Chapter Text
Sol 51, 6:30 a.m. Eastern
It’s the alarm that wakes him, and that’s how Arthur knows something is very wrong. Eames has consistently called in a few minutes before Arthur is supposed to be on shift, because irritating Arthur is one of the many and varied ways he keeps himself entertained up there in the Big Black. Arthur has taken to sleeping in his office, though really he needs to break himself (and Eames) of the habit, because the idea of sleeping on a pull-out sofa for six months is almost as lunatic as choosing to sleep in zero-g for the same length of time.
But today, the call doesn’t come in, and when his alarm sounds Arthur bolts upright, causing the springs on his couch to squeak in loud protest. Adrenaline gets him into his trousers—he skips the vest and suit jacket—and he’s still tucking in his shirt as he strides into the control room. “What’s happening?”
Ariadne answers without looking up from the console, her fingers flying over her keyboard. “Telemetry is inconclusive. Attitude data indicates anomalous rotation, and initial readouts suggest Daedalus may be in an uncontrolled spin.”
Arthur leans over her shoulder, scanning the lines of data. “How badly is it spinning?”
She bites her lip and looks up at him. “Badly,” she says softly.
Arthur allows himself one second—only one—to take that in, and then he’s spinning around. “Do we have contact with Eames? Anything? Where’s Dom?”
“He’s on his way,” Mal answers, “and no. We’ve got full radio silence—I think the primary antenna array is down, I’m not receiving anything.”
“Initiate the back-up channel, I want comms reestablished as soon as possible.”
“Already doing it.”
“Yusuf, what’s the power status?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “Without comms…”
“Right.” Arthur hovers behind Mal, itching to take over the job himself despite knowing that she is better at it, and therefore faster. He settles for watching as she switches to UHF frequency, quickly establishing a satellite relay link.
“Backup channel online,” she says at last. “We’ve got comms.”
Arthur snatches the headset from her. “Eames? Eames, do you copy?”
There is no answer.
Four Weeks Earlier
Taking over a space mission two weeks before launch was never going to be easy, but Arthur knew it would be so much harder than it needed to be, because the astronaut in question was Lieutenant Eames.
Nash was supposed to be the Flight Director for Icarus I (a ridiculously ominous name, as far as Arthur was concerned, but he wasn’t in charge of these things; their esteemed Space Billionaire had chosen the name himself). Nash did well enough on the practicalities, and most importantly he got along fine with Eames, mostly because he let Eames do whatever he wanted. But then he’d gotten hit with a bad case of Covid (along with half the science and engineering teams) and Arthur, who had been set to run his very first mission as Flight Director on Icarus II, got bumped up.
Arthur didn’t know for certain that he wouldn’t get along with Eames—he’d barely met the man, after all, just watched him charm his way through half the interns at every holiday party. But Eames was the type of astronaut who absolutely nailed the pre-flight physical exams, pulmonary, EKG, and especially his bone density and muscle strength tests. He clearly had trained his whole life to achieve the type of physicality required to endure microgravity, a thick-necked muscle-head Tesla Bro happy to launch himself into space for the purposes of colonization and Manifest Destiny.
(Of course, Arthur also worked for the Space Billionaire; the difference was, Arthur knew he was a hypocrite).
Luckily, he had at least a passing acquaintance with Robert Fischer, who’d be running the robotics team.
As for engineering? Ariadne, the Flight Dynamics Officer (who, incidentally, also served as the Environmental and Life Support Officer because apparently doubling workload and responsibilities was “an innovative approach to functionality and human-centric productivity”) and Yusuf, the Propulsion Engineer/Power Systems Engineer, were two of the four people Arthur could bring himself to share a table with in the cafeteria. Mal Cobb, the Communications Engineer, and her husband Dom, the Head of Medical and Psychological Operations, made up the other two.
Really, Eames was the only problem, and Arthur was confident he could handle him, because Arthur prided himself on being able to handle anything.
