to confess something. I wasn’t trying to save your life.” Staples looked at him in confusion. “I tripped.”
Staples stared at him for a moment, and then he couldn’t hold it in anymore. A slow smile spread across his face, and she realized he was joking. She laughed harder and louder than the joke deserved. It felt good to laugh.
Once she had recovered some, she continued, “But, Don, I really need you to know-”
He interrupted her again. “You know what? You’re welcome. There, can we leave it at that?” The cup came up for another sip.
“All right, Don. So if I can’t pledge my undying thanks to you, what do you want to talk about?”
“This, actually,” and he nodded towards the news on the surface. She swiveled around to face the screen. The Titan Prime coverage of the Cronos Station disaster had not evolved appreciably over the few days they had been in town, but as the grief and shock began to subside, political pundits were turning the tragedy to their own ends. The blonde sharply-dressed woman on screen currently was calling for an end to all attempts to harvest from the Jovian sector. Instead, she argued, efforts should be concentrated on expanding solar fuel cell capacity.
The reporter who sat across from the woman responded, “But it has been argued that solar cells do not provide enough power to drive space vessels. Wouldn’t your plan greatly extend travel times to Mars and Venus?”
The woman nodded. “For a short time, but once solar cells are made more efficient, that would decrease. Besides, why would we need to go beyond Mars and Venus? We have all we need here.”
The reporter, a swarthy man with a very expensive-looking haircut asked, “Are you advocating an end to space exploration? What about the planned missions to Proxima b? They are only a decade away.”
“They’re a waste of money and time. It will take them dozens of years to get there, from our perspective, and to what end?”
“To what end,” Templeton scoffed. “It’s what we do. We explore.”
“Indeed we do,” Staples said and turned back to him. “Is that what you wanted to talk about, Alpha Centauri?”
He took another sip of water. “Well not that specifically. I’ve been watching this a lot, when the morphine lets me anyway. They’ve officially ruled Cronos Station a reactor meltdown. Been a lot of people calling for a lift on the ban on AI research. There’s a vote coming up in a few months, and it’s not looking good. For us, I mean.”
Staples nodded. She hadn’t been watching the news much, but she wasn’t surprised. Historically speaking, people were most likely to hand over their freedoms or make unwise decisions when they were frightened. And while Cronos Station had been over a billion kilometers from Earth when it was destroyed, it had reminded people that space was dangerous. Many people lived and worked off planet, and those who lived in domes built on atmosphere-deprived planets and moons weren’t much safer.
“I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. It’s a terrible thing to say, but it was probably one of the smartest things that Victor could do. The irony is that the event that’s likely to legalize AI was a terrible tragedy perpetrated by AI. If people knew the real reason behind it, that vote wouldn’t even take place.”
“Too bad we’re the only ones who can appreciate it.” He coughed weakly and muted the surface with a tiny remote control, then changed the subject. “How are the repairs on the ship coming?”
“Well. You really set us up. The work is proceeding almost without us doing anything. It’s costing a pretty penny, but then, the bill is being picked up by some lovely shell corporations.”
Templeton lowered his fragile voice to a whisper even though no one was in the room. “Brutus?” She nodded. “Don’t suppose he can make us all billionaires when this is all over.”
Staples actually considered it. “Probably, assuming this doesn’t all end with his discovery and destruction, or with us in jail for protecting him, or just, you know, with all of us dead.”
“You’re just trying to cheer me up,” Templeton said. He tried to keep a straight face, but it was impossible for him, so he grinned again.
“It would be pretty funny if we came through all of this all right then went to jail for tax evasion or something.”
“That would be hilarious,” he said, but this time he didn’t smile.
