Holly walked through the narrow corridor to the Mess. Her stomach was a tangled knot. She had reviewed video of the Creature’s handiwork: the gruesome surgery removing tissue growths from Zhu, the solid trail of blood leading from Sci-Med’s airlock to Aux Two, and then Fuller’s bloated neck and eyes which looked like he had died of fright. And then the screams. And Sci-Med’s experiments were possibly even more grotesque. They were spawning outright abominations – animal cruelty for reasons she didn’t understand since Patterson could just use live cell cultures.
She had never seen any violence in this work. Others had, and she had reviewed their after-action reports. Gun battles could be quite bloody. Noisy too, with cries of pain and panic. But they were clean. This Creature’s kills were slow and cruel – not clean at all. The infections were even worse.
It was getting hard to keep her eyes open. The bags that she saw under everyone else’s eyes showed that they were facing the same challenge. She was strongly favoring blowing open the airlock in Aux Two. It would cause considerable damage, yes. And they would lose a large portion of their water stores and recyclable organic material. But the Creature would be gone and they could spend the outbound attempting to fix as many systems as they could.
She was confident they could restore most even without Zhu. And even if they couldn’t, they could decontaminate enough parts from Aux Two to give them more than enough spares for Aux One. Especially since Ugarit class starships were built well – she had never heard of a major systems casualty on one. But the crew only had so much strength. How much longer could they go, just waiting for a breakthrough?
Of course, nobody would volunteer to go in and disable the interlocks. They all knew it was a suicide mission. The Creature seemed smart enough to anticipate it. And it had proven itself a master stalker. Even De Silva couldn’t hunt it. Additional fatalities would likely endanger the ship more than the loss of the systems.
Ghost was resting on the deck in a corner. He raised his head, looked at her, and bolted down the other hall out of the Mess without reason. Her tired crew looked around and then shook their heads. He was acting strangely spooked. But at least he had energy.
She walked in the galley just as Nieves came out with a thermos. She smiled and forced her composure to appear more energetic. She couldn’t allow the crew to see her beat. Moussa was the only person remaining in the galley, making a new pot of coffee. He had stripped down to his muscle shirt and she took a moment to admire the deep contours of his arms. She slouched against the counter and smelled the aroma of the coffee and the chicken and vegetable soup that was simmering. She could afford to let him see the reality of her exhaustion.
“You and I both feel that way,” he mumbled with low energy. “Share a cup with me. It’ll keep us fit.”
“Thanks, I will.”
“Have you heard from the Captain?” he asked.
“No, I haven’t.” I’ll ping him in a little bit.
“Me neither,” he said. “I messaged him but he didn’t answer. You think he’s sleeping off the sedative?”
“I hope. He hasn’t relieved me yet, and I’m afraid of pushing him.” She leaned against the counter, exhausted. “I will soon. We need him back so that you and I can start a sleep rotation. I don’t want the crew looking to me for leadership.”
“Being in command is only so hard for you because you make it that way,” he said. “The crew knows what to do. We’re keeping watch to make certain our barriers hold and the Sci-Med team will work for as long as they need to. You don’t have to tell them to work or instruct them on how to. Just talk with them every so often and make certain nothing is holding them back. And when there are competing objectives, make the final decision and show them why.”
“You make it sound easy.” Moussa had responsibility but he never had the burden of command.
“It is easy,” he said. “De Silva’s not your standard starship captain. Yet other starships get their job done every day.”
She conceded his point, but still felt her situation to be different. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But I’m afraid that I can’t even give my best anymore.”
“Too tired?”
She nodded.
He nodded back in understanding. “Then let me show you something.” He beckoned her with his hand.
She came up next to him while he took a clay pitcher off the stone he had on the burner.
“This is the African way for making coffee,” he said. “The whole bean is used ground up very fine, and so this is stronger than the kind of Yank brew you’re used to.”
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“Sounds interesting.” She passed him a flirty glance. “But is there really only one way to prepare coffee in all of Africa?” She knew his story was embellished; it was just a question of how much.
He grinned. “One of the ways. But this way has merit – particularly in times like these.”
She rested her hands on her hips and waited as he poured two cups. He then put in a pinch of salt but no sugar. He promised it would just help bring out the full flavor. She raised her brows in skepticism. Okay, I’ll try it. Last, he took two sprigs of an herb and thrust them into the coffee. She recognized it – rue.
He handed one cup to her and he began to stir his coffee with the sprig of rue. “Stir it up for a bit and wait for the aroma.”
She mixed it like he said. It didn’t take long. She smelled the strong scent of coffee but also a somewhat floral and lemony scent. She brought the cup up to her nose and breathed. “This is rue?”
