Archaea (25 page)

“Janis, please bring rings up to point-seven gee – I am going to check on Pauli and our patient, and then dear friends... I think I might just take a little nap, I didn't have a nice luxurious rest like you folks.”

Gene snorted, and they all rolled their eyes enough to knock the Archaea off course. 

*****

“Pauli...” a voice called softly through my dream.

I came to with the craggy features of Captain Smith filling my eyes and the smell of something horribly vile filling my sinuses and lungs.

I had just been floating above a wooded hillside, looking down at the wind blowing slowly through the grass, the leaves on the trees shimmering and flashing as they caught the clear sunlight, and it felt like I had always been there, that what I woke up to felt like the dream... a horrible dream full of Captain Smith's face, eyebrows and all. Unfortunately I couldn't wake up to something different, but as least I tried.

“Are you awake, son?” he asked, with a voice heavy with concern.

“I think I am.
.. though I am not sure I want to be”, I said, feeling about a million aches and pains throughout my entire body.

“I know how you feel, Pauli. If you feel half as bad I do, we're both due for some rest and relaxation, and that's what I am hoping we'll do. We have about a dozen hours left on this leg, and nothing between here and there that can bother, or worry us. I would like for you to take it easy, and that's an order, son.”

I laughed, despite the ripple of pain it caused down my side – taking it easy is something we just don't seem to do, ever.

I winced as I tried to roll up out of bed, and the floor seemed to be made of some sort of gelatinous substance, impossible to stand on.

“Steady there”, the captain said, holding out an arm for support. “Your equilibrium will be pretty wonky for a bit after what we just went through. I haven't felt that drop-sick since my time in the academy centrifuge, and actually, not even then to be honest.”

“Captain, I can't even explain how horrible that was...” I started, trying to remember what it was like. “I felt like I was in some sort of crazy out of control washing machine that was on spin cycle while it fell down stairs.”

“That's a pretty good analogy, son. I might have to borrow that one... In simplest terms, Janis had us mass-loaded to the physiological limit of what we can take, and maybe a bit more. The worst of it, was the positive and negative g-loading, and the sideways, the upside down, the back and forth, inside, out--”

“Captain... stop... please...” I was going to be sick.

“Well, of course a superlative pilot like myself, it was hardly enough to make coffee shoot out of my nose.” he gave me a wink, as if that dipped eyebrow was enough to make all the pain go away. It actually was a little helpful, though I wouldn't admit it to my own mother.

“Let's see how our patient is...” he said, looking over the vital readout with his most inquisitive eyebrows. Unfortunately those eyebrows only resulted in his eyes squinting, as if it would make more sense if it were more blurry.

“Janis, how is our patient doing? His vitals look.... vital.” He looked back at me with a smile, apparently waiting for an off-stage rim-shot. He was on a roll; I think I'll have to try the veal. I wonder if he'll be here all week?

“Captain, he appears to be stable. His breathing is regular and his blood oxygen levels are within normal levels. He does not appear to have a secondary pulmonary infection at this time. I induced a comatose state in the patient during recent maneuvers because it seemed prudent.”

“Janis, how come I didn't get a medical coma induced?”  the captain said, as serious as a heart attack.

“Captain, it didn't seem prudent as you were effective at the time.”

“Did you hear that Pauli? Effective...that is the nicest thing anyone has said to me today!” he said, with a feral grin.  I groaned...I was finding out that a solid barrage of his jokes hurt more than my ribs.

“Well, enough about me, for the moment...Can you please wake our patient so I can tell him how effective I am?”

“Captain, I have already administered a stimulant, he should be awake in moments.”

“Thank you Janis, perfect – can you please let everyone on the bridge know?”

“I have already informed Jane, Yak, and Gene, Captain.”

“Janis, you are the greatest.”

“Captain, I have explicit instructions to regard you as the greatest, should I assume you were making an attempt at humor, sir? Please advise, I can adjust decision tree logic as needed.”

The captain looked at me with serious, deadly eyebrows. “Is she serious, Pauli?”

“Captain, she is not. I believe, she is trying her hand at a joke, sir.” I said, grinning.

“Janis, was that a joke?”

“Sir, yes sir. It was an attempt at levity, at humor. I was hoping to encourage a sense of pleasure and entertainment. Was I funny, sir?” she said, with the straightest face of all.

*****

The patient was sitting up in bed when Gene, Yak and I arrived from the bridge. He looked considerably better than when I first saw him, chained to the floor of the bilge compartment, but he still looked completely lost. I smiled my sweetest smile, and tried to make him feel welcome.

“Who are you people, and where am I?” he asked, in a quavering, hesitant voice.

“This is Gene Mitchell, our chief engineer and big man on campus. If it's broken, he didn't do it, but is the one that can fix it”, the captain said with one of his standard-issue toothy grins. 

“The vertically challenged cut
ie with the apple-red cheeks is, 'Shorty' Short, our weapons specialist--”

“Pleasure to meet you, my name is Jane, Jane Short. Please do not call me Shorty, or I might have to kill you”, I smiled murderously at the captain.

“Yes, we try our best not to pay too much attention to Shorty, she's the biggest little person you will ever meet.” he added, with a sideways glance at me to see if I was going to leap for his throat. I decided I might as well let him live a little longer, at least until he is done introducing us.

“The intelligent man in black here is Steve Pauline, our technologist and professional geek – he's the brains of the outfit, and the giant mountain of muscle here is Shaun Onebull, he do
es a little bit of everything, he does the heavy lifting around here.”

“Call me Yak, sir”

“And I am Captain Dak Smith, owner and master of the Archaea, the ship you are currently on at the moment.”

