It's a small extraction vessel. Name: ANTOLA. Can service a crew up to twelve, but they don't man crews that size any more. Some fifty years ago, upper management adopted a brilliant new system that nearly halved crews. The method is simple: overwork your employees and offer them no alternatives. Or something more to the effect of maximizing profits by increasing the amount of time spent on so-called Effective Work, incorporating a small number of performance enhancing drugs, and on the whole relying on simple and effective communication and the facilitation of communal feeling to create—at this point you lose me. I can't continue this without talking about the overworking and underpaying and dying thing. If you’re on a spaceship in the middle of, you know, space, and your options are to overextend yourself to keep everything running or to die (in space), people are, on the whole, inclined to pick the former.
The Captain is already standing outside the ship when I arrive in the morning. It's a minimally annoying process to get through the gates: show your ID badge, answer a few questions about your intentions and luggage, quick scan, and then you're on your way. Our nearest ship launch facility is a relatively small affair, only four or five hangars dealing commercial, passenger, and service planes like ours. It's not overflowing with people filtering in and out like its sister location. It’s small and remote enough someone even still recognizes me, years after the last time I'd been here, and asks what I’m doing back.
The Captain and I graduated the same year, so we must be somewhere in the realm of the same age. It'd make her about forty. It'd make me about forty, too. She notices me and nods, a return to formality since I saw her the night before, in a small bar fifteen minutes from my house. We’d set up there for drinks, reviewed the team and made baseless judgment calls. She still caught my name on the ledger and found my contact information, even though we’d only met during a general education requirement.
“Mikhail Hastings. He says,” she had stressed, hiding her smile behind the rim of her can of beer. I looked down at the tablet she’d brought with her, displaying the profiles of each member of the crew. “His ancestors were early manufacturing assistants in artificial limb regrowth, and were only migrated to space to assist in repairs.”
“Bullshit.” I don’t know how she stomachs canned beer. “My ancestors were early manufacturing developers. Why do they have to posture with us?”
“Poor kid’s in robotics. Probably only speaks to people like us.”
“He can kick it with the programmer.”
“Home kid this time. She’s supposed to be good.”
“Well good for her. She’s got to be special if she beats the supercomputers.”
“You never struck me as very anti-Maikerian.” It’s a word I don’t hear very often, the one space folks call themselves. The colloquial accepted names back Home tend to lean on the less flattering side. There’s a social prerogative to refrain from calling them Maikerian where we can help it—the enlightened next step in human evolution. It’s got an unpleasant ring to it.
“I just don’t love this whole ‘from the same mother’ shtick,” I said, downing the remainder of my drink.
“Well, we are,” she said. “And really, when they’re born, they are still the same.”
“They don’t stick a million computers in us.”
“In them, either.”
“I don’t mind them, really.”
“I know,” she said. “You’ll be civil, at least.” Someone younger might be prone to an outburst, so they think. Or maybe it’s a personal faith she places in me, pointlessly.
“I’ll be sober.” The bartender put another drink in front of me.
“You’re very quiet normally,” she said. I didn’t tell her that I haven't worked a job since graduating, a required semester of unpaid labor before we got our diplomas. That my life is occupied mainly by odd jobs back home, a stupidly boring waste of a pilot's degree. I only took this job on the advice of a fortune telling done by a woman I'd met at a bar.
“Imagine that,” I said instead. “Transcending the human race just to remake it.”
“If you take all the worms out of the world, you have to make more,” the Captain said. “Otherwise there’s none left to step on.” She’s not so fond of them either, I think. She just knows how to lie about it a bit better. “I’m not thrilled about this team,” she confided. I also think she was drunk. “Besides you and the robotics kid, it’s all girls.”
“You didn’t strike me as the type,” I said.
“Private beneficiary selects a team of almost all women. He’s also coming on the expedition.”
“Mm. Yeah.”
“It doesn’t sit right with me.”
I looked over the list of names again. “They really run us on nothing now, huh?”
“Knock on wood all’s well,” she sighed. “Ah well. Make sure to eat a large breakfast tomorrow. Real coffee. Spend the money. You’ll miss it.”
I don’t eat in the morning. Maybe after enough trips the nausea subsides, but there’s something abysmal about the physical process of going into space for me. In school, we skipped all meals any day we went up and just dealt with the hunger. Nobody had an appetite, and the kids who forced themselves to eat threw it up on the way out the atmosphere. It’d make sense to get used to it. To know you need to savor your last bits of real food and drink for a while. My memories are just fossils of a moment in time, our younger years as crewmen.