She smiled, imagining a deep family history for this practice with Moussa. Her eyes met his. He was watching her with a curious interest. “You’re going to tell me that your grandparents made their Joe like this?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe from time to time. This is more of an East Africa thing. But it’s got a punch we need right now. Do you trust me? Let’s give it a try.”
She nodded, understanding that there was no deep family history. She watched him as he sipped his coffee. He made a pleasant moan and sipped again. It seemed good and she took a sip. She was instantly overcome with the incredible bitterness and had to force it down. “This is disgustingly bitter!”
His eyes widened with shock. “It actually cuts the bitterness with a lemony flavor,” he said.
“Still too bitter.” She winced as she took another sip. It was bad. But she understood that she was used to sweet coffee and so maybe it was just cultural bias. And it was potent.
“You Americans are too in love with sugar,” he said. “Go ahead and use some. It’s still going to have the punch you need to keep awake.”
“I’ll manage.” She leaned back against the counter. “And I do like its kick.”
“Smell it too,” he said. “Stimulate as many senses as you can. It will help you stay alert.”
She stirred it some more. “It’s definitely not going to be my go-to brew.”
He laughed. “I’m not going to be mad if you use a bit of sugar. It’s your coffee, have it like you want. There’s a second cup for us there anyways.” He looked somewhat embarrassed.
“I am feeling more energetic.” She drank more. She wanted to say good things and now felt bad about complaining. “It’s good for that. You should probably make more for everybody.”
“Maybe later,” he said. He finished his first cup and poured a second. “This will keep us alert till the Captain’s back – hopefully. Then you and I need to work out a sleep rotation.”
“That could still be several hours away. Whatever he saw and heard must have been truly terrifying.” She savored the pleasant scent for a moment but her mind wondered. She vividly saw again Patterson’s twisted monsters - mockeries of life. And all of a sudden it hit her. The scariest part of it was that it appeared completely natural. One would expect the growths and body transformation to be excruciating, yet each of the test subjects went about their way as if things were completely normal.
She pushed those thoughts from her mind. That was Patterson’s job. She looked in his eyes. “What other recommendations do you have for staying awake?”
He grinned. “Take off some clothes.”
She looked at him in shock for a moment and then composed himself. He loved his wife and so he was tricking her into thinking he was being improper. Explain yourself. “And how will that help me?”
“I told you,” he said. “You need to stimulate your senses. Sip coffee with a strong taste. Savor a strong smell. And take off that jacket and stand under a blower for a strong wind. You’ll stay awake.”
She looked at her jacket. The company’s attire didn’t have the extreme hierarchical nature of the military. But her jacket did have her designation of NAV together with the ship’s badge and her flag patch. “I think I might look too informal in just a tee shirt.”
“The Captain does it all the time.”
She couldn’t argue with him. But he also had credentials that were beyond challenge. She decided it was better than risking dozing off in front of the crew and took it off. She poured another coffee and asked, “You’ve done long watches like this before?”
“It’s a rare thing, but it happens,” he said. “Usually, the tough jobs are more like what we had with the Polo. It’s tough, it stresses you out, but you have a good plan going into the job. So, you can manage it with some smarts and adaptation, and you can implement a proper schedule. Having a replicant really helped us out too. Most of their crew probably thought Patterson was one too.
The real hard times comes from stuff just going wrong. My first job in the Outers was a machinist on the al-Khwarizmi. She was a relativistic vessel that the company I was with at the time bought on the cheap. They should have fixed her up a bit before putting her on assignment. We had a fire in an electrical panel. Even an incipient fire is a bad day – the temperature and pressure in the affected compartments climb faster than you realize, and the oxygen is quickly depleted.
But we weren’t careful about loading our flammable cargo. And that panel fire spread to maybe a quarter of the ship. We had eight casualties in as many minutes. One of them was our doc, and so we didn’t get much medical help. Three people eventually died. The al-Khwarizmi was written off and scrapped.”
He rubbed his arms slowly as if reminiscing. “You can’t see anything now because I got my injuries fixed. But I had burns on both my arms when I first met the Captain. That was thirty-six years ago. I haven’t seen anyone else die until now. I’ve seen dead people on the ships we salvaged. But not one of my crew.”
“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to dig into bad history.” She tried to imagine how that must have been. Nothing appreciable could be done for the injured because the one who was placed to help them was incapacitated. The Nineveh was one accident away from that scenario.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” he said. “Stuff just went wrong. We got to stay clear headed to prevent that from happening now.”
She nodded in approval. He was right, though it was hard to do without knowing how to resolve their problem. And even Patterson was stumped right now.