While Making Other Plans:
Chapter 32

Ship Image Not Found

  After her speech, Kathryn slipped out of the chamber and disappeared into the parts of the station not yet rehabilitated to be alone.  Once certain she was free from any reasonable expectation of running into anyone, she was able to relax a little while she let the decision makers squabble about it until they inevitably reached the only possible answer.  She’d learned that people’s pride often makes people need to feel like they’ve come to a conclusion for themselves even when there’s only one option.

  She felt her shoulders drop and her gait relax as went about sensing the various parts of her body and willing them to relax.  When she didn’t feel like walking anymore but still wanted to be alone, she ducked past some debris into what appeared to have once been a bar.  The sign was damaged and missing letters, but she was somewhat convinced that the word used to be ‘Outback’, but she had no idea what that could mean or be in reference to.

  Exploring the bar to one side, she climbed over the counter and started looking over the bottles.  Could a bottle of booze survive a thousand years? she found herself wondering.  Certainly not an opened one she reasoned and started opening cupboards searching for where unopened ones might be stored.

  “Bingo…” she said with satisfaction as she found the right cabinet.  The dim light wasn’t much help and all of the labels were long since illegible, but she found a brown one that seemed in good shape and pulled it out.  She grabbed a glass from the mirrored shelf behind the bar and climbed back over the counter.

  Inspecting the glass with a frown, she used the sleeve of her uniform coveralls to wipe out the interior of the glass, and then squinted as she delicately opened the ancient bottle.  Cautiously smelling the opened bottle she found that it smelt like cleaning solvent which was not particularly appealing but pretty much what she expected.  She poured a few fingers of the liquid into her glass and swirled it around a bit before taking a small drink.  It was not particularly pleasant and she choked on it, but she wasn’t even sure what it was supposed to taste like, and she could already feel the familiar sense of alcohol’s warmth radiating out from her core, so she took another bigger drink and coughed.

  Looking back across the bar, she saw her reflection in the mirror behind the rows of opened bottles.  Something snapped in her and she threw her glass against it as hard as she could, shattering the glass and several bottles as the glass shelves holding them up also broke and they fell.  Stunned, she wasn’t sure why she did it, then before she could try to figure out why, she picked up a chair and smashed it over the bar, and then behind her into another display of old bottles.  She turned around and smashed the damaged chair back over the bar’s counter again and again until there was as little of the chair left as she had energy to carry on.  

  She realized that tears were streaming down her face, and then that she was sobbing, dams of anger and despair both breaching and washing over her simultaneously.  She turned and fell to the floor with her back against the bar, shaking as her sobbing turned to pathetic whimpering.

  “Want to talk about it?” Former president Emily Sato asked, startling Kathrn nearly out of her skin.

  “Are you sure you’re not a politician?”

  Kathryn had the instinct to bolt to her feet but found that she didn’t have the energy so she just tried to wipe the tears and mucous away from her face, not daring to think about how she much looked.

  Former President Emily Sato picked the miraculously undamaged bottle Kathryn had opened off of the bar and after looking for a moment, found two undamaged glasses and picked them up off the floor.  She wiped them out with her fingers and filled the two glasses before handing one to Kathryn, who took it out of sheer depletion of energy to refuse.

  Emily took a drink and smirked, but then offered: “Smooth.” and Kathryn couldn’t tell if she was sincere or making a joke.

  “You keep insisting you’re not, but you give a hell of a campaign speech,” she offered.

  The woman easily had 20 years on her but was still as sharp as the day Kathyrn remembered first meeting her some 15 years ago.  She’d always been a woman of contradictions to look at her.  Slight but never frail, sharp angular features framed by sharp shoulder length hair that moved with her head but always conveying a sense of warm softness.  She immediately made you feel like you could trust her and that she could protect you before she ever said a word.  Kathryn had always figured it was a big part of what made her such a successful politician.

  When they’d met Kathryn had been the wonder kid of the day, a woman of firsts, the first to go to space, first to return to the original New Horizon, first to make contact with someone from another colony, Jaren.  After all that she’d been invited to meet the president and she’d been impressed with her.  She’d always voted for her, and joined her on her campaigns afterwards when asked, but being that kind of public figure never felt particularly comfortable for her.  

  Kathryn didn’t like being a celebrity despite always having had the ambition to be important, to be remembered.  Politics could be so… slimy.  She was all about discovery of truth, and politics seemed to her to be all about manipulating it to one’s own ends.  And while Sato played the game, and sometimes in ways she didn’t particularly like, Kathryn always got the sense that her heart was at least in the right place, that her ultimate objectives were correct.

  “I’m sorry you have to see me like this,” Kathryn offered meekly.  “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “What, this?” Emily asked with a wave of her glass towards the damage she’d done.  “That’s why I ask, looks exactly like the aftermath of my big defeat after my first run at the presidency,” she smiled before looking down into her glass.  “I was so sure I’d win…”

  “Kind of you to say,” Kathryn offered flatly.