We meet at the loading docks and all introduce ourselves before launching. It's a crew of eight, and besides myself and the Captain, they’ll all be young. They get younger each year. They say as you get older you start wanting your feet to touch solid ground more and more and more. Eventually you can't stand it. Or you get lucky, and make enough money on one expedition you don't ever have to go up again. Not that it actually happens, but maybe you can set aside enough savings to switch to on-planet jobs.
“Sleep okay?” The Captain asks. She's got a clipboard. Last minute schematics.
“As well as you can,” I say.
“Sure. You're early.”
“Leave a good impression.”
“We’re just waiting.” I nod, and she returns to her clipboard.
Sometimes ship owners—benefactors usually, the people paying for whatever mission we're on—create embarrassing, gaudy designs for their vessels. There's no special paint or coloring on this one, opting for the manufacturer's whites and metallics, only a small stenciled identification set near the entrance in green. It's not so bad, I think.
The first member of the crew shows up after a few minutes. She's dyed her hair, but done nothing beyond initial bleaching, so it's toned orange and brassy and splits at the ends. Maybe it's the style these days. She's taller than me, too, just under the Captain's height. The smile she gives the Captain and I is relaxed but polite, like she knows we're all in this lie together, but we're playing it out comfortably.
“Captain. My name's Annie,” she says, holding out a hand for the Captain to shake. “Computer technician.” She uses the formal title from the job application. Green.
“Sorry we couldn't meet before,” the Captain says, shaking her hand. “Back in the day, you used to have the whole crew meet up on the ground before deploying, get a couple of beers and get to know each other, but lately it's been.”
“It's tough,” Annie supplies. “Flu.”
“True enough. Can't complain too bad, with what our parents went through.” Annie smiles politely, and doesn't mention her parents didn't, or were just infants when that all happened. That we have more in common with her parents than each other.
“You drink?” I ask her. I've lost my edge for telling ages, so I know I must be wrong to think she's fifteen. I wouldn't rule out her being underage, though.
“I'm from downcountry,” she says.
The Captain laughs. “Better than us, then.”
“Have you two worked together before?” She asks.
“Old university friends,” I supply. The Captain doesn't challenge it. You get old enough and stop caring so much about those particular distinctions. Young people might be horrified to have a vague acquaintance call you a friend.
“Oh. That's exciting,” she says. I shrug. The Captain opens her mouth to say something else, but gets distracted by someone behind Annie. She has long, dark hair tied in a low ponytail, bangs that can't help falling in the way of her eyes.
“This is the ANTOLA expedition meetingpoint?” She asks.
“That's right,” the Captain says.
“My name's Mark Braun, I was assigned.” She's carrying a duffel bag, which she pulls a manilla folder from. “I have the transfer files.”
“I received a notice about it,” the Captain says, holding out her hand for the folder. “No worries.”
“Right.” She gives Annie a thin closed mouth smile and a nod. Same to me.
“And those must be the two from Maikere-1,” the Captain says. It's a boy and a girl. The girl's shoulders are hunched forward, and her gaze is trained down, avoiding indication she’s listening to the boy, who talks animatedly beside her, with a large, relaxed smile. His eyes and hair have been colored—whites and irises contrasting—vibrant colors are supposedly in with young people in space. There's a difference in dyed hair compared to changed hair. You can tell with Annie's. The slight differences in tone where bleach develops less, the small indication of roots growing in or a strand completely missed by a distracted stylist. “Enit and Mikhail.”
“Mikhail's in robotics.” The Captain jerks around at the voice behind her. There’s another girl standing with her arms folded behind her back. Her eyes widen, surprised at the surprise, surprising her. “I wanted to be early, but now it just looks like I'm late,” she says.
“Where did you come from?”
“The ship.” She gives everyone a polite sweep of eye contact, including the now approached Mikhail and Enit. “My name's Maria. Senior Robotics Tech. I was just doing some last minute equipment checks.”
“That's already been handled,” Mark says.
“Always good to triple check.”
“Astute observers make for good captains, wouldn't you say?” I look at the final new person who's joined the small circle. His hair is white, and his eyes each a separate color. Cosmetics. Changed.
“Everyone, this is our benefactor for the expedition,” the Captain introduces.
“Feel free to call me Nine,” he says. “Maikere names can be so difficult for humans to deal with.”
