“Did you ask him anything else?” asked August softly.
“Just whether he would get off the ship if he had the chance.”
I frowned. “Why did you ask that?”
His answer was more cryptic still. “Because I think Captain Holloway is an even better judge of character than I am.”
He offered no more information. Instead, he asked what we’d been doing, and August told him, with interjections from me.
As we talked, he took the printout from August and read over it, nodding as we spoke. When we’d finished, he asked, “What do you plan to do now?”
“We’re going to try to help McMillan keep an eye on all of Unkrich’s old operations.”
“Why not just cancel his clearance?” the Doctor asked.
August answered this one. “McMillan wants to leave it for now. He says that if it was Lee, we’re safe for awhile, and if it’s not, we can draw whoever it is into the open.”
The Doctor nodded approvingly. “I have some work to do, but I’ll keep an eye on Lee as much as I can.”
“Why?” I asked.
Again, he didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to August and said, “You should be resting.”
He opened his mouth, but I protested before he could. “But we need his help.”
“You need him to be healthy,” the Doctor said, in the tone that told me that he would have no arguments. “He can help after he rests for a couple hours.”
August cleared his throat nervously. “Doctor Lloyd, with all respect, sir… this is very important. I think McMillan could use more help, someone with more operational experience than Andi—”
The Doctor interrupted calmly. “So do I. And I know just the person.”
Chapter XX
Guilders and I stopped at the elevator on D-Deck. I was going up and he was going down, so we couldn’t ride together.
“We told McMillan you were coming down, and he is willing to accept your help.” I pinched my lips together and avoided his eyes as I spoke. Normally there should be no reason for anyone to be unwilling to accept the first officer’s help.
But Guilders showed no sign of embarrassment. He just nodded, then said, “Be careful, Andi.”
Impulsively, I took a step closer to him, stood on tip-toe, and briefly put my arms around his neck. He didn’t move for a moment, but then he hugged me back, with arms stiff but hands resting lightly against my jacket.
I let go without saying anything, gave him a weak smile, and stepped into the elevator. I turned and watched his calm, steady face until the elevator doors obscured my view, then I said “C-Deck,” and waited as I was moved up a floor.
Once the elevator stopped and the doors opened, I slipped out into the eerily empty hall. Normally there would be crewmembers passing along it now and then, on their way to and from the mess hall or the lounge or the recreation and exercise rooms. But not today. Today a solemn tone confined the attitude of the whole crew, making me wonder if news of our mission had leaked out. If that was the case, the fact that no riots had been started or complaints filed showed the courage of the crew, and their trust in our Captain.
I hoped the trust was well-founded.
With these uncomfortable thoughts, I started my vigil.
First I stepped out of the elevator, turned left, and paced down the hall to the port peripheral access airlock, just as Guilders had instructed. There, in plain sight of the huge door, I watched for anything amiss, glancing every now and then at my wristcom.
No one else was in the long, white hall—though the light seemed dimmer than usual, giving the metal walls a yellowish tint. Or was that my imagination?
The minutes crept by on the com’s LED screen, one by one. The silence began to seep into my soul, like a sedative forcing my muscles to relax, despite my quick, nervous breathing.
Fifteen minutes passed. At the fifteenth, I turned, ran down the hall to the starboard airlock on the other side of the ship, and watched it for fifteen minutes.
On and on it went—fifteen silent minutes here, then several seconds of running down the hall with my footsteps sounding very loud against the gray metal floor, then fifteen minutes at the other side. Back and forth, back and forth. Seven times. Just over two hours. Once on my way to starboard I saw a young woman with her hair in a towel walking towards the elevator. Once as I stood and waited as a middle-aged man in a green jumpsuit shuffled past carrying a small metal crate. Other than that, I remained alone in the silence.
On the seventh time, my eyelids began to droop. I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms over my chest, trying not to let the silence lull me.
I hummed one of Almira’s cheerful tunes.
Four minutes.
The peal of an alarm broke through my humming and I jerked upright. The lights flashed back and forth between red and yellow as the alarm kept reverberating through the corridor.
I barely heard the beep of my wristcom through the noise, and it was even harder to hear the voice that followed it. I pressed the speaker to my ear.
“Andi, where are you?” Guilders’ urgent tones were almost drowned by the alarms.
“Port airlock,” I yelled.
A computerized voice started calling, “Alert, prisoner escaped. All decks alert. Prisoner escaped.”
Another call tried to beep through on my wristcom as Guilders continued.
“Stay there.”
He ended the call and I picked up the other one. “Hello?” I screamed.
The Doctor this time. Even with the com jammed up to my ear I could barely hear him. “Where are you?”
“Port airlock.”
“Okay. Don’t go anywhere; be careful, I’ll be right there.” He hung up.
Doors opened along the hall and half a dozen heads poked out. Two security officers exited their cabins, both strapping blasters onto their waists as they ran towards the elevator.
Prisoner escaped. Lee? We didn’t have any other prisoners, did we?
