The Nightshade Problem: Sol Space Volume Two

by James Wilks

  One after another the flashes came as the flak cannons detonated the warheads on the missiles incoming from the Nightshades. Staples lost count in the din of sound and chaos.

  “Bethany, two through!” Dinah shouted.

  As she had done in their first conflict with one of the Nightshade vessels, Bethany violently spun the ship on its axis to put his belly to the incoming missiles. Last time one had hit Staples had thought that her teeth would be knocked from her head. This time was worse.

  Staples’ entire world shook, and the noise of the explosions was actually so loud that she thought she had gone deaf. If she hadn’t remembered to extend the headrest supports, she thought it was entirely possible that her neck would have broken. Alarms and alerts screamed at her from every surface and speaker, not the least of which was the decompression alarm.

  In a fugue of confusion, she looked around the cockpit. Bethany was fetal in her chair again. Dinah was shaking her head to clear it. Staples looked through the window in front of her and saw a hawk shoot by, diving for the sea.

  That wasn’t right. She blinked hard and then squinted. Another hawk flew by, perhaps only a kilometer from the ship. The hawk left a glowing afterimage on her vision. Realization dawned, and she recognized them for what they must be. The tac missiles launched by the new fleet.

  “Where?” she asked, and was surprised that she did not hear her own voice. A vague memory stirred in the back of her head, something Don had said about the ship upgrades. She reached out and silenced the decompression alarms. She glanced out the window in time to see two more missiles hurtle by.

  “Where are they going?” she asked in confusion. She looked at Dinah for an answer.

  Dinah was concentrating on her controls, but the thrumming of the flak cannons had stopped for the moment. Four quick shudders vibrated the ship, and from somewhere in the deep recesses of Staples’ mind the words missile launch came, though she wasn’t entirely sure what they meant. Her head hurt very badly, and she thought that if she could just climb into bed, things would be much better.

  Instead, she pulled up a tactical radar display. She could see the missiles clearly now, the thirty that had passed them now joined by the four Dinah had just launched. There was no doubt where they were headed now: the Nightshades were under attack by a small armada of ships.

  “We’re… saved?” she asked no one in particular. Gringolet was adrift, though still travelling at great speed, and the stars moved lazily across the window in front of her. With a supreme effort of will, she bent to the surfaces in front of her again.

  “The armada from Phobos is continuing to fire… the Nightshades have launched more missiles at us. The armada has drones shooting them down. They’re…” She checked and rechecked before she said it. She waited an agonizing ten seconds for a radar return to be sure.

  “They’re breaking off. The Nightshades are retreating.” She looked up to see several of the unknown ships fly by.

  A small green light flashed in the corner of one of the surfaces in front of her. Staples tapped it without being exactly sure what it was.

  A stern male voice filled the cockpit. “This is the Martian Navy Vessel Pride of Ares. We are here to help. Do you require assistance?”

  Staples looked at Dinah in confusion. Mars had no Navy. The woman looked back at her and silently mouthed the word, “separatists.”

  “Yes,” Staples said. “Yes, we need help. This is Captain Clea Staples. We’ve been hit. We have casualties.”

  “Very well. If you can, correct your drift and reverse thrust. If we push it, we can match your speed in about a day, and then we can board with medical personnel and repair crews. Are you intact? Your belly looks ripped open from out here, Captain.”

  Staples looked at Bethany, who was uncurling and placing her hands on the controls in front of her. The journey of the stars across the window began to slow. Staples looked at the body of perhaps her best friend, the person on the ship who had known her best.

  “We are,” she replied. “We are ripped open.”

  “One of ours is aboard your vessel, a man named Marcus,” the voice said. “We received a transmission that he had… vital information for us. Could you please put him through or arrange a transfer of the information?”

  Marcus? Staples thought. Then it clicked. Marcus Junius Brutus, Brutus’ namesake. The man had sounded polite but insistent, and Staples realized that this man might be willing to send help without the information Brutus had promised him, but she doubted they would leave her ship without it.

  “A minute,” she replied, then cut coms and keyed her watch. “Brutus, we need you.”

  There was no answer.

  Twenty minutes later Staples, Evelyn, and Jang stood over the still and lifeless form of Brutus. There was no atmosphere in the hallway, so they wore EVA suits, their boots holding them to the flooring. The two bulkheads behind them had served as a crude airlock. A collapsed wall, staved in by one of the two missile hits Gringolet had sustained, had crushed Brutus’ body and head. In front of him was the scavenged communications suite that Yegor Durin had begun installing and that Evelyn had finished. Brutus’ mechanical hand rested on an access panel.

  “He saved us,” Evelyn said morosely.

  “When he mentioned ‘friends,’ I didn’t think he meant armed and radical Martian Separatists,” Staples said.

  “He called them in,” Evelyn continued. “He could have just transmitted what we got from Threndon, but instead he used it to get us help.”

  “He disobeyed my orders,” Staples shook her head. “If his friends hadn’t gotten here in time, the most important discovery of the century, maybe ever, would have died with us.”

