Red lights bathed the gently swaying leaves and palm branches that encircled us. The alarms roared again, dull as they passed through the flora’s dense organic mass.
“Shit,” Liberty spat, and took off, leaving me alone. “Sorry, David.”
“Go. Do what you have to.” I fought to stand upright, my hands and knees shaking as if afflicted by crashing blood sugar. I had to remind myself to keep it together. Keep it together. This too shall pass.
“She can’t save you,” the voice told me. “You know it’s true, son. You know it’s true. She’s only human. God will decide.”
I wiped my eyes clean, stumbling out through the fog of our red alert in search of Griffin. She was sitting in the hall beside Officer 1, clasping her knees and rocking gently. Strands of her blonde pixie hair were swept to the side, revealing blotchy pink and white skin.
“Come on,” I said, hardly audible over the howls of alarms. “We have work to do.” I couldn’t let a thing like a panic attack stop me, mine or hers.
She glared up at me, shocked. “During an alert? I don’t know, Goddard, I can’t do this. I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much. I just want to go home. I should have never signed up.”
“Alert? What alert?” I looked up and down the hall with arms wide, hands outstretched. “It’s just bright red lights and loud noises. We have work to do.” I told her this for as much my benefit as hers. I wasn’t the only one who wanted to go home, and we were well on our way. “Cap’ll want to fire back immediately.” I extended a hand and she firmly took hold, rising to her feet.
The alarms ceased and Griffin gasped. “How do you know?” I could see the fear of another alert looming just behind her. She was composed at present, but brittle as chalk.
I raised a finger and pointed to the wall. It immediately shifted from white to yellow as if on cue, following my careful mental instructions.
“Firing solution eminent,” the intercom blared. “Crew, standby.”
“We’ll be firing more than once,” I sighed. “This might be a long day.” My right hand was still trembling, the gasket ring a blur of motion. I stuffed it in my pocket and made a ball of the jumpsuit’s fabric. A warm breath touched the back of my neck. I pivoted my head to see. Nothing. It was nothing.
We walked past Med 1 where Harold Devins and Jack Lake, his second, were tying up in the hall. Griffin and I eased around their fist fight, narrowly escaping an errant punch or three. Harold’s head was thrown against the bulkhead with a bang, but it only made him madder. He threw himself at Lake with a flurry of fists, one landing in the shoulder, another in the breast. Griffin drew up her arms in defense.
Doc shot out the Med 1 hatch screaming, “That’s enough! No fighting on board.”
Lake decided to shift his attention and took a swing at Doc. Doc dipped out of the way and raised his hands like a boxer. He blocked the punch and countered with a solid right hook. It caught Lake square on the jaw, sending him stumbling back into the bulkhead, grasping for purchase. He slid onto the floor in a daze, then coughed blood into his hand. His teeth must have clamped down when Doc’s knuckles landed. Devins edged away, his anger having evaporated, revealing nothing more than desperate fear and shame.
Dour Face approached from the other side, stun stick in hand sweeping side to side. “Don’t make me use it, hot heads. I’m citing both of you for this infraction. Good work, Doc.”
He nodded and popped his knuckles. “Two time Arsia heavyweight Champ. Undefeated.”
Dour Face grinned. “No shit.” And he swung his stun stick, catching Lake, who was attempting to stand and fight, on the arm.
Griffin was fixed on the spectacle. “I’ve never. It’s just. What’s wrong with everyone?”
“Eyes ahead,” I whispered, and picked up the pace. “Their job, our job.”
“Right.” She followed reluctantly.
We entered weapons storage and control and went straight to work. This was the single most cramped section of the ship, and that was saying a lot. It took a host of equipment to fire our two hundred megawatt rail gun, and what little space we did have, was home to two closet size cells we used as our brig.
“Bridge, you there?” I muttered into my wrist.
“Copy, Goddard,” XO replied.
“Standby for firing clearance.”
“Standing by.”
“Griffin, checklist.”
She nodded and went to a brightly lit control panel. “Engaging counter rotation, locking armature. Releasing fire control to the bridge.” A loud click echoed throughout the section as a series of motors engaged, vibrations felt throughout the ship’s structure.
I inspected the status display of our two-stage nuclear batteries. They glowed from their positions in the halo surrounding our Coke can’s chest. Most of the icons were solid, their green lines reaching to the top. The ones already spent were displayed in red. I checked for any abnormalities, batteries that showed low wattage or improper amperage. This had to be done each and every time to ensure a damaged capacitor wouldn’t reduce us to dust when we fired.
We were a go.
“Directing battery’s power into the main rail conduit,” I said, choosing the next one in line. “Redirected. Running polarity test.”
Griffin called back, “Rail one, negative. Rail two, positive. Test cycle complete. Good to go.”
“Bridge, you’re safe to begin firing sequence.”
“Copy, Goddard. Lieutenant Fryatt, load projectile onto magnetic field.”
Griffin leaned her forehead against the bulkhead, worry growing in her expression. “César and I did this so many times.” She paused, uneasy chuckles escaping her chest. “He said it made him feel like a mad scientist. Something about this stuffy section transported him into a fantasy of Nikola Tesla’s lab. I told him I sure hoped it wasn’t like that place. We’d have electricity arcing dangerously all around the room. He’d laugh at me. I’d laugh at him. He’d make some off color comment about how I’d looked good exercising, or how he wanted to plug his RJ-90 cable in my female slot. Told me it had better bandwidth than the other cables aboard. What an idiot.”
She sighed. “We even had costumes picked out for the Valles Rojo Summer Festival…” Her face fell to her feet.
Liberty’s voice boomed over the intercom. “Final proximity sweep clear. Firing in five, four, three…” The section began to crackle as the battery’s energy was released in an intense burst. The lights of the ship dimmed for an instant, then went back to full.
“No outage,” Griffin said in surprise.
“No outage.”
The yellow lights turned off and came back on.
“Goddard,” my watch crackled. “Standby for repeat fire.”
“Affirmative.”
Griffin slumped onto the floor, head in her hands. “He was a genuine guy.”
I put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “He was.” The moment to apologize had come. “Jane.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I—”
My damned watch screamed, “Goddard, we have a firing solution.”
I let out an exasperated breath, threw a few switches and glanced over the battery display. “All set, sir,” I reported back a bit more tersely than I had intended.
The rails powered up and fired, plunging us into darkness. The whines of generators and cooling fans spun down, making our military-grade sensory deprivation experience complete. Outage.
A gentle whisper came from the dark. I shook my head and focused on the task at hand.