Furnace (5 page)

ASSIGNMENT

An hour later, an hour which I spent nervously pacing the gym and trying to look busy while carefully avoiding all matters of consequence, the captain changed his mind.

“Teemo. Chalmers,” he called into the all-purpose gymnasium through the open doorway. His voice echoed across the court to me yet somehow had a small quality to it that made my stomach clench. If even
his
voice was trivialized within our ship, I reasoned, what did that say about our place in the universe? “My quarters. Now.”

I glanced around the room as I followed Gibbons, trying to spot Teemo and get a read on his reaction to the summons. I couldn’t find him anywhere, though. Probably he’d already followed the captain out, I thought, or else he’d returned to his seat on the bridge after getting his arm patched up. I’ve learned over the years that fleet pilots are practically incapable of relinquishing control of anything once they believe they’re responsible for handling it, and nothing about my previous interactions with Teemo made me think he was an exception.

Halfway to the door, I felt a firm tug on my arm and whirled around reflexively, ready to lash out for no good reason. Like I said, I was on edge.

It was Gallagher. Her blue eyes were wide with something that wasn’t quite terror. Maybe suspicion with a touch of hopelessness. Maybe I’m confusing her emotions with my own.

“What is it, ma’am?” I asked once I realized she was looking past me through the open door. Probably making sure Gibbons wasn’t standing in the shadows, watching.

“Chalmers, right?” she asked when she was sure the captain had moved on.

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered, only slightly offended that she hadn’t known my name well enough not to ask.

“Nice to meet you,” she said stiffly. We’d met about a half-dozen times before that, but I let the comment slide with a little more understanding than the name thing, which I guess is counterintuitive. Something about the follow-up, though, made me realize she had noticed me enough to at least recognize my face. That was good. She’d met a whole lot of fleet monkeys since she’d boarded the
Rockne Hummel
, after all, and apparently, I’d made a lasting impression. Even in the face of certain death, I took it as a small victory.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her eyes narrowed and she touched my right hand lightly. “Do me a favor, will you?”

“Ma’am?” I tried to act like I didn’t notice her touch at all, but I have a feeling I failed miserably.

“Come see me as soon as you’re done speaking with the captain. I want to know everything he has to say.”

So
that’s
what this is
, I thought.
She wants me to spy on my own goddamned captain.

I didn’t like the idea at all. What sort of fleet soldier would I be if I tattled on my captain to a Crownie?

“May I ask why, ma’am?”

Her fingers slipped from my hand abruptly and she took a self-conscious step back, like she hadn’t realized we’d been touching at all. “I need to know his frame of mind to evaluate whether or not he’s fit to command this vessel through a crisis.”

I hesitated, glancing over my shoulder at the open doorway. Like her, I wanted to be sure the captain hadn’t seen me conspiring. It didn’t feel right at all, especially considering how I’d specifically requested a position on Gibbons’ crew and he’d offered me the job, overlooking a half-dozen more qualified candidates who’d been relegated to supply missions instead.

Aside from that, her request made me especially uncomfortable because it was
my
fault we’d wound up on that godforsaken planetoid in the first place, and
my
garbled calculations that had presumably led to the captain being unfit for command, though I never truly bought that assessment from Gallagher. Not until later, anyway, when my chance to prevent his rampage had already passed. Yet another thick coat of blood on my hands for my failures on Furnace. At the time, though, Gallagher’s suspicions seemed more than a little hasty considering Gibbons hadn’t yet made any irrational or psychotic decisions.

But I couldn’t articulate all that to Gallagher on the spot and wouldn’t have wanted to anyway. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that, ma’am,” I said instead.

I knew it was a mistake the instant the words left my lips. She was a goddamned Crownie, after all, and one of the bigshots at that. You don’t refuse a direct order from someone like her unless you’re prepared to fix sewage leaks on civilian luxury spacers, or spend ten to fifteen years in a forced labor camp in Bali. But she caught me off guard, and I was worried someone would overhear us.

As it turned out, there was no need to fret. Gallagher was kind in her own way. Understanding enough of the position she was putting me in, at least, though presumably not enough to spare me the headache.

“I understand, Lieutenant,” she said, eyeing the insignia on my sleeve to catch my rank. “But I’m not asking you to make that determination for me. I’m simply asking you to report back on what he has to say, which I am
legally
authorized to find out for myself if I choose. I have the authority to go anywhere on this ship that I damn well please,
including
the captain’s quarters. If I wanted to make a big scene about it, I would have. Instead, I’m asking you to simply report the facts after your conversation. Are you able to do that?”

I nodded slowly, feeling small. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

She smiled and patted me softly on the arm. “Thank you.”

We locked eyes for a moment, then she turned away before I even thought to salute.

Once she’d passed through the doorway, I took a quick look around and realized that practically everyone in the room was staring at me. Some with suspicion, some disdain, some merely bored or scared or desperate for a distraction from the waiting game, no matter how trivial the distraction proved to be. I can hardly blame them, but it made me feel a lot worse about talking to Gallagher, and I worried they’d seen right through my half-hearted protest against reporting on my captain to anyone other than fleet command. More than that, I worried they’d noticed how small I’d felt in Gallagher’s presence, whether it was a result of her rank or my own insecurities.

I hurried down the corridor without stopping to acknowledge the repair crew, even when a couple soldiers from Salib’s team tried to flag me down to assist. I wasn’t about to keep the captain—or Gallagher—waiting any longer than I needed to, and time truly was of the essence with life-support running out and given our lack of progress in finding a way home. I hoped Gibbons had regained his wits since the meeting and formulated a better plan of attack, but one step into his quarters assured me that he hadn’t quite regained that level of sanity.

