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Reflected in Mirrored Skies

by Deborah L. Davitt

Mariana stood in the security room, listening to Tesar and Bitna Park-Lee speak to the head of security. Ephraim Novak was a tall man with a surprisingly weathered face. “You’re saying that all the video and logs from the entire station were deleted between 17:00 and 19:00? Down to who opened which doors?” Tesar asked incredulously.

“Whoever did it, clearly didn’t want their route discernible through omission. And probably easier just to do a full sweep of the files,” Novak replied, shaking his head.

“Are the files recoverable?” Bitna asked in her precise manner. “Surely you have ways of reconstituting lost data.”

Novak shook his head again. “They knew what they were doing. The data’s gone.”

“Which implies that it would be a member of your staff, given that whoever did it also got into your secure system.” Tesar bit off the ends of his words.

Novak’s brows beetled. “I trust my people, Captain!”

Mariana wanted to snap, Well, someone did this. Instead she put in quietly, “Then we’ll do this the old-fashioned way. Verify the whereabouts of everyone aboard through interviews. Start with the video of when Oluwa and I came aboard and see where he went, up to the missing portions of the record. Gives us a start, anyway.”

Novak’s eyes glittered in the low light. “I’m sure that one of the command staff needs to be involved in the questioning.”

Tesar frowned. “I’ll do it.”

Bitna raised her hands. “Delegation,” she reminded him, “is both a privilege and a perquisite. Let me handle this.”
Tesar’s eyes narrowed. Suddenly, she’s quite cooperative, Mariana thought. “If you wouldn’t mind,” she put in, “I’d like to sit in on the interrogations. I wouldn’t interfere,” she added, looking at Novak. “I’d just observe.” And keep an eye on them both.

Novak blinked, a faint smile wreathing his face. “Certainly, Captain Delahaye. But I’d like to start with my people. So we can get on with actually investigating.”

“Makes sense,” Tesar acknowledged. “Of course, we’ll have to verify your whereabouts, too, Novak. Just to be sure.”

Novak snorted. “I was giving Eunseo Kwon a talking-to over sanitation protocols. She’ll vouch for it.”

“For two hours?” Bitna asked mildly.

“No, that was the first fifteen minutes. The rest was spent standing over her, making sure she used bleach and disinfectants, and stored them properly in the chemical locker when done. You can’t leave caustic crap sitting out.”

Bleach, something said at the back of Mariana’s mind, the killer bleached Oluwa after they stripped him. She flinched, not wanting to think about it.

The others left the room ahead of her, and Tesar squeezed her shoulder as she passed. “Hey,” he murmured quietly. “This isn’t really how I’d planned your first day here.”

She nodded, leaning into him for a moment. “Me, either,” Mariana replied wearily. “It’s not all high drama here, right? I mean, I’ve spent enough time in flight between here and Earth to be tired of boredom, but this kind of excitement is a little much all at once.” She tried to make it sound like a joke, but failed.

“Usually, the worst drama we have is when the number three balloon has sprung a leak, and someone needs to go outside and patch it.” He looked rueful. “I can promise day after day of absolute boredom. It’s a major selling point, I know.”

In the corridor, Mariana caught Novak and Bitna’s thoughtful looks in her direction. No one was supposed to know there was anything going on between us till we were sure ourselves. But maybe I’m just paranoid. It’s not like they caught me on the walk of shame back to guest quarters, right?

__________________

Tesar sat at a table, regarding Eunseo Kwon, while Dr. Bieri tapped at a tablet beside him. He’d handled enough disciplinary proceedings to know how to create psychological tension in someone’s head. Intimidation didn’t need to be about physical force. It could be about suggesting that you knew more than they wanted you to know.

Having Dr. Bieri in the room suggested that there were files involved. That someone knew something. That the psychiatrist was here to be a witness, to attest that there was no duress used in this questioning, to take notes, and maybe give him some advice . . . was beside the point.

Power was force applied to a point. And at the moment, Eunseo was the only point on which Tesar could focus anything.

So he remained silent, because silence had power, too. It created uncertainty in people’s heads. He stared at Eunseo until her shoulders shifted uncomfortably. And as he’d thought she might, Eunseo broke the silence first. “Captain, why am I here?”

Tesar didn’t reply directly. He flicked a finger at the screen embedded in the conference table, bringing up clips from other interviews. First, a stevedore from the docking area, Juan Mendez. “Yeah, I saw the new pilot. Instant celebrity. You know how it goes.”

