Void

by Matt Thomas

  "It's more like what I can do for you. I got orders to assist you with your current investigation when I happened to be in the area, so I'm already on Ephemeris Station."

  "I hate to take you away from other work . . ." Lind meant to say, he hated the idea of being assigned a new partner, especially a temporary one. He wanted to argue the point, but knowing she waited for him already made most of the argument moot. He couldn't tell her he was about to get rid of one hanger-on and wasn't eager to spend his time around another. Policy dictated partners chose each other. It sounded like the powers-that-be decided to break that bit of protocol given Lind's circumstances, whatever they perceived them to be.

  "Don't worry about it. Anyway, I'll be here waiting for you. When you land, I thought we could sit down and talk about the case before we conduct interviews."

  Lind saw an opportunity for delay. "I'd really like to talk to one of the administrators as soon as possible . . ."

  "I've already set up a meeting for you with Mr. Gunnow." She announced. "He's not available for two more hours, so we'll have some time together. I look forward to meeting you." She ended the opportunity for further protest.

  "Thanks." Lind said. "I'll see you there. Out." He terminated the connection before she tried to engage in further conversation.

  Sure enough, as he approached their docking port, he saw another Mako docked a few levels further down. Replacing one irritation with anxiety about the next, he connected his own ship to the station.

  Lind took his time disembarking to avoid any goodbye with the Hitchhiker. He fiddled with the instruments spread throughout the ship, looking busy, as long as he could until he just stood, staring at the forensic analyzer as it shut down. The visitor took forever, packing and gathering all of his bags. They thudded down the steps towards the lower airlock, and, after a time, Lind believed the man had left. More afraid of standing still, doing nothing, he made his own way down to the lower deck.

  The Hitchhiker, somehow, had not cleared the airlock. He stood talking to someone out of view.

  "Agent Michaels?" Lind heard the voice from the radio ask the Hitchhiker.

  "No, Liam Parker." He watched the Hitchhiker extend a hand out of view. The other man hovered, hesitating on the ramp. Receiving no response, the Hitchhiker finally took a hint, grabbed his bags, and shuffled deeper into the station shouting a thanks over his shoulder.

  When Lind ventured off of his ship, he found a woman waiting for him. Shorter than Lind, her head only coming up to the top of his chest, but she maintained a strong stature. Her hair, tied casually in a bun behind her head, mixed golden blond with deep brown. She immediately made eye contact. She raised an eyebrow and smiled, a look that could reveal sheepishness or confidence in equal shares. "Agent Michaels?" She asked again.

  "Yeah." He answered, accepting the extended hand with its long fingers, sporting only one sterling silver ring on her middle finger.

  "I'm Bitsy Donovan."

  "Bitsy?" He asked.

  The way she laughed in response tilted towards some form of embarrassment. "Elizabeth, but my parents always called me that and it stuck."

  "How very Victorian." He said, intending it to be an insult, but she didn't take it as such.

  "Thanks." They walked deeper into the station. "So, who was that guy who just got off your ship?"

  Lind shrugged and shook his head. "Some hitchhiker wanting a ride on his way home from Iapetus. I had the room, so . . ." He let his voice trailed off, afraid to admit that he'd allowed the man on his ship only because he lacked the energy to argue.

  She looked down at her boots. "I heard about your partner. I'm so sorry."

  "Me too."

  "My partner a family crisis back on Earth, so, I guess I'm yours for a little while."

  "I don't know what you could really do to help. I appreciate it and everything." Lind hoped the edge in his tone made clear he didn't. "But I think I'm doing okay."

  "I know you've been around for a while, and I don't want to get in your way, but . . ."

  "But we're going to do what we're told to do. I got it." Lind found himself giving up too easily yet again. His eyes lingered on hers for a moment in a failed attempt to size her up better. He shrugged and continued through the docking passage.

  Donovan quickly followed behind.

