Reunion: Chapter 19

  Kathryn sat alone in the room.  She was leaning forward with her elbows rested on her knees and her chin on her clasped hands, watching the countdown on the wall tick down the last seconds.

  The clear round end of the sarcophagus slid away, and a small cloud of mist rolled out of the chamber as the warm moist air inside mixed with the cooler, drier air of the rest of the ship.  As the tray Felix’s body rested on projected out of the chamber, Kathryn stood and walked over to it, looking down on her friend’s face and watched him open his eyes and blink several times as consciousness slowly arose in him.

  She looked on him fondly and with sympathy as he looked up at her and then lifted himself up on his hands into a sitting position.  He didn’t say anything to her, instead he looked at his hands and forearms, slowly rotating them in front of his eyes in disbelief.

  “Did that… did it even really happen?” he asked.  He seemed still a touch groggy from the sedatives.

  “Oh yes,” Kathryn answered softly.  “It really happened.”

  “It’s hard to believe,” he said in wonderment.  “I, I honestly can’t tell the difference.  It’s good as new…”

  “I’m sorry Felix,” she said, backing off as he swung his body around and hung his legs off the side of the body tray, and after a moment of gathering his strength, he carefully bore his weight on his feet.  He faltered for a moment but found his strength and recovered before Kathryn could finish coming to his aid and she backed off again.  He was completely naked and for a moment she admired his lean, muscular physique before her brain’s familiarity safeguards kicked in and he was just Felix again.  Between being in the service together, being best friends, and the absolute absence of sexual tension between them, they’d both seen each other naked any number of times before.

  “About what?” he asked as he reached for the fresh clothes which had been laid out for him.   She might not have noticed or cared herself, but anyone else could walk in at any moment, and basic modesty drew him to the clothing.

  “What happened to you.  It’s my fault.  I was reckless.  I’m sorry.”

  “Nonsense,” he dismissed with a wrinkled nose.

  “Don’t dismiss it,” she tersely countered.  “I was tactically reckless and foolish, and it nearly cost you your life.”

  “Maybe, but no one else thought so.  If you were reckless and foolish then we are all guilty of the same,” he said as he pulled his pants on.

  “But I’m in command,” she insisted.  She wasn’t seeking absolution from him, just insisting on a fact.

  “Of course,” he affirmed.  “Yes, you fucked up Kathryn, but only a little more than the rest of us did.  We won’t make the same mistake again, will we?”

  “No.”   Absolute certainty.

  “So what’s uh…” he pulled his shirt on over his head, temporarily muffling his ability to speak, “what’s the new plan?”

  “Overkill.”

  Felix raised an eyebrow at her.  Having finished dressing, he sat himself back on the body tray projecting out of the sarcophagus.

  “We’re going to pick up some of Molly’s scavengers to escort us before we try again.”

  “Definitely wise.  We knew of the intel resource; we should have done that in the first place.”

  “Right, then instead of just landing in the middle of the damn ruins, we’re going to take both shuttles down and make a base camp by the water as near as we can to the target site.”

  “Both shuttles?” he asked. “Is that wise?”

  “It will allow us to have a much larger landing party, and to split our resources more productively.”

  Felix nodded to the side with a raised eyebrow, indicating that he didn’t necessarily agree, but certainly understood the rationale.

  “I’m not going to allow what happened to you to happen to anyone else.  We’ll be armed, and we’ll have New Horizon in overwatch position.  We’ll do it right this time.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “You made full fledged Commander by the way,” she brightened at remembering she could tell him now.  “I put in for it while you were recovering, and it came through.”

  “Oh, well that’s something,” he acknowledged with a little laugh.  “Nice pay bump at least.”

  “Yeah…”   She winced, knowing he wasn’t going to like this part.  “… and you’re going to be our overwatch.”

  “What?”   There was real hurt in his voice

  “You’re not coming this time.”  She firmly insisted.

  “Oh, come on Kat!  Look, I’m fine now!  And you’re going to need engineers down there this time just as much as you did last time.”

  “Felix.   You are a tremendous engineer.  On Haven.”

  He frowned at her.  “That hurts.”

  “I’m sorry, you’re right.  I mean we’ll have to be doing excavating if we find what we’re looking for and you’d certainly be very helpful with that.  But you’re still not going.”

