Guardian

by Matthew S. Cox

  The door at the end of the deck opened, admitting a woman her height with a round face, dark skin, and a sharp indigo suit. She extended a henna-covered hand. “Welcome, Agent. My name is Chandra Mitchell. I’m the public relations and legal liaison officer.”

  “Hello.” Kirsten followed her to a warmer receiving area, which contained an information desk, food counter, and an automated kiosk with station maps and directions. “Is Miss Park still alive?”

  “As far as I am aware, yes.” Chandra took off at a brisk stride, possessing a masterful command of high heels that made Kirsten grumble. “I assume you don’t wish to waste time and get right to it as they say?”

  “I’m sure Miss Park would appreciate that, yes.”

  “You will need a suit to go EVO.”

  “Uhh. I’ve never done that before.”

  Chandra’s wavy hair bounced over her shoulder as she snapped her head around to smile at Kirsten. “It’s as easy as walking. You’ll be going out with Benjamin. He’s our lead instructor for new hires.”

  She wanted to protest, fearing what happened with the Division 1 officers at the church, but also terrified at the thought of screwing up and flinging herself out into space. Please don’t be a demon. “Thanks…”

  A pair of sliding glass doors parted at Chandra’s approach. “Once we leave the ring, there won’t be any gravity. I’m not dressed for that, so I’ll be staying behind.” She indicated her knee-length skirt. “Ben will meet you at the other side. Do you have any questions for me?”

  “Can you give me any more details about what happened? Did anyone else see anything else? What’s been going on?”

  Chandra nodded. “Miss Park was conducting a routine inspection on IS4-1882, a recently completed colony transport vessel. When a ship is declared ‘done’ by the build crews, it undergoes several inspections. Lindsey is part of the team that does the exterior testing. It takes them a few weeks to go over every inch of the outer hull and scan for faults. They were about halfway through the procedure on yesterday’s shift when her EVO-buddy screamed and lost consciousness. Lindsey began hyperventilating and complained of severe abdominal pain. Our medical team tells me that she showed an elevated heart rate, but the sensors picked up no other issues. She shouted about a man being out there with them who was trying to kill her, and powered her way to the far end of the berth. The last we’ve seen of her, she’s hidden in the mooring clamps and cables at the very tip of the spar. Her communications over the past twelve hours have been erratic and lapse in and out of coherence.”

  “She’s been out there twelve hours? How long are those suits good for?”

  “About twenty-four.” Chandra stopped walking by an elevator and pressed the call button. “After we put in a request for your assistance, we sent Jonah out to try and talk her down. He made it about halfway before yelling something I cannot repeat”―Kirsten lifted ‘oh fuck this’ from her surface thoughts―“and hurrying back inside. He proceeded to go directly to the cafeteria where he began to drink synthetic tequila. The only word he’s said since has been ‘nope.’”

  “I’d like to talk to him after I’m done outside.” I have to know what he saw.

  “Very well. Aside from that, no one has reported anything unusual.”

  The door opened with a loud hiss. Kirsten entered the elevator and spun around to face out.

  “Be prepared for a loss of gravity before it stops moving. You’ll be traveling down one of the spokes of the wheel to the hub. Once you reach the middle, you’ll be weightless.”

  “I understand.” I wanna go home. “See you soon.”

  Kirsten glanced at the wall and hit the down arrow. The doors snapped closed, and the chamber whirred with motion. She tried not to think about being in an overgrown metal box floating out in the endless death of outer space, far from Earth, far from Evan.

  Come on, K. Hold it together. You got this. That woman needs you.

  ithin twenty seconds of hitting the button, Kirsten floated off the floor and hung in midair. She slid upward until she found herself flat against the ceiling. After a moment of stillness, she launched down and hit the ground flat on her chest, the wind knocked out of her.

  The door opened with a hiss.

  A tall man with a dense brown-blonde buzz cut and a moustache reached for her hand. Except for the helmet, he already wore a bulky EVO suit. Sections of glossy cyan metal protected the forearms, shins, and chest like armor, while bright white fabric covered everywhere else. The surprisingly thin glove had a coating of rubbery mesh. Still wheezing, she didn’t try to move as he pulled her aloft like a human balloon.

