092: GUILT

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“Excellent,” Captain Sands says. “If we’re lucky, we might be able to avoid any further unpleasant business.”

I watch him leave the room. “I think I hate that guy,” I remark.

Celi raises an eyebrow. “I thought you two were friends?”

“What gave you that impression?”

“Um. Everything? Actually, on that note, I… need to talk to you about something. Something to do with Kinoshita’s notes.”

“You found something new?”

“No. Just…” Celi bites kes lip. “I’m sure that you’ve noticed that the captain is making some… rash and unpopular decisions. Now, things will probably calm down once this murder business is dealt with, but I can’t help thinking… what if they don’t?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing! Almost definitely nothing. But I think we need to be… at least as prepared as the original crews were. That’s reasonable, right? To be prepared?”

“Where’s this going?”

Celi sighs. “You’re our psychologist now, right? After… Renn.”

“Sure. Nominally.”

“Well, I’m your replacement as the assistant psychologist. Now, I’m not sure if you recall, but according to Kinoshita’s notes, when she was the psychologist and was pretending that Reimann was becoming paranoid and unfit for command, she and her assistant worked together to authorise some kind of psychology override to limit his powers in the system. Specifically, they stopped him from being able to wake colonists.”

I nod. “They were worried he was going to wake up his smuggled loved one, and when he couldn’t do that he started his war against the computer instead. Are you saying we should be using this override to shut Captain Sands out of things?”

“No. I’m saying that we need to keep in mind that it exists. Sometimes, after tumultuous situations like this, people calm down… sometimes they spiral. We can’t afford a captain who’s going to keep getting worse. If he can’t settle the ship down after finding this murderer, we might need to keep an eye on him, and be ready to stop him from doing further damage.”

I nod again. I’ve been worrying about the same thing. Captain Sands was generally quite composed when he was in control, but he clearly had a paranoid streak that got worse when he lost control of the situation, and he was stubborn as rootrot. If he couldn’t repair the damage he’d done to his relationship with Adin and the others, if he couldn’t build up everyone’s faith in him again and no longer had the crisis of solving a murder to keep everyone focused… what would he do? Would he calm down, or get worse?

I like to think that in that situation, he’d behave reasonably. He’s a reasonable person. But Celi’s right; we need to be prepared for the worst.

“Do you know how to do the override thing?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Great. Show me.”

The override is easy. Way too easy. It’s probably not great to put such power in the hands of two psychologists, but then in a properly trained crew, I guess that’s not supposed to be a problem. But then, it had been a problem with Reimann’s crew. So.

I head back to Habitation Ring 2, using the side of the ship we don’t travel through so often to minimise my chances of running into anybody, to update Lina on Captain Sands’ stupid plan, then get out of there as quickly as possible. Somehow, I don’t think it’s a good idea for word to get back to Captain Sands right now that I’m ‘conspiring’ with the suspects, although part of me wonders if this is somehow part of his plan. I mean, it just doesn’t make sense that he still trusts me at all, right? He had to know that there’s no way I’d go along with his ‘bully the suspects into incriminating Lina whether through truth or deception’ plan; he must know I’m doing this. He has to be antagonising me on purpose too, but… to what end?

I warn her anyway, and wonder if I should take a nap. It’s not even late, but it’s been such an exhausting day. I know I can’t, though. If the Friend is giving Captain Sands enough to incriminate Lina right now, he might push to execute her immediately, and I need to be there to stop him. Through reason, preferably. By force, if need be – if I can’t convince Captain Sands, I only need to convince Assistant Psychologist Celi Tate, a much simpler prospect.

I really hope it doesn’t come to that. Captain Sands isn’t one to take that kind of thing lying down, and if we start declaring him unfit for command and forcibly stripping him of computer access, it can only end in mutiny. I really, really don’t want mutiny.