“He's decided to join us as an observer.”
“I have no particular skills in this field,” he says. “Nothing officially, so I'll be looking forward to learning from you all.”
“Beneficiary usually calls himself captain,” I say.
“I'm strong enough to admit my shortcomings.”
“Those that are usually don't join.” The Captain shoots me a look that tells me to shut up. Fine.
He shrugs, smiling. “I have some pride.”
“That seems to be everyone otherwise,” the Captain says, clearing her throat. “Bags have already been moved to quarters. There's an hour for everyone to confirm their stations are set. Barring any issues, we'll launch.”
The Captain covers the official mission briefing. Things we already know but protocol demands repeating. Introductions are short and perfunctory. Name, region, some vague fun fact. I like the Captain because she doesn't waste time on trivialities. Some captains try too hard to make it fun or unique, the whole fact business. Two truths and a lie. Find a person who shares some trait with you and then share with the group. Nonsense. Fun facts are easy to lie about, to say something that vaguely hits the point but reveals nothing about yourself.
I say that I’ve never had my cavity. It’s true. It’s something I share with only three other people on the ship. Most humans have cavities. I’m unique in this way. Maybe I do have cavities now. I haven’t been to a dentist in years.
We load onto the ship after introductions are finished. Two of the kids follow me to the bridge, taking a console each.
The bridge divides into two sections. The back consists of computer terminals, four total, two on each side, which recess into the wall. The pilot's chair is in the middle, pushed forward into the front section, with a console of electronics—the very ones that let you pilot the ship, if you'd believe it—surrounding it. The ground falls out around the pilot’s chair, alongside the rest of the terminal, extending into the nose of the ship, completely surrounding it with the layers of thick glass that form the half-dome of the front window. There are two seats along the back wall with the entrance. It's a fairly large room. Nine must have had it built on schematics for larger crews. There's enough space to do light calisthenics, if you felt like it.
The actual mechanical maintenance has already been done by the engineers in the shipyard, so my job is confirming the layout of buttons. Private ships customize layouts and designs depending on the creator's preference. This runs standard. There's an intercom system throughout the ship. One of the mic points is at the pilot’s terminal, a small black rectangle microphone that fits in your hand. The design is old, but they don’t innovate on designs like it. They do exactly what they need to do, and nothing more.
“We're set to launch in five minutes,” I say into it. “Find a secure location and strap in.” I turn to the left. “Navigator?” I ask the girl at the console. It's a stupid question. That's the navigator's seat. She nods. “Where you from?” She looks at me, her left eye milky and artificial. Ah.
She turns back to her screen.
“I'm the pilot, you know,” I say. “We'll have to talk to each other.”
“I know,” she says. Her voice is quiet and monotone. “My name’s Enit.” She leaves it at that.
“Alrighty.” I turn to the console on the other side. “You're all set?” I ask. It's the computers kid. Annie.
“All good,” she says.
“Never know what you do for prep.”
“Check firmware updates, read about known issues. Also, I usually download a better code editor. The built-in one’s garbage.”
I exhale sharply. A laugh.
“Two minutes,” Enit says.
“Right. Report?”
“Skies clear. Winds fifteen miles per hour southeast. Artificial ozone as scheduled.”
“Great.” I slip on a headset, pull down the mic. “Ground Control, this is ANTOLA 1. Initiating rockets and preparing for launch.”
The voice crackles back through the headset. “Ground Control. All clear.”
I click on the rockets. The whole ship hums. There’s a transparent computer screen that covers the windows of the bridge, which darkens slightly to block out sun interference. Pick up the internal communications microphone again, click down the side button. “Preparing to launch. Find a secure location and strap in.”
The door to the bridge slides open, and the Captain and operations kid take the two back seats, locking themselves in.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, this has all just been sitting there. The steps to take a ship, hurtle it upwards, and pull it out of Home’s atmosphere and into space. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since I’ve done it last, the steps are rote, shoved into my brain by deceptively good teachers. It’s like learning to ride a bike, except the stakes for messing up at worst are an explosion and the death of you and everyone else on the ship, which is unlike riding a bike, where you may perhaps recall the stakes are significantly less severe and concern-inducing.
The worst part of the launch process is the speed. A straight shot up in a machine that you think, at this point, would be more secure. Gravity tries to keep you in its clutches while manmade monstrosities push you past it, or something poetic like that. I’m starting to think I've become cynical in age. It doesn’t matter much. Large, tempestuous rockets are pushing me and a handful of strangers into infinite space. Once you slip out of gravity's reach it all feels less life-threatening. Speed and velocity lose some of their bite. Although, the danger never really decreases, does it?
