by Tara Basi
“We’re getting close,” Doug uttered with a tinge of surprise that they had made it this far.
Just ahead Mina could see Doug was fastening himself to a nearby strut and pointing at an obvious, if small, circular airlock.
“I’ve found it,” Doug said with great surprise.
By the time she caught up Doug had already opened up a hand sized maintenance panel to one side of the door, mumbling to himself as he poked around inside. She secured herself on the other side of the door and helped as best she could, mainly with encouraging noises. Everything had gone so well. They had used less than a couple of hours of their air-supply and were ahead of schedule.
“You secure? Any air in there is blasting out.”
Mina nodded in answer to Doug’s warning.
He fiddled with the door crank. Mina braced herself. As he cracked the edge of the airlock there was no satisfying vapour trail streaming out, only a hard vacuum behind the door. It confirmed their fears that the whole of Maxinquaye was likely to be airless. He slowly turned the handle, sliding the door slowly towards his side. As the crack widened Mina lent forward to peer in.
She screamed and screamed. If she had not been tethered her frantic efforts to get away from the thing’s clutches would have sent her spinning off. As she kicked to escape she swung gracefully backwards as her tether tightened. The ghoul had grabbed hold of her and followed, pressing its hideous face to her visor, trying to bite its way through to her throat, its spider like limbs wrapped around her, scratching for access to her body. Mina was still screaming when she realised that Doug was shouting at her to shut up and calm down. She was rigid with terror as Doug floated over and pulled the troll off her.
“It’s a corpse, it’s been dead a long time,” whispered Doug.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit… OK, OK, give me a minute,” Mina said, struggling to get control of her jack-hammer heart.
Calmer she unhooked her safety rope and headed into the airlock, followed by Doug. The corpse drifted sadly away. Crammed into the narrow tube she nervously waited for Doug to crank the outer hatch shut. It was likely the Maxinquaye was airless but there was no point taking any risks. After the agoraphobic infinity of space she felt distinctly claustrophobic. Mina and Doug had no idea what the mummified corpse was doing in the tube. It looked adult sized but that was about all they were able to glean before it bounced off Mina and floated away towards Earth. Without a suit it had probably suffocated quite quickly in such a small place, assuming the tube was once filled with air. Had it become trapped in some bizarre accident? Was it hiding? Hiding from what and why had no rescue come?
Mina faced the exit hatch built into the side of the cylinder, Doug was just below her. Directly above her head hung an ugly crushing ram, used to eject waste barrels into space or compact loose material before the outer hatch opened. If the ram had been extended into the tube there would have been no way past it. She was uneasy at the thought that the dormant waste disposal mechanism might spring into life sending the heavy plunger down to squash her.
“Outer door closed, you can open the inner hatch,” Doug signalled.
With the tool Doug had provided the cogs turned easily, sliding the door open. Hard vacuum and cold darkness greeted her.
“It’s dead in here,” she advised Doug.
Her headlamp beam fell on a well-ordered area of rubbish drums in various stages of preparation for ejection. She floated out into the compartment and waited for Doug. After securing the inner and outer hatches they set off in search of the control room. In a straight line their goal should be less than a few hundred metres away but access was along a labyrinth of corridors, through numerous airtight doors and past many compartments. There was plenty of scope for getting lost even when the place had been brightly lit. Checking their air supplies they had at least four hours each, more than enough time if their luck continued.
Exiting waste management they headed for the material sciences module, their next reference point on the journey to the centre of the dead habitat. Mina was thankful that, so far, they hadn’t come across any more bodies. Eerily, everything seemed orderly. The compartments showed no signs of a struggle or a rushed departure. A jovial notice board in one of the corridors distressed Mina the most. Colourfully printed posters advertised a film show, a photography club meeting, and somehow worst of all, an engagement party. Did it ever happen?
Leaving material sciences Mina and Doug made their way along a long dark corridor passing a number of Maxinquaye’s dormitories and recreational sections. The scale of the station kept reminding Mina of how many people had lived here. Were they forced to leave? Had they gone voluntarily? Were they about to discover a horde of corpses hidden in one of the compartments? There had to be a connection with the monoliths but until they had power and could access the records, the Maxinquaye would be keeping its mysterious history to itself.
No matter how morbid and dangerous the circumstances, after so many years cooped up on the Small Business the wide-open spaces of the Maxinquaye were an unexpected delight. Mina had forgotten what it was like to turn a corner and discover a new outlook, though right now it was tinged with fear of what might be waiting. She knew every tedious centimetre of the Small Business, but at least it wasn’t haunted.
“It’s like a ghost ship, everything in place, but empty, just like I feel, this is bad,” Doug said as they drifted through one empty compartment after another.
“Look, it’s just ahead,” Mina shouted excitedly, ignoring Doug, as the beam from her headlamp fell on the door, highlighting its name, ‘Control Centre’.
Mina floated into the control room and swore lots. Everywhere else they had found order and military neatness. Here was vandalism on a sacking of Rome scale. Everything that mattered had been ripped out and removed. Not a single console or any kind of interface to the station’s systems remained.