I head to Network and Engineering Ring 2 (the computer ring nobody’s been murdered in), grab a random computer and flip through random games and books for awhile. I can’t focus, of course. The Friend is telling the captain presumably critical information just ten rings away and I’m not there because it wanted to speak with him alone. Will he tell me the information when they’re finished? Probably not, since I told him I won’t be involved in his stupid interrogation plan. Will it be enough to condemn Lina? I don’t know. At least there should be some kind of a trial; he wouldn’t bother trying to get rock solid information if he didn’t intend to hold one –

I must’ve misclicked something on the computer, because it suddenly starts blaring very loud, very horrible music. I nearly fall out of my chair in surprise. I recognise the music – it’s TechDream nonsense. Shia used to be really into it, so I’ve heard more of it than I ever wanted to when we shared transport. I even recognise the song – The Doctor Is Out by the Heartbreak Screamers. Awful band, worse song.

I look for a way to shut it off, only to realise that it’s not coming from my computer. It seems to just be blasting into the ring, like an alarm. I head to the neighbouring ring. It’s playing there, too.

Sam approaches, hands over their hears. “What the fuck is that racket?” they ask.

“The Heartbreak Screamers.”

“The what?”

“The Heartbreak Screamers!” I yell. “They’re a terrible band!”

“I can hear that! Who’s playing it?”

“How should I know?” I head back to the Network and Engineering Ring and pull up the AI.

Turn off the music.

– Please specify what music you wish to be shut off, Dr Greaves. –

There’s only one fucking song playing. I hate AIs.

Turn off The Doctor Is Out.

– You do not have sufficient permissions to deactivate this alarm. –

Alarm? What the fuck?

What alarm?

– The Doctor Is Out. –

That’s really not a helpful answer. What’s it an alarm for?

– The Doctor Is Out is Alarm X114375-2. It is triggered by receipt of Signal ##E#2575##p9. –

What does that mean??

– I do not have any further information. –

You don’t know what the alarm’s for? Didn’t you set it off? How can you not know?

– This is a manually coded alarm. I was not told the meaning of the signal when it was encoded. –

Oh, great, more Reimann bullshit probably.

Who coded the alarm, and when?

– Alarm X114375-2 was manually encoded by Senior Computer Technician Tal Smithson on Day 12815. –

Okay. Time to ask Tal. I check kes location – Habitation Ring 2, of course, where ke’s still locked up with the other suspects – and notice that our Public Universal Friend is out of bed and apparently also on its way to the Habitation Ring. If it’s walking around on its own, that’s certainly a fantastic sign. And I should go and see Captain Sands. Not necessarily to find out what it said, just because he should know that Tal set the alarm too; then we can go and ask what it’s about. He’s the captain, so it makes sure to get him. That’s just efficiency. If he happens to want to tell me what the Friend said, that’s also great.

Anyway, a quick look tells me that Captain Sands is still in the medbay in Recreation and Medical Ring 2, which is between us and Tal anyway. Sam and I head over.

We’re not the only people with the same idea. We run into Celi and Sunset on the journey, heading for the medbay. Heli is with them, which gives me pause – isn’t she meant to be confined to Recreation and Medical Ring 1? – but it makes sense, with an unknown alarm. If it’s some ship problem, nobody wants to have to go back to rescue a trapped prisoner; might as well bring her and keep an eye on her just in case.

The music shuts off just as we enter the medbay.

“There we go,” Captain Sands says, looking up from the medbay terminal. “Sorry about that, everyone. I must have hit the wrong key or something.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” I say. “But the AI says it’s an alarm.”

“An alarm?” Celi asks. “For what? Are we all going to die horribly?”

I shrug. “No idea. Apparently Tal set it over a year ago. I don’t know what it does.”

“Knowing Tal,” Sunset says, “it could be ‘one of the flaws in the AI that I can’t fix is about to kill us all’, or it could be ‘someone just won the ten thousandth game of solitaire on this ship, congratulations!’”

“Exactly. We should probably find out which.”

