Furnace (4 page)

Salib cursed under her breath but she must have felt something, too, because she was already waving her troops back up the ramp.

I re-buckled the kit and followed the squad before I heard the order. It was the first of many direct fleet-reg violations I committed during my approximately twenty-six hour visit to Furnace.

I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast in my life.

DAMAGE ASSESSMENT

“What’s the status of the engines, Rosie?” the captain asked.

About a dozen of us were seated around an anchored steel table in the tactical briefing room. Everyone was on edge, Salib most of all. I think seeing her that way got everyone else wound even tighter. Salib didn’t rattle easily, especially in combat situations. You might have been able to catch her stammering if an officer quizzed her on fleet protocols beyond combat directives, but in all other situations, she was stone-cold steel.

Rosie sighed and rubbed sweat from her brow with a grease-smeared palm. “I couldn’t tell you. As long as the sensors are off-line, we’re running dark. We all know what we’re doing but we can’t say for sure how close we are to fixing the FTL drive until we can verify it with the scanners, and we don’t know how background systems are being affected by the repairs we’re making. I’ve got most of my crew working on bringing critical systems back online, and then we’ll see where we’re at.”

Gibbons frowned but nodded. Rosie’s report must have been exactly what he’d expected, but it looked like he’d held out hope for a better prognosis anyway. Hearing ‘I don’t know’ from his Engineering Officer probably didn’t make him feel very good. It sure as hell didn’t make me breathe any easier.

“We need the long-range comms running again immediately,” Elizabeth Gallagher interjected from across the table. Rosie stiffened and Gibbons shifted uncomfortably in his chair at the sound of her voice. The rest of us remained completely still and silent.

Gallagher was the Crown Representative for our mission and also the acting Quartermaster, remember, meaning she was charged with ensuring every action we took was in the best interest of the Crown. There’s one of them on every RSA ship, but Gallagher is by far the highest-ranking rep with whom any of us had ever flown. She was assigned to our mission because Rep. Dirlika Heindorf—the politician we were scheduled to extract from a backwater colony so the two reps could negotiate a trade alliance with a Fronov delegation—was even a few rungs
higher
in the Crown hierarchy than Gallagher, and that was saying something. They carried a lot of weight, and Gallagher wasn’t shy about letting the crew know it. Basically, if we fucked up, she made it clear that the fleet generals would hear of it. We’d probably be relegated to desk-jockey duty on Pluto.

So I’m betting you can guess how popular she was with the crew.

I liked Gallagher from the start. She was elitist, no-nonsense, and abrasive, but there was a weightlessness about her expressions which was endearing nonetheless. Her intellect and grasp of ship operations impressed me from the moment we left port, and I’d been hoping to get to know her a little better ever since she’d reported me to Gibbons for failing to complete our Europa landing log until our departure checks. I’m not sure what this says about me, but her sheer disregard for the feelings of our crew made me want to matter in her eyes even more.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was goddamned beautiful, although I suspect some of her allure was just the constant reminder of her status. You couldn’t even look at her without thinking there was a chance she would someday wind up in the Big Chair wearing the Crown, and who doesn’t want to be the one sleeping beside the most powerful woman in the solar system?

“Agreed,” Rosie said diplomatically, shrugging off Gallagher’s command. “Long range comms are definitely a priority. We’ll work as quickly as we can.”

I wonder what it’s like to date a politician
, I thought.

Gibbons watched me closely while my mind wandered, though I didn’t realize it was wandering at all until Elizabeth looked me in the eye and caught me staring. Luckily, the captain interjected before I fumbled out an apology that would only have increased the tension in the room. We were all uncomfortable.

“Chalmers,” he said. “Once we get the engines up and running, what will you need to get us out of here?”

I cleared my throat and leaned over the table, watching the imprint of my palm fade from the surface. “Well, to be blunt, I need to know where the hell we are, sir. Even a general constellation to point us in the right direction. I don’t see a planet or star or
any
thing
any
where with the naked eye, and that’s all we’ve got to go on right now.” I shrugged and leaned back in the chair. “I mean, it’s amazing the surface is even illuminated and north of absolute zero, let alone
hot
. When you think about it, that should be impossible.”

“I’m aware of the situation outside, Lieutenant,” Gibbons said softly. “What I need to know is which
exact
systems you need operational in order to get us the hell out of here. Now pull your head out of your ass and tell us how we can help you do your goddamned job.”

I gaped at him. The entire room froze around me. They were staring in my direction to see how I’d respond.

Shit…

I’d never seen the captain look at me with such stern, unyielding contempt in his eyes. I’d always been one of his favorites, so it was more than a little jarring to see him call me out like that for no greater fault than nervously rambling in the face of extreme stress. More importantly, in the wake of watching people die on an uncharted planet while I stood idly by, unable to help them in any way. It was the sort of thing for which I’d normally receive a week of recup time just for seeing outside a battlefield, and
two
weeks under Captain Gibbons. I never would have expected to be confronted before the
Hummel’s
officers for a simple nervous reaction. I was goddamned tired, after all, and goddamned sure I was about to die without ever setting foot on Earth’s humble shores again.

But the fleet doesn’t
really
give a shit about that, anyway. They don’t care what we see or what happens to us out there. Not once we’re far enough from investigative journalists that they don’t have to worry about PR. Besides, they know that a soldier like me with an eye on advancement would never breathe a word of dissent. The risk of subtle but thorough retribution is far too high. Like I’ve said many times before, I’ve never been keen on working Pluto Station or mining some godforsaken asteroid in the middle of nowhere with no hope of seeing real combat unless the local colony starts an uprising.

No thank you, ma’am.

