Echoes of Starlight

by Eric Michael Craig

When Captain Walker calmed down enough to decide it was time to eat, the only ones left on the mid-deck were his two passengers and Angelique Wolfe who sat at a discreet distance but maintained a watchful eye. Marti had told him that he’d find Kaycee and Elias waiting for him, so he snatched a bottle of his special reserve rum and three glasses from his liquor cabinet and headed down to tell them the situation.

  He didn’t like the situation, and he knew they’d like it less. His only hope was the alcohol would help what he had to tell them go down easier.

  “How’s Preston?” he asked, walking up and startling them both. He set the glasses on the table and poured them full before he sat down.

  “He’ll be fine,” Kaycee said, picking her glass up and waiting until they’d all raised their glasses before she slammed it back like a veteran. “Once somebody gets overheated like that, it tends to make them more susceptible to future occurrences, but he’s young so he’ll bounce back.”

  “That’s good news,” Walker said, pouring another round and setting the bottle down on the opposite side of the table.

  “I’d recommend getting good environmentally appropriate gear before the next time he goes down,” she said.

  “Unfortunately, there isn’t going to be a next time,” he said, throwing the boulder on the table right up front.

  “Excuse me?” Elias asked, downing his second shot and setting his glass back on the table. “You mean no next time for him, yes?”

  He shook his head. “Not for any of us. At least not until we hear back from FleetCom.”

  “I expected you’d have to bring FleetCom into this,” Kaycee said. Ethan caught the significant and obviously instructional glare she shot at Pruitt. “How long will it take to get permission to investigate?”

  “I reported the situation to authorities at Cygnus Deep-Three and asked them what they want us to do. It’s almost a fourteen hour transmission lag each way so the earliest we will hear back is sometime tomorrow secondshift,” he said. “Until we receive an answer, we need to sit tight.”

  “A lot could happen in twenty-eight hours,” Pruitt said.

  “A lot has already happened down there,” Walker said. “Whatever happened there, it probably happened weeks ago. Another half day won’t make much difference. I know that’s not what you want to hear but until FleetCom weighs in—”

  “My family is down there,” Elias said, his eyes flashing. “I need to get to them and this isn’t something I care to debate with you, Captain.”

  “I understand that,” he said. “Well honestly, maybe I don’t, since I don’t have a family other than my crew. But I do know how hard it must be.”

  “I don’t think you do Ethan,” Kaycee said, sounding like she was struggling to hold her own anger below the surface. “There are a hundred thousand colonists in Starlight. All of my brothers and sisters live there. My mother. My husband and my wife too.” Clouds drifted across her face and she looked down at the table.

  “I know,” he said, looking down too. “I can’t do anything about it right now. I’m trying, but I just can’t.”

  “Why not?” Elias growled. “This is your ship.”

  “Only on paper,” the captain said. “I got my butt rather unceremoniously handed to me by my Triple-C. She made sure I understand I’m on dangerous ground.”

  “We have to do something. People could be dying while we sit up here and do nothing,” Pruitt said. He grabbed the bottle, poured another dose of rum into his glass, and slammed the bottle down on the table with a solid thump.

  “I don’t think so,” Walker said, shaking his head.

  “What makes you say that?” he hissed as he bottomed his third drink in as many minutes.

  Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to bring booze, he thought as he noticed Angel get up and move to a better position to keep an eye on them. As usual, the handler was in front of the potential problem.

  Ethan let out a long slow sigh. “Not to put too a fine a point on it, but it’s an oven down there. If there were massive collections of corpses, I’d have known it. By now they’d be stinking.”

  Pruitt slowly swung his eyes in the captain’s direction and his face ran through a dozen expressions before it dissolved into a wall of pain.

  “You can sit there and tell me you aren’t going to find out what’s going on?” Kaycee asked, acid edging into her tone.

  “I can do exactly that,” he said. “I have to tread very lightly or—”

  “Very lightly be damned, Ethan,” she snapped. “You cannot let her push you into ignoring your responsibilities.”

  “My responsibility is to this ship, and the passengers and cargo it carries,” he said. “Solving this mystery is not on the list of things I can bite into.”

  “My entire life is down there. If you won’t investigate, then let me.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “You have to,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Seriously, Kaycee. From a legal standpoint you two are cargo. You contracted with Cochrane Space Logistics to carry you here. Until there’s a safe place to deliver you and Elias, I cannot sign you over. The company has the responsibility to protect you.”

  “That’s pure crap,” Elias snarled.

  “Actually, it’s not,” he said. “I can’t do anything about it.”

  “It’s not that you can’t. You won’t,” Kaycee said.

  “Leigh is the Cargo Compliance Controller. Do you know what that means?” he asked.

  “Yah, she makes sure the cargo gets to where it is going,” she said.

  “It’s more than that. She’s responsible for the cargo,” he said. “She’s the legal agent for CSL. She works for them and represents their authority out here where laws might otherwise be thinly interpreted.”

  “So what?” Elias said.

