Week 1 Progress: ~7,000 words / 30 pages
/“Attention all passengers. Outer Rim flights have been delayed. Please check the flight information display board or one of our friendly gate agents for more detailed information,” the PA announced and everyone began scouring the news for what happened.
Then the large holo-screen up above asked everyone in Port 7, “We here at the Deimos Space Colony Interplanetary Spaceport would like to ask everyone to take a moment of silence.”
Most everyone did in remembrance of the Kharon Incident last year. Even one of the infiltrators, a young woman with blue hair, Sonya Alkes took a deep breath to steel herself for the mission ahead.
But the mission leader strode forward among the bowed heads.
“Only cowards pray before the gates of Hell.”
They wore their face masks. If they stood out, it was as foreigners during flu season, raising only the hackles of the most conservative, but a space port was a place for foreigners even during these war-stricken times and the war lingered in the distance, among the starlight, a supernova of great destruction that for those at the viewing screen, looking out into the cosmos, was almost beautiful, a backdrop to their days.
“And remember,” the PA concluded, “if you see something, say something.”
A common misconception is that shuttles, stations, colonies need to be airtight to survive the vacuum of space. While that is functionally true--the little air leaking out does not endanger denizens--it is not absolutely true. The same principle applied to security. Blind spots existed and hampering travelers with excessive protocol was bad for business, so ports opted for a theater of security. A sign that said “Employees Only” would deter the weak-willed, but without a keypad, those that came on a mission just had to glance this way and that, then step through.
The corridors led from the civilian access port to the military, where security was eased because soldiers had been vetted before enlistment. In the main hangar, a fighter had been disassembled to a puzzle-piece sphere with the main turbine out on blocks. The shielding stripped. Parts exposed. And repairman stepped away to eat his lunch. He glanced at a nigh illegible maintenance request form for fixing the arm of a collector before tossing it into the pile. He had examined it yesterday. It was fine.
The emtact, MTCT, military traffic control tower had dark windows. Not just tinted, but unattended.
A call came in.
A light switched on.
The sleepy ensign Lisa Maldoon slapped her face. Tested out her voice. Then answered. “DMS emtact. Call sign. Over.”
Silence lingered a moment and just as thoughts of her nap returned, the distant vessel replied, “UEC Defense Force escort carrier Scorpio en route to Ceres. Over…”
“…Purpose for dock? Over…”
“…Refuel and pick-up. Over…”
“…Transmit logs. ETA? Over…”
“…49 hours. Over…
“…Roger. Over and out.”
It was the worst part of her shift. Shortly after a spacecraft entered detection range, transmissions took 1.22 minutes to cross the vast expanse. 1.22 minutes there, 1.22 minutes back. And once answered, like someone performing CPR, the operator was obligated to stay until all signs of life went quiet for good. The ensign went back to sleep.
The busiest sector in this port was shielding. That needed constant attention.
An asteroid the size of a grapefruit—manageable, low-energy—disintegrated before reaching the titanium coating. The shield, otherwise invisible, flickered when activated and the color depended largely on the metal ions present in the asteroid moving to an unstable, excited state. Copper: green. Strontium: red. Potassium: purple. Science teachers felt equal excitement demonstrating since they got to play with fire. This grapefruit flickered yellow: iron.
Drones orbited the colony, armed with lasers and an emergency explosive ordinance. Their patrol detected no threats large enough to activate defense protocols, but once in a blue moon, a large asteroid turned up that needed to be broken into manageable, low-energy chunks.
“Goddamn litterbugs!” a new engineer cried as the data logger in his hands fried from overuse.
The real plight of laborers was pollution.
Stray space waste lit one of hundreds of pale dots on a graph, charted by an arbitrary Earth-centric time or the objective place in orbit. Certain sections of the orbit had dense groupings of dots, and while a single piece of junk required no more attention than a single fruit fly, a swarm was an annoyance. Last week’s orbital position was officially called a series of long, boring coordinates but among the engineering staff, was collectively known as Tie-Dye Hell. Pretty. Sparkly. And a nightmare of overtime.
“Cheer up, guy.”
“Cheer up?” The grouchy engineer took up his wrench in singed, bandaged hands to smack the supervising mentor with. “Why the hell should I cheer up?”
“Think of the paycheck.”
His expression softened to one already a little drunk off celebration.
Time-and-a-half or no, as shield surgeons reached seniority, they requested for cushier positions like emtact. The high turnover meant unfamiliar faces keeping the colony safe.
