by Logan Hunder
“Are you okay?” She asked him, voice full of urgency.
“Ohhh man,” he shouted as he rubbed at his head. “I skipped all those tribute concerts and now I’m gonna go deaf anyway . . .”
“Where’s Willy’s gun?”
“WHAT?”
“I said where’s Willy’s—”
“I’m kidding; I can hear you. I put it under our bed.”
“Seriously?” Donald asked. “Why didn’t you put it in the safe!?”
“Oh I don’t know, Donny.” Cox barked sarcastically from his sitting position. “Maybe because that’s where someone would expect something like that to be. Maybe because that’s going to be the first place they check!”
“ . . . That’s why you lock it!”
“Lock it?! Like, with a lock? That is not the type of environment I want us living in.”
“You don’t know the combination, do you?”
“I didn’t think I’d need to! Here aboard the Jefferson, we are supposed to trust one another.”
Kim rolled her eyes and darted out of the room, leaving the captain to get to his feet on his own. He rubbed at his forehead as he hopped up, rubbing his hands together after.
“Alright, we need a plan, we need a plan. Perp’s on the loose, my fox is on the run, and backup is ready for action. Just awaiting orders, right?”
Donald snorted.
“No way. This is not my job. In fact, I took this job because I thought stuff like this didn’t happen on boring cargo ships!”
“That answer makes me sad, but I see where you’re coming from! How about you, Willy?”
“Uggghhh . . .” He moaned from his foetal position, hands between his legs. “Do I have to, Captain?”
“Well, I mean it actually is your job, but if you really don’t want to, then it’s okay.”
Cox looked back and forth between the two of them, each averting his gaze, before puffing his chest out, inhaling loudly, and retrieving his Glock from the floor.
“Alright, guess it’s time for round two!” He used his free hand to cock it again, jumping slightly when the literal round two ejected and bounced away.
“What, you’re gonna ask us both to help you but not Whisper?” Donald pointed out.
The two of them looked over to the vent on the wall then back at each other.
“Oh c’mon, Donny. If you guys don’t want to, then what makes you think she would?”
He shoulder rolled out of the room and came up on his knees, waving the gun around in search of enemies. Upon finding none, he stalked off out of sight. Moments after his departure, Whisper peeked a glib face out of the vent.
“Hm,” she said. “Guess sexism can pay off sometimes.”
“I woulda gone,” Donald qualified. “But he is definitely going to die.”
HANDS CLASPED UPON HIS pistol, Cox alternated between reckless bravery and skittish reservation when it came to the pace at which he searched his ship. With akimbo legs and bent knees, he lurched forward and stopped short repeatedly like a teenager learning to drive standard. But still he pressed on, all the while mumbling the Pink Panther theme to try and calm his nerves. Surprisingly, even something as comforting and familiar as his pride and joy became eerie and foreboding when it housed a psycho space killer.
Ever since he bought the thing however many years ago, the Jefferson had been his home, and that was how he liked it. His former days living in his family’s moon mansion were luxurious, sure, but so long as he stayed there he may as well have been as grounded as the foundation upon which the building sat. That’s not to say he considered it a shameful existence to lead, but beauty wasn’t the only thing that resided in the eyes of the beholder. To him, a life that was just good enough was simply not good enough. Leaving it all behind for a modest life aboard a multibillion dollar custom-built spaceship was the best decision he’d ever made. Or so he used to think; no one had asked him since all this murder-y life-or-death business started.
He rounded a corner—gun first, of course—and found himself at a crossroads. He still hadn’t decided where he was going, and now he couldn’t proceed until he did. He had indeed expected Mister Nobody to make a beeline for the safe, but he hadn’t thought much beyond that step of the plan. In his mind, he half expected him to already be there waiting, ready to jump out at the man and yell surprise. With a couple tweaks, that plan would still be feasible, but recent experience had indicated surprises and guns didn’t mix too well. Showing up and yelling surprise without the gun also came with its own set of drawbacks. If only he could get a fake gun that was identical to the pistol in his hands in every way but without the bits that explode . . . that would be ideal. Unfortunately, shipping would cost a fortune and take forever to get here, so that plan was out. Plus, old artifacts like that were tough enough to find without trying to locate a specialty version.
