093: DESPERATION

Captain Sands backs away behind a bed, but I’m faster. He’s almost within reach before Heli shoulder-checks me directly into the metal frame of the bed. Pain blooms in my hip as I drop to the floor, my improvised weapon rolling out of my grip, and before I can get up again, she’s dragged me a safe distance away from him and has me pinned to the floor. Heli’s one and a half times my weight and, judging from the way she’s holding me down, seems to have some kind of combat or wrestling experience; I know before I even try that I’m not going to break her hold. I wriggle anyway.

I can’t see much with my nose pressed to the metal tiles, but there’s the sound of some kind of scuffle above. Then it stops, and Captain Sands says, “If everyone is ready to be reasonable…”

“I still want to try violence, actually,” Sam says. “What the fuck are you doing?!”

“Saving this crew from the people who stabbed two of our number to death. I thought I’d made that clear.”

“Like fuck they did,” I growl at the floor.

“Aspen’s right,” Sunset says. “Tal would never.”

“And neither would Lina,” Celi adds.

“And didn’t we determine that Tinera has to be innocent?”  Sam asks.

“In reverse order: no, we determined that Tinera didn’t wield the knife, not that she couldn’t be part of the planning. Two: Lina’s the only one we were already pretty certain was guilty, given her access to drugs and her injuries.”

“Well, yeah,” Celi says, uncertain. “But that could just – ”

“And three – Sunset, do you have any idea what Tal even did to end up here?”

“Ke was some kind of cybercriminal, right?” she frowns.

“Ke got busted stealing from an emergency relief fund for typhoon victims. The Durana Fund.”

“The Durana Fund are a bunch of wealthy hacks with ties to illegal child slavery,” I tell the floor.

“Aspen, every large charity are a bunch of wealthy hacks with ties to illegal child slavery. But when their coffers are emptied, who do you think suffers? It’s not the wealthy hacks. They certainly don’t free any child slaves. Criminals like Tal always like to justify their crimes by pretending they’re stealing from the rich or whatever, but the money taken in such a way is taken from the typhoon victims. I’m sure that Tal thinks ke’s a good person, but kes history clearly shows that ke is incapable of making such a decision. And the others… well. Tal has the excuse of being not particularly smart, outside of kes specialities, and might be more ignorant than evil. The others don’t have that excuse.”

“More ignorant than evil?” Sunset sneers. “You’re the one committing mass murder right now!”

“Do you want to know how many people that Friend killed?” Captain Sands asks. “Or Lina? Of course, we can only guess for Lina, but – ”

“Lina didn’t kill anyone,” I say. “That’s the Friend, and Tinera, and Denish. And I know that for Denish it was an accident. And Tinera says her victim deserved it, and I believe – ”

“She probably thinks that Renn and the dead Friend deserved it, too. What happens when she wakes up one morning and decides that another crewmate deserves it, Aspen?”

“Come off it, we already know she didn’t kill – ”

“We know she didn’t wield the knife. We also know – you yourself have testified, many times – that she’s an excellent project coordinator in a crisis. Did you know that her victim was thirteen years old?”

“He… what?”

“He was thirteen years old. And he was asleep. Tinera broke into his house, cut his throat in his sleep, and was making off with several valuables when his mother entered. She stabbed her twice in the stomach before fleeing. I bet she wishes that she killed her too; she would’ve been a lot harder to identify if she had and might still be free. And she’d already murdered a sleeping child, so – ”

“Whatever Tinera did, Lina wouldn’t,” Celi insists. “Someone tricked her with the drugs, or – ”

“Lina was convicted of organ stealing,” Captain Sands says. “Highly structured organs, such as lungs and hearts and kidneys, are still very difficult and imperfect to grow under laboratory conditions. For those who want something more long-lasting than clumsy cybernetics, the demand for donated organs is rather higher than the supply. There’s a lot of money to be made in butchering the dead.”

Wow, okay, that’s… super gross, but… “But the dead don’t need them,” I point out. “If she was saving lives – ”

From my current position, I can’t see him, but I can feel Captain Sands’ pitying look. “Aspen,” he says. “Where do you think an oncologist gets their supply of organs from?”

“Cancer can have an unfortunately high death ra – ”

“Cancer that is likely to kill is usually treated with radiation or chemotherapy. Do you know what chemotherapy does to a heart? To a kidney? Not much at first, granted, but with how long we can keep a patient alive these days, how far we can go to save them… if a patient dies of cancer, after all efforts have been made to save them, those organs are long ruined. There’s only one way for an oncologist to get a steady supply of healthy organs from their patients. While Lina was never actually convicted of murder, the trial notes do mention that a suspicious number of her younger, healthier patients died suspiciously early in their therapy.”

“She wouldn’t,” Celi protests.

“She did, though. And there’s nobody in that ring that somebody here doesn’t insist is innocent, and you can’t all be right. Is it really so surprising that none of you were right?”

I don’t have time to dwell on these revelations about my friends’ past crimes right now. I need to figure out what the fuck Captain Sands is doing, why he turned away from his plan to get enough evidence to reasonably convict Lina even if it had to be fabricated, to this mass slaughter with no trial and no evidence. What could the Friend possibly have told him that would prompt this? It couldn’t have been an actual confession; the Friend hadn’t known about the drugs and had to be innocent. It couldn’t have been real, solid evidence, or he’d insist on a trial. What had it said that would make him do this? What’s going on?

I need to get up. I stop listening to the conversation and focus on Heli pinning me to the floor. “Why are you helping him?” I ask.

“Why am I stopping someone from assaulting my captain? You need to ask?”

“Don’t pretend that you, of all people, have morals,” I growl. “If he’s treating them like this, what do you think he’s going to do to you, when he has the time and space to deal with you?”

