by Sam Renner
40 percent.
30 percent.
20 percent.
12 percent.
8 percent.
5-4-3-2-1.
It’s gone too.
“OK. No more time for hypotheticals. We have to get the people off this station.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Grey asks. “This feels like a security thing. I’m going to follow your lead here.”
Lebbe thinks for a moment. The room is quiet except for the typing that Keith and Rebecca continue to do. They’re diligent if nothing else.
“Your itinerary. Where is it?” Lebbe asks.
Grey looks at her datapad. She brings the screen up with a flick of a finger. A few more swipes and the document is displayed. She hands the pad to Lebbe.
He looks at it. If there were a time for this to happen, this is a good one. There’s only a couple of ships on Zulu’s locks, and these are smaller. Could have been a couple of the bigger mining ships with crews that number past 100. More if they are also transferring new crew out to some distant asteroid.
“Here’s what we do,” he says. “We need to get the two ships on our locks gone. Let’s have them load back up and disconnect. Anyone left on the floor after those ships are gone we move into the hotel. Give them rooms in there. We can pump oxygen from the auxiliary tanks into there.”
“But we can’t clean the air,” Keith says. “Even if we pump the place full of oxygen, it’ll soon…”
Lebbe is nodding. “Yeah, it’s not a perfect plan. Eventually, there won’t be enough oxygen to breath. But it buys us enough time to get a couple of skiffs here from the Manhattan to get everyone else off.”
Lebbe stops and looks to Grey. There are problems with his plan. He knows that. But it’ll work, and when you’re looking at emergencies like this, a plan that’ll work is about the best you can hope for.
“I like it,” Grey says and looks to McKibbon. “Can your men help round up everyone on the main floor? Let’s not get violent with anyone, but let’s also let them know that this isn’t some kind of leisure activity. We need them gone, and we need them gone as soon as is reasonably possible.”
She turns to Rebecca and Keith. “You two keep working up here. Start pumping the oxygen from the tanks into the hotel and civilian area. And if you start feeling light headed or like things just aren’t right, go. Get to your room. We need you to be safe. We don’t need you to be a hero. I’ve got to have people who can help me get this place back online when we get this all figured out.”
She turns to Lebbe. “You’re coming with me.”
TWENTY-ONE
Grey and Lebbe walk in silence down the long hall to the elevator that will take them to Zulu’s main floor.
Grey pushes the call button and both she and Lebbe watch the floor indicator lights change as the elevator comes to get them. Doors open and the pair step on, Lebbe following Grey.
The doors close and Grey turns to Lebbe. “What the hell, dude? You’ve got a gun on my station? You’re shooting a gun on my station?”
She turns and watches the numbers count down to the end of their little trip. She continues: “It this station wasn’t about to die anyway I’d have you thrown off of here. Although maybe not. That’d be exactly what you want. Maybe I’d have you transferred onto one of those tiny little explorer vessels that they’re starting to send out into the super deep black.”
A bell dings and the doors slide open. Grey steps off first and heads to the convenience store. Lebbe walks to The Quickstop. Carole is working the counter. Only a few people are at the tables. Frank’s girls are leaning against the bar top chatting. They’re cute. They remind Lebbe of his girls. He thinks of Sarah.
“Just a distraction,” he whispers. “That’s all this is little girl. I’ll get back to my search for you as soon as we get Zulu stable. Got to have a base to work from, and as much as I wish it wasn’t, this one is mine.”
Someone has ordered one of those burgers that Lebbe likes. He can smell the meat browning. He can smell the onions caramelizing. He suddenly realizes how long it’s been since he’s eaten anything.
Frank comes from the back and clears off a pair of empty plates. Lebbe sits down.
“What can I get you?” Frank asks.
Lebbe almost orders. Two of whatever it is I’m smelling. But he doesn’t. It’s not why he’s here. He’ll get something to eat once everyone here is safe.
“Nothing this time,” he says. “But is there somewhere we can chat? Privately?”
Frank gives Lebbe a puzzled look. “What’s up?”
“Privately.”
Frank looks over Lebbe’s shoulder to the tables farthest away from the bar top and any other customers.
He points to a group of four sitting in shadows. “Best I can do.”
Lebbe looks. “They’ll do.”
He gets up from his seat, and Frank comes out from behind the bar. A shout cuts through the dull chatter that had been filling the room.
“I don’t give two shits what your captain said.”
It’s a soldier’s voice. He has his finger in the face of what looks to be some miner. Middle-aged guy. Sunken cheeks that are mostly covered by a mid-length salt and pepper beard. It’s the clothes, though, that give him away. They’re heavy flannels and denim. These guys work in environmental suits, big hulking things the last time Lebbe saw one up close, but the vacuum of space is cold no matter if you’re sealed off from it or not.
