On her orders, the rooms were made smaller than they would be on the ship. The beds were made shorter, the food worse, the hours longer. Another two hours of hard, muscle-building workout were added to an already strenuous program. Train hard, fight easy; words to live and die by. When they finally made it up to the ship they would be relieved to find the quarters bigger and better, the food tastier, and the training regimen less strict.
Rebekka Loams, or Red Becky to most of the crew, was a firm believer in the sanctity of the human body, and she pushed the crew relentlessly in her pursuit of turning them into something resembling a coherent team. At six feet one and muscular without being heavy, with flaming red hair and a square face with a nose broken one too many times during military boxing, she struck an imposing figure. The crew had learned to both fear her temper and cherish her acknowledgments. After five of the hardest months of their lives, Red Becky had earned the respect of her crew.
She waited until most of the crew had left before approaching Captain Reinholts. “So, that’s our mysterious benefactor. About time he showed up, I need to check him out and greenlight him. Or scrub him for that matter, if he’s not up for it.” She eyed the door he had left by.
“Not a chance. Take it on good authority, that man will not be left on the ground, no matter what you find. I guess you might get him under your microscope if you pushed really hard, but I don’t see the point. If he croaks up there, good riddance, we don’t really need him anyway. If he’s up for it, good for him. He gets to wave at the cameras, probably be the first one to step off the lander, and in general be the successful businessman he pretends to be instead of the lucky bastard that he in fact is.” Reinholts pulled his eyes away from the same door Rebekka was eyeing and turned to her. “Good thing you came over though, I need to speak to you before I launch, privately.”
“I don’t care about his motives for taking the trip, and I certainly don’t care about your or anybody else’s opinion on whether or not he is due a full medical check. And I will check every single one of the crew taking the trip, whether they like it or not. Nobody goes on that boat without my say-so, and if I’m challenged on this you might as well find another doc to take an eighteen-month roundtrip in zero g. Good luck with that.” She locked eyes with Reinholts, and he quickly raised his hands in surrender.
“Sorry doc, I shouldn’t have said that. There’s just something about him that troubles me, has been since I first laid eyes on him. No matter though. I’ll stay out of his way, and I figure he’ll stay out of mine. But I still need to talk to you.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m the one who draws your blood, remember? There’s not much you can hide from me, even if you try. Half an hour in my office, and don’t be late.”
“Yes, sir!” Reinholts gave her a crisp salute, and got a half smile in return as Red Becky turned and walked out.
◆◆◆
Andrew Reinholts knew he had a problem the moment the door closed behind the last straggler and he collapsed in the chair up on the raised podium. His hands were shaking so badly that he had trouble opening his chest pocket, and a thin sheen of sweat was forming on his forehead. Finally, he managed to fish out a half-full blister pack, and after some fumbling he popped two small white pills into his mouth. He sighed and leaned back in the chair, and after a few minutes the shaking subsided enough that he could stand up and fetch a glass of water. He gulped it down and immediately downed two more before his thirst was slaked. This was bad. Really bad. If Rebekka had found traces of drugs in his system, he was out. No flight to Mars. No fresh start, no honor or glory, no paycheck, no nothing. Back to the bars, the fights and the bad company.
He punched the wall and cursed. The drugs were supposed to be impossible to detect! He had been so careful in their administration, never taking a dose within twelve hours of a scheduled examination. Years of alcohol abuse had left its mark on his body, and he had quickly discovered that going cold turkey was not an option for him. After two days of being locked in a cheap Nevada hotel room with nothing but water and a TV for company, he had finally broken down the door with his bare hands and found a drink within minutes, threatening bodily harm to the night clerk if he didn’t comply. The clerk quickly disobeyed Reinholts’s previous order to not allow any alcohol near him when faced with the enraged knife fighter with blood pouring down his hands. The following binge almost killed him, and when he awoke two days later, bleary-eyed and with the worst hangover of his life, he knew he had to either stay on planet Earth forever or find an alternative to alcohol.
The solution came in the form of little white pills. Designed to simulate the effects of alcohol without the damage or the loss of control, and supposedly impossible to detect. After he had been introduced to Rebekka and subsequently placed her in charge of the training facility, he quickly decided that he had to keep his addiction a secret. She had just sent home a very promising eco-systems engineer because a hair sample proved that he had smoked pot four months earlier. No, he had to detox by himself. Which proved harder than he had thought. He had steadily cut down on the pills, but he had now reached an equilibrium where he found that he could not cut down any more. To do so sent him into sudden fits of shaking and sweating, and he had barely escaped notice so far.
Something had to be done, and he had finally manned up and decided that he needed help, come hell or high water. He had to brave the fury of Red Becky.
He picked up his pills, stuffed them in his chest pocket and went to see his doctor.