  “That’s not fair.”  His indignance was receding but was still there.

  “No, probably not,” she responded with a sigh as she stood up.  “But I’m in command, and that’s how it’s gonna to be.  You will stay here on the ship with Irvina, Xion, and Teresa.  You will telescope our position and monitor in infra-red, and you’ll keep watch from orbit to make sure that what happened to you doesn’t happen to anyone else.   Everyone else will be down on the surface.  A pilot and guard will stay at each shuttle, and the rest will be divided into two search teams.  I’m sorry Felix, but that’s how it’s going to be.”

  He was unhappy but shrugged it off before too long.  “Well, someone’s gotta do it…” he remarked.

  He was a decimeter taller than her, and she put her hand up onto his shoulder, then affectionately cradled the side of his face with her hand as she smiled at him.   “Thanks.”

   

  Kathryn left the medical bay and the door shut behind her.  She paused and wearily allowed her body to fall back against the door and rest the back of her head against it as she let out a long-exhausted sight.

  “Is he alright?” Jaren asked.

  Her eyes shot open.  She hadn’t even noticed him there.  He was sitting across the hall a few meters away, his chin resting on arms folded over his drawn-up knees.

  “Oh, Jaren.   Yeah, he…” she sighed again, “he seems fine.  He’s as surprised as anyone else at how magical that sarcophagus seems to be.  He even asked if the attack was a dream… you can’t tell he was attacked at all to look at his arms and leg.”

  “Yes, the technology is… remarkable.”  He was remarkably glum.  “I’m glad he’s alright.”

  They sat in silence facing each other as a slow but steady procession of other crew members arrived and entered the medical bay to greet Felix.  They didn’t seem to pay Kathryn and Jaren much attention.

  “It’s my fault too,” Jaren offered.  As a commander himself he could sense that she was burdened with her sense of responsibility for what happened.  “And you said yourself he’s good as new.”

  “Maybe we should wait,” she pondered.

  “Wait?”

  “We could report home what happened, have them assemble a more specialized team.  We don’t have to do this ourselves.”

  “Captain.” he offered in a doubting tone.

  “Yes?”

  “We are the specialized team.” he reminded her.

  She smiled despite herself.  She had to admit that she missed him.  She wanted to sit beside him and let the weight on her shoulders soften and share it with him.  But she wasn’t ready for that yet.  Her own wounds were still too fresh and wouldn’t heal as tidily as Felix’s.

  “We should have brought more weapons,” she lamented as a general point of observation.

  “In retrospect yes, that would have been helpful.  We have enough to manage now though.”

  Kathryn nodded.

  “Did you mean what you said before about this all being just the beginning?” Jaren asked.   “About restoring Orbital One, establishing a colony and research post here and all that?”

  “I did…” she answered somewhat distantly, lost in the thought.  “I love Haven, love our beautiful twin cities, our people and our culture… It’ll always be home, but something about this place, despite the danger, despite the challenges… still somehow feels like coming home.  Do you feel that too?”

  “Not really,” he answered distantly.  He wanted to tell her that being with her was the most at home he’d ever felt in his life and how much he longed to return to that place, but it was obvious how poorly such a sentiment would be received at present.  “I do like it here thought, there really is something about it…  I love Kobol and have a lot to miss there too, but still.  I am taken with this place, the mystery, the potential, the danger, the wildness…

  “Captain,” It stung Kathryn a bit to hear him refer to her so officially, “if there’s a mission to have a permanent presence here to research and rebuild, I want to be a part of it.  I’ve been looking for a new direction and I think I’ve found it.  I want to spend the rest of my career working on this project, on rebuilding Earth.  I think that once the announcement is made, there will be a considerable amount of people on Kobol who will feel the same way and want to do their part to help rebuild.   Many won’t care of course, and I’m sure most won’t care enough to want to actually help themselves, but some will.   I will.  Some will just be curious enough to want to come see Earth for themselves and with their own eyes though.  There really is something about it…  Something deep in our bones feels the connection to this place.”

  “Have you gotten word on when the announcement will be made?”

  He paused to look at her for a moment, it was almost accusatory.  “Soon,” he told her as a tone sounded from his pocket and he pulled his scroll out of it.  Pulling it apart and reading the message, he clarified further: “Very soon.”  He looked up at her with a grave expression.  “We should gather everyone together,” he softly suggested.

