Planet of Graves

by Marc Everitt

  “We run an efficient team here, and I will require you two to fit in,” droned the Major to what were now a very bored Eli and Taylor. Around the control room the usual businesses of the day continued with the occasional sympathetic glance in the engineers’ direction. All the station personnel had suffered this same lecture. As she looked over, Sara found herself catching Eli’s eye and she smiled, before turning away quickly and trying to concentrate on her work.

  “I expect a certain level of discipline from my team,” continued the Major relentlessly, as he paced up and down the room in a bizarre stereotype of pomp and circumstances, “no excuses for letting our remote location allow us to behave like savages.” Eli gazed ahead and tried his best to pay attention but it was too difficult, his mind would not stay focused on the Major. What went on in the mind of Taylor West at this point, God only knew, his face betrayed nothing, eyes likewise and he slipped into one of his contemplative moods. It would take a phenomenon of considerably more interest than the Major to rouse him now. However, that would not be for the want of trying on the Major’s part, and the air around him seemed to vibrate with the decibels of the speech.

  “I will not tolerate any breech of the company directives which are enforced by the senior officer, namely me.” This was to continue for some time. At her workstation, Sara Crick frowned at her computer screen as it bombarded her with information which could not make sense. Movements just beneath the surface of the planet ripples across the screen in front of her in the form of an erratic pulse. Her fair complexion spoiled by creases as she sought a rational explanation for a physical impossibility, she still attracted an approving look from Eli who found her quiet, plain demeanour a welcome distraction from the grating pomposity of Major Hastings.

  While not exactly beautiful, Sara possessed a calm sense of dignity which never really attracted men but tended to keep the ones who did occasionally cross paths with her, curiously entranced. Many people prior to Eli had likened her to a schoolmistress, and he found himself echoing these thoughts as he glanced over at her. Beyond her, amidst a gigantic ream of databanks and astonishingly complicated machinery, slouched the small figure of Will Shanks. He remained unconcerned by all the questions surrounding him and being relayed to him via readouts and printers, all purring away nicely.

  As far as he was concerned if Graves’ World wanted to shift about internally, fine. No reason for doing so? So what? Movements under the surface which didn’t fit with tectonic theory? Who cares? He began to wonder if he could manage to sneak out while the Major was lecturing the two new engineers, and get himself a bite to eat. “Furthermore,” droned the Major mercilessly to a wilting Eli and a comatose Taylor, “We are expecting a high level of reliability in terms of reactor output.” He had been talking solidly for nearly ten minutes by this time and any novelty value caused by his ridiculous moustache had long since worn off for Eli.

  On the far side of the control room, Chris Maxwell was using the time away from the Major’s attention to complete a minor repair job. A device that had been hidden under his overalls lay on his desk, shielded from the view of the others by a mound of assorted machinery in various stages of repair, and he was fusing together a recently corroded connection. A crude device, he knew, but one would suffice for what he had in mind. A smile came to his broad hairy face as he contemplated the small device in use.

  A smile which, had it been seen by any of the research team, would have made them very anxious. Chris Maxwell was not a man who smiled a lot and when he did it usually meant someone else was in trouble. The same had been true of his father who held a reputation (richly deserved) for being one of the most dangerous bar room brawlers in the colonies. Many people, of all colours, creeds, races and ideologies had good reason to wish that they would never see a Maxwell again after seeing Maxwell senior.

  It was not a surprise to those who knew the Maxwell family when Chris Maxwell had beaten his way to infamy by the age of twelve; but considerable shock was felt when Maxwell Junior enlisted for a career in the Company. Not least of which from his father, who upon hearing the news that his son was going to get some sort of paid employment instead of bleeding the coffers of the state dry, promptly proceeded to release his anger on the next man who appeared to be looking at his pint in a strange way in the ‘Comet and Moon’ and ended up killing the poor unfortunate. It is a bitter pill to swallow that the contributions resentfully made by Chris in taxes do not even pay a third of the cost of keeping his father in the penitentiary establishment on Riker’s Island. The courts reasoned that the rest of the cost should be taken form the deceased’s pension fund, as he would no longer need it. Justice is blind, but sadly it is also a bit retarded.

