Starmind Chapter 30 (Patreon)

“Oh, that’s not good,” I said into the silent bridge.

Nobody replied to my somewhat unnecessary comment, and it took several seconds before Temeri asked, “Star, can you confirm that the shaft just sealed itself above us?”

Her voice was entirely flat, which was a relief. It was weird, sure, but at least she wasn’t freaking out over our situation. She just lay back in her couch, her attention totally focused on the slates before her, and her hands steady on the control yoke. In fact, her grip was so steady that her knuckles were turning white!

“Confirmed, Captain,” I told her. “As far as I can tell, the rock itself flowed closed in less than a second. That’s pretty impressive, really! I can’t put down material anywhere near that fast!”

Temeri took a big, steady breath and said, “Thank you, Star, for that information. Can you see any signs of turrets or the like along the walls?”

“No. But I couldn’t see whatever closed us in, either. Um… I don’t think we can get out. We should probably do what the message said.”

“That was my current plan, yes,” Temeri said.

“Um, sorry, Captain? Star? Was that communication channel two-way?” Simeon asked. He was the first person to make any sound at all besides Temeri. I had to look closely to even be sure that the others were breathing, they were so quiet.

“It was, wasn’t it?” Temeri muttered. “Star, are we sending?”

“I haven’t been.”

“Good. Please begin sending now. Unidentified station, this is Captain Temeri Carlon, of the Sirelli Confederation Astral Navy Experimental Survey Ship Distant Star. We are a science vessel, as defined and protected under the Treaty of Whitsmouth, and completely unarmed. Our intentions are peaceful. We seek shelter and protection from an unknown enemy who is pursuing us, entirely unprovoked. I repeat, our intentions are peaceful. We carry no ship-scale weapons!”

“That’s very good to hear,” came the reply. It was the same voice, still as smooth and friendly as before. “Please proceed to docking bay two, power down your drive, and await further instructions. Failure to comply will be met with immediate and lethal force. And before you get any unfortunate ideas, so will any sign of deception. This isn’t my first turn around the system.”

With that, the person, or Crystal Mind, or whatever was on the other end set the channel to idle, and I did the same.

“They can’t hear us anymore,” I told the Crew, and Simeon immediately spoke up.

“Did that last part sound… unsettling, to anyone else?” he asked.

“‘Not my first turn around the system’? Yeah, unsettling is one word for it!” Varlanda agreed. “Crystal Minds don’t talk like that! Harvin, are you—?”

“Yes, Varlanda, I’m sure,” Harvin said patiently. “There’s no sentient life on this rock. We’re so close now that with Star’s help I should be able to detect them, even if they were shrouded.”

“Star talks like that,” Bekeri said, and everyone fell silent.

“Right.” It was only a single word, and didn’t mean anything on its own, but it had the sound of a command to it. The others looked at Temeri as she released the control yoke and relaxed into her couch. “Crew, it’s past 2200 hours. Our path out is blocked, and we have to assume that whatever the system controlling this rock did to seal the shaft, it can do it again. I—”

Temeri took a deep breath and swallowed. Then she turned so she could sit up and put her feet on the floor, facing the others. “We have no choice at the moment but to comply. At our speed, it might be hours before we dock, depending on how deep the docking bays are. There’s no reason for you all to remain on the bridge. Go. Get yourselves cleaned up. Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning, or if anything happens. And, I… I’m sorry.”

“Captain—” Simeon began, his voice full of concern.

“No, Sim. I know what you’re going to say. I don’t need to hear it right now. Clear the bridge. You’re all dismissed.”

It took a little while for everyone to leave. Simeon didn’t look like he wanted to go at all, but finally he sighed and went down the access tube after the others.

Once she was alone on the bridge, Temeri softly asked me, “Star, can you shut off the access tube and make sure that the bridge is acoustically isolated from the crew deck?”

“Sure, Temeri,” I said. I wasn’t sure why she’d want that, but she was pretty clearly upset. I thought maybe she wanted to talk without anyone else hearing, and I didn’t see any harm in it. And it was easy! There was no air in the space between the decks, so there I didn’t need to do anything. For the tube, all I needed to do was to put in two layers of Hull with some space between them, and then teleport out all the air. It wasn’t perfect, but there wouldn’t be enough vibration going through my structure for anyone to hear anything without some pretty sensitive instruments. “There,” I told her. “All done!”

“Thank you, Star,” she whispered. “Please don’t let anyone else onto the bridge until further notice.” Then she straightened her back. She leaned her head back, closed her eyes, took a deep breath through her nose, and screamed.

*

I docked at around 0330 hours, on a landing pad more than big enough for me and helpfully lit up and marked with a numeral 2. I hadn’t received any more communications, and I didn’t wake anyone. They all needed their sleep.

