I sat back to take notes and enjoy the show. I very likely had no part in this conversation, but like hell I wasn’t going to eavesdrop on the whole thing. Pinging Isabelle to inform her that the show was about to start, I focused in on the sensor array and watched my captain work her magic.
“Miss Collins, we need to have a chat.” The woman walked in, holding a handheld terminal that showed the bullet points of the conversation to come, tilted carefully to keep it out of Collins’ sight.
Collins’ heart rate rose ever so slightly at the words, but she didn’t betray much of that anxiety in her body language. “Do we now? I suppose you did warn me.” She gave a performative sigh, her shoulders sagging slightly. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”
“I assure you, nothing painful, Miss Collins. We’re not savages.” Aisling tried to take on a lighthearted tone, but immediately went back to stoic seriousness when she next spoke. “Now, you attest that your name is Morgan Collins, former captain of the starship Demitrius?”
“Yeah. That’s me.” Collins looked down the length of her bed with a somber expression, voice deflated.
Aisling nodded and made the motion of typing on her tablet for a brief moment. “Alright, then let’s begin.” She cleared her throat and made her first move, “First of all, let’s hear the story of what happened from your perspective. Walk me through what happened that day that led to the unfortunate catastrophe.”
She was really hammering home the idea that Collins’ ship was gone. I had to wonder if that was her intention. Collins droned out, “We were minding our own business, when we were attacked by pirates. I have no idea how they found us out in wild space. Maybe they took our heading from our last port on Mars and calculated an intercept?”
And that was exactly why I had made a habit of obfuscating my heading by ensuring I was out of all communications network ranges before approaching my intended heading. I had quickly become wary of that exact scenario after Foundation had caught up to us after Luna.
“Minding your own business... what exactly is your business, Miss Collins?” Aisling asked, tapping notes about her thoughts on the response as she spoke.
“Can we cut the ‘Miss Collins’ bullshit? Just call me Morgan,” she muttered with a frustrated grunt. “Demitrius was a logistics ship. Transport of raw goods, occasionally paying passengers. I’d show you my business license, but I seem to have left it on my derelict.” She threw her arms up in muted frustration.
“That’s okay, we’ll check with records as soon as the warrant goes through.” Aisling nodded slowly at her tablet, refusing to make eye contact with Collins.
“Knew it,” she grumbled. “Not with any corporation my ass.”
Aisling finally looked up, quirking an eyebrow at the other captain. “Can you elaborate on that?”
“You know what I’m talking about. That message your stuttering tech bitch sent me when you ‘rescued’ me. She told me you weren’t corpos. Didn’t buy it for a second.”
I resented being called a stuttering tech bitch, but I had no recourse at the moment.
Aisling somehow maintained a level expression despite a new hesitation. I’d forgotten to inform her of the exact wording of my message to Collins half a year ago. I’d honestly forgotten it until that moment. Eventually, she did affect a small smile, speaking with a bit of proud levity, “I see. Well, technically speaking, she is an independent contractor.” I groaned quietly as I thought of my false life as a contractor.
“Whatever,” Collins sighed. “Not like that changes my situation any. Get on with your interrogation, officer.”
“Interesting that your first assumption is that I’m an arresting authority,” Aisling looked smugly down at her tablet, resuming her typing, but this time with a rather targeted question typed out in the file, ‘She has a better memory than you do. What else did you broadcast to her?’
I fumbled with the dataspace for a moment, not having expected to have any kind of active role in this scene. I searched my communications history. I knew I had to have saved it somewhere. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to request it from Isabelle, that would be a LOT of work.
Aisling moved on with her questioning while she awaited my response, “Alright, so you were assaulted by pirates. In the distant vicinity of Jupiter. Let’s say you’re telling the truth. What can you tell us about these pirates?”
Collins’ answer was immediate. “Scout class vessel, armed with something heavy. They caught us off guard, and it was over in a few minutes. I didn’t exactly have time to analyze the combat data. Ask my core, since your IT wizard seems to have made buddies with it.” She rolled her eyes.
“Ah, yes, you mean the crew manifest it provided.” Aisling nodded. “You are aware that if it weren’t so forthcoming, we would have declared the ship abandoned salvage and left without you, yes?”
“Maybe you should’ve,” Collins whispered darkly.
