by CK Burch
The comm clicked on. ″Chief? Clarke, here.″
Mac put down his multitool. ″Go ahead.″
″Doctors Tybalt and Straub are here in mechanics. Doctor Tybalt wants to borrow some equipment and I told her I'd have to get your okay on it first.″
The fuck? ″What does she want?″
″Nothing incredible. Some radiothermic scanners, an electromagnetic battery, and some twenty-five feet of wiring. Says she's conducting an experiment in the cargo bay.″
Oh, the fucking artifact. Figures. Dumb bitch wakes up from near-death and the first thing she does is get up to go work on her fucking experiments on her new prize. Captain probably should be notified, but he had plenty on his plate as it was. Besides, this was engineering equipment. If she took it, she had to bring it back. He sighed and asked, ″Are we using any of those items right now? Because I don't want her walking off with anything we're going to need.″
″I can't imagine why we'd need any of that, Chief.″
Neither could Mac. He was hoping Clarke would give him a different answer. But, if there was no reason to say no other than just being an asshole... ″Give her what she needs, Clarke. But tell her that if we need any of that back, we're taking it back and she doesn't get to say boo fucking hoo about it.″
″Right on, Chief. Clarke, out.″
Mac turned back to the relay router. The duct couched him in silence, save for the humming of the ship's engines in static orbit, quietly vibrating the bulkheads with a steady tremble.
Mac smiled. ″Now, where were we?″ He began to hum with the ship. Positive thinking, Mac, positive thinking. He was thinking of this time in repair like marriage counseling. It hadn't worked for him before, but women don't come with schematics.
***
Captain Udeh, now back in the mess hall, was thinking.
Thank god it had been Markov that had told him. Thank god the nurse had been there checking on him when he'd woken up. If he'd found out about the Prometheus on his own, in that state...
But then again, what was there to find out? Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. It was a fucking travesty, a mystery, and something that the Icarus crew had no place worrying about. They had enough problems of their own, problems in multitude, problems which he could help them out with once the effects of the medication wore off, but until then he would think on his ship, and even after he would think on his ship. The ship he'd abandoned. Commander Blake was a good man, had served in the USDSE for a long time and knew protocols, and wouldn't abandon a sister ship unless the situation demanded it. Which made him wonder: had the situation demanded it? Had the Prometheus called the Icarus a loss, falling into the Sun with no way of communicating otherwise? That was the only thing that Udeh could think of, but standard operating procedure demanding that the ship on site remained on site watching over the damaged and/or disabled starship until a recall vessel and a salvage team could arrive to tow the ship away. Which meant that Blake had assumed that Icarus was a total loss, irretrievable. That was the only logical conclusion. Especially considering that the solar diver was well beyond safe diving levels.
But there was no engine wash. No evidence to point that the Prometheus had flown anywhere, let alone into subspace.
In front of him, the plate of food slowly grew cold. Behind him, he could feel the unease of the cook, who'd been called special to start preparing food for the captain, and now was going through the motions of prepping food for the rest of the crew. Captain Markov had ordered that everyone get some food and take rest shifts during the repair process. After the fasting and adrenaline fueled dive prep, the crew was close to crashing out of hunger and fatigue. The cook, meanwhile, was watching Captain Udeh sit and not eat. Udeh could feel the stare. He also felt no desire to eat. He was nauseous. He was aware of the open space in the mess hall, wide and unrestrictive. He was dreading the narrow corridors, which still pulsed in his vision as though the bulkheads were breathing, closing in slightly and then expanding. Udeh knew he was in trouble if he couldn't get this under control, and the nausea and the terror were eating at his belly, and he had no desire to eat. He could only sit and think and pray that when he closed his eyes he would feel some sort of comfort. He did not.
