Fearless

by Allen Stroud

  Maybe one day, I’ll command my own ship and men like Keiyho will bow to me.

  I blink and focus on the sound files. They are neatly filed in a directory on my screen, little pieces of audio I’ve managed to isolate from the background noise. I’ve processed these files already, applying noise reduction filters, vocal enhancement tools, all sorts. I’ve named each one for what they are. There are two voices, both male. That was the first thing I noticed. If this is a communication between an EVA team and the bridge of the Hercules, then it’s incredible that we’ve managed to receive any of it.

  Have I missed something? I pull up the first file again and revert it to the original, setting it to play on a loop. I lean back and shut my eyes. It’s easier to focus on what you’re hearing when there’s nothing else to distract you.

  “…please don’t… sir…”

  There! In the background, really faint, but audible. A whistling noise? Sounds like music or old-school analogue interference. It’s buried under the vocal layers of the recording. The computer will never manage to isolate it, but I know it’s there. I pull up a second fragment, restore it to the original format, and listen again.

  Nothing.

  Dead end. Oh well.

  Along with our other duties, SETI tracking requires a communication specialist to run all sorts of searches, angling a space station’s receiver into deep space and processing whatever we find. Ever since humans started colonising space, equipment has been allocated to continue scouring the void for any trace of life beyond our solar system. According to the database, the project’s been going since the last millennium. The job involves isolating small pockets of received audio and trying to find some meaning in them. We’ve always speculated that any aliens out there from distant planets would have to use powerful transmitters to get anything across the millions and billions of miles of emptiness between us. Either that or they’d have a method of sending messages that we just wouldn’t know how to receive.

  This isn’t aliens. It’s a human voice, but how did it get to us?

  I play the sample again. There are definitely two sources, but I’m not sure this is conversation about an EVA mission. The frequency doesn’t fit the ones we make use of, and the chances of a suit transmitter reaching us all the way out here is next to impossible.

  “…please don’t…sir…” – might be a request from someone in a spacesuit outside an airlock or whatever. There’s a mention of the Hercules and a collection of thes, ands, ofs, nothing I can put together. I hear something else that sounds like ‘glass’.

  Who is the other source?

  I open another window on the screen and request an updated plot of all registered ships in the solar system. There’s a lot of traffic. Mars, Ceres, Europa, the belt stations, all of them need continuous resupply. It’s a lucrative business for nations and corporations alike. Green dots and their planned courses gradually begin to appear on a three-dimensional render of the region. According to the tracker, there are no ships missing. I key up and send a transponder request to verify all positions.

  The door to the bridge opens. Jacobson is there. He glances around the room, smiles at me and nods. He knows what I’ve been up to. I take off my headphones and beckon him over. He glides across and settles himself into a chair, logs on to his screen and swivels the chair around to face me.

  “How’re things going?” he asks.

  “Not bad. What do you make of this?” I nod toward my screen.

  Jacobson leans forward. “You’ve found something else?”

  “Possibly.” I touch the tactical plot. “I’m checking where all the ships are in the region, asking for verifications of the data you sent me.”

  Jacobson frowns and gives me a sullen look. “Okay, that’ll take a while.”

  “Yeah.” I’m biting my lip and trying to avoid his eye. I just implied I don’t trust the information Jacobson gave me. My people skills suck. I need to be better at managing egos if I’m going to earn a promotion.

  I point at the files on my screen. “I think I’ve confirmed that these were from the Hercules. I’m trying to work out who they were talking to. That’s why I needed the course information.”

  “You sure it was from the freighter? Not some stray reflections, echoing out of deep space?”

  “I’m sure,” I say. “One of the words is ‘Hercules’. It has to be them.”

  Jacobson stares at me. He’s still irritated. Those sparkly blue eyes of his are his best feature, along with his freckled cheeks. We’ve been sexual partners. In fact, we were together for a few weeks when I first joined the Khidr, we broke up. It was my choice. He was good and gentle. You have to be gentle in zero gravity.

  “You need to get some rest,” he says.

  “I know, but I need to solve this.”

  “Looks like you already have. What else can you find out? You’ve analysed the fragments, deciphered them, and drawn a conclusion. That’s the best we can hope for with limited information. Present that to the captain, let her factor it into her plans.”

  I can’t fault his logic, and I know if I stay here, he’ll just be annoying about it. “You’re probably right,” I say.

  Jacobson reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. “Get some sleep, maybe?” he suggests.

  “Sure, okay.”

  I turn back to my screen and send all the data to my portable device. Then I unstrap myself and nod to Keiyho, who gives me his half smile. “A wise choice, Ensign. You need the rest. You have permission to leave.”

  “I guess so. Thank you, Commander.”

  I’m out of the door and drifting down the hall. I make the turn toward my room and pass corridor six. I can’t help but glance in that direction. The whole passage is spotless. It better be, with all the work we put into clearing up the mess.

  Hard to think of all that blood and guts as a person.

