Ion Trail 7: Impossible

In the engine room, they’d pulled up the advanced diagnostics display, which showed a 3D projection of the ship. I peered at it for a second before looking to Clinton and Kyle for context.

“Okay, so we ran all of the normal diagnostics, right?” said Kyle, almost seeming excited. “And they all came back with the same thing. There was a second signal located somewhere near the bow. It’s really strange that it couldn’t get more specific than that. A hyperspace drive or even a transponder,” he paused and nodded to Clinton, “gives off a pretty strong resonance; that’s why they’re generally so easy to locate on radar.”

“So we pulled this up, and mapped the relative points of origin for all hyperspace resonance waves,” Clinton took over the explanation. “You see here, that’s the drive.” He pointed to the display where a flickering ball of light was overlaid on the projection of the ship. I glanced toward the bow, and frowned; he saw my expression, and nodded vigorously. “Right? The signature is there, but it’s not a single point; it appears to somehow be spread over the front of the ship.” I looked back at him, and then at Kyle and confirmed my suspicion; they were both excited, and looked very pleased with themselves.

“You’re not saying that this is somehow good news?” I asked.

“Oh no,” said Kyle, shaking his head with a manic grin, “No, we’re probably fucked.” Clinton shot his friend an exasperated look, but he too had a slight smile on his face.

“Look,” he continued, pulling up a different display. The hull integrity diagnostic? “I jiggered with the parameters a bit, trying to determine the source. Normally this diagnostic looks for debris, damaged plates, and micro-perforations. I added in a radiation scan, and tweaked the numbers until finally…” He gestured grandly at the screen. I scowled at his enthusiasm, and peered closely.

“What am I looking at?” I mostly knew how to read the results from these kinds of diagnostics. It was part of the training Grey Dwarf gave their pilots, since so many of us would be on solo-hauls like this was supposed to be. But I couldn’t make sense out of what the display showed; thousands of tiny motes, all over the hull but primarily toward the front, all of them sources of- I glanced at the parameters- subspace radiation.

“We think they’re nanites,” said Kyle. “All of them working in sync to act as a single hyperspace transponder.”

“That’s impossible,” I blurted out. “Nanites can’t do anything that complicated without a centralized controller, and we would have detected that far more easily than this!”

“That’s what we thought, too,” Clinton said. “But once we knew where to look, we found that there were also very, very tiny microwave transmissions that seem to propagate through the nanites in waves. They’re communicating with each other.” As he spoke, he tapped a few keys and I saw the image change to show waves of tiny microwave pulses sweeping across the hull, like drops in a pool of water, sweeping back and forth, overlapping and rippling constantly. Signals that small would be hard to detect against general background radiation if you weren’t specifically looking for them.

“Can you pick up what’s being transmitted?” I asked. He shook his head.

“No, it’s pretty heavily encrypted. Honestly, I don’t know that we’d be able to read it, even if it wasn’t.” He was probably right; what we were seeing was essentially impossible, by what I knew of nanotechnology. Nanites were capable of a lot of very fine, precise work but they had to be controlled by a central computing device, giving them their instructions and coordinating their efforts. These seemed to be actually communicating with each other, independently. This information created a lot more questions than it answered.

“Any ideas, guys?” I asked after staring at the screen for another minute. “I’d like to know how the hell they got there, but more importantly, we need to figure out how to get rid of them.” Neither of them said anything, so the three of us just sat there for a bit, each lost in their own thoughts. I still found it hard to believe that nanites were causing this problem, nanites far more advanced than anything I’d ever heard of. It had to be the black ship, I reasoned. All of the previous logic was still in place, as to why anyone would even want to track my ship, and this new wrinkle of impossible technology just pointed toward the black ship not being just a rogue element or a pirate of some sort.

It hit me then, and it made sense. Not the solution, but the delivery method. The black ship, while it was doing whatever it did to take down the datasphere, had seeded these nanites into space around the station, and we’d flown right through them.

“Hey, uh, do you think you could configure our sensors to pick these things up, now that we know they exist?” I asked.

“Maybe?” said Clinton. “They’d have to be transmitting at least the microwave pulses or else they’re so much space dust, but I think I could. Why?”

“Beginnings of an idea,” I replied. “Not to remove them, not yet, but how to avoid running afoul of them again, assuming we get out of this.”

“Well, as for removing them,” said Kyle, hesitantly. “Why not just try the easiest solution first?” I looked at him and waited for him to continue. “We could, you know, just… scrub them off. They’re on the hull, not inside of it, so we could potentially just physically remove them.” I tilted my head, considering. It’d be tedious work, with a lot of checking and rechecking, but it was possible. Except for one thing.

“We can’t do that in hyperspace,” I said. “To go out there, even with a suit, would expose you to so much radiation that you’d fry in minutes.”

“I know,” he said. “We’d have to drop out to do it, but it’d work, right?”

“Probably,” I admitted. “But we’d have a very short margin once we dropped out before we’d have to be away. If they’re actively tracking us, and we have no reason to believe they’re not, they’ll be able to tell where the transponder dropped out within… hours, tops. We could have as little as a day to clean them off, and get gone.”

“Well, let’s think a bit longer then, but it’s a plan if we can’t come up with something better,” he said. I agreed. It wasn’t ideal, but neither was anything else about this whole situation. So long as we didn’t go where they expected us to, we’d have that margin, and it might be enough, if we were quick. I glanced at the time and was surprised to see how late it was.

“You guys should get some sleep,” I said. “We’ll talk again in the morning, see if we can come up with anything better.” They agreed and I stood up to go. A thought occurred to me, so I paused in the door way. “And you guys are both geeks.”

I headed back to my room. I’d thought about stopping into the cockpit just to check on things but when I remembered that urge to flip the switch, I decided it was better to stay away for now. As I opened the door to my cabin, I heard a soft sound, and turned to see Diaz poking his head out of his room, blinking at me sleepily.

“What’re you doing up?” he asked through a yawn so vigorous that it made me want to yawn too.

“Clinton and Kyle found something out,” I said. “Not enough to move forward with a solid plan yet, but it’s a start. We’ll talk more about it in the morning.” As I spoke, he stepped out into the hallway. He was wearing his pants and an undershirt, but no shoes, with mussed hair and sleepy eyes. I smiled at the picture.

“You’re cute when you’re all sleepy,” I teased him. Having some sort of plan had taken a lot of the tension off; not all of it, but a lot, and I was feeling good. He looked at me as though he wanted to say something, and I just lifted an eyebrow, still smiling.

Suddenly he stepped forward, grabbed my shoulders and leaned down to kiss me. I froze for a second, surprised, before I shoved him back with a hand on his chest. He was much stronger than I, but he didn’t resist for more than a second, stepping back and looking confused.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I snarled at him, furious. He stepped back further, flinching from my tone, his hands held wide.

“I thought…” he said, and gestured vaguely between us.

“You thought?” I said, still angry, but since he was already as far back as he could be, I managed to wrestle my temper back into check. “You thought what, Diaz?”

“I thought that you, you know, liked me,” he said, and the sadness in his voice was just enough to defuse most of my remaining anger. “You’re always joking that I’m pretty, so I just…”

“Damnit Diaz,” I began, then stopped, took a deep controlling breath and tried a gentler approach. “Julio, listen. I do like you, but not like that.” I sighed, and leaned against the wall by my door. “You’re a good guy, but I’m not looking for anything right now. Especially not right now.”