“I think that Captain Sands is preventing a mutiny of criminals, and that when he puts his proper crew together, he’s going to care a lot more about who’s shown actual loyalty to him than some random dalliance with a dead convict. You heard him; he locked the atmosphere thing behind a password. The others are already dead. Maybe you should be planning more for your future instead of making yourself look like a traitor and a security risk.”

“Oh. Wow. You might literally be the most pathetic excuse for a person I’ve ever – argh!” I gasp as my arm is bent viciously at a painful angle. Everyone looks over, but is immediately distracted by a loud, beeping alarm.

“Oh, what is it now?!” Captain Sands exclaims.

“That’s a vitals alarm,” Celi says. “Somebody’s vitals have just dropped to zero.” There’s typing at the terminal. “It’s Adin,” Celi says quietly.

“Huh,” Captain Sands says. “I would’ve expected Denish to go first, being so much bigger and everything. But I’m no doctor. Can you shut off the beeping?”

“Can you shut off the depressurisation?!” Sunset’s voice is pleading. “Please, we can work this out, just stop!”

“Fuck this,” Sam growls, and moves. Heli is fast, rising up off me and grabbing Sam in one fluid motion. My muscles scream in protest as I force myself to my feet. This whole thing feels like a dream, a nightmare. It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.

The alarm goes off again. Through audible sobs, Celi says, “It’s Tal,” and with a feral scream of rage, Sunset launches herself at Captain Sands, who raises a large knife to defend himself. I grab Sands’ knife arm while Sunset’s fragile nails claw at Captain Sands’ face. Those pre-Neocambrian nails must be stronger than they look, because there are visible bloody tracks on the captain’s face as Heli throws her to the ground and Captain Sands, whose sex work and engineering past apparently contained self defense training for some reason, drops the knife, neatly disengages my grip and kicks me into the side of another bed.

“Adin and Tinera are dead,” Celi announces quietly, barely audible over the alarms. Ke shuts them off quickly.

“Don’t just sit there at the computer!” Sunset shrieks as Heli restrains her. “Stop him!”

“How?!”

I sink to the floor as the alarm beeps again, Celi shuts it off, and it starts up immediately for the sixth and final time. I glare up through my tears. “Hey, Captain,” I spit.

“Yes, Aspen?”

“May the seeds you tend grow to shelter you.”

“Oh, they will. Today, we build a strong crew that isn’t full of murderers. One that will let us do our actual job of getting these colonists safely to their new home. Or did you forget about those?”

“Do you think there’s any coming back from this?” Sunset’s voice is hysterical. “You’re not building anything! Do you think any of us are ever going to trust you again? The only one on your side is the fucking rapist! Or are you going to kill us, too?”

“What? No! None of you have stabbed any of your coworkers.”

“If you expect us to fall in line and follow your orders, you are very sorely mistaken,” Celi says.

“I’m aware of that. I understand that it might be beyond your perspective to look past this. If you feel you can’t serve on this crew in the future, I’m willing to dismiss you from duty. You can spend the rest of the trip off-duty and rest until we reach Hylara if you so wish; it’s probably for the best, in fact. We’ll fill in the roles of anyone who doesn’t wish to serve with new – ”

“You won’t get the chance,” Celi growls. “Aspen, the psychological override.”

“Heli, stop them.”

I head for the computer, wary of Heli, but she doesn’t go for me or for Celi. She just smashes the computer screen with the dropped arm brace.

“Thank you,” Captain Sands says. “Keep them in here while I strip our protesters’ ranks in the system. I trust you’re willing to serve as my second in command?”

“Yes, captain.”

“Excellent.”

“He’s leading you on,” I tell Heli. “He’s going to arrest you for your crimes as soon as he has the manpower to do it. He’s playing with you right now because you’re all he’s got, but there’s no way he’ll ever forgive or trust – ”

“Shut up,” she growls.

I exchange a glance with Celi, Sam and Sunset. Heli’s the strongest among us, but she can’t take on all four of us. If someone keeps her busy while someone else goes for the captain…

But then I realise that Sam is cradling a broken arm, and Sunset is blinking hard, dazed, while blood runs down the side of her head. Celi leans on the edge of the terminal desk, carefully keeping one foot off the ground. And Heli holds the arm brace like a weapon.

And then I hear one of the doors leading into the ring open, and I give up trying to understand anything.

Captain Sands, frowning, heads out of the medbay to take a look. He walks out of sight. Stops walking. Swears.

And then he’s suddenly back in sight, as he goes sailing through the air, landing neatly on a hospital bed.

Denish strides into the already crowded room and grabs Heli’s wrist in one large hand, squeezing until she drops the brace. Blood soaks a clumsily wrapped bandage on his right arm, and a broad grin lights up his face. “Hello everybody! Did I miss anything? Do not move, please.”

Sunset squints up at him. “You’re dead,” she says.

“Really?” Denish pokes himself. “I do not feel dead.”

“Nobody’s dead,” Lina says, coming into view next to Denish. “Not yet, anyway. Don’t insult our medical skills.” In her left hand, she holds some kind of power tool. I’m not sure what it is, but she wields it like a gun.

Tinera appears on Denish’s other side. She’s also holding a mysterious power tool like a gun in her left hand, and has it trained directly on the captain, as he groans and goes to pick himself up off the bed.

“This is a mutiny,” she announces, “for anyone stupid enough not to have already guessed. And contrary to popular belief, I don’t like hurting people and don’t want to hurt any of you. But if you don’t all lie face down on the ground and stay still right now, I absolutely will.”

I lie down and stay still. I still don’t really understand what’s going on, but for once, I’m fine with this turn of events.

At least, I’m fine with it until I hear someone walk up to me and stop just out of sight, and I feel the needle sink into my neck.