by James Wilks
“You love me, right?” she said coquettishly. “I also wanted to ask if you minded if I spent some time working on the computer core. I kind of need something to do.”
Staples thought about this for a moment. Brutus watched her carefully. “I suppose so, but to what end? I can’t have you taking the core down; we’ve already had some problems arise from systems being taken down for upgrades at extremely bad times.” As she said this, she thought that she need not remind Evelyn about the plot that had almost claimed her life.
“That’s fair. I’m just going a little crazy without something to do. I’ll run all planned upgrades by you. Sound good?”
“That sounds fine.”
“I would very much like to assist you,” Brutus said. “I have some ideas for upgrades to our core as well.”
“Are you sure you don’t have your hands full?” Evelyn asked, then blushed and grinned.
Staples groaned. “That was truly awful, Evelyn. Like worthy-of-Don awful.”
Brutus shook his head at the joke as well. “I should be able to repair this in the next few hours, then I can give you a hand.”
“Jesus Christ,” Staples muttered, holding her hands to her face. “Anything else?” There was silence for a moment, though Evelyn retained her smile. “Are you holding up all right?” Staples asked.
Evelyn raised an eyebrow in confusion. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I believe your captain is referring to the time you spent under assault by murderous robots while trapped in a vacuum-filled base,” Brutus offered helpfully.
“Oh that,” she waved a hand dismissively, “that was nothing!” She pranced out of the room and shut the door behind her.
“I’m not entirely sure that woman is taking this seriously,” Staples mused, concern in her voice.
“There is a bevy of studies that suggest that-”
Staples glanced at him sharply.
He began again. “Let me rephrase. We all react to the possibility of death differently. Evelyn’s seems to be a most cavalier approach.”
“I’ll try talking to her about it, but to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what the sane reaction to all of this is.”
“I would venture the one that does not result in our deaths,” Brutus replied.
“Good answer.” She pointed at the as-yet untouched arm in the vice. “Need some help with that?”
“That would be most welcome, Captain.”
It was almost two o’clock in the morning ship time when Bethany had gotten them clear of the asteroid belt. In the interim, the captain had debriefed the four crewmembers who had gone into the base on AR-559. Charis had sleepily set their course for Mars at a full gravity of thrust, and then everyone had gone to bed for some much needed and well-deserved sleep. Brutus of course needed no sleep, and though he was not finished with the repairs to his arm, he had promised to maintain vigil in the cockpit for any incoming signals. Staples and the rest of the crew had faith in Dinah’s estimation of the Nightshade class vessel’s repair times, but it was always possible that another ship was out there hunting them. Gringolet was still three days from Mars, which put them far enough away that Victor could still strike at them without fear of detection.
The night passed uneventfully, however, and the next morning Staples climbed up awkwardly into the cockpit with a bulb of hot coffee in her hand. Charis was already at her station; she had evidently relieved Brutus, and Staples assumed that he had retreated to the machine room to finish his self-repairs.
“Been up long?” Staples asked, still breathing hard from the climb. The cockpit was set to its ninety-degree configuration, so even though they were thrusting she was able to walk over to her chair and sit down.
“About an hour,” Charis said over her shoulder. Staples looked at her watch. It was just after eight. She had thought that she would be the first one in the cockpit. By her calculations Charis had slept for less than five hours.
“Wow, really? Would have thought you’d want to sleep in.” The morning shift generally started at eight, but she had told the crew that any time before ten would be fine in light of their stressful experiences the day before.
“Nah, couldn’t sleep.”
Staples noticed that her navigator was not turning around to fully face her and wondered if she was hiding the bags under her eyes.
“I feel like you’ve been pulling a lot of hours lately,” she said gingerly, trying to sound nonchalant. In point of fact, she had looked at Charis’ log after she had ordered her from her station and to her bed the day before, and she knew very well that the woman had been working a great deal in the past week.
