by Scott Baron
“No problem. I’ll get on it, and then run the cycle down on the lower port pods again.”
“Cool. I’m gonna head in.”
“Be careful, Sarah.”
“Hey, we’re perfectly safe in here, it’s not a big thing. We just need to get this leak sorted before it actually becomes one.”
For the next hour, the duo moved from pod to pod, Sarah slowly inspecting each one from the inside, while Daisy shifted from access panel to access panel out in the passageway, checking each bundle of circuits and relays one by one.
Okay, I’ve leapfrogged far enough ahead, Daisy thought as she paused to tap into an unused terminal. She double-checked her readouts, then began the process of overriding the pod-to-pod airlock doors on the lower port level again. While she was at it, she also remotely adjusted the sensors without Mal’s assistance, to restrict their reading for just the specific areas she was testing.
“Hey!” Sarah gleefully called out over the comms. “Winner, winner! I found a big stash of Mylar. Looks like Vince is going to get a bunch of balloons to go with that birthday cake after all!”
“My sister from another mister, saving the day again!”
“Damn straight!” Sarah giggled. “And as an extra special bonus, I’ve just cleared the first two pods. Making good time now that I’m not stuck crawling around in the Narrows. All the data so far is coming back clear on the internal pod instruments, but my portable reader is still acting kind of odd. Could you verify the readouts on your end?”
“Sure thing, send them over.”
“Coming your way.”
Moments later a flurry of data arrived on the wall-mounted terminal beside Daisy. Code flashed brightly as both ship-run and portable readouts flew by on the screen.
“Can I be of assistance?” Mal asked abruptly.
“Jesus, Mal, you startled me,” Daisy said. “Thanks for the offer, but we’re fine on our own. Your redundant systems somehow didn’t pick this up the first time through, so now we’re doing it the old-fashioned way.”
There was a brief silence. Daisy almost felt bad, hurting the ship’s feelings. Then she remembered, it was just a machine. Sure, a self-aware machine, but a machine all the same. Its calm voice spoke again.
“I am most sorry I did not detect any leak. I fear some of my sensors may have functionality issues. I have tasked Barry to help resolve the issue.”
“Fine, whatever you need to do. Just stay out of our way for a bit while we track this down.”
“As you wish, Daisy,” the AI intoned. She could have sworn it sounded a little upset, but the mood-stabilizing software hardwired into her base code was there to ensure against such emotions.
Moments later, a confused voice crackled over her comms.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Sarah asked with a concerned tone. “Not funny, Daze.”
“What do you mean? I’m just cycling the pods like you asked.”
“You’re supposed to do Lower Deck Port Ten through Thirteen only. Main Deck Starboard Pod Eight just locked me in.”
“The EVA and supply transfer pod? That’s not me. I’ve got the code working on a completely different part of the ship, just like you asked me to.”
“Well, the freakin’ doors to pods seven and nine keep cycling between locked and unlocked.”
“That’s not right,” Daisy said. “Maybe it’s the fail-safe?”
“But there are no leaks in here. The alarms wired to the external airlock would have—”
A shrill alarm sounded, resonating through the passageway.
“Sarah, what’s happening?”
“Shut it down! Shut down all power to Starboard Eight!”
“But the doors will seal you in!”
“Just do it! Hurry!”
Daisy’s fingers flew over the keyboard, executing commands as fast as she was able.
“Come on, Daisy!”
“Almost there!”
Sarah looked in horror as the green light to the external airlock flickered ever so slightly.
“Hurry up!”
The inner of the two doors cycled open. Only one separated her from the cold vacuum of space.
“Daisy! Hurry!”
Daisy entered the last sequence. “Got it! Power is down, doors locked,” she called to her friend over the comms. “Now would you mind telling me what the hell is going on? You scared the shit out of me.”
“You and me both,” Sarah said, a hitch in her voice. “The external airlock,” she continued. “It started to cycle open.”
“But that shouldn’t be possible. There are safety protocols. Multiple safeties.”
“Yeah, well, so much for those. The inner door is still open, Daze, so I’m not sure how much I trust those safeties at this point.”
“Sarah, get to the lockers and grab an EVA suit. I don’t want to take any chances, okay? There’s no way I’m going to power that pod back up until you’re safe and sound in a suit.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
“What the hell is going on down there?” the captain barked over the comms. “I’m reading a power outage in starboard pods seven through nine.”
“There was some sort of malfunction in starboard pod eight, Captain. I had to shut down the linked pods in order to isolate it in time.”
“In time for what?” he growled.
“It’s me, Captain,” Sarah chimed in. “I had her do it. I’m stuck here in Starboard Eight. I was checking some fluctuations in air levels in this block of pods when the connecting doors failed.”
“Tell him the other bit.”
“What other bit?” the captain asked. “And what’s that rustling noise?”
“Sorry, Captain, I’m putting on an EVA suit while we’re talking. The external airlock door was malfunctioning. Shutting down power was the only way to stop it—”
The lights flickered.
“What was that?” Sarah asked. “Don’t power back on yet! I’m not ready!”
