Seeder Saga (9 page)

Old Acquaintances

Sarah walked with Jack. She found that her annoyance with the man was only temporary, partly because he was the only person on this ship she knew. She said, "You should know that I saved your ass."

"How so?"

"The Chinese shot a nuke at us and I dodged it."

"When? How did they know our position?"

Instead of telling him that she was a damn dumbass and trusted a guy who
’d simply called himself Greg without offering a surname, she just shrugged as though she didn’t know.

He didn't need to know that it was her fault the Chinese
had known where to point their weapon.

Jack put a hand on her shoulder and said, "Thank you
, then."

"No problem. That's just what I do."

"Are you sure you're not making it up though? Hallucinations are the first sign of space madness."

She said, "You know there's no such thing."

"I know. I was just teasing. Thank you again for saving my tight muscular ass."

"I'd say it's a flabby ass
, but then again, I haven't spent even a single second looking at it."

"You should."

"You'd better keep it in your pants, or every colonist is going to have a child with the last name Mayberry."

"And what a magnificent colony that would be."

"Yeah, sure."

Jack changed the subject when the silence dragged out a beat too long. "Michael seems alright, don't you think?"

"I was going to talk to you about him. I got a hold of his test results. They say he killed two members of his crew to get here."

"No way. The guy seems like a sweetheart."

"I don't know how authentic his results were, but ours were spot on."

"Did mine mention how rugged and smart I am? If so
, then I'd trust them."

She smiled and punched him on the shoulder good naturedly. He pretended to flinch.

Jack said, “Jane was in his test group. She would know about him.”

“Should we wake her up and ask?”

“She’ll be pissed.”

“Who cares, man? I’m the captain.”

Truth

Luckily, Jane’s pod was at the opposite end of the pod chamber from Michaels. They could yell and Michael probably wouldn’t hear it from so far away.

They told the computer to open the pod
, and then waited while the atmosphere collected inside and the cavity warmed. They saw the fluids in the IV’s start to slowly move, and then Jane’s arm twitched as the thaw took effect.

Jack draped a warming blanket over her shoulders and Sarah fetched her clothes.

Her look of bewilderment quickly changed to one of joy. “Are we there?”

Sarah said, “No
, we’re not. We had to revive you to ask you some questions.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You don’t get to revive me on a whim. What kind of a captain are you?”

Sarah kept her composure, despite the slings and arrows. “We want to know what happened during your test.”

“I know where you’re going with this. I don’t care if I got demoted. I passed the damn test. I belong here as much as either one of you.”

Jack said, “No, no. What did Michael Stevens do to pass the test?”

Jane went wild-eyed. “Oh no. What the
hell did he do this time?”

Sarah said, “Did he kill the other two members of your crew?”

“I’m not allowed to discuss the details of our test.”

Jack furrowed his brow. “Why not? Our group wasn’t sworn to secrecy.”

A deep, menacing voice behind him said, “Because I’ll kill her if she talks.”

Jack and Sarah turned around and saw Michael standing there with Sarah’s stolen gun pointed at them. He didn’t look demented though. In fact, he looked to be very much in control.

Jane gave him a hateful look, gathered her courage and said, “Yes. That man killed the other two people on my crew. Then he took the command station from me and left me for dead.”

Michael pointed the gun at her face and pulled the trigger.

Bang

Michael pointed the gun at Jane's face and pulled the trigger.

The gun didn’t go off.

Michael yelled, “Bang, bang, assholes!”

Sarah was scared half to death, and Jane wet her pants. Jack took a quick step towards Michael and punched him hard in the gut. As Michael doubled over, Jack wrestled the gun out of his hand.

Michael straightened up and put his hand up defensively. “I’m sorry I lied to you about the gun, Captain. I did steal it from you.”

“Why?”

“Something about the mission isn’t right. I thought I was just being paranoid, until I started searching the ship.”

Jack spat, “Do you think this might be another simulation? If this is a test too
, I’ll go out of my mind.”

Sarah shook her head. “I checked into that. We’re in space this time.”

Michael looked at Sarah as though she was a kindred spirit. “I’m glad I’m not the only one suspicious about this mission.”

“Why did you steal the gun?”

Michael dug around in his pocket and came out with half a dozen bullets. “Do you know what these are?”

