by Joe Vasicek
“Yeah, yeah. Together. Got it.”
I hope you do, Isaac thought as he stared out the forward window at the derelict station. Down below in the planet’s atmosphere, lightning flashed silently, illuminating the tempest for a single instant before returning the world to darkness.
* * * * *
“Are you sure you want to go in with EVA suits?” Aaron asked as he slipped his legs into the thickly insulated pants. “These things are built for zero gee—inside that station, they’re going to be heavy.”
“Just put it on,” said Isaac as he pulled his suit up to his waist and secured the heavy utility belt. With the grayish-brown protective outer layer through the padded insulation and flexichain, the suit weighed more than half as much as either of them. Aaron was right—the suits were built for use in a microgravity environment, and would no doubt prove unwieldy on board the station. The important thing, though, was that they were perfectly sealed and provided enough oxygen to last a good five hours. Whatever they encountered on the other side of that airlock, it would have to get through nearly four centimeters of armor-like clothing, enhanced with durasteel fibers and self-sealing repair gel.
They finished putting on the suits in silence, Isaac in the narrow vestibule just outside the airlock, Aaron in the corridor by the bathroom. Whoever had built the Medea hadn’t designed for it to allow more than one person to suit up at once. Considering how the starship was barely large enough for two to live on it comfortably, that was hardly a surprise.
Isaac fit his arms into the sleeves and secured the clamps on his wrists. He zipped up both sides of the chest flap and fitted the helmet brace around his neck while the magnetic seals on the suit’s outer layer closed over the zippers. It was an older model, so the helmet would have to be secured separately—no fancy retractable gear. The gloves came first, though. Tight enough to squeeze a little but so thick that they made his hands feel more like paws. Lifting his arms put pressure on his chest, simply from the extra weight he had to carry. The inner layers were supposed to wick away body moisture, but he could already feel sweat pooling on his chest and under his armpits.
It’ll be better once I’m used to it, he told himself as he pulled down the dome-like helmet from the upper hook on the vestibule. The microsuction fabric on his gloves helped him to get a firm grip on it, and the slots around his collar helped him guide it in until it was secure.
The moment the helmet clamps sealed with a hiss, Isaac felt as if he’d been cut off into his own private universe. The glass faceplate gave a slightly copper color to everything outside, while the indicators in the corner of his vision lit up softly with his vitals. He took a deep breath of the canned oxygen, and the hiss of the airflow filled his ears.
“Need a little help?” he asked, toggling the external speakers by clicking his right thumb and ring finger twice.
“I’ve got it,” said Aaron, his voice coming through a bit tinny. The pickup on the microphones wasn’t all that great, probably because the designers hadn’t considered them an important feature. After all, there was no sound in space.
“Great. I’ll be waiting for you in the airlock.”
Isaac barely lifted his feet as he shuffled through the heavy durasteel door into the starship’s only airlock. Even so, he could hear the clang of the metal grating against his boots through the fibers of his suit. The greenish-yellow LEDs shone down through thick plastiglass, protection from the harsh vacuum. Unlike the rest of the ship, the walls and ceiling were made of the same durasteel plating as the rest of the hull, designed for exposure to the void.
He stopped and stared at the opposite door. The rhythmic hiss of the airflow mingled with the silent pounding of his heart as he wondered what lay on the other side. The sweat pooling against the back of his neck felt strangely cold. He wished his brother would hurry up.
“All right,” came Aaron’s voice, followed by a short burst of static. The suit’s radio sounded a lot clearer than the external microphone.
“Are you ready?”
“I’m right behind you.”
“Great,” said Isaac. “Let’s get stated.”
A low hiss sounded through the external microphone, as if through a long tunnel. The access panel by the outer door flashed green to show that they were sealed off from the rest of the ship. Isaac pressed his gloved palm against it, and the light flashed yellow. After a ten -second wait, the heavy outer doors opened.
Even though he was secure in his suit, Isaac held his breath. On the other side, a similar durasteel-plated room waited for them. The lights, however, were not working. He activated his headlight and stepped over the threshold onto the derelict station.
“Does the gravity feel a bit heavier on this side?” Aaron asked as he followed him on board.
“Don’t know. We’re still too close to the ship to tell.”
Isaac waited for the access panel to flash green, and when it failed to, he pressed his gloved palm against it anyway. The inner door hissed open.
If the air on the station was any different from the air on the Medea, he couldn’t tell. However, splotches of black mold on the opposite bulkhead told him that they’d been right to suit up. A thin layer of dust coated the floor, and the lights—such as they were—had dimmed so much that they seemed to cast more shadows than light. Isaac stepped through the doorway, and a small cloud of dust rose up around his feet.
“Wow,” Aaron’s voice transmitted over the suit-to-suit radio. “This place is a mess.”
“Step carefully, and stay close. We don’t want to take any unnecessary risks.”
For once, Aaron didn’t object.
