Superluminal
Week 3, Day 2
You boarded the ship on January 4, 2213. On your birthday, in fact. You carried slightly more than the maximum luggage/personal effects allowance. You couldn’t travel without at least one of your dance costumes, of course, complete with jewelry. You had stacks of memory chips, far more than any one person could use, so you wouldn’t have to use the shared computer memory to save your creative writing projects. And you brought Fluffy, or at least her carefully preserved corpse — the taxidermist’s finest work.
Of course, everyone knew you were — how shall I put it? — unusual. And we all knew why you were on the mission — your father, ship’s captain and, once we left the solar system, our iron-fisted supreme leader, would give his little girl anything to win her love (never understanding that his groveling earned nothing but your contempt). Plenty of our shipmates despised you for it. Spots on the mission were highly competitive. Careers were ruined, dreams crushed, marriages broken as prospective astro-colonists competed for assignments on the mission. Some even hated me by association, although a few knew that I’d worked my way into my role, just like the rest of them, despite the fact that I’ve known you since we were thirteen. I never even met your father, poor sap, until embarkment.
You were oblivious to their hatred, as far as anyone could see. They didn’t dare express it openly or confront you with it. You blithely ignored it — did you even know about it? — further enraging our crew mates.
We had been friends for twenty years by then, although we had grown apart. You had your obsessions, and I had mine — we took different paths. The mission brought us back together. I’m sure you suspect this already, but still it pains me to say that I wasn’t exactly thrilled when I learned you were going to be on board. I knew you — I thought I knew you. Our lives would be in each other’s hands for the next century. This was no time for nepotism.
The ship was a colony ship, but more than that. The crew was in cryptostorage for most of the journey, cycling in and out to take shifts running the ship. We all had our duties, our assigned schedules and highly structured “down time.” But you — well, what skills did you have? Your primary qualification was “Captain Paetr’s daughter.” Your responsibilities were light and downtime plentiful — another log on the fire of the crew’s resentment.
It was during an early downtime cycle that you approached me with your theory. “Areta, we need to talk.”
I looked up from my systems manual. “Sure, Riza. What’s up?”
“I was looking at the spectrographic analysis for Utropica. Something doesn’t add up.” You glanced around the room to identify possible eavesdroppers, and I wasn’t sure whether you wanted to keep them from hearing you, or to make sure they did. “I think they’re lying to us. This isn’t the mission we think it is.”
***
This is a story-start — if you’d like to see where the story goes, “clap” for it. My “winning” start (based on number of readers who clap for it) will be developed further and might grow into a full short story!
