The High Five

Picking Teams

When Tayen opened a band to Jake, she thought she had reached the wrong patient. He was lying prone in bed with oxygen tubes feeding into his nostrils. A pressurized IV bag hung by the bedside like a deflated party balloon. He looked sweaty and pale. Not enough blood was reaching his skin. His tousled hair was limp and clinging to his scalp.

Her self-blame gave way to concern, but she knew Jake wouldn't have wanted her to worry. How to begin then? Perhaps she should take a page from Milo and say something insulting. "You look like shit. Let me guess, big CME party on the station last night?"

"Something like that." Jake managed a weak smile. "Only without the booze and lap dancers." He grunted in obvious pain as he stacked an extra pillow beneath his head. He used the bed's lever to raise himself up. "The operation's been postponed until after the CME," he said. "Something about not wanting to do open heart surgery in the dark without electronics."

"Where's your sense of adventure?" Tayen asked.

"I have you guys for that. Here's to living vicariously." He took a sip of water from a dangling tube. "What was this I heard about a daring spacewalk repair? I knew you had it in you."

Tayen swallowed. Fill in the awkwardness with more small talk? No. She couldn't bear to keep up the lie with Jake. After all he had done for her and the team, he deserved to know. "Are you alone?"

"Why, are you going to say something dirty?" When Tayen didn't respond, he turned solemn. "There's more to the story, isn't there? Want to tell me about it?"

Tayen stammered her way through the explanation, leaving nothing out. She told him about the grenade injury too. She was a coward. Now he knew. She realized she had been planning to tell him all along. Vivian had just been a warm-up. When she was done, she waited expectantly for Jake to reassure her with an uplifting anecdote just like he always did. He would cast things in a whole new light that would turn the situation on its head and restore her belief in herself. Maybe the spacewalk—the whole CME even—was just an elaborate test, the last stage of their training to see how the team would cope in a dire emergency without their captain. And if it was just a test, then it didn't really count. She would get a do-over. She would nail it on the next try.

But as she continued, Jake just sank deeper into his pillow, his breath whistling through the nose-tubes. Moisture collected in the corners of his eyes. In the reduced gravity of the station, they developed into quivering pools that lacked the critical mass to either fall or float free.

"I was afraid this would happen," he said at last. "I'm so sorry, Tay. I really am. I should have never let you come on the mission."

"Sorry for what?" Tayen said. "I'm the one who should be sorry. The team was counting on me, and I let them down. Vivian could have been killed, and it would have all been my fault."

"No, the fault is mine," Jake said. "It's the captain's responsibility to know his crew and what their limits are. I let you be put in a situation where you were certain to fail."

"How is that your fault? You trusted me to do the job I was chosen and trained for. You put your faith in me, and I—"

"Stop apologizing!" Jake jerked forward suddenly. Only the flex-restraints kept him from coming completely out of the bed. "I knew you weren't ready!"

Tayen was stunned. Jake hadn't exploded like that since the infamous "driving lesson" that left Bobby bed-bound for two weeks. "What are you saying?"

Jake grabbed his hair, but instead of drawing it out into spikes, he just clawed his fingers through it. Still, it seemed to calm him. "I don't blame you. It's the acute chronic freeze response—that's the fancy psychological term for it. It was all there in your profile. If there was ever any doubt, there was the last training run. It was so obvious then." He settled back into the pillow. The outburst had drained him. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I was supposed to be there, and I would have done the spacewalk myself. I knew I should have postponed the mission until after my recovery, but when we lost the docu-stream, I was afraid the whole project would get shitcanned. And I thought, it's just a trip to the moon and back, what could happen, right?"

"But we did pull it off," Tayen reminded him. "Vivian came through. She's really a lot tougher than she—"

"Just quit already," Jake said. There was a shadow-like impression of his head on the pillow where he had been sweating into it. "Stop trying to make what I did all right. I can't stand it when you look at me like that."

"Like what? I don't understand."

"Like I'm the second coming of Christ. I'm not a saint, Tay! I'm not your big brother or best buddy. I'm just some sick, spoiled kid who always knew his days were numbered so he had to juice them for everything they're worth. I never expected to have this kind of mega-success. It made me think I could do anything. Pilot my own ship around the moon—how awesome that would be! I had no idea of the costs and bureaucracy involved. By the time I realized what I had gotten myself into, it was too late to back out. I needed support, funding, a ship, but most of all I needed an angle, a cause that people would rally to and the Allied Space Federation would get behind. I mean, do you think I actually set out to staff a handicapped crew?"

Tayen had a sinking feeling in her gut. "When you said you hand-picked each of us for our special qualities..."

"That part was true. It just wasn't for the reasons you think. Take Milo. Good-looking all-American with a second shot at hitting the big-time, perfect image for the second-in-command. And since I'm a wealthy, white spaceboy, it doesn't hurt that he's black and from the streets. Vivian was chosen because of her online following. Her six million viewers were just the boost we needed for the launch of the docu-stream—or so we thought.

"Jess? The International Autism Society was willing to become a platinum sponsor and launch a nationwide advertising campaign. They have a lot of pull with the space agency. You'd be surprised how many rocket scientists have autistic children or relatives. And you? Native American, butch, war veteran—you ticked all the diversity boxes. But the real clincher was that cutting-edge, prototype arm of yours, paid for by rich Uncle Sam. Synex, the manufacturer, saw a golden opportunity to promote their product. Remember the slogan you posed for? 'Synex. Winning the arms race in space.' Guess who's picking up the tab for all your expenses?"

The sinking feeling in Tayen's gut turned to acid. To be reduced to a walking billboard based on her demographic, especially her sexual orientation, which she was still coming to terms with. She felt humiliated. "And Bobby? What's his gig?"

Jake's expression turned sour. "Bobby was supposed to bring academic respectability to the project. Just like Captain Kirk had his Spock, every crew needs its token genius. Bobby was perfect. Graduated high school at the age of fourteen. Top of his class at MIT. Dual PhDs in neurolinguistic algorithms and quantum propulsion theory. We couldn't have asked for a better prodigy. I guess that should have been our first clue. In the end, the joke was on us. His diplomas were faked. He never set foot in MIT. We got tipped off when we got a disgruntled twixt from his supposed dissertation advisor."

"Why didn't you can him?" Tayen asked. "You had alternates, right?"

"We were less than a month from orbital training and pilot shoot. The scandal would have wrecked the whole thing."

"Let me get this straight," Tayen said. "The whole mission was just your personal ego-trip, and the disability thing was a PR stunt. The crew was chosen for their popularity, publicity, and bionic body parts. Our comms officer is a fraud, and our captain is a..."

"Jerk," Jake said.

"I was thinking of something stronger. Why are you telling me all this now?"

Jake looked uneasy. "I just felt that..." He paused, wheezing slowly in and out. "If this CME thing is as bad as they're saying... I guess I just wanted someone to know."

"So this is, what, a confession? Don't they have priests on the station? Or have they all abandoned ship with the rest of the able-bodied tourists?"

"What I meant is, I wanted all of you to know. If it means anything, I really did enjoy my time with the crew. Even if it started off as a stunt, it became so much more than that by the end. It's one of the highlights of my—what-would-you-call-it—career. My life, really."

Jake's eyes had a pleading look, but Tayen couldn't bring herself to let him off the hook. What was he expecting her to say? That she forgave him? That a year of half-truths and deceptions no longer mattered? She was saved the trouble when a middle-aged woman in pale blue scrubs entered the frame. "Jake needs to rest so he can be moved to the safe bunker."

Tayen waved the connection shut.