Former Captain and Admiral Halan died shortly after his conversation with
Captain Leithe. Funny enough, the last person on the vessel still alive who
could remember living in Ansutah also died that very same day. There were
probably many others back on Gatewood, but this felt like a somber
milestone. It was overshadowed by Halan, and everyone’s reaction to losing
him. There’s a saying on Earth, don’t speak ill of the dead. This sentiment
has held strong here. Even some of his most vehement opponents now have
nothing but nice things to say about him. That should be a good thing, but
his loyalists, like Kaiora, can’t help but feel bitter about it. He died in
hock, unfitting for a man of his greatness, and those who truly loved him
will never forgive these fair-weather friends for that. At least his
persistent detractors hold to their own convictions. At least Kaiora can
respect them for that. What she can’t respect is what has happened recently.
It was all planned out, but now it’s all ruined.
Future Captain is not just something people call who they think the next
captain will be. It is an official title that comes with responsibility and
even a tiny bit of power, mostly involving new access to certain sensitive
data. Trudie Haynes was already in this position, and had been there for two
years when the council pulled the rug out from under the both of them. They
have apparently decided that they need to drain the swamp. Halan picked
Kaiora, then committed a crime. While Kaiora has given them no reason to not
trust her judgment over the course of the next two and a half decades, they
think it’s best that they handle this one. It’s not just about the captain’s
seat either. Almost everyone on the crew will be dismissed at the end of
this year, whether their shifts should be over at that time, or not. They
agreed to a few exceptions, such as Hock Watcher Giordano, and thankfully,
Chief Medical Officer Holmes. The council and civilian government justify
these decisions by the new policies they devised a few years ago, which
resulted in Calixte Salmon being appointed the first—and maybe only
ever—Superintendent. The fact that he turned out to be a treasonous murderer
is clearly lost on them.
Kaiora has been investigating this development as a possible coup, but has
seen no evidence of that so far. She’s beginning to think that this is
simply annoying bureaucracy at work. Besides, her medical condition is
declining. She is finding it harder and harder to put as much effort into
the job as she used to. First Lieutenant Lars Callaghan has been handling
many of her normal duties, and he has really stepped up. Kaiora can’t help
but feel proud of him. She knew there was a reason Halan and Olindse picked
him to be on the team in the first place. His original position was never
backfilled after Corinna disappeared, but the new crew will reportedly
include a Second L-T. They say they like that it’s a thing now, and
honestly, it’s one of the few things they and Kaiora can agree on. While
Halan initially instituted it to control Ovan Teleres’ power, having an
extra hand has served the ship nicely since then.
It’s May 19, 2317. The Captain is sitting in her office, pretending to do
work, even though there’s no one else in the room to perform for. She’s just
bored, which is something that happens from time to time. There are days
when nothing goes wrong on the ship, and there aren’t any fires to put out.
Mostly she feels like a lame duck. The transition is still months away, but
it already feels over. She releases an exaggerated version of her signature
sigh, but before it’s over, First Lieutenant Corinna Seelen appears out of
nowhere, and takes a step towards her. “Cori! You’re alive.”
“No shit. Let’s go.” Corinna takes her captain by the arm, and transports
them to Council Chambers. The council is a loosely defined collective of
crewmembers and government officials who make sure everyone is doing their
jobs correctly. They have been slowly accumulating power, even though their
original mandate was to appoint the first crew members of the mission, and
then do pretty much nothing else. Is this them? Are they the traitors?
Corinna is sure staring at them with contempt. But no, Kaiora ruled them out
years ago. They were the obvious suspects—especially since most of the
council disappeared alongside Corinna, and had to be replaced—but they’re
all clean. Kaiora’s secret investigative team has been watching them
particularly closely, and has found nothing.
De facto leader of the council before the incident in the time lab, Esmee
Newport is already in the room, having apparently transitioned back from
wherever they were separate from Corinna. She clears her throat
authoritatively. “Esteemed members of the council, after years of
transdimensional investigation, we have finally figured out who has been
sabotaging Extremus in multiple facets of the mission.” She steps aside, and
presents the empty space behind her.
Another member of the older council teleports in, holding none other than
Ovan Teleres by the chains.
Esmee continues, “Ovan Teleres, you have been charged with high treason.
What say you in this matter?”
Ovan is sneering jovially. “You’re all under my spell.”
Yitro comes out of a shadow, presumably having teleported there as well at
some point. “Not anymore.” He’s holding a...machete? What the hell is he
doing with a machete? Ovan’s head rolls off in one quick swing. Oh, that’s
why.
The current de facto leader of the council stands up angrily. “Explain!”
“Hock prisoner, Mr. Teleres,” Yitro begins, “has been infecting people’s
minds with an illegal breed of nanites, which manipulate the victim’s
thoughts, movements, and emotions. He controls—controlled these little
buggers from inside his cell, and he was doing it for years. That’s why Rita
seemed to go crazy. That’s why the Superintendent switched sides. They were
all infected. They were all innocent.”
“So, wait. There are no clones?” one of the other council members asks.
“There had to have been,” Kaiora argues. “I saw the other me in the timelab.
She tried to kill Greenley Atkinson.”
Corinna places a hand on Kaiora’s shoulder. “That was not a clone either.
That was the real Kaiora Leithe. We think that she was the first victim.”
“No, but I’m...” Kaiora starts to say, but then she remembers. “I’m the
clone. The original went back in time.”
Corinna closes her eyes solemnly, and nods slightly. “That’s right.”