“I suppose,” Charis replied guardedly. “There’s a lot to get done.”
Staples almost decided to let it go, but she didn’t know when she’d have another opportunity to be alone with her like this. “Gwen…” she ventured, then began again. “Gwen says you haven’t been spending much time with her lately.”
Charis did not reply.
After several seconds, she pressed on. “And that when you’ve been home, it’s been a little tough?” She raised her voice at the end to make it a question, though of course it wasn’t one.
Several more seconds passed, then Charis sighed deeply and spun around in her chair. Staples saw that she did in fact have dark blotches under her bloodshot eyes, and though she looked marginally better than when she had been exiled the day before, she looked far from well or well rested.
“I’m sorry to say it, but that’s none of your business, Captain.”
Staples raised her hands palms out in a gesture of peace. “Just trying to help, Charis.”
“Probably you are, Clea, but you’re also trying to stick your nose in. Just because you teach my kid, that doesn’t make you my marriage counselor. Or Gwen’s analyst.” Her voice was becoming more shrill as she gathered steam. “I don’t know what kind of weird psychotherapeutic relationship you’ve got going on with Bethany, but you’re not a doctor, and you’re sure as hell not our doctor. So stop pretending we’re girlfriends here.”
Staples was taken aback. Wide-eyed, she attempted to apologize. “Charis, I’m sorry, I-”
“Like to think you know everything, I know,” she interrupted. “Well, you don’t. You’re not married, you don’t have kids, and you don’t have any idea what I’m going through, so just save it. Reading books does not make you an expert in people, despite what you obviously think. So just keep your nose out of my family’s business.” She turned abruptly back around, and the ensuing silence was almost intolerable.
After a nearly a minute of it, just as Staples was trying to decide if she should try to apologize again, leave the room, or attempt a subject change, Charis violently threw off her restraints. She stood and stormed out of the cockpit, brushing past Staples on the way to the ladder. Then she was gone.
The captain sat in stunned silence for another two minutes while she tried to decide exactly what she had said wrong. She heard hands on the ladder rungs and turned around in her chair, half-hoping and half-dreading that it would be Charis returning. She prepared to apologize again, but then she heard the labored breathing and knew it was her first mate.
“Hey,” he puffed once he had gained his feet. He gestured down the ladder. “What the hell was that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I just saw Charis, and she was a wreck, sputtering and crying. What did you do?” Templeton’s question carried a tone not of accusation but genuine concern.
Staples looked around as if the answer were still in the cockpit. “I don’t know, really. I think I asked the wrong question.”
“Which one? About her and Gwen or about her and John?”
“Gwen.”
“Yeah, either was bad. Not your place.” Templeton shook his head and walked over to the front of the cockpit, turned, and leaned against a console next to Bethany’s station.
“So I gathered,” Staples said despairingly. “She just looked like she
hadn’t slept, and I thought maybe if she talked about it…”
“Clea,” he said, adopting the informal tone he took when they spoke as friends rather than employer and employee. “You’re a great captain in a lot of ways, one of the best I’ve known, but you have this bad habit of thinking that you can fix everything.”
Staples recoiled a bit. “I don’t think that’s fair. I ask you for advice. I’ve got faults, and I admit it when I’m wrong.”
“Do you ever ask Charis for advice?” Staples opened her mouth to reply, but he continued before she could. “I mean about anything other than astrogation and radar returns. Do you ask her advice about your love life or if you’re making the right moral decisions?”
“Well, no.” Staples felt rather like a deer caught in headlights.
“And you probably shouldn’t. You’re her boss, Clea. You wouldn’t share your personal problems with her. You wouldn’t ask her advice, and she wouldn’t offer it.” He gesticulated as he spoke, waving his arms lightly in the air.
She screwed up her mouth as though she had tasted something sour. “So when I try to give it, I sound condescending.”
