15 Salas 1117: Jumpspace
Yesterday had been one of the most relaxed days on the ship for a long time; Saahna had commented last night about how nice it had been for all of us just to hang out again. So, instead of sitting in my cabin doing the paperwork that I would have to turn over to Tlianke customs, I decided to take it out to the lounge instead.
I almost went back. The others came through from time to time and stopped to say a word or two. Shelly was out briefly with her full netcast rig on, excitedly talking about the ‘quiet isolation of Jumpspace.’ She briefly went up to the bridge, then returned.
“And that’s it!” she was saying to her audience. “Outside of the Grayswandir right now there is nothing. We are alone in the Universe. Well, a Universe; a universe that is only inhabited by the few of us on this ship. It should be scary, but it isn’t!”
“In two days we will be on another planet and discover what is there for us to find. Until then, keep listening to the stars!”
She smiled and waved to the imager, then started pulling the rig off. She sighed and suddenly looked a lot more tired.
“Still doing those?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. But don’t worry! I’m doing my steward duties too! I’m not neglecting the passengers!”
“Hey, I wasn’t saying that. You’re doing a good job there. Trust me, I was Steward before Varan came on board; I know that if the passengers were unhappy that I would have known about it.”
She smiled slightly. “Thanks, Derek. I really like doing this, but I want to do a good job here too! I want to keep Travelling with you.”
“Yeah, I can tell you have the bug. Look, I’m not going to ask you to stop doing your netcasts; I know what they mean to you.”
“Thanks, Derek.”
I paused, thinking. “Actually, they may be helping us.”
“What do you mean?”
I paused again, shaking my head. “Just an idea. Anyway, don’t worry about it. Feel free to do those. If the passengers complain, let me or Varan know.”
“Know what?” I looked over to see Varan and Carma walking towards us.
“Know if she needs some help with the passengers.”
“Hey, I’m the Gunner now, remember?”
I held up my comp. “OK, you fill out the customs forms for Tlianke, and I’ll help with the passengers. Deal?”
He groaned and shook his head in what I could tell was mock indignation. “OK, fine.”
Shelly shook her head in false disappointment. “I guess I’ll have to do everything myself.” All of us laughed.
“OK, fine,” she said. “I’ll keep up my netcasts. And if I need help, just remember that you told me to!”
I shook my head. “It’s apparently my job to take the blame now.” Everyone laughed again.
“Anyway,” said Varan. “We were about to jump into Inquisitor. You up?”
Shelly shook her head. “Sorry, I’ve got to get back upstairs in case Director Morn suddenly needs more wine delivered to passenger Gains’ cabin.”
Varan raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
She nodded. “Yeah.” She shrugged. “None of my business.”
“Right.” He turned to me. “Derek? Or are you being the Captain today?”
I glanced at my comp then snapped it shut. “I think I’ve entered enough numbers for today. But I’ll be honest, it’s been long enough that I have no idea what we were doing.”
He laughed. “OK, we’ll drag you along then.”
We spent the next few hours in VR. We were still on old Earth, but when I had last played we had been in London, and now we were in Madrid for some reason. Varan tried to explain. We were trying to stop a demonic assassination attempt on the ‘Pope,’; apparently the head of the religion. I just followed along. After a while, Jami and then Saahna showed up and joined us.
We were in the middle of a tense fight in a warehouse, made more difficult by the fact that we were facing a teleporting demon (don’t spoil how to get through it if you’ve already played it, by the way), when a flashing red in the display told us that something required our attention.
I pulled my headset off immediately and saw the others doing the same. “Gray? What is it?”
“The Sitama Biogenics cargo is issuing an alert signal. Should I notify passengers Morn and Gains?”
I nodded. “Yeah, tell them to come down to the cargo bay.” I glanced around. “Saahna? Varan?”
“You need me?” asked Saahna.
“Yeah. That’s a bio-engineered life form. Either it’s doing something dangerous, in which case we may need to defend ourselves from it, or it’s managed to die on us, in which case we may need to defend ourselves from Director Morn.”
“What about me?” I heard a voice. I turned to see her descending the ladder from the passenger lounge.
“We need you in case we need to access your cargo,” I said, covering as quickly as I could. “We’re getting an alert…”
She nodded quickly crossing the lounge towards the cargo door. “Yes, yes, I know. Quickly! We need to get in there!”
