The Uncertain Flight of The Butterfly

Chapter 1. Friends.

Seated at his desk, Captain Tho Unama’s left hand tingled again, just under the skin of his palm. His comm implant vibrating was like a small animal convulsing between his bones, an electronic parasite desperately demanding his attention. And again, he didn’t pick up, despite Clehi’s calls getting closer together, as if she was pissed already. There was no time for her or anybody else, and he needed to focus on work. Even if it was a useless battle, he had to stay and at least pour time into solving the problem. He had to do something, and he couldn’t do it if everybody kept pulling him from all directions. His eyes returned to the computer screen in front of him. Maybe focus was all he needed to find a solution to this major screwup they did four months ago. He did, because he agreed to it.

Minutes later, the door of the office buzzed and slid open with a pneumatic sound. Uba Ukiri’s unmistakable steps followed. He didn’t turn to that either, but the distraction was inevitable. She was second in command and the only other person in the ship with a rank of captain. Ignoring each other was easier before the crisis started. Now they have these long overlaps in their shifts forcing them to interact. This office next to the bridge was hers too, and she didn’t need to buzz but had been doing it since the place began its transformation to an extension of his own cabin, with him sleeping on the sofa every time he could squeeze in a break.

He made a new effort to keep his eyes on the screen. Engineering had compiled a list of shutoff targets, so whatever power that remained in starship Monarch could bounce from system to system in a planned manner. Through the corner of his eye, he made out the shape of Uba, at attention, next to his desk.

“Is this about the arrest in D-ring?” he asked without looking at her.

“No sir. Councilman Wixia has not called.”

He turned to her and leaned back in his swiveling chair. Uba Ukiri’s stance had a solid quality. As if with her strong legs planted on the floor, you would need two men to push her away. They could try, but it could cost them a broken arm or two.

“These idiots made us arrange this show, as if we don’t have enough things to worry about, and when we are ready for the arrest, they won’t contact us?”

Uba stood silent showing little in terms of emotion, as it was typical during her interactions with him.

“So, no arrest. What is it then?”

“Clehi Riomas, sir. She had been trying to call you, but her calls are not going through.” She said this without a hint of sarcasm, as it was just another problem with the ship.

Tho exhaled. Not going through. There was wisdom in the way Uba talked to him. It was a language designed to avoid the old discussions between them. “I’ll deal with her.”

Tho observed her walk away, thinking that from the back she had hardly changed in decades. He also looked strong, he knew, but Uba’s leadership-grade package of genes was better than the one he had. She was almost his age but didn’t seem to suffer the indignities his body was putting him through. She was still running; he couldn’t do it anymore. He kept his perfect posture only with an obsessive surveillance of his image in any reflective surface. Uba moved gracefully, as she had always. The perfect mix of strength and speed.

He kept her eyes on her until she reached the door, then realized she was exactly under the spot where he used to jump and touch the ceiling. There was a duct near the entrance and during his first years as captain he used to jump and touch it with the tip of his fingers every time he entered. He hadn’t done that in years. He couldn’t run but wondered if he could still jump and touch it. He pressed his left leg with the heel of his hand until the old pain said ‘hi’.

Clehi Riomas called again and this time he closed his fist hard, starting communication. The voice traveled from the implant under the palm of his hand, through his nervous system up to a transducer in a molar, and from there as vibrations through the bones of his skull, giving every caller’s voice a muffled finish.

“Why are you not answering my calls, Unama?” she seemed to be walking briskly.

“Are you coming here?”

“You think? I needed to talk to you, and you were ignoring me.”

“I’m ignoring everybody. I’m busy.”

“Make time, because I’m almost there.”

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“I have bad news.” Clehi closed communication.

Bad news? It wasn’t the ship, since he would get information about any problem faster than her. It had to be an issue with the council. Maybe they would be ordered to reconnect the power from the reactors in their support ships and in this way resolve the Monarch’s power deficit. No, that would be good news. He got on his feet and walked around for a moment. There was movement in the bridge, separated from his office by a one-way glass wall. Uba was there working and so were half a dozen science officers. Then Clehi Riomas entered the bridge in a hurry. She looked worried, but walked directly to Uba, and when the two women embraced, they smiled and talked for a moment. Despite all the fatigue and the stress, the two women didn’t need anything but each other to look at ease. Uba was relaxed when Clehi was around. If he were to walk there now, between them, Uba would get stiff like a rod and Clehi would take him away and treat him like a little brother. He snorted. That was an accurate description if there ever was one. There had been no siblings in starship Monarch during the entire five hundred years voyage, but Clehi was his big sister, no question about that.

Clehi turned towards the glass wall of the captain’s office. She couldn’t see him, he knew, but her eyes pointed directly to where he was, as if she could. She walked to the door and waited on the other side without buzzing.

He stretched and pushed the button under his desk. The door opened and he waved her in, closing it after she entered. They walked towards each other until only couple of feet separated them.

“Clehi, I’m busy.”

Any traces of the smile she had when she was talking to Uba had gone away. “They want to meet.”

“Meet? Who?”

“Freen, Wixia. Right now, another vote to leave the ship.”

For a moment Tho couldn’t talk. The request was so ridiculous he couldn’t do anything but produce a nervous smile. “Am I the only person busy? Didn’t we vote last week, and the week before? Another meeting when we can barely keep the ship working?” He pointed to the screen in his desk. “I kept half of engineering awake for almost thirty hours, so they could come up with this new list of shutoff targets. I don’t want to approve it before understanding it well, because I don’t want to make this clusterfuck even worse. And now you are telling me we have to meet these morons again, even when they were the ones that created this situation in the first place.”