  “You okay?”

  “Ouch.” She coughed. “What…”

  “The elevator stopped. You didn’t. It was moving at about twenty feet per second.”

  She shivered.

  “Not as bad as it sounds… that’s about thirteen miles per hour.” He looked her up and down. “You’re on the little side. That uniform should be okay, but you’ll need to lose the boots, belt, and that forearm guard. They won’t fit in the Starstrider.”

  Kirsten let him move her into a standing position. “What the heck is a starstrider?”

  “It’s the armor.” He tapped his chest. “As tough as anything the military uses, plus it’s sealed and has a full RCS maneuvering system.”

  “It doesn’t look too much bulkier than our armor.” Kirsten grabbed the ceiling to pull herself to a locker. She hurried out of her boots, curling into a ball while floating to undo the clips down the sides. “Guess you’re Benjamin?”

  “Yep.” He smiled. “Please, call me Ben. I’m guessing you’ve never done this before.”

  “I thought I was the psionic.” She winked and stuffed her boots/belt/forearm guard in the upper part of the locker above an empty Starstrider unit.

  Ben pulled the stiff mannequin-like suit out of its bay, set it on its feet, and typed something on a forearm-mounted touchscreen. A four-inch disc at the center of the armored chestplate rotated a half turn before it opened like a mechanical claw, exposing the interior. “It’s a single piece with attached boots and gloves. Only the helmet is separate.”

  Kirsten hurried into the suit, feeling a little small for it. “It’s a bit big, but it works.”

  “The foot pads are magnetic. Sensors above your feet will react to you trying to walk and control the magnets. Don’t try to pick up both legs at once or you’ll go flying. It takes some getting used to.”

  She looked down at blocky cyan metal boots. “I feel like one of those guys in my kid’s video game.” Kirsten tried to lift her right foot, but it didn’t move at all, as if bolted to the ground. A half-second later, the boot flew up with enough force to make her tilt over backward. “Gah!”

  He pulled her upright again. “Take a few steps. Lindsey’s doing fine… a few minutes more won’t make a difference. No sense going out there unprepared. And whoa, you have a kid?”

  “Yeah.” Kirsten talked about Evan while she practiced walking for a few minutes, eventually going from ‘drunk Frankenstein’s monster’ to ‘tiptoeing giant.’

  “Not bad.”

  “I need to test something. Don’t freak out on me.”

  Ben folded his arms. “Try me.”

  She called the lash, which draped through the glove of her suit without an issue. She swung the luminous tendril of energy back and forth a few times before letting it recede. Her confidence swelled. “Okay. We’re good.”

  “What uhh, what was that?” Ben handed her a helmet and grabbed one for himself.

  “It’s a projection of psionic energy, like a whip. It’s how I fight paranormal entities. It can’t hurt anyone who’s alive. Wanted to make sure it would work with this heavy glove.”

  Ben lowered his helmet down over his head and gave it a slight twist to lock it in place. “Handy, that.”

  “What?”

  “That it only hurts spirits. Guess that makes things easier in tight quarters.”

&nb
sp; “Yeah.” She gathered her hair and fumbled with the helmet.

  Ben helped seat it. Weak jets of cool air sprayed on her cheeks and the back of her neck, triggering a shiver. “Not bad for never doing this before. Gotta start it off two inches offset to the left.”

  “Oh.” Soon after the neck ring clicked, her vision filled with a heads-up display, and her ears with a steady stream of whimpering and growling. “Lindsey?”

  The growling stopped. Seconds later, a weary voice whined, “Go away.”

  A distorted rasp followed that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. While she couldn’t make out speech, the tone came off angry. That’s a ghost… caught by the mic. Crap. Something’s really here.

  “Okay, step two.” Benjamin held his hands up. “Since you don’t have an M3 plug to jack in with, the maneuvering jets respond to virtual joysticks. If you hold your hands like this”―he raised his arms and positioned his hands as if holding flight sticks―“the suit will react. The controls are pretty simple. Left stick moves you up and down, forward for up and back for down. Left and right cause rotation. If you squeeze a trigger and move the stick back and forth, instead of sliding up and down, you’ll rotate longitudinally, head to toe.”