“Hey, you.” The supervisor snapped her fingers, trying to grab the attention of a newbie. ”Fetch another data logger from maintenance.”
“Data logger?” he asked.
“In the bird cage.”
He looked around. “Bird cage?” He looked to Sonya who also shrugged.
The supervisor slapped her forehead. “I’ll get it myself.”
She walked down the corridor, past a trash can overflowing with recyclables that when not properly sorted wound up giving Shielding more overtime and normally she’d do something about it, but not today. If she had, she’d have discovered the infiltrators’ civilian disguises buried beneath.
Every step after reaching shielding was a trade. A dollar for 2 quarters. 2 quarters for 3 dimes. 4 nickels. 5 pennies. Those pennies in the machines. Sudden maintenance.
Then sneaking away in the cover of a rolling blackout.
~
HOOK 2
As Sam carried his three-legged dachshund into the hall, he heard voices by the elevator. From the tone, clearly friendly chit-chat between long-time acquaintances, perhaps even friends, but he didn’t have his translator tapped on. He stopped to consider.
With the long day of paperwork he just had, with the earlier reprimand for filling it out incorrectly, with Sushi in his arms, Sam left it off.
“So cute,” the short and athletic guy said. Sam had heard the phrase enough to understand it.
The tall woman pushed up her glasses and said something like, “You think he’s handsome?”
“Mhmm.”
They couldn’t see Sushi’s prosthesis.
Sam had seen them around. He assumed the two were dating. Always together, leaning on one another, heading into the same 50 square meter apartment—too tight of living quarters for friends. All three lived on floor 40, but their schedules didn’t really overlap. Mostly they ran into each other on nights like tonight where they were taking out his bag of trash & her box of recycling, and Sam had Sushi.
He smiled to be polite, but they only saw his eyebrows scrunch up since he was in a mask, beanie, and sunglasses. If they commented on his flu season protection, strange on this colony, it wasn’t with any words he knew off the top of his head, but they continued to chat amongst themselves.
The elevator arrived. Everyone got in. The man held the door open button until Sam was in.
“One?” the guy asked.
He nodded.
The guy pressed the 1 button then B1 then let Sushi sniff him—Lee Ji-Ming, 32, First City native, 3 tours, senior airman.
The dog averted his eyes and shuddered when the stranger pet him. A long whine let loose. He nestled deeper in Sam’s arms, settling by the time the affection stopped.
The woman pushed the door close button—Tele’ktrides C. Lee, 37, Second City native, weapons R&D, team leader.
As the elevator descended, they were rocked by a sudden KA-CHUNK!
Rubber soles slapped the ground.
Everyone looked to the door then each other.
The collective thought that broke language barriers was, “Are we going to die?” followed immediately by “What should we do?” but the elevator soon started down again and somehow, having had the warning of the first drop, the second surprised everyone more—KA-CHUNK!—and Tele’ktrides box of cans scattered across the floor.
Emergency brakes engaged immediately and though the drop felt like a few meters, a few centimeters was more realistic. The display said they were on floor 39 and in the local alphabet, ERROR.
Ji-Ming pried open the doors to reveal they were between floors as the top half of the elevator was open to the 40th floor, marked by signage, but the bottom showed a shaft too small to squeeze into.
Sam remembered a dream like this. In it, he had tossed Sushi out thinking it’d save the dog, but as he had tossed the dog, the elevator went into freefall, the lights went out, and because it was a dream, they had impossibly survived the crash but as the red emergency lights flicked on, Sam saw Sushi cut in two, down to a single front leg, whimpering, betrayed, and he desperately tried to apply pressure to the poor pup’s missing hindquarters.
It was not a recurring dream. He’d had it once, back when nightmares were new, and yet it stuck with him, rearing its ugly head even during rare moments of tranquility and that ugly head now grinned with delight that the premonition seemed reality.
“Don’t worry,” Sam cooed to the pup. The two seemed to tremble at the same frequency as he stroked his back, slowly, firmly, letting the dog hear his words through touch. “You know, it’s actually a good thing. We’ll get down much faster this way.”
The two strangers exchanged quizzical glances. Dogs don’t get dark humor, and neither do cochlear translators.
“Did he just say…?”
Ji-Ming nodded.
Despite his attempts to soothe the boy, the anxiety must have been evident on Sam’s face, because a comforting hand touched his shoulder, grounding him as he did the dog. Ji-Ming said in English, “Should we crawl out?”
Sam slapped his ear in a fit, slamming his translator deeper in as it tapped on. “No!”