“It wasn’t me, Sarah,” Daisy said, trying to understand the blips on the readout screen in front of her. “Just hurry up and get into that suit.” Daisy had a bad feeling building in her gut.
“One step ahead of you. I’ll be suited up before you can—”
The ship lurched slightly as the airlock door blew open, jettisoning Sarah into the void in a rush of air and debris.
Alarms sounded as the ship’s AI hurried to compensate.
“Decompression in starboard pod eight. Environmental danger on Main Deck. All crew, don emergency oxygen masks.”
Even in an emergency, Mal sounded calm and collected.
“Starboard Eight airlock door now re-sealing,” the computer’s voice informed the crew a minute later.
“It is now safe to remove emergency oxygen apparatus.”
“Crew, report to your stations for damage assessment. I want a full systems check. All non-essential compartments are to remain sealed until I say so. Stay sharp, and note anything out of parameters. You will each be called individually for a debrief once this situation is under control,” the captain called over the intercom.
Daisy felt disconnected from her body as it somehow ran through the emergency protocols that had been drilled into her on autopilot.
Deep inside herself, Daisy’s mind was in shock. Overcome by a state of disbelief as she envisioned her friend’s smiling face. But that wasn’t her anymore. The reality was undeniable. Her best friend was frozen and drifting away deeper into space. Alone in the vacuum.
Sarah was gone.
Chapter Eleven
“We should get her body.” It was Reggie who floated the idea. “It’s not right to just leave her out there.”
“If we could, I’d agree with you, but that’s just not possible,” Captain Harkaway replied. “You know I don’t want to leave any crewmember behind, but we just lost a lot of air, sustained unknown damage, and the hopper can’t reach her given our trajectory. Our shuttle is the only thing with enou
gh speed to catch her now, and even then it would burn through all of its fuel chasing her the opposite direction the ship is moving in. At these speeds, it just can’t be done.” He paused, casting a gaze across the assembled crew.
“We have to move forward, assess the damage, and figure out what our status is. Sarah is gone, and she wouldn’t want her crewmates jeopardizing their lives over her corpse. We took a hit, and lost a friend, but we all still have jobs to do.” He paused and looked over his dejected crew. “One more thing, and this goes for all of you. Doctor McClain is here to offer counseling and support to anyone who needs it. We just suffered a great loss, and there’s no shame in needing to talk about it. I encourage all of you to utilize her services. That is all. Now get to work, people.”
The captain lurched through the galley’s double doors and headed back to Command, while the crew slowly rose to return to their tasks. Daisy, eyes and nose a fierce red, pulled herself together as best she could. She kept turning Sarah’s environmental scanner over in her hands. Clipped to the rack as she’d tried to don her space suit, it was the one thing that hadn’t been blasted into space.
‘Don’t be a pussy, Daze,’ Sarah’s voice teased her. ‘You’re tougher than this. If I knew dying would slow you down so much, I never would have done it.’
“Very funny, dumbass,” she muttered.
“What was that?” Vince asked, studying her as she rose to her feet.
“Nothing.”
“You need me, you know where I’ll be, okay?” He rested his hand on her shoulder and pulled her closer. “Come see me tonight. We can talk, or just sit. Whatever you need.”
“Thanks. I think I just need to get moving and put my mind back on a project, ya know?”
“Yeah.”
“Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later.”
Vince let his fingertips slide from her shoulder as she left. Sarah’s loss was a blow, but for now, they had jobs to do.
“Captain.” Daisy caught up to the limping man as he made his way down the passageway. “I’m not the life-support expert, but from what I can tell by the data Sarah was collecting, it looks like the secondary air scrubbers had possibly shorted out. My guess is that’s a new problem, though, and not what she was originally tracking down. It was most likely the force of the vacuum hitting the unprotected systems without a proper compartmental seal prior to decompression that caused a shear to a supply line. At least, I hope that’s all it is.”
Harkaway looked at her, waiting for Daisy to get to the point.
“Anyway,” she continued, “until we figure out what exactly needs to be done to repair them, we’re going to need to be running on a low oxygen protocol, just in case. It could be nothing, but we can’t risk it. I recommend we do what we can to reduce excessive physical activity as much as possible while we work through this problem.”
“And what does Mal think about this?” the captain asked.
“I haven’t discussed it with her yet, Captain. Some of the anomalies weren’t showing up on her readings, and Sarah noted several discrepancies in the oxygen consumption data, and—”
“My environmental systems are functioning at near-optimal levels, Daisy,” Mal interrupted.
Always listening, aren’t you?
“Maybe so, Mal, but you still have some sensor outages, and now we have lord knows what kind of damage to track down in the Narrows.”
The computer thought a moment. “This is a correct assessment. However even after the loss of oxygen, I can assure you, the crew is in no danger.”
“Tell that to Sarah,” she muttered.
“What was that?” Captain Harkaway asked.
“I said we need Sarah,” Daisy said. “We’re down to just one Narrows worker, and on top of that, she was the environmental and life support expert.”
“Just do what you can. I don’t expect you to fill her shoes, Swarthmore, but knowing how stubborn you can be, I won’t be surprised if you try.”
“Thank you, Captain. I think.”
“All right, then. Mal, I want you to figure out how much air we have currently, and if our consumption can be sustained.”