Then, a female environmental engineer with whom Eunseo worked. “Of course I saw him. Eunseo made an ass of herself over him.” Jealousy in the voice. “Kept laughing like everything he said was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. I hope they used protection.There are at least ten people on the list ahead of her to have kids—”

Sweat trickled from Eunseo’s hairline, and she licked her lips nervously.

Tesar broke his silence. “Whoever erased the security footage forgot that people have eyes. Memories.” He glanced at Bieri. “You want to tell us what happened next, Ms. Kwon? How a night of passion ended with a young man dead in an air-lock, his body scrubbed . . . though not of every important particle of evidence.”

This was true. Whoever had cleaned the body had gotten most of it, but there had been a few traces of Eunseo’s DNA.
Eunseo licked her lips again, remaining silent. Tesar shrugged. “I can turn this over to the doctors. They’ll do a physical evaluation. All evidence to add to the total.”

“Captain . . . sir . . .” Her eyes flicked to Bieri, who met her gaze with clinical dispassion. “It was an accident! I didn’t mean to!” Tears streamed from her eyes.

Ah, Tesar thought. Our first lie. The detective confronting the suspect, resulting in an immediate confession was a fiction promulgated by bad vids. The breaking-down process would take time—maybe more than he had. “An accident,” Tesar replied, nodding. “He fell on a knife twelve times by accident.”

A sudden ashen expression crossed Eunseo’s face. Dr. Bieri leaned in now, murmuring, “I don’t doubt that your regret is sincere, Ms. Kwon.” Her voice held soothing tones. “But I think that you’ll feel better if you tell us the truth. Perhaps you’ll be able to work out some kind of a reduced sentence with the captain.”

Eunseo swallowed. “I . . . want a lawyer.”

“We don’t have lawyers here,” Tesar pointed out. “You’d need one versed in admiralty law, anyway. And under maritime law, you are guilty until proven innocent.”

A flash of rage. “You’re a dictator! She’s right about you—” Eunseo suddenly snapped her teeth shut, eyes widening as if she realized that she’d just slipped.

You all signed contracts indicating that you accepted living here under maritime law, Tesar wanted to point out. You should probably read the fine print before just clicking I accept. But that sort of statement would diminish his authority. Would lower him to arguing petty details, and right now, he needed to assert his power. Project it into Eunseo’s mind.

“Who’s right?” Dr. Bieri asked in her quiet, understated way. “Talk to me, Eunseo. Help me understand you.”

And Eunseo turned towards that offer of hope like a flower towards the sun. She licked her lips, and began to speak.

__________________

In a sealed-off compartment, Bitna glared at Ephraim Novak. “What were you and Eunseo thinking? We aren’t ready for the next phase.”

Public revelation of the movement was at least two years away on the timeline. “Eunseo moved too fast,” Novak whispered. It didn’t matter that he’d disabled the cameras near this compartment; a raised voice could still be heard in the corridor outside. “Once she’d slept with him, she thought he was secure enough to talk into some preliminary smuggling.” His lips twisted. “He started to unravel. He’d have gone to his captain, and she’d have gone to Tesar and Mission Control. She panicked and stabbed him.” He paused. “I made her clean up the body. So that she’d understand her mistakes have consequences.”

“I never authorized killing,” Bitna snapped, her dark eyes suddenly fierce.

“Tell her that!”

“Believe me, I will! She’s made the situation worse—and by trying to hide the body, you have, too! It could have been smoothed over as—a date gone wrong. If he was dead already, all she would have had to do is say he raped her—“

“The doc’s too sharp for that one to fly, and you know it.” Novak grimaced, looking away.

“You wanted concealment, but all you’ve done is shine a spotlight on us!”

“I did it for you,” Novak insisted. “If it comes down to it, we can run with the rape story, and I’ll say I was trying to protect a frightened young woman.” He reached out, hoping that she’d take his hand.

She’d first taken him into her quarters six months ago. And over soju, she’d confided in him that she’d had troubling dreams. In which she heard the planet telling her that they shouldn’t be here. At least not in the way Earth intended them to be. That they needed to be here for the planet. To make themselves Venusian, as much as they could, rather than to make Venus into another Earth.

It had sounded crazy at first, but the longer she’d spoken about casting off the rules of Earth, the old laws that constrained them, and establishing new ones that made sense for their new reality, the more it had all made sense to him.

