Carpathian Forty-Three

Carpathian Forty-Three - Part 22

"Yeah," I say simply, relaxing in the opulence of Thak's prize chair.

When I first encountered the divergence in the ship's décor, I was careful and avoided it. Thak would have none of that. Sharing the chair with crewmates, and often suppliers or customers, was one of Thak's joys. It worked well in setting the power structure in relationships, most vendors in the outer planets had never seen wood in person, much less a whole chair of the exotic substance.

"Fort is putting us through the ringer now, throwing low-probability problems at us, training for everything."

"That must be weird," Thak says at my mention of Fort.

"No weirder than sharing a mind with a twenty something hydrocarbon analyst," I say.

"Touché."

I stretch in the chair. My back is convinced it spent several minutes at three gee and refuses to unclench from my spine.

"Working on the next cycle?" I ask, nodding at Thak's desk. Thak is usually planning a few cycles ahead for us, lining up customers, suppliers. Most comptrollers I've known during my time with Carpathian are like that. Thak is more structured than usual.

"What? Oh," The look at the desk, the figures there, then back to me. "No. Retirement."

That makes sense. There's no way corporate lets us continue after what happened to Fort, after waking a member of our cargo and thrusting them into the role of impromptu ship's Operating System. I haven't thought about what comes after this cycle. I've been concentrating on running the ship and working with Miki on our approach to Titan.

"How will it go down?" I ask.

Thak lives in the future, planning, lining up our inputs, fuel, air, water. Our current situation is a divergence, but I'm sure they had plans for something like this. They sit back from their desk, swiping the figures and numbers away, replacing them with the image of a faux wooden desk.

"Voclain's done. They made the hard choices and will be rewarded with forced retirement. Roz should have retired a couple cycles ago. I think they are holding on to Rhi without vocalizing that."

The captain certainly is old enough to retire, but like most ship's captains, they have a drive to continue, at least until a clear successor emerges. It's hard to believe any successor could live up to Voclain's standards. Myself, I'm not looking for that role. It's a problem in the Carpathian line. Executive officers that don't want the responsibility of command, they resist it. It makes succession planning difficult. Carpathian is trying to attract captains from other lines, but culture makes it difficult.

"Well, that's to be expected I suppose," I say.

"Rhi will go with them. They're close enough to retirement. They both toddle off to Ganymede or Calisto, wherever it is that Spacers retire to. I think Roz has family on Calisto. I know they've got land there, an apartment? Anyway, they're done. Probably for the best."

I can imagine Rosalie retired, am amused by the vision. Rhianu, less so. I expect they'll tinker on something, shipyards, ag domes, something. I worry about them separating from The Twins.

"What about you? What's the future hold for economic genius Dhananjay Thakkar?" I ask.

"Oh, I have plans," Thak evades.

There's a picture on Thak's desk of the three of them, Thak, Rhi and Roz in a bar somewhere. It's Ganymede Terminus station, my implants tell me. The photo was taken at Basko's on the space station at the terminus of Ganymede's Space Elevator, fifteen years ago. They look like siblings, all holding shot glasses commemorating fifteen cycles, fifteen trips from the inner solar system to Jupiter or Saturn. They're smiling, something I haven't seen much this cycle, even before Fort's death.

"Corporate will want to promote you," Thak says. "Ward will be reassigned. Not sure what will happen to Forty-Three. Stripped and scrapped I suppose."

Thak's clinical about their assessment. There's no sentimentality there for the ship. They called it 'Forty-Three' though, not 'Fort'. Fort's already gone. Martians aren't sentimental about passed loved one's bodies. They recycle bodies just like any other resource on Mars.

"Don't know that I want a promotion," I say, rubbing the wooden armrests of the chair. I don't think I could make the decisions Voclain's made. My solution to the trolly problem has always been not to play the trolly problem. It's not a stance a captain can take.

"You'd be a fool turn them down."

Thak fixes me with that wild, serious, old Martian eye they whip out at unusual or dramatic moments. Thak's face is asymmetrical to begin with, one eye higher than the other, bigger, an old injury that healed strange in the low gravity of Carpathian Forty-Three. When they want, they can exaggerate that into an intimidating seriousness that knocks you back on your heals the first few times you see it.

"Oh, I've been a fool for a long, long time Thak." You aren't winning this argument with your crazy eye this time, I think at them.

They hold the stare for a moment. Another. Another.

"Well. Alright then."

It's not the end of the argument. That much is obvious. Thak has plans. They'll wear you down until you think their plans are your plans. And then they win.