“Because I think that Captain Holloway is an even better judge of character than I am.”
The alerts kept screaming and the red lights flashing, and more doors whooshed open and I heard running footsteps on metal. I fixed my gaze on the airlock door.
“Just whether he would get off the ship if he had the chance.”
I kept watching the doors, breathing quickly.
“…airlock control…”
The noise started to pierce my head with pain, but I didn’t move.
“…stay there…”
I stared at the door, not daring to blink.
“…prisoner escaped…”
From the left of my vision, Lee stumbled into view, his eyes wide and his gaze distant. I almost cried out, but clapped a hand over my mouth and tried to think.
He stared at the airlock controls next to the door, but didn’t touch them.
Hands shaking, I raised my wristcom to my lips. “Captain, prisoner at port airlock now.”
“Coming,” his voice barked back, and I heard footsteps running towards me from behind.
“Lee!” called the Doctor.
Lee looked at him with the same dazed expression. “Gerard… I don’t understand…”
The Doctor stepped in front of me and yelled into his wristcom. “Port, Guilders.”
Their voices were almost drowned out by the blasting alarms. I stood, frozen, and watched.
“Gerard,” Lee called, his eyes full of fear. “I thought… Holloway said…”
The Doctor spoke in a low tone, which I couldn’t hear over the chaos.
Tramping boots sounded behind me, and I turned to see the Captain rush forward with two security officers and Captain Holloway. Guilders followed not far behind.
The Captain took in Lee’s presence at a glance, and pressed a button on the wall. “Alerts off,” he ordered.
The lights flashed back to white, and the blaring alarms and warning voice ceased with a shocking suddenness. I could still see and hear it all for
a moment after it had stopped.
“Would someone mind telling me what’s going on here?” the Captain asked, his voice terrible in the silence.
No one answered at first. Then Lee stepped towards his brother, holding out his hands. “Harrison, please… I don’t know what happened… Holloway told me that you wanted me to meet you here.”
Nothing could be more gently shocked than Napoleon’s face when this statement was made. “I?” he queried.
“Don’t play that game with me,” the Captain commanded.
“I promise, Harrison, I didn’t mean to cause trouble…”
“You want out of it, don’t you?”
The Captain’s cold, hard question echoed in the silence.
“Trent…” the Doctor tried.
“Gerry, I’m asking my brother a question!”
No one said a word. No one moved. I pressed against the wall, hunching my shoulders, wishing the Doctor would speak again. He didn’t.
Lee slowly said, “Yes. More than anything. But I wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t you? Haven’t you always shirked conflict? Haven’t you always taken the safest way out?”
“Harrison…” Guilders began, but he was silenced just as effectively.
“No.” The Captain jerked to look over his shoulder, one hand swinging to face Guilders. “This is between me and him.”
Another silence as he faced Lee again, dropping his arm to his side. I could sense that a crowd had gathered—my peripheral vision was full of green and black uniforms—but I kept my gaze fixed on the Captain.
When Lee spoke again, I could hear tears trembling in his voice. “Harrison… please believe me. I wouldn’t do anything to harm you or your ship… even if you weren’t my brother. It would go against everything I believe in…”
“If indeed you believe in anything.”
Another silence. Then, “Harrison… I swear, I haven’t done any of this…”
The Captain raised his wristcom to his mouth. “King, open the airlock.”
I pressed both hands to my mouth.
The airlock door opened centimeter by centimeter, emitting a prolonged, heavy whoosh.
“Harrison…” said both Guilders and the Doctor at once. Even Napoleon dared to utter, “I say, my dear Captain…”
The Captain ignored them, and spoke again into his wristcom. “Make sure that the first transport is moored.”
“Harrison, this is a mistake…” Lee protested as his brother approached. “I’ll go back to the brig. I will.”
“Nonsense,” said the Captain, more cold than I’d ever heard him. “If you want to go so badly, then by all means, leave.”
“Please don’t…”
The Captain stepped right up next to his brother, using his five-centimeter superior height to look down on him. “Get off my ship.”
“I don’t…”
“Get off. You’ll be able to reach the nearest station easily. Go.”
Lee looked into his brother’s eyes for just a moment, then turned to the airlock.
The silence was palpable as he began to walk towards the waiting transport.
The Doctor reached for my left hand, and I let him take it and squeeze it tightly in his. Only then did my vision blur with tears.
No one moved, and a communal sense of helplessness exuded from the group that surrounded me. The chaplain approached the transport, his shoulders bowed, his gait uneven.
Just as he reached the portal from the ship to the smaller craft, he turned back towards his brother. Even from that distance, a tear was visible on his left cheek.
“I looked forward to this meeting, you know. I see I hoped too much. I always was the idealist.”
I turned to hide my face against the Doctor’s shoulder. Sickness stirred in my stomach, weighing me down.
The Captain was wrong. He wasn’t often wrong, but he was now.
Lee turned back to the access.
“Captain,” came McMillan’s voice from the nearest intercom, cutting through the tension like an axe.