I nodded and went to the cargo door. It hadn’t opened for her, but after getting a decent look at my biometrics, it hissed open. Director Morn almost knocked me over rushing past. Mr. Gains had come up behind me and looked from me to the opening. I gestured him through, then Varan and I followed. Saahna had gone back to our cabin, and I was pretty sure I knew the reason.
Director Morn had already squeezed her way through the cargo. We caught up with her at the specimen container, where she was looking at the readout on its side.
“What’s the problem?”
She was shaking her head. “It’s… it’s out of food.”
“I thought you said that it had enough food in there for the entire trip? Why would it…”
“I don’t know!” she snapped. “Harvard! I mean, Mr. Gains! Quickly! What do you make of this?”
He stepped past Varan and me, looking sheepishly at us as he did. I noticed for the first time that he was only wearing a pair of briefs. He looked at the display on the container.
“Metabolism is up over 180%,” he said, shaking his head. “It appears to be otherwise healthy, but… it has gone through all of its food supply and is trying to get more.”
“So it’s fine? It’s healthy?” asked Director Morn. I looked at her again and noticed that she was only wearing a bit-too-short bathrobe.
What happens in Jumpspace…
Gains was still looking at the display. “For now? Yes.” He turned to me. “How far are we out of Tlianke?”
“Two days.” I turned at hearing something behind me and saw Saahna arriving with her gauss rifle. Jami stepped in behind her long enough to see us, nodded, and then headed on towards Engineering.
Gains shook his head. “At Mikey’s current metabolic rate, it won’t make it to Tlianke. We need to get some more food to it.”
“Mikey?” Director Morn asked, frustration in her voice.
“Sorry, Specimen 219,” Gains corrected himself. He turned to me. “Is there any way we can refill the fabricator inside the crate?”
I nodded. “Well, yeah but…” I gestured. “Do we need to open it to do that?”
“Um… yes.” He glanced between Director Morn and me. “We hadn’t considered a need for refilling the fabricator while it was in the crate. We thought we had…”
“Spare me!” Director Morn almost shouted. “Can we refill the dispenser?”
“Well, yes…” he said, this time looking at me. “But we’ll have to open the container.”
There was a pause.
“Is it dangerous?” Saahna asked. Director Morn and Gains looked at her and seemed to notice the gauss rifle for the first time. Gains backed up until he was blocked by the crate while Director Morns just gave us all an annoyed look.
“No!” said Gains. “It’s perfectly safe. It wouldn’t, it couldn’t hurt anyone.”
“It also couldn’t go through all of its food supply in less than a week.”
He frowned, but Morns immediately responded. “Well, it has! So we just need to restock it!”
I sighed and turned back to Gains. “What do we need to do?”
“We just need to restock the fabricator.”
“Is there a recycler in there? I mean, all the food it has eaten had to go… somewhere.”
“Um… no. It wasn’t considered necessary.”
I was suddenly even less interested in opening the crate. From the sigh behind me, I could tell that I wasn’t the only one.
Gains was looking around. “We’re going to need more space than this to open the thing up.”
“Um… you realize we have a full cargo bay. And it’s not like we can move something outside.”
“If we can’t get it resupplied then it will die.”
“In two days?”
“Based on these metabolism readings, yes.”
“This is your fault, Captain!” Morn shouted. “You should have realized that we might have to get access to the specimen!”
“And you assured me there would be no need to access the container!” I barely managed not to yell back.
I saw her clench her jaw, and she said nothing for several moments. “Mr. Gains! Take care of this!” She pushed past Saahna and me heading towards the hatch. She stopped and looked back at him. “And put some clothes on!”
He glanced down at himself and flushed brightly. “Let me… let me know when we have space to open the container.” He pushed past as well and followed Director Morn out.
Varan glanced at us from the far side of the crate. “I bet that’s going to be an awkward conversation.”
“OK, what can we do?” I asked, looking around. “There’s not much space in here.” I turned to Saahna. “Remember when you set up that obstacle course? Could we move the crates around again as we did then?”
She shook her head, frowning. “We didn’t have quite a full load that trip, so there was space to move things around. And it was still crowded if you remember.”
“So what do we do?”
“There might be nothing we can do.”
“That won’t look good. Sitama Biogenics isn’t the biggest or most respected corp around, but word getting out that we let a live cargo die won’t do us any favors on getting other freight clients.”
“Yeah.”
We all stood, looking around helplessly for a moment.
“Wait!” Varan looked up sharply. “The air raft!”
“What? We can’t…” I paused. “It has a cargo bay.”
“Yes!”
“A one displacement ton cargo bay. It can hold two containers.”