“I understand,” he said, disappointment plain in his tone. “I’m sorry I kissed you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Look, there has to be a boundary, alright? I’m the captain of this ship, and you’re my first mate. You’ve done everything I’ve asked of you, but this? This isn’t going to happen, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, and gave me a sheepish smile.

“Go to bed,” I said, turning to my door to do the same. I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye, and reach to open his door. “Oh, and Diaz?” He paused, and I hardened my voice again. “This never happened. Got me?” With that, I entered my room and closed the door.

I spun around and just flopped back down onto my bed, eyes unfocused. What the hell? I thought. I didn’t even think of the guy that way. I mean, he was cute, and under other circumstances, for instance where could just jump in my ship and fly away, I might have been interested in a fling with a handsome station guy, but Diaz was… Diaz. It was like kissing my little brother. I shook my head and hoped that this would be the end of it.

Instead, I thought about the nanites. The word ‘impossible’ crossed my mind several more times as I considered the how and the why, and I thought about the challenges of removing all of those microscopic machines from my hull. I wondered if they were heat-sensitive? It wasn’t like we could take a blow-torch to my hull, not in space, but maybe we could figure something out. Maybe cold? We did have nitrogen on board, part of the cooling system; maybe we could freeze them off and dispose of them before they recovered? I wouldn’t mind getting a sample if we could do it safely. But no, it was too risky. Just remove them and go. Who could I have do it? I only had two space suits. Clinton was an obvious choice; his career in salvage had given him experience with this sort of thing, but who else? It couldn’t be me, as I would have to triangulate our location and plot a new course before we were discovered. If we couldn’t come up with something better between us, I’d call another meeting to see what skills my other passengers might have between them. Though my mind continued to wander from scenario to scenario, I was satisfied that we had the start to a way forward and I finally managed to fall back to sleep.

=+=

“I imagine most of you are wondering why I gathered you here,” I said. That line felt like it had been used up centuries ago, but the words were already out of my mouth and I noticed a few smirks from the gathered passengers. “Well, things have changed, and not really for the better.” No more smirks, now. I glanced around, meeting the eyes of my co-conspirators standing in the group. Clinton had his arms crossed, and Kyle fretted with his sleeve unconsciously. Harper kept the same level expression that she always did and Diaz’s expression was openly worried, though he knew what was coming. “We’re not going to make it to Proxima Tau.”

I expected an immediate uproar, but aside from a few muttered epithets, the group stayed silent. Braced for questions and accusations, I didn’t know what to do for a moment until I saw Sister Estrada smile encouragingly at me. I coughed unnecessarily and spoke again. “The black ship is tracking us.” This got more of a reaction, but they quieted down surprisingly quickly. None of this was going according to expectations, and it was frankly freaking me out a bit. “We have a- a plan, to stop it from tracking us, but we have to stop. We can’t go on to Proxima Tau.” I didn’t mention that we’d possibly consigned that station to the same fate as Kestrel Station; I would bear that burden quietly with the few people who already knew.

“So what does that mean?” Craig asked, with a nervous quaver in his deep voice. No one else spoke.

“It means we’re going to drop out of hyperspace, probably tomorrow morning,” I answered. “You all know that I don’t want to do this, but I think it’s our only option.” I glanced at June and Sister Estrada. They’d only been told this morning, during breakfast. They controlled their expressions well, but I could tell that they were nervous too. “Once we stop, we’ll have to remove the transponder, uh, and I’ll plot a new jump once I know where we are.” Assuming we didn’t die right away, of course.

“Are we going to run out of food?” Caroline, the concierge, asked, and I glanced at June before quickly answering.

“I don’t know, but I do know that June and Melva are doing an outstanding job; we’d have been out of food days ago without their hard work.” There were murmurs of agreement. You could see the hunger in people’s faces, but no one complained, and no one had anything less than compliments for the meals provided by the rancher and the priestess. “We’ll just have to… to keep going. I’ll get us to the nearest station or inhabited planet, and we’ll be able to get all the food we can eat then.”

As before, there were more questions that followed, but the tone was entirely different. The questions were less frantic, less accusatory, and sometimes someone else jumped in to provide a suggestion before I even had a chance to speak. Several times I was complimented on how good a job I was doing and by the time it was over, I was even more overwhelmed than I had been the first time. I took my leave and went straight back to my room. When I arrived, I found that the priestess had followed me quietly. I could see that she wanted to speak privately; I owed her that much, and more, so I gestured her into the room ahead of me.

“May I sit?” she asked. When I indicated she could, she sat in the single chair, facing toward the bed. I took a seat on the bed itself and waited for her to say what she needed to say.

“You look…” she paused, looking at me thoughtfully for a moment. “Startled. Perhaps a bit confused.”

“Uh, yeah,” I agreed faintly. “I guess I am. That meeting didn’t go anything like I thought it would.”

“What is it you expected?” She had a small smile playing at the corner of her lips, as though she knew exactly what I expected. Still, I answered anyway.

“I expected shouting,” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “Panic, accusations. Not… that.” I waved a hand back toward the cargo bay that I’d just left.

“Do you know why you got… that?” she said, speaking and waving her hand in deliberate mimicry. I shook my head mutely. I wanted to cry but didn’t understand that, either.

“They trust you,” she said. “You’ve gotten us all this far. We all owe our lives to you.” Each sentence felt like a fist to the stomach. I reached up and squeezed my temples between my fingers and thumb, hiding my eyes from her.

“But I screwed up,” I said, unable to keep my voice level. “I didn’t even detect the transponder, Clinton and Kyle did that. I didn’t ration the food, that was you and June. Organizing the cargo bay was all Diaz, and Harper, she, she-“ my voice broke in a sob, and I stopped talking, trying to rein it back in.

“Susan,” she said gently, reaching forward to put a hand on my knee. I flinched, but was glad when she didn’t withdraw her touch. “You can’t do it all. You’re just one woman, a remarkable one, but just one.” I couldn’t help it. All the stress and fear and confusion just poured out, and I cried. She just made quiet soothing sounds and gently patted my knee until I’d cried it all out.

“This is what leadership is, child,” she said, once I was through. “You see what needs to be done, but you don’t have to do it all yourself. You’ve delegated marvelously, and that’s a large part of why we all trust you. You will get us through this. I have faith; in Jesus, yes, but also in you.”

Ion Trail 6: Hard Choices

This was bad. This was really, really bad. Everyone aboard and everyone at Proxima Tau were in grave danger. Even if the attacker had just the one ship I’d seen, they easily had the firepower to destroy Proxima Tau Station as well as inflicting immeasurable damage on the moon colony itself. Maybe they’d leave it alone if we never showed up, but if they’d gone to the trouble of getting a transponder onto my ship, they probably weren’t interested in allowing survivors to talk about the attack on Kestrel. Showing up to Proxima Tau would be a death sentence.

All of this went through my head while the two men stood there, watching me. I don’t know if their thoughts had progressed that far, but as I looked each of them in the eyes, I could see the worry written plain on their faces. Clinton was shorter than me, handsome and built like a wrestler, with callouses and scars visible on his face and large hands. Kyle was taller, slender and well-dressed, even after days in the same clothes, with clean hands and long fingers. They were a study in contrasts, but these two men had probably just saved the lives of everyone aboard. Again.

