"That might put this whole cargo bay offline," Rick said, grunting with frustration. "It wouldn't be the first time, though."
"What do you mean?"
"I've seen pristine ships go adrift. I've seen cranes fifty years past their prime outlast brand new ones. And through all of it, for my money, the Atlas is the best carrier in the fleet because it has one thing the others don't."
"What's that?" Wendy asked.
"Love."
Wendy laughed.
"I'm serious," Rick said. "This ship is home for this crew, and the people here would die to protect it. I think the Atlas knows that, so when those all-stars in Earth orbit forget to order a part we need and promise to get it to us the next run, things just seem to keep up anyway, to persevere like this old bitch can fight through the pain."
"You talk like it's alive."
"It is."
Rick grunted and pulled down on the cable until it would budge no more, wiggling the connector in its socket. When that didn't work, he pulled a wrench from his belt and violently banged the side of the frame. On his face, Wendy thought she saw frustration and anger, but the crane knocked and slowly rose into a roll of booms, joining the other cranes in the chorus of chaos.
"Love, eh?" Wendy said.
"Sometimes it's tough love," Rick admitted.
A pair of feet shuffled beside the crane, and Edward Stone dropped to his hands and knees and peered at Wendy and Rick.
"Hey, boss," Edward called. "The leak's plugged, but I'm not feeling so hot. I think that's why I dropped that manifold. Do you think I could bail for the day, too?"
"All right," Rick said. "But go see Dr. Lund. Let her look you over. We're going to need you if we're going to get these cranes in shape by the time we get there."
Edward shuffled away toward the end of the cargo bay. When his headset was out of range, Wendy and Rick looked at each other.
"Tom was right about one thing," Rick said. "We certainly don't need any more accidents around here."
Seven
The lift doors parted onto the command deck, and Stellan stepped forward. From the lift lobby, which housed multiple elevators to the command deck and other decks, a hallway stretched. On both sides of the hallway, department managers sat at workstations with holographic terminals, relaying information and issuing commands to their subordinates throughout the ship. For a moment, Stellan heard only the cacophonous knocks of their fingertips against the glass keyboards as they typed messages and entered commands, and he heard chirps, audial responses the workstations announced as the department managers dragged and dropped files between applications. It all amounted to a stereo orchestra of chaos, but it meant order throughout the ship.
For Stellan, reporting for duty had become more routine than eating breakfast, which he realized, since his mind had been elsewhere, he had unintentionally skipped. First in the Unity Corps and now as chief of security on the Atlas, he began his days by checking in with his superior officer.
As he walked down the hallway toward the bridge, the department managers were so absorbed in their work that he didn't know if they noticed the sounds of his boot heels when he passed. Their hands were capable, though. From the command center, this group of men and women held the Atlas together. Both literally and figuratively, the command center was the core of the ship, and upon it, everything else spun.
"Give me a status update," said Council Agent Adelynn Skinner from the bridge. She had boarded the Atlas in New Earth orbit. The irregularity of her presence had been a controversial topic of conversation among the crew. Most Council agent activity was confined to New Earth, but agents had the freedom to do essentially anything they wanted, answering only to the Council itself. They were the Council's dark hand, operating in shadows and secrecy, the necessary evils of a unified world.
Stellan knew more than most about the world beneath that world. He saw beyond the agents' masks, and that knowledge put him at great unease. Skinner wasn't to be trusted.
Ahead of Stellan, the bridge loomed, a brilliant white sphere, the command crew appearing to levitate. Around them, the Atlas' interface system's 3D application windows hovered in real space, enabling them to interact with the ship's controls.
The agent faced the helm away from Stellan, arms crossed and weight shifted onto one leg, her slender body's posture crooked and unnatural. Her champagne hair poured down her back.
Instinctively, Stellan's eyes were drawn to the belt that hung around her waist, slanting and holding onto only one hip. On the side that hung low, a handgun dangled precariously in a holster, daring someone to try to disarm her. Even for Stellan, though, it would have been a dangerous proposition.