If the Prometheus Captain's Boat had no communications, as Markov said Mac had investigated, then there was something more insidious going on than just Icarus's systems failing one by one. The boat had just been given an overhaul not a week before the sister ships launched on this goddamn mission, and it had received a clean bill of health from USDSE specialists. Annual lookover on the entire ship, Icarus too. Udeh started whirling into tangents: if the Icarus and the Prometheus both had gotten standard checkups and systems analyzed by the same USDSE specialists, was it possible that both ships had been sabotaged in some way? Could the USDSE have known that the artifact had been out here? No, that didn't make sense; if they'd known about it, there's no way that they would sabotage either ship. USDSE would want their hands on this thing. Unless they didn't know, and had sabotaged both ships, in order to...what? In order to what, Okwu? He held his forehead in his hands and exhaled, wishing to god that keeping his eyes shut would alleviate something, anything at all, but no, his churning, clenching fist-tight stomach refused to go away, his head still felt like his left eye had been used as a punching bag, swollen and tender.
His ship. His fucking ship was missing.
Okwudili Udeh had never been one to rest on his laurels, and he wasn't about to start now. He'd worked long and hard to become the captain of the Prometheus, and he would find a way to find it. First he had to eat. He had to, or all of this around him would get worse.
He chewed slowly, waited for it to drop into his belly. Don't eat too fast, just take your time. It hurt and his body protested, but soon his stomach settled and he took another forkful.
After a while he began to feel more like himself. He even ordered another plate. Full and satisfied, he was about to leave when as the doors to the corridor opened, he heard in his mind a breathing sound, soft and whispery in his ear, deep and vibrating in his chest, and once the corridor was revealed he saw the walls pulsing in and out with each breath, constricting, expanding, tightening, releasing.
God fucking dammit, he thought. Udeh closed his eyes. No. He opened them.
The hallway looked normal.
He was not going to give in. Not again. He'd already lost it once, and lost his ship. He couldn't give in again if he was going to find it.
One step into the hallway. Another. He breathed. Smiled. Then he began his way towards the lift, to the science deck.
***
In the cargo bay, Doctor Catherine Tybalt was busy with the systems control of the jury-rig she and Straub had put together. Two radiothermic scanners, aimed both towards the artifact on opposing sides; an electromagnetic battery utilized as a generator; wiring, connected to the battery and running towards the artifact, where she and Straub had connected the wires to the surface of the object; a helioscopic interface, normally used for measuring electromagnetic and hydrogen content; and a series of hydrogen extractors, already containing hydrogen and set to release in small, non-dangerous amounts.
Her idea was this: to use the electromagnetic battery to create a contained hydrogen reaction along the surface of the artifact, and the radiothermic scanners to measure and control the levels of both. She needed to understand what happened to the material of the artifact when it dropped to certain levels of the chromosphere. If all of her previous scans had been correct, the internal temperature of the object, being hollow, would spike to the same as the exterior of the Sun, yet the surface material of the object would remain cool and consistent with the environment of space. So if the surface was absorbing the heat and radiation, passing it through to the interior of the object, then what would that mean if it dived lower and lower? And could the material be adapted to divert the energy absorbed into energy converted for, say, a ship to run on?
They were in the middle
of the cargo bay where the artifact had landed once the gravity had been turned back on, though ″landed″ was a mild form of ″dropped.″ It had chipped slightly on impact, sending splinter shrapnel all over the floor, small enough to worry over if they were barefoot but not large enough to have to climb. The first job had been to sweep and collect the shards for experimentation later, then equipment setup. Straub had worked hard and quickly, double-checking his work, clearly shaken from earlier. Whether it was from Kerrick or Tybalt's accusation, it didn't matter. He was working hard, fast, and accurate. Tybalt felt sorry for what she'd said, but she hadn't known about Kerrick's condition. She clicked her tongue at that thought. Fuck. The girl had always been a little inconsistent. Tybalt had assumed that, like most brilliant minds, the inconsistency was just a by-product. Apparently not. Tybalt hadn't known much about Straub and Kerrick's relationship aside from that it had existed, and hadn't made it her business to know, but now she wondered if she should have. They were under her watch essentially. She shook her head. That wasn't the point any longer. What was the point was that they had a continued job to do, one which had switched over from their original purpose on the Icarus to this. And considering the state of the ″new and improved″ heatshields, cracking the mystery of the artifact's composition seemed more important than before.
