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There were a whole lot of tests that needed to be done before they were sent up here.
Medical exams. Psychiatric reports. Family records going back five generations, if possible, in order to assess a genetic predisposition towards anything from heart failure to anxiety to diabetes. Polygraph tests. References from every past employer she’d ever had. Her fucking high school diploma, in triplicate. There were lessons, too- engineering, first aid, conflict resolution, leadership. Training on a flight simulator for the shuttle. Enough university-level courses in engineering that by the end of it, Minkowski almost felt as if she could build a rocket ship herself.
Mental fortitude. Tests designed to push her- push all of them- to breaking point.
Minkowski did well. Obviously she did well. If she didn’t, then Goddard would never have sent her up here, and… sure, at the time, she’d thought they were a bit excessive, even by her standards. There was a lot that could go wrong in space, but was it really necessary for every member of the crew to know every single aspect of every single job in this much detail? They had the AI autopilot for most of these things, and the chances of it being knocked out for more than a few minutes due to a solar flare or something similar were absurdly low.
She’d changed her mind pretty quickly once she was actually on the Hephaestus, though. Even before things started going wrong on the scale of “Command actively wants us dead”, she’d needed to rely on those lessons far more often than was strictly comfortable. Hera was great when she was working… most of the time… but she had her blind spots, too.
And then everything went off the rails in a truly spectacular fashion, and Minkowski found herself returning to those lessons more and more.
Six months of boot camp before they were sent up here. Six months at Canaveral learning all the skills she never should have needed to use. Those skills have saved her life more than once, now, but just this moment she can’t help but regret every moment of it.
See, Minkowski was always a bit of an overachiever. The sort of person who researched everything obsessively before going into it, and-
And one of those things, one of those challenges they were set back on Earth when everything was simple, was solitary confinement. 72 hours. And Minkowski, being the dedicated student she was, researched everything before she went into it.
(It was… not fun. She managed those 72 hours because she had to, and they complimented her composure on the other side of it and she may have called her husband and cried down the phone the evening after it was done, but that’s okay, no one needs to know. It could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse, she did all the research into what this process can do to people and she is so very, very thankful it was not for longer.)
And Kepler smiles, just a little bit, as he says, ‘three weeks.’
She keeps her face blank and says nothing in response, partly because she has nothing to say and partly because she’s not sure she quite trusts her voice. Lovelace’s eyes widen behind him, the briefest flash of concern and fear before she’s back to being as inscrutable as always and perfectly steady as she utters her agreement.
Clearly, Renée isn’t the only one who’s studied these things.
The door slams shut behind him.
Minkowski lets the silence hang for a moment, one, two, and when it’s clear he isn’t coming back, she curls up in a ball and tries to remember how to breathe.
Here are the things that Renée Minkowski knows about solitary confinement:
Firstly: it is known to exacerbate pre-existing mental health issues, and known psychological effects include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis.
Secondly: there is an equally long list of physical consequences, including but not limited to chronic headaches, eyesight deterioration, digestive problems, dizziness, fatigue and lethargy, heart palpitations, hypersensitivity to light and noise, muscle and joint pain, sleep problems, and weight loss.
Thirdly: at least some of these effects have been observed within hours or days of individuals being placed in solitary confinement, particularly hallucinations. Even once the subjects have been released, these have been recorded to persist.
Fourth: In her research, she was unable to find documentary evidence of any volunteers lasting more than four days in an isolation experiment when they weren’t in prison already.
Fifth: every single study of individuals held in solitary confinement for more than ten days has recorded at least some negative health effects for every person involved.
Sixth: The United Nations considers anything above fifteen days to be torture.
Three weeks is twenty-one days.
It isn’t… It isn’t a surprise. She wishes it was, but Kepler and SI-5 and Command have all proven themselves to be monsters multiple times over by now, so it was only a matter of time before one of them had to pay the price for fighting back. Probably better her than Eiffel, at least. Not that he isn’t competent- he is- but he’s also her crew member and her responsibility to keep safe. Hilbert… she has lots of thoughts about Hilbert and so far, she hasn’t had time to properly untangle them. That’s about to change. Lovelace could handle herself- has undoubtedly handled far worse than being locked in a room for three weeks. She’d be fine if their situations were reversed.