“So we move two containers from down here up there, then move others around to make a one container space on either side of this one. That should give us enough room to work!”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, that should work.” I looked up. “Gray?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Have you been following the discussion?”
“Of course, Captain. You asked me some time ago to monitor everything in the Cargo Bay specifically.”
I had? It didn’t matter.
“OK then, can you work out a way to shift the cargo to do what Varan suggests? Put two containers into the Air Raft, then shuffle the others around to make space on either side of this one.”
There was a very brief pause. “Cargo shift pattern calculated. It will take approximately one hour to make the rearrangement.”
“Do it!” Almost immediately I heard the overhead arms whir into life, and the iris to the Air Raft bay hiss open. I turned to Varan.
“Nice idea.”
“Thanks!” He tried but didn’t quite succeed in not looking pleased with himself.
“No seriously, great idea. That could save us.” I turned to Saahna. “I’ll need you back here when we open this crate.”
She shook her head. “Back here? I’m not leaving here until we get this thing taken care of.”
“Gray can probably rearrange the bay faster if we aren’t in her way.”
She frowned. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” It was her turn to look up. “Gray? Let me know the moment we can get back in here without disrupting your moving cargo.”
“Of course, Lieutenant Denan.” I saw the arms pick up a container a few rows to our right. “Now, for your own safety, it is probably best for you to exit the Cargo Bay.”
“Thanks!” she said. We all filed back into the lounge.
We had barely arrived when Gains, now in a Sitama Biogenics jumpsuit, came down the ladder.
“How is Mikey? The specimen?”
“We aren’t sure yet. We’re trying to reconfigure the cargo load to let us get into the container, but that may take a bit.”
“And I’m going upstairs to make sure the air-raft is clear,” Varan said, heading towards the ladder.
“What? Why shouldn’t it be?”
“When was the last time we used the thing? Who knows what we’ve left in the back since then.” He quickly went up the ladder.
Saahna turned to Gains. “Are you sure this thing is safe?”
He nodded quickly. “Yes! Absolutely! We designed it to be safe. We were interested in its mutagenic properties; we weren’t trying to create a combat animal or something!”
“OK, but if it’s a threat….” she trailed off.
“What?”
“If it somehow becomes a threat to the ship, then we’ll do what we need to do,” I said. “I can’t compromise the safety of this ship and everyone on board for what is, essentially, just a piece of cargo.”
He blanched at that. “What? Gelan… I mean, Director Morn…”
I raised a hand. “Look… I don’t know or care how your company personnel policies work, but that’s your problem to deal with. My problem is making sure that all of you get to Tlianke and that none of my crew nor my ship suffer in getting you there. We’ll do our best but…”
He sighed. “I… understand Captain. Please. I do. But…” He leaned forward. “This can’t mess up. Mikey… the specimen is my project. This could make or break my career. I need it to get to Tlianke, undamaged. Please…”
“I assure you that we will do whatever we can.”
“Thank you, Captain.” He sighed. “I don’t understand. What could have triggered a mutation reaction like this?”
I dubiously looked at him for a few seconds. “Are… you familiar with starships?” I pointed behind me. “There’s an active fusion plant a dozen meters behind us, plus a fusion drive that isn’t particularly concerned with how dirty it is since all of its wastes are being thrown out the exhaust nozzles to move us forward. That’s how rockets work. Then there is the Jump Drive; that thing that literally annihilates matter though a process that I can’t even begin to understand but, by doing so, tumbles us into Jumpspace—a place where the laws of physics that we normally accept don’t apply at all–so that we can get to another star system that is parsecs away in a week instead of a few dozen years. Oh, and that Jumpspace itself is only a few dozen meters that way. And, with all of that, you’re surprised that a creature that was designed to spread mutations through itself as fast as possible might possibly have picked up a mutation that you hadn’t expected, even though you hadn’t protected it in any way?”
He actually took a step or two back away from me. “Captain… I…”
“Don’t worry, we’ll do everything we can to take care of your… specimen.” I looked up. “Gray?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“How are we doing with moving cargo around?”
“It will take approximately another 30 minutes, Captain.”
“Well, keep me informed.”
“Of course.”
There was nothing to do but wait. We all hung awkwardly around the lounge until Varan descended the ladder again.
“Had to clear some stuff from the air-raft,” he said. “Shelly had stuffed some of her video equipment in there.”
I frowned. “Yeah… she had her ton of high passage cargo with her when she came on board. I didn’t think to ask what she did with it. I’ll talk to her.”
