Reel, Arcturus
“Absolutely not,” Arcturus snarled.
Anger bled down the Link, as cold as the vacuum of space. It chilled Reel to the bone, stunning her and numbing the sense of excitement she’d felt when she’d told her father what she’d done.
“Wha…Why on Old Bug not?” She stumbled over the words, off balance. That anger…! She’d expected annoyance, or irritation, or maybe even a lecture, tense with disapproval. Those were familiar emotions from the Captain, ones she’d felt through the Link often enough, when his control slipped. But not this icy fury, leeching right into her brain. And she could tell that was only a trickle; behind it she sensed a vast reservoir, held back only by Arcturus’ iron will. It dangled over her head like an asteroid suspended by a string, oppressive and dangerous.
“You’re not even supposed to be there, let alone be making deals of any kind,” he ground out.
“But it’s a good deal! We’re going to get everything we want, faster than we needed it, for nothing more than letting them look at the lander!”
She thought that would give him pause, but he hammered in over her again. “I said no, blast it!” The anger flashed hot through the Link for a moment, searing her brain and making her physically wince before her father got it back under control. “You were supposed to drop off the transmission unit and then come right back.”
“And I will! I just need to run the condenser for a few days…maybe a week, two maximum, to top off the Dark Liquid reservoir.” It might take longer, but he didn’t need to know that right then. And she’d agreed to stay and help with the development, and he really didn’t need to hear that right away. Let him cool down first; he’d see reason.
“Yes, so you’ve said,” he growled. “I had Hark pull the maintenance logs for that unit. It seems the last person to work on it was you, one day before you left.”
“Of course.” She hesitated, then went on. “I needed to make sure it was in good shape before I came here.”
“What a coincidence then,” he snarled, “that it should turn out to have lost most of its reservoir on arrival.”
That brought her up short. She had checked it, twice over. It had been in storage for several years, but the reservoir had been full. What had caused it to lose most of its reserves over such a short time? She squashed a growing sense of uneasiness–she needed to be confident, if she was going to convince the Captain. “Something came loose during atmospheric entry, I’d guess,” she suggested.
“Or maybe you deliberately sabotaged the equipment to buy yourself more time groundside!”
“What?!?” It came out as a yelp. Konrad was standing a little ways off, and at her shout, he jerked around to look at her. Her cheeks flushed dark with embarrassment. She tried again, striving for a more dignified tone. “I would never do that, Captain.”
“I’m sure,” he said with bitter, biting sarcasm. “Just like I’m sure you would never sabotage the other lander to keep us from following you.”
That stung. “That was different,” she insisted, though she wasn’t sure that it was. “I mean it. The transmission unit was fine when I left. I didn’t touch it, beyond looking at the reservoir levels.”
“I don’t believe that for a second!” he thundered, fury breaking free from his control again. It poured over the Link, all the iciness lost in a blaze of hot rage. “You lied repeatedly, over and over, you stole a ship, and you disobeyed direct orders. If you were…” He cut himself off, and for a moment she felt him squeezing the anger down tight. When he spoke again, the words came through flat and dangerous. “Crew members have been sent back to Efreet for less.”
The words landed like a punch in her gut. She had never heard of such a thing happening. Sent them back to Efreet? The obscene thought left her groping for a response. “I can’t just leave,” she protested. “I made a deal with them, a promise. If I leave now it could jeopardize everything!”
“Just you being there jeopardizes everything.”
“So what? I should just leave, pack everything up and come back?”
“Yes,” he said, as blunt as an asteroid. “Make your apologies, inform them that you’ve been ordered to return, and that we’ll send someone else back with Lander 1 and another transmission unit.”
She clenched her hand, digging the claws into the soft scales of her palm. “And what of the deal I reached with Dr. von Braun?”
“It…has its merits.” The words sounded like they were being drug out of him with a tractor beam. “But it can’t be you down there. Come back, and we’ll send someone else down to finish things up.”
Her own temper flared. “Why shouldn’t it be me? I’ve done all the work! I flew here, I made contact, I arranged the deal, in spite of broken equipment! And you want to steal that from me!”
“Control yourself,” he snapped at her. “You disobeyed. You don’t get to be rewarded for breaking every rule we have!”
Reel felt like someone was twisting the throttle of her anger to full burn. “I’m saving you weeks of time!” she yelled, abandoning any efforts to keep her voice low. Konrad edged back away from her a step, eyes wide. “You kept talking and talking about seizing the moment and acting as quickly as possible, and you’re going to be mad at me for doing exactly that?”
“You violated every order I gave to you! Whether you saved time or not, you defied me!”
And there was the crux of it. He’d break the rules too if it suited him, but when she did it, it was a problem. “Your orders were stupid.” she snapped. A small, distant part of her mind screamed at her to stop, to take her hand off the throttle, that she was going too far, but she couldn’t hear it over the roar of her own indignation. “I’m doing the right thing.”
She felt another spike of fury stab down the Link. “Reel, you will return to Old Bug immediately.”
“No.”
“You will,” he snarled menacingly. “You will, or I’ll have you scrubbing air ducts until you’re as gray as Argo.”
