The Defiant

We waited in the shuttle, listening to the whoosh of the recompression sequence for a few moments before Four dropped the ramp to the floor of the shuttle bay and opened the hatch. We all filed out.

We stood in a small shuttle bay, just large enough for its contents: the shuttle we’d arrived in and its identical twin, docked on the other side of the bay. The external doors that opened out into space made up the back wall of the bay, and in the wall across from them was a smaller, person-sized door that led into the ship proper.

Three marched immediately over to the door, which whooshed open as she approached, and stepped through.

Alarmed, we chased her out into a plain hallway lit from above, with two doors on either side, spaced far apart. At the end of the hallway was a set of double doors that I guessed led into a lift.

“What are you doing?” Two demanded.

“Um, exploring. What, you want to spend the whole trip in the shuttle bay?”

“No, but we should check out the ship in pairs. We can meet back here in twenty minutes to share our findings,” Seven said.

“There are seven of us. Who goes with who?” Two asked.

“Whom,” Five corrected swiftly. Two glared at him.

“Well, Six and Three have to go together, because she’s the only one he can talk to, and someone else should go with them, too.” I said.

“I’ll do it,” Two said quickly, stepping over next to Three, who rolled her eyes.

“I’ll go with One,” Four said. I relaxed inwardly. As unpleasant as Four could be, I did not want to get stuck with Five.

“That leaves me with Five,” Seven said, less than enthusiastically.

“Four and I will search the upper two decks. Seven, you and Five take the middle. You other three, search the bottom two,” I said.

“Who died and made you queen?” Three muttered. I didn’t respond, but turned on my heel and and walked to the lift at the end of the hall.

Four followed me inside, and we rode up to Deck Two.

Defiants had six decks. The lowest two usually held cargo bays, the shuttle bay, and the engine room. The middle two had crew quarters and the med bay, as well as any recreation rooms had been included during construction. The top deck had the bridge, and the second contained the armory, galley, and any specialty rooms for the mission that was being fulfilled.

At least, that was what should be in this Defiant. I had no idea what the masked figure had in store for us, and so I was cautious when Four and I stepped out of the lift into a hallway just like the one on Deck Six.

There were two doors on each side of Deck Two’s hallway. Four and I crept to the first one, and I stepped out in front of it. It slid open silently, and we walked into a large room. It was dark, and I didn’t see anything distinctive before the door closed behind us and the darkness was complete.

“Computer, lights,” Four called. Nothing happened. “You try.”

“Computer, lights!” I said. The lights flicked on, bathing the room in white glow.

“Maybe it’s because of your accent,” I told Four.

“Maybe,” she said thoughtfully, but I could tell she didn’t think that was it. I looked around the room.

It was a rather Spartan galley, containing only a few plain metal tables and utilitarian chairs scattered throughout the room. A counter on the right wall looked into the kitchen.

I walked through a small metal door into the kitchen, which glimmered with chrome countertops and appliances. Another door at the back led into a storage room stocked with frozen and nonperishable foods. I saw dehydrated meat, protein packs, grains, and all manner of reheatable meals, more than enough to keep a crew of seven comfortable for many months.

I returned to the galley, where Four stood at the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out into space.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’ve never seen myself.”

That’s when I realized Four hadn’t been awake yet when Three, Two, and I had looked at our reflections, and she’d been working on the door when the others had awoken and looked at their own. She wasn’t looking into space, she was seeing her reflection in the glass.

“I’m so young,” she said, prodding her pointed chin. “I thought, with everything I knew about computers and piloting—”

I looked away from her. Her voice, lacking its stubborn, grumpy edge, was for once vulnerable and childlike. The moment was strangely private, leaving me feeling like an intruder.

Four studied herself for another minute, and then spun around and looked at me, the impenetrable mask settling once more on her young features.

“Let’s go, we’ve still got two decks to explore,” she snapped, but it lacked her usual bite. She walked back over to the door and passed back out into the hall. I followed her hurriedly.

The second door was locked, and I had to ask the computer to open it.

It was the armory, a small room with shelves stocked full of every imaginable firearm, from sleek, modern laser pistols to heavy projectile rifles and handguns from the twenty-first century. Four and I didn’t stay long. The armory set an sinister tone for our mission.

The doors on the other side both opened into one huge room with a tall ceiling, which looked to be a training room.

There were targets and dummies along the walls, and weapons hung from the ceiling. I recognized a set of Japanese katana and some other swords, several bows and quivers of arrows, and an impressive array of daggers and throwing knives. A punching bag leaned against a wall. There was a ring drawn in the center of the floor for dueling.

Four walked over to the rack of swords and pulled a thin rapier down, swishing it through the air.

“Swords? Where are they expecting us to be fighting? A pirate ship?” I asked, surveying the collection of daggers.

“Dunno. I won’t be using any of this, anyway. I’m the pilot,” Four said, putting the sword back on the rack.

“So you think they included all of us on this mission for a specific job?” I asked, surprised. I had assumed we would share all the responsibilities.

“Of course. Why do you think they chose us? We come from all over the world, I’ll bet, so they must’ve chosen the best. Seven sounds American, and Five’s English, and I’m clearly from Ireland. You’re probably Asian, and I dunno about Two or Three.”

“But we all speak English.”

“Well, we all have to, don’t we? We have to be able to communicate. I expect that was a limiting factor in their search for candidates.”