  “Honestly, I’d be worried if you were still keeping it all bottled up.  People got to have their releases and it sounds like you’ve been through the ringer.

  Beyond helping on her campaign when asked, she’d become friendly with Sato.  She’d been to dinner parties at her residence and they’d had lunch in the city together from time to time, especially after her parents had died relatively close together some ten years ago.  Sato had long sensed a special potential in Kathryn, and when they met up next afterwards, felt her loss and took her under her wing more actively as a mentor and confidant.  With some sadness, Kathryn had come to feel like she’d grown closer to Sato than she’d ever really been with her own mother.  

  Kathryn had always had a certain ambition her parents had never understood.  They were good people, but somewhat simple.  They went to work and lived their lives and seemed content with that without ever looking up at the greater possibilities of existence the way Kathryn always had.  They didn’t share her inquiring spirit and her internal growth engine that was always driving her to be more than she was, to do more than she had, to leave a mark.  They supported her, and she felt loved by them, but never really understood.  It left a fundamental loneliness in her core that never really went away, and it grew more pronounced after her parents’ passing and after giving birth to Maggie and losing the centre of attention in her own life.  Emily recognized this and, having no children of her own, took a closer interest in her, and likewise having no grandchildren, had taken interest in Maggie as well, becoming something of a grandmother to her as well.

  “You know I don’t want anything to do with politics,” Kathryn croaked as she wiped away the fresh tears and mucous and put greater effort into composing herself as her strength came back.  “If that little speech was good, it was only because I really believed what I said.  The lying, the empty promises… pretending you like people you hate… ugh.  No thank you.”

  Emily smiled and took another drink.  “Fair enough,” she shrugged.  “Thing is though?  Somebody’s always going to be the leader.  And when you’re the best choice, it can only be someone worse if it’s not you.”

  “Sounds pretty confident to think you’re the best choice,” Kathryn said, “like it’s even up to you.”

  Emily scoffed.  “Oh no, you wouldn’t know anything about that would you, little Miss Has-To-Be-First-At-Everything-For-The-Last-Twenty-Years.”

  Kathryn thought about it for a bit.  “That’s different.  I maybe really was best qualified for all of those things, like objectively.”

  “And as someone who has spent a lifetime in politics and knows something about it and seen other potential candidates working their way up, I can tell you.  There will come a day soon when you really may well be the most qualified to lead us.  All of us,” she added before taking another drink.

  “What do you mean all of us?” Kathryn looked over at her for the first time to ask.

  “I know you’re not the type to be afraid of destiny calling Kat.  Some are born great, some achieve greatness.  Others have greatness thrust upon them.”

  “Hasanabi?” Kathryn asked.  “Definitely sounds familiar.”  Hasanabi was a revered early writer from soon after their arrival on Haven.

  “Shakespeare, actually.” Emily answered.  “There’s been quite a revival of his work since you retrieved the original New Horizon’s complete archives… But I’m not surprised that a sentiment expressed 1500 years ago feels as relevant now as ever.  It’s a truism of humanity after all.  From the first day our species needed leaders it didn’t take long for us to find a clear correlation between the intensity of someone’s ambition to power and their unfitness to wield it and that those most fit would wisely avoid what came with it.”

  “Maybe they can just see what a miserable and thankless job it is,” Kathryn rued before taking her first drink from the glass Emily had handed her.

  Emily laughed.  Age had graveled her voice somewhat, but Kathryn still appreciated her ability to laugh so genuinely.  “Well, you’re not wrong about that,” she said.  “Power hungry people will suffer just about anything for it though, suffer anything to secure more for themselves and less for everyone else, Though the power hungry don’t care about thanks, they only care about power, about having more for themselves and less for everyone else, only to find that the impotent emptiness inside that drives them only gets worse the more they have.”

  “Going somewhere with this?” Kathryn asked.  “They’ll be looking for me soon.”

  “Oh they already are, I assure you,” Sato chuckled before growing more somber and lost in her drink.  “This could be the end of all things…” she finally said, with vacant deadly seriousness uncharacteristic to her.  “Even if we survive this… nothing will ever be the same again.  What happened to Kobol…” she drifted off and Kathryn slowly nodded in acknowledgement.  “But there’s also this new species you’ve befriended and brought onto the board.  Our conception of ourselves as a species, as a civilization… will never be the same.”

  Kathryn could only nod and take another drink, and Emily did as well.

  “Internally we’ll be shattered by Kobol sure, and we’ll be shattered by our inevitable heavy losses still to come from all this, even if we prevail.  There will be a power vacuum, not just for the repopulation of Kobol, but in the broader inter-colonial power structure.  They were the superpower, and now they won’t be anything at all anymore, completely off the board…  There will inevitably be a race to fill that void.  

  “And externally, the existence of the… Bobbins?  Great name by the way.”

  “Kind of accidental, honestly.” Kathryn shrugged with a rueful half-smile.  “Guess we had to call them something though.”