  “There is no doubt that we would be dead had he not done so,” Jang observed, and Staples could not disagree.

  Just over a day later, Staples found herself facing a large Asian man whose voice she matched to the transmission they had received from the Pride of Ares. Shortly after the battle, Gringolet had rocketed past the red planet. As Bethany and Dinah worked to slow the vessel, the Martian ship had accelerated greatly to match their speed. The two ships had managed to dock despite both being under thrust that would eventually carry them back to Mars once they stopped moving in the opposite direction.

  The two of them were standing inside the airlock on her ship. The man called himself Bao, and he had a sharp, military-style haircut and wore a drab olive jumpsuit devoid of rank. His eyes were dark and serious, and he had a mercenary air about him.

  “Here it is,” she said, and placed a small jump drive in his palm. He closed his hand on it reflexively.

  “I just outed our entire movement, not to mention a dozen illegally modified passenger and former military vessels, to save you.” He held up the drive. “For this.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be disappointed,” Staples replied.

  “I’d like to see Marcus if I can,” Bao said.

  “He, um…” Staples paused. Her discussion with Brutus about purposeful dramatic pauses came back to her, and she smiled grimly for a second. “He died. In the attack.”

  “Shame,” Bao frowned. “I never met him in person, but I heard that he was a good man.”

  “He was,” Staples replied, nodding. “He was a good man.”

  Chapter 20

  Clea Staples stepped awkwardly through the doorway to Medical and onto the gravity plating. She looked around the room and saw that, even though it had been three days since their escape from Victor, every bed was full. Bethany lay back in the nearest one, her makeup impeccable and her dark clothes at odds with the white sheet that covered her to her knees. The strain resulting from the missile strikes had caused a small tear in her still-healing abdomen, and there was some minor internal bleeding as a result. She smiled meekly at the captain when she entered.

  Next in line was John Park. He looked healthy enough, but tired. He had a bandage wrapped around his shoulder, and he was recovering from the surgery that Ja
bir had performed to extract the bullet. Though his right arm was immobilized to speed his recovery, his left extended outward and held that of his wife.

  Charis was in far worse shape than anyone else on Gringolet or even the ship itself. Her right leg was broken in three places, all in the thigh. She had hit her head on the way down the shaft and suffered a bad concussion. Two fingers on her right hand were broken and bandaged, and John held them gently. The great tragedy, however, the one that gnawed at Staples’ gut, was that Charis had lost her left arm above the elbow. The bullet had entered her palm as she had charged, arms out at their attacker, and travelled the length of her forearm before demolishing her elbow joint. The damage was compounded by the fall; as near as they could tell, the man who had shot Templeton had landed on it. Jabir could have saved the appendage, but it would never have been functional again. Instead, he had recommended its removal and replacement with a prosthesis, and Charis had agreed.

  The last bed was occupied by Gwen the room’s only other visitor. She sat with her legs dangling off the side, and she swung them forward and back. She was beaming at her parents, who in turn seemed to have eyes only for each other. They both glanced at Staples when she entered, but quickly returned to their mooning. Staples realized that she had interrupted a moment.

  The couple’s happiness might have seemed bizarre or even inappropriate to an outsider. After all, Charis had not only been badly injured, even mutilated, but they had lost two members of their crew. She had not expected anyone to grieve deeply over Brutus; they had known him only a few weeks, but Don Templeton had been a father figure to many of the crew.

  Upon reflection, however, it made sense to her. There was a well-known and often-witnessed connection between grief and romantic sentiment. From an evolutionary standpoint, it made sense; if half the tribe dies in an earthquake, it is critical that the survivors replace their losses. More than this, it was often true that people did not appreciate what they had until they faced losing it. Staples had known a couple once who had fought frequently, and it seemed that every week they might split up. Then the woman had found a lump, and though the cancer had been a difficult and painful trial, it had done wonders for their relationship. As far as she knew, they were still together.

  John and Charis were so damned happy to be alive and together that little else seemed to matter to them.

  The doctor poked his head out of his office. “Something I can do for you, Captain?”

  Staples surveyed the room, a mixture of sadness and elation warring in her, and she sighed. “No, I don’t think so.”

  She had wanted to see how everyone was doing, but she decided to give them their moment. Maybe she’d come back later.

  “I wish we could do this on Earth,” Evelyn said.

  “Me too,” Staples replied, and though she knew that she was part of the reason that they could not return to the planet of her birth, she did not feel guilty. At least not for that.

  The captain surveyed her crew standing on the arid surface of Mars. They were all wearing EVA suits, of course, and they were all present except Charis, John, and Gwen. Neither Gwen nor Charis was capable of joining them on this occasion, though John had said he would try. When Staples had stopped by Medical to fetch him, John and Charis were asleep. John had been flat on his back, and Charis was snuggled into his side with her head resting on his shoulder. What remained of her arm, heavily bandaged, lay across his chest. Gwen had sat cross-legged on the fourth bed reading a book, and when Staples had peeked in, the girl had held her finger up to her lips to signal silence. Staples had smiled and left.