Before he could say anything more, a horrible grinding sound drowned out his words.
The floor beneath us vibrated, then a jolt threw me against the wall. Yells rose around me, and the Doctor grabbed my arm as I started to fall.
“Airlock breached,” sounded an alarm.
I heard a scream, then realized it had been mine.
“Hold on!” the Captain yelled over the commotion, and I obediently gripped the doorframe just next to me, locking my knuckles. The Doctor threw his body over mine, holding me against the wall as a straining force began to suck at us.
I looked under his arm at the airlock, and saw the terrible, beautiful open space beyond the round access hole where the transport had been a moment before. Lee had been flung face down to the floor and was clawing the smooth surface as the vacuum pulled him through the airlock. He screamed, a terrible, high-pitched scream, and clutched wildly at the edge of the access as he reached it. His body jerked out into space, held to the ship only by his right hand against the circular door.
The airlock door slammed shut, closing him off from our sight.
Chapter XXI
The force stopped abruptly. I went limp against the wall, and started to slip to the floor as my fingers loosened their iron grip, but the Doctor’s arms caught me.
“Someone do something!” cried the Captain, and I caught a glance of his face as he threw himself against the airlock door.
My body shook with sobs, but the only sound I was aware of was the terrible scream that still rang in my memory.
It was Guilders who did something. Into his wristcom, he said, “Mr. King, please report?”
The airlock technician’s voice sounded small and shaky through the com. “I’m afraid he’s gone, sir. Airlock is stabilized.”
“Very good, sir.” And Guilders ended the call and let his arm fall to his side again.
The Doctor held me close, pulling my head against his chest. My body continued to rack with quiet sobs, and tears trickled down my cheeks.
The Captain dropped to his knees, still facing the door, and didn’t move or speak.
No one else moved, either. Even Napoleon was silent, his round, yellow-white face strangely expressionless.
“Lee,” said the Captain at last, in a dazed, almost surprised voice.
“Trent,” the Doctor began, but the Captain got to his feet and whirled around.
“Don’t talk to me, Gerry. I made him go in there. I made him!”
His last exclamation echoed off the cold, metal walls. Turning around, he faced the airlock again, and stood in silence.
Silent and calm, Guilders stepped forward until he was just behind the Captain. He reached out and laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Harrison,” he said, using his friend’s first name, something he hardly ever did. “You didn’t know.”
The Captain remained silent, and I closed my eyes for a moment. Lee couldn’t be gone. He just couldn’t.
The Captain would never be the same again if he was.
After a few more minutes of motionless silence, the Captain shrugged Guilders’ hand away gently and turned around. He faced our group without words for a moment, then said, “Back to your stations.”
We scattered, and the Doctor and I retreated to sickbay, where we instinctively retreated to the far end of the empty room and sat across from each other on two cots.
Not a single beep marred the silence.
At last I asked, with a choke in my voice, “What happened?”
He reached across and took my hand before answering. “I had been keeping an eye on Lee, going back and forth between work here and the brig. I even took my reports there to work on them. But then I had to come back here for about ten minutes to check on that broken finger from earlier.”
“And when you got back…”
“Yes. That’s when I contacted you. I figured he’d head for one of the airlocks, so I wanted to make sure you were th
ere. At the same time, Guilders had seen something, I suppose it must have been an unauthorized prisoner release blip in security or something. All I know is that he called me just after I called you, and said he was going to the starboard airlock to watch.”
“So you knew this would happen.” There was an unintended bitter edge to my tone.
He rubbed his thumb across the back of my hand. “No. I thought it might. Captain Holloway…” He paused. “…or Doctor Pearson... would have known enough to understand that Lee would want to get off, if he could.”
“You don’t mean… surely they didn’t work the airlock to… to…”
Silence for a moment, then he said, “It would have to be a very strange coincidence. Remember, Unkrich had airlock clearance.”
I said nothing, and after a few seconds, he went on.
“I was on my way up to you, and saw Lee by the door. I told Guilders, and we both hurried there. But there was nothing we could do.”
I wanted him to say more, but there seemed to be nothing else to say.
“Are you going to talk to the Captain?” I almost whispered.
“Yes. I need to help him through this before we get any closer to the center. He’ll need all his energy to focus on that.”
I nodded, and felt tears rise to my eyes again. “I don’t know how he’ll do it.”
“He’ll do it, all right. That’s why he’s the captain… and we aren’t.”
I remembered that Lee had been the Doctor’s friend too, and I squeezed his hand. He squeezed back, let go, and stood up.
“I recommend checking on August and telling him what happened, then having a visit with Almira.”
He knew me well. “Okay.”
He started to turn away, hesitated, turned back, and took my hands in his. He gently pulled me to my feet, then pulled me to himself and held me close for a moment. I clung to him and let my tears fall on his uniform jacket until I could feel the moisture against my cheek.
He rubbed his hands on my back, then said softly, “I’ll see you later.” He pulled me tighter for a moment, then let go, and was gone.
Firmament: Machiavellian Page 15