He laughs.
“What’s funny?” she says.
“New Darwinism.”
“What about it?”
He almost tells her about Keshawn. His dark eyes set in that leathered face. How they used to sneak out onto the barracks roof and watch the camp. Smell the stink of piss and shit in the troughs, the scrubbers struggling to keep up with all the pollutants in the atmosphere, such expansive human filth. Keshawn was a teacher. Jack never knew of what, exactly, but everyone called him Professor. He knew all about New Darwinism, understood its philosophies and said that although it was insane and brutal, it should not be disregarded. Our minds, he would say, are mirrors of the world around us. Sometimes the glass gets distorted or cracked, but the causes are very real. Jack never knew if he was reiterating classroom hokum or actually sympathizing with the men who beat helpless prisoners to death.
One night in particular sticks out. The enclosure lights were down, which was unusual, leaving the entire camp dark. They found their way outside and onto the roof by feel, and they could hear others rustling through the camp, and they could smell tobacco smoke that made them sick with envy. There were only a handful of guards doing their rounds, flashlight beams cutting through the rows of huts. Every time a beam fell on empty ground, someone hidden nearby would giggle, and the guard would shout threats, and the hidden man would giggle more. If it weren’t for his bruises and strained muscles and empty stomach, it might have brought Jack a momentary sense of joy. Here in the dark, no one could see them, so no one could hurt them. Keshawn felt it too. He took a deep breath and said, out of nowhere, If there is no escape from horror, then it is our responsibility to endure it, even enjoy it. Acceptance is the only freedom. It must be digested. That’s why I will survive and so many others will die. Jack said nothing. It sounded like bullshit. He assumed Keshawn was talking to himself the way starved men do, having forgotten there were others around. So when Keshawn gripped his shoulder, he startled so hard he nearly fell off the roof. He left the hand there, just squeezing for a while. A year and a half later, Keshawn was the first volunteer to help with the killings. A week after that, he used the lid of a tin can to slit his own throat.
Jack does not tell this story to Lana. He just drops his eyes and drinks his coffee. “Just thinking.”
Lana says, “I came here to apologize.”
“Apologize for what?”
She does that thing where she crinkles her nose like she’s about to sneeze. “When you came to me, you said Ani left you. And I said something pretty cold.”
He remembers. She had said it took Ani long enough. Which is fairly accurate.
“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I was running on very little sleep, and I didn’t expect to see you.”
“You thought I was trying to get laid.”
“Please let me finish. I’m trying to—” She slaps a piece of hair from her forehead.
“Sorry.”
“I just wanted to say that I didn’t mean what I said. I know that despite everything, Ani means a lot to you. I’m sure it hurt when she left.”
“It didn’t.”
“No?”
“It was a relief. I was the one who should’ve left. I was in no shape to be a husband. Or a father. I’m still not.”
“Jack…”
“You think I’m just feeling sorry for myself, but I’m not. Acceptance is freedom, right?”
“Um. I guess.”
“I never told you how I got this,” he says, pulling down his collar. He rarely looks at the tattoo himself, but thinks about it every day and sees it clearly when he closes his eyes. It was crudely rendered with a crooked needle and blotchy ink. A jagged four-point star—the image on FROST’S flag—and the words Killer and Coward arranged vertically on either side.
She looks at it for only a moment, then flicks her eyes away. “No,” she says. “You never did.”
“Food was scarce. The guards came to our hut with new orders. What they considered a solution to the rationing problem.”
She looks into the surface of her coffee.
Belinda’s inflectionless voice erupts through both of their portables: “Warning. Approaching vessel will make contact in one minute and fifty-nine seconds.”
The proximity alert.
Then Jack is out of his room and in the hallway, sprinting to the bridge.
Chapter 17
“What do we see?” Jack says.
Hunter beat him there somehow, a bite of breakfast tucked in one cheek. She taps at the monitor and a series of numbers and symbols pops up on the display. She skims the text and says, “Combat ship. Moving fast.”
He almost asks her to put it on the monitor, but the outer cameras are burned up.
“It’s gotta be our guy.”
“Hang on.”
“Transmission?”
“Not yet.”
“Hail them.”
“Already did. No response.”
“Lost in the noise?”
“I don’t think so.”
“They’re ignoring us?”
“Looks that way.”
The others come through the doors and down the steps. Stetson rushes to his console. Lana looks Jack over and frowns and gestures at her stomach. He isn’t sure what she means until he looks down. In his haste to reach the bridge, he forgot about his drink. He’s still holding the mug, but it’s empty. Hot coffee has splashed down his front, soaking his shirt and most of his right leg. He hadn’t noticed. He drops the mug harder than he means to and the handle snaps off.
“Oh shit,” Hunter says.
“What?”
“Stetson, are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“I don’t fucking believe it.”
Jack says, “Talk to me, people.”
Hunter says, “You’re not gonna be happy.”
He comes forward to see, but he can’t read the data. Squiggles and text and numbers. He’s never been good at this techy coded shit. “What am I looking at?”
She highlights two sets of numbers, one at the bottom of the display, the other at the top. She points to the bottom number. “This is the ship approaching us now.” She points to the top number. “And this is the ship that approached us about two months ago.” The numbers are identical.
“Two months,” he repeats.
She waits for him to realize the implication, but he already has.
“How long before they reach us?”
“Thirty-eight seconds.”
He whips around. He’s about to order them all to the panic pod when his portable rings.
The room gets very quiet.
He already knows who it is. He lifts it to his ear.
“Hello, Dandy,” he says.
“Good afternoon, Jaaack.” The voice is nasally, his name drawn out into a whine. “I had a feeling you would pick up this time.”
“Good guess.”
His crew stares. They knew it was a trap. They just didn’t realize how extensive.
“You should know, Jackie, before you try to run, that my ship is three times as fast as yours, and armed with a very powerful plasma cannon. So here is what’s going to happen. You and your crew will meet my men at your forward airlock. And don’t try sealing anyone in that little escape pod of yours. I know how to count. We’re attaching to your airlock now, so I’d head on down ASAP if I were you. Toodles.”
Toodles. Really.
“Dandy’s with the pirates now?” Stetson says.