  The rest of them, however, stood in front of her, and Olympus Mons rose behind them, impossibly huge. Jang stepped forward with a small urn.

  “Don Templeton had two families,” she began. “He had a difficult relationship with his first, but he loved them dearly.” She looked across the assembled faces and made eye contact with each of them. “I know that he loved all of you just as much.” She paused a minute before continuing. “Naval tradition calls for a burial at sea, but we all know that Don got space-sick.”

  There was the laughter of fond memories from the crew. Tears sprang into her eyes, but she managed to turn her sob into a laugh as well. “He was one of the best people I’ve ever known, not in spite of the fact that he was gruff and quarrelsome, but because of it.” She smiled again, and she saw several tearful smiles returned. “He was my moral compass, a man I could always count on to tell me what was right.”

  That was all she had meant to say, but then she looked at them and said, quite honestly, “I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”

  She pulled the top off the urn and held it out. Ian approached first, reached in, and took a pinch of ashes. He released them into the gentle Martian wind. They drifted and swirled, dancing slightly before skirting off towards the horizon. Staples could see that Ian was speaking, but he had disabled his radio. Whatever he had to say was for himself and Don alone.

  Jang, Evelyn, Overton, Dinah, Bethany, Yoli, and the doctor, followed suit one by one. When they had all said their farewells, Staples said hers quietly and upended the remains of the urn. The ashes joined the others on the Martian breeze. These were only half of what had remained of Don Templeton after cremation. Staples had sent the other half, along with a letter she had written, to his ex-wife and sons on Earth via private courier. She hoped that it would help.

  When it was done, there was nothing else to say, so they began the walk back to the nearest Tranquility airlock. Staples knew that funerals were designed for the living, to bring about a sense of closure and help people move on, but she suspected that the death of Don Templeton had left a hole in their ship and their hearts that would not soon be healed.

  Several days later, Staples sat with Carl Overton, Evelyn Schilling, and Kojo Jang in a sports pub doing her best to enjoy an undercooked veggie burger and fries made from Martian-grown potatoes. Gringolet was still scheduled to spend another two weeks in dry-dock while local Martian crews worked to patch the holes in him. Ian had overseen much of the hull repair work. Dinah had been slogging away tirelessly on the engines, and Evelyn had begun overhauling the computers.

  When Evelyn first cracked the communications suite open, she had told Staples that there were unexpected modifications throughout the equipment, some of which extended into the computer core of the ship. What they were for she had no a clue. When Staples had asked if perhaps Brutus had made the alterations during the few hours he had spent trying to clear the Nightshades’ jamming signal, Evelyn had been doubtful, but had conceded that it was still too early to tell. Surprisingly, none of the modifications seemed to be interfering with ship functions, but Evelyn still thought it best to run diagnostics and puzzle everything out. Since they had the time, Staples had agreed.

  John and Charis had been busy too, but they kept to themselves, and Staples had begun to worry about what would happen if they added a newborn to the crew.

  “I guess the real question is, what do we do next?” Evelyn asked.

  “You mean ‘is it over?’” Jang countered.

  Evelyn bit into a fry and said, “That too.”

  Staples didn’t had no answer at the moment, so she watched the screen on the other side of the bar. Human beings were spread out across the solar system; they lived billions of miles from one another, but this week, there was only one story, albeit one with two parts to it.

  The first of these was the fact that there were intelligent aliens who had communicated with Earth. The reactions to this had been everything they had anticipated and many things they had not. Some decried it as a hoax, regardless of the authenticity of the information Staples and her crew had provided to the press by proxy. Some had called for the immediate surrender of the human race, others for armament, and still others for flight. Pundits talked and talked. Cults formed. And there was the rash of suicides, looting, violence, debt-settling, and general chaos that Jang had predicted, but it had not been a
s pervasive as Staples would have thought. Many people had to realign their perspectives of their place in the universe, but that didn’t change the fact that they had to go to work on Monday mornings and pay their taxes as well. Life went on.

  The other story that dominated the news was that the US government had not only kept the existence of alien life from the rest of the solar system, but that it had built an armada of warships to counter the threat. Though a few staunch allies of the country had praised their dedication to protecting the system at large and the people from themselves, most had been exceedingly critical. Some argued that the alien story was simply a smokescreen to mask the US’s creation of first-strike weapons designed to dominate the solar system. Others argued that the existence of such a hostile force would provoke the aliens to attack. Still others accused the US of opportunistically using the alien message as an excuse to create a totalitarian society. The attacks came fast and fierce, and things became tense, but underneath it all, Staples wasn’t sure that it wasn’t the same politics as usual, only louder.

  She looked away from the screen and at Jang, who sat across from her. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know the answer to either of those questions. Maybe Victor has finished with us. Maybe he thinks that we’ve done all the damage we can do, and he’s got far bigger fish to fry now. If the press connects Teletrans to these warships, then he might find that he’s in a lot of trouble.”