Minkowski will be fine, too, since she has to be.
Besides, she did disobey his orders. In many ways, she’s probably lucky this isn’t worse. Kepler has the authority to do whatever he damn well likes to her, and the fact that he’s kept to this… he could have killed her. He could have ordered Lovelace to kill her. Minkowski doesn’t think she’d actually do it- Lovelace might not be her best friend, but the other woman hates Command- and, therefore, SI-5- even more than she does. But he could have threatened Eiffel, or Hera, or hell, probably even Hilbert, and sooner or later…
But he didn’t. He could have had her killed or tortured or used as an example for the rest of them, and instead he’s locked her in the observation deck with only her thoughts for company.
She’s not going to break, but even if she did, her crew wouldn’t even be around to see it.
The whole thing feels… off. Too kind, almost. Not at all what she’d do if she was trying to break the spirit of a bunch of rebels, and Minkowski knows that Kepler is a far worse human than she could ever dream of being, so surely his ideas should be far worse. Throwing her in solitary confinement, putting Lovelace in charge of it… hell, maybe he needs her to be functional. Lovelace is smart and knows this station better than anybody and she’ll have Hera on her side. Eiffel too, and those three together is a force to be reckoned with. if there’s a loophole anywhere in this punishment, they’ll be able to find it. And he has to know that.
Unless-
Minkowski tilts her head back, stares at the stars above. Tries to steady her breathing.
(Pryce and Carter 4, Conserve your oxygen. Even in environments with an air recycling system, oxygen can be limited, so keep your breathing at a slow, steady pace. Remain calm. Failing to remain calm could result in your grisly, gruesome death, so whatever you do, do not panic. Panicking will only serve to accelerate your oxygen consumption and make your already likely demise a certainty. If you want to avoid dying, painfully, alone, in the cold darkness of space, gasping desperately as freezing oblivion silences your pathetic hopes and dreams ... relax.
Pryce and Carter 218, Don’t forget to breathe.
Pryce and Carter 657, Take deep breaths. Greater oxygen intake will sharpen all your senses and improve your reaction times.)
Why the fuck are these tips so bloody contradictory.
This isn’t about her at all, is it?
He wants to catch them out. He’s given her a punishment which is, objectively, bad enough that someone will try and interfere. Lovelace clearly knew the same facts she did, if her quickly hidden reaction to the time scale was anything to go by. Hilbert’s the type of person to probably know the data, too, and Hera will certainly have access to it.
He wants them to work around him. He wants to catch Lovelace disobeying his orders within days of being appointed Master-At-Arms so that he has a reason to make her life hell. He wants Hera to be caught assisting her so that Maxwell has good cause to lobotomise her. He wants Eiffel to prove that he’s a problem who needs to be managed carefully.
He wants to give them just enough rope to hang themselves with.
Which means that if Minkowski wants to be a good commander and keep her people safe, she can’t let them interfere.
Twenty-one days. She has been stuck on this station for over eight hundred days now, she can manage twenty-one more locked in this room. Hey, maybe she’ll even get a chance to catch up on all the sleep she’s missed trying to keep them from falling into the star. There’s a pretty high chance something catastrophic will happen in the next three weeks anyway, and she’ll be let out of here to help them not die.
Twenty-one days. She can do this.
If she’s lucky, the others will work this out too. Hilbert should, at least. He knows how Command operates; he should see the trap a mile off. Hopefully he can talk the rest of them out of trying anything too stupid.
She’ll be under surveillance, of course. If they come, regardless, she’ll have to find some way to warn them off.
(This would be easier if she and Eiffel shared one single pop culture reference. Anything. But they do not. He checked. Extensively. She’s sure there are hundreds of discreet signals from his movies and TV shows which would explain the whole thing in moments… and she knows exactly none of them.)
Minkowski settles herself against the wall as comfortably as she can manage. There’s no rush. Even if Eiffel wants to run off with a plan half-cocked, there’s no way they can interfere yet. It will be a while before Lovelace can find a reason to check on her, and they certainly won’t try and interfere before then. If she’s lucky, they’ll spot Kepler’s play and she won’t have to warn them at all, but even if they don’t…
She’s got plenty of time to think.