Using their headlights for illumination, they walked slowly out into the main rimside corridor. It was almost twenty meters wide, with islands of equipment and doors leading down to the docking nodes. Long, narrow windows ran along the walls and floor. Several of the ceiling lights had already burned out, so that it was difficult to see the curvature of the station. Still, that familiar sense of an inverted horizon was enough to make Isaac feel as if he’d been here before, as if he were shuffling through a perverse dreamscape.
“Is that a computer terminal?” Aaron asked, motioning to a set of display screens set above a kiosk next to the airlock. All but one of them were dead, and even it was flickering.
“If none of these computers are working, I don’t think we can refuel here.”
“Nah, we’ll be fine. If worse comes to worst, we can access the tanks externally. I got a good look at them as we were coming in, and it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Great,” said Isaac. “Let’s just be sure we fill up with the right stuff. The markings on those tanks aren’t Gaian standard.”
“When was the last time you saw anyone follow imperial standards this deep in the Far Outworlds?”
He had a point. The really worrying thing, though, was that none of the signs or markings were written in a language either of them understood. Lines in blue and green paint ran periodically along the ceiling, but the labels beneath the arrows were written in a blocky script that was completely unreadable. They didn’t look like hazard signs, considering how the arrows seemed to point out directions to somewhere and not away. Still, it was difficult to know for sure.
“Let’s follow the rimside corridor a ways,” said Aaron. “See what we find.”
Are you crazy? Isaac wanted to say. Still, as much as he wanted to get back to the safety of the Medea, he had to admit there’d be little point in coming on board if they didn’t at least take a quick look around.
“All right,” he said, “so long as we stick together.”
“Why? Are you scared?”
Isaac didn’t grace the question with an answer.
They followed the corridor almost a hundred meters from the airlock, until the airlock was lost behind the upward-curving ceiling. The same repeating pattern of docking nodes, computer terminals, and other spaceport fixtures repeated itself with little variation, everything cover
ed in a thin layer of fine dust. Occasionally, a particularly nasty patch of mold showed where condensation or water leakage had gone unmanaged, usually near the ventilator fans. Very few of them were still working.
“It seems a lot like home, doesn’t it?” said Aaron, breaking the eerie stillness of the place. “I mean, aside from … well, you know.”
“This isn’t Megiddo Station.”
“I know that, but you’ve got to admit—I mean, the design is pretty similar.”
Isaac said nothing, preferring to continue their investigations in silence. Aaron didn’t press him.
They found the first body a short while later. It had decayed so much, with the skin stretched tight across the dry old bones, that it almost looked like a bag of discarded waste. Only when they came up to it did the human form become apparent.
“Stars of Earth,” Aaron swore, jumping back. “What is that?”
Isaac crouched and gripped one of the curled up arms as gently as he could with his oversized gloves. The suit did not transmit the sensation of touch, but the blackened skin peeled off like dry paper, the bone snapping off at the elbow joint. In the eerie silence of the station, the crack of the broken bone sounded surprisingly distinct through the external mike.
“What are you doing?”
“Investigating,” Isaac said softly as he laid the bone back in place. The body was curled up in a fetal position, with ribs poking out from the stomach and stringy black hair still hanging from the scalp. It was roughly adult-sized, with the gaunt remains of facial muscles pulled back from two rows of worn, flat teeth. Strangely, there was no sign of clothing—perhaps the colonists had preferred organic fibers over synthetics. Either way, the only indication of the body’s sex was in its bone structure, and Isaac didn’t know enough about that to tell whether it had been a man or a woman.
“Sol, Earth, and Luna, Isaac,” Aaron swore. “Step away from that thing.”
It’s not a thing; it used to be a person, Isaac wanted to say. Instead, he stood up slowly and took a step back.
“I can’t tell how long it’s been since he died, but clearly, it’s been a while. Years, at least.”
“At least,” Aaron agreed. “Stars, it gives me the creeps.”
“What I don’t understand is why he’d come down here to die, instead of finding a nice quiet place further up on the station. Maybe the cause of death was an acute disease of some kind? We’ll have to sterilize these suits before we go back to the Medea.”
“Yeah. It was a good idea to wear them.”
But still dumb to board this station in the first place, Isaac thought as he continued down the corridor. Honestly, what had they expected to find here? This station was a tomb—the radio silence was testament enough to that. And even though the body hadn’t bothered him, there was something wrong about the place that seemed to penetrate his EVA suit right through to his skin. He felt as if he were walking on the bottom of an alien world-ocean surrounded in the darkness by ancient ghostly creatures no man had ever seen. Even though the station seemed quiet, it was far from empty.
They found several more bodies clustered around one of the airlocks at a nearby docking node. A single arm with splayed-out fingers ran up against the door. At least half of the dead had been children.
“Stars,” said Aaron. “I’m sure glad we didn’t try to come in through this airlock.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think they were trying to do?”
Isaac shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“We should go to the upper levels and see what we can find.”
No, we should go back to the Medea and leave this place.
He sighed heavily and shook his head. “Haven’t we seen enough already? Everyone is dead—that much is abundantly clear. We can refuel the ship from the external tanks, so there’s no need to investigate any further.”