◆◆◆
Roger leaned back against the office door and let out a long sigh of relief. He had done it again. He had fooled the doc, and hopefully for the last time. In another couple of days he would join the advance party and be on a shuttle bound for orbit, safe from prying needles and sharp questions. He ran a hand over his clean-shaven scalp and gave himself a mental high five for anticipating that the notorious Rebekka Loams would demand hair samples from all of the crew. He had started to shave his head long before he even met the woman, and when she had asked him about it, rather pointedly in his humble opinion, he claimed he had gotten in the habit to hide his bald spot.
The blood and urine samples were harder to fake, but he had managed it by carefully monitoring the schedules of the medical team and saving up urine he knew to be good in the cooler in his room. He looked forward to not walking around with a tube taped to his penis and a bag of urine strapped to his thigh on days he suspected unscheduled testing. Not to mention letting his hair grow back. Once up on the shuttle there would be no point in testing for drug abuse because, A: there would be no drugs there (or so they thought), and B: what were they going to do? Chuck people out of the airlock?
Whistling, he set off down the cramped corridor, nodding to the captain as they passed.
◆◆◆
Steeling himself, Captain Reinholts took a deep breath and knocked on the door. He heard the faint “Come,” squared his shoulders and entered, fully expecting to be packing up his meagre belongings within the hour. Rebekka sat behind her desk, eyeing him as he crossed the floor and sat down in the chair in front of her. Silence filled the room with its loud implications. They stared at each other like two gladiators facing off before battle, neither one wanting to be the first to open hostilities. But the captain was disadvantaged, he had hit a dead end. He had come as far as he could on his own, and it was time, for once, to be humble. He broke the staring contest and looked down to the floor.
“For over twenty years I have been an alcoholic. During the past twelve months I have been taking Rovan to counteract the withdrawal symptoms, cutting down steadily. I have found that I cannot cut it any further without suffering serious withdrawal from that as well, and I do not know how to proceed on my own.” He raised his head and again looked her in the eye. “I need help.”
Rebekka had not moved during his confession, and she continued to silently regard him. After a while she sighed and leaned back. “I know.”
“How did y
ou find me out? Rovan is supposed to be impossible to detect in the bloodstream after only a couple of hours, and I know you have never drawn any blood from me for at least a day after I took a dose.”
“I didn’t. I was bluffing.”
He raised an eyebrow and gave her a half smile. “Really? You never saw me sweat it out during meetings? Shaking in the corners?”
“Never. But I can spot someone struggling when I see them. Everybody handles stress and tough situations differently, but when you asked to see me privately I took a gamble that it was something physical relating to you specifically. You’ve been in enough tight spots that one more wouldn’t rattle you noticeably, and as I said, I can spot a rattler from a mile off.”
“Heh, yeah, I’m rattled all right. I could just stock up on little white pills and try my luck out in space and on the red rock. But I would be putting others at risk if I did that, and I promised a long time ago I would not do that again. So, here I am.”
Rebekka put her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “The way I see it, we have two options. One, I shitcan you right here and now, and we proceed without you. Two, we deal with this, I turn a blind eye to you lying to me, deceiving me, and breaking the trust I put in you, and we get to keep our captain. I must say that professionally I prefer option number one. You are a liability. You are an addict, and one that has proven that he cannot deal with his addiction. This expedition would, in short, be better off without you. And besides, I have had some bad experiences with liars in the past.”
Again the captain broke eye contact, this time leaning back in his chair, letting his head fall back and staring into the infinity of the pattern on the ceiling.
“However, we have no one but you. You are the best we have, the one man who knows all the systems inside and out. You are a pillar to the crew, a rock they can beat up against and know that it will not budge, will not crack. In short, we need you.” She leaned back and picked up her e-pad. “What you’re going through is easily fixed. Had you come to me early on, you would’ve been off the Rovan by now, relying mostly on placebos and the occasional therapy session. We’ll deal with this. I’ll write you a prescription for enough meds to last you five months, but I doubt you’ll need half that once we get you on the right dosage.”
She tapped out a series of commands and put down her pad. “But Reinholts, next time come to me first. I’m not some furious harpy who enjoys chucking people out for the fun of it. The people I have sent home have been the ones who I knew could not make it. You are not one of those.”
“Appreciate it, doc, and I also appreciate the vote of confidence. So, I’ll see you in orbit, yeah?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She smiled and handed him a prescription. “You’ll need an equalizer before you can cut the Rovan completely. Follow this regimen, and you’ll be okay until I see you in orbit.”
Nodding his thanks, he turned and left the room.
13. The Point of no Return
The arm, disregarding the wrist and hand, consists of three bones: the large bone in your overarm, the humerus, whose end parts make up part of the shoulder and the elbow; the radial bone, which lies on the thumb side of the underarm; and the ulnar bone, which runs parallel with the radial bone. A break in one of the bones in the underarm is painful, but if set correctly will leave no lasting damage. If you break both bones, the likelihood of needing surgery is greater, but again you ought to be able to play tennis after a few months. There are also quite a number of blood vessels and nerves you really should avoid damaging, but even if you do, modern medicine and a good surgeon will probably patch you up just fine.