She was allowed to carry a weapon. She also was not required to wear a link, a fact that might have been to the disadvantage of anyone else, but for her, it meant she couldn't be tracked. If she could figure out ways to open doors on the ship without a link, and Stellan was sure there were ways, she could be like a ghost, moving anywhere and doing anything she pleased. That thought disturbed him the most.
"Thrusters at seventy percent," said Arlo Stone, the Atlas' pilot. His voice hung flat in the air, monotonous, as if bored and reciting a script. "We have hull integrity, and our EM field is holding. Light drive spinning up. Like I said, the board is green."
The agent sighed. "Just tell me where we are, Mr. Stone."
"We just passed the outer reaches of our system," Navigator Cooper Evans interjected. "We'll be ready to jump whenever the Captain is ready."
"Once we engage the light drive, how long until we reach our destination?"
"I adjusted the course your 'navigational specialists' charted while we were docked at Earth. Talk about poster children for continuing education. I'm amazed they can navigate their way out of their own shoes, and someone put them in charge of charting a course for the deepest run any carrier has ever made," Arlo said, shaking his head.
"Arlo," Skinner warned.
"I'm sorry, but the most direct route was right in front of them. Sure, we have to shoot a gap between a star and a singularity, but it's not rocket science."
"Actually," Evans said, "it is."
"You know what I mean."
Skinner rubbed her forehead. "Arlo."
"We should arrive a day early."
"Ahead of schedule," she said, blinking with surprise. Her fingertips fell to her mouth and pinched her bottom lip. "Good." Something in the tone of her voice suggested she wasn't so pleased.
Skinner turned and walked out of the bridge, an application window buzzing near her head. She swatted it away.
The department managers looked disturbed by her presence, like a wave of uneasiness as she passed. Some flinched. One raised her shoulders like a breeze made her shiver. Skinner's high-heeled boots ticked the metal deck like tap shoes.
The iris in her left eye glowed with a brilliant green, as if bejeweled with an emerald. It was beautiful and captivating to the point that Stellan almost missed the deep scar that trailed from the outer corner of her other eye. It streaked back toward her ear like lightning, branching into a Y. The iris in that eye was a pale blue, almost white, and Stellan knew that meant it had been replaced.
He wondered how she could have survived a wound like that, and then he thought she smiled at him. He could have sworn there was a hint of a curl at the corner of her mouth and a slight crease in her cheek.
He nearly stopped her to ask for her weapon, but the crest of the New Earth Council emblazoned above her heart reminded him of his place. Her uniform bore no other identification, no name, service number, or rank, but the crest signified military.
She passed Stellan like he was invisible, walking straight and steady without diverting her course, while Stellan yielded his shoulder. She entered the lift, and as the doors closed, there was no mistaking her smile this time. It was more than a greeting. Stellan saw something behind it, recognition, perhaps a mischievous intent.
When the lift doors closed, he gazed at them for a moment
. He knew her from somewhere, had seen her before, though he couldn't place her. An image taunted him from the back of his mind. She was softer, with the unmistakable fear of inexperience in her eyes, darting quickly from being on high alert, but both of them green as copper fire, the kind of blaze that consumes a city, and in the smoke that blanketed the streets, someone screaming his name.
"Stellan?" Arlo said, calling down the hallway. "Atlas to Stellan."
Stellan blinked at the closed lift door and turned toward the bridge. Arlo was craning his head and looking at him with a wrinkled brow.
"You all right, Chief?"
Stellan nodded and waved a hand in dismissal. He continued past the department heads, who relaxed with the familiar sounds of his rubber boot heels and his confident stride. The atmosphere was returning to normal.
The circular mouth of the bridge door closed behind him, and he stepped onto the opaque white glass walkway. The bridge was a spherical room, the walls and platform ahead that same thick glass. Behind it all, a white light emanated, and it was hard to judge exactly how big the room was.
