by Logan Hunder
Unfortunately, sometimes that resulted in situations wherein other people felt compelled to say it.
“Kim, do you read me? Can you open the airlock doors please?”
“I’m sorry, Tim, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Nobody in their little group took that news well, but Cox did so much more poorly than everyone else, for some reason. His response was fairly standard procedure for when one locked their keys in their car, naked, during a blizzard, shortly after accosting a polar bear, while smelling of freshly sautéed seals: He jiggled the handle an innumerable amount of times, tried to physically pry the door open, turned and grinned sheepishly at the man whom the polar bear represents in this metaphor, and then pressed his face up against the glass with no idea what he was hoping for, but welcoming of something potentially helpful. All that was usual for a desperate man. And all were about as effective as you’d expect them to be.
“Baby, if you’re trying to freak me out, then I can assure you, mission accomplished.”
“’Kay, I admit that was a bad choice of words, but you gotta understand why I can’t let you bring an armed murderer into our ship.”
Before Cox could respond, their potential guest of honour reared back and lobbed his rifle into open space without a second’s hesitation. Even such a gentle toss was adequate to propel it far into the nothingness, twisting and gyrating and almost dancing as it drifted away. Somewhere in the solar system there was probably a creepy, socially awkward teenager who would have loved to film it. But to the members of the crew, the true beauty came from the fact they were now very unlikely to be shot in the face by it.
“How’s that?” He asked in a tone that demanded a specific answer. “Now can we get a move on, please? I should remind you that the ship is still going to blow in a couple minutes.”
“I . . . I didn’t expect you to do that.” Her voice muttered in resignation.
“Well, I’m just full of surprises.”
“Alright, great, this is good.” The captain praised. “Everybody happy now? We all feeling a bit safer, maybe? Safe enough to even open the airlock doors?”
KIM PUT HER FACE in her hands, thankful that they couldn’t see her. No amount of stalling was putting her any closer to what she would consider a satisfactory conclusion. Tim had really outdone himself this time. So much so that biting the bullet and letting them in seemed to be, for better or for worse, what ultimately was going to have to happen. However, it would not come to pass until she had mitigated the threat as much as what was feasible.
“Alright.” She finally responded after letting them sweat a bit. “If he agrees to board the ship in handcuffs then he can come on.”
“Handcuffs?” Donald asked, trying for once not to let his voice be heard. “Why do you have handcuffs?”
“Don’t worry about it, Donald. Can you just go grab them? They’re in the top drawer of my nightstand.”
“Oh. OH! Ohhh . . . come on, that’s gross.”
“So how about that?” She asked again into the mic. “Do you accept my offer?”
“Uhhh . . .” Tim mumbled back in embarrassment, looking down at the wisps of smoke emanating from his glove laser. Apparently not expecting such a proposal, he had taken it upon himself to shear a small hole in the door where the handle used to be.
“Well, it would have been a really great suggestion if it was maybe ten seconds earlier!” He added as he watched the aforementioned handle waft off to join the rest of the floating space yard sale.
A series of hooks, ostensibly for clothing and other space gear framed the entrance hallway. Functional as they were, they remained empty in contrast to the floor where bits of space clothes lay strewn about in a direct path from airlock to bridge. The man barely even paused after pulling his wizened, bald head out of his helmet and tossing it aside. Sparing nary a glance down any adjoining corridors while stalking along, he ditched his space gear in increments until he had nothing left but his jumpsuit and the bottle of Fireball whisky that he’d been toting this entire time. Cox and company nearly tripped over the discarded bits of spacesuit in their haste to keep up. All four rounded the final corner at the same time to find Donald sitting alone in his beanbag chair. His droopy mouth fell open as the weight of the situation began to sink in.
“Alright everyone!” Cox announced with a clap. “Now that that’s all over with, I’d like to introduce . . . What’s your name?”