“You’d do that anyway. I made a deal, and I’m going to stay and see it through. And then at least one of us will have done something proactive. I’ll keep you updated.”
“Reel, don’t you dare--”
She severed the Link, cutting him off in mid-sentence. It left a great, empty hole where his anger had been, and a sense of dread rushed in to fill it. She was going to pay for that. Bowing her head, she shuddered. The rush that had come with the argument was fading, and it left her feeling shaky, scared and a little ashamed. If this didn’t work, he might just toss her right back out the airlock when she returned. He might do that even if it did all work out, but at least he’d probably put her in a suit first.
Konrad took a couple of small steps towards her after she’d been silent for a minute. “Um…Is everything alright?”
She forced a smile. “Sure. Just a small disagreement about…mission details.”
His eyes flicked over towards Lusser and von Braun. “Sure,” he said, licking his lips. “I know what that’s like. But don’t worry, I’m…I’m sure it will work out fine.” He offered a smile of his own. Such a strange expression on that round, pink, face, but she could tell what it was all the same.
“Thanks, Konrad,” she said, and meant it. Even that little bit of optimism buoyed her spirits, and she felt her smile shift into something more genuine. It would take them ages to replace the engines on the lander, and by the time they arrived they’d have the implants. No matter how mad he was now, she was certain that freedom for their people would outweigh even publicly defying him. “That means a lot.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Across the field, the sun’s light broke over the horizon. She put a hand up to shade her eyes, squinting into it.
The fluffy white clouds broke apart, letting the golden light through. It warmed her scales, and threw long shadows across the ground. She sucked in a breath, spellbound. She’d seen sunrises in the training simulations. The light, the shadows, that was all familiar. But she’d never felt the warmth! It felt great. Better than great. Her body drank in that warmth like it was…like it was…words failed her; she didn’t have anything that she could compare the sensation to, but it was infinitely comforting. In the light, everything felt a bit better. She let her hand drop away and closed her eyes, soaking it up. It melted away the leftover worry, filling her with a sense of calm assurance.
She turned back to Konrad, blinking her eyes open. He looked at her with his head half-cocked to one side, his eyebrows raised. While she’d been basking, he’d just been watching her, confused about what she was doing.
“You’re right Konrad.”
“I am?”
“Yes. If we work hard, everything will turn out fine. Let’s go get started.”
…
“Reel don’t you dare—"
The Link cut off with a jarring finality that left Arcturus spluttering. It was the first noise he’d made aloud since starting the call with Reel, and it came out as a strangled sort of choking. Argo glanced over at him from his seat in Arcturus’ quarters and raised an eyebrow at the sound. Arcturus hadn’t let Argo participate in the Link, opting instead to make him wait. He’d assumed that Reel would be more likely to see reason if it came right from him. In hindsight, that may have been a mistake. Not only had it not worked, but now he’d have to explain the whole thing over again.
He pushed away from the table and stood, stomping over to the viewscreen at the front of the bridge in a fine bad temper. His knees complained at the harsh treatment, doing nothing to help his temper. He grabbed the railing in front of the screen to take some of the weight off them, squeezing the bar hard.
“I take it she isn’t coming right back,” Argo said from his seat, his voice flat.
“No.” Arcturus bit out the word, bitter on his tongue. The mining platform floated outside his screen, in disarray. Between the mass Strickening of the crew and everything else that had happened, they had fallen far behind schedule. A single tug labored among the slowly turning rings, dragging a spar into position. Huge sections of the assembly were still missing, sitting in storage. The sight was an itch that he couldn’t scratch; he had his two other engineers working overtime to get Lander 2 ready.
“She is abusing your…relationship,” Argo said carefully. Deferentially, respectfully even. It set the scales along the back of Arcturus’ neck spiking up.
“Don’t. Just don’t, Argo.” His first officer fell silent. Arcturus almost wished he would say something more; it would feel good to yell at someone in person.
The thought brought a rush of shame that flattened the spiked scales back down. Argo was right, blast and burn him. And what kind of captain looked for excuses to yell? He blew out a long breath, fogging the screen and obscuring the solitary tug. He turned back to Argo and nodded. “Yes, she is.” The words came hard through the simmering anger in his gut, but saying them helped calm him fractionally. “We’re going to have to do something about that.”
Argo blinked in surprise at that, as though he’d expected another tongue-lashing rather than agreement. He nodded warily, watching to see his Captain’s reaction.
Arcturus grimaced. If his gambit with the humans worked, he’d need Argo beside him. If it didn’t, he’d need the aged first mate even more. “Walk with me. This conversation is long overdue, and I want to pay Hark and Roddel a visit. I’d like to see how Lander 2 is coming along for myself.”
They left the bridge walking side by side. The plating in the corridor scraped underfoot as they went, the only sound in this part of the ship. The office was tucked away halfway between the bridge and the ship bays, on a little used path. His father had kept his office right next to the bridge, but Arcturus liked the quiet that this spot offered. Argo watched him out of one eye as they went, waiting to see what he would say.
