Saving Morgan

by MB Panichi

  Leaving one boot connected to the deck, she dropped to the other knee and leaned over the maintenance hatch. She spun the wheel and snapped open the hatch cover, securing it against the hull. Within moments, she lost herself in replacing the two blown-out connectors, only half-listening to the constant chatter between Charri and Ben, and Digger’s occasional expletives.

  “What the fuck—”

  Morgan glanced in Digger’s direction, alerted by the panicked tone of his voice. A bright flare blinded her. Digger screamed. His voice cut off abruptly.

  “Digger!” Blinking spots from her vision, she pushed to her feet. Digger’s blue-striped suit fell slowly away from the ship toward the dusty ground.

  “Strom!” Morgan shouted, “Digger!” She yanked the jet pack’s handlebars down and thumbed the controls, launching herself off the ship.

  Strom barked, “Digger! Report!”

  “Say something, you stupid bastard!” Morgan shouted. Thrusters at full throttle, she whipped between the heavy support girders. As she shot through the scaffolding toward Digger’s slowly falling body, he hit the ground and bounced slightly. The suit turned. She saw the right arm of his vac suit was missing below the elbow and the front of the suit blackened.

  Strom reached Digger as his body settled onto the gray surface. Feathering the controls on the jet pack to stop himself, he pulled Digger close enough to see his suit’s life-control sensors. When Morgan reached them a second later, he snapped, “Morgan, back off!”

  “Hey!” she protested, about to rail at Strom until she got a glimpse of Digger’s shattered, gore-splattered faceplate. “Oh, God,” she breathed, her stomach twisting violently as she spun away. “Please, no, not again.” Blinded by stinging tears and desperately trying not to throw up, she hardly noticed when Ben and Charri grabbed her arms, pulling her away from where Strom knelt over Digger’s body.

  Strom’s voice carried harshly across her helmet speakers. “Control, this is crew 435. We’ve got a code red breach emergency. Send out a boat, code red. Repeat. Send out a code-red recovery boat.”

  Morgan heard the other’s breaths across the com static, but nobody seemed to have anything to say. She kept her eyes averted from Digger’s suit and tried to focus on breathing. Jaw clenched, she stared past the sprawl of scaffolding and docked haulers until she spotted flashing red and blue lights. A swarm of emergency vehicles headed in their direction.

  Ben muttered, “Here comes the cavalry.”

  Strom said quietly, “Just do whatever they say.”

  Morgan swallowed hard. With the recent rise in terrorist activity against Mann-Maru Industries and other corporate conglomerates, security had become increasingly heavy-handed. She watched the approaching vehicles with a growing sense of dread and anger. Digger is dead. What do they think Security is going to do? Bring him back to fucking life?

  Within moments, emergency skiffs surrounded the area. Security personnel double-timed out of the vehicles. A sharp voice snapped across her helmet com. “Everyone stay calm and cooperate with Security personnel.”

  At least a dozen guards with drawn laser rifles created a perimeter around her and the others. Three more guards joined their group.

  The first guard took Charri by the arm. “Come with me.” He started to pull her away.

  Charri cried out, “Ben!”

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Ben turned toward her.

  “Ben!” Charri’s voice broke on a sob.

  Morgan wrenched out of her guard’s grasp, yelling, “She’s scared, you idiot, leave her the fuck alone!”

  The guard grabbed Morgan again. His voice thundered through her helmet speakers. “Stop it! Shut up! Nobody’s hurting anyone.”

  Morgan felt the blood pounding in her ears. “Fucking bastards,” she hissed.

  Charri demanded plaintively, “Why are—”

  Her voice cut off with an audible click and another cut in. “This is Lieutenant Tommas. Please cooperate with Security personnel. For your own safety, this area must be secured. Noncompliance will not be tolerated.”

  Morgan glanced at her helmet’s heads-up display. “Command channel only” flashed in red. The guard pulled her forward. She forced herself to relax and let him direct her back toward Moon Base.

