Void

by Matt Thomas

  Contents

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Review Call

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Copyright © 2019 by Matt Thomas

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0-9908824-4-6

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9908824-4-2

  Cover Design by Tegnemaskin

  CHAPTER ONE

  One hundred and forty-seven seconds. Air would continue to scream for one hundred and forty-seven seconds, gradually reducing in pitch as the vacuum seeping into the ship lessened the pressure differential. The cascade of red droplets pouring out through four inches of ballistic plastic might not last that long. The burning in his lungs would certainly last longer, but then cease.

  Flashing red lights bounced off of every reflective surface, but the accompanying shrill siren drowned in the whistle of escaping air.

  At least four of those seconds escaped before he understood the situation. They had sat together, side by side, trying to identify a more efficient course. The sound of the chunk of rock striking the windshield blurred into the sound of the rock striking flesh. The object passed through the torso before impacting the metal seat with such force that both body and chair rocked backwards violently. The aluminum structure of the pilot's chair stretched and ruptured at the point of impact, releasing the tension that pulled both pilot and structure aft. The motion of his partner's head snapping forward caught his attention before the computer identified the loss of pressure and began counting down from one hundred and forty-seven.

  That's where Lind Michaels held his focus, torn between the width of Kay's eyes and red pulsing from the jagged hole just under his left collar-bone. He reached over with both hands, shoving them against the wound with all the force he could muster, ignoring the warm pressure flowing over them and the cracked bones beneath. All he could do was look at Kay's face, knowing full well that the impact destroyed the subclavian artery beyond repair and it now dumped his partner's blood into space.

  Kay's eyes narrowed. The pupils darted between Lind's face draining of color and the hole ejecting his own blood out of the ship. "What are you doing?" He yelled, barely audible over the rushing air and alarms. "Seal the breach!"

  Lind hesitated, and Kay used his right arm to fight free. Without compression, more blood escaped into the vacuum in a steady river. Less than two minutes remained, and he could feel his head becoming light from lack of oxygen. He frowned at Kay, who only sneered back at him and weakly slapped away Lind's hands again, before finally turning towards the cockpit console. Twenty-seven seconds had elapsed.

  Lind ripped the emergency kit free from its secure place on the underside of the avionics suite. A tab pulled off the protective outer layer from the swath of patchwork. It took both hands, but he spread it over the puncture. The edges rippled and tore as air tried to escape through the imperfect seal. The fabric's center pulled towards space, bunching and threatening to rip. The flow of air slowed. In response, the countdown clock added another one hundred and fifteen seconds until conditions inside the ship matched the freezing nothing outside. Moving on to the second part of the process, he grabbed a heavy metal plate, edged with adhesive rubber that would bond to the windscreen. Sixty seconds elapsed as he pinned the plate between his body and the breach while Kay continued to bleed out, the blood now pooling on his lap.

  The clock stopped. The red light stopped flashing. The siren silenced. He gasped for air.

  Kay's eyes hung heavy, and the pulsing blood lost most of its force. "Jesus," he muttered. "Can't you fix a little hull breach without me?"

  "Asshole." His partner replied, fighting his way between the seats to escape into the corridor running down the spine of the ship. The lab door had sealed during depressurization, an evidence-saving feature of their Mako. The designers built the ship as a mobile, virtually autonomous crime lab that happened to be home for two investigators. Evidence first, safety and convenience came later.

  Lind had to override the lock, struggling with the latch that had never worked properly before the door slid to the side and he fell into the lab. Supplies and kits and equipment necessary to process every conceivable forensic need cluttered the narrow, elongated room. The universal airlock nearly severed the lab while retracted, another great idea to preserve evidence brought on the ship but a hindrance to any other operation, like trying to save a life during an in-flight emergency. The medical supplies remained stuck in a far corner unused. In theory, they inventoried all the items every few months. In reality, he had no idea what items were where or whether any of them had not expired. He grabbed a handful of bandages from one drawer, medical tape from another, and pulled out an IV bag full of plasma from the small refrigerator that wouldn't open all the way.