  The station, like most corporate headquarters, showered its guests with what passed for luxury so far from Earth. Lind's boots fell on carpet, industrial and coarse, but carpet nonetheless. Giant windows, thick enough to protect from micrometeorites yet with the requisite clarity to see the storms on the planet, stretched from floor to ceiling. Matching sets of overstuffed chairs, mostly devoid of scuffing and tears, lay out in a logical pattern, flanked by potted plants and coffee tables in the welcome lounge. Wood, almost certainly fake, shined around a well-lit reception desk staffed by an incredibly attractive dark-complexioned woman.

  Donovan ignored the welcome party even though Lind couldn't as they brushed through the office's foyer. A few stray looks fell upon them as they navigated through hallways designed for aesthetic rather than practicality. The junior Thirty-Two spun, shoving open a pair of glass-paned doors. The conference room they entered was empty, most of the lights were off around a polished wood table and leather executive chairs. Photos and diagrams of Ephemeris products lined one wall while another displayed the full majesty of Saturn. The combined effect, in the dim lights, created a secretive atmosphere, despite the heavy use of windows and glass.

  Lind sat down at a corner seat next to Donovan, who spoke in an unnecessarily hushed tone. "They said we could talk privately in here."

  "I'm sure all the microphones in the wall will make things easier for them."

  She replied with a smile that implied she though Lind was joking. "I just want to get myself up to speed."

  "Where do you want to begin?"

  "You found a Marlin in orbit around Iapetus?"

  "Yep."

  "Can you tell me about that?" She prodded.

  With a sigh, Lind began his tale by brushing over many of the extraneous details of the find itself, until he skipped to the point of his story. "There wasn't any cargo on the ship." He said. "After getting down to the surface, they said the Mako picked up a small box that was supposed to be shipped here."

  "What was in the box?"

  Lind shrugged, before leaning on the table for support. "I have no idea. A day or so before it got picked up, something broke one of their Combs. Totally destroyed the teeth. They sent whatever caused the damage back here on the Marlin. They sent the Comb itself back on a Guppy."

  "Any idea what was tough enough to break a Comb?"

  "That's what I'm here to find out. But, whatever it was, someone didn't want either the Comb or whatever broke it to make it back here."

  "That's your theory?"

  "Yes."

  "Based on what, may I ask?"

  "Based on the fact that Rykov was sabotaged and murdered, and the Guppy was stopped between planets."

  "What do you mean, 'stopped'?"

  "You haven't seen that report?"

  She shook her head. "All I know about is the Rykov murder."

  "Well, something sent a depleted uranium shell straight down the Guppy's spine. Then something overloaded all its circuits. The entire crew was killed, either on the ship or in the lifeboats. Then someone broke into the hold, stole the Comb, and launched it towards Jupiter."

  Donovan's head tipped back upon receiving the news. "How do you know all that?"

  "Because I have a video."

  She thought about his response for a moment, but made no outburst or other expression of disbelief. The reaction was not what Lind would have expected. In fact, he dropped it with dramatic effect, trying to get a feel for how prepared she could possibly be to handle the string of bodies that led him to Io.

  "What do you expect to get out of Ephemeris? Why did you come all the way here?"

  "I'm hoping they'll tell me . . .
us . . . why they paid to have the Marlin bring that box back so quickly."

  "You actually think all this has to do with that box, don't you?"

  "Yep."

  "Even though you have no idea what's in it?"

  "I don't need to know what's in it, as long as Vannin does."

  This time, she was surprised. "Who's Vannin?"

  "He's the guy who stopped the Guppy, killed its crew, and stole the Comb." She stared at him for an explanation. "I was able get a facial recognition off of the video."

  "It must be one hell of a video."

  "It is."

  "What do you know about this Vannin character?"

  Lind shook his head. "I can tick off the facts I have about him on one hand. They guy doesn't appear in any of our databases. It's like he never made it passed the Gateway. Oh, and he's got his own Mako. One that's not on the books anywhere. Ephemeris doesn't have a record of one, and Sadko says it isn't theirs. But I've got enough sensor readings to know it exists."