Templeton shrugged and nodded, crossing his arms. “You’ve got this whole ivory tower know-it-all thing going on, Clea, and it’s not unfounded. You really are awful bright, and you probably would make a good psychologist, but sometimes that’s the problem. You come on like you want to be friends sometimes, but really that’s not your style. You’re a bit aloof. I doubt a single person on this ship could name one person you’ve dated.” Staples thought about how she had confessed to having sex with Jabir to Evelyn, but said nothing. After all, they hadn’t actually dated, and Evelyn hadn’t been a member of her crew at the time.
As if reading her mind, Templeton continued. “You keep secrets, even from me. You’ve got your own system of priorities and morality, and you don’t share it with people. Then suddenly people get glimpses of it, and they realize they don’t understand it or you, and that scares them a bit. Now,” he raised a placating hand, “don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this ship would still exist without you. You’ve consistently made the decisions that have kept us alive. Hunting down Brad Stave? Heading back to Cronos Station? Waiting for Evelyn and the others on that rock we just left when we had an enemy ship heading our way? All the right decisions. Whatever you’re doing, it’s working. I just want you to understand that when you keep yourself apart like you do, you can’t expect other people to respond when you swoop in to dispense some sage advice.”
“Jesus, Don, don’t mince words; tell me how you really feel.” Staples said it hoping she would make herself laugh, but it didn’t work.
He shrugged again. “You asked. Kind of.”
“I guess…” she began, then paused as she processed what Templeton had just said to her. “I guess that’s all true. Or fair, anyway. But what about you and me? Why are we friends?”
He looked at her as though she were stupid. “Well, that’s obvious. I’m special.”
This time she did laugh, and the tension in her shoulders eased.
“Also,” Templeton added, “Charis is fighting with her husband and dodging her kid because she’s afraid they’ll die and she won’t survive it. Or worse, she’s afraid she’ll die and they won’t survive it. She’s not sleeping, she’s got a bad case of stress-induced nervous exhaustion, and you probably asked the wrong question at the wrong time. Could have happened to anyone.”
“Or C, all of the above,” she conceded. “So how come they talk to you?”
“I could say a magician never reveals his tricks, but really, it’s just that I’m not their boss. I’m also kind of a gossip hound.”
“That simple, huh?”
“Yes and no. You’re the captain. You’ve got to keep your distance. That’s why you hired me. Christ knows, I’m not much of an expert in spaceships, but I’m a good-sounding board.” He drew himself up. “A liaison, so to speak.”
“I guess that all makes sense,” she said with a sigh.
“Hey, it’s lonely at the top,” Templeton said with genuine sympathy. “But don’t forget, you and me, we are friends. So if you want to share some of those tough decisions with me, I’m all ears.”
“Actually, there is one I’ve been thinking about.”
Templeton crossed the cockpit to her and sat down in his chair. He turned slightly to face her. “Do tell.”
“Well, my plan was to head to Mars and track down my friend Jordan Fecks in hopes of getting more information on why the government is building OS-controlled warships. I thought we would slip in and try to contact her covertly once we arrived.”
“Mars isn’t as big as Earth, but it’s still a big planet. Fat chance of us slipping by unnoticed. You can bet Victor’s keeping an eye out for us in every major port.”
“Those were my thoughts as well,” she agreed. “The more I think about it, the more I think we should try to establish contact with her before we arrive. It’ll limit our time on the ground if we don’t have to go hunting for her.”
“And if it’s a trap like that rock?” Templeton asked.
“She and I have a call sign. If it’s not safe or if she’s being influenced, she’ll be able to warn me off in a way that won’t be obvious.”
“And what if contacting her paints a bull’s-eye on her back?” Templeton pressed.
“That’s what makes the decision difficult, but Jordan’s tough. She can take care of herself.”
“You sound a little bit like you’re trying to convince yourself, but okay. Even if you’re right, she might not appreciate having to uproot her life and start a new one just because you sent her an email.”