  Before I applied for astrospace, I was a medical volunteer in the Norwegian army reserve. I worked as a responder on road traffic accidents, sea rescue and veteran support. At the time, I did it to improve my profile and because I felt it was a way to put something back into a society that raised me and gave me a start. They say it’s a common thing among my generation, to have a sense of gratitude and try to repay what we’re given.

  I’ve seen dead bodies, and I’ve attempted to help fatally injured people, but in nine months of medical work and two years of basic space, I never saw anything like the aftermath of corridor six.

  Wounds in zero gravity can be problematic. Everything responds to the force exerted on it. Jonathan’s body had been under acceleration strain, so he’d crashed into the far doors hard enough to shatter most of his bones. After that, when we stopped accelerating, his remains started to float around. That means a tough job trying to clean up, grabbing everything you can find by hand and bagging it up, until the whole sum of a person is collected into a set of bags.

  I knew Jonathan. I guess that’s why this was harder.

  I’ve stopped moving. I’m staring through the glass, seeing it all over again. I’m not sure I can—

  No, April! Focus. Move. Find something else to think about!

  I reach my room door, place my thumb on the pad, and the panel slides away. I move inside and it closes behind me. Instantly my shoulders relax and a sob wells up in my throat.

  I grab the desk as the grief takes me away. I need to let it out – to give in. That’s how the therapist said you have to deal with it when it all gets too much. That’s how we keep functioning. I don’t have anyone to talk to out here, not properly. If I reach out like that, someone might see it as a weakness. I need this tour to go perfectly. I need that promotion.

  But I know the bio-monitors will be registering distress. Doctor Bogdanovic will call me in response to an automated alert. I need to be ready to deal with that in a few minutes.

  I can�
�t control the sobbing. They turn into retching, the kind of crying that totally grips you. My hands are shaking. I can’t get away from the image of the corridor and the bits and pieces of Jonathan. We joined the Khidr crew at the same time. He came from Scotland and grew up just outside Edinburgh, which I’d visited a few times. He had an older brother, who’s also into plants. He’s some important doctor on the Mars colony and—

  “Bogdanovic to Johansson. Everything all right?”

  The doctor’s face is on my wall screen. I turn toward it and key up the response. “I’m fine, Doc, just pushed it a bit too hard, I think. Need a moment or two by myself to process.”

  Bogdanovic nods, but his concerned expression doesn’t change. “Okay. Lieutenant Travers has amended the rota. It says you’ve got six hours downtime. If you can’t sleep, drop by and I’ll give you something to help.”

  “I will, thanks.”

  “I’ll check in on you in an hour.”

  “Okay.”

  The intrusion is over, but it’s done its job. The calm façade has returned. I’ve always been careful with whom I trust and let in. Bogdanovic is a nice guy, little older than me, but not someone I’ve opened up to in the past. Still, he asked me to help him and we shared that gruesome moment. Perhaps he’d understand?

  No. He writes the psych evaluations for the Fleet promotional board. I can’t risk it.

  I’m staring at my hands. One is mine from birth, the other bought and paid for. I had the full integration operation with my prosthesis when I turned twenty. That was three and a half years ago now, after they’d assessed my physical development. I didn’t want a ‘corrective’ like some people get when they grow a little more. The integration ring on this one should last forever. The prosthesis itself can be replaced or upgraded where necessary. I can barely tell the difference between my artificial fingers and my real ones these days, and that’s the point. It took a while to unlearn some coping habits I’d developed as a child, but that didn’t take long as I’ve been wearing removable units since I was ten. The main difference between those and the permanent system is the sense of touch. You don’t get the same feeling of detail in a ‘plug-on’, without the hardwired connections.

  My room has two bunks. By rights, I should be sharing, but there’s a rotation in our extra capacity. The Khidr has to have space for twelve extra people as part of its mandate as a search and rescue patrol ship. There isn’t a lot of point in leaving rooms unoccupied on a six-month patrol, so some of us don’t have to pair up. That’ll change in three weeks, when I’m due to move out and bunk in with Specialist Ashe. He’s nice enough, but I’ll miss not having my own space.

  I’m out of sight of everyone else. That means I do what I was always going to do, carry on working. I pull out my portable screen and sync it with the wall device. The audio files and tactical plot appear in front of me. I check the frequencies and signal strengths again. This has to be a two-ship communication. There’s no way it could be anything else.

  I stare at the screen for a few moments, and then I have an idea. If this is ship to ship, how difficult would it be for us to plot positions from the fragments we’ve got?

  I start running simulations, getting the computer to hypothesise the location of the transmissions based on our trajectory and relative position when we received the signals. Tight beam, energy-efficient broadcasting has been the protocol in space travel almost since we started climbing out of our atmosphere. The only exception to that is an emergency signal. When you’re calling for help, you want everyone to know.

  The computer starts working through the data. To start with, it can triangulate a possible range of positions for the second ship based on the audio information, the probability of receipt by us, and the position of the Hercules. The freighter is a huge ship and might affect the signal to block it or amplify it. These kinds of simulations are something I can understand, but working through the maths would take days or weeks for me, without factoring in any errors or checking I’d have to do on top of that.