  Kathryn stood up and brushed off some of the dust which had accumulated on her pants.   She then crossed the hallway and offered her hand to Jaren to help him up.  He looked up at her quizzically for a moment before accepting her assistance and climbing to his feet.  It was a simple gesture but carried meaning in context.

  “Thank you,” he offered with the same soft contrition.

  “It hasn’t been for very long, but I shared in your lie,” she admitted with complementary softness.

  “Yeah…” Jaren affirmed with heaviness.

  “I love Felix like a brother…” she said, “but I couldn’t tell him.”

  Jaren nodded.

  “So I get it.   I get why you had to do what you did.   I hate it,” she insisted, “but I get it.   It’s hard to still condemn you for something I’ve now participated in myself.”

  Jaren wisely said nothing and just listened.

  “I still need to sort and separate out my feelings about what you and your people did.   It’s still all so muddled up for me, but I think we can be okay, in time, if you still want us to be.”  She let the first sliver of light through a narrow crack of vulnerability.  “I still need some time, but… I think at this point time is all it will take.”

  She wanted to hug him, but it still felt too soon for that.  Instead, she opted to place her hand on his chest, and let him put his own over hers before withdrawing it and walking away.

   

  All three crews were summoned to the conference room with the large wall screen and shortly thereafter were all in attendance.  No one knew exactly what the meeting was about but were told that the Koboli government was making an official statement which they all needed to hear.  Scrutinizing them, Kathryn thought she could tell that the Koboli crew knew what was coming, that it was about the virus and Earth, but she couldn’t know for sure.   For all she knew they could have all been given a heads up by Jaren or their authorities back home.  For now, they were all still sworn to secrecy, and she’d asked Jaren not to inform them that she and Elim knew.  

  Elim had undergone a similar journey to her.  Her commitment to truth left her wanting to tell everyone immediately, but after speaking to her, Kathryn was able to make Elim see her point of view.   Like herself, she only acceded with the understanding that the truth would be revealed by the Koboli themselves in short order.  Given their preferred outcomes and how differently their voluntary confession would play politically compared to being exposed, she understood the need to participate in the life if only for a short time.  Kathryn was grateful that Elim understood and that she didn’t have to order her because she wasn’t entirely sure it would have even worked.

  The wall screen flickered as the transmission began coming in, and a moment later the Kobol’s President Mortenson appeared on the large wall screen.

  “Greetings.  This transmission was recorded on Kobol and is being transmitted across Kobol and by rift to Roma, Haven, and Earth.”

  He paused before continuing.  He was a skilled politician and communicator, but Kathryn believed she could sense genuine apprehension in his pause, as though he were steeling himself for the consequences of his speech, still uncertain he should deliver it at all.   He was standing at a podium for his formal address; she’d already seen him give a speech with this setup shortly after her arrival on Kobol, but this time she noticed he was flanked on both sides by limply hanging flags representing Kobol and Roma to his right, Haven and Earth to his left.

  “In the beginning, God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Tempted by Satan, Eve ate of the tree, and thus burdened us all with an original sin for which we can never atone, but for which we must nevertheless perpetually strive against in an eternal Sisyphean struggle.

  “Our great Latter Day Saints religion was founded in the United States of America on Earth, a nation born of its own original twin sins of slavery and genocide.  For hundreds of years that great nation struggled to live up to the unrealized promise of its higher ideals.  It muddled through the darkness struggling to find a way to atone for those original sins, knowing all the while on some fundamental level that any sort of redemption was certainly out of reach if not outright impossible.

  “We on Kobol are aware that those of Roma and Haven have been suspicious of us, suspicious of our generosity and good will.  It is my heavy duty to inform you today, that there is indeed a reason for this, and sadly it is not merely our inherently generous nature.  We too have an original sin, a monstrosity in our past which we struggle to atone for every day, understanding all the while on a fundamental level that like Adam and Eve and the United States of America, such atonement can never be fully realized.

  “Much to their clear frustration, the people of Roma and Haven have been unable to understand our apparent lack of interest in what happened to Earth.  The answer is simple, really.  We had no need to wonder, because we already knew.  

