Sleeping Beauty

She was haunted by the day she became captain. Every night since then she’d been having inescapable dreams, dreams where she was able to stop the incident. Hundreds of different scenarios had played out in her head but when she awoke, truth smacked her hopes down with a hard dose of reality. Today was no different. Rory used the bed sheets to wipe the nervous sweat from her forehead; she felt tension jumbling through her body and the freakish adrenaline of her nightmare still pumping in her bloodstream. As she twisted toward the sickly yellow light of the control panel beside her bed, flashes of memory still plagued her: electric fires, the vast atrium of the ship filling with billowing smoke and seas of civilians scrambling in panic, all penetrated by piercingly shrill sirens. She switched off her alarm. Taking large gulps of water to wash down the bile and guilt, Rory prepared for the day ahead.

It had been almost three months since the incident. Today was the day of the inquest. Officials were being sent by the Courts of the Imperial Senate to collect final reports on events, conduct interviews with the survivors, assess the extent of the damage and assess Rory’s performance as Captain. Rory had been Kingsly’s second in command, stood at his side when they’d greeted the Necromblian Ambassador onto the ship and stepped up as Captain the minute Kingsly had been gunned down by the Necromblian guards in their attack on the greeting party. Although no news had come explaining the motivation for the attack, whispers were whirling through the engine rooms and galleys, the medical decks and rec rooms, hydroponic labs and kitchens. Whispers were weaselling their way up through the ranks. They blamed her. They blamed her for the death of a man who had been everyone’s father, son, brother and the lover of quite a few. Kingsly had refused her advances, said they should keep things platonic. They’d exchanged pet names though, but in the mouths of the rumour-mongers they became mocking. “Princess” they’d snigger behind hands, behind closed doors. It didn’t make her resolve falter; her grief was invisible in her demeanor. She became as stone and iron, hard and unrelenting.

The day had not gone well. Her reign over the ship had been fruitful, repairs were almost complete and endeavours into new security were well underway, but her disfavour among the crew and passengers had been noticed. She had been warned that unless the situation vastly improved, she would be removed onto another ship. But this was her home; she was not going to give up so easily. In the mess hall she was given a wide berth. Her face of thunder was enough to warn away any curiosity.

As she stepped into her quarters, the on board computer greeted her. She still hadn’t changed the voice settings, so the feminine starlet’s giggle crooned its welcomes from the speaker system. Somehow it was comforting to hear the voice Kingsly had chosen. Ironic that FAIRY (Framework of Artificial Intelligence for the Righteous Yeoman) should sound exactly like its namesake. There was a FAIRY aboard every ship in the Yeoman Fleet that served under the Imperial Senate, but to the best of her knowledge, The Needle’s was the only one that spoke like a girlish nymphomaniac. Kingsly’s sense of humour had been somewhat warped.

“How’d it go today Captain?”

“Please, only call me that in public FAIRY. And not good.”

“What can I do to help? Run you a bath? Pour you a drink? Order some of those lovely men from Lab 205 to come and help relieve the tension?” She giggled and despite the plush carpeting and soft furnishings, it seemed to echo in the cabin.

“None of the above. I want a quick shower and then I want to read, in bed.” There was another giggle. “By myself. Alone.”

“Spoilsport.”

The next morning the mess hall was almost empty, and quiet. It was not the mournful hush of mornings past, but an eerie silence, pregnant with expectation and foreboding. It put Rory on edge. The adrenaline of her nightmares began to nervously seep into her veins again, and her eyes flickered back and forth across the nameless faces of crew she had not yet formally met. Spoons scraped against emptying bowls and scratched at her nerves, fraying them. She ran from the room. Something was wrong. The corridors were lined with the pinched and suspicious faces of those she had known once, before the incident. Some she might have even called friends. She stopped by a control panel on corridor thirteen. She was due to conduct an inspection of the medical wing, but the arranged cohort of men that should be accompanying her had yet to arrive outside the entrance.

The usual bustle of the ship was subdued; the oppressive silence of the mess room had spread. However, as she inspected the screen, noting the surprisingly high rate of recent medical admissions, she felt a shadow loom over her shoulder.

“Priiiiiincesssssss” it lisped into her ear. It was not a mocking jibe; it was far, far more sinister. It was a threat.  Whirling around, she saw that recognisable and nameless faces alike were screwed into inhuman exaggerations of rage. The hatred fumed off them in waves, it was somehow palpable. This was unreal, this wasn’t possible. Nothing she could have done, even if she’d been guilty of that which she’d been accused of, could possibly deserve this amount of ill-feeling. She could feel their hatred morphing into something else, into blood lust. They wanted her dead.