My ulnar bone was snapped right off. My radial bone had splintered. The median nerve had bone fragments lodged in it, and the main artery in that area had been pierced and hastily stapled and glued back together. I had put in some serious hours of hard labor after the flare hit, ignoring the pain and popping morphine whenever things got too bad. In short, I was a mess.
Rebekka sat by my side, carefully removing the temporary cast on my wrist. Her face was drawn, and her mind seemed to be in another universe. Her hands were shaking, and the pain as she worked pulsed from my wrist up to my elbow and from there seemed to infect my entire body. I was sweating, shaking, hurting, and angry.
“Watch it! That’s not some burrito you’re unwrapping! I’d like to at least have a decent shot at using the arm after this.”
She came to with a start, sending another wave of pain down my arm. “Sorry. It’s just a bit much to take in.”
“I’d appreciate your undivided attention for the moment. And you!” I pointed my flashlight at Roger Wells and he froze like a deer in the headlights. “Go get the captain, I need an update on when we can expect the life support fully back online. The temperature is still dropping. I don’t care what he’s repairing at the moment, get someone else to do it. I need him here, I need him now, and I need him coordinating, not messing around with a flat iron.”
Rebekka ripped the last of the cast from my arm, making me grind my teeth so as not to cry out in pain, and fixed me with a glare. “Over thirty of our friends are dead, the ship is dying around us, and god knows what’s happening back on earth, but I doubt that it’s pretty. We’re dead in space, and we are all pretty much teetering on the edge of a hysterical breakdown. Captain Reinholts is doing everything he can to save us, so let’s not interfere, hmm?” She prodded my hastily stitched and glued wound, making spiders of pain crawl through my brain.
“Captain Reinholts is doing exactly what he should not be doing: getting down and dirty. There are at the very least fifty people still alive throughout the ship that can do the exact same menial jobs as the captain, but there’s only one of him, and one of me. He’s a leader, I need him to lead.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, boy, you’re not as important on this ship as you think you are. Now hold still, so you don’t rip these stitches.” She fished the X-rays taken earlier out of her bag, first holding them at arm’s length with the light from a flashlight in the background, then releasing them. It spoke volumes of her zero g prowess that the transparent foil stayed floating in the air exactly where she had let them go, only drifting slightly as the slowly circulating air disturbed the tranquility.
“We’ll see. How does it look?” I could see that the break was a bad one, but I also knew that the severed arteries and the nerve were the main issues. Since I was still alive, I figured the previous patch had been good enough. That didn’t mean that I wanted to go through the rest of my life, short as it might be, with a crooked wrist though. I was crooked enough as it was.
“Both the ulna and the radial bone are broken and displaced, the radial both nicking the main artery and piercing the skin. There are also a few loose fragments that might cause you some trouble if not corrected. Who did the original job on you, Tom?”
“Yeah, I think so. What’s the verdict?”
“It will heal, and it will work. Tom patched you up pretty good on the first run, and although I would’ve liked to put a couple of bolts and pins in there, this is what you get. Consider yourself lucky that they managed to pull you in before you bled out, I heard the suit was a real mess afterwards. The arteries are good, and the bones are mostly where they should be. Only time will tell if that nerve will work as it should, or if there will be some permanent problems with skin sensitivity or muscle function. I would’ve loved to do a nerve regen on it, but I think the equipment burned along with the backup med bay.”
“What can I say? The allure of the southern parts of the ship overcame me. The lust for greener pastures momentarily robbed me of my reason.”
“You certainly paid the price, that’s for certain. That wrist will never work properly again. Sure, the fingers will mostly do as you want them to, but you will never have full range of motion in your wrist. Your days as a knife fighter are over.”
“You’ll be surprised as to what can be done when the will is stronger than the body.”
◆◆◆
Anna leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms to prevent her fingers tapping out a waiting rhythm on the table. This was her third try to reboot the mainframe, and she was getting impatient. Johanson had been running errands throughout the ship at her direction for the past five hours, replacing circuit boards, pulling new cables, clearing debris, and in general patching up whatever he could find that was both broken and electronic in nature. And still the mainframe refused to overrun the fail-safes put in place. This was an emergency! She did not care one bit that the system reported catastrophic failures in kitchen utilities in the mess hall.
She snorted in disgust as the system again refused to initiate full startup and leaned forward. She punched in the override again and waited for confirmation. The system refused her, again. Frowning, she double-checked her system clearance and was surprised to find herself listed as deceased, along with a substantial number of the crew. Some overeager soul had already punched in some of the names of those who had died during the flare, and she had accidentally been added to the book of the dead. Annoyed, she quickly remedied the situation, then hesitated as she was about to close the personnel window. The system was giving her full access to the files of the deceased. All personal emails, all test results, all medical records. And all notations made by other system administrators, of which there were three: the Billionaire, the captain and their chief medical officer. Four system administrators in total, where there were supposed to be only three. Herself, Reinholts and Rebekka. In the windows displaying live crew members, none of the files from the Billionaire were showing.
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