While Making Other Plans:
Chapter 23
As her crew got to work stripping themselves of their precious anti-matter, Kathryn and Jaren went to their quarters to gather up the things they would need to take with them. This turned out to be most of their belongings since they had originally only planned to be on the ship for a relatively short amount of time. After packing up their own things, their hearts both sank as they both went on to Maggie’s suite. Seeing the dark and empty room was at first too much for Kathryn, and it took her a moment to compose herself enough to start pushing herself around the room and help Jaren pack up her things. They didn’t speak much as they carried went, both lost in their own thoughts.
It was an act of faith. Both knew all too well how little chance there was that she was not only dead, but dissected and preserved in an assortment of specimen jars, or whatever other horrible thing these aliens might do as maliciously inclined as they seemed. Kathryn couldn’t be sure why Jaren was keeping relatively quiet, but if he was like her he might be concerned that if they got to talking, they’d just wind up sniping at each other in impotent frustration or just crying. When they’d packed up all of Maggie’s things they could find, Jaren finally took hold of Kathryn and brought her into a full and forceful hug.
Before long she began to sob as they slowly spun in place. She’d teared up over losing Maggie a few times already, but she had yet to fully release and let herself grieve more fully. She’d been with other men in her life, and the rare cry spells she’d had over her life she’d always felt compelled to keep private. It felt like a kind of weakness to so expose to others, even those she was closest to. It had only happened a handful of times since she’d been with Jaren, but they’d been together long enough that he had inevitably seen the best and the worst of her by now. There was no way she could betray any additional weakness to him which he hadn’t already seen and had found she could trust him not to judge her for or use against her. Whatever problems they might be facing now, she still trusted him completely with her emotional security. He was the only man she’d ever become that kind of comfortable with. Felix was a not too distant second, but there was an inevitable ceiling on intimacy with someone you’d never been intimate with.
When she’d regained enough composure to notice, she realized that Jaren had been sobbing just as deeply and seemingly with an equal disregard for how he might look. He’d grown as comfortable with her as she had with him. They had lost their daughter, and with how chaotic things had been, this was the first time they’d allowed themselves to fully process that reality. They pulled away from each other at the same time as though it had been coordinated, and tenderly wiped the tears from each other’s eyes.
“We’ll get her back,” Jaren assured her.
“Damn right we will.”
☼ ☼ ☼
After having themselves as good a night’s sleep as was possible, which given the circumstances was better than it had any right to be thanks to some chemical assistance provided by the ship’s chief medical officer, it was time to disembark and head over to their new Bobbin ship. While they slept every last atom of anti-matter was moved into transfer pods and handed over to the Bobbins, who made short work of weaponizing the material. By the time Kathryn and Jaren woke up, showered, and had some breakfast (which blessedly reminded them to pack some human ration packs after seeing earlier what they had been offered to eat by the Bobbins), their new ship was staffed, armed, and ready to depart.
It approached New Horizon just as the one before had. Kathryn, Jaren, Margaret, Patricia, and Ralph, all waited by the airlock with their packed equipment and gear. Felix had come down to see them off, and as he watched the ship approach through the docking port windows, he asked: “You absolutely sure you don’t want me to come along with you?” He sounded like a kid begging to be allowed to play with the new toys they’d found.
“Love you too Felix,” Kathryn teased, trying to keep the moment light. “But you’re needed here more right now.”
Felix sighed too dramatically to not be mistaken for feigned. “Yeah, I know…” he replied wistfully as he watched the alien ship dock. After securing itself against the New Horizon II’s docking port, the wall of the alien ship dematerialized to reveal an empty corridor. It seemed the open door was their only formality to their invitation to board.
“Come on Ralph, make yourself useful,” Margaret said as she started slinging things around his weightless body loading up the robot with everyone’s bags and equipment, guiding him to put his arms out so she could attach more things to him.
“That might be too much Molly,” Jaren cautioned with a wince as the simulant overloaded the robot, “some of that is equipment is very sensitive.”
“Oh, he’ll be fine…” she insisted with a smirk. When it seemed like she couldn’t attach anymore and he’d taken on a more spherical shape with all the baggage attached to him, she couldn’t resist loading the last small item onto him before standing back to admire her work. “Alright boy, go on git,” she said with a grin as she smacked the sheet metal where his ass would be if he had one. The robot shuddered for a moment at the impact, putting a hand out against the bulkhead to stop the subtle spin she’d imparted on him. Once steadied, he carefully started moving himself through the threshold to the other ship one hand hold at a time, frequently pausing to let all the objects attached to him come to rest again before continuing. “Good boy,” she offered as she looked up at the others with a wide grin before following him in.
They watched as he crossed the threshold into the Bobbin ship which heretofore unbeknownst to them had some sort of artificial gravity, and several items fell off of Ralph as he fell to the ground, though thankfully at least to his feet. Margaret laughed and started loading him up again, directing him to hold his arms up so she could pile things up in them.
Felix shook his head but when he turned to Kathryn she could see his amusement before he grew more serious. “Good luck,” he offered before reaching for her and pulling her into a tight hug for what felt like a long time but she was grateful for it. “I look forward to hearing all about it when you get back home with Maggie.” He concluded with a sharp nod before turning to leave, seemingly wanting to done with the goodbyes to mask the tears welling up in his eyes.