  The recovery skiff approached. Red and blue running lights flashing, the neon yellow skiff slid past to slew to a stop beside Digger and Strom and a cadre from Security. Morgan blinked back hot tears. The guard yanked her ahead when she half-turned to watch. She glared at him, her anger surging. Have some respect, asshole, they’re gonna take my best friend’s body away.

  The guards herded her and the rest of the team to a hatch and into a cramped air lock. They were instructed to keep their suits and helmets sealed even after exiting into a holding area.

  Morgan looked around. Ten Security personnel wearing black fatigues lined the wall opposite the air lock. Ben stood behind her, Strom and his escort in front of her and slightly to the right. Charri stood just to her left. Behind the faceplate, Charri’s eyes were wide with shock and fear, which pissed her off and made her want to bang heads.

  She opened her mouth to say something, then thought about it and clamped her jaw shut. Irritating Security wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

  An officer sporting captain’s stripes stepped forward and spoke into a transceiver clipped to his ear. His deep voice echoed through Morgan’s helmet speakers. “I am Captain Ettaak. Each of you will be debriefed separately. Please follow the directions of your escorts.” He nodded toward the squad behind him.

  Two guards stepped forward. Strom’s guard nudged him in their direction.

  Strom stumped forward and was led away by the two guards.

  A female sergeant whose name badge read “Keffin” led Morgan away. She noticed they were followed by an expressionless young private. Plodding along a glaringly white hallway, she struggled with the weight of the vac suit, annoyed she was forced to wear it sealed in full gravity and atmosphere. Her thighs strained as she struggled not to drag the heavy boots across the floor.

  Ahead of her, Strom and his two guards disappeared through an unmarked door.

  When Morgan and her escort reached the next door, Sergeant Keffin palmed the sensor on the wall beside it and went aside. The private positioned himself to wait outside the entrance.

  Keffin gestured. “In,” she ordered.

  Morgan lumbered into a dimly lit room.

  As the door shut behind her, Keffin said, “You can take the suit off now.”

  Morgan sighed. About time. She unlocked the seals on her gloves, and for a stomach-wrenching moment remembered she wore Digger’s suit. Digger had been wearing hers. Oh, God. If we hadn’t switched jobs and suits it would have been me.

  Her whole body shuddered at the realization. Her gloves slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers. She swallowed hard and fumbled with shaking hands to release the collar at her neck. Air flooded over her face when she tugged off the helmet and took a gasping breath. The faded scent of Digger’s aftershave clung to the back of her throat. She set the helmet on the floor, then straightened and undid the seal along the right front and shrugged the suit off her shoulders. The empty torso slumped behind her, the collar clanking as it hit the floor. She unplugged the bio-monitor interface from her liner and stepped free. She moved to pick up the suit.

  Keffin barked, “Stop. Don’t touch it.”

  Morgan looked up.

  “Leave it. It’s evidence. We don’t want it tampered with.”

  “Tampered with,” Morgan repeated. “Okay.” She shook her head. What the hell did they think she was going to do to the suit?

  The sergeant stared, apparently daring her to start something. She gestured at the cot against the back wall. “We’ll need your suit liner as well. There’s a coverall on the bed for you to change into.”

  For the first time, Morgan really looked around at her surroundings. The room contained a bed, a commode, a small sink, and a table w
ith two chairs. At the end of the bed lay a folded gray jumpsuit, a flat pillow and a thin blanket. She wondered how long they planned to hold her. She walked to the cot and pulled off the form-fitting liner. Cool air raised goosebumps on her exposed skin. When she grabbed the jumpsuit, Keffin cleared her throat.

  “Sorry. Need to do a body scan first.”

  Morgan turned slowly to face the woman. “You’re kidding, right?” She didn’t care that she was naked, but she knew they could do a body scan through her clothes. Fucking voyeur.

  Keffin shrugged. “Not my rules.”

  Morgan rolled her eyes and held her arms out to her sides.

  Keffin crossed the room holding a palm-sized scanner. After a couple of sweeps over Morgan’s body, she stepped back. “You’re clean. Go ahead and get dressed.”

  Morgan grabbed the coverall and pulled it on.

  Keffin watched with an indifferent expression and commented, “Nice body art, Rahn.”