  “Some eighteen years after our launch from Earth, a conspiracy was hatched in secret among a small group of people among the thousands aboard the Nephi.  They developed a sinister virus, constructed a rocket, and launched it back towards the Earth.  It took nearly eighty years for the rocket to return to Earth.  When it finally did, it struck the surface and infected the planet.   Within a week most of the human inhabitants of Earth were dead.  Over the next weeks and months, most of the humans elsewhere in the Solar System died as well.

  “This is obviously a horrific revelation, but I wish to stress that this was an incredibly small faction of fanatics aboard the Nephi.  After the launch, after it was too late to stop, the plot was uncovered, and a tribunal was convened to judge them, and all involved were sentenced to death and ejected to space.  We would have warned Earth if we could have of course, but in our zeal leaving our home world, wishing to avoid further cultural contamination, we carefully excluded any technological means of transmitting back and forth between us.  Our founders sought a complete and irreversible severance from modern Earth culture.

  “As president of Kobol, speaking personally for myself, as well as for all of today’s citizens of Kobol, and on behalf of all of our forebearers who carried this shame back to the original inhabitants of the Nephi, I offer the sincerest apologies possible from the deepest depths of our hearts.  It can never be enough, but you have it all. 

  “While today we all carry this stain of inherited guilt merely by virtue of being members of our society, I implore the people of Roma and Haven to remember that none of us are ourselves personally guilty for this, and I ask that you keep this in mind as you experience the urge to judge us by association.  Remember what we have done for you so far in apology, what the reunions we have facilitated, the technology we have freely shared, and the aid which we continue to offer however we can.

  “Be horrified.  Be angry.  Be spiteful.   But when these impulses finally begin to wane, when the fever of hatred breaks and the wave crests, we will still be here.  We will still be here with outstretched arms, with open hands and open hearts, still offering our help, warmth, and love. 

  “Thank you.  God bless us all.”

  Jaren swiveled around in his chair to face the Roman and Havenite crews.  His right elbow was on his chair’s elbow rest and his chin rested on his hand.  He wasn’t able to look them in the eyes for very long before he had to look down and away.

  Nobody spoke for what felt like an eternity.

  “You knew?” Teresa finally asked him.  Her expression betrayed a jumble of hurt, confusion, and anger.  Jaren slowly nodded. 

  Seemingly at a loss for any better response, she stood up and walked out of the room.  One by one the others stood and left the room without a word, including Elim.  On her way out, Ana banged her palm hard on the table in front of Jaren and pointed a shaking accusatory finger in his face with burning emerald eyes, but soon after left without saying a word.  When only the Koboli crew, Kathryn and Felix remained, he pulled his face out of his palms and looked at her.

  “Why now?” Felix asked.

  Jaren shrugged with his hands.  “There is no right time for something like this.”

  “No, I mean I get that they would wait to do this until they’d made contact with us so they could admit it to all of the colonies at once, but why this moment specifically, why not yesterday?  Why not tomorrow?  Why now?   There must be a reason…”

  “Because I found out,” Kathryn admitted to him.  “Well, Elim found out in researching the virus and he told me.”

  “When?”

  “I didn’t when you went into the sarcophagus Felix,” she answered.  “By the time you came out I’d agreed to keep it to myself only long enough to let them admit it themselves.”

  The scraping of his chair against the floor as he pushed it back and stood rang loudly through the otherwise silent room.  He put his fists to the table and leaned his weight onto them as though he was going to say something, but ultimately declined in favour of quietly leaving the room without another word.

  “That could have gone worse,” Kathryn offered the Koboli crew.

  Irvina shrugged.  “It could have gone better.”

  

 

  It took Kathryn some time to track down where the others had gone, but eventually she figured out that they’d taken one of the shuttles and gone over to Orbital One.   Considering the circumstances, she declined to be angry at their doing so without approval, and instead boarded the other pilot and flew over herself using the autopilot.  After docking in the central hub, she retraced their steps and finally found them in the wrecked storefront which used to be the Space Outback Bar & Casino, which made sense once she saw the backpack with Molly’s head attached to the top propped up in a chair.  Kathryn remembered her commenting earlier that her long late lover had once been the owner and operator.  

