Grey wanted his first mentor meeting to be held in his private wing, where the girl could be put at ease. Yuli, though, argued the Bridge was the only appropriate place for such a meeting. “The entire ship is aware of the assignment by now,” Yuli pointed out. “The meeting is far more significant than a small child meeting the Captain in private. The symbolism must be upheld.”
Grey couldn’t argue with him. In the last four days since the news had erupted, the Forum had been thick with speculation on what it all meant. There were very few people insensitive enough to wonder aloud how he was going to die. Instead, there was a nuance and implication to every message posted there that told him it was exactly what everyone was wondering. Some were probably rubbing their hands with glee over the idea. Others, thankfully, were as disturbed by the prospect as he was.
The majority of people were naturally concerned about how the quick evolution of captains would affect the good running of the ship. The question bothered Grey, too. Why had he even been assigned as captain, if he was going to vacate the chair barely a decade into the job, potentially with projects half completed?
However, the ways of the AI were often mysterious, until hindsight provided the surprising answers. He had to trust there was good reasoning behind this scandal-making assignment. The AI could only work for the betterment of the ship.
So he should, too.
Reluctantly, he agreed to the first meeting being held on the Bridge, with the full array of aides and Yuli in attendance. The meeting would be recorded and posted on the Forum for everyone to see. After all, Yuli had also argued, everyone had to see the new captain formally accepting the role to understand the role was being preserved with due attention.
It wasn’t how Grey had met Captain Kermode. She had already been chair-bound when he was assigned to be mentored by her and they had drunk tea in her private quarters. He had poured because she couldn’t get up and the teapot was too heavy to lift from a seated position.
She had made him feel comfortable, not once reminding him he had been assigned because it was expected she would be dead in a few years’ time. But then, she had been well over her century mark and everything about his assignment and her training had felt perfectly natural.
Everything about this hand-over was wrong, awkward and resentment-generating. It had unsettled the ship, so holding the first meeting in public would help soothe some of those strong feelings.
Grey wore the formal black uniform, which he hated with a passion, because it scratched his neck and was tight through the shoulders and chest. Taking a full breath was impossible.
He sat in the equally uncomfortable big chair and waited, while beyond the open doors to the bridge he could hear people approaching, their footsteps echoing in the pristine white corridor beyond.
Paulie shifted on his feet and cleared his throat and Yuli glared at him from his position just behind Grey’s chair.
The big group of people entered the bridge, everyone looking around with wide eyes, just as the tourists did. Grey scanned them, looking for the girl.
There. She was half-hidden behind the adults in front of her. Even so, she was surprisingly tall. She was holding the hand of the big man next to her. Grey recognized him from his public profile on the Forum. This was her father, Jakub Emmetore.
Grey looked back at Emmaline. She was also looking around the big, trapezoid room. Three of the walls were covered in dashboards and static screens. The fourth and smallest wall, facing the chair, was one big screen.
There was only the one chair. The ship’s history said the Bridge crew had all stood, except for the captain. It had been a long time since anyone had needed to actively monitor the progress of the Endurance from the Bridge itself, so even the captain’s chair tended to gather dust, now.
Grey guessed Emmaline was looking around the room and feeling the same sense of disappointment he had felt when he’d first toured the Bridge. It was a museum, preserving a time when the Endurance had needed steering through a star system. A symbol, in fact.
Her attention turned to him. Dark blue eyes studied him. It was a hard, assessing gaze. Then she realized he was looking at her. Her gaze dropped. She took a half-step sideways, which put the red-headed woman in front of her, hiding her from Grey’s gaze.
The group came to a halt in front of him. There were six adults, ranged around the girl protectively.
Yuli stepped forward. “Welcome to the Bridge of the Endurance,” he intoned in his deep, projecting voice. “This is Captain Durant. Which of you is Emmaline?” It was a formal question. There was only one child in the group.
The adults shifted on their feet. There was a soft whisper. Then the big man, Emmetore, lifted his arm, leading the girl and making her step forward. He let her arm go. Then she staggered another half-step forward. Someone had pushed her.