Clehi exhaled loudly, and seemed unwilling to entertain his complaints. “What are we going to tell them?”

“The last meeting I told Freen I wouldn’t go back unless there was new evidence.”

“I know, I was there. The next time you lose your shit, don’t send ultimatums you can’t follow through with.”

Tho had to breathe deeply to not raise his voice. He observed her for a moment, weighing how harsh a reply she deserved. “I can follow through,” he grunted. Then he changed his voice, mocking Clehi’s diplomatic tone of voice. “There’s no new information about the state of the ship. We have carefully considered all options. There’s no reason to reconvene.” He pointed at her. “That’s the new message.”

“That’s not going to work. It’s an official meeting; we have to go.”

“Well, we are in an emergency. That supersedes it.”

“Are we? Isn’t the ship stable now?”

“Barely.”

“That’s what you want to say to him? That the ship can’t survive a couple of hours without you? Isn’t that exactly his point? His reason for wanting to leave?”

Tho shook his head and walked around the office. He could sense Clehi’s eyes following him. He turned to her. “This is your fault, you know.”

Clehi’s jaw dropped. She pointed to her chest. “My fault?”

“You are always doing this intrigue bullshit. It would have been easier to just say ‘no’ to him years ago.”

“We have been saying no to him for years. Don’t miss the big picture. We are doing a delicate equilibrium act here. If he gets pissed off, he could go public.”

“We needed to be more forceful. Make it clear to him we’ll never leave the ship. Making him understand once and for all. Then we can turn around all this shit they made us do. Frankly I think we need to piss him off. I don’t know, insult him.”

“Insult him?” Clehi smiled, maybe thinking it was a joke, but soon her smile vanished. “Are you serious? That’s your brilliant idea?” She shook her head. “No. Didn’t I just say he can’t get angry? We need to keep doing what we are doing. Let the clock run.”

“You treat that old man with gloves. That’s the reason he never gets the message.”

“Well, your outburst last week didn’t work either, or they wouldn’t be calling a new meeting again.”

“Because he knew you would meet again if he asked. You promised we would meet again, don’t you?”

“Tho, we have to go. It’s part of our job.”

“Did you?”

Clehi raised her voice. “Of course I did, and I promised you would be there. That’s the agreement with him. As long as we meet whenever he wants to review this, he won’t go public. So, let’s go, big boy. This thing you are doing can wait. You know it can.”

Tho didn’t move, and Clehi appeared to understand that she would need to work harder to convince him this time. She raised a finger and pointed it at him. “Don’t do this to me.”

They didn’t talk for a minute, and the silence brought from the background the eternal buzzing of the ship systems, as if he had just noticed it was there. “We have to change our strategy.”

“I disagree. There is only one week left. We better keep doing what we are doing.”

“Again, I said I wouldn’t go unless they had new evidence about the ship.”

“Look, I’m sorry if it makes you look weak but that’s on you. We still have to go. I promised you would be there.”

Tho snorted. “I see you can keep your promises, and I can’t.”

Clehi shook her head. “I made that promise to save your ass. They were going to have a meeting to vote you out.”

Tho waved a hand dismissively.

“I’m serious, Tho. Don’t screw this up. They called the meeting; we have to go. That’s how it works. You are not going to create a new problem for me only because you want to appear assertive. And insult him, that’s out of the question. Don’t you DARE insult him. So we go, we repeat the same arguments, we hear them for a while, we don’t get angry”-she paused for emphasis- “and we vote ‘no.’ That’s it.”

Tho crossed his arms, leaned onto his desk looking at the floor.

She put a hand on his arm and took a gentler tone of voice. “This time it will be different, I promise.”

He smiled. “Haven’t you learned anything? Stop making promises.”

She smiled back, then took a few steps to the door and tilted her head to indicate him to follow her. “Come on.”

Tho exhaled and observed her up and down again. Did Clehi know that he would never say no to her? “I’ll be there.”

“Come with me, right now.”

“Don’t push it, Clehi. I told you I’m going. I just need a minute.”

“And you are going to behave? No outbursts like the last time? You let me do the talking?”

Tho nodded. He moved to his desk and sat on his chair. In front of him the list of shutoff targets produced a fresh wave of worry. He shook his head and took the council box from the safe in his desk. Then he stepped out of the office.

The bridge was a large room with numbered computer stations arranged in three concentric semicircles. The room had a slope like an auditorium, with stations going lower as they progressed towards the giant wall-screen in the front. Uba stood at the lowest point, station zero, in direct view of the people she commanded. Some of the stations were unmanned.

From her place at station zero, Uba was choking down a laugh while looking at Clehi leaving the bridge. It was as if the women had shared an inside joke a few seconds ago. Something intimate only the two of them would understand. Clehi making a face, mocking him, probably. The two women were so close he used to get jealous of the time they spent together. But that was decades ago, when they were all friends.

Uba crossed glances with Tho and her smile vanished. This seemed to be a power he had now, making her feel miserable. She approached and did her stoic pose, waiting for an order.

“Sir?”

“Uba…” Tho realized his mistake and paused, waiting if Uba would react to him calling her by her first name. She didn’t, despite this being a departure from their usual language. He cleared his throat. “Ms. Ukiri, please stay until I come back.”

“Yes, sir.”

He took two steps towards the door but then stopped and turned around. Uba had not moved. “If I’m not here in exactly an hour give me a call.” Uba’s mouth twitched for a second. Maybe disapproval.