  Kirsten nodded.

  Ben flexed the fingers of his right hand. “The other side is all lateral motion. Forward glides forward, back glides, back, left and right strafe to the side.”

  “Sounds easy enough.”

  Ben clipped a tether on her belt and attached the other end to his. “In case of emergencies.”

  “I’m not usually into that sort of thing, but I’ll make an exception.”

  He laughed.

  They tromped across the room to a six-wheeled cart with a flat surface and one little control unit mounted on the end of a strut at the front. After climbing on, Ben drove it down about a quarter mile of tunnel past a repeating series of receiving bays that looked copy and pasted except for different arrangements of random boxes and carts. Each ended with a massive wall of triangular-paneled windows looking out into the vastness of space, and a few offered views of starship hulls in various stages of completion.

  He eventually turned off the ‘road’ into one of the huge nine-story rooms full of heavy equipment, giant cargo boxes, and power-loaders. A huge black ‘7’ decorated the center of the inner wall. Above it, a strip of windows looked out over an enormous starship in the berth, its eight massive engine cones frighteningly close. The craft had to be at least six stories tall and probably four or five hundred yards long. At the right and left corner of the recessed room, stairs led down to another chamber, from which the murmurs of several voices emanated.

  Ben led the way down into a room about half the size of the storage bay, where two huge airlocks took up most of the exterior wall, flanked by more windows. Kirsten approached, mesmerized at the sight of metal spars stretching off into space, so far they seemed to bend like noodles. Each one had to be ten meters thick, but their length made them look flimsy. She swallowed, second-guessing the idea of walking out on such a precarious place. Uhh. I dunno about this. She closed her eyes and wanted to wake up in her bed, at home, clutching Evan like a teddy bear. When she looked again, she still found herself a thousand miles above the Moon.

  A small team huddled around a desk that seemed miniscule in comparison to the cavernous room. They had been staring since two Starstrider suits clanked down the plastisteel grating staircase. A man and a woman in business casual stood on either side of two Japanese or Chinese women in white coats.

  Ben gestured at them. “They’ve been trying to talk Lindsey in for hours. Gene Michaels with our mental health team, as is Dr. Leslie Whitaker. Doctors Aya Shimura and Kimberly Nori are from health services. Everyone, this is Agent Wren from Division 0.”

  Kirsten tromped over and made a quick round of hand shaking. “Anything I should know?”

  “Miss Park is showing signs of a psychotic break,” said Dr. Whitaker, a confident-looking woman with auburn hair and steel-grey eyes. “I’m not wholly bought in to this whole spirit thing, but I suppose anything is worth trying as this point. None of the other crew will go out there.”

  “After Jonah came back in, no one wanted to go EVO.” Ben fidgeted. “People who live and work on an orbital platform aren’t too different from sailors. Superstitious as hell.”

  Kirsten looked at the medical doctors. “How’s her health?”

  The woman on the left glanced at the terminal behind them for a second. “There have been several spikes of heart rate, and her blood sugar is getting worrisomely low. After her previous injury, this may create complications.”

  “Previous injury?” asked Kirsten.

  “I’m sorry. I… shouldn’t have said that much. I can’t discuss a patient’s file without an active investigation of Miss Park as a suspect, a binding order from a judge, or approval of next of kin.” Dr. Nori let out a soft sigh. “It’s not relevant to what’s going on right now.”

  “Okay.” Kirsten looked at Ben. “Any scanners pointed that way picking up cold spots?”

  “In outer space?” He blinked.

  She sighed. “Okay. Maybe blonde is more than hair color. Let’s go.”

  Dr. Whitaker waved a datapad at Kirsten. “Miss Park has been one of the more stable personnel on board. The statistical probability of both her, Jonah, and Emmanuel having ‘issues’ at the same time are slim to none. That’s why I asked them to contact you.”

  “Emmanuel?” asked Kirsten.