  Chris had a youth spent in and out of various scrapes with the law, but never anything serious enough to allow him to share a cell with his dear father, who he had always hated anyway. The troublesome twelve-year-old became a brooding twenty-year-old who had lost none of his zest for a fight and had gained nothing in temperance. Chris had always been smart enough to know when he had to step away and avoid the inevitable fate his father had succumbed to. He appeared to calm down as he grew older but that was really happening was that he learned to be better at hiding his hate and disguising his rage.

  The thing that really changed the way in which Chris looked at the world was the day he met Lana Lovetta. He had been standing in a bar with a work colleague, sick of hearing about the fellow’s dull marriage to a college professor, and had looked around the bar to see if he could find a distraction. The distraction that he found was dressed in the shortest of dresses and had breasts practically spilling out of the front, much to the chagrin of the man she was with.

  He seemed to be less than pleased with the attention being given her by the majority of men, and open-minded women, in the bar and was clearly spoiling for a fight. To this day Chris could not work out whether it was the luscious body of Lana that had attracted him to leave his erstwhile drinking partner and march over to the other side of the room, or whether it was down to the chances of getting into a fight. It was probably a bit of both if truth were told.

  He later found out that Lana was not even as intelligent as his own dear old mother had been (and she had died whilst trying to have a really good look inside the blender) but he had married her anyway. Most people were of the opinion that looks and brains were difficult for a man like Chris to find in the same woman, and much more difficult for him to deserve. His minor repairs complete, Maxwell returned the device to his coveralls and looked around to be sure that no one had observed his actions. Although he couldn’t be sure, he thought he saw Will Shanks’ head turning back to his work. Had he seen anything? Maxwell could not be sure, but the suspicion remained firmly in his mind.

  The constantly circling rage of his mind manifested itself in a simple balling of his toes. ‘Did you see, Shanks, will you mention it’ If he had been seen then his whole plan would be jeopardised and the consequences of that were not worth thinking about.

  Maxwell could not be certain, but still the question lurked at the back of his waking mind, staying away from the swirling dervish that was the anger in his subconscious but tainted by it nevertheless. “Did you see, Shanks? Will you mention it?”

  Chapter Four

  Too Many Cooks

  His breath came in spasms. His lungs ached as they tried to gain oxygen for the thin, alien atmosphere. He could feel his heart beating on the inside of his rib cage as he ran, his tired legs carrying him shakily over the desert plain. Turning to look over his shoulder, he could see the masked figure behind him, gaining all the time. He forced his exhausted body onwards, faster; but to no avail. Fatigue battled with fear for a place in his heart, he knew he was about to die. He felt the mysterious pursuer breathing down his neck and he used the last of his energy to raise his face to the cold skies and release a scream of pure, unbridled terror.

  And then Alan Johnson woke up, sweaty and wild-eyed, as he always was after this
nightmare. Rising from his bed, Alan started towards the window which afforded him views over the surrounding plains of Graves’ World as if he wanted to pin down the exact spot where he had just been ‘chased’. Deciding it was better not to think too much about it, he made his way to the bathroom. His bare feet padded silently on the cold floor and his eyes ached as he turned on the light. ‘God’, he thought as he looked in the mirror, ‘I look like hell’.

  Running some water into his cupped hands, Alan splashed his face and washed off the sweat of fear and tried to avoid the cool liquid waking him up. These dreams were not an uncommon event in his life, and his sleep was beginning to suffer because of it. He was turning off the tap when he heard the noise, footsteps outside his room. His breath froze halfway out of his throat and he stood stock still, not daring to even blink. There it was again, definite footfalls outside his room heading away from the control room and towards…. well, towards where? Alan relaxed as he realised that only Will’s room was any further down that corridor. He thought that it must be Will getting a snack from the kitchen, he thought as he walked back to bed switching the bathroom light off as he did so. ‘Funny’, he thought, ‘Will usually sleeps like the dead’.