“That’s correct,” the woman said. Tele’ktrides pressed the big yellow Emergency Call button. An alarm sounded. A voice broadcast in several languages that all got translated, imperfectly in their ears, to something like, “Stay where you are. Help is coming. Don’t worry.”
“Guess we wait,” the guy said. “I’ve seen you around a few times, right?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so!”
A thin disguise of politeness. Sam stood out on this colony. His muddled appearance relayed that he was human and little else of his ancestry on Earth, compared to here where not-so-distant segregation had led to a starker contrast in skin tones. This couple might feel judgmental eyes on them as the man’s parentage received privileged treatment that he still reaped the benefits from while the woman still felt the sting of prejudice in outdated laws. Regardless of their personal beliefs, he stood out as an individual as much as they stood out as a couple and there was no ignoring that.
“You can call me Eddie if it’s easier.” His accent was thick and Sam realized it was because Ji-Ming was speaking rusty English and the translator wasn’t doing any work.
“Tele’ktrides,” the woman said. She kept to the colony French. “Are you one of the recent cadets?”
Sam shook his head. “Collector. For about 3 months.”
Ji-Ming’s eyes went up and over as he tried to recall when he first saw Sam, closer to 5 months prior, and the pieces started to snap in place when they heard a THUNK! overhead.
The maintenance access panel opened and a bright young face popped into view—Jean Beaumont, 26, Second City native, repair person. “Hey, folks! Don’tcha worry. We’ll have you two out of here in a jiffy,” they said. “Oh, it’s you two! I don’t know you, though. But your puppy!” If Jean were a cartoon, their eyes would have turned to hearts. “Are they okay? They’re very cute. They don’t bite, right? I’ll just stay up here and admire from afar but tell them the next head-pat is from me--THANK YOU!”
As quickly as they popped into view, they popped out, their flash of red hair trailing behind them, and the sounds of tools on the metal roof echoed in the elevator.
“It’s okay,” Ji-Ming said, clearly calming Tele’ktrides down, but not from the adrenaline-fueled fear, but from a boiling resentment of this buffoon. “Give them a chance.”
“Oops!” A tool scraped the outer wall before it plummeted down the shaft.
“Another chance.”
“How many do they need? They flunked out of grease monkey duty on base after their half-assed repairs nearly got you sucked out of an air-lock and now our lives are in their hands--again. It has to be intentional.”
“Maybe it’s fate.”
“Maybe it’s an assassination that’ll look like an accident.”
Sushi began to whimper at all the stimulus--tools falling, mag-boots, feuding, and Sam squeezing too tightly. Tele’ktrides took an intentionally audible deep breath and shut up.
Ji-Ming said to Sam, “These power outages happen occasionally. You’re just not usually in an elevator when they do.”
Jean called down, “Actually, it’s city-wide. Maybe Second City, too.”
The couple exchanged looks.
Sam noted it, but took it as a bad sign.
A building outage was just the result of crappy repairs, complements of hiring a flunkie. A block outage was an easily-fixed fault in the grid. City-wide could only be the result of space debris making it through the barrier and the astronomical odds having a grudge against shield surgeons. But the electrical gr-id had separate blocks for situations like that. One goes out, another reroutes power to critical systems, and the lights go dim but stay on. If it was the whole colony…
Was this Kharon all over again?
“Two muffins are sitting in an oven,” Sam whispered to Sushi. “One says, ‘Wow, it’s hot in here.’ The other yells, ‘Oh my god! A talking muffin!’”
Sushi didn’t laugh.
Tele’ktrides didn’t either.
Jean peeked down amid sparks.
Ji-Ming chuckled, his eyes nervously darting to his partner then to Sam in the corner who leaned on the hand rail. Without it, there’d be no other reason Sam’s shaking legs supported him. Touch was no longer enough.
The main lights flicked back on the and the alarm went silent. That emergency message turned to one of cheer. Jean hopped through the access panel and undid their belay line, which shot up the shaft, dinging the rim. They must’ve been wrong about the Second City. Nothing so widespread would get fixed that fast.
“Thanks, Jean,” Ji-Ming said while Tele’ktrides turned away.
The elevator stopped at the 12th floor. The short ride was smooth as butter, but everyone got off except Jean. “Should be all good. We have a form in the lobby for you to fill out and if you could give me 5 stars, it’d really help me... Where you going, Tele’ktrides?”
“Stairs.”
“Don’t bother with that! It’s fixed.”
She didn’t stop.
Jean reached toward Sushi and he turned his snout up to sniff their hand which frightened Jean into yanking it away which frightened Sushi into burying himself into Sam’s arms.