  His hands overflowing, he ran back to the cockpit. Kay's shallow breaths permeated the air, punctuated by his hard swallows. Lind rocked Kay forward, cutting through the shirt and gaining access to the torn flesh beneath. One over-sized pad, filled with absorbent and clotting chemicals, went onto the jagged exit-wound where the rock left Kay's body. A second went on the smaller, neater entry wound, held in place by long strips of tape haphazardly affixed to skin. Curses escaped from Kay's lips each time he suffered through some physical manipulation. The final curse came when his partner slid a steel needle into the vein on his living arm and squeezed in plasma.

  "I could put a tourniquet around your neck, if it would make you feel better."

  "It might." Kay weakly replied. The lack of his typical bitterness disturbed his partner. He watched the plasma drain from the bag and stared at twice that volume of blood soaked into the seat and spread over the cockpit. He could not guess how much floated outside the ship before he fixed the seal in place. "Just give me something for the pain." Kay pleaded.

  "Why, can't handle it?"

  Kay coughed a laugh. "Yeah, I'm so weak I can't take getting hit by a meteor."

  "Micrometeorite. Big difference."

  "Just give me the meds."

  "I can't. Your blood's thin enough as it is." The bleeding man could have cried, had he been born someone else.

  His partner leaned over, crowding him as he wiped his blood off of the navigation screen. With flicks of his hands, he jumped between screens, discarding possibilities in a process that should have been much easier.

  "We should have picked a different route." Kay mumbled.

  "We're so far from anywhere. . ." There were more clicks. "We might have to turn around and head back to Norse Station."

  "You've got to be kidding me." Kay responded, his voice quivering. "We left there almost four days ago."

  His partner shook his head. "The orbits suck right now. They're not even close to aligned. It's another two weeks to Titan."

  "It is what it is."

  It took two hours to slow the ship down, and almost another three to push the throttle all the way forward after it turned around. They raced back in nearly complete silence, without visual cues from the stars to reinforce the urgency.

  Kay, being senior, occupied the larger room closest to the cockpit. Lind struggled to get him there, but he woul
d rest better than in the cramped cockpit. Over nine hours of lying on his cot, Kay bled through the entire supply of bandages. The last three bags of plasma went through his system quickly before soaking the mattress beneath him. Confusion overcame Kay as his skin turned pale became saturated with sweat. The breaths burst with such rapidity and futility he could no longer hurl insults or profanity. The monitor hanging by cables attached to his chest dutifully displayed the increase in heart rate and weakening of pulse.

  Lind tried to keep Kay alive. He searched the computer for anything that might help. At one point, he considered trying to fumble his way through surgery to tie off the artery, only to realize that sticking his hand inside his partner's chest would only kill him faster. Their blood types were incompatible, and nothing on the ship allowed him to separate plasma from his own blood. Lind tried to stay away, finding excuses to slip out and make a cup of coffee or check the ship's status. They had already been up for at least ten hours when the accident occurred. The mental and emotional strain outweighed the jolt of coffee. Watching a man bleed to death over hours did not ease anything. Kay wanted to talk as long as he could. He gave instructions Lind did not want to comprehend: notes to family members and distribution of the few personal items stored on the ship. Eventually, Lind watched Kay lie in his bed, fading away.

  Eleven hours after the accident, while Lind sat, slumped in the chair in his partner's cabin, blood stopped flowing.

  *****

  The Mako's designers went to extreme lengths to provide for every need a team of investigators might have. Everything from the lab Lind ransacked to a cell on the lower deck helped the Thirty-Twos efficiently execute their law enforcement function far from any semblance of a police station. Those amenities included a refrigerated drawer along the forward bulkhead of the lab for storing a body. The drawer pulled out waist-high, with just enough room for someone to slide between the cadaver and the forensic instrumentation along the outer wall.

