Part 12: In The Meantime

There was an uneasy calm settling over the Rock. Kwame and John had taken the Bucephalus over to Byron’s garage to check it for damage. The docking bay was quiet. Alex didn’t like the quiet. He sat in his quarters, a small room attached to the docking bay’s office. He tried to read, to watch some holomovies, but he couldn’t seem to distract himself.

Alex never wanted to take part in that mission. He never wanted his crew to be put in that kind of danger. And against his better judgment, he’d taken the lead on the Freedom Flyer assault team.

Worst of all, Alex had been ready to abandon Michael on the Pillar of Hercules. He turned the scenario over and over in his mind. It wasn’t the type of choice he’d ever had to make as a fighter pilot. As a pilot, he was prepared for every situation imaginable. He and his squadron were a well-oiled machine, they operated with surgical precision.

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But being down in the fight, hearing the screams of the wounded, smelling the fear soaked sweat, seeing the blood, that sowed nothing but confusion. Alex needed to make life and death choices in that confusion, and he hated it. He hated every minute fighting in the dirt of Kilos. He hated it aboard the Pillar of Hercules.    

  He thought again and again about his choice. There was nothing he could have done. Michael was pinned down by a security team. Had that same team come to the bridge, they likely would have killed all that remained of Alex’s team. Alex chose the many over the one. He had made the right choice, even if it meant sacrificing someone who lived and worked on the same ship in space and under the same roof at home. At least, Alex wanted to believe he’d made the right choice.

Alex’s restlessness finally got the best of him. He needed someone to talk to. Opening the door, he saw Jade sitting at the conference table that took up most of the office space. She was hunched over, elbows on the table, tapping a pen on her temple, lost in thought.

“Sudoku?” Alex asked, stretching as he walked into the room.

“Crossword.” Jade answered, without looking up.

“Mind some company?” Alex said as he pulled out a chair and sat down.

Jade sighed and set down her pen. She pushed back in her chair and swung her boots up on the table. “Can’t stop thinking about it, can you?”

“No, not for a minute. I made the right choice, right?”

“No doubt. You needed to get as many members of your team as possible off of that ship. Michael was in a no win situation.”

“A situation I put him in.”

“You sent him to secure your position. He knew what he was getting into when he asked Byron to join the Flyers.”

“Yeah, but…”

“No buts. You never should’ve been in that position. That team barely had any training. Byron bit off more than he could chew. We’re lucky to be alive after that fiasco.”

“Hm.”

Jade put her feet back on the floor and leaned onto the table. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If I remember correctly, weren’t you one of ‘Lord Byron’s’ biggest fans?”

“I believe in what he fights for, but I’m not blind to reality.”

“Interesting,” Alex said, smirking.

“Don’t give me that… besides, here is some reality for you. If you feel all messed up about what happened with Michael, then you should be talking to him, not me.” Jade picked up her pen, and turned her attention back to the crossword.

“Uh…”

“Seven letters, starts with I, ‘to refuse to pay attention to’, what could that be?” Jade said, not taking her eyes off of the puzzle, a grin creeping across her face.

“Ok, ok,” Alex said, getting up from the table. “Do you know where he is?”

“In the docking bay, working on his ship.”

“Working on the ship? What’s he doing? He’s going to kill the collector’s value!” Alex said, bolting from the room.

He rushed into the docking bay, but he was already to too late. Michael had his ship in an antigrav lift, the upper half of his body disappearing into the fuselage. Tools and components were strewed around his feet.

Alex, for a moment, forgot about what was bothering him. That ship was his ace in the hole. Selling it after he got of debt to Byron would have given him a nice little nest egg to restart. But it seems like things just weren’t going to go his way. He collected himself for a moment, then remembered why he’d come out here to begin with.

Alex had almost reached the ship when Michael dropped from inside. “I still cannot believe the advances that have been made in interstellar propulsion over the past few centuries,” he said, wiping his hands clean with a rag.

“Yeah… uh,” Alex said. He crouched down to look up into Michael’s ship. “What are you, uh, going, whatcha got going on in here?”

“Installing a hyperdrive… artificial gravity… inertial dampers…” Michael pointed at the parts on the ground, “advanced life support, you know, the basics.”

“Wow, how’d you get all of this?”

Michael grabbed a few parts and then climbed back into the underside of his ship. “I’ve been using my share to buy parts from around the Rock, traded some work, tuned up some of Drake’s ships, made some deals. I took the position with the Flyers so I could afford to get everything I needed.”

“Oh,” Alex said. He hesitated for a minute. He didn’t want to beat around the bush, he wanted to get this over with. Taking a deep breath he said, “About that, about the job on the Pillar…”

“You made the right choice,” Michael said, without stopping his work. “If you tried to save me, odds are that everyone gets killed, leave me, you save more lives. I would always expect you to make the same choice.”

Alex exhaled. “Wow, really? Thank you, Michael, I’m glad…”

Michael stooped back down from his ship. “Alex, you know everyone I’ve ever known is dead, right?”

“Uh…”

“I drifted into space hundreds of years ago. I had a wife, a couple of kids back home. I know they’ve long since passed. Friends, colleagues, all gone. I’ve had plenty of time to be depressed, to process it all. To meditate on the subject of our own mortality. I’m passed all of that. Everyone dies, Alex. If I’d have died on that ship, then, so it goes. But if you’d have sacrificed more people to prevent a fate that was likely anyway, I’d have been disappointed. Could you hand me that wrench?”

Alex handed Michael the wrench, speechless. “Well, I uh… hm…”

Michael took it, and went back to work. Ignoring Alex’s stammering, he said, “I was on my way to Earth, when things went wrong on my mission. I was born on Mars, not sure if I’ve mentioned that before. Born to the first generation of colonists. My parents both worked for NASA… but you probably don’t even know what NASA is, do you? Never mind, not important.

Anyway, I joined up with the NASA Mars Initiative, and started flying exploration runs into the asteroid field around Sol. When an experimental program flying from Mars to Earth needed volunteers, I jumped at the chance. Always wanted to see the Parthenon-”

“Really? I have family near Athens, I-” Alex started, but Michael wasn’t finished.

“Yeah, the Parthenon, shoot over to Rome, take in the Coliseum, you know, the foundations of humanity. Some back on Mars had taken to referring to themselves as Martians, but I never liked that. And look at us now. Caught up in galactic affairs with alien civilizations, who would have imagined? And we turn and run at the sight of them…. Hmm.” Michael stopped working for a moment, and stepped away from his ship, placing a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “We run from the aliens, and we have no idea about the power locked inside of the our own minds. Interesting.” He handed the wrench back to Alex. “I meant the 10mm, not the 12mm,” he said, grabbing the other wrench from his tool box.

Alex wasn’t sure how to answer all of that. He thought back to what had happened on the Pillar of Hercules. The fight ending outside the bridge, the hatch blowing open, Michael escaping certain death. Turning it over in his mind, he asked, “How did you hold off the security team?”

“Fortes fortuna adiuvat,” Michael said with a grin, climbing back into his ship. Before Alex could ask what that meant, he heard Jade call to him from across the bay.

“Hey Alex!” she said, “Byron wants to talk with you.”

“Oh yeah?” Alex said, turning to meet her.

“Yeah, he says he has a job for us.”

“I’m not sure I want another job from him.”

“You know he basically owns the Bucephalus until we work off our debt, right?”

“I know, I know… anyway, did he say anything about the job?”

“Only that if we pull it off, we’ll be free and clear of him.”

Alex’s face brightened. Finally some good news.