It was in these moments of plotting that an entirely separate thought popped into his head. Every single plan that he was attempting to concoct excluded the person whose one request was not to be excluded in concocted plots. With how bungled this entire thing had become, the last thing he needed was to give her reason to be even more mad at him than she already was. So whatever plot he concocted entirely on his own without input from others, he had to make sure there was a part that he could tell her to do.
Speaking of the devil—figuratively, as he probably shouldn’t be referring to her as the devil, even in an internal monologue—the badass brunette interrupted his scheming with her brisk walk into the hallway, stopping short when she saw him. In one hand she clutched Willy’s space rifle, wielding it with a casual lean on the shoulder. The other she kept planted firm upon her hip in that chicken wing pose that some women tend to unconsciously do when getting their picture taken. It appeared that in her raid on the bedroom, she also took a moment to change her outfit, opting away from the space pajamas and instead for something more vintage. Black tights clung to her long legs and a loose white shirt with black vest were draped over her top section. Altogether, the ensemble didn’t seem to have any extra combat practicality whatsoever, but it certainly wasn’t going to elicit any complaints from the captain. As far as Star Wars-inspired outfits went, it was probably the second-best choice she could have made.
“Tim! I thought you hung back; what are you doing here?”
“Heyyy!” He replied, arms opening wide. “There you are! I was just looking for you.”
Her mouth closed and puckered with scepticism. Her brown eyes studied him with raised brows.
“Really? That’s kind of funny, seeing as you knew exactly where I was going.”
“You’re not wrong . . . but that doesn’t necessarily make me wrong.”
“You were about to go after him without me, weren’t you?! Jesus, Tim, we literally just talked about this!”
“What? No! I was coming for you, I swear!” He tried to emphasize with his hands but shoved them behind his back in embarrassment after realizing he was essentially threatening her with his gun. He sighed.
“Look, I know I don’t always make the best decisions in your eyes. But you know I wouldn’t lie to you.”
At that, her expression softened.
“Alright, fine, you’re off the hook. You’re lucky you’re pretty, though.”
She shrugged the blaster from her shoulder and grabbed it by the forestock with her free hand. The other one grabbed it by its bolt-action power switch and brought it to life with a foreboding cocking noise.
“Now c’mon, Captain Kirk. Let’s go save our crew.”
Cox did a redundant cocking of his own weapon again, ejecting yet another round as a show of solidarity, then followed her down the hallway.
“Right behind you, honey!” He encouraged. “And don’t worry, I’ve learned my lesson. This is my last adventure, I promise.”
She came to a sudden halt in front of him and whirled around, brown hair aflurry. She let a hand slip from the blaster so she could place it back on her hip.<
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“That’s not the lesson I want you to learn from this at all! I want you to go on a hundred more space adventures. I just wanna go on them with you! I understand that some—I swear to god if you reach for that gravity switch I will shoot you right in the face—but yeah, sometimes shit is gonna happen. It’s just life; I get it. All I want—and I bet all the crew wants too—is to not be treated like people you’re just caring for while you do your thing. The adventures will go better, too, if you’d just listen to us sometimes! You got a good head, but it’s not as good as five heads. Well, six if you count Whatshername down in engineering.”
“I totally include you guys!” He protested as they walked. Neither were watching where they were going anymore. “You even mediated between me and Donny when we were having that healthy group discussion.”
“Yeah, I agreed investigating the ship was worth our time! And then that was the end of it. No more discussion. You just grabbed two henchmen and took off without even stopping to make a plan.”
“Alright, alright, ya got me there. May have skimped on the planning bit a bit. I got a little excited, and now I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, babe. You don’t have to apologize, I just needed to know you hear me on this. But what’s done is done. Let’s just focus on the now and dealing with . . . our guest. I have an idea.”