Jack took a closer look. “Those are exploding shells. I saw those in the war. They’re a surgeon’s worst nightmare.”

“Do you know what firing just one of these on this ship would do?”

Jack nodded and then he sighed. “We need to get rid of those things.”

Sarah was getting angrier by the second. These men were deciding what to do with her bullets, on her ship. Maybe they’d forgotten that she was captain. “Why do we need to get rid of them? They were given to me for a reason.”

Michael said, “I’m pretty sure the person that loaded your gun with these bullets did not have your wellbeing in mind. If you fired one round off in here you’d breach the hull.”

Jack was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. “We need to put those off the ship.”

“I already disarmed them.”

“Thank God.” Then Jack asked Sarah, “Do you think the Chinese had something to do with this too?”

Sarah shrugged. “I didn’t see who put the gun in my command station.”

Michael said, “Why did you think the Chinese might have done this?”

Jack looked at Sarah. “Didn’t you tell them what happened?”

Sarah shook her head. She hated to be put on the spot like this. “The Chinese launched a nuke at us right after we took off from orbit.”

Michael said disgustedly, “When the hell were you going to let your crew know about the nuclear attack?”

“I wasn’t going to. I dodged it. We’re safe.”

Michael held up the shells. “We’re safe, huh?”

Sarah snarled, “I think we’ve gotten sidetracked. We were right in the middle of trying to ascertain if you were a murderer. The file I read indicated that you were, and Jane just confirmed it. What do you have to say about that?”

“‘
Screw you’ is what I have to say. I killed a dying man with an overdose of morphine as an act of kindness. Then I killed the woman who sabotaged our entire mission. So what?”

Jack said, “It wasn’t a real mission, you dumbass.”

“None of us knew that. If I knew it was a simulation I would have acted differently.”

“So you have no remorse for what you’ve done?”

“If that woman had managed to get on this ship, we’d all be in danger.”

Jane nodded. “He’s right. She went crazy. But she didn’t need to be bludgeoned to death.”

“I’ll admit I got carried away.”

Sarah said, “You’ll be confined to stasis for the duration of the mission.”

Michael laughed. “Who the hell is going to fix the pods when they fail?”

“You’re not the only person in this tub who knows how to turn a wrench. If we absolutely need you, we’ll revive you.”

Michael glared at her.

She added, “Stealing that firearm could easily
be construed as an act of mutiny. Would you like me to set up a kangaroo court? Because if I find you guilty of mutiny, it’s within my rights to put you off my ship.”

“This isn’t the high seas, Captain.”

“Tell me you understand what I’m telling you.”

“I do.”

“I need you to go back into stasis now.”

“Yes
, Captain.”

Computer Whiz

Jack said to Sarah, “I’d like to see those files you told me about. There should be psych profiles attached and I’d love to know what we’re dealing with in regards to Michael Stevens.”

“I deleted them.”

“Does anyone know how to retrieve deleted files?”

Jane was still shivering from coming out of stasis. “If we don’t have any colonists with I.T. experience, I could give it a shot, but I’m not very good.”

Sarah said to the room, “Computer, if we have a colonist with computer skills, please revive him.”

They looked down the bank of pods and saw one of them open. A weak mist escaped.

They gathered around the pod and Jack said, “You’re a sexist, Captain. What made you assume the computer whiz would be a guy?”

Sarah shrugged.

The diminutive old woman started to twitch, so Jane draped a heating blanket over her. Her eyes opened slowly and a dopey smile split her face. She mumbled, “Did we make it?”

Sarah said as gently as she could, “We had to wake you ahead of schedule. We haven’t made it to the seed planet yet.”

The woman sighed and sat up. She stared at Jack until he took the hint and turned around. Then she crawled out of her pod and dressed. The elderly were far more modest than younger generations.

“My muscles are on fire. And my head is pounding.”

“It’s a side effect of the thaw. It goes away.”

“So what do you need from me?”

Jack turned and said, “We have some deleted files we need to retrieve.”

“I can get those for you so long as the files weren’t corrupted.”

As they walked to the command station, Jack whispered to Jane, “Should we be nervous that she’s Chinese?”

The old woman turned around and said, “What does that mean?”

Busted, Jack said, “I didn’t mean any offense. The Chinese launched a nuke at us before we left the solar system.”