Stellan supposed the optical illusion was intentional because the bridge was a complete holographic environment. A small application window swooped over his shoulder, greeting him with a chirp, inviting him to make a command. He pressed upon the face of the window with his palm, and it shrank into nothingness.
The walkway culminated in a round platform, which was where Captain Pierce usually stood to command. Beside the platform, ramps led down and around to the front of the room where Arlo and Evans sat at their workstations.
Arlo removed his brimless cap, scratched his shaved head, and replaced the cap above his brow. It wasn't cold on the bridge. Arlo just always wore that hat. Stellan assumed it was a comfort thing.
Beside Arlo, the blue glow of the navigator's holographic interface reflected off Cooper Evans' smooth, boyish cheeks and danced in his eyes like wildfire.
"The Captain was looking for you," Arlo said.
"He isn't here?"
"He's already gone up to his cabin. And I'm sure you saw the spooky Agent Skinner." He snorted and wiggled his fingers in the air for melodramatic effect.
"Can't you ever take anything seriously?" Evans said. "She is kinda spooky."
Arlo picked up a cushy ball from his workstation and threw it at Evans. "Everything spooks you. You watch too many movies."
"What did the Captain want?" Stellan said.
Arlo shrugged. "I don't know. I just work here."
Evans looked to Stellan with appealing eyes. "Is there something wrong, Chief? With this run, I mean."
Arlo laughed. "Stel, tell Coop there's nothing to worry about. He won't listen to me."
As with Doug earlier, Stellan wanted to tell them that he didn't feel good about it. He wanted to share the anxiety so that maybe they could reassure each other that everything would be all right. That wasn't his place. It wasn't his duty. His duty was to ensure their safety.
"Of course nothing's wrong," he said. "She's just here because it's such a deep run, to be sure everything goes smoothly."
"Yeah, but an agent on a carrier?" Evans said. "Everyone is saying that's highly irregular."
"It isn't that irregular," Arlo said. "Is it, Chief?"
Stellan paused longer than he would have liked. "The Council does what it wants. Always has. Regularity is irrelevant. You two should learn to just accept it," Stellan said and winced at the lapse in his discretion. "But there would be no point in endangering us, Cooper. Trust me. There's nothing to worry about."
"Yeah, go change your diapers," Arlo said. "The Captain wouldn't let someone on the ship if he thought there was any danger. And if she does try to pull anything, the Chief here will drop the hammer. No doubt about it." He playfully punched Stellan's arm. It had more force than Wendy's blows earlier, but without the discontent behind it, it somehow hurt less.
"What if the Captain didn't have a say?" Evans said.
A small window expanded from Arlo's workstation, framing an unshaven face lined with time. The man's bespectacled eyes stared unflinchingly beneath eyelids that had begun to overlap. Despite his apparent age, he exuded a kind of power, which promptly stopped Arlo's assault on Stellan, and the pilot righted himself at his workstation.
"Arlo," Captain Gordon Pierce barked, "has the Chief checked in yet?"
"I'm here," Stellan said.
"Come to my cabin," Pierce said.
"Sir," Stellan said with a nod.
"Arlo, Ms. Skinner informs me we will arrive at our destination a day early?"
"Yes, sir," Arlo said uncertainly. "Evans and I found a shorter route those nincompoops at Earth missed."
"She says it could be dangerous. You think it's the best course?" Pierce asked.
Arlo scoffed. "It isn't dangerous. The radiation from the star won't be a problem, and while we may not be rated to operate near event horizons, it's just a teensy-weensy, little baby black hole. I know this ship better than anyone, and—"
"Arlo."
The pilot sighed. "Yes. It's the best course."
"Good work. Pierce out." The window shrank into Arlo's workstation, winking out of existence.
"Well, I guess he didn't mind," Arlo said.
"I can't believe you dragged me into that," Evans whined. "Now, if we die, he'll think I had something to do with it."
"If we die, we'll be dead, and no one will care."
"My mom would care," Evans pouted.