“I did this. I caused all of this.”
“No,” Esmee contradicts. “Victim is not just a word we’re throwing around.
It’s what your alternate self was. It’s what all of them were. Nanites are
invisible to the naked eye, and undetectable when dormant. Anyone could have
been infected. We still don’t know how many were, in fact. Every single
civilian and crewmember will now have to get tested, even though the master
is now dead.” She grimaces at Ovan’s head on the floor.
“Forgive me for the brutal violence,” Yitro says. “It was the safest way to
sever his connection to all of his victims at once. Like she said, we don’t
know who’s been infected. I couldn’t risk the possibility that one of you
might have stopped me.”
The council leader sits back down calmly, and composes herself. “Until your
story can be verified, you will all be placed in hock, including the
captain.”
Yitro laughs. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”
“You have no authority here, Captain Moralez of the Admiral Perran Thatch
Detachment Timeship. You shouldn’t even be on Extremus Proper right now.”
That’s when Omega and Valencia appear behind the council’s backs. “Neither
should we,” Omega declares. One by one, they tap on the council member’s
heads as if playing Duck, Duck, Goose. As they do, the lot of them
disappear, probably to hock themselves.
Kaiora slowly backs away. “Now I can’t trust anyone.”
“Captain, you can trust me,” Corinna insists.
Desperate, Kaiora snatches Ovan’s head up from the floor. “We’ll see about
that.” She teleports away, but not all the way to her secret section,
worried that someone might be able to track her there. As quietly as
possible, she runs the rest of the way, and slips inside, checking to make
sure no one is watching her. “Daley!” she cries out once she’s fully inside
the section.
Nurse Daley McKee jumps into the hallway in front of her, ready to help.
She hands him Ovan’s head. “You’ve been looking for a subject to test. Here
ya go. Tell me what you find.” She passes him, and heads for the office she
keeps down here, and doesn’t use much.
“Where’s the rest of him?” Daley asks.
“The rest was too heavy to carry!” she shouts back.
“So you hacked it apart!”
“Uhuh!” she lies.
“What am I looking for!”
“I’m not tellin’! You should find something, and if you don’t...either
you’re lying, or the person who served him up on a silver platter is! Just
do what you’ve been waiting for years to do!”
About thirty minutes later, hacker Elodie Seabrooke knocks on Kaiora’s open
door. “Captain?”
“Have they found anything?”
“I don’t know. I came to let you know that I watched the footage. I know how you got
that head. And I also want you to know that I’m not going to tell anybody. I
understand why you don’t want to contaminate the results with
preconceptions.”
“Thank you. Is that all?”
“Also, I’ve been doing a little math.”
“Your specialty.”
“There’s a reason the transdimensional investigators showed up on this day.”
“And that would be?”
“If they went back in time in the reverse dimension as far as they were
planning to, they were gone for as long as it took them to get there.”
“Huh?”
“When the machine turned on, you were expecting the other investigators to
use it to travel back about six years.”
“Okay...”
“That was about six years ago.”
“So...once they exited the dimension, they had to wait twelve years to
return?”
“I think they went to another dimension first; another observation dimension,
that is, which parallels ours in direction. And yes, I think they were stuck
there for twice as long, for whatever reason. It’s the most logical
explanation for why they showed up today, and not anytime earlier.”
“That sounds stupid,” Kaiora spits. “Who designed that?”
“God?” Elodie proposes.
She nods. “Anything else?”
“If this is true, then...”
“Then it’s not over. If Kumara and Errol eventually caught up with the
rest in the past, they’ll have to be there for even longer, and won’t return
until...”
“Around November 9 of this year. But that’s assuming they all entered the
second observation dimension at the same time. They might have gone back
further in the timeline, or they came out sooner. Or they died...”
“How would any of this explain how my original self went back, and somehow
got out of the reverse time dimension without having to go to this second
observation dimension?”
“That I can’t explain,” Elodie answers. “Maybe she escaped completely.”
They hear someone else coming down the hallway. Elodie steps inside to let
Corinna in the room. “How did you get in here?” Kaiora demands to know.”
“We were in an observation dimension,” she confirms, apropos of the
conversation. “It was my job to watch over you. It was a sick assignment,
really, since I couldn’t do anything to help.”
“Is it true, you were stuck in there for eighteen years?”
“Don’t I look it?” Corinna asks.
Indeed. She looks like she’s in her fifties, when she should be in her
forties. “Yes,” Kaiora answers truthfully.
“It was rough,” Corinna agreed, “but we survived, and we learned so much.”
“You being here does not change the fact that I still can’t trust anyone,”
Kaiora acknowledges. “In fact, it probably makes it worse.”
“I’m going to the lab now, so they can test me too.”
“What would they look for?”
“Anomalies. There shouldn’t be any, but...there might.”
“Assuming you are who you say you are, and you’re still on my side,” Kaiora
begins, “then you must know if I can trust them.”
“You can,” Corinna replies. “You did well. You picked a good team. The whole
ship has been compromised, including the Bridger Section, but excluding this
tiny little isolated area. I was in charge of watching over you, but Esmee
took responsibility for these people even while you weren’t here. She knew
that Dr. Malone was working for the Bridgers, and I think she only told me.”
“I see.”
“This is all gonna work out, Captain. You’ll see that too.”
“Thank you. You’re both dismissed.”
Once they’re gone, Captain Kaiora Leithe, Third of Ten goes down for a nap,
and she never stands up on her own again.