Staples rubbed her temple in frustration. “That’s the risk. It’s possible that I might ruin her life or even get her killed. But we’re out on the edge here. We need to take some chances. You can’t win at chess by playing defensively all the time. At some point you’ve got to risk a piece.”
“Yeah, I suppose that’s true, though I never was any good at that game.” Templeton smiled wanly. “Didn’t know you could play.”
“I’m not very good either. My ex-boyfriend Spencer taught me.”
Templeton raised his eyebrows and widened his eyes in mock astonishment. “Well look at you acting on my advice. Next you’ll be telling me you slept with the doctor.”
“I did,” she said sheepishly.
“I know,” he replied evenly. “That’s why I said it.”
“What scares me is that I still think they deserved to die,” Bethany said.
Staples regarded Bethany and weighed her statement. The two of them sat in Staples’ quarters on opposite sides of her small table. Bethany was dressed in a baggy black sweater that had perhaps once been yellow before she died it. Now it was faded in patches and fraying at the cuffs where she had picked at it. Her jeans were skinny and black as well, and she wore as much eye shadow and mascara as usual, which was a lot. The sweater was a favorite of hers during their therapy sessions; the captain suspected that her pilot drew comfort from it.
Staples was atypically out of uniform; she sported a mauve silk button down shirt and black slacks. “Do you think you shouldn’t feel that way?” Staples asked, feeling a bit rhetorical.
Bethany squinted in confusion. “Shouldn’t I?”
“I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.”
“Well, isn’t that the point of this?” Bethany still appeared perplexed.
Staples stroked her chin thoughtfully and chose her words very carefully. “No, I don’t think so. The goal of us meeting is not for me to change you or fix you. The goal… maybe we shouldn’t even call it that. ‘Goal’ implies that we’ll cross the finish line and be done some day. The point of this is for you to talk and work out some of your issues.” She paused at this point and held Bethany’s gaze until the other woman nodded.
“You’re allowed to feel what you feel. The problem is not so much that you judged Quinn and Parsells
to be deserving of death.” She paused again in hopes that Bethany would finish the statement.
Bethany dropped her head and said, “The problem is that I acted on it.”
“Yes. We all have feelings, ugly or angry feelings, inappropriate feelings. I doubt one member of this crew hasn’t wanted to kill someone at some point.”
“Maybe not Gwen,” Bethany objected.
“Maybe not Gwen, though that girl can throw some tantrums.” Bethany smiled lightly at this. “The point is; we all have these feelings. And we can talk about them, but acting is another matter.”
“Do you think they deserved to die?” Bethany’s eyes focused intensely on Staples’.
“We’re not here to talk about me.”
“You’re just dodging the question,” Bethany replied, her voice slightly raised, and Staples was reminded of the pilot’s outburst when she had first confronted her about her attempted murder of Quinn and Parsells. The girl might have had a traumatic past and a poor education, but she was far from stupid.
Staples nodded. “Okay, you’re right; that’s a dodge. I honestly don’t know. I could say yes and win your trust but also risk justifying your actions. Or I could try to take the high road and say no, but I risk alienating you and you might not believe me anyway.”
“Why don’t you just say what you feel?” Bethany asked, the look of confusion back on her face.
Staples’ recent conversation with Templeton was still fresh on her mind. “I suppose because I’m trying to be your friend, your boss, and your therapist all at the same time, which is a pretty clear violation of therapeutic guidelines, but we don’t have much of a choice out here. Also because I’m not sure I know what I feel. I think they were bad men. I think they needed to be locked up. I don’t know that I believe anyone deserves to die.”
“Not anyone?” Bethany asked, her eyes back on the table and her hair hanging in her face again. “What if they did something terrible? Like really really terrible. Would they deserve to die then?”
“I don’t know, Bethany. I don’t feel comfortable making that decision. I know some people are beyond redemption, but I don’t really believe in capital punishment. I just don’t think we have the right to decide who lives and who dies.”