Grey studied her curiously. Even he had not been able to access her personal profile on the Forum, where children were given one hundred percent iron-clad privacy. He had not been able to find a single public image of her. Her parents had kept her sheltered and somewhat isolated. Other children led far more public lives, the adored minors of an entire ship of five thousand people who collectively and vicariously enjoyed watching them grow up.
On this day, right now, there were only six hundred and three children on the ship. The number did not vary much. Grey had checked historical statistics on the numbers of children late last night, when sleep wouldn’t come. The AI that controlled procreation quickened children at just the right rate to keep the population stable.
Grey studied Emmaline Victore curiously. She was a slender girl, already well into puberty, with the long hair he remembered from the few times he had seen her in the Aventine with her father, many years before. The pigtails were gone. Her hair hung down her back, a rich brown river.
She was wearing…he wasn’t sure what to call what she was wearing, except to say she wasn’t wearing trousers like everyone else. He could actually see her legs, from the knee down. The slender ankles disappeared inside work boots, while the flesh between her ankle and knee was bare. The garment covering her down to her knees was a soft tubular shape, in a blue that matched her eyes almost exactly. It looked like a modern version of clothes he had seen from ancient history footage, from old Terra. A skirt? The name came to him and seemed right. He would have to look it up, later.
The outlandish clothing was at odds with the formality of this moment. It was rebellious.
Her chin was pointed and thrust forward as she looked at him directly.
“I am pleased to meet you, Emmaline,” he told her.
“Captain,” she acknowledged. She had an air of containment and control which he usually only found in much older people. It was intriguing, because everything else about her said she was ready to bolt at the first alarm. She was tense, all her senses alert.
But still she stood and looked him in the eye. She had courage, then.
“I see you brought friends with you. I’m glad.”
“They are my parents’ friends,” she said. “My friends weren’t given permission to come to the bridge.”
And a complaint, right on the heels of the defiant look in the eyes.
The rank of aides alongside him reacted. He could feel their disapproval.
So could she. Her shoulders curved in and her gaze dropped to the ground. She glanced back over her shoulder toward her father. He shook his head a little, silently telling her to stay where she was.
Grey put his elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin on his fist, his intrigue growing. “I don’t think your friends would have helped you feel any better about this meeting, had they been allowed to attend.”
Her chin came up again, just enough for her to look at him from under her clear brow. Her eyes narrowed. “You were given tea and there…there wasn’t all these people.” She pushed out the words, getting them out. Her courage was starting to fail, the stress of a public reception and glaring attention taking their toll.
The mention of tea told him she had done her homework. She had researched him. Ah, well, he was an adult now. His life was a matter of public record.
He sat up. “Everyone, leave us. Emmaline, please stay.”
“Sir?” Yuli asked with stiff formality.
“You, too,” Grey said gently.
“You must let the parents stay,” Yuli murmured.
Grey sighed. “Very well.”
Yuli murmured to the parents, then turned and shepherded everyone out of the room in front of him and shut the doors.
Anat and Jakub stayed behind the girl, who was hugging herself as if she was cold. It might have something to do with the skirt-thing she was wearing, which seemed insubstantial. He suspected, though, her chill came from another source.
“Would it make you feel happier if I arranged for tea to be served?” he asked her.
She considered for a moment. “No,” she said at last.
He pressed his fingers together. “There is no one here to listen to what you say, now. My chief of staff has halted the recording of this meeting. You can speak freely, Emmaline. You don’t want to be here and I would like to know why.”
She stayed in the frozen posture, one hand cupping her shoulder, the other held in a fist against the other arm. “I don’t want to be captain,” she said flatly.
Surprise touched him. Everyone wanted to be the captain. The children he had played with growing up had acted out stories they made up about life on the Bridge and argued over who got to sit in the chair. At ten years of age, the fantasy of being captain had been as glamour-filled and wildly improbable to him as it had been to any of his friends. “Why do you not want to be the captain?” he asked curiously.
She almost shrugged. It was a tiny movement. “If you knew what you know now about being the captain, when you were first assigned to Captain Kermode, would you have wanted it?”
Her parents both looked aghast. She had moved far beyond the realms of politeness in their estimation.
