Hamartia

Hamartia - Part 1

"Blue lips. Blue veins. The color of our planet from far, far above." - Regina Spector

"We're made of star stuff." - Carl Sagan

Mikaela Everett's husband said he needed some space.

So she locked him outside.

A fact made all the more dramatic because they were currently orbiting one of planet 2B's natural satellite moons. Looking through the viewport, she watched a particularly violent geyser erupt on Enceladus' surface. The moon's eight hundred mile per hour eruptions of salty ice water and simple organic chemicals — mostly silica — sometimes extended hundreds of miles into space and eventually became the building blocks of one of the planet's rings.

Forcing her eyes away from the spectacle, she absently checked the numerous dials and gauges lining Hamartia's central control panel. Long haulers were auto-piloted by AI systems far more intelligent than their flesh and blood pilots. She was a redundancy, an outdated custom that made the Company more comfortable spending zillions hauling ice between Enceladus and Mikaela's home planet — 4A — the once thriving blossom of the solar system that was now a shriveled, dried up husk of it's former self.

She'd worked aboard the dilapidated Hamartia for three sun cycles. The assignment — thankless and boring to most — was a golden opportunity for a person with her ancestry. She was what top-tier families colloquially called a "catacomb child." She belonged to the poorest caste, the bottom dwellers of her planet. Literally, her family lived ten sectors beneath the surface just above the waste deposits.

Being posted on the Hamartia had been a huge lifestyle upgrade. It was cramped living — the habitable part of the ship tiny in comparison to the automated ice mining cargo freighters — but it was also the first time Mikaela had her own room, her own bed. It was the first time she'd ever had that elusive thing called freedom the top-tiers took for granted.

Then she had to go and ruin everything by falling in love with her engineer — the only other crew member aboard the Hamartia — and marrying him.

She grumbled under her breath as the husband in question floated into view. She couldn't see his face, due to the metallic sheen on the spacesuit's visor, but she imagined his expression caught somewhere between frustration, confusion, apology, and adoration.

Ty Adamson— love of her life and bane of her existence.

"You gonna let me in, love?" he asked through the intercom.

Mikaela crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. As if he could see her obstinate pose, a heavy sigh crackled over the speakers.

"Are you going to apologize?" she finally asked, leaning into the intercom button with a little too much force.

The spacesuit raised it's arms dramatically. "Apologize for what?" he asked, befuddlement clear in his voice.

He honestly didn't know, she realized. How could men be so quarking ignorant?

Mikaela growled under her breath and mashed the button until her finger hurt. "YOU SAID I SMELLED BAD!"

There was a long pause before he responded. She watched as he drifted in a small semicircle in his suit, superimposing his silhouette over another geyser eruption.

"I ... I said you needed a shower. We both need—"

"Just stop! Stop!" Mikaela yelled. "Get inside!" She punched in the code that would open the ship's cargo bay doors.

"Thank you," he said as he drifted out of view.

Was it just her wrath that made his tone sound indignant?