“Well Jaren,” Kathryn held an arm out towards the airlock in invitation with an encouraging smile, “after you.”
☼ ☼ ☼
Bill greeted them on the other side of the airlock and first showed them to their quarters which were not far away. They’d seen enough of Bill now that Kathryn was growing more hopeful that she could distinguish him from other Bobbins as they saw and passed the odd other alien as they made their way through the ship. The corridors themselves were unremarkable— perfectly flat matte black surfaces on the walls and floor, while the ceiling was all one continuous light emitting surface. The ceiling lighting was bright enough but felt too dull for Kathryn’s comfort. When they arrived at their quarters, instead of finding a doorway, much like the airlock they only found a door shaped section of the corridor wall which simply particalized away when they stopped in front of it. Kathryn wondered how many similarly unmarked rooms they had passed along the way.
The door was too short for them. It was obviously Bobbin sized, and after Bill looked up at them for a moment and then back at the door, it enlarged to a size more appropriate for them. Bill led them in, and once inside informed them through a colourless mirror ball that their robot could inform them how to operate the suite. He told them they were already underway towards the star, which they found this difficult to believe with no apparent sense of acceleration other than the artificial gravity, which was blessedly much closer to normal for humans than Bobbins. He assured them that they were in fact accelerating towards the star and that once they were all situated, they should join him in the command room. After all he reminded them, it wouldn’t be long until they arrived at the star and their mission would begin. It was hard for Kathryn to process that the trip which would normally have taken them several days would this time take only a few hours.
Once left alone, Margaret asked Ralph what Bill had meant by ‘operate’ the suite, and he showed them. While the room at first glance seemed quite barren and uninteresting, the shape could be easily manipulated into whatever configuration they wished. He showed them how they could pull a slab out of the wall to make a bed or raise a chair from the ground to sit in. He showed them how they could even make the entire outside wall of the room transparent to light, turning it into a window. He cautioned them with a concerningly matter of fact tone that they should be careful not to make the wall disappear altogether though to avoid the certain death of sudden complete depressurization. He explained the too subtle for her comfort difference between the specific hand gestures for transparent versus vanish, and once she was clear enough she commanded the wall to fully solid again as the invisibility of the wall had become too unnerving the more she understood how sleight the distinction between invisible and nonexistent were. He then directed them how to draw up a computer terminal and showed them how the ship’s onboard computer had been loaded with human language so they could converse with it in English as easily as they could with Bill or himself.
Margaret and Patricia stood by the wall and Kathryn instinctively held her breath as Margaret conjured a respectable sized window into the wall. “Wait,” Patricia said, “that… that can’t be—” Off in the distance there was a bright disc the size of a small coin held at arm’s length. She turned to Ralph in disbelief. “That can’t be the planet we just left!?”
Ralph came up beside him and looked out the window for a moment. “I assure you it is, Commander.”
Jaren shook his head with wide eyes which suggested his logging just one more impossible thing he’d seen in the last few days. “Can we interface our scrolls to the ship’s computer?” he asked. After Ralph showed him how, Jaren thanked him and started scrolled through the list of hand gesture commands and attempted to draw something up from the ground, but instead disappeared the wall connecting them to an adjacent suite, revealing a showering Bobbin which Kathryn didn’t need the colour of a mirror ball detect how unimpressed it was with the sudden intrusion. Patricia let out a small yelp of surprise at the sight as Jaren frantically looked back down at the list of commands and successfully restored the wall.
“I could have killed us,” he said, looking pale with fright.
“What are you trying to do?” she asked, coming up beside him to review the commands with him.
“I’m just trying to pull up a desk or table or something to put our stuff on so we can unpack,” he uttered in something between defeat and exasperation.
Kathryn made an attempt of her own after reviewing the commands, but instead raised the whole floor up so abruptly she was feared for their lives that they would be crushed against the ceiling. Patricia screamed and Margaret cursed in angry surprise as Ralph quickly made the correct gesture to restore the floor to where it should be, and seemed as anxious at their attempts as his simulated face was able to make him. After consulting the instruction list together more carefully, they agreed on the correct command and this time checked with Ralph to confirm. He nodded approvingly, and this time when Jaren made the correct gesture an appropriate desk raised up out of the ground against the wall, and after they’d both sighed in relief, Kathryn began hoisting their gear up onto it.
“Oh,” Jaren remarked with curious surprise as he reviewed another screen on his scroll.
“What is it?” Kathryn asked as she started unpacking.
“The scroll’s instruments read a constant one point two gees, but—” he looked back out the window for a moment before looking back at the scroll, seeming to find it difficult to believe. “With the relative size of that planet, calculations suggest that we’re pulling away from it at nearly a thousand meters per second squared. Look,” he pointed out the window towards the planet. “It’s already just a point of light!”
“Is this typical?” Kathryn asked Ralph with a look of concern.
“Yes,” he answered. “This is the standard maximum safe displacement velocity for a vessel of this size.”
Margaret pulled a cigar out of her jacket pocket and lit it with a wide grin as Patricia, in clear irritation tried to wave the smoke away before it quickly started being drawn directly up into the ceiling. “Well, I guess you meat bags just set some kind of speed record for yourselves then, hunh?”