“All clear,” I say into the microphone. I hear the seatbelts unbuckle around me.
“Well done,” the Captain says.
“Just the first leg,” I deflect.
“Still. Never gets old.” That's comforting, at least.
She departs. The operations kid follows. I switch the controls to turn the autopilot on, lean back in my seat, and look out at the stars.
I don’t think it gets old either, truthfully. Being in space. My whole childhood was spent looking up at the stars. It was supposed to lose its luster at some point. People told me no matter how hard I tried, other things would get in the way, and eventually it would lose that something that made it feel special. You don't care so much about the stars in the sky, or the phases of the moon, watching Maikere-1 orbiting Home. And then you go into space. You exit the atmosphere for the first time. I have to wonder what it's like to have been born there. To have been born in that wonder. Maybe they don't care about it at all, like kids in the central belt and blizzards.
Ships run on local time, dependent on what zone you leave from. It helps keep a standard of living, extracted from regular day and night cycles. Historically, they ran on one universal time, but the jet lag caused problems for crews, and pointlessly, so ships shifted to run on the time they departed from. Standard communications run on Maikere Universal Time, but ships convert that automatically in logs and on screens.
Unlike the rest of the crew, I don't sleep the first few days. Burden of being a pilot. I desperately last as long as I can, take the legal, corporate approved stimulant minimally, and wait for the Captain to relieve me for brief, hour long naps when she can. Eventually her and I will swap shifts. Crews used to have a proper copilot. They don't go for that much anymore. A captain has to pick up the slack.
An easy, quiet rhythm establishes itself amongst the crew. At least, as far as I can tell. Most people don't come into the bridge much besides the navigator, who has to. Everyone else only filters in on occasion. That's what had originally drawn me to the role. A one-man team of integral importance to the operation. That and comics with fighter pilots. Rogues who played by their own rules. I get complete control over the bridge audio speakers. You can hook them up to play music. Enit could argue music choice, with how much time she spends there, but she never comments. I delude myself into thinking she likes jazz, too.
Three days pass, and the Captain and I begin working in proper shifts. I can lay off the synthetic stimulants, and join the rest of the crew in a daily rationed cup of instant coffee. It's prepared by a machine, despite the fact it's just hot water, instant coffee crystals, stir. Easy for a person to manage on their own. The machine lists everyone's preferences. The Captain and Nine drink it with sugar. Both robotics kids take cream, and the computers kid takes cream and sugar. Operations just takes it black. I find myself skimming the list each day until I’ve memorized it. They prep enough portions for each of us to have a cup each day of the planned expedition. You can skip one, but you won't get two cups the next day, so it's without benefit.
Sometime a week in, the operations kid slides open the bridge door. Ships this small have no mechanism to enforce gravity or pull you along hallways. There's a lot of pushing yourself and hoping for the best as you move about the ship. Another thing that’s nice about being a pilot, you don’t have to learn how to do that gracefully. I tend to lumber when I take breaks from piloting.
“The Captain wants to talk to you,” she says to Enit. “I can cover here.” The door slides again at the sound of Enit leaving.
“You said you were in operations,” I say to her. Mark. That's her name. “What the hell does that mean?” She shrugs. “They stick me on missions that need another set of hands.”
“What do you do?”
“Most jobs.” She shrugs again. “I've been navigator and robot tech and CPU tech and everything before.”
“Pilot?”
“No. Co-pilot, I guess. I can handle the ship for a minute if you need the bathroom.”
“The ship can handle itself for a minute if I need the bathroom.”
“Sure, but you can blame me.”
I grin. “You like this work?”
She shrugs. “I need money.”
“You're not supposed to say that.”
“This isn't a job interview.”
“Young kids like extra cash.”
“It's for my mom,” she says.
“Sick?
“There was an undisclosed landmine beneath our house. Well.”
“Ah.”
“We need to get some kind of prosthetic, and food and things. I have younger siblings.”
“Sure. You got work here?”
“I've been handling internal ship robotics,” she says. “They're more focused on the actual extraction robots. Dunno, something to do.”
I hum in agreement. “I might take you up on that offer,” I say. “Your fall guy duties.”
She smiles. “If you ever need it,” she says. “It's the only job I'd never actually get hired for.”