Especially Temeri. She’d screamed, and screamed, and screamed for almost a full minute, while I begged her to tell me what was wrong. Finally I told her that if she didn’t say something to let me know she was okay, I’d ask Simeon to come up, even though she’d asked me not to. After Simeon left, he’d asked me to keep an eye on Temeri. He’d said that he was worried about her emotional state, and I was inclined to agree; I’d never heard anyone scream for as long as Temeri had. I was pretty sure it couldn’t be a sign of anything good.

When I told Temeri that, she’d stopped screaming. “No, Star,” she’d said, breathing heavily. “I don’t need medical attention. I just… no. Please.” Then she’d curled up on her couch. She’d gone to sleep almost instantly.

For the first time in several days, everyone was asleep at the same time, and I was alone. It was strange. When they were awake I wasn’t always talking to someone, but there was always something happening, or someone to watch. Now they were all just lying there. Even Temeri, whom I hadn’t watched sleep since our very first days together.

I didn’t like the way she’d gone to sleep. I’d teleported up a spare blanket and put it on her, and adjusted her couch so she’d be more comfortable, but the way she’d been screaming, the way there was just nothing in her voice when she asked me to please not bring anyone to check on her, they worried me. I wanted so very much to wake Simeon up, to have him go to the bridge and talk to her, but she’d asked me twice not to. As long as all she did was sleep, I really couldn’t justify going against her wishes just because I was uncomfortable.

So, with everyone asleep, I sat on the docking pad. I’d sent a request for further instructions once I’d landed and shut down the drive, but I hadn’t received anything back. All I could do was sit there, and watch, and wait.

The docking bay was spacious, but not overly large. At its base, the shaft had opened up into four chambers, set like a cross around it. Each chamber was a squat cylinder a thousand feet high and just as wide, with a central pad like the one I was on set so that “down” was toward the outside of the rock. It was all quite open, though, the rock dug away so that I could see the neighboring pads. It was also lit with a soft, diffuse light, letting me look around with just passive sensors — which I appreciated, because I was kind of bored and I wasn’t sure if our host would react badly to active scanning.

Two of the pads, numbers 3 and 4, were unoccupied. Number 1 had a ship on it, a tall, cylindrical thing with a bunch of what I recognized as weapons. That one had scared me a bit when I first saw it, but it was cold and inert. It also had a large, jagged hole through the hull around where I guessed the bridge would be. I decided it wasn’t likely to turn any of those guns on me anytime soon.

Otherwise, the dock was just that: a dock. It looked much like anything I could find in my archives. There was a central control tower, observation windows in the walls, gantries and cranes, maintenance and cargo drones, and doors and elevators leading off to parts unknown. The only thing that set it apart was that nothing moved. All the drones stood in orderly rows. None of the cranes carried anything. No one watched through the windows or walked on the floor or the catwalks. No one, and nothing, did anything.

A dock, even one with only four pads, should have been bustling with life when a ship had just landed. That was what my archives, and my memories from Temeri, told me. This place was, for lack of a better word, dead.

It also wasn’t anything I could assimilate. I sat on my landing struts on the pad, and the material under my feet was as foreign after several minutes as it had been the moment I set down. Now, maybe that was because there was something special about the pad, which looked like standard duracrete, but I wasn’t about to start messing around. Something that might be able to smash me flat in a second had told me not to try anything clever, so I wasn’t going to. I was going to be a good, patient ship and wait for further instructions. Anything else seemed like a quick way to get the Crew hurt.

With nothing to do, nothing to watch, and no one to talk to, all I could do was think. We were being kept as reluctant guests. I didn’t love that, but nothing had happened to us. Our host had been true to their word; I’d followed instructions, and we’d been left in peace. I just didn’t see why. Why anything? Why were there no people? Why did the rock’s systems talk so strangely? Why was it so threatening? Why were we forced to dock, when that was sort of what we’d been hoping to do anyway? Why didn’t it talk to me now that I’d done what it asked?

Why did Temeri scream in such a heartbreaking way?

I didn’t have any answers, and none came to me. And so, for several hours, I simply stopped thinking.

*

“It’s 0600 hours! Good morning, everyone! Time to wake up!”

I excitedly told everyone the same thing at the same time. I’d been barely conscious for the last few hours; all I’d done was to keep an eye on… well, everything. But now I could finally wake the Crew up with a good conscience! I could finally have some company!

I even woke up Temeri! I’d watched her carefully all night, and her sleep had been surprisingly restful considering how upset she’d been, so I decided that she could get up at the same time as everyone else for once. I didn’t open up the bridge, though. She’d been so insistent on that the previous night that I figured it would be best to talk to her first.

“Mmm, Star?” Temeri muttered, pulling her knees up and the blanket tighter around her. “Report.”

“Nothing much to report, Captain,” I told her. “I’ve docked, but I haven’t heard anything more from whoever is controlling this place. No one and nothing has approached us, either. I’ve just been sitting here, alone and with nothing to do, for hours!”

