“Because you happened to be on the ship at the right time.”
She laughed dryly. “That’s not enough.”
“It really is, Arietta. It makes all the difference. Sometimes life just comes down to chance, no matter how much you think you can plan it.”
“But it shouldn’t have been me. My dad’s been through so much already.” She took a deep, halting breath. “He deserved more.”
“Yes, he did. But he loved you.”
Henrietta closed her eyes again. “I know.” She choked back her tears.
“We all deserved more, Arietta. None of us asked for this. But if you would have asked your dad, I bet he’d be very glad you’re here.”
Henrietta did not reply.
Peter continued, “I owe something to my mom and dad too. All of us owe our parents; Stiles even does.”
Henrietta laughed, but the guilt quickly returned.
Peter tried to smile. “See, they all did the best they could to raise us. Did a great job with you, by the way ….”
She cracked a thin smile at the compliment.
“So … it’s our duty to make their lives worthwhile. That’s what they’d want.” He looked around her desk and—not finding what he was searching for—handed her a small cotton ball for her tears.
She took it and dabbed her eyes, sniffing softly. “A cotton ball? Thanks loads.”
“It’s not my fault you don’t keep tissues around here.”
She threw the wet cotton ball at him. “Just need to ask.”
She opened a drawer and pulled out a tissue, blowing her nose. “C’mon, let’s give you that treatment.” Henrietta rolled her chair to the refrigerator and took out the prepared vial. “Go lay down on the diagnostic bench.”
Peter strolled over to the cold metallic cot and hitched up onto it, sliding his abdomen under the sensor module. He ducked under and settled down on his back.
Henrietta walked to the sink and scrubbed her hands. “Unsnap your shirttail and lift it up.” After drying her hands, she settled next to the bench.
“Yes, Doctor,” Peter chided.
She made a face at him. “Okay, hold it there.” Henrietta shifted the sensor until the affected bone mass was in view. “Perry, do you see the target area?”
“Yes, Henrietta; please shift down one inch.”
Henrietta repositioned the large overhead unit until the intermittent beeping from the locator steadied to a continuous tone. She inserted the radioactive nanocytes into the injector and immobilized Peter’s hips with her hands. “A’ight; I’m gonna inject them now. Don’t move.” She pressed the instrument button.
The five cc solution entered Peter’s body, sending the ten thousand miniaturized machines into his system on a genetically-coded search and destroy mission to the radio-tagged precancerous cells. Each nanocyte was designed to specifically pair up with a tagged diseased cell, excise it from Peter’s marrow, and transport it through his kidneys and bladder and out through his urine stream. In their place, synthetic bone marrow was introduced to replace the excised cells. Each batch would work for twenty–four hours until the next daily dose. It was internal surgery at the microcellular level leaving all the surrounding healthy cells completely unaffected. It was the second dose of eight, and as long as Henrietta had dialed in the correct mechanorganic compounds, Peter would recover with no ill effects at all.
“Ooh, that feels warm,” Peter complained. “Almost hot.”
“That’s just your imagination,” Henrietta replied. “You shouldn’t feel anything. If anything, it should feel cold.”
“If you say so ….” Peter flinched as he felt a sharp pain radiate through his side, as though the center of his spine was pierced with a dull needle.
“No sweat; you’ll be better before you know it.” Henrietta shut off the overhead and swung it aside. “Okay, that’s it for today. You can get up now.”
Peter shifted around and sat up. He tucked in his jersey and snapped it down to his trousers. “So, how about you; you okay?” Peter asked, looking down at her from the steel platform.
“Yeah, I’ll get over it. Maybe my body’s flooded with a three-year supply of hormones. Feels like it, anyway.”
“Ah; ain’t space travel great?” Peter asked.
“Oh yeah,” she replied, “a real funfest.”
* * *
“So, Perry; have you been monitoring Peter, like I requested?”
“Yes, Stiles, I have.”
Stiles shifted within his bed, wondering what the ship would report. “And …?”