“How much effort do you think they put into all this?”

“A lot, I’d expect. Look at this ship. This can’t’ve come cheap. And the technology to remove memories? That’s advanced stuff. They’ve been planning this for years, probably. Let’s go check out the bridge. If there’s any mission details on this ship, that’s where they’ll be.”

Four and I left the training room and rode the lift to Deck One, where we stepped out onto the bridge.

It was a small, circular room, containing only the pilot’s station, captain’s chair, and computers along the walls that received input from all over the ship. At least, they would if they were turned on.

“Why’s everything off?” I asked Four, looking at the front wall, which was made up of a huge viewscreen, currently darkened.

“It’s probably deactivated to save power. Tell the computer to turn the consoles on,” Four said, seating herself at the pilot’s console.

“Why me?”

“You’re the captain,” Four said matter-of-factly.

“What?”

“You’re the captain. It’s obvious. You were the first to wake up, you’ve got natural leadership tendencies, you know the specs of the ship, and the computer only responds to your voice.”

“No way.”

“Well, maybe I’m wrong. You seem to lack basic intelligence. If you don’t believe me, try turning on the consoles.”

I frowned at her. “Computer, activate the consoles and view screen.” Much to my surprise, the computer beeped and the consoles powered up all over the bridge. The view screen flickered to life, displaying the outside view of the planet’s surface as we orbited above it.

“Told you,” Four said smugly.

“Well, if I’m captain, I’m going to go check out my office,” I said, striding over to the door in the wall opposite the lift. It didn’t open automatically, but I knew, without knowing when I had learned, that doors to quarters and offices in nebula-class starships opened only at the recognition of their owner’s handprint.

I laid my hand on the cool metal surface of the door and breathed out as it opened. This proved conclusively that I was, in fact, the captain. For what mission or purpose, I wasn’t sure.

The captain’s office was austere, containing only a desk, computer, and chair, but it was one of the only rooms in the starship that could be exclusively mine. My quarters would undoubtedly be private as well, but I hadn’t seen them yet.

The door buzzed as Four pressed the intercom, and I exited the captain’s office—my office—and returned to the bridge.

“We should get back down to Deck Six,” Four said. “We’re supposed to meet the others in a couple of minutes.”

“Yeah, all right.” I followed her off the bridge and into the lift. We rode down to Deck Six in silence, where we found Three, Six, and Two waiting, looking uncomfortable in Two’s and Six’s case, and bored in Three’s.

“Nothing interesting down here. Just the shuttle bay, some cargo, and the engine room,” Two said immediately, seeming relieved that we had arrived.

“We found the armory, galley, and an epic training room on Deck Two, and the bridge on Deck One,” I said.

“Anything interesting on the bridge?” Six asked via Three.

“We didn’t check the computer banks yet. I figured we should wait until after we’d finished checking the place out. Oh, and One’s the captain, by the way,” Four said casually, sliding down the wall to sit cross legged on the floor.

“What?” Three and Two asked at the same time.

“Yeah. The computer responded to her voice commands, and she can get into the captain’s office.”

Three whistled. “Five’s going to be pissed. He thought he was a shoo-in for captain.”

“Where are they, by the way? We said we’d meet three minutes ago,” Four said.

I looked at her curiously. “How d’you know that? Do you have a watch?”

“No, I just know. You can’t track time like that?”

“Uh, no. What are you, like some kind of freak?” Three said, lip curled.

“Three!” Two said, scandalized.

“What? Normal people can’t tell time that accurately.”

“Anyway,” I said hurriedly, putting a hand on Four’s shoulder as she started to get to her feet, a murderous look on her face. “They were supposed to be here by now. Should we go look for them?”

Just as the last word left my lips, the lift doors slid open, and Seven fell out, blond hair disheveled, a bloody cut on her forehead and a bruise blooming on her cheekbone.

“Five!” She gasped. “Needs help—Deck Four!”

The five of us exchanged looks and then surged forward, piling into the lift.

“What happened?” I asked urgently.

“We were—” she paused to swipe a drop of blood from her forehead, “exploring Deck Four. We went into the med bay—there was a girl there; passed out on the floor. I ran over to help her, and she woke up and attacked us—threw me into a wall. Five told me to run for help. He was still fighting her when I left.”

The lift doors slid open, and we sprinted into the hall of Deck Four. Clatters and thumps sounded from the last door on the left.

Six in the lead, we ran through the door into the med bay, which had been completely trashed, pallets and medical supplies strewn everywhere, streaks of blood on the walls. Five and the stranger were on the floor, fighting, rolling on the floor in a tangle of arms and legs.

Without hesitation, Six reached into the ball of limbs and extracted a girl, who snarled and squirmed like a wildcat, clawing at his arms. He was terrifically strong, still as a statue while the girl writhed around, laboring to extricate herself.

Seven ran over to them with a syringe of clear liquid, which she jammed into the stranger’s arm. The girl slowly stopped struggling and passed out in Six’s grip, who dumped her onto one of the pallets.

“Son of a bitch!” Five exclaimed, standing up with his hand over a nasty scratch on his arm that was sluggishly oozing blood. Seven jogged over to him with a roll of bandages she’d pulled from an overturned cart.

“Um, One?” Two called from by the unconscious girl.

“What?” I asked, coming over to him. But my question was answered when I looked down at her face.

It was a mirror image of my own.