“Well, it’s sitting in the middle of the passenger lounge at the moment. I guess everyone up there knows about our crisis now.” He turned to Gains. “Sorry.”
Gains shook his head. “It doesn’t matter; we’ll still get to Tlianke before anyone else finds out what we’ve done. As long as we can get its dispensers refilled!”
As if on cue, the ship’s computer spoke up. “I have cleared the space around the specified container, Captain.”
“Let’s get to it then!” I stopped. “Um… we need a refill for a fabricator and dispenser.”
Varan held up a canister he was holding. “Way ahead of you.”
“Great. Well… Let’s get this over with then.” I turned to Gains. “Should we notify Director Morn?”
He shook his head. “The Director… really doesn’t want to be concerned with details. She only cares about the results.”
“OK, then.” I went to the cargo hatch and cycled through.
It was only moments before we were beside the container. I looked at Gains. “You have the code, I hope?”
“Of course I do!” He glanced around at me, Varan, and Saahna, who now had her gauss rifle out and ready. He looked uncomfortable, but he keyed something on his comp, and the container opened.
Almost immediately, something flashed away from the container, moving far faster than I would have expected. Saahna tried to track it, but it disappeared among the crates too quickly.
“Gray! Track that thing!” I shouted. Then the smell hit me. “And send a utility-bot down here to clean up this place.”
“Confirmed,” the ship replied. There was a pause. “The specimen has entered the air-raft bay.”
“We didn’t close that!”
“There was no request to do so.” There was another pause. “The specimen has now exited the air-raft and is entering the passenger lounge.”
“Shit!” I immediately started running towards the exit. Saahna, apparently realizing what was happening, was several steps ahead of me.
We raced into the crew lounge and up the stairs. There, we found…
…most of the passengers standing around Shelly and a… creature.
It looked more like a bird than anything else, except that it had matted, dirty fur instead of feathers. A bulbous body sat on two overly long legs, while a tiny head that was mostly eyes rested on a comically long neck. Two stubby wings/arms completed the creature. Shelly was laughing as she handed it another tama leaf, which it gobbled down quickly.
“You’re so cute!” she was saying, handing it another leaf. “They haven’t been feeding you, have they? Gods, you’re so hungry!”
“Is that… Mikey?” I asked, slowing as I approached the circle.
“Is that its name? It’s so cute!” She handed it the last leaf then punched the dispenser for more. “It ran up to me and was so hungry! And what a sweetheart it is? This is the Sitama Biogenics thing, right? Why did you keep it cooped up in the cargo bay? And it’s filthy, the poor thing. Don’t you take care of it?”
I stopped and looked around dubiously. “It’s… OK?”
She nodded, tossing it another handful of tama leaves. “Well, beyond the fact that it ran in and grabbed my quick lunch.”
Director Morn had been looking on in horror. “Captain Kodai!” she almost shouted. “The specimen cannot be out of its container! Why is it here?”
“Ask it,” I said, relaxing and trying to keep from laughing. “But, from the way things look, maybe you should consider marketing this thing as a companion creature.”
The creature… Mikey… rubbed its head against Shelly then stretched out and tapped the console. Shelly laughed and punched for a crunchstick, which the creature quickly ate from her hand.
“Well… besides the fact that it seems to be really hungry, it seems to be harmless.” I turned to Director Morn. “Is there anything we should be concerned about?”
“Yes!” she shouted. “This is a proprietary piece of genetic engineering created by Sitama Biogenics. No one can know about its existence! Why is it here?”
“Because it ran out of your crate? Which we had to open to refill its dispenser? At your request?”
“Then you should have kept it confined to the cargo bay!”
I thought we had, I thought.
“We are very sorry, Director Morn, but both you and your colleague had indicated to us that time was of the essence. We did the best we could, but to more quickly address the immediate need, we needed to skip a few precautions.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have! It’s no use to us if everyone knows about it advance?”
Advance of what? I wondered. “Director Morn, we are on a starship in Jumpspace. No information is getting off this ship until we arrive at Tlianke, at which point you and your specimen will also be at Tlianke. I do not believe that you need to worry about anything.”
“Oh, what about them!” She gestured angrily towards Chelis and Drakson, who seemed surprised at the sudden attention. “You think it is just a coincidence that they are on this ship?”
“What?”
“Oh, come on! We all know they are with Takashina! They only have operations in Gimisapun because we have our labs there. They’re only on this ship so that they could try to find out what we were doing. And now you’ve shown them our specimen!”
