Star Side

Chapter 9

Stellar date (Earth Time): 01-24-2914

Joshua stayed unconscious for several hours. During that time we kept the coms on speaker and instead took turns keeping Naomi company, who was wide-eyed awake and pale as the A.I. robots.

The coms crackled back on when he woke up with a groan. But the moment he made noise, other noises came in—clicks, rumbles, growls, which all ended with Joshua swearing and speaker cutting off with a loud click.

"The helmet's been disengaged," said Levi.

I wanted to do something for Naomi. But her eyes were glued to Joshua's oxygen levels. She had switched jobs with Levi not long after the incident.

I glanced over occasionally to see his heartbeat going all over the place and his oxygen levels slowly dropping lower. The air on the bridge seemed to grow sticky and heavy, and I wondered if breathing argon would feel the same.

After a day, it went unspoken that we were all just waiting for Joshua's vitals to flat-line. Levi managed to convince Naomi to take a nap and took one for the team staying up, though I didn't think I could sleep. But, surprisingly, I did, perhaps in part because Naomi asked me to lay by her, and though we didn't touch, there was a comfort in another warmth of a body I hadn't realized I needed. When I woke up she had rolled against my back and for the first time I noticed just how small she really was. It made me think of my own grandmother, who had still been alive when I'd left Earth. She hadn't been as small, but she'd seemed equally as fragile when she last held my hands.

'I hope this is what you need,' she'd said.

I lingered on that last memory of her before I got onto the ship. She'd had traces that she'd cried, but she'd been dry-eyed on seeing me off. She'd tried to dissuade me the most. My mother had only cried and glared. My father had just smiled, somehow finding my disappearing for a possible century long job something to be proud of. To him I was being brave, taking the plunge for humanity, diving into a new adventure of discovery. He had his own adventures to see to as well.

My brother and sister hadn't been there at all.

I ended up rolling over and putting my hand over Naomi's until she woke up.

But Joshua stayed alive, with ever lowering oxygen levels in his blood, for a grueling three more days. Even though we were safe and fed, it felt like we too were fighting to survive just waiting for the moment he was dead. Naomi didn't cry. But more than once Levi got up and showed a rare display of affection by giving her shoulders a squeeze.

"I'll do whatever you ask. You still know that, right?" he asked at one point.

She nodded.

I didn't know the story there, and I didn't ask.

Then, after a total of four days since launch, three days longer than we had planned for, Joshua's tracker suddenly began to move. All three of us crowded around the navigational station to watch his blinker zigzag up, away from his original path, then trundle down the hills at a break-neck speed. His vitals went all over the place, and for a brief moment his oxygen levels seemed to rise, but they only went up a bare two percent. His hormone levels spiked to all level highs, a sign that adrenaline was pushed to his max.

None of us breathed. None of us spoke, afraid to even pray aloud.

And then his blinker hit the coordinates of the pod.

The coms cracked back on, this time from the probe, but only wheezing, crackling breath could be heard.

Surprisingly, it was Levi who dived for the coms.

"Joshua, is the door closed? You hear me? Knock your knuckles if you have to. Twice for yes."

Two knocks on the speaker. But it was the faint, whisperery "Yes," that made Naomi collapse. I caught her and eased her into her chair.

Though Joshua had been drilled on the launch procedure of the pod as taught by Levi twenty times over, Levi still walked Joshua through each of the steps, not moving on till he got the double knock on the speaker. We weren't quite within position to be picking up the pod, but none of us could think that far with how desperate we were to get him from that planet and whatever had caught him.

The moment procedure was finished and it was all about waiting for the engines to warm up, the coms flicked off on Joshua's side.

Naomi flew at the console. "Don't you dare sign off, Joshua Fritz Friedman!"

It clicked back onto his whistling breathing, only to check off again.

Levi put a hand on her shoulder.

"I'll pick him up in another pod," he said. "You get medical bay ready."

She hesitated. We were undermanned as it was, and life pods weren't meant for rescue missions. They were strictly designed on a load and shoot basis.

But Levi reassured her he could make it work and pushed her off.

The moment she was gone, he turned on me, his usually bored, flat expression given way to something sharp and focused. A thrill went down my spine at the way his black eyes looked to me with unnerving clarity. Gone was the lazy, middle-aged criminal. I saw another life for Levi then, one where he was young, capable, and in charge.

"Time to use that nerd brain of yours," he said.

Turns out, his way of 'making it work' was making me make it work, by shooting his pod and have it intercept Joshua's in flight.

Tricky, yeah, but I could do it. Problem was--

"Isn't that called crashing and dying?" I said.

"The life pods have a built-in magnetic function to keep them sticking together in space," said Levi. "Makes it easier to rescue people as a whole that way."

I wanted to ask if that magnetic pull would be strong enough to catch a pod shooting out in the opposite direction (because it seemed like something to hold pods together that were launched from the same ship), but nothing would come of the answer and Levi's gaze commanded obedience. I had the numbers up within a moment and sent Levi off to the pods with only two minutes to spare.

And like that, I found myself alone on a bridge meant to hold at least half a dozen, with two one-eyed A.I. robots waiting with their little pokers for my command.

I let my breath out fast through my teeth. I'd not been trained for this.

"Guess it's time to get in touch with inner Ahab." I cracked my fingers. "No stress, no stress, come on girl."

I only had both Joshua's and Levi's lives on my hands now.

"Josh, I'm totally gonna punch you when you get back."