“I’d love to hear your idea! It’s probably a great one. We probably should have done it your way from the start.”
“OUR WAY, Tim!”
“That’s what I meant.”
“You’re unbearable sometimes.”
A voice cut into their deliberating.
“Does this mean when I vote against going off course it’s actually going to count now?”
They spun around to see a projection of Donald cast upon the wall. He sat with a calm slouch, hands folded in his lap, completely ambivalent to the motionless Willy sprawled out on the floor behind him.
“No,” the captain replied instantly.
“Yes,” his wife replied nearly as quickly, but a little behind him.
They looked at each other; Tim with a slack jaw and Kim with a raised eyebrow.
“Maybe,” he amended. “Say, Donny, you’re on a computer right now, right?”
Donald looked around at the area below the camera, face scrunched up as if unsure if the question was being asked in jest.
“ . . . If you are,” The captain continued. “D’you think you could check the scanner for Mister Nobody? It probably isn’t gonna tell you for sure that it’s him, ‘cause it’s a computer, so how could it really know that, right? There’s also the chance that’s not even his real name. But maybe you could look for a blip and see what ha—”
“The old guy literally just left,” Donald cut him off. He nodded toward the doorway. “He came back like two seconds after you two ran out the door. I’m pretty sure he was just hiding around the corner and you went right by him.”
Cox growled a puppy-like noise of frustration.
“That sly dog! I knew I shoulda looked both ways.”
“Why did he come back?” Kim asked.
Donald burbled something incoherent and gave a sheepish shrug.
“Iunno. He came back in, mumbled hello to me, and headed straight for the freezer. Then he yelled some stuff about somebody taking his Fireball and punched Willy in the face.”
“ . . . Fireball?” Cox breathed. “Like . . . A fireball?”
“It’s booze, man. Stupid kids like drinking it cause it gets them drunk fast.”
“Oh. Well, if it’s alcohol for children, then why does he have it?”
“Holy shit, Tim . . .”
“I don’t know!” Donald snapped. “The guy was freaking out and assaulting people; I wasn’t going to try and chat with him. I just told him Whisper took it back to her room and hoped he would leave me alone.”
“Oh hey, Donny, that was a good idea! I bet he’d believe she’s young enough to be a kid.”
“She’s sixteen, Tim, she is a kid.” Kim informed him.
“She’s sixteen?! You told me she was eighteen when we hired her!”
“Yeah. She was actually thirteen.”
“You put a thirteen-year-old to work!? What are we, Amish?!”
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone that has both a pilot’s license and a clean record who’s willing to spend their time flying a freighter?! I didn’t even want to hire her, but every other applicant only wanted the job with us because they’d gotten themselves disqualified from real piloting gigs. At least she doesn’t have a criminal record.”
“But we might if anyone catches us violating child labour laws!”
“Oh relax, it says in her employee file she’s eighteen too. Not that anyone would ever bother to look. And hey, I would have been happy with an autopilot, but nooooooooooo, you insisted it had to be a real person. So I made do.”
“And look at the bonding you two have done! Bet that wouldn’t have happened with an AI.”
“So are you guys gonna go save her, or . . . ?”
They clammed up and looked back to Donald. He shuffled uncomfortably under their combined gaze.
“You mean that’s actually where it is?” The captain clarified. “That wasn’t just a clever lie you told to throw him off track?”
“What?! What the hell gave you that idea?! I told you that this dealing with intruders stuff is not my job.”
“God damn it, Donald,” Kim snapped. “I know this sort of thing wasn’t explicitly stated in your job description, but you’re still the communications officer aboard this ship.”
“And I communicated her whereabouts very effectively!”
Kim sighed and cut off the projection. Her anger was short-lived, however, as she swiftly returned to being that focused and disciplined problem solver who had a knack for calming contagious flustering.