“Do you know what this means?” I asked them, quietly. Kyle shook his head, but Clinton paused for a moment before nodding slowly. He’d been out there scratching through the wreckage of ships and he’d probably seen things like this before. For Kyle’s benefit, I went ahead and spoke it out loud. “We’re probably dealing with a hyperspace transponder. I don’t know how they got it aboard my ship, but if I’m right, we’re all in very serious trouble.” Kyle’s eyes widened as the implications struck him, and he leaned back against the instrument panel to stabilize himself.

“What are we going to do?” he asked. Shit. Just like that, it was all back on my shoulders. I guess it always had been, but I’d been able to relax a little bit over the last day or two. Now I felt it settling back in, along with the telltale signs of a fresh migraine. Perfect.

“You two need to get me more information,” I said. “You have my permission to dig in as much as you need to. Find me that transponder, or whatever it is. We can’t do anything else until it’s been found and dealt with.” My words left room for doubt, but in my head, I knew that’s exactly what it was. It was the only thing that made sense, and to assume anything less was to risk everything. Until we could put our hands on it, we had to assume the worst. “Say nothing to anyone else. I’ll decide what, and when, to tell the others.” I turned to go, but looked back over my shoulder before I left. “Ping me the instant you find something.” I didn’t wait for an acknowledgement.

I walked down the corridor, my mind going down the list of things I’d need to do. I should tell Harper; if we weren’t going to make Proxima Tau, she’d have to do whatever she could with the resources we had on hand. Melva and June? They’d been doing a marvelous job of stretching the food, but no, that wasn’t a priority. There wasn’t much else we could do to tighten our belts further, anyway. I needed to focus on the more immediate threats.

There was nothing I could do for Proxima Tau at this point. A hyperspace transponder would allow them to calculate our destination within minutes after we’d initiated the jump. If they were inclined to attack the system, there was nothing we could do except die with them. We couldn’t even warn them. There was only one option: we would have to drop out of hyperspace, no matter the risks. Of course it’d have to wait until after we’d found and disabled the transponder, but even then it’d be incredibly dangerous.

Hyperspace wasn’t a wormhole like you sometimes read about in old theoretical treatises, but neither was it within normal space. A hyperspace envelope’s path corresponded to the space between the endpoints, but it wasn’t fully linear travel. While you could predict with a high degree of accuracy when you’d arrive at the other end, you couldn’t predict with any degree of accuracy where your normal space location was by how far along your jump you were; That is to say, if you drop out of hyperspace you will be somewhere along the path between the two points, but it was impossible to predict where.

Of course, that was only half the problem. Hyperspace didn’t concern itself with objects in normal space, so the pathway in normal space might take you straight through planets, stars or nebulae, but objects in hyperspace weren’t affected by these things. The only thing in normal space which seemed to affect hyperspace travel was a black hole, but even that was largely hypothetical; Hyperspace jumps which took them too close to black holes simply never arrived, and current science couldn’t explain why. This was the reason that most space travel stayed in thoroughly vetted star lanes. You could plot a course from anywhere to anywhere else, but the less traveled the space between, the more likely your calculations would fail to account for a black hole somewhere along your path.

So I could drop us out of hyperspace right into the center of a star or a planet. If I was marginally luckier, it would be an ion storm or a dense asteroid cluster; that would only probably kill us. The possibility of dropping into open, safe space was also fairly likely; space was a big place, after all, and most of it was empty, but there’d been too many reported instances of problems with dropping out for any pilot to be sanguine; it was a risk you simply didn’t take unless you absolutely had to. Sister Estrada might have her Jesus to pray to, but I didn’t believe that Someone was out there looking out for this tiny ship in all the vastness of the universe. Once we identified the transponder and disabled it, I’d just have to roll the dice, and hope that maybe someone was looking out for us, after all.

My thoughts carried me to the cockpit, where I dropped into my seat with a heavy sigh. There wasn’t much I could do right now, but I went ahead and initiated an automated self-diagnostic; Maybe it’d pick up something Clinton and Kyle missed and it gave me an excuse to sit there for a minute. I stared at the hyperdrive emergency disengage switch, safely tucked away under its plasteel cover. I’d only ever pulled it once, during a simulation. I’d found myself within the corona of a star, and all my training and frantic reactions hadn’t been enough to save my ship. They’d deactivated several of the safety features for the simulation, and when the trainees had exchanged stories about that scenario, we’d learned that several people had suffered minor but very real injuries, and that absolutely no one had ever survived the Drop-Out. The lesson had been simple and effective: Don’t flip the switch. Never flip the switch. No, not even then.

But I was going to flip the switch.

A part of me wanted to do it. I surprised myself when I realized the urge I was feeling; just do it, right now. I’d felt something similar then too, during training, and I realized I felt that same crazy grin twitching at my lips. It had been exciting, even as it ended in failure. Of all the disaster scenarios we’d gone through during training that one was the most memorable. There was a part of me that had wanted to do it again, and again, until I finally got it right. I felt my hand twitching as I stared at the switch.

Nope, I thought, standing up so quickly that I nearly bumped my head trying to duck out of the cockpit. Nope, can’t be doing this right now. I needed to talk to people, to prepare, to plan. All the same, I still felt that grin playing across my face as I walked away from the cockpit, rubbing my hands on my shipsuit compulsively. I went to the med bay and went in without knocking, expecting to see the medic in there with her patient, but it was quiet and the lights were down. I took a moment to let my eyes adjust, and confirm that Harper wasn’t there and that Shanna was sleeping restlessly. I quietly let myself back out and tried the medic’s cabin. No one answered so I reluctantly turned my steps toward the cargo bay.

“Why did they blow it up?” Craig, the black man who spent so much of his time in med bay with Ms. Brennan, was asking a question when I entered the cargo bay and I paused to listen to the answer.

“It was a grand gesture,” answered Carla, “a message to the people of Earth that they weren’t coming back. When they overloaded the reactor on their own orbital habitat and let the pieces rain fiery destruction down on their city below, the Transhuman League was cutting their ties with the rest of humanity by destroying the only place that was fully theirs.”

“So then they just, what, left?” this voice was a younger girl, late teens; I still hadn’t gotten her name. No one really seemed to know her, and she kept to herself. It was a surprise to see her here, let alone asking a question. When I saw that she wore an improvised sling, I realized she was the one who’d broken her arm during the escape.

“Yes,” confirmed the librarian. “They’d finished their colony ship, equipped with one of the first experimental hyperdrives, and they just left. Of course, they’d left the keys to reproduce the technology with us, along with the invitation to join them if humanity ever wanted to live up to their potential.”

“Did we? Did we ever meet up with them again?” the girl’s voice was taut, her body language was intense, almost as though she were on the verge of fleeing. For whatever reason, this question was important enough to her to bring her out of her solitude.

“Unfortunately, no,” Carla said sadly. “We did find the remnants of their colony ship about seventy years later, when our own diaspora had well and truly begun, shredded to pieces in the Oort cloud of what is now Gianotti’s Star. I’ve always lamented how much knowledge was lost with them.” She lapsed into a pensive silence and no questions followed, which seemed to signal the informal end of today’s presentation. I pushed myself away from where I’d been leaning in the doorway, and stepped forward into the cargo bay. No one did more than glance at me as they moved back to their individual spaces and for a moment I was at a loss for words. I hadn’t thought this through, instead just fleeing my strange self-destructive impulse in the cockpit and coming here unprepared. Then I saw Harper and decided I’d stick to my original plan; Talk to her first, then maybe June and Melva, and proceed from there. I walked over to where she was trying to convince the girl to let her take another look at her arm; when the girl saw me, she made a quick excuse and moved away so quickly that the medic stared after her, mouth still open to protest.