Novak had grown up in Montana. He had a rancher’s instinctive distrust of government. He was head of security; he understood the need for law and order. But at the same time, he wanted those laws to be his laws. Not the hodgepodge of rules that governed the habitat fleet, each ship under the flag of a meaningless nation on a distant planet. And while he understood the chain of command, it grated on him that there was no way he could ever ascend. The captain was the captain. Novak could stay in his own job for decades, but he’d never get an ounce more say in decisions. And there was no way to change that. Any new captain would be one imposed on them by Mission Control back on Earth. Would be a newcomer, a stranger, with no idea how things actually worked here.

There were others in the fleet who felt the same way. Novak had monitored the fleet’s message boards for security purposes long enough to have absorbed information about the factions on the thirty habitats floating above the lethal clouds. But he’d downplayed the autonomists to his captain in security briefings. Mostly because he’d always sympathized with them, but also because they’d been disorganized and leaderless . . . until Bitna came along.
They’d become lovers. He knew that she had others—Eunseo, probably that kid Jin-kyu, maybe Atinuke. It didn’t bother him. A new world. New rules. And to hell with Earth.

Now, Bitna frowned, but accepted his hand. She’ll come around. She’s got the level, pragmatic head of a quartermaster. “No,” she finally decided. “I’ll take responsibility—when we’re ready.” A pause. “Since you’ve engineered a crisis point, perhaps it’s time that the movement has its moment in the sun.” Bitna pursed her lips. “Still, we need a way to get off this station. Otherwise, Tesar will eventually corner us. And we can’t overthrow him without a clear majority of the population voting for us. Which takes it from mutiny to democracy.”

He didn’t like her continued suggestions of blame, but let it pass for the moment. “If he starts a witch-hunt looking for the murderer, we’ll get that majority,” Novak replied, nodding. It sounded good. “But there’s already a way off the station. For us, and for the rest of our people.”

Her eyes narrowed. “The supply ship?”

“Plenty of room. Still has the supplies set for the other habitats. We make a run to the Chinese-flagged habitat. No extradition treaties, currently.” Novak felt a smile stretch his face. “We just need a pilot.”

__________________

In a break between interrogations, Mariana slumped, mind churning. Who would kill Oluwa after a day on the station? Did he flirt with the wrong person? Did he see something he wasn’t supposed to?

Finally, Bitna and Novak joined her. “I just got word from my team,” Novak said, tapping his earpiece. “They found several people with whom your co-pilot spoke before the missing logs started. I’m going to go talk to them—want to come along?”

“You don’t want to bring them here for questioning?” Mariana asked, raising her eyebrows.

Novak shook his head. “Don’t want to spook them,” he replied easily. “Just a little one-on-one at first. Or three on one, if you both come along.” A friendly smile.

Mariana nodded. “I appreciate the chance to help.”

Bitna nodded, smiling. “Where to?”

“G level, section four.”

“Near the cargo bays?” Mariana knew that much of the station layout. They smile so much without Tesar around, don’t they?

“He did a lot of talking with the stevedores and maintenance crew.” Novak waved them out the hatch.

Near the cargo bays, Mariana’s wrist-unit buzzed. She glanced down, noting a text coming in from Tesar, but could only see the first few lines of the message—Novak involved, security compr—

She spun, just in time to watch Novak seize Bitna, wrap one thick arm around her neck, and press his gun to her forehead. “Keep going,” Novak grated. “Your ship’s just ahead. Move!”

“Do what he says,” Bitna gasped as if her air supply had been cut off.

Mariana’s heart pounded. Bleach, she thought numbly. Talking to that girl about bleach. He just about waved it in our faces, didn’t he? And now he’s got the XO in a headlock, ready to kill her. Damn him!

Something nagged at her, some errant thought she couldn’t focus on while adrenaline and stress cortisol hammered through her brain. A few feeble thoughts made their way through the storm—should I scream? No, he’ll shoot her and then grab me . . . shouldn’t someone see this on the security cameras?

And as she trudged onwards, feeling weak and old in the gravity to which her body remained unaccustomed, her mind circled around one numb thought: He killed Oluwa. He stabbed him. Tried to throw him out the airlock. He’s the one.
Her hands shook.

They reached the SRS, and crew members scrambled out of their way as Novak alternated keeping the pistol on Bitna and on anyone who approached. Then he rapped out, “Open the doors and get in. We’ll be behind you.”

Once inside, he pressed her towards the cockpit. Ordered her to strap in, adding, “You’re going to have a different cargo this time. People.”