  It was dim in the bar.  Main power was still down and would continue to be until a crew resupplied and restarted the central fusion power cores.  Only some portable lights revealed her crewmates and the condition of the bar.   It seemed as though not a single piece of glass remained intact in the entire place, and the ground crunched under her boots as she walked in.  The grand piano in the corner was smashed and a lot of the false red leather booth seats were torn up.  She found herself wondering how it had all happened.  Did people go mad and just start looting and ransacking when the apocalyptic extent of the sickness became clear?  She wondered how she thought her own people might react to such a thing, how she herself might.

  The two crews were gathered around two round tables pushed together in the middle of the bar, and she discovered that she was wrong.  There apparently was at least one piece of glass remaining intact; they were passing around and communally drinking from one large liquor bottle.   They seemed at best ambivalent about her showing up there.  No one welcomed her, but nobody was willing to explicitly tell her she wasn’t welcome there either.  When she took off her jacket and draped it over the back of a chair and sat down, Felix eyed her for several lingering moments before finally handing her the bottle.

  She looked the bottle over in the dim light and realized that it was Havenite vodka.   One of her crew must have brought it along and been saving maybe saving it for a special occasion.  She took a drink from the bottle and grimaced violently as the toxin burned her mouth and esophagus.  She reflexively going to hand the bottle off but tilted her head to the side and thought better of it, taking another big gulp before handing it off to Keri as she put her other forearm to her mouth to contain the foul drink as it went down.

  She didn’t know how much they were talking before she arrived if at all, but nobody was saying anything now.  Everyone was just staring glumly into space, interrupted only by their turn to drink as it came.

  “Thoughts?” Kathryn finally dared to ask.

  “You should have told us,” Keri told her.

  “Maybe,” she admitted with a nod as she fiddled with an ancient coaster on the table.   She knew she did the right thing but had to entertain the sentiment as part of the process.  “Maybe.” she offered again, letting the word hang in the air for a while before continuing.  “Do you remember how they told us that they were monitoring us for years before they made contact?” she asked Keri, who nodded.  

  “They said they did so because we were so close to reaching New Horizons on our own.   They knew how important it was to us to be able to do that for ourselves, for our own esteem and sense of accomplishment.  I only granted them the same courtesy, and for less than a day.  I told them I only would on the condition that they made their announcement immediately.  I got them to reveal it themselves sooner than they wanted to.  I extended them the courtesy of being able to do it for themselves.   I felt I owed them that.”

  Several people shrugged, but nobody said anything explicitly approving of dismissive of what she had to say.  They seemed willing to accept her reasoning; they still just didn’t like it.

  “As for them keeping the secret as long as they did, as for judging them for doing it… I don’t know.  I’ve had a little more time to process it than the rest of you have.  If you’re anything like me, it’s hard to blame them personally for what a small faction of them did so long ago.  What really hurts now is the lying, the deception of keeping it from us since they made contact.  At the same time though… you’re all right of course,” she shrugged in admission.  “I became complicit in that too though, so it’s hard for me to judge them too harshly for that alone.”

  “It’s just so shocking to find out what they did,” Teresa said.

  Kathryn nodded.  “Yeah, it sure is…  But it wasn’t really them them, was it?”

  “It feels like it was…” Keri said.

  “I know.   Believe me I know…” Kathryn sighed.  “I certainly felt that way with Jaren at first.  If felt like such a personal betrayal.  But the fact is it wasn’t them… and I hope you all come around to that as I have.  His sin… their sin sorry, was only the lie.  They kept it from us as long as they did and yeah, they’re on the hook for that.  They pretended they didn’t know what happened to Earth, and that they just didn’t care to find out.  That, they certainly are culpable for.”

  Everyone around the table nodded bitterly.

  “It’s hard to forgive them for that, I know… but from what I understand they always intended to make that formal announcement at some point.  You can certainly argue that they waited too long; you can argue that they would have waited much longer if they hadn’t been found out, but I believe them that they meant to tell us at some point.  Like Jaren said though, there is no good time for this sort of thing.  Even if I had to force their hand, at least now they have copped to it.  Everyone knows.  And frankly, their guilt over the whole thing has rather turned out pretty well for us all in the end, hasn’t it?”