“Job security of an advanced degree.” We settle into silence. Enit returns later with the Captain.
“We’re almost at the extraction point,” the Captain says. “We should be set to begin in a few days.”
“Got it.”
The Captain glances at Enit.
“Everything’s clear,” Enit says. “The sensors don’t pick up any debris, so, uh, yeah. Should be fine,” she finishes lamely.
“All good on my end,” I say.
“Good. I’ll let everyone else know,” The Captain says before leaving.
“Have you done one of these before,” Mark asks Enit.
“I’ll be fine,” she says.
“Right. Just, I’ve been navigator for one before. If you have any questions.”
“Um. Sure. I’ll let you know.” Nothing is different when Mark leaves, but it feels like it. Enit returns to her work, and so do I. I don’t pay it any mind. The Captain comes back later to let me sleep.
“I'm just saying,” Maria's voice filters in the next day, before the door to the bridge slides open. My music plays quietly through the bridge speakers. “He's nice, okay?”
“Okay.” Mark says with a laugh. “He seems lovely. Sure.”
“He's odd,” Annie says.
“He's just trying to fit in,” Maria says. “Enit. We're heading down to dinner, do you want to come?”
Enit glances over from her terminal. “No. I'm all set.”
“Are you sure?” She nods. Maria shrugs. “Suit yourself.” She looks at me. “Thanks for your hard work,” she says, before the three leave again.
Enit tries to focus back on her work.
“Not eating?” I ask.
“I will.”
“It's mealtime.”
“I'll eat later.”
“You shouldn't be able to.”
“It's fine.”
I shrug, focusing back on the distant stars. I like to try and form fake constellations depending on my position, what I can see in the far distance. It's not my business, I decide.
Nine usually avoids the bridge. Thankfully. I don't mind the other two kids from space, but he's off. Maybe because he's financing the whole thing. He's (openly) got the money to pay for this kind of an expedition, all for some rocks that might not be valuable in 2 months time.
He seems to take everything with a smile. It unsettles me. Like he's laughing at all of us. There's some rumors about space folks using neural implants to affect the way they perceive and respond to emotions. Lower their feelings of pain and increase their feelings of elation. I can chalk my feelings up to general certainty he's done something like that.
He's probably more interested in the robotics section in the loading docks. They'll be his actual moneymakers. We're just required luggage.
Unfortunately, it’s safer on the bridge than in the loading docks for the actual extraction. Only the two robotics kids stay down there.
“Autopilot coordinates locked,” Enit says. “A thousand feet off.”
“Launching stabilizers,” I say.
Mark is sitting in the console next to Enit. I don't know if she's actually providing much support, but there are only two seats in the back, and maybe she also sees Enit as better company than Nine. The Captain sits next to Annie on the other side, watching the ship's vitals on the monitor.
We've all changed into space suits, a requirement for the mission. The official rules state space suits must be worn any time a passenger is, you guessed it, in space, but the rule is so severely ignored that even our instructors in school told us not to bother, excepting debris or any point where an entrance of the ship might be opened. Assuming you had a teacher worth anything, anyways.
Colors, format, stylings are all PSC regulation, thankfully. There's no element of personality attached to them.
“Five hundred feet,” Enit says. “two-fifty, two— we're there.”
“Holding position,” I say. I have the mic to connect to the comms system in one hand, thumb pressed down on the talk button so robotics can hear. “Stable,” I announce, after a signal from Enit.
Maria's voice crackles back. “Beginning extraction.”
“What an invigorating process,” Nine says.
“It’ll take a few hours, total,” the Captain says.
Nothing comes through from robotics. We check them every fifteen minutes. If there's something specific to report, they will, otherwise there's a beeper on the comms letting us know they're still there and fine.
When it finishes, Maria sends another response letting us know the loading dock has closed. Enit checks the sensors. We stop holding position, and begin the return journey.
The Captain gives the all-clear to move about the ship, and Nine departs, floating some comment about seeing how they've made out down there before he goes.
“Good work,” the Captain tells us. “You can have the rest of the day to yourself,” she tells Enit. When the Captain leaves, I wait for Enit to follow. Instead, she returns to typing on her console.
The mood on the ship tends to shift as we turn from the journey to the mission to the return. There’s an excitement about returning to your non-mission lives, a certain relief at no longer worrying something will go wrong with the extraction, and a shifting in duties as the focus now is solely on making sure the ship returns safely. Annie and Mark spend more time than before down in the loading dock, where the robotics kids used to occupy the most space, but they can float a bit more. I don’t see the boy much, still.