Straub stepped back and held his hands up. ″Done. We have full connectivity between the electromagnet and the hydrogen. Give it a test burst.″
″Okay,″ Tybalt said. She waited as Straub took a few large steps backward, then said, ″Contact.″ She pressed the button for a small, two-second burst, and the artifact came alive as a flare of hydrogen flame flooded over it, liquid in form, snaking about in ripples. It was nowhere near the intensity or heat of the chromosphere but it was hot enough that she could feel the heat coming through the protective shielding. They had erected an electromagnetic shield around the artifact for containment; Tybalt checked the readings and saw it was holding. The burst ended and the scientists looked at each other and smiled.
″Alright,″ Straub said. He was finally looking better.
″Let's see what we can get out of this,″ Tybalt replied. She began fiddling with various settings until she found the proper frequency she was looking to imitate the initial layer of the chromosphere. She took a deep breath; this was a scientific find, perhaps of the century, maybe even out of all known scientific research. An alien artifact capable of absorbing solar radiation and possibly transmuting it. Her fingers shook a little with excitement and possibility. She could see the Dyson bubble in her mind already, formed and waiting for population.
She looked over at Straub and giggled.
So did he. ″It's a little intimidating, isn't it?″
She nodded. Exhaled again. Then she looked at him again with more composure. She felt serious. ″I'm sorry,″ she said.
He looked confused.
″About Kerrick. And for earlier. The accusation.″ She looked away, sheepishly. ″For all I know at this point, Kerrick could have switched everything around. It was clear that she was unhinged. Just how much so – ″
″I don't know,″ Straub said. He looked as though he was contemplating the situation, that or feeling upset over Kerrick. ″I could have sworn that she left with us after the setup. She couldn't have switched anything. I know I didn't and that you hadn't either. We were all together. So either we screwed something up together, or someone else reset them.″
″What do you mean?″
″If not us, then who?″ Straub said. ″That's what I keep thinking about. That's what I have to keep shoving away because there's no way to answer that. If not one of us, then who on the ship would do that?″ He looked over at Tybalt and shrugged. ″I don't know. I just – I don't know. But thank you, Doctor. I appreciate it.″
Tybalt nodded. The seed of curiosity was planted, however: who would have switched around the radiation scrubber settings? And why? That wouldn't make any sense, but given Kerrick's reaction to the stress of the dive, who knows who else could have gone off the deep end? Good god, maybe Laguardia was right to walk around with that goddamn pistol on her hip like she was some fetishistic supermodel. Oh, the fucking state of this ship and the way it was all unraveling and turning into a circus sideshow of tangential thoughts and comical imagery. She just wanted to go home and get off this fucking coffin.
″Well,″ Tybalt said, ″I guess we should get on with it.″
Straub nodded, looked over his readouts on the radiothermic scanner, and said, ″Ready.″
Tybalt reached forward. ″Simulating the first layer of the chromosphere. Contact.″
And then something strange happened.
***
In the sick bay, strapped down to the medbed, Sydney Kerrick suddenly opened her eyes and said, ″Home.″
Doctor Anthony Gaines turned around and removed his glasses. ″Excuse me?″
She said nothing else, merely laying, unblinking, looking up at the ceiling.
***
Markov stood outside Doctor Fleur's office, resting his arm against the bulkhead and his forehead on his arm. What was he doing? Why on Earth was he here instead of somewhere, anywhere else? Because he had the time. Because the ship was slowly stitching itself back together and he wasn't required anywhere else at the moment. And also because he wanted to be near this woman. Badly. Badly enough that he realized it was bad. Markov took a deep breath, exhaled, and was about to turn to leave, no, turn to press the bell, no, leave, no, goddammit. The bell. He was going to chime and see if Fleur was in, and if not then he'd leave.
