by Zen DiPietro
“Good, then.” The captain nodded. He turned his attention to Fallon. “Well, then, Lieutenant Arashi, I think it’s fair to say that we are more than ready to begin security drills. Are you ready?”
All captains had their own personality and command style. Lydecker’s tended to be a bit more formal and serious than most, but as he looked at her, she saw an almost imperceptible shift in his features. His eyes softened and while his mouth didn’t turn up into a smile, the set of it relaxed.
For some reason, he liked her. Maybe it was because she’d made a couple of subtle, wry jokes when consulting with him and the security staff. Whatever it was, she hoped it proved to be something she could use to her advantage.
“Yes sir, all ready to go. I’ve drawn up a schedule and I’m just waiting for your order.”
“Proceed,” he said. “Is there any chance I won’t be forced out of bed at some point?”
His lips turned up slightly in a small smile.
“None at all, sir,” she assured him. “All crew will be thoroughly disrupted at the most inconvenient of times for fire drills, containment breach drills, evacuation drills, and all the rest. There will be no pattern to the drills, or hint that one is impending.”
“I think it’s fair to say,” Minho said, “that a great deal of chaos can be expected, particularly the first couple of times we do each type of drill.”
The captain nodded. “I suspect so. It should be a very eventful couple of weeks.”
“I’m sure of it,” Fallon said. “But once that’s done, you’ll be able to look forward to having the pleasure of kicking me off the station.”
She gave him a small, knowing smile. After the crew had gotten the emergency drills down, all that would remain for her and Minho to do would be training the crew to pilot the drones. A few already had some experience.
His expression warmed again. “It’s always good to have the end goal in sight, isn’t it?”
Fallon smiled. Although he’d said it in an understated way, that was definitely a joke. She could almost start to like the man, if she didn’t know he was a potential suspect. But then, maybe he wasn’t guilty after all and she’d have a chance to like him for real.
Only time would tell.
“Is there anything else?” The captain looked around the table at the fourteen people gathered around him.
When no one else offered any new business, the captain pushed back his chair and stood. “All right then. You’re all dismissed. Work hard today. We’ll be getting a visit from the admiralty in a month so they can tour and inspect the station. I want us to be ready in half that time.”
Fallon hid her smile at the crew’s quiet body language. They knew they had a lot of things to do, learn, and perfect in a short amount of time. Since she wasn’t part of that, outside of her own specific tasks, she had the luxury of being amused at their discomfort.
She was glad she didn’t share those problems, though. She had plenty of her own unique issues to work through.
Like figuring out whether or not their captain was a criminal.
“Do you want to do it?” Fallon asked.
Minho smiled. “And take this away from you? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“All right, then,” she said. “Here we go.”
From her quarters, she launched a program—its parameters already set—in the security office. She’d largely avoided the department because, as someone who wasn’t a part of the regular crew complement, she didn’t truly belong there while the security officers adjusted to their new posts, and also because she didn’t want to give anyone any hints that a drill might be coming.
Immediately, alarms started going off. Emergency lighting flared, and alert lights glowed red.
All over the ship, systems would be locking down, preventing access and shunting power to critical systems.
“Oh, no,” Minho said calmly. “It looks like the station’s about to blow up.”
“Yep,” she agreed. “Let’s see how that goes.”
They strolled to the doors of her quarters, but once in the corridor, they both adjusted their body language so that it was appropriate to an emergency situation.
As they went, doors swished open and crew members came hurrying out, rushing this way or that way, depending on what their assigned emergency duties and escape routes were.
“Nobody’s freaking out and screaming ‘we’re going to die!’ yet,” Minho noted pleasantly in a low tone. “So that’s good.”
“Most of them will be certain it’s just a drill,” she said. “But it would be good if they weren’t sure.”
“Working in a heightened emotional state would definitely be better practice for a real disaster,” he agreed. “But they’ll spring surprises on them down the line, after we’re gone.”
More people rushed by and Fallon felt satisfied that they seemed to be in a genuine hurry. Occasionally, she caught the sound of loud voices. Overall, she got the impression of uncertainty and urgency, which was reasonable for the situation.
She exchanged a veiled look with Minho. The evacuation of the station was proceeding as it should, although probably too slowly. That was expected, though, and the timing would improve drastically each time they ran through it.
For now, though, while everyone else was occupied and distracted, she and Minho had a different job to do. One that had a lot to do with security but nothing to do with evacuation.
By unspoken agreement, they proceeded to their first stop.
Asimov Station’s second in command kept her quarters tidy. Fallon only got a glimpse as Minho entered. She remained in the corridor with her voicecom in her hand. If anyone came that way, she’d pretend to be giving orders to someone and hurry them along.
Inside, Minho would be following up on something they’d started before the crew had even arrived. Within each local voicecom display and panel inside the senior crew members’ quarters, she and Minho had placed monitoring programs. Everything those officers did on the voicecom while inside their quarters would be recorded, as well as each time the officer left and returned to their quarters.
