Full as I’d ever felt within my brief period of reliable memory, I sat at the dinner table, feeling that if I dozed off right there, maybe I'd be so satiated as to sleep soundly. Maybe I wouldn’t have a nightmare again and just dream nice things about Ray’s delicious cooking and enjoying a full belly. Wishful thinking, given that this would be the first time sleeping since the unreliability of my memory had come to light.

I closed my eyes to take another peek at our prisoner, and noticed that he wasn't sitting in the same place that he was before. He must have gotten restless and squirmed his way across the room at some point during dinner to sit against the far wall.

"Think our mark needs some enrichment." I joked to the others at the table, who’d taken note of me closing my eyes "Who's bringing him his last meal?" I asked.

"Joel." Aisling said before anyone could volunteer, a smirk on her face.

I expected a grumbled objection, but instead I heard "Alright." Followed by Joel moving dutifully to pick up the extra plate that had been prepared

"And actually give it to him. Don't be a dick." Ray scolded.

"Yeah, yeah. Don't need him starving to death before we get paid." He said as he walked up the stairwell. Closing my eyes, I focused in on the temporary brig. Shaw was witty, and Joel was certainly going to gloat. I had to watch this exchange.

I frowned as I watched the cell though. Something was… unusual. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I had a bad feeling. It was hard to get the kind of clarity I wanted while I was outside the void though. I had to stare at it for a minute to figure it out.

Then I managed to spot what had been bothering me. A hand. I could see his hand behind his back. Before dinner, his hands were bound inside of the wrapped cables. I opened my eyes and shouted as loud as I could "Joel!" Standing up immediately and seeing everyone else's eyes turn to me.

"Shaw untied himself!" I proclaimed. Aisling was on her feet with me immediately, bolting for the stairs, shouting after Joel herself. The others followed on her tail. I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep up.

Instead, I tapped into the intercom. I certainly couldn't synthesize a voice while I was out of the core module, though, so I hesitated. It took me more time than I'd like to admit to realize that I could have just walked to the wall, physically pressed the button, and just talked. But I didn't. I wasn’t thinking like a person at the time.

I looked in on the cell again to see Joel standing over Shaw, and I pursed my lips. I had to warn him somehow. I tapped the intercom and just sent noise through, causing both men to look toward the speaker. I heard Aisling’s voice calling through from the hallway, and Joel whipped his head around again in confusion toward the open door, but this time Shaw realized he must have been had and made his move.

He swept his leg out, discarding the cables that he was holding against himself like a blanket, and knocked Joel to the floor, making him spill the plate of food all over the wall. He grabbed hold of Joel and wrestled him down against him onto the floor. Joel was on top, but Shaw had a strong hold on his neck. By then, Aisling was standing in the doorway with her pistol drawn, and Shaw was holding what looked like a jagged piece of metal to Joel’s neck.

“Where you think this is gonna go, Shaw? Put him down.” She demanded, while Shaw did his best to try and drag Joel further away into the room.

Shaw had a confident smile on his face “Now now, I just want a word.” He grunted as Joel tried to pull away from him again, but pulled him back into position. Seemed that he wasn’t as weak as he’d let on. And where did he get that makeshift weapon?

“Shoot him, Captain.” Joel grunted angrily, trying to make a move, but unable to do much with the metal at his throat

“Go on, say your peace.” Aisling said patiently, weapon still trained on the man.

“You turn this ship around and I won’t slit your boy ear to ear. Tell the skulls I got away, I’ll even share a couple of my caches back on Earth with you. Gotta be worth more than my bounty.” He grunted, shifting himself up slowly to a sitting position while still holding Joel in front of him.

There was a short silence where they stared each other down, Joel making no leeway on struggling himself out. No one else was armed at the time, so they were standing outside, watching closely. “Theseus.” Aisling said next, stepping into the room and holding onto the metal bar she’d used earlier when we broke atmosphere. I was listening closely. “Why don’t you stop us right here, so we can work out the details.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She emphasized the word stop more than she usually would. Stop? We were going full speed. If I halted momentum… I was reminded of the lesson I’d learned on my first day piloting Theseus. It was hard to operate quickly from the mess hall, but I pulled up my piloting interface and not only killed all of the engines at once. I put them all into full reverse in the same command.

In an instant, Aisling was the only one left standing, the artificial gravity system struggling to keep up with the sudden drastic change of relative momentum. While the rest of the crew fell over each other in the hallway, Joel was given new opportunity to reassert his struggle, tumbling away from Shaw, and leaving the prisoner open to Aisling’s sights.