The door opened unexpectedly and a surprised Fleur almost ran into him.
″Oh,″ Markov said.
″My,″ Fleur said.
They both chuckled and Markov felt himself grow red in the face. ″Are you leaving?″
″Actually, I was just coming to look for you,″ she said.
″Oh.″ Come on, think of something better to say. ″Well, I was just about to ring you, so...″
″Come inside,″ Fleur said, and she turned back into her office and he watched her go, trying to think professional thoughts and failing. Gladly.
″How are you holding up?″ he asked. ″It was a rough dive. There's a number of the crew who I've had to order into mandatory rest and eating cycles.″
Fleur nodded. "You're following my example."
He smiled. ″Well, the proof is in the pudding. Here I am, none the worse for wear, but thankfully that's after following your advice.″
″Orders.″
He raised an eyebrow.
″Doctor's orders,″ she continued, smiling. ″Doctor's orders supersede the captain's. And I am your doctor.″
″Of course,″ he said. ″My doctor.″
Her smile grew a little wider, a little triumphant and mischievous, and she leaned backward against her desk. Markov kept himself from a sharp intake of air. God, but she was sexy. How old was she again? Forty-five? Forty-seven? It didn't matter; he was twenty years older than her regardless, and the fact that she was even looking at him like that was enough to move his blood through his body with the speed of a much younger man. Thoughts began speeding through his mind. He remembered how she'd licked her lips earlier, talked about what he needed permission to have, thought about that look on her face now, how she leaned back and said with her body what she hadn't yet said aloud. He noticed her hair: it had been pinned back earlier, now it was down. Red curls flocked over her shoulders in waves, contrasting her pale, freckled skin. She was a beautiful woman, and he wanted her badly, but this was the wrong place. Wasn't it? The wrong time? Something like that. It had to be.
″You're thinking too hard,″ Fleur said. ″You make a face when you do that.″
He wanted to chuckle or smile, but he was in awe of her. ″You look beautiful,″ he said.
Now it was her turn to flush, and he didn't feel sorry for it.
″Rene,″ he said, honey over his tastebuds. It was a whisper of her na
me, that was all, but enough to quicken his pulse even more. ″I don't mean to speak out of turn, but. I just. I've been thinking about you.″
″Have you?″ She was looking away, refused to look at him. He saw the smile on her face just below the curls that hid most of her expression.
″For a long time.″ He stepped forward, carefully, not wanting to break the tension or the spell. ″Listen, I won't be captain for long. We both know this. And...if it were possible, I'd want to see you. Afterward. You said you had some shore leave coming.″
″Yes,″ she said. Now she looked at him.
He stepped closer to her, quicker than he meant. They were inches apart, chest to chest, and his penis was moving in ways he hadn't thought he'd ever feel again. He felt like a teenage boy discovering a girl's body for the first time, his erection a life of its own, a hurried force telling his body Quick, quick, give me a woman, give her to me, take her sweetness. He tried to shake it off; he couldn't.
Their eyes were locked, and his hand came up to her chin.
″Rene.″ He said nothing more.
She leaned forward and their lips met, tenderly, easily, with no pressure or force, just the contact and the trembling. He wanted her, not just her sex, but her. His hand moved from her chin to the back of her neck, cupping gently, his other hand moving to her waist, around to the small of her back, and he pulled her close to him, aware that his cock was pressed against her, stiff and hard and aching, but he ignored that sensation as best as he could. He kissed her with passion and she returned it, her arms coming around to his back and holding him there. His tongue made its way inside her mouth and she sighed.
They separated briefly. He rested his forehead against hers. ″I've been wanting to do that for so long now,″ he said.