Grey hid his admiration. For a fourteen year old to understand the difference between the glamour and the reality was a rare thing. Perhaps, behind her shyness and her defiance, the girl had potential, after all. “No, I wouldn’t have wanted the job, if I had known then what I know now, although that is because I would have thought I couldn’t possibly do it. That is what mentoring is for.”
“Do you…mind?” she asked, sounding just as curious as he did.
Her father frowned, puzzled, while her mother shifted, watching her daughter with growing horror.
Grey, though, knew exactly what she was asking. In the last five days since the news had broken and spread across the ship like wildfire, this girl was the first to ask him directly how he felt about being told he would die before he reached thirty-two.
“I mind,” he replied truthfully. “But there’s nothing I can do about it and the captain’s chair must be filled by the most suitable candidate, so the ship can move on smoothly.”
“That’s all you care about?”
“Emmie,” her father breathed. He was well beyond appalled now. His face was red and he was sweating.
“I must consider the ship first, above all,” Grey told her. “That’s my job.”
“It stinks,” she said flatly.
“It does.”
“All of it,” she added. She took a tiny step forward. “You’re the captain. Can’t you tell them to find someone else to train?”
He almost laughed at the idea. “It doesn’t work like that,” he replied. “My priority is the safekeeping of the ship and the people on it. It is Master Baki Hart’s job to tell us what we should all do to contribute to the welfare of the ship.”
“It’s his AI that tells us.” Emmaline used a dry, adult tone. “The one they tell me has never been wrong, not once.”
“Not in a very long time, no. AIs learn from their mistakes and grow. But you know this.”
“Yet the AIs can’t predict the winner of the next tank game at all,” she added.
The laugh caught him by surprise. It came from his belly, deep and jolly. He pulled himself together. “Do you know how the tank games are built?” he asked her. “I mean, how the gravity surges that affect the behavior of the ball are designed?”
She shrugged. “The only fair way is for the surges to be generated randomly, so no one knows what will happen next.”
“Random,” he repeated. “In other words, chance. Tankball games are games of chance. Even the most skillful team can be decimated by chance surges that give the other team a break.”
She was frowning. Her arms loosened and her hands fell to her sides. “So we’re both victims of bad luck?” she asked.
He was startled. Again. That hadn’t been what he meant, although he could see why she would draw that analogy. “You can think of it as luck if you want,” he told her. “I prefer to think there is a meaning in this we do not yet understand.” He straightened up again. “My chief of Staff, Yuli, will arrange a training schedule and syllabus, to be fitted in around your formal education. Next time, we will meet in my private office, not here. There will be tea,” he added.
She didn’t smile.
“You will work harder in the next six years than anyone else you know. You will also get all the help and support you need. The resources of the Bridge are yours to call on when you need them…and you will need them before you’re through. I can promise you, Emmaline, when you reach your Emergence day, you will know as thoroughly as I did that you are ready to sit in this chair.”
Her gaze dropped.
“You have a lot to absorb. I remember how it felt,” he told her. “Go home, now. Rest, talk with your parents and friends. You can also speak directly to me whenever you want. Yuli has sent my personal code to your apartment…and to your parents, too.” He nodded at the two standing behind her. They looked dazed and very uncomfortable. Grey wasn’t the only adult in the room caught flat-footed by the girl’s questions. It made him feel a tiny bit better.
As Emmaline led them off the Bridge, Grey sat back in the chair and let himself more deeply absorb her on-point question. Did he mind? Yes, absolutely, with every shred of his being, he minded. If he let himself think about it for too long, he wanted to scream aloud his resentment and fury.
But while he had been speaking with her, the blind near-panic had checked for just a moment. It was something he had said to her, about putting the ship first….
Ah, there it was. He grasped the idea and let it form fully in his mind.
He was one of the very few people on the Endurance who ever got advance warning about their impending death. If he must die young, at least he had a decade in which to do something useful, to make the death more than meaningless. As captain, he was in a position to do exactly that. He could bring forward the long-term projects he and Romilda had talked about in the days leading to her death, when she had been vocally regretting all she had not been able to do.
Yes, that was it. He would die with nothing left undone.
No regrets. None.
Training Emmaline Victore to be one of the best captains the Endurance had ever seen would fit nicely with his ambition.
Now, all he had to do was make Emmaline see it that way, too.