“Nobody.” The old man grunted through twisted lips. His narrow grey eyes scanned around the room with suspicion.
“Right on! Well this is Mister Nobody. Now, it’s very important we all make him feel welcome. And from all of us here on the Jefferson, Mister Nobody, I’d just like to say: ‘My casa is su casa.’”
“What?”
“Oh, that’s an idiom from this old dead language called Spanish. It might sound familiar, y’see, it’s what a lot of modern-day Spanglish is derived from.”
Mister Nobody blinked at him, probably trying to decide if Cox really was this socially unaware or if he was just Canadian. He seemed to at the very least possess the acumen to tell when a silence was persisting too long.
“Aaaaaaanyway, why don’t you guys all sit down and share some stories. We got some meal supplement capsules in the galley if you’re hungry, and I’ll come join you just after I step into my office and change!”
“You are on thin ice.” Mister Nobody growled, gesturing with a steady sausage of a finger. “So how about you drop your little charade and start acting like the captain you claim to be. First thing I want you to do is find me that woman from the radio.”
“Alright—ALRIGHT!”
Cox was breathing heavily now. His hands were out in front of him and his blonde hair bobbed in time with his head swinging back and forth between Mister Nobody and his crew members. They all looked back at him in similar poses, frozen in apprehension, beads of sweat running down their faces, Willy’s arms raised but not so high that his belly peeked out under his shirt. Off in the background, Donald’s video game character was getting teabagged.
“We’re on your side, okay?!” He placed himself between the intruder and his crew. “Nobody’s messing with you. I mean we’re not messing with Nobody. Meaning you. Your name is very confusing.”
He swallowed when none of his blithering seemed to be inspiring a response.
“And the woman on the radio is my wife. Her name is Kim. She is definitely not gonna be hiding behind a doorway somewhere waiting to club you over the head when you walk through.”
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?” Kim announced with a magnificent voice crack. Sure enough, she stepped out from behind the galley doorway, threw down a steel garbage-can lid, and folded her arms.
“Seriously,” she continued, “I am genuinely curious at this point.”
Her nose twitched in disgust when she looked upon the most recent newcomer to her ship, with his cold dead eyes, his pronounced ears, and his shiny head. And he looked back upon her with the faintest etchings of mild amusement. However, that may have been more for her husband, since he immediately turned back to him.
“Are you sure you’re the captain of this ship . . . ?”
Cox sighed. He placed his hands on his hips. He licked his lips absentmindedly. And he looked Mister Nobody straight in his sagging, weathered face.
“It might seem like they’re against me right now. But they know that I’m a captain they can look to when they’re in trouble.”
“Well then, you look at me.” The old man replied, all amusement gone. “I’m the captain now.”
There was an electricity in the air that likely tingled down the arms of any in the room that had hair on theirs. The great trump card had been played; the gambit had been made, and now Mister Nobody stood sober as he awaited a response. Cox had been right about one thing: everybody else in the room seemed to look to him for it. However, that may have been because they were just as confused as he was and was hoping he’d be the one to voice it.
“
So, uh . . . that’s it?” He asked with a pre-emptive wince. “Is—is this how a hijacking works? You just, y’know, say so?”
He gestured nonsensically with his hands as he tried to find the words. When he did, his voice dropped to almost a whisper.
“I just thought it would be, like, sexier. Y’know, more showmanship or something.”
Mister Nobody pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows.
“I could kill you in front of your crew as a display of dominance if you want.”
“No . . . no, that’s okay.”
SEEMINGLY SATISFIED WITH THE submission, the skyjacker spared a second squint around the room; presumably to gauge the obedience of the remaining company. They appeared weak and worried for the most part; knocking knees, darting eyes, gulping throats, all were often common preludes to dark spots forming on fronts of pants. It was strange, really. All this for an unarmed old guy wrinkling his nose at them. Who knows what would have happened if he still had his gun. At least one of them would have actually fainted like some overwhelmed Victorian lady. It probably wasn’t even real fear. It was probably just those proximity emotions that are induced by fervid social situations. Like when you’re at a funeral of someone you didn’t even care about thaaaat much but you still cry anyway because the situation just seems to call for it and that’s what everybody else is doing.