When Shaw got his bearings enough to look up from the floor again, the captain had him dead to rights “You were saying?” she asked, the surprised man holding his hands up in surrender.

“Okay… you’re resourceful, I’ll give you that.” The man panted as he watched the rest of the crew getting up off of the floor, including Joel, who looked pissed. He dropped his weapon and it… dissolved? My sensors must have been malfunctioning, or it was a glitch in the data stream. “Deal’s still on the table,” he said “Surely we can work something out?”

Aisling growled and redoubled the grip on her pistol with both hands “Skulls I can at least trust a little. You, not so much.” She put her weapon down and motioned to Joel to come past her, out of the room “You pull shit like that again, you get shot on the spot, bounty be damned.” She stepped back out and closed the door tight, locking him in once more from the outside.

I breathed a sigh of relief that it hadn’t gone worse than that, and started correcting our course back toward the far side of Luna, setting us into a slow orbit while I walked up the stairs to join the others.

As I came up, I opened my eyes to see Joel glaring my way “Thought you were supposed to be keeping an eye on him.” He growled at me.

I took a deep breath. I had been keeping an eye on him, that was the thing. There was nothing in that room that could have freed him from those cables like that “Joel, how did he get out of those bindings?” I asked.

“How the fuck should I know! You’re the one who sees everything on this ship!” he shouted.

“Exactly, and I didn’t see him getting the kind of tool he’d need for that.” I explained “I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do with this guy. I think he’s got… something weird going on with him.”

“Can’t use a shiv to get through that door anyway.” Aisling said, sounding just as angry as Joel and I were at each other “No one goes in that room unless we absolutely have to. If we do, we do it in pairs, with an armed guard at the door. Got it?” the rest of the crew nodded in agreement “This was no one’s fault but his. If Meryll didn’t spot it when she did, who knows what he would’ve done? So no grudges between you now. Everyone back to your duties.” She declared, finally putting her pistol back into its holster.

I breathed a sigh of relief. That kind of encounter within my own shell was uncomfortable to say the least. It was supposed to be safe in here. But I supposed that I needed to reassess my views on safety, if this was the kind of thing that happened regularly. As the crew dispersed, I found myself standing side by side with Aisling on the way to my heart “I’ll be able to keep a closer eye on him if I’m back in the core module.” I offered.

She sighed, putting a hand on my shoulder “Doc’s gonna have to run a thorough check on you. You were in that thing for too long. Get him to look you over. Make sure you’re not falling apart. Physically or mentally. And get some fucking sleep, you look tired as hell.” she spoke sternly. I knew that she had just told us that no one was in trouble over this, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was being scolded. I nodded along to her and she patted me on the shoulder a few times “You did good, Meryll. You’re not a computer, and you don’t gotta be perfect and catch every little thing as it happens. You did about as good as I could’ve expected from a normal security guard there. And I know you’re gonna get better the more you get used to this ship thing. Keep it up. But take care of yourself too.” She let go of me and walked away, a concerned look on her face as she turned in to her own dormitory.

I know she was trying to reassure me, but it made me feel like I let her down on some level. I supposed that I would get better at monitoring things while also utilizing my physical body, but in a life or death matter like that, it would have helped if I’d spotted whatever he’d done as soon as it happened. I needed to finish that sensor script.

I knew she was right about my health though. We still didn’t perfectly understand what the core module was doing to me. When I walked into my heart, I sat down on the bed and laid back. I could have just ignored what she said and got back into the void. I wondered if standard cores regularly spent this long outside of their modules anyway. I wasn’t really savvy on exactly what normal ship core care was like. I imagined that these inspections probably took minutes. They likely just fed their bodies through nutrient saline solutions or something, and then put them right back into the system.

I closed my eyes to adjust myself up to speed again and check on Shaw. He was pacing now that it was obvious that he was free of his bindings, but he didn’t look like he was making any kind of meaningful move. I didn’t really like that he seemed to be in thought though. It meant he hadn’t given up. He was planning something.

With the adrenaline of the situation beginning to fade, I was still feeling pretty tired from the heavy meal and my extended period without actual sleep. I knew that it would quickly wash away if I got into the void, but Doc and Aisling were right. I was dead tired. Closing my eyes didn’t help me rest, but my body did it anyway. We were in a steady orbit, and we would be for some time now, but for the time being, I needed this nap.