Anyway, Gibbons’ snap reaction was a clear indication to me—and likely to everyone in the room who’d served under his command for more than five minutes—that he was starting to crack.

Gibbons?
I thought, checking myself.
No way.

Of all the miserable captains I’ve had the pleasure or misfortune of meeting during my service in the fleet, he was the last man I ever thought would cave to pressure so early in the game. The situation was dire, of course, but we hadn’t even been grounded for three hours at that point. I knew Gibbons, and that meant I knew he was made of harder stuff. Hard enough that I couldn’t truly believe he was flipping his can while I (somewhat) held it together in spite of all the shit I’d seen. That—more than anything—made me hesitate before I responded.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I finally managed through tight, dry lips and a curtain of heavy stares. “I guess the most important thing for the time being is just to get the engines running and life-support stabilized. Once we have all that taken care of and the hull breaches are patched up, I can jump us a safe distance from…whatever this place is…and we can start figuring out how to get back.”

Assuming we
can
get back
, I thought.

As a navigator, the complete absence of starlight in space was considerably troubling. Hell,
more
than troubling. It shook me to the very core, and it still does. Before I saw it with my own eyes that day, I would have told you there was no conceivable point in any universe where at least a
distant
star wasn’t visible. I guess that may still be true considering the way things turned out, but it still bears careful consideration going forward. At the very least, the absence of constellations told me that we were far beyond the reach of any fleet ship in the history of human spaceflight, and that the chances of us returning home before we died of old age—even with the stasis tubes—were not very good.

My assessment passed without comment from Gibbons, and that slipped my already foul mood from bad to worse.

“Agreed,” Elizabeth finally said, just to break the silence. I could see that she was fuming, but I didn’t understand why until much later when I found out she was just as terrified as the rest of us. “For the time being, we’ll have to focus on patching the ship from the inside.”

“Damn right,” Salib cut in. “No fucking way I’m going back out there.”

“And Captain Gibbons,” Elizabeth continued as though she hadn’t heard Salib’s comment at all. God, I admired her. “
Would
have provided that assessment himself, were he in his right mind.” She paused, allowing the accusation to sink in. “For the sake of this ship, Captain, and the wellbeing of all her crew, I strongly suggest that you return to your quarters and read over fleet regulations on what’s expected from a captain at a time like this in order to survive.”

Her voice quivered ever so slightly over the last four words. So subtle I don’t think the others even noticed. They were too shocked by her audacity, anyway. Probably annoyed, too. After all, whether she was right or not, she worked for the Crown. The infuriating, out-of-touch dictators who commanded us to perform suicide missions with no comparable payoff while they farted around in Geneva pulling each other off and writing speeches. Gibbons, on the other hand, had been through Hell and back on the front lines like the rest of us. Gallagher really had no right to talk to him that way, and especially to lecture him on the virtues of captaincy.

And, in spite of my dedication to Gibbons, it made me like her even more.

For a moment, we all watched the captain struggle to keep hold of himself while he decided whether or not to contest the point. Whether or not, in other words, duty and hierarchical constructs were worth honoring when the universe itself had slipped right out from under us. In the end, he must have decided that the lives of the crew were, in fact, more important than proving a point to some bigwig who would probably beat us all to the fiery clutches of death on that strange new world.

“My apologies, ma’am,” he told her with a contemptible grin. “The strains of the situation have clouded my judgment. It won’t happen again.”

I remember thinking he probably wouldn’t get a chance to prove it.

To break the tension, and also subtly reaffirm her support for the captain, Salib rose and stepped between Gallagher and Gibbons. “What are your orders, sir?” she asked with a stiff salute, using her back to block Gallagher’s view of the rest of the table.

Gibbons grinned ever so slightly and stood to return the salute. “Have your team comb the ship and make sure all hull breaches are sealed.” He paused and frowned in deep thought. “Also, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get someone to take a roll call. Matter of fact, bring everyone we have on board to the gymnasium and have them sound off. We don’t want anyone wandering off until we know the dangers of the planet.”

“I don’t think we’ll need to worry about anyone
voluntarily
leaving
the ship at this point,” Gallagher remarked.

Stepping around Salib, the captain hovered over the Crown Representative with a look of naked disdain. “I’m not worried about what’s
outside
of the ship, Representative. I’m worried about what might have found its way in when we opened the airlock. Something could have crawled in through the vents, or any one of the dozens of hull breaches Rosie’s conjectured.” His eyes were squinted with fury but his voice was remarkably reserved.

It was interesting to watch him draw back into himself in the silence that followed. Like watching prey recoil after a defensive strike to intimidate a predator, only I couldn’t imagine someone as battle-hardened as Gibbons saw a Crownie—even Gallagher—as anything but a nuisance. A harmless fly.

Towards the end of the diffusing silence, Gibbons caught my stare from across the table, and when he spoke again, it was like he spoke directly to me. The words and his intense gaze sent chills up and down my spine.

“Something bad might have infiltrated the ship. Something that can kill all of us. An alien, a pathogen. Maybe not. Who knows? Either way, we need to gather everyone together to make sure it
won’t
happen if it hasn’t already. I don’t give a damn if anyone on this crew decides they want to leave the ship, but I sure as hell won’t be picking up any hitchhikers.” He paused thoughtfully, then turned for the door. “I’ve been down that road before.”

I wasn’t sure which mission he was referring to, but I didn’t want to ask. I was afraid the specifics would stray a little too close to our current situation.

Have I told you I’ve always known I would die at the hands (or tentacles or stingers or teeth) of some hideous, alien monster on a planet far away from home?

No?

Well, maybe I’ll get there eventually. I guess Gibbons and I had more in common than I ever realized.