“Well, that was abrupt,” I said as I reached her, feeling vaguely offended by the girl’s hasty retreat. The medic turned toward me and smiled. “So, uh, Harper, can we talk?”

“Why don’t you call me Lorna?” the older woman asked me. “I’ve told you enough times that I doubt you’ve forgotten.” I blinked at her, but honestly didn’t have an answer. I just thought of her as ‘Harper’.

“Uh, I don’t know, I guess,” I mumbled. “But listen, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Can we go back to my cabin?” She lifted an eyebrow at that, but gestured for me to lead the way. I saw Diaz talking to the librarian, so I caught his eye, and gestured for him to follow. When we got to my cabin, I closed the door behind us, and took a deep breath. “We’ve got a problem, a big one. Bottom line up front, we’re going to have to drop out of hyperspace.” Harper quirked her brow again, and Diaz blinked at me.

“Didn’t you say that was a really bad idea?” she asked.

“Super bad idea,” I agreed. “Nonetheless, it’s the least bad of several bad options.” Another deep breath and I forced my eyes up to look at both of them in turn before I spoke again. “I have reason to believe that we’re being tracked, most likely by the black ship; I can’t imagine who else would bother.” That bit of news hit them hard, as I expected it to, but I used their responses as a gauge to guess how the rest of the passengers would react. Harper just stood silently, digesting it, but Diaz’s expression shifted from surprise through puzzlement to fear, and I watched him do his best to swallow it. My respect for him went up another notch. He’d lose his shirt at poker with the way he wore his emotions so openly, but he had guts.

“Who else knows?” Harper again, calm as ever, no hint to her emotions.

“Clinton and Kyle brought the anomaly to my attention, and they’re trying to locate and verify the problem, before we do anything else.”

“What are you going to tell everyone?” Diaz found his voice now, and used it, as he often did, to show his concern for others. “This is going to freak them out.” I didn’t answer, because I didn’t have an answer yet, and he filled the silence with a stream of words. “Just when everyone was beginning to think we’re safe, this isn’t going to go over well. And what about food? We’re running down fast as it is. Where are we going to resupply? I should tell June and Melva. Wait, maybe you should do that, you’re the captain after all. Oh, man, what about-?” he finally stopped and looked at Harper, who nodded wearily. Of course her thoughts had probably gone to her patient immediately.

“I’m probably going to need to do something I haven’t done since my six-month stint on Praxis, during the civil war.” She didn’t elaborate further, and it didn’t look like Diaz wanted to know the details any more than I did. The woman was a decade older than me, but in this moment she looked far older than her years. I didn’t envy her at all.

“Whatever we can do to assist,” I said, leaning forward to place my hand on her arm. “Just ask. Anything.” She smiled gratefully, but she also knew how little my offer really meant. I patted her arm awkwardly, and pulled my hand away. I looked back at Diaz, trying to remember the highlights of his rapid-fire stream of questions.

“I don’t know what I’m going to tell everyone, yet. The truth, eventually, but you’re right, this won’t go over well. I’d rather have a solid plan before I announce anything. Melva and June will be among the first to know, but I don’t really know how we can stretch the food to last any longer. I’ll be able to say more once we’re out of hyperspace, in regards to resupply; until then, I really don’t know.” I was saying ‘I don’t know’ a lot. I felt a sudden pang of petulance. I didn’t ask for any of this! I don’t want to be the one who has to make all the decisions! I didn’t say any of this of course, because there was no one else to do it for me. It was my ship.

With very little else to say, we broke up our little meeting. Harper said something about more research as she left, but I held Diaz back for a second after she’d gone, to tell him that I was going to lie down for a while, and not to disturb me for anything less than an emergency. He gave me a skeptical look, and I tried not to look guilty; it was coming up on meal time, and this wasn’t the first time I’d pulled this. After a minute, he reluctantly agreed and left me to my thoughts. I lay down on the bunk and laced my fingers behind my head, staring at the ceiling. I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to sleep ever again, especially as the migraine really took hold. But it looked like my fatigue had decided to team up with the quiet and relative comfort. I didn’t even remember closing my eyes, but a sharp rapping woke me from a deep, dreamless sleep some time later.

“Captain?” called a voice from the other side that I recognized, after several seconds of disoriented blinking, as Kyle. I stumbled out of bed and pulled open the door.

“What is it?” I asked, expectantly.

“Well, we, uh, we found something. It’s… I think you need to come take a look.”

Ion Trail 5: Complacency

The next steps were not great. I don’t know how people just… do this, as their actual job, all the time; just making life-and-death decisions for other people. I’d been on the job for barely twenty-four hours, and I was ready to resign my commission. Except I didn’t have a commission to resign; I just had a ship to fly, and people on that ship who needed to get off of it alive and reasonably healthy. I wasn’t going to turn over my ship to anyone else no matter how stressed all of this was making me, which meant that I was making the decisions.

Didn’t mean I had to like it, though.

Unsurprisingly, sleeping arrangements were the first problem I had to figure out. I had four small cabins and fifteen people to accommodate. Two could share a cabin if they liked each other a whole lot, and maybe you could get a third person on the floor, but it’d be cramped as hell; if you were going to sleep on the floor anyway, you might as well sleep in the cargo bay where you’d have room to spread out. Even after I pointed this out, several people seemed to have very good reasons why they deserved to be one of the ones who got to sleep in a cabin, which led to protests from everyone else who didn’t think they rated special treatment. My own cabin had become the de facto med bay, since the ship didn’t have one, which only left three cabins; anyone who thought I was going to give up my right to claim one of the other cabins for myself was suffering from a tragic case of space dementia. Without some place I could go and lock the door, I tended to get kind of paranoid and crotchety, so then there were two.

I listened to arguments and explanations until I was sure I’d heard every possible angle at least twice. I still couldn’t figure out an equitable way to split two tiny cabins between 13 people. Even if I were willing to share my cabin and we slept in shifts, that still wouldn’t be enough for everyone; it’d require us to sleep two to a bunk and aside from the newlywed couple (the two people Diaz had been talking to at the beginning of our first meeting) no one was really sanguine about that, least of all me.

Finally I’d heard enough and I put my foot down. My former cabin would remain the med bay. What little medical supplies we had would remain there, and Ms. Brennan would remain there as well. Harper, the medic, would get a cabin of her own. Aside from myself, she was the only person on the ship who was truly indispensable; almost everyone had minor contusions and scrapes that she had to keep an eye on lest they become something more serious, so there wasn’t much argument there. I did have to give her the stink-eye when she tried to refuse, though. I gave the last cabin to Diaz, as my ‘First Mate’, he deserved some sort of perks. There was some grumbling there, but Diaz was a good-looking, likeable sort who’d taken his new responsibilities very seriously and he’d made friends with most of the passengers already, so no one protested too much.

Once that was settled, the next matter was our food supply, or lack thereof. I asked Diaz who he thought might be useful in helping figure out the food situation, and he came back with June Hamilton-Gonzalez, one of the newlyweds, and Melva Estrada. Both women had experience with making food stretch, so I pulled them into the galley and laid out the situation to them. The expressions on their faces as I showed them the food confirmed what I already knew; we didn’t have enough food to feed this many people.