“I need the exercise, too,” Sam said so Jean wouldn’t be uncomfortable in an enclosed elevator with a trembling wiener dog.
“Thanks, bud.” Ji-Ming pat Jean on the back, but already torn as Tele’ktrides left, he saw Sam go, too. “I guess I should as well, but you did great work—as always!”
In the windowed stairwell, Sam gathered that Jean had apparently restarted the building’s systems before the AI had been able to. Probably by by-passing a few critical diagnostic checks that would almost certainly turn up green but were still there for a reason. Back-up generators and emergency personal lights dotted the First City. The streets were especially visible as cars fell into an algorithm of stopping at the flashing traffic lights. No scarlet dome rose from the horizon and Sam suspected Second City had indeed been hit as well.
An early dark inspires nightmares. Ancient people died of shock upon witnessing an eclipse. Sam was not so primitive, but those overprotective instincts were, so perhaps that was why, out the window, he at least thought he saw a silhouette falling from the roof.
No.
Not falling, not a loose piece of paneling that spelled the doom of this colony, too. It descended too controlled for a fall.
A landing.
While he parsed the information, Tele’ktrides heard the door open, footsteps, and from half a flight below, yelled a bit hushed, “What the hell were you doing speaking English--” She stopped upon spotting Sam looking startled. “Apologies.”
Ji-Ming made it in time to watch a wave of lights roll through a dark city. He rushed toward Sam then seemed to usher him quicker toward his girlfriend so the trio could walk as a group.
Jean’s footsteps echoed in the stairs above them, opting for the company on the long trek down than an elevator ride alone. They did, however, stay a floor above Sushi, rushing down then stopping to let Sam get further then rushing more and repeating.
By the time Sam saw out the next window, the silhouette was a figment of his imagination. There was no more dark. He couldn’t remember the shape or where it supposedly other than generally in the forest by the mountain where no one would witness it.
He let the thought go—as much as he could.
~
Tele’ktrides continued down to B1 with her remaining recycling, having left the top layer of aluminum cans in the elevator, but Sam, Jean, and Ji-Ming went to the security guard at the front desk. She spoke gruffly to Jean, “Rooftop needs you.”
They hurried back to the stairwell, leaping up the first six in two steps.
“Elevator, Jean,” she said with a sigh.
One big hop down.
Ji-Ming mulled over the maintenance survey like a final exam and Sam wondered how long it’d take. His arms ached from holding Sushi for now 30 minutes of panic or stair climbing, but finally Ji-Ming signed it SrA Lee Ji-Ming and took the dog from Sam, quickly finding a paddle point that eased the poor boy’s trepidation while Sam took the stylus. The survey amounted to a few basic comments then some ratings. It took Sam 10 seconds.
The entrance to the building faced a parallel entrance and the cigarette butt-filled courtyard between buildings with sparse plantings of grass and a symmetrical saplings propped up by stakes led to the shopping center to the right or a distant park to the left—where Sam took Sushi most mornings, nights, and afternoons he wasn’t working. It had quite a few people out for strolls or bike rides or similarly walking their own dogs.
However, to the left was also the dumpsters if you took another left into the alleyway by the building—where Ji-Ming was headed.
Adrenaline has a strange nature to it, in that as it recedes, it leaves a person, however shy, traumatized, or generally anti-social, craving bonding. So Sushi, not feeling this, automatically headed toward the park and felt only the harness tug at him to go a strange direction full of strange smells. Sam had not intended to follow Ji-Ming but they’d been together so long already and there hadn’t been an explicit goodbye so his feet moved on their own as the two chatted. Ji-Ming threw his bag into the pile and stood with the two lost puppy dogs, giving them the attention they all needed after that experience.
“What happened?” When Sam was filling out the form, Ji-Ming had felt the prosthesis. But politeness meant asking later. Later was now. “Dogs never get the good ones unless you’re filthy rich. Lawyers, CEOs, arms dealers. Soldiers might be dogs of the government, but they still fit us with the latest and greatest.”
He twitched his pointer and ring finger on his left hand. The movement was sharp and more to the point, the other fingers didn’t move. Complete isolation.
“SrA?” Sam asked.
“Senior Airman. Military rank probably holds more sway on the survey, and Jean does deserve someone pulling for them.”
The Deimos colony was a part of the United Earth Colony Federation, but in name only. They were safely within the middle of the middle rings. The Goldilocks of Goldilocks. No active conflicts anywhere near here. No lucrative mining operations.