Maria, for her part, seems to decide the bridge ought to be the best place to spend her time. She's done with work, essentially, and she's decided to make it her mission to simply float around in our way.
“I feel bad for her,” Maria tells me, one day after Enit leaves to use the restroom.
“Do you?”
“She always sticks to herself. Eats alone. Mark usually brings her food to her and leaves it.”
“What's she getting up to?” I ask.
“Sitting,” Maria says. “I don't know.”
“Maybe she's got nothing to say to humans.”
“Isn't that a little narrow-minded?”
“I thought young people were supposed to be more radical than their elders.”
“Are you really my elder?” She smiles. “I'm just saying, that's all.”
“Sure.”
“If you won't help her, I guess it's hopeless.”
“Talk to the Captain about it.”
“The Captain makes it a reprimand. You're just suggesting as her supervisor on the ship.” I'm not, really.
“Didn't think you were so concerned.”
“Ship community is important.”
“I suppose. You want a career in upper management or something?”
She’s smiling when I glance away from the windows at her. “Wouldn't be so bad,” is all she says.
The door to the bridge slides open and Enit reenters, scratching behind her ear. Maria looks at me, then glances at Enit. She's some kind of busybody.
“You had dinner yet?” I ask. It takes a moment for Enit to look up at me, horrified I'm talking to her.
“What?”
“Have you eaten?”
“I will.”
“Go now.”
“But-”
“Nope. Go eat with everyone else.”
She resigns herself. “Okay,” she says.
“And I'll ask. If you weren't there I'll know.”
Maria watches her leave. “Not exactly what I was hoping for,” she says when the door slides closed. “But okay.”
“If I gave her a heart-to-heart she'd know something was off.”
“I suppose.”
“What about you?”
“Mikhail and I switch off maintenance. It's my day today.”
“Then shouldn't you be off doing that?”
“Had to grab a flash drive.” She holds it up, cord wrapped around her thumb so it can't float off. “Firmware updates.”
I grunt.
“Well, thanks for that,” she says. “Very helpful.”
“Yep.”
The Captain relieves me a few hours later, to grab my meal and sleep.
The next day Enit tries to return to her previous structure. Eating separately, presumably in some tucked away corner of the ship, a meal brought to her by someone else as she whittles away at whatever it is she does in her off hours. I hate that the robotics kid's words got to me. She should just be left alone to do whatever she wants. I don't want it to be my business. It's halfway through regular dinner block when I finally break.
“You've got to give in,” I tell her, swiveling in the pilot’s chair to look at her.
“What?”
“Y'know, buy in. Subject yourself to ship culture and invest in it. Teambuilding and community, things like that.”
She's silent for a moment. I think maybe she's ignoring me.
“We don't do things like that,” she says.
“No, the Captain's not too bad,” I say. “I had a captain once who made us do morning stand-ins, he called them. Everyone wakes up at five am ship time, so the morning and night workers could both participate, and we all listed our ship wins and losses for the day.”
“In the morning?”
“Yeah. You had to remember from the day before.”
“That's,” she starts, but doesn't finish.
“It sucks, you can say it. Look,” I say. “All I'm saying is you're here. This is your job. It's good to have connections. The Captain can recommend you for pay increases or promotions or whatever. It's definitely not a bad thing to have people know you and like you.”
If I were her, I wouldn't take my advice. But she doesn't really know me. We've never spoken outside this ship, so she's never seen me at my worst, dry-heaving in an alleyway while my friends don't realize and keep going until they make it to the next bar, too far separated to find me again until the next day. She's from space, too. She's never experienced that. Dry-heaving. Overdrinking. Drinking in general.
“Why don't you?” She asks. “Participate.”
“Pilots are different. And I chat when people are in the bridge.”
“Don't most navigators become pilots?”
I shrug. “The pay's better. But you don't really care about the pay, do you?”
“I don't know,” she says. “But if I wanted to, I'd need a recommendation.”
“Don't need. It just helps. The Captain's would be better than a pilot's, anyway. And I'll write you a good recommendation if you do,” I say. “Become a team player, collaborative, all that jazz. They want all that in a prospective pilot.”
Somehow that does her in. Kind of.
“I'll go tomorrow,” she says.
“I said today.” She's returned to typing on her console. “Fine,” I concede. “Tomorrow.”
She leaves a few hours later to rest.