They’d been unwilling to risk transmission of that information, given that Lydecker had control of the station. Instead, they’d have to copy and purge the data, which was stored only locally, in person.
While everyone else was occupied with the drills, this was the perfect time.
In less than a minute, Minho returned, nodded to her, and they continued onward. If anyone happened to appear and see him entering or exiting, they would claim to be doing a sweep to make sure no souls remained on board.
This would be the longest drill they did, and the only time they did a full evacuation. Because it was critical to test all evacuation pods, everyone but Fallon and Minho would actually depart from the station. Even the captain. In future drills of this type, they would stop short of ejecting the pods and simply track the timing of all souls properly following protocol.
As they hurried on to the next officer’s quarters, Fallon wondered what the remaining skeleton crew thought of having to participate in these drills when they were scheduled to depart very soon.
Again and again, Minho slipped into abandoned quarters, retrieved data storage, and escaped. When they arrived at Captain Lydecker’s quarters, she palmed her comport and assumed the position, only to have Minho give a small shake of his head.
“Nope,” he said. “You’re going in on this one. Time to earn your stripes.”
She blinked at him. They hadn’t discussed this. His skills and experience qualified him as the one to do the data retrieval. Especially since they were about to get the information for their actual suspect.
She gathered herself and nodded. If he said she should do it, then she’d do it. She had few doubts about herself, but about him, she had none at all. If he said this was what they should do, then she would do it.
Quickly, she moved inside. The quarters were a mirror of those she’d occupied before the captain’s
arrival, and she went directly to the voicecom panel built into the wall. All other voicecom devices within the quarters had fed their data into this unit, so she only needed to extract the data from this one place.
“Captain?” she called out, wanting to ascertain that he had, in fact, left the quarters. After a moment of indecision, she checked the bedroom and the necessary.
Of course, no one was there. It would be unthinkable that the captain, or anyone else, would lounge around in the captain’s quarters while an evacuation order was in place.
She returned to the voicecom, inserted a portable device, and used her thumbprint to activate the monitoring program. It only took seconds to take the already compacted data and upload it to the device. Once the device was ejected from the panel, all the data would be wiped from this location.
It was some very slick programming. She’d never seen anything like it when Minho had shown it to her.
Just as she had when she’d first seen the programming, she wondered what Raptor would think of it. Had he seen it already? What else had he seen?
Seconds could take a very long time, under the right circumstances. She stole a look at the doors to the quarters, willing them to remain shut.
There. Transfer complete.
She ejected the device, ensuring that no trace of its use or her presence in the quarters remained, and quickly exited.
Nodding to Minho, they proceeded to their next destination: the evacuation pods.
Only they could recall the pods for this exercise.
On the way, Minho made a shipwide announcement. “This is Lieutenant Commander Minho Park. Asimov Station is under an evacuation order. If any souls remain on board, respond directly to me now, so you can receive assistance.”
They stood in a long corridor. It resembled a corridor with docking bays, but pods were much smaller and didn’t have airlocks. Two hundred doors represented the entirety of the escaped crew.
No response came over the voicecom.
Minho activated his comport again. “Activate a scan for life, excepting this location.”
Such scans weren’t foolproof, but there was no reason to think anyone had chosen to remain behind. No one wanted to be the person who turned an evacuation drill into a failure. That kind of thing could severely damage, if not ruin, a career.
Fallon looked at Minho, and he returned her gaze. They waited, letting minutes pass.
Minho’s comport made two sharp blip sounds. He glanced at it, then back at her. “Looks like we’re alone.”
It was an interesting feeling. The two of them, the only people on an entire space station.
“It’s kind of romantic, isn’t it?” Minho asked.
“Yeah, this is a unique feeling. Like being in a live ghost town. But that doesn’t make sense, does it?” It had made sense in her head, but spoken aloud, it only sounded like an oxymoron.
“No, I get what you mean.” He paused. “By the way, have I ever told you how beautiful you are?”
She rolled her eyes. “Are you ever serious?”
“In this kind of situation? Deadly serious. And yet…there’s a certain dark humor that comes with it.” The corners of his eyes crinkled.
“Yeah, I’m familiar with it.” She thought back to her missions with her team. They’d cracked plenty of odd and inappropriate jokes, too. It must be a universal thing for this kind of work.
They waited another few long moments, then Minho nodded. “All right. I think we can consider this evacuation complete.”
He activated his comport and entered a series of commands to end the evacuation simulation.
The alarm stopped and the lights returned to normal. Fallon breathed a sigh of relief. She’d tuned those things out as much as possible, but now that they were gone, their absence felt downright heavenly.
Minho took a breath. When he spoke again, his voice was deeper. More official. “Attention all hands of Asimov Station. The station has been cleared of threats. You are hereby authorized to return. This message will be certified with the pre-existing authority codes of Asimov Station.”
He entered his authorization, then returned his comport to its place on his belt. “Well, that’s that. One drill down, only about a billion to go.”
“Not quite a billion,” she said. “More like…fifty.”
