Zephyr Dorsey

“The Red Curtain” from ANARCHO

A thick red curtain hung in stiff folds against the wall beside Marxa. She knew the secret behind it. The lonesome stars sparkling like broken glass on black asphalt, the silent icy death awaiting, the nothingness ever after.

The thoughts of it swirled through her head. Round and round, blackness and death, meaninglessness and void. Vertigo seized her—the first time in her young life. She pitched backward, scraping at the wall for support. Her grasping hand found the lever beneath its open, transparent dome, and she clung to it as a shipwrecked soul to timber in a tumultuous sea.

The steely blue eyes of First Officer Nyogo Wickham glared at her disdainfully, the bones of his jaw working as if grinding marbles beneath the thin skin of his handsome face. As was the rest of the Amaurot’s Crew class, he was wearing a white dress-uniform and standing ramrod straight, arms at his side.

Averting her gaze, Marxa looked across the large room, trying to keep her mind on anything other than what was behind the curtain. The carpet, narrow and dingy, sliced the assembly room in half, a blood-red trail leading straight to the curtain’s rigid cascade. Across the red aisle, members of the Corprit class gathered in dark-suited clumps, shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

The white uniforms abruptly stiffened even straighter, and Marxa saw Captain Jarrard Cutlass and Chief Executive Officer Tahnessa Tohla walking down the carpet toward her. Leaning up from the lever, she stood erect and leveled her eyes.

Cutlass, wearing the same white dress-uniform as his Crew, was of a stocky build, with short dark hair, his black beard recently becoming threaded with silver. His stride was militaristic, and his eyes remained fixed on the curtain as he marched forward.

Tahnessa, about the same height as the captain, wore her golden hair tied in a swirled bun behind her head. Like the other Corprits, she was dressed in black—dress jacket, blouse, and long skirt.

Arriving at the curtain, the two leaders turned and faced the gathering, a few steps away from Marxa.

“Janneth Fellows has been found guilty of treason and sentenced to death,” Cutlass boomed, his words bouncing harshly off the vacant walls of the Gathering Room. “A tribunal has examined the evidence against her and determined her guilt to have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt.”

Fellows guilty of sabotage? Marxa could still hardly believe it. Although it felt less than a year to her consciousness, it had been over five OUTside-years since she had first met the commander.

Marxa had been turning a rounded corner along one of the ship’s corridors when she found her way partially blocked by a panel removed from the wall. As she was shifting to go around it, she noticed someone dressed in light-blue overalls, on hands and knees, half her body disappearing into the large, rectangular hole left behind by the missing panel. The woman leaned back and sat on her heels, rubbing the side of her grimy face with the back of a hand wrapped around a pronged instrument of some sort.

“Vice Chief Bunyan!” the woman exclaimed. She waved a sideways arc with the strange tool. “Come on through. Excuse my mess.” She stood and brushed off the knees of her overalls.

“Thank you,” returned Marxa. Her initial instinct was to continue on. She was late for a meeting with the Chief X. But something caused her to pause and turn. “Commander Janneth Fellows, isn’t it?” she asked. “Engineering?”

“The one and the same.” Fellows held out a hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Vice Chief.”

Marxa hoped Fellows hadn’t noticed the fractional second of hesitation she had shown before taking hold of the dirty hand and shaking it. She glanced toward the uncovered recess behind the wall. “Major problem or minor problem?”

“Oh, nothing a couple of bangs and a turn can’t fix,” replied Fellows, displaying a wide, close-mouthed smile.

“Nothing to worry about, then?”

“What? Worry about the Amaurot?” The commander shook her head, her loosely tied, brown ponytail shifting behind her. She slapped the smooth wall. “You don’t have to worry about this young colt. He’s just getting started.” She caressed the wall’s surface. “Aren’tcha, boy?”

***   ***   ***

“Traitors!” someone hissed from the dark-suited ranks of the Corprits.

Marxa shook away the memory of Fellows and stared over the angry faces jutting toward each other across the carpet.

“Nihilists!” Wickham growled back, the heel of a black-booted foot rising as if readying for a charge.

“Silence!” barked Cutlass, springing forward, his stern visage fanning side to side. “Such outbursts will not be tolerated!”

No one dared utter a contrary word, although many remained forward-leaning and seemingly ready to brawl.

“We are all a little emotional today, Captain Cutlass,” came a woman’s voice from the far end of the room.

Marxa saw Reverend Evanjaleen stepping forward. She wore a coarse, light-brown tunic and a long, dark-brown skirt. Her face was plain, her nose thin and long, and her graying hair piled untidily atop her head.

“A single death affects us all,” she continued. “The blowing out of a single candle, though it be set amongst a thousand, is a diminution of the combined light. I beg you… be forbearing, Captain, if our shared sorrow at this diminishment of ourselves manifests in a few words or behaviors not strictly conforming to protocol.”

Cutlass’s brow furrowed. Marxa knew the captain was not one to condone speech out of turn. There were rules aboard the Amaurot, rules criss-crossing like the strands of a net, keeping things from slipping out of good order.

