124: UPDATE

Captain Kae Jin reaches full alertness surprisingly quickly. Her eyes open, drift slowly across the faces of the strangers surrounding her, and immediately focus. She glances between us, then at the IV and oxygen system next to her, then about the room, gaze lingering on the various items that aren’t normally there, that we brought in from the other medbay to expand this one. Her eyes land on the machine next to her displaying her vitals, stay there a moment, and then flick back to our faces, and it’s clear from the pain in them that she’s already guessed a fair amount of the bad news we have to tell her.

“Captain Kae Jin,” the Friend says, “can you look into this light please?”

The captain submits to the cognitive and reflex tests without hesitation or complaint. They take less than a minute, and when the Friend is done, Captain Klees clears his throat.

“Captain Kae Jin,” he says. “My name is Adin Klees. I’ve been commanding the Courageous on an emergency basis. We are currently about a month and a half away from Hylara. I’m sorry to tell you that there have been multiple situations and system failures, resulting in ship damage and significant loss of life.”

Captain Kae Jin’s voice is weak and scratchy with disuse. “We have systems sufficient to make orbit around Hylara?”

“We believe so, yes.”

She nods once, slowly. “You’re not one of Reimann’s.”

“No.”

“And you’re in charge. Meaning Reimann’s entire crew are dead?”

“Yes.”

“My crew?”

“Some loss of life, but most still in chronostasis. We woke you first.”

She relaxes a little at that, sinking back into the pillow. But not much. “The other medbay is broken?” she asks, glancing once again at the moved equipment.

“Not being used, for now. The ship’s systems are currently being monitored manually and there have been… oversights. We’ve confined activity to as few rings as possible to minimise the chance of further fatal accidents.”

“Monitored manually? Why?”

“The AI is offline. Damaged beyond repair.”

“The central ship AI is broken?”

“Yes.”

“How?!”

Captain Klees opens his mouth, can’t seem to think of a concise way to answer, and looks to me. I don’t have one either; I look to Lina.

Lina shrugs. “It’s, um. It’s a very, very long story.”

“I’m sure it is,” Captain Kae Jin sighs. She sits up abruptly, immediately starts coughing, and lies back down. The doctors immediately start fiddling with her mask and oxygen supply while she coughs weakly between shallow breaths.

“Captain, please conserve your strength,” Lina says. “You’ve suffered very extensive lung damage as a result of chonostasis and we don’t have the ability to safely replace them here. You should also know that you might be at risk of further organ collapses, and that risk is greatly exacerbated by physical strain. You should rest as much as possible.”

“My crew,” she says when she can get a word out again. “You said you’re not using all the rings. The chronostasis rings – ”

“The three chronostasis rings we still have are all fully operational,” Captain Klees assures her.

“The three we still have?”

“CRs 1 and 5 had to be ejected. As part of…”

“The very long story?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I certainly look forward to a thorough accounting of that. I can’t imagine what sort of scenario would irreparably damage chronostasis rings at both ends of the ship and leave the middle intact. How many of my crew are alive?”

“Five of your crew are dead. The three engineers, plus Harrian Tayne and Mereau Of Sirius. The others are in chronostasis. But, I should warn you, revival viability from chronostasis is very low across the board.”

“Low? How can they be alive and revival viability be low? Was there some kind of life support issue? What happened?”

“It’s a long st – ”

“Story. Yes. How low?”

“In the sixty to seventy per cent range.”

Her eyes widen. She takes a sharp breath, and starts coughing again.

“This is across the board, you say?” she asks when she can speak again.

“Yes.”

“As in, not just my crew? Because we went into chronostasis too old, complications were expected. But the colonists?”

“The colonists too, yes. It’s not an age factor.” Captain Klees glances at Lina. “In fact there’s some interesting statistics there, but they don’t really matter right now.”

“Is viability still going down?”

“No. It’s been stable in its current range for… well, five years at least. We can’t say anything about before then for certain. Records are difficult to retrieve.”

“Because the AI isn’t working.”

“Yes.”

“And Harrian’s dead and can’t help.” She blinks away a tear. “We’ll work with what we have, I suppose. You said we’re about six weeks from orbit?”

“Give or take, yes.”

“Not to be rude, but why were colonists revived to run this ship instead of my crew? Also, why wake me now, if viability isn’t dropping?”

“The first is complicated, the second is easy. We have a situation with Hylara that we need your help with.”

“Is this also part of the very long story?”

“No, this one’s quite a short story. Hyl – ”

“It is quite a short story,” Lina cuts in, “but perhaps it should wait until we have the rest of the crew revived and Captain Kae Jin’s had a chance to get her bearings? She needs to minimise stress.”

“I suspect that just telling me would be a lot less stressful than telling me there’s a ‘situation’ with the planet and leaving me to wonder what it is.”

“Captain, your organs are – ”

“There’s people down there,” I cut in. “On Hylara.”

Everyone stares at me.