“Fuck, fuck,” Mina raged and kicked out, which only sent her spinning around the room.
Mina steadied herself and floated towards the stationary Doug. He gave her a horrible smile like someone dying of cancer trying to cheer up the hospital visitors.
“Can you do anything?” Mina pleaded.
“With what? There’s nothing left,” was his almost happy reply.
Mina was broken, she turned back to face the empty spaces where the controls should have been. His stupid crazy plan deserved to work after all they had been through. How do you drive with no steering wheel, no brake, no accelerator and no ignition key?
“What now?” Mina cried out.
“Die,” Doug said quietly.
Mina knew they had enough air to get back to the Small Business. Nobody needed to die, not now, not yet. She turned back to the console, desperately searching for something, anything to give them a chance.
“It’s better this way,” was the last thing Doug said from just behind as he sliced through her oxygen pipe with a knife from his tool bag,
Mina turned in time to see Doug remove his helmet and his head explode in the vacuum. A fountain of blood, bone and brain droplets filled the room.
Like a dog chasing its own tail, Mina carried on spinning, trying to catch her wayward and lively oxygen pipe. Droplets of gore were splashing into her helmet visor as her air hissed away, and she started dying.
Screaming again, Mina thought. She could hear herself insanely hollering as a skinny ghost with no legs haunted her. Being dead scared of the dead when you’re dead seemed a little funny and her scream turned to a momentary fit of insane giggling.
Getting a grip she started to look and slowly started to see. She was lying in a bunk, lightly held down by familiar sleep straps, still in her suit, with her visor raised, breathing. Mina was in a lovely, small, brightly lit cabin with all the modern conveniences, including a ghost. She started screaming again.
“Are you pre-menstrual?” the ghost asked.
Mina stopped screaming and started swearing.
“Not getting enough?” it
helpfully added.
That momentarily shut Mina up. “You offering?” Mina defiantly replied.
“Maybe twenty years ago but I don’t think I even have the kit anymore” the ghost sadly responded.
“I’m not dead, am I? What exactly are you?” Mina blurted out.
The ghost chuckled, “Pointless conversation as you don’t really exist but I’m going to pat myself on the back. My creative side is really blooming! I’ve invented a sex-starved, pre-menstrual princess Kaur to while away the nights and the even longer day-nights.”
Mina was taken aback, a white ghost that knew about Sikhism? “I’m real, you’re the figment,” she stuttered.
After a few more abusive exchanges Mina convinced the ghost she was real and the ghost convinced her he was alive too. His name was Anton and used to be a professor of engineering and cultural studies. Now he was the last person left alive on the Maxinquaye from the original crew.
“You’re from the Small Business, how remarkable. You’ve probably got lots of questions,” Anton said after Mina had introduced herself.
“What happened, where is everybody?”
“I have some facts but I don’t have many answers.”
“You definitely know more than me.”
“It was such a banal beginning. The whole world, everyone, got this email. It just said, “Surrender now, or else”. Made the news as the biggest spam ever but no one could figure out the point, until the little towns got cut down. Not exactly sure how many, but every continent got hit and it was all over in twenty-four hours. Don’t know how many died. Maybe millions, hundreds of millions.”
“Who sent the mail? Who attacked the towns?” Mina asked, not quite believing what Anton was telling her.
“As I said, I have some facts, not many answers. No one knows, the powers that be replied and we surrendered.”
“Surrendered, to who?”
Anton shrugged, shook his head, “Then we all got an individual email, there was to be a worldwide census, everyone had to assemble in designated places, and wait for instructions.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Exactly, we hesitated, and a couple of thousand more towns got zapped. Then we all started moving, we were given a year. And it included us up here, the Moon and Mars settlements, we all had to leave and go to our assembly point.”
“But you stayed? How?”
“Figured it couldn’t be magic, they, it, whatever, were using our records, lists of people. So I hacked the station’s HR system to say I’d had a heart attack and died. Then I built myself a little cubby hole deep inside a disused part of the station, stacked it with power supplies, air, food, water. With all the panic and shuttles taking people away, no one noticed. Tried to persuade a few others to stay but no one wanted to listen, they just wanted to get home. They had family, friends, I was always a bit of a loner.”
“Someone else stayed, didn’t make it. What happened to the ones who left?”
“Really don’t know. I was so scared. Just stayed in my little hideaway, terrified to come out, I was completely cut-off, no radio, nothing. I was a coward, should have done something.”
“What could you have done?”
“Must have hid in there for a year or two, went a bit crazy. When I did come out the whole station was shut down, so was the world and those monstrous things had arrived. Decided to keep quiet, expanded my living area a bit, moved all the controls and, watched. Been more than twenty years, never found anyone, never heard another voice, till you turned up. Sorry I can’t be more help.”
The scale of it all hit Mina, and she cried and cried. Anton tried to comfort her but he ended up crying himself.
Anton’s cabin glittered with a cloud of tiny tears when Mina finally composed herself and asked, “Are they all dead?”
“I wish I knew, they’re just gone,” Anton replied.