“Ai, you were not kidding when you said that no one would have full bellies,” said the younger woman. “I’ve half a dozen ranch hands that I need to keep fed, but this…” she trailed off, her hands speaking more eloquently than words. The older woman smiled slightly as she looked at the meager shelves.

“This would be a time for Jesus to multiply the fish and loaves,” she said quietly. June nodded in agreement, but Diaz looked as baffled as I felt. Seeing our expressions, Melva smiled again with some real warmth to it. “It’s a story from the earliest days of my faith, but I see that you two are not faithful. Perhaps another time I can tell it to you, if you’re interested.” I nodded skeptically, but said nothing more.

“Well, it is what we have,” June said brightly. “It will have to do. I think Sister…?” she paused, looking at Melva shrewdly, who nodded with a smile. June nodded back in satisfaction as she continued. “Sister Estrada and I can probably make this stretch a little bit, especially if water is plentiful.” She looked at me as she said this last, and I took a moment to respond, still trying to puzzle out the unspoken exchange between the two women.

“Uh, yeah, water should be good,” I said. “Everything but black water gets recycled back into the cistern, fresh as when it was filled.”

“Good,” she said. “I thought as much. We use a similar system on the ranch.” She turned back to the older woman.

“You’re thinking stews and soups?” Melva asked. June nodded.

“Lots of soups and stews,” she confirmed. It still won’t be enough food, but the water will at least make everyone feel as though they’re getting more. And it’s only a week.” The two women started sorting through the packages in the pantry, talking between themselves. I seemed to have been forgotten for the moment, so I nodded to Diaz, and turned to go.

“Make sure they have whatever they need,” I said in parting. “I’ll be in the cockpit for a while.” The two women seemed to have this situation well in hand, and I was just as happy to offload this particular bit of responsibility. I knew enough about cooking to turn the stuff in the boxes into something that would keep my motor running, but that was about it.

On my way back to the cockpit, I impulsively stopped at the med bay, opening the door and sticking my head in. Harper had her back turned, with the small med kit laid open on the desk in front of her. She turned as she heard the door open, and she smiled in welcome when she saw me.

“How’s she doing?” I inquired quietly. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

“She’s in a lot of pain, but the bruising appears to have stopped spreading,” she replied, turning to look over her patient as she spoke. “I can’t do a whole lot, but I think she may live so long as we can get to proper medical care soon enough.” She shook her head and looked at me. “How likely do you think that is?” Her question, while simple enough, was given added meaning by the frank look in her eyes. She already knew we were a bit less than a week out of Proxima Tau, so she was asking for more than that.

“I really don’t know. Proxima Tau is another posh tourist station, orbiting a large terraformed ice moon which is popular for skiing and such.” I shrugged. “It should have all of the facilities you’d expect, much like Kestrel Station. But I just don’t know. The ship that attacked Kestrel was a completely unknown quantity. It could be a rogue, or part of something bigger. Proxima Tau has the same kind of security force you’d expect, but no proper TU presence, either.”

“I had similar concerns,” she admitted. “I guess it’s time to bone up on combat surgery, then, and check the galley to see what you might have that I could improvise.” I blanched at the casual way she said it, and envisioning my cutlery used in that fashion didn’t help. “May I borrow your datapad? I’d rather not do serious research on my commlink,” she asked, cutting through my gruesome imaginings.

“Of course,” I agreed readily. “Anything you need, just let me or Diaz know, and we’ll do the best we can.” I spared another glance at the injured girl, deeply asleep, but with her brow still furrowed in pain, and shivered. I didn’t want the girl to die, but I wasn’t sure how much of a chance she really had. Harper had a quiet confidence and seemed like she’d seen some shit in her day, but a ship’s med kit and some cookware didn’t make for an ideal surgical situation. I just hoped Proxima Tau worked out like I kept assuring everyone else that it would.

=+=

The next couple of days were full of interesting little challenges, but with the bigger things settled, albeit to no one’s especial level of satisfaction, we were able to settle into something resembling a routine. Melva and June enlisted aid at their own discretion from the other passengers, and they managed to get everyone fed, to some extent. No one was happy about it, but there was surprisingly little grumbling. I learned with some discreet inquiries that the helpers also served the secondary purpose of quietly making sure everyone knew how strained our resources were; It seemed to make everyone feel responsible for their piece of the problem. I wasn’t sure which of the women, the rancher or the priestess, were to credit for it but I made a mental note to keep that little trick in mind.

After all of that, it turned out that the biggest problem we had left to deal with on this trip between the stars was boredom. Most of my passengers were working-class people, and long stretches of idleness were unfamiliar to them. The GS-1592s were a highly modular series of ships, and this particular one had been fitted to allow for almost complete autonomy with only a single pilot over short hauls. Longer haul freighters and independent ships tended to have small crews to deal with the various problems that I, as a contracted pilot with a company-owned ship, didn’t need to worry about.

I learned that Mr. Hamilton-Gonzalez, June’s husband, had been a flight attendant, and it didn’t take long for him to attach himself back to his wife’s hip, helping in all the dozens of little ways he was used to aboard interstellar passenger liners. Unfortunately we didn’t have a big supply of peanuts or cocktails to placate restless passengers, but he made do, and I saw a marked difference in attitudes once he’d found his niche again. I found him an interesting contrast from his wife; Alan was worldly, well-traveled, and very civilized in the sense that we used to mock back on the can colonies, whereas June had only been away from her ranch a handful of times, and was practical, blunt and earthy, and not in the least bit afraid to get her hands dirty. All the same, they seemed to complement each other in a way that stretched beyond their newlywed status.

A couple of younger guys who seemed to know each other very well had asked for permission to take a look at the engine room; I had my reservations, but they’d promised not to touch; One was a salvage operator and the other a parts merchant, so they were both interested in the newer high-efficiency model of drive core that GS had fielded. I gave them leave, but with a very stern warning; I was getting better at those, especially where my ship was concerned.

For the rest, the librarian was my saving grace. She’d dug deep into the datasphere and found a wealth of historical documents and vids and had decided to start sharing her findings in the form of interactive presentations. Her genuine enthusiasm for her subjects, no doubt aided by the enforced closeness and inactivity actually made the presentations quite popular, and I even found myself spending more time in the cargo bay, listening in with everyone else. She’d created a video chat room so that anyone could listen in regardless of their location on the ship, but people tended to congregate there when they didn’t have anything else to do, which was most of the time.

Aside from the never quite satisfied pangs of hunger, it wasn’t honestly going that badly. Having to mediate small personal disputes wasn’t my idea of a good time, but after three days I began to think that maybe we’d all survive this. I knew life wouldn’t ever be the same for any of us, not after what we’d experienced and what that likely meant for the galaxy at large, but getting to Proxima Tau and everyone getting on with living their own, individual lives again didn’t seem so unrealistic. Even Shanna Brennan, my injured passenger, seemed like she was doing okay despite the severity of her injuries. She’d been spending more time awake over the last twenty-four hours, participating in Carla’s presentation on the Transhumanist Rejection via her datapad. I was standing in the doorway to the cargo bay myself, listening with focused interest, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Shit!” I jumped, and spun around, seeing Clinton recoil in surprise so quickly that he bumped into Kyle, behind him. “Don’t do that!” I snapped, trying to keep my voice down and avoid disturbing Carla’s presentation. Clinton and Kyle had been the two who’d wanted to look at the engine room.