“There really has not been much for him to do. We are cruising at optimal speeds to the system exit point, but that is all automatic and mostly under my control. We discussed habitable zones surrounding Antares, but not much more.”
“That’s all he did? All day?” Stiles asked.
“Essentially, yes. As I said, there really is not much to do for the next week. He did, however, cancel a command in a very odd manner. It presented a contradiction of terminology that needed additional clarification.”
“Odd, you say?” Stiles probed. “Could that have been dangerous; I mean, like, if we were under attack at the time, or something?”
“Well, not really,” Perry considered. “It would, however, have added several seconds for me to respond to his command.”
“Which, under the wrong circumstances, could have spelled the difference between surviving a battle and losing it?”
Perry hummed. “That is correct.”
“Maybe you should mention that to the medical officer tomorrow morning.”
“That sounds like sound advice, Stiles. Thank you. As you stated earlier, I shall be discrete.”
Stiles nodded. “While you’re at it, you should monitor the rest of the crew. Inform me of any irregularities. Stress has a habit of building up at the worst of times.”
“One wonders how humanity survived as long as it has,” Perry observed.
“Don’t worry about that. We always have a few tricks up our sleeve. Go to bed now, Perry.”
“I assume that means you are finished talking to me, Stiles.”
Stiles settled into his bed and opened his PAD without answering.
PERSONAL LOG, Day 11, Year 500, 2127 hours: Peter is not looking well at all. He looks white as a sheet, and is hardly eating. (Although none of us are eating as much as we should.)
For the good of the mission, we will continue to ration food until a new supply is found. I searched the scientific logs and saw that Antares has a huge Habitable Zone. I think it would be wise to search for food here before we commit to jumping out, but Peter does not agree. His illness, I am afraid, is starting to affect his judgment.
Speaking of which, Henrietta is not the doctor she thinks she is. If she were, I think Peter would be improving. I may need to search the medical databases to see if she is doing anything wrong. I hardly have enough time to spare, what with doing her work as well as mine. But who else is here to do it.
Such is the burden of command.
-Stiles Essen, entering Middle System, Antares Space.
CHAPTER 13
Antares Star System – Middle System
Peter failed to show up for breakfast. Everyone else was in the galley by 0600, but it was now quarter after seven and there was still no sign of their captain. Stiles pointed out that Peter was probably sleeping in today like he did the day they discovered their location at Antares. Stiles was also quick to add how unprofessional that behavior was. Jimmy corrected Stiles, arguing that it was Peter who stayed up all night three days ago calculating where they were, and that there was no “we” in the discovery of their location.
Stiles chose to ignore Jimmy. “I still say he’s not being very dependable.”
Unfortunately, it was hard to argue the point.
“He’ll be here in just a minute,” Ali insisted.
“Sure he will. Let me know if you want to take any bets,” Stiles offered.
Ali r
emained silent.
“He’s not missing much, anyway,” Stiles continued. He finished the remainder of his breakfast like it was a chore. “I’m glad we’re not eating much, ’cause this stuff sucks. Somebody please teach Jimmy how to cook.”
Today was Jimmy’s turn to cook and clean the kitchen, so he gathered up the empty plates and threw them into the ’cycler. It gently hummed as it broke down their constituent elements. “Is anyone having anything else?” Jimmy asked. They all shook their heads. “All right, then. I’m finished here. I’ll be on deck two, dreaming of what’s for lunch.” Jimmy skirted around the tables and disappeared down the lift.
“Perry,” Henrietta asked, “can you tell me where Peter is?”
Perry hummed before replying. “Peter is still sleeping in his quarters. He does not appear to have slept very well last evening. His room logs show he was up four times throughout the night.”
Henrietta forced herself from the table, “I’d better check up on him then,” she said with a sigh. She wove her way through security and the conference room and took the forward lift down a floor to the forward sleeping quarters. She shuffled up to Peter’s cabin and gently knocked on his door. There was no answer, so she pounded harder.
“Perry, what’s Peter doing right now?”