“Why are there military here?”
“Ask the brains of the operation. Sit!” he said to Sushi. “Dogs don’t know what orders mean. They just know how to get a treat. But it’s a cush assignment. Early morning runs and weekend drills. Otherwise, border patrol, policing, colony repairs, and Tele’ktrides is Randy.”
The lewd lingo threw Sam, some friendly hazing.
“R and D. Research and development.” He started lighting up a cigarette, but the wind fought him.
“Does that mean she’s the ‘brains of the operation?’”
“Ha! I wish.” He turned his back to the alley entrance and finally got his light. “One day. One bright, sunny day after the long dark.”
“What kind of research?”
Tele’ktrides appeared around the corner. “Sharing that would be treason.”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Sam snapped out of his auto-pilot and realized he had followed a stranger into a dark alley and was sandwiched between another stranger, the first’s partner, and not only that, they were dressed for a date. Sam was the tag-along, playing third wheel, and apparently asking them to commit treason.
“No harm done. Civilians often ask how their tax dollars might murder others,” she said. “Should we go?”
“Where you headed, Sam?” Beyond the park was a set of restaurants the couple liked and often couldn’t decide between until they got a whiff of the specials. That’d decide their craving. “Walk with us.”
Tele’ktrides took a deep, calming breath as she looked at her husband with a strained but familiar expression. “Only if you want.”
“Either we’ll awkwardly walk near each other or we can make some new friends.”
Sam looked to Tele’ktrides for a sign.
She nodded. “He’s hard to argue with.”
They walked past some construction of a new apartment building rumored to cost so much per month that only two neurosurgeons cohabitating could afford the rent. Sam, who purchased blackout curtains to sleep in until his afternoon shift, often woke up at 6:00 am to the sound of hammers.
“Have you met many people yet?” Ji-Ming asked.
“I mostly stay in. Work, home, Sushi.”
“You really like fish, huh? But sushi does sound good right now. My treat if you want to join us for some.”
“They won’t let a dog into the restaurant,” Tele’ktrides reminded him.
“There’s outdoor seating. Or we can get it to-go and have a picnic in the woods!”
Tele’ktrides’s glare again.
“My dog’s name is Sushi.”
“Aww.” Sushi had been on the far side of Sam, always a step behind. Perhaps the dog’s fear was eased by the newfound kinship of Sam and them, so when the soldier squat down to give pets, Sushi let him, then walked between the two instead.
Then they reached the corner that Sam had never tread beyond. Turn here and reach the park. Go another few blocks, turn right, and that accessed the spaceport where Sam worked. Another block beyond that was the grocery store and the final corner to Sam’s territory, a comfortable rectangle with everything he needed.
But the two were heading the other way and while conversation wasn’t stellar--his fault--it scratched a long-standing itch.
There were trees that way, too, a lot in the woods around the mountain, and there were restaurants with new smells and probably messages left by other dogs and most immediate, that direction had a few minutes longer with his new acquaintances, maybe even friends.
“I’ll see you later,” Sam said as he turned toward his usual route.
Ji-Ming, through a subtle set of questions, drawing on his own memory for other evidence, had been on the cusp of an epiphany since floor 40—an epiphany that Sam feared.
~
The couple chose outdoor seats, but not for fish. Their new furry contact turned them off, momentarily, to sushi, and instead they opted for warm oxtail soup on the chilly evening. Their table had the perfect view of the mirrors as they angled away the sunlight and the day came to a rest. The mirrors perhaps mimicked the day cycle, but the mirrors were functional and the sun divine. Maybe one day they’d see a real sunset together.
“What if he had accepted?” she asked.
He rubbed the scar on her knuckle, drawing her back to an old memory, first bitter then sweet, when while dissecting the rotor of a defunct, early model starfighter, her pristine knuckle caught on a bolt. She wanted to shake it off and keep working, but while shaking, a droplet splashed on the canopy he had just polished. He hopped down from the ladder and stuck her hand in his armpit. It kind of worked at applying pressure while he fetched liquid stitches from the medkit. Bitter, sweet, and a little smelly. They’d been married two years at that time. “Then we’d excuse ourselves for some alone time.”
They smiled across the table.
“He just seemed like he needed a friend. And almost getting dropped from an elevator, that’s scary for most people in their bubble-wrapped lives.”
They finished their soup. Ji-Ming summoned his comm’s AI assistant. “Pronoia, can dogs safely gnaw on oxtail?”
