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.