  Kay outweighed Lind by fifty pounds. To him, size mattered, and he worked diligently to maintain an impressive physique. Over their years together, Lind watched his partner's mass become softer from months stuck in space with nothing but the two pieces of exercise equipment bolted to the floor downstairs to keep him occupied. Lind ran on the lean side, having spent his days at home running extreme distances for nothing but pleasure, and spending hours on that exercise bike downstairs while listening to music during the long trips between the planets and moons.

  Lind preferred, of course, to stuff his partner into the morgue drawer, but the mass differential made it nearly impossible. He had stared at the drawer and wondered how he could fit his friend into something so tiny. The ship specifications told him he should fit someone much larger in there, but any attempt to imagine it sickened him. For a moment, Lind toyed with the idea of shutting off the gravity, simply floating Kay over and stuffing him in. But the practicality of dealing with a ship with all its contents floating haphazardly while he struggled to move the body dissuaded him. Looking around his partner's berth, the scattered stained gauze and bandages strewn about offended him, even though his partner was not known for tidiness. They argued about that often, as expected of two people stuck in close proximity during the long flights. Kay invariably gave Lind lip-service about how he would clean up, only to eventually shut down the conversation by invoking his rank.

  The filth post-death differed from a lack of tidiness. The mattress and sheets turned brown as Kay's blood dried in large circles, where it had drained from his shoulder and pooled. Empty plastic packets of plasma littered the floor where Lind had discarded them among the piles of clothes Kay dumped on the floor each night. Kay appeared to be a fake after a while. His skin became white and covered with a fine coat of dried sweat. The eyes remained closed, but his mouth hung slightly open, dried spit congealed along the corner of his lips. Silence descended on the ship without the constant noise of Kay shuffling around or his regular use of profanity. Lind's first instinct had been to shut the door to Kay's room, only to find it more unsettling to stare at a closed door that had almost always been open in his partner's total disregard for privacy or propriety.

  For the last three days, Lind barely left the cockpit. To do so meant to walk past where his friend lay. That was not the rationale Lind gave himself. To leave the cockpit also meant to leave the ship unattended. The logic was ridiculous. Even with the two of them, the cockpit sat empty mostly. In fact, had they not argued about whether they should head directly to Europa instead of Titan, neither of them would have been in the cockpit at the time the micrometeorite struck. Still, Lind ventured out only to the head or galley downstairs momentarily before returning to the bridge. He slept there, or rather, faded from consciousness for a few dozen minutes at a time before waking up to stare at the ugly metal patch obstructing most of his view.

  In the seven years since he left Earth, he had never been alone in space before. He had been alone in a room on a station, certainly, even alone temporarily on the docked ship while Kay went out to run errands or take personal time. Each time, though, he had been only meters from the next living being. Lind realized there were many millions of miles between him and the next breathing human. Even the great distances of space conspired against him, delaying any communication with another by minutes at best, or hours more likely. He managed to transmit a message home, to The Hub orbiting Earth and home to the handful of his fellow investigators, a place he had not seen in fourteen months, to inform them of the death of an agent. Their recorded reply and instructions came over twelve hours later, but he couldn't bring himself to read it.

  At first, Lind would not shower, not willing to take so much time away from the controls he barely touched, and he would not change his clothes. Towards the end of the second day, he stopped in Kay's quarters. He stared at the body for an undetermined amount of time, wanting to say something but knowing his partner could not hear him. Finally, Lind could not handle the situation any more. He needed a distraction.