  “As a Triple-C, she has the final say in everything except ship operations,” Walker said. “If she thinks I’m risking a payload, she has the right and power to jerk my Shipmaster license and void my lease on the Olympus Dawn. She can order my first officer to pilot the vessel back to Zone One. In that situation, if any of my crew refuses her orders, she can go as far as locking me down and calling in a replacement captain to get the ship home.”

  “So she’s got your bag in a vice,” Kaycee said. “But I have the right to tell her to stuff it.”

  “Sure. You can request arbitration, but she has the authority to have you arrested for your own protection. Especially if she thinks you’ve become a risk to the cargo,” he said.

  “What?” Pruitt almost roared.

  The captain nodded. “Protecting the cargo is her singular responsibility. That means she’s obligated to protect you too. If your behavior endangers yourself, or the other cargo, she can have you confined until we make a port where arbitration services are available.” He held up his hand to stop another explosion. “Go ahead and look it up. It is in the contract you signed before you came aboard.”

  “You’re telling me that in her mind, going down to Starlight is a risk to me, and therefore the cargo,” Kaycee said.

  “Yes, exactly,” he said. “Right now, she’s probably in her office writing up a formal reprimand against me because she thinks I’ve already risked your safety. She told me she will be transmitting a report to CSL headquarters outlining how she feels I’ve already jeopardized you both.”

  “Howso?” she asked.

  “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that there’s a virus loose on Starlight and that it’s killed everything,” he said. “If that’s true, then I’ve taken a huge chance by going to the surface.”

  “But you did a medscan on the excursion party before you came back,” she said, pausing in mid-thought and shaking her head as concern flashed over her face. “You did do that, didn’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” he confirmed. “I’m really not a dumb as I look.”

  “It’s possible that a new infectious organism might have popped up that the bio-scan equipment w
ouldn’t detect. If it is a virus that means it got past the assessment survey of the planet.” Elias said, picking up the bottle to pour himself another drink. Kaycee shot him a look that caused him to put it back on the table sheepishly.

  “What Leigh said is true. If that happened, and we brought it back, then I’d be responsible.”

  “The odds of that are small,” she said.

  “I know that,” Ethan said. “However I have to admit that the chance of something like that is not zero. We have the best bio scanning gear we can get on a shuttle, but it’s limited. There’s only so much we can scan for.”

  “Your MedBay has high-end automation, but is nowhere near well enough set up to catch everything,” Elias said.

  “Because we can’t guarantee the environment on the surface is safe with the tools we’ve got, any more trips down there are a hard no-go.”

  “Theoretically speaking, if there wasn’t a risk of exposure, would she authorize another excursion party?” Kaycee asked.

  “Probably not,” he said, shrugging. “That might take one of her arguments out from under her, but she’s a certified legal advisor. Debating is her profession, and she’d just come up with a new position to counter attack. Arguing with her is like hugging a cactus.”

  “Ouch,” Pruitt said, grinning in spite of his frustration.

  “It doesn’t matter, because we can’t do the science to make sure it’s safe with what we have onboard,” the captain said.

  Kaycee leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. She glanced at Elias and he nodded slightly. “I could guarantee the environment from a biological perspective. We’ve got better gear in the payload.”

  “I figured you knew what we were carrying, even if you aren’t listed as a load steward on the manifest. You know you’re obligated to disclose that in the paperwork?” Ethan said, frowning. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s sealed until it’s delivered and she’d have to vacate the contract in order to let us crack the seals.”

  “You don’t think she’d allow that, even in an emergency?” he asked.

  He shook his head. “In her world there are no emergencies, only bad planning. Her position would be that there’s no proof of a problem, and without that, the load is sacrosanct.”

  “While people might be dying?” Elias said. His voice carried more anguish than anger this time as he gave voice to his fear again. He was clearly shredding inside.

  “From her chair there’s no evidence to suggest that as a real possibility,” Ethan said. “Let’s hope she’s right.”

  Kaycee nodded, “And we can’t get evidence without going down there.”

  “Exactly,” the captain said. “And she won’t let us open the load to prove it is safe to go down there so we can’t get the evidence. Law lives off of the art of circular logic.”

  “Nojo?” Elias asked. “She could be that callous to the potential reality?”

  Ethan leaned back and sighed. “It’s not callousness. She works by rules. Order comes from enforcing law, and she believes that the structure that comes from that is the ultimate foundation of civilization and likely the entire universe.”

  “And you can work with this woman?” Kaycee asked, shaking her head in clear disbelief.

  “Normally, she is just an over-qualified shipping clerk,” he said. “In the three plus years I’ve had her as my watchdog, this is the first time we’ve gridlocked.”

  “So to get her to change heading on this, we’ve got to tackle her arguments one by one,” she said.

  “You can try, but I don’t think you’re going to accomplish much,” Walker said. “If you push hard enough, you might get her to agree to arbitration. But that means you don’t have your say until we get to a facility where those legal services are available. Until then, as far as she’s concerned, she is the incontrovertible representative and interpreter of law.”

  “My family is down there,” Elias repeated as his face let loose and showed the torment he felt.

  “Mine too,” Kaycee said, swallowing hard and looking away. “Ethan, if you were in our place, what would you do?”