“That is another curious question. How exactly does the captain of a ship end up inside of the core module to save herself in a surprise assault?” Aisling asked, still taking notes on where she wanted to take this conversation.
Collins gave a sigh, followed by a long silence. “Got lucky, I guess.” She sat up slightly, adjusting herself in her bed. “I liked to do the maintenance on our core sometimes. When Freeman, our med tech, had time off. I’m kinda proud of the... the modifications I made to the core, so I liked taking care of it now and then, anyway. The attack happened when I was just getting started. Hadn’t even taken it out of the module yet. I realized we were fucked, so I... I didn’t even have time to think about it. I just hit the switch and jumped in when I saw the atmospherics starting to fail.”
Aisling nodded “Right, your customizations... that was quite a curious core that fell out of the module with you when we broke it open.”
“I can explain the markings,” she spoke quickly. “I bought it on Mars, back before the... the civil war-”
“The armed uprising, yes.” Aisling muttered. Joel, who had been stoically standing at Aisling’s heel through the entire conversation so far, furrowed his brow slightly at that. Aisling’s persona might have hit a bit too close to home for him.
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Collins gave a frustrated grunt, through clenched teeth, “Yeah, that.” She took a moment to collect herself, then continued, “I was in a bind, low on funds since we’d already purchased cargo before our last core failed, and I might have picked it up from a less than reputable dealer. I admit that. But when I say my mods, I mean on the software side. Nothing illegal, I swear.”
“We’ll audit the collected data to be sure,” Aisling noted. “So, you were saved by a momentary instinctual reaction? That’s all?”
“Guess so.” Collins laid back again, sighing quietly. “Thought I was dead until things started moving around a while later. Might have been a few days or weeks. I didn’t have a clock, and trapped in there, it might as well be... nowhere at all. Surreal as hell experience. Figured I’d just end up starving in there. Felt like I was, after a while. She wasn’t kidding about feeling like I was dying.”
I managed to locate the chat log I’d saved of my very first conversation with Isabelle, and forwarded the entire thing to Aisling’s terminal, opening it for her alongside her notes, where she quickly perused the statement I’d meant to be a comforting reassurance that she would be okay.
Aisling frowned at it, tapping on her screen a few times before she moved it aside and continued talking, a gloomy pall coming over her words as she continued, “You seem to have quite a remarkable memory of what our technician sent you on that day. Exactly what was her message, again?”
Collins seemed slightly taken aback by the question, her face going pale. “I... I don’t... It was just a message informing me that I was being rescued, and what to expect to happen in the coming week. That’s all.”
Aisling nodded slowly at her, but I could tell she was glaring a hole through the other captain. Something had set her off. But she retreated back to her calm ‘interrogation officer’ persona after a moment, and changed the subject. “Can you tell me, what exactly were you transporting when your ship befell this unfortunate and frankly improbable attack?”
Collins seemed relieved at the sudden change of subject. Was she hiding something? “Raw materials. Metal ore. Mostly iron, if I remember right,” she lied brazenly. We’d retrieved most of that cargo, and it was all exotic metals; the kind of things that sold well on the black market. We’d gotten quite an initial cash flow from it while we were still establishing ourselves on Io. Perhaps she’d assumed that whoever assaulted her ship in the first place would have looted everything of value.
“I see. Are you insured? Your ship, your crew, your cargo? For your sake, I hope you can make a claim,” Aisling started sorting through other files, searching for something while she waited for Collins’ reply.
The former captain looked sullenly away from Aisling. “Insurance is expensive, and times are tough. I couldn’t afford to pay my crew if I’d taken that gamble.”
Aisling nodded, “I see... and what, might I ask, would be your plan, should you be released from custody?”
Collins paused, like she hadn’t even considered that question yet. Her expression seemed to soften slightly as she considered it. “I... Is that in the cards? I mean, I’m not exactly in great shape here. Where are we, anyway?”
“Io,” Aisling answered brusqely, her eyes still navigating file systems.
“Io?” Collins answered with a huff, “Well, fuck me, may as well be on Pluto. Don’t suppose you can drop me off on Europa or something?”
“We aren’t a taxi service, Miss Collins, and your freedom is still a hypothetical. Is there someone waiting for you on Europa?”
Collins grumbled slightly at being called by her last name again, but didn’t say anything. “Don’t see how that’s any of your business. I need to call my lawyer.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Aisling said coldly. Joel gave an amused chuckle that almost seemed genuine.