Mariana temporized. “I can’t lift off with the cargo bay doors closed—”

“Tesar will open them,” Bitna said coolly, stepping away as Novak released her. She reached towards his belt and drew his backup pistol. “We’ve got you, after all. I wondered why he seemed to be looking forward to this supply drop.” She paused and then addressed Novak. “I’ll guard her. Open communications and give Tesar our demands.” She clicked the safety off and smiled faintly at Mariana.

Mariana closed her eyes. That was the thought that had refused to coalesce. All their damn smiles. “This ship hasn’t refueled,” she pointed out. Giving herself time to think. Inhale, exhale. More oxygen for the brain. Calm the body so the mind can follow.

“It has enough to get us to the next habitat. One without an extradition treaty.” Bitna’s voice held a smirk. “Might as well make use of these hodgepodge laws. Show people how idiotic the system really is. Earth’s laws, governing another planet. Trying to make a new Earth here. This is Venus. We need our own laws for our own world.”

“Practiced saying that a lot?” Mariana asked, trying to put irony in her voice. Get inside their heads. “Guess if you say anything often enough, you can make yourself believe it. I mean, it’s not like you’ll ever be independent of Earth. You still need supply drops just to get by.”

“Shut up,” Bitna ordered, her eyes narrowing.

Behind them, Mariana could hear Novak talking with Tesar by radio. Making their demands. “. . . that you allow all those who do not wish to live under of maritime law to leave with us. Or hold immediate open elections, including a referendum on the laws that govern this colony.”

Pirates, Mariana thought, boiling. They’re so quick to use the language of freedom to attain their own ends, but if they got their way, they’d turn the Qetesh into their own private dictatorship.

“I want to see her,” Tesar insisted, his voice strained.

Novak turned the screen towards her, so that its camera caught her face. “Say hello,” he ordered. “Tell the captain that he’d better give us what we want.”

Mariana considered her options. Assets, liabilities. She hadn’t handled a gun since boot camp. No hand-to-hand training, and she’d spent the last eighteen months in effectively zero-G conditions. Strength and confrontation were out as solutions. All she had was her mind . . . and her knowledge of her ship. Eight modular sections, back to back, like an old-fashioned train. Each of them could be shut down and separated from the rest in the event of a hull breach. This is my ship. You don’t know it the way I do. That’s my only advantage.

And as her thoughts calmed and centered, Bitna jabbed her with the muzzle of the gun. “Speak up,” the other woman ordered peremptorily.

Mariana looked up at the camera. “Tesar,” she said clearly, hoping that this wouldn’t be the last time she spoke to him. That this wouldn’t be the last image he had of her face. “They’re serious. Open the cargo bay doors. I’ll take them where they need to go.” Straight to hell, hopefully. She looked directly into his eyes, hoping he understood her message. “If any of their friends want to come along for the ride, I’ll take them there, too. People should know what happens when they fly the black, right? Me, I’m flying the red.”

As she’d hoped, Bitna only looked confused. She’d probably understood fly in space when Mariana meant under the pirate flag. Pirates had raised a black flag to signal intent to board a ship and take its cargo.

A red flag, however, meant no quarter. All aboard would be killed.

Tesar’s expression tautened for a moment. Message received. Forcibly taking over someone else’s ship? Piracy. Can’t put them in a brig. Can’t hold them prisoner on my ship for an eighteen-month trip back to Earth. Go to another habitat, and I’m still a hostage . . . no, it’s this. A bad chance. Barely a chance at all. But better than nothing.

They bound her hands with zip-ties and fastened her legs to her pilot’s seat as they waited for any of their followers willing to join them. Mariana noted with distant satisfaction that only a handful of people seemed willing to stand as the public allies of hijackers. And when they both turned their backs briefly to welcome the newcomers aboard, she took her chance. Tapped a button on her control board that lit up an alarm button.

As the station’s cargo bay doors opened, Bitna pushed the muzzle of her gun against the back of Mariana’s neck once again. “No mistakes,” she warned the pilot.

“Lady, if I make a mistake right now, I’ll take out the cargo bay doors and risk the lives of a thousand decent people.” Mariana didn’t have to fake the tremor in her bound hands as she tapped controls. “I’d be a lot better at this if you’d cut these off of me.”

“No way,” Novak snapped as they eased out into the upper atmosphere.

Mariana felt the buffet and pressure of wind through the controls like a lover’s caress. Not yet. Need to be further from the habitat just in case things go south.