“Shut the door,” he told me.

I did.

Teemo stood at full attention in front of the captain’s wooden desk. His hands were glued firmly to his sides despite the cast on his broken arm. His stare rested somewhere between the ventilation ducts and the top of Gibbons’ head. Like a good little soldier. That wasn’t anything like Teemo. I could tell he was scared.

“Yes, sir?” I asked. I glanced at the door control to make sure it remained unlocked in case things went bad, then took my place beside Teemo.

“I want the two of you to join Salib’s team for a surface mission.”

I swallowed hard. My stomach dropped. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Sir?”

Gibbons gave me a sharp look and sat back in his chair, picking thoughtfully at a loosening splinter on his desk. “You heard me. Meet Salib by the airlock and get suited up.”

“I thought you said you didn’t want anyone on the ground again, sir?”

“
I
didn’t say that.
She
did.”

Damn. He knows.

I couldn’t imagine how he’d heard about my talk with Gallagher in the absence of comms, and it didn’t seem likely that he could have overheard us and then beat me to his quarters, but my guilt got the better of me. Whether he suspected I was evaluating him or not, I was jumping at shadows.

The captain stood and pushed his chair in slowly. I tried not to notice Teemo subtly shifting his weight away from me to avoid association now that I’d chosen to challenge the captain’s orders. It’s not the sort of thing your fellow troops typically encourage. Not unless they like the prospect of being court-martialed or tried for mutiny once the mission ends.

The thing is though, by then, I was already more than a little suspicious that the mission never
would
end, and if it did, that I would never again take a deep space assignment. I’d seen enough of the universe to last a lifetime.

Besides, what the hell kind of commanding officer sends his only pilot out on a ground mission with a broken arm while stranded on a potentially hostile planet? I guess that should have tipped me to his degrading mental state, but I was too close to the situation to see it then. Too much had happened.

Should have kept my mouth shut
, I thought.

Gibbons rounded the table. He didn’t look happy.

Fuck.

He stopped so close in front of me that I could smell his horrible stasis breath. The glowing green grime hadn’t quite washed off his skin. I wondered if I looked the same.

He smiled wide. “I’m going to
pretend
you didn’t just question me twice in my own goddamned quarters when I gave you a direct order, Lieutenant. I’m going to chalk it up to the ‘extraordinary stress’ of being stranded on a planet that shouldn’t fucking exist beyond contact range of any of our fucking deep space installments.”

My muscles locked and I stared straight ahead, careful not to meet his gaze or even flinch. Anything might set him off, I realized. Anything might push him over the edge. It was becoming more and more apparent that he teetered on the brink of some personal catastrophe. His
words
were typical Gibbons, but the
smile
threw everything else out the window.

I’d never seen the man so much as smirk.

For a moment, he stood with his nose a few inches from my face. Staring me down. Waiting for me to crack. Then, the smile abruptly vacated his lips and he turned toward Teemo.

“The fact is we need to know the lay of the land here before we take the next step. We
all
know we’re running out of time.”

I almost followed up with another question but caught myself at the last second. Maybe he was right, after all. It wasn’t like me to speak out of turn so often in front of a superior officer. Or at all, really. I didn’t know what the hell had gotten into me. Maybe it was just the thinning oxygen levels, or maybe being trapped on the planet on the heels of rocketing through endless space was too claustrophobic. Lots of soldiers have that same problem when they return home and hang up their gravity-equalizing boots. Especially navigators, because we’re the ones who understand how truly massive the universe is.

“We need to know whether or not there’s a place anywhere on the planet that’s capable of supporting life. It doesn’t seem likely—
impossible
, really—but we have to know our options. I’m not looking for a five-star hotel with breathable air and a vending machine, but it sure as hell would be nice if we could shield ourselves from burning alive.”

Is burning any worse than dying of thirst or starvation?
I thought, but didn’t dare say in front of the captain. I didn’t dare say it in front of myself, either. Hearing talk of death aloud—even from my own lips—would have been too much.

“We need to know what sort of resources are nearby. Anything we can use to expedite repairs on the ship.” He turned back to me, this time with a deep frown. “Locals,” he said, letting the word hang between us long enough for me to catch his meaning. “I want to know if we have any friends in the neighborhood.”

“Yes, sir,” Teemo said.

I hesitated a moment, but not because I didn’t agree with the logic behind the ground mission. I just wasn’t sure how it would go over with Salib, or whether or not it was the best decision to separate Teemo and me—the two most important specialists for getting us the fuck out of there, one of whom was already injured—from the ship. Without a navigator and a pilot of Teemo’s ilk, the
Hummel
wouldn’t get very far. And if they somehow got the ship up and running for a short burst and we weren’t there to guide them, our team would wind up stranded and the ship would wander off into deeper nothingness outside the planet, having shot blindly for home with no real hope of reaching it.

Not that my presence necessarily made the odds much better, but it certainly didn’t
hurt
them to have me around. If any one of us was capable of making sense out of gravitational fluxes, meteor paths, etc. (assuming that we would even encounter them), it was me.

“Chalmers?” Gibbons cut into my thoughts. He was standing in front of me again. I hadn’t even noticed him move. My mind was even more clouded than I’d realized.

“Yes, sir,” I answered, mostly because there wasn’t anything else to say unless I wanted to wind up in a holding cell, or, if the captain was feeling especially generous, confined to quarters. I wouldn’t be any good to the mission
there
, either.