The new crew would learn to jump at a moment’s notice in the next two weeks.
“Close enough,” he said. “Also, don’t forget that I made a pass at you and you rebuffed me. I’m offended. I demand you make amends.”
She laughed at him. “Fine. I’ll steal some food from the mess hall and make you dinner one night.”
“Deal,” he said. “But don’t steal it. Appropriate it through proper channels. And see if there’s anything in hydroponics you could use.”
7
After the excitement of the evacuation drill, Fallon and Minho kept the crew on their toes with a variety of other drills.
In the meantime, the pair also experienced the polar opposite of emergency excitement.
Reviewing stolen data was, as it turned out, deadly dull. She and Minho had spent days slogging through mundane voicecom activity, from every request for a map of the station to every personal communication.
They viewed, categorized, then moved on to the next thing. Thus far, nothing had seemed suspicious, but it was possible that patterns might emerge, so they wouldn’t know anything for sure until they’d gotten through all the data and looked for outliers and commonalities.
They’d gone through Captain Lydecker’s data first. When nothing seemed out of place, Fallon said, “Maybe he’s clean.”
“Maybe he’s careful,” Minho countered.
“Maybe’s he’s waiting,” she suggested.
He’d joined her in her quarters for the meal she’d promised him. She’d managed to get good ingredients to make him some gimbap and samgyeopsal. She hoped the traditional dishes from Korea made him happy. The meat was easy enough to make, but the seaweed in the gimbap proved challenging. She shredded it twice before looking for a better way to roll the sea vegetable around the rice.
“Wow,” he said after he dug into the meal. “This isn’t terrible. At all.”
She put on an offended look. “Hey, I’m perfectly capable of looking up someone else’s work and copying it. I absolutely don’t hate this.”
She used her chopsticks to pop a bite of pork into her mouth.
He grinned. “It’s good. Thanks. It doesn’t exactly remind me of my grandmother’s cooking, but it’s a solid effort at Korean cooking.”
“I was going for ‘delicious’ but I guess that faint praise will have to do.” In truth, she was pleased with the faint praise. She’d been concerned that she had massacred one of his childhood favorites or something.
“Like I said, it’s good.” He shoved a slice of gimbap into his mouth and chewed with exaggerated vigor to prove it. “Most of all because you took the time to do something very considerate that you thought might please me. And it did.”
“Did? Past tense? You’re over it?”
He laughed. “You’re relentless. Did, and still does. See?” He shoved several pieces of samgyeopsal into his mouth at once and chewed. It was far too much food for one mouthful, and he looked ridiculous.
She smiled. “You’re cute when you act stupid. But you’re welcome. I’m glad you like it.”
“What were your favorite Japanese favorites, growing up?” he asked. “Maybe something special your mom or dad made, or a grandmother or something.”
It was the closest he’d ever come to asking details about her family or specifics about her past.
“Tonkatsu. It’s pork, but not barbequed like this. It’s breaded and fried. I’m sure you’ve had it.”
He nodded and she continued, “Udon and sushi were always around for birthdays and other celebrations, or just for an everyday thing. But when I think about what made me happiest when I was a kid, I have to say it was ramen. Homemade, not fr
om a packet. My mom always teased me because I wanted an egg stirred into the sauce and a soft-boiled egg on top, too. She called me ‘Chicken’ sometimes because of it.”
She paused, thinking back to how she felt when she ate the ramen her mother made her. “Ramen, for me, was like a ritual. Putting my face in the bowl and taking a deep inhale of the aroma while feeling the steam on my skin. Carefully slurping the broth while it was still too hot, so it didn’t burn my tongue. Eating the boiled egg first, and then finally, digging into the noodles. To me, that’s the taste and the feel of my childhood home.”
She looked up and realized he’d stopped eating. He was just watching her, smiling.
“What?” she asked defensively.
“Nothing.” He shoved a piece of gimbap into his mouth.
“Well, what about you, then?” she asked. She felt a little exposed after telling him something so real about her past. “What reminds you of your childhood?”
He looked toward the ceiling of her quarters with a thoughtful expression, still chewing. “Gimbap was always around. For what you’re describing, though, I think I’d have to say tteokbokki. I could never resist it. And you’ll probably think it’s weird, but Bennite stew. My dad was really good at making it.”
He looked so nostalgic, with a sweet smile on his lips. He must have some really fond memories wrapped around those dishes.
“You’re cute when you’re sentimental,” she said.
He snapped out of his reverie and blinked at her. “What?”
She’d been waiting to say something like that to him after his joke about her being beautiful during the first evacuation drill. It was a bonus that he really did look quite endearing.
“Eat your rice,” she told him.
After a quick grin, he ate every bite.
Fallon made sure to say a personal goodbye to each of the members of the skeleton crew when they left Asimov. Other than Katheryn Lee and Priestley Simkopf, who were continuing on as part of the station’s crew, only Jess and Jacen remained. Fallon checked in on them regularly, and kept tabs on them. There was no reason she should, really, except that she felt a sense of personal duty toward them.