“He is sleeping, Henrietta. Would you like me to awaken him?”
“Yes, please.”
“One moment,” Perry replied.
Henrietta waited a couple minutes in the hallway, shifting around awkwardly. She was starting to worry even more.
“He is not responding to my call,” Perry announced.
“Open the door, Perry; medical emergency.” The door slid open at her command and Henrietta saw that the room was still dark. “Three-quarters illumination,” she called out. As the lights brightened, Henrietta made her way to Peter’s bed. He looked like a dead lump under the sheets. “Peter.” She shook him.
Peter groaned. “What’s wrong,” he murmured, throwing the crook of his arm over his eyes.
“Peter, are you all right?”
He threw the covers over his head, burying his face in the pillow. “No, I’m sick. I think I got the flu.” His voice was muffled by the pillow. “Go away.”
“Have you been throwing up?”
“Not anymore,” he whined. “There’s nothing left.”
She forced her hand under the covers and felt his forehead. It felt warm, but then again, he was just under the sheets. “Does anything hurt?”
Peter pushed his face out into the light. “Well, my eyelids don’t. Other than that, everything else does. Tell everyone I’m not going to school today.” He curled up in a ball and rolled over to face the wall. He looked confused.
“Peter, do you know where you are?”
“Never-Never-Land ….”
Henrietta looked concerned, but Peter smiled. “Least according to Stiles,” he finished with a smirk.
At least he has his sense of humor. “It must be your meds,” Henrietta thought out loud.
“Sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself. Do most people get sick on ’em?”
“No,” she replied nervously, “only a couple percent.” She did not add that those who did represented the lowest recovery rates. She was concerned about it since he complained of stomach pains last evening, which forced her to complete more research on the treatment long into the night. It was still too early to tell, but maybe she would need to try something more radical.
Peter was fading in and out while she observed him. “Their whole lives were like this,” Peter said half deliriously. “’Till they died ….”
“What?” Who’s he talking about?
“I don’t know why my parents liked this so much.”
“Liked what?”
“All the responsibility ….” He faded out for a beat. “And the boredom ….” He turned onto his stomach and rubbed his face back into his pillow. Muffled, he completed his thoughts, “And the terror.”
Henrietta knew exactly what he meant.
* * *
It was lunchtime, and Peter was still in bed. Jimmy was finishing the food comps when Henrietta walked up beside him and looked over his shoulder. She reached over and dialed in a little more calcium chloride. “You’ll be surprised how much better it tastes,” she commented.
“Does Stiles like salt?”
“Yeah, but so do the rest of us.” She returned to the table as Ali and Stiles joined them. Stiles made it obvious he was looking around the galley. “He’s still sick,” Henrietta replied before he could ask.
“Really holding up to the pressure, I see.”
“Shut up, you moron,” Jimmy cried.
“Takes one to know one,” Stiles replied.
Ali slid into his chair, facing Henrietta. “That’s a very astute observation, Stiles,” he broke in. “I’m sure they use it in Parliament all the time.”
Stiles stewed silently at the barbed insult. “Well, it’s true,” he continued as if he had not been interrupted. “We can’t have a sick captain, and you know it.”
“He’ll get better,” Jimmy shouted. “Just you wait ’n’ see.” Jimmy dispensed four plates, each with a small portion of food, and carried them to the table. He went back and drew up an orange bulb from the unit. “And you can all get your own juice.” He sat down a couple seats away from the others and slid his plate in front of him. He nibbled at his lunch, anticipating where the conversation was heading.
“Five star service here,” Stiles complained. He happily walked up to the dispenser and dialed three orange bulbs, passing one to Ali and Henrietta. “You know what I’m talking about,” he told Henrietta as she took her bulb. “If you need to, just ask Perry.”
“I already did,” she replied hollowly.
Stiles unsuccessfully hid his smile. “And …?”
She sat her bulb down and pushed her plate away. “We all know it; even the ship.” She hung her head in shame.
“Hey, I don’t like this anymore than anyone else does,” Stiles replied.