  "Could it be an error?"

  Lind shook his head. "I just know it's not. I can't really explain it. I just know."

  "So your theory right now is a guy who doesn't exist murdered a ton of people to recover a box containing god knows what while flying a ship that also doesn't exist."

  "That about sums it up." Lind recognized how ridiculous it sounded.

  "So who's this Mr. Gunnow?" Lind asked, standing up as a signal that their private meeting was over. "Some executive?"

  Donovan laughed. "No. There's no way they're going to have one of the execs meet with us. Gunnow is their maintenance manager."

  "Their maintenance manager?"

  "Sure." She led him back down the corridor. "I think they call him a Product Sustainment Engineer." The further they got from the conference room, the less space there was between office doors and the more wear showed in the carpet. They passed through a hatch in the inner bulkhead, and the decor disappeared, returning to the austere environment expected in a station billions of miles from the home planet. They came to a door with Mr. Gunnow's name displayed on a removable placard. Donovan knocked on the door, not waiting for an answer to push her way through as though she'd been in that office before.

  Work crammed every space of the room itself, pushing out any sense of the man's personal life. No photos of family, no trinkets from times past sat on any surface. The man himself, short with reading glasses perched on top of his extended forehead and dark bags under his eyes, easily could have been any of a thousand over-worked middle-managers spread throughout the companies.

  Lind introduced himself half-heartedly. He had to move a stack of maintenance tablets from a chair so that both he and Donovan could sit down.

  "So this has something to do with the Iapetus Comb?" Gunnow began with a sigh and without small talk.

  "Yep." Lind didn't elaborate.

  "Well, there's not much I can tell you." Perkins said. "We got a report saying the thing was broken, and we wanted to look at it and see what did the damage."

  "So why would you pay to have a Marlin fly out there to pick it up and bring it back? That's a ton of cash."

  "Ephemeris isn't exactly hurting for cash." Gunnow replied. "We expensed it because a broken Comb is a huge deal. The company spent outrageous amounts of money to build a piece of equipment that can sift through the dust layer of a planet to collect ice particles that also won't break when it comes across any rock or metal ore. Ephemeris specifically designed it to get random foreign bodies stuck in its teeth without breaking. We test it by throwing granite and titanium in front of it. Geologists study anything we might find on the surface of a planet to make sure the damn thing survives. They even drop space junk in front of it, and it either chews it up or detects that it can't and stops. Do you know what breaks it? Diamonds. If you throw down a diamond the size of a human head, the teeth will break if the sensors don't catch it in time. Other than that there's nothing. One of two things happened, either there's a fault with the equipment, in which case we have an incredibly expensive recall to do, or there's something out there that we didn't predict, which means an incredibly expensive overhaul. So, yeah, it's kind of a big deal worth spending some money on."

  "Any idea what broke it?"

  Gunnow shook his head. "We got a text-only initial report from our maintenance guy on the ground. He just said he couldn't identify it, but it was about two inches by four inches by one inch, hard, and it didn't look like some kind of ore."

  "Who knew that the Comb had broken and that you were shipping it back?"

  Gunnow shrugged, air whistling between his teeth as he exhaled. "Not many. I mean, it's proprietary technology. We don't want everyone knowing we've got a defective product. The tech called me, I passed it up to the executives, they approved the expense, and that's about it. The guys down in the evaluation bay won't know anything about it until the thing arrives. Speaking of which . . ." He looked at the screen on his computer. "The Guppy with the Comb should arrive tomorrow, if you want to stick around."

  Lind and Donovan exchanged glances while remaining silent.

  "Can I ask," Perkins asked. "Why there is so much interest in the Comb? I get that you're investigating the missing courier."

  "Because the courier isn't missing, he's dead. So are the ten crew members on the Guppy." Donovan blurted out, hoping to catch Gunnow off guard in an ill-advised interrogation strategy.