He wore his favorite suit to the introductory team meeting, just in case. Fischer, Ariadne, and Yusuf were already there, and Dom and Mal strode in soon after, Mal wearing a flowing red dress that told everyone within range that space was not just for nerds, thank you very much. Arthur sat at the table (it was round so as to discourage hierarchy) and sat in the deeply uncomfortable ergonomically-efficient chair next to Dom.
And then he waited.
He went through his notes, even though it wasn’t actually necessary, because he knew precisely what needed to be covered in this meeting; two weeks out from launch, everyone already knew their jobs, so it was really just a matter of introducing himself, and everyone here was his friend.
Except Eames, who hadn’t bothered to show up yet.
Ten minutes in, Arthur leaned over to murmur to Dom, “Is he always like this?”
Dom shifted in his seat. “Like what?”
Arthur gave him a look. “Unprofessional.”
Dom squirmed a little more, glancing at Mal for assistance. She gave him none. “He’s…a little looser than most,” he admitted. “But he’s extremely competent, and he passed all the psych evals. He’ll get the job done, it just might take him a minute to blow off some steam first.”
“Uh-huh.” Arthur was skeptical. “He doesn’t really seem like the type to be alone with his thoughts for six months. Without anyone to reflect himself back with all due admiration, how will he know he exists?”
“Not to worry, darling, I have enough admiration for myself to sustain me for years.” Arthur raised an eyebrow at the darling but decided in the interests of efficiency to let it go. Eames settled himself in the last available ergonomic chair, swiveling it slightly. “So sorry to keep you all waiting,” he said insincerely.
Arthur pointedly did not tell him not to worry about it. “All right, then. Now that we’re all here, let’s get started. We all know what an important mission this is. Icarus I will provide proof of concept: that autonomous and remotely-operated systems will allow a single astronaut to man a dedicated space station that we can use to dock spacecraft before heading down to the moon—and, eventually, to Mars, and one day even Europa and Titan. As those journeys would be significantly longer, this mission will also serve as an isolation experiment in preparation for solo voyages lasting several years.”
“Basically, I’ll just run up to earth’s orbit, tinker with some of Bobby’s robots for a little while, and return a hero.” Eames grinned at Arthur, who granted him a tight smile.
“Right. I know that replacing the Flight Director two weeks out from launch is unorthodox, but I can assure you all that I’m adequately prepped for whatever will come up—“
“Oh, I do believe it, darling.”
Yusuf snorted, Ariadne and Mal exchanged surprised and delighted looks, Dom shifted uncomfortably, and Robert missed it entirely, as he was typing away on his phone. Arthur deployed his second-most annihilating glare, which Eames unfortunately seemed to find hilarious.
“Does anyone have any questions for me?” When Eames opened his mouth, Arthur added, “Questions relevant to the mission.” Eames closed his mouth again, pouting his full lower lip. Arthur felt his knee start to bounce with irritation, and ruthlessly stilled it.
Dom cleared his throat. “How are we planning to monitor Eames’ health, especially during extended comm blackouts? We’ll need contingency plans in place if telemetry goes down.”
Arthur glanced over at Mal. “There’s a scheduled blackout on Sol 30, correct?” Mal nodded. “We’ll be testing redundant systems, but as far as medical goes, we’ll be relying on Eames to work with the medical robot run his own blood pressure, heart rate, EKG, vision, biomass, radiation…” he trailed off as Dom nodded. “Daedalus is fully equipped for remote medical procedures, and those will be functional during backup, correct?”
“Yes and no,” Robert answered. “We will have full access to emergency equipment, including what’s necessary to set broken bones, disinfect wounds, set sutures, and so forth, but we will have limited capabilities.”
“All right, in that case, let’s schedule a drill for Sol 30, run a simulation of an emergency procedure in case of injury. Dom, Robert, you’ll mock something up?”