  The figure stopped outside of Will Shanks’ room, cautious yet confident. They knew Shanks never bothered to lock his door, and that made it so much easier. It was not that they had anything in particular against Will, in fact they quite liked him; but he had begun to suspect. That could not be allowed to happen, not so soon before the great day arrived, not when it was so close. With this thought in mind, the figure steeled itself for the task in hand and opened the door to Will Shanks’ room.

  ***

  The night wore relentlessly onwards, the moment of Will’s death came and then passed. The reactor, housed in giant titanium storage bays ticked over well-enough; their automatic systems set for the night. Should any irregularity occur a signal would be sent to the duty officer’s com-unit on his belt that would emit an electronic shock of extremely low voltage and duration. This was just enough to break the brain patterns of sleep and alert the engineer to an impending problem.

  The duty engineer for that night was Eli, but it was not a concern for his duties that was keeping him awake. Although not an overly sensitive man, he felt that night weighing heavily upon him, as if it had decided it would smother him personally. He could find no reason for his discomfort, no unusual sounds or disturbances to which he could apportion blame.

  If anything, the night seemed to Eli to pass without event; no shock from his com-unit and no noise from the other side of the room where Taylor slept peacefully. Eli almost saw the dawn, just drifting off to sleep a matter of moments before the first flickerings of sunlight danced over the sand. This still allowed him to grab a few hours sleep as dawn arrived on Graves’ World after only four hours of night. Not even the company could expect its engineers to work after less than four hours sleep, although it was not for the want of trying.

  ***

  The first one to rise the next morning was Sara Crick. Her small alarm woke her with a minimum of fuss and she rolled over and rubbed her eyes. Getting up from her bed she stretched her arms over her head and tried to inject life into her back. She walked over to the mirror and was annoyed to see the presence of black hollows under her eyes. She cursed under her breath and washed her face to try and awaken her facial muscles.

  Although she would never have admitted it, especially to her work colleagues, she had found the tall African looking engineer as attractive as Lana had and had begun to take more care over her appearance. Combing her mousy blond hair into her customary style, an easily maintained bun clasp. She ran an appraising eye over her figure, something she very rarely did. She could see her reflection in the mirror dressed in comfortable nightwear that finished well below her knees.

  Pulling herself upright she stood sideways on to the mirror and pulled her nightwear tight under her breasts whilst pushing her chest out and arching her back. Her figure, while not as busty or curvaceous as Lana’s, still boasted both tidy curves and ample cleavage. This was not a fact that was noted by her associates at home or her colleague on the station as her plain demeanour and sensible clothing were not liable to invite lechery or voyeurism. If anything, she pondered as she appraised herself in the mirror, her legs were better than Lana’s, whose legs tended to hold a little too much weight on the calves for comfort. But who as she trying to fool, she thought, her efficient professional personality asserting itself for the first time that day as she shook her head with a wry smile. She was sure a man like Eli Jackson would not look twice at her.

  Yet, he had seemed to catch her eye and had looked to be more than friendly, but that was something she put down to imagination and with that in mind, dressed for the day.

  ***

  When Eli got out of bed and walked across to the dresser, Taylor was struggling to open his eyes. His body seemed to be responding to instructions from his brain as he could move his toes but anything further then that was pure speculation. Waking up for Taylor was always a chore, and one that he really did not enjoy. For as long as he could remember, waking up had been like that; a daily struggle to push away nightmare imagery which bombarded his dreams, a battle for him to work out who he was. Taylor never felt as if he were at home, never relaxed enough in his own mind to consider himself at peace. The first few moments of each day were a whirlwind of confused emotions and patchwork memories, most of which he could not recognise. Images of people he was instantly familiar with and then, as if part of another life, the memories were gone and he was left with only the present; and for Taylor West, that would never be enough.