Cooked bones might splinter so, against Tele’ktrides wishes, he talked to kitchen staff for some raw ones that they had to charge him for, but the bag was full of about ten full of marrow, then the two headed off.
According to CCTV footage on the street, after finishing their meal, the two turned right to walk hand-in-hand to her one-room, off-base apartment and even the building footage, doorbell’s camera, and keypad log showed the same.
But those would be discrepancies with reality.
They turned off their comms.
Deep in the woods, a woman tugged on her face mask painted orange by the light of the small fire.
Tele’ktrides wiped her brow.
“Nice weather for camping.”
“If you’re okay with the cold.”
The new woman said in a sharp tone, “You’re late. Kill a deer en route?”
“They’re for a friend’s dog,” Ji-Ming said.
“Shouldn’t be making friends here,” their contact said.
Tele’ktrides gave her a flash drive. “If all goes as planned, this will save the colony.”
“And they’ll hate you for it. How soon do we move?”
“They’re doing final diagnostics tomorrow, so the first test flight is slated for the day after, off colony of course. Pick-up arrives in 47 hours. That’s our window.”
“During test?”
“Before.”
~
As Sam lay in bed, his dreams spilled over to reality. The sound of collapsing buildings, that cacophony of voices and materials crashing into one another, were confused by the erection of the new apartment building next door.
Breathe.
“Deucalion,” he called and his phone lit up as well as the AI panel on the wall. “Time.”
Deep breath.
“7:06 on a bright sunny morning. Would you like to hear headlines?”
Sushi jumped from the spare pillow on the floor to bed, then settled in the same coiled dragon position he always did, his fluffy tail draped over his nose.
“No. Lights on. Curtains up. Music.”
Some generic background music played, harkening back to spring in a meadow with birds chirping and apparently strumming a harp.
He could not settle.
“Deucalion. Call police non-emergency number.”
The dream was familiar. Except for the not-falling silhouette.
The convincingly human operator listed several options. Personal extension. Press inquiry. Case inquiry. Appointments. Tip line.
“Tip line.”
“Please leave your name, address, and contact information along with any relevant information to an open case or suspicious activity and an officer will get back to you.”
Sam remembered a similar message when he first arrived on Deimos. The hospital said they’d contact him with test results and clearance to exit quarantine, but they never did, and every attempt to contact them had him leaving a similar message that went returned.
It was probably nothing.
“Remember, if you see something, say something.”
But due diligence.
~
*Some dazzling description of the vastness of space*
Infinite and open. The vastness of space stretches on to this day. Humanity, as humanity does, continues to consume all that is before it. Manifest Destiny. But even our insatiable appetite is meaningless before infinity. One day, civilization will reach so far that a child might be born en route and die before ever seeing the edge of our own borders, and yet, the stars that light our night are even further beyond that. It is painful yet beautiful silence.
When an alarm sounded.
A piece of junk pinged off the rear camera panel. Was that an egg carton?
The three-axes of the debris collector spun and for veteran pilots, they felt the whirl and steadied their eyes on the panel ahead of them and went about their business, but for Sam, even after three months in this ball, he gripped the throttle’s foam pads till he felt bones. The mask hooked up to his face, feeding out through his helmet into a waste collection pack, kept the expensive—if outdated—cockpit controls clean and working, but the tube still reeked of old nausea, further sending him back to his first, soul-suckingly embarrassing day in training when of the three candidates, he’d been the only one to vomit.
Yet here he was.
Because of that?
Had the other candidates, immigrants recently released from quarantine as well, been rewarded with less twirling, whirling work and the one with the weak stomach been punished in an attempt to train it out of him?
No.
When he steadied, when his eyes focused, when the tide in his throat ebbed, Deucalion was still running analysis on material and orbital trajectory of the swarm of debris. He had collected junk that would be useful to recycling, the raw materials going to the plant, melted down and made again into junk that’d wind up here. Factoring in how long the recycling process took, time on the shelf waiting for purchase, the forgettable instant it was chucked in the trash, the 487 days of orbit, he’d be out here collecting it again in some form in two years. Then again in four, ten. Twenty if he lasted that long.
Sam waited for permission.
The main screen changed.
What reflected on the screen was the same vision he saw, but his eyes were closed. He was no longer, Sam, rookie of the year space janitor, but at one with the bit drones in his territory. The drones locked onto the largest pieces of trash. Their single dot lasers fired. Space debris now space dust.
Space is infinite. But the space around us is not.
An alarm.
His shift was up.
Nausea returned as he returned to the sickening, aged smell of his helmet.
~
Third party? ISF scene?