Chief Tohla took a step forward and stood beside the captain.

“Yes, thank you, Reverend Evanjaleen,” she said. “As always, your comments are insightful. This is no easy thing we’ve been called forth to witness today.”

“Reverend Evanjaleen,” said Cutlass, finding his voice, “I am sure you can understand that there can be but little leniency aboard a starship tasked with a mission such as ours.”

“Of course, Captain,” replied Evanjaleen, clasping her hands behind her back and bowing slightly as she retreated into the crowd of similarly simply dressed Pilgrims at the rear of the assembly.

One of the Pilgrim women rested a reassuring hand on Evanjaleen’s shoulder. Docelyn Bunyan, Marxa’s own mother.

Marxa’s parents had started their family when they were very young, and Docelyn was still a lovely woman, with sparkling green eyes, an upturned nose, and broad cheekbones that gave her smooth face a less cadaverous look than most of the others aboard the Amaurot.

Marxa knew her mother’s opinion of the death penalty and was surprised she had come to the execution at all. She must certainly be very disappointed to see her middle child taking such a prominent role in such a ghastly spectacle.

Cutlass’s voice again boomed through the Gathering Room. “We are embarked upon a great journey,” he began. “We have crossed billions of miles, all of it most hateful to life. And we have much, much farther to travel. We have gambled our lives and the future of humanity on this undertaking… and on each other. No one can be allowed to jeopardize our mission. We walk the knife-edge as it is.”

As the captain spoke, Marxa’s attention drifted to the droning, background hum of the Amaurot, a sound she rarely noticed anymore. She realized she could hear another sound, too. A small click, reoccurring as rhythmically as a heartbeat. It was coming from behind her.

She stole a glance over her shoulder and saw she was standing near one of the circling green lights embedded in walls throughout the ship. The lights, or “eyes” as they were often called, indicated the status of the Amaurot‘s artificially intelligent operating system. As long as they remained green, all was well. But if they ever turned red—which Marxa had never seen happen—then something was amiss with the ship.

Cutlass turned to the ship’s Chief Executive Officer. “Chief Tohla, you wished to address the assembly?”

Tahnessa inhaled deeply and forced a grim smile.

“Thank you, Captain,” said the Chief X, pivoting toward the assembly. “My fellow Sojourners… we aboard the Amaurot owe it not only to ourselves but to those left behind—as well as to those yet to be born—to complete this mission successfully. When someone purposefully acts to reduce the likelihood of our success, we have no choice but to treat such treason with the utmost severity.”

She paused, regarding the simple-garmented Pilgrims at the back of the room. “I know not all of you are entirely in agreement with what must be done here today, but I appreciate your show of support and your commitment to unity. In the vast, empty reaches of space, we have only each other to hold on to. We have no choice but to trust each other. If one among us violates that trust, consequences must follow. Our resources are too limited to sustain those who would betray us or harm the mission.” She turned to Cutlass. “Captain?”

As Cutlass began speaking again, Marxa was surprised to see the Chief X quietly making her way along the wall toward an exit.

What’s so important it can’t wait a few more minutes? she wondered. She felt a little hurt that her boss—someone she had begun to think of as a friend as well as a mentor—would leave her alone to face the terrible task ahead of her.

“Janneth Cybil Fellows has been condemned by lawful tribunal for the crime of treasonous sabotage,” bellowed Cutlass, “the penalty for which is death. We are gathered here today to carry-out and bear witness to that dread sentence, not out of vindictiveness, and with no joy in our hearts, but for the good of the mission. We are only fortunate that her plans did not come to fruition before being detected by Sentinel.”

Cutlass gestured toward the android standing to the side of the assembly.

Sentinel was of average human height, with a hard-shelled body, rust-colored except at the joints, which were black. His spherical head contained, around its equator, a dark, glassy sensory band. He gave no indication that he had heard his name spoken. A typical Sentinel non-reaction reaction, thought Marxa.

“The time has now come to allow the condemned to speak her final words,” announced Cutlass to the somber assembly. “Sentinel, the curtain, please.”

A few Corprits grunted sounds of disapproval, unhappy at having to listen to anything the convicted traitor, a member of the Crew class, had to say.

Marxa flinched when the curtain beside her suddenly moved. She had forgotten that the android was directly connected to the Amaurot and could manipulate ship components as if by magic.

The curtain pulled back, revealing a metal door with a large glass panel at its center. On the other side of the panel, Commander Fellows stood inside the airlock’s narrow compartment, her brown hair hanging limply over her shoulders. She was dressed in a light-blue, one-piece overall similar to the one Marxa had seen her wearing the day of their first encounter.

“Open communications to the interior of the airlock, please, Sentinel,” ordered Cutlass.

“Communication channel now open, Captain!” returned Sentinel, his tone’s cheeriness out of keeping with the solemnity of the occasion.