  ***

  When the lifeless body of Will Shanks was discovered, it was already twenty minutes into his shift. No one thought of this as in any way unusual as they had been long since accustomed to the laxity of his timekeeping. In the engineering room Taylor and Eli were unaware that Shanks had failed to turn up on time as they had their minds on a separate concern. A slight imbalance in the ratio of energy to fusion had appeared and Taylor was, at that moment, lying under a vast bank of machinery with only his lower legs showing. Eli was standing over him shouting comments about the effects that his tinkerings were having on the instrumentation which Taylor could not see on the front of the hardware.

  “A bit more,” offered Eli as a dial moved closer to a line marked nominal with every grunt of exertion Taylor made. Taylor’s voice, muffled by the tonnes of metal he was lying under, was weak and barely audible.

  “How about that?” Eli looked at the dial, anxious not to make a mistake. The problem was not dangerous, but caused a greater degree of credit-loss then the company would have thought necessary. Having confirmed the dials location at the position allocated, he bent down and gently tugged Taylor’s trouser leg. “Spot on, out you come from under there.”

  With Eli’s help, Taylor wriggled out from under the panel, taking care not to catch himself on any of the vital circuitry which was fitted a mere matter of millimetres above him. The space left under the hardware was not great, certainly it would never have allowed for the considerable frame of Eli. Taylor rose to his feet and dusted himself down, as he did so the wall mounted communicator buzzed into life for the first time that day.

  Eli moved to answer it, depressing the com-button and speaking into it. “Jackson.”

  On the other end of the internal communicator, he heard the Major asking him if he had seen Shanks that day. Eli replied he had not and was rewarded with a dissatisfied ‘Harumph’ through the speaker. Then the line went dead as the link was severed from the other end. Eli turned and continued the process of aligning safety hatches at the base of the machinery Taylor had just expedited himself from and thought no more of it.

  In the control room, the Major called over to Alan, “Johnson, go and wake Shanks up, will you?” Alan smiled, as pleasant as always and left the room, pausing only to switch off his automatic dicta-pen.

  �
�Never on time,” mumbled the Major to no one in particular. “Probably dead to the world.”

  Alan moved rapidly along the corridor towards Shanks’ room, he had midway through a particularly interesting sub-tectonic analysis and was loath to let the mood slip away from him. After a few moments of walking, he reached the door to Shanks’ quarters and he knocked politely, but loudly, hoping to wake him kindly.

  Upon hearing no response, his knockings became louder and more insistent until he was practically hammering on the door. Still, his efforts met with no reply and he began to become concerned. With a burst of action, which was, in many ways, unlike him; Alan attempted to shoulder charge the door only to find it too firm for him. A sudden thought occurred to him and he tried the door handle, then felt foolish as the door swung open straight away. ‘Of course’, he thought, ‘Will never locks his,’ but this was a thought he never finished. As, before his eyes, hung the still corpse of Will Shanks.

  ***

  The initial shock hit Johnson hard, as if they had been punched brutally in the stomach. All the banality of everyday life was pushed aside by what he saw. It was a moment that would live with him for the rest of his life, the first time he had seen a corpse. The fact that the deceased was well known to him made it all the more difficult for him to cope with.

  Will Shanks was hanging, his bare feet just over a metre above his untidy floor. A rope was tied at one end to the back legs of the standard issue bunk. The rope then shot upwards and threaded itself through the grill of the ventilation shaft in the centre of the ceiling before plummeting down and coiling itself around the dead man’s neck. Shanks’ arms hung lifelessly at his sides as he swayed ever so slightly in the faintest of breezes caused by the opening of the door.

  His head lolled to one side, his eyes glazed open and protruding slightly from his already blue face. The fact that his tongue was sticking out of his dead lips and pointing towards his left ear lobe lent the scene a macabre comedy, but Alan was not laughing. He had taken all this information in, as he stood frozen in the doorway, less than a metre from the slowly swinging corpse. It was well over a minute before he realised that he wasn’t breathing, the hammering of his heart the only sound in the room. Drawing a deep breath he bolted out of the room and some five metres down the corridor to the nearest wall mounted com-unit and contacted the control room.