“I threatened to send her to Efreet.” Arcturus admitted finally. “Told her I’d done it before, though I never have…My father sent people back though, right?”
Argo frowned, wrinkling up the graying scales at the corners of his mouth. “Only once, that I recall. Remedial training is…expensive.”
The funds chart flashed into Arcturus’ mind. He wasn’t sure which downward spikes might coincide with remedial training, but even the small ones hurt. “Who was it?”
“A maintenance technician. Not one of ours originally, he came to us from another ship. He was just plain lazy, always hiding in access corridors and napping, never getting his tasks done.”
Arcturus waited to say more as they went around a corner, passing one of Yerry’s technician heading the other way. She bobbed a nod as she skirted them, hurrying on her way. When she’d passed out of sight, he asked, “Did it work?”
Argo rocked his head from side to side. “Sort of.” He hesitated. “When we picked him back up a few years later, he was certainly diligent. But…well, he was very different. Quiet, where he’d been boisterous before. Never said a word he didn’t have to...it was like he was only half a Torellan. He never quite seemed all there after coming back, and I know you’re father regretted the decision immensely. You never met that crewmember, of course; he died a few years before you came back to us from Efreet.”
Arcturus repressed a shudder. “Let’s avoid that option if we can, then.”
Argo stepped ahead of him to palm open the doors to the machine bay. The big steel doors slid apart with a whisper, revealing Lander Two. The smell of coolant, oil and freshly cut metal wafted over them, and the whirring of the metal mill vibrated through the deck plating. Roddel stood next to it, watching as the machine shaped a piece of steel. He turned when he heard the door open, waving to them.
Arcturus had to shout to make himself heard over the mill. “Give me a status update. How long until this thing is ready to fly?”
Roddel shook his head, pointing at his ear. The end of a bright yellow plug protruded from it. He grabbed two more pairs off the workbench and offered them to Arcturus and Argo.
Arcturus rolled his set in his fingers. The foam gave way easily beneath his fingers, compacting. He packed them into his own ears, working his jaw back and forth as they expanded to seal the canal. The scream of the mill faded to a distant, muted whine, and he opened a Link with Roddel.
“I said, give me a status update. How long until Lander Two is back in working order?”
Roddel rocked his head from left to right. “Ten days? Maybe as long as two weeks? We’re pushing as hard as we can. But it will be a month before Beno has pilots to fly it.”
Arcturus grimaced. He remembered how long the lander training had taken him. Beno had three of his tug pilots in the sims every waking hour, but they could only grind through them so fast. “Is there any way to cut that time down?” he asked.
Roddel cocked his head to one side. “The training or the repairs?”
“The repairs.”
“Umm…We could put in more hours, but we’re already taking our meals here.” He cast a doubtful glance over to Lander Two, where a pair of legs protruded from under the craft. “Hey Hark!” he called, pulling the second Engineer into the Link.
The legs kicked, and Hark slid out from under the ship on his shell. “What cracking now?” he grumbled. He started, seeing the Captain and Argo standing there. “Oh, erm…Pardon, Captain.”
Roddel rolled his eyes. “How are the engine installations going?”
“Good. I’ve got two of the blas…two of the things in so far. But two is all we’ve got, until we can fab up the remaining ones. That’s the real hold up.”
Arcturus ground his teeth. Reel had planned her escape well, taking the engines from Lander Two with her. Without enough spares in storage, they had to fabricate entirely new ones, using up precious materials..
Roddel turned to the Captain and shrugged apologetically. “That’s the real sticking point, Captain. We’re going as fast as we can, but some things just can’t be rushed. We have other engines, but none for the landers.”
A thought tickled at the back of Arcturus’ mind. “What type of power connectors do the landers use, Hark?”
Hark cocked his head to one side from where he still lay on the deck plating. “Series 9 with power B. Why?”
“And the tugs use…what, Series 7, power B?”
“Right. We looked at using tug engines. The lander can provide plenty of power, and we have connection adapters, but the engines themselves don’t produce enough thrust. You’d end up with weird, uneven thrust, weaker on one corner of the ship; I wouldn’t trust it in atmosphere.”
“What if we used more?” Arcturus went over to the screen next to the mill and pulled up a blank palette. “What if we strapped two or three tug engines where a single lander engine would go? That would get us closer to the same thrust values.”
Roddel frowned, looking over at the lander in its cradle. “Where? The ship only has so many engine ports.”
“So we make space.” Arcturus stabbed a finger at the screen. “Here, look at this Roddel. You could run the power up along a conduit, and bolt the engines to a mount like this on the hull plating,” he said, tracing a rough outline of the shape on the diagram.
Argo gave it a dubious look, reaching up to touch the back of his head. “Will that work?”
“I don’t see why not.” The question brought a sharp warning buzz from his implant, so he pushed it away. “They’ll be pretty close to their original positions.”
Roddel looked the sketch over, rubbing the back of his own skull. “I could mill something like that up pretty fast, but what’s the point? We still won’t have anyone to fly it for another month.”
Arcturus gave him a grim, tight lipped smile. “Not true. It’s been a while, but I’ve done all the lander sims.”