“Sorry,” said Clinton, putting his calloused hands up in a conciliatory fashion. “Didn’t realize you were so jumpy.” He paused and looked back at the taller man, who nodded. “Listen, uh, we need to talk.” He paused, looking at the people clustered in the cargo bay, and then back at me, making a point to meet my eyes. “Privately.” I nodded, picking up on the air of seriousness from the two men, who were usually a lot more relaxed and tended toward jokes and laughter. I followed them as they turned and led the way back to the engine room.

“So, you know how we were wanting to look at the drive,” Clinton began, as we reached the engine room. “Kyle had been telling me about some of the refinements they’d added to the new models, and how certain parts were going to be more in demand once these were more widely fielded.” I nodded; as a salvage worker and a parts retailer, that sort of information could be worth a lot of money to both of them. “So we were looking at it and comparing it to spec-sheets we’d pulled down from the Grey Dwarf database, just doin’ our thing, you know?”

“Clinton’s honestly a bit of a geek for stuff like this,” Kyle interjected, his tone taking on some of his normal jocularity. Clinton snorted and shot him a dirty look, but he was smiling too. It was obvious that these men were very close, rather than just business partners. Kyle picked up the story where Clinton had left off. “We noticed that the resonance frequency for the drive was off-spec.” I frowned. That was unusual, and rarely a good sign. Kyle smiled as he saw my recognition of the potential problem. “We didn’t want to say anything until we’d verified it; False readings happen sometimes, and we didn’t want to worry you when it might be nothing.” I inclined my head, and he continued.

“Turns out, it was a false reading, but not for the normal reasons you’d expect, miscalibrated sensors, stuff like that,” Clinton continued. “See, we were picking up a second signal, and that was throwing off our initial resonance reading.” He paused, waiting for me to think that through.

A second reading? That shouldn’t be possible, I thought. At least, it shouldn’t be possible without special coordination. The TU Navy used a technique to send squadrons of fighters on short jumps by syncing them up so they’d enter the same hyperspace envelope, but there was no way that should have happened when we were escaping Kestrel Station. “If you’ve got more, you’d best just tell it to me straight,” I said after a moment. There was no longer any hint of a smile on either of their faces.

“We do. We checked diagnostics best we could without touching anything on the drive, just like we promised. The second signal seems to be coming from…” Clinton paused, trying to formulate his words. Kyle jumped back in at that point.

“It seems to be coming from your own ship, somewhere near the bow. We can’t pin-point its location, which is strange, so we figured it was time to bring you in on this.”

“A second signal, coming from my own ship,” I said, thinking hard. There was no way it was another hyperdrive. Even if it were possible that there was a second drive on this ship, activating it would have destabilized the envelope and most likely destroyed the ship in the process. The only other possibility… “No,” I whispered, feeling a dawning sense of horror. “Oh, no, no, no…” The only other possibility is that they’d somehow managed to get a hyperspace transponder onto my ship.

They’d know exactly where we were going.

Ion Trail 4: Incommunicado

I managed to catch a solid hour to myself before I had to deal with anyone else. After checking the log to make sure that nothing unexpected had happened while I was checking on things, I went about reactivating the ship’s local datasphere.

A local datasphere is essentially a digest version of the TU’s online catalog of sites and databases. It doesn’t keep literally everything, but it’s usually got enough of the most heavily accessed information that you can do research, read books or articles, watch holos or listen to music for the duration of a good jump without ever needing to reach out. More esoteric stuff, or anything updated since you last synced up, may require you to do a hyperWAN query, which can get expensive if you’re doing them very often. Technically, all stations and even planets used essentially the same technology as my ship, just on a much larger scale; Always-on interstellar connections were basically unheard of, even among the insanely wealthy, but with data storage and access having grown exponentially larger, faster and more efficient, you could keep an equivalent to pre-space Earth’s entire internet in a single datapad. Most spacers are more than willing to wait until their next port of call to sync up, rather than pay the expense for anything less than completely vital. Grey Dwarf typically shelled out a bit more for an upgraded datasphere package, in order to keep their pilots happy and prepared for contingencies, which was nice, but they didn’t cover any hyperWAN queries, so those would all come out of my pocket.

Once the datasphere’s status display read ‘Active’, I decided to go ahead and disable hyperWAN routing; with so many people aboard, the bill for queries would be exorbitant, especially given what had happened. We all likely wanted to know what was happening back at Kestrel Station. I decided it’d be worth the creds to do a quick query of my own for news. Just a quick scan of the headlines should be enough to get an idea of what happened, which I could then relay to everyone else. I selected my query parameters and sent it off, but was surprised to get a non-response dialog popped up immediately. Only when I glanced at the status icon did I remember the debris impact right before the jump that had knocked out the comms disc. Well, that was another problem that would have to wait until we got to Proxima Tau.

I spent a little time doing a systems check, and double-checking the oxygenation systems, as this ship wasn’t rated for passenger transport; One or two people was fine, but over a dozen was likely to push things, but the system still read within acceptable levels. When I caught myself wiping dust off of individual keys on the navconsole, I admitted to myself that I was stalling; a pilot didn’t even need to be in the cockpit most of the time during a hyperspace jump, and here I was acting like it was a full-time job. I pushed myself to my feet, squared my shoulders, and walked out of the cockpit.

I made it as far as the passenger cabins before my nerve failed me. I stopped in the hallway outside my own cabin, remembering that it had been turned into a sickbay, and turned the other direction instead, opening the door across the hall to peek in. It was empty, fortunately, so I slipped in before anyone could see me hiding from my responsibilities. I just wanted to freshen up a bit before I addressed my passengers, that’s all. I turned to the mirror and splashed a bit of water across my face, then took a good long look at my reflection. I tried a stern, no-nonsense expression, but failed to convince even myself, so I just looked, taking slow breaths, and studied the face that I saw.

The woman in the mirror wasn’t anything special to look at. Dark brown hair with some highlights courtesy of the week I spent on Xanadu’s sunny beaches after graduating from flight school. I wore it how I typically did, with it pulled back into a queue, but as usually several strays had escaped to be constantly brushed out of my eyes. My face was an oval with a strong jaw, pronounced cheekbones and skin the color of creamed coffee, with a bare sprinkling of freckles across my nose; another souvenir of the beach and my mixed heritage. With deep brown, almond-shaped eyes to complete my look, I got my share of second looks, but no one had ever tried to tell me that I could be a model; a hand model, maybe. What I realized most was just how tired that woman looked, nearly as tired as I felt. I guess it was understandable, given the day I was having.

“You can do this,” I said. My reflection didn’t look convinced, but hearing the words out loud made me feel a little better, all the same. I nodded firmly, and turned to the door, opening it and stepping out with a small, fragile feeling of resolve. I turned around to ensure the door closed quietly, as I wasn’t trying to disturb the passengers who’d taken over my cabin, but when I turned around to stare directly into a broad chest inches from my face, all though of silence vanished and I screamed in surprise, and I backed up to the wall. My cheeks burned with embarrassment as I followed the chest upward to the face of the man who’d been in my cabin with the medic and the injured woman. He was a lot bigger than he’d looked before, all hunched over with worry, and my gaze had to go up and up to finally reach his face, a full head higher than my own.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and I felt an absurd comfort in noticing that his voice was deep enough to seem natural for his size. “I didn’t mean to startle you, Captain.” He gestured back toward the door behind him. “Ms. Harper dozed off and I didn’t want to wake her.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m fine.” I wasn’t fine. “I was just on my way to talk to the rest of the passengers.” I gestured vaguely toward the cargo bay, my heart still hammering in my chest. At least my voice wasn’t shaking.

