Chapter 8
EIGHT
EDDIE
Weaving through the crowded Bridge, Eddie felt Jett right on his heels.
Exactly where he should be, yet it wasn’t the same.
Jett’s unexpected apology felt like a step toward coexistence during the situation they were walking into.
Whether anything would go beyond that was not something to think about now.
But Eddie couldn’t help himself. If this emergency hadn’t happened, would Jett have sought him out to apologize? Would Eddie have reached out one last time? What would he have done in the elevator if Jett had stepped into his arms once more?
Questions roiled in the back of Eddie’s mind as they reached the Control Room. He looked back at Jett, watched as he waited for clearance, and then fell back into place behind Eddie.
Like nothing has changed.
The Control Room was silent, tense, all eyes on the large meeting room in the far right corner where officers waited, their colorful uniforms making a motley mosaic. Jett peeled off at the back of the group, distinct in his usual black, and Eddie took his place beside the captain.
“Eddie. Lieutenant.” The captain nodded to them in greeting. “Now that everyone is here, I will let Quasar Representative Ra’ana take the floor.”
Ra’ana stepped forward, their large-eyed, pale blue face impassive. “At 17:00 hours we intercepted a corrupted signal bearing the Quasar imprint. The Tech officer on duty was able to partially decode this message.”
Text scrolled on the tab screen inlaid in the left wall.
……crew disappearing…
…evacuation unsuccessful
…send……………………
Storm closing in around us
…………………send……
Eddie heard everyone around him breathe. Every inhale and exhale. No one spoke, no one moved, their attention on the signal text. Eddie wondered how much more he could coax out of the data, if he could clear up the corruption, form a fuller picture of what this other Captain meant to send.
Jett stepped forward, his cybernetic eye burning bright. Eddie’s chest tightened. He was forgetting how to read Jett.
Jett stared at the text while the rest spoke in hushed and frantic whispers.
“It’s a distress signal.”
Eddie sighed, unable to process this surprise, and turned to the Tech on duty. “Send the data to me and I will work on it.”
“Do we know anything else?” Ollie Wort sounded uneasy from where he stood beside Cosma Caine, who wore a look of detached boredom on her petite face.
“What do we do?” a second person asked, this one from Engineering.
“Where do we go?” a medical officer chimed in.
The voices built upon each other, growing into a mass that rang in Eddie’s ears. He closed his eyes and focused, tried to pick one voice out to follow, but it was hopeless.
“Ahem.” Captain Ro-nold cleared his throat beside Eddie, but it did little to quell the din.
“Quiet down,” Jett commanded. “We’ll get you the answers you want, but the captain wants to speak again.
” Something about Jett’s stance and the tone he used made Eddie think of his murky past, the time he spent in Emergency Response that he never talked about, under any circumstance.
It was effective, effortlessly calling all attention, quieting every voice.
“Thank you,” the Captain said with a nod. “Lieutenant Valla is correct that we will answer some of your questions soon.
“I would like each of you to put together a list of personnel to be on stand-by should we be the ones to respond to this signal. Other ships may be closer, but it is better to be prepared.
“Now, Lieutenant Valla, Head of Security Wort, and First Officer Stone will remain with myself and Representative Ra’ana to discuss this further. Everyone else is dismissed; and I ask that you keep this information on a ‘need to know’ basis. We do not want panic in Neo-Tokyo.”
Eddie ground his teeth, clenched his fists. Someone would eventually talk, but keeping important information between the heads of departments would lessen the impact when word did spread.
He looked over the signal as he waited for everyone to leave. The corruption appeared to be additional code mixed into the intended message and metadata. It would be easy enough to pick through once he was back in his quarters with his desk tab and custom tools.
“Is there any chance I can convince you to bend the rules?”
Eddie looked up at Jett, who was frowning at Captain Ro-nold. But it was Ra’ana that responded.
“I’m afraid that goes against Quasar regulations, which state that, in an emergency situation, the First Officer is in charge of any response. We’re bending the rules enough allowing a consultant as part of the planning team.”
“Because Ollie has no experience with rescue missions.” Jett sounded angry, perhaps exasperated. And there was something else that clung to the emotions.
Ra’ana nodded. “And Officer Wort has no experience with rescue missions.”
Ollie Wort stood beside Jett, his mouth quirked into a smirk. “No offense, of course.”
Jett nodded. “None intended. For you.”
Eddie swallowed, uncertain what they were talking around.
“I don’t want him anywhere near this other ship. He has even less experience than Ollie and will only get himself, and others, hurt.”
Captain Ro-nold sighed. “We are bending regulations enough as it is, Lieutenant. Edward must be in charge of our response.”
Jett turned to Eddie, eyes scanning, judging, calculating. It was a side of Jett that he hadn’t seen in years—not since they’d first met and Eddie made those first, tentative attempts to breach Jett’s near-impenetrable personal shields.
“Could someone explain what is being talked about?”
Jett looked toward the wall as he responded.. “You are in charge of emergency instances.”
“I am aware of that.” Eddie had undergone nearly a decade of training as First Officer, which included procedure for emergency situations. “But I do not understand what you are saying, Je—Lieutenant.”
“If the Neo-Tokyo is the closest ship to the signal source, and we are the ones to respond, you are not to go onboard the ship it came from.” Jett turned to Captain Ro-nold and Ra’ana and crossed his arms. “That is my condition for being involved. I won’t put someone like him in danger.”
“Like me?” Eddie’s heart stilled, wondering where this version of Jett had come from.