“Are you the same Captain Smith that recently retired from the Terran Service?” he asked, eyes opening wide.

“Quite possibly... it depends on what you have heard!”

“Sir, it's an honor to meet you – you are a legend in the Academy right now. Darn near every instructor has some story they use about you as an example of why the coursework isn't too hard for a real captain. We all came through dreading the inevitable story about how a real captain handled this problem, or that simulation--”

“Oh, well in that case, yep – that's me! Are you in the service?”

“Yes sir, my name is Thom Sheppard, Ensign First Class, recently of the Mantis, a destroyer on Vega patrol.”

“The Mantis? Was that the destroyer we found you on, son?” the captain asked.

“Yes, I've been locked in that hold for longer than I can
remember; it's been weeks at least, but maybe months. I couldn't really keep track of time down there.”

“What happened to the rest of the crew, son? How did pirates get their hands on your ship?”

“I wish I had some other story to tell, sir, but the truth of the matter is that they were all service, until the mutiny.”

“Mutiny?” We all looked at each other.

“Now don't you mob start getting any ideas”, the captain said, fixing us with his invincible eyebrows and most commanding stare. “Tell me everything, mister”, he said, pulling up a chair.

The story Thom told was horrible, but not unlike any other similar stories of mutiny.

“The captain of the Mantis was a severe leader, an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist who demanded more from his crew than they were ever realistically able to give, setting impossible deadlines and drill scores, and meting out unrealistic punishments for the most trivial of offenses.”

“His drive towards perfection eventually ground down the resolve of his crew, and they started following the direction of the executive officer, a man named Red Martigan. Over time, Red became a sort of father figure, one who would stand up for the transgressions of the crew, sneak them extra rations
, release them from confinement, or otherwise lighten their punishments. Eventually, his interventions on behalf of the crew undermined the authority of the captain and endeared himself to the crew members, until the captain was in command by name only, not in actual fact.”

“As time went on, and the patrol ranged farther and farther from contact with other service vessels and support craft, Red and a handful of the other officers formed a cult of personality among the lower ranks, and the crew who had been most impacted by disciplinary actions or rationing, men of weak character who felt they owed it all to Red and his inner cadre of officers.”

Thom took a moment to collect his thoughts, and I offered him some water.

“At first, a handful of other junior officers and I tried to work with the new cabal, the new order aboard the ship, but it became increasingly difficult to direct the efforts of crew members when every order was questioned, every command was ignored, or deferred to Red or one of his cronies. The captain became completely ineffective at command, and eventually withdrew from daily interactions with the crew and officers, spending entire days or weeks in his quarters. Into that complete power vacuum, Red stepped in and assumed command, ostensibly on behalf of the captain. With the captain indisposed, it seemed like the right thing for Red to do, as if he was too sick, or injured to continue to command effectively – which wasn't really all that far off the mark.”

“A million-tonner like the Mantis was a large enough vessel that at first the occasional absence of a watch-stander was hard to notice, but when key personnel started disappearing, and they weren't in sick bay, they weren't in their quarters, they weren't anywhere to be found – well, it just wasn't that large of a ship. The lower-ranked officers started to talk, and suspicions of foul play started to point towards Red. No one dared to challenge Red directly, but a few of us went to the captain with our concerns, only to be brusquely ignored or ridiculed. The captain was at this point in time completely out of touch with the situation, the day-to-day routine aboard his ship.”

“The flashpoint, the fuse that ignited the mutiny, was a tramp hauler we stopped in a transit between the second and third slip points between Sol and Vega. The captain of the hauler ignored a boarding hail, and a brief chase resulted in the hauler being taken in tow, and boarded.”

“The hauler was found to be smuggling black market pharmaceuticals, worth billions of credits on the black market to the right systems. The crew that boarded the hauler were all hand-picked by Red, and every one of them were devoted followers of his cult of personality, no more than henchmen at that point, thugs and bullies.”

“When Red ordered the crew of the hauler spaced, and loaded their cargo into the Mantis, everything boiled over, as there were still law-abiding men aboard, men who swore an oath to protect and defend the rights and freedoms of men, men who felt that even criminals or smugglers were entitled to lawful prosecution.”

“A desperate, brief battle raged on the decks of the Mantis, resulting in a siege of the mess deck, where the officers loyal to the service had barricaded ourselves and the remaining crew who were loyal, if not to the captain, but to the service. At that point in time, the captain hadn't been seen out of his quarters for a few standard weeks, and in all likelihood, had already been spaced.”

“Negotiations between the ship's surgeon and Red, the highest ranking loyal officer at that time, resulted in a cease-fire, where it was promised that officers and crew that did not want to continue to serve Red on the Mantis would be allowed to disembark
on Halcyon Station, but as soon as the barricades were lowered, Red betrayed the cease-fire agreement and took everyone that remained as prisoners.”

“Red then commanded officers who weren't yet completely loyal to him, to space the lower ranked crew members he had taken prisoner, and thereby forged their commitment to his leadership, solidifying his command beyond any doubt. As a test, the officers who had been playing along with the mutiny, the officers who didn't have the stomach to murder their ship-mates in cold blood were weeded out, and placed among our ranks, pariahs for their complicit involvement in the mutiny.”

“Over a short period of time, Red purged nearly all dissent among his ranks, and through the process of elimination via lock into cold vacuum, formed a bloodthirsty band of followers that were in too deep to ever see a way out - - at that point, Red had captured the ship.”

Thom took a few moments, as if he was having a hard time trying to come to grips with his memories.