  "So," Lind added. "You're not going to be getting your Comb tomorrow."

  "Jesus." Gunnow gasped. "Where is it?"

  "The Comb and the package with the courier were the only things stolen from the ships."

  The manager's face showed true shock, his eyes wide, the color drained from his face.

  "How're we going to know what happened to our piece of equipment?"

  "Not really our problem. We only care about who died and why." Lind said standing up, ending the interview. He tossed a card with his contact information onto the pile of work on the desk. "I need everything you have sent to that address."

  "Okay . . ." Gunnow said, standing again.

  "Oh, and one more thing." Lind said, halfway out the door. "I talked to the people on Iapetus. No one seemed to know anything about it. What's the name of the guy who called it in?"

  "That's easy." The Ephemeris employee squinted as his computer, scanning through a document. "Liam Parker."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  "I need to find out where he is right now." Lind yelled at the receptionist sitting behind the over-sized welcome counter.

  "I'm sorry, sir, I don't have access to that information." She protested. "I would imagine he headed down to the passenger terminal on the lower level."

  Donovan protested almost as much, grabbing his arm to pull him away from the innocent young woman he bullied. "Come on. Let's go back to my ship."

  He broke free. "No, I'm telling you I need to find that asshole right fucking now!"

  The receptionist backed away from the desk defensively. "Sir, I'm sorry I can't help you, but I'll have to call security if you don't calm down." Sure enough, several passers-by lingered to see the commotion.

  "I am fucking security!" Lind bellowed.

  "Okay, that's it." Donovan pushed him backwards. He didn't resist as much as he could have. "We're going to my ship to talk this out."

  He succumbed as she herded him down a curving flight of steps circling the welcome atrium. She nearly pushed him through the airlock to her ship, closing the airtight hatch behind them.

  Her Mako structurally mirrored his. Yet it felt alien to him. Every bolt, every hatch, every component to the ship maintained the same space, yet it somehow had an atmosphere more warm and less foreboding that what he always experienced on his ship. They walked up the stairs to the control deck, and he passed the open hatches to both cabins. She lived in the same cabin he did although she had blanketed a room full of personal touches with bright lighting and luxurious bedclothes. The next cabin, the one Kay would have had ba
ck on his own ship, was empty. Cheap, readily resourced sheets crisply covered the bed. The desk was bare, and, while closed, he was willing to bet the closets had a handful of clothes hangers and nothing else. It looked more like a hotel room than a place where anyone lived. Lind understood the familiarity of her actions towards an absent partner. It was enough to temper his fury, but just barely.

  Donovan sat down in the pilot's chair, covered with a soft, custom-made cushion rather than the bare, worn leather he was used to. Why she chose there, rather than any other spot on the ship to have the conversation, he had no idea.

  "Ok," she began like she was speaking to an irrational child. "I understand that you're upset about this, but I don't think yelling at the receptionist will make things any better."

  "He lied to me." Lind didn't yell, although his anger, now augmented by his treatment by a junior investigator, seeped into his voice. "He lied to me for weeks while he sat in that room." The investigator jabbed a finger towards the analog of Kay's berth.

  "How did he lie to you?"

  "He never once said anything, anything about being involved with the whole thing."

  "How much did you discuss with him?"

  Lind paused. "Not much." He conceded. "But he knew what this whole thing was about. Shit, he watched me on that Guppy. He saw all the bodies and freaked out, but he never said one fucking word."

  "So, basically, you have a guy who maybe stumbled across something that later got a lot of people killed, and he chose not to say anything. It doesn't seem unreasonable."

  "Well, when you put it like that . . ." Lind matched as much venom as he could against her criticism of his theory. "Look, there was also the bomb on the station."

  Donovan looked like she was about to protest again before Lind interrupted her train of thought. "This guy is with me the moment I stop at TOS, disappears for a couple of hours, and then, the instant I go near the Marlin in the repair bay, a bomb goes off. Then, he tries to find me to see whether he succeeded."