She used that adrenaline now. In the narrow corridor she escaped, banking on their raw emotion to make them clumsy and inept. It worked. Running pell-mell, blinded by their hate, they didn’t notice when she slipped through a fire hatch into the crawl space reserved for maintenance. She gasped for air, the confined space only allowed for shallow breaths and her taut muscles were already beginning to cramp. It was then that FAIRY decided to make her presence known through the earpiece all crew were obliged to wear.

“Captain, are you okay?”

“Does it look like I’m okay? No! I’m freaking out! What the hell is going on FAIRY?!”

“Hmmm, yes well, your vital signs have gone a bit haywire. Sorry about that. I should have told you when I first spotted something suspicious”

“You mean you knew about this?! Why the hell didn’t you say something earlier?”

“I thought it might’ve just been a blip.” There was that irritating giggle again. “You know, from the way you went on I thought it was just your typical case of paranoia. But then a couple of days ago I was flicking though the medical records and I noticed that admissions had spiked. I was thinking it was a fluke or something, but then I noticed when it started.”

The cramped space was getting hotter. Rory was glistening with sweat now, but the noise of the mob had faded significantly. “When FAIRY, when did it start?”

“Take a wild guess...Three months ago. The day of that nasty business with the Necromblian folk.”

“And you waited two days to tell me?! What were you thinking?”

“No need to get testy little miss, you wouldn’t want me to just leave you in this pickle all by yourself now would you?”

“FAIRY, do you know what it is that’s affecting the crew?”

“It’s not just the crew, it’s the passengers as well. To the best of my knowledge it’s some sort of pathogen. The Necromblian guards leaked it into the ship’s atmosphere.”

“And why has it taken you so long to detect it?”

“I don’t know, they must’ve messed about with my lovely wiring or something. It’s awfully rude you know. Imagine how I felt when those nasty Officials came prodding and poking about in my innards yesterday, so uncouth!”

“Holy mother, they’re in on it too!”

“Yes, I suppose so. In any case they certainly know what’s going on, which means no help from the Imperial Senate and bye bye rescue.” She started humming to herself, the kind of absent-minded crooning a mother does when they’re preparing a meal or doing laundry. You wouldn’t have thought such a complex collection of electronics could be absent-minded, but FAIRY was certainly not your average on-board computer.

“FAIRY, is there any way of stopping this pathogen from spreading and curing those affected?”

“Yes. But it would involve killing 70% of onboard inhabitants outright and suffocating the rest while I replace the air supply.”

“Right, not a viable option then. What are the other choices?”

“Let the pathogen have at it and hope it doesn’t kill those affected.”

“Were you not watching them trying to kill me? I don’t think that one’s going to work either. Next?”

“If you can make it to the freezer in the medical wing, I can put you in stasis. And then I can slowly clean the air supply without the ship’s occupants asphyxiating. It will take time. But it should work. And if not, I’ll freeze the whole ship and wait till someone come to rescue us.”

“Okay. That one is doable.”

From the crawl space where she currently resided, Rory knew she could make it to the freezer through the vent system. It was two floors down, and along corridor 17a. With grunts and wheezes, she evaded the clawing grasps of the mobs, easing her tired muscles and aching frame through hundreds of metres of titanium vents. Eventually she reached the compression chamber outside the freezer. Stepping inside and sealing the door, she let the cold wash over her. It felt like relief. Relief from the threat of harm, but also from the pressure of responsibility. Inside the freezer was dark, aside from the faint blue light inside the cryogenics pods. They were laid out like glass-lid coffins, heavy metal tubing pumping ice into each individual bed, preserving all the unfortunate in a state of living death. Not alive, but not yet truly dead. They glowed blue with the promise of restoration. She knew where she was going: fourth row on the left, second pod in. Through the lid she could see his lips stained red from the blast impact high on his barrel chest. But despite this, Kingsly still looked as if he slept. Black ropes of hair splayed across his shoulders, and his arms lay limp at either side. With a silent tear and one last whimper, Rory opened the pod. The cold that spilled forth soothed and she needed no encouragement to clamber inside. With the last few moments of movement the ice allowed, she pressed a loving kiss on his forehead, his mouth, curled her form against his side and snuggled her head in the crook of his neck. She had been wrong. This was her home.