Staples had been back in her quarters for only five minutes when there was a knock at her door. She had just lain down on the bed with her copy of Heart of Darkness when the quick staccato tapping came, and from the sound of it, she knew it was Dinah before she opened the door. The chief engineer had evidently showered, shaved her head, changed her clothes, and cleaned herself up. Even her boots had been polished. The scent of alcohol was no longer detectable. Apart from the black and red eye, the bandaged knuckles, and a slightly swollen lower lip, she looked as she always did: parade-ready.
After taking a moment to look her over, Staples stepped aside and Dinah walked stiffly into the room. Her manner was normally formal, but Staples thought that she was almost marching as she crossed the threshold. Staples closed the door and turned to face her.
“I’m here to report for disciplinary action, sir.” As she spoke, she adopted her often-used trick of focusing on a spot just to the side of Staples’ head.
“Don’t be absurd,” Staples replied. “I’m your employer, not your commanding officer, and what you do on shore leave is your business.”
“But I was out of contact for days, sir,” Dinah insisted. “You might have needed me.”
“We did,” she replied, and let that sit for a moment to see if Dinah would react. She didn’t. Staples sat down in one of her chairs, resting her chin in her hand and her elbow on the table. “But we managed without you. Actually, I rather think that it might have been a good thing, you being off ship.”
Dinah’s eyes flicked to her then away. “How so, sir?”
“Well, my well-intentioned crew was ready to storm into the police station guns blazing to rescue me. They thought my life was in danger.”
“And you think I would have stopped them, sir?”
“That or burned the place to the ground. It’s sometimes hard to tell with you, to be honest.” Staples did not intend this as a compliment, but a slight shift in Dinah’s features hinted that she might have taken it as one. “You have a bad habit of acting first and asking permission later. You realize the irony?”
“It’s not my intention to be ironic, sir. I hope you’ll tell me so that I can avoid it.” Dinah’s voice was flat as ever, but Staples snorted with laughter anyway.
“No, of course it isn’t,” Staples said knowingly. “What’s ironic is that in your day-to-day behaviors, you’re a model soldier. You observe all of the sm
all rules and formalities. It’s only the big things, the things that really matter, where you ignore orders.”
“Orders, sir? I thought you weren’t my commanding officer.”
“Call them directions, then.”
“Have I ever not followed your directions?” Dinah favored her employer with her full gaze.
The captain considered a second before speaking. “No, not directly. But it would have been nice to tell me that you were going on an EVA to sabotage the pirate ship’s boarding tube. It would have been nice to tell me that you put trackers on Quinn and Parsells so you could monitor their whereabouts on the ship. And it would have been particularly nice to tell all of us that there was a chance that your friend Overton had taken Evelyn and fled to Titan Prime. If we hadn’t ended up here, would you even have told us?”
“But we did come here, sir.”
She stood up and looked the other woman in the face. “I know we did, but that’s not the point, damn it. And no, you haven’t ever not followed directions, but it’s like you’ve got this secret world that you only let me in on when you deem it necessary. I know you think you know best, and the truth is, your judgment hasn’t been wrong yet. I’m just afraid what will happen when it is.”
“I suppose the same could be said for all of us,” Dinah replied.
Staple sighed. “Of course. We’ve had a lot of close calls lately, and there are probably half a dozen times when I made a call that could have gotten all of us killed. But I don’t make those calls in a moral vacuum. I have you and Charis and Templeton. Why do you think I keep that man around? He’s really not great with spaceships, but he’s a hell of a moral compass. I need him to vet my ideas, even if we don’t always agree.” Dinah did not reply.
Staples sighed again and took her seat. “Look, I don’t know what happened while you were gone on shore leave, and I don’t care. Unless you want to tell me. I’ve never asked about your past,” Dinah’s eyes flicked to her again, and this time there was a warning in them. Staples continued anyway. “And I don’t know what happened to make you so secretive, so… unwilling to trust our judgment, but that’s your business as well. But you’re not in the military anymore. These people,” she gestured to the ship around them, “are not those people. We’re your friends, whether you want us to be or not. So if you want to trust me, if you want to open up, we’re here.”