“I’ll go with you,” he said. I waved for him to go ahead and fell in behind him, trying to calm myself before I had to face the rest of them. I wasn’t sure how long I’d survive as Captain if this was how I handled just bumping into someone, however literally.

He preceded me into the back, where I saw that most of the cargo had been unstrapped and pushed back against the walls, making more room in the center of the bay. I made a mental note to ensure that Diaz got it strapped back down again; it was unlikely that anything would happen that could overcome the inertial dampers, but you didn’t take chances you didn’t have to. I saw Diaz talking to a couple of people who looked to be mid-twenties, and I did a quick count of the rest of the people clustered in my cargo bay. Twelve people, if you counted Diaz and the big man who’d walked back with me. Add in the medic, the injured woman and myself, that made fifteen. Several people looked up when I walked in, and it didn’t take long before everyone had turned to look at me. Diaz murmured something to the couple, and walked over to stand next to me. I gave him a quick smile and opened my mouth to speak.

The good news is, we’re alive, was what I started to say, but the words died on my tongue. We were alive, but many others weren’t, including some of the people who’d arrived at my berth with these people, and very likely the whole station. I doubted anyone would consider that good news. I closed my mouth, swallowed and tried again.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” I began, then paused. Oh, great. That’s how all the most trustworthy people start their speeches. This is going to be fantastic. “I’m not going to lie,” I said again, almost defiantly, “we’re in a shit situation. No one expected to be here. I wasn’t prepared, and I doubt any of you were, either.” A few murmurs, but no one really said anything that I could hear; at least they weren’t heckling me. “Kestrel Station is… Probably gone. Or close enough to gone as to make no difference.” This got a reaction at least. Several people gasped, and one man sat down, hard. “I couldn’t tell you what was attacking the station except that it was a ship of a sort I’ve neither seen nor heard of before. We also didn’t escape completely unscathed. We have no communications, and no way of knowing what is going on out there,” I gestured as I spoke, indicating everything, not just Kestrel Station. “If you heard my earlier announcement, then you know we’re on our way to Proxima Tau.”

“But that’s days away!” said the man I saw Diaz talking to earlier. “Why wouldn’t we go to Bekter’s Rim? It’s much closer, and has a strong TU presence.”

“That may be true,” I agreed, bridling at the questioning of my decision. “You might have noticed that we didn’t have a whole lot of breathing room, so I just used the navdata I had already.” He blinked at the harshness in my tone, but his expression indicated understanding. I dropped the other shoe, anyway. “Unfortunately, we’ve got a week, not just a few days to Proxima Tau. This ship isn’t as fast as what you’re probably used to.”

“A week?” This exclamation signaled a new batch of protests, most of which were just variations on the same theme. I let them talk, not saying a word. Honestly, with that kind of uproar I didn’t think I could have; it was all I could do to stand my ground instead of retreating to the cockpit. I glanced at Diaz; seeing the worry in his face steeled my resolve a bit, and I turned back to wait it out. Eventually they settled down until only a few voices remained and I raised my hand to regain their attention.

“Listen, it’s not ideal. I know it’s a long time to be stuck aboard this ship, but if you know anything about space travel, you understand that it’s very dangerous to drop out of hyperspace in the middle of a jump.” A few people nodded their agreement, including the man who had originally protested, which seemed to mollify the rest. “If it were a longer jump, I might risk it simply because we wouldn’t have the supplies, but with the food I have on board I think we might be okay.” I didn’t mention that the food I had was enough for one person, not fifteen. “It won’t be a comfortable trip, and no one is going to have a full belly when we get there, but the important thing is that we will get there.”

I stayed a while longer, answering their questions, including some that I’d already covered; yes, I was sure that we had to go to Proxima Tau and no I didn’t think it would be a good idea to try to reroute. These questions came from a very attractive Station Concierge, who seemed like she was very good at getting what she wanted. Unfortunately no, there weren’t enough cabins to accommodate everyone. Yes, there was a datasphere, but no, there wasn’t hyperWAN access. Everyone was welcome to use anything they wanted to on the local datasphere, but I wasn’t responsible for what they found there. It was a standard mid-tier LD package, and no, it doesn’t have Decency Filtration. If you don’t want to see it, you should probably just avoid looking for it. So it went from there.

In time the questions ceased, and Diaz stood up, giving me a look that seemed to suggest that it was time for my escape. When he stepped forward to grab people’s attention, I flashed him a grateful grin. As I turned to go, he was marshaling the passengers into pushing the cargo around to create some level of discrete space for individuals and small groups. I quietly fled the cargo bay, back to the sanctuary of my cockpit.

Ion Trail 3: The Captain

“Ow!” I groaned, throwing one arm up to cover my eyes. I knew better than that, and Mr. Dudek, my flight instructor, would have stripped my hide raw for such a rookie mistake. I shaded my eyes and squinted down at the control console, trying to locate the right button. When I did, I mashed my thumb down on it harder than necessary, and the forward screen went black, leaving me to blink stupidly until my eyes had adjusted to the sudden darkness.

Only once I could see again and I’d made a couple habitual status checks did it finally dawn on me that we were alive. I hadn’t been so certain we would be, only a few minutes earlier. I keyed the intercom, and fought to keep the nerves out of my voice as I announced to the passengers that we were in hyperspace, en route to Proxima Tau.

“Diaz,” I added, “Come on up to the cockpit. We need to talk.”

When he arrived, I was busy double-checking things I knew were fine. My first long trip, bringing the ship here from the shipyard, had been leisurely, but with what had just happened, and knowing I had a dozen people hanging out in my cargo bay, I simply couldn’t relax. It was almost a relief when I heard Diaz push the door open, until he spoke.

“Rick’,” he began, “I’m he-“

“Don’t call me that!” I rounded on him with a snarl. “My name is Rickard, not Rick. Hell, since we’re going to be on this ship together for a while, you can even call me by my first name, but do not call me Rick. You got it?” He’d backed up to the wall, hands raised defensively at my tirade.

“Okay, okay, Sue it is,” he said placatingly.

“Su-san,” I said flatly, with a strong emphasis on the second syllable. “Not Sue, not Rick; Susan. Rickard. That’s it.”

“Susan,” he agreed, hands raised again. “Got it, Susan.” When he realized I wasn’t going to bite him, he stepped forward a bit, rubbing the back of his neck. I almost felt bad for biting his head off; It’s not like anyone was having the easiest day, but I didn’t bother to apologize. I might grind my teeth at the stupid nicknames when we were going to see each other for a couple hours at most, but if we were going to be on the ship together, I had to nip that in the bud. “So…” He trailed off.

“Yeah,” I said, not really knowing where to begin. I was trained as a pilot, and I’d done well in my certifications, but now I had to make decisions that would affect the lives of a dozen strangers, and that was not something I was prepared for. “Um, the red-head?” I said awkwardly.

“Oh, she’s fine,” he replied, then winced. “No, she’s not fine, she’s bad. I’ve got her in one of the cabins, and one of the others was a medic. She’s in there with her now.” I sighed, not having expected much else. She’d hit the ramp hard, and the only thing you could say is that it was better than having missed it entirely. Unbidden, the distorted faces of the people I’d seen while undocking came to mind, and I felt my stomach give a little heave. I looked up to see Diaz watching me quietly. “So, uh,” he paused, then swallowed hard before continuing. “So, what happened? Was it…?”