“That has nothing to do with me. I’m fifth generation Australian.”

“Okay. I meant no offense.”

“And my ancestors were Vietnamese.”

“Way to go, Jack,” Sarah said. “And you had the nerve to point out my preconceived notions.”

“How many times do I need to say I’m sorry?”

Psych

It took all of ten seconds for the old woman to retrieve the files.

Sarah hated to tell her that she’d have to stay out of stasis for at least three hours for safet
y’s sake, but there was no other way. If she went in ahead of schedule, she could die.

The old woman took it in stride. “How long into the voyage are we anyway?”

Sarah answered, “A little less than two hundred years.”

“So we’ve hardly made any progress at all then.”

“We’ve had a couple kinks, but they’re worked out now.”

“You can find me in the kitchen if you need me.”

Sarah said, “Thanks for your help.” She felt a little guilty that none of them had asked her name. It was too late to ask now.

When Jane said she’d join her for a snack, Sarah was secretly relieved. She didn’t know if the old woman could be trusted. She looked Chinese
, and if she was lying about her history, it was good that Jane would be shadowing her around the ship.

As soon as they left, Sarah and Jack pored over the test results. Some of the details were gruesome
, but they had to keep things in perspective; if it weren’t for the tests, none of them would’ve been trusted with the mission.

They opened Michael’s and read it through. Jack said, “You know, Johnson was only one catastrophe away from turning into a killer. I hardly blame Michael for what he did. I might have done the same thing if I’d found a saboteur.”

Sarah looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Johnson was self destructive but he wasn’t a monster.”

“Johnson knocked Emma out with a chair. He went nuts. I saw it on the monitors but you were there. You saw it up close.”

She mulled that over. It was difficult to compare their situation to Michael and Jane’s because they’d been tested in totally different ways.

Jack said, “Click that tab.”

She clicked the little tab he was pointing at and a whole new page of info opened up.

“That’s a psych eval
uation.”

Sarah and Jack read it over.

It was incomplete, but it still painted a pretty vivid picture.

Michael had a robust survival instinct. The testers considered that to be an attribute perfectly suited to the mission. He had a strong moral compass
, but Sarah knew what that did to him when someone else acted in an immoral fashion. He could go into a rage. He had killed to right the perceived wrongs.

Jack pointed and said, “Open that one.”

She clicked the next tab and they read the results of Michael’s aptitude test.

He had scored well in all the physical exams. His IQ was off the charts
, but then again, everyone on the crew was probably a genius.

Jack smirked. “I have six points on him.”

Sarah said, “That hardly makes him a dummy.”

What’s yours?”

“I have no idea.”

Jack closed out Michael’s file, opened hers, which she’d never read, and opened the right tab. He read off her IQ results and sucked air between his teeth. “Alright, you got me there.”

She did some quick math and said, “Only by two points. Those tests aren’t worth a shit anyway.”

“Well, now I completely agree with you.”

A deep voice from behind them said, “What are you guys looking at?”

Jack whipped around quickly and raised his fists at Michael. Sarah pulled her pocket knife out. The gun was out of bullets
, so it was useless.

Michael went wild-eyed when he saw the knife and Sarah thought,
Oh shit. Now he thinks I’m a threat.

Michael took a step backwards and said, “What the
hell?”

Sarah barked, “I ordered you back into stasis.”

Michael’s brow furrowed. “I’m not going back in ahead of schedule. Are you crazy?”

She hadn’t considered that. “How long before you can safely go back?”

“I was just coming up here to say goodnight.”

Now she felt like an asshole.

Jack said, “You’ll have to forgive us. You make us nervous is all.”

“I apologize for that. I hope you understand that when I killed my crew
mate, I thought I had no choice. I’m not a sociopath. I was trying to save the mission.”

Sarah said, “Maybe. But you’re a liar. When I asked you if your report was correct, you told me it wasn’t. You told me you didn’t kill anyone and you denied taking my gun.”

“I probably saved lives taking that gun.”

“There was no need to lie about it then.”

His demeanor changed. “Well, I’m about to be locked up tight in stasis, so you won’t have anything to worry about.”

Jack said, “That might be for the best.”

Sarah added, “Agreed.”

He had a hangdog look as he left the command station. “Well, goodnight then
, folks.”