Robert nodded, and as Dom leaned over to murmur to him, Mal added, “We’ve prepped for the satellite relay setup, but what’s your strategy if we lose connection during critical operations?”
“Presumably I—“ Eames began, but Arthur cut him off.
“Eames is trained for manual operations during comm blackouts,” Arthur said, hoping this was actually true. “He’ll have access to onboard diagnostics and command overrides to mitigate any major issues until we reestablish comms. Additionally, we’ll stagger non-critical operations to minimize any risk during a blackout window. Redundancy is built into every stage, so we’ve got multiple layers of fallback.”
“Not every stage,” Ariadne muttered. “The guidance system is not on fallback.”
Arthur was well aware of this, having argued vociferously (and successfully) against the idea for Icarus II. Nash, however, had not. “I know. There’s nothing we can do about it now. Eames will have manual control of attitude adjustments, thrust vectoring, and course corrections. In a worst case scenario, we can always send up the crew recovery vehicle. I believe that drill is scheduled for three months into the mission, correct?”
“Yes,” Yusuf confirmed. “CRV deployment is set for Sol 90.”
“Any other questions? No? Great.” This would only be the first of many meetings, Arthur knew, and anticipated having his inbox flooded with queries both urgent and inane within the hour—but for now they all had plenty of work to do. Before leaving, however, he pulled Dom aside for a quick request of Eames’ psychological profile.
“I don’t know him well,” he explained. “I know it isn’t protocol, but I need—“
“Absolutely not,” Dom said. “That’s a gross violation of his privacy.”
“Actually, I completely agree,” Eames said. “Not to the sharing of all my deepest and darkest—not yet, anyway—but it will be a very close working relationship, and I for one believe we should get to know each other. Intimately.”
He came to stand beside Arthur—very close beside Arthur—and Dom looked back and forth between them like someone who thought perhaps he ought to intervene but quite desperately didn’t want to. Mal took her husband by the arm and drew him out of the conference room, though not before sending Arthur a wide, sparkling-eyed smile that bode poorly for peacefully professional cafeteria meals for the duration of Icarus I.
Arthur took a beat before answering. It wasn’t that he was unused to being flirted at; he had the sort of excessively youthful features that made a certain type of man want to despoil him—never mind that he had been well and thoroughly despoiled for many years now, thank you. It was just…most of those men didn’t have deltoids that stretched the seams of their shirts or off-kilter eyebrows or eyes of an unnameable color. They certainly didn’t wear their attractiveness like a birthright, like something a bad haircut and aggressively awful clothing couldn’t possibly do anything to dim, and they didn’t withstand Arthur’s flat disinterest with something approaching glee.
Arthur tended to date men he could relate to; they were analysts, actuaries, compliance officers. For a few months a surgeon, but their hours had rarely overlapped. Eames was nothing he was interested in.
“Mr. Eames,” he said at last. “The relationship between a Flight Director and Astronaut needs to be one of mutual trust as well as mutual responsibility, but make no mistake—I am not your friend.” Eames’ smile widened, but Arthur plowed on. “I am ultimately responsible for this mission’s success, and as such there is a clear hierarchy: you answer to me. I expect you to follow my directives from the ground without question. I trust I’ve made myself clear.”
He spun on his heel, yanking open the door to the conference room, but Eames called after him plaintively, “Darling, you’re unbearably sexy when you’re giving me orders. Even ones I have no intention of following. One drink, that’s all I’m asking—I’ll be all alone with nothing but my hand for six whole months, can’t you give me something to dream about?”
Arthur let go of the door, turned around, straightened his cufflinks, and gave Eames a derisive look, taking in everything about him—the half-untucked polyblend shirt, the faded jeans, the crooked teeth, the thick neck—until eventually Eames’ seemingly imperturbable smirk began to fade. “My name is Arthur. Call me anything but that and you’ll find yourself having a very unpleasant six months indeed.”
When he left, he slammed the door behind him.