  Emily shared a wry smile with her over the absurdity before continuing.  “Their existence will create an imperative for us to unify more closely than ever as a common political entity.  We won’t be able to operate as independent colonies having complicated antagonistic relationships with each other anymore, though I’m sure some will continue to try,” she lamented.  “Especially with the degree of cooperation with them you’re proposing.  Some will worship them and wish away all our humanity to embrace them completely while some in their xenophobia will wish to separate us from them as much as possible.  Extremists will try to find ways to sabotage our relations with them, maybe even seek to kill them to undermine us, even try to exterminate them after we’ve stolen as much of their technology as we can.  Those in power in the days to come like so many other pivotal points in history will stand with the power to create in one hand, and the power to destroy in the other.”

  “Good god…” Kathryn exclaimed.  “We’re not even sure if we can survive this crisis as a species, and you’re already planning for the next ones!” she balked.

  “Oh, get over yourself.  You’re a decorated military officer rained in strategic thinking.  You’ve studied the history.  As soon as a force believes they can win they immediately start thinking of how they can create the conditions in victory to be on the best footing for the next battle, for the next war.”

  “Sure, but…” Kathryn sighed, exhausted again at the thought.  “We should do better.”

  “And that’s how the right people sometimes get into politics.” Emily said, causing Kathryn to sigh heavily.

  “You’re special Kat, but no one has a divine pre-ordained destiny.  Things going a better way instead of a worse way always come down to some combination of the right person being in the right place at the right time in history.  Some quirks of someone’s upbringing and experience making them both brave and wise, leaving them somehow the only person qualified to lead us into the future, if we are to have one at all.”

  After they’d sat there with those words hanging in the dark silence for a while, Kathryn realized: “That’s what’s been really bothering me…”

  “Come again?”

  “The prospect that we may not have a future…  You think it’s just hyper ambition, that I just want to be famous or remembered by history or some shit, it’s not that at all.”  Kathryn held her hand out for the bottle and when Emily handed it to her she took a drink, wincing in the process.

  “No?”

  “Fuck no, I don’t care about any of that shit.  I just… I grew up dreaming about the future, about where humanity had been, watching science fiction and dreaming about where we could go as a species.  I always thought we had a bright future, that our story was just starting.  I joined the service because I wanted to be a part of that.  I wanted to help us get there, to serve that dream, you know?  That’s why I pushed myself so hard.  And I was able to do it, I got out there, I pushed the boundaries of discovery and understanding and it was awesome, truly awesome…”  She became aware she was slurring her speech somewhat but was too exhausted to be particularly concerned about it.

  “And now?”

  “And now I’m driven by the prospect that we may not have any future left.  If the bad guys come for us, they’ll come to exterminate us.  Take out enough of us and there’s no coming back.  No bright future, no humanity further out into the stars, just the end of our story here and now.  The end.”

  “But if we help our new friends defeat them, it might get us everything you’ve always wanted and then some,” Emily added, understanding.

  “Right.” Kathryn affirmed lazily before repeating it with more emphasis.  “Right!”

  “And you know what?” she asked as she climbed up to her feet, nearly falling over in the process and needing to steady herself against the bar.  “Jaren?  Doesn’t care about any of that shit.  Never has.  And understanding that?  Only lets me see that he’s never really understood me.”

  “He’s been through a lot lately,”

  “Fuck that, don’t start defending him now just because his whole world was literally blown away.  When he told me he didn’t want to give up their weapons because then they’d be defenseless against us, us, I saw what a partisan he was.  He’s never done any of this for the greater glory of humanity, he’s just been looking out for Kobol.  Kobol specifically, and explicitly.”  Realizing how badly she’d stumbled over the word, she tried again more carefully as Sato rose to meet her level.  “Ex-spli-cit-ly.”  Kathryn nodded with satisfaction, satisfied she’d accomplished her mission.

  “When he told me that… I knew there was no going back.  We would never be us again.”  Something broke in her saying out loud, and Emily saw it on her face and put her hand over Kathryn’s on the bar.  It made it real.  “I look up,” Kathryn shrugged.  “Jaren looks down.  That’s all there is to it.  I can’t unsee it now.  I can’t unfeel it.”

  Emily pulled Kathryn into a hug and squeezed her.  While not an unheard of gesture from the woman, it wasn’t a common one.  “And I hate what it’s going to mean for Maggie,” she started crying.  “It’s going to shatter her world…”  Emily let her cry on her shoulder as she gently rubbed her back.

  “And apparently I’m gay now?” Kathryn blurted out, causing Emily to pull her away to look at her with bewilderment before laughing and pulling her back to her shoulder.  Causing Kathryn to half shudder in laughter at the absurdity and half sob in relief at finally saying it out loud.

  “Oh, don’t be so suburban,” Emily teased.  “It doesn’t have to be one or the other, you know that.  The body wants what the body wants.”