“Oh... Oh, I’m in that kind of situation, am I?” Collins’ voice faltered, a frown quickly stretching down her face.
Aisling finally found what she was looking for, and pulled up the crew manifest that I’d acquired from Isabelle in our first exchange. Hiding away her notes, she ignored Collins’ grumbling and turned the terminal toward her, tilting it down for her to see. “This is a bit of a formality, but please confirm the identities of the other members of the crew on this list as correct.”
“Not sure.” Collins muttered, barely looking at the screen. “Memory’s feeling a little fuzzy.”
Aisling kept the tablet held out in front of the other captain, an unimpressed look on her face as she stared Collins down. She gave an impatient sigh. “Miss Collins, it has been... painfully obvious that you haven’t been wholly honest with me, today. It is important that you understand that how this goes for you depends on how cooperative you are in this investigation going forward. If I’m satisfied with your answers, then certain actions you may or may not have taken can be overlooked for the time being, and perhaps you’ll happen to stumble onto the access details for an unmanaged slush fund account that may have appropriate renumeration for your misplaced property while you are being discharged from medical hold.”
Collins furrowed her brow, an accusing glare pointed at Aisling. But she didn’t even spend a moment in consideration. “You’re after bigger fish than me,” she growled.
“There are a number of... unsavory elements on Mars that have somehow eluded capture for some time.” She started into some of the rhetoric I recognized from recent media broadcasts, “For the safety of the Martian citizenry, we must bring these instigators to justice. And we have reason to believe that you may have information-”
“I don’t,” Collins declared sharply. “And even if I did, I’m no rat. I don’t care if you say you’ve got my ship and my crew, safe and sound, waiting for me through on the other side of an airlock. I wouldn’t give you shit. Go fuck yourself.”
Aisling’s expression turned dour. “Miss Collins, you must be aware that there are consequences for such an incriminating statement, yes? That can still be stricken from the record, but if you insist on further radical diatribe, I cannot help what happens next.”
Collins sat straight up proudly in her bed despite her weakness, a furious expression on her face. “You think you can scare me with this shit? I’ve been on the wrong end of the class struggle enough times for one life, already. You can lock me up forever, you can kill me, you can make an example of me, I don’t care. I’d rather die than make trampling over and murdering good people one tiny bit easier for you corpo assholes. Mars deserves to establish an independent democratic movement and put some order to this fucking hellhole of a solar system, and you can shove your offers to betray that up your tight, frigid ass!” She crossed her arms and slumped back in the bed, her energy spent, and continued to glare daggers at Aisling.
Joel couldn’t hide his smile. He was proud to hear those words, and looked about ready to enthusiastically agree with the woman. Aisling, however, had to turn around, letting out a disappointed sigh as she made herself look busy on her tablet. She didn’t drop the act, and had a conflicted look on her face, puzzling something I couldn’t read out.
I figured this was where she dropped the act. Collins was not a threat to us, and could make a useful ally if she was as rabid a fanatic for such a good cause as she seemed to be. But instead, Aisling mumbled, “That is disappointing to hear. Perhaps I should give you a few moments to reconsider-”
With less energy than before, Collins called out, “Leave me in this room with a bullet and a gun. I’ll consider myself all over this wall myself, you bitch.”
Joel looked conflicted, somewhat confused by Aisling’s decision, but followed along behind her as she left the room, sliding the door shut before releasing a more genuine, tense sigh and walking a short way down the hall before resting against the wall.
“You nailed the act, she’s a good one. So what was that for? Weren’t we gonna tell her the truth?” Joel asked, irritation slowly rising in his voice.
Aisling nodded slowly, stowing her terminal back into her jacket as she stood pondering something, a look of deep concentration on her face. A moment later, she declared, “The situation just became a lot more delicate, right in the middle of that. I couldn’t risk dropping the act without some consideration first.”
Joel looked confused now, his tone turning to skepticism. “How so?”
Aisling hesitated for just a moment, then nodded to herself again before answering, “Because she knows what Meryll is.”
Discord
The Nothing Child. It's an urban fantasy about three reluctant college students and a shapeshifting alien monster thrust into a campaign to defeat an all-consuming horror from another world that they accidentally unleashed upon their city.