“I will verify the figures and have them for you immediately, Captain.”
“Gustavo,” he said into the comms.
“Yes, Captain?”
“Plug into the ship and double-check our course. Given the glitches of today, I’m not entirely confident Mal has plotted the most efficient trajectory. It’s probably nothing, but I want a second set of eyes on it.”
“Copy, Captain.”
“I can assure you,” Mal chimed in, “the trajectory is ideal for mission parameters, Captain.”
“Nothing personal, but I want it double-checked anyway. And Daisy, that goes for environmentals too. Figure out what Sarah was working on and check our oxygen consumption. We need true readings, and if there really is possible damage to the scrubbers, we need the most accurate data possible.”
“I’ll get right on it, sir.”
“One more thing. Your replacement communications array, how powerful is it?”
“I tried to replicate what we had before the impact as best as I could with the parts on hand. It should be close to the original unit’s power ratings.”
“Good, though despite all the work you’ve put into it, I would really rather not have to rely on that jury-rigged long-range communication setup. Nevertheless, we may need to try to reach out to Dark Side base to see if they can meet us halfway with replacement O2 scrubbers if we can’t get ours back online. Can your gizmo handle a tier-three encrypted transmission?”
“Captain?” Daisy asked, confused.
“Tier-three, Swarthmore. Can it handle it?”
“Um, I don’t know. It should be able to, in theory anyway. But that’s high-level military encryption on a pulsed phase-shifted frequency. Why would a repair base use that?”
Harkaway looked at her but said nothing.
“Oh shit,” she gasped. “Dark Side has a secret military facility as well?”
“Like you said, it’s secret,” he answered.
“Then why are you telling me, if you don’t mind me asking, sir?”
“Because our fan is covered in shit, Daisy, and what I just told you is need-to-know information.”
“But I’m just a tech. I don’t need to know that.”
“You do now,” he said grimly. “Barry!” he barked into the comms.
“Yes, Captain?” The cyborg had somehow approached them while they were talking without being noticed.
“Jesus, Barry, I hate it when you do that,” Daisy said, nearly jumping out of her skin at his stealthy appearance.
“Sorry, Daisy.”
The captain turned to the mechanical man.
“Barry, I want you to suit up and do an EVA to the exterior area of Lower Port Ten through Thirteen. See if there’s any damage we may have missed from the inside. Mal says we’re ship-shape down there, but I’d like to confirm it.”
“I’ll get right on it, Captain,” Barry said, turning and heading for the ladder to the lower deck. Daisy watched him disappear down to the bottom level.
“Trust but verify,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Just something I read in an old book,” she replied. “But, Captain, there’s something that’s been bothering me. The Váli isn’t that old, but a lot of her systems seem to be in fairly advanced states of failure. It’s not readily apparent, but in some spaces, like the Narrows especially, well, it just looks like some of the components are outdated.”
“The Narrows, huh? Well, that would make sense, I suppose. The one place the ship’s auto-maintenance doesn’t cover.”
“Captain, there’s something else.”
“What is it?”
“There are things written in the Narrows. Drawings and gibberish, mostly, but also messages scratched out on the walls in nooks and crannies.” Daisy pulled her notepad from her hip pocket and flipped through the
pages. “I wrote a bunch of them down. Like this one. It was particularly dark. ‘We can never go home. This is our home of glass and steel. Yet still we hope for green pastures.’ - Lt. Burke, Icarus.”
Captain Harkaway swallowed hard as he silently stared at the bulkhead. “Some of these pods,” he finally began, “were originally from other ships, like the Icarus. When the Váli’s framework was commissioned, it was configured to best serve the mission’s needs, and pods from ships that fit the bill were installed as needed. That’s all it is, Daisy. Just a few pods that are a bit older than the others. Now, get going. I want you to get as much done this shift as possible, then get yourself a good night’s sleep. I know we all need it.”
Daisy would have liked to do as the captain ordered, but a good night’s sleep was something that hadn’t been in the cards for her for quite some time. Sure, she’d sometimes wake truly rested, though more often than not, those were the mornings after Vincent had kept her up well past her normal bedtime.
As she lay in her bunk, running the day over and over in her mind, Daisy could find no fault in her actions. Nevertheless, she still felt like somehow, someway, Sarah’s death was partially her fault.
Never should have run those diagnostics from up there. What if that little tweak to the command structure started the whole thing?
She knew that hadn’t been what happened, just like she knew none of the other dozen scenarios playing out over and over in her head would have changed things. Still, her friend was gone, and no amount of replaying the events would change that.
“Let it go, Daisy. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Stay out of my head, dead girl,” she muttered. “That shit’s not helping.”
“It’s your psyche, hon, not mine.”
“Touché,” she said to the air, then turned out the lights, hesitating as her fingers touched the neuro stim beside her bed. Not tonight, she decided, and settled into her bed, leaving the device where it sat as she gradually drifted off to sleep.
Daisy found herself in a busy metropolitan area. The skies were a clear blue, and happy clouds dotted the horizon. In the distance she could see the mountains, covered with lush trees, their peaks capped with pure white snow.