He was almost worse than the man who confronted Eddie eight weeks back, good though his reasons had been.
He’d hoped that some of the hostility would have dissipated, but he feared he was wrong, feared that he’d done something wrong just by existing.
“Inexperienced and ill-equipped to lead soldiers with a clear head.” Cold, unemotional, Eddie saw Jett as the soldier he once was.
Without thinking, Eddie scoffed. “I am not the emotional one of the two of us.”
Jett smiled, a sad imitation of his real smile. “Perhaps not, but you still don’t know the barrel from the butt of a weapon, and you’ve never seen what could happen in a situation like this.”
Eddie conceded that he was mostly correct. He did know the difference between the butt and barrel of a weapon, but he had no experience beyond mandatory training.
“And you have?” Eddie hoped he sounded caring and inquisitive, instead of accusatory. He’d always had issues telling his own tone as he spoke, and had to attempt to read others reactions to gauge how he sounded.
Jett nodded, his smile faltering, a hand rubbing over his arm. “Yes…I have. More than most in the System.”
“Agreed,” Captain Ro-nold said. “Eddie, you must remain aboard the shuttle if our physical presence is required at the ship.”
Ra’ana turned to Eddie. “How long do you need to pick apart the signal?”
“I need four hours to decipher the signal and another to double check the data. Then I will be ready for a briefing.” He looked back at Jett. “Will you be ready with your own plans then?”
Jett gestured to Ollie. “I’ll meet up with Wort to come up with a base plan to work from. He’ll be in charge of the logistics and I’m the one with practical experience.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Eddie nodded but didn’t say anything.
“There won’t be a problem sending you both on this mission, will there?” The captain’s voice held a warning in it.
“No, Captain,” Jett said.
“No, sir,” Eddie said at the same time.
“Great. Dismissed. I’ll join you in twelve hours for the briefing.”
“Edward, join me, please.”
Eddie turned around, his thoughts jumbled. Captain Ro-nold stood by the entrance, gesturing Eddie back inside the Control Room.
“What did you need, sir?”
Captain Ro-nold smiled. “To talk.”
It was a vague answer at best. And though Eddie wanted nothing more than to dig into the signal code, he nodded and followed the Captain inside, across the Bridge, and into the tiny office set aside for him.
“Sit, please.”
Eddie sat in a chair that was a little small for his frame. He usually stood, but knew from long experience that the captain would not start until he sat.
“Have I told you much about my life before the Neo-Tokyo?”
Eddie sat straighter. “No, Augustus.” He had no idea why they had to have this conversation now.
The captain shot him a glance over his shoulder. “Now don’t turn this into a meeting, Eddie. This is very relevant to your situation, even if it doesn’t seem like it right now.”
Augustus turned toward the tab screen in the back wall, which showed Enyo, the larger of two stations that orbited Mars.
“When I was a boy I grew up on Enyo. I had someone special to me there, a childhood friend that eventually became something else, but I will spare you the details.” He laughed.
“When I joined Quasar, they followed me and we were inseparable for years. And content. That is, until I was offered the Neo-Tokyo.”
He shrugged his great shoulders. “It was an offer I felt like I couldn’t refuse, but they wanted to stay where we were, live the life we had already built.
But I wanted the honor and prestige. I wanted to be the youngest Captain of a Quasar ship.
Things ended badly and they moved to Alpha Centauri, where they knew that my ship couldn’t follow. ”
The tab screen switched to the Astral Gate that lead to Alpha Centauri. It was an immense metal circle with glittering blue light that stretched the expanse, through which some arcane engineering flung matter light-years away.
Augustus sat back down, leaving the screen on. “I’ve led a very good life here, met many amazing people, but I regret my decision I made every day.” The lines on his face were deeper now, and Eddie felt rather than saw the sorrow that the Captain felt. “I don’t want you to repeat my mistake.”
Eddie looked down at his hands, nails dug into the flesh of his palms. He wished he could go back in time and take everything back. Wished that he’d been smart enough to see what was happening around him before everything blew up.
“It is already over. I cannot undo what I did.” His voice was only slightly muddled by emotion.
Eddie wished he’d done better by Jett, that he’d showed he cared and could be the support Jett needed.
He wished he knew what dark secret Jett hid in his scar-covered past. What secret had he kept so long without Eddie pushing to learn more?
“Eddie, you are the closest thing I’ve ever had to a son.
I’ve mentored you over the last decade, and I’m telling you that there is still time.
I know what was between you two—everyone saw how in love you were.
You owe it to Jett, and yourself, to talk about what happened one last time.
” He smiled, then shrugged. “And you owe the crew stability.”
Eddie nodded. One of the things Augustus had instilled in his head was that he should prioritize the crew above himself.
“That’s part of what a Captain does; you talk and smooth over issues.
You ensure that the best compromise is reached for the sake of the crew.
That’s why we have so many Officers, that’s why we have Representatives, because in the end, we are in charge of the lives of everyone on the ship. And we have to do our best by them.”
Eddie sighed, finding the words to pierce through some of the wariness in his heart. “I do not know that I made capable of being responsible on that level. Not when I cannot even sort out my own life. Not when I cannot stop thinking about what I did to Jett…”
“Life isn’t easy or fair, Edward. We just have to do our best. I know you always try to do what you think is correct, but you also need to consider yourself and what you want.
“Ask yourself if you really want this future. Think about it while you are in charge of this mission and we’ll talk more when you are back.”