Five kilometers. Ten. Fifteen.

She sucked in a breath and whispered, “Oh, that’s not good.”

Novak’s head spun. “What?”

“There’s a problem in bay eight.” Mariana pointed at the flashing indicator. “Just started. Looks like one of your crew left a hatch unsealed when they finished unloading supplies. I can’t close it from here.” She shook her head. “Even at this altitude, the pressure’s going to rip through each compartment!”

Their eyes widened. Panic set in. You scare someone enough, their front-brain shuts down. Cortisol in their blood locks out rational thought, and they make bad decisions. They’re already stressed, and I just poked the biggest fear button anyone on this planet has. Don’t let them think! “Don’t just stand there!” Mariana snapped with all the authority of a captain on her own ship. “Someone needs to grab the spacesuits in the third module and go close the damn door!”

Novak spun and ran for the door. She expected that. He was a security chief, and his job remained putting himself between others and danger. Bitna wavered. “For god’s sake!” Mariana yelped, again not having to fake the fear in her voice, “You’ve got me tied to my chair, piloting a ship I can’t even put on autopilot right now, because you want a custom destination! What am I going to do besides pee myself up here? Help him! Or we’re all going to die. Some slow. Some fast. Take your pick!”

For an instant, she thought she’d pushed too hard. Bitna’s eyes glittered in the lights of the control panels and the gun wavered one last time.

And then she turned and ran after Novak, sealing the cockpit door behind her.

Mariana’s head sagged. Then she forced herself to look up. To watch where they were on the cabin monitors. Saw them clamber into pressure suits and then enter module eight, clearly expecting alien atmosphere, crushing pressure, a hatch in need of sealing, yet finding . . . nothing . . . she touched another button on her console.

The one marked Disengage.

The rearmost module unlatched from the rest of her ship and plummeted into the clouds of sulfur dioxide below. She couldn’t, thankfully, hear their screams, but she could see how their bodies flew up off the floor to hit the ceiling. Saw the goods destined for another habitat tumbling around them. Saw the walls starting to press in around them as the pressure of the inner atmosphere closed around them like a fist. They’ll be dead before they hit the ground, she thought numbly. This was the only answer.

It didn’t make it feel any less like murder.

Mariana pressed several other controls, locking the cockpit off from the rest of the ship. And then she swung the ship back around on approach for the habitat, tapping at the radio controls with fingers starting to swell from the zipties around her wrists.

“Qetesh, this is SRS-1468 returning to base. Minus one module, minus two pirates. Do you want the remainder of their associates alive, or do I drop them to the surface, too?”

Tesar’s voice, ragged with relief. “SRS-1468 . . . Mariana, it’s good to hear your voice. We left the barn doors open for you. Come on home. We’ll take care of your prisoners. And of you.”

Mariana wanted to close her eyes and weep. But she couldn’t do that. Not yet. She still had a job to do.

As she brought the ship in on manual, glanced out of one of the small windows of the cockpit, and saw her ship—and herself, tiny inside—reflected in one of the vast mirrors spun by the Qetesh. Half in shadow, half in light, reflected there, in Venus’ skies, she hoped that she had, at last, truly come home.

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Host Commentary

One thing I love abut this story is it covers the bitterness of the people in the middle. I’m the kind of impatient person who can’t fathom the fact that the Taj Mahal took 22 years to build. The James Webb Space Telescope took 30 years to build. Notre Dame took 103 years to build. But that’s nothing compared to our SF stories with people who keep generation ships going or begin terraforming actions on inhabitable planets. These are people who will never see the fruits of their labors, who will never step foot on a new planet. There is a certain tragedy to these people; the situation gives a very real reminder that they are just a replaceable cog in a much, much larger machine that doesn’t really care if they live or die.

But even if you acknowledge that the situation is a sad one, it is usually one that people aren’t forced to take. And that still doesn’t excuse murder and washing bodies in bleach and all that.

Someone once described bureaucracy as a giant boat. Even if everyone on board wants to turn around, it’s going to take some time to go safely in a new direction. You could probably cut corners but then you get things like mutiny and murder and decisions made to benefit a small group of people instead of the larger establishment.

This story also gave us a sweet romance without showing us much romance at all, but showing two people who work well together and trust each other, and are relieved when that kidnapping thing turned out okay. No sex or smooches or even declarations of love, but you know these two are in it for the long haul now. I like that.

Our quote comes from Robert Zemeckis: “We don’t function well as human beings when we’re in isolation.”