The soldier shouts again. “Get to your ship! We are evacuating this station!” He grabs the man by the upper arm, his knuckles going white as he tightens his grip, and pulls him to standing.
He pushes the man in the back to get him moving then steps closer to the two other men still seated. “What are you waiting on?”
The men stand and follow their shipmate.
Lebbe looks to Frank. “Can I get a couple of minutes?”
Frank nods and heads to the tables in the shadows.
Lebbe walks up the the bar top and puts a hand on the woman’s shoulder. He leans down and asks here if she’s come in off one of the ships still hooked to Zulu’s locks or did she come in with someone who was already gone.
“The second,” she says and wipes a bit of something from the corner of her mouth.
“And are you finished up here?”
She reaches forward and shoves what’s left in her sandwich into her mouth.
“I am now,” she says through a mouthful of what smells like a club sandwich to Lebbe. It’s all vat-grown meat this far out. Disgusting when they first started selling the stuff, but it was a taste that seemed to grow on you. What I wouldn’t give for a sandwich stacked double high with the stuff right now.
Lebbe helps the woman off of her stool then places a hand on her back to keep her moving forward, guiding her in the direction he needs her to go. He points her toward a pair of open doors near the elevator. There’s a soldier standing there, a smile on this one’s face. Thankfully.
Lebbe asks the woman to follow the soldier’s instructions then heads back to The Quickstop to push more of the guests there either toward their own ships or toward the residential areas of Zulu.
He does this all with a pleasant grin and a cheerful personality that he’s doing his best to fake. This is anything but easy. He has a girl missing at home, and there’s not a minute he doesn’t see her in some kind of life-threatening position. It’s one of the dangers of his background. The stuff you see makes it really easy to jump to worst-case scenarios. So, he’s seen Sarah scared. He’s seen her bound. He’s seen her tortured and beaten blue. He hasn’t seen her dead. Not yet, but he knows that it’s just a matter of time.
Now, on top of that, he’s got a station that’s dying and responsibilities here to the strangers that are on board. He’s also got a soldier who’s on some kind of voice-raising power trip barking orders at people who have no clue what’s going on.
This soldier’s got a tight hold on the forearm of anot
her stray miner, pulling the guy toward the hall that will lead to one of the locks. He’s shouting something at the man, a shower of spittle landing on his chin.
“Hey,” Lebbe shouts and starts to approach. The soldier doesn’t acknowledge Lebbe.
“Hey,” he shouts again. Still no acknowledgment. Lebbe’s close enough now to grab the soldier’s arm, so he does. The soldier swivels, his fist raised. Lebbe puts a hand in front of his face to block a punch that doesn’t come.
“I just want to talk a second,” he tells the guy.
“Get to your ship!” he shouts at the man he’s got a hold of then lets the guy go.
He turns to Lebbe. “What?”
“How about we chill out a bit. You’re the loudest voice in a room that doesn’t need loud voices. We are coming to these people cold and telling them that they have to leave. And not just leave this little area. We are kicking them off the station. It’s unusual. It’s confusing. They don’t need someone yelling at them.”
“I was given orders to clear this floor as quickly as possible. I’m doing what I was asked.”
“Didn’t say you weren’t, but your screaming at people isn’t helping.”
“They’re leaving, aren’t they?”
Lebbe pauses. This kid was the worst kind of soldier. He wasn’t in it for the honor of serving. He wasn’t in it because it made a good career. He was in it for the power trip. He wanted to shoot blasters and kick ass. And then he gets stationed here, some distant station with no ass to kick and probably doing a job that has him confined to a hangar most days. Every type of service gets these kinds of recruits. He saw them on the police force. Some cops joined up only because they liked to be in charge. Leadership could usually sniff these types out and bury them in jobs that kept them two or three levels away from ever seeing members of the public face to face.
Then something like this happens on Zulu, and this guy who the brass thought it had buried light years deep, away from anyone who he might interact with suddenly gets pushed front and center.
“Honest truth,” Lebbe says, “you’re pissing me off. I’ve listened to you yelling at these people, and I’m sick of it. Get the last of them to where they need to go. Do it quietly. Then disappear. I don’t want to see you again.”
The soldier looks at Lebbe like he’s speaking some language he can’t understand. “Who are you to talk to me …” He puts a hand on Lebbe’s shoulder to push him a couple steps back, and that’s his last mistake.
Lebbe snatches the guy’s hand off his shoulder and quickly twists his thumb back toward the top of his hand. The soldier’s knees go loose and he falls to the ground. His mouth gapes open in a silent scream.
“Last folks where they need to go and doing it quietly. Understood? Then you disappear, right?”
The soldier nods, his mouth still open.
Lebbe lets the man’s hand go, and the soldier quickly grabs it with his other and begins trying to rub the pain away.