But there would be no funerals today if everyone played their cards right. Partially because virtually nobody has a funeral on the same day that they die, but also because murdering someone without a weapon is a really strenuous process and it’s not unreasonable for one to want to mitigate their workload when they can.
“Arright . . .” The old man rubbed his hands together. He seemed every bit as hassled by this as the crew. “Let’s get the usual stuff over with. You, aggressive tanned lady, disable the AI defense system. Fat latino guy, clear any voice recognition requirements. And you, less fat guy . . . what are you, Egyptian?”
“Yep.” Donald replied.
“Right, well, disengage the autopilot.”
“We don’t have one,” Whisper cut in.
Everyone turned and looked at her; the man in confusion, others in surprise. She shrugged sheepishly and turned her shoulders inward.
“His idea, not mine,” she added, pointing at Cox. “‘Something something robots are impersonal or something.’” Now all focus turned to their new acting captain. His lack of quip seemed to suggest he was pondering the notion. With hands on hips, he shuffled where he stood, tongue absent-mindedly running along his lips. Finally, he looked at Cox.
“Did I catch you on bring your daughter to work day or something?”
“Careful, now!” The real captain shot back. “If she overhears somebody calling her my daughter, I’m gonna have two terrorists on my hands!”
“I’m literally standing right here.”
“And you’re being very brave right now!”
“How psycho do you think I am, anyway?”
“I don’t think you’re psycho at all! I just think you voice negative emotions more strongly than positive ones, and instigating more conflict would probably be a bad idea right now.” He turned back to Mister Nobody. “This is just kind of a handful already, y’know? Well, maybe not for you; you seem pretty used to this. But for me? Wow, this is tense. Can you believe this is my first hijacking? Been in the business for ten years and nothing! Morbid as it sounds, I was almost starting to get a little offended. Like, there’s all these stories of space pirates you hear about, but none of them ever wanted me. It’s definitely not ’cause I look tough. Is my ship not pretty enough? It’s not like we’re hauling—”
“Kid, shut—for the love of—shut up!” The old man snarled through the wrinkled hand on his face.
Cox grinned from ear to ear at Kim.
“He called me kid.”
“Alright,” that smug, raspy voice announced. “It’s pretty clear what kind of hijacking this is going to be.”
5.
BREAKING THE BANKS
THERE WEREN’T MANY ROOMS on Captain Cox’s custom-constructed country club that weren’t built for comfort. Despite its listed purpose for hauling freight, it was no secret that the most important focus was that it be a nice place to live. The gravity was light, but not enough so as to atrophy one’s muscles. The beds were fluffy, the food was delicious, and the holodeck porn library was positively sublime. Frankly, the only passenger on board that didn’t have ritzy accommodations was the lifeless payload that bounced around the stern. It was a facet that Cox found himself legitimately considering remedying as he and his crew sat in the cargo hold near the tethered space rocks.
The room didn’t even seem like part of their home. Gunmetal-grey walls merged into horrible romance-novel grey floors and neither one bore any level of sprucing in the slightest. It made sense, really, as a loose piece of cargo would tear it all to shreds and likely didn’t have any specific preferences regarding the adornments of its quarters anyway. But to the sulking crew sitting on the floor and leaning against the walls, a pick-me-up would surely have been welcome, even if only as a means of alleviating the wearisome silence that had been going on since the moment the door slammed behind them.
Kim kept her arms folded all the while. They hadn’t come undone since she initially crossed them back on the bridge. While her pleasant face still hadn’t been contorted to a frown, she hadn’t immediately set to business combating the problem as her nature would usually compel her. Instead, she looked down at her husband sitting in the corner, hands on knees, being uncharacteristically silent as he stared off into space. Figurative space, that is; the room had no windows.