Stellan walked back down the narrow passageway that led away from the bridge, to the lifts, and off the command deck. One lift in the center reached as high as the captain's private deck, and as Stellan moved toward it, he let the bickering of the Atlas' two most influential technical operators fade behind his ears and out of his mind.
Eight
In Captain Gordon Pierce's quarters, conflict hung in the air like a fog.
Pierce sat in an old-fashioned wooden chair behind an oak desk, the scratches and gashes on the surface and along the edges showing its age. Gaps between panels and around drawers exposed the shrinkage of the wood over time. On the lip of the desktop, Pierce's thumb rubbed nervously back and forth over one particular spot, which had become a smooth indentation from years of wear.
"You shouldn't have allowed one of your men to change your ship's course without consulting you first," the Council's agent said, meandering before the Captain's desk and running her fingers over the spines of Pierce's book collection on the shelves. She narrowly avoided a pile on the floor and stepped over it respectfully, as if it were a corpse she didn't want to disturb.
"It's what Arlo does," Pierce said.
"By allowing it to continue, you become responsible for his insubordination," she said passively.
"My men need to know I have faith in their abilities to do their duties," Pierce growled. His thumb stopped rubbing, and he stood. Skinner faced him, still calm, pressing her hands together into a triangle. "They don't get that with me breathing down their necks. Command is about trust. I trust my men to use their best judgment. And it's a two-way street." His high and tight silver hair glinted like sparks.
"I used to believe something like that, but no," the woman said, her green eye a bright flash of fire. "Command is much simpler than that. It's about making your men follow orders." She sauntered around his desk and leaned on its worn edge, arching her back. Her breasts swelled beneath her tight black top.
"It's almost a fight in itself. You find their weaknesses, and then you exploit them," she said and leaned closer. "The best leaders get their men to follow orders without them knowing it," she whispered. "Some are better equipped for that than others."
Pierce grabbed her shoulders, his forearms bulging.
"I think the results speak for themselves," Pierce said through gritted teeth and pushed her away. "I gave my men a destination and ordered them to get us there, and they're getting us there a day ahead of schedule. That's called exceeding expectations, and I didn't h
ave to put a gun in their face."
The woman doubled over with laughter, and her golden hair fell across her face like a shroud.
"Are these great leadership qualities of yours why you're here commanding a carrier?" She brushed her hair straight back over her head, allowing it to fall where it may.
"What is this really about, Adelynn?" Pierce said, his voice trembling with sincerity. The color in her cheeks faded. Her smile diminished.
Pierce and Agent Skinner hung onto each other's gaze, like exhausted boxers embracing, ready to end their toil but neither willing to let the other come out on top. They knew someone always had to win, and even though it didn't matter who the victor was, through sheer stubbornness, neither would cave. Neither could give in any more than either of them could travel through time and change the past. Yet, there was a softness to their faces, a sense that they both wanted to let their differences go. The longer their eyes refused to look elsewhere, the harder they felt the pull, like gravity, toward forgiveness.
A knock on the hatch door broke that fragile moment.
"Come in," Pierce called out. They silently agreed to settle their differences later.
The metal scuffed as the door swung open, casting a slice of light on the dim room. Stellan stepped forward into the foyer of Pierce's cabin, a small living room with a couch, a meeting table, and more books.
Pierce shot one final warning look toward Adelynn and walked into his foyer to greet Stellan. Adelynn followed.
"Stellan," Pierce said, "Ms. Skinner has finally found it appropriate to share with us why she's here, where we're going, and why the Council decided to send us there."
"Why now?" Stellan asked. Skinner offered no response but an inquisitive look, with her bright green eye and her other sickly, blue eye. Stellan wondered which had the ability to peer into his soul. Pierce shook his head in frustration.
"Because we're out of comms range and can't tell anyone," Stellan said.
"Correct," Skinner said. "You're as sharp as I thought you'd be. Don't act surprised or feign insult. You both know how secrets work."
"It doesn't mean we have to like it," Pierce said.
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