That Liaison training kicked in. “Director Morn, please… I’m sure that…”
Drakson interrupted me, holding up a hand. “Captain, please.” She turned to Director Morn. “Takana and I are on this ship because we’re taking several months away from our business. For… personal reasons. The last thing either of us wants to do is worry about pharmacy, bioengineering, or corporate espionage. We just want some time together. Alone.” She paused, then pointed. “And someone may want to check on your specimen.”
I spun around. Mikey was at the dispenser, punching the sequence that Shelly had used earlier over and over with its beak, then grabbing the crunchstick that was produced, gobbling it down, then punching again. Shelly gasped and ran over, shooing it away.
Director Morn was still glaring at Chelis and Drakson. “Captain Kodai,” she said stiffly, “Will you please get the specimen out of this lounge and back into its crate?”
“Aw…” said Shelly, feeding it crunchsticks again. “Couldn’t you at least let us give it a bath first?”
“No! It needs to be back in its crate. Now!”
I sighed. “Shelly? Can you dispense a sleepy-stick? Let’s see if it will eat that.” I kept my gaze on Director Morn as I did.
There was a pause, but finally, I heard the dispenser behind me. “Of course… Captain.” A few moments later, I listened to the sound of the creature gobbling something down.
I turned to look. Mikey went and tapped the dispenser a few more times, but Shelly just stood there, looking at me. I shook my head. Mikey managed to tap the correct sequence again and got another crunchstick but, after picking it up, the creature took a few steps back and dropped it again. It looked down at it, then tucked its legs beneath itself and settled to the floor.
It picked up the stick and took a bite, then dropped it. It looked at Shelly and emitted a croaking squawk that I could tell was a question, then its head slumped to the ground. It made a second, fainter squawk, then loudly exhaled as its eyes closed. It remained silent and unmoving.
I kept my eyes on it and tried to keep the anger I was feeling out of my voice. “Gray? Have the utilitybots cleared that container yet?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Has the dispenser in the crate been restocked?”
“Yes, Captain.”
I sighed. “OK, send a couple of utilitybots up here, pick up the specimen, and take it back to its container. We’ll be down there in a few to seal it back up.”
“Confirmed, Captain.” Almost immediately, two utilitybots appeared and approached the specimen. They hovered briefly, then extended arms and picked it up. Together, they floated towards the aft access to the air-raft bay.
“The cargo is too large to carry through the ladder iris,” the ship’s computer informed us. “I am directing the bots to take it through the air-raft airlock.”
“Sounds good,” I said. I gestured towards Saahna and Varan. “I guess we need to get this back where it belongs.”
“Derek!”
I turned to Shelly. “Yes?”
“You’re just going to lock it back up again!”
“The specimen is a piece of cargo owned by Sitama Biogenics,” I said, trying to keep as much emotion out of my voice as I could. “It is their decision as to what should be done with it.” I turned back to Director Morn. “Director?”
“Of course, Captain! As I said, it should never have been out of its crate in the first place! Please, return it there as soon as possible.”
“On it.” I didn’t look back at Shelly, though I was sure I could feel her angry gaze on my back as I headed for the ladder. Saahna was already waiting for me in the crew lounge, and Varan followed me down.
“Well, that could have gone better,” he said as he dropped beside me.
“Tell me about it.” I headed for the cargo bay.
The utilitybots with Mikey were already there. I directed them to put the unconscious creature into the crate, at which point Varan and I resealed it.
When we were done, I glanced upwards. “Gray? Restore the cargo configuration. And when you’re done, seal the air-raft airlocks.”
“Certainly, Captain.” Almost immediately, the cargo arms started moving again.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. I headed for the crew lounge.
When the door had hissed shut behind us, I sighed. “Well, I hope that’s behind us.”
“Director Morn is pretty upset,” said Varan.
“Yeah, I noticed. But we handled that as best we could, so she may be mad, but there isn’t anything she can do about it.” I glanced up again. “Gray, we’ve got everything on record, right?”
“Yes, Captain. Per your request, I am archiving everything until further notice.”
“Great. Thanks.” I looked down again. “So we’re good.”
Varan shrugged. “I guess. We’ve got a lot of unhappy passengers, though.”
“We’ve got an unhappy Director Morn. And an unhappy Shelly, I guess. I’ll talk to her later.”
“What about Gains?”
“He’s just trying to get through this as best he can, and Morn is doing everything she can to keep him in line. Everything.” I paused. “I think there must be some presentation to a bunch of stockholders at Tlianke or something; otherwise she wouldn’t be as on edge as she is.”