  Morgan said, “Y’know, if you’re going to stand there and leer at me, you could at least come up with a decent line.”

  Keffin smirked and tapped the transceiver in her ear. “Send evidence recovery in.”

  Moments later, two men entered the room and silently bagged the vac suit and liner. Morgan shook her head at this new evidence of insanity.

  “Make yourself comfortable, Rahn. A debrief team will be with you shortly.” Keffin marched out.

  Morgan sighed. Did “shortly” mean ten minutes, an hour, or a day? She turned to the cot and dropped down on it, sitting with her back against the wall. Wrapping the thin blanket around herself, she clutched the pillow to her middle. Exhaustion and sadness flowed over her.

  Behind her closed eyes, images flashed. Her friend was dead. Gone. She would never hear his voice again, never get to roll her eyes at another of his rude jokes, never get a big sweaty hug after a grav-ball game, and never get to tease him about some woman he was ogling. She curled around the pillow and pulled her knees up to her chest. Damn it, Digger, what happened? How could you be dead?

  Was it her fault? He’d been wearing her suit. If they hadn’t switched, would she have been killed? What could she have missed? She was certain the diagnostics had run clean last night. She pictured her hands moving over the control panel on her suit. Green lights had flickered across the small display. Even the checks for the suit’s power tools had come back clean. Everything was good last night. She had no doubts.

  Even so, something had caused an explosion big enough to blow off Digger’s arm, shatter his helmet, and char the front of his suit. Hell, did the blast even have anything to do with her suit? Had a component in the thruster assembly blown? She shook her head. Off-line thrusters didn’t simply explode, not when the ship was powered down in dry dock. And she knew the ship had been powered down because the control leads she’d worked on had been in standby mode.

  What could she have missed? Damn it, they should never have traded suits. She should have convinced Digg to switch jobs instead. She felt she was headed down a dangerous mental road and forced herself to stop the impending wreck. I’ve been through this before, she told herself. It’s not my fault. There’s nothing I could have done. Shit happens. People get hurt. People die. It’s part of the job. I’ve known the risks since I was twelve.

  Morgan sucked in a deep breath and fought to control the crush of memories and emotions. Her mom had been killed in space—a harsh, unexpected death. She doubted she would ever come to terms with either the loss or her anger over it.

  The hiss of the opening door interrupted her thoughts. She straightened, pushing the pillow off her lap.

  A baby-faced, black-uniformed man entered the room. He nodded at her. “Good morning, Ms. Rahn. I’m Investigator Mike Rajekk. I want to ask you a few questions about what happened today.”

  She eyed him warily and shrugged an acknowledgment without moving from the cot.

  He offered a professional smile and sat at the small table, setting down his comp pad. Morgan watched while he tapped on the screen, apparently getting his thoughts together.

  “Could you tell me what happened today?” he asked.

  She frowned. I don’t know what happened. I just know Digger’s dead. She looked down at her hands, swallowing the grief and shutting out the pain. “Digger was doing thruster maintenance. He yelled, and I looked over and saw a flash, like a small explosion. I heard him scream. Digger’s faceplate was cracked, his suit burned, and half his arm was gone.”

  “Where were you at the time of the explosion?”

  “I was on the underside of the ship. Digger was up by the port thrusters.”

  “You switched vac suits,” he said. “Why?”

  Morgan’s shoulders stiffened. “My fuser is busted. You can check the maintenance logs. I put in for repair a couple days ago. Strom knows about it, too. The fuser on Digg’s suit worked. He hated to do fuser work, so we switched.” She ran her tongue over dry lips. “We’ve done it before. It’s not a big deal.”

  Rajekk nodded and asked blandly, “Who was the last of your crew to leave the ready room last night?”

  Morgan hesitated, thinking. “It would have been Strom. Digger left first, and I left with Ben and Charri.”

  “And you didn’t go back during the time after you initially left and when you arrived this morning?”

  “No.”

  He made a quick note. “Thank you, Ms. Rahn.” He slid the chair back and stood.

  “Then I can go?”