You don't know if anything you say actually has value to others. I know whether or not it should, but people conceive of you in different ways. They construct you off different ideas, perspectives, recollections. You're the only person who sees your whole self, the only person who knows who you really are, if you're willing to step back and look at it.
In the morning, when the ship alarm beeps that our 7AM has occurred, Enit doesn't appear like she always does. She shuffles in with Annie at 8:30, listening with slightly glazed eyes as Annie explains what mountain biking on a mountain is actually like. That becomes part of her new morning routine. We’re still a ways out from returning to the atmosphere. There’s always a certain hesitation when she goes, like I'm going to reprimand her or change my mind, something like that. Young people are weird, really.
A few days later Enit enters after breakfast. She clears her throat.
“What's up?” I ask, turning. Maybe she's finally gotten sick of my music choices.
She holds up a cup of coffee. “It made me this, this morning,” she says. “I don't drink coffee.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want it?” I already have one cup stacked into my first one. The machine seems to be haywire with breakfast. Maria's had turned up black and refused to give her cream, so she'd passed it off to me.
“Sure,” I say, holding out my hand for it. “Thought you'd be a fan.”
“It's gross,” she says, handing it to me. “Why would you think that?”
I shrug. “Baseless assumptions are funny.”
She shakes her head, taking a seat at her terminal, while I sip on the coffee and watch the nothing.
The first few hours pass quietly.
“I'm going to step out,” she tells me.
“Sure.”
“For the afternoon, too.”
“Sure.” So-called ship culture. And then I'm left alone in the bridge, watching the empty expanse of space, letting the autopilot work its magic. It feels emptier now that Enit isn’t there, even though she never said much.
The third cup of coffee is the catalyst. The door slides open. Mark enters, pulling herself up next to my chair.
“Water refill,” she says.
Here is my mistake. It falls on my head. It was preventable on my end.
I ask Mark to watch the controls for a minute, while I use the restroom. This isn't something you should do, ever. Especially not with somebody who hasn’t actually been trained for it. I should have asked her to get the Captain, or at least Enit, so she wasn't stuck in the bridge alone when it happened. It's not her fault she couldn't read the warning signs that said it was approaching. Didn’t know how to disengage the autopilot or move the ship. It's not Enit's fault she wasn't there to see them, either. She was doing what I told her to. It's all a wash.
Some asteroid debris, the clear aftermath of a rocketed explosion into a DFO, floated into our path. Mark wasn't trained to fly a ship. She would never know how to. She didn't have enough time to reach any of us for help.
I’m returning from the bathroom. Not traveling slowly for the sake of it, just not really rushing, that’s all. The whole ship shakes, the large, rattling kind of shake that’s too severe even for turbulence when you’re in atmosphere. I run into Enit on my rushed path back to the bridge. She’s horrified when she sees me.
“Mark’s in the bridge,” I say.
When we make it back she's standing paralyzed, staring out the front windows. Enit makes a noise. I can’t make out a word of it. There’s asteroid debris around the ship. Nothing that was on the ship’s log or in anticipated path.
“Shit,” I say, pulling myself back into the pilot’s seat. “First and fourth rockets are failing. Ship sensors say all external doors are open.”
“There must have been a recent explosion,” Enit says, pulling herself into the navigator’s seat. “It didn't pick up until fifteen seconds ago.” I grab Mark by the arm and push her towards the terminal next to Enit. She bumps into the seat, stopping her there.
“Mark, kid, stay with me here.” Enit takes her arm and directs her into the seat.
“It just came out of nowhere,” Mark says. Her hands find the console keyboard, although she still looks dazed.
The door slides open again. Mikhail enters.
“What's going on?” he asks.
“Hit an asteroid,” Enit explains. “We should be able to function, even at reduced capacity, right?”
“Maybe,” I say. If she blames herself, she has the sense not to apologize yet. It's not her fault. I'm glad I don't have to tell her that.
The ship shakes again. Mikhail grabs the back of the pilot's chair, holding himself steady as it shakes.
“What the hell?”
“Another hit,” Enit announces. “Right side. Damage to the wing. Rocket capacity at 45%. Engine cooling system is damaged.” The emergency lights begin to flash, red dominating the room at regular intervals.
“Fire,” Mark says.
“What?” Enit shouts. Her voice cracks.
“Here,” Mark shows Enit something on her monitor. “It'll spread all the way back to our fuel reserves.”
“The ship's going to explode,” Mikhail says.
“We have about ten minutes,” Mark says.