“Help!!” Willy yelled as he pounded at the door. “Somebody! Let us out!”
It would have been wince-worthy enough if he had just stopped at the one.
“God damn it, new guy, get a hold of yourself!” Kim snapped at him. “We’re in space. No one can hear you scream. Well, except the guy who put us in here.”
“Does anybody have any ideas?” Donald polled the group out of nowhere, perhaps to fit in with the theme of acting uncharacteristically.
Whisper didn’t even look up from her spot in the corner. She appeared as zoned out as Cox, just staring at the floor tracing figure eight circles with her finger. Willy, however, pushed off of his lean against the wall and removed his hands from his pockets.
“I got an idea.” He offered with a slight hesitance.
Donald waited a moment then, realizing a follow-up wasn’t coming on its own, prompted it.
“Well, what is it?!”
Rather than reply, Willy tensed up. Then, his heaving shoulders tucked towards his torso, he tore into a full-tilt trundle towards the doorway. His stubby legs made surprisingly great strides, and he was moving at quite an impressive pace by the time he slammed into the hatch. The impact shockwave reverberated around the room as the security officer bounced off the door so hard his feet left the ground, making it that much more painful-looking when he landed flat on his back. The echoes were still going even after he had come to a stop on the floor.
Donald walked over to him and looked down.
“ . . . Was that your plan? Or were you just warming up?”
Willy half sighed and half groaned.
“I thought maybe I could knock it down.”
“UGH!”
The exasperated exclamation came as a figurative record scratch to the scene playing out. Everyone involved turned to find Whisper, still in her corner, looking back up at them with mirrored confusion—albeit hers caked with a layer of disgust.
“Yeah, no, you’re right, I’m the one being weird. Keep smashing your face against it. That’ll probably work. It’s not like that door regularly deals with ten-ton rocks smashing against it or anything. God!”
In lieu of crickets, the creaking and groaning ambience of the metal room accented the awkwardness fostered by the outburst. Willy let his mouth fall open with an audible smack of the lips
, at a loss for a retort. No one else seemed to know what to say either. Thankfully they had a bit more time to think since the telltale spreading of arms for emphasis indicated the young lady wasn’t done.
“I know! There goes Whisper being a psycho bitch again, right? It’s not like she ever has a point or something. She’s just bringing the team down like usual.”
She got to her feet, her manicured eyebrows angled down and her chubby cheeks doing nothing to conceal her frown.
“Even though you had literally one job and you couldn’t even do it!” She barked at Willy.
“You just plain never do your job, like, at all,” she added to Donald.
Her eyes then settled on Kim with a beat between beratings.
“And I don’t know what your job even is!”
Finally, her hate parade arrived at its final destination. Cox looked up at her, waiting to receive his review. She served it in the same succinct style.
“You . . . are just the worst captain ever.”
She retreated back to her corner, as drained from the tirade as everyone else. No one dared respond. No one even knew how. She wasn’t totally wrong; at least not in their eyes. So rather than rebut, the rest of the crew threw around sheepish glances until reaching a sort of silent consensus. Three pairs of brown eyes trained their gaze onto the lone owner of the baby blues.
“This really is all your fault, Captain.” Donald observed. His words were not caustic, rather clinical. It was an “I told you so” that he, for whatever reason, didn’t glean pleasure from.
“If you didn’t force us to get on that stupid ship . . . none of this would have happened!”
Cox looked up at him without a word, waiting patiently for him to finish. Once he was sure the admonishing had abated, he looked at Willy as if his turn were next. Perhaps it was the head trauma, but the big man had nothing to offer. He just shrugged and took to walking it off. Finally, there was Kim. His sweet soul mate’s face said more than her words ever could. That’s not to say hearing harsh words along with it wouldn’t still suck, though.