“Miss Fellows,” began Cutlass. “You have been found guilty by lawful tribunal of the crime of treason. For this crime, you are sentenced to death. You will now be ejected into space where your final moments will be neither unduly prolonged nor painful. Do you have any last words you wish to communicate to the world of the living?”

Fellows stared wildly through the window. Her eyes, downturned at the outward corners and normally narrow, were opened wide as they shifted through the faces of the crowd.

Marxa found herself unable to look away from the condemned woman’s intense, electric stare.

She’s trying to be brave, she thought. But why? What did her reputation matter now? Why bother to impress when she could gain no future benefit from it? Why not scream and fight against the abyss with every scrap of body and spirit? What compels the condemned to so obediently walk out upon the gallows and lay their heads down meekly upon the chopping block?

It was almost more than Marxa could bear. She felt the tug of vertigo again at the base of her neck and reached a steadying hand for the wall between the lever and the revolving green eye.

At last, Fellows’ hyper-alert stare came to rest on Marxa. The Vice Chief’s breath caught in her throat. She had to fight the urge to shift out from under it, toward the wall, where Fellows could no longer see her because of the wide angle between them.

“I direct my final words to Vice Chief Marxa Bunyan,” said Fellows, her tremulous syllables fogging inside the cold chamber.

Marxa’s muscles tensed, the blood pumping loudly in her ears

Fellows faced her as directly as she could through the glass and metal barrier. “Mz Bunyan, I know you to be a good person, a dependable person. But most importantly at this moment, I know you to be a seeker of truth. You would not have stepped away from the faith of your people if you were not looking for answers you could believe in. It is my last request that you clear my name of this heinous crime. You must find the true saboteur, Vice Chief. Before he strikes again. Successfully this time. You may be humanity’s last hope.”

Marxa stood frozen. Clothes rustled as people shifted their feet.

Fellows turned and faced the assembly. “Alright, Captain, I’m ready. My daughter was granted even less time in this world of tears. Maybe if I think hard enough about her in my final moments, I can direct my dying soul toward hers. Maybe where I’m going, distance means nothing. Nothing at all. I hope so.”

I hope so, too, thought Marxa.

Fellows wiped the tears from her cheeks and took a step back from the door.

Cutlass cleared his throat. “The condemned has spoken. As the captain of the good ship Amaurot, the unpleasant duty falls to me to order the sentence of capital punishment accomplished. The Celestia Expedition Corporation’s second highest-ranking officer, Vice Chief Marxa Bunyan, will now carry-out the sentence.” Cutlass looked toward the android. “Sentinel, the curtain.”

The curtain slid over the airlock door. Simultaneously the slight static from the airlock speaker went silent as Sentinel disconnected the channel.

As Fellows disappeared behind the curtain, she directed a final glance at Marxa. The mix of terror and sorrow and pleading Marxa saw there sent a chill down her back, and she shuddered from head to foot.

“Miss Janneth Cybil Fellows,” roared Cutlass, “for the crime of treason, I hereby sentence you to death!” He gestured toward Marxa. “Vice Chief, if you will.”

Marxa sucked in a deep breath and, steadying herself the best she could atop shaky knees, gripped the lever with both hands and rotated it counterclockwise as she had been shown.

A muted swish sounded from the other side of the curtained door.

Marxa stumbled forward, her forehead touching the wall, her grip on the lever the only thing holding her up.

A long moment passed.

“You may now re-close the airlock’s outerdoor, Vice Chief Bunyan,” ordered the captain.

Marxa leaned up, attempting to shake the fog from her head, and turned the lever in the opposite direction from before, her arms almost too weak to function. As if from far away, she heard the captain saying something to Sentinel, and the red curtain retreated from the door. Her task completed, Marxa stepped away from the lever and forced herself to look through the airlock window. The chamber was empty. Fellows was gone. Completely and permanently gone. A living, breathing human being had just vanished. Forever.

A numbness descended over her like a glass dome separating her from the rest of existence, muffling every sound and slowing every movement. The pain of the moment had given way to a sense of disjointedness. Reality had never felt less real.

“Sentinel,” Marxa heard Cutlass say, “if you would please mark the time.”

“The time of the execution of Janneth Cybil Fellows has been noted according to ship-time!” returned the android.

Cutlass nodded and began toward the exit. “Commander Wickham,” he murmured as he passed the First Officer.

Wickham clenched his jaws and spun on his heels. “Dismissed!” he shouted.

Those in white uniforms began dispersing quickly and silently. Moving more slowly, the Corprits and Pilgrims also began towards the exits, some of them murmuring mournful words. Marxa saw her own family standing together, her older brother’s hand resting on the shoulder of their mother, and their father holding the hand of Izzy, their kid sister, now all grown up.

Suddenly, Izzy pulled her hand away from her father’s and ran toward the exit, her red hair bouncing behind her. The next instant, their father was chugging after her, a concerned look on his grizzled face.

The thought returned to Marxa like a striking hammer. Fellows is dead.

And thousands of miles away by now.