  The accident spewed blood and sucked dirt and debris throughout the interior of the cockpit. Nearly every surface stuck to Lind's hands and feet, and the top of the control console displayed every fleck of dirt and each dust bunny from throughout the main cabin of the ship, stopped by the windshield on their way out into space. Kay would have said only exposure to vacuum would clean the ship, anyway. For hours, Lind scrubbed the floor, glass, and metal until it no longer resembled a murder scene. The copilot's chair remained canted at an odd angle, the now-red stuffing shoving through the hole in the upholstery. The used rags and other garbage filled a bag fed into a compactor downstairs and jettisoned into space. After all of that effort, Lind broke away from the cockpit long enough for a shower that used both his and Kay's rations. Kay didn't need the water any more. The shirt covered in his partner's blood and the pants went into the compacter as well. He poured himself a cup of coffee and returned to the cockpit, averting his eyes when he passed Kay's door.

  After three days of occupying the small space with Kay's remains, a tone sounded throughout the ship, alerting him that he began entry into Norse Station's airspace. A few flashing buoys thousands of kilometers away provided the only visual reference through the damaged viewport. Lind checked the navigation computer and switched his radio frequency.

  "Norse Station this is Mako Three-Two-Two-Zero, requesting expedited approach for repair and a medical crew."

  A few seconds passed between transmission and response. "Mako Three-Two-Two-Zero, Norse Station. Roger, standby for vectors. What is the nature of the emergency?" The voice came through garbled from a distance, but Lind's expert ear broke through the interference and pieced together the message.

  "We suffered a hull breach and had one crew member injured."

  "What's the status of the crew member?"

  Lind's hesitation came from a psychological blockage. The cleaning, the desire to stay in the cockpit, avoiding Kay's door separated him from the accident mentally. Even
though everything connected, his actions followed the same illogic that kept him from transmitting messages home, or reporting the accident to his headquarters. Those steps made the situation final.

  "He's dead." Lind spoke so softly the microphone barely picked it up.

  "Roger, Mako Three-Two-Two-Zero. Are you still venting?"

  Millions of miles away, Lind shook his head. "Negative."

  A longer break between transmissions had nothing to do with the distance. After nearly a minute, the navigation computer lit up, spewing out waypoints. The computer projected the path on the windscreen, not aware that the ugly metal patch blocked most of the representation. "Mako Three-Two-Two-Zero, prepare to enter approach pattern Golf. You are third for docking."

  Three days of exhaustion exploded out of Lind. He slammed his fist on the console, rattling the components within. "What happened to my expedited approach?" He yelled.

  "Mako Three-Two-Two-Zero, your status doesn't qualify. We have a line of ships trying to enter the system." The voice projected regret, although Lind ignored it.

  "My status doesn't qualify?" He shouted back. "What part of my call sign didn't you understand? Do I need to help you understand what 'Mako Three-Two' means?"

  For seven years, Lind had religiously repressed the sense of entitlement his profession garnered. The design of the solar system boiled down to a single document. Humbly named "The Contract," each of the four major corporations responsible for development and settlement agreed to a set of rules, a blueprint for extracting every nickel they could from colonization. Some set forth the bare necessities, the primordial soup of legalese creating the foundations for the first steps towards humankind's first permanent homes in space. Others created and viciously protected the cartel the four companies created. Qinlin mined the ore that made Ephemeris Engineering ships piloted by Sadko crews to stations operated and maintained by Lamb, Higley & Hilbert infrastructure management.

  Article Thirty Two carried the unobtrusive title "Regulation, Enforcement, and Conflict Resolution." It created Lind's agency, funded equally by the companies, and empowered it to reach into any business transaction, operation, or personal matter of any kind that may upset the balance of power set forth in The Contract. In the absence of a government, the Thirty-Twos were the governing body. Every individual in space signed a piece of paper as they passed through The Hub, affirmatively stating that would subject themselves to oversight and control, when need be, of the Thirty-Twos. Everyone understood the designation "Three-Two" and give it appropriate deference. Kay threw it around in jest at bars, restaurants, and the occasional strip club, but Lind only used it when absolutely necessary. Major enterprises could crumble because of them. Doors opened wide and voices spoke for them. None risked costing themselves, or, worse, their employer, a license to conduct the lucrative business of space colonization.