“Who ’you trying to fool?” Jimmy asked.
“The fool,” Stiles said petulantly. This time, he smiled outwardly.
“If I may add my observations,” Perry said, “Peter is not performing up to his capabilities. One of the last commands he issued was over twenty–four hours ago, and was markedly conflicting. He has not reported for duty all day, and is having considerable difficulties concentrating. Stiles is the oldest member of this crew.”
“You mean XO,” Henrietta corrected.
“Yes,” Stiles added quickly, “that’s exactly what Perry meant. So, Doctor; what is your opinion?”
Henrietta remained silent, staring at her food.
“She has none,” Jimmy chimed in. “So shut your pie-hole.”
Stiles narrowed his eyes in anger, “We weren’t talking to you,” he breathed. “When we want to know what not to do, we’ll ask your opinion.”
“She still doesn’t—” Jimmy began.
Henrietta cleared her throat, interrupting Jimmy. “Under Article 153.f4, United Colonial Space Academy—”
“Henrietta, don’t!” Jimmy yelled.
She paused and pinched the bridge of her nose absently. “—emergency clause two-alpha-niner, the senior medical officer aboard UCSA Sampson K. Perry, operating away from any established military chain-of-command, hereby submits to the official log that Captain Peter R. Campbell is not fit for duty due to illness, and is temporarily relieved of command.”
“You traitor!” Jimmy cried. “He’s not even here to defend himself!”
“Jimmy,” Ali said, “I know how you feel, but there’s nothing else Henrietta can do.”
“Yes there is!” Jimmy persisted.
“Executive Officer Stiles F. Essen,” Henrietta continued, “is hereby designated as Acting Captain, UCSA Sampson K. Perry, until such time as the senior medical officer deems that Captain Campbell regains fitness of command.” Henrietta took a ha
lting breath. “Perry, please time-stamp my statement, and add my digital signature.”
“Done, Henrietta,” Perry replied. “Stiles, you are now in command.” The room remained silent as they all took in the import of what was just done.
“What’s wrong with all of you?” Jimmy shouted. “Can’t you see this is a mistake?”
“Your mother made the mistake,” Stiles smirked.
Jimmy ran up to Stiles and punched him in the stomach. Henrietta and Ali were stunned at the strength of the attack as their new captain doubled over in obvious pain.
“Jimmy!” Henrietta yelled. Jimmy continued to swat at Stiles. Ali grabbed Jimmy and pulled him off the downtrodden boy. Stiles recovered as quickly as he could and raised his fist in anger.
“Stiles, no,” Henrietta cautioned.
Stiles glared at the struggling boy, firmly held by Ali. Stiles stood with his tightened fist upheld. His knuckles were white in anger. “I want him thrown in the brig. Now!”
Ali looked from Stiles to Henrietta, keeping the squirming boy in line.
“I can’t let you do that,” Henrietta said quietly.
Stiles stammered, “He hit a superior officer! I have every right.”
“Officer, maybe; but not superior,” Ali said.
“And insubordination,” Stiles added, pointing at Ali.
“So what do you want, the whole crew locked up?” Henrietta asked. “That’s the problem. There’s an emergency clause in the regs where I can intervene in any disciplinary actions if it endangers the condition of the ship.”
“What clause?” Stiles asked.
“I don’t know the number, but I read it last night,” Henrietta replied. “There must be sufficient crew to run the ship at all times. Any actions that make the situation worse—”
“Without the number, you got to prove it—”
“Henrietta is within her rights as senior medical officer of this ship, Stiles,” Perry observed. “She is quoting from the list of extenuating circumstances for a ship in distress—”
“We’re not in distress,” Stiles began.
“What would you call it?” Henrietta shouted. “Do you want me to go through the particulars?”
Stiles stared at his mutinous crew, considering his options. He took a deep breath. “No, you’re absolutely right. For the good of this mission, I will overlook his illegal act—for the time being. But once we’re … out of this distress condition … I’m pressing charges.”