He shook his head. “How do we always get these passengers?”
“Well, hopefully, we won’t anymore. I’m not planning on taking any more next Jump.”
“What? What about Carma?”
“I’m not talking about her; it’s just that we don’t need passengers anymore. We’re way profitable without them. And they’re causing us more problems than they’re worth. No passengers, no one is complaining about anything.”
“Yeah, you said that last time.”
“Well, keep reminding me.”
The overhead iris opened, and Gains descended the ladder, looking around. “Where is it?”
I pointed with my thumb at the cargo bay behind me. “Back in its crate. We’ve got the ship’s computer restoring the cargo configuration. Hopefully, we won’t need to get to it again before we land.”
“I hope so too.” He paused. “I apologize for the problem, Captain. I hadn’t anticipated a mutation that would increase its metabolism that much. At least it wasn’t fatal.”
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t. Is Director Morn satisfied?”
He sighed. “Your steward started asking her about Mikey… the specimen. This got the Director even more upset, and she has gone to her cabin.”
“Sorry.”
“What?”
“Never mind. I guess I should check in up there.” I glanced at Saahna and Varan. “Anything else we need to worry about at the moment?”
Saahna started walking towards our cabin. “I’m going to secure this,” she said, holding up the gauss rifle. “Then I’m getting a drink.”
“Ahead of you,” said Varan, heading for the dispenser. “Then I guess I need to let Carma know that the excitement is over.”
“OK then, we’ll recap later.” I turned to Gains and gestured towards the ladder. “After you.”
—-
The passenger lounge was mostly empty. Dr. Korvusar was still in her seat near the front display and Shelly was sitting in one of the chairs below the holodisplay, looking at something on her comp. Gains looked around, then back at me.
“I’ll… just go to my cabin.”
“Sure,” I replied without really looking at him. He moved away as I glanced around. I could tell from her posture that Shelly was deliberately trying not to acknowledge me, so I walked over and sat in the seat opposite from her. She didn’t look up.
“So what happened up here after we left?”
“Director Morn immediately started yelling at passengers Chelis and Drakson, telling them that she would sue them and ruin their careers if they mentioned anything about Mikey. They basically went back to their cabin to get away from her.” She wasn’t looking up; she kept her gaze on her comp. “Then she started yelling at me about how she was going to ruin us if we allowed anything else to happen. I told her to stop yelling in my lounge. That seemed to really piss her off, I got a bit of ‘do you know who I am?’ before she got too angry to talk and stalked back to her cabin. Passenger Gains decided to go downstairs after that. It’s been quiet since.”
“So, what else is wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
I sighed and stood up. “OK, let me know if anything else comes up.” She nodded without saying anything. I glanced at Dr. Korvusar, but she was engrossed in something on her own comp as well. I sighed and went back downstairs.
Saahna was standing in front of the dispenser when I came down. She glanced back, saw me, and punched something in as I walked over. She handed me the beer that had just been produced.
“What a mess,” she said. The dispenser beeped again, and she took another beer, twisting off the top. “To no more passengers!”
“No more passengers!” I said, tapping her bottle with mine. I twisted the top off of mine and took a drink. “I’ll be glad not to have to deal with this anymore.”
“Me too.” She glanced upwards. “Any other problems up there?”
“Director Morn is pissed. Of course. Though I think that is normal for her. Gains is mad because he isn’t sleeping with the boss anymore. Chelis and Drakson are unhappy because Director Morn is yelling at them, Lorentz is stilled locked in his cabin with his embezzled funds, and Doctor Korvusar is pretending that nothing out of the ordinary is going on.” I paused. “And Shelly isn’t happy with the way I handled things.”
“What? Why?”
“I think she thinks that I should have done something different with Mikey. Um… the Sitama specimen. I’m not sure how to explain to her that there wasn’t anything else I could do.”
“Well you could, you know, tell her there was nothing else you could do?”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” I paused. “I did what I had to do, but not what I wanted to do. Another reason I want to quit carrying passengers.”
“For what it’s worth, I agree.” She put a hand on my arm. “You made the right calls. It was the right thing.”
“Yeah, for us.” I shook my head. “I need to stop getting so involved in things that don’t concern me.”
She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. “If you didn’t worry about everything, even the things that didn’t involve you, I wouldn’t be in love with you.”
I returned the embrace. “I love you too.”
“Yeah. I know. Now.”