  “Lindsey’s teammate.” Dr. Whitaker sighed. “He’s still under sedation.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Kirsten smiled at her; the woman had to be old enough to be her mom, but didn’t really look it. Who would I be if I didn’t have a piece of shit for a mother? She offered a pleasant smile, unable to wonder if the psychiatrist had picked up on the longing in her eyes, and headed toward her guide.

  Ben waved to the support team and crossed to a fourteen-foot hexagonal airlock hatch in a single gliding leap. Two shiny white panels with yellow markings split apart down the middle and retracted into the walls, exposing a chamber ten yards deep to an exact copy of the inner door. Kirsten tromped over, gazing at the six-inch thick doors as she passed. Once inside the chamber, Ben approached a holo-panel near the exit and closed the inner doors.

  “It takes about two minutes to reclaim the air.”

  She nodded. A readout at the upper left corner of the HUD flashed, warning the exterior atmosphere had become hazardous. About ninety seconds later, it showed ‘vacuum.’ Soon, the outer door opened, revealing a wider-than-expected path, a road paved out of plastisteel grating that ran the entire length of the spar. A huge dull-grey bot that resembled a legless titan with a tiny head sat parked near a wall that stopped a mere twenty yards from the exit. It didn’t react to their presence, its single lens eye staring off into space. Dents and scratches on its chest plate suggested they used it to move around chunks of starship or large components too unwieldy for people.

  For most of the walk to Lindsey, she’d have only the magnets in her boots to keep her from floating off.

  “Ugh.” Trying to concentrate on opening her mind to the presence of the paranormal proved somewhere between impossible and ‘not happening’ while her brain ground its gears on the terror of hurtling into nothingness.

  “Agent Wren, we’re reading an elevated heart rate. Are you feeling okay?” asked Dr. Shimura.

  “Yeah. Other than scared shitless, I’m doing great.” She lifted and placed her feet, falling into a meditative rhythm.

  “I’m right behind you,” said Ben. “It’s going to take you an hour to get out there at that pace. We usually jet along, but it’s okay if you’re not comfortable with that.”

  “Lindsey, are you there? My name is Kirsten. I believe you. I’m with Division 0. They sent me up here to deal with the ghost who’s trying to hurt you. I’m not going to let him touch you.”

  Snarling and whimpering came back o
ver the comm.

  “Oh, shit. Okay fine.” Kirsten held her arms as though she had on a jetpack. “Don’t let me kill myself.”

  Ben glided up at her left side. “I’m right here.”

  She unstuck her boots and pushed the right hand ‘joystick’ forward. A hit as though Gabriel had kicked her between the shoulder blades launched her forward. She screamed, watching the plastisteel spars fly past her. The illusion of a curve in the span stretching out in front of her made her feel like she’d gone from flying sideways to falling down a hole.

  “Easy!” yelled Ben. “The sticks are super sensitive.”

  The tether went tight, snapping her to a halt and folding her in half. The cord sprang taut and recoiled, pulling Ben forward and her backward. They collided in a clumsy embrace. Kirsten screamed for a few seconds after, clinging to him for all she had. A torqueing motion came next, followed by a grunt from Ben.

  “You’re safe. Boots down.”

  She opened her eyes and blushed at her subconscious reaction to turn into a clinging koala bear. “Uhh. Sorry. Space is really not my thing.”

  “I’m sure Lindsey will appreciate your bravery.” Ben held her out and spun her to face forward down the spar. “Okay. Give it a tiny little push.”

  Kirsten positioned her hands as if holding joysticks again. This time, she moved her glove about a millimeter. A faint hum sounded in the helmet, and she glided forward at a hair faster than walking. Another tap got her up to a running speed, a third, a little faster.

  “That’s good.” Ben kept pace with her, one hand on her shoulder, the other at his side.

  “You got a plug?”

  “Yep. Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Oh, right. You said that already.” She tweaked her course with micro-adjustments and tried to convince her mind that the sensation of going downhill came from a trick of the eye. Keeping the new starship in her peripheral vision helped focus on the truth of going in a straight line.

  “Most psionics avoid cybernetics. Cutting into the brain messes with it. Plus I’m squeamish. Before today, my worst fear was having something sliced off by some crazy gang member and waking up with a metal hand or leg.”