“What do we do?”
“Evacuate the ship.”
Enit and I look at each other at the same time.
“Even if we do that,” I start. “When the ship explodes, we won't be far enough away. It'll take us out in the explosion.”
“So we die?” Enit whines.
“We'll need to cut the ship's power to at least delay the explosion,” I say.
“But if we cut the ship's power, the escape pod can't deploy.”
“We won't make it far enough without cutting it.”
“Which means someone needs to stay behind,” Mikhail says.
Mark hesitates. “You're right,” she says. “Listen, I’ll-”
“I'll do it,” Mikhail says.
“No. Absolutely not,” I say. The task falls to me as pilot. By age. By technical seniority.
“I'm volunteering,” Mikhail says. “We don't have time to argue.”
“You realize what you're offering to do.”
“Eight minutes,” Enit says.
“I understand,” Mikhail says to me. “I don't believe in any gods. There's nothing to worry about.”
“That's not-”
“Less than eight minutes,” Enit says quietly.
“It's this button,” I tell Mikhail. “The escape pod is still registering properly in schematics. It should tell you when we deploy. Or you'll see us.”
The comms crackle on.
“What's going on?” The Captain asks.
I grab the mic. “Get everyone to the escape pod. We're evacuating.”
“Got it,” she says. Enit looks at Mikhail. I don't know him, really, or what he's about, or why he's here, or what it means for him to give up something like his own life.
“The two of you, let's go,” I say to Enit and Mark.
The red emergency lights continue flashing the whole way down to the bottom of the ship, which is really the back of the ship situationally. The escape pod entrance. It’s a small, windowless thing, with ten seats attached to the walls, five on each side. Near the entrance there's a small computer terminal that doubles as a comms unit. When we get there, the door is already open. Inside, Annie and Nine are sitting while The Captain stands near the terminal.
“Where's Maria?” Mark asks.
“Shit,” the Captain hisses. “I thought- shit.” She inputs something into the computer terminal. Mark moves next to her. “Maria,” she calls through. Waits for a response.
I take a seat on one side of the escape pod, pull Enit into the seat next to me. She's tapping her thumb against her opposite palm.
“Four minutes,” she says quietly. “We need to launch in the next minute.”
“Captain,” Maria responds. “What's the report?”
“Where are you?”
“Down in the loading docks. Everything's unharmed. None of the doors are open, either. I can't find Mikhail.”
The muscles in the Captain's face untense, falling to horrified. “Mikhail is in the bridge,” Mark says. “He intends to cut the power to delay the ship explosion.”
“Understood,” Maria responds. “I'll assist him.”
The Captain hesitates. “Thank you,” she says. She removes her hand from the talk button. Maria doesn't come through again.
“We're leaving them?” Annie asks.
“Everyone get into a seat.”
“There's nothing we can do,” Nine says. He has a light smile on his face.
“They're going to die!”
“So we may live. Sacrifices needs be made.”
“No more talking,” the Captain says. “We can chart a partial course and set distress signal intervals.”
“Partial course?”
“We don't have the fuel for the full course back to Home,” I answer. “It'll make it most of the way, cut the rockets, and drift until we're close enough to re-employ them and enter the atmosphere.”
“The only problem is making sure we land in the ocean without proper navigation equipment, and then-”
Enit grips each side of the seat tightly, turning her knuckles white, staring hard at the floor of the pod. “I don't want to die,” she says quietly.
“And then we're in the ocean,” I finish. “The escape pod automatically sends out distress signals at regular intervals.”
“When we launch, masks will fall from the ceiling. Secure them over your mouth and nose.” The Captain explains, inputting a code. “They contain a sedative. You'll be unconscious. It removes the need for food, water, movement. Anything.” Feeling yourself die, too. Realizing there's no hope.
When the escape pod is disengaged from the ship, it signals in the bridge. This is when Mikhail can cut the power. The two will separate. We thrust forward, the ship falls back. The masks deploy from above. You secure it around your mouth and nose, breathe in deeply, and then there’s nothing.
In the bridge, Mikhail floats, slowly being twisted around to see every part of the unfamiliar location. The blinking of the emergency light is methodical, red illuminating the dark cabin at each pass, the only thing that remains on with the engines cut.
From the front windows he can see the rockets of the escape pod, fading to nothing as it gets further away. He stares out at the large, empty vacuum of space that surrounds him. The door to the control deck slides open with a hiss.
The ship would explode in one minute.