~
Sam took a taxi to the military base, but the car wasn’t allowed past a certain point by signage or its programming, and he walked the last bit near the chain-link fence. He gawked at the expected vignettes of military life.
Soldiers ran laps in sharp formation, chanting with bravado between breaths. Beyond the corner, a firing range aimed at the broadside of the mountain. Stray shots might hit a squirrel, but that was just protein.
Beyond those superficial necessities for military life, the design of the base stuck out. On some colonies, the military base was like a Third City with home supply stores and restaurants and suburbs. You could find kids in the park. Movie theaters played the latest hits.
However, on Deimos, the base reminded Sam of an industrial complex. The ugly aesthetic of function. Every building laid out on a grid. A candy cane-striped smoke stack piped toxic fumes into the infinity outside the colony. Four water tower-type structures were marked with a series of warnings. A transport vehicle parked against one with a polytetrafluoroethylene hose hooked up. It was slightly translucent and whatever dark liquid inside had stopped flowing, but the driver waited for the dregs that might disintegrate, drop by drop if, the outer coating of the colony if protocol was ignored, until finally she could drive along oddly wide roads, hauling her trailer to a building designated by an alphabet. To civilians, each letter on a near-identical building meant nothing, but to inhabitants, the difference was obvious.
The fence became a vestibule with a guard booth inside. A camera scanned for license plates and would open automatically for the guard to then check credentials and wave them past the boom barrier.
When Sam approached, in his usual flu season get-up: face mask, beanie, and sunglasses, the guard approached. The pattern of chains separated them and while this guard had no weapon in hand, a guard standing at the far gate was armed with a rifle. Sam felt her eyes, too.
“Identification.”
“I’m not a soldier,” Sam said.
“Civilian ID,” he barked with a commanding gruffness that sent Sam into a panic of patting his pockets to find it. He handed it over without a thought. “Remove your face coverings.”
First his sunglasses.
Then his hat.
His dark hair had natural highlights.
Then a pause.
Then he started to do his mask, when the soldier nodded that that was enough.
“What’s your business on base?”
Sam hadn’t really thought about it. And definitely not how to explain it. He sputtered, “Um, I—well…” while he prepared it in his head. “I’m looking for someone named Ji-Ming. Eddie, maybe. Airman. Senior airman. He lives in my building.”
The soldier stayed silent as a short-range radio on his shoulder buzzed with background noise. Low, whispering voices not directed at this soldier but another one elsewhere. Finally the static-masked voice rose to an intelligible level. “Senior Airman Lee is in recreation.”
“Samwise Nuwim at the gate.”
“He’d just know it as Sam.”
“Sam.”
Low voices again before the gate separating the soldier and bundle of nerves slid slowly along a rickety track and Sam was looking the soldier in the eye. He remained silent but returned Sam’s ID.
“Can I go in?”
“Wait for escort.”
~
Ji-Ming threw his arm around Sam as they walked deeper into the base. He peeked over their shoulders before shaking his head. “Security these days. But it’s good to see you.”
After the pleasantries, there was a noticeable silence between them as they continued the walk. He was a bit sweaty from double-timing it over, but the colony fans blew a nice breeze today.
“Was I expecting—did we make plans?”
Sam shook his head.
“I’m happy to give you a tour. At least of the visitor friendly section. How about some lunch? It ain’t great but that’s part of the fun.”
“I saw something.” Sam’s feet moved on auto-pilot and before he realized it, his escort’s friendly arm no longer draped across his shoulders.
“Gonna need you to be more specific than that.” Ji-Ming’s tone changed. “This isn’t a friend-thing, is it?”
“There are just all these posters and announcements these days—’See something, say something,’ right?” Sam was suddenly feeling very silly.
A blackout?
A shadow?
A dream?
And he was making reports like he stumbled on some conspiracy. It was arrogance to think two monumental events would happen in his vicinity. “Forget it. I should go. It was probably nothing.”
“Let me be the judge. Pronoia, voice recording.” His wrist watch had a red light and the screen showed the sound waves rise and fall with his each sound. “This is United Earth Colony Defense Force Senior Airman Lee Ji-Ming on Deimois military base with Samwise Nuwim. Do I have your permission to record this conversation?”
“Sure. Yes. That’s fine.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Sam recounted the blackout last night and the elevator and taking the stairs. “It was end of the day so only a little natural light and everything else was dark and I thought I saw a shadow fall into the woods. Maybe it was a trick of the light or something. But it looked controlled. Like a landing. Or something, I don’t know. I called the police department this morning and left similar information, but who knows how many tips they get.”