“Yeah, but don’t you want to find out what happened to these people? Maybe if we go up, we’ll find some sort of—”
“No.”
Even through the copper-tinted faceplate, Isaac could see his brother’s scowl.
“Come on! Why are you always the one who decides these things?”
“Because I’m the oldest.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Isaac didn’t answer. Now was not the time to get into another argument about who was in charge and whether Aaron could take care of himself. Stars knew they had far too many of those arguments already.
Aaron took a deep, raspy-sounding breath. “Well, fine. You do what you want down here. I’m going to go check out the upper levels.”
“What? Hey, stop!”
But Isaac was too late. His brother was already heading toward one of the narrow stairwells leading to the upper decks of the station.
“What the hell are you doing? You come back right now!”
“You’re not my captain. I don’t have to do what you tell me.”
“Dammit, Aaron! We’re supposed to stick together!”
“Then come with me. It’s not so bad. If everyone’s dead already, then what’s there to be afraid of?”
Take a look around, you idiot.
Isaac took a deep breath and clenched his fists. “Aaron, please. Think about what you’re doing. This isn’t the time or the place to throw a fit like this. This station isn’t safe. We should go back to the ship and get ready to leave the system.”
“You’re not going to stop me, Isaac. I’m going.”
Isaac’s skin crawled and his stomach flipped as he looked down both ends of the empty corridor. One of the broken display screens flickered in the distance, reminding him of the lightning storm on the cloud-covered world below. With the colonists’ decaying bodies all around him, the place seemed filled with death. More than anything else, he wanted to go back to the Medea and leave this awful place forever.
But he was not going to abandon his brother.
“All right, all right,” he said, masking his fear with indignation. “I’m coming.”
* * * * *
Isaac’s brother was waiting for him at the top of the stairwell when he reached the top. It was slow going in the heavy EVA suit, but he managed the climb without losing his breath for more than a few seconds.
“Well, here we are, ‘captain,’” Aaron said as he cleared the final step. “Where are we going next?”
Isaac paused, unsure where to go. The lights were even dimmer here, the corridor much narrower. A number of doors branched off on either side, but most of them were closed and the electronics were clearly failing.
“I don’t know. The Station Master’s offices, I guess.”
“Got any idea where they are?”
The scowl was almost audible in his brother’s voice.
“Let’s just go.”
They set off down the windowless corridor, their helmet lights illuminating the way. Little flecks of dust lit up like tiny stars as they walked by, suspended peacefully in the air until the wind from the brothers’ passing wrenched them back into the darkness. With the closeness of the walls, though, Isaac felt a little more at ease.
Aaron was right—this place was designed a lot like their home station back in Delta Oriana. He almost expected to see icons on the lintels of the doors they passed, or catch the smell of incense wafting from one of the local deck churches. Megiddo Station hadn’t been much bigger than Alnilam Station, and it was only a few light-years closer to the Coreward Stars. The Oriana Star Cluster was still squarely in the Outworlds, but it was settled thickly enough that none of the systems was completely isolated from the others.
Not that that had saved any of the ones who had stayed behind.
“I wonder if these arrows on the ceiling mean anything,” Aaron mused. “The green ones go back to the stairs, but the blue ones seem to lead somewhere else.”
Isaac shrugged. “So long as we don’t get lost.” Since the station was small enough that they could walk the whole length of the
rimside corridor in less than an hour, there wasn’t much danger of that. Probably.
The corridor came to an end at a maintenance closet. The door was open, giving them a view of the equipment lockers and control panels for the stationwide systems. Surprisingly, the computer terminal seemed to be in pretty good shape.
“I wonder if we can access the station records from here,” Isaac mused. He stepped inside, checking quickly to see if there were any dead or decomposing bodies. Satisfied that there weren’t, he sat down at the terminal and activated it. The screen came to life, displaying what appeared to be some sort of boot cycle.
“I’ll take a quick look around some of these other rooms,” Aaron said. “If this place is anything like Megiddo Station, the station master’s office shouldn’t be far.”
Isaac hesitated, the dusty darkness of the maintenance room suddenly much more ominous. The external mike buzzed—probably from the ventilation shaft out in the corridor—but it could just as easily have been from something less innocuous.
“We’ve got to stick together, Aaron. No wandering off.”
“I know, but—look, I’ll stay in range of the suit-to-suit radios and talk with you just to let you know what I’m doing. Is that all right?”
Isaac bit his lip. The computer finished booting and showed a startup menu. The prompt was obviously for languages, since one of the labels was in Gaian.
“All right. I’ll stay here, but be sure to tell me where you’re going and what you see.”
“Okay,” said Aaron. He patted him on the arm and left.
Language: Gaian, Isaac selected on the startup screen. Out in the corridor, the sound of his brother’s heavy footprints grew softer and softer, mingling with the buzz of the ambient noise from the few working ventilators.
“I’m turning a corner,” said Aaron, his voice as clear as if he were standing just a few feet away. “If this is like Megiddo, then—yep, the corridor continues on the other side of this maintenance room. Following the blue arrows. Passing one door, two doors …”