“Sorry to hear that, Star,” she said. She still didn’t get up.

“Thank you! But now, you’re awake, and so is everyone else! We can start figuring out what to do!”

“That’s great, Star. You do that.”

Temeri still didn’t get up. She didn’t move, or even open her eyes. She just lay there, like she was trying to go back to sleep. Which didn’t make any sense; she’d gotten almost eight hours of sleep, and it was morning.

And what did she mean by “you do that”?

“Um, yeah, we’ll do that,” I said, stressing the we as much as I could. “So let’s get you off that acceleration couch, so you can use the head, and maybe have a quick shower and a change of clothes, and then you can join the others in the rec room!”

Temeri finally moved. She rolled onto her back and opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling, and whispered one word. “Why?”

“Well… we need to decide what to do?”

“We already know what to do: sit here until further notice, or die. Nothing I can contribute could possibly improve our situation.”

“What? Of course it can! You’re the captain! You make the decisions!”

“Star… my last decision brought us here. We’re in more danger than we’ve been since this whole mess started. Everyone would be better off if I’d never left my cabin. I’m a gods-damn—”

“Please don’t finish that sentence, Temeri,” I said firmly. And she didn’t! And I didn’t have to find out what she thought she was, but whatever she’d been about to say, I was sure that it was silly and wrong. “Yes, we’re here. Yes, it was your decision to go inside. But you were as careful as you could have possibly been. Five hundred foot wide tunnels suddenly closing off is not something anyone could expect!”

 “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered, rolling to her side so that her blanket pulled tight around her. “I wasn’t trained for this. I can’t… there’s nothing I can fight here. Nothing I can chase down or outrun or outmanoeuvre. All I can do is sit and wait, and be absolutely useless. So why even leave this couch? What’s the point, Star?”

It was really painful to see her like that, but at least I was starting to understand what the screaming had been about. “You’re not useless,” I told her.

“Then what use am I?”

“We’re safe from the Bad Guys! That's thanks to you! It was your plan, and it worked! And yeah, sure, now we have a new problem, but we're all free and alive. We can fix it. You can fix it. Because you’re the captain. You make the decisions, because someone has to. Someone has to take responsibility, and when nobody’s sure what to do, someone has to pick an option and make sure that everyone’s working toward the same goal. And that has to be you! The Crew all look up to you, Temeri. They trust you to get them home safe! And… they’re worried about you.”

I wasn't sure that helped; she pulled the blanket tighter around herself. But I pushed on regardless.

 “It’s all they’re talking about right now, okay? Normally they’d all be getting ready to get some work done until you get up, but instead, they're so worried they’re all getting together in the rec room to talk about you. Not about the situation we’re in. Not about whoever controls this rock, who might be able to just… just kill us all if they decide to. They’re all so worried about you that they can’t worry about anything else. They need you, Temeri! They need to see that you’re… maybe not alright, but at least okay. They need to know that you’re ready to lead them when something happens. They need you to get off that couch and go down and say good morning. They need to see that you’re not giving up. Okay? Please, Temeri. For their sake. Get up.”

Everything I said was true. Varlanda, Bekeri, and Harvin were gathered in the rec room by then. They were talking about Temeri, because none of them had missed how upset she was the previous evening, and they were very worried about her! They were worried about her as their captain, as a part of the Crew, and as… perhaps not a friend, which made me sad, but at least as a person they shared their lives with.

Simeon wasn't there. He hadn't left his cabin yet, because he was coaching me, just a little. Everyone was worried about Temeri, but no one more than him. He’d asked about her the first thing he did, and it wasn't like I could just not say anything!

In my defense, I hadn’t told him exactly what was happening on the bridge; I felt bad enough about telling him that Temeri was having confidence issues. I’d told him that she felt bad about how her decision to enter the rock had turned out, and that she found it hard to get up and join the others, and that was it.

“Is she still on the bridge?” he’d asked.

“Yeah. She went to sleep pretty much right after you all left,” I answered, leaving out the parts that might have embarrassed Temeri.

“Okay. Listen, Star, I may not be Harvin, but I think I have a pretty good idea what the captain's thinking right now. She needs to know that we want her around, alright? That we need her. Someone has to be in charge. That person doesn't have to be perfect, because nobody is, but she needs to be able to see the big picture and make decisions under pressure. And if anyone here can do that, it’s her. Tell her that, okay?”

Now, I did kind of improvise loosely around what he’d suggested, but his advice got me talking, which was the important part. And it worked! As I talked, Temeri rolled onto her back again. She stared at the ceiling for a while. Then she sighed, deep and slow, and whispered, “Fine. For the crew.”

Twenty minutes later, Simeon was just finishing preparing breakfast when Temeri strode into the rec room. She was showered, had her hair up in an immaculate bun, and was wearing a fresh uniform sans jacket.

“Good morning, crew!” she said briskly. “Thank you for waiting. What’s for breakfast?”