“The station was under attack,” I said, confirming what he’d been unable to ask. “I don’t know who. I’ve never seen anything like it in my studies.” His eyes grew larger, the soft brown color vibrant in the cabin lights.

“Do you think it was-“ he began.

“I told you I don’t-“ I started to cut him off.

“-Aliens??” he finished, and I stopped dead, just staring at him. Aliens. Jesus. Did I think it was Aliens? I mulled the thought for a half second before the absurdity of it overwhelmed me. Fucking Aliens.

“Don’t be stupid,” I replied. “I don’t know who it was, but humanity has been in the stars for over two-hundred years. If there were alien life- sentient alien life- we would have discovered it well before now.” I sighed, and pressed the bridge of my nose between my knuckle and thumb, feeling the makings of a monstrous headache looming. I looked up again, noting the slightly hurt expression on his face before I spoke again. “Look, whoever it was, we only barely escaped, okay? I didn’t say anything, but we were seconds, maybe less, away from becoming stardust all over again. I don’t know if anyone needs to know that,” I said quickly, seeing the look of horror on his face, “I don’t know that you needed to know that either, but for now, let’s just keep that bit of fun trivia to ourselves.” He nodded quickly. “We need to figure out some sort of longer-term accommodations for these people, see to any additional injuries, and figure out food. I wasn’t prepared for a trip with a dozen other people, and we’ve got a week until we’re due in Proxima Tau.”

“What are we going to do?” he said, the horror from before fading into something more like dread. I realized that my instinct to talk to Diaz wasn’t really a good one. He was a good guy, only a few years younger than me, but his years as a stevedore hadn’t made him especially smart or resourceful. I guess it’s good that you’ve got your looks, I thought to myself. Another sigh and I pulled myself to my feet, with one more glance at the instrument panel. We were in hyperspace, so there wasn’t a lot to do right now. It’d keep.

“Take me to see the injured girl,” I said. I didn’t know what we were going to do either, but some part of me realized that the last thing I wanted to do was show it. While all I’d wanted to do was pilot a ship through the lonely emptiness of space, it seemed that I would have to be the captain for these people, at least until we got to Proxima Tau. Diaz led me through the ship to the small cluster of passenger cabins, and stopped right in front of my door. Oh, damn it, I thought. He tapped quietly at the door, and then pushed in.

The small cabin was more crowded than I expected. Once Diaz and I entered, there were five of us. The injured girl lay on my bed, unconscious, with her shipsuit zipped down in the front, revealing her modest chest in a cute lacy bra, and a considerably less attractive mass of bruising from her ribcage down to the low-slung line of her matching underwear. My first thought was less than charitable. The only woman I wanted in my bed right now was me. But the point was moot now. She was there, and I wasn’t going to make her move simply out of selfishness. Near the bed sat an older woman in an unmarked shipsuit, with a heavy first aid kit laid open on her lap. She looked up when I walked in, and her light blue eyes betrayed worry for just a second before it disappeared behind a mask of professionalism. Behind her stood another man with his arms crossed tightly in front of him. He was maybe my age, and every line of his body radiated the worry that the medic hid so well.

“Hey,” I started. Uh oh, here comes Captain Confidence again, I thought. I tried again. “How is she?”

“I’ve given her a mild sedative,” said the medic, closing the medkit and setting it on the foot of the bed before rising to greet me. “But she’s not doing well. At least a couple fractured ribs, likely some internal damage too.” She smiled wryly. “If I’d have known, when I left the clinic, that we’d be dealing with a station-wide emergency and unexpected departure, I’d have grabbed my other bag, but I can’t diagnose her properly with your ship’s kit.” I must have looked mildly offended because her hands came up in a deprecating fashion, and she said, “It’s a perfectly adequate kit for dealing with a variety of wounds, but diagnosis of internal damage is beyond its scope.”

“Understood,” I replied with a nod. When in doubt, terseness can be substituted for confidence. “Were there any other injuries?”

“Minor contusions and a broken arm,” she replied. “I set the arm, and one of the other passengers is looking at the minor scrapes and bruises. What we’ve got here is more than adequate for those.” She looked down at the auburn-haired woman again, and a ghost of concern passed across her face. “Ms. Brennan is another case, however.” Learning the young woman’s name made me remember my courtesies, and I reached out a hand.

“I’m Susan Rickard. I’m the Captain,” I said, but that felt wrong. “The pilot. Er, the, yeah.” I stammered and finally stopped talking, before I made it worse. So much for confidence. The medic smiled, and took my proffered hand.

“Lorna Harper,” she replied. “Medic. Captain seems accurate, under the circumstances. I have a feeling that all of us owe you our lives.” I blanched; because of course what she said was true. Had I followed my initial instincts, I would be responsible for all of these people’s deaths, but being responsible for their lives wasn’t much better. I glanced over at the other man, who’d been observing this exchange quietly. When he saw me look at him, he took a step forward, his arms coming uncrossed, and I immediately panicked.

“Very good,” I heard myself say, like a complete tool. I nodded abruptly, and spun on my heel, nearly running into Diaz in my urgent need to get out of that room. Damnit, that was my room! I stepped through the door, and he followed, barely getting through before I closed it on him. I rounded on him, ready to yell at him for putting her in my room, after I’d specifically said not to, but when I saw him flinch, the anger melted away, and I sighed again. I had a feeling I’d be doing a lot of that over the next week. “Do me a favor?” He nodded quickly. “When you get a chance, move my clothes out of there into another room.” I turned away from the door, toward the cockpit, and I heard him shuffling his feet. Then I turned back.

“Julio, isn’t it?” I said, feeling the need to say some things I didn’t really want to say. He nodded again, and I kept talking. “Listen, I didn’t ask for any of this. None of us did, I guess. But I made a choice, and I’ve got to live with it, and so do you.” I gestured, somehow indicating the closed door and the cargo bay all at once. “I don’t know any of these people. We’re damned lucky we have a medic, and one who knows what she’s doing, but I don’t know her, either. I know you better than anyone else here, so I’m going to have to trust you. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” he said haltingly. I doubted he did, but I wasn’t really sure I was so certain of what I was asking him either.

“I need someone I can count on. If I’m going to have to be the Captain, I’m going to need a, uh, a First Mate. Someone who can make sure things happen. Right now, that’s you. You with me?” Instead of nodding right away he paused, considering. My estimation of him went up a notch. It was a big responsibility, and if I had stepped into mine without thinking, it was best that he at least considered it first. I didn’t have a lot of options, anyway, but when he finally met my eyes and nodded again, much more seriously, I felt a wave of relief wash through me. “Good to hear it,” I said. “I need you to figure out what to do with the rest of the passengers. Try not to bust into the cargo, but if there’s something we need in there, just do it. I hope Mr. Dion-“ I grimaced, realizing that the amiable merchant was likely dead, “Er, his associates, will forgive us under the circumstances.”

“Got it,” he said, giving me the ghost of a smile as he turned to go back to the cargo bay. I waited until he was nearly to the door before I called him back.

“Hey, Diaz?” I called, hiding the small smile I felt. He paused, turning back to look at me with a quizzical look on his face.

“No more talk of Aliens, okay?”