“What?” I ask. “She’s right. It’s much more stressful to not know what’s going on.” I focus on Captain Kae Jin, because I really, really want to see how she reacts to this part. “Our information is limited, but there are people down there and they’re aware of the Courageous. We suspect that they were sent from Antarctica.”

Confusion flashes in her eyes. Thoughtfulness. Confusion again. “Did you say Antarctica?”

“Antarctica, yes.”

“Antarctica doesn’t have a space program. Or at least, they didn’t when we left.”

“Not too long ago I would’ve agreed with you. But here we are.”

“How? Why? I mean, we will arrive late, so it’s not unfeasible that somebody else developed a program in our absence and they beat us to Hylara, but with the distances involved, they wouldn’t have known about the failure of our colony until sixty five years after our intended arrival date. There’s simply no time to have launched another and set up to – wait. How late are we? Have there been further delays? I – ” She makes to sit up again, and the Friend puts a firm hand on her shoulder.

“We are on schedule,” the Friend says. “We are on the schedule you predicted after the failure of the aft engine. We’ve been travelling for just under forty years. You’re right; they wouldn’t have had a chance to hear nothing from the colony and launch another colony ship. This ship must have launched while we were in transit.”

“Why?” the captain asks. “If Antarctica wanted in on the colony effort, they could’ve been part of the Javelin Program. It makes no sense to chase us to the same planet.”

She sounds sincere. Could be an act, maybe; she could be in on it. But… no. Waking up from chronostasis, getting this mess of information all at once, correctly predicting what she’d need to pretend to be confused about? No. Captain Kae Jin had no idea about Antarctica.

I relax slightly. I think everyone in the room does.

“I know this is an upsetting topic,” I say, “but do you have any information that we should know about Richard Rynn-Hatson’s death?”

Grief clouds her eyes. “Stupid kid,” she mutters. “Pointless death. He went out to do some hull repair alone, didn’t tell anyone about it. Ovlo never would’ve allowed it if he’d known. Only an utter fool would go out there by themselves.”

My crewmates all look at me. I ignore them.

“We didn’t even know about the problem until he didn’t come back.” She reaches up a thin, weak arm to scrub tears from her eyes. “He always wanted to prove himself, you know? Prove he was good enough to be on the mission. I always told him that was stupid, he was selected for the mission, but honestly? I don’t think he should have been. Not because of his skills; he was a pulsar of an engineer. But because he was the kind of guy who’d go outside the ship by himself to fix some minor problem instead of reporting it to the head engineer. His sister was on Reimann’s crew, did you know that? I halfway think he was just following her. Wanted to show that he could be a superstar astronaut, too. And of course the two wanted to make it to Hylara together, not leave their entire families behind. Command should never have allowed it. If Claire wouldn’t go without Richard, leave them both home. Find other astronauts. Disaster waiting to happen. What did you want to know about his de – wait.” She frowns at me. “I don’t mean to be rude, but do we know each other?”

“No,” I say.

“Hmm. You’re not one of Reimann’s or mine, but I’d swear I know your face. The part of it that isn’t new, I mean.”

I reach up to touch my new skin. There’s no avoiding it forever. “I wrote some books about human migration and space exploration. Maybe you saw an interview or – ”

“I don’t think so. I don’t usually watch stuff like that. Richard’s death was – wait! You’re one of the hostiles!”

“I – what?”

“We were given photos to memorise, of people who might prove a danger prior to the Program. Various extremists and whackos and corporate sabeteurs and soforth.” She narrows her eyes. “Aren’t you the one who tried to kill the CEO?”

“I didn’t try to kill him! I wasn’t going to kill anyone, I just…”

“Hmm?”

“… put a knife against his throat and… threatened… him a little.”

“Hmm.”

“I was going through some stuff.”

“And now you’re crew?!”

“T-technically, um, technically I’m the ship’s psychologist.”

This time, Captain Kae Jin’s coughing fit lasts quite a while. As soon as she’s able, she gasps, “How did you get approved for this program?!”

“To be honest, I’m as confused about that as you are.”

“Aspen’s a very valuable member of this crew,” Captain Klees says firmly. “They’ve saved my life at least once, probably several times; it’s not always easy to keep track. And for the record, Aspen was the first person the computer woke after Captain Reimann’s crew died. They’re the one who got the rest of us up and got the fore engine on so we could actually make it to Hylara.”

“Why didn’t the computer wake me and my crew, like it was supposed to? There’s a revival priority system in place in the event of crew loss.”

“Like we said. It was broken.”

“Broken in a way that made it wake up the wrong people?” Her eyes settle back on me. Suspicious.

Does… does she think I’m some kind of spy or sabateur?

“Believe me,” I say, “I didn’t expect to be woken on a broken, uncrewed ship in deep space either. I expect they approved my application to go for PR reasons. The books I mentioned. It’s complicated.  You can believe me or don’t, it doesn’t change the facts; right now, we’re all headed to Hylara. We all want to get there safely.”

“Mmm.” She leans back, closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. “Well then, Captain Klees. You’d better tell me this very long story.”