  “Don’t put me in that position,” he said, standing up and slamming the last half of his second drink. “My whole life is this ship and everyone that’s on it is my family. You are asking me to throw my family away for the sake of finding out about yours. If I knew for sure that there was a real possibility that it would make a difference I’d probably risk it, but…” he shook his head, leaving the rest of the thought unsaid.

  He stepped back a half pace and closed his eyes for a second. “I’m sorry, but I’ve already gotten myself in way deep over this. I know how frustrating it is for you, but she’s got my hands tied. Leigh made sure I understood precisely how precarious my position is.”

  Chapter Seven:

  “Boss you need to report to MedBay now.”

  Ethan woke from a restless night of kicking and thrashing his way through near nightmares. He wasn’t sure he’d actually heard Rene’s voice, or if it had been in a dream.

  He rolled over and glanced at the chrono on his bedside shelf. Its faint illumination told him it was 0400.

  “What’s up?” he asked, tentatively. If the voice had been real, he’d get a reply, and if not, then maybe he could go back to sleep.

  “You need to get down here now,” he said, this time the urgency was clear in Rene’s voice.

  “Is it Preston?” he asked, fear grabbing at his heart with a steel claw. Kaycee had told him he was recovering. Maybe he’d relapsed somehow?

  “For the third time boss. You need to get down here quick. Before any of the rest of the crew gets here.”

  “Is Preston alright?” he snarled. “Just tell me that.”

  “Yah, he’s fine, but we’ve got a big problem and you need to get on top of this now,” Rene said.

  “Fine I’m on my way,” he said, pushing the coverlet off and tapping the screen on his console to bring up the lights.

  It took less than three minutes to get dressed and down to the mid-deck, but when he skidded to a stop at the MedBay door, he wasn’t sure he was awake enough to understand what he was looking at. It looked like a pasta processor had come apart all over everything with chunks of unrecognizable hardware strung together with ropes of opti-cables and power lines. It was a hideous mess and for all that he tried to absorb the reality of what he was seeing, he had no clue what was going on.

  “What the hell is all this?” he asked. His guts told him that he didn’t want to know.

  “My gear,” Kaycee said, stepping out from behind a console. She wore a lab smock and had an optical visor over her face and had an augment arm strapped over her shoulder.

  “Your gear?” he asked. “From the cargo module?”

  “Yah. It’s a small part of it,” she said, flipping the faceplate up and smiling at him like she was oblivious of the consequences of what she’d done.

  “You got Leigh to unlock the seal for you?”

  “Uhm … Not exactly.” Her smile wrinkled on the side and he would have laughed except he knew were this was going. His guts were right.

  “Then how’d you get it?” he drew in a breath and held it while he waited for the answer he knew was coming.

  Elias stood up from behind another piece of equipment and waved sheepishly.

  “What the holy frak?” he bellowed. “You can’t just unseal the cargo without getting her to write it off! Oh shit, no!”

  “We need to do a deeper scan on the three of you to prove it’s not dangerous down there,” Kaycee said. “After our discussion last night, I realized I had to address her concerns over the risk. I had to have access to my equipment to do that.”

  Ethan dropped back against the wall and thumped his head against it repeatedly.

  “You have … you can’t …” he sputtered.

  “Just breathe,” she said. Her eyes showed her confusion. “I’ll take responsibility for it.”

  “You cannot do that,” he said.
“As captain I have the sole responsibility for everything that happens aboard the ship. You cannot take that off of me.”

  “I’ll talk to her,” she said. “She’ll understand we needed to do this to prove you didn’t put us in danger.”

  “This could end my command.”

  “Oh you’re being melodramatic,” she said.

  “The frag I am,” he growled, anger overtaking his other emotions in a wave. “You have no clue how serious this is. Cargo tampering is a criminal offense.”

  “But it’s my cargo—”

  “It belongs to Smythe Biomedical, but it doesn’t matter.” He launched away from the wall with both elbows. He needed to figure out his options and somehow explain the reality to her. “I have custodial responsibility for everything in that payload container until we unload it at port. If it doesn’t arrive at its destination in an uncompromised state … meaning exactly the same condition that it left the shipper, they can prosecute me under the internal piracy laws.”

  “That sounds draconian,” Elias said.

  “I am sure it won’t come to that,” she added, nodding.

  “It seriously might,” Rene said, jumping to the captain’s defense. “It used to be fairly common for ships to arrive at their destinations a little light in the load. A lot of crews were making more cred by skimming off cargo and then selling what they’d boosted on the underground market. It got bad enough that the government imposed laws to protect shippers from bad crews and to cut back on illegal markets. They don’t frak around with it.”

  “Well I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do about it now,” Kaycee said. “I have no intention of putting it back. If we’re going to do anything about what’s going on down on Starlight, we need to rule out any pathogens first.”

  He shook his head and spun to walk away. It was either that or risk damaging the passenger part of his cargo in a very real way.

  “I’ll need to do an exam on you once I get this all set up,” she said.

  Walker didn’t slow down on the way out.

  He headed across the lounge toward the galley and a cup of pseudojo. It was still several hours before his usual morning, but the instant coffee-like oil, would at least give him something else to grumble about while he stewed over the ever deepening pit opening under him.