A long pause as Ji-Ming waited.
“That’s it,” Sam said. “Probably nothing.”
“Any specific place it touched down? Mountain-side? City-side?”
“I don’t know. I lost sight of it when we kept heading down.”
“It won’t hurt to check it out. I’ll report this immediately to superiors. Pronoia, stop recording.” The wrist watch screen faded to standby. The soldier’s tone was back to friendly apartment dweller. “And it’s always nice to get off base.”
“Should I submit a written report or anything?”
“Not necessary, but if you want a paper trail in addition to the recording, we can arrange that. We’ll have to ask around for a notary. Might take a bit, but if you want.”
“No, the recording’s fine. I should go.”
“What about lunch? I can’t promise it’s good, but that’s half the fun for civilians. Freeze-dried ice cream,” Ji-Ming said in an attempt to tempt.
~
How little the third shift meant during arbitrary time, and yet, even for debris collectors, it was the least desirable position. Instinctual lethargy dragging their movement down. And though data showed that rare accidents happened equally across shifts, it was widely known that strange things happened at the witching hour.
Each member had a name for their collector Ball, and as even Balls were expensive, the dozen of Balls used by the first shift were the same dozen used by the second shift and so each Ball had several names depending on the pilot.
“Macbeth 7 reporting a reading past perimeter.”
It was just Junie in the dispatch room, staring at the feed of the remaining collectors as well as last year’s charts. Without closeness of drifting debris or the data coordinates transmitted, the feed would be black dotted by starlight. Whether the pilot was moving at all was hard to parse, and even the faded green numbers in the corner relaying vitals, coordinates, and the like fell to background noise. The first transport carrying 1 through 5 had already begun docking procedures, a bit early, but with paperwork and clean-up, it’d even out.
She wheeled her desk chair over to Station 4 for a better look at the reading. It wasn’t on a collision course. It wasn’t in the way of the docks. And it was too far for a proper reading of elemental composition. She made a note of it on the chart for next year.
“There’s no overtime,” radio replied.
“Too big to ignore.”
“Still no.”
“I’m checking it out.”
If this maverick pilot took too long, it delayed 6 through 12 from docking on time, they took longer with paperwork, and then Junie is stuck sitting around when she was supposed to be on a pancake breakfast date with Nic.
“You could be the goddamn Red Star of Deimos after this but you’re still not getting an extra cent.”
7 Comms went silent.
She reported it to the other Balls and the transport pilots, who groaned.
7 Comms stayed silent.
“Well?” Junie buzzed impatiently. The reading had intrigued her as nothing was listed on the previous chart.
“En route! Hold your horses.”
Junie put a remote headpiece on to take with her as she fetched coffee, certain she’d late now. But remote work always went silly in the break room and it’d been too long since last report.
“7, report?”
Nothing.
“What’d you find?”
No answer.
“Macbeth 7, do you copy?”
Impatience gave way to dread.
“Nic! Are you okay?”
“Sorry, sorry! There was some static interference. Are you seeing my feed?”
“I guess it’s frozen. Save local recording then power cycle visuals.”
The feed for Macbeth 7 cut then returned then cut again.
“Still out. Get back here and we’ll requisition repairs. Repeat. Return to colony for repairs, Macbeth 7. Return ASAP. Macbeth 7, come back to base and we’ll have pancakes. Macbeth 7!”
~
Tele’ktrides ran her diagnostics, waiting for the results to compile into a 3D image she’d seen a dozen times in various shades. A new actuator here, a different circuit there, an algorithmically upgraded AMPSystem that even at a slowed pace made only partial sense to her. No one could explain it.
The software engineers had made the testers. The testers had ran infinite number of fledgling AI through an infinite number of data points. The AI who passed made other fledgling AI who were run through improved tests. And so on, into infinity, until all tests were aced and they had the AMPSystem.
The screen she stared so intently at suddenly turned from code to a friendly, smiling face of home.
“Dinner tonight,” Ji-Ming called her comm.
“Did we have plans?”
“No.” His voice was not smiling.
~
*Operator yells at Sam for approaching perimeter, which is 75% today due to third shift incident.
Sam heads just beyond to 80%, seeing that same strange reading, and gets yelled at but turns off comms long enough to grab something.
Sam returns with a bit drone of Macbeth 7. Tries to get optical data from it. There aren’t any traditional cameras on it, but the sensors paint some sort of picture that he can sense an image from. The heat map shows him hostile activity. But no one believes him. Returns to base.*