“Alright, we know what he wants and we know where he’s going,” she said in a voice as level as her head. “We can work with that.”
“I acknowledge and agree with that contribution!”
“If we move quickly, we can cut him off in the hallway just outside her room.”
“Well, alright! That would be something we could do, wouldn’t it?”
“And then we’ll vaporize his goddamn kneecaps and blow a gaping hole in his sternum.”
“Working together is fu—wow, wait, what? That’s a little dark, don’t you think?”
Kim sighed as they rounded the corner. Despite her shortness, her brisk strides left her husband struggling to keep up.
“We’re a little past diplomacy, I think!” She barked, picking up the pace. “He’s demonstrated he’s nothing more than a wild animal endangering the kids, so I’m gonna give that bastard a death so tragic they’ll build a statue of him like that stupid monkey one outside the Cincinnati Zoo.”
“Or I mean we could, y’know, accost him. Like, both of us point our guns at him and I could even hold mine sideways like this . . . and if you really wanna get into it we could start yelling and acting all crazy and unpredictable and firing into the ceiling and stuff. If we do all that then he’ll probably get scared and leave!”
Kim blinked at him as he finished his suggestion.
“Leave?” She repeated. “Baby, we’re in space. This isn’t some uncomfortable dinner party; there’s real stakes up here. He’s not just gonna get frustrated and go home.”
“Okay, well, what if we could knock him out then? Doesn’t that thing have a stun setting?”
She looked the weapon over halfheartedly, clearly not expecting to see one.
“I . . . a stun setting? I don’t really think that’s how lasers work, hon. Even if I could turn the wattage down I’m pretty sure it would just turn this into a laser pointer.”
The captain slowed his pace as he comprehended all this. Not only the layout of the warring parties, but their trajectories, armaments, and opposing yet oddly similar ill-intents for one another. Obviously,
his allegiance was clear, but that didn’t necessarily mean he craved the conflict. Quite the opposite, in fact; Cox craved amity more than plants craved electrolytes. Unfortunately, he had a hard enough time coming up with plans, even when he wasn’t in a time crunch.
“Tim?” Kim asked. She had stopped several feet ahead of him.
He snapped out of his analysis-paralysis and looked at her.
“You alright?”
“Yeah!” He declared, probably a little louder than he should have. “Yeah, I was just thinking. Alright, here’s what we should do. You keep going this way, and I’ll do a big ol’ loopy-loo around and come at ’em from the other side! He’ll be all like ‘Whooaaa, there’s two of ’em and I can’t even look at ’em both at the same time! This isn’t gonna go well for me at all! I better surrender really peacefully before they vaporize my goddamn kneecaps and blow a gaping hole in my sternum.’”
“Uhhh, okay? You do realize you’d have to run almost all the way to the bridge and back, right?”
“Yeah! It’ll be great, just wait for my signal!”
He fixed his unblinking eyes upon her as he backed away. Those pouty lips of hers seemed to want to cry scepticism, but for now they held fast. They were slipping, though. Trembling, even. Perched precariously on the cusp of doubt or acceptance, waiting for just the slightest nudge to either side. To the layman they were just sitting closed, perhaps with a slight purse, like lips do. But to Cox, the man who knew the woman behind the lips . . . he knew. He knew! He just had to be careful about it. Take long exaggerated steps in the opposite direction. Flash her a big toothy grin that says “I got this.” Throw in a nice thumbs-up to drive it home. Nearly at the corner now, keep on edging away, that’s it, little further, reach the legs around first until only his head can be seen still maintaining eye contact, then pull it away nice and easy until all line of sight is broken and theeeeeeennnnnn . . . sprint down the corridor at breakneck speed.
But did he embark upon the roundabout route as previously agreed? Well, no. Not yet, anyway. There was an unmentioned first step to the plan. Just a simple slip of the mind, naturally, nothing worth getting worried about or calling space divorce lawyers over. Don’t worry about whether or not that was his decision to make.