  Even with the ship’s computer, the whole process will take hours.

  I move to the lower bunk and lie down. The straps sense me and begin to snake around my body. I shut my eyes.

  Chapter Six

  Shann

  It’s been nearly ten years since I left Canada.

  My journey into space started with a call from the International Space Agency about my tactical and strategic simulation test scores. I’d always been into computers when I was a young child. Rather than see my interest in gaming as a waste of time, my parents encouraged me, pushing me toward the national and international military recruitment campaigns. I won a few regional events, but nothing serious.

  I was invited to a meeting in Toronto. I sat three more tests and took two interviews before the agency officials explained exactly what they were profiling me for: the role of a space transit analyst.

  I was offered a six-month trial secondment on Earth Station Five. I’d be monitoring and coordinating local orbit traffic around Earth and Luna. It took me about an hour to make a decision. I was packed up and flown to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. I did six months of basic training and left Earth after that to start my new job.

  Those first few days in microgravity gave me exactly what I needed. I’d found my place, my home.

  I’ve never been back.

  Six months vanished. A promotion and a second contract followed. Then I was invited to work in a senior coordination role on Luna. This would be a commissioned post, meaning I’d have to join Fleet officially. I did, passing the entrance exams and getting my ensign’s bar. After nine months, I transferred to a mobile tracking facility, and worked there for nearly two years. From there, I got recruited as bridge crew on the Baldr. When the Khidr’s previous captain left, I interviewed for the captain’s post and got it.

  Sometimes, I wonder what life is like on Earth now. I get an impression from news articles and correspondence, but nothing visceral or current because of how far out we are. What goes on up here is pretty removed from the day-to-day politics and horse-trading I remember.

  The resonance drive winds down. We spin up the rotational section. We’re one hour away from the rendezvous, and I call another meeting.

  When I get to the gravity deck, all the others are sitting around a table, waiting for me.

  “I thought we were inviting Keiyho to this,” Le Garre says.

  “We were,” I reply. “Something happened.”

  “You going to fill us in?” Travers asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “But first, I need to hear from each of you.” I turn to Duggins. “Are we prepared?”

  “Yes, I’ve briefed everyone,” he says. “The team are ready to go as soon as we’re in range.”

  “You think it’s a shutdown?”

  “Latest transponder information points to that.”

  “I’ve updated the rosters,” Travers says. “We’ll have all hands available at the rendezvous. We can plan for what’s needed after that.”

  “Sleep deprivation may be an issue,” I say. “We need to take care no one is pushed too hard, especially now people are talking.”

  Travers sighs. “Yeah, we’re going to be vulnerable during the rescue – short-handed and with our eyes on other things. Perfect time for another accident.”

  “We think Drake’s chair responded to an emergency override command from a bridge console, or a handheld device,” Le Garre explains. “Captain Shann was checking the bridge command history for the last twenty-four hours. I take it you found something too?”

  I nod. “I was about to bring Keiyho in and authorise personal sidearms, but when I got to the bridge, my screen had been tampered with. Only Keiyho and Johansson were there. Keiyho said no one had been in.”

  “Keiyho, you think it was him? Is that why he isn’t here?”

  “I h
ope it wasn’t him,” I reply. “However, I also found a set of commands executed from my console during the burn. They deactivated four different chairs across the ship. Only one was occupied. That was Drake’s chair.”

  Le Garre frowns. “What about Johansson? She was there too.”

  I think about that for a moment. “She’s so committed to Fleet and her career I can’t see her as a traitor. When I got up there, she didn’t even notice I’d come in. She’s so focused on her work.”

  Duggins grins. “Yes, I put that in her file.”

  “Good, she deserves that. I can’t be absolutely sure, but my instincts tell me she’s not who we’re looking for.”

  Le Garre’s expression becomes thoughtful. “If you’d performed those commands, you wouldn’t have told us. You’d have erased them and said the consoles were clean.”

  I smile at her. “It doesn’t make sense that I’d try to murder my own crew.”

  Le Garre shrugs. “A random murder doesn’t make sense either. The killer must have had a motive, personal or professional.”

  “Yes.” I’m trying to think over the politics of this from the last intel briefing I read. There’s nothing in Drake’s file to suggest he would be a target for assassination, but taking out a Fleet tech while on board a ship, or even taking out a Fleet ship, would send a message. There are some Earth-based organisations that don’t like us, but reaching us out here would be a stretch for them. “At this moment in time, let’s not rule anything out.”

  “Probably for the best.”

  “If Keiyho is our main suspect, we have a problem,” Duggins says. “He’s one of two people on the ship with access to the firearms lockers. He might already be armed, and that means we’re already at a disadvantage.”

  “Quartermaster Sam Chase is the only other person with access,” Travers says.

  I bite my lip and glance at Duggins. He knows how close Sam and I are. So do most of the crew, but not all. Duggins nods and gives me a reassuring look. “Captain Shann doesn’t want to vouch for Sam as they were friends before he joined the ship’s crew,” he says.