  He smiled again. The expression didn’t reach his eyes. “I need to speak with my supervisors. Someone will be along to release you.”

  “When?”

  “When you’ve been cleared to leave,” he said shortly, and turned on his heel.

  The door clicked shut behind him. A sick feeling twisted Morgan’s guts. Did they really think she’d done something to cause her friend’s death? Were they trying to pin the accident on one of her crewmates? A surge of helpless fear and anger washed over her. She edged back against the wall, tightening the blanket around her body and hugging the pillow. Nothing she could do but wait.

  Eventually exhaustion overtook her and she fell into an uneasy sleep.

  Later, she jerked awake with a gasp, panicking a couple seconds before remembering where she was and what had happened to Digger. She blinked into the dim recessed lighting and rubbed her hands over her face. How long had she slept? Five minutes? Five hours? Her wrist chron was in her locker and there wasn’t one in the cell.

  After stretching stiff muscles and popping a kink in her neck, she figured at least a couple of hours had passed. She eased to the edge of the cot, shoved aside the blanket and pillow and got to her feet. After using the toilet, she washed her hands and splashed lukewarm water on her face. Lack of a towel forced her to dry off with the jumpsuit’s sleeves.

  Morgan paced the twelve-foot cell. How long were they going to keep her here? Where were Charri and Ben and Strom? Were they still being held? Sadness and the ache in her chest returned when images of Digger flashed through her brain.

  The door slid open.

  She turned to face the broad-shouldered, dark-skinned man who strode into the room. He wore his hair in a gray-flecked crewcut. His piercing black eyes seemed to bore through her. He wore black dress pants and a tight-fitting tunic rather than the quasi-military fatigues worn by most of Mann-Maru Security. An odd expression crossed his face while he sized her up. She got the sense he was placing her in his mind, making connections.

  “You may call me Rogan. We have much to discuss, Morgan Rahn.” He nodded toward the table and two chairs. “Sit,” he commanded.

  She didn’t move. “I already told them what happened.”

  Rogan crossed the room in two swift steps, grabbed her by the front of her coveralls, and growled, “How did you do it, Rahn? Tell me!”

  Morgan flinched.

  “Tell me!” he shouted in her face.

  “I didn’t do anything!” she blurted. Fear sur
ged through her. “Let me go!” Instinctively, she swung her fist.

  Rogan caught her wrist, effortlessly flipped her around into a choke hold, and twisted one of her arms behind her back. She tried to kick backward at his knee, but he shifted out of reach and jerked her arm higher. Sharp pain knifed through her shoulder. She choked off a cry and struggled anyway.

  “Stop!” he roared in her ear.

  Morgan froze and squeezed her eyes shut. After a second, Rogan released her and stepped back. She straightened on shaking legs, facing away from him.

  “Come and sit down,” he grated.

  His footsteps moved away. She heard a chair scraping across the hard floor. Fabric rustled when he sat.

  Slowly, Morgan turned and walked to the table, choosing to sit on the edge of the chair and meet his gaze as evenly as she could. She wasn’t guilty of anything other than losing one of her best friends and she had no intention of groveling to Mann-Maru Security to prove the obvious.

  The tight lines around Rogan’s eyes relaxed as he studied her face. His tone changed to an almost casual friendliness. “So, tell me why you think you’re so innocent.”

  She trusted friendliness even less than false accusations. He raised an expectant brow. She said, “Because I am.”

  “You’re telling me you didn’t wire the explosives into your suit.”

  “What?” She heard her voice crack on the exclamation.

  “Your suit was rigged.”

  She stared at him.

  “An igniter was wired into the power pack that ran the drill attachment. Your buddy fired it up and boom. Micro-explosives were hidden in the rim of the faceplate and on the power pack itself.” Rogan shrugged. “It wouldn’t have been caught by the suit’s internal diagnostics. No way either of you would have seen or detected the tampering unless you knew what to look for.”

  Morgan sat back heavily, feeling like someone had just punched the breath out of her.

  “You know anyone who wanted to see you dead?” Rogan pressed. “Enemies? Jealous lovers? I know you play some pretty rough grav-ball. You piss anyone off lately?”