“Go, Lebbe says. “Get to work.” He begins walking back to where Frank is sitting and watching.
He pulls a chair out from under the table.
“Care to tell me what all this is about?” Frank asks as Lebbe sits.
“I don’t know that we have time for the long story, so the abridged version is Zulu’s dying.”
Frank sits up. “Excuse me? Dying? How does a space station die?”
“We don’t know,” Lebbe says, “but it’s happening. Something is shutting down all of the support systems. Been happening all day apparently. It’s bad now, though. We’re beyond life support.”
“What do you mean something is shutting Zulu down? How can something do that? Somethings don’t do that. Somebody does that.”
“True. But we don’t know who that somebody is just yet. And right now things are bad. We’ve lost air and water. Can’t get them back up, so we are evacuating who we can immediately. The rest of the folks who can’t leave right away we are asking them to go to the hotel units. If they live here like you guys do then we are asking them to go back to their units.”
Frank doesn’t say anything; he just looks at Lebbe.
“So I need you all to do that. Get back to your units. We’re going to get some ships from the Manhattan here to help get you all off, but it’s going to be a bit of time before we can do that. So go home. Sit tight. We’ll get you off here just as soon as we can.”
Franks looks to the table. He starts picking at a loose bit of laminate that’s pulled itself from the top. “Dying? Stations don’t do that.”
“Can I get you all to shut down here and head back to your units, Frank?”
Frank looks back up to Lebbe. “Yeah,” he says. “We’ll go. Just give us a few minutes to close things up here.”
Lebbe gives Frank a thumbs up then turns and walks out to the main floor. Frank’s freaked out, and Lebbe can’t blame him. He came here to build a life for his family and was just told that was over. That the place he’d picked out as the prime location to do that was about to die. That he was being asked to abandon all he’d worked for.
Lebbe has his cop head on right now, but he doesn’t know how he’d react if he didn’t have the ability to compartmentalize everything.
Would I be happy about this? It gets me off this station, and isn’t that the point? There’s no guarantee, though, that it gets me any closer to home. No guarantees that it gets me any closer to Sarah. I still have half a contract to fulfill, and I know there’s no way I get out of that. They’ve got time to extract from me, and they aren’t going to waste that.
Lebbe gives a quick look to The Quickstop. Frank is still sitting at the table where Lebbe’d left him. He toys with the idea of going back over. See if there are any other questions he can answer. That idea is interrupted by another gruff voice from another soldier. A couple of McKibbon’s men are talking to a small group of men who are still sitting along a wall over in one of the darker corners of the main floor.
These aren’t Lebbe’s favorite places on Zulu. They aren’t exactly private spaces, but thanks to tricks of angles and light, they can feel that way, and every couple of weeks he finds someone--or a couple of someones--over there doing things they shouldn’t be. Most of the time, it’s busted out travelers trying to quickly eat or drink something that they’ve swiped from the convenience store. Or he’ll find evidence that says he just missed someone who’d enjoyed a free meal.
Other times, though, it’s a couple of guys--a buyer and a seller--conducting business. He walks up to them. They quickly try to disguise their transaction as something else. Faking a laugh. Faking friendliness and friendship. Most of the time one of them would have a little bottle of Azure on them, who it was depended on when he interrupted the transaction.
That’s what looked like happened here. These soldiers found this group of guys in the middle of something.
“Empty your pockets,” one of the soldiers shouts at one of the men. The other two have already been restrained, their hands secured behind their backs and their wrists being held tight by another of McKibbon’s men.
“Eat dirt, soldier boy.” He leans in and gives the soldier a sneer. The soldier punches this fresh target, and sends the man to his knees.
Lebbe: “Hey! Hey! Hey!” Everyone still standing turns to see who’s shouting. “What in the world, guys?”
“Found them over here buying and selling Azure,” says Mr. Aggressive. “We’re going to take them to the lock up until someone who can make sure they are processed through the system can come get them.”
Lebbe steps between the soldiers holding the men who’ve already been secured and releases the ties that have their hands bound.
“Normally,” he says as he works, “that’s exactly what we’d do. But not today.”
He reaches down and offers a hand to help the other man back to standing.
“I appreciate your diligence, fellas. Really. But today these gentlemen are getting lucky. I’m not too worried about a few via
ls of the blue stuff. Today, I’m worried about getting folks off this station who don’t have to be here. Are you guys here with one of the ships still on our locks?”
Nods all around.
“We’re evacuating the station. We need you away from here as soon as possible, so go. Get back to your ships. And tonight, count your blessings. You’re getting away with something here that could have gotten you into quite a bit of trouble.”
A couple of the men mumble thank yous as they all hurry off.
Lebbe looks around the floor. It’s mostly empty now.
