Jane had run off and hid from them in a cupboard. At first Sarah was mildly disappointed by her actions until she read that the fighting had turned deadly. Who wouldn’t get sick of that much aggression?
But because of her perceived cowardice, when the test ended, she was demoted from captain.
That explained why Jane had given her the evil eye when they met during the launch from Earth into orbit. But Jane’s cowardice and her resultant demotion was hardly Sarah’s doing.
So Jane was only here because she was small enough to fit inside a kitchen cabinet and cowardly enough to let her crew murder each other without intervening in any way.
She closed the report and moved on to Michael’s. When she was finished, she had half a mind to jettison his frozen carcass out into the void.
Michael had performed quite well during the trials. But that had all changed when it was discovered that one of the crew members had purposely jettisoned several colonists—actors—and then set up a fellow crew member to take the fall. She’d semi-thawed the patsy crew member so he'd move into a different position and then she refroze him. When the others saw that he'd moved since they'd put him on ice, they suspected he'd come out of stasis to kill the colonists. But because refreezing so soon after a thaw was dangerous, the guy was dying a slow and painful death as his cell walls were ruptured by the crystallized water within them.
Th e scenario turned Michael Stevens into a bloodthirsty killer.
He was the reason Jane had hid in the kitchen cabinet; she thought he'd come for her next.
Sarah closed his dossier. Why would the testers deem a guy like Michael fit for this sort of duty? Just ten days ago he'd killed two people. Not for the first time, Sarah got the sinking feeling that they were all just being tested again. A wild card like Michael would give them all fits in a simulated test setting.
She made a mental note to talk to the other two members of her team about Michael as soon as it was time for them to wake up. Jane might have further insight s about the man.
She browsed through the dossiers one last time, focusing mostly on Emma’s. Something about it didn’t ring quite true. The tests had fooled them all too easily. Her suspicions demanded she s ought out the truth, so she called down to ground control and asked to be put through to Doctor Davis, the doctor in charge of the sadistic, deadly experiments. In less than a minute, his familiar voice came over the comm.
She cut right to the chase. “This is Captain Sarah Miller on board the outbound vessel Seeder .”
The throat cleared and a few seconds later the doctor said, “Go on , Captain.”
“I’ve been poring over the test results of my crew members and something doesn’t feel quite right about them.”
Davis cut her off with, “You can not have those files. Who gave you them?”
“ Screw you, Davis. My question is this: Why did we fall for your charades?”
“I don’t know what you mean. We put obstacles in your way, some easily overcome and others impossible to overcome. You were simply evaluated on how you performed.”
“I mean, why were we so easily tricked by your tests? We’re all extremely intelligent and yet none of us figured it out.”
“Oh, yes. We administered a mild morphine cocktail while you were in your mock stasis pods.”
“So you drugged us? Wouldn’t that skew your results?”
“We didn’t feel we had given enough to any of you to completely cloud your judgment.”
She didn’t know she’d been drugged. She hadn’t felt it at the time. But she was glad there was a reason none of them had figured out they were being tested. She didn’t feel like such a dipshit anymore.
She barked accusatorially, “Do you blame yourself for the deaths of the four crew members who didn’t pass your tests?”
“Actually, there was an entire four man crew who all perished while under our observation, so the number of fatalities is
But because of her perceived cowardice, when the test ended, she was demoted from captain.
That explained why Jane had given her the evil eye when they met during the launch from Earth into orbit. But Jane’s cowardice and her resultant demotion was hardly Sarah’s doing.
So Jane was only here because she was small enough to fit inside a kitchen cabinet and cowardly enough to let her crew murder each other without intervening in any way.
She closed the report and moved on to Michael’s. When she was finished, she had half a mind to jettison his frozen carcass out into the void.
Michael had performed quite well during the trials. But that had all changed when it was discovered that one of the crew members had purposely jettisoned several colonists—actors—and then set up a fellow crew member to take the fall. She’d semi-thawed the patsy crew member so he'd move into a different position and then she refroze him. When the others saw that he'd moved since they'd put him on ice, they suspected he'd come out of stasis to kill the colonists. But because refreezing so soon after a thaw was dangerous, the guy was dying a slow and painful death as his cell walls were ruptured by the crystallized water within them.
Th e scenario turned Michael Stevens into a bloodthirsty killer.
He was the reason Jane had hid in the kitchen cabinet; she thought he'd come for her next.
Sarah closed his dossier. Why would the testers deem a guy like Michael fit for this sort of duty? Just ten days ago he'd killed two people. Not for the first time, Sarah got the sinking feeling that they were all just being tested again. A wild card like Michael would give them all fits in a simulated test setting.
She made a mental note to talk to the other two members of her team about Michael as soon as it was time for them to wake up. Jane might have further insight s about the man.
She browsed through the dossiers one last time, focusing mostly on Emma’s. Something about it didn’t ring quite true. The tests had fooled them all too easily. Her suspicions demanded she s ought out the truth, so she called down to ground control and asked to be put through to Doctor Davis, the doctor in charge of the sadistic, deadly experiments. In less than a minute, his familiar voice came over the comm.
She cut right to the chase. “This is Captain Sarah Miller on board the outbound vessel Seeder .”
The throat cleared and a few seconds later the doctor said, “Go on , Captain.”
“I’ve been poring over the test results of my crew members and something doesn’t feel quite right about them.”
Davis cut her off with, “You can not have those files. Who gave you them?”
“ Screw you, Davis. My question is this: Why did we fall for your charades?”
“I don’t know what you mean. We put obstacles in your way, some easily overcome and others impossible to overcome. You were simply evaluated on how you performed.”
“I mean, why were we so easily tricked by your tests? We’re all extremely intelligent and yet none of us figured it out.”
“Oh, yes. We administered a mild morphine cocktail while you were in your mock stasis pods.”
“So you drugged us? Wouldn’t that skew your results?”
“We didn’t feel we had given enough to any of you to completely cloud your judgment.”
She didn’t know she’d been drugged. She hadn’t felt it at the time. But she was glad there was a reason none of them had figured out they were being tested. She didn’t feel like such a dipshit anymore.
She barked accusatorially, “Do you blame yourself for the deaths of the four crew members who didn’t pass your tests?”
“Actually, there was an entire four man crew who all perished while under our observation, so the number of fatalities is
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