“I’ll go and ask kem,” Captain Sands says, heading for the door.

“I’ll come with you,” I say.

“No, Aspen, it’s alright.”

Yeah. I should’ve expected that. I said no to his interrogation scheme so I guess I lose all Captain Backup Privileges. Whatever. I turn to leave.

“I’ll come with you, then,” Celi says, and there’s a strange edge to kes voice.

“No need,” Captain Sands says. “I’ll just nip down; you guys should be getting ready to respond to an emergency if there is one.”

“We’ll all know faster if there’s an emergency if we all go,” Celi insists.

“Good point,” Heli says. “We should all go down.”

“You are banned from contact with the convict crew, Heli, for what should be very obvious reasons,” Captain Sands snaps.

“Everyone except Heli, then,” Celi says.

Captain Sands looks flustered. “It’s fine. I’ll report back – ”

Sunset says something sharp in a language I don’t know. It sounds like a swear. I glance over; she’s at the medbay computer terminal, staring at the screen, shaking. She starts typing rapidly.

I rush over to see what she’s doing.

Unlock all airlocks around Habitation Ring 2.

– You do not have sufficient clearance for that. –

Unlock the fucking airlocks!

– You do not have sufficient clearance for that. –

Restore the atmosphere in Habitation Ring 2 to normal.

– You do not have sufficient clearance for that. –

“The atmosphere?” I ask. “What’s wrong with the atmosphere?” I look at Captain Sands. “What the fuck did you do?!”

“What needed to be done,” he says firmly.

I have the second highest rank on the ship. I take Sunset’s place.

This is the Logistics Officer. Restore the atmosphere in Habitation Ring 2 to normal.

– You do not have sufficient clearance for that. –

“Fix it,” I tell Captain Sands.

“No.”

“What did you even do? Fucking with the atmosphere?”

“He did what?” Sam asks, rushing over to the terminal. They shoulder past me and start typing rapidly. “Oh, shit. He’s depressurising the ring.”

“You’re killing our crewmates?!”

“I’m ridding this crew of murderers!”

“One murderer! And you’re killing – ”

“It was a group effort. I have the Public Universal Friend’s confession; they all worked together. What did you expect from such people?”

I’m half-listening to the conversation, staring at the screen. This doesn’t make any sense. Captain Sands can be paranoid and impulsive and stubborn, but slaughtering half the crew without trial like this just… just doesn’t fit into anything he’s done so far. What’s going on?

I guess I can ask him, once we’ve saved everyone. Decompressing CR1 to eject it took about half an hour; are we on a similar time scale? I know a human can die long, long before a ring is fully depressurised. So in terms of our timeline, that means…?

Doesn’t matter. We’re on a time limit and solving this sooner is better. Celi and I exchange a glance. I take over from Sunset and start typing.

“Captain Sands,” Celi says, “as the psychologists aboard the Courageous, Aspen and I agree that you are mentally unfit for command. We’re removing you from your position as we speak. The computer will designate your replacement, and they will use their captain’s rank to undo this.”

“That’s not going to work,” Captain Sands grins. A manic grin, like a cornered animal.

“Of course it will,” I snap.

“Really? How much luck have captains had undoing Reimann’s work?”

I stop typing. “You password protected the command?”

“Of course I did! This system is ridiculous. It’s unreliable. With someone like Tal on the ship, able to change roles willy-nilly, did you think I’d rely on things like authority levels? I password protect most computer changes. I suppose that won’t work any more, if you’re so set on this mutiny, since there’ll be people of higher rank than me to countermand what I do, but this command was sent by the captain, so if you’re really willing to upend the entire order of this ship to undo it, you’re wasting your time.”

“That’s okay,” I say. “There’s other ways around it.”

“There are?” Celi asks.

“Yep.” I grab the nearest heavy object, a metal arm brace left out from when Celi was cementing Sunset’s broken hand, and step forward. “I’m going to keep breaking his bones until he tells us what the password is.”

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