  Most of the group looked at her with a puzzled expression.  “We’re here,” she elaborated, conservatively waving her hand about.   “We wouldn’t be, without them.   We’ve all been reunited.  We wouldn’t have been, without them.  That means a lot to me, and I think it should to all of you as well.  In the final calculus that forgives a lot in my opinion.”

  “We can’t just…” Molly tried to utter through her scroll.

  “Can’t what Molly?” Kathryn asked.

  “They committed genocide,” she balked.  “That’s not something you just get over.”

  “The people who did that Molly, I don’t ever intend to forget or forgive.  I agree we need to keep an active hate for them.  We need to erect some kind of monument, or series of monuments to those who were lost in perpetual condemnation of the perpetrators.  We need a regular interplanetary day of memorial across all of our worlds.  We need all of that.  This can never be forgotten, and those who did it must never be forgiven.” 

  “Those who did it…” the head said.

  “That’s right.   But as for the… well, latter-day Latter-Day Saints, despite myself I keep putting myself in their position.   I keep imagining being confronted with people who are angry with something people ten generations removed from me did, while I’m doing everything I can to help them in the present, just sucking it up and taking their slings and arrows.”

  “They are no saints,” Ana asserted.

  Kathryn smirked.  “As much as they may like to refer to themselves as such, no they most certainly are not.  But they are humans.  Fallible, arrogant, individual humans, just like us.  They don’t deserve to be burdened with the sins of their ancestors any more than we do.  I’d remind all of my fellow Havenites why we’re technologically so far behind them today.   Bad blood over the Tycho incident on the way to Haven couldn’t be forgiven, and subsequent generations kept the hate alive.  We fought and killed each other after our arrival over inherited conflict.  I will do what I can to avoid something like that happening again.

  “So,” she said as she stood up, “here it is.  I will choose to forgive them whether I really want to or not.  I don’t condone their lying.  I don’t forgive what their ancestors did, but for what they have given us, as the people I have come to know today, I forgive them.   I understand their reasons and their shame, and I choose to forgive them.  What each of you carry in your own hearts is your own business, you can all feel however the hell you want to.  When we get home, you can react however you want, feel whatever you feel, and hate whoever you want to.  But right now we’re all on a mission you’ve signed up for, and I expect you all to do your duty until the job is done.

  “I’ll give you all the day, then we’re launching our second search expedition for a new body for Molly.  You have…” she checked her watch, “twenty-eight hours until we launch.  I expect you all to be well rested, to be professional, and to have your game faces on regardless of how you feel.”   She took the bottle from Ana and took one last heavy drink before handing the bottle back.  She stood and grabbed her jacket off the back of her chair and walked out of the ruined bar.  She wished she could have stayed, that she could have just drunk with them as one of the team.   But sometimes being the captain was lonely.  Sometimes it meant giving your crew the space to hate you a little together.

   

  Back on the New Horizon she found Jaren on the bridge.  He was reviewing surveillance video of the landing site, and she smiled at the sight of him still working given everything that was going on.  She knew it was a comfort for him to focus on his work; it was something they had in common.  He noticed her enter but didn’t say anything and instead opted to look back at the screens.  She appreciated that he was trying to respect her need for time and space.

  She came up behind him and put her hands on his shoulders.   Without looking up at her he moved his right hand up to his left shoulder and took her hand.  “How are they?” he asked.  

  “They’ll work it out,” she answered.  He nodded his understanding.

  “And how are you?” he asked.

  She swiveled his chair around to face her and pulled him up to his feet so she could hug him.   Their hug lingered as they slowly turned back and forth alone in the dim nighttime lighting of the bridge.  She pushed away from him, held him at arm’s length, and looked up into his eyes.  “Don’t ever lie to me again.”

  “Never,” he said with misty eyes.

  “I don’t care if you’re bound by your job.  We have to be past that point now if we’re going to be together.”  Jaren nodded his understanding.

  “Is there anything else you’re hiding?” she asked.  “Any other big dark secret you’re keeping that will make me hate you when I find out?”

  His smile brightened his eyes.  “No there’s nothing else.  And it was killing me having to keep that one from you.”

  “Good,” she said.  “I hope your suffering was absolutely horrific,” she teased with her first smile for him since she found out.

  He could only return an awkward smile in response, and she couldn’t resist kissing him.   It was good to finally come home again.