Mina parked her grief for now. She knew she would be coming back for it. Good thoughts and feelings of hate swirled around when she recalled Doug and the plan. Mina would have died if Anton had not come to investigate the strange hull vibrations. Choosing to forgive Doug his final act Mina concentrated on finishing what they had set out to do. Anton helped Mina fire up the Maxinquaye’s comms and she called the Small Business.
“You’re alive, my god, where’s Doug, what’s that,” Cole blurted out as soon as she got through.
Unbidden, Trinity whispered in her ear, “Tea Bag you’re not dead, give me a sec and I’ll restore all your access rights. It’s good to have you back, Sara is a pain to deal with.”
“There was an accident, Doug didn’t make it. This is Anton, he saved me,” Mina replied, trying not to cry again, deciding they didn’t need to know what really happened to Doug.
It took a moment for everyone to get used to Anton’s appearance and stop stupidly staring. After years in zero gravity without the benefit of an exercise machine, or body repairs in deep hibernation, Anton looked a hundred years old, though he was probably only in his fifties. His lower body had almost completely atrophied. What was left was an emasculated shell covered in translucent, paper-thin, albino skin.
“Doug was a good man. What now Mina?” Cole asked.
“I’m going to stay over here, had enough of space walks, it’ll take a couple of days to restore enough power to dock and get some of the living quarters habitable.”
“Fine, we’ll get ready this end, call us if you need anything,” Cole said as he signed off.
Just before the screen went blank Mina caught a glimpse of a sheepish Sara waving and smiling weekly in the background. Bitch, Mina thought.
In her time separated from the Small Business crew the second worst thing she had to do was bag up Doug’s remains and clean up the rest. The worst was reading through the station’s records. She didn’t learn any more than Anton had already told her but she saw the silly looking end-of-the-world emails and all the absolute trivia of dull station reports and ordinary personal correspondence that had gone on. Then, after the evil emails, everything went crazy. Disbelief turned to horror and then everyone was trying to get home. Within a week the station had shut down.
She talked to Anton as much as she could, before the others arrived, but he didn’t know any more. Anton was slightly mad but nicely so, not in the way Doug had been tormented. His survival gave her hope that there may be other survivors, somewhere.
Three days later the Small Business docked with the Maxinquaye, The space station shivered slightly as though an ice cube that had been dropped down its back.
When everyone was back together the first thing they did was bury Doug. It was a simple affair. Cole said something formal, Greg added a prayer and then Mina said a final goodbye to her troubled friend before his body was floated out of an airlock.
For the crew of the Small Business the Maxinquaye was a treasure house. It had enough freeze-dried rations to feed hundreds for years, Anton had hardly made a dent, and the re-ignited reactors provided almost unlimited power. The Small Business crew and Anton could survive on the Maxinquaye, very comfortably, for the rest of their natural lives.
After a tough week a large part of the station facing the Small Business was running normally. Cole decided to keep the Earth side of the Maxinquaye dark, for now.
With time to consider what next, everyone assembled in one of Maxinquaye’s well-appointed meeting rooms.
Greg kept insisting they shouldn’t do anything, just wait, for a, “sign”. The others argued more interventionist options without a conclusion, the debate raged back and forth.
“Hiding out like cowards on the station waiting to die or finding a way of getting back to Earth and doing something,” was how Mina less than objectively summarised the debate.
“As I’ve told you a hundred times there is no way of getting back, there are no shuttles left, none, got it?” an exasperated Cole explained again through clenched teeth.
“That’s not the point. If there was, would you go back?” Mina shou
ted back in response, frustrated by the lack of anything concrete emerging from hours of discussion.
“Of course we’d go back, if we could. Do you think we want to stay up here?” Cole said through gritted teeth.
“You know, maybe we’re not supposed to go back, it’s maybe better we just let things play out, you know? God has a plan, right?” Greg added.
“You’re talking out of your arse,” Mina shot back.
“What about the great flood? Maybe we’re today’s Noah, and the Maxinquaye is the Ark,” Greg answered, undaunted.
“It’s a pointless discussion, there is no way to get back,” Sara said, and for a moment there was silence.
“I can’t go back, my body is no longer gravity tolerant,” Anton said, and then continued, “but there may be a way for you to return.” The room went quiet.
“Time to kick some alien arse,” Mina mouthed to herself contentedly.
Chapter 5 – The Free
“You can call me Worry, not my real name of course, but, you know, I’m not really sure what my real name is any more. John, Bob. Nope, don’t sound right. Got called Worry early on, when we first came here. That was, give me a minute, fifteen, twenty, no, no. Must be nearer twenty-five years,” Worry rambled.
“How old are you, what are you?” Battery Boy asked, trying to keep his voice steady and hide the terror that was racing through his body as he talked to the cold voice coming out of the dark. He was still covered in Block glop, breathing hard from their narrow escape from the pit cage and wondering which way to run, if he got the chance.
“So I got called Worry, cause that’s what I did, worry. Worry we’d get caught, worry the Crawlers would come and get us, worry the Block would settle and squish us flat, worry other guards would notice we’d gone missing.”
